Human Solutions Page 5

  I listened to Uncle Peter’s voice rising and falling, his shifting cadence, and the varying speed at which he spoke. This was a man who had been a preacher for most of his adult life and a man who loved to hear the sound of his own voice.

  When he was done, the colonists began taking their plates to the kitchen, and a team of men and women began cleaning tables and washing dishes. Everyone began filing out of the hall, and I was approached by a guard.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  I followed him out of the hall. We marched down the road and back to the small room where I had been interviewed by the three men. The guard waved his gun at the chair and told me to sit. I thought of what Julio had told me—to get as close to Uncle Peter as possible with admiration but also with honesty and a lack of fear.

  I heard voices outside the room, and I stood up and walked over to the photographs. It was where I wanted to be when Uncle Peter walked in. I chose a picture of him and pretended to study it. The door creaked open. I turned around slowly.

  “Oil this door,” Uncle Peter said to the guard.

  The guard hurried off.

  “Please,” Uncle Peter said, gesturing towards the chair, “have a seat.”

  I didn’t want to have him standing over me while I sat—it would create the type of power dynamic that Uncle Peter seemed to thrive on.

  “I was admiring these photographs,” I said, ignoring his request. “Magnificent.”

  I walked over to Uncle Peter and stuck my hand out.

  “I’m Javier. It’s a pleasure and an honour.”

  He shook my hand and gave a pleasant, forced smile.

  “Please,” he said again, gesturing towards the chair.

  “Thank you,” I said, “but my knees. They are stiff from all the sitting at supper. And I must say, what a delightful meal. The sauerkraut alone had enough goodness to feed a man for a lifetime.”

  “I do like the sauerkraut myself,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “You are a much talked about man in my community,” I said.

  “What community is that?” he demanded.

  I named one of the more prominent Evangelical churches in Santiago.

  “Is Pastor Sotomayor still working there?”

  “I’m not sure who was there before,” I said, “But now it’s Pastor Morales.” Julio had done his research.

  Uncle Peter leaned back, satisfied.

  “He mentions you frequently in his sermons,” I said. “And I have spoken to others at the church. Everyone agrees that what you have built here is nothing short of a Utopia.”

  “I will not ask why you want to live here,” Uncle Peter said. “Everyone wants to—especially those who are unfortunate enough to live in a sinful city like Santiago.”

  Uncle Peter faced me and made a show of slowly removing his sunglasses. He had one regular eye and one glass eye. The glass eye looked not unlike a cloudy marble. I didn’t flinch—in fact, I forced out a yawn.

  “How can you contribute to the Colony?”

  I told him about my idea of putting together an acting group. He frowned at me for a moment. “The children here do need to learn more about the history of the Colony,” Uncle Peter said slowly.

  “Of course—and of its founder,” I said gesturing at him.

  Uncle Peter mentioned that artistic endeavors should happen outside of working hours only and that I would need to work during the day to help the Colony run smoothly.

  “We have a library,” he said. “Our librarian is at the end of his tenure. He is 84 years old and needs to pass on his knowledge. You have come along at just the right time.”

  I agreed to work at the library and said that I would need to meet with him somewhat regularly to conduct a series of interviews in order to write up the play about his life.

  Uncle Peter nodded. “Mornings, you will work in the kitchen, making breakfast,” he said. “After breakfast, you will report to the library.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” he said. “Don’t talk to anyone here about what’s going on out there in the rest of the world. Not a word.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “Call me Uncle Peter.”

  TWENTY

  I was taken by a guard to my sleeping quarters. We went into one of several nondescript apartment buildings and walked up the stairs to the third floor. The guard rifled through a round of keys on his belt and found the right one. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and turned sharply to leave.

  “You almost forgot,” I said, sticking out my hand. “The keys.”

  The guard looked at me incredulously. Then he barked out a laugh and put his face up close to mine. “These doors don’t lock for people like you,” he said. His breath stank of sauerkraut, but I stood my ground. “They lock when I decide or when Uncle Peter decides. That’s it. Understand?”

  I shrugged. “Oh sure,” I said breezily—I wasn’t going to give him any satisfaction. “I should turn in now,” I said. “Big day tomorrow. First day of school.”

  The guard shook his head and left without another word.

  I pushed the door open. The room was clean and sparsely furnished. There was a single bed, neatly made, and a nightstand with a lamp and a Bible on it. In the corner, there was a straight-backed wooden chair. The only piece of decoration was a small framed portrait of Uncle Peter that hung above the bed. I closed the door and placed my suitcase on the floor. The bed was lumpy and firm. I crawled in and turned this way and that, trying to get comfortable. When I was finally still, a series of sounds began leaking into the room. A man sped through a Hail Mary—his voice a loud monotone—then another, and another, and several more. When he had finished and I was thanking the same Mary for that small miracle, I discovered that his droning had drowned out a far more distressing sound—that of a man crying. He was subdued at first, but, before long, his heaves reached a sobbing crescendo, and I pressed a pillow down onto my head to block it out.

  At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because, the next thing I knew, I was awoken by a stern shouting. I hauled myself up on the creaky bed and squinted at the doorway. It was still dark out.

