RSClef Epilogue

Joaquin blinks and covers his face from the wind with his little arm. He´s bundled up in a sweater over a fluffy blue body suit. The stroller I can´t remember where we bought it as I push it into the brisk wind coming off the sea. As I push the stroller along the boardwalk I try to lean forward to get a better a look at him. Those sweet long dark lashes so like his mother´s ... Another gust of wind batters us and I look down again anxiously. He´s placidly staring out to sea. Isadora´s father and grandfather were in the merchant navy and my father was in the navy and grandpa was a first mate in the English merchant navy. Something to hold onto. The stroller slips from my grasp and another gust of wind slaps my face as the sun slides out from behind a gray bank of clouds and nearly blinds me. I can´t find the stroller and I panic flailing my arms about.

I´ve slipped sideways off the remains of a trunk that I had fallen asleep against. To my right the remains of lunch in a plastic bag and over there the chainsaw and axe. And the sun is now shining right in my eyes. A late November sun, slanting through the bare trees - although some oaks retain their leaves. When Father collapsed on the driveway late last winter and died a few hours later I had wanted to move us all to Renfrew but Isa had objected. Jans and his company ( Cruz Phospates ) had recompensed us well and it seemed the moment to return for a while at least. Isa, however, wanted her Argentine son to grow up Argentino. With Diego back and Ori finally out of high school and now working as a pastry chef at L´Hermitage ( Sargento Vanni had helped her get the job and his company - SeguriSur - provides ´logistics´ to Cruz Phosphates ) Isa felt supported and liberated and wanted to stay where she felt at home.

The crows cackle loudly like Harpies and I want to throw something at them. They´ve been here for years in this woodlot; not a forest not marked by any path - as in the words of Dante in Canto XIII - but rather sliced into sections by some well trod footpaths down which I stumble with logs on my shoulders for our furnace. Mother keeps up with her aerobics but she´s slowing down more and more and she failed her test twice and has decided to let me do all the driving. We spend early May to mid September in Mar del Plata with Joaquin and Isa Diego and Oriana. Then we return here to cut the wood and they spend the holidays with us and return in mid February when Mardel is reclaimed by it´s citizens from the summer tourists. I finish cutting the wood and doing our taxes in March and April and we head to the airport the first week in May and start the cycle again. So it means a little over five months of each year without Joaquin. I sit up and then stand up slowly and trod over to the chainsaw. More wood to cut before they come in under two weeks.

Most of the work on Nonepileptic seizures seems fairly recent. Physiologic nonepileptic seizures arise from metabolic disturbances disrupting brain function. Hypoglycemia can produce this and I am definitely hypoglycemic. There are also Physcogenic nonepileptic seizures and these are the result of physcological conflict and the stress it produces, or arise from emotional trauma. They start slowly and build and involve screams or cries in the middle or near the end. There may be unusual posturing but the recovery is much quicker than in the case of an epileptic seizure.

Dr. Salas seemed very confident that this was what afflicted me. What do you think? If you live and die by Luke and the Gospels then I was a possesed soul who fought the devil´s embrace and won - at the cost of a step towards suicide: tending to my mother as she spins out her last years in this faded wooden cottage rather than living the whole year in Mar del Plata. The forest of suicides in Canto XIII. But think of it as a post modern slip towards the safety and silence of death. Nothing as absolute as taking one´s life, as robbing your soul of its own flesh. If you believe in the certainty of medical science, however, then the answer is more straightforward and my choice to tend to my mother is making the best of conflicting demands on me. The crows flap into the air and head towards highway 132 cackling agressively. I think I spot a hawk circling above them in the pale low sky. For some reason it makes me think of Kabede and I wonder if that package I recieved from Tel Aviv was him. It was a gold krugerand ( how did it make it through customs? ) and a brief note - regards from Toby it said. I had fingered the metal disk and had felt my world slip slightly ... we all know Toby never really existed ... don´t we? I´m sure it was exactly what Kabede had wanted. But his elegant little revenge hadn´t lasted: when you´re past fifty you´ve either learned how to let things go or you hate the world. And I don´t hate the world. The crows disappear over the Lepine´s large california-style home and their cackles fade into the woods.

