The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2007

            REUNION

   Amy Bitterman

The bitter smell of sulfur and carbon woke Raul from his nap.

“Fire!” he yelled as he sprang off the bed.  His screams brought the nurse rushing into the bedroom.

“It’s alright, Señor,” she said.  “I was only burning a few of your wife’s belongings, some old notebooks and pictures.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Doctors’ orders.  No reminders, no portraits.  It’s bad for your heart.” 

“The doctors are idiots.” 

“But the tests, Señor Prado.  When you thought about your wife, your blood pressure spiked.  Looking at her photographs made your pulse race.”

“How dare you burn Maria’s things.  She’ll need them when she returns.”

“You must face facts.  Your wife isn’t coming back.”

“Get out, get out, get out!” Raul screamed until he was hoarse.

“Madre de Dios,” the nurse mumbled as she wrapped a shapeless cotton dress around two of Maria’s necklaces and folded the package into her suitcase, “why do I get all the crazies?”

Before the nurse was out the door, Raul was up the stairs and on his knees in the master bedroom, sifting through the charred remains of his wife’s work, blowing out smoking words and phrases that burnt his palms and fingertips.         

“Forgive me, Maria,” he whispered. 

Every evening, he prepared her things.  He placed her slippers next to the bed.  If they returned her at night, in the morning she could swing her legs over, slide her feet into her shoes, and walk without ever touching the ground.  "Just like the old days, mi corazon."  He laid a nightgown across her side of the bed and smoothed out the wrinkles.  Sometimes he left the windows open to watch the silk breathe.

He prepared himself for any changes.  When he curled up next to her in bed, he practiced gentleness.  How to squeeze without breaking.  How to hold without hurting.  Remembering not to press on the puckered skin of her scars.  Remembering to smooth the furrows in her brow when she had nightmares about torture.  Then he put his hand between his legs and made love to an absent pair of arms and lips and hips.

 “Where did you last see your wife?”

“At our offices.  1209 Via Sanchez.  Thirty-fifth floor."  Before the print from her articles blocked the view, he and Maria had held hands and surveyed the city from one end to the other:  the marble wedding cakes that dripped with marzipan in the wealthy suburbs; the corrugated tin shacks that sprouted in the alleyways near the railway station; the Plaza Mayor; the Colonel's palace.  The only danger was watching the ground too closely.  He had warned Maria to focus on the higher things.  “Music, art, architecture,” he said.  “Why soil yourself with politics?”  But she hadn't listened and when they caught her, she was covered in muck.   

“When?”

“Three months ago.”

“And you waited all this time before reporting her disappearance to the police?”

As he thought about his answer, Raul’s eyes drifted to the light that hung above the captain’s desk.  Flies clustered around the naked bulb.  Their wings stirred the silence.  Raul watched the tiny bodies spring off the glass each time they came too close to the heat.  The windowless room smelled of sweat and tobacco.  He choked on the smoke the officer blew in his direction.  Screams whispered through the peeling yellow paint on the walls.  Raul imagined ice picks, clubs, electrodes, knuckle busters.  Iron striking flesh, metal slicing through tissue.  He covered his face with both hands, then slowly removed his fingers until he was able to face the room again.

“I’ve been a policeman for many years, Señor Prado,” the captain said as he brushed his palm over his thinning brown hair.  “Many, many years.  So I know a thing or two about human nature.  How old was, excuse me, is your wife?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Quite a bit younger than yourself.”

“Twenty years.”

“Let me speak frankly, one middle-aged man to another.  Isn’t it possible that you waited all this time to report her disappearance because you suspect that your wife has left you?”

“That’s nnnot tttrue,” Raul stuttered.  “I sssaw them.”

“Who?”

“Two men.  Wearing dark glasses.”

“A popular fashion statement.”

“In the rain?”

“Especially in the rain.”

“I saw them grab her and force her into a car.”

“Can you describe the vehicle?”

“A green Falcon.”

