TELASTA: WIL DUPEPE’S STORY
Let me tell you the story of Telasta, one of a very few remaining members of the Ocean Society (they dislike the term “mermaids.”) It is a long story, and there is more to it than I can tell you in a single book. Fortunately, Telasta has volunteered to tell parts of the story I have never heard, and her father may add his own book that tells parts of their history before our current age. Without preamble, let me set the stage for my part of the story: “Telasta -- Wil Dupepe’s Story.”
We are under some illusions about “mermaids” (forgive me, Telasta, but my audience will be slow making the transition of verbiage.) We have been told that they are half fish, with long green tails. Most folks believe mermaids to be about the same height as their human counterparts. Both of these misconceptions are borne out of perceptual anomalies that occur on, or near, the sea.
Almost all mermaids and mermen are three feet tall or shorter. Mermaids have legs and feet just like we do. Their legs fit nicely together, and their scales (yes, they have tiny scales) take awhile to turn from hues of green and blue to flesh-tone once they emerge from the water and begin to dry. Their feet are longer than ours with very long toes that are webbed. If they are out of water for extended periods of time, everything shrinks a good bit so that they look like normal people.
Fresh from the water, lying perhaps on a boulder in the surf with their legs together and their toes pointed downward (as they are accustomed to having them while swimming), they might appear to an observer on the near shore as having their legs connected into a tail and that observer might also believe the prone figure to be at a greater distance than he or she actually is. This would account for not seeing how small the mermaid actually is. I hope this explanation clears up some long-held false beliefs. Maybe it would help even more if I tell you about the origins of this species of humankind.
When the Lemurians overpopulated their continent to the point that their news media began using the word “locusts” in describing the birth rate, the government finally had to step in and begin doping the food supply to prevent pregnancies. The annual lottery winners who were allowed to become pregnant were greeted with such open hostility that everyone knew it was not a sustainable solution. Finally, a hero emerged – the genetic engineer H. Bolden. Shorter names were generally reserved for people of importance, so it may be that the H. WAS his name rather than an initial.
H. began engineering these tiny water people, as he called them, much earlier than anyone suspected. He knew people wanted children desperately and knew just as certainly that there was not enough room on the continent to support them. The country was already farming the ocean. It was not much of a stretch for H. to think of engineering from human tissue a being who could breathe with lungs and also had gills for breathing underwater. He wanted these “people” to live long lives with few diseases, so he made them with triple-helix – rather than double-helix – DNA.
Not only did he give them tiny scales that looked just like skin when they were dry, but he created a symbiotic, almost substance-less, creature that would lubricate the scales which he called a plinky. The plinky’s whole purpose was to keep the scale from grafting to the mermaid’s body at its outer edge. Many seafarers in a later age – an age that had forgotten these engineered beings -- reported hearing music before a mermaid sighting. It is likely that they were hearing the noise made by a tiny scale’s popping musically against a mermaid’s body as plinkies played chase under and around the scales.
H. ultimately unveiled his children in the capital city of Utumalacuopa
It is true that children should outlive their parents, but these children would outlive their parents by hundreds -- even thousands -- of years. ‘H.’s’ understandable concern regarding overpopulation led him to create his children such that they would not bear a child more often than every 50 years with the first offspring coming no sooner than 350 years of age for a female. While Lemuria’s water children
brought great joy to their parents, none of those land parents would ever see a grandchild.
There was a problem with this arrangement which H. never considered. The biggest threat to the Ocean Society was one which current society faces today, one which is stealthy and which can camouflage and hide: depression. The solution was built into the problem. Keeping an active interest in living over an extended period of time was a challenge. The hope for offspring was usually enough to keep mermaids and mermen emotionally healthy for the 350 year wait.
CHAPTER 1
I was born in Louisiana
We lived in the country close to a small country town. Though the town itself had few residents, there were enough people scattered in those piney woods for us to have a school. Nearly everyone was focused on hunting and fishing (murder and mayhem) and, oh yes, FOOTBALL. When asked, I would say that I attended the school for the mentally challenged. I was glad not to have to teach any of this nonsense to a sibling; glad to be an only child, just as my father before me had been.
My life did not really begin (though I was setting a foundation for the beginning) until the day everything familiar was taken from me. I was 12-years-old. My parents were so obsessed with their hatred of one another that neither of them had much of a life. By avoiding their constant arguments, I stopped being involved in their lives. Whether there was any love between us, I know that I missed them terribly when they were gone.
On the day my parents left forever, my aunt Flora Bell came to the school and took me to her house without giving me an explanation. She was tight-lipped and stoic about the fact my parents were gone. NOBODY would talk about what happened to them. In the absence of facts, a kid will fill in the blanks with imagination. I decided my mom and dad had run off on some adventure together. Later I thought that perhaps they had been arrested for some illicit activity, like drugs. I should have known they weren’t doing drugs. They were never happy enough for that. It took weeks for me to understand that they had died. I’m still not sure that I accept that. I mean, there was no FUNERAL.
Nobody talked TO me, only ABOUT me. They talked in whispered tones I always thought my hearing was good, but the only words I picked up were “the boy…” I stayed with my aunt for a week, never going back to school, when a strange old man showed up. He had pale blue eyes and thick white hair, walked with a limp, and spoke with an accent. He was an imposing and powerful figure with broad shoulders, thick chest, and arms the size of my legs. He stood 6’3” or so, and walked with the carriage of one accustomed to command.
“Where’s the boy?” he asked solemnly. I was brought to him where he sat in the rocking chair in my aunt’s tiny living room. He continued to sit as I came in the room. My aunt stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders as this man examined me. I examined him, also. He looked me over, then cut his eyes up toward my aunt and gave an unwilling little grin. “Looks like me, don’t you think?” Aunt Flora Bell, my mother’s sister, spoke through clenched teeth at a near-whisper, but with enough anger that it made the hair stand on the back of my neck, “Nobody looks like you. You left your family so long ago that I don’t know why you came back now. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you are here, ‘cause there ain’t nobody to care for the boy. We can’t afford him and Jenny Sue (Mother’s other sister) don’t want nothing to do with him. Let me get his clothes and you can just leave again.”
Such was the introduction I got to my grandfather -- my father‘s father. Let’s not go into the details of his divorce from my grandmother or any of his life before he left. He says that part of his life did not count. As I look back today, I believe that part of his life counted more in the fact that it created me than in any other way.
My grandfather went with Aunt Flora Bell to my room, helping her pack my clothes. We drove from Mansfield down a lot of narrow and curvy roads through Alexandria , Krotz Springs, and Baton Rouge New Orleans New Orleans
The ship, as I called it, was the biggest boat I had ever been on in my life. Naturally, I had seen pictures of ships in books. In the years since that first trip, I have come to call this vessel more appropriately -- a yacht. It was sea-worthy. It was luxurious. It had a motor and it had sails. Most of the time, we were wind-driven. My grandfather and I were the only passengers, though there was a crew of three other men. My grandfather slept in the stateroom, which was only slightly larger than my quarters. I never went into the staff’s quarters.
Life was such a whirlwind ride for me that I was probably just a tad in shock. My thoughts were so topsy-turvy that I felt like a completely different person. I had heard of Joaquin Dupepe as I grew up, but did not know him. I think he might have come to see my father once or twice, so I probably had seen him. If I did, I do not remember. My father and mother spoke so disparagingly of this man that I had an instinctive fear, if not outright hatred, of him. In fairness, I knew my parents were judging this man based on stories with which my father’s mother had filled my parents’ heads.
My grandmother divorced Joaquin Dupepe when my father was a toddler. For reasons unknown to me, my granny had hidden my father from his father and never allowed contact between the two. I know that she told her son that his father never tried to see him, which turned out to be untrue.
He sent money to help her raise his only child, but every time he came to her house she would send my father to one of her sisters before he got there. Joaquin got to see his son only once or twice before my father was a grown man. By that time, my father had heard so many bad stories about his father that there would never be a relationship between them. Granny died when I was too young for her to poison my mind against my grandfather.
My grandpa seemed nice enough to me. He rarely spoke to me on the boat ride to his home in Brazil
Most of the questions I asked were to the staff. The captain of the yacht was a man of about 40. He was well-suited to the isolation of his job. Taciturn and tactless, though he answered my questions, there was a roughness to his tone that told me I was bothering him. I chose not to engage him often. The porter was very effeminate, but nice. I think he and Captain John shared a room on this ship. His name was Rodrigo, and he spoke several languages. He was the one who told me I should begin learning to speak Portuguese. I would be living in Brazil
The cook ended up being my best friend on this trip. His name was Jesus, which I had a hard time calling him after he spelled it for me. I was okay with calling him ’Hay Suse’, but the name ’Jesus’ had such a sacred context attached to it that it felt like profanity for me to call him that name. Finally, I settled on calling him ’Hay.’
Hay and Rodrigo taught me to fish. We ate fish almost every meal, so it was a good thing for me to learn to catch my own food. Fishing also kept me occupied and happy until the day a marlin took my bait. I recognized that it was a marlin as he flew out of the water almost a hundred yards behind the boat. He was saying, ‘Hello’, I guess. His next words, as he chose to swim away from us, were ‘Come with me.‘ I refused to let go of the fishing pole and was dragged overboard by this powerful fish. I only got in a single yell, as I went airborne, before hitting the water. Needless to say, I let go of the pole and the marlin got my tackle.
From the spot where I was treading water I saw Avô Amado running up on deck in response to my yelling. He let out a shout for the captain to turn about, that there was a man overboard. The water was colder than I had expected.
With chattering teeth, I welcomed my grandfather’s hand as the ship came alongside me with my grandfather hanging onto a ladder on the side of the yacht. He lifted me from the water as if I weighed nothing and put me on the ladder between him and the boat. When I climbed back over the edge and into the yacht, Avô Amado had a huge beach towel waiting for me. I was shaking uncontrollably as Amado took me to his quarters and stripped my clothing off of me before putting me into his shower. He would not let me adjust the water. He explained that with hypothermia (which means ‘so cold you can‘t stop shaking’) one often turned on too much hot water and could burn oneself. (He talked like that, you know. My English was fairly good, but his was much better than mine. Since I wanted him to be proud of me, I tried to mimic the way he talked.)
That was the end of my fishing. Amado gave strict orders to the staff that I could play checkers or they could entertain me with stories or we could play cards, but I was NOT to fish again. We remained on the water only two days after that adventure anyway, so whatever boredom he feared I might suffer would be short-lived in any event.
I knew we were near the end of this journey when I first spotted the line of trees in the distance. The closer we got, the larger the land and the greener the trees. Finally, we slowed down and began to inch toward land. There was a deep-water dock with a pier at the base of what I would have called a mountain. I was from Louisiana
My grandfather steadied my back with his massive hand as the engines on the ship reversed. My sea legs were already pretty good, but the sudden slowing of the ship might have had me falling on my face without my grandfather’s hands on my back and then against my stomach to keep me from lurching forward as the yacht came to a complete stop. He was a man of few words, but his actions and facial expressions had won me over during the course of this excursion.
I looked around us to see what ‘home’ meant. There was no house in sight. Maybe he meant, ‘Welcome to your new country.’ I could see pieces of a road going up the hill through the forest that covered the mountain in front of us. The mountain was built like a pyramid. I could see that the ocean curved around it such that at least two sides of the mountain were against the ocean. Only our face of the mountain was visible from where we stood.
Amado helped me out of the ship and onto the pier. “I would not let your aunts send all your clothes, Wil. We can drive to Sao Paulo or even to Rio and get new clothes for you. You are a growing boy, so most of your clothes probably won’t fit you more than 6 months, anyhow.” This was his explanation, I suppose, of my having only one suitcase -- which he was carrying in one hand, his suitcase in the other hand.
At the end of the pier there was a short stretch of sandy beach, just above which was parked a Jeep where the sand turned to rock. We were not in sight of civilization. There were no other boats, no visible roads except that steep driveway I saw climbing the hill in front of us. I felt butterflies in my stomach. I had never seen a land like this.
Avô Amado opened the driver’s side door of the Jeep and pushed a button which automatically folded the car‘s roof into a bin behind the back seat. “Get in,” he directed me as he threw our suitcases into the back seat. I opened my door and got in as he sat in his seat. The key was in the ignition. This must be a REALLY remote dock if he left the key in his car while he went to the U.S. Brazil
He cranked the car as the yacht began to back out of the dock. I wondered where the three crewmen would go, where they lived, who owned the ship. Lots of questions raced through my mind as I looked backward and forward simultaneously. It was hard to let go of the familiar. That yacht had been my lifeline. It was the umbilical cord that was now severed, and I almost panicked. With not-exactly-eager anticipation, I forced my face forward and tried my best to enjoy the winding asphalt drive up this mountain.
It could not have been more than a 5-minute drive up the hill. Occasionally I would look back over my shoulder and
catch a glimpse of the ocean. Higher and higher we climbed. When we got to the very top, this road ended and ‘Teed’ into what must have been a main 2-lane road. Amado turned left. He pulled over onto the left shoulder of the road and came to a stop where the highway jutted out over a cliff. What a view! I could see massive trees on the steep slope of the mountain below us. The dock we had just left was barely visible and the yacht was already out in the ocean. She looked like a child’s toy. A tear stung my face as I silently bid farewell to any possibility of going home. I quickly wiped it away and put on a calm face before Amado could see my tears.
Maybe a mile ahead of us, on the other face of the mountain not visible from the dock, I saw a small Mediterranean-style house perched on a cliff top with the ocean in the background. Again Amado smiled, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Welcome home, Son.”
CHAPTER 2
Back home, it had been winter already. It was summertime in Brazil Rio de Janeiro
Brilliantly-colored birds flew across the road as we passed. There were monkeys in the trees and snakes crossing the road. Amado swerved to avoid hurting the snakes, unlike my father who would have swerved in order to kill them. The sky was a vivid blue, while the scent of salty Atlantic spray from waves crashing against boulders on the shore far below us awakened my sense of smell. Every sense was on edge. The crisp, moist breeze hit my skin in fitful gusts. My boyish hair was happy to know how futile a comb would be. The smell of Louisiana
The paved road ended abruptly at my grandfather’s house. It made a large circle directly in front of the house, then went downhill from that point as a gravel road. “This is your new home, Wil. I hope you like it. If we were to keep going down this road, we would first reach the small town of Ubatuba Sao Paulo Rio de Janeiro
Get out and take it all in, son,” he said as he got out. “I know it is all new and strange to you. We live on a peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean . All the land we just traveled on belongs to us. We only have one neighbor, and she lives a quarter of a mile west of us by land. It is about a 10-mile walk to her house if you walk along the shore line. Get your suitcase and come on in. Our house is almost never locked, but I will get you a key and show you where I hide an extra key out by the swimming pool, just in case we ever DO lock it.”
“Swimming pool?!” I could not hide my excitement. “Why would you need a swimming pool with the ocean so close, and where would you put a swimming pool? It looks like the house is on a cliff with no back yard.”
“Appearances can be deceptive, young man. The arches on front of this house would lead you to believe the house is a single-level home with a high ceiling.” He reached for the door, opened it, and motioned for me to go in front of him into the house. When I stepped into this humble-looking place, my preconceived ideas were washed away as if by a tsunami. We were in a hallway with rooms on either side of us. I would later learn that the room on the right was my bedroom, while the room on the left was a huge kitchen and breakfast area. What took my breath away was the view directly in front of us.
I had never seen a fancier hotel -- not that my impoverished parents ever spent time in hotels, but my school had taken us on a field trip to New Orleans once and I had ridden with a friend of mine and his family to Dallas Dallas
His ceilings were 25-feet high. The back wall of the house was solid glass, floor to ceiling and was built in a semi-circular shape. There were French doors all along the glass wall, with 12-foot wide galleries (porches) just beyond those doors and arches identical to those in front of the house holding up the porch roof, just like in front. We were on the second floor of a two-story house, and there was an atelier accessed by stairs at the far end of the kitchen. I had not even noticed the atelier ‘tower’ from the front. Rather than a single story, this house was three stories if you counted the atelier.
Behind the main wing of the house, a ledge was cut into the face of the cliff with a quarried stone patio encircling an Olympic-sized swimming pool at the same level as the lower floor. The lower floor also had arches and galleries like the entry level. I saw now that the house was U-shaped, with a connected two-story wing on each end of the swimming pool. From the front this looked like a decent-sized house, but once inside and the whole house unfolded to view, it was enormous. The backdrop to everything was the azure blue Atlantic Ocean . Once inside Joaquin Dupepe’s house, that view of the ocean took your breath away. He called the house ‘Jewel of the Sea.’
There were no overhead electric lines like we had back in the states. I wondered how my grandfather got electric power or phone service. I asked a lot of questions, which he did not seem to mind. He made his own electricity with some kind of noiseless generator, he told me, and he and a friend of his spent the better part of a month running a phone line all the way to Rio . That line ran underground most of the way. It even ran some of the way at the bottom of the ocean.
We did not get off of Amado’s property during the next couple of weeks. We spent hours exploring the inland property as well as the coastline. He wanted me to be able to identify the poisonous snakes, and to assure himself that I was alert enough to spot them, before he would be comfortable letting me roam the woods alone. There were many friendly creatures living here. Some of the friendliest had dangerous traits with which he wanted me to be familiar. Monkeys can be funny and friendly, but if you don’t know how to handle them, they can hurt you. Even the fruit-eating macaws and toucans, while beautiful and unafraid, need to be fed with a long-handled spoon. “One should never hold the fruit he is feeding an animal,” my grandfather cautioned. “A monkey bite is very painful, and a macaw can neatly remove one of your fingers.”
I got set up in my bedroom. It had its own bathroom. Wow! There was plenty of food and great water pressure, and the days passed smoothly. Amado had the energy of a young man, and he was constantly busy with interesting projects. He was probably as nervous about having a new member of his family as I was by BEING that new member. We were not doing very well in our conversations with one another. I guess that’s why he decided it might help us bond if we DID something together.
He had some steel cable in a storage room and some long poles stacked behind the house. One day he decided that he and I would finish a project he had designed years before. “You know, Wil, I always wanted a zip line. I always thought I might have a grandson some day, or maybe Paul (his son -- my father) might decide to visit me and we could have some FUN. I have a tractor with a post-hole digger attachment. It will be a challenge to dig those post-holes in the right places along the back cliff -- an even bigger problem to get the poles set in the holes and concreted in; but the two of us should be able to do that. I want to put poles all the way to the edge of the drop-off and then attach the cable to them. From there, we’ll run the cable almost straight down the cliff to a pole I set out in the bay years ago. I have an automatic disconnect built onto the cable so when you reach the end it unhooks the zip line from your belt and you will fly out into the ocean. Don’t worry. You will land in a really deep pool of water. Unless you do a belly-flop, it won’t hurt you. Are you game?”
“Yes, sir!” I said with enthusiasm.
The building of the zip line was one of the great joys of my life. Since Amado had all the tools and supplies already purchased and available, it really did not take long to put it together. Once the poles were up, which took one whole day to accomplish, Amado put a pipe through the spool of cable and picked it up with the forks of the tractor. Then we unwound enough of the cable so we could drop the looped end off the edge of the cliff. When the cable reached the bottom, I used a come-along to pull the cable over to our pole out in the ocean and we hooked it up to a pulley to get it to the top of the pole. I swam out to the pole, then climbed up that pole like a monkey and attached the cable to the top of the pole. After that, it was easy. Using the same technique, I attached the cable to the top of each pole. Hooking up the cable and the hardware that attached the cable to the pole took another long day. When it was finished, I could put on a special belt and hook to the zip line at the corner of the entry-level gallery.
We woke up early the next day with the project completed. Amado asked me if I wanted to be the first to try it out. He did not have to ask twice. Each of us put on a zip-line belt over our swim trunks and went to the back gallery. We set up a step ladder so that I could climb up to the porch rail. The cable was attached to the porch’s corner post low enough to attach the belt cable. Because the roof line was very high, there was no danger of bumping my head. There were two zip-line carriages attached to the cable, one behind the other. I clipped my line onto the front carriage, yelled “Yahoo!” and jumped.
Nothing prepared me for the speed of this thing. The instant I jumped, that carriage device fairly flew along the cable and in seconds I know I was going 10 or 15 miles an hour. When it reached the drop-off at the cliff top, however, I let out a screech without intending to. It scared the bejesus out of me to drop straight down like a stone. At the bottom of the drop, the unsupported drape of the cable swung me back upward like the bottom part of a playground slide, and I was headed out to sea. Boom! I hit the release mechanism and flew headlong out into the deep water trough. I was laughing so hard by this time that I almost forgot to take a gulp of air before a perfect dive into the ocean. Just as I surfaced, I heard a screech coming from Grandpa. I looked to the cliff, and it pleased me to know that he was enjoying that drop the same as any child my own age. Boom! He hit the release mechanism and flew into the ocean as I had, but with virtually no splash. He was really a good swimmer, too.