When they head down the escalator towards the baggage claim in Ottawa in two weeks, I´ll observe how much Joaquin has changed in the nearly three months since I´ve seen him. I´ll see who carries him - Isadora or Diego. It´s a long flight from Ezeiza to Pearson and then the shuttle to Ottawa, so he´ll be dead tired and cranky and I doubt he´ll feel like walking much. As I take him in my arms maybe he´ll be asleep, his hazel green eyes resting under those lovely lashes. His reddish chestnut hair tousled from the flight. His body warm and heavier every time. He´s going to be larger than me and I hope he´ll learn to love earlier than me. So I´ll leave you standing here in our woodlot, gentle and otherwise reader, as I walk towards the swamp and some dead poplars that need cutting. You can watch me as I head up over that little rise and disappear around the bend between the fir trees.

RSClef55

A dog barking. I open my eyes. Strange curtains and two other beds ... and a needle in my arm. I turn and see the IV drip feed. One of the beds is occupied but he´s asleep. I try to turn onto my side but I´m strapped in and the restraints hold me in place. I stop and stare at them for a moment, horrified; then struggle angrily but can barely move. The door opens and a nurse trots in with a doctor following her a few paces behind. A male nurse arrives quickly as well and the two hold me down while the doctor fills a syringe and then injects me in my left arm. I don´t scream but I do struggle half heartedly against their grips as I fade back into darkness and silence.

The same fucking dog. This is a joke. I´m obviously at the hospital in Cruz del Eje - and I´m groggy and I have a headache. I let my eyes slowly close. How long have I been asleep? 55 crystalline spheres, with deferents and epicycles - circles circling around larger circles. The Ptolemaic Universe and it´s attempts to explain celestial movements. A predictor in a way of the elegance of sine and cosine functions. But those are waves; broken half circles stretched and joined. Sound, light, seas. We´re at number 55, the last sphere. The Prime Mover. Then I jolt awake. My son ... where is he? Where is Isadora?? I call out trying not to yell. I have to negotiate with them somehow.

Hola ... ? Hola ... ?

Footsteps outside. The door opens. A different nurse, a little older. She surveys me carefully and then answers me.

Buen dia Señor Keeley. Estas en El Hospital.
Mira vos ...
Tu hijo y mujer descansan en la hacienda. El parto resulto perfecto.

I stare at her as if the words hung there in the air - thinking of the song. I slowly nod at her. Am I crying? Hopefully the tears are a slim little flow and not a pyschotic flood. I raise my eyebrows politely ( is that even possible? ) and she approaches and loosens a restraint and then hands me a paper towel. I wipe my tears and realize that I really have to pee. She steps out into the hall a moment and then returns with the same male nurse from last time. They release the restraints and he helps me down the hall to the bathroom. I have a gown on but unlike those scenes in a movie I also have underwear on. Later they let me take a shower and hand me a small knapsack ( it looks like it´s Diego´s ) with a change of clothes.

The psychiatrist interviews me late that afternoon. It´s in a office one floor down and thank goodness I can wear street clothes. He´s younger than me, perhaps in his late thirties. Thick head of short dark hair. The name is Salas, Dr. Federico Salas.

Tuviste un episodio fuerte Allard y tuvimos que darte sedativos. ( a porteño accent - I feel relief ).
Si ... cuantos dias estoy aca?
Tres. Como te sentis?
Drogado che. ( he smiles, good ) Y necesito ver mi hijo.
Claro Allard, Eso lo logramos en poco tiempo. Decime, cuando empezaron estos episodios?
Hace unos meses ... ( be honest ) era el viento las persianas ...
A ver ...
Era como un trance ... me senti paralizado. Dominado por una fuerza.

