The Pure Presence of Trust

My Dad stopped the little red car in front of a long empty driveway and he said: "I think it’s here. I’m pretty sure it’s here." I opened the door and pulled the large backpack over my right shoulder. "I will see you at home then." I stepped out of the car and closed the door behind me and I watched him drive away. It was a small narrow street and, other than my Dad’s red car already turning the corner, there was no traffic. I could hear the distant sound of TVs and radios coming from several houses, laughter, melancholic orchestras, commercials for soap, cell phones and clothing. It was already getting dark and there were many small trees that lined the sidewalks, making long shadows that would spread over the walls and onto the asphalt like splotches of oil over a flat surface of obsidian. I knew this neighborhood relatively well. It was the same neighborhood I used to walk through on my way to "Satelite", where my old friends lived, back in the days of the civil war, the days of standing in the corner for no purpose, the days of clandestine heavy metal, the days of intentions that formed and vanished without action, like ephemeral figures on a translucent cloud of smoke.
But as with all streets and places in El Salvador, things weren’t quite the same as I had known them years ago, and maybe they had never been as I had once imagined, and maybe if I could walk again, as I am today, down the streets of twenty years ago, the sidewalks and walls and trees would look as different as they did today to my startled eyes.
I took out the small piece of paper from my pocket and looked at the number I had written on it. I looked for a number on the house with the long driveway and I realized that this was the wrong house. I shook my head and looked around me. In the distance I could see the local street guard, with the typical silver shotgun over his shoulder. He might have been looking over at me, wondering who this person was, just standing in the middle of the sidewalk with a big backpack and no apparent place to go. I looked at the other houses and, after examining them carefully, I came to realize that several of them had no number. I looked in the other direction and I saw a middle aged woman talking to someone on the other side of a doorway. A small dog was barking somewhere inside that house. I walked towards them and, faintly smiling, I said: "Buenas noches…excuse me… would you be able to tell me where house 151 would be?" Then I heard the known voice from inside the house: "Juan Carlos, you are here. You are in your house. Come in." I turned towards the doorway and I saw the Old Woman, smiling and nodding. My own faint smile turned broad and sharply defined and I moved towards her and hugged her. She hugged me back and, in an instant of recognition, it was as if all the years of distance and silence had gone by in a blur of disconnected dreams and unanswered questions.
I had met the Old Woman almost two decades earlier, when I spent four or five months in El Salvador, after graduating from college and before breaking my mental patterns apart in an orgy of cathartic psychedelic enlightenment and spontaneous magical invocations. In that twilight zone in between the end of one life and the start of another, I had come to see my Dad and he had introduced me to his very distant cousin who then was also his very close friend. I immediately liked her soft voice and her wide and careful observant eyes. She was small and she was made smaller by her slightly curved back. Her hair was short and black and her skin was a dark brown etched with wrinkles and the subtle marks of a thousand secret battles. Her laughter was gentle and cautious and her words sprinkled out with precision and care, in a kind of soft but secure song that inspired me to listen closely and to answer clearly and with an equal amount of attention. It was very easy for her to become enthusiastic, for her eyes to squeeze tightly into wrinkled lines of happiness and for her smile to explode over her face like a shower of fresh rain over a dry valley, and when that happened, she would start to make suggestions, one after another, in a quick succession of ideas, freely given, without a touch of arrogance or malice. After talking to her for hours, it became clear that she was exploring me as much as I was exploring her and that she was constantly thinking of how she could be helpful to my endeavors and how I could be helpful to the greater good, the purpose which she held above all others. I trusted her immediately and without hesitation or doubt.
Through our conversations, and through tales that my Dad told me when we were alone, I came to learn that the Old Woman, this little wrinkled brown lady with the sweet smile, had been a fearsome warrior of the rebel army not too long ago. Just a few years earlier, she had thousands of men under her command and she had lead them through the shadow regions of the city, the invisible channels hidden in plain sight. In the dusty back rooms of abandoned warehouses, in the empty bedrooms of middle class neighborhoods, in the mazes of dirty huts made of tin and cardboard, this is where her urban guerrillas waited, where they sweated in anticipation, from here they attacked and here they returned to find a place to hide. She had fought alongside people whom I regarded as nearly mythic legends and she had known them as close friends and comrades. She had been cold blooded when necessary, she had been as tough as steel nails when the situation demanded it. She had done things that most people that I had known, most people I would ever know, could never even bring themselves to imagine and she carried all these memories with her, in her curved little body, like a little soft purse full of grains of sand that slowly spill out through the imperfections of the fabric.
I became aware of her own mythical status back then, when she took us to a party of the ex-guerrillas in a low budget hotel in an old decrepit neighborhood of San Salvador, a place I would never have visited on my own. The Torogoces, the official band of the revolution, was the house band for the event. They were playing cumbias and rancheras, the kind of music I would have avoided when I was younger, but here the simple chords and constant rhythms covered the crowd in a translucent sphere of open celebration that glistened with shared memories of victory and sacrifice. Young skinny men with eyes fixed on the future, middle aged women with faces of hardship and endless endurance, girls in tight jeans and loose tops and eager voices like the tinkling of bells, they were all drinking and laughing together, forming little circles of shared attention. Everybody there seemed to know each other and they were very suspicious of anyone that they perceived as an outsider. When I first walked in, I could feel their suspicion in subtle glances and a slight shrugging of shoulders as I passed by. But as the Old Woman introduced me to her closest friends, to other guerrilla commanders, to new political figures and to old men and women who had been with the revolution from the very beginning, they took me in with open arms. They trusted the Old Woman, and by the simple act of her introduction, their trust then extended to me. Later, as I mingled alone through the hall, people talked to me with eyes wide open, and, stepping closer to me, they whispered: "You are with the Old Woman, right?" In the tone of their voice, I realized what she meant to them. I could see through their question the nights when someone would knock on the window and they would find a note under the door that said: "Go to the corner of Boulevard de los Heroes and Gabriela Minstral, at 3pm tomorrow" and they would do exactly as the note said, knowing that it came from the Old Woman, the voice of wisdom somewhere out there in the urban darkness. Maybe most of them had never met her in person during the entire ten years of war, or maybe they had only seen her briefly, maybe another fighter had described her to them, maybe they had only heard the name, maybe she was just the Old Woman and that was all, and that was enough. And their eyes kept on being open and wide, like clear lagoons filled with the waters of respect and admiration.
They all shared the memory of having been true rebels together, in the face of death and horrible tortures. They all shared the knowledge of a time that was unlike any other, a space in their mind that still crackled with the fire of life and which they held close to their chest, away from the eyes of strangers, hoping the fire would never fade away as the years passed slowly by, like an old wooden cart on a road made of rocks, dirt and sand.
It was a time when you would be told that a guest would be coming to your home and you would leave the door open all night, and sometime after midnight you would hear steps, you would hear someone eating in the kitchen, someone going to the bathroom, someone laying down to rest. You were not supposed to know who this was, you were not supposed to talk to them, you were not supposed to see them. So you stayed in your bed and waited. By the time the morning had broken and you came out, the guest was gone and there were very few traces left of their stay. You would never know who had been in your house. You would never know what part this had played in the greater scheme of the revolution. You would never know what came before it. You would never know what happened next.
It was a time when you arrived at a house to get a package and you were handed a plastic bag full of papers and an address and then the door would close. And you would make your way through a city full of soldiers and policemen, all hunting for people such as you, and you would not know what was in the bag, or who you had just visited or who you were taking the bag to or who would eventually read what was inside. You would arrive at another door and hand the package and walk away, without ever turning back. And you would never know who you had helped or what had been the consequences of your dance at the edge of disaster. You would never know what came before it. You would never know what happened next.
It was all trust. Trust and nothing more.
The Old Woman was one of the few that could see the whole picture, she was one of the few that moved the pieces and made the silent tough decisions that could lead other fighters to the gates of destruction and horror. Many of them passed through those gates and never came back. But the Old Woman kept on making choices, kept on moving the pieces, kept on sending out her messages that glistened like fireflies on a warm summer night
I became aware of the cold edge that was still hidden behind her gentleness one night in my aunt’s apartment. It was a small dinner that my aunt had put together. She had invited a couple of famous commanders from the guerrilla army that had turned into political figures after the peace accords had ended the war. She also invited the Old Woman, who had left the guerrillas before the peace had been settled and so she had no official role in the new left wing party. My father and me completed the guest list. During that time I had been reading a small book by a man that had been a rebel commander and was now speaking out against the guerillas and against the reasons given for the war itself. I was curious to see what these people would have to say about him and I committed the indiscretion of bringing up his name and his book. The woman who was a commander turned politician, dressed in a fashionable flowery top and tight silky pants, analyzed his ideas quickly and determined that he was saying some things that were correct but that it was not the right political time to say them, there could be truth in it but it was a truth that couldn’t be spoken of yet. The other commander, wearing a guayabera and newly pressed jeans, just shrugged his shoulders and said that people do different things under different situations and then had nothing more to say about it.
Then I heard the Old Woman’s voice, coming from behind my left shoulder, cutting through the genteel conversation like a machete through a soft ripe coconut: "He’s a traitor." She didn’t say anything else, she didn’t elaborate on the meaning or the implications of her sentence, but none of that was necessary. In the coldness of her voice, in the finality of her judgement, the sentence was clear and it was a sentence of death. In the depth of her voice and in the echo of her words through the apartment, there was no question left in me. The Old Woman would not have hesitated to execute the sentence and she would not have thought twice about it the next day. There was nothing personal in her words. There was no anger, no resentment, no shame. It was a simple description of fact that carried within itself an implied series of consequences.
It was a different time then, a different space from the one that the Old Woman carried around her like an electromagnetic field. Peace had descended onto El Salvador in a modern 747 carrying many Anglo-Saxon men in pristine new suits and wearing dark glasses, men who would write in English the will of a people who would never learn to speak in English, tall blonde men who would then celebrate the triumph of peace and democracy in this little backwards country, men who would return home and tell stories of the good things they had brought to the third world while drinking whisky and playing golf, far away from the dusty roads, far away from the torture chambers, far away from the unmarked graves. Because the times had changed, because the paradigm had shifted, the consequences that echoed in the Old Woman’s voice would never happen. But the mathematics were still clear and sharply outlined in her old wrinkled eyes.
"He’s a traitor." There was a short silence and then my aunt changed the subject. But in that instant, I had seen the dark abyss that surrounded the protected lonely tower of the Old Woman’s trust.
Today I stepped into the Old Woman’s house and the warmth of her friendship was as clear as a tropical breeze blowing across a forest of palm trees; strong, warm and touched by the depths of the ocean. We talked for hours, in a conversation that had no clear direction but resonated with significance in every question, in every phrase, in every word. We sat in her living room and her little black dog tried to nibble at my shoes for a bit and then went to sit under the Old Woman’s rocking chair. There was a guitar in the corner, hanging from a nail, and a computer on a wide flat desk. There were a few paintings on the walls and a couple of photographs. Otherwise the walls were white and empty. Her grandson, a young teenager with baggy pants and a long loose T-shirt, sat with us for a while but he quickly realized he had better things to do and he left us alone. She offered me food but I politely declined, saying that all I wanted was to talk with her. She understood the communication clearly and her eyes widened, she purposefully left all other concerns aside, and she kept on talking, without restraint or a sense of time passing.
She said many things to me that night. She told me of the work she had been doing, writing of the family’s history, she told me of things that had happened a hundred years ago, of crimes that had been left unpunished and untold, of our mutual friend the Philosopher who lived alone in a barren little room with a hammock and no other amenities and who ate every morning at "Mr. Donuts", of her early days in the revolutionary movement, of promises that were kept in spite of the interruption of death, of the mysterious way that she perceived my wedding with Dilcia and the things she had been told about it by others, of my Dad and his path of suspicions and secret judgements, of the silence of years, of American politics and Salvadorean politics and how they came together, of the silent contact with animals and of the verbal contact with people, of the relationship between the young and the old, of learning English in a little school just a few blocks from where she lived. Among all the many things that she said to me, there was one statement that resonated most profoundly and seemed to be the anchor that held our entire contact in place, solid and unshakable:
"I don’t like to speak of certain things with most people. I don’t believe that they can understand. I am afraid that they will misinterpret. I don’t believe in their intentions. But with you, I will tell you everything and anything. You can ask me anything at all, and I will answer without hesitation. Because I trust you and you trust me."
As she had said before, so many years ago, the basis for the old organization was trust, the old organization of idealistic guerrilla fighters that she joined so long ago and which she left when the trust had vanished like cigarette smoke on a windy afternoon. When she left, the trust had disappeared on her side and the trust had disappeared on their side as well. When that was gone, the Old Woman had nothing left to do.
When the strong, decisive man that had fought with her for ten years committed suicide and her superior female commander had been found hacked to death with an ice pick and the truth was hidden and the truth was vague and it was based on half spoken hints and silent resentments, then it was her time to go, it was her time to take the almost invisible doorway that lead away from the ranks of the lost brigade. No longer ready to follow orders but always ready to help and serve, she left behind a struggle that faded into ambition, corruption and dirty politics. But even as she saw the twisted remains of what had been the dream of a million silent voices, she would always carry with her the truth that brought her there, the ideals that inspired her to work without rest or safety, and the basic principles that kept her at her shadow post for so many years.
And the main basis for it all was trust, a trust that is almost unheard of in modern industrialized societies, a trust that overrides all other considerations, a trust that digs inside the primary directives of the body to find an older purpose, a primordial reason to breathe and move and act that stands above survival, above safety, above comfort, above the body itself and all its personal fears and desires. This trust was the glue that formed the giant invisible web of nighttime fighters, the makeshift network that made a strong professional army tremble, it forced the powerful rich men of El Salvador to leave their mansions behind and escape to little apartments in Miami, and ultimately, it forced the hand of the American Empire to look down upon this little lost country, like an elephant looking down upon a fly. From the heights of power, the Empire responded with the might of the gods and the cold decision of a hooded executioner, but the army of shadows kept on pushing forward, with its strange rhythm of creaking old doors and random footsteps in the night. Trust was the fuel for the subterranean movements and it was the basic mass from which the invisible tendrils were formed, tendrils that stretched over the jungles and the barren mountains, into the flaming cauldrons of the volcanoes, and down into the lost passageways of the city and deep into its forgotten alleys of spit and rust and fear. Long and far the tendrils of invisible connection stretched and they were as solid as steel but they had no weight or dimension, their only mass was trust, their only glue was trust, their only hope of remaining in existence was trust. Trust over all power. Trust as the only defense against bombs and machine guns and tanks and warplanes. Trust to slide into the cracks of the oppressive regime and find its points of weakness. Trust, trust and only trust. Without trust there could be no work. If only trust was left, then the work could continue.
I looked at the Old Woman’s eyes, I looked deep into her open pupils that didn’t retreat before my gaze, that didn’t try to hide or take cover, I looked inside and I found the depth of understanding and sacrifice that had been her only fuel for so many decades. More than most people on the planet, more than anyone I would probably ever meet again, this was a being that knew what trust meant, what it implied, what it could sustain, what it could accomplish. The Old Woman knew trust intimately, like a musician knows their scales, like a painter knows the canvas, like an engineer knows bricks and mortar and cement. The Old Woman knew the nature of trust in its most secret chamber and the Old Woman trusted me. I could ask for nothing more.

