From Cape Verde: Courtesy of McNaughton

A Short Story in Progress by Martha S. Held

I am from Cape Verde How long had he been living there? He, who averts his head long from passing cars in the quiet street after he has locked his front door counts years back until losing tacit memory. He counts again, three, four, almost five , ... four. He errs conservatively. He was 30 years old. He worked in a warehouse. He was from Cape Verde Island. His father was wealthy. Portuguese is what he speaks. He is Catholic. Why was he there? It is as if he waits still. He is pausing above the metal platform of the ship before the wharves. It drifts in a patterned landscape of concrete and glass, there sequestered from hazard motifs of cut rock and land lain against the coastal waters of the East Atlantic. Hesitantly he steps into a crosswalk as if he seeks footing in a current that pulls to nowhere. He sits at the bus stop, angry and unsettled as he is. He dreams that trucks at the warehouse loading docks are freighters in the mouth of a river, speculates that cars on the expressway are seabirds circling in the air, and mocks that the city haze is a high cover signaling a cold wind that stills always before the clouds turn. As such, he spends this day in a mended repetition of ordered gestures, for so performed they bring him a semblance of something familiar and secure in chaos. These drills provide a schedule of purpose. He is in the cathedral, lighting a candle. On the other side of the church one man kneels, his shoulders trembling. He is quite old, a hold-over, an archetype dressed flawlessly. He collects himself, slowly, gently standing. His prayer finished, he looks once at the young man. Then he sits in the pew, exhausted, spent, white and frail: in his features determination contends with fatigue. Later, when the younger man leaves the church, the late afternoon sun has washed the plaza in rose-gold, sweeping across the porous pavement in dimensioned hues, as if the light were a cold, clear stream. He sees the old man being seated in an old town car. The mans face, which has lost its pensive character, is bright and calm just as he turns to duck beneath the car roof. The door closes and a driver sits in the front seat. The car sits in silence in front of the cathedral. It was in a holding cell where he sees the older man again, who is out cold, lying on the concrete bench as the guards unfastened the handcuffs that were cutting into his wrists. There were bruises around closed eyes, whose lids looked as bloodless as wax. The younger man sits against the concrete wall away from the toilet, not wanting to disturb the older man, for the bench is the only seat in the cell. He himself had been mistaken for a man who had been reported breaking and entering in Port Huron. I am not an Arab, he had repeated, for the suspect was from the Middle East. I am from Cape Verde. In the months after their release, as the mayor of the city would weather indictments for corruption, the case files of these two men would be dispatched to the basement of the closed state prison, the paper records dissolving under storm water, assumed names and social security numbers degrading in cardboard cartons in the cellars of open-gaped windows.

The man on the bench slept.. A warmer color was returning to his face in the midst of the dark marks just beneath the left eye. The man seemed peaceful. Prisoners in orange coveralls filed past the steel bars of the detention cell, which wealed under stress as the door shot open suddenly. Guards entered and placed handcuffs on them, and they were led, chained together with the others down a long corridor to a waiting van. When the doors to the van opened, the prisoners had to wait as each one stepped down from the step at the rear of the van. Mario braced himself as the man in front of him pulled him slightly as Mario reached the verge of the step. When Mario had descended, he stood solidly so that his elderly cell-mate would be spared strain from the chain connecting them. They were seated in a small room along two benches lining the walls. As the door opened, Mario could see that the room adjoined a court room. One after another, two men were collected and taken into the courtroom. According to the clock on the wall, some 25 minutes had passed when it was Marios turn to be heard by the judge.

An Object of Inquiry
Marios feet sank into the snow, and then more deeply, past the tops of his ankle socks, pushing his pant leg up to his knees. The snow melted on his skin and began to seep into his shoe, while searing his skin on the way down. He swore silently, edged his other foot into the drift and sank into it hip-deep. He dragged his feet up and out like a fisherman emerging from surf, sweeping powder to either side, one, two, one, two... When he reached the road, he didnt step onto it, but fell into it, lacking the resistance from the snow bank. In the road, hidden by a cut in the drifts the old town car was waiting, idling very quietly. The driver stepped out and opened the rear door and waited for him to get in. His elderly cell-mate was inside. He gave him a sandwich and some coffee. Mario ate and drank and then fell fast asleep. When Mario awoke, the car was on an expressway in Ontario, traveling at a moderate but steady speed. Intermittently, heavy snow would fall, sheeting across the windshield, cleared by the beat of the wiper blades, one, and two, one, and two They turned off the highway into London, past the service areas and into the downtown of the small city. Next to several new, adjoining five story buildings stood a three story building recessed in the shadows. The driver pulled into a short drive, stopped the car, and stepped out to open an iron gate in the doorway of a high, brick wall. Once inside, the driver opened the door to the building, and they went up a flight of stairs to the second and third floors. Mario was shown into a bedroom, and given the key to a closet that contained several blankets and towels. A door from his bedroom led into a small, ancient private bath, where Mario bathed, combed his hair, and shaved with a razor he found in the cabinet above the sink.