I was walking in the shallows now. There was a noise coming from above me, so I looked up. The carriage mechanisms -- what Grandpa called ‘trolleys’ -- were grinding their way back up the cable to the jump-off point. How neat! A self-return. There was a very steep path leading back to the lower patio. From there, I walked around the pool to the stairs; climbed the step-ladder, hooked to the trolley and did it again. And again. So did Grandpa. We went to bed tired and happy that night.
I thought of home a lot, though I was completely infatuated with my grandfather. He was beyond doubt the neatest person I had ever met and he had the best house and toys that were more fun than anybody’s; but I was lonely for my friends back home. I tried not to show it, for there would have been no value in making my grandfather miserable with my own misery. He probably guessed how I was feeling, since I was constantly talking about friends back home. “I just cannot WAIT to tell so-and-so that I’m living in UBA - TUBA,” I would say and laugh till tears came to my eyes. Every time I said the name of this town, it hit my funny bone. Grandpa must have caught the joke, for he laughed with me each and every time.
“Wil, let’s go down to the Praia Grande -- that’s ‘Big Beach Rio who is vacationing down here. You might even meet somebody who speaks English. I know you would like that. If nothing else, you need to be around at least SOMEBODY your own age. If you were still in the United States
“Sure, Amado. That sounds fantastic to me. Give me a minute while I run to my bedroom and put on some swim trunks under my pants.”
“Alright, then. I’ll get a couple of towels. You never know when I might decide to take a dip, myself.”
We both put on our swim trunks, which had dried overnight on the back gallery railing where we had hung them, and put clothes on over those. “I am not going to let you drive on these steep roads, but I promise that soon I’ll start teaching you to drive,” he said as he got behind the steering wheel.
The drive toward Ubatuba was much bumpier than that first drive up the asphalt road had been. This was the first time I had been in a car in over a month, I realized. Life was very different for me here. Things were going to be fine, ‘cause I was starting to not miss ‘home’ at all. I always thought the pace of life was slow back home in Louisiana
Anyway, Grandpa must have known I have a tendency toward being a hermit. That’s the only reason he wanted to get me out into the public and around other people. Like I said, we did not need food. Going to the fruit stand was just an excuse.
It was good that I was thinking my thoughts, for this road was beating us to death. I don’t know why we didn’t just SWIM to Praia Grande. You could see that beach across the water from our house. Riding in this car was torture, but we finally made it to a short stretch of stores that Amado called ‘Ubatuba.’ At the bottom of the mountain, the road turned to sand, then there was a huge bump and we were back on asphalt. “Thank the Good Lord,” I said. Amado understood and smiled. We went through the town, hugging the ocean, and traveled another 5 miles or so before we got to Praia Grande.
The early morning breeze felt cool as the sun was peeking over the horizon to the east. We parked at the fruit stand across the road from the beach. There were 3 or 4 other cars parked at the fruit stand. Amado said the owner would not mind if we parked there, since it gave the appearance that it was busy. Most of the vehicles belonging to the people on the beach were parked all along the sandy roadside on the opposite side of the road from the beach.
I was glad Amado thought the beach would not be crowded. What constituted a crowd must be wall-to-wall people. I am not good at judging numbers of people, but I bet there were a thousand people on this beach. There were cars parked as far as the eye could see -- all the way back to the last curve in the road coming from Ubatuba.
“Don’t get lost,” Amado called to me as I headed across the road to where the swimmers were and he walked toward the many tables of fruit and produce.
I had really had enough swimming at home. What interested me here were the people. It had been a long time since I had been around this many people. Children really do have a great facility for learning language. It was not long before I was able to isolate the meaning of a word here and a phrase there. I had some Mexican friends back in school who had taught me some Spanish. Portuguese sounded a lot like Spanish. I tried to listen and pretend that I spoke no English. It worked pretty well. When you know that you MUST understand and you listen very closely, pretty soon you DO understand -- at least SOME of the meaning. Gestures helped me to understand, of course. Certain gestures were unmistakable, which is why I learned a lot of curse words in a short period of time.
In the United States Brazil
I was standing in that sea of people, not moving a lot, hands on my hips and enjoying people-watching. Back home I had learned to see a squirrel’s ear poking above a branch in a tree. Nature can make one very observant. When I was in the woods, I knew when an owl or a fox was watching me. I could FEEL it. Here on this beach, I could FEEL somebody watching me. I thought maybe it was my grandfather. Looking back toward where we had parked, I scanned the crowd for his face and locked eyes with the person who WAS watching me, and it was not my grandfather.
My spirits fell a little over the fact that it was not a girl. It was probably silly to think a boy of nearly 13 would attract one of these silken-haired beauties. The guy who was looking at me was older than I -- very well-built and groomed as only someone with money would be. He had a thick neck like a football player and his hair was perfectly cut and styled. I turned my eyes away. It felt rude to just stare at somebody. I figured we had both caught one another’s eye by accident. I turned my eyes and body away from him, toward the ocean, and forgot about the incident until I felt a tap on my shoulder.
The shock of somebody touching me was like an electric jolt. I jumped and turned around. The guy I had been looking at was standing behind me, bent over with his hands on his knees, laughing. He was laughing so hard he could not catch his breath. I said nothing to him, ‘cause I had no idea why he was laughing and besides, I did not speak Portuguese. “Man, you jumped like you were shot,” he wiped the tears from his eyes as his laughter came under control. “I’m Arnold
I shook his hand, surprised that he spoke English. “That’s my dad,” he pointed behind him toward a group of men standing beside a limousine parked across the road. “We are from D. C. My dad’s work brought us here. They tell me you are from Louisiana
“My name‘s Wil, Arnold,” I began tenuously, caution written all over my face, I’m sure. “How do you know about me?”
“Well, first off, Ubatuba is not exactly New York City -- or even Shreveport U. S. consulate office between here and Rio , but I spend every summer in our vacation home here in Ubatuba. Actually, this is only my second summer in Brazil Sao Paulo
“What grade are you in, Arnold
“Oh! I’m in the 12th grade.” He seemed to be caught off-guard by my asking a question. He acted like he wanted to be friends, but at the same time there was something very strange and forced in his manner. He kept looking over his shoulder at his father’s limo, then turned back toward me and tried to make conversation.
“Where do you guys live?” He asked. I pointed at Amado’s house, which was tiny from here, but definitely visible.
“Oh! So you live just a little ways in front of Old Lady Telasta.”
“Who?” I hate it when people start talking about other folks I have never even heard of.
“Old Lady Telasta. She lives in the house on the other side of the peninsula you live on. I have never seen her, but she must be a hundred years old and filthy rich. The servants who stay here with me while my father is at work told me about her. She almost never goes out of her house. I guess when you get as old as she is, you can hardly stand the bumpy roads to town. It’d probably break her bones if she rode down that last part of the bumpy road from Rio . ‘course that road goes right by her house. Maybe she DOES go to Rio -- I don’t know. I figured you might know her, what with her being your neighbor and all.”
“No, I don’t know her. I’ve never even HEARD of her.”
“Okay! Well, it’s good to meet you. Maybe I’ll be seeing you around, Wil.” Arnold Arnold got there and Arnold
By this time, it was almost lunchtime. I was hungry, and had had enough people-watching for one day. I looked toward the fruit stand and saw my grandfather standing by one of the tables under the covered part of the concession area. He had his hand on the back of a chair where a young woman was sitting. They were talking, and I could tell they were good friends. Amado looked up and saw me coming toward him. He said something to the lady. She turned toward me, smiled, then turned away and walked down the road. I was still a hundred feet or so from Amado. “Hungry?” he asked.
“Famished!”
“You want to eat here? They have a good plate lunch, and it’s really reasonably priced.”
“Sounds good to me, Grandfather, but you know I don’t have a cent to my name. I probably need to get a job to help you out on the expenses around here.”
“Don’t you worry about that, son. I have plenty of money. You are MY son, now. You need to grow up spending your time learning -- getting a good education -- having fun. I repeat: I am NOT strapped for funds, and neither are you. There is a hidey-hole at home where I keep extra cash. I will show you where that is. You do not ever have to ask me for money. When you need it, take what you need. Later on, I will put you on my checking account, though most of the time you will use cash in Brazil
We moved further under the tent-like covering of the cabana and sat at a small table for two with very rigid straight-backed chairs. The café area was open-air. It had a dirt floor, but all the counters and tables were clean. The waiter came over with menus, which Amado handed back to him. “I know what I want. You want me to order for you, Wil?”
“Yes, sir. I like just about everything, so you can’t go wrong. Just don’t get me anything with a lot of hot peppers, though.” I smiled at the waiter, who obviously did not understand a word I had said.
Amado switched to Portuguese, speaking to the waiter as if to an equal. I liked the way people in general responded to my grandfather. He was so friendly, yet dignified, and appeared to like others as much as they liked him.
While we waited for our food to come, I told Amado about the strange meeting with Arnold Arnold
“I’m not sure. I guess they must have. They parked on the roadside just past this café. Do you know those people?”
“Not really. I know who Arnold Palazzo is, and I know who his father is. Those goons who run in the pack with Dave Palazzo -- Arnold Arnold
“Amado, I really don’t think I WANT to be friends with him. There’s something not quite right about him, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I’m the same way. He’s probably okay. His father, on the other hand, has something up his sleeve. I don’t trust him.”
The food came about that time. We ate in silence. When we got up from the table, Grandfather took his billfold from his pocket and placed enough money on the table to pay our bill. He hesitated and then put some more money on top of the pile of bills for the tip, I guess.
We drove back to the jewel (my nickname for my grandfather’s house -- ‘Jewel of the Sea’) with enough time to play on the zip line. Neither of us had gotten wet back at Praia Grande. As Amado parked the jeep in front of the house, I jumped out, taking my pants off as I ran, stripping down to my swimsuit. “Last one in’s a rotten egg,” I shouted. My grandfather, never one to evade a challenge, had his pants and shirt off before we reached the door. He pushed me aside and ran to the back gallery, throwing his clothes onto a chair in the living room as he passed. He hopped up on the rail without touching the step-ladder, grabbed one of the belts from the hook we had screwed into the corner post for that purpose, and attached it around his waist. Before I even had my belt in my hands, he was leaping from the rail with a joyous shout. It turned out to be another glorious day in Brazil
As time passed, Amado continued to be concerned about my lack of social interaction. We played chess and canasta each night and sometimes we swam in the heated pool. Many years later I learned to appreciate the fact that this was a self-cleaning pool. This pool did not use chlorine -- it used ozone. We frequently sat by the pool at night. The whole patio area was lighted so well that reading a newspaper would not have been a problem. Amado wanted me to be well-read. He had a library in the atelier that was stocked with all the classics. He challenged me to read the Zane Grey novels, and the Agatha Christy mysteries, Sherlock Holmes -- even Shakespeare (which was hard for me to understand.) Almost every night, Amado would go to bed and leave me up reading. There were nights when I went to sleep in the atelier, sitting up in one of the overstuffed chairs. Every time that happened, I would wake up the next morning in my own bed. My grandfather would pick me up like I was 5-years old. He removed my clothes, which he put in the clothes hamper after unloading my pockets onto the dresser, pulled back the covers, and put me to bed.
As I said, Pops was very concerned about my lack of social interaction. “Can you ride a bicycle, Wil? You ever ride a motorcycle?”
“Yes, sir!” I said. “Daddy used to have a motorbike at home. I rode that thing all over town.”
He winced when I mentioned my father. Just because he had not been allowed to spend time with his son -- my father -- as my father grew up; even though my dad alienated my grandfather even more after my father was grown; still, the love my grandfather felt for his son and the grief he must have felt over the death of my father caused Amado to wince every time I mentioned him. I myself was still in denial. When I spoke of my father, it was strictly academic. I refused to think about my parents emotionally. They were gone, and that was that. Nobody could change the facts.
Pops shook himself and continued his thought: “I have a motor bike in one of the storage rooms off the swimming pool, Wil. I want you to have a life, and you are old enough to take care of yourself. How old are you, by the way?”
We were drinking coffee, sitting at the breakfast nook table. There was a calendar on the wall, which I looked at now. Today was the 15th of December. I had missed my own birthday just over a week ago. No need to make my grandfather feel bad about missing my birthday. I don’t know how anybody could ask for a better birthday than every single day in this paradise, anyhow, so I answered his question. “I’m 13-years-old.”
“Okay -- yeah. That’s plenty old enough. There are no policemen anywhere around here. Just be careful on that old gravel road going down to Praia Grande. You need to take that motorbike and drive yourself down to the beach every day. You still remember how to get there, don’t you?”
Surprised he would even ask, I said, “Sure I do, Amado.”
“I can see the beach from here with my binoculars. They play volleyball and soccer and have all kinds of fun on the beach. It’s holiday right now. There ought to be plenty of kids your age that you can get to know. You have a good mind. I noticed the other day when we were at the beach that you seemed to understand some Portuguese. The best way for you to pick up the language is to be around people who are speaking it. You need to get away from the old man and spend a little time on your own every day. Be sure to take some money for lunch. If you are not home before dark, I’ll come looking for you.”
He had already shown me his hidey-hole where he kept extra cash. He wasn’t lying when he said he had PLENTY of money. Gosh, there must have been three- or four- THOUSAND dollars in that safe behind the grand piano. Now that I knew the combination, I could move the picture that hid the safe and get money whenever I needed it.
The morning after that conversation, Pops took me to the storage room at the end of the building off the pool patio and brought out a Cushman Eagle. It was a motor SCOOTER -- not BIKE! It made a nice puttering sound when he cranked it. We checked the oil, which did not look like motor oil. It was almost too clear to see. “We do not use gas, Wil. We use peroxide. I retrofit this machine to use peroxide, so please don’t ever put any gas into it. You can carry a plastic jug full of peroxide, plus the tank on this old girl is a full ten-gallon tank. You shouldn’t run out, but if you do and you have to refill the fuel tank from your spare jug of peroxide -- whatever you do, do not get any of this peroxide on you or anybody else. It will burn a hole through to the bone in one second flat.” To demonstrate his point, he pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and laid it on the ground. He unscrewed the lid of the extra peroxide that would be strapped onto the back of the scooter, and poured a tiny amount of liquid onto the cotton kerchief. Poof! A hole appeared in the cotton. Even the concrete under the cloth had a small hole which stopped getting deeper only because the peroxide had played itself out.
“Wow!” I was duly impressed. “Don’t worry about me. I will be extremely careful. Do you have any gloves I can wear that will protect me, or will it burn through them as well?”
“Yeah, I was just about to get to that. There’s a pair of pure rubber gloves in the scooter’s storage shelf under the handlebars.” He reached out and pulled the gloves from their shelf, then put them back. “Now, take off. Have fun. Come home when you are ready. I will be here.”
Knowing that he would be at home was comforting. It helped me to leave home with a sense of permanence -- a sense of ‘place.’ Going to the beach would be an adventure that would expand my world. I dreaded the unknown, while at the same time looking forward to doing something new and meeting new people.
There were places on the gravel road where I had to get off the scooter and push it while walking beside it. That’s how bad the road was. Where it took only a few minutes to ride to Ubatuba in a car, I now knew to allow twice that much time on my return home on this scooter.
The morning air was clear and crisp. It was a cool 75° more or less. (That‘s only a guess.) There were little 4-footed animals who came to the edge of the road, curious what was making such a cute puttering noise. Only one snake was on the gravel road. He was one of the non-poisonous snakes. I knew to let him live, even had he been otherwise. When I reached the huge bump where the now-sandy road gave way to asphalt, I got off the scooter and walked it over the hump. A fellow could kill himself on this one hump alone.
The beaches were all nearly deserted. As I drove through the tiny town, I looked up at the Catholic church on a hill and realized why the beaches were empty. From the number of cars, wagons, and bikes in front, it appeared that the whole surrounding area had gone to church. It was Sunday, for crying out loud. I started to turn around and go home, but maybe there were more people at Praia Grande. This empty beach in front of the town proper was Praia Tenorio. It frequently had a much sparser crowd than the larger beach down the road. I drove on.
Looking down the straightaway after I made the final turn toward the Big Beach
The bicycle rider was doing a slow turn in the middle of the road a quarter mile away. It turned toward me. The driver must have recognized me, for he picked up speed and came quickly toward me. It was Arnold Palazzo.
“Hey, bud!” he called brightly. “I have been looking for you. I thought maybe we could be friends, but you never showed up on the beach again. Did I make a bad impression or something?”
“Oh, hi, Arnold
“Yes, we have a phone. Here -- I’ll write the number down for you.” He had both feet on the ground and held the bicycle up with his legs while he pulled a piece of paper and a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote down a number which he then handed to me. I folded it and put it in my pocket. “Nobody ever calls us at my grandfather’s house. I will have to find out the number and I’ll give it to you later, okay?”
“Yeah, that’s good. We live right up the next drive down this road. It’s the only house on that drive, up on top of the hill overlooking this beach. I would invite you to come home with me, but my father is there. He does not like visitors. Let me park this bike and you and I can sit at one of these picnic tables and talk.”
He parked the bike next to one of the several picnic tables. They were probably part of the seating for cabana customers, but the cabana was closed today. There was a big sign out front which did not take much skill to figure out that it said they were closed on Sunday. We sat across from one another and started to talk.
When company showed up at their house, Arnold Arnold
I was pretty shocked at his language. My parents had not been prudes, but I was never allowed to use the kind of language Arnold Arnold
I listened to Arnold
“So, you still have not met Old Lady Telasta?”
“No. I meant to ask my grandfather about her, but I forgot.”
“Let me know if you ever DO meet her. You know, you’re her neighbor. You ought to walk right over and knock on her door and introduce yourself. Wouldn’t be a thing wrong with that.”
I laughed, despite myself. “That may SOUND like a good idea, Arnold
He laughed, also. “Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t think of that. I’m just curious is all.”
When the church bell sounded, Arnold
My belly knew it was lunchtime, too. The cabana was closed. I did not know what I was going to do for lunch, but I was not ready to go home.
In a few minutes, the beach began to fill up with people. Now that church was over, it was time to have some experiences they could take to confession later. I took off my shirt and shorts, tying them around the scooter’s handlebars, and went out to the beach. The water was nice and warm. The sand felt good between my toes.
Three girls about my age came over to talk to me. Their names were long and difficult to pronounce, so I gave them nicknames. They spoke a little English, since English was a required subject in their schools. I told them I was going to give them American names. They were very excited for me to do this. I named them Mary Ann, Charlotte Sue, and Rena May -- good Southern names, all. They laughed and said things to one another that I could not follow, but I laughed with them just the same. A good bluff goes a long way in a conversation one cannot understand.
It was a good thing that I met these girls. Their father had a portable barbecue grill. When he saw his daughter and her friends had found an American boy, he put some more steak on the grill. His wife had an igloo cooler with a big bowl of some kind of salad and some bottled drinks. They were so gracious to invite me to lunch. I was hungry enough to accept.
After lunch, I continued to hang around with the girls. They wanted to teach me Portuguese. It was quite a game for us -- I taught them words and phrases in English; they taught me those words and phrases in Portuguese. By the end of a single day I was understanding many of the things that were said on the beach. You’d be surprised how few words most people know -- in ANY language. At the end of the day, I bid farewell to my three ‘southern belles’. They said if I would come the next day, they would still be here. They would be on vacation at Ubatuba till New Year’s Day or a little before that.
For the next two weeks I went to the beach every single day. If you think you cannot learn a new language that quickly, try immersing yourself in it. When you cannot say anything in English that anybody else understands, you WILL learn to communicate in their language. Bear in mind, too, that I had some really good (and cute) teachers.
Rena May’s father was a college professor in Rio . He did not let me know during our first meeting that he spoke fluent English. Any time during those two weeks when Charlotte Sue, Mary Ann, or Rena May said something I did not understand or vice versa; we simply went to Daddy Warbucks. When I gave him that nickname, he laughed so hard he spit out his dentures.
By the end of vacation, I felt really fond of the girls and very confident of my skill with the Portuguese language. I’m sure my accent was deplorable, but at least I could understand most of what was said and could respond in some reasonable fashion. I met the girls and Rena May’s parents on the beach that final day of vacation. We had arranged to say goodbye at a certain time. Daddy Warbucks gave me a big smile and shook my hand and the girls and Mrs. Warbucks all hugged me. When they got in their car to drive back home, the girls were all crying. “That’s nice,” I thought.
After they left, here came Arnold
“Yep.”
“And you still have not met Old Lady Telasta, I bet.”
“Nope. What’s this fascination you have with an old lady, anyhow, Arnold?”