A call for change in an tense zone
of imminent danger.
To speak was never enough,
to remain silent could never be an option.

Without TV, without radio,
without microphones, without newspapers,
a white wall and a bucket of paint
became the tools of angry poetry.

A plastic bag and a heart etched with fear,
a message from the hidden to the unknowable,
a small contribution to a grand jigsaw puzzle
that his eyes could never see completed.

As I raise my left hand in solemn oath,
I renounce all truths that I have been given,
I take the path that is not spoken,
I step into the jungle and become one of the hunted,
where the night shines with promise,
and all laws are turned on their head.

Proud and decided,
I will accept the Way of Destruction
in the hope that someday
others will come
with strong hands and open hearts
ready to create the new
from the ashes of the old.
In their past was the barefoot wandering
over forests and rivers that were forbidden.
In their future is a wound that cannot heal
and a sudden confrontation with transcendence.
In their present there is sacrifice
and the solid knowledge,
that in a world of slaves and animals,
together, they made one true choice.
In a corner of the world

where nothing ever happens
and nothing ever could,
the secret armies of the night
came and went
without leaving traces of their passing.

The Labyrinth That Was My City

Today I saw San Salvador as a comprehensible entity for the first time. Today the haze of my memories, which ran like yellow smoke over my present vision, was dispelled for a moment, and the real city that lived underneath emerged in all its grimy glory. Today the walls became more solid, the houses became older and the streets themselves grew in their treasure chest of details. Today, the present assaulted me like a thief in broad daylight and I invited it in, offering my assumptions in exchange for ripped up clothing and twisted roofs made of plastic. Today the moment gave me the gift of clarity and it came wrapped in old newspapers and oily rags covered in dirt. Today I saw the city and it was complete and unified and it made no promises and it refused to hide its scars and diseases. Today I saw the city naked and I kissed it from its lonely crown to its murky crotch with the clicking circular lips of the lens of my camera. Today I saw my city and it was true and shameless and I let it touch me with its rancid tongue.
It had never been like this. For so many years, I had been a hidden stowaway riding in the secret hold of a ship on its way to nowhere. Growing up, I had always been driven from one place to another, a naïve and comfortable passenger in the hands of more knowledgeable drivers. Without the real need for understanding, I would go from place to place, from house to house, from store to store, and I was never sure where I was in the city or how I got there. The names of landmarks and streets just bounced upon each other and got diluted into a vague translucent gossamer that left me lost and helpless in the strange labyrinth that was the city of my birth. Each space was complete in itself, recognizable but unknowable, and completely separate and disconnected from all the others. From the Hula Hula, one of the two main parks in the center of the city, a place I had heard mentioned a thousand times in regards to shows, parties and political rallies, to the Flower Clock, where my uncle crashed many years before I was born, to the Ruben Dario Avenue, which I knew to be significant as a border between worlds but I didn’t understand the nature of the worlds that it divided, to the Boulevard of the Army, which I remembered as a place to drive away into forgetfulness, into airplanes that took you to faraway places from which you never returned. All these places and more, they all interconnected in some mysterious logic that wasn’t clear or open to my limited vision. The areas I knew, the areas I could connect without trouble, where the ones I had walked, from my Dad’s home in the heights of Escalon, in the skirts of the volcano, where the streets were slanted and quiet amid a false sense of safety that permeated the elegant mansions like a violet cloud of subtle poison that couldn’t be detected until killers emerged from the shadows and by then it was too late; to my Grandmother Antonia’s home by the Salvador del Mundo plaza, where I saw couples kissing and grinding against each other in my childhood and where I encountered Dilcia on the second day of our love affair and it was the first time we were alone together and she called me "my love" with a great grin of open happiness and she made no attempt to hide the extent of her surrender, and the movie theater was there ("El Caribe") where I used to go with my friend Rodney when the afternoon was long and hot and there was nothing else to do and the McDonald’s where we ate skinny little burger after skinny little burger, trying to forget the rumors that the meat came from stray dogs captured in the middle of the night; to the boy’s school that I attended for one year, the Garcia Flamenco, where I first comprehended the nature of male culture and where I first realized I had a clear role in that world, a role that I did not know existed but which I fulfilled easily and without hesitation, to the Metro Center ("El Metro Centro"), the one and only big shopping mall that I knew in my Salvadorean teens, where we walked around for hours without purpose, looking at window displays and girls in short skirts, and where we ran into people that we knew who were also doing the same thing that we were and nobody questioned its usefulness; to the little low middle class neighborhood, the "Satelite", where I finally found enduring friends (that lasted through three decades, even though most of that time was spent in silence), where I had my first real kiss and where I truly loved a girl for the first time, and it all happened in a long blur of parties and jokes and games and lazy windy mornings when all I needed was a friend by my side and a cold chocolate milk in my hand and an open window of empty time to talk and tell stories. Outside of my known routes, which connected my safe known chambers to each other, the rest of the city was utterly dark and incomprehensible, like a dark jungle of cement and pavement that threatened to swallow my paths in its moist and growling darkness.
Today, I ventured into that jungle, into a new awareness of the maze of asphalt and buses and old houses and screams that was San Salvador beyond my known realms. For the first time, I acquired a true sense of the city’s dimensions, of its nature as a double labyrinth and of the true extent and progress of its slow and unstoppable decay.
To begin my exploration, I crossed the city sideways, from West to East, from one end to the other, from the Masferrer Park which crowned the Paseo Escalon with a huge blue and white flag and a promise of green shadows and peace which was only partially fulfilled, where young men and women, wearing fashionable clothes and dark glasses, drove around in brand new cars while shoeless kids ran to their windows and asked for money; to the metal bridge which extended above a crowded and noisy corner and a banner hung from the handrail that said "Welcome to Soyapango" (the small suburb just to the east of the capital) and the streets here were covered with grime and the air was thick with dark exhaust fumes and smog and the people themselves were a thick dark brown which was only partially genetic and the noise of horns and screeching motors was continuous and unforgiving. Here, at the eastern end of the city, was a glimpse into the chaos of necessity, carelessness and disdain from which I had been lovingly rescued by two generations of smart hard working women. I could now see that there was a single clear spine that ran from the heights to the depths, a spine that began as El Paseo, the long wide main street that I remembered as peaceful and safe but was slowly turning the same gray color of the eastern neighborhoods, which turned into Alameda Roosevelt, where I could first see the signs of the desperate agglomeration that was the city center, which then turned into Ruben Dario street and its parallel companion, Arce street, both in my mind forming a double pathway into the labyrinth’s heart, the Hula Hula, the Cathedral and the Plaza Libertad. From there, the crowded streets turned into Calle Delgado which then made a leftward turn into Independence Avenue, the land of the brothels and fat old prostitutes eating mangoes in their open windows while they threw kisses at the passing cars and laughed in great bursts of barely hidden hopelessness, and that turned into a long wide street of factories which was the Boulevard of the Army, a long row of big fat buildings protected by tall walls and tall slanted lawns, which eventually reached the border of Soyapango, where the little bridge waited with its dirty sign.
We took that long straight route twice, from one end to the other and back again, my Dad and me, and then we made a great circle around the city’s perimeter which solidified my basic discovery: San Salvador was big and complex but it was not infinite, it ended at distinct points that could be located and measured, it ended with the great volcano that had been the backdrop to my childhood and it ended with a pedestrian bridge that smelled of urine and smoke, it ended with thick green bush and small piles of garbage, it ended with promises of dark jungle over the hills.
Along the way, I saw many fragments, many iridescent scraps of life that I managed to freeze into my memory like old paintings that call out from a distant past. I saw a little boy playing with two soda cans on the sidewalk, maybe imagining that the cans were cars and the sidewalk was a great speedway, and the walls were great mountains filled with excited spectators. I saw a pair of girls in stylish high heels who raised their heads in an act of dismissal yet turned around to make sure that they had been seen, noticed and admired. I saw a giant thick building with walls of glass and beams of silver steel, a modern monument that signaled the new era of privatization that had come to El Salvador several years ago, where a French company now owned the telephone network and the very dreams of Salvadoreans were quickly transmitted and translated into money and power that resided far across the ocean, in air conditioned chambers that peasant eyes would never see. I saw political banners that announced that this time everything would truly be fixed and repaired and happiness would finally come to the people, if you only voted for us, after so many years of waiting, this time it was true they said, and some of these banners were covered in graffiti that in its snaky incomprehensible writing simply stated, in terms that went beyond language: "no, we don’t believe you, we can’t believe you any more. You, all of you, you have lied too many times." I saw a fat woman in a camouflage shirt who laughed uproariously at a joke that a younger woman had told her, as they both walked towards a crowded bus stop where little skinny men sold blocks of ice covered in artificially flavored syrup. I saw more screaming men and women, with their arms full of little plastic flags, encouraging the people to show their love for the country, to show their loyalty, to show their respect, and cover their cars in little flags, hanging from each of the