all, kind, and not one to reject another human being. Unlike Moses, she wouldn’t judge Cavanaugh harshly. She would go out of her way to make anyone feel good.
Not only does Moses wake cleansed (no hint of apprehension in his speech, thank God), when Jorge wakes, he is his old self. Lucid and fun. Kind and fatherly. He takes a walk out into the gallery and lets Moses work, even joins the others for rec and goes out into the yard so Moses can write. When he comes back in, his cheeks are flushed from the warm spring air. He is sweaty and smells like a young man. He doesn’t look at Gina’s letters maniacally. Instead he stretches out on his bed, folds his arms to support his head and starts to tell Moses stories.
Moses isn’t entirely done with his paper. He has the bulk of it written. He just needs a conclusion, and he has a general idea how he is going to wrap things up. He is going to declare that “Death in Venice” is proof positive that you better not mess with your true nature. And if you start turning into Caruso and lusting after some young boy, you’re sure as hell done for. Something to that effect only more academic. He intends, in any case, to call the lessons in the story cautionary.
Despite the loose ending, and his fear of proper documentation—the stylebook Lila loaned him is as clear as the penal code—he takes a break to enjoy Jorge’s lucidity and decides to finish the paper in the morning.
“I came here from Ecuador an orphan, entiendo.”
Moses knows, but that’s OK. He settles in on his bed, lights a cigarette, and revels in the smoke curling slowly out from between his lips and the security of Jorge’s storytelling lilt.
“I came on a boat full of café and landed in Brooklyn. Portencia,” Jorge says, “Resented the beans it took to keep me alive.” Moses knows the story: Jorge’s mother’s cancer, his evil aunt Portencia, her plot to break him by sending her son to steal Jorge’s beloved’s heart, starving Jorge until he was driven to murder; but he loves hearing it because at the end he hears how Jorge and Moses became friends and this story, like the story of one’s birth, is endlessly captivating. It fills him with peace each time he hears it.
“When I was convicted of killing the girl that I loved, I didn’t even know what happened to me! I didn’t speak Ingles. I had no education. I knew nothing of birds. I couldn’t even read Spanish! At the end of the trial, my lawyer turned to me and he say, Descuple, Jorge. It was the only word I understood him say to me. It wasn’t until I was at Sing Sing that someone told my fate to me: I was in for life!
“You know what happens to a man’s heart in that moment, Moses. I broke every rule. I spit in every face, I hit, I yelled. They moved me up here to Hardenberg, and put me in the hole. That, Moses, is where I first knew Cavanaugh.”
“Stop!” Moses puts up his hand. “Stick to the script, Jorge. I don’t want to know anything about Cavanaugh. Not today.”
“Moses, I need to tell you something I have never told no one. You need to know why I trust him. Why I give him the letter for Gina. I want to tell you because you are my dearest friend.”
Moses flicks his cigarette into the toilet and lights another. “I’m not happy about this. This is not the story I want to hear.”
“Please, Moses, permiso. It is the root of it all.”
“Get on with it, then. And cut the E-Spanish, will ya?”
“Ha! You understand all that I say. Why should I?”
“Because this is America. And in America, Jorge, we speak E-English.”
Jorge waves a hand, laughs, comes to the edge of his cot and leans forward, “This story is to show you that it is through kindness, even the most unexpected and undeserving kindness, that we are saved. You cannot use this story against Ed Cavanaugh. And you can never tell another what I am about to tell you. Agreed?”
“Why would I agree to that? I don’t even want to hear it.”
“Do you agree?”
“Who the hell else am I going to tell? You’re all I talk to anyway. Agreed.”
“OK. Ed was at Sing Sing when I was there and he had a reputation as a crier.”
“A crier? Ha!” Moses cackles.
“Shh. Moses, listen. So when he put in for a transfer up here, he got it right away. I was transferred around the same time. You see our lives have been like this. They are parallel. He was assigned to the hole and I was there soon enough. For three years we spent nearly every day together. What you must know is that he was put there as punishment for what the others thought was his weakness: He was too nice. They put him there for the same reason they put me there, to break our spirits. They wanted to make a killer out of him, and I saw in Ed’s eyes a young man like me, scared like me. We were both locked in a box with no light and no hope, for what seemed back in those long away days an endless sentence.
“When he was by himself he never did nothing mean. He never spoke bad to no one. He just did his trabajo. Maybe he was a little quiet, intimidated. Some of the men down there they sensed this, so did the guards. The guards would force him to beat us just to toughen him up. He used to do this to me. And Moses, I tell you, I saw myself in him. Those men, they were like Portencia. Horrible and cruel. Working to make us bad, you know? When he beat me, I felt for him. It was just my body that was hurt and my body would heal, but I knew that each time he hit me it was his spirit that was destroyed. I saw it in his eyes.
“Don’t be angry, Moses,” Jorge says. “Ahh, Papito! Finally! Where have you been?” he says to the little brown bird with the thread tied to one leg that lands on his shoulder and chirps and turns his head as if in response. Jorge takes a cracker from the top of the locker, breaks off small pieces, and feeds them to the bird.
“He was just doing his job,” Jorge continues. “You know the kind of COs around here who are so brutal. He was saving himself. But he hurt himself bad. When Ed toughened up, they transferred him to D block. I too had been released out of the hole. Marie found me then and saved me by giving me Gina. And that same year, Ed and his wife, they gave birth to their hija, Shell. So we were young fathers together. Oh, I was so jealous of Ed each day when he come to work with those red eyes of his. He got no sleep her first year. He got no rest from the demands of his tough little wife. He started messing up on the job.
“One day, he was the OIC on my row and he had the keys. He was trying to let guards in and out of the gate at the stairs and trying to get the keeplocks back from the showers, and at the same time letting a crew of mess hall porters through the gate from the gallery upstairs so they could report to work and there was a group of hombres who had just come back from Industry and they were crowding around him asking him all kinds of questions. Where is the paper I requested? Can I go to the infirmary? You know how it can get, and he lost the keys. He left them in the gate. I saw them and grabbed them myself. When I saw Ed reach for his keys and realize they were not there, I said something horrible—I don’t even remember what—something to make him come after me. And he did. You’ve seen the temper they built in him. He took me down to the floor and punched me and I slipped the keys back on his belt. It was a kindness from one new padre to another, entiendo? No one noticed that Ed had committed the cardinal sin and let the keys fall in the hands of an inmate.
“I tell you this so you can know the power of such a kindness, Moses. You see I had been jealous of Ed. Jealous that he could hold his hija whenever he pleased. That he could sleep in the same bed with his esposa every night. But something changed for me after that day. I began to see myself differently. I knew that I had returned to