  “Your pants,” the man said. It was the guard from last night.

  I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

  “And your shirts,” he said. He dropped a stack of folded black pants and white shirts onto the floor. Then he dangled down a pair of suspenders and let those fall, too.

  “Be at the dining hall in five minutes,” he said.

  “Five minutes?” I said, rubbing my face.

  “That’s not much time to get ready—is it?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I thought of waking you up ten minutes ago,” he said, “but you looked so peaceful there, sleeping.”

  The thought that this man had watched me sleep for the last ten minutes was both disturbing and terrifying.

  “You must be a special kind of man,” I said, “if watching other men sleep is your idea of fun.”

  He kicked furiously at the pile of pants and shirts, scattering them all over the room.

  “Your room is a mess,” he said evenly. “You’ve got clothes everywhere. If it’s a mess again, I’ll report you to Uncle Peter.”

  He turned abruptly and left. I put on the clothes—they were all on the large side—and made my way over to the washroom. I shaved in front of a warped mirror and washed my face with cold water. I tried to repress the anxiety I was feeling and replace it with a sense of purpose. I needed to find Claudio and get us both out of the Colony—but there were a series of smaller goals that would lead to that, and I needed to focus on these.

  The kitchen behind the dining hall was buzzing with activity when I walked in. A dozen or so men and women were washing and dicing and frying. I stood in the doorway, alone, feeling just like I had when I first arrived at that party my sister had taken me to. Stay calm, stay positive. I took a deep breath and smiled. I
stopped a woman who was walking by and asked her who was in charge. She pointed at a large woman—old enough to be my mother—who was peering into a walk-in cooler.

  “Good morning,” I said, as I approached her.

  “It would be a better morning if you could butcher a pig and take care of our bacon shortage.”

  I smiled and stuck out my hand. “My name is Javier. I’m here to help with breakfast.”

  “Anita,” she said. “First thing that needs to be done is cleaning the tables. Fill a bucket with bleach and warm water and find a rag. Every table needs to be wiped down. There’s mouse droppings and spider webs and all those things that happen overnight.”

  The kitchen was warm from all the moving bodies and stovetops and ovens. The dining hall, on the other hand, was cold and empty. I took my bucket of warm, bleachy water and set it down on a table. I dipped the rag into it and then swished it across the table—first in straight lines but then in a more easy, circular motion. I had not done very much physical work in recent years.

  My first taste of it was when I was twelve, and my father thought it would be good for me to spend the summer away from the city. It was right after my mother had died, and my father was hardly getting out of bed most days. He sent me off to my aunt’s house; she lived alone on a farm in the southern part of the country. The bus ride was long and uneventful—my first time traveling alone—but the change in geography as we rolled down narrow roads was magnificent. The vineyards of the central region became lakes and waterfalls, and my nose was glued to the window for hours. My aunt needed help on the farm, and I was more than happy to pitch in. It felt good to be needed and to work on concrete tasks that were quantifiable. For one glorious summer, there was no more pretending to be happy around my father, no more putting on short one-man skits just to try to get him to smile, but rather picking bushels of green beans and pints of strawberries for hours on end. I worked until my back was sore and my fingers cramped.

  I alternated rags, leaving one to soak while I used the other, and made my way down the rows of long tables. The light in the room began to change, and I went to look out one of the windows. The sun was slowly working its way over the Andes. Elena would just be getting up now. She would be drinking two cups of coffee and reading the newspaper. I wanted her to look at the clock and hurry out the door. To drive out past the city limits. And I—I wanted to arrive, to see my name written in large block letters, to push through a crowd of suitcase-draggers and fall into her arms.

  I found Anita scrambling eggs. “I’m done with the tables,” I said. She looked at the clock on the wall.

  “Great,” she said. “Go help that man slicing tomatoes.”

  I walked over to the man and told him I was sent over to help. The man wordlessly handed me a knife and pushed a cutting board towards me. There was a series of wooden tomato crates stacked several feet high. I reached for a large one and began slicing. The serrated knife was as sharp as any knife I had ever used—after a while, the weight of the blade alone seemed to be doing the work for me.

  “You’ve been doing the breakfasts long?” I said.

  The man looked up quickly from his slicing and then back down. It was not going to be very easy to gather information from these colonists.

  I tried a different tack. “The way you’re slicing those—you’re very good at it.”

  The man did not look up—he frowned and then nodded curtly.

  We sliced tomatoes in utter silence for the next half an hour, until we were interrupted by the clanging of a bell.

  Over the next ten minutes, there was a furious rush in the kitchen. People darted about, helping others finish up their tasks. Trays and bowls and hot plates were hurriedly shuttled out to the dining hall and over to the serving table. I wandered over to an enormous pot and went to peek inside it.

  “I need someone to serve that,” Anita said.

  I looked up. “What is it?”

  It was oatmeal.

  “Just stand here,” Anita said, “and use this ladle to serve anyone who holds a bowl out to you.”