windows, wrapped around the antennas, stuck in the edges of the rearview mirrors, the more the better, there could never be too much patriotism, "you need another one!". I saw a decrepit old bus that was slanted sideways with the weight of too many people inside and outside, hanging from the open doors and the sides, as it moved down the crowded street, spilling black smoke from its vertical exhaust pipe and, on the back window, there was a sign that read: "In God We Trust" in English with glowing prayer hands on either side, letting passengers know that Jesus would look out for their safety and the smog and the broken bus could be set aside as distractions from the true word of the Lord. I saw more security guards with black and silver gunshots at their sides, standing by open doorways, greeting customers with a smile and waving them goodbye as if they were old friends, as thin wrinkled old women walked by, looking down, their eyes lost in the cracks of the broken sidewalks. I saw two sleeping drunks whose brown skin looked almost black with dirt, with smog and with many years of sadness, using little bags as pillows which they rested against a wall covered in graffiti and a thousand little gaps of gray and black where the white paint had peeled away. I saw two young girls in tight jeans and flowery shirts who walked side by side along a very narrow sidewalk, laughing at their own private jokes while looking carefully all around themselves for any present sign of danger. I saw a thick middle aged woman in a bright green shirt that was riding up her back, revealing rolls of brown flesh underneath, sitting by her booth of illegal CDs, playing loud music on a beat up stereo while her young son read the newspaper on a high stool to her left. I saw a young thin boy pushing a large heavy cart full of open metal vats full of horchata and tamarindo, offering his refreshments to a mass of flesh that walked around him, avoiding his offering, all of them lost in their own worries while the ice melted in the metal vats and the flies descended on the moist edges. I saw a young boy playing with a plastic whistle in the open doorway of an empty shoe store, while an old woman in a red dress looked up and down the sidewalk, hoping for new clients. I saw a booth full of masks and dolls, Spider Man, Batman, Bart from the Simpsons, Annie, all roughly made copies of American icons, some of them easily recognizable, some of them wildly inaccurate, and I could see that the salesman, a short thick man with short black hair and a wide compact noise, was completely unaware of their meaning, their origin or their significance, seeing them purely as cheap things that some people might want, for unknown reasons, and he was here to sell them and bring back money to a little lost home where his wife and children were waiting, somewhere outside the city. I saw red shirts in plastic bags with the image of Che Guevara, of Fidel and of the current candidates of the left wing party, images that had been incendiary and forbidden in the recent past, the past I remembered, but which were already moving fast on their way to becoming as powerless and irrelevant to the Salvadorean crowds as Bart or Batman or Annie. I saw a uniformed policeman standing in a corner with his hands intertwined, his eyes a mask of boredom, a living symbol of weak organization imposed on a rumbling loud strong current of chaos. I saw a soldier in full camouflage fatigues lecturing a poor dark man in an old dirty blue shirt, who responded calmly with subtle nods of his head, his eyes slimmed down to allow no expression, a full pink plastic bag in his left hand. I saw a thick man in a straw hat and a colorful striped shirt pushing an ice cream cart, tinkling the tiny bell with enthusiasm, while a little skinny boy in a soccer uniform stared at him with angst and hunger. I saw an old man with a straw hat, leaning back on a metal bench in the Hula Hula park, his wrinkled hand laid over his crotch, his legs wide open, his eyes alert and alive, following every movement around him, his mouth stretched into a knowing smile. I saw an empty lot overgrown with tall leaves of grass and green trees, surrounded by broken down, unpainted walls and roofs of curved gray metal. And down the boulevard of factories, where the crowds were thinner and the air was clearer, I saw the silhouette of the San Jacinto hill in the distance and a glimpse of an entire neighborhood made of cardboard and tin, built within a giant hole in the ground that stretched for several miles.
From the heights of the Escalon, where the calm quiet streets were losing their silence, to the chaos of the center, where the hints of mass desperation became an overwhelming roar, to the ingrained decay of the east side, where the noise was losing its purpose and its ancient melody, the edges of the labyrinth had now been determined and that made the labyrinth knowable. The city had passed from a state of dream-like confusion to a new state of clearly defined margins and a half visible structure that I could now begin to unravel.
As I explored, I came to realize that the city was truly not one labyrinth but two: one made of brick, cement and steel, and one made of tin, plastic, wood, dirt and wild bush. At the side streets of the first, you would encounter the gateways to the second. I stared down long narrow dirt pathways, outlined by little tin houses and semi-naked dirty little kids, and my eyes got lost in the distance, where short skinny shirtless men walked in loose old blue shorts and women washed clothes with buckets full of rain water and little transistor radios played the latest cumbia and Reggaeton. I had known this world all along, I had even gone into these areas as a kid and as a teenager, but I had always perceived them as exceptions, as tiny imperfections in a city made of cement. This time I stared down these long corridors with eyes wide open, I let their reality sink into me, I allowed the dirt pathways to speak to me in their own language, and they told me that they were a true city as much as the one with the pavement and the telephone poles and the guards and the shopping centers. I suddenly came to understand that these places had their own connections, they had their own secret pathways which extended all over San Salvador, under the bridges, behind the rows of little brick houses, over the green and brown broken hillsides, even to the bottom of the huge thick walls that protected the mansions of the most powerful men of the country. Through the snaky little dirty rivers, the "arenales" (sand swamps), the "quebradas" (the breaks in the earth), this second labyrinth extended like a subterranean spider web under the asphalt of the known world. From any place in this hidden labyrinth, you could go to any other, without ever walking on a paved sidewalk or watching a car drive by. Here was the true underground labyrinth of El Salvador, hidden in plain sight, and living by rules of its own, beyond the reach of policemen, guards, politicians, diplomats or idealist rebels with dreams of justice. Like the green weeds that grew out of the cracks in the pavement of my garden, this was life in its purest form, finding the gaps in the solid structure and recklessly reaching up towards the sun, without fear, without reason, without anything left to lose.
At the city’s center, these two labyrinths came together and fused into each other so tightly that they became indistinguishable. Here the oldest buildings were covered with the graffiti of anger and desperation, here the sidewalks were thick with swarms of illegal vendors, selling everything from bras and panties to unauthorized DVD copies of the latest American movies, illegal CD copies of pop music, Reggaeton, salsa, rock, electronic, even an entire booth devoted to Japanese Anime in all its many forms, tended by a short dark brown man in a deep red sports shirt. Here there were no trees and the sunlight fell without mercy on the shoppers, on the workers, on the students going home. Here, at the center, the two labyrinths became one and maybe this final union was accomplished in the plaza where an old man with a light brown hat strummed the guitar lazily while two policemen laughed and the great statue of the hero that lead the founding of the country went completely unnoticed, except by the few pigeons who used his extended stone arms as a place to rest. Here the old thick walls trembled with all kinds of loud noise, insistent rhythms clashing against the roaring of old motors and the screeching of car shops and the screams of vendors in need of more sales. Here was the great Cathedral of San Salvador, the religious center of a city that had found its savior wanting, a building that I knew as a labor of many years, slowed down by corruption, greed and military conflict, and witness to the ultimate horror of an indiscriminate massacre and a cold blooded betrayal. Here there were tanned skinny girls with full round asses and very short skirts, that laughed in a rough disdainful way that betrayed their true profession. Here there were men in short sleeved shirts, covered in several layers of dirt, that slept in the gutters and couldn’t perceive anything beyond their own skin, for the world had left them with nothing to see. Here was the heart that brought the two labyrinths together, the light and the dark, the visible and the hidden, the image and the real, and its pounding lustful pulse of raw life brought them all together into a rumbling drone of laughter, anxiety, decay and undying hope.
From this center, full of need and lust and envy and sadness and memories and tears, from this heart of black smoke and dirt and music, the great decay spread out, like a bubble of dark oil making its way over an ocean of gray and green. Even at the farthest edges of the city, this bubble of decay showed its presence, in the sound of a distant grumbling bus, or in the peeling paint of a store wall, or in the cracks of a wide quiet sidewalk, but here in the center, the decay was pure, profound and complete. Here was the compost that gave the city its most needed nutrients. Here is where the dark earth worms lived and died. Here is where the new life forms evolved. Here was the birthplace of the Other.
From this long trip to the underworld, I came back tired and drained, but with a sense of much delayed discovery. In my own dirty hands I now held the old labyrinth that I first encountered when I pulled back the curtains of my parent’s house, the one I saw from the polarized window of a golden Mercedes Benz, the one I briefly touched when I walked to the Metro Center with my friends, looking for fun, girls, adventure, and dreaming of other places and other people, somewhere out there, beyond the unknowable edge of my world. Here then was my first and most incomprehensible labyrinth, the one that had first defied me, the one that had first pulled at my mind like the sticky strands of a spider’s web, and today it had opened itself to me, eager and unashamed, showing me its inner secrets, its most private chambers, unveiling itself in its full naked glory before my eager gaze, for the very first time. I embraced this ephemeral vision and I swallowed it whole. I could now feel the city itself within my cranium, no longer pulling from the outside to force my skull wide open, but pushing at the edges of my brain from the inside, getting adjusted to its new home behind my eyes.

