Happy That It's Not True (31 page)

              They belong in the story...along with Diego and Ling and all the others.  What else is there to do out at sea, but tell stories?   I don’t know what their names are.  I’ll name them Cara—and Alejandro.  They remind me of my children.  They look so innocent.  How beautiful the world must appear to them.  There’s too much defilement within me to see as well as they do.  I know there’s truth out there somewhere, but I can’t see beyond the veil.  Perhaps I’m hopeless.  Perhaps only God can save me from myself.  Someone should tell them.  Someone really should.  That if one day, their hearts should break, to consider it all joy, for joy is always filled with sadness—a small price to pay.  Little children, take the good with the bad.  Steal joy if you have to.  Purchase every sorrow. 

...

              In the dream, she stared at a moonlit flower for a long time.  The column, petal and lips seemed to form a face.  As if to shame her, it became the exact representation of her husband, the one she always took for granted.  In that moment of clarity, she remembered that he was her rock, the answer to every prayer that she had starred the heavens with.   

              She vowed to return to the only thing that mattered, a perfect life and a perfect love.  She looked closer at the flower, shining in its constellation of tendrils, and noticed that it was filled with words.  The flower wasn’t a flower at all, but a crumpled up letter, stained with a lover’s tears.

              She awoke, determined to destroy her love letter before her husband could find it.  She didn’t know what possessed her to write such words, in a letter she never intended to send; to a man she didn’t love. 

              She had seen Luciano one day in the park.  He was magnificent.  Tall, but not too tall.  Handsome, slender and charming.  The sight of him in a baseball uniform almost made her want to undress, or at least reveal something of her labyrinth heart that she was unable to show her husband.  But in Luciano’s gaze, she found nothing but oceans of emptiness, and never once touched him.  She knew that half the women on the island coveted him.  He was merely an ideal, a fantasy, not her joy, her strength and satisfaction.

              The last time she had seen her husband, it almost seemed that he was asking with his eyes for an eternal embrace.  Sometimes you can tell by a person’s expression that it will be the last time you ever see them.  She entertained the thought for a moment and then scoffed at it.  But a day later, she feared the worst, because few things in life matter as much as the things people never get to say to one another. 

              She searched for her husband, to claim once again her perfect life and perfect love, but he had already left on a balsa, hoping only that she would enjoy his absence, and perhaps one day, be as happy as Ling.

              And so her husband drifted out to sea with a group of men who had spent so much time together that they had begun to resemble each other, identical in their length of facial stubble and silver rimmed spectacles, equal in their beatings and imprisonment. 

              He could identify with their plight—to document the disappearance of others, to denounce nationalism and crimes against humanity.  But he had chosen love, wishing to carve out some measure of happiness with his wife and children.  And yet, in the end, he discovered that life is cruel to both the brave and the ordinary.     

              Once they were far out in the choppy waters, and could no longer see land, he told them a parable.  He said that the kingdom of hell was like an enormous canyon that had been dug out of the earth and that with all the dirt taken from the excavation, a mountain in the sea was created, a place that one could climb only by day, and never after sunset, to enter paradise. 

              The men told him that they didn’t understand the parable, and so he explained to them that in the darkest of nights, there is much to be unearthed; much to help form a way to heaven, a place where not only could one fall in love, but also stay in love. 

              The men told him that they still couldn’t grasp his strange elucidations, and so he told a long story of human sorrow, inspired by the war in Afghanistan and the spiritual war that tears at every heart.  And when he was finished telling his story, they all died at the feet of God, in the whirlwind and the storm.

...

              His wife found a new letter, folded in the shape of a flower and placed over her letter to Luciano.  It read:

              My love, my sky, my reason to breathe and die.  If only I could have you.  If only you could have loved me.  I know it’s too much to ask, to possess the entire night.  That’s what you are to me, the stars that fill up the void.  Your bright eyes are breathtaking, magical like the tides rushing in under the moonlight.  I sometimes believed that you loved me as much as I loved you.  Such vanity - how could I ever think that I could have you to myself - that the stars belong to only one lover?  But how I treasured your lies.  I remember the times when I kissed you over and over, each kiss like a luminous horizon, a prayer, a fasting, with each warm kiss, my night ending.  But now my night grows greater.  The moon has stopped moving against the rim of the sky, eclipsed by the shadow of your licentious secrets.  I want to run to you, but can only run away, knowing that you are not mine.  I can never forget your kisses, a hymn, an ecstasy, your warm kisses, like a faint laughter that cures all despair.  And because I can never forget, I will believe all your lies. 

...

              The balseros passed from flame to flame, the wood, stubble and hay burning away, along with every facet of their souls that had not been born of love.  As they approached the shores of ethereal light, the storyteller was unable to chronicle the happenings that surpassed sight, sound, human language and imagination.  His scientific mind shuddered at the word heaven, which to him, seemed like such an antiquated concept.  He preferred the term higher dimension. 

