Time Dancers

space.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There has been another, earlier Gogorati. Ours will not be the first!” He laughed again. “Who is to say, perhaps there have been many?”

The thought raced through each of our minds and instantly, intuitively, we knew Trumoi-Meq was right. The idea was outrageous and mind-numbing to think of the expanse of time involved, but somehow we knew that it was true. And that made the Gogorati seem more confusing and fearful than ever. What was it?

* * *

Jack came back sooner than expected, saying he had hit the jackpot in La Coloma. He opened the trunk of the DeSoto and displayed two wooden crates full of lobster and shrimp, harvested that morning by a local fisherman. Jack bought the fisherman’s entire catch plus rubber fins and masks his children no longer used. “Enough for everybody,” Jack said, then asked if I would mind picking up some fresh fruit at a little stand he saw not a mile from Luis’s house. Geaxi decided to accompany me and we set out walking under a brilliant blue sky with towering white cumulus clouds building to the south.

Two children, a boy and a girl, ran the fruit stand. There wasn’t much to buy in the stand, but what they had looked delicious—coconuts, ripe bananas, lemons, limes, and a Cuban passion fruit called guerito. Ciela served it often, by itself or mixed with other fruits. Geaxi held one of the apple-shaped fruits in her hand and asked the children in Spanish if they knew where the fruit got its name. The children said no and Geaxi told them the name came from its flower, which was known as “flor de las lagas, or flower of the five wounds.” At first the children showed no understanding, then they beamed, smiling and saying in unison, “Ah, si, si, Pasion de Cristo!” I paid for our fruit and turned to leave, but Geaxi lingered, talking and laughing with the children. I watched her carefully. When we returned to Luis’s house, it seemed as if she had been partially renewed, in a manner similar to the way our bodies heal, only this was a wound that could not be seen. Ten minutes later, without anyone asking, she gave us a full account of what happened in Guernica and to whom. She started talking and didn’t stop until the awful tale was told.

Geaxi and Mowsel entered Basque country on the night of April 25 from the north, through the Pyrenees using secret trails and hidden routes they had known for centuries. Pello and several Basque compatriots met them outside Pamplona. The men all wore berets and most carried rifles. Geaxi said their faces each reflected the stress of war and their eyes knew death at close range. In stolen trucks, the men drove through the night, arriving at Pello’s compound of caserios before dawn. After sleeping through the morning, Pello suggested going into nearby Guernica for market day. War or no war, Pello wanted to have a feast to celebrate Geaxi and Mowsel’s arrival. In Pello’s tribe, the ritual was older than the country of Spain itself and he had no intention of letting a few fascists from Madrid break the tradition. A group of twenty or so men, women, and children, along with Geaxi and Mowsel, piled into two open trucks and started through the hills for Guernica. At that time, Guernica was an open town far behind the lines of fighting and Pello felt there was nothing to fear.

Geaxi said the sky was a clear, soft blue and the market was full. Peasants crowded in from the countryside and all the neighboring villages. The women shopped and gossiped, the men smoked and relaxed, and the children spilled out in five directions. The afternoon passed. At 4:30 P.M. a church bell rang the alarm for approaching airplanes. Five minutes later a single German bomber dropped three or four bombs in the center of town. Fifteen minutes later came another bomber, then more and more, wave after wave of bombers followed by fighters demolishing Guernica and murdering innocent people indiscriminately and without mercy, killing anyone, even machine-gunning children trying to run away through the fields. Geaxi and Mowsel were trapped in the town along with everyone else. She saw Pello trying hard to get his people to safety, but there was too much chaos and they were too scattered. Building after building began collapsing. Geaxi said she and Mowsel took refuge in a sewer, standing six inches deep in water until the attacks subsided. People screamed with pain everywhere. Most were missing arms or legs or both. Blood pooled and ran in the streets and people were dying all over the crumbling town in piles and heaps. Geaxi and Mowsel waited, then made their break for safety. As they were running past the church of St. John, Mowsel saw a girl wandering aimlessly, in shock and completely oblivious to everything. Just then, the incendiary bombs began to fall. Mowsel stopped and tried to get the girl to take his hand, but she only stared at him, then backed off in horror. He tried again. Suddenly she turned to run into the church and Mowsel reached out and grabbed her just in time. The church of St. John exploded and stone, glass, and splintered wood knocked them all back ten feet. The girl was left unconscious, but alive, and Geaxi was unhurt, except for several cuts and bruises. Mowsel had taken the blow directly in his face. Hundreds of tiny shards of glass ripped into both eyes and destroyed the optic nerve. Instantly, he was blinded and probably beyond normal Meq restoration and repair. He was also bleeding. Geaxi quickly tore her shirt into strips and wrapped a temporary patch around his head. With Mowsel holding on from behind, Geaxi carried the girl to safety in the hills, where they stayed the night. Geaxi said she never slept, and all night long she watched the most ancient town in Basque country become an inferno.