An old man waits for his bus
in the city center,
holding onto his valuable possesions
safely stored inside a black pastic bag.

A young drunk sleeps away his sadness,
leaning against a wall marked with
angry graffity and peeling paint.

A business woman carries her store on top of her head,
her bank is in her apron,
her strength is in her eyes.

An old man with his hand at his crotch
and his eyes on the noisy life
that screeches and screams and laughs
all around him.

An old house covered in moss and scars
and faded dreams of a past
that has almost been forgotten.

A statement of undying faith
that is also a hidden warning.

An old thin woman bent over by the years,
who has walked so long and so hard
that she no longer needs to look
at where she's going.

A tinkling bell and a cold cart full of ice cream,
a sign of colorful hope
in a gray city lost in unspoken resentment.
Two young women wait for a ride
by the eastern side of Calle Arce,
to their right are the smog and the dreary endlessness
of a regular life of paychecks and repetition,
to their left is the cackling laughter
and the dark corridors of the old dirty brothels.

A young man offers horchata to his fellow pedestrians
while the sweet drink slowly gets ruined
in the open and vulnerable metal pots.

The giant factories that hide
behind tall walls and black metal gates
and a thousand crimes left unpunished.

A small house made of tin, plastic,
random pieces of wood, trash bags, cloth
and pure raw defiance.

A woman battles the growing forces
of carelessness and decay,
sweeping the broken sidewalk
littered by years of neglect.

A young boy plays with a plastic whistle
in the doorway of a shoe store downtown,
while Britney Spears looks upon him
from behind the cover of a fake leather purse.

A wall made of an extended trash bag,
a silent gateway to
the secret labyrinth that lies beneath.

A baby looks upon the labyrinth for the first time
and the nature of his impressions
is as mysterious to me as
the creatures of underwater caves
and the thoughts of the beings from distant galaxies.
An angel stands upon the world
making an offering to heaven
and a pigeon comes to take the gift.

A Storm In Paradise

I was reading in the living room of my grandmother’s house, in the restless silence of the early evening. A light wind was shaking the trees outside and there were signs of a very soft rain that was about to start. The living room windows were half open, letting the refreshing cool air into the house. I felt very grateful for the soft, cool breeze after a day of intense heat and bright sunlight. My father had already gone to rest in his bedroom and my grandmother had been asleep for a couple of hours. There was nothing left to do and that nothingness left me with a wide open doorway of needed solitude. I was relishing the quiet pleasure of turning the pages of my book calmly and methodically, in this place, this very couch, where I had done the same so many times before over the course of this lifetime.
Suddenly, loud voices invaded the silence. With the voices came the sound of an orchestra, a melancholic string section playing a sad melody and the sound of thundering timpani, then the sound of waves and then some more voices. I turned towards the living room and saw both Ana and Lorena sitting there, watching the small red TV that sat by the telephone. They saw me looking and they both smiled, completely unaware that the loud sound of the TV could somehow be disturbing to my reading. For them, as for most people in El Salvador, noise was the rule and silence was a strange aberration, a shared sickness to be cured as soon as possible. I had the impulse to ask them for silence, to exercise the implicit authority of my position and abruptly end the noise, the orchestra and the voices. But looking at Ana and Lorena, I realized I couldn’t ask them to turn it off. They were both too happy and too focused on the drama unfolding on the TV screen for me to ask them to stop.
I resigned myself to the loud sounds and turned away. I tried to return to reading but I kept on hearing snatches of conversation and more dramatic orchestral passages that signified an important plot development. There was no point in resisting. I put the book down, walked over to the dining room and asked them what they were watching. "It’s called ‘Storm in Paradise’… it’s the novela we have been watching. It’s the only one we really follow," Lorena answered right away while Ana just nodded her head, her eyes still on the screen. I looked at the TV and saw a blond woman behind bars, crying and asking to die. "Who is she?" I asked. They smiled at my curiosity and Lorena explained: "She is the evil woman. She is terrible. Right now she is in trouble… but usually she is so bad…" I saw the beautiful face on the screen, the wide blue eyes, the long sparkling blonde hair. "Why does she want to die?" "She is only scared," Lorena answered, "As soon as she gets out, she will be as bad as ever!" I smiled as the titles came on before the commercials. A storm in paradise… bright shining letters over a dark stormy sky, followed by sudden lightning, rumbling thunder and the crashing of waves upon a tropical beach. A beautiful, perfect place drenched in the dark waters of lust, ambition, envy and betrayal.

