Arcangel stood in the rain that flowed like a waterfall from heaven, splashing over his head and naked body in an exuberant torrent. From a distance and through the gauze of the rain, it would seem that he was clothed. The stark white of his torso and legs contrasted sharply with the deep brown of his head and neck, arms, ankles, and feet. He ran the bar of coconut soap over his body, through his hair, under his arms, and between his legs, frothing and rinsing, white foam slipping down his legs, swirling with mud and the rainbow of grease toward the highway. He bent over, his back toward the flow, to enjoy the pounding massage. He tilted his head back and spread his arms, swallowed and sputtered the rain from his mouth. He massaged his penis and ejaculated into the foam. Then, he peed into that.
The rain seemed to subside, allowing him to pull one of those disposable plastic razors this way and that across his face, carefully feeling his way against the hollow of his cheekbones. He felt his face, the rugged places and the soft places, and he thought to himself that he had had the same dream again.
In the dream,
a woman was pushing a cart
filled with cactus leaves.
Fresh nopales.
The woman was pushing her cart along a highway
toward the city,
only to come upon an orange,
out of season,
there along that horizontal line
where the sun sliced the tropics.
Yes, thought Arcangel, that is the Tropic of Cancer. That is a border made plain by the sun itself, a border one can easily recognize. And there was the orange, rolling away to a space between ownership and the highway.
The woman paused with her cart
to avoid the orange.
She stooped, scooped the thing up,
threw it in the cart with the cactus and shrugged.
As suddenly as they had appeared, the clouds with their torrents lumbered away, and the rain slipped across the horizon perhaps to the sea. Arcangel shook himself from his head to his feet much like a shaggy dog except that he was somewhat hairless. The water sprayed forth from the loose attachments of his old skin, especially the sagging lobes on either side of his torso, in a way that seemed to please him. The sun appeared to do the rest.
He carefully unfolded a wrinkled but clean set of clothing—a simple shirt and loose-fitting pants. Of course he could wear any number of costumes, but artists like himself always traveled incognito. He repacked his traveling menagerie in his worn leather suitcase, pushed his shirttail into his pants, and walked toward the marketplace.
A truck with a load of oranges was stalled in the street just at its narrowest place. Behind it was a line of cars and trucks and carts filled with produce, meats—dead and alive—grains, and kitchen utensils, all temporarily stalled in their progress toward the marketplace. The commotion behind the stalled truck was becoming fiercer by the moment as lettuce wilted and the rising stench of ripening fruit began to dash any hopes of a morning trade. Occupants in the houses on either side of the road stuck their heads out of the windows and yelled at the line of stopped vehicles. Some took advantage of the situation and bought produce through their windows. The man with the stalled truck was nervously tinkering with a wrench under his hood as impatient merchants with merchandise piled on their heads and shoulders struggled by on foot, yelling epithets. “Stupid! Have you checked the gas tank?”
Arcangel assessed the situation and made his offer. “I will move your truck for you,” he announced, flexing his skinny biceps.
“Old man, I don’t need your jokes, too,” the truck driver snapped.
“I have moved such trucks before. I will do it for you.” He climbed to the top of the truck and faced the long crowded corridor of angry people and fuming vehicles. His voice was powerful, the voice of a true performer. It drowned the commotion like an approaching tidal wave, thundering with fearful authority. His arms lifted, and his body seemed to glow against the morning sunlight. In each hand flashed a large metal hook.
I will demonstrate the incredible strength
of the human body.
With the aid of a steel cable
around the axle of this truck,
these two solid hooks
and the skin of my body,
I will myself move this vehicle.
What is it worth to you to see such a feat?
“Old man, you are crazy!”
“We are stuck here anyway. Let him do his trick. At least we will have a good laugh!”
“I give you my profits today!”
“What profits? You are never getting to the market to make any profits!”
“So what is there to lose? I give him my profits!”
“I give him a chicken!”
“A sack of beans!”
“A kilo of tomatoes!”
“Two kilos of tomatoes!”
Arcangel nodded and climbed down the truck. The crowd scurried forward to observe his movements, watching him secure a coil of steel cable from his suitcase. A young boy scampered up and offered to crawl under the truck to draw the cable around its axle. Meanwhile, Arcangel removed his wrinkled but clean shirt with a quiet flourish, exposing his thin white torso. When the cable was in place, Arcangel secured both ends to the two hooks and drew the hooks through the very skin of his body, through the strangely scarred lobes at the sides of his torso. He moved slowly forward until the entire contraption was taut, until he was harnessed securely as an ox to its plough. “Put the thing in neutral!” someone yelled.
Arcangel clenched his fists and moved forward.
The skin against his abdomen
spread itself
as tanned leather over a drum, the hooks
drawing the large lobes of skin
backwards. In fact,
the entire surface of Arcangel’s person—
from the skin on his face and his flowing white hair
to the legs of his pants—
seemed to be drawn back toward the truck,
as if he were facing
a great tunnel of wind.
Slowly, his torso leaned into his footsteps
one at a time,
gripping the surface of the asphalt and
pulling inch by inch
the truck and its entire load
of oranges.
Those who witnessed this performance
felt themselves the excruciating weight
of the machine and its fruit
tearing at their bodies.
People choked with amazement and fear
that they might see a man
stripped of his fleshy covering.
Why should they allow him to do such a thing?
What were they thinking?
They should push the truck themselves!
Fools!
But they all strained themselves
with watching and yearning in hushed awe
that the feat should be achieved.
And so Arcangel, attached to his great burden, inched his way down the street toward the marketplace, every muscle in his body intent upon its task. By the time he had traversed fifty meters, women and children had run forward to spread flowers in his path, to cup their hands to catch the blood and sweat from his torn stigmata; people tossed coins; fruit and vegetables were collected on his behalf. Another fifty meters and the street was clear. Arcangel unhooked himself, recoiled the steel cable, repacked his baggage, while gathering, exchanging, and distributing his gifts and tokens of appreciation. He wiped the glistening layer of sweat from his body and slipped his arms into his shirt. The traffic flowed past him, and the street was once again engulfed in the business of the day.
As he had meant to, he continued on to the marketplace. It was perhaps more than a coincidence, but
the woman in his dreams,
with the cactus leaves,
was sitting there on a crate,
carefully slicing the thorns from the leaves.
She looked up at Arcangel. “The very freshest. Cut today.”
He nodded. He could see
the orange tossed to one side
with the refuse of thorns and
green shavings of cactus skin.
“I will take a bag of cut nopales.” He had just pulled an entire truckload of oranges with his bare skin, but still he said, “And that orange, too. How much do you want for it?”
“This orange? Worthless. I’ll be honest with you. It is not imported. A local fruit out of season.”
“I have a need for the taste of an orange.”
He opened his suitcase and put the orange and the bag of cactus leaves in one corner.
“Where are you going with that?” the woman pointed at the suitcase.
“North,” Arcangel smiled. “I am going north.”