Exile. Ann Ireland
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Then he spoke in Spanish, in the slang of my city, with an accent so authentic that I jumped with recognition. “They making you their poster boy of the season?”
His voice was crisp and unsentimental, to show that he in no way romanticized the plight of the exile.
He dropped my hand. “You must know Gabriela Piñeda. She’s from your neck of the woods.”
Gabriela. Indeed I knew Gabriela with her affected high-toned voice, although she came from some hick town in the mountains where her father was a rancher. I knew about her endless manifestos and gringo pals and book contracts with a dozen countries. Yes, we all knew Gabriela. I could see her now, painted mouth curved downward as she examines my pathetic self — I who had dared to place a hand around her sainted waist.
I nodded cryptically.
“A remarkable woman,” Stan continued. “And the writing is damn good.”
As he spoke Stan began to move his hands expressively, in the way so many Canadians feel compelled to do when speaking to a Latino. He’s slept with Gabriela, of course. Another admirer set loose in the world. Soon she will be receiving an invitation to a conference, this time in Vancouver, all expenses paid, where she will captivate yet another audience.
I felt sick. The wine, which had dyed the sides of the plastic cup, had left a maroon stain on my wrist.
“I’m afraid I don’t know your work,” Stan said. “So I’m especially looking forward to hearing you tonight. We get so little first-hand testimony here: we’re a parochial bunch, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
Rita nudged my elbow. “The snacks are running low; I gotta go warn Laura.”
Stan followed her exit with his eyes, not hungrily, but vaguely, as if he found it hard to focus in this crowded room, in this city, in this country. He had left his real self back in the Café de la Luna.
“I understand you were imprisoned.”
“Four months.”
He didn’t wince like the others, just nodded in a comradely way.
“The poetry of witness is not necessarily welcome in this country,” he said, pulling out cigarettes — Rojos! — and offering me one.
Gratefully I tugged one from the pack and held it a moment before slipping it between my lips. It had a familiar texture, slightly lumpy, and the smell was dank and uncompromising.
“It makes readers and listeners uncomfortable,” Stan went on. “They aren’t sure if it’s real poetry or political tract.” He smoked thoughtfully, brushed on one side by a tiny woman in a bowl haircut who was seeking to cross the crowded room. Her smile tightened as he laid a hand on her shoulder.
I spotted her name tag: “Lily Hunt; Arts Tonight.”
“Let me modify that,” Stan said. “For you, it’s fine. You have a right, in fact they expect the politics. But for me, it’s pretentious. A Canadian has no right to be engaged. We write pretty, well-crafted poems about bones we find on the beach, and the landscape of our lover’s skin.” He spat out a shred of tobacco that had become trapped between his teeth.
I slid my hand into the pocket of Daniel Rose’s navy blue jacket and clasped the folded sheets of “Prison Poems.”
“And he’s darn cute, to boot.” A tipsy feminine voice rang out and I felt, yet again, fingers lace through my hair. Startled, I looked into a familiar face: deeply lined, the wan skin lightened by a stripe of coral lipstick. She had interviewed me earlier for the co-op radio station, but then she had been serious, almost dour, clad in black overalls.
Stan snorted. “You’re the new pet. Last year they saved a Muslim biologist. But listen up…” He had to lean over to confide, being a good six inches taller than me. “Were you part of the Café de la Luna crowd?”
His paunch brushed my meager belly.
“I dropped by.”
“You know Sanchez? Patricio?”
I pretended to think. “Somewhat.”
“And Angel. What’s his last name, writes for El Tribunal —”
“Zubicueta.”
“That’s the one. You know him?”
“Of him.”
Stan looked disappointed. “Sounds like I met a different circle.”
“There are many circles in my town, many cafés.” How could I explain that I did not want to talk to this man about my friends and enemies? He would never understand that in my milieu there are a hundred conspiracies and alliances, old feuds and ambushes. To him we were the “Café de la Luna crowd,” a group of colourful characters that he felt honoured to meet.
“How many circles of dissident writers can there be in a place the size of Santa Clara?”
Carlos Romero Estévez, dissident writer. I could just see Angel’s sardonic smile as he dropped copious plugs of ash on his trousers. Luckily I was rescued by Rita, who dashed over and began fiddling with my clothes, righting the collar, brushing crumbs off the lapel, while I stood stoically as a child being prepared for Sunday Mass.
“You go on directly after Stan.” She removed the wine glass from my hand and stood back. “Well, you look the part.”
Stan Drury laughed.
“Break a leg, you two,” Rita said, before charging off again.
The backstage was emptying. Stan cocked an ear. “The show has begun.”
We listened to the sound of electric guitars tuning up.
“That’ll be Tim and Harvey — two of our prominent novelists making like rock stars.” Stan giggled as faltering male voices began to sing:
“Get up
Stand Up
Stand up for your rights.”
“Christ, aren’t they awful?”
We moved to the wings where a small crowd of performers was watching. The theatre was jammed; there were well over seven hundred people in the thirty-dollar seats, shrieking and applauding as two middle-aged white guys did their Rasta impersonation. I stared with the others, transfixed. I tried to imagine, back home, the eminent and dignified Alfredo Cruz Ascencio grabbing a mike and allowing, even encouraging, his rapt audience to laugh at him, as these people were doing, laughing until they wept. And second row centre, a black woman in dreads squealed the loudest.
I had dared to think that I was beginning to understand these Canadians, their taut friendliness and polite smiles, their helpful practical advice, their fervent lack of sensuality, but now I felt my theories unravel strand by strand.
“After this,” Stan whispered beerily into my face, “we’ll go out and get drunk.”
I dreaded the thought. This man would quiz me, naming every bar, every newspaper, every writer he’d met until he nailed me. He would find out precisely who I was — and who I wasn’t.
“You’re up next.”
I jumped. But Rita had touched Stan’s shoulder, not mine. Immediately he straightened, and, carrying his manuscript under his arm like a score, he strode on stage to the still trickling laughter and a scatter of fresh applause.
Rita looked worried. “Whose idea was it to put him on after Tim and Harvey?”
I perched on a piece of plywood shaped like a wave. This was a dark night for the theatre’s production of Sinbad The Sailor.
Stan knew how to work a crowd. First he took the mike from the lectern and paced with it slowly until the audience played out its silliness. Then, without speaking, he stood still, all 250 pounds of him, with just the sound of his laboured