The captain cleared his throat, then took a long drag on his cigar.  “A young man’s color, don’t you think?  You or I would choose something less flashy, a nice warm brown, perhaps.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Isn’t it likely that your wife simply traded you in for a younger model?”

“Not true,” Maria whispered in Raul’s ear, “only the Colonel’s angels of death cruise the capital on Falcon wings.”

“Shush,” Raul murmured.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” the captain yelled.  Without waiting for an answer, he pressed the call button on the white plastic intercom in the corner of his desk.  Within minutes, two policemen escorted Raul out of the prison.

In the years that followed, the captain’s suggestion festered in Raul’s head.  What if he’d been wrong all along?  What if the day had been sunny and the Ford just a car?  He imagined Maria with a lover.  Someone young, someone handsome.  He returned to the idea again and again, picturing supple, unlined hands fondling his wife’s breasts, long, thin fingers reaching between her legs, a dark beard tickling her neck.  “Better she were dead!” he’d shout when the reel in his head became too real.  Then he’d conjure another pair of hands pushing Maria into the back of a lime green Falcon with blackened windows.  “My God, what have I done?” he’d moan, pounding his fists into his gray temples as if he could beat out his hasty words and jealous nature.  As if his thoughts had power.

He knew better.  Every interview confirmed his impotence.

“If your wife had truly loved you, Señor Prado, would she have kept exposing you to legal claims by writing those libelous articles about the regime?  After all, you were her publisher.”

As he considered his response, Raul focused on the mahogany desk in the center of the room.  “Your persistence is paying off,” he thought.  “In three years, you’ve progressed from the police to the army, from captains to lieutenants.  From surplus furniture to antiques.”

“Nineteenth century,” the lieutenant said.  “French.  The dealer assured me that it was part of Napoleon’s collection.  Cost me an arm and a leg.”

“It’s very beautiful.”

“You’re a man of taste, Señor Prado.  In my experience, men of taste are usually men of sense as well.  Surely, it must have struck you as odd that your wife didn’t even bother to publish her scurrilous attacks under a pseudonym?”

“She said she had no choice,” Raul blurted out.   Another betrayal.  Like his refusal to have children, ensuring that Maria would die with her death.  Raul bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.

“You see, Señor Prado, the regime takes the press very seriously.  So much so that your wife’s disappearance is a matter of some concern to us, despite her mistaken views.  So much so that I’m now personally in charge of this investigation.  A great honor, if you think about it.”

“And very much appreciated,” Raul said.

“No need.”

As the lieutenant stroked his patchy, thin moustache, Raul considered whether he should have shaved before coming.  His own beard had grown down to his chest.  “I’m usually clean-shaven,” he explained.  “It’s just that my wife always groomed my beard and moustache.  Since she’s been gone, I don’t trust myself with a razor.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.  The unfortunate truth of the matter is that after three years, we’ve come up with nothing, not a trace.  We can only conclude, Señor Prado, that your wife doesn’t wish to be found.  She was, after all, quite a bit younger than yourself.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“These things aren’t uncommon when a husband and wife are, how should I put it, incompatible.”

“We were perfectly compatible.”

“Really?  Surely you didn’t share your wife’s politics?”

Raul worried the bite on his cheek with his tongue until it began to bleed again.  “No.”   

“Let me give you some advice, Señor Prado, one old soldier to another.  Perhaps it’s time you forgot your wife and moved on with your life.  For your own sake.”  The lieutenant lifted his half-smoked Cuban cigar and smashed the lit end into his Tiffany clamshell ashtray.

Later that night, Raul pulled the snapshots from the cabinet where the nurse had stored them three years earlier.  His memories hadn't aged well.  Mites had eaten up his youth.  Mold had discolored his countryside.  The farms that stretched east of the city, the beaches that dotted the coast, the mountain range that lined the border had faded into the pale yellow of yesterday's news.  A few of his treasures, mummified in clear plastic wrapping, survived.  Raul found that he could finally look at Maria without risk.  Except for the occasional heart flutter.  Quick as a blink, soft as an eyelash.  Imperceptible to strangers, but he knew.  And Maria knew. 

