The Abundance of the Infinite (8 page)

I dream of an empty village and huts devoid of people, and I feel that there is nothing but myself and wild beasts surrounding me. I run to find the huts are overgrown with foliage and all empty, their floors made of mud and dirt and the rocks and the forests surrounding them are devoid of life, all of the homes and the forest abandoned, and for miles around and everywhere I look I see barren emptiness with only foliage and trees, dirt and dust as my constant companions.…

The next morning, I awaken to a renewed song: an overabundance of different voices, a crimson, yellow and apricot sunrise over flattened, low-hanging clouds, a tapestry above and an oil painting below in distorted, wavering reflection. A dark outline of trees separates the sunrise and its reflection, the replicated image completed in faded brushstrokes, the water rippling subtly. I am flowing backward as mosquitoes buzz about my head accompanied by the repeated, high-
pitched twitter of a bird, the low, resonating call of another, the squealing and the guffaws of another, and then another, and another, all to the backdrop of the clatter of countless insects. A tree branch floats lazily by, and the mosquitoes, despite my repellant, will not let me be.

I wonder what I am doing here, floating aimlessly, and I paddle for a time as if to provide an occupation for my hands, seeing no one else except for a woman immersed in the river up to her waist, beating clothes against a rock as children play on the shore nearby. None of them notice me. I remove most of my clothing, warm in the sun now, and descend quietly into the water, slowly, tipping the canoe over on its side enough to slip into the river ... I slide in and swim, close to the canoe at first and then farther away, until the canoe is an elongated matchstick that is almost out of sight. Afraid, I quickly return and climb out of the water and back into the safety of its confines.

The day flows into night, rain beating down and then subsiding, and I experience a painful and distinct hunger. I drink from the bottles of
chicha
, from the muddy river water that grits on the teeth, and from a bucket of rainwater, in my thirst.

I become cold, my clothes damp, and the air lights up with dots of luminescence flashing in and out of vision, their radiance growing and then quickly withering away. There is a sensation of profound emptiness, the night inviting a chorus of pests and animals. I suffer through the dull ache of hunger and frequent chills. Drinking
chicha
continually for warmth, I begin to fall asleep until I notice a light on the horizon.

There is a fire up ahead, in the distance.

I
immediatel
y
begin
paddlin
g
towar
d
th
e
light
,
anticipating heat and warmth, and as I get closer, the noise of the bugs fades away and the fire begins to swell until, at close proximity, it consumes my view. A
row of huts is ablaze, and there is a line of men passing empty and full buckets along, the men dunking the buckets into the river at one end and passing them down full, retrieving empty ones and refilling them again. At the other end, the men splash water on the huts that are quickly being consumed. It is a fruitless effort, and I am inclined to reach out and tell them.

Because I have not been sleeping well, I wonder if all of this is an illusion induced through a combination of alcohol and sleep deprivation from a lack of REM sleep, knowing that when deprived of sleep, one starts to hallucinate as though somehow dreaming by day. But this image, I convince myself, is too intense, too real.

Looking into the wavering and crackling flames, the fire producing torrents of smoke in areas where it has touched down near the wet ground, I see that on one side of the huts is a small boy, five or six years of age. He stands there, staring back at me. He has dark skin, wears plain brown clothing and has unwavering dark eyes that gaze at me as if in disbelief that I am there; as though I am some incorporeal reflection of the fire upon the surface of the water, or a vision brought on by the heat.

And in this surreal image, the sky overflowing with flame and smoke, the resonance of the boy's outline quivering in the warmth and hazy effluvium as he watches me, I have the sense that it is I who am the boy, standing there, peering back into the eyes of my father. And in that realization I can see that my father might have, in fact, been here, with his undiagnosed agoraphobia, his fear of inescapable situations the same as my own, cast out into the night alone and of his own accord as I am, as drunk as I am feeling now; and just as I have made the decision to escape from and to flee the memory of my daughter, I have already, if only subconsciously, chosen to forsake the love of the wife I can no longer love, and can no longer see or interact with, because of the life she has taken.

I watch the boy's eyes wander away from me, darting over to one side as though he has abruptly remembered another place he ought to be, or as though he is unexpectedly ashamed for having stared languidly back at this unknown stranger in the darkness, at an image that may or may not be real. As he darts away into the shadows, toward an isolated row of huts seemingly unaffected by the fire but still consumed by smoke, I am inundated by the overwhelming urge to follow. I grab my paddle and row swiftly to shore, rise out of the boat and, pulling the distended maw of the long, thin beast up onto the rocks, I run after him.

