The Curtains, the Swimmer, and Death

Countless metric tons of seawater hurtled into and over las Cortinas, or curtains—named for the cascade the Pacific makes when it thunders over them and the slab-like shape of the volcanic rock formations themselves—thrusting out of the Nicaraguan shoreline south of Casares with the weight and sound of a doomed jet. It was the hour between dog and wolf, when the light parts the veil between day and night in a part of the world comprised of attracting opposites: priceless natural beauty and heartrending poverty; profound generosity and the expedience of necessity; life, and the other. 

I looked to the sun, a somniferous blob of mercurochrome, far out to sea. My sons—still my hearts outside of my body, aged six and ten—built a sandcastle in the surf a few feet from me with their friend, conscious of the place’s beauty, but still untouched by its menace. I reassured myself of their safety by observing that their mother and grandmother were close by.

A swimmer who looked to be about twenty-two, slender, swarthy, and breathtakingly reckless, thrashed in a shallow, rocky posita at the base of the curtain of frozen lava on which hammered the deafening tide. He stroked piston-like, joylessly, against the incoming rollers, his arms pumping mindlessly in the confined space like a diaphragm providing air to a dying brain. When his head disappeared among the razor sharp outcroppings, I thought, he’s going to die, and commenced the mental calculus—distance from me to him, him to the rocks, boys to their mother, next wave to the shore, time required to cover the distance between us, distance I could go without leaving my sons fatherless. His head reappeared, and the wave flicked him backwards. He could either get out or dive into the next wave. 

Out of the corner of my eye I noted in an instant both my oblivious children’s joy and the horror on the women’s faces. I halved the distance between myself and the swimmer in case I was compelled to decide whether or not to try and save him. At that moment, with difficulty, he climbed out of the surf. So he is going to live, I thought. Shaking my head, I turned to my family. My wife’s eyebrows rose; wordlessly, she indicated with her finger that I should look back. 

He had scaled an immense slab of frozen lava and now stood, back to us, arms thrown wide like waxen wings, facing the ocean, haloed by the ruby sunset, dazzling in his youth, his arrogance, his foolishness, his proximity to his own destiny? He’s invited Death in, I thought. There wasn’t even time to call out to him. In one beat, his legs were swept from beneath him and he disappeared. Sucked inland, not seaward, between the Charybdis of water and Scylla of stone, his head reappeared for an instant as it hit a shelf of rock six feet under where he had just been standing. His legs followed as the waves cascaded over and around him, pushing him into the posita another six feet down, where he disappeared again. I began towards him. His head reappeared. I determined to drag him out of the water and begin CPR. Came the next wave, which pushed him under and expelled him, raking his legs against the barnacles. I thought, if he’s unconscious, then it’s going to be easier to serve as Charon, if I can reach him before he’s carried out to sea. 

As I made for him a third time, he hauled himself out of the water, and strode decisively to a log on the beach, pulled a phone from a bag, and began texting. I stopped and observed him. Stabbing at the phone, he seemed unaware of the blood streaming from the deep cuts and abrasions on his legs. If he had been concussed, then he hadn’t yet gone into shock. He didn’t seem drunk, altered, or fatally injured—there seemed even to be a slight caper in his step. (Or was that my imagination?) Was he suicidal? Had he stupidly taunted Death in some sort of sideways-macho-bullshit Hemingway stunt, or was he just a fool? What was his story?

The children, concentrating on their sandcastle, seemed to have missed it all. I inhaled deeply, noting with a trace of guilt that I felt no compassion for the boy, and felt relief that I hadn’t really been called upon to decide whether or not to risk my life to save him. My youngest sang quietly as he patted the wet sand; the ladies were still processing their astonishment. My older boy looked up at me. “Did you see that?” I asked him, indicating the swimmer, his back to us, sloping up the beach in the starlight, talking animatedly on the cellphone. “Hmm?” He replied. “The boy who nearly met Death just now,” I answered. “No,” he said, sunnily. “I was watching my sandcastle get swept away.”

The Sweet Water and the Salt

I hear in ecstatic counterpoint the songs of a dozen birds in only ten seconds as they roost in the neem, eucalyptus, palm, and mango trees that surround my father-in-law Bernie and me as we swing like a spider’s dinner in hammocks strung up in the rancho at Rio Mar. I think, there were at least thirty different bird calls in the air. I can only differentiate a dozen. Even though I know that I missed them, I don't mind, and I can accept not having heard them all. Is that what aphasia is like? All at once, the singing stops. Silence.