She’d always known.  She’d seen his mouth twitch when she laughed too long at another man’s jokes, and watched his jaw tighten when she tossed her hair back one time too many at dinner parties.

“Such a jealous boy,” she’d tease when they were alone.

“Do you know what people think when they see us?”

“Tell me.”

“What is that young beauty doing with that fat, old man?”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

Maybe the lieutenant was right.  Maybe Maria didn’t want him to find her.  He started his own investigation, searching the features of every woman Maria’s height and age that he passed on the street.  “What are you looking at?” he shouted at the boyfriends and husbands who stared back at him.

The next year brought him to a new office.  This room had blue walls and deep carpeting.  Venetian blinds sliced the light into even strips.  Raul watched the sun slowly cross the room in uniform bands.       

"Sex of the disappeared?" the doctor asked when he came into the blue room.

"Female."

"Height?"

"One and a half meters."

"Age?"

"Thirty-nine."

"Right or left handed?"

Raul hesitated.  He had been prepared for the other questions.  Age, weight, and sex were standards from all the other interviews, but the bureaucrats and the police didn't have any interest in arm length. 

          He'd spent years collecting her details, rushing through meals so he could watch Maria cut her steak into fine pieces and separate her squash and potatoes into distinct islands of color.  He’d noted that the tip of her nose bobbed up and down when she laughed, and the valley between her collarbone and shoulder darkened when she shrugged.  He'd crept into her sleep and stolen the way her eyelids fluttered and her mouth twitched.  He'd eavesdropped on the private language she spoke when she dreamed.

"You talk when you're asleep."

"You talk when you're awake."

"Do I say anything interesting?"

"Do I?"

He smiled through indigestion.

"You shouldn't wolf down your food."

"Grr."  He liked to bite her neck after dinner and lick the sticky remains of flan from her lips. 

Long before she was gone, the Maria files bulged.  He had dissected her in bed and across desks.  Taken her apart and reshuffled the pieces.  Catalogued her expressions and timed her moods.  Counted the freckles on her back.  Noted that she bit down on her tongue when she concentrated, and allowed her glasses to slide halfway down her nose before pushing them up.  Noticed that strong light erased the fine line that separated her iris from her pupil, and wondered if her cat eyes could see in the dark. 

"Right or left handed?" the doctor repeated.

"I don't remember."

"I see."

"Doctors’ orders," he stuttered. 

"Relax, Señor Prado.  This isn't an interrogation.”

“Then why am I here?”

“New government, new regulations.  They’re digging up all the mass graves.  Nothing like throwing a little dirt on your predecessors, eh.”  The sweat pouring down Raul’s sides made him shiver.  “It’s okay, Señor Prado.  We’re trying to help you find your wife.  We’ve even brought in forensic experts from El Norte.  Pregnancies?"

"No." 

“I see.”

“No, you don’t.  We didn’t need children.”  Children would have spoiled the geometry of our marriage, he thought.  At dinner, he and Maria sat opposite each other, fingertips just touching, arms forming a perfect oval.   

“I see,” the doctor said, lowering his eyes to the notebook on his chrome and leather desk.

“No, you don’t.  I should have been enough for her.  She was enough for me.”

"Too bad.  I've got a set of bones that matches your wife's general description, taking a few breaks into account."

Raul dug into the armrests of his chair until he felt the frame beneath the stuffed leather.  No matter how hard he pressed, the metal didn’t crack.  He swore he would armor his wife’s soft limbs with steel when he found her.

"Unfortunately, this one had had children."

Raul took a deep breath.  Formaldehyde seeped into his nose and mouth.  He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and spat.

"Señor Prado?"

"Water!"

Raul grabbed both sides of the glass.  Water dribbled down his chin and left a pale yellow stain on his shirt. 

"Where did you last see your wife?"

“1209 Via Sanchez.”

"Which district is that?"

"The ninth.  Near the newspaper offices and the university."

