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“WE HAVE TO LEAVE,” Maria said. “We have no choice now.”
She was sitting at the kitchen table, when Elio walked in the house. He had set off from the factory, keeping up a fast pace, wanting to get home as soon as possible. He took a moment to flick the shutters closed, then joined Maria at the table. Since the incident with the brick two weeks earlier, he’d had a daily migraine. His heart was beating fast but when he spoke his voice was quiet.
“We’re staying. I don’t care what they call us.”
“When did you decide this?” Maria asked him.
“Yesterday, today, tomorrow,” Elio said.
Maria had stayed home from work that day. There was yet another repudiation rally planned for that afternoon—so she faked a head cold. She’d told Elio that morning that she simply couldn’t bear to be part of it—not after what they’d done to them, and to poor Elsa, and to so many other people they knew. Elio had agreed wholeheartedly. He, too, refused to participate in what had become yet another repressive measure on the island, yet another way—along with surveillance, short-term arbitrary detentions, forced labor, official and unofficial warnings, removal from homes and jobs, and, perhaps worst of all, forced exile—of keeping them stuck in a goddamn barrel. Most people didn’t leave because they wanted to; they left because they had to. Plus, not showing up to work, or abandoning work completely—due to a lack of incentive and the shortage of absolutely everything, including toilet paper—had become a major problem. He figured, and hoped, she wouldn’t be missed.
Maria touched a fingertip to her lips. Two weeks after the rally, her knuckles were still bruised.
“Don’t worry,” he said, avoiding looking at her hands. “It’s just a little adventure. It’s like your grandmother going to live in Cabañas, except we’re not going anywhere. We’re staying put. Everything will be back to normal before you know it—you’ll see.”
“No!” she shouted. “It’s not at all like going to Cabañas. My grandmother had most of her life behind her. We have most of ours ahead of us. I have most of mine ahead of me. There’s still time, Elio. Your dad’s in Chicago... he could—”
“Leave my dad out of this. In over twenty years, he’s called once.”
“He’s all we have, damn it. I’m scared they’ll march on the house again. Next time, maybe we won’t be so lucky.”
Elio saw genuine distress in her face. “We’ll manage,” he said. “If you love me, you won’t bring it up again. This is the place that birthed us, Maria. No other place will do.” A long silence spread out across the whole room.
“What are you hiding?” Maria finally said, pointing to the hand he’d kept under the table all this time.
Elio was thankful that she’d suddenly changed the topic. The whole thing depressed him. He wasn’t ready to accept a game that everyone, including Maria, seemed to think he, too, had to play.
He grabbed the brand new book on his lap. Placing it in front of her, he confessed, “I stole it for you.” The words stretched a taut wire between them.
“Have you lost your mind? Any reason in particular you want to go to prison?”
“At least I’d go to prison for something worthwhile, for making you happy... for making myself happy. Don’t we have the right to decide our own happiness, goddamnit?”
“Couldn’t you think of something else to make me happy? I send you for bread and you come back with Don Quixote? I’ve already read it, anyway,” she said, turning her eyes away.
“I know,” Elio said. “I thought you’d want to read it again. You know, to remember old times.” Elio knew Maria well and knew that, in spite of her concern and her frustration, the sight of a brand new copy of Cervantes’s magnum opus made her heart beat a little faster. It was Don Quixote, for God’s sake, not Diary of a Nurse by Corín Tellado.
“What am I supposed to think except that you’ve lost your common sense? Are you trying to give them more reasons to come after you? To add the word thief to the many names they’ve already called you?” she said. “Damn it. If I hadn’t interfered, they would have beaten you to a pulp. Are you hoping for another rally? Or worse, another beating?” She took inventory of the room and shook her head. “Look at this place. You’d think you’d be more interested in improving our lives.”
Hadn’t she always loved Don Quixote? Perhaps if he’d brought her Camille: The Lady of the Camellias or Fortunata and Jacinta, he thought, she’d be more forgiving. But nothing could have washed, dried, and folded the chaos of their house. Not books, not miracles, not Elio. Because of neglect due to a lack of paint, varnish, and drywall, coupled with their own dwindling motivation, the house was in a state of absolute deterioration. Slabs of plaster hung from walls by a thread, termites gnawed on the entrails of tables and chairs, a mold-speckled bedspread covered a mold-speckled bed.
