Bitten

9781483512020

1

Arriba, a la izquierda, she had said. Up the stairs to the left. She hadn’t given me a key, because there were no keys in her establishment. The wooden doors to the rooms could be bolted from the inside. No need to lock when one stepped out; people with valuables didn’t frequent the place.

The bus I had taken from Guatemala City had broken down twenty minutes into the journey, leaving passengers on the side of the road to be picked up piecemeal by subsequent buses passing at irregular and interminable intervals. As an obviously disoriented gringa among mostly indigenous veterans of the commute, I did not get first dibs on relief transport. When I finally reached Antigua I was dead on my feet, but somehow managed to find my way to the hostel La Querida in a labyrinth of winding dirt footpaths and to retrieve enough residual high school Spanish from my addled brain to articulate my request for a room. I opened the door to room #9, fumbled for the switch on the lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a wire and switched it on. The stark bright filament blinded me, but when I was able to focus, I was jolted from my fatigue by an unanticipated rush of terror. Brown and black spiders of every conceivable shape and size clung to the whitewashed plywood walls, 3-D wallpaper from the set of an arachnophobe’s nightmare. I edged out the door backwards, down the wood plank stairs, back to the concierge.

Hay arañas en el cuarto, I informed her, somewhat out of breath from my hasty descent.

The señora was an indigenous woman with long plaited gray hair in traditional long skirt and shawl. The matriarch of the family that lived on the ground level and owned the building, she seemed neither surprised at my announcement nor interested in my discomfort. She got up slowly from her chair to retrieve something from a wooden placard. Aqui, use la escoba, she said, handing me a broom.

I accepted the broom, understanding that if I wanted the room and I didn’t like spiders on the wall, this was as close as I would get in the way of room service. Gracias, I replied blankly, and ventured back up the stairs. With only a dim idea of where I was in the world and very little money, my options at that hour were nonexistent.

The adrenaline rush of my predicament was succumbing to crushing exhaustion, but sleeping with spiders was inconceivable. Yet so was killing them. The only creatures I am capable of killing–without the motive of self-defense–are indoor cockroaches and mosquitoes. Although I was convinced many, if not all of these Guatemalan spiders were capable of killing me, they had thus far demonstrated no such intention. They were just hanging peaceably on the walls, and in all fairness, had been there first. I would de-spider the room humanely and without hesitation.

The shuttered window opened out to the second floor boardwalk under the open sky, beyond which a volcano loomed in dark silhouette. The door also opened onto an open-air boardwalk, but faced other rooms. The best exit for the spiders was the window to the wild beyond. Moving with a speed and dexterity that would not have been possible had I paused to think, I coaxed a spider onto the broom, quickly escorted her and the broom out the window, struck the broomstick on the boardwalk railing, and sent her sailing into the verdant abyss. I repeated the maneuver until every spider had joined the darkness. It was all over in about twenty minutes, but to make sure I took a final inventory, carefully peering under the skinny bed and small wooden table, broom in hand. When I was confident that my quarters were spider free, I called out to them in the darkness, firmly, but without malice, I live here now, you must find someplace else, then shut and bolted the windows, and fell immediately into a deep insouciant slumber.

I found La Querida on a tip from a woman with whom I had shared a room at a hostel in Guatemala City. The cab driver at the Guatemala City Airport had dropped me at El Jardin del Cielo when I asked him to take me to any place near the center of town that was clean and under five quetzales a night. The door to the room opened onto a moonlit courtyard where a large fountain murmured quietly. It was very small but clean with white stucco walls and a crucifix hanging above a tiny wooden table that separated two cots. A candle was burning on the table, the only light.

Arachne sat cross-legged on the cot furthest from the door. She was slight, with a fair complexion, stark against long black hair and deep brown eyes. Her face resembled a 13th century painting of the Virgin Mary, an impression that was perhaps exaggerated by the quiet austerity of the candlelit room. She did not feign delight that her serenity was to be interrupted by a roommate, which I appreciated. Instead, she seemed to take my arrival for granted, as if I came with the place. I was braced for the perfunctory introductions normally exchanged by strangers sharing sleep space, but instead she said matter-of-factly, You have an air of relief about you, as if you have escaped from something.