He shifts in his chair and taps his pen against some papers. Clinical report I´ll assume.

Sentiste como una corriente electrica?
Exacto.
La adrenalina es un factor importante en estos episodios. Decime, vos has tenido ataques eplilepticos alguna vez??
A ... si, la verdad. En Venezuela, Bocono.
Aja. Desmayaste?
Si, pero el medico dijo que no era epilepsia sino ... coño me olivdo.

He smiles at my use of coño and scribbles quickly for a minute. Then he looks up.

Te hicieron electroencefalogramas?
Si.
Y nada resulto?
De lo que me acuerdo, nope. Era normal. Doctor Hack Belloso ... una clinica privada en ... la avenida Bella Vista creo ...
Aja.

He nods distractedly at my uneccessary details and focuses on his notes.

Allard, te vamos a cuidar aqui unos dias mas para observarte y despues te damos en alta. Te parece?

I nod carefully and wait quietly. He writes some more, perhaps some prescriptions and then puts down his pen.

No me parece que ya necesitas sedativos. Mañana hablermos un toque, ok?

His tone is cordial and casual - I walk back down the hall and upstairs wondering if he´s from Cordoba but studied in Buenos Aires. I don´t have a good enough ear to distinguish that sort of subtlety but his careful modulation suggests that may be the case. He had walked me to the door and had shaken my hand in the hallway. When did he say we were to meet again? Tomorrow? A nurse at a desk smiles crisply at me as I pass by and head upstairs. Then she goes back to arguing with someone on her cellphone. The day passes slowly and I ask for some magazines. There´s La Voz del Interior and I read that and finally fall asleep.

Next day the interview with Dr. Salas is punctual and cordial. More magazines and a new copy of La Voz del Interior. I grin sardonically at some political intrigue in Cordoba Capital - fake invoices and family members employed in the tax collecting agency ... more of the same. I fall asleep again to the sounds of the barking dog.

I dream of a small hand grasping my fingers. Dark skin. Then lighter skin. A soft warm head pushes against my chest. The sound of water, or merely the sense of water. I´m moving forward slowly. Tunneling through that hidden passage my guide and I have entered, to find again the world of light. Dante´s words but who is my guide? Him, of course. That soft warm head. Those small fingers grasping my index finger. I move slowly breathing hard like a miner crawling through a collapsed mine shaft. His warm wet weight binds me and obliges me forward. Without thinking of a moment´s rest we climbed up - Dante´s verses like a ladder towards the stars that await us. An enormous rushing wave pushes us towards consciousness at an accelerating rate. Panic takes hold of me and I gasp for air. The math is wrong. I´m not rising towards a view of heaven. We´re falling back - slip sliding down again. I can´t find a center. Something to hold on to. I spin and gasp, screaming and sweating. Help me, god just please help me.

Chestunt hair, redder than I had expected. My paternal grandfather was a redhead and her paternal grandmother was a redheaded Italian. But I can´t hold him long. Salas wants to keep me here a while longer after my latest episode. As far as I´m concerned it was just a nightmare - can you blame me?? Isadora had been crying. Love and anguish in her eyes as I held him. Joaquin Keeley Osabe. They´ve named him already but it´s ok. It´s what we had agreed on. Diego had stood in the doorway, still in love with Isadora. Tall and strong and handy and happy. Not at all like me. I cradle his head and feel his sweet warmth against my chest. He´s sleeping now. So I hand him back to Isadora and they leave me alone here again... I wanted to give you a happy ending, to banish that devlish snapping wind to the frozen core of Dante´s hell and resume my life here on Earth´s surface. Maybe I can still. But purgatory demands patience and humbleness. I can´t even leave this hospital to care for my son and wife. Humble is a very plausible option right now. And remember the math, this should leave us back again at verse XIII - the forest of suicides. How can I make this work out? In a post modern world where faith is an accessory. How can I make this work out? Patience gentle reader. I think I know how ...