| Friday, December 1, 2006 |
| Sinking Island |
Somehow the town had decided that the big hotel had to come, and when it came it would have to be Sahr's family who sold their land, Sahr's family who had to watch an enormous, ugly structure be put up and their own beloved house be bulldozed, Sahr who launched a vendetta against the structure and anyone who would live there. Of course it would have to be Sahr's family, because his parents could be molded like putty and he, though his own personality resembled nothing so much as a diamond in hardness, was still young enough that he could be pushed back brutally without anyone complaining and without being able to fight back.
Not any more, oh no. He was almost a man now, a tall fourteen-year-old, with the light skin native to the town but black hair that no one, no matter how far back in his family, on both sides, had. That was easy to check though, as the whole town was interrelated. Until the sudden popularity of going to "pristine, undeveloped" towns and the hotel, it was very common to marry your own cousin simply because there wasn't anyone else. Not six degrees of separation; more like two.
Then came the Hotel Carind.
Men in ugly gray clothes with hard black bags - Sahr later found out the impractical things were called 'briefcases', whatever that meant - came to his parents and talked.
"We will make you an offer which you would be good to accept."
It didn't take much to intimidate his parents into accepting. They were scared witless anyway. And though the eight-year-old Sahr had strained mightily against his mother's crushing hold, and hopped to try to bite the insolent hand that ruffled his hair rudely, the deal was made, the house was bulldozed, and Sahr retreated more and more into himself, answering questions with vicious glares and speaking with horribly dripping sarcasm when he absolutely had to respond.
And then came foreigners.
Sahr had sworn never to do anything that benefited the hotel people, but here he was, working for them; they owned almost all the town, so unless you wanted to be a bum, you'd work for them. And that was how he came to make his first friend.
She was tall and thin, with long legs like sticks, unlike all the girls in the town; the first time he saw her, his reaction was assuming she was sick. She didn't look like either the foreigners or the natives; her eyes were some sort of violet, her hair was dark like Sahr's and her skin was the color of the rich topsoil that you could see under a clear stream, a rich, dark brown.
"Um," she had said, "Er. I was - I mean - it's that - er - can I talk to you?"
"You're already doing that," he said bitingly.
She nodded, as if satisfied. "That's what I thought."
. . .
Somehow, after that, he found himself talking to her a lot. He didn't know how it had happened and wasn't sure if he liked it, having a friend, but he was stuck with her, and she never seemed to leave the Hotel.
. . .
Ever since he was small Sahr had found he could coax the elements into doing little things, make a trickle of water fall upwards for a minute and the like. Whenever he showed off to his mother, her face would go paler than usual and her mouth would go pinched, so he didn't talk about it.
The day he was fired for "speaking disrespectfully" to the guests, his superiors, according to the man who informed him of the displacement, was his fifteenth birthday. That day, all the anger accumulated from a seven-year vendetta seemed to burst, and he watched dispassionately as huge wave after huge wave started to burst on the beaches all around the tiny island, making short work of whatever dunes the hotel people hadn't demolished, most of them with tiny shacks perched forlornly on top.
He supposed he could've saved Cissa, his friend, but he was past thinking straight, he would later say, if there was a later, though at the time he thought he was thinking straighter than he ever had in his life, darn it, as he ran senselessly towards the beach and dived into the waves.
He didn't even try to resist the crash of the surf and the pull of gravity, didn't hear his mother screaming that she had known this was going to happen! Why couldn't he leave well enough alone? He didn't resist at all; he was ready; and he welcomed oblivion as it washed gently over him.
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posted by CosimaCat @ 8:22 AM   |
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| A blog made up of short stories that can be read in any order. Rather like the Fiction in the New Yorker. Me vaugely gesticulating in order to make a point that doesn't seem to be there. |
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Name: CosimaCat
Home: Bloggerland, My World, Mexico
About Me: How do I know? You tell me. I'm a cat by any other name. I'm sure I was supposed to be a cat, really. There was a cosmic screwup. Heads will roll.
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