The Abundance of the Infinite (5 page)

13

I write a letter asking Yelena to come here, not simply to visit after Annabelle is born, as I wrote in the previous letter, but now, to live. Here, Annabelle would not be judged, I write, but accepted. Her life would be better here. After living here for a time, we would all travel the earth together, working as much as we needed to in order to obtain money for further travel.

Over the next few days, I think of freedom and the myriad of possibilities before me. I imagine that I can see all of the immensity of life through the anticipation of travel along with Yelena and Annabelle, and through the windows of this apartment and the ocean it overlooks.

I have the intuition as I mail the letter that all of the burdens of my previous existence have been lifted and that emancipation has been granted to me through this place.

I no longer need to go anywhere in the mornings. I paint endlessly. I don't teach the Señora's daughters until late in the afternoon, after they have returned home from the university. The Señora tells me that they do not have to pay to attend the university, only for books, and that they do not have to pay for my tutoring services except by tolerating my presence in their house, which she says is no payment at all.

∞

This evening is unique in my own personal history. I have only experienced insomnia infrequently, with increased stress, and I have never simply wandered about aimlessly at night. Despite my recently apparent euphoria, I cannot sleep. Wondering what Yelena is doing at this moment, thinking she would be reading late into the night with her endless cups of tea, I am relegated to roaming the streets, feeling as though I am in a lucid dream—the beaches, the stores and businesses are caged with retracting metal guards for the night, and the strange-looking women and tired-looking men seem too distracted by whatever it is they are looking for to notice me roving about. It is a strange world, that of the insomniac. It is a different view of humanity here, not one I would ever imagine myself proud to be a part of. It is a world that evolves after the curtains have been closed along the streets, long after the families have fallen into sleep. The families are secure with the broken bottle shards extending over their concrete fences, and with the guard dogs on their roofs. They are protected by these defenses against unwanted entry. They are sheltered in their fortifications against an immoral land of drug users and pushers, sexual gluttony and lust, and alcohol and tobacco. They are locked away against this land of excess and against this unseen city, which has now been unveiled before my eyes.

There is the sound of music in the distance. As I walk toward it, a familiar figure appears from between dozens of abandoned buckets and elongated poles belonging to shrimp fishermen. I recognize the shape as Karen. She is dressed entirely in black. Her hair is pinned back. She is very attractive in this light.

“Jonathan,” she says, hugging me. She dangles a lit cigarette in one hand and a large glass smelling like sweetened turpentine, likely
Caña Manabita
sugarcane alcohol, in the other. She releases me after a moment.

“
Venga
,” she says, walking away and extending her hand for me to follow. “Come here. Come and have a drink with me.”

“This explains why I never see you during the day,” I say.

“This doesn't explain anything. We're having a drink, that's all.”

“I don't drink.”

“No explanations.”

I grasp her hand as she lifts the glass to my lips to give me a long drink. She leads me somberly into a small group of people, all of them engaged in conversations in the rapid-speak and
localized expressions of Ecuadorian coastal Spanish. They all extend their hands toward mine, in the proper sequence according to Karen's introductions. Afterward she hands me her drink again, and as I down some more she tells me that they are mostly students and some professors.

“I thought you weren't going to explain anything,” I say.

“Well, that was the only one tonight,” she replies. “Apart from this: if you weren't married, if I wasn't—involved—I might be tempted to kiss you right now. Softly, on the lips.” She smiles.

There is a fire beside us, a spitting grill sputtering the venom of fishy lime juice. There is a much larger fire nearby, students and faculty dancing barefoot around it, eating the flesh of freshly caught fish beneath the moonlight as if in some pagan ritual. There are several beautiful women standing beside the fire from whom I can't seem to turn my attention away. Inés and Yolanda are among these women, and the sisters smile in my direction. Karen notices my distraction and, turning my head toward her, she hands me her drink. Feeling the effects now, I take another mouthful.

“I'm flying out of Guayaquil,” she announces as she casts her shoes away. “In two days.”

“Where are you going?”

“Well if you must know, and I assume you must because you asked: Caracas, Venezuela. There's a small island off the coast. My friend who goes to school there, I'm going to see him.”

“Why?”

She pauses, and then sighs. “Well, I haven't told you, and I don't want you to tell the Señora. When I'm ready to, I'll tell her myself.”

“Tell her what?”

“More explanations,” she says, sighing again. “Tell her that I'm pregnant.”

I am silent for a moment, thinking of her smoking, her drunkenness, wondering about possible damage to the fetus, and I immediately think of harm coming to my own daughter. I have the impulsive urge, thinking of this, to go home, to protect my daughter from those who would do her harm. I have not received any letters from Yelena recently, although I have been writing to her now more than ever before, trying to entice her to come here. I could only know her state of mind through those letters, in which she wrote nothing about our child, and now I have no recourse to know anything about either of them.

I return to the conversation, reflecting that I've never seen Karen with a man.

