Rita’s voice rose and fell, and I realized that she had finished. There was a long communal sigh as we sat back in our chairs, allowed to be comfortable again.
“Your poem is very strong, very moving,” Sandy Peeple said.
“Thank you.” Sweat was gluing my hair to my forehead. But this woman didn’t flinch. When she uncrossed her long legs I caught a flash of blue panties.
“May I ask you some questions?” she said.
“Of course.”
I was puffing. Was it possible they couldn’t see?
“Please tell me to back off if you don’t feel like talking about it.”
I waited.
Her face tightened as she sought the correct words. “Can you tell us more about what you’ve been through in recent months?”
“What do you desire to know?”
“How were you treated during your imprisonment?” Her face tensed another notch.
“Excuse me, ‘treated’?”
“I’ve read, of course, accounts of… torture.” She whispered the word, like some people whisper the word “naked” or “cancer.” Her gaze fell to my hand and I realized, to my embarrassment, that she was staring at my finger. Or rather, where the tip of my finger had been. My mother, one Sunday morning, had slammed the door of a taxi and my toddler fingertip had been neatly sliced off.
“Please excuse me, Carlos. I quite understand if you don’t want to talk about this.”
I dug my hand in my pocket, then, realizing that this would make it even more certain to her, some unspeakable altercation forming in her fevered brain, I pulled out my hand and let it sit on my knee. It was nearly dusk and the lilacs had begun to seep their sweet scent into the air. I was used to the sounds of chaos, of sirens and honking; even in my basement, with a window inches from the sidewalk, the racket of city life filled my ears.
“It is something I cannot speak of now.”
Everybody nodded. I smelled a whiff of embarrassment. They were relieved, but perhaps also disappointed. For hadn’t they worked hard to bring me here? Rita had told me all about the benefit, the book sale, the barbeque, a mass poetry reading, and a special plea to members clear across the country. I was grateful for the rhythmic slap of the basketball next door.
“You can smoke if you like,” Sydney said, passing an immaculate ashtray.
I felt them watch as my jittery fingers worked to light a cigarette.
Finally Sandy Peeple cleared her throat and said, “I write a little poetry, too.”
“Everybody in the department of English writes poetry,” Syd said. “Carlos, you have little competition. Other than you, the only genuine artist here is Rita. She scrapes by with her contracts at the Grad Centre and performs her strange theatricals for tiny but avid audiences.”
“Shut up, Sydney,” Rita said.
I ignored this exchange and looked only at Sandy, whose intense brown eyes peered from behind her glasses.
“I think you are a good poet,” I said.
She didn’t blush. “Why?”
“I can tell that you have real feeling inside you, by the way you speak.”
There was another embarrassed silence. I was being too earnest, too personal. Yet at the same time I could see that I had given Sandy pleasure.
Sydney made a snorting noise then exclaimed, “All this must seem incredibly decadent to you.” His arms spread, encompassing the patio with its wicker furniture, the table laden with half-eaten food, and the pristine bottle of brandy which I was waiting for him to open. “Our lives are soft,” he went on. “They have the texture of futons.”
“Do not feel guilty for your lives,” I said. “Why should you give up anything? You are just normal people leading normal lives in a normal country. It is how it should be.”
“But how many thousands are there like you?” Lucy said. She had been sitting back, watchful. She was younger than the other professors and wore a pair of overalls, like a teenager. Her hair was pulled into a no-nonsense ponytail. “Not just in your country, but all over the world. Prisoners of conscience.”
“What can you do for all these people?” I was getting impatient. This was beginning to sound like the discussions I had at home with my pals in the café. We got the most sentimental and vehement when we were drunk. And the next morning we went back to the newspaper and wrote our tepid columns.
Sydney cut himself a slice of soft cheese and wrapped it around a grape.
“Who among us could endure a fraction of what Carlos has been through?”
There was a respectful silence as each pondered the question. Sharon had folded her arms over her chest and was staring at me with an odd expression. Her eyes were no longer moist.
“Excuse me.” I rose to my feet. “I must go to the toilet.”
Again my knees banged against the table and again the peanuts spun off, this time safely to the ground. My head was throbbing: they all had stories constructed for me, much better tales than mine. How would I avoid disappointing them?
Sydney gave me instructions, which I couldn’t understand, and so I found myself lurching through his house, opening and shutting doors to closets, a laundry room, a study. Somewhere rock music was playing and its pulse vibrated through the walls.
Finally, seconds away from pissing in a corner, I raced down the hall and flipped open the last door. A young man, shirtless, lay across a narrow bed. There was the sweet smell of hashish. Music was pounding from a boom box at his feet. The room was dark, except for one flickering candle. The boy lifted his head off the pillow and said in a sleepy voice, “What d’you want?”
“The toilet.”
“Other end of the hall.” He squinted. “You the poet?”
“I am.”
“Close the door on your way out.”
Above Sydney’s toilet was a framed print showing a cherub pissing into a pool of tiny red fish.
3
RITA SAT IN HER STENOGRAPHER’S CHAIR, SPINE erect. I watched as, without thinking, she tilted the gooseneck lamp so it bathed one side of her face in light, while she nodded, talking to some invisible person on the phone.
“That’s possible,” she said. Then, “I might.” Her body coiled, as if she were mapping out the next gesture. I saw the dancer in her now. She replaced the receiver in its cradle and stared at the wall while I pretended not to notice. I was playing with Andreas on the floor. We were constructing a tower from his alphabet blocks, an elaborate enterprise with a wide base and a gradually diminishing point, like the Chrysler Building in New York City, famous for its art deco elegance. The boy was impatient at first, and always glancing towards his mother as if to ask, may he do this.
“That was your father,” she said after a moment, and Andreas watched her face, waiting to hear what this meant. We were so close I could hear his breathing speed up, feel his damp body shiver with excitement.
She lifted one slim leg and swung it over the other. In another day I would have to enter my students’ quarters, but today I was still inside a real family.
“He’ll pick you up tonight.”
“Will I spend the night at Jane’s?” the boy said.
She nodded. “You will spend the night at Jane’s.”
When he returned