I was trying to find the indignation that normally kicked in when someone made unsolicited observations about my inner space, but I couldn’t. I was too fatigued, and besides, she was right. But what was I to say? How could I siphon the inferno of the last several days into a cool little story? After a quick call to Ernesto, my busboy friend who was working there that night, I hadn’t spoken to anyone since it happened, especially not the cops who I’m sure were looking to talk to me by now. I had slipped out the back door of the club, took a cab to my room in the transient hotel on Rush Street where I’d been staying for the last six months, threw some clothes, my flute, and my stream-lined portable typewriter in a suitcase and left the rest for Ivy, the maid. I left a note on the nightstand: Bye, Ivy. Had to run. Take what you need, and ditch the rest. That was an inside joke Ivy and I had. It doubled as a philosophy of life.

I was at O’Hare Airport within the hour, unsure of where exactly I was going. Away–that I knew. I thought of the conversation I had just had that morning with a new waitress at The Salt and Pepper, the diner where I usually ate breakfast at the counter. Her nametag said Diamond. Diamond-in-the-Rough, I thought. Bleached white-blond hair, too many black bobby pins matching an outgrowth of black roots. Diamond was dumb-gigging it before her next acting job started, she said. She had just gotten back from Guatemala. She didn’t say why she went there or why she came back, but she was telling me how cheap it was, how many places to stay for next to nothing. Diamond, I said aloud to myself. The Hope Diamond. I gave Diamond a good tip. I hope Diamond has given me one. I booked the next flight to Guatemala City. I’d figure the rest out on the other end.

El Jardin del Cielo was nearly 2,000 miles away from Chicago. That alone earned it five stars from me. But what to tell this Mary-faced woman in this nunnery-looking room who had so accurately assessed me at a glance?

The pharaoh wooed me into his harem and I delivered an ultimatum. Dismiss the other women, or be consumed by the wrath of Ra, my other husband. I fled the conflagration.

She could take that explanation or leave it. She’d probably think I was off my rocker and leave me alone.

That is something I’d like to hear more about tomorrow, she said with a simple sincerity that surprised me. She retrieved a nightshirt from under the pillow of the cot she was sitting on, and before stepping out to the women’s bath area, she said, I’m Arachne, from Germany. I’ll be here for two more nights.

I’m Cressid. I might be here for the rest of my life. I was asleep in my clothes before she got back.

The next morning I awoke alone in the room. Arachne’s bed was neatly made, and her things were stored in her suitcase beneath the bed. I went first for a shower in one of the cement stalls on the other side of the courtyard. There was no hot water, so after the shock of the initial blast of cold water on my hot skin, I relaxed and let it wake me up, then returned to the little room, put on a simple white cotton dress and following the example of my roommate, stored my things neatly in my suitcase under the bed. It felt good to be clean, at least on the outside.

The smell of eggs and tortillas beckoned me to the far corner of the courtyard, beyond the murmuring fountain, where there were several red checker-clothed tables among potted palms and hanging baskets of red and yellow flowers. A few of the boarders were already at breakfast, some reading, some speaking softly in Spanish and other languages I didn’t understand. The sky was deep blue overhead, and a gentle breeze softened the warm sunlight. I hadn’t eaten since Diamond had served me breakfast at the Salt and Pepper–ages ago, it seemed. This pleasant open-air cafe was the antithesis of the seedy congestion of that place, and I was soothed by the feeling that I was a world away.

I spotted Arachne sitting at the far table, reading. Even in the daylight her dark hair and big round eyes gave her face the medieval Mary look, but otherwise, she looked pretty normal–jeans, sandals, white denim shirt. I didn’t think she’d mind if I joined her.

Good morning, I said.

She looked up from her book, closed it, smiled brightly, and said, Have a seat, gutsy harem woman from ancient Egypt.

What was that supposed to mean? I thought. I’m always so disheartened when someone I want to befriend turns out to be nuts. Then I remembered what I had told her when I arrived.

Actually, I’m from Chicago, circa yesterday morning, I said, and sat down. I glanced at the title of her thick, hard cover book, simple black capital letters on white: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Definitely not a beach read. I’d refrain from asking her about it at least until I got something in my stomach. She had said that she was German. She didn’t look German, but I didn’t want to be nosey and ask why she didn’t.

Arachne, however, had no qualms about being nosey, and although I am normally reticent, she had an effect on me something like truth serum. I answered her questions openly and freely, and realized that I was being more honest to her than I had been to myself. Maybe it was because her interest was intelligent rather than lurid that I began blathering.

Who then, is the pharaoh? she asked.

