something were blowing up inside him. “It’s important that you remember that it was not our fault.”
“Yes, Father,” the little brigadier said.
My father placed both his large hands on my shoulders and pressed down. “I will not have you growing up defeated, do you understand?”
I nodded. A small breeze blew a strand of hair across my forehead. He quickly swept it back.
“We are never to feel defeated,” my father said. His voice was restrained, but there was an undiscoverable ferment behind his eyes, a crazed unrest.
“I won’t, Father,” I said.
He touched the side of his head with his index finger. “We must keep this in our minds.”
I imitated his gesture. “In our minds.”
“It is important.”
“Yes,” I said.
My father watched me suspiciously, his lower lip trembling. All his life, he was a creature of unfathomable loneliness.
I stood quietly in front of him and probably would have stood there through the night if he had wanted, but suddenly the smell of sugar cookies surrounded me, lifting my spirits. I smiled.
My father frowned. “What is it?”
I stiffened my back reflexively. “Nothing, Father.”
“That smile, what was that for?”
“Nothing.”
My father squeezed my shoulders. “Answer me!”
I could not.
My father stood up instantly and stared down at me with intense disapproval. “How can you smile after what I’ve told you?” he said angrily.
“I was not smiling,” I said quickly. The very idea of sugar cookies became nauseating.
My father glared at me, then raised his hand and slapped my face. I could hear the sound of the blow ringing through the park.
“You dishonor me!” he cried.
“No, Father.”
“You dishonor me!”
I lowered my head.
He took my chin in his hand and lifted it up. “You are like your mother,” he said. His face showed his disgust.
“I’m sorry, Father,” I said desperately.
“Like your mother. Stupid. Stupid.”
For a moment I saw myself positioned in his sense of the Chain of Being, a vile, crawling thing that sickened him unspeakably.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I whined. “I didn’t mean to smile. It was the sugar cookies.”
My father’s face hardened. “Sugar cookies?”
“Yes.”
“Sugar cookies? What are you talking about?”
“From the bakery on Telemannstrasse,” I explained. “They are making them. They smell sweet.”
“How can you think of such things?”
“It was just the smell,” I said, trembling. “I didn’t mean to smile.”
My father dropped to the bench, his shoulders slumping forward. “Sugar cookies,” he muttered.
Then I saw defeat. Not in France, but in him. “Father, I’m sorry,” I said weakly.
My father’s head bent forward. I could almost see my face reflected in the sleek smoothness of his skull.
“I didn’t mean to smile, Father,” I said again.
He looked at me. “You must learn to care about things, Peter. Do you think the world is sweet? Do you think it is made of sugar cookies?”
“No, Father,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
My father shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said wearily. And then, in a low voice, almost to himself, “They will come here. We are at their mercy now.”
“Who?”
“The enemy.”
In my childishness I could not even be sure exactly who the enemy was.
“It’ll be all right, Father,” I said.
“I don’t know what will happen now,” my father said without looking up.
“Nothing will happen. It will be all right,” I said. I felt the urge to touch his shoulders, but I was afraid to do it.
“They will come here,” my father said. “The enemy.”
And then in my imagination I saw them, the enemy. They were not people at all, but great, woolly monsters. In my mind I saw them clawing up the pavement of the Unter den Linden and scratching their matted, filthy behinds on the lofty archway of the Brandenburg Gate.
OLD MEN watch the world from a certain distance. From the heights of my verandah I can see Esperanza as she bends over the river scrubbing my white linen shirts on a large flat stone. There are no modern conveniences in El Caliz. And throughout the Republic there are very few. Of course, in El Presidente’s palace the rooms are stacked to the ceiling with every imaginable mechanical contraption. He is a connoisseur of all the little humming trinkets of advanced industrial society. From the great enterprising nations he imports thousands of toasters, televisions, electric pencil sharpeners, and the like. It is said that he has devoted one huge hall to the working of such things. The walls are empty save for row upon row of electrical outlets. These he uses to feed a current through a jungle of extension cords powering hundreds of small machines, infinite in their variety. When he pulls the switch, they clang and hiss and sizzle, and it is said that nothing can be heard above this metallic bedlam except the gleeful laughter of El Presidente.
Esperanza slaps a shirt against a stone. The very monotony of her action makes it clear that part of the tedium of the primitive lies in the incessant passing of day into day until the nature of labor becomes, finally, the nature of life. The lowly character of Esperanza’s work reflects the low esteem with which she and all her kind are regarded by El Presidente. And yet Esperanza has triumphed over the debased quality of her circumstances. From within the depths of her impoverishment she has seized a spirit in its flight and prisoned it within the confines of her potions and incantations. She has captured God, and dispenses his indecipherable favors to the villagers who gather nightly in her hut. They come to hear their futures spun out from Esperanza’s mouth like the endless string of Fortune’s wheel. Will the child be a changeling? Will the sugar cane rise tall in season? Will the bats suck dry the herds? To all these questions Esperanza gives certain answer, and the villagers, in the desperate precariousness of their need, remember when she is right and forget when she is wrong.
In the Camp, there were others such as she, people who claimed special powers of clairvoyance and enchantment. The withered vermin came to them, begging for blessings from their bony fingers. They sat hollow- eyed and shivering while these prophets rolled their eyes toward the sky. They pleaded with a special fervency for news concerning lost family and friends. The prophets listened quietly, then bleated these same questions heavenward, knowing all the time that the ashes of the loved ones were smoldering in the crematoria.
Esperanza bats at a mosquito, then turns back to her work. Loudly, she slaps the shirts onto the rock, then kneads them with her fists. The sky is bleaching overhead. Heat in El Caliz acts as a great sponge, sucking up speculation. The heat is the given, a world unto itself, beyond which nothing is truly imaginable. El Presidente, however, has three huge air conditioners in his gilded throne room. He has attached long multicolored ribbons to the vents so that they blow wildly in the air, filling the room with the sound of their snapping. In the unnatural cool El Presidente may exercise his mind, hatching exotic visions of deflowered maidens and the smooth brown thighs of uninitiated boys. But Esperanza, slowly cooking in the heat, can think only of God and water.
The Archbishop of the Republic also thinks of God, though less of water. He serves as spiritual adviser for El
