Ancient, Ancient Page 7

  Pedro lights a cigarette and glances up at the ceiling. As he exhales a breath of smoke with a sigh, WaLiLa stands and slowly walks to the kitchen window. She casually pulls a rose from a vase of flowers sitting on the window sill. She pushes the rose against her nostrils and returns to her seat, maintaining surveillance on the thin curls of cigarette smoke. The smoke does not reach her, but she keeps the rose pressed to her face anyway. She trusts its petals to filter smoke from the air before it can enter her body.

  She looks at Pedro, and their eyes lock for a brief moment. When Pedro looks away, words start to spill from his mouth. “The pain you sense here is very specific to this time period. We have always lived with pain. Sometimes very little, sometimes a great amount. Today we are living at the limit of human dignity. We struggle to maintain some semblance of life, but it is …” he pauses, his effort to translate thoughts into words visible on his face.

  “When we lost the Soviet Union, we lost a lot. Without their support, we are isolated and alone in the world. It’s a strange thing really,” Pedro mutters as he squints at the wall as if looking at something in the distance. “We are isolated and alone, yet the entire world watches us and regards us with curiosity and suspicion. You came out of curiosity, I assume?”

  Pedro turns his head and glances at WaLiLa, then turns away when she nods her head in agreement.

  “Oh, especially the Americans, they salivate waiting for us to fall so they can pounce on us. Castro will never let that happen…”

  WaLiLa focuses on the bitterness in Pedro’s voice. She tunes out his speaking, wishing she could gain some assurance from the ancestors. Her muscles strain, begging to communicate with them. Can they want nectar from such a bitter fruit? Her thoughts are interrupted by a loud crash. She realizes Pedro is no longer talking and her wrist is stinging. Both he and Modesto are staring at her.

  “Why you look me?” she asks.

  “Do you know what you just did?” Pedro asks.

  “No.”

  “You knocked everything off that shelf above your head.”

  She looks up and sees a small plank of painted wood tilted off its wall supports. She looks down and sees the floor littered with overturned spice jars.

  “Oh, my muscles jumps, must came back.” How could the arm flick have returned? She scrambles for words to explain, as her message-center simultaneously races to find an explanation.

  “I have muscles jumps. I have no medicine here, so they come back.”

  WaLiLa mumbles this as she kneels to pick up the spilled spices. Modesto also kneels. As his knees knock against hers, she looks up, and their eyes lock. Barriers open, and Modesto dives into the infinite space he sees in her eyes. He begins disrobing his soul. I hate it here, his soul cries. It is too painful to stay. Breathing the air here is like tapping a raw nerve. He speaks of a child conceived with a Spanish tourist. He speaks of joining her and their son in Spain. He admits to staying home so as not to see the prostitutes selling their bodies to foreigners. He describes the pain of having nothing, doing nothing; of endless days of smoke, smoke, smoking. He details the days he sits alone holding himself for he has nothing substantial to offer the hungry young women the regime has bred.

  Pedro’s fingers wind themselves around Modesto’s collarbones and dig into his flesh. The pain forces Modesto to blink. The connection broken, Modesto looks up at his brother with a wet face.

  “Qué haces?” Pedro yells. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Pedro drags Modesto to his feet and pushes him away from WaLiLa. He shoots her a sharp, angry glance. His eyes are full of fire. In them, WaLiLa sees fear and a stubbornness that screams, You will not conquer me.

  6.

  Over the next week, the memory of Modesto’s crouched frame heaving with confessional sobs under WaLiLa’s gaze remains in Pedro’s mind. When she blows into the room, he examines the burning end of his cigarette, stares at her lips as they move, focuses on any other activity so as not to fall into those eyes. Neither witty conversation nor exposed shoulder can draw his eyes to wade in her vision pools. Her attempts to establish herself as a love interest have fallen like a dove struck by a stone. Her body feels just as bloodied. Each passing moment of failure brings more pain pushing through her like pins piercing skin.

  One day while the house is quiet, WaLiLa finds herself slumped on the floor almost paralyzed by pain. With each inhalation, she feels the air squeeze her like quicksand. She bites the inside of her cheek and pushes herself up from the floor. She holds onto the wall and pulls herself upstairs. Her arm leaps into an arc as she stumbles into bed.

