The hospital is a gigantic building intersected by corridors where it is never night and the temperature never changes; day is captive in the electric lights and summer in the heating. Routines are repeated with irritating precision. This is the realm of pain; you come here to suffer, and all of us understand that. The misery of illness makes everyone equal. There are no rich or poor; when you cross this threshold, privilege blows away like smoke, and we are all humbled. My friend Ildemaro came from Caracas on the first flight he could wangle during an interminable strike of airline pilots, and stayed with me for a week. For more than ten years, this cultivated and gentle man has been like another brother to me, an intellectual mentor and companion during times I felt cut off from my country. As he hugged me, I felt an absurd certainty: you would react to his presence, and when you heard his voice you would wake up. He took advantage of being a physician to question the specialists and read the charts, tests, and X rays; he checked you over from head to foot, with the care that distinguishes all his actions and with the special affection he feels for you. When he came out of your room, he took my hand and we went outside and walked through the streets around the hospital. It was very cold.
“How do you find Paula?”
“She’s very ill. . . .”
“That’s how porphyria is. They assure me she will recover completely.”
“I love you too much to lie to you, Isabel.”
“Tell me the truth, then. Do you think she might die?”
“I do,” he replied after a long pause.
“Might she stay in the coma for a long time?”
“I hope not, but it is a possibility.”
“And if she never wakes again, Ildemaro?”
We stood silently beneath the rain.
I will try not to be sentimental, I know how much you hate that, Paula, but you will have to forgive me if sometimes I break down. My nerves are shattered. Am I going crazy? I don’t know what day it is, I’ve lost interest in news of the world, the hours drag by painfully in an eternal waiting. I’m allowed to see you for such a short time, and I fritter the day away waiting for those moments. Twice a day, the door to intensive care opens and the nurse on duty calls the name of a patient. When she says “Paula,” I go in, shivering. I can’t help it, I can never get used to the humming of the respirator, to the monitors and needles, to seeing you always asleep, your feet bandaged and your arms bruised purple. As I hurry toward your bed along the white corridor that stretches endlessly before me, I call on Memé, Granny, Tata, and all my beloved spirits; I beg them to let me find you better, without any fever, your heart regular, your breathing tranquil, and your blood pressure normal. I say hello to the nurses and to don Manuel, who is growing worse every day; he can barely speak now. I bend down to you, and sometimes I dislodge some cable and an alarm sounds. I examine you inch by inch, observe the numbers and lines on the screens, the entries in the open book on a table at the foot of your bed—futile tasks, because I understand none of it, but with these meaningless ceremonies you belong to me again, as you did when you were a baby and entirely dependent on me. I place my hands on your head and your breast and try to transmit health and energy. I visualize you inside a glass pyramid, isolated from harm in a magic space where you can get well. I call you all the pet names I have ever given you and tell you a thousand times, I love you, Paula, I love you, and repeat it over and over until someone touches my shoulder and tells me the visit is over, I must leave. I give you one last kiss and walk, now slowly, to the door. My mother is waiting outside. I give her an optimistic thumbs up, and we try to smile. Sometimes we don’t succeed.