A rotund Guatemalan woman in a full apron brought out a plate of scrambled eggs and refried beans with a small basket of tortillas and set them in front of me, then poured me a cup of sweet dark coffee from a large green pitcher, which she left on the table.

He was a Blues musician, I began. A lot of the musicians discreetly refer to the biggest band leaders as pharaohs, because they have the power to hire and to pay, and they tend to have a lot of women.

How did he take your ultimatum that the other women would have to go, or he would be consumed by the wrath of Ra, your other husband?

This woman had an uncanny memory. I didn’t even remember exactly what I had told her. He didn’t.

So you dropped him.

Yes, but that didn’t stop me from going to the clubs. I needed that energy, the music, the crowds, a thousand things going on at once. I write poetry. It helps me to write. I’ll sit at a table in a cram-packed club, music blaring, and that’s when I get my best work done. I avoided Pharaoh’s gigs after we broke up, but there are plenty of clubs to choose from, like the one where his brother played a lot.

Revenge, she said neatly.

Who said anything about revenge? I countered, but again could not locate my habitual aggressive defenses. It had been a week since I broke up with Pharaoh. His brother asked me to go with him when he did the rounds jamming at a few clubs on his night off. Why not? I know people talk, but am I supposed to stop my life because of it? I didn’t know anything about what had gone on before, the tension already there between them. It wasn’t my business.

She did not retract her interjection, but neither was she passing judgment. She watched me calmly as I delved into the eggs, patiently waiting for me to continue.

OK, there was a little exaggerated affection for Brother when I saw Pharaoh coming through the door of the club. You’re absolutely right. It was revenge. But who would have guessed that kind of hell was going to break loose? Shoot your own brother?

Whoa, she said, and her mouth dropped open. Then after a respectful silence she added with a pensive calmness, So you instigated a Cain/Abel. That is deep.

I wasn’t there when the shooting happened. I judiciously removed myself from the place when the chairs started flying. I was told the gun went off in the fury of the combat. Pharaoh got locked up and won’t be charged until the cops piece together what happened. Brother might not have died. A friend told me on the phone that he was still alive when the ambulance got there.

So I was right. You have escaped. Your plot for revenge was even more successful than you anticipated, she said slowly as if pondering the significance.

Successful revenge, I admitted. But I don’t want the blame any more than the credit for it, especially for what happened to Brother. I had just encountered the woman, yet for some reason I was confident she’d give me a straight answer to the question that was causing me considerable grief. Do you think it’s my fault that Brother got shot?

Not at all, she replied without hesitation.

I was as surprised as I was relieved at her judgment. How would you analyze what happened? I asked her, sick of my own redundant attempts.

What kind of analysis do you want? Freudian? Behaviorist? Marxist? Biblical? Biochemical? Feminist? she asked with a nonchalant fluency that conveyed she could deliver upon request.

Biblical was the obvious choice. We were already on a roll with Mary just proclaiming I had instigated a Cain/Abel. Anyway, biblical symbolism was woven through my psyche, however unreligious I had become. I was born in Zion, Illinois, in a small town settled at the turn of the 19th century by religious Christian fundamentalists, among whom were my great-grandparents. The theocracy that they established had faded into secularism by the 1930s, but the cultural roots were indelible. The streets had biblical names in alphabetical order emanating from and leading to the Church of Zion. Enoch, Eshcol, Ezekiel…I escaped that town when I was sixteen and made my pilgrimage to the godless city (according to church elders) of Chicago. But I am and will ever be the daughter of Zion, however I sully myself. I’ll take Biblical, I told her. Sounds safest.

Safest it probably isn’t, but straightforward, and just as interesting as any. Different types of analyses all have pretty much the same effect, though. Other people’s stories told to make sense of your own. All full of truths and lies with no presorting. But back to Cain and Abel. To know them, you have to start with their parents. God, a male, makes a human male out of dust. There happened to be a lot of testosterone in that dust…

Aren’t you transgressing into the biochemical there? I challenged her. Perhaps, also, the feminist?

She dismissed my questions with a confidently stern, There are so many ways to tell stories, they end up overlapping here and there. That cannot be helped.

Sorry. Go on.

