Feeling Safe

A short story by
Teolinda Gersão

While waiting for the test results, he made a vow : He would donate a million dollars to charity, if they were negative.

If the results were positive, the diagnosis was cancer. But after talking to his psychiatrist, who increased his dose of tranquilizers, he forced himself to give it no further thought. He buried himself in his work, went to movies, not even remembering the titles afterwards and, several times, fell asleep with the television on. He called help lines, telling stories similar to his own, without daring to say what was really the matter. At most, he would say "a deadly disease" or "a prolonged illness." Once or twice, he had the feeling the voice on the other end of the line thought he was HIV positive.

The last night he called in, he had the impression the hot line counselor did not believe him; when he was talking about the notion of fear, the counselor understood him to be referring to a real situation and tried to get him to face it head on. Which, actually, was of no help at all, he thought, banging down the receiver: he had no desire to be confronted with something that did not exist. (Or that did not exist yet?)

He stopped calling in and then things got even harder. One night he drank almost a whole bottle of whiskey. The next day he felt so bad he called in sick. He told his secretary he would not be in all morning and did not want to be disturbed. No, no he did not need anything, he yelled at her, didn't she hear him say he didn't want to be bothered? Or was she deaf?

His hands were trembling as he opened the envelope.

Negative.

He read the slip of paper over and over again, from start to finish, as if he could not understand the words. Then he started laughing, rubbing his hands together; he put the envelope in his pocket and went out to a bar to have a Scotch.

He was a new man when he went back to his office. Your dress is a beautiful color, he lied to his secretary in full awareness.

He opened his window and took in a deep breath, looking down below at the traffic. Life went on, all the noise out there was the throbbing of the city, of the world. From which he had not been excluded.

Only after he had shut the window and sat down at his desk did he remember the vow. But now it seemed absurd. Under stress, people always made all kinds of promises. He would think about it later, with a clear head.

He buried himself in his work enthusiastically. He felt like whistling, and came very near to doing so. He got more work done than he had in ages. At the end of the afternoon, he left for the gym ten minutes early and bashed his squash ball with renewed strength. He was singing as he got into the shower.

Months later he had the dream : he was out walking somewhere and was killed. The dream only lasted a few seconds. There seemed to be no build-up, no specific tension in the atmosphere; all that happened was, he was walking somewhere, under normal circumstances, and was slain. All of a sudden, he suffered a deadly assault.
It left me with a very strong impression, he told the psychiatrist, when he had the same dream again. I think it's a recurring dream.

Hmm, came the answer from the winged chair, situated right behind his own.

This was followed by a long silence, before the question:

Now, why do you think you would be killed?

I don't know, he answered. I haven't done anything wrong.

(Except for that one broken vow, he thought. I've got a million dollar debt.)

Nevertheless, he caught himself in time. The psychiatrist shouldn't know he'd considered throwing away a million dollars just like that. First thing, he'd start charging more for the sessions, which were already exorbitant; but still, they hadn't gone up in six months. Shrinks had an obscene relationship with money. Every single second was counted, paid for in gold. Apparently, patients were supposed to buy their progress, the economic duress was part of the treatment.Wonderful. Which meant that Freud's greed had established a precedent and his eager disciples trailed merrily behind. And with a clear conscience, since fleecing patients was therapeutic. The Master has decreed.

Hmmm, he said to himself in turn. With no help from the psychiatrist, he realized he had established a link between the money he had neglected to donate and the dream.

But there was no link; it was just an idea that had occurred to him. Not without some logic, but childish, certainly naïve : you're done a good turn, and decide to do another. As if to confirm that there was justice, order in the world.

But there was neither order nor justice in the world. He did not deserve, for example, to have lost his family. But his wife had wanted the divorce, and had kept the children. He had accepted both the former and the latter ; for one thing, he could not look after the children, he had very little free time. Still, he had not expected them to grow so far apart. It was almost as if they were strangers, he hardly ever even saw them anymore. Although, he made certain they never lacked for anything. He had established a system whereby the bank sent their monthly allowance, and the bank paid like clockwork. And he never forgot anyone's birthday; he had told his secretary to write them all down in the date book, so she could send telegrams, flowers to his ex-wife, toys to the children, and other things, depending on their ages. The secretary was good at it too, because they always seemed pleased. Year after year, they sent him thank-you notes, always the same.

