Corner of the Dead

Chapter 3

[ 137 ] C H A P T E R 3 T H E T R U T H and Reconciliation Commission was convened . Karlos wrote requesting my negatives. I sent everything. It is possible Arye was the forensic anthropologist working in our area. And it is possible that Arye touched a bone that belonged to Cholo or Lobo or someone else we once knew. Karl has a daughter now, younger than the one we would have had. I know this because he told me face to face. I see you. Karl. Karlos. You are the last one to pass through immigration and for a few minutes I think maybe you changed your mind. That you did not come. It has been two decades. We see each other across the room, stare, then look away. We finish a bottle of red wine. You need to walk. On the street you point to a man. But our dead friend, this man we both see to be Enrique, doesn’t turn around, doesn’t recognize us, and so we let him keep on walking. He passes through an [ 138 ] opening into Riverside Park and is swallowed by the night, by what looms on the other side of the darkened tree trunks. Every now and then the clouds move and a half-crescent moon lights the way. But the stars never seem as far as they really are. The red wine in last night’s glass reminds me of the hand of the man who wanted to shake mine. Instinctively I knew not to take it, even though he had come from the same opera and was eating in the same restaurant. There is blood everywhere. It follows you. I saw enough to say for sure his fingernails were trimmed and filed smooth with not one rough edge. You were always a person or two or three away from a blood-stained hand. Even after traveling nine hours north by plane. There are days and nights when wine doesn’t work, nor sleep, or the persistence of the mountains. Then come the dark days when it isn’t worth trying. You will always be in the mountains. This is where I would look for you, if I ever look for you, bundled and sealed against the weather. You will be in a coat and it will be raining. Nine o’clock at night. The fish you bought for dinner is still wrapped in paper. You forgot to put it in the refrigerator and the ice that once protected it from spoiling has melted. Now the bloated bundle sits in a shallow puddle on a blue plate. They pulled all those distended bodies from the rivers. The military went through a lot of trouble, dumping them from helicopters with weights tied to their ankles, men at desks plotting the way the corpses were to fall. • • • [ 139 ] In The Tin Drum the mother throws buckets of fish down the cellar stairs. The squirming half-live prehistoric bodies bury her small son standing wide-eyed at the bottom. The world beyond their locked door is in chaos, men gone mad. The boy closes his eyes and stands perfectly still. Does fish taste different if it is eaten close to where it is harvested ? Here in the northern hemisphere they tell us not to buy it, that it is over-fished or poisonous. When you look out at the sea you cannot tell they are nearly extinct and full of mercury. Even if you let yourself stare deep into the water, past the lapping waves, there are no clues. This is true of the mountains as well. What is missing cannot be seen. This time we said a formal good-bye on the curb at Kennedy airport. There was rain falling from a dark and starless sky. I pulled away and in the rearview mirror watched as you got smaller. I couldn’t tell if you turned around, if you were watching me leave. Your coat blended with the color of wet pavement. Then the details were gone. ...