***

There were dark clouds in the distance, cloaking the sky in the color of overwhelming foreboding, but the two men insisted on diving, they could both feel that they were close, too close to give up now. The waves battered against the small boat and made it rock back and forth, while the two men continued to explore the hidden depths underneath. A small Mexican man waited aboard the boat, making sure that the men were supplied with air, making sure that the storm still was far enough away that they would be able to return to shore safely. As the night got nearer and the storm got stronger, the lone man on the deck became more and more nervous. He ran his thin wrinkled hand over his face and torso, muttering the distinct incantations of the Catholic cross.
Finally, one of the two divers surfaced only feet away from the trembling boat. He removed his mask and called out in a sign of victory: "I have found it! We have found it! It is ours!" His face was covered in water, excitement and triumph. The Mexican man nodded and smiled slightly in response, while he helped him get up on board. The other diver followed behind him. They were both American and they talked furiously to each other in English, loud raspy voices that sang a distinct melody of hard won completion. The Mexican man understood only half of what they said, but it was clear that they had achieved what they wanted and, if any further proof was needed, he could see the huge pearl shining in the white man’s hands. "After all these years… after all these dangers… " the first man said to the other, "after all this, the pearl is here, we have found it, it is ours." His eyes were wide open, shining and reckless. The other white man looked at him with a smile on his face, but with eyes that were not so open, somehow not so happy, somehow not so clear. There was a shadow about them, a shadow that was almost hidden by the water and the rain and the clouds, but it was there. The Mexican man could see it and he crossed himself again, aware that something was not right, something was not going the way that it should, something evil was looming in the horizon, something more terrible than the clouds and the rain and the thunder. Soon the boat was on its way back to shore and there was much drinking and toasting in the little bar by the pier, but the Mexican man could not look at the white men in the eyes, he had seen too much already.

***

I stopped Lorena on her way to the upstairs apartment and asked her about the novelas, the daily soap operas that women all over El Salvador watched with a strong loyalty that I could easily recognize and understand. She smiled at my questions and responded without hesitation. I could see that she was feeling more at ease with me, she was losing any trace of her early shyness and she was even beginning to feel a real friendship with the stranger that had come to visit. She somehow treasured my curiosity and was very eager to reward it.
"The novelas are just… they’re just a way to pass the time, you know? They help us get less bored. We just need something to do. The novelas help us to relax."
"But tell me about the novelas themselves."
"Well, sometimes they can be kind of repetitive. The same things happen over and over. I can see the stories… they tend to be the same…"
"How so? What is it that always happens?"
"Well, really… all soap operas have the same plot, the same basic story: a good woman who is completely and endlessly good, and a bad woman… a very bad and evil woman who is completely and endlessly bad."
"Like the blonde woman from last night?"
"Right, like the blonde woman. She is just terrible. She is bad. All the novelas have a woman like that."
"And there’s another woman who is good?"
"Yes, as bad as the blonde woman is, there’s another woman… a girl really… who is pure and good… you didn’t see her last night. But she’s there. In this one, and in all novelas. Always the one who is good."

***

Aymar crossed the luxurious doorway in a haze of shyness and fear. Her bronze skin contrasted perfectly with her white sleeveless shirt and her long black hair fell all the way to her lower back, in complex curls that touched the edge of her long white manta skirt. She looked around the room and then waited for her mother to follow her. The older woman, who crossed the doorway after Aymar, was as beautiful as her daughter, and her beauty was only subtly marred by the tiny little wrinkles around her eyes and a sense of sadness and loss that pervaded her every movement, as if transparent tears were flying out of her hands with every gesture that she made.
Inside the enormous living room, there were four men seated around an imposing wooden table. Aymar stood still, looking down at the floor and waiting for someone to tell her what to do. Her mother stepped forward and announced their presence in a loud voice that echoed through the halls of the mansion: "This is Aymar, the lost daughter of Mr. Seyles. We have come a long way to see him. We ask for your mercy and kindness. We have no other place to go." A rush of murmuring went through the room like a wave of rustling papers. Then one of the men walked up to them, smiling slightly and bowing in a display of old fashioned hospitality . He lifted his head, reached out with his hands to welcome them and then greeted them individually. Then he said: "My uncle is not here at the moment. But you are welcome to stay until he comes back." Aymar looked at him and her eyes shook with the intensity of knowing that she had seen him before, but in a land that was not here, in a place that she could not easily remember, a place that hid at the edges of her thoughts where her words could not reach. She averted her eyes and kept them away from him as he called for a maid to take them to the guest room. As mother and daughter walked away, up the long stairway and down the long hall, the murmuring in the living room erupted again and got louder. Aymar could only barely hear it. All she could see in the hall and the walls and the doorways, were the young man’s eyes and the hint of an unspoken promise that she could hardly comprehend.

***

"And is there always a man in between the two women?" I asked her, looking up from the couch.
Lorena nodded, her nose upturned as if to let me know that she understood how repetitive the novelas were, how predictable. She didn’t want me to think that she fell for their trickery. She might watch them but she knew better.
"That’s right. There’s always a man in between them. A man that is being pulled in two directions. "
I thought of this man caught between two forces, between two fountains of desire. The women were the poles of this universe but a man stood at the heart. The women would dance and fight and cry and scream and appear to be the main actors on the small stage of the TV screen, but it was a man that would ultimately determine their fate. A man that was cause, effect and prize. A man that stood in the middle, waiting to decide, waiting to end the tears and the fighting with a simple kiss and a timid request for forgiveness.

***

The High Priest grasped his scepter in tight sweaty hands and looked towards the horizon, where the ocean rose up to meet the sky and all thoughts vanished in a haze of blue and gray and wave and cloud. His long white robe was draped around his broad strong shoulders as he paced back and forth on the stone balcony of his private quarters. This was not how it should have happened. This was wrong. This was a divine betrayal and it would bring upon them terrible misfortune. But there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say that would stop the wheels that were already in motion. A white man had taken his beautiful daughter, the same one that the Priest had selected as an offering to the Gods, the same one that was born with the clear mark of sacrifice across her forehead, a mark invisible to others but bright and distinct to one such as him. Now a messenger had come running, through the hot and humid jungle of the land that was their ancestral home, a land blessed by the Gods in return for their holy sacrifice, and the messenger had come running to tell him that his gift to the Gods had run away, his most prized and loving daughter had given herself to a strange man that did not deserve her, a white man, one of the enemy, one of the alien demons that now ravished this once peaceful nation of proud and courageous warriors. Upon hearing the news, the High Priest refrained from crying. He somehow stopped himself from surrendering to the overwhelming waves of misery and despair that washed his whole body in darkness.
Instead, he walked back into his quarters and there he saw the pearl, the gigantic pearl that had been a gift from the ocean, the pure sphere of beauty that he had saved to offer to the Gods, in magic union with his daughter, on the day of the sacrifice. The great white pearl was as beautiful and unique as the prideful girl that even now was laying in the arms of a devious man without knowledge, a thief, a brute, a blonde predator in metal armor that was simply too strong and powerful to be stopped. It was the greatest insult imaginable. A betrayal so complete that it defied comprehension.
The beautiful pearl would no longer serve its intended purpose but it remained beautiful, silent and waiting, ready to serve its chosen master. He walked towards it and lifted it high into the air with both hands, looking straight into its unearthly beauty as it shone above him. In an explosion of rage that coursed through his vision and body like a tornado of hot red wind smashing against the gray rocks of his vast inner ocean, he screamed: "This pearl is now cursed. Whoever touches it, will fall sick. Whoever takes it upon himself, will be hurt. Whoever wishes to possess it, will be damned forever!" The High Priest’s eyes flared like burning stars and his face trembled with an angry rush of pure will that came up through his tensed muscles like a surge of poisonous black spit. When it was over, there was silence all around him. He placed the pearl back on its obsidian pedestal and turned away from it, feeling the ocean breeze on his back, feeling the cloak of loneliness that would now be with him for the rest of his days. He retired to his bed and fell on his back, breathing loudly with his mouth wide open, exhausted. There was nothing left to do. His work was finished, his sacred contract with the Gods was broken and it could never be repaired. But there was still the pearl, the pearl that would carry his curse forever.

***

"But you like to watch them…" I said it with a hint of mischief, daring Lorena to admit that something in them touched her, daring her to name what it was that brought her back to the novelas, night after night.
"I do like them. They entertain me. It’s just that sometimes they’re hard to believe…the plots are too unbelievable!" She twisted her mouth in a sign of disdain, again letting me know that she didn’t really fall for their tricks, that she could see past the illusion.
"Why? Why do you find them so unbelievable?" again hoping for a hint of the truth behind the veil of melodrama and sentimental tears. Lorena shook her head with a smile that held a seed of true curiosity.

***

Raquel waited inside the room that wasn’t hers. She leaned back on the white wall beside the open balcony, letting the wind play with her thin, transparent nightgown. She was completely naked under the gown, and the waning light of the dying afternoon outlined the silhouette of her slim perfect body, tracing every curve, showing sudden glimpses of tanned smooth flesh. She knew exactly what she looked like. She knew just what she was doing. Her blonde hair fell all around her shoulders, loose and dancing with the wind. Her right hand played with the pearl necklace that hung around her long soft neck. Everything was in place. There could be no escape.
She barely moved when she heard the footsteps coming up the stairway, the knob turning, the door creaking open, the gasp of surprise. "Raquel? What are you doing here?" Raquel leaned back further, letting him take in the full sensual picture that she presented, without shame, without any trace of shyness or coy hesitation. The young man stared in silence and closed the door behind him. He stopped for a moment, trying to bring himself to walk away, trying to escape from the trap that was waiting for him beside the balcony, barely covered in thin satin. But somehow he knew, as much as Raquel knew, that it was too late. He knew there was no way to avoid this. The beautiful blonde girl had made a move that he could not resist, she had attacked in a way that he could not respond to. He slowly walked towards her as she waited, breathing patiently, her eyes wide and round and blue. "Raquel, we shouldn’t do this…" Raquel extended her leg towards him and the nightgown fell open around her thigh and the young man looked down at the long tanned naked leg and he walked faster towards her, unable to stop himself, unable to ask any further questions. When his lips finally met hers, and his strong young body pressed against her own, she allowed the nightgown to fall to the floor, discarded and useless. Naked, with her arms around his neck and her heart beating wildly, she whispered softly into his right ear: "I am only giving you what you’ve always wanted. Take it. Take what you want. Take me. I am yours." Helpless, unable to look away from the bright blue eyes that were shining only inches away from his own, Elias did as she commanded.