In the gathering dusk, three stately palomino chanchi sashay down the middle of the deeply-rutted dirt road outside the gates past the “Huevos de Yankees,” (a useless, stalky plant that pops up uninvited all over Nicaragua that gives inedible, tennis-ball-sized green fruit just below its crown) on their way to what used to be Cuban Pete’s place up the hill. Released by Yvette from their pen for the night, the dogs streak past us, mewling, to the outcropping of sonsiquite on the river side of the house, there to stream like champagne over the rocks and out to the ocean where the tide runs very, very high. The first sound to return, now that the sun has set, is that of the surf. It pounds like distant artillery; the roosting birds' feathers rustle as they jostle for position; the northern wind’s whoosh blends with the ocean’s deep song; and the drone of winter cicadas joins the rhythmic, hollow, thumping sound of iguanas on the house’s metal roof fucking.

Bernie is asleep in the hammock next to mine. Aphasic from the post-operative stroke that he suffered six years ago, his world no longer makes much sense to him. The obsessive web-spinning to which I’ve subjected the skein of my memories in an effort to construct from them a meaningful narrative is the equivalent to him of a man brushing cobwebs from before his eyes. The stroke took away his ability to read his beloved Shakespeare, Melville, and Joyce; to consistently recognize his children; to identify my sons; to know with complete certainty, even, where he is. 

His eyes open, he pitches forward slightly, and waves his hand before his face. “All these people I love were looking at me and I was dead!” he says, still in a waking dream. “You were there; the woman I live with; my sister—. Do you get it?” He asks.”Yes,” I reassure him. “That was your wife Gilda, your sons, your sister and her husband, … and your daughter.” He smiles suddenly, “the one who sang!” He cries. “You were waking up after your stroke,” I explain. “They wouldn’t talk to me,” he continues, “but I could hear her singing, and I knew she wanted me to come back.” “You did. You did,” I reassure him. “And the first thing I thought was that I was dead and that every second now is a bonus,” he says. “Do you get it?” “Yes,” I promise him. “But I didn’t make it all the way back,” he says. “We’ve got the best parts, Pappy,” I say. 

"Our coordinates, according to my phone," I tell him, "are: 11°38′11″ N  86°20′59″ W. We are two old, white-haired, gringo Quixotes painted red by the sun worrying about our wives and children who’ve been shopping all day in Masaya and Diriamba." "So, that's where we are," he chuckles. There is no comfort in exactitude. “Are you hungry?” I ask him. “No,” he answers out of principle. “Maybe a cup of coffee.” “I’m putting some eggs and cheese on a tortilla and making a fresh pot of coffee for myself,” I say, airily. “OK,” he says, and falls asleep. 

Since there’s no time here except for the enormous seasonal rhythm of the stars and tides, he picks up where he left off when I help him out of the hammock and place the good, hot coffee in his hands. Digging into his eggs with a will, he observes, “they love us here, kid. I really don’t know why. But they do.” I don’t answer. Tearing a warm tortilla in half, I hold it to my nose and inhale its wholesomeness—so like the way my son smelled when he was born. I hand it to him, observing, “we’re very lucky guys, Pappy.” He takes it and uses it to scoop up his eggs. We finish the meal in agreeable silence. 

Just when we start missing them most, Mama calls Yvette’s phone with the message that they’re all fine and that they will be home in a couple of hours. We don’t discuss it, but each feels the other’s relief. We’re free to pretend for a few more hours that we’re self-sufficient. After we wash the dishes, Bernie climbs back into his hammock.  Just as he’s about to nod off, he observes, “I don’t know why I’m still here. I can’t really do anything any more except love all of you.” He’s suspended again in the web between waking and dreaming, between life and the other. I clear my throat lightly. He opens his eyes. “Orson Welles is supposed to have written, ‘We’re born alone. We live alone. We die alone. Only through love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we are not alone’,” I tell him. “Well put,” he says, closing his eyes, for the moment mollified.

It’s late. “The eggs were good,” he says. “Gramma made them. I only heated them up,” I say. We’re quiet. Long after I think he’s asleep, he rolls over and mutters, “Huevos de Yankees.” I chuckle. He winks. No more sounds of birds, iguanas, livestock, or even children. Just the gentle heartbeat of the crickets, the occasional surge of the breeze over the Rio Casares, and the sea comfortingly caressing the shore. 

Bernie is fast-asleep, and I’m half-awakened by the well-thumbed copy of Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World that slips from my hand when Harold steers the Trooper in. My older boy carries in groceries—pastelitos, picos, and local coffee from Diriamba; Harold shoulders in a six-gallon jug of potable water; the women ferry in presents to take back to the States. We allow our younger son, who has fallen asleep during the drive home despite the wild roads, to doze on in the jeep. Gilda turns down the boys’ beds; her mother begins stowing things in the kitchen; Yvette closes and locks the gate; and I awaken Bernie and guide him inside. 

