Tortuga (32 page)

Danny shook his head. He stared at me and tried to make me back down, but I didn't. “I got other things to do,” he whispered and jerked out of the room, muttering to himself.

“Poor bastard,” Ronco shook his head, “he's going crazy. Just goes around talking to himself all the time … claims he hears God's radio waves telling him what to do …”

“It's that damn arm,” Buck said. “How would you like to sleep with that thing lying next to you, rotting all the time …”

“He's too wrapped up in himself,” Mike shrugged, “he's got to quit feeling sorry for himself and come out and join the world, but he's given up.”

“Well, back to the party,” Ronco said.

“Right. Ronco and me will go tell the girls to get ready, you guys cover the ward here, and remember, it's only for the big boys. The squirts have to stay in the ward tonight.”

“Yeah, we don't want to contribute to the delinquency of minors,” Ronco said and they went out laughing.

A wave of excitement swept through the ward. By supper time everybody knew about the secret swimming party, and the small kids giggled and whispered that we were going to swim naked. We swam with the girls everyday at the pool, played water basketball and horsed around with them, but one of the therapists was always with us, and we didn't swim naked in the day; tonight it was going to be different.

Nobody ate dinner. We sat around the huge dining room and played with our food and glanced at the girls and they whispered to each other and looked at us. After supper we waited for the lights to go out and talked about the swimming party. Most of the fellows had girlfriends in the girls' ward, and somehow the swimming party was a natural end to the romances which had blossomed at the movie. Spring was tugging at all of us, and the excitement made us restless. The girls had agreed to swim naked, and that made us hot and expectant.

I wondered if Ismelda had heard about the party. Of course she wouldn't be there, and if it wasn't that the party was for me I think I would have skipped it. I had too much on my mind to really enjoy it. I was thinking about the trip home, I could leave the following morning if I wanted, and I was thinking about Salomón. Deep in his ward he lay sleeping, dreaming, smiling at our crazy antics, always happy for us, always telling us to do more, to embrace life, to get tangled in it and never mind the pain … I was tempted to go back to his room, before the party, just to talk to him and check on him, but before I had made up my mind the lights were switched off and the ward grew dark. Shortly thereafter Ronco appeared at the door and whispered, “We're ready.”

“Oh my,” Billy whispered. I heard him gasp. He was afraid. We had talked that afternoon, and he had told me that he wanted to go awfully bad to the swimming party because there was a girl he liked in the girls' ward, but he was afraid to get naked in front of anyone. We talked for awhile and he finally decided that he had to do it, that he had to lose his fear. He looked at me in the dark and I nodded and he shook his head. He was ready.

“Did everybody stuff pillows in their beds?” Ronco asked. We had covered the pillows with blankets so it looked as if a body was asleep in each bed.

“We're ready,” Buck replied.

“Let's go,” Ronco motioned and we moved out into the dark hall. Other shadows joined us.

“What about the small kids?” I asked.

“They've been threatened to stay in their rooms and keep quiet,” Ronco whispered. “Tomorrow we'll have special games for them in the recreation room, so they're happy. Little bastards—”

We moved down the hall quietly. Once the lights were out the night nurses never ventured out of the nurses' station, so it was easy to get past them. Two of them were smoking, drinking coffee and nibbling at snacks as we slipped by and headed for the pool. We were extra careful at the windows because the spring moon was bright, but the hospital was quiet and we got to the pool without an incident. Mike had picked the lock; he held the door open while we slipped in. During the day the pool was noisy and turbulent with swimmers, but tonight it was peaceful and quiet. The moonlight sparkled on the clear, chlorine blue. I looked at the water and remembered the night Danny had dumped me in, and I wished Danny had come with us. Like Mike said, he needed to get outside himself and join us in doing things. The disease was driving him crazy, but try as we might we couldn't draw him out. I shrugged, slipped off my pants and shirt and entered the water noiselessly and joined the others. We swam quietly around the pool and waited for the girls.

