Life During Wartime (40 page)

‘Not well.’

‘There’s a small military airport across from the civilian one, and that’s where the office was. All morning I sat in the reception room with his aide, staring at the walls. Around noon the aide brought me a sandwich and a soda. I ate, waited some more. I was beginning to think the major just wanted me to sit there and look nice. Then about two o’clock he came to his door and said, ‘Debora, I need you now.’ Just the way he’d ask a secretary in to take dictation, just that offhanded tone. I went into the office, and he told me to take off my underwear. Still very polite. Smiling. I was afraid, but like I said, I’d prepared for this, and so I did what he asked. He told me to get down on my hands and knees beside the desk. I did that, too. I shed a few tears, I remember, but I managed to stop them. He pulled out a tube from his drawer, some kind of jelly, and … and he lubricated me. That was almost the worst part. And then he dropped his trousers and came inside me from behind, the way you …’

‘I’m sorry;’ said Mingolla. ‘I didn’t …’

‘No, no!’ Debora’s hands fluttered in the dark, found his face, cupped it. ‘Sometimes I want you to do that, but …’ She sighed again. ‘Let me tell the whole story.’

‘All right.’

‘I thought he’d make love to me roughly. I’m not sure why. Maybe I figured that his good treatment had been to lull me, to undermine my preparation. But he didn’t. For a long time he didn’t even move. Just kneeled behind me, inside me, his hands on my hips. There was a bottle of whiskey on his desk, and after a couple of minutes he had a drink from it. Then he moved a little,
but only a few times. He had another drink, moved some more. It went on like that for about a half-hour. Then somebody knocked on the door. The major yelled for them to come in. It was another officer. He looked at me, but didn’t seem surprised by what was going on. After that first look, he didn’t pay any attention to me, just discussed business with the major, something about scheduling, and then he left. It kept on like this for the rest of the afternoon. The major having a few drinks, moving now and again, conducting business. At the end of the day he pulled out of me and masturbated. He didn’t insist I watch, he didn’t seem to care what I was doing. He finished, wiped it up with a rag. Then he drove me back to his house, and that night over dinner he treated me as if I were his houseguest again.’

Mingolla rested his head on her shoulder, bitter, wishing he could take the memory from her.

‘It was the same every workday,’ she said. ‘In the beginning I felt relieved that he wasn’t hurting me, but before long … I don’t know how to explain what I was feeling. Humiliation was there, the fact that I was being used like a piece of furniture. Guilt that it wasn’t worse. The feeling of being a nonperson. Sometimes I’d hate myself for not hating it worse than I did, and sometimes I’d almost enjoy it. I’d have a sense of being freed by it, that once he was inside me I’d go floating off into some other universe, invisible, made different, unique. Then I’d worry that he’d get tired of me and put me back in prison. I remember once when I was worrying about that, I started to make love to him, to take an active part … you know, to give him a better time. But he didn’t want that. He reprimanded me, told me to hold still or he’d punish me. My feelings for him changed, too. Back and forth. One day I’d be repelled by him, I’d dream about killing him. And the next day I’d be thankful that he was sparing me from worse. I’d actually look forward to the office, to the chance to prove myself to him. I’d make bright conversation at dinner, bring him presents. For a while I was actually in love with him, at least I felt something like love. And I think that’s why he finally released me, I think my attachment to him didn’t suit his needs. I was terribly distracted, close to a breakdown, and I’d begun to tell him how I felt. Trying to widen our range of communication. I guess I
thought he’d be interested. Like a scientist, you know, I thought he might want to take notes on the disintegration of my personality. But he wasn’t interested. God knows what did interest him.’

She was silent a long time, and Mingolla asked what had happened.

‘One morning I was waiting for him, and two soldiers came instead. They drove me out of town, north toward Antigua. I knew they were going to kill me, throw my body in a barranca. But they just dropped me off by the side of the road. I felt lost, I didn’t know what to do. I walked back and forth, laughing and crying. I didn’t realize they’d left me off at a bus stop until the bus pulled up. I got on the bus … it seemed the only choice. I never saw the major again. Two years later, after I’d gone through the therapy, I tried to find him. But I learned he was dead. Assassinated.’

‘Did you want to kill him?’