“You're pregnant by whom?” I ask.

“The man I'm going to see in Venezuela,” she replies.

“Oh. So you won't be back?”

“I can't give up on that apartment. One day soon, I'll be back.”

I pause for a moment before stating emphatically, while thinking of my daughter again: “I'm going with you.”

“To Venezuela?” she asks incredulously.

“No. To the airport.”

“So am I. But where are you going?”

“I'm going home. To Canada.”

“Really? Interesting ...”

Among the students and professors, we move in rhythm to the
salsa
and
merengue
music in a ritual dance to our trip, to our safety, to a glamorous freedom I have never known. I have never known insomnia to be anything but terrifying, but now it is sensuality, uninhibited. Now it is spirituality. It is a faded opera soprano that comes from the sea. It is the voice of Annabelle, soft and sweet, fluttering like the wind through the leaves of the palm trees. It is anything but logical, this feeling.

Seven years of abundance, seven years of drought for you Pharaoh, God said in His infinite wisdom.

Dreams, one of God's instruments for speaking to the individual.

Did He intend for psychologists to interpret dreams?

Prophets, God's Dream interpreters, recipients of a divine word helping form the basis of faith.

Jacob's ladder, extending to heaven.

God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

The Warrior. The Father. The Creator. The Destroyer.

Without dream images, would there be any religion?

Without God, life is meaningless.

Without my dreams, without my visions by day and night, what would I have?

14

The next morning, I awaken with the memory of what was certainly one of the worst nocturnal panic attacks I've ever experienced. Sunlight beams through the windows and I am tired, thinking that, instead of contemplating what I endured the night before, desperately attempting to forget my dread as my heart pounded rhythmically to the pulse of the waves lapping onto the beach, I must focus on other thoughts.

I contemplate how to make “legitimate” art.… First, choose a worthy subject: Karen … not falling, or sweating, but standing upright, unaffected by any form of physical exertion ... choose an incomprehensible message: that her dreams are like chilled wine, dry or sweet, white or red, rich in tannins, intense and spicy, complex in flavour … her dreams do not fill her with terror without the accompanying nightmares ... try to forget … choose a background: her departure … the time has come to make “legitimate” art.

I sketch her as she sleeps for the first time, at her request made the previous evening, in my apartment, on my couch. It is mid-morning. From her spasmodic movements I am aware that she is dreaming some awful dream, which she may not remember upon awakening—unless, of course she awakens quickly and has time to recall the events before her conscious mind suppresses and overpowers her unconscious thoughts … she shifts one way, then another … then suddenly, she opens her eyes. She tells me she remembers a bus … there were cliffs, too … the university above, the sky below … the bus fell over the cliff's edge, and into the red sky. She was falling, endlessly falling.…

I work to somehow capture the essence of fright in her face.
This is a way to remember, I say as she watches me. I am sketching a crude picture of her dream images now. This is a dream diary of sorts, I explain. A mnemonic trigger to recollect some of the events of the dream.

She dismisses her dream. It was ridiculous, she says. What colour was the bus? I ask her as I begin to paint.
Red,
she says,
the same as the students and the sky
. Were you on it?
I don't know. I think so.
What about the cliff, what shape was it?
More rounded than any cliff should be.
The university?
The same as it is in normal life.
You don't see the meaning, then?
No.
The one constant is your work, the students and the bus the same colour as the sky, the students all merging together into one memory, the rounded cliffs early Freud would say are your breasts and I would say it is your inability to attach yourself to any one person or place. Falling in dreams has to do with a lack of control. The myth that you will die in your sleep if you hit the bottom is just that, a myth. I've had many patients who have hit the bottom and still, they have woken up. Still, I hope I never hit the bottom.

As I paint, I recall how I have recently dreamed of falling. Sometimes Annabelle is there falling along with me, her tiny body wrapped in the same cloth as my father's shroud. We have never met earth. The land below is always black, the same as the darkness that surrounds us, but somehow I know it is there. Despite my knowledge that my death would not come as I hit it, the subliminal realization that it was there always prompted me into consciousness.

Are you psychoanalyzing me?
Karen asks.

Perhaps, I say, adding after a moment: well, actually, yes.
A while later, with a look of patent disgust on her face as her eyes move from what she says to be one disturbing image to another, from the picture of her dream to other pencil sketches and paintings scattered about, she suddenly and resolutely declares:
You are no artist. No artist at all.

15

There are times when I am convinced that I see someone from Canada who I know, walking on the streets of Manta, and I realize afterward that all those around me must be strangers. The notion of their assumed identity defies my sense of logic. Still, I have seen past patients and family members in the crowds, and friends from my childhood walking on the streets alone or staring back at me from a corner bar.

This is one of those moments when I believe I see someone I have thought about but have not seen in over a month. She is across the street, contemplating whether to purchase a sweatshirt, a
sudadera
. Something to keep warm in.

