There is a certain unmistakable beauty in this land. This is a land transfixed on family, close friendships, and living life as though tomorrow’s day might be the last. It is a land where it is easy to forget, where mothers kiss the bellies of babies they hold high above their heads, beside concrete homes with the glow of a single light bulb emanating from within; where, on this evening, the smooth melody of guitar and voice permeates the smooth hushing of the sea to the shore and the crackling of firewood. It is a land where an improvised dance floor has been created in the sand, where the shoes of young and old have been cast aside, where the smells of salt, lime, liquor, body sweat, and burning palm leaves infuse the air with an aura free from anxiety, free from tension and fear, and free from the worries of living.
I awaken to see a crowd dissipating in the hallway outside Karen’s apartment, and I follow the party down to the beach. The flames of the fire seem to dance in rhythm with the music, just as the sea seems to. I sit down on the cold sand as Karen approaches me, her slim body outlined by her meagre dress and the light of the fire. In this light, she looks astonishingly like Yelena.
“You are late,” she says. “You missed most of the party.”
“I was dreaming,” I say placidly.
I do not tell her that I was dreaming again of Yelena, standing in a closet, or that I had written an alternate ending to the dream on paper before falling asleep, in order to put an end to it. “What are you doing here?” I asked Yelena in the dream. “You know,” Yelena’s voice replied. But the sounds of conversation awakened me, and the dream terminated too early. I had awoken to the sound of people in Karen’s hallway upstairs.
“It has been said before,” I say, “that the body can do better without sleep—”
“—than the mind can do without dreams. I’ve heard that too. So, you were dreaming. Trying to shed what your waking mind can’t accept. What’s so bad about this place that you can’t endure? I’m surprised you could even sleep, let alone dream, with a party going on above your head. You must be a very sound sleeper.”
“Most of the time, yes.”
Karen sits down beside me. For a moment, we both watch the dancers moving to the music’s rhythm. The dancing stops as the guitar is passed to a man with long hair grown past his waist, who immediately begins playing.
“I’ve seen it at every party I’ve been to since I’ve lived here,” Karen says. “The ritual passing of the guitar. I can’t play, but it doesn’t matter because they never pass the guitar to women anyway … here, take a drink.”
She hands me a small glass flask.
“I don’t drink.”
“Everyone drinks.”
“I don’t. It causes problems for me.”
There is silence. She continues watching the dancers as she shifts her weight in the sand. She lights a cigarette.
“Have you been here long?” I ask.
“Two years,” she says, exhaling. “It’s a long time for me to have stayed in one place. And what about you? How long are you going to be here?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “A month, maybe longer.”
“Are you a teacher?” she asks. “Are you looking for work?”
“I’m a psychologist. And I’m not looking for work, particularly.”
“A psychologist? What do you do for money, here?” She pauses and then, after a moment, acquiescing to my silence, adds: “If I can ask, of course.”
“I’ve brought enough, but I’m going to be teaching English to Inés and Yolanda,” I say. “In exchange for one or two meals a day.”
“How resourceful of you. The Señora is a very good cook. She’s asked me to tutor her daughters in the past, and I did, months ago, but not since. I’ve taught enough English to last a lifetime.” She draws from her cigarette, pauses, and then continues.
“They both want to go to New York, the sisters. The Señora doesn’t want to move, even though her husband and her daughters’ father is there. He works in construction in Brooklyn. Have they told you that?”
“No.”
“They will.”
She pauses for a while as we listen to the music, and we watch as a pair of dancers falls down in the sand, laughing.
“I had a man,” she continues, “a friend of the sisters, offer to marry me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Don’t sound so surprised. All of my students want to go to either Miami or New York. It’s not easy to get there if you were born here. If they have relatives living in the US, which Inés and Yolanda do, then they can get a visa. But it takes time; years, sometimes a decade or even more. But as I was saying, the man who offered to marry me, I dated him for a while and I explained to him that I lived in Winnipeg, not in Miami or New York, but he didn’t seem to care or to even know the difference. To him it was all the same. I told him I wasn’t planning to go back to Winnipeg anyway, and I talked him into going to school instead of marrying me. So he moved to an island off the coast of Venezuela, where his family is from, and he is studying business at a technical university there. Even though he writes to me often, I almost never reply.…” She pauses, and then rubs her forehead. “Sorry, I’m rambling. I’ve had too much to drink.”
Karen raises the cigarette to her lips. A woman in a skirt falls while dancing, and is promptly collected and returned to an upright position by the throng of dancers. There is almost no disruption of the flow of movement, as if she was a piece of debris unfettered and swept along by the current at the bottom of the sea.
“You know,” Karen continues, “I teach down at the university. I can get you a job there. It wouldn’t be a problem. Really. I’m the only native English-speaking teacher there, and I may not be there for long.”
“Why, where are you going?”
“Let’s not talk of that tonight,” she says, extinguishing her cigarette in the sand. Then, taking my hand, she leads me into the mass of dancers.