“I don’t know. I like money, I guess, and she has that big old nice house. I’m probably mentally ill. That name -- Telasta -- and all the servants are so curious now that they know somebody from my country is living right near her.
You speak Portuguese well enough now that you really ought to go introduce yourself to her.”
“Yeah, maybe I should, Arnold
“No. My father made arrangements for me to live off campus. I’m going to be staying at home and driving to school every day this last half of my senior year. He said you could ride with me if your grandfather wanted to enroll you in my school. What do you say?”
“Amado DID say something about my needing to finish this school year. I’ll ask him about it. I don’t know if he can afford the kind of school you go to. We probably don’t have the kind of money your father has.”
The noise Arnold Brazil U.S. , some going to China , some headed for Europe . Who do you think your grandfather IS?”
My mouth was open, but there were no words there. Words came from your mind, didn’t they? Well MY mind had been knocked out of gear. “Wait a minute,” I said at last. “This is Joaquin Dupepe you are talking about. Grandpa. He does NOT own plantations. If he was a coffee king or a banana baron, he would have to leave the house SOME time. He would be on the phone a lot, too. I watch TV, you know. Wealthy business men are … well … BUSY! My grandfather was in the merchant marines is what my father told me. He might have made some money, but I seriously doubt he ever made THAT kind of money. I don’t know who filled your head with such nonsense, but you better set them straight. I can’t wait to tell my grandfather that people think he is Soooo rich. He will be flattered, I’m sure.”
“He’s your grandfather. You ought to know about these things, I guess. Anyhow, just ask him if you can go to school with me. You need to go to school somewhere.”
“Yeah. I WILL ask him about that. I may not even mention what you said about how rich he’s supposed to be. Let me check with him and I’ll call you at home. Is that okay?”
“Sure, Wil. Be sure to call me before dark. I have to leave my house by 5 o’clock tomorrow morning.”
I got home early that day, looking forward to spending the evening with my best friend, my grandfather. Amado was sitting in the living room waiting for me, and he had a guest. As I came through the door, he stood and so did the woman I remembered seeing him with that first day at the cabana. “Wil, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. Telasta Ferragamo, this is my grandson Wil Dupepe.”
The lady standing in front of me had long blonde hair. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She was beautiful. Every move of her face, every gesture with her hands, every blink of her eyes was angelic. She was so flawless as to be something other than human. Never in my life had I been in the presence of anybody like this. She could have been a queen, so far removed was she from my experience. Even her clothes were of material that was totally foreign to me. Her clothing was iridescent -- changing color as she moved. The silky top and matching pants were perfectly tailored. The pants had a flair at the bottom that covered her shoes, but I suspected her shoes would prove to be as heavenly as the rest of her.
“Wil,” Amado repeated softly.
“Oh, my. I must be in shock,” I thought, closing my mouth which had been hanging open. “Excuse me, Ms. Ferragamo. You caught me off guard. I.. I mean … I was not expecting anybody to be here.” I was sounding more stupid by the minute. I clenched my jaw shut, forcing myself to be quiet for a second, then spoke. Extending my hand and forcing a faux-natural smile, I said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Ferragamo.”
She must have understood my reaction. Probably she had received this reaction from men before. She smiled, and the room tilted. “It’s nice to meet you, Wil. Would you rather I call you Mr. Dupepe?”
“No, ma’am. Just call me ‘Wil,’ ‘cause that’s my name.”
“Then you call me Telasta. That’s MY name.” She laughed silently.
Something about her was so disorienting. “Would you like for me to fix some coffee or tea for the two of you, Amado?”
“Telasta?” my grandfather deferred to his guest. She made a hand motion, palm out, fingers down and mouthed a ‘no.’ “No, thanks, Wil. How did your day go?”
“It went well. My three girls left to go back to Rio . They cried, which I appreciated. Arnold is going to be attending that English-speaking school in Sao Paulo
“Don’t mind me, Wil. Your grandfather and I are old friends. We do not have any secrets from one another. He does not mind your talking about private matters in front of me, do you, Joaquin?”
Amado threw his head back and laughed out loud. “You KNOW I don’t have any secrets from you, Telasta. Wil might as well learn right now how important you are.” Then he turned to me. “Son, I told you I do not have any money worries. If you think you are ready to go back to school, and if you think you’d like to ride with Arnold
I jumped in the air and gave a holler. “Let me go call Arnold Arnold
“Yes, sir,” I stuttered, unsure of how to address a butler properly. “This is Wil Dupepe. Could I speak with Mr. Arnold Palazzo, please?”
“One moment, please,” the butler responded. The line went blank for a few seconds before Arnold
“What say, my man Wil. What’s the news?”
“My grandfather says I can go to your school. Should I drive the scooter to your house in the morning or meet you at the cabana?”
“Yeah. Meet me at the cabana. If we leave by 5:30, we will make it in plenty of time. It won’t matter if we are late, regardless. This school has one teacher for every 2 or 3 students, so the teacher never minds adjusting his or her schedule to accommodate the student. Wow! This is great news. I’ll see you in the morning, then.” Without further niceties, Arnold
I had made up my mind to say nothing to Arnold about Telasta and nothing to Telasta about what Arnold
Upon rejoining my grandfather and Telasta, I was eager to listen to Telasta’s voice and to learn more about her. “My dear Wil, I apologize for waiting so long to welcome you to Brazil Brazil
It was with effort that I tried to mimic Telasta’s sophisticated tone. There is not a sophisticated bone in my body, but how better to elevate oneself than to copy success? “Think nothing of it, my dear Telasta. My grandfather kept the secret of your existence very well. Therefore I never knew that I should feel slighted.”
I must have overdone it. Telasta gave a very confused look toward my grandfather as I finished my tacky effort at elegance. I just couldn’t leave it alone. “I mean, don’t worry about it, Telasta. You came when you came and I’m just happy as an otter in a swimming pool.”
The look on both their faces shut me up completely. I did not know what I was saying, but with these results it was a good bet that I should stop saying it.
“So -- quick change of subject, son. How do you plan to handle this ride-sharing proposition?”
Glad for any help I could get, I took no time in jumping on this new subject. “Arnold
“Great plan, except for one or two things. First, we need to get you some better transportation to the cabana. Second, I should go with you tomorrow. The school will need your vital statistics -- school transcript from Louisiana Arnold Arnold
“Yes, sir, Avô Amado. That last plan sounds fine to me. I want to spend some time tonight visiting Telasta. Are you here for awhile, Telasta, or will you have to leave soon on another trip? I don’t mean to pry -- just interested.”
“No offense taken, Wil. I am home for the duration now. Most of the time I am very much a home body, in fact. One of the reasons I came over today was to invite you to come to my home for a visit. I have few friends in the immediate area, so one new friend -- especially since you are Joaquin’s family -- is a treasure for me. Would you come see me; this weekend, maybe?”
“Absolutely. I would love to come see you. Should I drive over?”
“Oh, no, Wil. There is no road to my house. The road to Rio passes the mountain on which I live, but you cannot even SEE my house from that road. Besides that, the Rio road has a bridge which spans the ocean inlet above which I live. There is no exit to my house. There is a well-marked path from this house to mine. If you walk out your front door and go due west, you will see that path clearly as soon as you cross the asphalt road. At most, it is a 15-minute walk. Would you like to come for Saturday breakfast -- 7:00 or so?”
“Yes, that will be fine. Would you like me to bring something? Do you need bacon or fruit or anything like that?”
She gave me a condescending smile. “You grandfather has NOT told you anything about me, has he? I NEVER eat bacon, my new friend, but thank you for being so thoughtful as to ask. No, just bring yourself. Are there any fruits or vegetables for which you have an intolerance or a dislike? My family eats a wide variety of fruits and vegetables from land and sea, but you may have some limitations. Do you like scones?”
My grandfather gave me a look that said, ‘Say no,’ but before I could edit my thought, I blurted out, “Probably so. I eat most anything.”
“It’s settled then. I shall see you at 7 o’clock sharp this coming Saturday morning.” Telasta stood and reached out to clasp my grandfather’s hands with both of hers. “I will go home, then, Joaquin. You were exactly right about everything you said, by the way. You two boys be careful on your drive to Sao Paulo
I came back down to reality just in time to say a tiny croaked, “G’night,” as my grandfather closed the door behind her.
We took our showers and went to bed directly after Telasta left. As far as I was concerned, she spent the night, however, for I dreamed of her the rest of the night. She was trying to tell me something in my dream, but I never could catch the words. It was enough that I got to look at her face all night long. There was something really special about this friend of my grandfather’s. I hoped she liked me.
CHAPTER 3
The next 5 days were a whirlwind for me. I liked the school and so did my grandfather. Amado was pleased with the way Arnold drove in front of us on that first day, so it was settled that I would ride with Arnold Arnold on the second day, but when I got home from school that day, there was a fairly new Jeep sitting in Arnold
Avô Amado had driven to Sao Paulo Arnold Arnold
“Grandfather, one of the things I learned from my own father was that some things are ‘family,’ and you do not put ‘family’ business on the streets. I have not even told Arnold Arnold
Avô laughed good-naturedly. “You are a chip off the old block, aren’t you? Thanks, son. No doubt Telasta will appreciate that, as well.”
School was just like any other school, except that when I had a question there was rarely any wait before I asked it. With the student to teacher ratio of one or two students to one teacher, all I had to do was ask the question. I had lost a little time in some of my subjects with the months I took off, but such concentrated tutoring caught me up in a hurry.
I gave Arnold money to help with the gas, though he stubbornly refused to accept it until I told him my grandfather would not let me ride with him unless Arnold Arnold
He still had a fixation with Old Lady Telasta, asking me almost every day if my grandfather had mentioned her or told me anything about her. I stuck to my original story, even though it was now a lie: “No. I still have not met her. Maybe she’s in the hospital. You know, old as you say she is, she could have DIED. I keep meaning to ask my grandfather, but once I get home and get my homework done, I just seem to forget or we start talking about something else. I PROMISE I will find out something by this weekend.”
“See that you do, good man,” he laughed. “The natives around my house are getting restless.”
Saturday finally arrived. The path from our house to Telasta’s was very well marked. Honestly, once I arrived at Telasta’s house I could see that there was only one path to her house and that was the path that led past Amado’s house. It was as if she had only one visitor, but that one visitor made the trip regularly – or else she made the trip to Amado’s house often enough to create a pretty deeply-worn path. Maybe she used Amado’s car when she wanted to go to town. Obviously she could get no car into her non-existent driveway. I thought about things like that.
Telasta’s house was solid, that’s for sure. I don’t know what you’d call the style. It wasn’t Victorian, though it hinted at that, and at 13-years-old I did not know much about house styles, anyway. It had a big front porch with spiral columns made out of concrete or something similar. The whole house appeared to be made of this same hard pink stone, though it was not stucco and it wasn’t quarried stone. It looked like some type poured building material that was meant to perfectly mimic glossy pink granite. Even young
as I was, I was struck by the fact that there were no seams like you’d have from quarried rock. There were no windows on the front of the house at all. And there was no doorbell or knocker. How was I to announce that I was here?
As if the house read my thoughts, the front door slid open. It was a pocket door with no hinges. I would find out later that Telasta refused to waste space on swinging doors. Every door in the house was a pocket door. “Come in, Wil,” her melodious voice called out from somewhere inside the house. Frankly, that was kind of spooky to me. It reminded me of the Munsters New Orleans
Telasta sat smiling on a chartreuse chaise, weaving some kind of handwork using both hands and all her fingers to do a kind of weaving I had never seen before. Then again, I figured, I’m only just now 13-years-old. I have not seen much of anything yet.
“How did you know I was at the door?” I always seemed to be beginning conversations with questions.
“Well, first I was expecting you; and then there’s that sensor outside that’s connected to a bell in here. Any time a large animal passes between the columns, the bell rings and I push this button,” she picked up a rock from the coffee table and mashed a spring-loaded button on its face, whereupon the door that had closed behind me opened again, “and say, ‘come in.’ I really have to be more careful, since I once let in a Marsh deer with a giant cowbird on its back.” We both laughed. “I had quite a time showing those two the way out of this place.” We were both still laughing at the visual that evoked, and as the laughter faded into smiles, Telasta said, “Instead of cooking breakfast for you, I have some fresh figs and Earl Grey tea. Is that okay?”
“Oh, Telasta, that sounds perfect,” I answered as she put a tray of the fruit and tea on the coffee table. We ate as we talked. “This is a beautiful home. I have never seen anything like it before.”
She smiled broadly. “Thank you. That was what I was aiming for when I made it.”
“YOU made this house?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice.
“Why, yes. I’m not just ornamental, you know. I can DO lots of things. Isn’t that what life is all about? Doing things?”
“I mean, you made this house yourself with your bare hands?”
She laughed unabashedly. “My dear boy, I’m strong, but not that strong. Yes, I made this house years ago; and I used tools – not bare hands.” She laughed again. “Let me take you on the grand tour of the house. It took many years to build the house. Since I’m a clever girl, I put lots of thought and lots of clever things into my home.”
It would be a waste of time and a violation of trust to recount all the details of Telasta’s extraordinary house, but she was truthful about the clever details. There were walls that opened into secret passageways, there were even tunnels and ladders, and there were what appeared to be wells in her back yard. You could look down the chimneys of those wells and see water far below. The back of her house, just like our house, was the showstopper. She lived on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There was not a blade of grass out back, but the whole area behind her house was that same pink granite. The shocking realization came to me as I stood entranced by the ocean view, looking over the rail that guarded one from falling off the cliff. I leaned over the rail as Telasta warned, “Be careful!” and noticed that the entire hundred feet cliff facing was pink. “You carved this entire house out of what? A giant granite boulder or something!?”
“I told Joaquin you were too smart by half,” she laughed as she spoke. “Yes! That’s exactly how I built this house.”
“But young as you are, you must have some kind of tool that can cut through this stuff like butter. I mean, you would have to be very old or very quick to do this much work. Wow! This is the most amazing thing I ever dreamed of.”
“I look a lot younger than I am, but yes, I do have a tool that is very quick. Maybe I will show you some of my tools one day. It still took a long time to design this house. First I had to use sensors you have never heard of to determine where the fault lines in the granite rock were so that I could then design where the rooms would go. The sensors told me how deeply to cut, where to cut, and how thick to make the walls and floors. We can talk about the house later, and maybe I will explain in more detail and even show you more of the secrets of this house. For now, I would just like to get to know you better. I have known your grandfather for many years, and I worried about him when he told me he was going to America
As Telasta spoke, she sat on one of two stone benches that faced one another adjacent to that rail over which I had leaned. “Taxing?” I laughed as I finished her sentence, taking a seat on the other bench facing her.
“Just so,” she laughed with me. “Really, I was just afraid you would waste his life and be a burden and annoying on top of it all. Joaquin must really have good genes. I see now that you are good for him. Do you like your grandfather?”
“That’s a good question. My life was turned upside down so quickly that I have not had time to think about that. No. I do NOT like him. I love him. He’s the best friend I ever had, and he has given me a much better life than I had back home. Home! THIS is home. I have to stop talking about BACK home. I AM home. I still don’t know much about Amado. He’s pretty quiet, you know. How long have you known my grandfather?”
There was a long pause. I have an image imprinted in my brain from all those years ago of Telasta, sitting on a stone bench hewed from the bedrock on which it sat, blue sky and ocean behind her. She searched my face as hers showed uncertainty and something like fear. She reached out to where I sat, took my one hand in both of hers, and said softly, “Fifty years.”
We looked at each other, both frozen in time. I had heard what Telasta said, that she had known my grandfather for 50 years. I looked at her face – that of a 20-something lady – and then I burst out laughing.
“Good joke. You really had me going there for a second.”
She threw her head back and laughed, also. “I know. You should have seen the look on your face, Wil. That was SO funny.”
We laughed for a good while, then Telasta began to laugh again. “You know you are calling your grandfather ‘Beloved?’ ”
“No. Rodrigo told me that ‘Avô Amado’ meant beloved grandfather. That means ‘Avô’ is Beloved, right?”
“No, silly. In Portuguese, the modifier goes after the noun in many cases; so ‘Avô Amado’ would properly be translated to English as ‘grandfather beloved.’ If you want to call Joaquin ‘Grandfather’, you should call him ‘Avô.’ I’m not sure but what he might prefer you keep calling him ‘beloved.’ He seems to like that a lot.”
“I guess I’ll keep calling him ‘Amado’, then. This may seem like a complete change of subject, but when you mentioned my language deficiency it made me think of my friend Arnold, because he hardly speaks any Portuguese. Would you mind if I bring him with me to visit you sometime? He is really very lonely.”
“Yes, I know of Arnold Palazzo. Sure, you may bring him. Just ask him to keep my business off the streets after he leaves my home. He probably already told you that I have a reputation for being very private.”
“Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. He really does not know much about you, but I think you’ll like him. I KNOW he’ll like you. I’d better be going before Avô Amado gets concerned. I’ll see you in a few days, then, and I’ll bring Arnold
“Nope! I’m an original. Why do you ask?”
“No reason, really. It’s just such a unique name that I thought maybe you were named for someone else.” I had reached the door in preparation for leaving, suddenly realizing that maybe this would be a good time to plan a time for bringing Arnold Arnold
“Oh, my. That is going to be a slight problem. I received an emergency call from my people in New Zealand
“Certainly. History has a way of causing events to happen at the right time, doesn’t it?”
We said our good-byes, smiling broadly. This was a bigger adventure than I ever remembered having.
There was so much to think about. I had gotten away with letting Telasta off the hook on the 50-year business. When I looked at her face, I SAW the face of a 20-year-old; but I also saw the truth written there. She was telling the truth when she said she had known my grandfather for 50 years. She was also sweating bullets about divulging this secret. I did not want her to be uncomfortable, so I acted like I thought she was joking. I did not know how she had such a young appearance at such an advanced age, nor did I have any idea as to how old she really was; but I knew she had
to be at least as old as my grandfather if she had known him for 50 years. I had no intention of telling Arnold
I fully understood Telasta’s desire for privacy. She had lived in her very private house for many years with my grandfather as maybe her only friend. She was able to navigate through the shops and fruit stands without arousing any curiosity. She passed as a local, but was so circumspect that nobody became curious or tried to invade her life. She spoke softly and received a soft and smiling response, but her manner was so bland that she elicited no undue attention.
I rode my scooter down to one of the 80+ beaches where I knew Arnold
“Go away!” he said as he stood and turned away from the beautiful girl. She pouted, then turned and said something to her girlfriends. They all giggled and jiggled off to advertise to a more willing muscular man down the beach. Arnold
“She asked if you wanted something to drink.” I’m sure my face told him that I was as confused at his response to her as she had been herself.
“Yeah,” he reached down and picked up his towel as we began the walk back to his house “ well there’s no reason for me to even come out here. I want to get out of my house, and I would really like to get to know some of these beautiful girls; but I can’t understand a word they say and they’re so ignorant, they don’t even speak English.”
This was Arnold
We continued driving to school every day. I must tell you that my Portuguese suffered from going to an English-only school. However, it WAS fun conversing with Arnold
Amado and I were getting along well. Here again, during the school year there was not enough time for us to forge a better relationship. The relationship was pretty good, anyhow, as we saw one another for a few minutes every day and took breakfast and dinner together. What a difference life was with this man. I never knew anyone before in my life who would get up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning when he did not have to. He WANTED to, he said. “If a member of my family has to make a sacrifice, as you are doing, I insist on helping with that sacrifice. I will not allow you to get up so early in the morning without seeing my face and knowing that I am here for you. Besides, I’m afraid you would never eat breakfast if I weren’t there to fix it for you.”
The days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and before we knew it the school year was days from its end. One Monday morning at breakfast, Amado came to the table with a big smile on his face. “Son, Wednesday is your last day of school?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“You have made me so proud this year. You have finished the 7th grade with honors. I have a surprise for you. Telasta is back home and she is eager to see you. She still has some business to tend, else she would be over here; but she asked me to remind you about your date with her. She suggested that you and Arnold come see her this Saturday at 10:00 a.m.”
I jumped up from the table and hugged my grandfather’s neck. “Wow! That’s great! We will be out of school and can spend all the time we want. Tell her ‘yes’ and ‘thanks.’”
This was the day I had been waiting for. When I got to Arnold
“Okay, Arnold
“Yeah!” he said excitedly. “That would be COOL.”
“Okay, Arnold
“Look,” Arnold
“Then it’s a deal? We‘ll go visit Old Lady Telasta and we won‘t even tell anybody we met her, okay?”
“Sure! Deal! She’s probably boring as Hell, anyway. Why do you think she wants to be so private? Maybe she works for the CIA or the mafia or something. Anyway, I don’t care what she does. She could be a major marijuana distributor, for all I care, and they’d never get me to talk. I don’t want to stay too long, though. If I wink at you with my left eye, that’s your signal for us to leave, okay?”