              His emotions were searched and sifted, torn apart, happiness from fear, envy from passion, arrogance from self-loathing.  He felt himself being refined by the flames; perhaps there would be something left that was formed of silver and gold, something within him—made of love—that would endure the caldron. 

              There had never been any data to suggest that such things were possible, not a shred of proof that the soul lives on along with thoughts and memories, nothing that could be verified in a controlled experiment.  Yet despite the plain conclusions of logic and reason and all empirical evidence, he felt the presence of God’s consuming fire seething before him. 

              There was a quality that was beyond fear and trembling, a sobriety, maybe it was an inquisitiveness that drew him closer.  What was this light?  This fire?  Was it the collective unconsciousness of man?  Was there truth to the Eastern concept of Ātman?  Was it true that only that which is formed of the love of Christ would enter paradise? 

              He thought he had known paradise, in the love of his children and his wife’s fleeting touch.  Yet there had been many times that he had suspected that truth only came from above, that there was none of it on Earth.  The sky always seemed so mysterious, so many stars and swirling cloudscapes.  He could imagine it opening up like a hidden doorway through a bookcase to a secret room. 

              He had never seen such an entrance, and could only imagine what a façade of faux book spines looked like.  It seemed his wife’s love had been like that, an illusion, a lie.  If only he could have been like Diego.  “God must have wanted Diego to be happy,” he thought.  “God must have cared deeply about his happiness, because he gave him Ling.”        

              There was a great silence.  And then he could almost hear music coming from the light; an ocean of harmony. 

...

              In a courtyard in a dilapidated building in Northern Havana, Diego and Ling sat together at a mosaic patio table.  Ling drank her espresso; Diego swung a bag of black tea like a pendulum to his favorite ostinato blaring from their apartment in the second floor.

              She’s hardly eaten in days—Ling said.

              How?—Diego asked—How could this happen?

              I told you she was crazy—secretly writing erotica about other men and expecting her husband never to find out.

              And what do you think—she would keep her darkness bottled up?

              It’s just such a shame—and now he’s gone.

              It was obvious it would never last—with her mental illness, and with his fear of abandonment, it was only a matter of time.

              Everyone is a little crazy—like artists.  It seems the smarter people are, the less they can control their thoughts.  But we don’t judge.  Do we? 

              We know better.

              What about us?  Tell me we’ll always be together.

              Para siempre
—forever and ever.

              Ling beamed as she lifted Diego’s hand up to her cheek. 

              Diego, what we have is rare.

              Some people say that you have to find happiness in yourself, or higher self, or God—that you can’t expect to find it in another person.  But I have to be honest with you, I can’t imagine being happy without you.

              And I can’t live without you.

              Look at us—we’re still covered in sand from the beach.  I can still feel the sun on your face.  We have everything.  We have Sashi.  How can anyone say we’re not having a good day?

              There was something curious about the way Diego and Ling held hands.  It was much more than simply craving each other’s touch.  It was almost as if they had been granted a vision of an alternate existence, and had learned the art of contentment.  Despite their lack of talent and riches, they could see what others could not:  the simplicity of love.

              Octavio walked by, dressed in his policeman’s uniform. 

              Is everything good here?

              Ling smiled—Better than we’ll ever know.

Acknowledgments

Before giving thanks, I’d like to clarify a few points about the story.   The description of the Cuban prison was based on the life of my grandfather, Francisco Velasco, a political prisoner, and Jorge Valls’ book, Twenty Years & Forty Days: Life in a Cuban Prison, (Washington, D.C.: America’s Watch Committee, 1986).  I will always remember his courage to preserve his sense of humor despite post-traumatic stress disorder.  I included El Viejo not to make any political point, but simply to include that part of the spectrum of human suffering.  The novel is, after all, a study in the many forms of sadness, something that fascinates me, having endured years of my own mind delusions.  I can look back upon major depression; almost as if it was a past life and see that there is a common thread that many experience, unable to separate reality from illusion.  The end of Cara’s story (for Cara this story about sadness would end well) is a tribute to Dostoevsky’s ending in Crime and Punishment.

              I would like to thank my wife, Jean, for her love, higher consciousness and maturity, all instrumental in helping me find inner peace and the art of writing.  Jean proofread many early drafts of this book and made wonderful suggestions.  A special thanks to the family of publishers, editors and writers at Aignos, which I am happily becoming acquainted with.  In particular, I would like to thank Jon Marcantoni for his inspiration as a writer, as well as his faith in this book.  Jon, with remarkably painless guidance, turned a mess of a story into something I’m very happy with.  The scene in which Adriana receives the news about Tavi’s death, Jon wrote himself. 

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.

Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.

Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.

Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.