“He bites.”
Rodolfo’s striped shirt, the one he insisted I take with me, was spattered with water and a slowly seeping nervous sweat.
Sharon Rose touched my elbow and whispered, “Syd’s very high strung. Don’t worry.”
I loved the way she spoke, in a slow unhurried voice, her lips cracked under scarlet lipstick. She popped one of the rescued nuts in her mouth and I knew she was doing this for me, so that I would understand that nothing was wasted.
Syd took one of his oversized linen napkins and mopped himself up, carefully dabbing his forearms and each finger in turn. When he saw me watching, he gave a quick fretful smile.
We settled back into the wicker chairs and I heard Sharon mutter, “Crisis over, thank God.”
Rita was unpeeling plastic wrap from three bowls full of cold noodles and salad, and mixing their contents with a pair of tongs. There was a musty smell, some Indian spicing, and no bread to be seen. And no protein for energy and endurance. Even in my basement cell Marta would bring skewers of grilled meat along with the crusty bread my people live on.
“Excuse me,” I said quietly. “There is no meat?”
“Poor Carlos,” Rita laughed. “Syd’s a strict vegetarian.”
“Vegetarian, yes.” I nodded. I had an aunt who practised this regimen, not for health reasons but because she was convinced that dead beasts continue to claim their souls.
China plates with scalloped rims were passed around, followed by the bowls of food. I helped myself, using the pair of wooden tongs while Rita held each bowl in turn. I felt my hosts’ polite stares, and the quick, forgiving smiles when a noodle slopped to the ground. The plate was too little, almost a saucer, and I’d misjudged what it could hold.
“This is quite an occasion,” Sydney said when we’d finished serving ourselves. “Shall we toast our guest of honour?” He lifted his glass and waited while the rest of the party mimicked the gesture.
“It’s been a long and sometimes arduous journey,” Daniel Rose proclaimed. “For all of us.” He slipped an arm around his wife’s back and I watched her smile stiffen.
“Particularly for Carlos,” she said.
I lifted my own glass. “And I would like to salute all of you, to thank you sincerely, and thank you Canada.”
“To your new life,” Sandy said, her eyes moist with feeling.
“To my new life.”
We all drank, paused, then drank again, then simultaneously placed our glasses on the table, and I wondered if this was a ritual here in Canada, that all must follow the gestures of the honoured guest.
Rita touched my forearm. “Now would be a good time…”
I remembered, yes, the poem.
“Carlos would like to read to you from one of his recent works.”
“Wonderful!” Frank Peeple slapped his knee in a way you knew was foreign to him. His wife gave him a puzzled look.
Rodolfo’s jacket was folded over the back of my chair and I searched through its pockets until I found the crunched up piece of paper and my eyeglasses.
The guests were quiet during this bit of activity, and stared into their drinks.
I announced that first I would read the poem in Spanish, then Rita would read it in translation: we had worked this out a few hours earlier.
I smoothed the paper on my knee, cleared my throat, and as I read they leaned forward on their chairs, intent. Plates sat on their laps, untouched, attracting wasps and flies which were discreetly waved off. As I read, sun sifted between the branches of the arbutus tree and toasted the goldfish. A couple of guests knew enough Spanish to let out little grunts of appreciation at appropriate moments. There was a regular thump in the background — the kid next door popping baskets, slamming the backboard. Such a normal, everyday sound. An orange cat prowled the length of the fence, back arched, claws reaching out and tugging the air.
I knew my poem by heart and never looked at the paper. When my gaze swept past Sharon Rose I saw that her eyes were wet and a streak of mascara had run down her cheek.
When I was finished, I bowed my head and Rita began, in English:
“The Prisoner’s Song.”
It was all about bread, the loaf that I had seen fall from the wagon outside my basement prison. It was the most ordinary kind of bread, like a French baguette, only chunkier, the kind that in my country appears at every meal, and with every cup of coffee. The bread of everyday life.
I gulped my drink as she read. I was shaking. Not just my hands but my chest and gut. I felt faintly nauseous from all the vegetables and too much sweet sangria. It had been so long since I had been with a group of people that I had to relearn the rhythm of speaking and listening. Not only in my own language, but now in English, which felt like a blanket being constantly tugged away. Rita read on and I couldn’t understand a word of it, my own poem.
Sydney, the president of CAFE, refilled my glass. The fish rolled over in the pond, briefly displaying their bellies to the sun. They reminded me of sunbathers on the coast, unashamed of their bodies, seeking heat and light.
Rita’s voice rose and fell, and I realized that she had finished. There was a long communal sigh as we sat back in our chairs, allowed to be comfortable again.
“Your poem is very strong, very moving,” Sandy Peeple said.
“Thank you.” Sweat was gluing my hair to my forehead. But this woman didn’t flinch. When she uncrossed her long legs I caught a flash of blue panties.
“May I ask you some questions?” she said.
“Of course.”
I was puffing. Was it possible they couldn’t see?
“Please tell me to back off if you don’t feel like talking about it.”
I waited.
Her face tightened as she sought the correct words. “Can you tell us more about what you’ve been through in recent months?”
“What do you desire to know?”
“How were you treated during your imprisonment?” Her face tensed another notch.
“Excuse me, ‘treated’?”
“I’ve read, of course, accounts of… torture.” She whispered the word, like some people whisper the word “naked” or “cancer.” Her gaze fell to my hand and I realized, to my embarrassment, that she was staring at my finger. Or rather, where the tip of my finger had been. My mother, one Sunday morning, had slammed the door of a taxi and my toddler fingertip had been neatly sliced off.
“Please excuse me, Carlos. I quite understand if you don’t want to talk about this.”
I dug my hand in my pocket, then, realizing that this would make it even more certain to her,