Silence, I crave silence. The noise of the hospital and the city have seeped into my bones. I long for the quiet of nature, the peace of my house in California. In the hospital the only place free of noise is the chapel. I go there to look for refuge in which to think and read and write. I accompany my mother to mass, where usually we are the only ones present and the priest officiates for us alone. Above the altar, upon a wall of black marble, bleeds a Christ crowned with thorns; I cannot look at that poor tormented body. I do not know the liturgy, but from hearing the ritual words so often I begin to feel the strength of the myth: bread and wine, fruit of the earth and labor of man, converted into the body and blood of Christ. The chapel is behind the intensive care room, but to get there we have to make a complete circle around the building. I have calculated that your bed is precisely on the other side of the chapel wall and that I can send thoughts straight to you. Mother insists that you won’t die, Paula. She is negotiating the matter directly with heaven; she tells God that you have lived to serve others, that you have much good yet to do in this world, and that your death would be a senseless loss. Faith is a gift; God looks into your eyes and speaks your name. That is how He chose you, but He pointed his finger at me only to fill me with doubt. My uncertainty began when I was seven, the day of my First Communion, as I walked down the nave of the church, dressed in white and wearing a veil, a rosary in one hand and a ribbon-tied candle in the other. Fifty little girls in two rows marching to the chords of the organ and the novices’ choir. We had rehearsed so many times that I had memorized every gesture, but the point of the sacrament had escaped me. I knew that if I chewed the consecrated Host I would burn in eternal hellfire, but I did not remember it was Jesus I was receiving. As I neared the altar, my candle broke in two. It just broke, without provocation, the upper half hanging by the wick like the neck of a dead swan, and I felt that someone from on high had pointed to me, amid all my companions, to be punished, perhaps for some sin I might have forgotten to confess the day before. In fact, I had elaborated a long list of major sins to impress the priest. I did not want to bore him with bagatelles, and I had also reasoned that if I did penance for mortal sins, even though I hadn’t committed them, the venial sins would be pardoned in the lot. I confessed everything imaginable, even things I didn’t know the meaning of: homicide, fornication, lies, adultery, sins against my parents, impure thoughts, heresy, envy. . . . The priest listened in stunned silence, then, aggrieved, rose to his feet and signaled to a nun. They muttered a few minutes and she seized me by the arm and led me to the sacristy, where with a deep sigh she washed out my mouth with soap and made me pray three Ave Marias. In the evening, the hospital chapel is dimly lighted by votive candles. Yesterday I surprised Ernesto and his father there—heads in hands, broad shoulders sagging—and did not dare go to them. They look very much alike. Both are large, dark, and sturdy, with Moorish features and a way of moving that is a rare mixture of virility and gentleness. Ernesto’s father’s deeply tanned skin, his short gray hair and wrinkles like knife scars speak of his adventures in the jungle and forty years of living with nature. He seems indestructible, and that is why I was so moved to see him on his knees. He has become his son’s shadow; he never leaves him by himself, in the same way my mother is always at my side. He accompanies Ernesto to his aikido classes, and they walk for hours in the country, until both are exhausted. “You need to burn off that energy or you’ll explode,” he tells Ernesto. He takes me to the park on nice days, sits me down facing the sun, and tells me to close my eyes and feel the warmth on my skin, to listen to the sound of the birds and the water and the distant traffic and see if that will help calm my nerves. When he heard about his daughter-in-law’s collapse, he immediately flew from the depths of the Amazon to be with his son. He does not like cities or populous areas, the hospital gives him claustrophobia, people bother him, he paces the corridor of lost steps with the sad impatience of a caged beast. You have more courage than the most macho of men, Isabel, he says, with great seriousness, and I know that is the most flattering thing a man accustomed to killing snakes with a machete can think of me.
Physicians come from other hospitals to observe you; they have never seen such a complex case of porphyria. You have become an example, and I am afraid you will earn a certain fame in medical textbooks. The illness struck like a thunderbolt, sparing nothing. Your
husband is the only one who is at peace; the rest of us are terrified, but even he talks about your death and other, even worse, possibilities.
“Nothing has any meaning without Paula, nothing is worth the effort. Since she closed her eyes, the light has gone from the world,” he says. “God can’t take her from me, else why did He bring us together? We have so much life ahead of us. This is a cruel test, but we will come out of it. I will never leave her, I will never love anyone else; I will protect her and care for her always. Whatever happens, even if illness or death separates us physically, we are destined to meet again and be together through eternity. I can wait.”
“I’m sure she will recover, Ernesto, but it will be a long convalescence. Be prepared for that. You will take her home, I’m sure. Can’t you just imagine that day?”
“I think of it every minute. I will carry her up the three flights of stairs. I will fill the apartment with flowers. . . .”
Nothing frightens him; he thinks of you as his spiritual companion, safe from the vicissitudes of life or death; he is not alarmed by your motionless body or your absent mind; he tells us he is in contact with your soul, that you can hear him, that you have feelings and emotions, that you are not a vegetable as the machines you are connected to attest. Skeptical, the physicians shrug their shoulders, but the nurses are swayed by this obstinate love and sometimes they allow him to visit you out of hours because they know that when he takes your hand the readings on the screens change. Perhaps the intensity of feelings can be measured by the same apparatus that monitors heartbeats.