Thank you. God tells Adam not to eat the apple on the tree, or else. Then he takes Adam’s rib to forge Eve. Male causes male to give birth to female…, she interrupted herself, "You’re right, I must at least strive not to mix genres… Anyway, Eve doesn’t know anything about what God said about the tree and the apple. She didn’t even exist yet when Adam got that news. And this is before she is condemned to serve and obey him, so they have equal status. If she wants an apple, who is Adam to tell her she can’t have it? Is he God? Certainly not. So she picks the apple, and even offers him some. Now Adam, knowing full well, having heard it from the Horse’s mouth he shouldn’t eat it, eats it anyway. Yet Eve gets the wrap for starting the whole trouble. Go figure."

Eve is exonerated, I agreed. I couldn’t help but admire Arachne’s grasp of American slang, and I complimented her.

American ex-husband. Another story. But back to this one. Then Adam and Eve have two kids, both male. Y chromosome… not Eve’s fault, either. Gender imbalance, three to one. Soon Cain kills Abel out of jealousy. In this case, Eve is nowhere around at the time so there’s no way to pin it on her. To superimpose the dynamic on Cressid-in-Chicago-time, French kissing Brother Abel right in Pharaoh Cain’s face so soon after the break-up was rather slutty behavior, but the violence, the shooting, that’s on them. And you weren’t around at the time, either.

You make your point. Thanks.

"No problem. Do you know what unnerves me about the Eden story besides the scape-goating of Eve?

What else?

After Cain kills Abel, how many people are left?

That would be three.

So where did the rest of us come from? Either Eve had some daughters and Cain slept with his sisters, or Adam slept with his daughters, or the Oedipus complex plays out with the first mama. Or a combination of those events. How can God send Cain off to the land of Nod to find a wife, when there aren’t any other people? I like wild stories, but I think they should at least be consistent with whatever their inner logic is.

Again, you make your point. But if you made such a point to a religious fundamentalist you would no doubt put yourself in harm’s way.

I am always careful with my audience. You are no religious fundamentalist.

I am the daughter of Zion, I droned in an ominous, low monotone.

And I am the daughter of the Antichrist, she returned in the same tone.

We both laughed at that, but I didn’t elaborate, nor did she.

Arachne told me that she was taking an extended break from doctoral studies in ancient civilizations at Heidelberg University. Currently, she was working with a German relief agency that had given extensive aid to Guatemala after the massive earthquake three years before. Her job was to travel throughout the country to investigate the effectiveness of projects started at that time, and to determine which ones should be granted more funding. She was fluent in Spanish and a couple of indigenous languages as well as English and German and already knew the country well, she said. She had some bureaucratic business to take care of with the relief agency branch in Guatemala City before beginning her trek through mountain villages.

Arachne came and left quietly and unobtrusively, and I hardly saw her for the next couple of days as I was always sleeping when she returned. I slept most of the time in fact. During the day I punctuated my naps in a chair in the shade by the courtyard fountain with brief forays into the city streets, making circuitous meanderings never exceeding a mile. Beyond the wooden door of the courtyard, I was at once submerged in the intensity of the city. The buildings in Spanish colonial style, the women in traditional clothing selling fruits I didn’t recognize from large baskets on street corners, the occasional small band of goats, these things were pleasantly strange. But the noise, pollution and traffic that constitute the canvass of city life were all too familiar.

Although I had no clear idea of where else I would go, I did have a project. An editor at Silver Canyon Press expressed interest in a collection of my poetry. I had already published a few poems in one of their anthologies, and this would be my first opportunity to publish a book of my own. If and when I got back to the States I’d no doubt have to put in a serious stint of tutoring rich-but-dumb high school kids to get back on my financial feet, so I wanted to seize some productivity out of this quiet time.

On the morning of the third day at El Jardin del Cielo, I awoke to someone shaking my foot. Sleepy Cressid, awake! Arachne chortled cheerfully. I’m leaving after breakfast. Come join me.

I hadn’t realized it, but even though I had seen only glimpses of her since our breakfast on the first day, I had taken solace in the solid self-assuredness of her presence, and the fact that she was about to leave made me feel the sands shifting beneath my feet.

By the time I had showered and dressed, she had already eaten her breakfast and was reading that book with the impossibly long and complicated title, drinking a cup of coffee.

Ciao, Cressid! After two days of sleep, feeling better? She book-marked her reading and poured me a cup of coffee from the pitcher as I sat down.

Much. Thanks.

Cressid is a lovely name. What does it mean? Where does it come from?