Elio shrugged at the book in his hands. “The bread was gone,” he said. “Anyway, need I remind you that man cannot live on bread alone? Aren’t we all supposed to be big readers on this island? Wasn’t that what they were doing when they went into the mountains with paper and pencil in hand? Weren’t they teaching us all to read? Well, why can’t I read now?”
Unable to let it go, she said, “There’s nothing worthwhile about books, Elio—that much I know. Next time you want to steal something, steal something we can actually use, like food, or toilet paper.”
Elio looked at the small, empty bookcase in a corner of the living room. “If there were anything else to steal, Maria, I would have taken it already. You shouldn’t have gotten rid of your books. Who does that?”
“I do that,” she said. “I get rid of books.” She pointed at herself with an index finger. “Do you think there’s a point in reading anything, after what they’ve done to us? No books in this house. I don’t want to see another book again as long as I live on this goddamn island. What do books have to do with leaky refrigerators and power outages? I’m not interested. Get rid of it.” Elio took heart in knowing that the rest of his books were hidden from Maria’s reach.
“Your grandma would be proud.” He looked at the empty spot on the table where his Lee pitusas should have been. Maria had gotten rid of the jeans too, for fear they’d come back to search the house.
“My grandma’s six feet underground. Let’s leave my grandma out of this. Pepe came looking for you,” she said and moseyed toward the kitchen. Elio’s eyes followed her as she turned a corner and disappeared behind a wall. He loved her. He may never get his Schwinn, but he had her—and she was and would always be the best thing about the island.
“And? Talk, woman. Finish what you started,” he said, gripping the book close to his chest.
“And he wants you to meet him at the park in an hour.”
“What the hell does he want now?” Elio said, low enough to escape Maria’s sharp ears.
He shuffled his flip-flops toward a window and let himself free fall into a chair. He stared at the book in his hands and let it rest on his lap. He’d be the first one to read it. Maria was right, though. He could go to prison for stealing a book—but not because stealing was a punishable crime, but because stealing a book suggested an even greater offense: the free pursuit of ideas. After the mob had marched on their house once, he was certain they’d come back, in one way or another. They were watching him for signs of dissent, waiting for him to make the wrong move—monitoring his movements, contacts, telephone calls, and correspondence. They were trapping him in place.
It was all too bad, he thought, fingering the scar the flying brick had left on his temple. He wasn’t surprised she’d rejected the book—he couldn’t blame her. Books were dreams, he thought, and there was very little room to dream on their island anymore. Nonetheless, he loved to remember that he’d be almost illiterate, if it weren’t for her.
Elio slowly settled into the chair. Thoughts of Maria’s youthful drives fell on him like snowflakes—but he brushed them off and opened the book. Pulled back the first page a little to detach it from the rest. Yup, a virgin book. The first text published by the Revolution, with an impressive run of one hundred thousand copies. One of the many triumphs of the revolutionary process.
Elio had stolen the book because there was nothing else to steal—and because he simply refused to give the librarian the satisfaction of checking it out the old-fashioned way. “Anything pique your interest today?” she’d ask him, lifting her brown nose from the daily gazette or flapping her jowls over a sluggish Rolodex. “Nope. Not today,” he’d say. He’d already stolen The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and The Black Corsair. If not these, then he would have ended up with yet another rancid edition of The Old Man and the Sea pulling on his armpit hairs as he left the library. He was neither a fisherman nor did he want to be. Hell, after the shark attack, who’d wanna get back in the water, with or without Hemingway? Though, at this rate, he would have read the whole nineteenth century by the end of the year.
Truth be told, he’d loved Monte Cristo. The guy committed a prison break after fourteen years of being jailed on an island, changed his name, and became a member of society with a spotless reputation. What was not to like about the guy? Elio loved the book so much, he might make it a point to read The Three Musketeers, too.
He flicked the book shut. He’d get to it later. He’d need to find a place to read it first. A special book required a special place. Plus, he’d be screwed if Pepe caught him with a book. The guy was allergic to words, let alone ones that might turn into sentences and run for hundreds of pages, only to be continued in Part II. He sauntered over to a futon. Tucked the book under the pencil-thin mattress, already bulging near the edge with the rest of his loot. “I’ll be back later,” he shouted into the hallway, and walked out the door.