“Here they come!” Mike called, and the whisper spread like a shudder over the water. We turned and saw the door open and the girls slipped in. Then Mike closed the door and in the light of the moonlight the girls disrobed and slid into the water to join us.

At first we were only shadows in the green, spring water, then as our eyes grew accustomed to the dark we became beautiful golden fish and graceful turtles sliding through the quiet water. There was no shouting and noisy splashing, only the silent group of male fish swimming slowly around the shy mermaids who had entered the water, calling to them with our bodies, courting them with the prowess of the spring dance. They swam in the inner circle, dipping in and out of the water, coyly calling us. Their glistening, shimmering bodies rode the crest of waves. We laughed, waved at them, listened to their silent song and gurgled with a joy we couldn't express as we bathed in the moonlit water. Hot and excited we swam the wider outer circle, closing in on the mermaids who swam counter to us and smiled for us to join them. The air was pregnant with a dripping electricity which could not be contained. Like lovers showing off for their beloved, we dove in and out of the clear water, rippling with flesh and fin the water of the mermaids, becoming merman for them, we smiled across the clear water and dove to greet them.

Oh, Salomón would have cried with joy to see so much beauty! I saw in it a verse to be added to my song. The tension of the spring which had pierced the earth to thaw the land now coursed through our bodies and quivered in our limbs. We were no longer the deformed, twisted bodies which on land limped and dragged the heavy weight of steel; we had become graceful golden mermen and mermaids, part fish and part men and women, swimming to the dance of spring, comingling our terrible energies in the water. Wild cries clawed at our throats until the tension and silence were almost unbearable. The circle tightened as we closed in on the mermaids, swimming like golden fish at spawn, wetting the water with our hot pee and slippery juices, drawn by the fragrance and the song of the mermaids, we dove and splashed towards their beckoning smiles and their virgin, naked bodies.

I paused and looked to keep from drowning in the beauty which unfolded before my eyes. I saw that in the water we were like birds in the air, full of power, graceful, elegant in our movements. We unfolded like sea flowers in our liquid element, gracefully reaching out to touch fingertips in the strands of golden water. We fanned out like sea moss, undulating back and forth until hands clasped, and the mermen pulled the mermaids to their sides and they swam as one, disappearing into the depths of the water, rising to breathe the warm, spring air, diving again to complete the courtship dance, tinting the water with virgin blood, making it swirl and bubble with the thrashing of their love … then all was silent again, and the water was quiet. Couples rose to rest in the sea castles by the shore …

The dance dissolved as quietly as it had begun. The melody rested on the water, spent of its energy. Overhead the spring moon shone through the skylight. Across the pool Cynthia smiled at me. She had been my partner in the dance … now she was content to sit by the side of the pool and dry her body in the moonlight, content to dream her dreams in the pale light. Like tired seals we had climbed out of the water and flopped down to rest. We were exhausted from the swim. Around the pool the lovers sat resting, touching hands, quivering from excitement, bathing in the silent intimacy they had shared.

I sat alone and looked at the glistening bodies of my brothers and my sisters. I was full of joy, as full of joy as I had been with love at the movie. I had shared these moments of ecstasy, felt the present slip into the past until I saw the communion girls swimming in the pool with me, welcoming me and calling to me like Cynthia had called. Somehow I was swept up in the energy of destiny which would force me to join into the fate of those who shared my journey … perhaps that's what Salomón knew and why he had predicted the blue guitar would come to me. Curse of chance or force of fate, I was entwined in it, seeing at times through the illusion of time and soul with perfect clarity, lost and cursing the dark way most often, wanting Salomón and his vegetables to enjoy moments like this and yet knowing that deep inside they were always with us. So this was only a part of the song … it was not yet complete.

I stood and draped a robe around my wet body, folded my clothes under my arm and slipped out the door. I walked slowly back to the ward, I was very tired, but when I got to the room I couldn't sleep. I turned on the radio and wished Ronco was back so I could share one of his cigarettes, maybe that would calm my thoughts. The day had been too full, too loaded with those realizations which kept fitting together like notes into a melody. Each peak and valley of the day had been full of emotion, more than I could take in one day because each one kept sweeping over me and pulling my thoughts back and forth … but through them I was beginning to see what I had to do. I knew Salomón was right.

