A Love Forbidden

  "A junior-year lark?" An acidic note in Jeff's voice told Leah to get to the point, fast.

  "I got to Amsterdam the night a student riot broke out on the Dam. People scattered in every direction. I thought, 'God, it's Berkeley all over again!' and caught a streetcar heading away from the Royal Palace. Using a combination of sign language, school German, and restaurant French, I asked people on the car where I could find a youth hostel. A man in front of me said in perfect English, 'Get off at the next stop, and go across the canal. There's one on the corner.'"

  "The next morning," Leah continued, "I discovered I was only a few doors from Anne Frank's house. I'd devoured the book and seen the play and movie too. Now, there I was. I opened the door and went up the narrowest, steepest stairway I'd ever seen. At first, I was fascinated by the black-and-white photos on the walls and in awe of the fact that I was standing on the actual floorboards Anne Frank walked and played on during her family's confinement there. I went up to the loft, where she and Peter van Daan spent so much time together, looking out that tiny window at the sky."

  "I know the exact spot. You're bringing back lots of memories."

  "So, you had a junior-year lark too?" she asked with an innocent smile.

  "Touché!" Jeff grabbed his left shoulder as if to cover a stab wound and laughed out loud. "I deserved that." Getting the interview back on track, Jeff lead into the next part of her story. "Tell us what happened in that upstairs room."

  Leah took a deep breath, refocused, and went on. "I heard wailing a siren. It stopped in front of the building. The walls closed in on me." No matter how many times she related this event, the same terror and lonely desperation grabbed her by the throat. "Suddenly . . . I was Anne Frank. I heard the stomp of heavy boots rushing up the wooden staircase--rifle butts pounding on the bookshelf that concealed the entrance to our hiding place--the look of horrified resignation and despair on everyone's faces. My father. My mother. My sister. Peter. And why? What had I done? I was only fifteen years old!"

  Jeff stared at her. Gone was the slick TV veteran. The studio audience had disappeared into the silence beyond the banks of lights that nearly blinded her.

  "Don't stop now, please," Jeff urged.

  "I stumbled down the stairs, clutching at the walls for support, hardly able to breathe. Outside, I lay down on a bench to let the blood flow back to my brain."

  At a signal from the floor director, Jeff threw his hands up in a gesture of resignation. "It's time for another commercial break." As soon as the camera's red light went dark, Jeff leaned over and whispered, "Dynamite story!"

  Two minutes later, they were on again. "We left you on the bench outside Anne Frank's house," Jeff said, providing Leah with an open field on which to play out the remainder of her story.

  "I looked across the canal and saw a sign: Prisoners of Conscience International, World Headquarters. I went over and said, 'What can I do to help?'"

  During the next break, Kati collected questions from the audience. Leah wanted to eavesdrop, but Jeff insisted on engaging her in idle chit-chat. "You look great in that outfit," he began. "Turquoise. Good choice for the cameras."

  Leah thanked him without stoking this off-camera turn in their conversation. The red light on the Cyclopean Camera 1 rescued her.

  "We have a caller named Carmen in Menlo Park," Jeff announced after reading the name off a prompter mounted atop the camera. "Carmen, are you there?"

  "Yes, Mr. Nelson." Carmen spoke with a thick Central American accent. Leah guessed the woman to be in her 30s or 40s. "I would like to ask Mrs. Barton, do you ever feel yourself to be in any personal . . . peligro-- How do you say it? Danger?"

  Leah watched her ratings-sensitive host leap at the opportunity to send the interview in a controversial new direction. "Sounds like you have a reason for asking that question, Carmen," Jeff prodded. "Can you tell us what it is?"

  "I was director of the Human Rights Office in San Salvador." Leah had heard this voice before. Not this very one, but others like it. In it she heard the terror of men and women who constantly looked over their shoulders in public, who ducked at the sound of a car backfiring. Years of suffering and first-hand knowledge of terrible atrocities muted the caller's tone.