I think for a moment that perhaps I am mistaken, that this woman is Karen, until I look again.

I never expected to see her here. She never answered my letters asking her to come.

She looks the same, her hair drooping from her shoulders in flaxen, rolling waves, her body thin, and well-defined by the folds of her dress. Her face is refined with feline features—especially her eyes...those deep green, penetrating feline eyes...She has returned to allow me the opportunity to save Annabelle, before I have the chance to return to where I assumed they were.

Yelena! I shout. She looks around, and doesn't see me. I walk toward her, smiling, ecstatic.

I know that this exact scene will melt into my dreams. I know it may become lucid because I am thinking about having this dream later. We have the power to create a lucid dream by thinking dream thoughts during the day. By thinking I can fly to her, or reach out to her with an enormous hand, or contact her through mind-thought, I can later dream this exact scene and know I am dreaming—thereby having control over it. It will become a waking dream.

She is cold, she says as I approach her. She did not expect to be cold here. She puts the sweater on over her dress. It is nearly nighttime, I say.
I see the moon,
she says,
it's larger than other moons I've seen. And redder. Look, it's blood red. It's a hook moon. And it's sinking into the horizon. I've never seen that, either.

I notice, for the first time, that she is cradling a small baby in her arms, a baby with the most beautiful face I've ever seen.
This is Annabelle
, she says. The baby's eyes are closed.

This is the first time I've seen you in over a month, I say. And you haven't written any letters lately.

Of course, you know where we've been
, Yelena says.
You ran away from us, not the other way around. You see me here, in your new home, and think maybe that you never left. A piece of your home, a part of your past has come back for you. How does that make you feel? Are you distraught by our presence? Are you upset, or pleased? I can't tell by your expression. It could be either. I can see in your face that you are tired. You haven't been sleeping. Wasn't it you who told me how the mind cannot do well without dreams? Have you been dreaming, or have you been forsaking your dreams as you said you would?

Oh, you are preposterous with your dreams, you know you are. There is so much to say … I'm only here for a short time … how to begin … clichéd questions always end in clichéd answers … Have you learned any Spanish since you've been gone? Have you been to the mountains, to the rainforest? You have? To the mountains, but not the rainforest. I see. We can go to the rainforest together. I know of a place where you get a guide to take you through … I've heard about it before from other people who have been there ... we can see termite nests in the trees, swing from vine roots high above the forest floor … we can trek by the trails and eat fish straight from the Amazon … we can kayak and white water raft … you've thought about this too, have you? You have seen this in your dreams? You're unforgivable, you know, leaving without even asking us to come with you. How could you not even ask? You and your silly dreams. You have an established career, your own practice, and who are your patients visiting now? Look at you. You're dishevelled; not disgustingly so, but almost. You've turned into Gauguin in Tahiti, or into Van Gogh as a preacher, but without their gifts. Are you malnourished? You can't be eating right, look at you. You're too thin. You're a beach dweller, a nomad. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. No, I'm sorry … I take that back. Maybe I should be ashamed of myself for saying that … but you've only been gone, what, a month, or a month and a half, and look at you. You should have some pride in yourself, if you're going to be chasing after Ecuadorian women. Have you met anyone here? Are you searching for someone? What is your purpose here? Why are you staying here in Manta, because your father lived here before? What was he doing here for so long? Was it a woman? Why did he come here initially? You said before that he never truly acknowledged having had a family, and his escape was through being here in this place and through alcoholism, an extended vacation, one that in his case lasted decades—but why Manta? Was it a manta ray he saw in a dream, like one of those fish that swim above the bottom of the sea, and then he found this place on a map and somehow connected the two? Was he as preposterous as you? Remember, you're the ridiculous one, not me. His wife, your mother, was she from here? No? He had little money, wanted to live a lifetime on it paying the Señora twenty or thirty dollars a month for rent and food, and found a school that needed English teachers in an obscure and isolated fishing village in an obscure and isolated part of the globe? I'm sorry, I'm rambling, I've been drinking a bit, I'm sorry if you don't think that's right in my condition, but did you really want to be here, away from all those you love? A place, after all, is only as good as the people who inhabit it. Why did you want to leave? Why do you stay away? How much longer will you remain? You said you would be away for a month, but you've already been gone that long and you haven't returned. You're going to, you say? Really? Or do you plan to stay here as long as your father did? Is this to become the ultimate egoistical endeavor of your life, your dreams amplified? Dreams are egoistic, you always liked to quote Freud. He said dreams were the ultimate form of egoism, did you know that? Of course, you must know that. You probably even told me that. I can't tell you anything you don't know about him. But listen, when were you truly planning on coming back to see us? And what are the demons that have chased you away? Your daughter, look she's opened her eyes, and she's looking at you now. She's telling you that she needs you, look, I'll unravel her tiny blanket so you can see her clubbed feet. She's smelling you now. Babies are sensitive, even to the smells of their father.…

Are you really coming home?