Some thoughts for a writer to live by

Emigre

Every day he takes a rolled newspaper to the pool. He wears a long Hawaiian swimsuit: overweight, slightly paunchy, shuffling along in slippers. His wife, Conchita, watches their child Lupe alongside the pool. She talks to ladies about their trips to the market for supplies. After reading the paper, he leaves it on the pool’s lip and steps into the pool. He’ll wade into neck deep water careful not to take one step too far. He watches a lady, preoccupied with leisure, sip on a frozen drink as she floats on a raft. Another man, in a white cotton suit, studies his racing form before noticing the recently arrived couple. He mops his brow as his scalp glistens and his skin continues to turn brown from the sun.

Everyone wonders what the man does for work. When asked, he vaguely answers, “I’m in business.”

No further explanation. The man is focused on nothing but the political situation back home. The fat cats suckle off of the overtaxed peasantry using the government’s coffers as their personal piggy bank. Some days, the man sends political screeds to the papers back home or to government officials. He hopes the right words will awaken their missing conscience; on other days, he feels hopeless. At first, he politely asked the local officials to actually enforce the laws. His requests were initially met with silence, and then their actions got worse. He found that the newspapers were nothing more than conduits of the generalissimo’s lies.

The man occasionally sends letters to political allies, in the south. Many have disappeared. Others are in hiding. A tragic ending always appears possible. The man remembers a BBC reporter coming to his pensione. The reporter asks, “How have you survived, when so many of your comrades haven’t.”
The man considers the question before answering, “I go forward.”

The statement is vague but both understand its meaning. The man attacks as a means of protection. No one is certain if the man has special powers or if he’s just crazy. Losing heart and trying to escape has often proved fatal. Both, he and the reporter, have heard stories of captives being shot while trying to surrender. Perfectly healthy men have heart attacks while detained. The man believes he’s a soldier so, if captured, he expects no better treatment.

A month earlier a confidante, Marcos, warned him of trouble brewing. He had asked too many questions about how certain important individuals made their money. A week later, a bomb under his car detonated. The concussion rocked the neighborhood, flattening Conchita and Lupe as they walked toward the car. The man’s allies smuggled his family out of the country. They were given new identities. He became an independent businessman still unsure of what exactly he sold. His family was set up in a modest, comfortable cottage.

The racing enthusiast, sitting alongside the pool, asks the man why he’s constantly reading foreign newspapers. He asks, “Are you an émigré to our country?”

“Yes,” the man says. “My wife and I came to enjoy your fine climate. We are emigreing.”
The racing fan looks confused. He wipes his brow again. The man chuckles. He and Conchita have invented this word. It means: conducting armed insurrection across international borders.

Conchita looks tired. Lupe is cranky. She cries as her teeth break through her gums. Everybody is weary of the constant movement. No place is safe. Conchita sometimes rubs his brow to alleviate his headaches. It helps when he’s under stress. The man is in awe of his government’s reach. The totality of the struggle is overwhelming. He merely concentrates on taking a few steps forward at a time.
The man longs for a simpler life. In this pool, in this complex, he feels like he’s on the verge of achieving such a life.

The genteel lady slips off her float. She leaves the pool as the float bobs freely on the water. Conchita follows her out of the pool area trying to quiet crying Lupe. The women, who Conchita spoke to, have left for the market and the bartender is busy out the back. The only people at the pool is the man and the racing enthusiast.

The man decides to take a turn on the float. He slides onto it. He reaches over to the side to grab the news from back home and places it on his stomach. He’s tired, just so bloody tired. He’d like to float away. Allow his troubles to float away with him. The people he fights have so many weapons and he can only rely on his own stubbornness. The man closes his eyes and allows the pool’s current to carry him along. He can’t let go of the struggle. He and the struggle have become one.

He doesn’t notice the guy, in the white cotton suit, putting his racing form down and moving to the edge of the pool. He doesn’t notice or sense the racing fanatic hovering above, or making contact with his shoulders like a participant of a bizarre baptismal ritual.

The man goes into a life or death spasm. He never actually sees who or what is dragging him under, for the second time, but he eventually surrenders to the inevitable. The paper, no longer on his chest, floats to the surface. It’s wet, its ink bleeds, and as it texture dissolves inside the pool. The racing enthusiast doesn’t let go until the man goes limp. It’s only then that the man in the white suit rises, smooths his wrinkled suit, folds his racing form, and walks away before someone realizes that there’s a corpse in the pool. Somewhere in the distance a baby cries. It could even be Lupe.