"A number of the no nombres were last seen in that area."

“But my wife had a name, doctor."

"We found newsprint on their ink-stained bones."

The left armrest on Raul’s chair snapped in two.

After leaving the study center, Raul walked home through the humid streets.  He could taste the sweat beading his upper lip.  Dead leaves and gum wrappers swirled around his ankles, locking him in place every few meters.  He shook the sides of his coat with his pocketed fists.  The material protected his wounds.  His doctors had warned him to keep covered and avoid irritants that could sneak into the hole in his heart.  But on very cold nights, Raul sometimes warmed himself over old memories.  Maria at twenty, positioning his hands on her thin hips to teach him the latest dance steps. 

“Just shift your weight back and forth from foot to foot.  Think of palm trees swaying in the breeze.”

All Raul could think about was the firm, smooth flesh beneath his fingers and the tuft of jet black hair over her sex.

“What are you so nervous about?” she teased.  “You’re leaving sweat stains all over my skirt.  Let me show you.”  She slid out of his grasp and traced circles with her feet.  “Follow me.  That’s it.  Now loosen up.  Feel the flow of the music.” 

Watching her glide across the room, all he felt was a tightening in his groin that made it difficult to move.

“Good Lord, Raul, elephants have a better sense of rhythm.”

Maria at thirty, floating in the tub, water softening the contours of her limbs and lifting her dark hair into a halo around her face.  He traced the latticework of veins visible beneath her pale, pale skin.  How had he won this beauty?  He’d never asked her and now he could only speculate about his charm, his wit, his ranch, his income.

The sky perspired on his forehead and neck.  A strong wind rifled through the leaves.  He picked up his pace to avoid the storm burst, but he couldn't get past the overripe smell coming from the General Cemetery.  Maria had loved heavy perfumes.  Bottles full of lilies, aged roses and wet, winter leaves were lined up on her dresser.  Mornings, she brushed back her bangs and dabbed fall smells on her forehead.

The heavy scent of decaying leaves led Raul to a series of plain metal crosses laid out at regular intervals.  No names, no identification.  Crumbling wreaths necklaced a few of the crosses, but most were bare.  He ran his fingers along the arm of the first memorial.  The rains had cut thin alleys through the surface of the metal.  Raul peeled off rust patches with his fingers.  Orange chalk settled into his nail beds.  Rough edges tore his skin as he rubbed his hands back and forth along the metal.  He took a deep breath; the heavy perfume was gone.  He had lost the scent. 

Raul fell to his knees.  Closer to the ground, there were faint traces of mold.  He started to dig.  The smell of pressed leaves and crushed petals made his eyes water and his pulse race.  He clawed the earth until his hands bled.  Behind closed eyes, he burrowed back to Maria at twelve, when he’d first met her.  The beginnings of breasts were just starting to emerge from the baby fat that stretched her striped, cotton T-shirt. 

“Catch me,” she giggled, as she turned and ran.  “If you can,” floated back to him.  Raul chased her until he was breathless, but she remained out of reach.  Was she still somewhere out there, giggling at his grief?  He held his hands over his ears to block her out, but her words snuck through the slits between his fingers.  “You weren’t enough for me,” she whispered over and over until his screams drowned her out.

Exhausted, he laid on his back to catch his breath.  Tree branches cut the sky into puzzle pieces.  A bruise of clouds appeared.  Unable to move, Raul half-wished the rain would bury him.  “Just get it over with,” he whispered, stopping himself mid-thought.  “No,” he shouted.  “I must be strong.  She’s just angry at me for being such a coward.  That’s why she’s stayed away so long.”   

The storm winds carried in the odors of the outskirts.  Raul smelled the urine that ran through the Calderon district, and the coal smoke that hovered over the industrial quarter.  The giant fans that spun and whirred along the edges of the city couldn't blow away the stench. 

Maria had laughed when he told her about the fans.  A deep, full laugh that still rang in the plaster cracks of their home.  At night, when Raul closed his eyes and put his right ear to the bedroom wall, he could hear her.