He was such a drama-freak. Although at one level we had become best friends during our school year of traveling together, at another level I found out that familiarity does, indeed, breed contempt. Best to just agree and pay no attention to what he said. I knew he would be counting the days till our visit.
Amado still did not particularly like Arnold Arnold ’s visit; but he still did not welcome Arnold Arnold
We finished school on Wednesday, but continued to see one another at the beach every day, and every day Arnold Arnold
“Yeah, well… this is just social, so you ought not to expect me to punch a clock. I’m going to have to walk home after our visit, too.”
“Doesn’t matter, Arnold
a social occasion. Never mind! You don’t ever listen, so what’s the point? Let’s just go.” I turned over my shoulder and spoke loudly, “Amado, we’re gone to Telasta’s. We should be back in a couple of hours. Arnold and I are going to walk to the beach after we leave Telasta’s.” I heard a muffled response that sounded something like, “Okay!” so I went out and closed the door behind me.
As we walked the trail toward Telasta’s house, I studied Arnold
We arrived at Telasta’s door on the stroke of 10, and I gave some final instructions to Arnold Arnold
private business. If she wants you to know something, she will volunteer that information, okay?”
“Alright, already. You told me all this before. You gonna knock on the door, or what?”
As if on cue the door opened and Telasta was standing in the entrance, smiling broadly.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Won’t you come in?”
“How are you, Arnold
“Hi, Miss Telasta. Yes, coffee’s fine by me. I don’t know if Wil is old enough to drink it.”
We all laughed politely, but I got in my dig, “Yes, thanks. I prefer mine black. Arnold
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. I’ll drink it black if you don’t have cream and sugar.”
“I have both. Come on into the living room. Sit where you like. I’ll be right back with the coffee.”
We sat on that ugly chartreuse furniture – comfortable as any chair or couch I’d ever sat on, however; and I saw Arnold
Telasta came back in with a silver tray, beautiful ceramic coffee urn with matching cups, and freshly cut pineapple on matching saucers. “Here you go, lads,” she said as she put the tray on the coffee table in front of us and settled herself in the chair facing the couch where I sat and the chaise where Arnold Arnold America
“Yes, that’s right. This is the best coffee I have drunk since coming to this God-forsaken place.”
“Oh? You don’t like Brazil
“Not particularly. You have a beautiful home. Would you mind if I saw more of it?”
“Not at all,” Telasta said as she stood. “Let’s take the mini-tour and then we can come back and finish our refreshments and conversation.”
“That’s great,” Arnold Arnold
Telasta laughed out loud. “You have no manners, young sir. Let’s just say I am older than you, shall we?”
I jumped in here, upset with myself for not having seen this coming. “You silly! Telasta is a family name. Miss Telasta’s great-great-great grandfather built this house, and that man’s sister was named Telasta also. Humph! Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Thank you, Wil. That was a nice explanation.” She leaned over and whispered as we continued to walk, “Where did that come from? Are you my protector?” and then she laughed, as did I.
“What did she say?” Arnold
I whispered back, “She said I had some pineapple caught in my teeth.”
“Oh…”
The tour was much briefer than the one she had taken me on, but the house was still awesome by any standard. When we got to the wells in the back – the ones she had told me were her escape route, (though she did not elaborate to say from what she was escaping or to where she was escaping) Arnold
Again I jumped in. “You see, if you want to fish and can’t catch any fish from one well, you just drop your line into another well.” I looked directly at Arnold
“I don’t work, Arnold
“So, what’s the story on that old tapestry on the wall? Is that you and some little girl? Or is that you with a midget?”
“Arnold Mississippi
“Oh, yeah. That’s what I thought it was,” he laughed. “Yeah, I know that story, but you’ve got to admit the taller sea nymph looks a lot like Miss Telasta.” Arnold
I looked at my wrist watch and exclaimed, “Oh, dear, Telasta. I’m sorry to have to leave so abruptly, but I promised Amado I would run some errands for him. Will you excuse us? We enjoyed the visit, and the refreshments were wonderful.”
“Sure, Wil. I enjoyed your visit, too – more than I can tell you. You come see me again soon, Wil. Nice to have met you, Arnold.”
As Arnold and I walked from the house, I made up my mind to not scold him for any of his behavior, but I made note of the fact that this erstwhile friend of mine was unlikely to be my lifelong friend. He was simply too casual -- too self-absorbed and thoughtless.
He was probably nervous about his gaffes, not wanting me to address them or scold him. That would explain his high-pitched chatter. As we walked, he talked endlessly of everything that had happened at Telasta’s house; how beautiful the furniture was, and how clever her ancestor had been to build those fishing holes in the back yard. He then said something that really alarmed me. “Alarm” is probably too big a word, but when he said what he said next, I could feel the blood shoot into my face with anger/ disappointment/ feelings of violation? He was gleeful as he said, “I can’t wait to get back home and tell my father all about Telasta. He wanted to know everything about her house and about her life, and I promised him I would try to remember everything so I could share it with him. I mean, I know you made me promise not to tell, but you couldn’t have meant for me to keep things from my FATHER. He’s going to really enjoy this story.”
We were passing my house by this time. I looked up and saw Amado standing at the door. He gave me a little wave, acknowledging, I suppose, that he understood I was going on to Arnold Arnold Arnold Arnold
I stopped on the path, so Arnold Arnold
“Okay, then. See you later!”
If I didn’t know better, I would have said he was glad to get rid of me. Feeling a little guilty for not offering him a ride home in my Jeep, I watched him go on down the hill, whistling that little irritating tune he sometimes whistled. Then I turned and let down my guard as I walked back home. I was really dejected, thinking how I had invited Arnold Arnold Arnold
I moped on back toward the house, oblivious to my surroundings. Lost in thought, I heard the voices ahead and heard a door close in the distance, but I was still in such a frame of mind that I heard at a subconscious level only.
In no mood to share my thoughts, it was my intention to go inside and go to my room without even letting Amado know that I was home, so I opened the side kitchen door softly and closed it gently behind me.
“Did you hear somebody at the kitchen door, Joaquin?” It was Telasta’s voice. She was the last person I wanted to see in my current state of humiliation, so I tiptoed to the broom closet and slid inside. Children are far more sneaky than adults remember having been when they were children.
“I didn‘t hear anything. I’m not expecting anybody and Wil won’t be home till sundown, probably. Wil!” he called, “Is that you?” Then in a normal tone, “Naw! Probably just the wind. So you got to meet the infamous Arnold Arnold
That boy is too much like his father for me to trust him, though the ride-sharing arrangement worked out okay. Arnold Arnold
“That’s something I wanted to talk to you about, Joaquin. I know Wil wanted to go to this school, but don’t you think it might be better to hire a full-time tutor to teach him at home next year?”
“Telasta, that’s just too expensive.”
“Bosh! You have all that gold that I brought you before your trip to America
Remember, I’m always right. I haven’t lived these several thousand years and learned nothing. I know Wil might get lonely, but I saw how he handled Arnold Arnold
I was really uncomfortable eavesdropping on this conversation. I had not planned it, and I really wanted to stop doing it; so I tip-toed back to the outside kitchen door, opened it, slammed it, and announced, “I’m home, Amado.”
There was no response. I paused and listened before walking into the living room. Hmmm… It was empty. The sliding glass door on the back of the house was open. I looked toward the ocean just in time to see Telasta diving from our cliff. “Wow!” I thought, “She must be a great swimmer. I never knew anybody could dive from that cliff into the ocean and survive.” Avô rounded the corner from the far end of the room, rubbing his head with a towel as if he’d just had a shower, though he was fully dressed.
“Was Telasta just here?” I decided to see just how honest my grandfather would be by asking the question directly.
“Yes, she was; but she decided she had left her stove on so she took the back way home.” He must have guessed that I had some clue that pointed to Telasta’s presence. Therefore, he must have decided the truth -- or at least part of the truth -- would serve him better than any lie.
“Could I borrow your binoculars? On the way down the mountain with Arnold
“Sure you may use my binoculars -- anytime. You don’t have to ask to use my stuff. It’s OUR stuff now. Just try to remember to put things back where you got them when you’re through so WE will know where to find them next time, okay?”
“Thanks, Amado. Where DO we keep ‘our’ binoculars, then?” I asked with a little sarcastic laugh.
“They’re on the top shelf, left side of the pantry in the kitchen” he said as he turned back toward his bedroom on the far end of the house, still rubbing his head with that towel. I had to laugh at how good an actor my grandfather was. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Telasta had left 15 or 20 minutes before. That’s apparently what Amado wanted me to think. I suppose Telasta’s abrupt departure was brought on by her not wanting me to think she was reporting on my visit, though that’s exactly what she was doing -- among other things. I was still musing about that full-time tutor business and the fact that she gives gold to my grandfather. This was getting more and more curious.
I looked in the pantry and grabbed the binoculars, then bolted out the kitchen door and dashed down the trail to Telasta’s house. I was fairly certain that I could run to her house faster than she could swim, and I was right. There was a small path to the right of her house that led to the ocean. I took that path, bringing the binoculars up to my eyes at the first sight of water. I scanned the coast, and was almost instantly rewarded with a glimpse of Telasta. How she could have traveled the ten miles around the coast in under fifteen minutes was a puzzle.
“Goodness!, but she must swim fast,” I thought to myself. She was swimming just under the surface of the clear water. I kept waiting for her to raise her head out of the water for a breath of air. It never happened. She swam like a dolphin, and while she clearly was in no hurry, she still was moving pretty quickly. She swam about ten meters from the coast line. During the 2 or 3 minutes I watched, she never took a breath.
When she reached a point just below her house, she sailed out of the water like a marlin or flying fish, turned her airborne body deftly, and landed in a seated position on a smooth boulder. She was naked or wearing a skin-tight blue-green wet suit, I did not know which. She reached behind the boulder she was sitting on and picked up what appeared to be a large-mouthed gallon jug, took off the lid, and started scraping the water from her body with her hand -- using her hand as a squeegee to scrape the water into the jug. She put the lid back on the jug and placed it back behind the boulder, stood with her arms raised toward the noon sun, and let the coastal breeze dry her hair and body.
Her beautiful long blonde hair dried quickly and her body color changed from algae-colored to flesh tones. Yes, she was naked. She bent down and drew another large-mouth jar from the same cubby hole she’d put the water jug in. She opened this new jar, drew some type gossamer material from the jar, and slipped a beautiful flowing gown over her head. I was entranced. I took the binoculars from my eyes and sat on a small boulder behind me so I could think.
I knew what I had just seen, or rather I understood SOME of what I had seen. Maybe I had just learned more than I was meant to know. It had never been my purpose to become a peeping tom. While the human body has never been shameful to me, there still should be expectations of privacy by a person who does not know she is being watched. I had unwittingly violated Telasta’s privacy. I mean, I’ll admit I was stalking her; but it wasn’t for the purpose of seeing her in her altogether. Oh well… no harm, no foul. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
“What are you doing, Wil?”
I jumped as if I’d been shot. Telasta stood on the trail in front of me, not 15 feet away.
“Are you spying on me?”
CHAPTER 4
Not knowing how to answer, and instinctively believing that Telasta would know an untruth, I began to stammer rapidly, but I got it all out -- red-faced as I was. “I’m sorry, Telasta. I didn’t mean to see you without your clothes on, but I saw you dive in the water behind our house and I mainly was just curious about how long it would take you to swim home. Yes, I was spying on you, but not so I could find out any secrets. I just wanted to see how long it took you to swim home.” I was now repeating myself, and my face was still red, so I decided to hush. My suffering was so profound that tears were streaming down my face. I put my face in my hands, crying uncontrollably now -- not knowing what would happen next, but knowing that I was humiliated beyond anything I had ever experienced before. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
And then I felt her arms around me as Telasta knelt in front of me and put my head on her shoulder. “It’s okay, baby boy. Hush, now. It’s okay. I understand. Shhh! Shhh!” she gently coddled me. “Come in the house and we’ll have some hot tea and scones. Are you okay?”
“I guess so. I’ve just never been so embarrassed in my life. I just want to die because I took away the one thing you value most -- your privacy.”
She took my hand and helped me to my feet, and we walked hand in hand to the back of her house and into the breakfast alcove. I’m sure I was still red. As I sat at the table and Telasta went to the kitchen to quickly prepare our refreshments, I gave a loud sigh. “Maybe you’d better take my temperature. I’ve never heard of anyone’s having terminal embarrassment, but I’m pretty certain I’ve got it.”
Telasta gave a short staccato laugh. “You’ll be okay. All things happen for a reason; or if they don’t, then we have to MAKE reason out of the things that happen to us.” She set the tray of tea and scones on the table in front of me. “This has been a day of revelation for you, but in time you may realize how much this day has revealed to me, as well.
There’s no question but that we must now plunge on through to the core of what you understand, what you think you know, and areas where you might MISunderstand. I’m so sorry, Wil, to have complicated your life; but you don’t know the half of it. You may be in shock right now. Trust me when I tell you that the only thing that will save you from your ‘terminal embarrassment’ as well as the shocks you are about to receive is your youth. There is a certain resiliency that comes with being young. You are able to accept shocking information as a matter of course by virtue of your awareness that there ARE things beyond the scope of your experience. I want to make this as painless as possible, so help me out here. Tell me what you think you already know.”
“See, I just don’t understand why you let me into your world and your secrets in the first place. Maybe you thought I was young and wouldn’t catch stuff about you, but you were dropping hints to help me know you had a secret from the very beginning. How did you know I would keep your confidence? I’m just a kid, and kids are not very good at keeping their mouths shut.” I had a really good grasp of what was about to be revealed, and I was fairly sure that Telasta already knew that; so I fielded her question by asking for this explanation of the root REASON as I took a sip of tea to calm myself.
“You are too quick for me, young Mr. Wil. I’m a woman, and women have emotional reasons for much of what we do. Why did I want to include you in my life, you ask? You already know the answer to that. Joaquin is an integral part of my life. Your presence is a threat to that relationship -- or not! I had the choice of curtailing a long-standing friendship or expanding that friendship to include you.
Your arrival was very much the same as the birth of a child. There was suddenly a new member of the family, and he had to be accommodated. Usually, when a new family member comes, she or he is a blank slate which can be guided and given knowledge selectively. That child can be punished or rewarded until it reaches a level of acceptable behavior and attitudes that allow the adults to know how much he can be trusted. You brought a full set of values, developed to maturity already, and I decided to test you in a number of ways to find out whether Joaquin could continue to be a part of MY life based on your responses to me.
I wanted you to know me, and I wanted to know you, but honestly, I did NOT want to know you if you rejected me at any level or if you showed evidence of being judgmental or temperamental or untrustworthy or sneaky.”
“So I guess I blew it, huh? I mean on the ‘sneaky’ thing.”
Telasta smiled that ‘you poor thing’ smile and took my hand in hers again, kneeling in front of me. My head was still bowed in shame, so she put her head down below mine and looked up into my eyes. In a very soft and conciliatory voice, she said, “Wil, there’s a huge gulf between ‘curious’ and ‘sneaky’. I would have been disappointed had you LACKED curiosity. Now, my dear boy, let’s get on with it. What do you know?”
She pushed her chair back from the table and, keeping her full attention on me, crossed her arms and slumped down in the chair as if prepared for a long tete-a-tete.
“Okay. I know you are an Aquawoman or something like that. Cool! I can totally understand why you’d want to keep that secret, and you don’t ever have to worry about my telling anybody about it. Let’s see. I know you and my avô were talking about hiring a full-time tutor for me.”
Telasta sat up abruptly, big smile on her face, “I KNEW you were in that kitchen. I heard the click of the door when you came in, but when Joaquin called and you did not answer I just chalked up that click as some unidentifiable and unimportant noise. So you heard our whole conversation, then?”
“I hate to admit it,” I said sheepishly. “Just another example of my ‘sneak’ nature. I’m sorry. I did not mean to listen to your conversation. Arnold
Again in an understanding tone, Telasta said, “No… No, things were just unfolding to give you a shortcut to understanding. You and I are a lot alike. I can see myself getting caught in just such a situation, reacting just as you did. When you harvest information that you were not looking for during the course of normal and innocent activity, your MOTIVE counts. Motive colors the ‘guilt’ or ‘innocence’ of lots of things. I’ll have to admit that I did not want you to think I was reporting to Joaquin on yours and Arnold
“Oh, no. I knew you were an Aquawoman before that. Leastwise I SUSPECTED something of the sort. Well, not exactly THAT -- but something weird. You’re too young to be so old, for one thing. I guess I am sneaky, ‘cause I knew you were telling the truth when you said you had known Avô for 50 years. I let you off the hook on that one. If I hadn’t, you would have worried for days that you told me too much. I just hate it when somebody tells me something and then wishes they hadn’t.”
“Well you little rascal! You are as good an actor as your grandfather. I will admit that it felt like I was telling you too much, too soon; and yes, it would have worried me later except for the fact that you acted like it was a big joke. I thought I was letting YOU off the hook by going along with treating my revelation as a joke. You come from good stock, Wil Dupepe, and I am glad that I trusted you enough to let you into my world and that you let me into yours. Now! What else do you want to know?”
“Since you said something about giving my grandfather gold and you talked about being thousands of years old (and by the way, that’s way more than I can even imagine), the one question I have -- for now -- is, ‘How did you and my grandfather meet?’ Oh! And another question that goes with that one: “What made you decide to tell him that you were an Aquawoman?”
Telasta stood up. “Grab your tea and scones if you want. Since this looks like the beginning of a marathon conversation, we’d better go somewhere more comfortable. Since this involves your grandfather, and since we may be up talking very late, what do you say we go to your house and include Joaquin in the conversation? I don’t want him to worry about you, and he loves my stories even more than you do. You’ll probably get bored and fall asleep while I’m regaling you with my tales, so it would be well for you to be at home when you crash.”
“Okay,” I said as I also stood. “but let’s leave your tea and dishes here. We can make tea at home and not worry about getting your fine china back to you.” I suggested.
“Good idea,” Telasta agreed. “Just leave everything on the table except the scones.” (I had taken only one bite of those awful things.) She picked them up in one hand and opened the back door. “I crumble leftovers like these on the back patio so the birds can enjoy them,” and she tossed them toward the rail at the cliff where a seagull and sparrow swooped down, each grabbing a piece of this generous gift. We kept walking -- down the back trail till it joined the path from the front of her house and on to Avô’s house.
“Avô!” I called as we came through the door at home. “Telasta and I are here.”
Amado came into the living room as we came into it from the kitchen. “Joaquin,” Telasta began, “the little sneak knows everything.” She and I burst out laughing. Avô had a concerned look on his face.
“Telasta, do you think it wise to tell the boy EVERYTHING?” he asked.
“Too late, grand pa!” she teased. “He already knows everything -- or at least all the high points. We came over here to fill him in on some of the details, since the first question he had was about how you and I met. It looked like this was going to be a long conversation, so we decided to adjourn the meeting at my house and re-convene over here to include you.”
“You KNOW I appreciate that!” He smiled. “And I DO think Wil is trustworthy; but I’m not sure exactly how you came to that conclusion yourself -- or what prompted you to come to it so quickly.”
“Joaquin, it’s not like I had a choice. The boy was over at my house with YOUR binoculars spying on me.”
I started to defend myself, then thought the better of it. I was positive that Telasta would represent me fairly. I was not disappointed as she told my grandfather the whole story of our recent history -- motives and all. It was a little embarrassing that she even told him about my breaking into tears over my humiliation but, as I would find out more and more in the coming years, Telasta didn’t know how to edit the truth when in the presence of those she trusted. She told the story exactly as she viewed it and let the chips fall where they may.
“Well, that’s that then!” said my grandfather. “Wil, I just made a big thermos of coffee in the kitchen. You grab the thermos and I’ll get the mugs. We’ll lock the doors and sit down in the living room. You are going to love this story. I was part of the story, and I still love it; though I seldom get to hear it. Who could we tell the story to? You and I are the only two land dwellers, far as I know, who really know who Telasta is and son, I’m telling you, you don’t know the half of who this creature is. There is more to her than any dozen other people you will ever know.”
We were getting the coffee and cups as Avô spoke. Telasta went around locking the outside doors -- not that we EVER had visitors, but my recent eaves-dropping made us all aware that the walls have ears. My grandpa and I each sat in over-stuffed chairs facing the third such chair in the living room, where Telasta sat. Amado believed in nothing if not comfort, and our home was perfectly suited for these types of conversations.
“What year did we meet, Joaquin? I really get the dates confused on lots of things -- probably one of the disadvantages of living so long.”
“I’m not even sure of that myself, Telasta. I think it was 1911 or 1912.”
