I assume that my creating other lives makes sense to you now, my dreams sending me to Medellín, Moscow, Istanbul, and the Galápagos Islands, places where I am someone who is free and adventurous. It’s odd, because as many times as I have been Deo, Abel, Icarus, and Zed, at first, when I land in the same blank space, a tunnel of concrete, wearing my striped pajamas, I am not sure who or where I am. I dust myself off and head toward the white light beckoning in the distance. Sometimes I need only take three steps, sometimes four hundred, sometimes two thousand, until I step out into my new world and look down to see whether I am wearing huarache sandals, fur-lined boots, Turkish slippers, or flip-flops. Even when I say, “Oh, I’m in Colombia or Russia or Turkey or on an island in the Eastern Pacific Ocean,” I need clues to recall my alternate life, clues thrown my way that I heed and roll into my being, until the diverse parts of myself are a united whole. Most of the time, at the start, I don’t even remember my name.
My high school teacher, nut-sized Mr. Patel, a walnut of a man, once a medical school professor in Mumbai, reduced to teaching high school science in Rhome, came into my mind all at once, and I realized it was because of Kartar. Kartar and Mr. Patel shared the same lyrical intonations, the same nutmeg-hued skin. His son, Rajeev, had been in my class. From Mr. Patel, I learned the intricacies of systems I still have memorized alphabetically: cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, immune, integumentary, musculoskeletal, nervous, respiratory, reproductive, and urinary; and about their systemic exceptions, diseases that arrested the body’s mechanics. Mr. Patel lectured excitedly on hemophilia, called it “the royal disease.” It was a physical science class, but he talked cheerfully about the stricken royal lineages of the Russians, the British, the Spaniards, the Germans. More than a few times, he uttered his calmly democratic statement: “Being royalty, with its power and riches and unfair advantages, also carries the possibility that your blood might be contaminated. A high birth will not save you, if your blood refuses natural containment within its earthly vessel.”
So from Kartar to Mr. Patel, who buttered high school science with political theory, to Simon Tabor, a hemophiliac narrator suffering that inherited blood disorder where the body’s natural clotting factor is absent. My mother would say nothing is random; coincidence does not exist, just the right time for forces to unite.
I reviewed the table of contents again. In “The Travels of Boys,” the stories hinged on the first version of Simon Tabor, the hemophiliac trapped in his room, that began with “Simon Tabor Introduces Himself” and “Simon Tabor Explains All.” In the next four stories, “Furia Returns,” “Abel’s New Game,” “Icarus Dives,” and “Zed’s Scepter,” the teenage hemophiliac was living as one of his imaginary boys in their exotic milieus.
I dove into the first one, “Furia Returns.”
My bare feet echo until I am through that tunnel. Then I look around and there is the Museo de Antioquia, and the Uribe Palace of Culture, and so I know I am in the City of Eternal Spring, in Medellín, Colombia. Policía, guns tucked into their holsters, are guarding barricades, looking exhausted, their uniforms sweat-stained, and not at all snappy. It is a thankless job, policing the most dangerous city in the world, run by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. As I walk past, I wonder how many of them are corrupt, are in Pablo’s pockets, his cocaine still fresh up their noses. One cop waves at me, says, “Paleto! Bienvenida a la ciudad!” He’s ironically welcoming me to the city, but I wonder why he’s called me a country bumpkin. I look down and find I am wearing my huarache sandals, and loose linen pants, and when I finger my shirt, it is collarless. I realize I have a hat on my head, and pull off a sombrero vueltiao intricately woven in cream and black. The cop was right; I am in the clothes of a country boy, but I sense I do not come from the rural part. You see, there are always glitches in reality that I must work through.
I am still holding my hat in my hands when I suddenly find myself in an art gallery, and a man says to me, “Deo, mi hijo, explain to our illustrious guests the getup that you are wearing.”
Oh, yes, right. In the City of Eternal Spring, where cocaine paves the streets, I am Deo Furia, and this man must be my father. My Spanish is rusty at first, but I know hijo means “son.”
The guests are Americanos, a husband and a wife, who are stupid, or brave, to be in Medellín at this time.
“Well,” I say, giving them the full force of my smile, “I am dressed like this because it reminds me of our peasant past. The sombrero, loosely translated as ‘turned hat,’ is a Colombian national symbol, handcrafted out of natural palm leaves using a traditional Zenu technique that can depict religious scenes or everyday activities like hunting and fishing. You need not be religioso. You need not be a hunter or fisherman, you need only love and respect the craftsmanship. This one, as you can see, is a geometric rendition. Stunning, is it not?”
I turn my eyes innocent and say, “Padre, you don’t mean to sell my sombrero, do you? It is a rare one, made for me personally by the old man in the hill shack who creates hats only for those not born on the Ides of March.” My father winks at me.
He is pleased because the Americanos have not moved from their spot in front of A Woman Who Expects Too Much. It is an enormous and expensive painting by the famous Colombian painter Gómez Días Mu?oz, and mi padre would very much like them to purchase it. He is soft-shoe dancing, nearing the bulk of the painted woman in her frilled burnt-tangerine dress, pointing out what the artist was saying with the jeweled bracelets that encircle both of her wrists, her painted nails at the ends of small, childish fingers, the glove in her left hand, the clutch purse in her right. I think she looks like a human cake, with those three chins, the choker nestled against the bounty, her hair like meringue, a tangerine flower affixed behind her left ear. Her eyes are black currants, her brows arched, her lipsticked mouth tight. Ah, but she is all done up and ready for viewing, presenting herself, I think, to someone whose opinion she cares about and may not receive, unsure whether the frills, the long kimono-style sleeves, the sensual color of the dress suits her at all. She is a cake-topper, for sure.
“Deo,” my father says, “allow Mrs. Warring to inspect your sombrero vueltiao.”
I hand it over to the Americana, who smiles at me with her small white rodent teeth, the nostrils of her button nose flaring. She is elongated and flat as a board, spared of breasts, hips, any kind of saucy rear. It is hard to imagine that underneath their clothing, Mrs. Warring and A Woman Who Expects Too Much each have nipples, belly buttons, pussies, and haunches. The only thing they share in common: the prerogative of fortune.
The price of the painting is 361,000,000 COP, or $1 million. I am not sure how I know this because I do not remember seeing the price list for the art my father represents, but I know their images are in a binder on the shiny white desk at the front of the gallery, where a girl with a curtain of bright yellow hair sits with her legs crossed. Her gleaming thighs are sunlit-striped because of the iron bars over the skylight, installed to keep out potential marauders and thieves. But direct sun has found her face, giving her a halo and an angelic vibration, despite lips painted magenta. She nods at me, and I wave back.