  She nestles into the folds of a rough blanket and closes her eyes. She intends to do a full review of her body functions and find the source of her pain. But before she can begin, her hunterself pushes against the inside of her chest. She taps her chest and allows her hunterself to exit. Her hunterself brushes against her forehead then starts buzzing around the room. After sweeping the room twice with broad wing strokes, her hunterself discovers one of Pedro’s rumpled T-shirts discarded on the floor. She lands gently on the shirt and collects his scent in the wells of her body, then flies out the room’s only window.

  WaLiLa quickly loses the energy her hunterself is expending and abruptly falls asleep. With the road map of Pedro’s scent in front of her, WaLiLa’s hunterself goes flying through Havana, dodging families who spill out of doorways onto sidewalks, bouncing on the sounds of conversation, and flying over avenues filled with rusted vintage cars and legions of bicycles. She skids to a stop when she no longer feels Pedro’s scent. She doubles back and locates his scent two blocks away, floating outside the first floor of a little house. Hovering in the air that presses against a cracked window, WaLiLa’s hunterself sees Pedro gathered with ten people in a small, cluttered living room. Eleven mouths share a bottle of rum while eleven pairs of hands exchange cigarettes and finger snaps. One of the eleven leans against pillow cushions embracing a guitar. They all sing, glowing in the space made light by the gathering of hearts.

  Many laughs and musical notes later, discordant sounds reverberate in the small room. The crashing of a glass against the concrete floor. The rise of angry voices, followed by soft apology. Tears fall now; then a shaky-voiced reminder of tomorrow’s departure. The threat of the sea and fear of isolation wells up from the floor. The room is as quiet as held breath. Pedro is the first to speak. “We’ve been planning this for two years. I think we’ve deliberated enough. I’m done thinking. When tomorrow comes, my things will be ready, and I will sail.”

  Before Pedro’s lips have stopped moving, WaLiLa’s hunterself is gone. Flying at breakneck speed, she returns to the attic where WaLiLa is resting. With a crackle, she rejoins WaLiLa’s body. Immediately the knowledge of Pedro’s journey sinks into WaLiLa’s being-center. She sits up abruptly. She feels as if shards are puncturing her lower back. With stiffness weighing on her bones, she commands her message-center to review her body signals, note which senses are malfunctioning, and identify which poisons are capable of triggering such reactions. It then cross-references those poisons with elements she has come in contact with. Hopelessness washes over her as her message-center comes up with a match: SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE.

  She considers the smoke: It has been quietly damaging her systems for weeks, and it is too late for repair. Then she considers Pedro. She doesn’t have time to follow him. Her equilibrium is already damaged. She won’t have the capacity to walk, much less gather nectar in the next few days. WaLiLa twists her arms back and forth. She falls back against the bed as she accepts the truth: death is already promised her. If I am to die anyway, she thinks, the possibility that Pedro’s nectar may be poisoned cannot harm me.

  WaLiLa sits up and slides her knees beneath her body. With a fluid, flicking motion from the top of her forehead into the air before her, she reports her decision to the ancestors. Oh great ones, WaLiLa raises curved, outstretched arms. The Earth air is binding its poisonous cords about me. She folds her
arms behind her back. This vessel that carries me is no longer strong. She collapses to the right, then collapses to the left. I speak now to expose my failure. Palms outstretched, she crisscrosses her arms at the elbow four times. I cannot connect this human to you. She drops her head and shakes it vigorously from side to side. He is resistant. She snakes her torso forward. He fears me. She rocks her upper body forward and back. I have been ineffective with him. She cleaves her hands in the air, then breaks them apart suddenly. Because I refused to follow your rules. She bends forward weakly from the waist and shakes her head from side to side. I have ingested a lethal substance. She sits erect and stiff, and lowers her right ear to her right shoulder. With death as my insurance. WaLiLa lowers her shoulder blades to the ground. I am free to complete my assignment. She lowers and raises her fists with a constant steady rhythm five times. If his nectar is poisoned, it will die with me. She pounds the air with her fists, then drops her arms lifelessly. If it is not, I shall return to you and deliver the nectar. She pushes a path from her center to the space above her head. Then the smoke damage will bring my death. She lays on her side briefly. She ends by touching her forehead to the bed and rolling her hips.