“Okay, then. Back at the turn of this century, I had already established my home in Ubatuba. This was only one of several homes I had, and I did not spend as much time here as I did at other more remote and less-civilized places. You see, I was a little fearful of civilization because civilized people seem to pry into one’s affairs with closer scrutiny than country folk. It turns out I was probably wrong in this belief, but it’s what I believed at the time. So I spent a lot of time at sea, sometimes with others of my kind, but alone most of the time.
Since I am completely at home in the water, and since water covers more of the earth than land does, there are so many more adventures to be had in the ocean than on land. There are some dangers, of course, but we members of the Ocean Society are pretty clear on how to avoid those dangers. Our physiology protects us more than yours protects you. We have triple-helix DNA and other specialized organs that speed recovery from injuries, and we are immune to most of the toxins from snakes and morays and sting rays that would kill land humans. Whales are friendly and most kinds of sharks fear us, so the main problem we have in the ocean is land humans.
Joaquin was in the merchant marines. His long absences from home probably contributed to the breakup of his marriage. When we met, he had been divorced for about a year. He probably never thought about Louisiana
I was swimming in Lake Maracaibo , Venezuela
My first problem was in not considering the nature of the roustabouts and other working men on the coast. They tend to be pretty coarse, without the rules of civilization for the most part. My second mistake was in getting in the rut of predictability. Ocean Society members generally take naps throughout the day and night, rarely sleeping for over 15 minutes at a time. Once or twice a year we may go into what we call ‘ long sleep’ -- a sleep lasting anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. We like our comforts, like all other bi-pedals, and we fall into routines quite easily.
At Lake Maracaibo
Every day, I spent the morning until around 10 a.m. exploring the floor of the lake. Then I would come up onto the shore at the same spot every day and walk around the property, picking fruit and enjoying a leisurely stroll, not bothering to put on land human clothing. The property was deserted and remote. My ears were sharp enough to hear people talking well before I could see them. No need to put on clothing till it was necessary. At least, that was what I thought.
What I did not know was that Señor Blanchett became suspicious of me at the outset. He was a card-carrying misogynist who was offended at being approached by a female who wanted to buy his land. He was a fisherman, and did not know how I could possibly have taken a tour of his property with only one road in. He and his family lived at the front of that road on an adjoining 50 hectares of land. Since his wife had told him that nobody had come down the road to look at the back acreage he asked, during our second meeting, how I had seen the land. I told him that I had seen the property from the lake side.
The immense distrust Mr. Jorge held for women brought about the subsequent events. He told the fishermen who worked for him to keep an eye on the Maracaibo Lake
The brigand band of fishermen caught me unawares and in my altogether in the orchard I had come to think of as my own. They had been looking for a boat when they spotted me swimming. They noted I had no air tanks, yet I stayed underwater for far too long. My scales began to dry and disappear once I went ashore, which confirmed that they had discovered an ancient legend -- a ‘sirena’ -- a mermaid. Jorge Blanchett was not with them, but from their conversation it was clear he had sent them. They had guns and they had knives and they had me surrounded. Fisherman are not known for stealth in the woods, but these caught me totally off guard.
I begged them, ‘Please don’t hurt me. I have no weapon and I’m just picking some fruit from property I intended to buy, so I’m not stealing. Just move aside and let me pass and I will be on my way.’
They closed ranks and leered at me, raking my body with their eyes. Somehow, I knew what was going to happen next. I cannot think of how I could have stopped it. Analyzing what happened, after the fact, sometimes one can see mistakes and routes of escape. My only problem was in not knowing self-defense techniques. It was never necessary before. There were never any enemies prior to this. Somebody grabbed me from behind, pinning my hands at my back. Another man picked up my feet, and they threw me to the ground.
After each of the men had taken advantage of me and satisfied his basic urges, it was over. I was not badly hurt. I had insulated my emotions well enough that if this was the worst they were going to do to me, I would survive. The whole thing had been disgusting, but nobody ever died of disgust.
The men were liquored up, but not quite drunk. Still, there was a chance that I could reach the lake and escape if their attention lapsed for a moment. I was poised to run when one of the really strong men grabbed me around the neck from behind, lifted me from my feet, and forced me into a canvas sack -- then tied the top of the sack with a rope. What further indignity did they have in store for me, and why? What had I done to them? I was afraid.
For two days we traveled. I could tell by the sounds and smells that we were in a boat. The men talked and laughed constantly. From their conversation, I was made aware that they knew what I was, and they intended to sell me. They thought they could get big money for me.
On the second night of this miserable trip, the boat stopped and I was hoisted onto a man’s shoulders. ‘Good!,’ I thought, ‘At least this is more comfortable than the hard bottom of the boat.’ That thought was short-lived as I was thrown to the ground in my sack, then dragged across the rocky ground till we came to a camp site near the small town of Merida
The fishermen were speaking in broken English and the man to whom they spoke was speaking in half-English, half-Spanish badly spoken.” Here Telasta lost the scowl she had kept during most of this story, and gave a smile and sidelong glance toward Avô Amado. There was a look of more adoration than she had ever before displayed. I would soon understand just why she felt so strongly bonded to my grandfather. I thought that maybe he ended up buying her, since he was on a mission to find products to buy for re-sale. The story had me entranced. Telasta gave a big sigh and continued:
“Yes,” she said as she caught the proud look I was giving Amado, “it was your grandfather. The men had heard that there was a rich Americano who was looking for interesting things to buy. They decided they had something more interesting than anything he could possibly expect to find.
‘Okay,’ Joaquin said to the men. ‘Let me see this mermaid you have captured. Take me to her.’
‘She’s right here in this sack,’ one of the men laughed. ‘You don’t think we’d leave her somewhere and risk somebody stealing her, do you?’”
“I was appalled!” my avô interjected, wanting to add his voice to the telling of the story.
Telasta continued, “They opened the sack, grabbed me by the hair, hoisting me out for Joaquin’s inspection.
‘You have kidnapped a young woman and now you are trying to sell her to ME??!!’ he yelled angrily. ‘You men should be horse-whipped or SHOT!! This is no mermaid. She’s just a beautiful young lady. We do not buy or sell people in the United States
‘Oh, but you are wrong, sir. This is not a person. This is a sirena -- a mermaid,’ one of the men said. ‘You could put her in a circus and make mucho dinero… uh, money. And she IS a mermaid. I will prove that. Put her in the water, Pablo,’ he directed one of his men.
There was a very small, very muddy pond beside which we stood. Until Pablo and another man grabbed me by the arms and put me into the water, I had no idea HOW muddy the water was. As soon as I was in the water, I began to shake with uncontrollable revulsion because of the thickness of the mud and the stench of the water.
The leader of the fishermen said to Joaquin, ‘My men will hold her under the water and you will see. She will not die. She can breathe under the water. Show him her gills, Pablo.’
Pablo held my arm with one hand and with the other he pulled back my hair. Not wanting violence, I turned my head in such a way that Joaquin could see my gills behind my ear.
‘See? She is part fish.’ the leader spat.
‘Sir, they are telling the truth about me. I am what they say,’ I spoke to Joaquin in English, ‘but I cannot breathe in this filthy mud. If they force me underwater in this filth, I shall die. Please!’ I begged, ‘Do not let them force me underwater in this mud hole. Please! I don’t want to die.’
I have never before nor since seen your grandfather so angry. He methodically and slowly took off his expensive shirt and hanged it on a tree branch -- wordlessly. Then he removed his trousers, folded them, and draped them over that same branch. He untied his shoe laces and methodically removed his shoes and socks. Looking me in the eye, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, he chose this moment for introductions. ‘Ma’am, my name is Joaquin Dupepe. Do you have a name?’ Not knowing his intentions, I simply answered the question. ‘Yes. My name is Telasta.’ All the other men were smiling lasciviously, thinking that Joaquin intended to use me as they had used me. ‘Well, Telasta,’ Joaquin measured his words slowly in English. ‘I apologize for removing my clothing, but I do not want to ruin perfectly good clothes. This is going to be messy. Are you ready?’ I nodded my head, tears still streaming down my face from fear. ‘Yes, Joaquin Dupepe, I am ready,’ I said through my tears.
There were three fishermen standing on the shore and two that were holding me by the arms. Joaquin reached out with the flat of his palm and broke the big man’s nose. Copious amounts of blood flew everywhere as the big man screamed a terrible scream, falling to the ground holding his face in his hands and crying like a baby. Then Joaquin turned to the other two, kicking one of them in the shin while chopping the other in the neck. I heard the shin bone
break, but he had done no permanent damage and had taken no life. He could have killed them easily.
The man with the broken shin bone screamed as the first had done, falling to the ground and grabbing his leg with both hands and wailing. The one with the chop to the neck was knocked out cold. The two who were holding me let go of my arms and ran from the site as quickly as their horrified legs would carry them. It had taken Joaquin less than a minute to effect my release. He was right, there was blood everywhere -- mostly from the broken nose.
‘Run, Telasta.’ Joaquin shouted. ‘You are free. The lake is that way,’ he pointed downhill. ‘RUN!’
‘I’m not running anywhere,’ I answered. ‘If I run, I might run into the same men who just let me go. I’ll stay here, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘Okay, then. Let me clean up just a bit and we’ll go to town and get some food. I’m hungry.’ he said as he picked up a couple of towels from his supplies. He handed me a towel and a canteen of water, then walked to the groaning men, disarmed them, and took their canteens of water. We both had a spit bath, which got rid of the first layer of dirt. He put on his clothing. I was still naked, but clean.”
She and Amado looked at one another and burst out laughing at this point. I laughed, too, as I was enjoying the story; but I wasn’t sure I was laughing at the same thing Avô and Telasta were laughing at.
“The man with the chop to the neck had dropped a dress he had intended to use to display Telasta. I picked the dress up from the ground where he had dropped it, shook the dirt from it, said ‘Thank you,’ to the unconscious man and handed it to Telasta. That was the ugliest dress on the prettiest woman I had ever seen.” Avô added his commentary at this point in the story.
“Why, thank you, Joaquin. You never told me that before.” Telasta smiled broadly.
“Well, it WAS the ugliest dress I had ever seen.” he responded.
“Not that part, goofy. The ‘prettiest woman’ part.”
“Oh, that. Well, you were. Uh… you know you still ARE. You have barely changed at all from the day we met. Well, you’re a lot cleaner.”
We all laughed. I poured a cup of coffee and took a sip. “Is that the whole story, then?” I asked.
“No! Not by a long shot,” answered Telasta. “After we left the camp site, Joaquin put me behind him on the horse he had ridden to meet these men and we went to the town. On the way to town, I said, ‘Joaquin, I really need more clothing than this dress. I need shoes and accessories,’ and he said, ‘ I will buy those things for you when we get to town.’ Indignantly, I responded, ‘You certainly shall NOT! What kind of woman do you take me for? I pay my OWN way. I do not want you to buy clothing for me, thank you just the same. Please take me to a boat and I will go to the place on shore where I have stashed my money and certain articles of clothing -- or absent that, I shall swim.’
Joaquin just smiled, though I still believe that he wanted to laugh out loud. ‘That’s fine. I did not mean to be offensive or presumptuous. I was just trying to help. I have a boat on the bay. We can ride to the boat on this horse and from there my crew will take us wherever you direct. Let me warn you, though, that I will not be able to direct the thoughts of those men. They are likely to think our relationship is something other than it is.’
I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice, but the idea that morality should be based on consensual sexual activity is foreign to my sense of right and wrong and I could not keep from being a little indignant. After all, I had just been raped and put into a sack, dragged over rough ground, and put in a mud hole. What did I care what some strangers I might never see again thought of me? In a dispassionate voice, I said, ‘Thank you for your concern, but it is misplaced. Do you think that someone in my position, living as I do primarily in the water, would spend one moment crediting what your ignorant, shallow-minded crewmen might think of me? They should care more what I think of THEM!’
This time Joaquin made no effort to hide his amusement. He threw back his head and laughed so abruptly that it startled the horse. As the horse broke into a canter, he chuckled, ‘You know who you are, I’ll say that for you.’ I wasn’t sure what to make of his statement or his tone, so we rode in silence the rest of the way. Being behind him, I couldn’t see the smile on his face or the twinkle in his eyes. At the moment, I did not know whether Joaquin Dupepe would be a long-term friend or just a champion for the moment. I already knew what I WANTED the answer to be. I was in love with him from the moment we met.
The smell of the river hit my nostrils as we passed through the primitive settlement with its mixture of mostly poor and ignorant hard-working people. A few turned to look at us, but nobody paid much attention. The men who had held my arms were probably running AWAY from this settlement, since this was where they had met Joaquin. Even if we ran into them, there was no reason to fear. Joaquin had beat them once -- he could do it again. As strong as I was, I should not have had fear, anyway; but remember that before this point I had not run into the need for self-defense. I normally did not interact with land humans in any way that might invite conflict.
Joaquin hitched his horse to a pine tree at the water’s edge near his boat. It was more like a barge, and was loaded with various crates and equipment. Joaquin spoke briefly in Spanish to one man who was clearly in charge, and that man rallied his crew.
In fewer than 15 minutes we were moving across the water. Joaquin had told the lead man to go wherever I wanted. I had understood their exchange perfectly, but decided to play it safe and act like I did not understand Spanish. When the river we had been navigating flowed into Lake Maracaibo
At length, we reached my point of debarkation. Taking his lead from my gestures, the captain docked the vessel against the bank of the lake. Joaquin told the men to remain on the barge while he and I walked just out of earshot onto the shore. ‘Do you want me to go with you, or would you
rather go the last distance by yourself?’ Joaquin asked me.
‘Come with me, by all means,’ I said. ‘You must still be hungry, and there is food where I’m going.’
As we walked, Joaquin tried to find a polite way to tell me that I was free to go on my way. It was clear from his body language and his facial contortions that he really cared about me. He felt responsible for me, but did not want me to be in bondage to him any more than to my captors.
In something under a 20-minute walk we had reached a beautiful green glade, remote from our vessel and miles from the nearest human habitation. At the edge of the glade there was a fallen tree that had been there long enough to lose all its bark. It was just the right height for sitting, perfectly shaded, with dappled sunlight filtering down from a cobalt blue sky.
‘Telasta, if you have time, let’s sit and talk for a moment, shall we? This may all be normal for you, but for me… well … I just don’t know the rules, and I’m having a hard time finding words to tell you how I feel.’
Without answering, I sat on the sun-bleached trunk of that tree. He straddled it and sat facing me with one of his hands atop the other resting on the trunk in front of him, shoulders hunched with his weight on his hands. ‘Telasta, I am glad to have had the good fortune of meeting you. I thought the stories of your kind were fairy tales. Whatever you may think, you don’t owe me anything. If you are uncomfortable traveling with me, you do not have to explain. -- I mean, if at any point you want to return to the water … That is, if I turn around and you are gone, I will not blame you for going back wherever you came from. You do not owe me anything -- not even an explanation. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
It was my turn to be amused. I smiled broadly, letting him know with a look that he was now part of my world -- my family. ‘Joaquin, the rules in my world are the same as the rules in your own. The reason you never knew us is that we are not familiar with pure spirits like yours. Land people always seem to want something from us, and what they want is not often noble. They do not want to allow us to share with them of our own volition. No! They invariably want to take from us by force.
I have dealt with land humans on many occasions, but not with any degree of intimacy. Until now, all my dealings with land dwellers have been formal and dispassionate. Now in the course of a few days I have dealt with treachery and magnanimity both. Perhaps for the first time, I realize that the only way to harvest value in relationships with land humans is to be vulnerable and risk treachery. Once my true nature was known, I was raped. When my nature was exposed next, I was rescued. This may be my only chance to study your kind and see who your race is from an inside view.
I can see your discomfort, but I also see that you are struggling -- not with how you can hold on to me, but with how you can release me and still be friends. I am struggling with those same issues, Joaquin. I want to be your friend and to use you in whatever way you may volunteer to be used, but I don’t want to entrap you -- not even with your own intrigue. You have bought my friendship with the valuable coin of extending yourself for my benefit without thought for your own gain. I’ve never run across that kind of generosity of spirit in your kind before, or not in many hundreds of years, at least.’”
Telasta left the telling of the story for a moment and addressed me. “Your grandfather got that stunned look on his face. It was a look I had seen before when I said something to a land person about my memory of hundreds of years. Mentioning hundreds of years this early was unintentional. One of my faults is that I do not edit myself when I like somebody. That fondness leads to revealing too much, too soon. The problem with befriending land dwellers is that your lives are so brief. To be friends with you, one must act quickly. You are like incredibly beautiful flowers that bloom and then fade in a very short period of time.”
As she returned to her narrative, I could see her sitting on that smooth, sun-dappled log as she again addressed Joaquin Dupepe all those long years past:
‘Oh, no!’ I sighed. ‘Not the age thing again. Yes, I’m older than you are; but please, let’s not let that get in the way of our friendship, okay?’
‘Hell!’ Joaquin laughed, ‘Older than I am? You said hundreds of years! You’re at least old enough to be my great-great-great- many times great grandmother and you look young enough to be my sister.’
‘Let’s get this straight, cowboy. I am NOT your grandmother and certainly not your sister. If you looked at your sister the way you‘re looking at me, they would arrest you for incest. Heaven only knows what they would do to you for looking at your great-grandmother in that way.’
Joaquin drew in a sharp breath and laughed till he lost his breath. He finally fell off the tree trunk, holding his stomach and laughing. ‘Telasta whatever-your-last-name-is, you are the funniest woman I have ever met -- of any species.’
‘I don’t have a last name,’ I pouted, not quite catching what was so funny; and then he thought THAT was funny and started laughing again. I was a bit concerned that he had just taken leave of his senses when he sat up, smile on his face, sighed a big sigh, and said, ‘I know all I need to know now. I’m satisfied. Let’s go, what do you say? How far are we going?’ to which I replied, ‘We’re here. This tree we’re sitting on is hollow. All my stuff is right here inside this tree trunk.’ He started laughing again. It still today surprises me what Joaquin Dupepe finds amusing.
There was a perfectly round boulder wedged into each end of the tree trunk. When they were removed, the inside of the log was hollow with 4 large glass canisters I had secreted there. One was full of preserved food -- a concentrate which we call ‘maquitri’. It does not spoil readily, and is so nutritious that a spoonful or two is enough to provide one with all the energy needed for a day’s work. The second canister had three dresses in it. They were made of a fabric that does not wrinkle, and each dress was long enough to cover my feet. I mean, look at these feet.”
She stopped the story for a moment and we came back to the present. She held her leg out and extended one foot from under her long skirt for my inspection. It was MY turn to be shocked. She had feet that barely fit the definition. Her toes were prehensile and her great toe was more thumb than toe, as it was opposable to the other toes. I found out later that she could write with her feet and perform other “hand” functions as well as with the hands on her arms. Though her toes were webbed, so were the fingers on her hands. One simply did not notice this fact without staring at them rudely. Where I had originally thought she might be part fish, I now wondered whether she was part monkey.
Telasta probably noticed my surprise. I was sure she intended to de-sensitize me slowly. There would probably be more surprise revelations in the future. At this point, I would not have been surprised to learn that she could leap
tall buildings with a single bound and stop speeding bullets with her bare hands. I felt like I was living inside a comic book with a super hero as a friend. I did not voice any of this, because this story was so interesting that I did not want Telasta to stop. I just nodded as I looked at her feet, made some kind of grunting noise, and let her continue.
“They grow so long and my webbed toes are so obvious when I spend a lot of time in the water. When I stay on land for protracted periods, they shrink enough that I can wear normal land shoes; but I had spent so much time in Lake Maracaibo
The third canister was full of gold nuggets, which I handed to Joaquin. I noticed how much stronger I was than he when I handed him the canister and he strained under the sudden weight. It wasn’t much money, by my reckoning. I had only brought enough from the ocean floor to pay for the parcel of land at which I was looking, plus a bit more for legal fees and such.
‘This should pay for anything you need to buy for me or for yourself,’ I said.
‘I don’t want your money, Telasta. Keep it for your own use.’ Mr. Curious was not content to let me lead the conversation. He was looking at the fourth jar still inside the log. ‘What’s in that jar?’ he asked.
Seeing no reason to keep secrets at this late date, I just answered his question: ‘Those are my plinkies.’ I knew he had no idea what a plinky was, but he had said something that needed to be addressed before I explained plinkies to him. ‘You have no idea what you are talking about, Joaquin. You have said that I don’t owe you anything and that you don’t want my money. You elevate my opinion of you by your lack of greed, but I want you to try to see things from my perspective if you can. Had you not been conscripted by my captors as a potential buyer, I would not be here today. Granted, your being in the right place at the right time may have been purely accidental; but your response to my predicament was a choice you made, and you chose to risk your own safety to save me. This is now a piece of my history that I can never forget and never repay. You treat me as if I am a woman of limited financial means, and while I find that offensive at one level, I find it endearing at another. You need to know that I am wealthier than probably anybody you have ever known.
