strained and distant, then disappeared altogether. When your life has shrunk, and when the only human contact is the food provider and the remover of the shit pail, your heart drills in your chest at the sound of feet clattering down the stairs. You begin to sweat in anticipation. You arrange yourself in the room, first sitting, then standing propped against the wall, hands in pockets. What else could I do but receive their diminishing attentions? I knew they wished me to disappear, but I had no choice in the matter. I depended completely on their good will and it made me disgusting. To them, and to myself.
I began to stink. It was difficult to bathe. Marta and Rodolfo have two small daughters, curious, sociable girls who must not know of my existence. This caused great strain.
“No!” I heard Marta cry when one of the girls put her hand on the door to the basement. “You mustn’t!”
I strained to hear more, what excuses Mama used: deadly fumes? rodent infestation? Perhaps not so far from the truth.
There was a tiny window just above my head which revealed a portion of sidewalk, but I was not, in theory, permitted to open it, not even an inch. Nor was I allowed to part the curtains.
“It is too dangerous Marta said.
Of course. Dangerous not just for me, but for all of them. I immediately began to disobey, for without sun or air a man decays, he becomes rank, a rat dying inside the plaster of the walls.
I cheated often. On Friday nights, very late, I switched off my light, propped open the window an inch, then parted the curtain just enough to feel the outside air press in, and to hear shouts and laughter from patrons leaving the bars. Sometimes I was sure I recognized voices — Sylvan and Ana — and I would listen for the sharp click of a woman’s high heels on cobblestone. What if I sneezed or hiccupped? I imagined the pair of legs stopping, followed by a grunt of discomfort, then a face peering in. My nerves fired with each sound. Still, like anyone, inside this fear, curiosity flickered. One evening a pair of stockinged ankles came so close to my window that my hand rose to seize them. I wanted to see how much worse I could make it for myself. No, I wanted to stroke her skin, make her cry out. And where were all my friends, my so-called pals from the newspaper, the writers union? “Too bad for Carlos they were saying, as they sat for endless hours in the café gulping sugary pastry.
I began to love my own country now that I was forbidden to enter it.
Marta raced to my room in a state of excitement, forgetting even to flinch at the layers of unhygienic smells. She’d pulled her thick hair back into a ponytail and it tossed from side to side as she dropped onto the other chair and faced me. I was suddenly ashamed at my appearance, the pasty unshaven face and filthy clothes. I had refused to let her wash them, thinking of their increasing stiffness as a metaphor for what was happening to me. I was a sorry specimen.
“I have interested an organization called CAFE in your case she said in a breathless voice.
“Café?”
“Canadian Alliance for Freedom of Expression.” She spoke these words in slow, careful English. “Their group in Vancouver wishes to help you.”
“Vancouver?” My mind searched for geography. “Help me? How?” I was suspicious and scared. For here, in this dank basement room, I was, at least, safe. I got up and started pacing. The sole of my shoe had come loose and flapped against the cement.
“They want to bring you to the west coast of Canada, as a refugee.”
Her face shone with pleasure.
A refugee. I thought of those photos: famine-stricken Africans with distended bellies grabbing for food, Red Cross trucks.
“It’s good news, Carlos. You’ll be free.”
I looked at her. It will be you who is free — of me.
That night I hardly slept. But then night and day had long since lost their identities. The light in my cell was a timeless glimmer, like some monk’s lantern in the caves of Tibet. I woke up at what may have been dawn, with my left hand clasping a woman’s ankle, which slipped away as the walls crowded in. I must have wakened the household with my cries of ecstasy.
Sunlight bruises when the eyes have been in hiding. I was swept out of the house at dawn, pressed roughly into Rodolfo’s car by an anxious Marta and my sister Rosario, who both chattered non-stop and made me crouch in the back seat so I would not be seen. I hardly had a chance to smell the dewy grass or charcoal burners from the nearby market. Rodolfo stayed home with the sleeping children while his wife took the wheel.
Marta raced through the empty early morning streets and I felt each pit in the asphalt as I lay hunched across the vinyl seat, cheek hot against plastic. The international airport was thirty kilometres out of town. Everyone except me seemed wildly happy about the unfolding adventure. Especially Marta, who would have her house back whole and would send Lucía, the maid, into the basement that very day with a pail of soapy water and wire brush.
“You are a fortunate man Rosario called over her shoulder. “You’ve have been offered a new life.”
I was less excited than stunned. I thought of childhood journeys in my father’s old car when I would lie like this, but my body much smaller, knees folded up to my chin, head pressed against my sister’s sweaty thigh. Did I even want this new life? I’d become like a hospital patient: you do what you are told and are grateful for the attention.
I was clean now, freshly scrubbed and dabbed with deodorant and hair gel, decked out in new-old clothes, nails buffed and teeth flossed. The evening before, after darkness fell, I’d been permitted to creep up the stairs and lower myself into the family bathtub, an oversized porcelain monster from the previous century. Not without a pang of regret, for I had become attached to my dirt. I swept the terry cloth between my legs then down each thigh and between each festering toe until an odd smell joined the perfumed suds: something had left my body for good.
We finally arrived at the parking lot near the ugly cement building. This example of our glorious civic architecture was built under the last administration, with the hope of enticing tourists and foreign investment to our land. When I woozily lifted my head I saw yellow light spill through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the terrazzo floor within. Silvery jets pulsed on the tarmac, spewing diesel fuel exhaust, while gnomes in forklifts toted luggage.
As a newspaper man, this building was hardly foreign to me. I’d spent many an hour in its lounge waiting for mysterious mechanical problems to be solved. Our national airline is famous for its antique equipment and flexible schedules.
“Lock the doors!” my sister cried. The place was full of thieves, even at this hour.
“Does he have his bag?” Marta said.
I had already begun to exist in the third person.
They’d selected, after a quick argument, a spot between two delivery vans to park. These would shield us as we exited the car. I felt my body creak as it unfurled, my poor spine fused from the weeks of confinement. Hot tar bled beneath our feet as we made our way to the automatic doors of the airport entrance. My pockets bulged with precious documents: passport and birth certificate, something from the Canadian government with official signatures, and the letter from CAFE written in stilted academic Spanish. Much work had been done on my behalf. This astonished me. Who were these helpful strangers in a faraway country? The doors opened and we were sucked in by the blast of icy synthetic air. It was too much, too sudden, and I started to skid across the polished floor.
“Carlos!”
