House Arrest

T
HERE ARE NO BIRDS on
la isla
. Isabel told me the first time I came here. If you walk down a country road, there is no flutter of wings, no morning chirps. Deep in the forests and in the swamps, you can still find the trogon, the emerald hummingbird, the pygmy owl, but not near the towns. This is because the people have eaten them all. In the cities there are no pigeons picking at crumbs because there are no crumbs.

There used to be all kinds of birds in the Zoológico Antiguo—rare blue macaws, ruby-throated finches, giant-crested cockatoos. But the looters ate them. They ate the giraffe as well. It is not difficult to see that the people are starving. They have eaten their cats. Their horses too. But they draw the line at dogs. They think that if they eat their dogs, they will eat their children next.

Sometimes they put the dogs to sleep, but mostly they just let them go. Of course, the dogs don’t want to go so the people get on buses and ride with them out of town where
they hurl them from the windows. On the outskirts of the city, you can see dogs chasing after buses for miles. This is what this country has become, Isabel said, a pack of desperate, starving dogs.

I saw them myself the last time I was here—mutts mostly, but some still with their collars on. They run in feral packs, digging in garbage where almost nothing is thrown out. Everywhere you see the dogs. They roam, scrawny, tails between their legs, through Ciudad del Caballo, the City of the Horse.

Once this ancient city of viceroys and buccaneers, of cobblestone streets and stone citadels, was called Puerto Angélico, named by the Spanish five hundred years ago because of the way the harbor shaped itself into an angel’s wings. But with the victory three decades ago they renamed it for the leader whom they have long called the Horse.

Isabel joked with me that he is the only horse left. He is proud, fast, strong, but with blinders on. She told me that he would run back to his burning barn. In the end, she said, horses are not that smart.

Of course it is Isabel I think of as I sit in this room. Not that I have stopped thinking about her for these past two years. I think of her as the shadow that cast itself over my life. I have asked myself many times how it is possible that someone I knew so briefly could have come to occupy so much space. Yet she has assumed the weight of memory. I can still see her clearly. Her bone-thin body, her breasts, the small craters they left in the sand.

My name is Maggie Conover and I am thirty-six years old. I have lived a fairly ordinary life—a childhood in upstate New York, the same marriage and job for the last ten years. Yet for reasons that I cannot understand I have found myself
at times in circumstances that others would consider to be extraordinary. This is one of those times. I am writing this down now because I do not know if my story will otherwise be told. I do not know if anyone will know where I have been or what has become of me.

Except for the plastic chairs, the room where they have asked me to wait is small, empty, and white. A wall of blue doors stretches ahead of me, and beyond these doors the officials sit, though most have gone home now. They must know it is cold in this lounge where the air conditioner blasts above my head. It is loud and makes a rattling sound as if a screw is loose inside as it spews cold air on me. If Todd were here, he’d probably try to fix it. He’d tap its side, at least figure out what was wrong. I wish I knew how to do things with my hands. All I can do now is run them up and down my sides while I try to get warm.

The customs officials—both men and women—wear olive green. Olive green combat uniforms, camouflage shirts, stretch pants. Though there’s no war, it’s all standard-issue military gear. Only a few of the guards stand by with guns but one ambles back and forth, carrying his machine gun like a lunch box. Occasionally they glance my way. When they whisper, I try to imagine what they are saying. Do they think I am pathetic, like a child being punished in the hall? Do they think I am a spy? Do they want to buy my khaki pants?

Just a few hours ago I stepped on the tarmac, into the sultry night. The air was warm and smelled of citrus and the sea. The line in which I stood moved swiftly and the tourists with their jackets and sweaters draped across their arms were all excited, ready to have a good time. Soon I was smiling at
the young immigration officer with the dark hair and he smiled back.

Then he glanced at my passport, fondling it as if he’d never seen one before. He studied its number, flipping through the pages of stamps. He stared at my picture, then back at me. It is an old passport, due for renewal in June, so perhaps I don’t look the way I did when I was twenty-six. Perhaps I looked better then.

The young man seemed to hesitate, unsure of what to do. Behind me a man put down his carry-on, a woman sighed. There was a shuffling of feet as the line of travelers pressed against my back. Then the young immigration officer picked up the phone.
“Un momentito,”
he told me. He spoke softly with his lips close to the receiver, as if he were arranging to meet someone in a secret place. Then, looking up at me, his brown eyes tinged with regret, he asked me to step aside.

So I did. I stepped aside as flights came through from Brussels and Berlin, from Cancún and Moscow. I waited as elegant tourists and shabby tourists and tourists in safari clothes with video cameras breezed through customs. A few times I tried to ask for an explanation, but the immigration officer told me to be patient because he was awaiting a phone call. A formality, he assured me, though already I suspected something wasn’t right.
“Un ratito,”
he said, shaping his fingers into the equivalent of an inch.

At first I was not the only one waiting. A man with a beard played video games on his laptop. I glimpsed at his screen as a gobbling creature chased a mouse around. He had a visa problem too. So did the older gentleman in the gray fedora. A married couple with a wailing baby had been waiting for hours. But soon they let the others go.

The man with the laptop gave me a little salute as he left.
“They never get it right,” he said. He was an amiable enough person, a gringo who lives on
la isla
. He works in import-export, but he didn’t say of what. The husband of the couple with a small child in tears paced, and I could tell his case was cause for some concern. For hours their relatives stood on the other side of the partition, faces pressed to the glass, waving, pleading.

At last, with one sweep of the hand, they were allowed to pass to the other side, where they fell into the arms of weeping grandparents, patient friends. The older man with the fedora sat with a resigned look on his face, but eventually he too was let through. A late flight from Jamaica arrived and the tourists, some wearing dreadlocks and carrying musical instruments, were quickly processed. Then the doors of the airport were locked and I was left alone in the cold room.

Next they took things from me. My camera, my tape recorder, my ticket home. They already had my passport. For hours now I have watched officials, shuffling papers, moving about. Rubbing my arms, I try to determine what had gotten me into this predicament. At first I assumed it had something to do with the update I did the last time I was here.

It is true that I traveled on a tourist’s visa, but then I always do. I wrote a soft piece by anyone’s standards, describing buildings in disrepair, rubble on the boardwalk. I poked fun at the show at the Club Tropical—the women in their trailing boas and tutus whose sequins flew off as men in toreador pants twirled them. I mentioned prison terms for those who insult the regime, but I spoke of no dissidents, revealed no state secrets.

Recalling all of this, it occurs to me that I am not sitting in this room because of the guidebook I wrote. I am here because of Isabel. I suppose the mistake I made was listening to
Manuel and letting him offer to have me meet her in the first place. I should not have listened to Manuel and I should not have made contact with Isabel, though our first meeting was (or so I still want to believe) coincidental. And then once I made contact—once I understood who she was and what she wanted—I should have stayed away.