  Her communication ended, WaLiLa lays back in the folds of the blanket and slips into sleep.

  7.

  As WaLiLa sleeps, night thickens. When the air reaches its blackest point, Pedro rides in on midnight wings. He is surprised to find his mother sleeping in his bed: the cot next to his brother’s. Pedro’s eyes rise up to the ceiling as he visualizes the only empty bed in the apartment: the bed upstairs next to WaLiLa’s. He sits on the floor between the two cots and soaks up his family’s energy. When he can keep his eyes open no longer, he rests his hand gently on his brother’s head, presses his lips to his mother’s cheek, then climbs the stairs. Keeping his back to WaLiLa, Pedro drops his shirt and pants on the floor. He sits on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts, attempting to quell the sadness that claws at his throat every time he imagines leaving his mother and brother behind. Then he lays back, solemnly reclining as though the bed were a coffin. He clutches the images of his mother and his brother closely to him and drifts off to sleep.

  WaLiLa’s hunterself thumps on the inside of WaLiLa’s chest for thirty minutes, attempting to alert WaLiLa to Pedro’s presence. After WaLiLa becomes aware of the thumping, she takes another thirty minutes to rouse herself from rest. By the time she releases her hunterself and rises from the bed, Pedro is in a deep sleep. With teeth clenched, WaLiLa drags herself to Pedro’s bedside. Her hunterself flutters around his head. As taught during training, WaLiLa places one hand over his closed eyes and another over his abdomen, her thumb connecting to his navel. Under her velvet touch, Pedro’s eyes do not open. He does not even stir.

  WaLiLa closes her eyes and pushes her chin upwards to the skies. As she establishes portals between their two bodies, WaLiLa begins to glow. Her hunterself detects a sound and flies to the stairs, peeking over the banister to investigate. She flies over to WaLiLa and tugs at her ear. When WaLiLa opens her eyes, her hunterself communicates Modesto’s presence at the foot of the stairs. Knowing that Modesto will soon be privy to her actions, WaLiLa tightens her grip on Pedro. She shrugs one shoulder in disappointment. She has never experienced a hunt so fraught with failure.

  When Modesto reaches the top of the stairs, a painful sensation rips through WaLiLa’s body. Poison jerks through her torso. It rips into her organs like shards of glass. Modesto stands frozen, transfixed by what he sees. With gritted teeth, WaLiLa flexes her torso, closing off the internal portals through which Pedro’s nectar had entered her body. A loud tearing sound rips through Modesto’s eardrums and breaks his trance.

  Modesto screams his brother’s name. As Pedro stirs, WaLiLa pulls herself away from his body and stumbles backward. When Pedro opens his eyes, he sees WaLiLa fall limply onto the bed. Seeing her skin soaked in a dark green liquid causes a mixture of terror and compassion to riot across Modesto’s eyes. Pedro sits up and rubs his temples. When he brings his hand down from his face it is moist. He brings his fingers closer to his eyes and sees green liquid on them. He looks down at his body. His torso is covered with the same liquid. As he jumps up and scrambles away from WaLiLa, the haze of his sleep dissolves.

  They will come for me, WaLiLa motions weakly. They will come for me.

  Exhausted and delirious, she slides into a deep coma. Long after her lids are closed, she imagines the brothers’ unblinking eyes examining her. She prays that when she opens her eyes she will be home. She pretends that she is already there, wrapping herself in the thick air of her nation until she vanishes into the folds. She imagines herself lying in maroon cloud fields over gold skies. She promises herself that as soon as she’s home, she’ll compete in flying races with her clan and never use her voice again.

  8.

  When the coma finally lifts from WaLiLa’s body, she pushes her eyelids open to see herself resting in the same small room where her death began. The brothers are gone, but there is a pair of shining eyes staring at her from across the room. When the eyes see motion flicker across WaLiLa’s face, they rise from the camouflage of darkness and float closer to the bed. WaLiLa knows from the weight of the footsteps that the eyes belong to Elisa.