The area he had started toward, away from the men who are occupied in futilely attempting to extinguish the raging and increasing fire with small buckets of water which might as well be thimbles filled to the brim and passed daintily along, is vacant. The boy has disappeared. Looking through each of the huts that is engulfed in smoke I quickly find him inside one of them. He looks up at me and I look into his eyes again, closer this time, seeing in the shadows and fog that they are dark brown, and that he has retrieved what he came into this room, filled with diaphanous smoke, to obtain: a doll made of straw and old rags. I am barring his exit, my arms on either side of the opening, his only way out beneath my arms, and he looks at those areas of escape longingly, as though anticipating that he can dash out, scurrying away from this nonsensical man before him.

If I were to stay here for a time, continuing to block the way out in a fit of malevolence and wickedness, enough to smite the life out of this boy, my actions would not be any different from what I have done, and in fact what I have subconsciously wanted to do. I am no different from my father, or from the King in my Boccaccio dream. In the boy's gaze I see that I am again this boy looking up at my father, who chose to view me, for the purposes of his own life, as deceased; and I have the horrifying realization that I wanted my child dead, as I have just contemplated my power over this helpless child in pondering his death, the one who looks up at me now with the appearance of dread. I made it easier to end Annabelle's life by escaping my responsibilities and running away from my unborn child, I explain to this boy's stare, either in my thoughts or verbally. I made Yelena's decision easier because my absence did not preclude her actions except through a verbalized agreement, a contract that perhaps became less important and more easily justifiable to disregard over time. My father chose to have me out of his life, and as such, to have my existence relegated only to a distant and faded memory, just as Annabelle's will now irrevocably become, my father's remembrance of me interspersed with random snapshots of a boy's periodic visits, a boy left to raise himself outside of these visits in light of a mother who was never there, whose alcoholism and desire for the outward appearance of a flawless home and a perfect life seemed not only contradictory but counterintuitive. My father's kind and gentle treatment of me on my visits to Manta was a ruse of paternal compassion that I now recognize I saw him extend to any and all children he came across. And now, this boy is coughing, slumped on the floor, his eyes closing. I feel that perhaps his fear has overcome him, that he feels he cannot escape, and that he is therefore not even trying; and I see myself as following his example, lying down among these straw walls and allowing the smoke to consume my lungs and thereby extinguish my ability to breathe, giving way to what will become my end.…

I feel the onset of a panic attack and I am light-headed, my feet beginning to give out beneath me, the boy perhaps beyond my ability to save him now, and in my dizziness I have a sensation of weightlessness, a slackening of tension akin to when I was floating hopelessly down the Amazon, and I am inclined to the notion that this attack will be my last, the one that will render me powerless to prevent my own imminent death. This recognition terrifies me, and I wonder if throwing myself on the blazing huts nearby, to be burned up in that fire, might be preferable; or whether slipping quietly into the water to be consumed by the river and its gluttonous piranhas would be better; and in this realization I see that I, too, have agoraphobia now and an inescapable sensation of guilt, a substitute emotion for what I am really feeling, a relentless grief and wretchedness, a lonely dejection at having run away from my unprotected and unborn child who hadn't lived, from subconsciously wanting an end to its life for which I merit an end to my own, and from having misjudged not only Yelena, but myself, so severely.

I am present here on this river, I now understand, as a consequence of my belief that I needed to suffer in order to atone for my past actions. But I must agonize in a different way by regretting such reticence and lethargy, since I can do nothing else, eventually forgiving myself and reconciling with having known that Yelena would end the life of our child, that I in fact was the King that wanted our child killed, that I was no better than my father for the pain he had inflicted upon me over the years, and that Yelena was in a closet in my recurring dream because she was hiding that my absence would give her the means by which to not only conceal her intentions, but to carry them out uncontested.

Glaring back at this boy with his now tenuous grip on my stare, as he begins to slump more and more toward the dirt floor, I have the instinctual necessity to escape from this place, to row back and to find the place called Archidona, and then Manta, from which I came.

I grab the boy by the arm, hauling him out of the hut and exposing him to the fresh air. Reviving after a few minutes, his breathing heavy and the experience inside the hut now behind us, he rises and then runs off in a mad dash toward the line of men with buckets.

Not eager to explain myself or my actions, horrified at what might have happened in the hut, at what I had allowed to happen in Canada and why, I enter the boat and begin rowing against the current, in the upstream direction I believe to be that of Archidona, with more strength, intensity and focus than ever before.

21

As the sun rises over the river the following morning, having rowed through the night past bridges, tree outlines and huts that I recognized onshore, I am in awe of the splendour of this place. I see another elongated boat motoring in the distance. On board is our former guide, and Karen.