  She left, and a river of colonists began to flow into the room. They armed themselves with trays and silverware and formed a line at the serving table. The first one in line—an unusually tall, bearded man—picked up a bowl.

  “Good morning,” I said cheerfully.

  He ducked his head and held his bowl out. I ladled a generous amount of oatmeal into it. He peered down into his bowl, then held it out for me again. I heaped more into his bowl, and, from then on, I did not stop doling out oatmeal until the line of colonists had trickled down to nothing. Anita came out and told me to hurry up and grab some food. I went back into the kitchen and found the staff circled around a table full of food. I grabbed a plate and discovered that I was famished. Soon, my plate was full of fruit, scrambled eggs, sausages, toast, and sliced tomatoes. No oatmeal.

  I peeked out into the dining hall. The majority of the colonists were chatting comfortably in hushed tones while they ate their breakfasts. There’s an easy way of relating to others that I had never quite picked up. For me, each social interaction is fraught with subtext and body language—everyone was always after something; that much I was sure of. Maybe there was something about removing all external circumstances that simplified the way colonists were able to interact with each other. By having their daily lives pared down to the most basic level, these colonists were able to form relationships that were not weighted by discrepancies in social status, the intricacies of office politics, or the uncertainties of sexual tension. Perhaps it was my line of work—acting, in one form or another—that placed layer upon layer of complexity upon each and every interpersonal relationship, making it impossible for me to converse plainly with another human. Plainly, without an agenda, intention, or motive.

  I ate a forkful of eggs. Someone brought in a rack of dirty dishes from the dining hall, and a group of people hurried over to their dish-washing positions. I put my plate down and went over to Anita.

  “What am I supposed to be doing?” I said.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Eat. Then you’re off duty.”

  I nodded gratefully and found a corner in which to sit and eat my breakfast. Then I brushed the crumbs off my freshly starched white shirt and pants. I walked out into the bright sunshine and was nearly run over by a stampeding herd of young girls.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Field mice!” called the adult who was hurrying after them. “Behave yourselves!”

  I stood still, letting the children pass. I scanned their faces, but they looked to be younger than Claudio. I found a guard marching down the road and asked him for directions to the library. He pointed at a wood-shingled house in the near distance. I slowly made my way over to it. The exterior of the house was a faded yellow with white trim. There was a front porch with a pair of rocking chairs on it. I was startled to find a man sitting quietly in one of the chairs.

  “I didn’t see you there,” I said.

  “I don’t have my hearing aid in, so, if you’re talking—I can’t hear you.”

  I walked up the steps and over to the chair. I mimed a wave and mouthed the word hello.

  “Sit down,” said the old man. “I’m just joking—I can hear fine. I’m Ernesto, the librarian. You must be my new chicken-walker.”

  “Chicken-walker?”

  “I keep some chickens out back,” Ernesto said. “They need exercise, so every morning I take them for a walk.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was joking again or not.

  “I’m not joking,” he said.

  “I’m not your new chicken-walker,” I said firmly. “Uncle Peter sent me to help you with the library.”

  Ernesto shrugged. “I’ll show you around the library, and then we’ll go for a walk,” he declared. He put his hands on his knees and hoisted himself up onto his feet. He was a wiry old man—the kind who performs creaky calisthenics every morning before eating a large bowl of oatmeal and prunes.

  I
followed him into the library. There were large, sturdy bookshelves lining the walls and some additional shelves clustered around one side of the room. We went out through a back door and into the backyard. There was a chicken coop on one end—a small, red house with a tin roof. Ernesto walked out to the coop, and the chickens clambered over to him. He retrieved a pair of sticks that had been secured to the wall of the coop and held one out to me. The stick was a few feet long and had a small rubber worm tied firmly to one end. Ernesto demonstrated how the chickens would follow the dangling worm. This carrot-and-stick technique seemed to work well, and we went off on our walk, the chickens clucking busily as they chased after the unattainable worms.

  We had not traveled far when the same group of young girls hurried by. Their supervising adult was still scolding them, “Field mice! Stay together!”

  One of the chickens next to me began clucking anxiously.

  “Pick her up!” Ernesto said, pointing. “She’s going to make a run for it.”

  I had no idea how to pick up a chicken. I handed Ernesto my worm stick and squatted down. I grabbed the chicken the same way I would grab a soccer ball—one hand on each side—and she flapped her wings mightily in my face.

  I let go—by this point the girls had passed, and the chicken looked more anxious about my clumsiness than anything else.

  “You have to pin the wings down with your hands when you pick one up,” Ernesto said. “Or they flap them.”

  “What was that woman saying ‘field mice’ for?” I asked.

  “Those are the Field Mice. The way Uncle Peter’s got things set up here is that people are divided up by gender and by age.”

  “Oh?” I said, hoping to elicit more information.

  “At first, everyone is part of ‘The Babies,’ up until they’re six years old. They’re taken away from their parents as soon as they’re born and raised by nurses in the hospital. At six, the boys join ‘The Wedges,’ and the girls join ‘The Field Mice.’ At fifteen, the boys join ‘The Army of Salvation,’ and the girls join ‘The Dragons,’ and so on.”