My mother and father were Shakespearean actors who fell in love when they were working on the performance of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. My mother felt she had a unique understanding of the character, Cressida–also called Cressid. She thought that most people entirely missed the point about her. She named me Cressid more as an act of vindication of that character, I think, than as a tribute to her love for my father.

That is one of Shakespeare’s plays I’m not familiar with. Why did Cressid have to be vindicated?

It takes place during the Trojan War. Troilus and Cressida are Trojans, madly in love. The Greeks have captured one of Troy’s best warriors, Antenor, and since Cressid’s father, a priest, has already defected to the Greeks, the Greeks make a deal to give back Antenor in exchange for Cressid. Cressid and Troilus make solemn and passionate vows to be true to each other and she is sent to the Greeks. No sooner is she in the Grecian camp than she dumps Troilus and picks up a handsome Greek warrior.

Oh. But of course your mother did not see this as the betrayal it seems, so there must be more to the story. Did Troilus fight against the trading of his beloved?

No. It was what his father, King of Troy wanted, so he fussed a bit when he found out, but then went right along with it.

And your mother pointed out that Cressid had been exchanged like a sack of potatoes to the enemy camp, and therefore owed nothing to anyone any more. Furthermore, it was in her best interests to have a Greek warrior boyfriend, considering her circumstances as a Trojan in the camp of the Greeks.

Precisely.

Was your father in agreement with naming you Cressid?

Actually, I just made all of that up. My parents didn’t name me at all. They died before I was born. Troilus-father found Cressid-mother in bed with Othello and he shot them both before shot himself.

Arachne laughed loudly, throwing her head back against the chair, revealing her beautiful straight white teeth. She straightened up and asked in all sincerity, Then how did you come to exist if your parents died before you were born? And who named you Cressid?

I’m not quite sure how I came to exist, but I am the one who named myself Cressid. My name used to be Ruth. Truthless Ruthless Ruth. And your name? I’ve never heard it before, but then I don’t speak German.

It’s not German, it’s Greek via English. I’m named for the mortal woman who challenged the goddess Athena.

Ah, Arachne, I said, for the first time making the connection between the unusual sound of the name and the Grecian myth. Can you weave?

No, not textiles anyway. But my grandmother could. And when all of my grandmother’s skill and talent were lost on my mother, my mother chose this name for me in an attempt to absolve herself. She never admitted that, but that’s what I surmised.

There was a solemn resonance about the past tense she used when referring to her mother that let me understand she was dead, and I didn’t inquire further. A strange coincidence that we should both have names spun through Greek mythology, I remarked.

Strange, but not so strange. I believe that the world is a mind-boggling entanglement of coincidence, and we’d go insane if we noticed them all, so mercifully, we only pick up on them now and again by accident.

I poured us both another cup of coffee. On the other hand, perhaps we create coincidences. I think poetry has a lot to do with creating coincidences. They have a magic power. I was also thinking about how if I hadn’t created the Hope Diamond coincidence, I wouldn’t be sitting there at that moment.

True, but to say the world is an entanglement of coincidence, and to say that we create coincidence is ultimately to say the same thing, since we create the world through our perceptions, she countered.

HMM. Let me marinate in that thought for a moment. I wanted some more time to think about her argument before I could agree or disagree with her, but I remembered that she was leaving after breakfast and I wouldn’t have the time. Sorry you’re leaving just when I’m finally waking up. I would have liked to have talked to you more.

I’ll be in Guatemala for about six more months until this job is finished. Depending on how long you’re staying, maybe we can catch up with each other further down the line.

I’ll stay until luck and money run out. I’m hoping to make it through at least a few months. Maybe I’ll be able to pick up some odd job somewhere. Who knows? By spring, things should be cooled down on the club scene in Chicago and warmed up weather-wise. I don’t regret missing the brutality of a Chicago winter.

Where are you going from here?

I thought I’d just stay at this place. I’ve grown attached to that chair over there by the fountain. I’ve got some writing I’m working on. A book of poems. All I need is a table to put my typewriter on, and the one in the room is adequate. Five quetzal–five American dollars a night–that’s dirt cheap compared to Rush Street Chicago.

You really shouldn’t get stuck here, she advised. It’s OK for a couple of days as a city stop, but there are nicer towns further into the country, and there are lots of ‘adequate’ places to stay for only one quetzal a night.

No kidding? That would stretch my funds considerably. My loyalty to my newfound home evaporated immediately.

"I’m talking ‘no frills’ you understand. I don’t know how much you’ve