As the boat comes alongside my own, Karen jumps into the front, nearly toppling it over. The other man turns his boat around and motors away. Karen and I are suddenly left alone.

“Where have you been?” she asks angrily.

“I don't know,” I say, my voice hoarse. “What are you doing out here?”

“I've been looking for you since you left. I'd nearly given up hope. I thought you'd gone mad, seeing your door wide open, and those paintings in the hut; the hut owner showed them to me, dozens of pictures painted all over the floors and the walls and the furniture, all of the same girl with clubbed feet and a small head with a flat face. To say that I was shocked, disgusted and extremely worried would only be—well, in fact, after seeing those images, I thought I'd never see you again.”

“I want to travel with you,” I say. “To see more of the world, to experience more than I've ever known.”

She smiles after a time, and then, before we arrive on shore, she says: “The next bus will be through here tomorrow morning. The protests are long over. We have been here far too long.”

22

As we travel to Quito on the morning bus, there are fires dissipating over the horizon. The fires of pacified protest. Nothing, other than this, has changed. Karen understands, without explanation, that I am going back to Manta, and not to Venezuela with her.

She leaves me an open-ended ticket she purchased for Margarita Island.

“In case you change your mind,” she says, a grin on her face as she climbs aboard the bus for the airport. I call her name, and she turns around to face me.

“If not,” she says, “the Señora will take good care of you. She will. Just promise me that if you're not coming to Venezuela, you'll go straight to Manta.”

“I will,” I say, taking her hand. “I want you to come back, soon. I want to help raise your child.”

She seems confused, but still squeezes my hand as if to assure me that we will do so, together.

“I'll be back soon. This is something I have to do.”

∞

Back in Manta, there seems to be a certain solemnity about the place. Inés and Yolanda are not there. The Señora tells me she is lonely. Her daughters have gone to Quito to see about their visas that will allow them to be with their father in New York.

“Karen, she will not be back,” the Señora says to me in Spanish, “Unless it is many years from now. She is pregnant from a man who once lived here. Now he lives in Venezuela.

“Yes, she told me,” I say, to which she appears surprised.

The Señora demands I clean every bit of paint from the walls, ceiling and furniture of my old apartment, where I have painted additional renditions of Annabelle. After I do, she hands me another key. It is the key to Karen's apartment.

“You can live there for as long as you want,” the Señora says. “I told the Señorita, Karen, that your father lived in the apartment beside hers. There is a door connecting them both. You can have them both, there is no one in either. No one to rent. She suggested that you live there now. But no more painting.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I understand, and I won't be painting anymore.”

“I will be going soon to Quito, to be with my daughters and to see about a visa for New York, for myself. You will go to Venezuela to visit Karen, and to see her baby?”

“I have the sense that she will be back here,” I reply, “and much sooner than you think.”

∞

The Señora asks me a few days later, in an informal proposition, whether I am interested in marrying one of her daughters and moving to New York. I reply that, although her daughters are very beautiful, I won't. I will be travelling, a short while after her return, with Karen and her child.

I carry my few possessions from my old apartment, and turn the key to the lock on my father's door. Inside, the place is the same as mine. The only difference seems to be that the roof is accessible from a pull-down ladder hidden over the kitchen, a ladder I have never seen before.

As I sit on the roof later that night smoking unfiltered tobacco, I see a spectacular array of stars. The night is cold, and the beach seems somewhat illuminated by the intensity of the stars. I can see the spot where my father is buried, and the small cross protruding from the sand....

Tomorrow, I will go down to the beach and introduce myself to the family living on the boat with the stilts, the boat that now appears as though it is floating on the water. I will not explain to them that I have intentionally littered the bay with my paintings, throwing them in the mud. I will have conversations with them about anything
else. I will swim with them at the beach nearby, while watching as the tide rolls in and my paintings are washed out to sea.

I spend a few minutes writing out an alternate ending to my recurring dream.

As I fall asleep there on the roof, I again sense Yelena in the closet. I open the closet door to reveal that she is inside. She is holding Annabelle, who is asleep. Both of them are dressed in blue. “Take her,” Yelena says upon seeing me, and I do. I hold Annabelle close, caressing her skin before kissing her forehead. I smell the sweetness of her skin, and I carefully remove her from the closet. I fall asleep
in the dream, holding Annabelle in my arms.

The next evening I begin intentionally depriving myself of sleep, knowing that my recurring dream is over and that I will never again approach that same sensation, that same moment of overwhelming bliss, and because of that my reality, with the memory of that moment, is preferable to dreams; but I stay awake, drinking instant coffee and smoking a filterless cigarette, with the understanding that you can escape your dreams, but never for long.