“You’re joking.  Giant fans, 30 meters high?"

"To clear away the haze."

"Beautiful.  And will they be plugged into giant sockets?"

"They'll run on gas."

“More haze."

"The Ministry of the Interior hasn’t worked out all the details."

"Why don't they use animals.  Have four or five horses turn a huge wheel connected to the blades.  Or better yet, prison labor.  A few strong men.  Either way, the by-product can be discretely recycled.  Compost for the garden.  Fodder for the Colonel's speeches."

"For Christ’s sake, lower your voice.”

Maria returned to her typewriter.  Raul could hardly hear himself over the click clack of her nails on the keyboard.  Click, clack drowned out the police sirens and gunshot rat-a-tat-tat breaking up the protest below.

“Are you deaf?” Raul shouted as he cracked the window open.

“Are you?” Maria shouted back without lifting her head from her notes.

“You’re killing us,” he said.

“They’re killing us,” she answered, nodding toward the window.

All he saw was the black flash of the keys, all he heard was the clack of their hammers and all he smelled was the brine of his sweat.  He picked up the typewriter and threw it across the room.  Maria covered her face with her arms.

“I’m trying to protect you,” Raul said as he gently lowered her hands to her sides. 

Maria looked at him through shut down eyes.  “If you break it, I’ll only buy another one,” she said, as she freed herself from his touch and walked across the room to retrieve the typewriter.  Raul flinched every time she pressed a key. 

“Click, clack, click, clack,” Raul repeated over and over, like a prayer, on his way home from the cemetery.  That night, he unpacked his pictures; the doctor had asked for photographs.  Raul removed the color he'd painted on the plastic covers.  He wiped off the red lipstick from Maria's mouths and the pink blush from her cheeks.  The eye shadow was more stubborn; it left a blue ring of exhaustion around her eyes.  He set aside one 8 x 10, reapplied his favorite ruby shade to its surface and pressed his thin lips to his wife's thick smile.

After he smoothed out the silk wrinkles of Maria's nightgown and laid out her slippers, Raul sat at her dresser, brushed back his nonexistent hair and poured crushed roses over his head.  Cool alcohol ran over his cheeks and nose.  The perfume tingled, but the scent still wasn't right.  Raul picked up Maria's nightgown and twirled it around the room until the air was filled with an old, familiar smell that made sleep possible.

"When can I see her?"

"Just a few more minutes." 

This waiting room had pale green walls and no carpet.  Raul had no way of marking time in this room; there were no windows and his internal clock had shorted out.  His pulse raced, but his mind kept flashing the same hour, minute and second.  It was four years, two months and three weeks to the day.

"Sorry for the delay," the doctor said.  "This way, Señor Prado."

Raul’s walk slowed to a shuffle.  "I can't."

"Lean on me," the doctor said.  "I'm used to it.  Just a little farther."

Raul lifted his arm off the doctor's back and straightened his shoulders.  The doctor stopped in front of a brown door, but Raul kept walking and had to be pulled back. 

Maria was on a table in the center of the room.  She was paler than Raul remembered.  Her lips and cheeks and eye sockets were a monochrome light tan.

"It’s a new technique,” the doctor explained.  “Amazing what they can do to put life on a few bones.  We applied an inch of clay over the skull.  We try to match the pigment as much as possible.  This one took several tries.  I hate to brag, but, based on the photographs, I think it's a damn good reconstruction."

“How?”

“Computer imagery, for the most part.  It’s very complicated.”

“No, I meant . . .”

“Oh I see,” the doctor interrupted.  “You want to know how she died.  Bullet wound.  A single shot to the back of the head.  We’ve held the skull together with clay clamps.  Not an easy job.”

Raul rose onto his toes.  He gripped the sides of the table to keep from floating to the ceiling.  When he was weighted enough to risk it, he loosened his grip and leaned toward his wife's skull.  "Maria, mi corazon," he whispered as he pressed his mouth against hers.  "Mine at last."