  "I fled to this country after they murdered my father and brother," Carmen said. "Now, I have reason to believe the death squads are no longer bound by borders, but are active right here in California."

  Jeff looked at Leah, eager for her response. "Carmen wants to know if you feel personally threatened by your work. After all, you put heat on some pretty powerful bad guys around the world."

  The question had never come up in any of Leah's previous interviews. "No, I don't consider myself to be in any danger."

  Leah had read reports of suspected death squad activities within the Central American refugee community. San Francisco police and the FBI suspected that the recent murder of a Taiwanese-American newspaperman had been the work of agents of his former country's repressive government. As yet, no proof of the allegations had surfaced.

  "There's one major difference in our situations," Leah suggested. "Aside from marching with the Mothers of the Disappeared in Buenos Aires, I haven't traveled to a country POCI has targeted. Except for issuing an annual report on conditions in individual countries, POCI maintains a low profile. None of the letters our volunteers send mention affiliation with POCI. We never take the credit when a prisoner of conscience is released. Does that answer your question, Carmen?"

  "Yes, but please--" Great urgency constricted Carmen's voice. "Do not dismiss the possibility. The human rights movement has powerful enemies. They stop at nothing to preserve their power." By the time Carmen had finished speaking, it was clear that the woman was in tears.

  "Thank you for your call, Carmen." Jeff turned to Leah. "Could it happen here?"

  "I don't think it's likely, but I'll tell you this. It's devastating to hear from someone who has suffered so much." Leah's passion rose. "There are too many Carmens in this world. They've been driven from their homes, separated from their families and the lands of their birth. And, for what? They've only dared to demand that every man, woman, and child be given the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and that no one should ever be sent to prison or killed for what they believe." She looked straight into the camera, as if addressing every world leader who dared to criminalize opposition. "Those are rights I'll fight for until the day I die."

  * * *

  Back at her Market Street office, Leah felt drained, but satisfied that she had spoken well for the cause she loved and served as passionately as a mother with two active children could. Although swamped with work, she couldn't shake Carmen's phone call from her consciousness. The woman's voice had the crystal ring of prophecy. It suggested, warned rather, that oppressive regimes had raised the stakes in the human rights arena. Those committed to the cause of justice and liberation could no longer count on physical distance as a guarantee of personal safety.

  "What if Carmen's right?" The nagging question followed her to the weekly staff meeting, where she looked with new eyes at her dedicated associates. It lingered when she gathered with local Cell leaders at two o'clock. The question beat on the door of her unwilling imagination as she drove across town to pick up Teddy and Monica at school. For the first time, she asked herself what right she had to put her children in danger, no matter how remote that danger might be.

  "What if?" she repeated again, when she turned out the lights that night. What would it mean to the regularly paced and comfortable life she and the children enjoyed?

  "Cuidado. Be careful, hermana," all the Carmens of the world cautioned her in the darkness.

  "Of what?" Leah asked the chorus of suffering sisters, before drifting into restless sleep.

  3

  If the early part of Independence Day belonged to God, midday belonged to the Santa Teresita's politicians and other civic dignitaries. Father Javier had heard the same speec
hes year after year, mostly by the same homegrown orators.

  The festivities progressed throughout the day, as did the heat and humidity. The central plaza swarmed with ad hoc entrepreneurs, eager to make a few extra cruzeros by selling anything they could from the backs of their donkey carts and battered old pickups. It was as close to a Florida-style swap meet as Santa Teresita could manage. It reminded Javier of his bargain-hunting days as a young seminarian in and around St. Augustine on Florida's Atlantic Coast.

  By nightfall, all but the food vendors had abandoned the plaza. Electric amplifiers blared a steady stream of salsa music whose Latin beat Javier found irresistible. Yet, he politely refused the few awkward young women who invited him to dance, undoubtedly on dares from giggling friends who peeked from behind posts across the festooned outdoor dance area.

