legs. I do not want to dwell upon it, so I turn again to the left. Sweat is darkening the back of Dr. Ludtz’s shirt as he kneels beside his self-made monument. His hands are folded in prayer, his head bowed, his lips moving slightly. After a moment he rises and crosses himself — an odd thing, since he is not a Catholic. And yet, of late Dr. Ludtz has become a man in love with gestures. The graceful bow, the courteous nod, the sign of the cross — with these things Dr. Ludtz affirms himself as a man of substance and experience, one who has seen misfortune and yet triumphed over it. With a single courtly affectation he has erased his past and rejoined the community of civilized mankind. Through the screen of smoke and blood that has besmirched his life, he sees only aging, crinkled snapshots of his long-lost portly wife.
I turn away from him, then back again. Nothing should be avoided, not even Dr. Ludtz. He rises from his knees and slaps the dust from his trouser legs. When he catches me in his eye, he nods with an exaggerated grace, a gesture that might have found its proper place in some elaborately curtained Viennese ballroom, but which has no meaning here amid the chaotic chatter of the monkeys.
I lift my hand in greeting as Dr. Ludtz makes his way up the narrow trail to the steps of my verandah.
“May I join you?” Dr. Ludtz asks.
“Please do.”
Dr. Ludtz moves heavily up the stairs, then drops his body into one of the polished rattan chairs. He breathes with some effort, as if his bulk were pressing down upon his lungs. He smiles, pulls his pince-nez from his nose, and rubs the fog from the lenses. “Dr. Langhof, tell me, have you ever read any of the writings of Meister Eckhart?”
“Yes.”
“Extraordinary, don’t you think?”
“Ja, aber ich habe viel vergessen.”
Dr. Ludtz flinches. He does not wish me to speak in our native tongue. It is a method of identification, a verbal fingerprint, the abiding language of our crime.
“Please, Dr. Langhof,” he whispers quickly. “Even here — silly as it seems — I would prefer English.”
He has never learned Spanish, considering it a peasant tongue.
“As you wish, Dr. Ludtz,” I tell him.
He leans back, relaxing slightly. “Well, to the point. I am much taken with his — Eckhart’s — notion of transcendence, of triumphing over our creaturehood.”
“Creaturehood?”
“Ourselves,” Dr. Ludtz explains, slapping at a mosquito.
I nod. “Yes. Eckhart prefers the God-man.”
Dr. Ludtz smiles delightedly. “Ah, you do remember. Yes, precisely. The God-man. What do you make of it?”
“Nothing.”
Dr. Ludtz looks disappointed. “Nothing?”
“What is one to make of such a notion?”
Dr. Ludtz blinks quickly and replaces the pince-nez. He has adopted this style of eyeglasses because he thinks it makes him look scholarly. If it were that easy, we would all be wise.
“Well,” Dr. Ludtz begins, somewhat taken aback, “it seemed quite interesting to me.” He does not wish to argue with me. He fears that I might take offense and refuse him the protection and permission to reside in the Republic I purchase for us both by giving El Presidente a diamond each year.
“Many people find Eckhart’s writings interesting, Dr. Ludtz,” I tell him. “It is simply that I do not.”
“Yes, of course,” Dr. Ludtz says. “Quite true.” He rises, wrenching his body forward, his belly drooping heavily over his belt.
“Would you do me the honor of joining me for breakfast?” I ask with deliberate formality, an Old World ritual with which I expect Dr. Ludtz to be pleased.
“With great thanks, no,” Dr. Ludtz replies. “With your permission, I must be about my chores.”
“Of course.”
He turns and walks uneasily down the short flight of wooden stairs. The sweat has oozed through his clothing, plastering his pants as tightly against the globes of his buttocks as the lid of an eye. Halfway up the path to his private quarters, he glances right and left over his shoulder, sensing abductors in the brush. He has denuded the area immediately surrounding his cabin of all vegetation, so that it sits forlornly on a great clay embankment, a monument to enforced aridity. I hope the Valkyries will bury him in his weedy sarcophagus, for I do not know if I can. I have so little taste for farce.
Esperanza, Juan’s wife, brings out my breakfast and places it on the glass surface of the small oval table in front of me. A large woman whose skin is the color of gingerbread, she wears a bony amulet around her neck. It dangles from a small pouch that smells like red cabbage.
“Buenos dias, Don Pedro,” she says.
“Buenos dias.”
“Tengo su desayuno.”
“Si.”
She eases the rolls and butter closer to me, pours a cup of thick, pasty coffee, and then, from another pitcher, pours a strange lemon drink of her own design into the glass near my right hand. She claims this drink will drive the devils from my mind. Once, long ago, before I attained even the rudiments of grace, I threw this drink into her face. She stood watching me, not the slightest bit unnerved, as the greenish liquid dripped from her hair. At that moment, I believe, she began to hate me. She did not stop bringing the drink, but now she brings it not to drive evil from my brain, but to keep it there.
“Gracias,” I tell her.
“De nada.”
Esperanza lumbers back toward the rear of the house. She is the spirit-woman of the small village that bakes alongside the river a few miles below the compound. She is Eckhart’s God-woman, to whom dusty peons come, bringing their insurmountable fear and grief. Over the years I have seen them come by the hundreds. They cradle dying children in their arms, or old men drooling papaya juice. For a time, I tried to intervene, to drive Esperanza back into the musty cave of her superstition. But the villagers would not come to me. Perhaps, like Juan, the ceiling fans inflamed their joints.
The morning humidity has already done its work on the rolls, turning them soggy. I push them away and watch the butter liquefy in the hard, white light. Many years ago, on the train to this final home in El Caliz, I was stalled briefly on a rickety railway trestle. An odd, familiar smell wafted through the open window, and for a moment I knew that it reminded me in some strange way of home. I thought of street cafes in the capital, of old men in buckled shoes and lederhosen, of girls in pigtails singing lightly to the accompaniment of twin accordions. I turned to the man sitting next to me, smiled as best I could, and asked what the smell was. “Ugh,” he said, grimacing, “it’s that slaughterhouse upriver where they burn the animal remains.”
It is time for my morning walk. I grasp the banister firmly and ease myself down the stairs. Old men must move slowly or they will hurt themselves.
On the ground, I feel reasonably safe again and make my way down toward the greenhouse, which sits beside the river. Juan is inside, fingering the orchids, following instructions that come to him in dreams, hoping in this way to secure the orchids against the evil blight. The air is sweltering, but the orchids thrive. They have defeated heat. It is their nourishment. Their radiant petals open to it like the mouths of hungry children.
I nod to Juan. “Juan. ?Que tal?”
“Bien, Don Pedro.”
He does not turn from the flowers. His fingers are half-hidden within the petals of one exquisite bloom.
I compliment his handiwork, tell him the flowers are beautiful.
Juan does not leave his work. “Si, Don Pedro.”
“Hermoso, muy hermoso,” I say insistently. Beautiful.
“Si.”
Here in El Caliz, they are beautiful. But there are certain worlds where beauty itself may become transmuted into obscenity. I remember that day they lined the vermin up outside the great wall and made them undress under the square, smoking chimney. One of the guards noticed her, a naked woman who had been a famous dancer in her day. He walked over and began to taunt her. “Dance for us,” he said. “Dance for us. It’s your last chance.” She
