Sea Wife - Amity Gaige Page 0,74

it’s the most alive city I’ve ever seen. The richest person lives next to the shoeshine man, who sleeps in his wheelbarrow w/ his feet sticking out. There’s this outdoor market called the Bazurto. Big as Milbury but made of stalls. Miles & miles of aisles you can’t see the end of. Named after what’s sold there. You can buy anything on earth. A whole aisle for women’s shoes. An aisle for live crabs. Vendors standing behind piles of fruit so large you only see their heads. Fruits I’d never heard of. Soursop. Slimy cherimoya. Green plantains. Mountains of watermelons. Stacks of dried fish. Hammocks. Jugs. Pig heads. Wholesale perfume supplies. Anything you want to buy on the off-chance you didn’t already lose your wallet in the jostling crowd at the corner of Fish & Pork.

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I couldn’t go to my closet immediately after the police left. There was Georgie to get at daycare and soiled clothes and dinner and then Alison rang the doorbell with Sybil. My mother and I weaved around each other with lunch boxes and baskets of laundry. We’ve become like married people. Unable to have an extended conversation.

We were thrown into added distress when Georgie lost his stuffed seal with the big blue eyes, without which he cannot live. If he were just a normal boy, on a normal day, maybe the sound of his wailing would be tolerable. But because he is who he is, a boy who has just lost his daddy, the sound of Georgie’s crying hurts us too much. We look everywhere. Even Sybil. In cabinets, under beds. Finally, Sealie is discovered behind a toilet.

Then, the second before I lose it, without saying a word to anyone, I go into my closet and shut the door. I sit down, grab the logbook out of its shoebox, and I read on.

Michael, I say out loud. What. Have. You. Done.

The word “cappuccino” is the diminutive form of the Italian word for “hood,” named for the color of the Capuchin monks of 16th-century Italy. But few know that the drink itself originated not in Italy but Austria. The Austrians made their kapuziners out of coffee, sugar, cream & egg whites. Then along came a genius named Angelo Moriondo. What you see atop a modern cappuccino like those sold here at Carullos (by the way, best cappuccino in the world = Carullos) is not egg whites, of course, but the result of Moriondo’s magical espresso machine. Duels have been fought over

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Christ Almighty, I say.

I flip ahead.

We teach our kids that the Pilgrims came up w/ the idea, but here, as everywhere else in the New World, the arrival of the white man was an unmitigated disaster for the native population. Low estimates put death toll from European-imported diseases at 90% by end of 17th cent. Built on the ruins of that civilization, Nueva Granada was actually a coalition of modern-day Colombia, Panama, Venezuela & Ecuador, all ruled by Spain. Then Napoleon threw King Ferdinand in prison in 1808 and the colonists learned to live quite easily w/out a king.

Two main political parties, Conservative & Liberal, struggled for power for the next zillion years until they decided to rotate control of govt. every 4 years.

Not a bad idea! Must write my senator.

What’s amazing & haunting about Cartagena is the way they never bothered to destroy the past. They even kept the Spanish torture chambers. Which are worth a visit. Sybil & I are partial to the Inquisition Palace. Stone archways, sunlit courtyards w/ palms growing inside, flowering vines…Then you enter this dark chamber full of torture devices. Sybil likes the large upright sarcophagus for burying people alive, which you are allowed to stand in (while open). Doesn’t bother her at all, she’s fascinated. Smart kids like her are always trying to piece things together. They accept all information w/out sentimentally protecting their innocence for Mommy & Daddy’s sake. I tell her this is what happens when government takes the liberties of the people away. In the sunlit plaza you can still see the char from bonfires where heretics and witches and crypto-Jews were burned. Roughly 800 people were burned in this city alone, resulting in very bad PR for the Catholic Church because