  With a final, "No, thank you," he moved away from the dancing and strolled through the plaza. He soon became aware that the day's prayerful beginning and thunder of drums and marching had given way to excessive alcohol consumption--always the prelude to trouble. Real or imagined infidelities or sexual encroachments led to inflamed jealousies, which led to angry words among some of the young, impulsive tough guys of the village, and a few not so young. In the end, there were the inevitable fist fights and the eruption of small arms gunfire.

  Javier had ended more than one Independence Day at the hospital or the police station ministering to the victims and survivors of fights, stabbings, and shootings. He prayed it would be different this year.

  At eleven o'clock, the hospital summoned him to give the sacrament of the sick--and, in this case, dying--to twenty-one-year-old Roberto Yañez who had the bad fortune to be an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time. A pistol shot intended for his pal, Miguel Arroyo, had lodged in Roberto's brain, guaranteeing he'd never attend another Independence Day celebration.

  These senseless acts of violence sickened Javier. He had made nonviolence--physical, sexual, verbal, emotional-- a hallmark of his ministry. He had done everything within his moral power to pass on his deep convictions to these passionate, hot-blooded highlanders. His greatest joys came in those unexpected moments when disputes having the potential for bloodshed were settled peacefully. He suffered when alcohol-induced violence won out, as it had this night.

  These thoughts pounded inside Javier's head, as he walked to the clinic exit with Dr. Miguel Alonzo, who had attended the Yañez boy. "How can we expect governments to shun violence, Miguel, when neighbors can't even spend a holiday together without killing each other?"

  The doctor's response to the tragedy was less emotional than the priest's. "My mother taught me you can only save the world one person at a time."

  Javier nodded a reluctant, mournful agreement. "It's so slow that way."

  On the short walk home from the hospital, Javier wondered about the rumors creeping up the slopes of Chuchuán from the capital. Had there really been arrests at the university? Was it true that the authorities had tortured those being held? He had heard unvalidated rumors before. He doubted they were true this time.

  Close to midnight, Javier reached his small room at the back of the parish house. He had grown so accustomed to these minimal quarters that he experienced a kind of social shock whenever he ventured into Santa Catalina, the capital, and stayed at Archbishop Palacios's residence or even in his own mother's home.

  A rough wooden frame held his narrow bed together. The hard mattress had exceeded its life expectancy. Because the bed was too short for his taller-than-average height, he frequently awakened in the night with leg cramps. A few pieces of unvarnished, non-matching furniture and some personal items crowded the remaining space.

  A small table served both as desk and typewriter table for his old workhorse Olympia portable, a gift from his parents when he graduated from high school. That green, solid-steel machine had faithfully seen him through the seminary and into the ministry. On it he had written hundreds of homilies and most of his personal correspondence. A wash basin that jutted out from the wall and a single bookcase rounded out the furnishings. There was hardly room for Javier to squeeze between the furniture, as he moved about.

  He began keeping a spiritual journal-diary after his ordination. Gradually, the press of parish duties and a creeping depression that settled over him when he saw his inner self exposed on paper spaced the stream-of-consciousness entries further and further apart. Almost without his noticing it, they ceased altogether.

  The final entry in Javier's journal read, Almost midnight, December 31, 1987. End of year . . . . Who am I? Is there a human being inside this cassock? Or is it a black shell, an empty garment from which all vitality has fled? . . . God, Javier! You're in a state. Stop feeling sorry for yourself! New Year's resolution: spend a half hour in meditation every day . . . pray for renewed energy and commitment. It had worked, at least for a while, but that had been the end of his journaling.

  Only a few feet away from Javier's single screenless window stood a row of mud houses, from which the unfiltered sounds and smells of village life entered his room. On festive nights such as this one, the voices rose louder than usual.

  "I saw how you looked at her. Don't think I didn't!"

  Newlyweds María del Carmen and Ramón Martinez had worked themselves up to another good fight. How different they had been the day Javier joined them in "holy" matrimony.