Think about it, Joaquin. I travel the oceans. I have seen the wreckages of many many ships that sank, loaded with wonderful treasures. Those belong to me if I choose to make the salvage effort. More than that, when continents have sunk -- Lemuria and Atlantis, for example -- they had storehouses like your Fort Knox in America
It does not diminish me to include you in the ownership of everything that I own. Let me repeat what I already said, but try your best to believe what I say instead of just hearing the words. I’m not saying something to you just to impress you. In case you do not yet understand, I am not in the least interested in impressing anybody -- not my Ocean Society friends, not the land humans I have known, not you. I love living. Unless I continue to live, I do not own anything.
You are the only reason I am alive today, so it follows that when you saved me you saved everything I value, including my money. How can you possibly think I would be stingy with you when you just gave me the biggest gift anyone ever gave me? I will not be a pushy benefactor, and I do not believe that I now own you, but you are welcome to satisfy whatever financial whims you may have by using my wealth. Got it?’
He grinned condescendingly. ‘Got it! Now, what are plinkies?’
‘You are single-minded in the extreme,’ I said. ‘Alright then, a plinky is basically a huge symbiotic virus that was created to lubricate the scales of ocean people. Plinkies swim under and around our scales while we are in the water. They require only water to live, but they like living on our bodies. They are not parasitic. They don’t make me itch. And they will not colonize in great numbers except on our bodies.
When ocean people are out of the water, plinkies go into stasis. That is, when my scales change to flesh tones the plinkies hibernate just under my flesh-colored scales. They can hibernate for a couple of weeks, more or less; but any longer than that and they begin to die. Plinkies are one of the secrets of our extremely long lives. If we go too long a period without plinkies we will die. I always scrape plinkies off my body and into a jar of sea water in case I ever lose all my plinkies and need to re-populate the colony that has died on my body. You will know that my plinkies have died and that I am in crisis over their loss if you ever see my skin peeling like a land person peels after a bad sun burn. Lost scales can be re-grown, but it is very painful and not something I want to do anytime soon. If you accept me as one of your close friends, I hope you will let me show you where I keep stashes like this. You never know when you might need some gold or I might need clothing or plinkies. Right now, I’m hungry and I’ll bet you are, too. I have a drawstring pouch behind my plinky jar. Pull it out here, and get the spoons out. Let’s have some maquitri.’
Joaquin reached into the hollow log, tipped my plinky jar over on its base enough to reach past it and get the drawstring pouch, then he opened the pouch and pulled out the spoons. I noticed that he investigated the gemstones and precious metal chains that were in the soft black bag while he looked for the spoons. ‘Why do you keep all these valuable things, Telasta?’ he asked.
‘What do you WANT me to do with them -- throw them into a ditch?’ I answered, to his immediate laughter.
‘You know I didn’t mean that. Or maybe you don’t know. I meant why do you keep all this stuff in a log in the woods? You have stuff out here that needs to be in a safer place so that nobody steals it.’
I opened the jar of maquitri and handed a spoon and the opened jar to Joaquin. ‘Try it,’ I offered. ‘I think you’ll like it, but eat at least a couple of spoonsful even if you don’t like it. You can use the nourishment.’
He took a taste. ‘Mmmmm,’ he made little obligatory yummy noises as he ate 4 or 5 spoonsful greedily. ‘Hey, slow down!’ I advised. ‘This stuff is concentrated. It will make your stomach hurt if you eat too much. You SHOULD be okay, but you have had enough for now.’
‘It tastes like a mixture of fig preserves and mincemeat and sassafras tea,’ he was still smacking his lips as he spoke. ‘You ought to patent this stuff. You could make a fortune.’
He paused, furrowed his brow for a moment, then gave a little pensive frown. ‘You don’t NEED to make a fortune, do you? All of a sudden, the lights came on in my head. It would not bother you if somebody DID steal this gold and these jewels, would it?’
Now it was my turn to laugh out loud. ‘You got it. It changes your perspective on lots of things when money is no issue. Now that money is no issue for you, either, you will soon find out how that feels yourself.’ I was trying to solidify my claim on him as I trotted out this last statement, because I knew my wealth would not keep this valuable friend and ally. By selflessly saving my life, he had reached a place of importance in my life beyond anything he could know. I took a couple of spoonsful of the maquitri myself, stripped off the ugly dress I’d been wearing, and replaced it with one of my beautiful gowns. Joaquin never flinched or turned his head. I tossed the gown that reminded me of my capture onto a sandy spot of land.
‘Joaquin, do you have flint?’ I asked him. ‘I want to burn this dress. I never want anything to remind me of my capture again. YOU remind me of my salvation. This dress reminds me of my enemies.’
He pulled out a silver match box, slid open the drawer full of matches, closed it, and struck one of the tiny matches on the side of the box, cupping the tiny flame in the palm of his hand in such a practiced way that I wondered how long it had been since he stopped smoking tobacco. He set the dress afire and gathered some dry leaves and small twigs to encourage it to burn faster. In a very few minutes the dress was reduced to ash.
What a relief it was to close that chapter of the book of my life. I gave a little shiver at the realization that this pile of soot symbolized the closest brush I had ever had with losing my life.
Joaquin must have understood some of what I was going through emotionally, for he put an arm around my shoulders and drew me into his embrace. ‘Shhh. Shhh, little girl. You’re alright now. I’m going to hold you until you calm down. I will be here to protect you for as long as you need me.’ I turned into the embrace and put both my arms around his strong neck. I’m a big girl, but he reached down with one arm under my legs and the other under my back, picked me up off my feet, and lay me gently onto a thick carpet of green grass. I was still shivering, though for a very different reason, as he lay beside me.
He put a finger to my lips to keep me from spoiling the moment. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘and so do you. You want to give to me, and I want to give to you. If we still feel the same after today, you will never have to worry about my abandoning you.’
You are a little young for me to go into details, Wil Dupepe; but that magic moment your grandpa and I shared all those years ago is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. As we walked back to the boat, I asked him the same thing that I asked you, Wil: ‘What else do you want to know about me?’ and his answer was: ‘Are your parents still alive? I no longer have a family, and family is very important to me; so if you are still involved with your family, I guess I would like to be part of your family if that’s okay. That one statement pleased me more than anything else he could have said.’
Now THAT’S the end of the story, Wil.”
I had sat up on the edge of my seat cushion, trying to incubate all this new information. Pouring myself another cup of coffee as I swung one foot on top of the opposite knee was my attempt to appear adult-like, but I was feeling less sophisticated than ever in the presence of these two people. Even though one of them was my grandfather, it was obvious to me that I only THOUGHT I knew him.
Telasta’s story had not taken long to tell, but it had shaken me to my very core -- to the marrow of my bones. Here I sat in the living room of one of the wealthiest couples in the world, and I was just a poor country boy from Louisiana
My sudden change of spirit must have shown on my face, because Telasta got a concerned look on her face and asked me, “What’s wrong, Wil? Didn’t you like the story? Why are you upset?”
Seemed to me she was always reading my thoughts. I figured there was no point in trying to hide anything from her. Maybe she was psychic on top of all her other abilities, so I just came out with it and told her what I was thinking and how out of place I felt with such great people. After her story, I knew that they were a family and I was a complete outsider.
My soul laid bare, Amado and Telasta began to laugh. How could they laugh at my inferiority? Tears sprang to my eyes with the realization that I was far below their level and, as if that weren’t enough, they found it humorous. Once again my face and tearful eyes gave away how I was feeling. The two of them stopped laughing, instantly aware that I was deeply mortified. Amado spoke first, “Wil, the reason we are laughing is that you have become extremely important to both of us. We thought you already knew that. You are not an outsider. You are family -- not just to me, but to Telasta, as well. Like she said, I learned what it felt like when money is no object. You will learn that feeling, too. Remember that I told you what was mine was yours. Telasta taught me that when you love someone (as we both love you) then they possess not only the keys to your heart, but the keys to everything else in your life, including your bank account.
We will certainly set boundaries if and when you are incapable of setting your own boundaries. And I’m not saying we won’t be disappointed if you go out these doors and blare your business on the street -- we will be. We do not think that will happen. You have shown good judgment so far, and we believe you will quickly adjust to the knowledge of your new circumstances and handle that knowledge judiciously. You should not feel put down. You should feel lifted up.”
My emotions were in a whirlwind, yet when Amado said I should feel lifted up, that’s what I suddenly felt. I sat up straight, where I had been slumping just seconds before. I smiled where I had been frowning. I felt laughter where moments before I had felt a lump in my throat. Once again my spirit was reaching out with questions rather than feeling like I already had some unwanted answers. This had been the beginning of the realization that sadness is a state in which you think you have all the answers and joy is that state in which you are full of questions and you know that there are questions you haven’t even thought of yet. Sadness is looking backward, joy is looking forward.
“You two have just solved my little bout of self-pity, then.” I wanted to say everything I was thinking and didn’t want them to interrupt me before I finished, so I talked as fast as I could. “Then the two of you are married, I guess. Amado, you are more a father to me than a grandfather, so I’d like to start calling you Papa; and Telasta, I’m still going to call you Telasta, ‘cause I like the way it feels rolling off my tongue.” They both laughed, and I was afraid they were going to interrupt me, so I plowed forward. “If you truly do accept me as a member of your family, then I want to meet your mother and father, Telasta, and I WOULD like to call them Grandma and Grandpa. Do you think that would be okay?”
Telasta was still smiling. “You don’t KNOW how much my mother would love a grandson, Wil. Yes, that will be perfectly okay. I’m not sure you’re ready for my mother. You are in for a real treat. She is as full of mischief today as she was when she was a young mother to me.
It’s early yet. Would you like to hear the story of that tapestry that hangs in my living room? As you guessed, the large figure in the fountain is me and the small figure is my mother. That story will give you an idea of just how curious and fun-loving my mother is. She is a scientist of the first order, but her serious side has never forgot how to let her childish side have fun.”
“You KNOW I want to hear that story. I’ve been wanting to hear it since I accidentally eaves-dropped on your conversation with Papa and heard you say that tapestry was you and your mother.” The excitement in my voice echoed the message in my words. I sat back on my cushions after setting my coffee cup down. I was all into these stories and wanted no distraction.
“Okay, then, my friend and adopted son. This story is a long one and requires a lot of preliminary explanation. Let me digress to address your assumption that my ‘Amado’ (and I call him that because he is truly my beloved) and I are married. We are together for the duration of his life, but until I created a fictitious identify there was no way for an undocumented person like me to marry. Joaquin helped me to create the identity I currently use, and we purposely transferred everything into Joaquin’s ownership in case some of the nosy government types come calling and try to use some of their tricky loopholes to take away what I spent years creating. So to answer your question, no, we are NOT married.
We have not told you what we know about Dave Palazzo. He was sent here as an attaché for some branch of the U. S. U.S. Washington
We do not know what purpose Mr. Palazzo has in wanting to meet me, but he has made inquiries for the last few years. We are slightly concerned that he now might be linking the name ‘Telasta’ with his so-called mermaid. We are fairly certain that Washington
In light of your friendship with Arnold
Teelee is my mother’s name. In our society we rarely use the terms ‘Mother’ or ‘Father’ when talking to- or about- a specific parent. We use their names. Teelee was one of the first batch of ocean dwellers created by H. Bolden -- the genetic engineer who created all of the original Ocean Society. I know her parents were named Shawna and Reuben, though the chronology of a family tree with such old and sparse roots as ours is of little interest. If she ever told me about her grandparents, I have forgotten. Teelee was raised in an enclosed bay of the ocean immediately outside H. Bolden‘s lab where she was incubated. She was fed, schooled, visited by her parents, and socialized at the docks until she was fifty-years-old, when she was released to the ocean along with the 75,000 other Ocean Society members of the first water.
H. Bolden felt that it was necessary not to let those first Ocean Dwellers roam the oceans freely until they had some sense of caution and until they learned to talk fluently with their backpack organs underwater. This is one of those
preliminary things I need to explain. If you noticed the thickness of my mid-back, then you saw the external evidence of one of several organic differences between us and land dwellers. We call it our backpack organ to differentiate between it and our voice box. The voice box is used exactly as land dwellers use the same organ. The backpack organ is used like porpoises use sonar. When we want to talk to one another underwater, we use this organ. It takes a lot of practice to learn correctly. Our ears are just like your ears except for the fact that those flaps you have over your ear holes are incapable of closure. Our sense of hearing is more acute than yours, however. Just before we dive into the water, our ear flaps close automatically. Our nostrils also have an automatic closure feature.
I could tell you the entire story of our physiological differences; but the subject is very dry (little pun there), and I want to get to Teelee’s story.
I did not mean to exclude my father. He was the last of all H. Bolden’s children -- the very last -- and H. gave him that name: Last. I find it interesting that such a word would mean the same thing in Lemuria as it means today in English-speaking countries.
My mother was 150 years old before Last was created. One might think that Teelee would therefore be much smarter than Last. Never underestimate my mother. She is very smart, but Last was tutored by the greatest minds of his day, both before and after he went to the ocean. My mother is Last’s consort, so you might say she pulls the strings of probably the smartest man on earth. Teelee is fun-loving, quick to learn, naturally inquisitive, and beautiful. She reached her full height of just under 3-feet tall by age 20. Last was exactly 3-feet tall at age 18, as tall as he would ever be.
H. Bolden was growing extremely worried about tectonic plate activity discovered by one of his scientific buddies. This type activity usually presaged some type cataclysmic seismic event and was probably an attempt by the earth to reverse its polarity. If that were to happen, H. knew, then civilization would be lost and land dwellers might even revert to barbarism once the earth regained its equilibrium. All scientific knowledge would likely vanish in less than one generation as the scientists would have none of their tools and zero ability to communicate with other scientists across the earth.
The computers on which they had chronicled great discoveries could not be serviced or even powered following such a catastrophe, H. understood. He decided the best way to safeguard the acquired knowledge of the past was to spend thousands and thousands of hours investing as much knowledge as he and his fellow scientists possessed into Bolden’s last acolyte -- my father -- Last.
H. Bolden himself was very old when his prediction came to pass, possibly four- or five-hundred years old. He had made some experimental changes to his own DNA, but stopped just short of transitioning into an Ocean Society member himself. Last suggested to his mentors as they tried to cram him full of knowledge that the logical solution for preserving all knowledge would be for them all to make the transition to amphibious beings. Habit is a hard task-master, and Lemuria’s entire academic body rejected such a mind-blowing change. Maybe they were vain, maybe they were fearful; they died just the same.
Fragments of earth’s society lived, though all computers were lost because of some massive electro-magnetic surge at the moment of the polar shift. Since electric power was centralized, Lemuria had a monumental grid with only one power generation site. The tremors from the global earthquake that followed completely buried that power plant, along with over 90% of Lemuria’s cities. The entire earth looked as if it had been pelted with meteors. Many of nature’s life forms were completely lost and nearly every large life form on earth died. I suppose the large elephants and the few remaining dinosaurs that were kept in special refuges were too large a target for all the flying debris. At the end, only the babies of such large mammals survived. The rest of those became extinct during the quakes that followed two hundred years or so later.
Teelee and Last were among the many in the Ocean Society who heard the groaning from the earth’s core, felt the wild magnetic pulses leading up to the cataclysm, and saved themselves by swimming into the open ocean --
away from every land mass, away from both the bottom and the top of the ocean -- protected by the soft cushioning water. Even so, it was quite a ride and one they are loath to remember; but they made it through one of the worst times in the story of mankind’s history.
After the catastrophe, Last did what he could to restore order and civilization in the old capital city of Utumalacuopa
Teelee, on the other hand, was NEVER interested in what the land people did. This all happened when she was young and lacked appreciation for the struggles of land folk. Today, she is ashamed for judging land dwellers so harshly. ‘They WERE stupid, and they were DEFINITELY lazy,’ she says, ‘but there was so much going on in their lives that they were overwhelmed by the sudden changes. They simply could not cope. That kind of overload frequently manifests as laziness and stupidity, and it took me many years to feel sympathy for their plight. Last did all he could to help. I am sorry to this day that I allowed the poor people to flounder in confusion without offering my help. I wish I had been more understanding.’
Last must have been at the very young age of 150 or 200 when the first tremors came. I may tell you later about Teelee’s and Last’s courtship. Underwater romance is very very different to open-air dalliance. The end result is a child. Teelee’s and Last’s child came about a hundred years after my father helped restore order to a decimated Lemurian society. In all those years, my mother had not set foot on any land mass larger than an atoll that would accommodate a few dozen ocean people. She was a loner who became interested in other people only after she became responsible for another person -- me.
My early life was so much fun. I swam with dolphins, learned the games played by sea turtles (they have a great sense of humor), bothered the whales, and identified all kinds of foods created in the sea. We cannot swallow underwater, but Teelee had to watch me like an eel to keep me from taking certain items to the surface and eating them. I tasted everything. (We can TASTE underwater.) Teelee says I was stung on more than one occasion by some unsuspecting creature whom I put into my mouth or tried to stick up my nose. Laughter is universal. Many are the times that Teelee rolled on the floor of the ocean laughing with her backpack organ at my antics, and every time she laughed, dolphins would congregate (to see what was so funny, I guess.)
The Ocean Society has a government, of sorts. We are all alone much of the time, but there must be rules to protect us. For instance, while there is no specific stipulation saying that we cannot expose our existence to individual land people, there is a rule that we are not to ally with governments. Each rule -- or law, if you will -- only becomes validated if each and every member of our society agrees to it. In other words, each society member has the power of veto. All laws must be passed unanimously.
I did not stop growing at age 20 as my mother had. I reached a full 3-foot tall at that age, and Teelee was satisfied that I apparently got the taller genetic material from Last; but when I reached 4-feet at 23, 5-feet at 26, and 6-feet at 27 (I had a growth spurt that year), the entire society was scandalized. From one end of the earth’s oceans to the other came the call for a solemn meeting at our secret hall on our new year’s day, and my height was the subject of discussion.
I knew how the old-timers felt about height. While they could not banish me outright for being so tall, since the ocean was my birthright, many of them had concerns of discovery over my much-more-visible mass. It had been a long time since Lemurians celebrated us. Land people had become superstitious toward anybody who was different from the accepted norms. Most land dwellers thought we were imaginary, and we liked it that way. On the few occasions when one of us was captured, that one always ended up dying -- whether through neglect, ignorance, or meanness we did not know.
Beyond the fear of discovery, all of the society members were afraid that my having children would threaten the gene pool. They still remembered Lemuria’s overcrowding. What would happen if my offspring mated with theirs and filled the oceans with huge people like me? Ultimately they all wanted a law to forbid me from having children. We voted one by one on the proposed law. Teelee cried uncontrollably as she cast her vote: ‘Aye!’ Strangely, it did not bother me one bit to say ‘Aye!’ I understood the reasoning and agreed with it. Were I to have a child and she or he were to be as big as I, the whole fabric of our society would undergo an unnecessary change. Why take the risk?
It appeared to me, following that vote, that Teelee became unhinged. She moped about for days, then disappeared entirely for over a month. When she finally re-appeared, she was her old playful self and even slightly manic.
I believe my voting against my own freedom to give birth was one of the motivating factors which caused my scientist/ artist mother to want to do something special for me and with me. She would never be a grandmother, and I would never know the joy of having my own child; so she reasoned that it would do me good to study land people. I have no idea how she came to that conclusion from that set of data. She has one of those minds that makes quantum leaps which others cannot possibly follow. I looked at my father as Teelee was making the case for taking me topside to study land people and gave him that look that said,
‘Where did THAT come from?’ and he gave me the look that said, ‘Neither do I understand. Just go with it.’ In the end, I had no choice but to go along with her.
We swam for the better part of a week, Teelee and I, taking nourishment from the sea as we swam, but never sleeping and never stopping. It was obvious that Teelee was proud of herself over something, as she constantly sailed out of the water into the air like a seal on the hunt. She laughed constantly, and kept muttering the word ‘surprise.’ I thought she was deranged for sure when we reached our destination in the dark of the night. I found myself wishing that Last had come with us, but he had had better sense.
There was a fountain in a public park in the rebuilt city of Utumalacuopa
Teelee said, ‘Lots of ducks around during the day. People feed them. Each fountain site is built and maintained by any individual or group who wants to beautify this park. I built this fountain myself. What do you think? It took many nights for me to carry out the construction in secret so none of the land people would see this tiny woman at work.’
I tried my best to look impressed, but my mother is an incredible artist and this was just a concrete fountain with an odd-shaped empty bench in its center. The water shot from orifices all around the circular pool toward the center, but there was no depth to the water and the entire structure was extremely plain.
