Courteguay, on the island of Hispaniola, a tiny landlocked country nestled like a snail between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, bordered by both, the shape of the moon of a fingernail, and not much larger.
‘We sent a team of missionaries to Courteguay a few years ago,’ one of the tall pale men explained. ‘At first they sent back enthusiastic reports, then we didn’t hear from them for a few months. Neither they, nor the follow-up team we sent have ever been heard from at all.’
‘Beyond there be dragons …’ said Sandor, quoting from a medieval map he had seen in a museum. The phrase described the unknown, everything beyond the explored world.
‘Haiti is full of dark visions and strange deaths,’ said a wiry-looking woman with bony, red-knuckled hands.
‘And the Dominican Republic?’ asked Sandor, willing to risk a good deal for baseball, but not anxious to be eaten by savages, or burned alive as a sacrifice to some primitive god.
‘We are led to believe the Dominican is much more civilized than Haiti, though it is said to be heavily Catholic,’ a short rotund man said.
‘And Courteguay?’
‘Unknown territory,’ said the leader of the Pentecostals, a red-cheeked man with a perpetual smile. ‘One of the newest and smallest countries in the world. Reportedly, a piece of useless mountain slope and swampy valley, given to a fierce old soldier, who so terrorized the governments of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, so disrupted their attempts at civilization, that they gave him his own country just to be rid of him. His name – he was given the land some forty years ago and was an old man then, so he must certainly be dead – is said to be Octavio Court, though he was known to one and all as the Old Dictator.’
‘The trouble with an island is that it is the end of the world,’ said Sandor. ‘One cannot run and hide well on an island. People left with only themselves, with nowhere to hide, have to look inward, have to face the reality that they are trapped within their own skins forever. Sometimes they do not like what they see.’
Sandor Boatly for some reason felt no fear at the idea of setting off for Courteguay. Perhaps they did not play baseball there, he thought, he hoped. He knew the Pentecostals would relish suffering, even death. They were fundamentalists so narrow they could look through a keyhole with both eyes. Martyrs have always been well regarded in religious circles.
‘What do you think of baseball?’ he asked the missionaries, tossing an ermine-white ball in the air and catching it in his large, calloused hands.
‘A relatively sinless game,’ replied their leader, ‘as long as it is not played on Sunday.’
‘How little you know,’ whispered Sandor Boatly, smiling mysteriously, as he boarded the boat for the island of Hispaniola.
No one on the mainland ever heard from Sandor Boatly again.
He has become a legend, of course. You newsmen, journalists, writers, or whatever you call yourselves, must know all about that. By the time he departed America, Sandor Boatly was already a folk hero, tales were told, songs were sung about his spreading the gospel of baseball across the continent. But because of his mysterious disappearance the legends grew, multiplied and prospered out of proportion to his actual deeds. Several books were written about him, the most famous, which I am told is still in print, titled The Evangelist and the Ball. In it is recounted how, when he stepped off the train in San Barnabas, the capital of Courteguay, he was met by two hyenas. They had been washed and perfumed and dressed in formal porter’s uniforms. They walked upright and spoke enough Spanish to conduct their business.
‘May we carry your bags, sir,’ the tallest hyena said, bowing slightly. Sandor Boatly stared around. The station was bustling. No one seemed upset by the domesticated, talking hyenas.
‘Certainly,’ he replied. One hyena carried his suitcases, the second managed a trunk and his mysterious bag full of bats, balls and magic.
‘You will have to help us with the station door,’ the tallest hyena said, ‘while we have evolved considerably we still have not mastered the doorknob.’
As a famous missing person Sandor Boatly was a favorite subject for journalists. His followers organized expeditions to Hispaniola, though for some reason they concentrated on Haiti, where, one persistent rumor had it, he was buried under two baseball bats joined in the shape of a cross, while a dozen vanda orchids danced in a circle on his grave.
But as you must know, in Haiti they do not play baseball. They speak French in Haiti, a language not conducive to baseball. There they play soccer. I spit! Soccer is slower than watching stagnant water find its own level. A game for those totally devoid of imagination. Next to Ambrose Bierce and Amelia Earhart, Sandor Boatly is America’s most popular and mysterious folk hero.
How do I know so much about him? I am Courteguayan. That is a sufficient answer.
Later that day, more of the interview finished, if not satisfactorily (at least the Gringo Journalist had extracted enough information to continue to pique his curiosity and was alternately amazed, baffled and annoyed with the elderly and capricious Wizard), something happened that made the Gringo Journalist a believer. After being given a drink from the hospital water glass with its crimped straw, the Wizard raised his head from the pillow and sniffed like an animal, a scavenger testing the air for carrion.
‘I need your help,’ croaked the Wizard, reaching for the Gringo Journalist with a skeletal hand. ‘Help me out of bed.’ The Gringo Journalist aided the old man, who was light as a kite, from the bed, assisted him into a threadbare hospital robe and terrycloth slippers. The Wizard’s talon hands fastened like intravenous needles to the young reporter’s arm as he led the way down the hall of the hospital to the emergency ward.
There, even the reporter could smell blood, the coppery, electric odor of liquid death. Doctors were just turning away from, drawing a sheet over the face of an auto accident victim they had been unable to save. The Wizard detached himself from the young reporter, slipped both hands under the sheet and gripped the still warm chest of the deceased. The Wizard stood stock still in that position for several minutes. The reporter expected to be rousted by doctors or nurses or orderlies, but it was as if he and the Wizard were invisible.
Eventually, the Wizard produced his hands from under the sheet, and as he turned toward him the Gringo Journalist could see an amazing change had taken place. For one thing, the Wizard had gained probably ten pounds, his hands that had been the claws of the very old, were younger, healthier looking, as was the Wizard in general. On the way back to his room he walked unaided, keeping up a steady one-sided conversation.
‘A delightful twenty-two years,’ said the Wizard, smiling with both warmth and cunning, as he climbed, with a good deal of agility, back into his bed. ‘I expect I’ll leave this hospital in a day or two. We’ll continue this interview at my home.’
‘You ask too many questions,’ says the Wizard to the Gringo Journalist. ‘Make up your mind. Do you want to hear about the old days politically, or the birth of the twins, or about Milan Garza, or the nefarious Dr Noir?’
They are in an ice cream parlor in San Cristóbel,