The next day, after finding a home for the girl, they learned Pello Txopitea and twenty-three of his closest family and friends had perished. His son, Koldo, alone survived, but only by pure chance. Earlier in the afternoon, he had experienced an upset stomach and decided to leave Guernica and return to the compound. When Geaxi and Mowsel finally made it back, they asked Koldo if there was some way they could help. Koldo thanked them but told them they should probably leave Spain as soon as possible. He said there was nothing Geaxi and Mowsel could do. This was a Basque tragedy—the tragedy was theirs, the war was theirs, and it was only the beginning. Geaxi and Mowsel stayed long enough to say their farewells to Koldo and the remainder of his tribe, then walked out of Spain and began their journey to Cuba and Finca Maria.

“Why did you go to Spain in the first place?” I asked.

Mowsel answered. “There was a man in Pello’s tribe who contacted me on Malta. While blowing a bridge for the Republicans, he said he had exposed a cave in the rocks underneath. Something unique was found inside; however, he did not say what it was in the letter. Geaxi and I were too curious to stay away.”

“I only wish we had,” Geaxi whispered, “things might have been different.”

“You must put that thought out of your mind,” Opari said.

We were in Luis’s courtyard, sitting in the cane chairs around the oak table. Jack and Luis were grilling the lobster and shrimp not far away. Geaxi glanced at Trumoi-Meq, sitting proud and blind, tilting his head toward the drifting smoke, then leaning forward and caressing the stone sphere with his fingers, still feeling for the truth behind the symbols.

“What do you think, young Zezen? It is ironic, no?” Geaxi asked.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean, Geaxi.”

“As we learn more about the Remembering…little by little, we are falling apart.”

8. Puxika (Balloon)

When is childhood truly left behind? Is there a certain place, or place in time where this occurs? Is it inevitable? Is it in the mind, body, or both? Is it gradual, as the apple ripens, or is it in the moment the apple falls? Perhaps the answer lies with a grand balloon seen rising silently to the top of the sky; a terrible balloon that is not a balloon at all and shall never, ever be a toy.

We spent two continuous weeks in La Coloma under fair skies and on calm seas. We found no trace of the cave, but Ray and Nova fell in love with the underwater world of skin diving. I discovered Ray to be an excellent swimmer and faster below the water than any of us, including Luis. Geaxi said she had been diving since she was a child, but never with rubber fins and goggles. Mowsel always insisted on going along, though he stayed in the boat with Jack while we were underwater. Each day we sailed the coastline and every night we ate fresh fish and drank Cuban beer in the courtyard with Luis and Jack. It was a good and healthy two weeks for all of us. As we were preparing to leave, I asked Mowsel where he thought Sailor and Zeru-Meq might be. I was certain that wherever they were, they would have heard about the Spanish Civil War and realized our planned rendezvous in Spain in 1937 was out of the question. Mowsel said he had no idea and I should not hold my breath while waiting to find out. Sailor might inform us from time to time, if it suited him, but Zeru-Meq had never informed anyone of his whereabouts at any time. But that was before we returned to Finca Maria. The moment Jack pulled the old DeSoto