Western Avenue and Other Fictions

Arrival, circa 1976, el Morro

1 Arrival, circa 1976, el Morro His memory arrives with the geography of this photograph: a black iron lamppost, a white globe circling above, the blue stone road, the forking paths and incandescent fountains, a labyrinth of arcades leading from the bright heart of the city to its darker edges, el Morro, that blackish sea-sprayed wall, sentry of departures and arrivals, timekeeper of the azure sea. Palm trees sway in the breeze. The sweet smell of the rum distillery wafts across the bay tinged with smoke, the sweaty shapes of oxen struggling in a cane field, the fragrance of purple orchids beginning to bloom on the edge of a cascading waterfall bathed in the mountain green of dusk. Crouched down, against the lamppost, he’s dressed in a yellow and red striped T-shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of delicate-looking leather sandals. Beside him, almost solemn with newness, a valise the color of deeply bruised fruit. His father approaches, he turns, hears it is time to go, clutches the valise, lets go, crouches even more, his butt barely touching the cool blue stones as he follows the designs of facades and porticos, Santa Barbara’s church bell swinging with bass and echo within the arcades, the road, out toward the wall of el Morro and back again, like a sudden spark or surge, and he’s standing. He turns. Inside the Park of Pigeons, men sit on wooden beer crates underneath the last tiger-striping shade of the trees, their dominoes cracking, the sun slowly descending like a peeled orange ripe with heat, their laughter. His father lifts the valise, the pigeons springing up into the bluing evening light, suddenly alabaster as if written in perfection by a strange hand, perhaps spoken into form by a foreign tongue just on the edge of the palms shaking for the comings and goings of the sea. ...