When he returned to the second floor, a meal was waiting on the table with a bottle of wine. Mario ate and went back upstairs to sleep. When Mario awoke, it was very dark. As his eyes tried to fix upon some line as a reference, they looked into an opening well. The abyss bounced sound past him, sent in fractured crackling patterns, forcing him to recoil slightly, just until he realized that the noise was nothing more than the shift of his eyelids, together with the sound of his heartbeat. It was fluid; it spun, irritating him but lulling him to sleep again. When his eyes opened once more, the moon had flooded the room through the window. He could see everything so clearly, it was as if it were day, even the edges of the floorboards, which creaked as he walked over to the window in the biting cold air. He hested open the window, and stepped back at the abrasive shock of the diminishing arctic wind. Far beneath the window, a hoof struck against cobblestones. Mario leaned out of the window to peer down into the courtyard. Inexplicably, there was a small horse. Perhaps it was grey; it was luminous. The horse turned its lowered head to the side, and Mario realized that it was looking up at him obliquely. It seemed to be calculating his intentions, wary and feral. Go away, said Mario, ridiculing himself that he should feel threatened by a horse three stories below. The horse stood, lowered its head and returned to regarding him with its left eye, which, singly glittered in the soft moonlight. A rear hoof fell on the stone. Then, Mario saw that the horse had left the courtyard through an open gate. Early, the morning was cold, blue and still. Weak light had stretched to the ceiling in the corner. Its warmth was sparse to nothing. Mario put on his clothes, and first put on his shoes, then combed his hair in front of a mirror, cursing the stiffness in his forearm and shoulder. He grimaced into the mirror, smiling away the dark circles that were his lower eyelids and laughed at himself. He was foolish. He walked down the stairway until, on the second landing next to the door of a bedroom, he turned to look into the open door of the kitchen. At a table in the ancient kitchen sat his cell-mate and the driver. He walked in. The two looked up amid discussion, startled. My name is Roger, said the cellmate, after slight hesitation. This is Wally. Why dont you sit down. He sat, and the two looked at him expectantly. My name is Mario, he said. Roger said, Youre from West Africa, Mario, arent you- from where? I am from Cape Verde, said Mario. Roger looked at Mario rather speculatively. Do you speak Portuguese, or Wolof? he asked. I speak both, said Mario, but my father is Portuguese. My mother was Italian. Ah, said Roger. Then you speak Italian.

How do you know Cape Verde? asked Mario. My father did business there, said Roger. He used to tell us about it. All right, he said. Lets go get something to eat.

McNaughtons repre
They walked up to the front of the music store. There were flyers in the window, and on a light green faux wall behind the picture pane were steel and copper glints of tacks and staples and faint outlines where posters had faded past recognition, in all likelihood. One imagines that, these posters had been, probably dog-eared and fallen, draped and doubled over one another, neatly removed and folded into a trash can in one fell morning. Inside the owners, the McNaughton Brothers of the sign on the tall post that reached above the store had remodeled. It had been sound-proofed. The floors and the walls were smooth, paneled wood. On the floor stood gleaming, new electric guitars and bass guitars, and in one corner hung acoustic guitars. It was still early morning, yet some teen-ager had dedicated himself to quietly testing guitars before deciding upon one. The man who had allowed him in before the store had opened, presumably, stood up from a chair in the corner. Where in the world have you been, what took you so long he said as Roger replied and they shook hands. Bill, said Roger. I didnt know if youd be around or not. I wondered if I would come back to an empty shop. I am still here, said Bill. Youre the only one who hasnt been around. They went through a door as another man on the other side replaced Bill in the store. On the back of the building was a caf, the smell of roasting coffee, and a host of morning customers. At their entrance, a sea of rough heads shifted only just, faces turned, at that hour some alarmed incongruously. They all turned inclined once more to plates, coffee, and newspapers. An aging couple in dreadlocks bore plates and tubs of dishes back and forth from a kitchen. Every swing of the door brought sounds of metal pans, a dishwasher, searing, and the aroma of cooking food. Mario sat with the others at a free table in the center and the couple in dreadlocks brought them plates of eggs, potatoes, and slabs of toast with coffee. Afterward, as the others sat reading newspapers, Mario watched tables of customers be cleared, as one by one or two customers finished their meals, and paid. They left tips on sparse bare space remaining on the tables surfaces amongst the empty plates and dishes, departing through the back of the store where a plate glass window had steamed up.

