THE LOST BULLET
for Chele Marcos
"The bullet which shall wound me shall be a bullet with a soul...”Salomón de la Selva
I do not know why, but since I was born in the United States, I just knew I was destined to live one of the weirdest romances of all times. Nothing in my appearance or configuration distinguished me from so many thousands, so many like me, I was not anything special, but from that very moment I recall that I told myself I was going to be special, memorable, unforgettable. It was not a Mae West syndrome whispering for you to come up and see me sometime. I would have to go and look for that unfanthomable destiny, incredible, unique, unrepeatable and inevitable. I was just one more golden gringa, that was it, but something told me that I was destined to be a one of a kind protagonist. I spent a lot of time just holding on, bored, I felt tied, like stuck in a case of nothingness, gravitating as I waited for the event, for that magical moment in which I would be catapulted into an unique and decisive event, expected and feared, both at the same time. I understood what the ovules gravitating into maturity in a ovary feel, or what a fetus does while he waits for the waters to flow outward and he can dawn into the world. But the date for my encounter was already pointed out by what the Arabs call kismet, destiny. If you please, call it fate.
In 1984 I met the great love of my life. She was wearing loose camouflaged pants, a video camera slung from her shoulder and she exhibited jungle hair in several shades of mahogany. We met in Jalapa, Nicaragua, so far away from my birthplace in the United States. She was being followed and since she was rather chubby, she had a hard time climbing up the ladder that went into the military helicopter that would return her, other militaries and 4 European war correspondents back to Managua. An amalgam of noise which was made of triggers, whistling bullets and the hissing blades of the helicopter disoriented me a wee bit, but when I was able to find myself, the encounter had already happened.
The woman settled herself inside the helicopter next to a blond Frenchman who was stinkier than all the onions of the world put together. This blondie looked at her in alarm and told her to look al the bloody pants. Instinctively, the maiden looked at her crotch, the logical site if you are a woman in a fertile age. The Frenchman had the decency to blush to say no, it was somewhere lower. That was when the woman looked at the left leg of her pants, all torn, and a sea of blood oozing from behind her knee. ”But I felt nothing, merdouze,I felt nothing and they hit me!” she would recite as if she were quoting Walt Whitman or Guillaume D`Aquitaine if that is who pleases you most.
It was as if her dignity was upset because she had been shot and she had been so stupid as no be unaware of the fact. Beside her, a blond Nicaraguan with the rank of captain took out a big bandanna and a tourniquet was firmly tied in order to avoid further loss of blood. The blond Nicaraguan held her head in his arms and crooned, ”That`s it, fatty, stop it, Bat! We will take you to the military hospital but take it easy, okay?” It was pretty obvious that this man had a very difficult time trying to handle soothing words, but it was evident that he was terrible worried. He continued speaking to her in English all along the chopper`s flight, and I was understanding what he was mumbling. Some of the things he said were not to my liking. Who was he to touch the love of my life, and she to allow him to do so? I did not know that she and the blondie, whom many called Eric the Red, were chums since they were both babies, and a gust of jealousy swept over me.
Once in Managua, the woman was taken in a noisy ambulance to the hospital, Eric the Red went right along with her. Far from the foreign correspondents, the man finally burst into tears.”I shall never forgive myself if your leg gets amputated, Bat. Shit, you have such nice legs, you bitch, your father will kill me for this! ”The woman twisted and turned on the stretcher and she had a strange fey smile on her face, but she would utter nothing more than a hissing shut up! Up to this point, a huge anguish was getting into me.
What would happen to me? Getting the woman into the doctor´s hands, Eric the Red stayed outside promising the woman that he would call her parents. The physicians inmediately stripped her of her boots and pants. They cleaned her up and I heard them say it would be a difficult case. It was not until around 7 in the evening, after countless exams, x-rays, hurries and lots of fidgeting that I could be at peace. The doctors` opinion was that due to the way that things happened, and since the bullet was sitting exactly at the point where femur, tibia, fibula and patella converge, it would truly be an impossible task to extricate the projectile from there. There was a man with transparent green eyes who chain-smoked next to her bed.
There was no question of amputation, and nothing about extricating the bullet. The woman would learn to live with her bullet as of that moment. As weeks and years went by, the orifice of the entry would leave no mark on the perfectly formed leg. She would have a bit of pain during the new moon days, with air conditioners and the cool airs of December, and she would set off the alarms when she visited banks or went through the airport check -up, when the metal would be detected.