She could not possibly have missed the look of disappointment written across my face. ‘I’m kidding,’ Teelee said. ‘Watch this!’ She reached under the coping on the inside of the fountain wall and the bottom of the pool pivoted. Let me draw a word picture for you. If you open a tin can with a can opener, then glue a toothpick across the center of the lid and lay it back across the can, you can pivot that lid where it will have one side up -- pivot again and the other side is up. This was no tin can.
Like I said, Teelee is a scientist AND an artist. Somehow she had engineered a false bottom made of heavy stone that pivoted with ease. A metal shaft ran through the circular stone bottom, allowing it to flip from one side to the other. On the bottom face of the stone were two statues sitting on a bench -- one a likeness of herself and the other a perfect likeness of me. The two statues were covered in scales to their necks. They had the appearance of looking interestedly at some imaginary something in the distance. Teelee had colored the statues such that they looked alive. Neither was smiling, but their necks were slightly craned, hands folded in their laps. The Teelee statue was sitting on a raised platform that brought her head to the same level as
Telasta’s statue and the Telasta statue had one arm on the shoulder of the Teelee statue. The fountain’s water landed perfectly just at the neckline of the figures.
‘What IS this?’ I asked.
‘You like it?’ Teelee answered my question with a question.
‘It’s beautiful, but I do not understand why you hide these statues part of the time. Isn’t the purpose of art to display it?’
‘Aha!’ Teelee spouted. ‘Now you’re getting close. I told you that I wanted you to study land people. Can you strike a pose identical to your statue’s pose?’
‘Well, sure,’ I said. ‘That’s an EASY pose,’ I pronounced as I sat on a bench that faced the fountain and took the exact pose of my mannequin.
‘Yes,’ Teelee said breathlessly, ‘but how long can you HOLD that pose?’
‘Heck, I could hold this pose for hours,’ and as I said it, I knew what she was up to. ‘Oh, no you don’t. I am NOT going to sit in the hot sun for hours just to satisfy this fancy of yours.’
‘Oh, come on, Telasta. Give it a try. The fountain will keep you cool and if you get tired while there are no people here, we can just hit the button and our doubles will spring into place while we dive into the ocean. Nobody will know the difference, and we can observe these wonderful people and their children and learn about their culture from their conversations. You COULD dress up and live as one of them, I suppose, but I could not participate in that. Come on, Tilapia,’ she begged. I knew I could not deny her whatever she asked when she used that pet name.
‘Oh, alright then,’ I yielded. ‘When do you want to start this insane project?’
Teelee jumped up and down with glee, clapping her hands together like the infant she was. ‘Tomorrow morning before sunrise. You make me so happy. I bet you enjoy this even more than I do. It will give us something new and exciting to talk about and it’s something we can do together.’
We spent the night at our site and spent the entire next day sitting on the bench in our fountain, observing a life form with whom I had never had any dealings. It was much more fascinating than I had thought it would be, so we kept doing it every day for weeks. Each night we would wait till all the park employees left and the park closed before we jumped from our perch, hit the ‘tilt’ button that swung the statues into place, and go for a swim or raid one of the many orchards for our supper in this tropical paradise.
There were so many things we overheard -- so much that we learned -- but two events stand out from that whole adventure. First, someone left a newspaper one night with a front page article that asked whether any of its readers knew who had created Teelee’s fountain. The picture beside the article was obviously taken just after Teelee finished producing her fountain, but before we started our observations. The reason I know this is that the picture was taken during daylight hours and there was a woman in a mermaid swimsuit -- complete with Spandex tail -- standing with her hand on my statue and smiling for the camera. We were nearly always inside the fountain during the day. I think I would remember if a woman with a Spandex fish tail had leaned against me. Teelee laughed nervously, but was not particularly concerned. She said in what she thought was a convincing voice, ‘They’re just curious. There is no concerted effort to find out who the artist is. The article just says that they have never seen this level of realistic art before and they want the artist to come forward and receive his just accolades. HIS!! Humph!! This is a patriarchal society for certain. They don’t think women are as capable as men. Maybe I SHOULD go forward and get my ‘attagirl’, and I would, too, except for the fact that it would violate the rule about letting governments know about us. Oh, well… they’re just curious. Can’t say I blame them. That’s why WE’RE here. WE’RE curious,’ and then we both laughed and laughed.
Teelee was right. Nothing came of the article. We continued to enjoy days of observing people who could not live underwater. We kept up this practice for awhile, then grew tired of it and would skip days, and then the day came that we now call ‘The Tapestry Day.’
Most of the visitors to Teelee’s site were respectful. Sometimes there were groups that came in festive moods. It was often difficult to maintain my pose when somebody said something especially funny. I was stoic, however, and proud of the fact that nobody could break my resolve. Nobody, that is, until that day.
An attractive couple sat on the bench facing Teelee’s fountain. We, the living statues, listened as the couple’s children began to ask questions of their parents. The boy was about 4 or 5 and the girl maybe 10 or 11. Their ages were reflected in their questions. A 5-year-old asks, ‘Why is the grass green?’ while a 10-year-old wants to know when she can get her own hover craft. Weary with the barrage of questions, the parents brought out a picnic basket and laid out a wonderful tasty meal for the children. The smells were fairly new to me, as few families actually picnicked here, but it was not unpleasant -- just novel.
After the family finished eating, the children began to roam. The girl took some slices of bread and began breaking them apart to feed the ducks. Once the ducks at other sites saw what the girl was doing, literally dozens of ducks came flocking over to Teelee’s site.
I was amused when the parents started ooh’ing and aah’ing over all the ducks that the girl had attracted, and the boy began to feel left out. He started a high-pitched, ‘I want to play horsie, Daddy. I want to play horsie!’ The father obliged by swinging the little boy up onto his shoulders and running around the fountain. I could not move my eyes, but father and son passed directly in front of me often enough that I enjoyed and appreciated the bonding that was going on… and then, just as father and son stopped directly in front of me, facing me, the little boy’s eyes met mine --- and a duck flew directly between our eyes, making a little noise as it flew between us. There was silence for just a moment. Then the boy looked right in my eyes and as if talking directly to me, he said, ‘That duck FARTED.’
I’m sorry. Nothing I could have done in that moment would have kept me from screaming in laughter. I could not STOP laughing. Unfortunately, that was not the effect the little boy’s words and my laughter had on the audience at hand.
Screaming was certainly heard, but not in laughter. The father turned, little boy on his shoulders, and ran OVER his wife who was sitting on the bench. They all fell to the grass behind that bench while the daughter stood transfixed. That little girl jumped up and down, moving her little arms and open hands up and down in the air, screaming and screaming -- unable to move from where she stood. The father jumped up from the grass, grabbed his son by one arm, and ran toward the park’s exit, looking at me over his shoulder-- abject terror written on his face -- while his wife ran to the screaming daughter, yanked her by one arm, and followed her husband. Teelee was irritated at first, but within seconds she began laughing, too.
‘Did you see the look on that man’s face?’ As soon as our laughter would subside just a bit, Teelee would come up with another zinger, like ‘That woman made a noise that sounded EXACTLY like the duck, and I don’t mean quack!’ and we’d laugh again.
Of course that was the end of the fountain experience. We returned to the scene of the crime a few times and found newspapers that had various renditions of the story. Investigators found the tilt switch on the fountain base. They finally passed the whole affair off as some type of complex crank or hoax.” Telasta’s body language told me that this was the end of the story. I took a sip of my coffee and let my mind re-inhabit those last few lines.
I suppose I was as present at that fountain as the human family had been. In my mind’s eye, I could SEE the little boy delivering his line about the duck. I started laughing at that line. As the scene incubated in my head, the full realization of the shock to that family hit me, and it became even funnier. It had the same comedic value as hiding behind a door, then jumping out and saying ‘Boo!’ I do not know why it is funny to hear my victim scream and jump in the air. It just is. The ’Tapestry Tale’ was as funny these thousands of years later as it was to Teelee and Telasta when it happened.
I laughed and laughed and so did Telasta and Papa, and it stitched me into the fabric of history like nothing ever had before this. That event was so ancient that it would have been lost forever without hearing it from one who had been there.
Arnold Rio . He picked me up and asked me to ride to his office with him -- the local office, not the one in Rio . He cancelled all his meetings for the rest of the day and closed his office door so he could spend some time with me. That’s what I thought at first. Then he started plying me with question after question. I’m sorry that I did not pick up on what he was doing. I was just so happy he was giving me so much attention. He was smiling and I thought he was enjoying my company. He had his secretary bring me a coke. Later on, one of his staff brought lunch to us. Father acted like he had all the time in the world. He listened to everything I told him about our visit and was so relaxed, sitting behind his desk, kicked back with his feet on his desk and his hands behind his head. He smiled every time I said something about you. I thought he was just proud for me to have such a good friend as you. In fact, most of his questions were about YOU at first. When he was satisfied that I had told him the whole story, he started asking questions, going back to different parts of my story and wanting me to elaborate.
Arnold
Arnold
CHAPTER 5
I found myself yearning to be allowed to meet George Washington or Cleopatra. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was viewing iconic figures in history as real people with thought processes and emotions maybe not exactly like mine, but identifiably similar to my own. Telasta had just become the greatest teacher I had ever had. She had a memory like a steel trap and a passion for telling stories from her vast wealth of experience. Looking back today, I wish I had chronicled those stories from the beginning. At the same time, we were all a little afraid to put anything in writing that might be used against Telasta later.
We went to bed that night thinking the world was the most wonderful place to live, happy to be a family, content with the secrets we shared. I do not know whether Telasta slept more than her short naps or if she slept in a bed or in the ocean. Without thinking of anything specific, I was grateful that she chose to include me in her life.
I was sleeping soundly till 8:30 or so in the morning -- very late for me, but we had stayed up pretty late the night before -- when I heard an insistent knocking at the door. Papa did not answer the knocking, and whoever was at the door was not giving up, so I got out of bed and put on a pair of jeans, opening the door with no shirt on.
I told him everything -- from the way the door opened automatically to those wells in the back yard and what Telasta served us for refreshments. He acted like he was just casually interested, but Wil, I’m so sorry it never occurred to me that this was an interrogation. That’s what it was, alright enough. He was interrogating his OWN SON! The bastard! He used me. We talked for probably three hours. I did most of the talking, I’ll admit; but Wil, he never is interested in anything I try to tell him and yesterday he was all ears. I was flattered by his giving me his undivided attention and by the fact that he WANTED to be around me. I am SUCH an idiot!! Now I know that he probably set me up when he suggested I get to know the new American kid just after you got here.”
“Wait!” I said with surprise. “Your FATHER is the reason you wanted to be my friend? I thought you liked the fact that I spoke English and THAT’S why you wanted to be friends.”
“Yeah, I did; but it was my father who planted the seed. Just as you say, he said it might be nice for me to have somebody to talk to who spoke English; but he also said you might be needing a friend who speaks English, too. I hope you believe me when I say I really liked you. I was not just acting like your friend to please my father.”
‘Your father cannot see you right now, Arnold. He is in a very important meeting. Is there anything I can do for you?’ she asked as she closed the door behind her. By that time I had forgotten what it was I wanted to ask my father, anyway. ‘Uh, no. That’s alright. I’ll see my father tonight,’ I said. ‘You don’t even need to tell him I came back.’ I turned around and went out of the building, proud that my father commanded so much attention and respect. Our second car was parked at the embassy, so I got in it and drove home. I thought everything was wonderful.
Come on, Wil,” Arnold
“Hold on just a dang minute,” I said. “Let me put on a shirt and get Amado. We need to let him in on all this. He will know what to do.” I ran to my bedroom and grabbed a shirt off a hanger in my closet. Then I ran through the house, hollering, “Amado! Amado!”, and got no response. I ran to every room in the main house calling for my grandfather, then went to the downstairs and the north wing, into every bathroom and closet -- no luck. Papa was nowhere to be found. I ran out back and called toward the ocean, thinking he might be tending his garden or fishing in the ocean, but my grandfather was not anywhere I looked.
“Strange,” I thought, “Amado never leaves home without letting me know where he’s going and what time he will come back.”
I went back upstairs to the main floor living room where I had left Arnold
It sounded like he was saying that his father had some men who came to their house late last night, speaking Portuguese. Arnold Arnold
We both thought that Telasta would open the door when her sensor let her know she had guests. Arnold Mississippi
“Yes, I did, Arnold
“So you already knew what she was! You could have trusted me, Wil, and maybe all this wouldn’t have happened.”
I kept quiet, but my lips got tight with the realization that Arnold Arnold
We ran up the path to the point where the path to the back made a junction, then ran down that trail to the back of Telasta’s house. We called her name repeatedly and got no response. We ran back to the front of the house, not knowing what to do or where to go, and it’s a good thing we did. How we had missed it before is beyond me, but there was a folded piece of paper on the ground directly in front of Telasta’s front door. I reached down and opened it. The blood drain from my face at what it said. I translated the Portuguese to Arnold
“Ms. Telasta,” it began, “We know who you are and WHAT you are. We have tried our best to capture you, but without success. Your friend was much easier for my men to capture. If you ever want to see Joaquin Dupepe alive again, come alone to the American embassy tonight at midnight. We will not hurt you, but we will harm Mr. Dupepe if you do not come.” It was not signed, but Arnold
“That’s my father’s handwriting,” he volunteered. “My father KIDNAPPED your grandfather. Save that note, Wil. I guarantee you it will send my father to jail some day, if there’s any justice in this world.” Obligingly, I stuck the note down into my trouser pocket.
“Look, Arnold Arnold Arnold
I had a hunch. After my grandfather had introduced me to Telasta, but before I had gone to her home, I noticed Papa would climb down the steep steps cut into the cliff facing at our house almost every day before I left for school. Most of the time I was still asleep, I guess, when he made this journey; but I caught him on this daily jaunt often enough that I knew it was his habit. Until now, I had given little thought to that trip, but it all made sense now that I knew his and Telasta’s relationship and her relationship to the sea. He was meeting the love of his life every day or maybe another member of the Ocean Society was delivering a message from her. If my theory was correct, then she must already know that something had gone awry.
She probably came to the house when he didn’t show up at their meeting place, and I was certain she had a key to the house so it was even more likely that she came inside and found that Papa was missing and I was still asleep. “She already knows there is trouble,” I thought out loud. “She is somewhere in her house, planning a way to help my grandfather.”
I was walking up the front path as I did my thinking, then I turned onto the back path and soon found myself on Telasta’s back patio. I kept trying to figure out a way to get into Telasta’s house. Papa probably had a key to her house, but I didn’t want to waste any time by going back home and trying to figure out where he might hide her key. Besides that, all her doors were pocket doors and I could not even see a key hole to use. As I stood at her back door, looking toward the ocean, the chimneys of her patio ‘wells’ caught my attention.
At least I now knew that these wells in her back yard were an escape route, so I figured they were quick exits. That meant she would just jump into one of the wells and land in the ocean. I took off my shoes and socks and set them on a stone bench. It was risky, I knew, but desperation causes temporary insanity that borders on genius. There is an age at which children believe they know what’s what. When it turns out that they are correct, it is only a coincidence. This was one of those events.
Without allowing myself to think, I hopped up onto the middle well’s chimney, jumped into the air above the center of the well, and let myself fall. The well’s walls were so extremely smooth and straight that it looked like the inside of a water pipe, only about 4-feet in diameter. I prayed that I would land in water and not on a jagged rock.
I hit the water so hard that it stung the bottoms of my feet, and I shot deeply into the water like an arrow. This was a lot further fall than it had looked from up above. I doubt I would have jumped had I known how far away the water was. It’s a miracle I wasn’t killed. I thought later about people back in the states who committed suicide by jumping from a bridge -- a bridge that might not have been as high as I had just fallen.
As soon as I came back to the surface, I called through chattering teeth (the water was ice cold), “Telasta! Telasta! Where are you?” Looking back toward the cliff facing, I noticed that I was in a sort of cave and there on the bank, about 20-feet away, stood Telasta. “Have you lost your mind, Wil? That big of a drop would kill most land people, or at least knock them unconscious. What are you doing here?”
“They’re looking for you, Telasta, and they HAVE Papa.”
“Oh, no! Yes, I knew somebody was after me when I got home last night. After leaving you, I came back to my house under the water. There is a tunnel that leads from below your house to the ocean near mine. When I broke surface at my normal exit, I smelled quite a few different types of cologne and picked up the pheromones of at least 8 or 9 different men. Now that I think about it, I smelled somebody near your house, but I chalked that up as the odor of somebody who had passed your house on the way to Rio . My kind may not be able to smell underwater, but our olfactory sense is superior on land. It comes in handy when I’m looking for something to eat.
I decided to enter the house through the underground passages. When I got into the house proper I used the sensors around the house which told me I was probably under siege, so I went back through the hidden entrances and spent the night in my underground quarters. I had no idea that Joaquin would be a target. Why in the world would they take Joaquin? I knew something was going on when I went to our morning meeting site at daybreak this morning and Joaquin was not there, but I just supposed that he was running interference with these men for me. Nobody knows there’s a connection between us, so why would they go after him?”
“Oh, I forgot,” I said as I reached into my pocket and fished out the wet folded note. I’m surprised the paper did not tear as Telasta opened it and read. “This was on your front doorstep. The reason they know about you and Papa is Arnold Arnold
“My God, Wil. This is bad -- very bad. I will have to go to this meeting, or they will hurt my Joaquin, but if I DO go, then they are likely to hurt me and that will hurt Joaquin more than anything they could do to him. The other problem is this: we cannot trust these men. Even if I DO go to that meeting tonight, what guarantee do we have that they will let Joaquin go free? No! Somehow we must trick them into believing that they have us both when they really have neither of us. I do not have the slightest idea of how we could pull off such a trick.”
Telasta was thinking out loud, but this situation had clearly shorted her circuits. She was standing in the middle of the cave, pacing to and fro, while I leaned against the wall -- standing in a shaft of sunshine -- the only warm spot I could find. As she paced, I saw her feet and then looked down at my own bare feet. I had an idea. “Telasta, do you have a pair of shoes that you can wear while your feet are the size they are now?” I was hoping she had all kinds of camouflage clothing.
“Sure, Wil. They are not very fashionable, but I can get them over my feet. Why?”
“Go get your shoes. In fact, I will go with you. Those men are gone, is my guess. They know you will turn yourself in, so they won’t be worried about you. I need to get my shoes and socks from your patio, and then we should go to my house so I can change clothes and wait for Arnold
“You leave that to me, Wil. If you can get Joaquin free, I can get us out of this place. The CIA has no authority here, but they do have authority in the consulate. We may not be able to come back to Ubatuba for many years. We will continue to pay taxes on our homes and we WILL come back someday. I love this place, but I love our freedom more.”
We went upstairs, and I was amazed at the size of this underground facility we passed through on the way. We passed through what appeared to be an aircraft hangar, but there was no time for me to satisfy my curiosity. It was enough for now to know that there was a safe house where we could all go if and when Papa escaped. Telasta put on an elegant dress and a pair of clunky, ugly shoes while I went out back and put on my socks and shoes. I went back inside, with Telasta asking, “Do I have to wear these right now? You know I have some cream that will shrink my feet in an hour or so.”
“Oh! Well then, bring the cream and a pair of your regular shoes.” I said. “Let’s go to my house and I will explain my plan to you. There might be some improvements you will think of before Arnold
Telasta put on some comfortable footwear, carrying her consulate shoes in her hand. We walked briskly toward my house. I noticed that Telasta was sniffing the air like a Russian Wolf hound. By her posture I was pretty sure that we were not being stalked.
When we got to the house, I began to explain how we might get to Papa and how Telasta might get him free. My basic idea was that we should wait for Arnold
I was naïve, of course, but had they done everything the way I had planned it, Telasta and Papa would be alone and Telasta could slip off her shoes and use her feet to untie Amado. Her captors would never think of binding her feet. They had no way of knowing her feet were like hands. Even if they tied her feet together, she could still slip off her shoes and untie Amado with those dexterous feet of hers.
Telasta DID have additions to my plan. She ran back home to fetch a few things that might be needed like a nylon rope, for one thing. I was a lot less nervous about this whole dangerous plan once Telasta came back and added her thinking to my thoughts. She laughed at my plan. “Baby boy, you have jogged me out of my paralysis. Most of your plan is far too speculative to work, but you gave me the one idea I needed to hear. Your one break-through was the idea of going immediately, while it is still light outside. If Arnold Arnold
Last night I sent a relay message underwater to my father when I thought I was under siege. My thinking on this subject is likely to be more subjective than is healthy. If my father is not too far away, or if he uses one of his faster means of transportation, we will have the benefit of his superior thinking before we must leave to go to the embassy. He has, in times past, sent items to Joaquin’s house via one of his mini-jets. There is a small port at both my house and down by the dock at this house. I checked the dock at my house and there was nothing there. Let me go down and check this dock, and I’ll be right back.”