He had never had any of that, a father sending him a monthly allowance and gifts. He had earned every last cent himself. But no one seemed to acknowledge that fact, nor respect him for it. Much less show any gratitude. Not his wife, nor his children, and not his lovers, either.

A man had to be even more careful in dealing with lovers than with a wife. Women tended to confuse money with affection. And he did have money, not because he had ever been given anything, but because he had a gift for earning it. They had better not think he was willing to buy their affection. Much less feigned. Women were such phonies.

He finally figured he did not really need women, anyway; at least not anyone permanent, the occasional affair was enough. Which, since the breakout of AIDS, had become few and far between because condoms were not safe. At least he did not think so.

Do you think condoms are completely safe? he asked.

What do you think? answered the psychiatrist.

It was always the same routine, that guy sitting over in the winged chair answered his questions with more questions, or else repeated his. And then the session would end. Even if he were right in the middle of a sentence, he would be asked to leave.

At least they had ended the session talking about sex. He had steered the conversation away from money, which he did not want to bring up. Just mention one figure and they take you for Bill Gates, he thought, once he was out on the street. Then he remembered the million dollars.

Take a vacation, his general practitioner told him. Your problem is, you're overworked.
Maybe that doctor was right. How long had it been since he'd had a vacation?

Get me a reservation for a week's vacation, he told his secretary. Anywhere, some place pleasant, not too expensive. I'm not Bill Gates, right?

If he were Bill Gates, he could donate several million dollars. But he was just himself. A hundred thousand, he thought. Maybe even ten thousand, if he had to fulfill the vow. The zeros had grown delirious with his fear. It was the thought that counted. Although now the whole thing seemed useless.

As useless as his conversations with his psychiatrist. Maybe he should get rid of him after the vacation. He would realize it was just fatigue making him so nervous. His general practitioner was probably right after all. Besides, he charged fairly for his appointments.

Do you think if someone doesn't fulfill a vow, then dies, the two events are related? he asked his secretary the morning he was going on vacation, when he had finished dictating his most urgent letters.

What do you mean? she asked, holding the letters.

Suppose someone promises, for example, to give money to the poor, then breaks the promise and is run over by a car, or an iron pipe falls and hits him on the head. Is there a connection between one thing and the other?

No, she smiled, just a coincidence.

That's what I think, too, he said.

On the airplane, he calculated how much of a tax break he could take if he were to donate ten thousand dollars. He figured the break was immaterial and discarded the idea. Then he worked for several hours on pending documents, and made a list on his laptop to e-mail to his secretary. Finally he took some sleeping pills and woke up four hours later. It was cold in the plane and he was uncomfortable in his seat, regretted bitterly that he had decided to make the trip.

When the plane landed in the middle of nowhere - since the airport consisted of thatched huts - it occurred to him that donations rarely ever reached people in need. How many times had he seen that in newspaper and television reports?

In his case, what exactly would a donation mean? He had been done a good turn and would reciprocate, he thought, showing his passport. Equivalent, or merely symbolic, it was the gesture that counted. But had he been done a good turn? After all was said and done, he was still the same. Healthy. Nothing bad had happened, that was all. So his only obligation was to not do anything wrong, and he would be square with the world. But he never wronged anyone, and never had. There was no reason to go on thinking like this.

He got lightheartedly into a wagon and rode along a dirt road bordered with hibiscus and frangipani.

His first impression, from his hotel room balcony, was that the beach was true to the travel posters: fine white sand, blue-green, calm water, and beach chairs set up under coconut trees.

The room was humid, which came as no surprise, since they had told him to expect 85% humidity. The air-conditioner was too cold, so he turned up the thermostat two degrees. Besides, it was an unnecessary waste of energy.