“At least it did not hit you near the arse, like your uncle who was on D-Day,” said her father when he took her home from the hospital two days later. There had been Eric the Red, whom obviously had not been thrown in jail or anything like it.”Bat, can you forgive me? It was I who took you on mission, ”said the blond, with a tearful look in his gray eyes. ”Fuck off, Eric, stop giving me bullshit ,”said she while I writhed around in jealousy.
From then on I learned to know her. And I started loving her with such a vicious possessiveness that I never believed I could be capable of feeling. She was again out as a war correspondent at La Penca and she almost went lunatic when she yarned with a chap named Rubèn, who had a profound gash on the chest. Bat would affirm that she spent the whole night yarning with him, but it was quite scary when she returned to Managua with the recruit`s corpse and the forensic doctor told her that he had been dead for a good amount of hours. She wept for hours in her father`s lap and Eric the Red snarled at her that if she took the military service recruitsnwho died in combat so seriously, she was going to spend the rest of her life with her stormy eyes as swollen as frogs. Once in a while her mother would have her visit several doctors to see what could be done about her bullet. Once she was given pills which made her vomit even what she hadn`t eaten in centuries, to say the least. I felt guilty because I couldn`t mitigate her pain. I never wished to hurt her, but I adored her so much that I couldn`t bear the thought of being wrenched away from her.
After her parents` death in a plane crash, there was no more mention of going to the doctor. The only one who could have convinced her to visit the hospital was Eric the Red, but the poor chap was so enmeshed in his own troubles because he had to deal with his own psychosis. I get the impression that Bat sometimes got a little fed up of playing wageless psychotherapist, and even though they were together at the same military unit after she decided to become a full-fledged military, Bat never overspent her patience. She deal with Eric the Red with an endless sweetness, just like a mother had to deal with a hyperkinetic baby. Eric the Red would seat her on his long sofa in his bureau, he would hand her a guitar and would ask her to play the instrument. I remembered Farinelli singing to soothe away King Philip V of Spain`s melancholy. “You are my Orpheus and I am the beasts for you to tame...”said Eric the Red.
Years later, when Bat left the army without signing a single document, Eric the Red continued to be hooked on her emotionally. One afternoon, she was translating confidential documents for a multinational when he called her, sunken in despair. Taking into consideration that she had many bills to pay such as energy, water service and phone, with the threat of getting those services cut off, Bat said that she could not abandon the translation because at the same moment that she finished, she would get paid in cash. Eric the Red lost his marbles and he insulted her, yelling at her that if he committed suicide it would be as if she herself put the bullet in his head because she never had time for him. Bat surely had heard similar nonsense after so many years of friendship, so she didn`t do more than hang up. The following day, Eric the Red was dead after having swallowed a bullet in the best Hemingway style. Bat, this time, was unable to cry. She had too many other things to do, and pain was not included n her agenda. She just undertook the burden, a burden which was made of guilt, heavier than anything that Atlas had to carry, including the whole world.
Pain should have been included in her agenda because when many years later she was diagnosed as a diabetic, she would have it. The neuropathies, those shameful bolts of flashing pain that people with diabetes suffer, would be worse in her left leg because of the bullet. Again, it was brought up that maybe by extracting the bullet that she had since 1984 maybe some remedy might be possible. Bat this time wanted to know about the possibility, so she went to the hospital to have an ultrasound performed on her. Lying down on a couch, she turned her duststorm eyes towards the screen. It was the first time that she saw something like that. She remembered her pregnancy, when she was expecting her rowdy twins, and a wave of maternal feelings swept over her. There she was, tiny,well- nooked, shining. Like a fetus. Bat, recalling that on one occasion she was almost aborted, got up from the couch and cuddled her knee. She felt pain, but she smiled. “Under no circumstance am I removing this thing from my body. It would be as if I aborted my kids. I am not a criminal. She stays there. I love her. No more talk about this.”
I could finally breathe, relaxed. I was loved! Here, inside Bat, despite her high glucose level and her pains, I have the honor of being cocooned in an eternal, loving pregnancy. When she dies, I shall be buried in her same tomb, a privilege that not even her own husband will have because he will be laid to rest beside her, in a separate crypt. Well, one thing. Keep me a secret! I will never tell her that the 22- caliber bullet which dashed her friend`s life, Eric the Red, when she refused to listen to him, that bullet was my own sister.