It was a bitter cold day again. Mario sat in the passenger seat of the town car as Wally opened doors for Roger and Bill. They embarked on a plate of ice, the car shifting ever so gently as the tires lost and gained traction. Wally drove to the far end of the street until they reached a highway that had been plowed and salted. They drove north along the highway. Snow embankments that approximated the breadth of the path an Ontario Provincial highway maintenance snow plow having drawn up and back to the local road East/West rose on either side of the road. It was a narrow highway, with only one lane free in many places, and good fortune had left it empty of traffic. Vast fields with resolute reaches stretched far along the road, their propriety marked by lone farmhouses that claimed fields for miles all around. In these lands of callous wind and spurious spring, a merciless thrift was staked out with a paucity of trees, stands that weathered the winter winds that doubtless, one knows strafed the far portions of the fields. Mercy rested for Julys crops, when rough winds were taken by an obdurate summer sun or a cloudbursts downpour, and when prayer remained that the summers handiwork be spared from drought for another portion of the season. Past one field where the snow had drifted in parts into forms of giant waves, the snow banks broke into the opening of a road. More closely considered, the surface of each talus had rilled into tiny elongated scales. Slowly they turned South on the flattened snow of the lane, where they drove for several minutes until they stopped at its end, at the face of a tall, wood-frame farmhouse. Wally turned off the care engine and opened the back doors of the town car. Bill, Roger, Wally and Mario walked to the front door of the house. A young man inn his twenties opened the door, smiled and greeted Bill and Roger, and welcomed them all into the front room, where they seated themselves in chairs and on a sofa after having entered variously. A woman, who was ancient, came into the room with the young man at her elbow. Look whos here, said Bill to the woman, who beamed. Dont you look great! Please-said the woman, gesturing Bill to a chair, and she folded herself slowly onto a small couch. She rested for a moment with her eyes closed, took a deep breath, and said, It is nice to see you both. Its been too long. I brought Roger, since he wanted to see you, said Bill. How is your business, said Mrs. McNaughton turning to Roger suddenly. Its good, said Roger, And I still place special orders with Polotti a few times a year. Some musicians come from California to look at the guitars This was what she had imagined, acknowledged Mrs. McNaughton. Then she and Roger talked about Natali, Rogers daughter. She was the woman in a photograph on the table , Wally told Mario quietly when Mario asked him who Nathalie was. Nana, this is Mario Mariana. He is from Cape Verde Island. He speaks Italian. I brought him so you could talk to him about Cape Verde, said Roger.

Im pleased to meet you, said Mrs. McNaughton, who was taken aback. Did you know that I had been in Cape Verde? It was a long time ago It was such an interesting place. My husband used to do business there. Nana speaks Italian, said Roger to Mario. I Am Italian, said Mrs. McNaughton wryly.

In the morning, when Mario was descending the narrow staircase, as he ducked his head underneath the low boards of the second floor landing, he heard Wally saying something, and out of the corner of his eye, through a doorway to the front room he saw the two of them standing together in front of a small table. The driver stood just to the side of the old woman, his head inclined so he could hear her. Then she was talking about the woman in the photograph, Rogers daughter. She bought the company in Boston, said Mrs. McNaughton. She runs to work every day, across the Charles before work, can you imagine? I dont know how she survives; the drivers have become so reckless there. Wally nodded, somewhat abject at the thought. A step squeaked beneath his foot then groaned as he placed his weight on the step. When he looked up from the step he saw the two old people looking at him in surprise. Both of them had hearing impairments and hadnt realized they had been speaking so loudly. Good morning, he said. Good morning, both answered. Mrs. McNaughton said it in Italian. Later when Bill and Roger had come down, Mrs. McNaughton said, Wally says that Natali is publishing some of her writing. Wally looked a bit embarrassed. I didnt know you and Natali were in touch, said Roger. It isnt the first time Natali hasnt shared something with you, Bill remarked. Somehow she survived our divorce and everything else that happened. I dont know how shes turned out so well. She is one tough cookie, said Roger. Did she say what she is writing? Roger asked Wally. She wrote a book. Shes had offers from magazines for excerpts, Wally confided dryly. Roger seemed confused.

Shes been writing since shes been small, Roger. George said she has a gift, said Wally. Well, said Roger, impressed. She must be really good. George is a department chair at Harvard, he explained to Mario. My daughter is a writer , he improvised to no one. Roger, you werent such a bad parent, said Bill. Dont cheat yourself out of some credit. Id thought shed settled on being a lawyer for the rest of her life, smirked Roger. Now what will I say to my friends? You mean every musician in Ontario who sponsors benefits for the homeless? You know youre suffering, Bill replied contritely.

