He was a younger, happier version of himself.
My good news, baby: his first exhibit in a gallery in Miraflores. A real opening with wine, a catalogue, and they’d promised him press, maybe even half a column interview in one of the Sunday magazines. This is what he wanted to tell her.
Wari knocked some more. He hummed along to the melody that played in her apartment. He pulled pen and paper from his bag and composed a note for her, in English. They were both studying it at an institute, Elie with much less enthusiasm. English is tacky, she’d say. She mourned the passing of Spanish, the faddish use of gringo talk. It was everywhere: on television, in print, on the radio. In cafés, their peers spoke like this: “Sí, pero asi es la gente nice. No tienen ese feeling.” Why are you learning that language, acomplejado, my dear Wari, you just paint and you’ll be fine. She made him laugh and that was why he loved her. On a piece of paper torn from a notebook, he wrote:
I come see you, but instead meet your absence.
It’s perfect, he thought. He put a W in the corner, just because — as if anyone else would come to her home and leave a note like this. He tacked it to the door and walked down to the street, music serenading the walls of empty apartments. Music that slipped out into the street. He had nothing to do but wait for her. A kid on the corner scowled at him, but Wari smiled back. It was late afternoon, the last dying light of day.
The show went up, but the reception was sparsely attended. “It’s a bad time,” said Eric, with Leah on his arm. “The anniversary has everyone on edge.”
“On edge,” Wari asked, “is like scared?”
“Just like that,” Leah said.
Wari didn’t care. He was scared too. And not because the world could explode, or because Manhattan could sink into the sea. Real fears. His paintings were glowing beneath the bright lights. A handful of people filtered in and out, sipping champagne from plastic cups. Already there was something foreign about his paintings, as if they were the work of someone else, a man he used to know, an acquaintance from a distant episode in his life. There was nothing special about them, he decided. They exist, as I exist, and that is all.
The grandiose illusion of the exile is that they are all back home, your enemies and your friends, voyeurs all, watching you. Everything has gained importance because you are away. Back home, your routines were only that. Here, they are portentous, significant. They have the weight of discovery. Can they see me? In this city, this cathedral? In this New York gallery? Never mind that it was nearly empty, and a hundred blocks from the neighborhoods where art was sold. Not for himself, but for their benefit, Wari would manufacture the appropriate amount of excitement. Make them all happy. I’m doing it, Ma, he’d say over the static. It’s a bad connection, but I know now everything will be all right.
Afterward, Eric and Leah took Wari out for drinks with some friends. He could tell they felt bad, as if they had let him down. Eric complained about student apathy. Lack of engagement, he called it. His department was in disarray, he said, they hadn’t done a very good job of advertising. Leah nodded in solemn agreement. It was all words. Nothing Wari said could convince his host that he really didn’t care. I used you, he wanted to say. I’m not a painter anymore. But that seemed so cruel, so ungrateful, and still untrue.
“Is no problem,” he repeated over and over. “We have good time.”
“Yes, yes, but still…I feel bad.”
Americans always feel bad. They wander the globe carrying this opulent burden. They take digital photographs and buy folk art, feeling a dull disappointment in themselves, and in the world. They bulldoze forests with tears in their eyes. Wari smiled. He wanted to say he understood, that none of it was Eric’s fault. It’s what had to happen. He took Eric’s hand. “Thank you,” Wari said, and squeezed.
The bar was warm and lively. The televisions broadcasted baseball games from a dozen cities. Eric’s friends congratulated Wari, clapped him on the back. “Muy bien!” they shouted gregariously. They wouldn’t let him spend a single dollar. They bought round after round until the lights from the beer signs were blurred neon arabesques. Wari felt it nearly impossible to understand a single word of their shouted conversations. There was a girl, a woman who kept making eyes at him. She was slight and had a fragile goodness to her. Wari watched her whisper with Leah, and they looked his way and smiled. He smiled back.
“I liked your paintings very much,” she said later. The night was winding down. Already a few people had left. Leah and Eric had separated from the group. They kissed each other and laughed and, by the way they looked into each other’s eyes, Wari could tell they were in love. It made him feel silly.
He was ignoring the woman in front of him. “Thank you,” he said.
“They’re so violent.”
“I do not intend that.”
“It’s what I saw.”
“Is good you see this. Violence sometime happen.”
“I’m Ellen,” she said.
“Is nice name. My ex-wife name Elie.”
“You’re Wari.”
“I am.”
“How long will you stay?”
“I have ten more days on the visa,” Wari said.
“Oh.”
“But I do not know.”
There were more drinks and more intimate shouting over the cacophony of the bar. Ellen had a sweet smile and lips he could see himself kissing. His hand had fallen effortlessly on her knee. In the corner of the bar, Leah and Eric kissed again and again. How long will you stay I do not know. HowlongwillyoustayIdonotknow. Wari wanted to drop his glass on the floor, but he was afraid it wouldn’t shatter. He was afraid no one would applaud, no one would understand the beauty of that sound. The days were vanishing. Then he was in the street and Ellen was teaching him how to hail a cab. You have to be aggressive, she said. Does she think we don’t have cabs? he wondered, shocked. Does she think we ride mules? Just as quickly, he didn’t care. She meant nothing by it. He could feel the planet expanding, its details effaced. Who is this woman? What city is this? The evening was warm, and the sky, if you looked straight up, was a deep indigo. They were downtown. His head was swimming in drink. I should call my mother, he thought, and tell her I’m alive. I should call Elie and tell her I’m dead.
They stood on the street corner. Cab after yellow cab rolled past Wari’s outstretched arm. He was no good at it. Wari turned to find Ellen in a daze, gazing down the avenue.
“They were there, you know. Just right there,” Ellen said. She reached for his hand.
They were quiet. She pointed with two fingers in the direction of the southern horizon, toward the near end of the island. Wari stared at the yawning space in the sky, a wide and hollow nothing.
the visitor
It had been three months and I thought things would have gotten easier. The children still cried at night. They still asked about their mother. On clear mornings, I took them to the cemetery, which was all that was left of the old town. From that hill we could see the remains of the valley, and the sharp scar where the mountain had slipped. The planes flew only on clear, cloudless days, and we watched for them in the skies above us: whirling, seesawing, their shaky wings trembling in the mountain wind. The children waved. We counted the parachutes drifting down and down. It was a game we played. I taught Mariela and Ximena to differentiate between German and French as we sifted through the aid packages. I helped Efraín pull the parachutes from the mud and clean them off.