I write a letter asking Yelena to come here, not simply to visit after Annabelle is born, as I wrote in the previous letter, but now, to live. Here, Annabelle would not be judged, I write, but accepted. Her life would be better here. After living here for a time, we would all travel the earth together, working as much as we needed to in order to obtain money for further travel.
Over the next few days, I think of freedom and the myriad of possibilities before me. I imagine that I can see all of the immensity of life through the anticipation of travel along with Yelena and Annabelle, and through the windows of this apartment and the ocean it overlooks.
I have the intuition as I mail the letter that all of the burdens of my previous existence have been lifted and that emancipation has been granted to me through this place.
I no longer need to go anywhere in the mornings. I paint endlessly. I don’t teach the Señora’s daughters until late in the afternoon, after they have returned home from the university. The Señora tells me that they do not have to pay to attend the university, only for books, and that they do not have to pay for my tutoring services except by tolerating my presence in their house, which she says is no payment at all.
∞
This evening is unique in my own personal history. I have only experienced insomnia infrequently, with increased stress, and I have never simply wandered about aimlessly at night. Despite my recently apparent euphoria, I cannot sleep. Wondering what Yelena is doing at this moment, thinking she would be reading late into the night with her endless cups of tea, I am relegated to roaming the streets, feeling as though I am in a lucid dream—the beaches, the stores and businesses are caged with retracting metal guards for the night, and the strange-looking women and tired-looking men seem too distracted by whatever it is they are looking for to notice me roving about. It is a strange world, that of the insomniac. It is a different view of humanity here, not one I would ever imagine myself proud to be a part of. It is a world that evolves after the curtains have been closed along the streets, long after the families have fallen into sleep. The families are secure with the broken bottle shards extending over their concrete fences, and with the guard dogs on their roofs. They are protected by these defenses against unwanted entry. They are sheltered in their fortifications against an immoral land of drug users and pushers, sexual gluttony and lust, and alcohol and tobacco. They are locked away against this land of excess and against this unseen city, which has now been unveiled before my eyes.
There is the sound of music in the distance. As I walk toward it, a familiar figure appears from between dozens of abandoned buckets and elongated poles belonging to shrimp fishermen. I recognize the shape as Karen. She is dressed entirely in black. Her hair is pinned back. She is very attractive in this light.
“Jonathan,” she says, hugging me. She dangles a lit cigarette in one hand and a large glass smelling like sweetened turpentine, likely Caña Manabita sugarcane alcohol, in the other. She releases me after a moment.
“Venga,” she says, walking away and extending her hand for me to follow. “Come here. Come and have a drink with me.”
“This explains why I never see you during the day,” I say.
“This doesn’t explain anything. We’re having a drink, that’s all.”
“I don’t drink.”
“No explanations.”
I grasp her hand as she lifts the glass to my lips to give me a long drink. She leads me somberly into a small group of people, all of them engaged in conversations in the rapid-speak and localized expressions of Ecuadorian coastal Spanish. They all extend their hands toward mine, in the proper sequence according to Karen’s introductions. Afterward she hands me her drink again, and as I down some more she tells me that they are mostly students and some professors.
“I thought you weren’t going to explain anything,” I say.
“Well, that was the only one tonight,” she replies. “Apart from this: if you weren’t married, if I wasn’t—involved—I might be tempted to kiss you right now. Softly, on the lips.” She smiles.
There is a fire beside us, a spitting grill sputtering the venom of fishy lime juice. There is a much larger fire nearby, students and faculty dancing barefoot around it, eating the flesh of freshly caught fish beneath the moonlight as if in some pagan ritual. There are several beautiful women standing beside the fire from whom I can’t seem to turn my attention away. Inés and Yolanda are among these women, and the sisters smile in my direction. Karen notices my distraction and, turning my head toward her, she hands me her drink. Feeling the effects now, I take another mouthful.
“I’m flying out of Guayaquil,” she announces as she casts her shoes away. “In two days.”
“Where are you going?”
“Well if you must know, and I assume you must because you asked: Caracas, Venezuela. There’s a small island off the coast. My friend who goes to school there, I’m going to see him.”
“Why?”
She pauses, and then sighs. “Well, I haven’t told you, and I don’t want you to tell the Señora. When I’m ready to, I’ll tell her myself.”
“Tell her what?”
“More explanations,” she says, sighing again. “Tell her that I’m pregnant.”
I am silent for a moment, thinking of her smoking, her drunkenness, wondering about possible damage to the fetus, and I immediately think of harm coming to my own daughter. I have the impulsive urge, thinking of this, to go home, to protect my daughter from those who would do her harm. I have not received any letters from Yelena recently, although I have been writing to her now more than ever before, trying to entice her to come here. I could only know her state of mind through those letters, in which she wrote nothing about our child, and now I have no recourse to know anything about either of them.
I return to the conversation, reflecting that I’ve never seen Karen with a man.
“You’re pregnant by whom?” I ask.
“The man I’m going to see in Venezuela,” she replies.
“Oh. So you won’t be back?”
“I can’t give up on that apartment. One day soon, I’ll be back.”
I pause for a moment before stating emphatically, while thinking of my daughter again: “I’m going with you.”
“To Venezuela?” she asks incredulously.
“No. To the airport.”
“So am I. But where are you going?”
“I’m going home. To Canada.”
“Really? Interesting ...”
Among the students and professors, we move in rhythm to the salsa and merengue music in a ritual dance to our trip, to our safety, to a glamorous freedom I have never known. I have never known insomnia to be anything but terrifying, but now it is sensuality, uninhibited. Now it is spirituality. It is a faded opera soprano that comes from the sea. It is the voice of Annabelle, soft and sweet, fluttering like the wind through the leaves of the palm trees. It is anything but logical, this feeling.
Seven years of abundance, seven years of drought for you Pharaoh, God said in His infinite wisdom.
Dreams, one of God’s instruments for speaking to the individual.
Did He intend for psychologists to interpret dreams?
Prophets, God’s Dream interpreters, recipients of a divine word helping form the basis of faith.
Jacob’s ladder, extending to heaven.
God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
The Warrior. The Father. The Creator. The Destroyer.
Without dream images, would there be any religion?
Without God, life is meaningless.
Without my dreams, without my visions by day and night, what would I have?