  Elisa hovers over the bed, filling WaLiLa’s vision. She pushes a glass against WaLiLa’s lips. WaLiLa turns away. Elisa stands back, places one hand on her hip, and regards her silently. Why Elisa’s face holds no anger or fear is a miracle to WaLiLa. She closes her eyes again, twirling her wrist with the repeated question, Will they come for me?

  “They will not come,” Elisa says, chopping through the thick silence of the room with her voice.

  WaLiLa’s eyes pop open, and she stares into Elisa’s face. Seconds pass as the two examine each other in silence. Just as she is dismissing Elisa’s announcement as hallucination, Elisa speaks again.

  “They are not coming for you.”

  WaLiLa rises up onto her elbows and stares at Elisa incredulously. To her surprise, her body does not hurt when she moves it. Only her head throbs with pain.

  “Who are you?” WaLiLa demands.

  “I am Elisa,” Elisa responds with an amused smile. “I was once a nectar collector, like you, but Pedro’s aunt put an end to that, much as Pedro has done for you.”

  “But…” Questions slam through WaLiLa’s mind battling for dominion of her lips. “How long have you been here? Did you know who I was from the beginning?” Then she motions with her arms, Will I die here?

  “I’ve lived here longer than I care to remember. I realized what you were after you stole flowers from my altars. Before that, I only recognized you as a traveler and welcomed you as I had been welcomed on my previous Earth trips. And yes, you will die here.”

  WaLiLa lays back on the bed and pounds her fists against the mattress in frustration. Then turns back to Elisa.

  “Does that mean…?”

  “That means you shall no longer collect nectar. Nectar shall be gathered, the ancestors shall be fed. But you will no longer do it.”

  WaLiLa is overcome with strange sensations. Water drips from her eyes.

  “Don’t look so confused. You died, but you have just been birthed. You are breathing your first breaths as a human being.”

  “A human!”

  “Yes. You have human emotions now. You have the ability to cry. Haven’t you noticed how easily you’re speaking? You were also given the facility to speak human languages.”

  “But I thought…” WaLiLa touches the water dripping from her eyes and rubs it between her fingertips. “I thought death was supposed to make me an ancestor.”

  “Not here. The rules of our people don’t matter anymore. You will never see the ancestors again.”

  The strange sensations wash over WaLiLa again. More water falls from her eyes.

  “How could this happen? Was it the smoke? The poison?”

  “What smoke?”

  “The flowers I took
from your room were filled with smoke.”

  “Ahhh, so the poison saved you.”

  “Saved me?”

  “Smoke is lethal to us, but not to humans. Think of it this way: the poison you consumed is known here as ‘mortality.’ It is a death agent for humans. Their death is not like ours. They consider death to be a finite thing.”

  “What is finite?”

  “The final thing, nothing more will happen after death.”

  “But how can death be finite? Death is transformation. Death is change.”

  “WaLiLa, I know that’s what you learned, but you must remember, you are on Earth. Humans are bound by such things as time and gravity. At least they believe themselves to be.”

  “Will I die a human death at the end of this journey?”

  “I cannot know until I meet my own death.”

  “So I am never to be anything other than human?”

  “I don’t know, WaLiLa.”

  “But this is my first life, I will know nothing else!”

  “That is not true, you are beginning your second life now. Although you still exist in the same outer shell, life here will be different from your life as a nectar collector. I promise you that Earth is not without its delights.”

  “But how—”

  Elisa interrupts. “We will talk later. For now, let your body do its work…”

  “But why…”

  “Rest,” Elisa repeats firmly. “You shall need your strength.”

  Debris

  Debris has a bad effect on me. It’s in my heritage. Everyone knows about the great Limione who got dust in her nasal holes and spent the rest of her life bequeathing her bones to cripples. It was harmless enough when it began. She offered a few of her decrepit digits to a little boy who was missing a foot. Sharing is a good thing, Grandmother told us, hobbling proudly through the house, the model of benevolence.