Cecilia Levallois
for Chele Marcos
"The bullet which shall wound me shall be a bullet with a soul...”Salomón de la Selva
I do not know why, but since I was born in the United States, I just knew I was destined to live one of the weirdest romances of all times. Nothing in my appearance or configuration distinguished me from so many thousands, so many like me, I was not anything special, but from that very moment I recall that I told myself I was going to be special, memorable, unforgettable. It was not a Mae West syndrome whispering for you to come up and see me sometime. I would have to go and look for that unfanthomable destiny, incredible, unique, unrepeatable and inevitable. I was just one more golden gringa, that was it, but something told me that I was destined to be a one of a kind protagonist. I spent a lot of time just holding on, bored, I felt tied, like stuck in a case of nothingness, gravitating as I waited for the event, for that magical moment in which I would be catapulted into an unique and decisive event, expected and feared, both at the same time. I understood what the ovules gravitating into maturity in a ovary feel, or what a fetus does while he waits for the waters to flow outward and he can dawn into the world. But the date for my encounter was already pointed out by what the Arabs call kismet, destiny. If you please, call it fate.
In 1984 I met the great love of my life. She was wearing loose camouflaged pants, a video camera slung from her shoulder and she exhibited jungle hair in several shades of mahogany. We met in Jalapa, Nicaragua, so far away from my birthplace in the United States. She was being followed and since she was rather chubby, she had a hard time climbing up the ladder that went into the military helicopter that would return her, other militaries and 4 European war correspondents back to Managua. An amalgam of noise which was made of triggers, whistling bullets and the hissing blades of the helicopter disoriented me a wee bit, but when I was able to find myself, the encounter had already happened.
The woman settled herself inside the helicopter next to a blond Frenchman who was stinkier than all the onions of the world put together. This blondie looked at her in alarm and told her to look al the bloody pants. Instinctively, the maiden looked at her crotch, the logical site if you are a woman in a fertile age. The Frenchman had the decency to blush to say no, it was somewhere lower. That was when the woman looked at the left leg of her pants, all torn, and a sea of blood oozing from behind her knee. ”But I felt nothing, merdouze,I felt nothing and they hit me!” she would recite as if she were quoting Walt Whitman or Guillaume D`Aquitaine if that is who pleases you most.
It was as if her dignity was upset because she had been shot and she had been so stupid as no be unaware of the fact. Beside her, a blond Nicaraguan with the rank of captain took out a big bandanna and a tourniquet was firmly tied in order to avoid further loss of blood. The blond Nicaraguan held her head in his arms and crooned, ”That`s it, fatty, stop it, Bat! We will take you to the military hospital but take it easy, okay?” It was pretty obvious that this man had a very difficult time trying to handle soothing words, but it was evident that he was terrible worried. He continued speaking to her in English all along the chopper`s flight, and I was understanding what he was mumbling. Some of the things he said were not to my liking. Who was he to touch the love of my life, and she to allow him to do so? I did not know that she and the blondie, whom many called Eric the Red, were chums since they were both babies, and a gust of jealousy swept over me.
Once in Managua, the woman was taken in a noisy ambulance to the hospital, Eric the Red went right along with her. Far from the foreign correspondents, the man finally burst into tears.”I shall never forgive myself if your leg gets amputated, Bat. Shit, you have such nice legs, you bitch, your father will kill me for this! ”The woman twisted and turned on the stretcher and she had a strange fey smile on her face, but she would utter nothing more than a hissing shut up! Up to this point, a huge anguish was getting into me.
What would happen to me? Getting the woman into the doctor´s hands, Eric the Red stayed outside promising the woman that he would call her parents. The physicians inmediately stripped her of her boots and pants. They cleaned her up and I heard them say it would be a difficult case. It was not until around 7 in the evening, after countless exams, x-rays, hurries and lots of fidgeting that I could be at peace. The doctors` opinion was that due to the way that things happened, and since the bullet was sitting exactly at the point where femur, tibia, fibula and patella converge, it would truly be an impossible task to extricate the projectile from there. There was a man with transparent green eyes who chain-smoked next to her bed.
There was no question of amputation, and nothing about extricating the bullet. The woman would learn to live with her bullet as of that moment. As weeks and years went by, the orifice of the entry would leave no mark on the perfectly formed leg. She would have a bit of pain during the new moon days, with air conditioners and the cool airs of December, and she would set off the alarms when she visited banks or went through the airport check -up, when the metal would be detected.
