Marina Perezagua - The Story of H

BREATHLESS, FEROCIOUS, UNCONVENTIONAL, RAW, a primal scream from the depths of what is human, Marina Perezagua dives into the subconscious while her lungs compress to the size of raisins. Water is a conduit—our brains react and shift chemically when we are near water—and dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin levels rise, while the inducer of bad moods, cortisol, drops, in the same way as when we are reunited with someone we love after having been separated. Even the sound of water causes a chemical reaction in our brain. Ishmael knew that, of course, before there was scientific proof. And H, like Ishmael, launches on a quest to find the whiteness of the United Nations whale in the shadows of the Congo. If all voyages are a homecoming, then could it be that water made humans as a way to transport itself? Are we the damp, spore-like vessels colonizing the world for it? What if our brains react to the sound, the sight, of water because, on a molecular level, water is recognizing itself in us? With H, you are in for the plunge of your life.

Sir:

The pages that follow constitute my declaration, which focuses primarily on the circumstances that led me to the crimes for which I will be judged, acts I do not regret.

This is not a confession. A confession is nothing but a weapon for people in power to coerce someone into betraying him- or herself. I won’t be the one to give my own self away. You’ll see that I’ve done everything possible to resist the powerful. If I was tarnished in any way, it’s never been in their defense.

Neither is this a justification.

What you are about to read is the mark of a firebrand on a mule’s rump, or a groove in a rock eroded by rain, or even a tree that’s been warped by strong winds. That’s right, what you are about to read is my story, the coherent reaction of a sensitive nature. A story penned by me, but set in motion by a fate that was woven on high.

As you read on, you’ll see portraits of certain colleagues of yours, perhaps a relative, maybe even you yourself. If you don’t like what you see, you can go ahead and break the mirror or burn the pages, but you’ll never be rid of the infection, the rot that pollutes the rivers, seas, wombs, and fields. And you’ll never be able to take from me the joy I’ve finally come to feel.

I call myself H because I’ve never been given a voice, and a Spanish man once told me that h is a silent letter in his language. So this letter will be my name, seeing as it’s a name I share with many other mute people who might discover their voices here.

I’m sure they’ll find me before long. I won’t resist, as this story is what stands as my resistance. Whoever is coming to arrest me will see the same brown river I’m gazing out at now from my African refuge, a place that has allowed me to transcribe my testimony over these days. Perhaps my captor is so near that he’s watching the same hippopotamus as I am right now, in the same position, with the same bird on top, drying off in the sun as if there were no such thing as hell.

I penned this last note after narrating the story that follows. I’m weary now; maybe that’s why you’ll find in these last words that my tone has grown colder. Don’t take it personally. Love has always prevailed in me. I love and have loved as if I had been born for it. If you pay attention, you’ll see how love stands steadfast behind every deed. Judge me according to your laws, but consider this as my last wish:

Once you too have taken my voice away, if ever you should have the chance to speak in my name, don’t employ the vocabulary of death. When you raise my head with your fist, everyone will know that I’ve killed. So if anyone ever asks, please remember H’s last words were these:

“God knows I stood for life.”

The refugee camp’s main tent was on fire before us. Hungry flames engulfed the tarpaulin as if it were synthetic fur. I stretched my hand out to clasp Yoro’s. I noticed she was trembling and that her tremors seemed in sync with the roaring fire. As if they provided the flames with something more than sound alone: substance. Yoro and the blaze were like the sternum and spine of a single creature, two integral parts of a whole, a drum and its stick. Through her, my hand was able to perceive the swan-song hiss of a tin cup, of the metallic tubes that held the tent up. I was absorbed in these subtle details, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel for the people and things being consumed right there, though I’ve trained myself to resist the instinct to flee in dire situations, and not to sob or try to find a solution for something beyond my control. I tried hard to keep from blinking. Blinking too much is like hyperventilating. A steady movement of the eyelashes saves oxygen, energy, and helps keep my knees from buckling. That’s how I could remain standing. That’s how I could fix my gaze. Of course I was scared. Of course I felt compassion. But I held myself in check, not only because if I fell, others would come to consume me, but also because I promised never to move a muscle out of rage or despair. Not a single one. I had promised Jim that. Dwelling on these thoughts helped me keep my promise, observing from a distance the heat so close it was like my own skin. I found serenity in my own way, tugging at a string of memories to find some experience that would help me sustain my composure. I found it. The string was the death of Quang Duc, the seventy-six-year-old monk who immolated himself in front of me and a host of fellow monks on a street in Saigon. He torched himself for freedom, incinerated himself without varying his meditative lotus position; even when the flames enveloped him, he did not move a muscle. The other monks and I, we sobbed over him without opposing his will; others begged for help, wishing to rescue him, for his sake but against his will, because he had to burn in order to end persecution, to achieve peace for his brothers and sisters and others like me, who had to avoid blinking while facing a fire. Eventually I found serenity. The heat of the flaming tarp carried me to a distant place, far from the here and now, and rekindled the heat of the monk I saw immolate himself in Saigon, and the more the refugee camp’s tarp burned, the further away I slipped, motionless, toward the instant of Quang Duc’s death. Just as Yoro’s trembling seemed to give flesh to the sound of the flames, so the sobs of we who loved the monk seemed to give sound to his silence, because the man who burned himself alive said nothing, not a moan, not a hiss to express complaint or pain or reproach.

THE FIRE CULMINATED A PURSUIT that had begun when I met Jim, exactly fifty-five years ago. Jim’s story is my story. It’s not that his story is linked to mine, it’s not that my love for him has had a bearing on my life, it’s that without him I would never have become, since becoming, to me, is that moment when I first dared to open my eyes and see myself for what I was. I could finally know, I could finally be—that’s what I owe to Jim. I said goodbye to the skinless me, the me who lacked the body’s biggest organ—the epidermis—the me who’d never claimed a right to the only hide ever offered freely. Slowly but surely I became the hunterly me tracking the prey that had been ripped from my teeth, the racing lion me pouncing, fighting to take back the stolen flesh, the lion’s own flesh, not zebra or antelope, not the flesh of some other lion, but its own. I became the lioness stalking her own self. That’s how I became the me that I am now—intact, golden, menacing. Jim’s hand was the first to see and to stroke the earnest skin my mother delivered me in, skin that gave me back the natural protection that belonged to me. I’ve become; I see myself now as being so strong that even naked I still feel dressed in armor. Long gone are the times I used to wake up trying to fit into someone else’s skin, so that by the end of the day I went to bed distraught and with throbbing joints. How wouldn’t my bones grow misshapen, trying so hard to fulfill other people’s expectations? But it doesn’t hurt anymore. Thanks to Jim, my fingers stopped deforming by endlessly picking fruit grown for other people; thanks to Jim, my legs began straightening out once I stopped following the curves of landscapes that didn’t matter to me; and thanks to him, in my dotage my back is even straighter today than it was when I was twenty.