  "Come on, María, let go of it," Javier muttered. If this bout went according to pattern, she and Ramón would yell at each other for a few minutes, then quiet would descent on their bedroom. Following a prolonged silence, they'd treat their parish priest to the sounds of uninhibited lovemaking and triumphant orgasms.

  This was the way it went with his neighbors. Day and night, he shared their marital spats and their moments of pleasure, both public and private. It was a one-way sharing. Rarely did any sound escape his room, no angry words, no audible cries of pain--or pleasure. How multiple generations could occupy such small dwellings and be contented was a mystery to him. Nor could he understand how his neighbors found a way to make love without the privacy he insisted on the one and only time he had ever made love to a woman. They must be just as puzzled how I can stand to live so quietly and with so much solitude.

  Javier wondered, too, if the man who had fired the fatal bullet into young Yañez had heard his Independence Day homily. It seemed like such a long time ago that Javier had stood before his congregation. He hoped the killer hadn't been in church. It would only highlight the futility of his ministry among these people who dwelt on the volcano's outer skin, the inheritors of its raging spirit. They were rich in passion, if in nothing else. But, the same passion with which they loved God and made love to their spouses (and girlfriends and married lovers) was too often expended in killing and maiming each other.

  What good have I done in the years I've served them? A rhetorical question. In a way, he envied Roberto Yañez. Not that he wanted to die, but the thought of spending another October Seventeenth in this mountain village depressed him no end. Without a specific plan, he vowed to be gone before then. Gone? Where do you think you're going?

  Javier stripped to his cotton briefs and knelt on the uncarpeted plank floor, elbows resting on the lumpy mattress. "'Lord, save us while we are awake,'" he recited, "'protect us when asleep, and Christ with whom we keep watch, will guard our souls in peace.'" Maybe the time had come to wake up to a truth that had forced its way into his consciousness. "Not tonight," he groaned. Instead, his mind slipped away to happier days than the one just ending.

  Javier had been born the first and only child of the rising young army officer Ernesto de Córdova and the former South Florida debutante Erica McFarland. They named their son Javier Estebán after his paternal grandfather, recently deceased. The date was August 15, 1946, feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The child possessed a subtle and quite harmonious blend of Hispanic and Scotch-Irish features.

  Even as a young boy, Javie
r had been quite handsome. Partly because a winning upward turn at the corners of his mouth gave his face a welcoming quality, people found him easy to like, despite the mischief he initiated.

  Moving into adolescence, he grew taller than most of his pure Hispanic and Hispanic-Indian classmates. His jaw squared like his father's, giving him a look of physical strength and determination. His surprisingly blue eyes provided an interesting contrast against his olive complexion and black hair.

  Everyone expected young Javier to follow his father into military service, but the boy declined to declare himself when asked about his career plans. Finally, on the day of his graduation from high school, he announced his intention to study for the priesthood. His delighted mother confessed she had prayed since his birth that he would make some other choice than a career in the army. To have a priest in the family exceeded her dreams. It renewed her faith in a provident God who knew best what was good for his faithful followers.

  Javier's choice disappointed Captain de Córdova, but he too had faith in God and refused to stand in the way of his son's vocation. Only the girls Javier had dated in high school--and those who still held out hope--had the nerve to say out loud what all the young women thought: "What a waste!"

  In the fall of 1963, Javier entered the archdiocesan seminary located in a villa-like atmosphere on the outskirts of Santa Catalina. Unlike others who had joined one of the many religious orders, Javier chose to become a parish priest in the service of his local archbishop. This assured a life of service on his native island, where he had always be close to his beloved parents. Javier found his niche in the all-male clerical life and excelled in his philosophical studies. After four years, Archbishop Palacios sent the promising seminarian to study theology at the regional pontifical seminary in Florida.

  On a cloudless May morning in 1971, Deacon Javier knelt before the archbishop, prepared to commit his whole life to the service of God and the Church. The elderly prelate imposed hands on the young ordinand's head, consecrated the new priest's palms with holy chrism and bound them with a spotless linen cloth.