A Disposition
Roger had been sleeping. The window shade leaked blue light around the border. Was it dusk, or would it rain? He vied with his fatigue. Better to get up than to spin in and out of restive consciousness. She stood in the doorway. She knocked gently again. Come out, Dad, I need to talk to you. He sat on the edge of the bed. He put on his bathrobe and slippers. He opened the shade. He was exhausted. It was raining on the snow. He must remember to get up to put salt on the walks in the morning. He walked down the hall to the stairs, then down to the living room where his daughter was waiting. Where is Mom? she asked. Gone, he said. He should have said something more, but couldnt. But where is she? she rejoined. Maybe shes with him in Baghdad snatching pre-Islamic artifacts away from the path of destruction. His daughter stood to look out of the window at the rain. She lowered herself into a chair as if she were in pain. Her shoulders hunched inward. She was looking at him. Her face was plaintive. What do I do now? I dont know what to do. I dont know what I want to do. He should have felt something. He felt grief for her. He felt nothing else at all, and not a trace of how to form his empathy into words. It will be all right. You will find out, eventually, what you want to do, he said. He knew that this addressed her anguish not even scarcely.

Im graduating. Where do I go from here? I have no sense of where I should go from here. Im terrified. She suppressed some tears, breathing through sobs, her eyes closed, her chin resolute. He had no answer. He tried and failed to summon some appropriate emotion. He felt hollow: ridiculously perplexed. You know she loves you. I love you. he said to no effect, he thought. He regarded her face, pale and wise as it was. Her features favor Sandras, he realized. Im very proud of you, was all that he could say. He said nothing more. He was afraid of allowing wordless pain escape from within him, not knowing what he might do. He set himself in an immobile curve. She left the room. The next day they drove her packed belongings to Colby College. He kissed her goodbye when they had taken all of her boxes into her room. As he turned his car around to leave, he saw she was opening the door to her dormitory.

He picked up her photograph from the table. He scanned it and replaced it. He knew it by heart. In the image a self-assured young woman smiled at the photographer. Mario was talking with his mother. He was listening intently. Roger understood enough to know that they were discussing people they had known. It seemed that Mario knew children of business associates, just slightly. Mom would ask him questions and sometimes, to their mutual astonishment, Mario would reply at length. As for Mario, he was uncomfortable. He didnt want to talk about Cape Verde, and the woman in front of him missed nothing. She marked every hesitation. Certainly every verbal misstep was answered with her own deliberate, syntactical modification. He couldnt read her, and in truth, he was afraid. He had been talking about people he had read about in the newspaper. The Cape Verde she had known didnt exist anymore. This she knew. It was clear she did. He wondered why she kept at the pretense of asking. After dinner, Bill got the four men into the town car. They drove into a small town north of the farm. Roger saw the sign of a bar glowing within a line of empty store fronts, just as the town car was pulling up to a corner. Wally let Roger, Mario and Bill out in front of the bar, and parked the town car across the street in front of an empty store. Mario got snow in his shoes again as they stepped through snow drifts and they kicked off slush at the entrance before walking into the bar. There were four other customers. The electricity had gone out, and a generator was rattling in the back of the store. The bartender stepped to the bar with a specious welcome. Bill ordered the drinks and took them to a table. A man came in and stood at the bar. One of the customers from the other table went up to carry coffee back to his table. The bartender began to complain to his friend. Do you know how much it costs just to keep the toilet tank filled? Im flat broke His friend laughed. Id estimate that it costs more to fill the toilet than it costs to buy a drink, he said over the noise of the generator, which was beginning to saw.

Bill went over to the other table to offer to buy a round. He returned. They want us to join their table, he said. At the other table, four elderly men looked up from cups of coffee. As Roger was seating himself, he heard two speaking in a French dialect that he couldnt understand. When one of them saw him take this in, they began speaking in what Roger guessed was a Native American language. The man who had invited them over welcomed them. To his left was a thin, placid man. To his right were the two men, who were now arguing. He glanced at them in irritation, and they stopped. Roger felt sick suddenly. His head spun. He wondered if he was having a seizure. He imagined that one of the men was pretending to strum a guitar sarcastically at the other. He looked more closely. The two were sitting meekly with their hands on their coffee cups. Abruptly he saw the man strumming again, his face screwed up in rage. Do you know me? asked Roger, What are you talking about? The bar fell dead silent. Roger felt like an idiot, for the two old men were, once again, merely sitting quietly with their hands on their coffee cups. Roger didnt know how to cope with this. Hed said something so disruptive that it required explanation. He couldnt find anything logical to say. He prepared an answer in his mind. I think Im not well. However, the eldest man in the center spoke. My brothers son has a fellowship to study music in Toronto. My cousin says that young people shouldnt go to the cities. Hes afraid he wont come back. Roger gave him his card. It said, McNaughton Brothers Guitars Specializing in Polotti Classical Guitars.