***

Lorena looked at me for a moment, squeezing her face into a mild frown, thinking of an answer.
"They’re just unbelievable…because, look, there are bad people…of course there are bad people… bad people do exist, they are everywhere… I’ve heard plenty of stories about terrible people that do very bad things here in El Salvador. Back in the town where I come from and here in the city, everywhere. Almost every day I hear some terrible story about what some bad person did. This country is full of people like that."
"Then why are the soaps unbelievable?"
"Because I can’t believe that a person would keep on being so good in the face of that, that they would remain good no matter what. I can’t believe that, after being attacked in such a terrible way, a person would keep on being good, and not attack back…"
I saw then in Lorena’s eyes that, to her, evil was real and tangible. Evil needed no reasoning. Evil was true beyond question. It was good that was suspect. It was good that stretched credibility. It was good that couldn’t be. Not sustained. Not forever.

***

Paul, dressed in long dark robes and sitting on a wide chair that resembled a throne, looked at the strange woman they called Little Mermaid and he smiled. Little Mermaid looked up at him, her scraggy white hair was like an explosion around her face, and her wrinkled eyes were tinged with sadness and awash in curiosity. She sat at his feet, with her face upon his lap. He looked down upon her, with a long white beard that came down to his stomach and a receding hairline that made the crown of his head look like a kind of flesh colored crystal ball. He ran his right hand over her hair and pointed to the distant ocean that they could both see through the wide open windows.
"So why does Raquel do these things?" Little Mermaid asked in a soft innocent voice.
"It is all in the pearl. It is the pearl that has divided them in two. One of the two is Raquel, and she is selfish and strong and two faced. She has the explosive power of sex within her. Elias can’t resist her. For she is full of lust and she invokes that lust in him. Her beauty is the beauty of dark mountain passes in the middle of a storm. It is the beauty of a jaguar as it jumps to slash your throat. Her beauty comes from deep within her, in a place that most of us would never wish to see. She is the deep heart of the pearl, revealed in its utmost clarity through her blue eyes and her golden hair. She is irresistible and she is unstoppable."
"Then there is no hope for Aymar?" Little Mermaid asked again, looking up at Paul with eyes shimmering with admiration.
"Aymar is the other half of the pearl and so she is powerful in her own right. Her path is to suffer. For all the suffering that Raquel can give, Aymar can take it all and more. There is no painful ordeal that Aymar can’t endure and remain as she has ever been. She is the clean surface of the pearl and she can never be disturbed in her pure innocence, her pure truthfulness, her pure strength. Elias feels it within him, he can almost recognize the enduring truth that lies in Aymar, but he is charmed and enslaved by the power of Rachel. He truly loves them both. He is tortured by the idea of having to make a choice, an impossible choice that lies beyond his grasp. What he doesn’t know is that they are one. They have always been one and they will always be one. What he truly loves is the pearl and the pearl is cursed. As long as he holds them in his attention, he is cursed as well, doomed to relive suffering after suffering, with only faint moments of rest before the suffering begins again. His tortured pain will return forever, and, each time, it will be as fresh and shocking as the first time, because he will always forget and the entire story will begin again. He will walk this trail of tears for eons without ever glimpsing at the bars of his millennial cage."
"Who made this happen? Why did the pearl divide in two? Why is it cursed?"
A warm breeze came through the room and Paul nodded, looking directly into Little Mermaid’s eyes. His eyes were wide and strange and his pupils became large and filled with a blankness that seemed inhuman. He ran his long hand through Little Mermaid’s scraggly white hair and then he answered.
"I did Little Mermaid. I did it. So many thousands of years ago. It was not the High Priest as they have told you. It was not Mr. Seyles who found it at the bottom of the sea with his unfortunate friend who had no true hope of survival. It was me. I pulled it up from the grasp of the most ancient Gods of the oceans. I held it in my hands and I took it away. It was me. I split the pearl in two with a curse that would never die. My confused hatred of an instant echoed through time and eternity and came to live in this mansion, in this haunted place of endless loneliness and futile hope. And now I can only watch the results of my moment of weakness unfurl before my eyes. And as I watch I can do nothing. I cannot alter the course of events, I can’t help the weak, I can’t hurt the strong. I can’t speak to the actors in this tragic play. I can’t warn them of what’s coming. I can’t point out what they have missed. I can only watch and suffer in my own way, knowing that I was the one. I was the one who placed the curse. I split the one pearl in two and left the pieces dancing in the void, ready to become desire, envy, sadness and pain. I did it, Little Mermaid. I split the holy pearl in two."

***

"So, if attacked, you would respond with evil?"
Lorena thought about it for a moment, letting the question settle within her. I could almost feel the waves of thought and sensation coursing through her thick brown body, moving through her muscles, swimming through her veins.
"Maybe not evil, but maybe not so good. Who knows? It’s never happened to me. I’ve never had to deal with a truly bad person like that."

***

Elias stood over the cliff, his black hair dancing in the wind, his shirt half open, his eyes lost in the horizon. Aymar stood beside him, her arms around his shoulders and his arms around her waist. The mansion stood in the distance, as desolate as they had ever known it. Seen from a distance, it was difficult to believe that so many people lived within its tall white walls, so many people with such different paths in life, a noisy collective of angry bees that could not form a true hive. Aymar wore a long white dress that whipped around her legs, making little fluttering sounds as the cloth was slapped by the growing wind, a delicate counterpoint to the distant booming thunder. As the storm increased in strength, Elias pulled her soft brown body towards him. Holding her tightly, he whispered in the softest voice he could find within his chest.
"I am sorry for everything that has happened. I am truly sorry."
Aymar looked up at him and her eyes were full of kindness.
"I know you are. I believe you."
"It has been terrible, being without you. It has been terrible to see you cry."
"It has been terrible for me… to see you with her, to see you both walk together down the aisle, to see her long white wedding gown…to see you two together… it crushed me so deeply, so completely, but I never lost my love for you… I never completely lost my hope…"
Elias pulled her closer and kissed her deeply and the wind surged as their lips pressed against each other, as if the sky and the ocean knew that this was indeed a moment among moments, a unique reunion that happened only once and then again forever.
Aymar pulled back only slightly and whispered: "But what about her? What about Raquel? I’m sure she won’t be ready to accept your love for me… I’m sure she will do something."
"We will deal with her when the time comes. She is not as strong as she might think. She is not invincible. And, above all else, she is a liar. We can prove it. I now have the pearl. Little Mermaid gave it to me on the night of my uncle’s death."
Aymar closed her eyes and Elias kissed her again and rain drops began to fall over their heads, little drops of cold water sliding down their foreheads, bathing their faces in a new kind and gentle morning that would soon turn into night. It was the moment that they had expected. And at this precious moment they were together at last.
From the highest window in the mansion, a pair of eyes saw them from behind closed curtains and a pair of lips whispered: "This is not over yet. Not at all. These two don’t know what I can do. These two don’t know the extent of my influence. If I can’t have him, then nobody will." Her long blond hair fell around her thin shoulders, covering them in soft golden curls. The frame of her thin body shivered with anger. Her breath was wide and strong and hoarse, bathed in hate, hot with the fires of vengeance.
And in the distance, the lovers kept on kissing, their twin figures a simple gesture of eternity painted over the wild canvas of a gray stormy sky.

***

"But what would you do? If you found yourself attacked by evil? If you were attacked by an evil person, one of the many that you say exist all around you, would you respond with the same? Would you become evil yourself?"
I looked intently at Lorena, at her smile that swam in and out of existence on her thick brown face, at her open and attentive eyes, at her forehead which burrowed into a knot of inner questioning. She looked back at me then, directly and openly, and her eyes flared for a moment, like bubbles of vapor in a pot of boiling water. Then she said the truth:
"I don’t know what I would do."
I thought then that in Lorena the pearl had not been broken and that the curse extended far, but it couldn’t reach all places. There were secret caves beyond its power and she was one of them, a dry spot in the cliffs of reality where Paul’s anger could not reach. Here in Lorena, the pearl was one, it was as unified as the first moment when human eyes came to rest upon it. She was Raquel and she was Aymar, both as one. She was pure but she was lustful. She was smart but she was kind. She had a strong will but her heart was vibrant with unquestioned compassion. Maybe she followed the "Storm in Paradise" novela to catch distinct glimpses of herself, of a past that never happened, of a future that would never come. Maybe she hoped for division, maybe she hoped that Paul would finally reach within her and break her in two, so that she could end all the many years of waiting.
I thought then of all the beings trapped forever in endless cycles of life and rebirth, all cursed, all broken, all caught within the limited confines of a cubic box full of light and sound that held a window open into eternity. How many times would Elias betray Aymar? How many times would Raquel betray them both? How many times would they burst with love and happiness only to wake up lost again in the midst of chaos and confusion? How many times would the orchestra play in the distance, letting them know that the cycle was about to begin again? Maybe they could never realize that they were and had always been flat images on a screen of light, designed to provide a form of vague entertainment, flat images lost in the recurring dreams of an endless night.

An explosive instant that breaks the pearl in two.

Raquel with her long blonde hair
and her beauty touched by evil.
Aymar in her white dress
and her innocence that is beyond temptation.
The High Priest infuses the pearl with the
black venom of his heart.

Aymar and Elias together,
in a simple moment of happiness
that will repeat forever
but will only last an instant.

Raquel beckons from the depths
of the pearl's hidden core.

Paul standing on top of the world
as he breaks the pearl in two
and fulfills the strange work
that will be his own eternal punishment.