I sat by the window and looked across the valley at the mountain. It was clothed in the blue velvet of the spring night, but like me Tortuga, too, was restless. I felt him tugging at his moorings, nervous to toss aside his shackles and swim into the sparkling night sky. It was a strange spring madness, full of the sounds of home which were calling me, full of Ismelda's love which slept in the night, thick with the tragic love songs which flowed from Buck's radio.

It was the radio that should have warned me. For an instant it blared loudly, the sound came crashing into the room like death's call. And in the valley the lights of the town flickered brightly, and then as quickly as the energy had come it found its equilibrium and settled to its former level. It was as if a star had died in the galaxy and charged the earth with its dying gasp … or as if a new sun had been born and lighted anew the golden strands of light that anchored our earth to space. I had been dozing and the brief flicker of light nudged me awake, I shook my head and wondered what it was, then the unsettling darkness drew me down again and I slept. If I had looked carefully I would have seen Tortuga angrily rear his head and curse the night.

I tossed restlessly in the troubled waters of sleep, pulled back and forth by the energy which filled the night sky and made it glow, bothered by the dry gusts of wind which shook and rattled the hospital. Sometime during the night I heard Mike and Ronco drag in and fall asleep … the sounds of music drifted through the night. I dreamed a mermaid came to sing to a crippled turtle-man, and he strummed the strings of a dark, blue guitar, strings woven from her long, black hair. She sang a song, and when the song was done they swam north on the rising crest of the river.

24

I will remember it the way Ismelda told it to me. She sat by me and held my hand for a long time, and I knew she was afraid that she would cry when she told me they were all dead, that someone had pulled the switch that night and sent the entire ward into darkness … They had no chance, locked up in their iron lungs, without the force of the air to lift their lungs they suffocated quickly … All of them.

I will always remember the way the sun rose over Tortuga's hump, bringing with it the wail of the sirens and the terrible screams of terror which filled the halls. At first I thought it was a part of the terrible nightmare that haunted me that night, but no, the sun was up and shining, covering everything with its light … it would admit only the truth, and the truth was that Dr. Steel had sealed off the ward and we weren't to leave our rooms, not even above Mike's protest and mine. So all morning long while the police cars and the ambulances moved up the hill we could only watch from the window … and we knew immediately what had happened. Someone had pulled the switch in the vegetable patch … everyone was dead … all of them.

I will remember the screams of terror which filled the ward, the shouts of the nurses and the doctors, the small kids crying … and then the silence which fell over the ward as we sat by the windows and looked out as they carried the small plastic bags out of the ward and loaded them on the ambulances. Once only did someone say—somebody pulled the switch—and then no more was said. Once only did Mike and I say, we should be there—and when Steel shook his head we returned quietly to our room. There was no need to be there. Their end had come.

Then there was the silence which followed. We did not look at each other, we did not speak … words were useless, and we had been through it before. Now there was only the shock, the terrible fatigue which lay in our stomachs and throats and made us numb, now there were only the questions which we had asked so many times before tumbling through our tormented minds. Then Ismelda came. She sat by me and after awhile she told me she had been to Salomón's room. He had not been afraid. There was a smile on his angelic lips. Filomón had come for him, and tenderly they had lifted him into the wagon which had originally brought him here. So he has good care for the new journey, she said. I opened the window in his room, she told me, then I opened all the windows to let in the sun and the spring breeze. I looked into her eyes and saw myself reflected in them, saw her opening the windows, felt the grief in her heart. It was over very quickly, she said, like most tragedies … now all that remains is for us to live with it. How will you be, Tortuga. I told her that I had seen Salomón that evening and played my song for them … and then in my troubled dreams I had seen her, and finally I told her that I would have to leave in the morning. I wanted to get out as soon as possible. I did not want to be consumed by the grief, it was not what Salomón would want. He would want me to start my own journey home. I know, Ismelda said. She kissed me lightly on the cheek and then she disappeared.