Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

Alas, I was no Bobby Thomson. What a loser of a ballplayer I turned out to be. Sleepy Joe came in and in a matter of seconds he wrestled the bat from me.

“Time to pray, my little hot ass,” he said, his face all drool and blood, and because his voice was all nasal with the broken nose, he sounded more dejected than enraged.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Go up to the roof and pray; I’ll wait for you right here.”

As if he was going to do as I said. He grabbed my arm and bent it behind my back in some jujitsu hold and led me up the stairs to the roof. It was dawn, the time the little Slovak boys performed their prayers. Once up on the roof, Sleepy Joe took off his belt and bound me to the railing with my hands behind my back and naked as I was.

“Let’s see if you can let me pray in peace, you two-timing whore,” he said.

“I’m cold, Joe,” I responded.

“Shut up, bitch, or I’ll warm you up with a beating.”

“But why are you tying me up?”

“So you don’t escape.”

“I’m not going to leave.”

“Bullshit, you bitch.”

I had never actually known what the brothers did on the roof during their prayers because they never let me up there, assuring me it was not for women. But this time I saw how Joe lit some candles, spread out some blankets, messed around with a bell, took out a Bible, incense, and I couldn’t tell what other knickknacks and placed them all very meticulously on a red cloth spread out on the floor as if for a picnic. What a dirty Mass, I thought.

“Stop playing around, Joe,” I called. “Come here, hon, untie me. Or at least cover me with something; don’t let me freeze to death here. And don’t get so close to the edge, baby, careful or you’ll fall off.” I said all this in a very sweet tone to see if I could win him over, but he was so focused on the whole ceremony that it was as if I wasn’t even there.

“Get over here, Joe, give me a little kiss.” I didn’t know what else to try. “Come on, let me go, don’t be such a bad boy to me. Let me clean up that nose, my poor little baby. Does it hurt a lot? Why don’t we just go back down, things were so good there—”

“Shut your mouth, you whore, I’m doing this,” he said without even turning to look at me.

Sure enough, he was doing that, on some cosmic voyage or some shit, as if he were in another world, tooth and nail with his god so nothing else mattered. Meanwhile, the city slept below, and I trembled naked in the cold. What could I do? Scream? Wake up the whole neighborhood, yelling for help by causing a scene? Not a bad plan. But Joe must have thought about such a possibility at the same time, because he interrupted his little Mass and came over and gagged me with a handkerchief. So much for my plan. After he was done muffling me, the nutcase moved away and knelt on the very edge of the roof — and because there were no parapets on the cement roofs of the buildings in this neighborhood, the edge was like the edge of a cliff. A wind swept across the roof, blew out the candles, and tousled my hair. The city was waking up little by little below, and I was a little stunned by the change in my brother-in-law. Just a little while ago, he had been a raging macho hyped on testosterone, and now he seemed to be some type of angel glowing in the divine light of morning. He was moving in slow motion, half monk and half yogi, and he began to chant, at first in a low voice with his head lowered and his whole body folded in on itself, like some giant fetus floating in the amniotic fluid of the first light of day. Then slowly his voice grew louder. He straightened up and let his head fall back theatrically, and his body went into convulsions or something, as if electrical shocks were coursing through his body. His body shook epileptically, but somewhat controlled, the petit mal, let’s say — I know too well about these things with all the psych wards I’ve had to visit for Violeta.

A song in two different tones now broke out from Sleepy Joe, first one tone then the other. For the first tone, a grand and serious voice emerged from his throat, a voice like Greg’s, I remember thinking, if I closed my eyes I could imagine it was Greg who was there, it was his Gregorian chant. Motherfucker, I thought then, I was hallucinating because of the incense that, not for nothing, smells like weed. What purpose did all this serve for him? What was the point of this ridiculous theater? Did he miss his brother? Was he summoning the spirit? I began to shiver. And then it was no longer Greg’s voice that was coming out of that throat, now it was a little thin voice, almost a child’s, that responded to the other one. Sleepy Joe’s voice as a child? The two brothers together and praying? Oh, God, so horrific I was getting goose bumps. They must have been very ancient chants from Slovakia, but so incomprehensible, son of a bitch, lightning over Tatras. In spite of it all, there was something very impressive about it, I had to admit. Sleepy Joe’s silhouette over the city was a potent sight. My loser brother-in-law had become a dark, half-naked priest, with the bloody face and the rivulets of blood dripping on the crucifix tattooed on his chest. He spread out his arms as if he wanted to hold the universe and let his head fall back. No laughing matter here — this was scaring the shit out of me. His back was tense, so arched that his ribs stood out like a vault. I was beginning to lose it, I don’t know, so much so that Sleepy Joe seemed to be emitting heat and brightness, perhaps burning, it seemed as if the air around him had caught fire. The veins in his neck popped out and his fists were so clenched that I could imagine his nails cutting into his palms. Could it be that he had some kind of supernatural powers? Greg used to say that his little brother was imbued with the Spirit, but I never believed that crap, because I knew that if his little brother had any powers they were located elsewhere. But now, watching this mystical display, I wasn’t so sure. Stop with this idiocy, María Paz, I told myself — what powers? what possession? — it’s just your asshole brother-in-law monkeying around with rusty buckets and pots and tin sheets. But the reality was that the man covered in blood celebrating this ancient ritual at times did seem more than just a man. Of course, I knew that wasn’t the case. He was just some maniac. Not a devil, just a man. It was a line from some movie that came into my head then. And it helped calmed me down, not the devil, just a fucking man. I repeated it to myself. This Sleepy Joe was like a coyote, mysterious and cowardly. A loser, all fucked up and defeated by life. But in that state he was in during the ritual, shaken by some sort of celestial orgasm, with his eyes gone white and fully raised to the heavens, Jesus, you had to respect it. I swear, Mr. Rose, more than a man. As if some high-voltage electrical shocks had transformed him, that’s what it seemed for a moment, and I began to understand some things then. I felt as if Corina were beside me and suddenly I got it. My Corina, I’m sorry for my stupidity. This is what you saw, Cori? This is why you fled, to save yourself. This is what frightened the shit out of you. This fear I feel now was your fear. These muffled screams were your screams. Oh, Bolivia, my beautiful mamacita in heaven, Corina in Chalatenango, have mercy on me and save me from this lunatic. Something has happened, now I can see that this uncouth man who had been my lover has been endowed with some horrendous power. He was a terrifying being, inside and out; he instilled fear in others and at the same time was devoured by it. His faith was nothing more than panic raised to a maddening power. But this was the first time I witnessed the full metamorphosis. I had known the signs. They were obvious every time we made love.