Life During Wartime (39 page)

‘Love!’ Ruy sniffed and flipped his cigarette over the rail; he shielded his eyes from the glare and peered toward Debora. ‘Yeah, she sure is nice. I’m tellin’ ya, man, this ain’t casual with me. I’m really feelin’ somethin’ for her. I’m thinkin’ ol’ Ruy can put a smile on her face.’

‘All you done so far is bore the hell outta her.’

‘Then maybe I try harder.’ Ruy squinted up at him. ‘Tell ya what, we make a trade, okay? I’ll send Corazon to your cabin tonight, and you lemme see what I can do for the little lady.’

Disgusted, Mingolla turned away.

‘Hey, you gettin’ the best of the deal, man,’ said Ruy. ‘That Corazon, she got tricks that’ll notch your pistol.’

Something occurred to Mingolla, something he’d been intending to ask Ruy about. ‘You remember a guy named Gilbey?’ he said. ‘Short blond guy ’bout my age. He traveled with you ’round eight or nine months ago.’

‘Gilbey,’ said Ruy. ‘Naw, uh-uh.’

Mingolla searched his face for a hint of a lie. ‘You’d remember this guy. He was surly, y’know … had a bad attitude. Wouldn’t take shit from anybody.’

‘What you think?’ said Ruy with menace. I dump him over the side?’

‘Did you?’

‘You been talkin’ to them dumb cunts back in Livingston, that it?’ Ruy climbed to his feet, adopted a challenging pose. ‘Listen, friend. I ain’t a nice guy, I’m a fuckin’ criminal! But I don’t throw nobody over the side ’less they begging for it.’

‘Maybe Gilbey begged for it.’

‘Then I’d remember him.’

‘How ’bout your baby, you remember your baby, don’tcha?’

Ruy spat at Mingolla’s feet. ‘My baby’s born dead, man. I get rid of it ’cause my woman she can’t stand to be ’round it.’

‘If you say so.’

‘That’s what I say. Those bullshit savages back in Livingston, what they know ’bout Ruy Barros. What they know ’bout my work for the cause. I work my butt off for the cause, I do things nobody else got the belly for.’

‘That right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Ruy went chest-to-chest with Mingolla. ‘But what’s a fuckin’ gringo like you know ‘bout shit. You …’

Mingolla gave Ruy a push. ‘How you know I’m American?’

Ruy grinned. Debora, she tell me.’

‘That’s crap,’ said Mingolla. ‘How’d you know?’

‘Huh! Ruy Barros, he can smell a fuckin’ gringo. That’s a nice paint job, man, and you got the language down … but you walk gringo, you act gringo, and the things you say is gringo. And you don’t see that the cause is for all the people. For priests, murderers, whatever.’ He shook his fist at the sun. ‘La
Violencia!
Lemme tell ya, man. This war ain’t gonna end ’till we win it.’

Despite himself, Mingolla was impressed by Ruy’s vehemence, by the honest zeal it appeared to embody.

‘You don’t unnerstan’ nothin’, gringo,’ Ruy continued. And that’s why me and the little lady gonna work things out. ’Cause in her heart she know I unnerstan’ her.’

The time had come, Mingolla decided, to stake out his claim. You talk a lot, man, I like that. Guys who talk a lot, that’s all they’re up for.’

Ruy rubbed his chin, his long face grew thoughtful. ‘You sayin’ you can take me, man?’

‘Absolutely.’ Mingolla gestured at Debora. ‘And y’know what? She can take ya, too. You ain’t a threat at all, beaner. So set it out, give it a shot.’

Ruy’s shoulders tensed as if he were preparing to throw a punch, but he must have thought better of it. He hitched up his pants, scowled at Mingolla, and went into the wheelhouse. Mingolla picked up the cassette player, held it up to show Ruy, who looked away, attending to the business of steering.
Then he walked back to the stern, turning up the volume of a ballad.