A pristine beach that lays open and ready
for the blood that will cover it in violence,
for the tears that will cover it in salt.

Of Fathers and Mothers and Children

We were eating in the dining room, on the long dark wooden table that extended from the door of the kitchen to the edge of the opposite wall. It was already getting dark and I could see the wide green leaves of the trees outside, rustling in the restless howling wind that came before an angry tropical storm. I was sitting at the head of the table, with my back towards the kitchen door. My father was sitting to my right and my grandmother was sitting to my left. Lorena was standing by my grandmother, helping her to eat, ready to bring her whatever she needed, a sly knowing smile always drawn across her face. Ana was moving around in the kitchen, arranging and rearranging the cooking utensils, her sandals slapping like little claps on the hard flat bricks of the old floor. The room was only partially illuminated by the indirect lighting on the eastern wall, and the pale light streaming in from the kitchen, leaving the dining room in a twilight of gray shadows. Tiny currents of wind made their way through the gaps in the windows and they whistled like little lost children flying over the long table, from wall to wall, from window to doorway, from darkness to light.
My grandmother was as quiet as she had been in the last few days, moaning softly and constantly as her thin body shook and little ungraspable melodies escaped from between her lips, always ending in soft little grunts and painful gasps for air. She ate slowly and methodically, every so often asking my father what I had said to him or what he had said to me. My father would then repeat it in a louder voice and, after two or three attempts, my grandmother would nod and moan to let him know that she had understood the message, and then she would get back to eating. My father mentioned Honduras and I asked him about his early childhood. Then I asked my grandmother about her own childhood. My question managed to get past my grandmother’s hearing problem and something unusual happened.
It was as if her whole thin frail body had been struck by a bolt of electricity. She straightened up and leaned over the table towards me, her eyes wide and deeply focused and her shoulders shaking slightly. She started to talk, in the intense continuous and vivid way that she used to talk years ago, and she told me stories I had never heard before, one after another, full of enthusiasm, reliving forgotten moments with a clarity that would have seemed impossible just a few minutes earlier. I could see the look of surprise in Lorena’s eyes and in my father’s. They expected her to give up quickly and return to her slow and soft moaning, but instead she seemed to get more energized, more excited and more alive, and my father and Lorena just looked at each other, wondering what had happened. I realized, with a pang of urgency that struck at my heart, that this could be the only time she would talk like this during this entire journey, maybe the last time ever, so I placed my whole attention on her, as firmly as I was able to, and I sat back to listen, watch and ask questions when it became necessary. And she talked and talked and talked. And I listened and listened and listened. And, somewhere in the back of my mind, I tried to keep track of all that I was hearing.
She told me of the old times in Honduras, back when they lived in a little town called Juticalpa in the big inland state of Olancho. It was a place that sat on the border between a new civilization and the ancient wild, a place where there was a clear attempt at establishing European style laws, rules and etiquette, but the raw violence of the machete and the intense hunger of animal lust were always around the corner, waiting, watching, like a fierce tiger stalking behind flimsy wooden bars. The rule of law was more of a general suggestion, a piece of theatre to be enacted when things were calm, but it was quickly set aside at the slightest sign of turbulence.
Every so often, the revolutionaries, as my grandmother called them, would come to town in the night and someone would come running to alert her mother, screaming: "They are coming down from the mountain!" It was not necessary to say who "they" were. Everyone knew them. These feared revolutionaries were men of ideals that my grandmother perceived as savages, men who had sacrificed the comforts of society for a chance at glory and political change. In their youth, they might have been clean shaven young men with open eyes and open hearts. In the mountains they had grown violent, rude and dirty and their coming was seen as a recurring local plague. Upon hearing the news, my grandmother’s mother would calmly place a large sheet on the floor and there she would place enough clothes for everyone. She would tie it all up in a bundle and then they would run from the house, leaving it open and empty and defenseless. One night that my grandmother remembered, they escaped to a house next to a jail and all night my grandmother would hear the prisoners beating hard against their chains and against the bars, calling for release, hoping for freedom. My grandmother looked at her mother with horror and asked: "Mother! Why did you bring us here? This is where the bad people live!" But her mother just told her to be quiet and they stayed there all night, listening to the anguished cries of desperate men, knowing that their own house had been taken by the revolutionary guerrillas from the mountains. As my grandmother talked about these mountain fighters, I could almost see them with their long dirty knotted hair and scraggly beards, in dirty white uniforms and long black boots, with wide flat hats and simple thick rifles over their shoulders and belts full of bullets around their waist. My grandmother must have feared them terribly, but her mother knew that the family was safe as long as they stayed away. The guerrillas would stay in their family house for a while, they would eat their food, sleep in their hammocks and beds, even kill some of their livestock, and then they would leave. And my grandmother’s family would come back to do the cleaning and sleep in their own beds after one or two days had passed. The family, from the window of a house nearby, once saw how the guerrillas killed a bull in front of the family house. As she told me about this, my grandmother made a dismissive gesture with her hand and she shook her head: "They were dirty and careless! They left the whole house in a big mess! They did it just to be spiteful!"
Honduras in those days was in a state of constant political upheaval. The two opposite sides in the political battle were the Nationalists, the party that looked towards the past with admiration, and the Liberals, the outsiders who rejected the past and hoped for a different future. My grandmother’s father was Luis Suarez and he was the president of the Nationalist Party in the state of Olancho. He was also a great personal friend of the legendary dictator of Honduras: Don Tiburcio Carias. Don Tiburcio was a man that my grandmother loved and admired, as a kind of strong and powerful father that reigned with a tough but fair hand over an entire nation of children. This is why the revolutionaries would take over their house in particular each time they came down from the mountains, because of their intimate connection to the single most feared ruler of the land.
My grandmother remembered, with a clear sense of nostalgia and pride, walking in the Nationalist parades down the main street of the town of Juticalpa and screaming the name of the beloved dictator, the glowing father in the faraway shining city that ruled with fearsome finality over all his many peasant sons and daughters:
"Viva Tiburcio!" ("Long Live Tiburcio!")
And when she screamed again his name, that night in front of me, her face, now so old and wrinkled, turned once again strong and clear, and her eyes were shining with defiant anger and her mouth was twisted into a vertical rectangle and her lips pushed out like the red flowers of a cactus and her voice was loud and strong and it echoed in the twilight room:
"Viva Tiburcio!" ("Long Live Tiburcio!")
Long live Tiburcio above all others! Long live Tiburcio for he is strong and proud! Long live Tiburcio in our hearts and in the city and in the dark soil of the mountains! Long live Tiburcio as an eternal symbol of love and strength and power! Long live Tiburcio whether you like him or not! Long live Tiburcio who hovers above your thoughts, your prejudices or your desires! Long live Tiburcio who goes on forever and exists in all places and times! Long live Tiburcio who is good because he says so and needs no confirmation from you or anyone else! Long live Tiburcio who is a true man in a world of spoiled children! Long live Tiburcio who shows us the way of the sword and of fire, the only way that is true, the only way that works, the only way that persists through the ages! Long, long, long live Tiburcio!
One day, when Tiburcio’s reign had ended and four decades had passed, she was walking by the place where she knew that he lived. She was going somewhere else and she just happened to be near this place, for no purposeful reason. It was a big flat colonial house with a traditional open garden in the middle. The doors to the street were wide and thick and they were half open. The urge to see him came like a strange whim without reason and she turned towards the half open doors and walked inside. My grandmother had never talked to the legendary man in forty years and she had not thought of doing so until this day, but once the thought had formed in her mind, and her will had coalesced around it, she walked straight into the house as if she had always been there, as if this had been her house all along.
The old man Tiburcio, the old general of a thousand battles, both feared and loved all throughout Honduras, was sitting on a hammock among several people who, even after all these years, still clung to his every word. My grandmother walked up to him, without fear, shyness or subtlety, and boldly announced: "I am the daughter of Don Luis Suarez, your great friend of many years ago!" His eyes lit up and he smiled and laughed with sympathy and told her to sit down. He had someone bring her something to drink and they talked for hours of the old towns and the old ways and the old wars and the old triumphs and the old glories. In an instant, the old man recognized something in her eyes that he didn’t see so often in the eyes of the newer generations. In that instant, he brought her into his inner circle, without reservation or doubt. She was one of the people of the old times, one of the survivors of the recurring self betrayals of a society bred on recrimination, resentment and contempt, one who carried about her the signs of the real world that he had known in a distant past not completely forgotten. That was all he needed to know of her. After that instant of recognition, all further words that came out of her mouth were like music to his ears.
From that day on, he became her invisible protector. She asked him for a post in the embassy of Honduras in El Salvador and he responded: "But Graciela, I am not in power anymore. I can’t make such a thing happen." But there was a twinkle of a knowing smile on his lips, an acceptance of a secret that was not so secret, that old power remained even if the ruling masks were replaced by new ones. My grandmother said to him: "I don’t have anyone else to ask. So I have to ask you." Don Tiburcio nodded and called for one of his orderlies to take her to see the President and, when they were in his office, the orderly said: "The general says that you should give her a post in the embassy in El Salvador." Upon hearing that the general wanted this to happen, it was done immediately, as if God himself had spoken. Several years later, Don Tiburcio’s son, who then had become President, got the post of general consul in Boston for my aunt Nena. The son would say to my grandmother in the midst of friendly laughter: "You have a very powerful friend. The general simply says to me: ‘I want you to take care of her and support her in any way that is needed.’ And because he says it, that is what we do."