‘There was more to it than that. I think I wanted to understand what he’d been trying to do with me … ifit wasn’t just a matter of his own perversity. I’m not sure what I would have done to him. Probably killed him … I don’t know.’

The engines had slowed, and Mingolla could hear the bubbling of the
Ensorcelita
’s wash; he was grateful for the sound, because its sudden incidence alleviated the need for speech. Minutes went by with no communication between them other than touches. Debora’s breathing grew deep and regular. Then she said, ‘Make love to me.’

‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘I was … but I was dreaming we were making love.’

‘Aren’t you too sleepy?’

‘Maybe, but we can try.’

He pulled her close, kissed her. Her response was tentative at first, and he wondered if she was testing herself against the bad memory. Soon, though, she lost herself in the foreplay. But when he entered her, she lay motionless beneath him and he started to withdraw.

‘I want you to finish,’ she said.

‘You’re too sleepy.’

‘No, it’s good. Sometimes when I don’t move I can feel you more. I like that.’

He felt irrationally aloft, distant from her, and this gave him an inarticulate concern; but then concern vanished as he heard her voice call to him in the quiet of his mind.

Once she had fallen asleep he lay back, listening to the engines. Something was bothering him, and he realized that he still felt distant from her. He knew if he were to turn and embrace her, the distance would vanish, and he would feel drifty, at peace. But knowing that changed nothing. He had the idea that his insights into her were somehow in error. As were her insights into him. It seemed to him that they had become shifty characters to each other, that their mode of honesty – these sudden bouts of revelation and confession – were smokescreens. Not that they were lies, but rather that by being framed so dramatically they became less than truths, a means of obscuring some truth that perhaps they themselves didn’t understand. That must be it, he decided. That they didn’t understand themselves well enough to practice honesty … or else they were frightened of self-discovery. Self-discovery was an unpleasant chore. He could look back a mere matter of weeks and see what an idiot he had been. Like in Emerald. His role of hard-ass creep, his lovesickness. Roles poorly conceived and poorly acted. And God only knew what sort of idiot he was being now. He turned onto his side, facing away from her. Their problems likely had something to do with how they had begun; though for the most part he had been able to put that behind him, it was always there beneath the surface, always a cause for doubt. He sighed, and the sigh coincided with an enormous swell lifting the
Ensorcelita
, and for an instant he felt that the coincidence of tide and breath would carry them in a gravitiless arc beyond Panama to a dark country where silent cowled figures with burning eyes awaited their arrival. He turned onto his back again, causing Debora to stir and mumble. He tried to resurrect his train of thought, but it no longer seemed important. None of it mattered, none of it had real weight. He lay awake a long time, unable to think of anything that did.

*

The engines broke down the next night while Ruy was attempting to impress Debora with the fervor of his revolutionary convictions, with his inside information concerning secret matters. The moon, almost full, hung low above the coast, and they were close enough to shore that Mingolla could make out the separate crowns of palms silvered by its light. Ruy was leaning against the wheelhouse door, and inside, visible through his opaque reflection, Corazon stood at the wheel. She turned toward Mingolla, her left eye glinting redly. He tried to read her face, and she held his gaze without a hint of challenge, as if willing to let him learn all he could.

‘Yeah,’ Ruy was saying. ‘Don’t matter to me if the revolution’s dead. I start it all over myself if I have to, unnerstan’? And anyway’ – he shook a finger at Debora – ‘why you keep tellin’ me that shit ’bout it’s dead? You think that, why you goin’ to Panama? You runnin’? Naw, that’s not it! You and this Yankee come on board, act like you gonna kill this black man, and then the next minute you actin’ like old friends. It don’t make sense. You got some kinda plan. A fool can see that. And lately there’s been too many strange motherfuckers headin’ for Panama. Gotta be somethin’ big happenin’ down there.’

‘How you figure?’ Mingolla asked.

‘I told ya, lotsa strange fuckers travelin’ these days.’ Ruy fingered a cigarette from his shirt pocket ‘Wonder what’ goin’ on.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Debora. ‘People have been running to Panama since the war began.’

‘Not this kinda people.’ Ruy cupped a match, lit up. He threw back his head and blew smoke, affording Debora a view of his sharp profile.

