Through a lens darkly
I.
the captain
He begins talking about pain, not the day-to-day aches and pains that you can just ignore and forget, but ones that gnaw at the flesh, the mind and the soul, the exquisite pain that often accompanies lost love. He speaks from one ear to another and eye to eye, eyes that see all the sadness in this world but never each other.
It's another hot winter morning; the thermometer already climbs to the eighties. She clamps her hair in a band, fingers check loose strands that are soon tucked out of the way. She walks toward him with a slow indifference and the general knowledge that the world isn't going to end today, but recession is going to creep in wearing a pink apron and jelly scandals.
The waitress brings him toast, eggs and a cup of coffee. The room is dimly lit, deserted by air and light which a languidly turning fan on the ceiling attempts to resuscitate. The cook, fat and shirtless, smokes behind the bar.
She could tell that he does not belong here from the style of his long starched shirt, linen pants and black suede boots. But despite the way he covers his pallid skin with the dress of a colonial technocrat, he cuts a handsome figure against other tourists who hautily flaunt their pink rolls of sun-burnt flesh. He has deep brown eyes and lips that are full, as if he was a sensual man, but he isn't.
He takes a sip of what tastes like mud-water and declares:
"You know, the world is a square. We think we're circling the globe, but we're really circling the SQUARE. Circling. . ." He lights a cigarette.
"Are you a captain out to map the world or something?" She asks filling his cup with more coffee.
Her pidgin Ð smooth, elegant, musical, the way Portuguese compares to Spanish - surprises him.
"Yes." But this was not exactly true.
An elderly couple dressed in the same floral pattern muu-muu and aloha shirt sits in a booth across the room.
"There's free culture for tourists at Kapiolani Park tonight. You should check out its hula show after laying around the beach."
"Are you asking me out?" he mocks.
She turns to flip on the television above the bar and walks toward the couple to take their order.
The T. V. emits no sounds. He concentrates on the image just because it's there - its the opening sequence to "Three's Company" with Jack, Janet and Chrissey flouncing in a zoo trolley - he looks at it just to have something to concentrate on besides the rumbling static in his head. The fan turns faster and faster and the ceiling lowers until it almost crushes him.
"Hey, mister. Are you alright? You've been sleeping for almost an hour."
"What?"
His left elbow rests on the table. He lights another cigarette, but this time he smokes suavely and cradles the cigarette between his thumb and fore-finger.
"Has anyone. . ." He pauses to breathe, "Has anyone called for me?"
"No."
He exhales a little cloud of relief. And when he's almost about to put out the cigarette and leave, she comes in and sits at the table.
"Hello, Charles." There isn't passion in her voice, but her eyes are exactly as he remembers them: bright with the clarity of the morning's light when they would walk together, barefoot on the sand five years ago.
There was a time when he was happy, when he could say that he was contented and in love. He would play Debussy on the piano and create divine fire for her with his fingers.
"I'm glad you came. Your father needs his peace. He's dying." It wasn't like her to be so direct and up front. Afterall it had taken an entire summer for her to reveal that she had fallen out of love with him and was sleeping with another man - his own paterfamilias.
He is shocked. Not about the dying father but the indifference and tranquillity of her voice. Does she feel remorse for her actions and for what happened? Since the moment she betrayed him, each minute felt like a day, or worse still, whenever he blinks an eye, hours had already passed. In those lost years he dreamt jagged pieces of sleep. And in his few alert moments, he rationalized that they were horrible people and that they did this to him just to hurt him and were not really in love.
Two hours later they're both drinking a beer together. It's seven in the evening. She smokes a cigarette. He says something and she nods yes. She speaks. He moves his hand and picks up the bottle of beer. They are silent. Through the window beside their table, a neon-sign blinks. There's light and then, darkness. There isn't any war. There's only hell. As the street outside flowers into night, she stands up and leaves.
The waitress comes back with the bill. He leaves sixty dollars Ð half for monopolizing the table.
It began to rain the next day, not just for a few hours, but for seven days and seven nights. At the Pearl Harbor Navy Station, the gutter were not made for this much water and the rain came cruel, dense, heavy and strong. The rain gave Charles fierce slaps as he jogged every morning to Makalapa Gate from his barracks in the Sub Base and back. His ceiling leaked water; all of his large plates, pots and pans were used to catch the incessant drips and as soon as they were full, they were full again and again. At night, laying in his cot he could feel the foundations melt from under the building. The river of rain fell into the red earth and delivered the island to the greedy sea. The torrents in Charles' head were also full of rain and huge hailstones, large pieces of ice, bombarding, exploding and hitting against everything.
