Olympia (17 page)

I went back out into the street and cupped my hands and brought water up to my lips. It was sweet and cool on my throat. The alcohol had made me thirsty. When I took up another handful I raised my eyes to look down the street and saw lights moving over the water. I squinted in the dark. In the distance a procession moved slowly and quietly across the shallow waters, over the drained and muddy plains and up over the hill. At first I
believed it was a band of looters who'd come down this night to salvage what they could, odds and ends left behind by hundreds of families. But they were too many and their shapes were too thin, too white. They seemed to shift through one another and disappear into the darkness like
candle
flames, then reappear a moment later where human steps could not have led them. Some carried their possessions on their backs: candlesticks and enormous clunking radios and baskets overflowing with loaves of bread and bundles of clothing and chairs and carpets and rugs rolled up into awkward sagging tubes. But still I saw no faces. I listened for voices but there were none. I came closer, my hands tucked under my arms now in the chilling night.

How can a trick of light at the bottom of a drained reservoir convince you of the reality of what you can't possibly be witnessing? I remember thinking this when I saw my sister and grandparents and my old uncle Willy walking among the crowd. A hard pain rolled in my chest and rose to the top of my throat. There they were. Ruby's face, her quick athletic body, impatient with my slow-moving grandparents and uncle. They were in the middle of the column. Ruby moving between them, running forward a ways and returning, excited and impatient in the way she always was before a trip. They helped each other out of the water up onto the mudflats. My grandparents, both younger somehow. Come from a time I knew from long before. But they did not notice me. They walked, looking ahead and up to the hills as if there was something waiting for them on the other side.

I was shivering now. The night and the water had gone deep into my bones but I stayed and watched this procession move through the darkness, still without words, hundreds of forms, faceless but for those of my sister and uncle and grandparents. I waited until the last of the stragglers had moved far into the darkness and disappeared. A mist was rolling into the valley now. I stood there waiting for my people to return with that column of refugees, my hands in my pockets, shoulders hunched against the chill that had enveloped me. But they didn't return. I don't know how long I waited, an hour or more, until the town was under a blanket of mist and I finally turned and walked slowly back the way I'd come, found the abandoned raft, then the path that led up to town.

I heard the party before I saw the lights of the town again. I was wet and covered in mud and shivering. My shoes squelched as I walked along the main street. I stopped on the sidewalk in front of Casa Pepe and tried to brush the filth from my pant legs. There was shouting and laughing spilling out onto the street, then in the crowd of voices I heard an accordion scale, my father limbering his fingers, and he started in on the song I recalled about leaving things behind, “
Muss I den
.”
I straightened up and walked in and saw my mother and father in the middle of the room. He had the old Hohner propped up on his chest, standing beside a tall thin man playing a nylon string guitar. My mother began to dance with the small girl whose dress had intrigued and delighted her so, its intricate weave beautiful and full of mystery. I pushed through the crowd and found Nuria sitting with the old fisherman at a table by the door with the green-and-white beads. He smiled when he saw me and leaned back and folded his large hands over his belly. She looked at the state I was in and smiled. The mud and water up to my thighs, shaking.

“This creature from the Black Lagoon,” she said, touching my leg. “Looks like you've had yourself an adventure.” She knew where I'd been. As she rose I took her hand and put my face into her neck and inhaled. I was glad to feel her warmth, the pulse moving strongly beneath her skin. We began to dance, my mother beside us, the small fragile hands of the little girl placed softly in her palms as she guided her over the floor. I cupped Nuria's hand in mine and held her tightly around the waist. The whole room started then, arm in arm, clapping along with this farewell song, its melody at last becoming familiar. My father stamped his foot grandly when he turned into the chorus and the words came back to me after all those years.

Now I must leave this place
And you, my sweet, must stay.

The music of our voices floated out into the night over the procession of the dead like shadows and fleeting spirits. The party went long into the night, the singing and drinking and dancing. There was no rush to worry the evening to a close. We'd seen miracles this day. I knew this is where I belonged, here with my people among the living.

My thanks to the
Banff Centre for the Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo and the
Fundación Valparaíso
for lodging and companionship during the writing of this book; and the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for making it possible to go where the writing wanted to take me.

I am grateful to the editors at the following publications in which portions of this book first appeared:
Canadian Fiction Magazine, Descant, Grain, Queen's Quarterly, Quarry, Coming Attractions 1997
(Oberon Press) and
The 1997
Journey Prize Anthology
(McClelland & Stewart).

This book could not have been written without the excellent advice of many people. My lasting gratitude to Clare Henderson, Victoria Bell, Bob Ward and Cheryl Pearl Sucher.

Gracias a mi hermano, José Ramón, quien me ayudó descubrir lo que queda al fondo.

Dennis Bock's first book of stories,
Olympia
, won the 1998 Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award, the Danuta Gleed Award for best first collection of stories by a Canadian author and the British Betty Trask Award. His first novel,
The Ash Garden
, was a #1 national bestseller and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Caribbean and Canada Region). It won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the Drummer General's Award for Fiction. His most recent book,
The Communist's Daughter
, was a national bestseller and garnered much critical acclaim. Dennis Bock lives with his family in Toronto.

Olympia
Copyright © 1998 by Dennis Bock. All rights reserved.

A Phyllis Bruce Book, published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

First published in Canada by Doubleday: 1998
First Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2002
This EPUB edition: January 2013
.

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