Returning to the jeep, I gather my son in my arms and bury my nose in his fine, long, straight hair—exactly like mine at his age—and smell the burnt leña and dust of the market in it as I carry him to bed. The next time we return, Bernie may be gone, I think, climbing into bed with the boys, pulling them close, and singing them their secret songs. A few hours later, disentangling myself, I rise.  Alone, I stroll to the ocean with a cup of coffee and honor the dazzling full Blue Paschal Moon—the first to be followed the next day by Easter Sunday since 1714. The surf intensifies as the sun begins its ascent behind the trees; the pelicans begin to rustle; and there’s the staccato nicker of a horse. As dawn breaks, instead of the sound of the rooster’s call, comes the plaintive howl, nine beats long, starting low, rising, and dying as it falls, of a lone hound, from across the estuary where the sweet water of the river meets the salt of the sea.

Nicaragua: Barb of Sorrow

We piled into the Jeep that winter morning in 2006 and drove in to Diriamba, the birthplace of El Güegüense, where a traditional drama reenacted each January during the feast of San Sebastián, the city’s patron saint, took place. We would end up at the beautiful Basilica of San Sebastian of course, but first we had to change some money. Diriamba had a bank, or maybe two, I suppose. I never went into them. Why in the world would you buy córdobas at a bank? The best rate to be had was at the gas station on the Carretera Panamericana. One “negotiated” the exchange rate with the Coyotes, scary-looking dudes who stood between the gas pumps, wearing crisscrossing ammunition belts, a wad of bills in one hand and an automatic weapon in the other. Equal parts Malcolm Lowry  (there are literally a dozen active volcanoes in Nicaragua at and given time) and Jim Lehrer (of the Viva Max, not the PBS NewsHour vein), I loved the unhinged madness of my mother-in-law’s birthplace—where gun-toting lunatics fired off shots next to fuel pumps; people bought baggies of pastel-colored mystery booze from street vendors straddling the median strip; we slept with a machete in the bedside table; and the sunrises, every one of them, broke your damned Yanqui heart. I felt intense, crazy pride, as I watched my fearless mother-in-law intimidate the Coyotes into giving her a better rate.

I love the family I've been blessed to have married into, every member of it, with the fierce, wild appreciation and gratitude of a man who never thought he could ever be anyone’s son or brother or husband again. Even after a stroke, Gilda’s father Bernie can still handle himself and quote Shakespeare at length. His wife Gilda was born to the respected Alemán family; they operated Diriamba’s department store, co-owned several small Cinema Paradiso-like movie theaters—and, as I learned the very first time I was shown the town, built the municipal Clock Tower—in nearby Diriamba. Bernie and Gilda met in Upstate New York, where they attended Woodstock, among other things, and earned their teaching certificates. Bernie taught English and Gilda taught Art to emotionally unstable children from troubled backgrounds at Pope Pius XII High School, in Rhinecliff, New York. They retired a few years before Gilda Marie and I married.

Latin America is a bloody clot of Life and Death, Good and Evil, Wealth and Extreme Poverty, Man and God. For me, as it does for many folks, this inspires a heightened awareness of possibility, an intensification of experience that renders emotions more vivid, the appreciation of the fragility of life more sanguine.

We enjoyed a horse-drawn coach ride around the colonial city of Granada—a town dressed for wealthy travelers—and boated on the fresh water of Lake Nicaragua, prying monkeys off our shoulders—a lake so large that you could drop Puerto Rico into it. We trekked up the paths surrounding the active cone of the Masaya Volcano, made our way through the bustling markets of Masaya and Jinotepe, and spent our last morning in La Boquita on a ten mile walk on the beach to the shore’s point (which revealed another point beyond that) at dawn. All the while, we were treated to incredibly lavish and sumptuous meals prepared by our Tia Leyla as well as delicious foods in fine Nicaraguan restaurants.

Either it was a discarded bone needle of the sort used by fishermen to repair their nets, or it a stingray’s barb, a rusty nail—whatever, the four-inch-long espina passed through my Gilda’s foot like a red-hot knitting needle through butter when she stepped on it in the Pacific surf.

The patriarch of the family there, Ricardo Gutiérrez (Tio), was one of the preeminent horse trainers in Latin America. (In the Spanish style, each dictator, once they become an eminence, keeps horses.) The horse in Nicaraguan society served not just a beast of burden, but also as a mark of culture and prestige. One day we attended the Ipica—a huge equestrian festival—in Diriamba where $100 workhorses were ridden proudly next to $150,000 show horses. Because of his personal charisma, character, and his talent as a horseman, Ricardo seemed to know and be respected by everyone—from the peasant driving his burrow down the street to the President of the country, Enrique Bolaños, to whom we were introduced at one of the house parties to which Tio and Tia brought us during the festival.