He keeps a childhood memory deep in his subconscious to preserve his life without going crazy. It is him as a boy kicking a ball in a small courtyard covered with smooth pebbles. The walls are a bright yellow punctuated with a single window looking into the kitchen. The breeze is blowing and sparrows are singing. A butterfly is dancing in the sunlight. A dog in the distance barks that a car is coming up the driveway. He just keeps bouncing the ball against the wall. Over and over again. But, this memory isn't successful in hiding that from which he is evading. The past continues to chase him. The nightmare begins with an image: There are palm trees in the background when he sees his father's face, thin, feline and with those eyes with pupils framed in coal. He has a book in his left hand, but the type is indecipherable: it must be poetry. His mouth moves elegantly and without force. Then Teresa comes beside him, wraps her arms around his waist and kisses his father on the cheek. Charles is revolted in ways he cannot describe nor barely imagine. He wants to kill him.
Charles catches the Bus to Queen's Medical Center. He takes the elevator to the seventh floor and gets out in the corridor in front of the Intensive Care Unit. The air is oppressively stale with the smell of chloroform. There is no natural light and a large oil-painting of a forgotten doctor hangs on the beige wall. It is a lonely place, dry and without life. Even the interns at the nurses' station have a vacant glaze over their eyes. His father shares the room with a much younger man who lies on his thorax tranquilly clicking the television remote. There's a round curtain made of surgical green vinyl separating the two patients.
His father is sleeping. Hands, ashen and wrinkled like cigarette paper, rest placidly on his stomach. He lacks his characteristic youthful energy and vigor. His thin-as-a-bone wrists are as fragile and brittle as twig, ready to snap at any moment. Tubes and life-supporting lines snake up his arms and imbed themselves in his sinking skin. Teresa is here. Her fingers press into the ashen hand and gently trace the curvature of his ring. He opens his eyes.
"Hello," Charles says.
"Hello," responds his father with a look of subtle surprise.
"How are you?"
"Good."
A metallic taste fills Charles' mouth as if he had just licked a penny. He is silently furious. He lowers his eyes to his father, the way a dead fish returns the gaze.
"My ship is leaving Pearl Harbor tomorrow. I might not be back to see you ever again."
"Charles, I've acted selfish and stupid. And in the process I've hurt you. . ."
"It's never too late for us to right what was wronged. Look, I've brought you The Captain's Verses, by Neruda."
Still, as an ailing man, Charles could still feel his father's sensuality: the fascination of a movie star, a poet, a seducer of people. He opens the book and begins to read:
"Sempre
Antes de mim
não tenho ciúmes.
Vem com um homem
na espalda,
vem com cem homens na tua cabeleira,
vem com mil homens entre teu peito e teus pés,
vem como um rio,
cheio de afogados. . ."
His voice lowers to a murmur.
"Please, let me finish it for you," says Charles.
"Charles," Teresa interrupts, "he's tired. Let him rest. It's time."
"Yes, it is time."
Teresa gathers up her purse, her keys and the red hibiscus that she plucked for him a few days ago. She places the most tender of kisses on his lips and says:
"I love you."
It is time, Charles remembers. He hears her wooden clogs clack against the linoleum as she walks down the corridor until they become a faint, resonant, echo. He straightens up the mountain of magazines in the chair.
"You don't need to do that. The nurse will take care of it. Could you stay here with me for a little while?"
"No, I really can't. It's time to go. . ."
"Then could you give me the rest of my chicken?" he says pointing at the tray on the table.
Charles watches his father slowly cut the meat into small pieces. He had forgotten how handsome his father looked when he ate, the way in which each delicious mouthful filled his cheeks.
"I'm going to sit with you for a few more minutes," Charles changes his mind.
He sits silently by the bed. When he leans over, he smells his father's internal organs through his breath. He also notes the Van Gogh-esque mottled yellow around his eyelids spreading over his dwindling frame.
"Is it time to go already, Charles?"
Charles does not answer. He turns around to the window. He sees Teresa by the car in the parking lot, smoking.
He squeezes the tube, at first gently like cradling a cigarette and then he clamps it shut with all five fingers.
The room is silent. The television clicks off.