‘Come and live with me …

Aw, girl, there ain’t no better place for you,

’cause you just hangin’ on

to somethin’ old when your mind is onto somethin’ new.

Listen to that jukebox pla-ay-ay,

one of them sad ol’ Sentimental Journey tunes,

somebody’s singin’ ’bout. Hey, girl,

I guess it wasn’t meant to be for me and you …

But though you say we’re through,

I guess it all depends upon your point of view,

’cause when I look into your eyes,

I can see clear through ya and don’t ya know …

You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me

You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me

Well, y’can run but …

You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me

Y’ain’t no mystery, lady …’

‘What’s that?’ said Debora, frowning at the player as Mingolla sat beside her.

‘Prowler … like it?’

‘It’s all right.’

‘It’s old,’ he said. ‘From four or five years ago. And not typical. They do mostly uptempo stuff. I’ll find something else.’

‘No, I’m starting to like it.’ She leaned into him.

‘… that stranger over there,

sittin’ all alone, so sad and blue,

he’s playin’ solitaire and losin’ bad,

drinkin’ gin and feelin’ sad ’bout missin’ you.

But don’tcha see, somewhere in his heart he knows there’s still a trace

of lovelight in your eyes tonight

and foolish dreams you can’t deny

each time you look his way …’

‘What were you and Ruy talking about?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You sounded angry.’

‘He’s an asshole.’

‘… he don’t believe in fate,

and to win at solitaire

you just lay the red queen down

upon the diamond ace,

y’can’t lose that way and …

‘You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me …’

Debora’s hair drifted into his face, and it seemed he was breathing her in with the same rhythm as that of the swells lifting the
Ensorcelita
. Seaweed floated on the swells, clumped reddish brown beard-lengths with black bean-shaped seeds. The sun beat down, wedging silvery between the clouds, and a dark bird wheeled above the shore, then dived and vanished into the palms.

‘I guess he is,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Ruy … an asshole. But I still think he means well.’

‘Meaning well doesn’t matter when you’re that much of an asshole.’

‘Come on, girl!

Can’t ya find it in your heart

to take a chance,

and see if there’s a world where we

could live and never have to take

a backward glance?

Maybe I’m a dreamer, maybe I’m a fo-oo-ool,

or maybe I’m just a lonely man,

but maybe I’ve got the answers to

all those questions that are troublin’ you …

All ya gotta do is ask …’

Ruy poked his head out of the wheelhouse, glaring at them, his lean cruel face a badge of enmity, a reminder of all they had endured, all they were going toward. But Mingolla felt so content, so removed from the world of trials and disasters, that – not stopping to think how Ruy might take it – he grinned and gave him a cheerful wave.

The next day they were stopped by a patrol boat, but it was no big deal. Ruy paid a bribe, and they went on their way, sailing along the Honduran littoral. However, they spent the day after that moored in a deep cove, and Ruy informed them that they would be traveling at night for a while; he claimed he was ‘illegal’ in this part of Honduras and didn’t want to risk being spotted by the militia. He continued to pursue Debora, and although his pursuit was somewhat more circumspect, Mingolla believed it had become more intense, more driven. From watching him, from further information that Debora had passed to Tully, he realized that as a byproduct of his confrontation of Ruy, Ruy’s feelings had acquired validity, and he thought this involved a conscious decision on Ruy’s part, that he had elevated simple lust to an obsessive level, as if the idea of the unattainable had inspired a passion.

To avoid Ruy, he and Debora kept to their cabin, and as a result they engaged more and more in their fierce mental communion. There was tangible proof that their powers were still increasing, but even had there been no proof Mingolla would have known it. Standing in the bow one night, at the extreme end of a road of rippling gold light that stretched across the black water to the newly risen moon, he felt as he had on the riverbank their last evening in Fire Zone Emerald, that he could look past the horizon and grasp the essence of the days to come; this time the feeling was freighted with clarity, and he believed that were he to exert the slightest effort, he might launch himself into another vision. But he was afraid of visions, of visionary knowledge. He
wanted to inhabit this long oceangoing moment and never arrive anywhere, and so he restrained himself from testing his strength.

