The Face of Death

'Harmed how, sir?'

'For a brief and very terrible time, I became the property of evil men. They . . .' He averts his gaze. 'They had their way with me. When I was eight. These men, they had kidnapped me, while I was getting water for the home. They took me and in the first day, they raped me and they beat me. They whipped my feet until the blood ran like little rivers.'

His voice is slight now, almost dreamy.

'They made a demand, when they beat me. Words to say. 'You are the God. I thank you the God.' The harder we wept, the more they beat us. Never anywhere else but on the feet.

'I was taken with other children, both boys and girls, to Mexico City. It was a long journey, and we were kept quiet with threats.' His gaze comes back to me, and it looks like it should bleed. 'I prayed, sometimes, for death. I hurt, not just in my body.' He taps his head.

'In my mind.' Taps his chest. 'In my heart.'

'I understand,' Alan tells him.

'Perhaps. Perhaps you do. But this was a special hell.' He continues. 'In Mexico City we heard the guards speaking at times, and from their words we came to understand that we would go to America in the coming months. That our training would be complete and that we would be sold to bad men for great sums of money.'

The trafficking ring, I think. And the circle closes.

'I was in a deep place with no light. I had been raised very religious, you understand. To believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Mother Mary. But to my eyes, I had prayed to them each, with all my might, and still the men came to hurt me.' He winces. 'I didn't understand then. The fullness of God's plan. In that dark place, when my despair was greatest, God was going to send me an angel.'

He smiles as he says these words, and a kind of light fills his eyes. His voice finds a rhythm, like a wave that's always coming but never reaches the shore.

'He was special, the boy. He had to be. He was younger than me, smaller than me, but somehow, he did not lose his soul.' His gaze on me is intent. 'Let me help you understand the significance of that. The boy was only six years old, and he was beautiful. So beautiful that the men liked using him best of all. Every day, sometimes twice a day. And he angered them as well. Because he would not cry. They wanted his tears, and he refused them. They would beat him to make him weep.'

He shakes his head, sad. 'Of course, he always wept, eventually. But still . . . he did not lose his soul. Only an angel could have resisted them in that most important way.'

Gustavo closes his eyes, opens them.

'I was not an angel. I was losing my soul, falling deeper and deeper into despair. Turning away from the face of God. In my despair I thought about killing myself. I think he sensed it. He started coming over to me at night, whispering to me in the dark while his hands touched my face. My beautiful white angel.

' 'God will save you,' he told me. 'You must believe in him. You must continue to have faith.'

'He was only six, or perhaps seven, but he spoke with older words and those words rescued me. I came to know his story, that he had been called by God when he was only four years old, that he had resolved to enter the seminary at the earliest possible age, to devote his life to the Holy Trinity. Then one night, the men came, and stole him from his family.

' 'Even so,' he would say to me, 'you cannot lose faith. We are being tested by God.' He would smile at me, and it was a smile of such pureness, of such bliss and belief, that it would pull me away from the despair that wished to drown me.'

Cabrera's eyes are closed in reverential remembrance.

'He did this for a year. He suffered every day, we all did. At night, he spoke to us all and made us pray and kept us from wanting death more than life.' Cabrera pauses, looking off. 'One day, that fateful day, he saved my body as well as my soul.

'It was only the two of us. We were being transported by a guard to the home of a wealthy man, a man for whom just one boy was not enough. I was shaking in fear, but the boy, the angel, as always, remained calm. He touched my hand, he smiled at me, he prayed, but as we drove on, he became concerned when he saw that his prayers were not reaching my heart. I was afraid this time in spite of his words. My fear only grew as we approached, until I was trembling uncontrollably. We arrived at the house, and without warning, he reached over and took my face in his hands. He kissed my forehead, and he told me to be ready.

' 'Be not afraid, but trust in God,' he said.

'We left the car and the guard fell in behind us. The boy turned without warning and he punched the guard in the groin. The guards were used to our obedience, and so this one was caught by surprise. He doubled over in pain and screamed in rage.

' 'Run!' the boy told me.

'I stood there, trembling. Unsure. Ever the victim.

' 'Run!' he said again, only this time it was a roar, the voice of an angel, and he fell upon the guard, biting and kicking.

'His words reached me.

'I ran.'

Cabrera rubs his forearm with one hand. I can see him there in the moment, but I can see it mixing with the present as well. The fear of indecision, the joy of making an escape from hell. The guilt of taking what the boy had offered, and of leaving him behind.

'I do not need to tell you the story of every moment, month, or year after that. I did escape, from that hell on earth. I came home to my family. I lived for many years after that as a troubled boy, and later as a troubled man. I was not a saint, I was often a sinner, but--and this is the most important thing of all--I had lived. I had not committed suicide. I had not damned my immortal soul. Do you understand? He had saved me from the worst fate of all. Because of what he did for me, I will not be barred from heaven.'

I do not share Cabrera's beliefs. But I can feel the strength of his faith, the succor it provides him, and it moves me.

'I came to America,' he continues. 'I believed in God, but I was troubled, always troubled. I'm ashamed to say that I did drugs at times. That I saw prostitutes. I contracted the virus.' He shakes his head. 'Once again, the despair. Once again, the idea that death might be better than life. It was then, at that moment, that I realized: The virus was a message from God. He had sent me an angel, once, and that angel had saved me. I should have been thankful. Instead, I had wasted many years embroiled in my own sorrows and rage.

'I listened to God's warning. I changed my ways, became a celibate. Grew closer to God. And then, one day eleven years ago, my angel returned.'

Cabrera's eyes now grow mournful.

'Still an angel, but no longer one of light. He was a dark angel. An angel made for the purpose of vengeance.'

The tattoo, I think.

'He told me that he had gone through terrible, terrible things as a result of helping me escape. I cannot tell you the things he told me. They are too evil. He told me that at times, for moments only, he would doubt God's love. But then he would remember me, and he would pray, and he was certain again. God was testing him. God would lead him from that place.' Cabrera grimaces. 'One day, God did. One day, all of the boy's faith, all of his prayers, his sacrifice for me, all these things were rewarded. He and the other children, in America now, were rescued by the police, by your FBI.

'He described it as a glorious moment. It was, to him, as though God had kissed him. His faith and his suffering had been justified.'

Cabrera goes silent now. A long silence. I have a very bad feeling building inside of me. Something that tells me I know what's coming.

'One night, he said, God returned them to hell. Men came to where they were sleeping, and murdered the police that guarded them. Men came and took them away and returned them to slavery. Terrible,' Cabrera whispers. 'Can you imagine? To be safe, and then to be snatched away from hope again? And for him, it was the worst of all. They knew that he had been helping, that he had told the police the name of a guard. They didn't kill him, but they punished him in ways that made his prior existence in hell seem like heaven.'

I knew it already, someplace inside me, but now it is confirmed. I move so I'm standing next to Alan. 'The