CARINO BY KIM ANTIEAU DRAWING BY FAY JONES David keeps us from the kitchen, tel Clinton St. Quarterly Clinton St. Quarterly “You are very happy, you and Jake?” David says. We walk along the tide mark, preferring the dry sand to the wet. “We are very happy,” I answer. I wait Sg hi i v a e n r t i n w g h a ite w a b k u e tt e to rf li d e a s r k m ne o s v s e , I a c wr a ot s c s h t h th e e w s a ti l l l l , li l n es e s o af part of the wallpaper now than they are in the day. The butterflies flutter almost imperceptibly, .and my nightmare is sent back further still into my unconscious, a curiosity to be examined in the light. I know the man I see is David. He is the only Hispanic surrounded by white-faced tourists who glance around and ask, "Where's the ocean?" “Pizza!” he exclaims, laughing, his eyes aflame from, the candlelight. Jake claps. I say, “Salvadoran food?” David shrugs and sets the dish on the table. “American food cooked by a Salvadoran.” “There' are only two settings,” I suddenly notice. “I feel as if you have not been alone in two weeks,” David says, taking a bowl of salad from the counter and putting it at my elbow. “You are married; you need time alone.” Jake pushes away from the table; the scraping of the legs are too loud in this small room. He takes a gas-station plate and sets it on the table, instant fine china. David rests his hand on Jake’s shoulder for an instant, like a butterfly resting on a flower. Then he pulls out a chair and joins us. ling us he is making his American friends a Salvadoran meal, his specialty. Jake and I stay in the study we now share, trying to write but mostly laughing as we try to guess what David is doing. He is awkward in the kitchen. It is the only place he shows even a distant impatience. There are too many gadgets and switches even in our simple kitchen. He is at our door. “You may come now,” he says. In the kitchen, the shades have been ‘drawn and light from two candles cause the gas-station plates to shape-change, making them look like bone-china. Blood shadows from the wine stain the linen tablecloth. “Sit,” he says, pulling out my chair. We smile and do as he asks. The kitchen smalls of basil and oregano. He opens the oven and my mouth waters, anticipating the dinner. He slides the dish I crack open the door to watch him sleep. He does not stir. I want to move closer, to be in the room and feel his dreams. Jake puts his arms around my waist and kisses my neck. “Leave him be,” he whispers. “It’s probably the first good sleep he’s had in a very long time.” I pull the door shut and turn in Jake’s arms to face him. He folds me to his chest. “We’ll never know what he was like before all this, I say. “He may have been cruel to his mother or harrassed women in the street or beat up little boys. He may have been someone I totally disliked.” Jake laughs, and presses me closer. The world dissolves when he is near to me; a reassuring dissolution that I sometimes crave. “Does it matter what he was?” Jake says. “He is here with us now.” was special—because of what he’d been through. “That's not so,” I say. David is not special because he has seen people he loved killed. No, he is just a person caught in the circumstances of the times. I shake my head, knowing that is not true. He is extraordinary. And one reason is his past. “I didn’t really know he was special until I actually saw him,” I say. From that moment I sensed a kindred spirit of sorts. Something gnaws at my soul: I don’t know what precisely. Some kink in the world conscience? Something that threatens me at night in my dreams. I His face is too perfect, I think when he steps off the bus. I hesitate going to him. I have never met him, but I know the man I see is David. He is the only Hispanic surrounded by white-faced tourists who glance around and ask, “Where's the ocean?” I reach for David’s arm—already I want to touch him—and say, “I am Cully.” He smiles and shakes my hand. It is a unable to return until after the revolution, he has told me. I know that means maybe never. Although I want to know his past, I don’t ask about it. I will not be a voyeur, watching him finger his wounds. “My grandmother used to brush our hair when we were children,” David says. “She used this brush with a handle that looked—to a little boy’s eyes—like it was made from jewels; I don't know what kind—madreperla?" “Mother of pearl?” He nods. “When I was a boy, it was the finest thing I had ever seen. I would sit very still while she brushed and looked for lice. She would tell me stories about my grandfather after he was killed. Later, she told me stories of my father and my Uncle Geraldo.” We have stopped, and he is looking out beyond the horizon. “I wanted her to be buried with it,” he says. “But they took it.” The only sound I hear comes from the ocean. Before I had become aware of Central America, I had little knowledge of the Spanish language, literature or mythology. When I visited Europe, I had skipped Spain, and I had never gone to see my relatives when they lived in Mexico: I had assumed those worlds would be filled with too much machismo for my taste. Now David turns from the ocean to look at me, and I see only the soul of a gentle human being. I stare at the blank paper, the hum of the typewriter like a buzz of an insect in my ear. I am writing a story about a Salvadoran escaping his home. The further into the story I move, the more I realize I do not know much about the main character. “I don't know what hurts him,” I say aloud, temporarily stopping the clacking of Jake’s typewriter. “I don’t know who he is.” “It doesn’t matter,” Jake says. “Even before you met him you’d decided he for him to say what others have: “You are lucky.” As if luck had anything to do with it. David nods. “That is good.” I slip my arm through his. I should have known he would not have said anything else. His “that is good” tells me we deserve it, it is right. David watches our feet as we walk, sometimes glancing up at the ocean. So often he seems oblivious to his surroundings, concentrating instead on the people with him—or else somewhere inside of himself. I want to ask if he is lonely, but I.know the answer. He is away from his country, child’s smile, filled with delight. “I bet you're tired,” I say, looking around for his suitcase, not knowing what else to say. He holds one bag and several books are tucked under his arm. I start to ask about the rest of the luggage and then I remember he left El Salvador in a hurry, days ago, switching from this car to that after the’ Mexican border, a straight shot up Highway 5 until the last car could not make it, and they risked putting him on a bus to the coast. They needn’t have worried. Oregon is far from the border. “I am fine,” he tells me, still smiling. I wait for him to look about, admire the day or the town, some tension-breaking pleasantries, but he is watching me. “Come on; I'll take you home,” I say. Jake waits for us at the house. He towers over David when the two shake hands. Jake leads David into his room. They are talking, but I cannot hear as I follow. Two quiet men. I smile. Perhaps we will all get along. I touch Jake’s shoulder and then leave the room, wanting to stand in the living room, to look across the lawn silvered with moonlight. Something stirs on the couch. “Dahveed,” I whisper, touching his hair gently with my fingertips. “Couldn’t you sleep?” I go around the couch to stand in front of him, gliding I think, a figure out of a fairytale. I kneel before him and take his hands. I cannot see his brown skin well, but I feel it in his hands, a velvet softness that is like a baby; a man my age, not yet thirty, with skin so unbattered. “You asked once why I do not watch television,” he said, his accented voice quieter than usual even in the silent house. “So I am here watching television now. We are silent companeros." My eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and I see he is looking at me. I reach across the room to open the curtains. It is far away and I must have moved from David, but I only remember his eyes looking at me. The moon is out, as I hoped it would be, and it pulls me to the window. David stands behind me, only slightly taller than I am. “I heard you weeping,” he whispers. “You do not like the night.” “It’s only old things. Sometimes they resurface at night.” . Images of the dream come back for a moment. Always in the nightmare I cannot save David. I shake the thought away. The dream fades and I am grateful for his presence this night. * o W. V oo ;a fe n
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