“At least it did not hit you near the arse, like your uncle who was on D-Day,” said her father when he took her home from the hospital two days later. There had been Eric the Red, whom obviously had not been thrown in jail or anything like it.”Bat, can you forgive me? It was I who took you on mission, ”said the blond, with a tearful look in his gray eyes. ”Fuck off, Eric, stop giving me bullshit ,”said she while I writhed around in jealousy.
From then on I learned to know her. And I started loving her with such a vicious possessiveness that I never believed I could be capable of feeling. She was again out as a war correspondent at La Penca and she almost went lunatic when she yarned with a chap named Rubèn, who had a profound gash on the chest. Bat would affirm that she spent the whole night yarning with him, but it was quite scary when she returned to Managua with the recruit`s corpse and the forensic doctor told her that he had been dead for a good amount of hours. She wept for hours in her father`s lap and Eric the Red snarled at her that if she took the military service recruitsnwho died in combat so seriously, she was going to spend the rest of her life with her stormy eyes as swollen as frogs. Once in a while her mother would have her visit several doctors to see what could be done about her bullet. Once she was given pills which made her vomit even what she hadn`t eaten in centuries, to say the least. I felt guilty because I couldn`t mitigate her pain. I never wished to hurt her, but I adored her so much that I couldn`t bear the thought of being wrenched away from her.
After her parents` death in a plane crash, there was no more mention of going to the doctor. The only one who could have convinced her to visit the hospital was Eric the Red, but the poor chap was so enmeshed in his own troubles because he had to deal with his own psychosis. I get the impression that Bat sometimes got a little fed up of playing wageless psychotherapist, and even though they were together at the same military unit after she decided to become a full-fledged military, Bat never overspent her patience. She deal with Eric the Red with an endless sweetness, just like a mother had to deal with a hyperkinetic baby. Eric the Red would seat her on his long sofa in his bureau, he would hand her a guitar and would ask her to play the instrument. I remembered Farinelli singing to soothe away King Philip V of Spain`s melancholy. “You are my Orpheus and I am the beasts for you to tame...”said Eric the Red.
Years later, when Bat left the army without signing a single document, Eric the Red continued to be hooked on her emotionally. One afternoon, she was translating confidential documents for a multinational when he called her, sunken in despair. Taking into consideration that she had many bills to pay such as energy, water service and phone, with the threat of getting those services cut off, Bat said that she could not abandon the translation because at the same moment that she finished, she would get paid in cash. Eric the Red lost his marbles and he insulted her, yelling at her that if he committed suicide it would be as if she herself put the bullet in his head because she never had time for him. Bat surely had heard similar nonsense after so many years of friendship, so she didn`t do more than hang up. The following day, Eric the Red was dead after having swallowed a bullet in the best Hemingway style. Bat, this time, was unable to cry. She had too many other things to do, and pain was not included n her agenda. She just undertook the burden, a burden which was made of guilt, heavier than anything that Atlas had to carry, including the whole world.
Pain should have been included in her agenda because when many years later she was diagnosed as a diabetic, she would have it. The neuropathies, those shameful bolts of flashing pain that people with diabetes suffer, would be worse in her left leg because of the bullet. Again, it was brought up that maybe by extracting the bullet that she had since 1984 maybe some remedy might be possible. Bat this time wanted to know about the possibility, so she went to the hospital to have an ultrasound performed on her. Lying down on a couch, she turned her duststorm eyes towards the screen. It was the first time that she saw something like that. She remembered her pregnancy, when she was expecting her rowdy twins, and a wave of maternal feelings swept over her. There she was, tiny,well- nooked, shining. Like a fetus. Bat, recalling that on one occasion she was almost aborted, got up from the couch and cuddled her knee. She felt pain, but she smiled. “Under no circumstance am I removing this thing from my body. It would be as if I aborted my kids. I am not a criminal. She stays there. I love her. No more talk about this.”
I could finally breathe, relaxed. I was loved! Here, inside Bat, despite her high glucose level and her pains, I have the honor of being cocooned in an eternal, loving pregnancy. When she dies, I shall be buried in her same tomb, a privilege that not even her own husband will have because he will be laid to rest beside her, in a separate crypt. Well, one thing. Keep me a secret! I will never tell her that the 22- caliber bullet which dashed her friend`s life, Eric the Red, when she refused to listen to him, that bullet was my own sister.
Cecilia Levallois
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