My grandmother took it all in stride. She would walk in and out of the National Palace with complete liberty. Everyone knew her and all the guards would step out of the way when they saw her coming. She would eat there whenever she wanted to, she would watch movies in the President’s private movie theater, and she would walk directly into the President’s office and ask for an audience whenever she felt like it. Many diplomats would ask her to get them a few minutes with the President, recognizing the special access that she had somehow acquired. She would get them what they wanted and they would simply wonder at the power of this little lady with fierce eyes of defiance.
When my grandmother got the post in Boston for my aunt Nena, at first my aunt refused to go and my grandmother would then say to her: "But what are you going to do here in Tegucigalpa? There is nobody here to take care of you!" My grandmother was genuinely worried that her daughter would end up poor and hopeless in the streets of the merciless capital of Honduras. She had managed to get her a golden opportunity to escape, but her daughter refused to understand it. After a lot of talking and a lot of nagging and a lot of waiting, my grandmother finally convinced her. My Aunt Nena prepared for the fearsome voyage to the north. Knowing that the weather in Boston would be much colder than the sweaty moist afternoons in Honduras, my grandmother took some old large blankets and she turned them into thick bulky coats for my aunt and for her son, Lorenzo. The coats were strange in color and shape and they didn’t fit quite right. When people saw them dressed in the strange coats, they thought that they must be Russian refugees. My Aunt Nena left Honduras and went to live in Boston, where she led a peaceful life of comfort and curious observation, away from the harsh realities of Tegucigalpa or Olancho. Her son studied in a very good university and went on to become an executive lawyer. As far as a standard human eye could see, my aunt had found paradise. Nobody would ever know what her life would have been like if she had stayed in Honduras.
As she told me this story, my grandmother turned to me and pressed her fragile little body against the table. The she said: "Nena doesn’t remember."
I asked her: "Why do you say that she doesn’t remember?"
Her eyes got wide and sad and she said: "Because she never mentions it. People only remember the bad things. The good things, they forget. There could be a long list of good things but they would all be forgotten. But if there is one single bad thing that happened, that one thing they will remember!"
She remembered then that a teacher used to say to her: "To be young is to be an idiot!"
She nodded her head to that saying, tasting the truth of the words in her mouth, and she continued: "When one is young, one doesn’t see things clearly. As one grows up, one starts to realize things and one would want to go back and change things, do everything differently. There is a long line of mistakes… mistake after mistake after mistake… A man used to say to me: ‘After all, if one could go back and start again, if one could live life all over again, one would live it perfectly, one would know how to live it!"
I thought of what this man said and I felt the pain in my grandmother’s big open eyes and I thought to myself that maybe one would make the same mistakes all over again, pushed by uncontrollable forces that would overwhelm any knowledge or memory, and, one day, once again, one would look back and wonder what one could have done differently. Maybe this had already happened. Maybe it was happening as we spoke on that windy night.
I looked at my grandmother, and in a loud voice that I strained to make as kind and loving as possible while still being loud enough to be heard, I asked her for an example of the mistakes she was talking about, of the things that became clearer as time passed by and that she wished she could change. She nodded, understanding my question, and then she said: "My mother. I never saw how good she was with me. I didn’t ever see it until it was too late. Now I spend all my time talking to her. I wake up in the middle of the night and I call for her: Mama, Mamita, Mamaita. I used to laugh at her when I saw her talking to her own dead mother in the darkness and now I spend my time talking to her. During the day and in the middle of the night. I wake up and call her. I ask her for strength."
I asked her if her mother ever responded to her calls and she said, simply and directly, "No. One time I thought I saw her as some kind of being of light, but no, she doesn’t respond, I only talk to her, I am the one that talks, I ask her for help in letting go of what is tormenting me."
My father then interrupted her to tell her that she shouldn’t feel tormented at all, that there was no reason for it. I stopped him, knowing that at this point my grandmother had no choice in the matter, and I asked her: "Why are you tormented? Why do you feel tormented?"
"Because there is no peace among my children. Because they are so divided. I wish they could be united and happy."
I asked her why she thought they were so divided.
She answered in a loud clear voice: "Because I see it! I see their division! I see their anger! I see it all around me! It doesn’t let me live in peace!"
I asked again in a different way: "But what has made this happen? Why did they become so divided?"
She shook her head, looking down towards the table, and the wrinkled old flesh of her cheeks flapped around like wet pieces of old cloth: "I don’t know."
But I could see the desperation in her and I knew that in some way she believed that it was her fault. Like the prisoners in that old jail in Juticalpa, she scraped at the metal bars of her invisible prison, but freedom would not come. What was it that she felt guilty about? What was the terrible mistake that lurked in the depths of her memory? An answer shone before me at the farthest edge of my inner vision but I couldn’t quite grasp it, it was too faint, it was too transparent, it was too elusive for me to hold.
My father again interrupted to say that it was all my Aunt Lichi’s fault. That she was a terrible person, an ugly hateful bitch and that she was the one that created division among them. My father and his sister Lichi had been fighting each other, in very vicious, hurtful ways, for most of my life. When I was young and lived with my father, I saw my aunt and her daughters walk straight by my father without saying hello, without ever turning to acknowledge his existence. I also saw my father react intensely and attack her with painful, hateful words of recrimination and disdain when he felt attacked or somehow disrespected. I could see implicitly and beyond question, that my father’s answer was wrong. It wasn’t all my Aunt Lichi’s fault. It couldn’t be.
My grandmother then said: "I love all my children the same. I don’t love one more than another."
My father insisted: "But you were here when the phone incident happened and you saw how…" I interrupted him then and, calmly but firmly, I forced our attention back onto my grandmother. When she saw my eyes on her and she felt the silence around her, she continued:
"I want a priest to come and bless this house. I want it to be cleansed and purified from so much anger!" My father laughed and said that only my Aunt’s apartment needed cleansing. My grandmother dismissed the joke and continued: "I want to do it. Even if it’s only me and the priest here by ourselves." In that moment, I saw the believer in her, just as I saw it when I sometimes would overhear her praying to particular old saints in a soft secretive whispers. It was such a stark contrast to the times when she would rave against the church and the priests whom she accused of being thieves and liars. But she clearly knew that something needed to be done, an action in the subtler levels of reality, and the church was the only answer her human brain could find, the Catholic church was the only spiritual knowledge that she was aware of.
She almost started to cry when she said that all her children had their good points and that they all had their particular defects, but that she loved them all. She repeated that phrase like a mantram that would somehow disperse the poisonous anger that was present even that night, like a brewing tropical storm that can turn into loud thunder and brilliant lightning at the smallest provocation.
"All mothers are good," she said it as a final statement, an archetypal law that transcended any questions or investigations.
My father responded: "Some are good and some are not."
She shook her head again and spoke in a louder voice: "No. Not some. All. All of them. All mothers are good. What is true is that some are more able than others, some have more skill and some have less. You can’t ask someone to do more than they are able to. They can only give what they can give."
She came back to saying how much she loved her sons and how tormented she was. Then my father interrupted the strange delicate space abruptly and he said that my grandmother had to go to bed. He walked around the table and took her carefully by the hand. My grandmother stood up and walked slowly to her bed, her head lowered and her mouth silent except for the little moans that always escaped from between her thin wrinkled lips. As they walked, my father said to me that once she was in bed, we could continue talking. But, once in her room, she left to go to the bathroom and my father laid down in his own room to watch sports on the TV. I was alone in my grandmother’s room for several minutes, wondering about the things she was not saying, wondering how much of it she knew and kept silent on purpose and how much of it escaped her own knowledge and only came through in ephemeral glimpses as she talked. My grandmother came back into the room and, instead of going to her bed, she walked directly towards me and grabbed my arm tightly in her thin little trembling hand. Looking intensely into my eyes, in the last wave of energy that she would be able to gather that night, she said:
"Your father does not like to listen to this. He doesn’t like it when I talk about this. But you do. You really listen to me. I can see it. When I talk, I can see you listening. I can feel it. Your mother told me that sometimes you say: ‘This is just like my grandmother says’ You really do listen. I am very unhappy about what happens between my children. I am not at peace." She looked into my eyes in silence and I looked back at her and we breathed together in the darkness of her little room. "You really listen to me. It is important to listen to the old ones."
My father stepped back into the room and my grandmother turned away from me and went to bed, saying in a soft voice that she was ready to go to sleep. I said good night to her and walked up the wooden steps to the living room. Sitting alone on the light brown couch, I tried to write all that she had said to me, knowing that a lot of her real communication was in the gaps of silence, in the scenes left unspoken, in the mistakes left unsaid. There was a depth in her vague allusions, a profound detail implied in her voice and her intonation, a weight that anchored her words to a stronger foundation. The same words could be spoken by another person, but the weight would be missing. It was this weight, this depth, this subtle ancient meaning that hid behind the words and around them, it was this rumbling ancient drone that could be easily missed by a mind that was easily distracted. It was this weight that made it truly important to carefully listen to the old ones, to listen to the single primordial tale of a thousand chambers and masks and twists and turns, a tale that traveled through the maelstrom of time to find new beings to ingest it, to transform it and to pass it on. That night, it flourished once again within the thin little body of my sick grandmother, to find a new living vessel, a fresh carrier that was now sitting quietly in an old house, in a stormy night, in the decaying city of San Salvador.

Don Tiburcio Carias, the fearsome stern father
whose shadow extends over the history of Honduras.

My grandmother and her five children.
Some have died,
some have simply grown old,
some continue to fight.


My father as he is today,
with a look of sadness over things he cannot name.

My grandmother as she is today,
with the weight of her many mistakes and glories
resting on her weak old back
and the light of newfound clarity
all around her.

The altar that my grandmother keeps by her bedside,
my father and her, me when I was a little boy,
the virgin in all her many forms,
and her mother in the only old picture that remains of her.