The President had served as vice president under his predecessor, Arnoldo Alemán and just begun his term, which ended when Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas came back to power in 2007. He has since retired from politics and runs a non-profit educational foundation. Casually dressed men loosely ringed him with automatic rifles propped against their hips, and came to surround us as well as he—to our surprise—chatted with us for nearly twenty minutes.

Gilda turned chalky, one foot out of the water, the other in. “Don’t move” I said. “I don’t know what it is,” she said. The pain moved across her face like a shadow. I bent down in the waves and felt for her foot as, reflexively, she lifted it.

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Basílica Menor de San Sebastián, Diriamba, Nicaragua, March 2005. (Photo credit: Daron Hagen)

The festival of San Sebastian celebrated the meeting of the patron saints of Diriamba (San Sebastian), Jinotepe (Santiago), and San Marcos (San Marco). Evidently, statues of San Sebastian and Santiago were en route from Spain when the boat carrying them capsized. Fishermen found the statues floating in the ocean, dry and safe in sealed boxes, as close to each of their intended destinations as they could have been. The folklore surrounding them is that, with this history, they must be traveling companions, and very close friends. Each year San Sebastian invites both Santiago and San Marcos, as he is from another nearby town, to celebrate with him in Diriamba.

Blood poured out of both the top and the bottom of her foot and into the water, on my hands, all over her suit. I quickly checked the entry and exit wounds. Clean. Tore my shirt off and bound her foot. It stanched nothing. “I’ve got to get you to the house. Don’t look at the blood,” I said, trying to tie the shirt tighter.

Faithful from each town carried the statues from Diriamba, Jinotepe, and San Marcos to Dolores, a town in the middle of all three Saints’ homes, where the three met and then parade back to Diriamba. A huge Mass was celebrated in the basilica there and everyone processed, carrying the saints’ statues, accompanied by extravagant, beautiful dances and music. Children as young as four years old—dressed up in elaborate costumes—threw themselves into the moment. Faithful of all ages walked on their knees to fulfill promises to the saints. The incredible smells of fresh—and delicious—festival foods like picadillo, chicharrón, yuka, and nacatameles as well as of horses, people and the spent gunpowder of fireworks—all overwhelmed.

“I’m okay,” she protested. “I can walk.” Putting weight on the foot, she nearly passed out. I looked back at the house, across a finger of water and far up the beach. There was no one for three hundred yards in any direction. “I’m going to ferry you, baby,” I said.

We attended Mass in the choir loft above the front door of the basilica with several priests, and five or six members of the family, leaning over the rail and looking down towards the altar. People were packed tightly in as the choir sang. At the customary moments in the Mass, probably three thousand voices inside the basilica, another several thousand outside in the square, sang.

“Sit down, brother,” commanded Christopher gently, as I placed her in a chair on the porch of the little bungalow. He took over. The blood had by that time soaked everything we had on. ‘You look like you’re going to pass out,” he said, seizing my arm. “You should sit down.” My tailbone connected with the ground as I nearly fainted from the sprint up the beach.

The cardinal finished, the procession began. The statues of the saints, covered in ribbons and silver Milagros were carried down the central aisle, preceded by dancers, huge waving flags, drummers, and flute players. The basilica trembled and I felt what it is like when sound itself moves. Deafening fireworks exploded outside, thousands sang, and—a few feet away from us in the belfries—the bells began to peal. It was as beyond the pale as New Year’s Eve in Venice in the Piazza San Marco, but even more intense, with a more fervent undercurrent of religion and danger.

Now that Gilda was safe, my mind began to fly off like a busted kite. “Like stigmata…” I shuddered, trying to steady myself by looking out to sea. The fist around my heart tightened. Blood still pulsed from the wound, but her color was returning. “Kierkegaard called it—what was it—a barb of sorrow?” I was going into shock. “If it is pulled out, I shall die,” I half-remembered.

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Looking southwards toward Rio Mar from Casares. (Photo credit: Chris Lyons)

Every hair on my goose-bumped arms stood on end in the heat as the procession passed out of the church through the doors below. I was guided to a rope like a blind person and directed to help toll the bells. Flying a dozen feet up and down, drowning in the sound of the singing, of the bells, of the blood pounding in my head, I looked first one way to see waves of people reaching up to touch the saints as they pass in the plaza, then another to see the Christ hanging above the altar, hands and feet nailed with barbs of sorrow to the Holy Rood. I looked another way and saw the huge clappers inside the bells, then another and saw the bullet holes pocking the belfry’s inner walls, and then another to see Gilda’s ecstatic face in song.

“In this country,” Chickie remarked as he wound gauze around his sister’s foot, “Death sits right next to you at the bar without asking, claps you on the back, looks you in the eye, and buys you a Toña.” 

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This essay first appeared in an earlier iteration in the Huffington Post. You can read it there by clicking here.