Reciting the Histories
Since his wife’s death, she had come to him more and more often in the form of voices, which, at first, he considered a consequence of old age rather than a manifestation of her spirit. He could see his wife vividly, but only with his eyes closed, in the black of night: her long, dark hair, nearly to her waist when unbraided, which she had taken to doing more often in the evening. In the daylight, she might have tied it back or braided it once again before making dinner or preparing the bed. And he continued to feel her small hands in his own, and her curious eyes. Even as he aged, he recalled the embrace of her youth, when he was young and whole, and after. Her voice? Su susurro? Insistent, and always awakening him from the comfort of his visions and her embrace. Was this his curse? The memory of his wife to be reduced to one soft sound? The whistle through the mail slot, the rattle of their bedroom door, the rattle of his daughter’s bedroom door, all voices? Longing for comfort, he opened his eyes to the faces of the commonplace, but his waking vision was fading as quickly as his legs, and he could only rely on what he heard. Voices of the grocer, the postman, the young wife, the drunken neighbor, the children at play, the young children in the street. And still, her voice. Was it a singular voice, or many voices whispering in unison? He did not know, but this was what his wife had told him: nightmares are neither unusual nor grotesque; they often rise up in tones as reasonable and as calm as a dream; they can be mistaken for a dream. The voices he heard were common, dreamlike, and the dreamlike voices anchored themselves to the walls and to his skin.
He closed his eyes to rest them from the incoming sun. When he opened them and read the page again, his words looked suddenly foolish, as foolish as he had declared them to be when his wife would utter them, in her youth, in their young marriage, before their travels north, before their daughter. He discarded the paper and began once more.
Dear Ciela, I write to bring you news. I write to bring you news.
An odd word, news. His letter was less news than a revisitation to old ground. His wife had been gone and buried for nearly a year, but he was certain his daughter would be stricken by the newness of it. For her it was news. What made the word so odd was that Paulino had announced it so suddenly, so starkly. And in his own hand. For a moment he questioned the truth of it, despite the black ink and the ivory paper. The contrast. And he questioned if black and ivory were the proper colors for such a letter. Of course they were, he decided. At once a letter of greeting and a letter of death. Hola. Adios. Hello. Farewell. But what of the rest? The revisiting? The rapprochement? The retribution? There was more to say beyond the news of death, even in black and ivory, to such a young girl.
A young girl? Ciela’s age, he suddenly realized, had slipped beneath his scrawl unnoticed. She was no longer a girl of fifteen. How long had it been since he had seen her—since her mother had seen her? Twenty years? Perhaps, although longer for him than for his wife. She had visited Ciela often, first in her Phoenix apartment and later when she moved south of the city. He knew of his wife’s visits but could not bring himself to go along. At first she pleaded with him. Then she wept with him. After a time—after the seventh or eighth refusal—she stopped asking, but tears remained, for both his wife and himself. His daughter’s distance was too painful for him to face. This is what he told himself, what he told his wife, so he waited patiently for the pain to dissolve, or to be carried away like thistle from an August field.
His face hovered above the page. It all seemed wrong. The first draft and the following draft and the following draft, and still he could not bring himself to finish: the letter, the arthritic scrawl, the salutation. Dear Ciela, he wrote. Even the greeting belied a distance unfitting a father and a daughter. But there it was. In his hand. The facts as he had written them down, one line bleeding into another.
Dear Ciela, I write to bring you news of your mother’s death. That I have waited so long to tell you will likely harden your heart toward me. But I have heard the voices that whisper “it is time…it is time.”
The delay would be no surprise to Ciela, he knew. He was accomplished at ignoring the inevitable. Had his twisted form not been evidence of this? The delay of any harvest heightens the deformity of the crop. Of the fruit. And it goes on to infect the remaining crops. And would he say “The fruit will grow larger with time? The crop more abundant?” We are left with rot. This much he knew.