A further consequence of their retreat was that they gained new insights into each other. Though the things Mingolla had already learned about Debora implied the existence of a complex personality, he saw now that her growth had been interrupted by the war, her complexity channeled into the simple pragmatism of the revolutionary; her incarnation of the revolutionary spirit was childlike, capable of aligning everything she perceived into rudimentary categories, black and white, pro and con, and whether she continued to grow would depend on how much longer her natural processes were constrained. He sensed a similar inhibition in himself, but pictured his process as being less constrained than trained into specific patterns of growth, the way Japanese gardeners bind the limbs of trees to make them spread crookedly and sideways.

The smell of gasoline was always thick in the cabin, and they could feel the vibration of waves against the hull. There were two bunks, no lights, and the close quarters and darkness acted to enforce intimacy. One night as they lay together, Debora’s buttocks cupped spoon-style by Mingolla’s hips, he started to turn her onto her stomach, to enter her from behind, and inside his head he heard a shrill,
No!
Heard it clearly, enunciated in Debora’s voice. The message was so sharp and peremptory, it stimulated him to answer in kind,
What is it? What’s wrong?

‘I heard you,’ she said, shifting to face him.

‘I heard you, too. Let’s try it again.’

After several minutes they gave it up.

‘Maybe it didn’t happen,’ she said.

‘It happened, and it’ll happen again. We just can’t push it.’

The grinding of the engine, the mash of waves shouldering the hull. Debora settled against him, and he put an arm around her. ‘What was wrong?’ he asked. ‘What’d I do?’

‘It’s not important.’

‘If you don’t wanna tell me …’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that things are so good for us, I don’t want to spoil it by bringing up the past.’

The pitch of the engines dropped to an articulated grumble, and Ruy shouted.

‘Maybe I should tell you,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’ll explain why I was so reticent with you at first.’

‘Back in Emerald?’

‘Yes … you see there were a lot of reasons I didn’t want to get involved with you like this, and one was I was afraid it wouldn’t be any good between us.’

‘You mean sex?’

She nodded. ‘It hadn’t ever been good for me, and I thought nothing could change that, not even being in love. But it is good, and I keep getting scared it won’t last.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s so perfect … the way you fit me, how you touch me. And everything before was so imperfect.’ She turned away as if embarrassed. ‘When they brought us in for interrogation … the government …’

‘Your family?’

‘Yes.’ She let out a sigh. ‘When they brought us in, I knew they’d rape me. That’s what they always do. I prepared for it, and every day that passed, every day it didn’t happen, I grew more afraid. I thought they must be saving me for something special, some special horror. Finally this man came to see me. Major Armangual. He was very young to be a major, and not too badlooking. He spoke politely, softly. He made me feel hope. He explained that he’d interceded on my behalf with the government, and that he’d take me out of prison that same day if I’d cooperate with him. I was sure that cooperation included sex, but I didn’t care. The prison was awful. Other women screaming all the time, bodies being carried past my cell. And I thought if I was out, I might be able to help my family. So I told him, Yes, I’d do anything. He smiled at that and said I wouldn’t have to do much at all, that his requirements were limited and specific. Just some office work.’

Debora gave a tired-sounding laugh, plumped up the pillow beneath her head. ‘It was the weekend, and he was off duty, so we went back to his house. A fancy house in Zone One, near the big hotels. There was a pool, maids. He installed me in a room on the
second floor, and I expected him to come to me that night. But no such thing. I ate dinner with him, and afterward he said he had papers to go over and suggested I get some sleep. The whole weekend was like that. It was as if I were a houseguest. I considered trying to escape, but the grounds were patrolled by dogs, and I still hoped I could do something for my family … even though I didn’t have much hope left.’ Her voice faltered, steadied. ‘Monday morning I rode to work with him. He was in the air force, and he had an office at the airport. Do you know Guatemala City?’