With every gesture, he was – Mingolla thought – projecting the image of the Romantic Smuggler, layering it with his Zorro-like commitment. The pose was laughable, but Mingolla was coming to believe that Ruy knew this, that he was using the image to disguise a real commitment. He had been operating too long in dangerous waters to be the buffoon he pretended, and besides, Mingolla had a bad feeling about him, about his whole act.

‘Yeah,’ Ruy said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘I been smellin’ somethin’ funny for a while now. Been hearin’ things, too.’

‘You fulla shit, mon.’ Tully, perched on the rail, turned his head; the moonlight washed over half his face. ‘Ain’t nobody be tellin’ a chump like you nothin’.’

Ruy ignored him. ‘This one man I carry south, he don’t think mucha me. And that’s good, ’cause when a man don’t think mucha you, he ain’t cautious.’ He blew smoke toward Tully. ‘So he say to me, “Ruy, there’s more to this war than meets the eye.” And I say, “Yeah? What you mean?” I’m pretendin’ I ain’t really interested, y’know. “Well,” he says, “I probably shouldn’t be talkin’ on this, but the peace is comin’ soon, and Panama is where it’s comin’ from.” And I say, “Wow! Peace, man! That’s fuckin’ terrific!” And the man’s all puffed up ’cause of how he’s astoundin’ me, y’know. “Oh, yeah,” he say. “People I know, they workin’ on the peace right this second. Negotiatin’, y’understan’.”’

Ruy folded his arms, cocked his head, and from that pose, the pose of a bemused lecturer pausing to consider the effect of his words, Mingolla recognized the man of whom Ruy reminded him. It should, he thought, have been obvious to him from the beginning. All Ruy’s little clues had been designed to give himself away.

‘Anyhow,’ Ruy went on, ‘I start pressin’ this man … not so he’d notice, y’unnerstan’. Just workin’ on him. And he tells me that, yeah, dey workin’ on a peace in Panama, but dere’s fightin’ still. Armies in the streets. I ask him who’s fightin’, and he act like it’s a big secret, like he’s really doin’ me a favor by tellin’ me, y’know, and he say he ain’t clear on the whole story, but he give me a name and say this name got a lot to do with it.’ He put on a sly smile, swept all of them with a glance. ‘ “Sotomayor,” he say to me. “You ’member that name. Sotomayor. That name, it’s the key to everything.” ’

Mingolla met his eyes, and though Ruy was not smiling, Mingolla could sense his secret amusement. He was about to call Ruy, to demand an accounting; but at that moment the engines stopped.

‘Fuck!’ Ruy threw down his cigarette, flung open the door to the wheelhouse. ‘What’d you do?’

‘Nothin’,’ said Corazon. ‘I don’t do nothin’. It just stop.’

Ruy stomped forward, heaved off the hatch of the engine compartment; he put his hands on his hips and stared down into the darkness. ‘Corazon!’ he bawled. ‘Bring the flashlight!’

Corazon went forward with a flashlight, and Ruy grabbed it, lowered himself into the compartment. The rest of them gathered around Corazon. Below, Ruy swept the beam across a maze of grease-smeared metal. He held the beam steady a second, then banged the side of the compartment. ‘Son of a bitch! Motherfucker!’

‘Can’t you fix it?’ Debora asked.

Ruy banged the wall again, hauled himself back onto the deck. ‘Take parts to fix this cunt! And I ain’t got no parts.’ He looked as if he were about to throw the flashlight, but only smacked it against his hip. ‘Man, this some real fuckin’ shit!’

‘Look like we gonna have to put into port,’ said Tully.

Ruy’s face was wild, the muscles knotting at the corner of his mouth. ‘I told ya, I’m illegal ’round here. They blow my fuckin’ head off if they catch me.’

‘Run up the sail,’ Mingolla suggested.

‘Sure, man! That way we be right off Truxillo come daybreak, and that son of a bitch Dominguez, he be smilin’ ear to ear when he see the
Ensorcelita
. Shit!’ Ruy clutched his forehead. ‘What the fuck am I gonna do?’

‘You can’t fix it for sure?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Ain’t you listenin’, man?’ Ruy spun around to face him, his fists balled.