One day more of waiting, one day less of hope. One day more of silence, one day less of life. Death wanders freely through the hallways, and my task is to distract it, so it cannot find your door.
“How long and puzzling life is, Mama!”
“At least you can write about it to try to understand,” she replied.
Lebanon in the fifties was a flourishing country, the bridge between Europe and the extremely wealthy Arab emirates, a natural crossroads for several cultures, a tower of Babel where dozens of tongues were spoken. All the commerce and banking in the region passed through Beirut; by land came swaying caravans of merchandise, by air, the newest fads from Europe, and by sea, so many ships they had to wait their turn to anchor in the port. Veiled, black-robed women carrying bundles and packages and pulling their children by the hand scurried through the streets, eyes always lowered, while idle men congregated in the cafés. Burros, camels, crowded buses, motorcycles, and cars stopped as one at the traffic lights as shepherds dressed in the same fashion as their biblical ancestors crossed the avenues herding flocks of sheep toward the slaughterhouse. Several times a day the high keening of the muezzin called the faithful to prayer from the minarets of the mosques, chiming with bells from Christian churches. The smart shops of that capital offered the best of the world’s goods, but we were more often drawn to the souks, the labyrinths of narrow alleyways lined with countless shops where it was possible to buy anything from fresh eggs to relics of the pharaohs. I can still smell those markets! All the aromas of the planet wafted through those twisting streets, a mélange of exotic vapors, food fried in sheep lard, baklava, garbage and excrement floating in open drains, animal sweat, leather dyes, cloying perfumes of incense and patchouli, coffee freshly boiled with cardamom seeds, spices of the Orient—cinnamon, cumin, pepper, saffron. . . . From the outside, the bazaars seemed insignificant, but each of them stretched inward through a series of roomlike areas with glittering lamps, trays, and amphoras inscribed with intricate calligraphic designs, rugs covering the floor, draped from the walls, and lying in rolls in the corners, furniture of carved wood with ivory, bronze, and mother-of-pearl inlay swamped beneath piles of tablecloths and embroidered babouches. Merchants came out to meet their customers and nearly dragged them inside those Ali Baba caves glutted with treasures. They would offer basins filled with rosewater for washing your hands and then serve a black, sugary coffee—the best in the world. Bargaining was an essential component of the transaction; my mother understood that from the first day. Upon hearing the opening price, she would reply with a horrified exclamation, throw up her hands, and start toward the door with a determined step. The seller would seize her arm and haul her back, swearing that this was the first sale of the day, that she was his sister, that she would bring him luck, and that he was therefore prepared to listen to her proposition, even though the object in question was unique and the price more than fair. Impassive, my mother would offer half, while the rest of us rushed for the door, red with embarrassment. The store owner would pound his forehead with his fist, calling on Allah as witness. “Do you want to ruin me, my sister? I have children, I am an honest man. . . .” After three cups of coffee and nearly an hour of haggling, the object would change ownership. The merchant would be smiling with satisfaction and my mother would rejoin us in the street, certain she had acquired a bargain. At times, a couple of shops farther along she would find the same piece for much less than she had paid; that ruined the day but not the temptation to buy again. This was the process she followed during a trip to Damascus when she negotiated the cloth for my wedding dress. I was fourteen and had no relation of any kind with any male except my brothers, my stepfather, and the son of an affluent Lebanese merchant who visited from time to time under the vigilant eye of his parents and mine. He was so rich that he had a chauffeured motor scooter. On the wave of the vogue for Italian Vespas, he pestered his parents until they bought him one; his father did not, however, want to run the risk of losing his firstborn in a crash of some vehicle for suicides, so he hired a chauffeur to drive the boy regally mounted behind. In any case, I was considering the idea of becoming a nun, in order to conceal that I could not snare a husband, and that is what I tried to convey to my mother in the market in Damascus, but she insisted. “Don’t be foolish,” she said, “this is the chance of a lifetime.” We left the bazaar with meters and meters of white, silk-embroidered organza, besides several tablecloths for my hope chest and a carved wooden screen that has survived three decades, countless moves, and exile.