As she left, I had a strong feeling of relief -- not only that her father might help, but that she had thought about my idea and would NOT be using it. I already knew it was a flawed idea. Besides, I really did not want the responsibility of making a plan -- especially if it was doomed to fail. Why I was so arrogant as to even MAKE suggestions to a woman with Telasta’s vast experience is still a mystery to me, and the memory of it causes me to blush to this day.
Telasta had a way of allowing me to express my juvenile ideas and of taking some of my thoughts, discarding others, and refining others. She has done that for most of my life. Her corrections do not create self-loathing as those which come from most adults. I was always encouraged to continue thinking and to continue expressing those thoughts.
In my former life back in the states I had clammed up, for the most part. A kid could not say anything in those days without being slapped down verbally. Telasta was always quick to let me know the places where I was RIGHT! In actual fact, she used very little of my plan; but she let me know that she would not have thought of that important part of the plan WITHOUT me. In addition to that, she taught me that there was no shame in asking for help outside one’s self.
I learned how vital teamwork can be. I had part of the plan, Arnold
There was no knock, no doorbell -- nothing of the sort -- when Arnold
out of breath, and though he was clearly fragmented and overwrought, he closed the door behind himself. “I found your father… I mean your grandfather. They have him on the third floor of the compound. There are at least 6 guys guarding him and probably 4 or 5 more are with my father. I tried to get in to see my father, but he came out into his waiting room instead of letting me into his office. Since I could not hide the fact that I was upset, and I couldn’t come up with a reason for wanting to see him, I just told him that I thought somebody had kidnapped your grandfather. He covered his involvement by putting his hand on my shoulder, like he was worried about ME, and said in his most concerned voice, ‘I know. We are working on that. Go back home now, son. You need to stay out of all this.’
One of his hatchet men came to the door from inside his office and asked if he should make that call to the U.S.
I saw Telasta coming from the steps in the cliff facing at the back of our house as Arnold Arnold Arnold first, “Hello, Arnold
Life is full of coinciding information and events -- what Telasta calls ‘serendipity.‘ No sooner had Telasta got the words out of her mouth than I saw a white pencil in the air, drawing a fine white line across the sky. “What’s that?” I pointed and Telasta turned to look through the windows. “That’s Last, Wil. Everything will be alright now.” As the milk-white pencil got larger and larger, I saw that it was some type missile; but then that missile sprouted wings and it was a fast-moving airplane, about the size of a Volkswagen station wagon. It slowed down, and at the last minute it shot helicopter blades from its body -- blades above it and a rotor on back of it -- and was set gently down on the lawn between the house and the cliff.
The single door to the helicopter sprang open as the blades came to a rapid dead stop, and a small monkey-looking creature shot from the door as if ejected by a spring. This had to be Last, but boy! was he small! He was not a midget. He looked like a growing boy. Everything was in perfect proportion. He looked slightly older than Telasta, but more like an older brother than a father. I did not know whether to bow or genuflect or just what the protocol was for greeting such a dignitary. Telasta broke into a laugh as she ran through the back door to embrace her beloved father. Last jumped just before he reached her and bounded up into her arms. The love between the two was palpable. Telasta cradled Last’s buttocks on her forearm, much as a mother would carry a 5-year-old child, and walked into the house.
“Put me down. I’m not a child,” Last laughed. “This must be Wil,” he said as he extended his hand. I guess that answered THAT question. Protocol demanded a handshake. He was only 3-feet tall, but Last had a grip like an iron worker. “And this, then, is your friend Arnold.”
“Yes, sir. This is Arnold
“Okay, Arnold
“Yes, sir. He’s on the third floor of the embassy in one of the storage rooms. There is an armed guard standing sentinel in front of the door. I saw 5 other men in the room behind that door. I used to play on the roof of that building when I was a child. There is a window off the roof that feeds into that storage room. The window lock is broken, but it has security bars. Those bars are old and loose. You can squeeze through them, but the ceiling is high. It’s 20 or 30 feet from the window to the floor. I was able to lean into the room far enough to see where Mr. Joaquin is tied to a chair. He does not appear to be hurt, but you can tell that he’s really agitated. The five men who are supposed to be guarding him are standing around drinking coffee. There is only one door into that room, unless you use a rope and go through that window.
“Good man, Arnold. This is going to go swimmingly. Telasta, I brought everything you will need. I am not going with you. You can handle this by yourself, but you must take Arnold
If Arnold
My goodness, but this was a tight fitting seat. Mr., uh, Grandpa… Last flipped some switches in front of him and a seatbelt swung over my shoulders and tightened around me. I noted as I looked through the plane window that the helicopter blades and rotor had retracted and the butt of the plane dropped so that we sat at a pretty severe angle. “Hold on,” Last said. I heard the sound of rushing air, and we were airborne. We turned neatly in the air above the ocean and before I knew what was happening we were turning toward the cliff face at Telasta’s house, dipping down just above the ocean waves and flying neatly into the underground hangar, where we were caught by some kind of rubber cord stretched across our path that brought us to an almost instant stop.
Last did not speak at first. He got out of our conveyance and got busy playing with some lanyards and a 4-wheel tug which he pulled seemingly from the wall. I guess there were storage bins all around the perimeter of this huge room -- hangar. I had no idea what fueled the tug. It made no noise as he drove it in front of the plane and attached the lanyard (or cord) to a big hook that protruded from the front of the plane. The other end of the cord was attached to a hook on the front of the tug. Last leapt neatly into the seat of the 4-wheel tug and pulled the plane to the far end of the hangar. He got off the tug, disconnected the rope from the tug, drove the tug back to its storage bin and put it away, came back to the loose end of the cord which he attached to a hook on the wall, and hit a recessed button on that wall. Everything was so well hidden that you would have had to know exactly where to hit on that wall. It was a button, all right enough, but it was the same color as the stone wall and there was barely a seam around it to indicate what it was. Last finally spoke for the first time since we had arrived.
“Step back and watch this.” That button had activated some type motor on the other side of the wall which pulled on the rope that was attached to the plane and reeled it in. Parts of the wall fell away as the plane made contact. The whole thing was engineered to accommodate this plane and nothing else. It was like a hand going into a glove. The surprise came when the wings began to hit the wall. They did not go IN to the wall in their OUT position. No, they folded. “I wish you’d look at that,” I thought to myself.
Now I understood. The helicopter had turned into a plane behind our house and now the plane was turning into a missile in the hangar. I got it. Just as the wall closed behind the last of this marvelous vehicle, I got it. I could almost see the missile being pulled into an upright position behind that wall, ready to be boarded in this secret silo. Somewhere in Telasta’s complex house was an entrance that allowed her or her family to quickly board a getaway missile.
It is one of my long-standing jokes that my peripheral vision is so good I can see my ears. Even while I was watching the wall close shut and thinking on this high-tech system for hiding a missile silo inside what appeared to be a normal house, I was looking at Last with my peripheral vision, aware that he was studying me intently. I could see that he had a broad smile on his face. There was no guile in this man. Whatever he was thinking, he put it right out there on his face for all to know. It was almost impossible not to smile in response.
“So you like what you see?” I asked without turning my head, but I DID turn my head with his (still-smiling) response.
“Yeah,” with a slight upturn of inflection at the end, like a question. “You know Telasta has already told me all about you. People in the Ocean Society have no secrets from one another. We have some extremely advanced forms of communication -- better than your telephones, but our primitive backpack organs serve us pretty well. We are not an overpopulated society, but there are enough of us worldwide that if one of us wants to talk to another who is all the way around the earth, we send a message to that person by relay. The nearest ocean dweller remembers the whole message, even copying the inflections of the sender, and relays that message to the next nearest person and so on till it reaches the target recipient. It is not just I who knows you. Virtually every Ocean Society member knows OF you, and there has been enough recent conversation ABOUT you that we all consider you as an adjunct member of our clan. Maybe I should call you an ‘ancillary’ member.”
I liked the sound of Last’s rich baritone voice. I had no idea what ‘ancillary’ meant, but instead of letting him know how ignorant I was I decided to remember the word and look it up in the dictionary later on. It really didn’t matter to me what ANYTHING meant. I just liked being around this man. He had grown so large in my imagination since first hearing his name that he was now some kind of king or potentate in my mind. He had not come to our rescue riding a white stallion, but the white missile seemed a modern-day equivalent.
“How far away were you when Telasta’s message reached you?” I tried to make some kind of conversation without coming across as the dope I felt like.
“Not very far in nautical miles. Actually, it took me longer to swim to my facet-aire than it would have taken me to swim here directly. Without a clear idea of what was going on, it felt safer to bring the facet-aire in case it was needed.” When Last spoke, you felt like you were talking to a dear friend. I mean, the comfort level generated by the sound of his voice was awesome. I could have curled up on the floor and listened to his voice for a week, except I knew the only way to keep him talking was to talk myself.
“So are Telasta and Arnold going to kill all those CIA people, or what? Was that some kind of ray gun you gave her. You remind me of comic book heroes and stuff, so when I saw that gun I figured it was something that would knock the people unconscious or maybe even kill them.”
Last laughed, and it struck me that the two Ocean Society members I had met were both very quick to laugh. The only time I had seen Telasta in a serious mood was when I told her they had kidnapped Papa, and she even pulled out of that mood very quickly. “No, Wil. Nobody is going to die over this problem. The solution was very simple. I especially liked that you thought Telasta should surprise the embassy by showing up extremely early. That was good thinking. Let’s wait for Telasta to return with Joaquin and she can fill you in on the details.”
“You mean Telasta and ARNOLD and Joaquin, don’t you?”
“No. Arnold
The ‘ray gun’ as you call it (and you are not far off the mark) is a specialized projectile gun which shoots tiny hair-sized darts. Those darts are infused with chemical compounds I designed which quickly enter the blood stream, pass through the blood-brain barrier, and cause neuron activity that erases specific time periods from the memory. Depending on the chemical design, I can erase anywhere from 3 days to 2 years of memory. This dose of chemicals will erase 3 days from all the people involved, including Arnold Washington
“I may have the answer to that, sir… Grandpa… Mr. Last.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Wil. Stop stammering over what to call me. When you feel like I have BECOME your grandfather, you may call me ‘Grandpa’ on occasion. Until then, call me ‘Last.’ That’s my name. If you ever call me ‘Mister’ again, I’ll hold you underwater until you grow a set of gills. We in the Ocean Society are very akin to Quakers in that regard. It is my understanding that they, like we, believe honorifics create walls between people. Respect is not found in words or titles -- respect comes from the heart and attitude, with or without the disguise of titles. Now, what’s your answer about Washington
I laughed nervously. “Okay, LAST! Arnold Washington
“Ah, that’s very good then. IF that’s the case, we will not have to worry about the escalation of events that have been building for some time now. Enough on that! Telasta deserves to get to tell you SOME of this story. In case you don’t already know it, my family LOVES telling stories. By the way, Wil, let me go back to your question about whether Telasta is going to KILL anybody. Our kind NEVER sees the need to punish someone. Correct, yes; Punish, no. Joaquin endeared himself to all of us when he first freed Telasta. Has she told you that story yet?”
“Yes. Last night. I loved that story.”
“You ain’t heard nothing yet, son. Joaquin had the ability and the incentive to kill those men. After all, they had raped and abused a beautiful young woman and they were trying to sell her. His anger was stratospheric. Believe me, he has told me man to man what he was feeling that day, and those feelings were extreme -- even murderous; yet Joaquin has a basically tranquil spirit. He weighs things to the best of his ability, and when people or situations are out of the realm of his experience, he withholds judgment until understanding comes. He told me that he might never understand the way those men were thinking, but he believes -- as do I -- that the ACT of those men was evil. Still, the men themselves might reach a place sometime in their future where they will repent and become better persons.
We try to always value life. Don’t get me wrong. It might be perfectly alright for you to kill something and eat its body for food. None of us in the Ocean Society is evangelical enough to preach to you or others that your way is wrong. It’s wrong for US, but your path is YOUR path and we don’t have the right to try to influence that path. If I am to become your friend, your family, your grandfather perhaps; then you need to know about my path, even if you never emulate it.
All of the life forms on earth were engineered. Some of them are pesky, like house flies and roaches and mosquitoes. We don’t LIKE them, but we don’t KILL them. We are encouraged in seeing that many of our land brethren are now coming up with repellants that keep pests away without using death as a deterrent. So NO, you never need to consider that we would correct a person by killing him or her. Correction, by definition, means a continuance of course -- altered course, but ongoing. Did that sound too much like a sermon or dissertation?
EVERYTHING is funny to me, yet I find myself giving speeches all the time when I’m with people. I think I must be spending too much time alone.” Last smiled at me, put an arm around my waist, and gave me a brief hug. “I LIKE you. I really do,” he said. “Come on. Let’s run topside. Telasta and Joaquin should be coming in after awhile, and I’d like to cook up something to celebrate. You like cookies?”
“As IF, Grandpa! EVERY American boy likes cookies and milk.”
“How ‘bout coffee? Telasta usually does not have milk, except that canned stuff she serves with coffee.”
We were running as we talked -- up the circular stone stairs that led to the secret entrance in the living room. I was having a difficult time keeping up with Shortie. Man, this guy had more energy than a Boston Terrier. “Yeah, coffee’s fine,” I said -- almost out of breath, just as we reached the landing behind the hidden opening in the wall panel. Last moved a sliding ‘peek-through’ stone at his eye level on the back side of the living room wall. I bent down so I could see, also. He had a perfect view of the entire room.
“Nobody is home!” he laughed. “If Telasta has not already told you, we have better olfactory senses than a bloodhound. I wasn’t just LOOKING through this portal, I was SMELLING. My sense of smell tells me that the last time anybody was in this house was this morning and it was only you and Telasta at that time.” He slapped a white phosphorescent button on the wall and the whole wall panel pivoted, giving us access. “Telasta didn’t want that button to be hidden, in case she ever needs to find it in the dark,” Last said.
We stepped into the house proper and Last closed the panel behind us, turning toward the kitchen with a light-hearted step. He pulled one of those rolling step-stools from the corner and pushed it into the pantry, hopped up on it, then hopped onto the counter so he could reach the shelf where the flour was kept. He grabbed a couple of bowls while he was in there, and kept gathering spices and stuff so that when he came out he looked like a pack mule. He had sugar and flour and shortening, canned milk, something white in a jar, a bag of nuts, something that looked like fig preserves, a rolling pin, and a bag of cookie cutters. “You are going to love these. I call ‘em ‘maquitri cookies’. Bet you never heard of those before.”
“I don’t know if I can eat very much of it, though, Last. Just a little maquitri goes a long way, doesn’t it?”
“Well, you’re some type smart ass, aren’t you, Mr. Wil? Where did you hear of maquitri?”
“Telasta fed some of that to Papa right after they met. Am I going to have to hold you under water till you grow gills, or are you going to quit calling me ‘mister?’ ”
“Too late,” he laughed as he pulled his ear forward and turned his head to expose his gills. “Just playing with you,
my lad. Yes, I remember Telasta’s telling me about their maquitri meal. I just didn’t think she would have included that when she told YOU the story. She tells a good tale, my daughter does, don’t you think?”
“She’s a wonderful person. I just hate that Papa’s going to die and leave her by herself one day. I mean, it may be a long time by OUR standards, but she’s going to be lonesome for a long time after he’s gone.”
“Who told you that, Wil? You talk like an old man yourself. Joaquin has no plans to die for a very, very long time. Why should he, with such a wonderful father-in-law as I? You don’t need to worry about these things. We have already taken care of that. I changed his genetic make-up already. The change may not be complete yet, as it takes quite awhile for the entire triple-helix to manifest. He still has white hair (which will probably turn dark again soon). You probably did not notice there’s not a line on his face, did you? I have not had time to tell you that this was one of the things which concerned me about Joaquin’s capture. If they had done a blood test on him, they probably would have labeled him an alien and put him in Area 51.”
“What’s ‘Area 51?’”
“Never mind. Let’s just say, they would not have thought he was human. He is, of course, though we have been hoping he would choose to become amphibious. I don’t know WHY land people are so resistant to that idea. You
ALL seem to be afraid of becoming amphibious. Oh, well… There’s beauty in every species. I hate to admit that my kind are more like fungus and yours is more like a daffodil. We go on for a very long time, while your kind blooms with exquisite beauty, then withers and dies.”
“But Last, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. You are beautiful to me. In fact, you are MUCH more beautiful than most of the land people I’ve seen. You are as beautiful as Hollywood actors, without the look of perpetual surprise they adopt after plastic surgery.”
He laughed out loud, as he stirred his ingredients. “Turn on that oven, would you? Put it on ‘bake’ at 350-degrees, please.” I did as I was told, and watched this small person with his constant concentration, great grace, and jaunty joy. I wondered if I could be like him when I grew up.
Last and I continued in light conversation while the cookies baked. We did not talk about anything of any importance. I think we were both trying to fill the nervous emptiness, both of us on an edge of anxiety over the situation at the embassy. When the bell sounded, we both jumped and ran to the door. It was the oven bell. The cookies were done.
We walked dejectedly back to the kitchen and opened the oven door. “Let’s wait for Telasta and Joaquin to get here before we start eating, what do you say, lad?” Last said as he grabbed the cookie sheet from the oven with an oven mitt on his hand.
“That shouldn’t be a long wait,” came Papa’s voice from the living room doorway. He and Telasta stood there smiling, hand in hand and exchanging adoring looks. “I knew my father-in-law was here when I smelled the maquitri cookies. What a treat! Freedom AND cookies on the same day!”
Last and I rushed to embrace the two, laughing and crying at the same time from the release of tension. Papa and Telasta were just laughing. I guess they had no tears to spare, having been involved when the rescue took place. It’s hard to muster a set of tears when no imagination is involved.
“How did it go, daughter?” Last asked. “Wait a minute! Let me put out a plate of cookies and a carafe of coffee. I want to savor the story with refreshments. Nobody likes a movie without popcorn. I want my stories served with coffee and cookies. Wil almost pried the whole story from me, but I made him wait so that you could have the benefit of telling what happened, Telasta.”
After Last arranged the cookies and I poured the coffee into the thermos, we all walked into the living room and sat down, giving Papa and Telasta our full attention. “Let Joaquin tell the story from his perspective. I’m interested in knowing how things unfolded from INSIDE,” Telasta said, as she cut her twinkling eyes toward Papa.
“Me? Not much to tell from the inside. Those guys who were in the room with me kept getting called outside by the guard, one by one, and they never came back in. Finally, I was in there by myself. Next thing I know, Telasta walks through the door, walks over to my chair and unties my hands, plants a big kiss on my lips and says, ‘C’mon, big guy. I have been waiting for you to come home. I should have known you were up here playing with the boys. You’ve had enough fun for now. Back to the salt mines with you.’ I knew she would break me out of there, but I had no idea how she would accomplish it -- should’ve known the hand of Last would be involved.
Then Arnold came through the door, whispering loudly, ‘Come ON!’ so we left my little room and went with Arnold
Once she had dispatched every single man, including Dave Palazzo, she said, ‘I’m sorry, Arnold, but you do not need to carry the burden of this memory and I do not need to worry about what you might accidentally reveal later on,’ and she shot Arnold.
She gathered all the men from upstairs into the room with the secretary and the downstairs men and told them all a story: ‘Telasta Ferragamo fell into the fountain in the square today and almost drowned. Only the fast thinking of Dave Palazzo’s men saved her life. The very elderly Mrs. Ferragamo was resuscitated while her great-granddaughter and namesake, Telasta Ferragamo the younger, looked on nervously and gratefully. Three days from now the story will appear in the Rio newspaper, announcing the elderly lady’s death due to complications from the near-drowning. The mayor will present the keys to the city to you wonderful men for showing such valor toward this poverty-striken old lady. You will accept the honor with humility. You will all give praise to Pambo, as you all agree that it was he who deserves the majority of credit.’
When Telasta said the last line, one of the men -- I suppose it was Pambo -- got a look of pride mixed with humility while the other men looked toward him admiringly. These dupes took the bait -- hook, line, and sinker. Even Arnold Arnold Arnold
She hooked Arnold
Last raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat nervously. “Wil, I think that’s OUR cue to take our leave. Joaquin, I’m guessing it might be okay with you if I steal my new grandson for a few days and give you guys some private space. Is that okay with you, Wil?”
“Sure!” I said excitedly. “Can I, Pop? Please!”
“Oh, alright. Don’t stay gone too long. School starts in a couple of months, Last. I’m sure you’ll give him a better education than these land folks, but we have to have documentation that Wil is ready for the world, you know. Take good care of him, Last, and take the cookies. Wil may need the energy.” Papa stood as he talked. He and Telasta went toward one end of the room while Last showed me the secret entrance to the missile silo.
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