Even the incentive of bargains was not enough to make my mother feel comfortable in Lebanon; she had the sensation she was a prisoner in her own skin. Women were not supposed to go out alone because in close quarters a disrespectful hand might dart out and offend them, and if they tried to defend themselves they were met with a chorus of hostile jeers. Only ten minutes from our house was an endless white sand beach and a warm ocean inviting us to cool off during the dog days of August. We had to go as a family, always in a tightly knit group to protect ourselves against other swimmers’ busy hands; it was impossible to lie on the sand, that was an open invitation to trouble, and as soon as our heads broke the surface of the water we ran to the refuge of a cabana rented for that purpose. The climate, the cultural differences, the strain of speaking French and mumbling a little Arabic, the juggling act of making ends meet, the absence of friends and family, all overwhelmed my mother.
Lebanon had found a way to live in peace and prosperity despite the religious wars that had torn the region for centuries. During the Suez Canal crisis, however, growing Arab nationalism profoundly divided politicians, and rivalries became irreconcilable. Violent uprisings culminated in July 1958, with the landing of the United States Sixth Fleet. Installed on the third floor of a building located at the confluence of Christian, Muslim, and Druze barrios, we were in a privileged position for observing the skirmishes. Tío Ramón made us place mattresses in front of the windows to stop any stray bullets, and forbade us to watch from the balcony; meanwhile, my mother managed somehow to keep the bathtub filled with water and to obtain fresh supplies of food. During the worst weeks of the crisis, a sunset curfew was imposed; only military personnel were authorized to move through the streets, but in fact that was the hour of a tacit truce when housewives bargained in the black market and men did business. From our forbidden terrace we witnessed ferocious gun battles between opposing groups that
lasted most of the day, but at dusk everything stopped as if by enchantment and, under cover of night, furtive figures slipped out to trade with the enemy and mysterious packages passed from hand to hand. We saw prisoners, naked from the waist up and handcuffed to wood poles, flogged in the courtyard of the guard station, and just within our field of vision was the fly-covered corpse of a man with a slit throat who was left in the street for two days to frighten the Druze. We also witnessed the revenge, when two veiled women left a burro with a load of olives and cheeses standing in the street. As expected, the soldiers confiscated the burro and shortly after we heard the explosion that pulverized neighborhood windows and left the barracks courtyard a pool of blood and torn flesh. Even with that violence, I have the impression that the Arabs never truly took the U.S. landing seriously. When their ships sailed into the bay with cannons at the ready, Tío Ramón obtained a pass and took us to see them. There was a huge crowd of curiosity seekers on the docks, waiting to do business with the invaders and get permission to board the aircraft carriers. LSTs like monsters of steel opened their jaws and vomited out landing craft filled with armed-to-the-teeth marines who were greeted with a salvo of applause from the beach, and the minute these bold warriors touched dry land they were surrounded by a raucous mob trying to sell them everything from parasols to hashish and Japanese condoms shaped like brightly colored fish. I can imagine that it wasn’t easy for officers to maintain the morale of their troops or to prevent them from fraternizing with the enemy. The next day at the indoor skating rink I had my first contact with the most powerful armed force in the world. I had skated all afternoon among hundreds of uniformed youths with shaved hair and tattooed arms, who were drinking beer and talking in a guttural lingo very different from what Miss St. John had attempted to teach at the British school. I could barely communicate with them, but even if we had spoken the same language, we wouldn’t have had much to say to each other. That memorable day, though, I received my first kiss on the lips; it was like biting a frog that smelled of chewing gum, beer, and tobacco. I have no idea which one kissed me, because I couldn’t tell him from the others—they all looked alike—but I do remember that from that very moment I decided to explore the matter of kisses. Unfortunately, I had to wait quite a while to pursue my research, because as soon as Tío Ramón discovered that the city was crawling with marines hungry for girls, he redoubled his vigilance and I was confined to the house like a flower of the harem.