He unpacked his bag, e-mailed his secretary, put on his swim trunks and a t-shirt and sat down in one of the beachside cafés. There was a light breeze (actually, the restaurant was called La Brisa). He drank some water and coffee and went for a swim in the ocean, which felt as if it were heated. He swam for forty-five minutes, and finally went to his room and slept.

He woke up with the sensation that he had wasted the whole first day. He got up quickly and went down to the beach. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and it seemed like most people were napping, based on the number of beach chairs taken up with only towels and objects.

He went to get a towel and, he too, laid it out over a beach chair, which he dragged over underneath the shade of a coconut tree. Right afterwards, he swam for half an hour and went back to his chair, covering his face with his hat. He fell asleep, but woke up a few minutes later and walked down by the water along the beach, which extended out to the right of the hotel (they had told him at the reception desk that it went on for 10 kilometers). Not too far off in the distance there was an inlet, where he saw people, probably tourists, horseback riding.

There was another hotel next to his, and another and then another. They were fairly similar, with the same bars, swimming pools, and beach cafés. They were all part of the same chain, so he could get food and drinks or use the outdoor areas at any of them.

He stopped in and had a Scotch here and there, and kept walking down the beach. The ocean was on his left and, on his right, there was thick, low shrubbery, with an occasional tree. Among the trees there was a wire fence and, every once in a while, a security guard walked by clad in a khaki uniform with a billy club attached at the waist.

The fence and the guard gave him a pleasant feeling of safety, which made up for the discomforting landscape. He felt more ill at ease with every step he took. He was unable to identify any of the trees, nor the plants climbing against the fence, growing thicker and thicker beyond. The birds were also unfamiliar: some black, others web-footed, swooping down suddenly into the ocean for fish. Another bird, which landed next to him on the sand, had a black streak around its eyes and a white strip along its head. The bird stared at him - the one with the black outlined eyes - with hostility, it seemed to him. Everything was different, nothing at all was familiar, as if he had landed on another planet, or in a dream.

By now, he had left the hotels way off in the distance. There was only sand and an occasional house or two. In one garden, a pale girl was doing yoga, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed and her palms facing the sky.
After a while, there were no more houses, either, only nondescript buildings, storage areas for beach chairs, broken buoys, abandoned outboard motors, rotting boats, and all kinds of junk.

The sand stretched out ahead of him, and the horseback rider silhouettes in the distance were more clearly defined. He noticed that the wire fence had now disappeared, and the sun was beginning to set.

He started going back, along the ocean. The water was still warm. One of these days, he'd take a night swim, he thought. And also, walk to the inlet, where the tourists were riding.

The next day, he enjoyed watching the flurry at the beach. From ten o'clock on, there were continuous activities: volley ball, aerobics, games, dance lessons, sporting events, and tennis and ping-pong tournaments.
He swam more than he had the day before. At night, he was tired and did not stay to watch the show in the hotel reception room, which had been transformed into a theater decorated with posters advertising magicians and dancers.

The dream came back that night: he was walking along and was killed. Everything was normal, then all of a sudden someone or something started beating him to death.

I've got to stop this, he thought waking up in the middle of the night, alarmed. He would put a check in the mail the next day, if that would put an end to it. In his mind, he came up with a list of possible donation recipients: children in Ethiopia, anywhere in Africa, the Red Cross, Oxfam, Unicef, Aids sufferers, cancer research. After a while, he fell asleep again.

The next day it rained. The first gust of wind blew, shaking the coconut trees and stirring up the sand, which blew into people's faces and got in their eyes, poorly shielded by dark glasses. Then the rain started pelting down and within seconds had swept everyone off the beach. Right afterwards, the sun came out again, everyone came back, and the sea was soon taken up with sail, peddle and motor boats, and jet skis. Down on the beach, boatmen in sailor hats once more called out to tourists to take twenty-dollar rides in glass bottom boats to the coral reef.

He e-mailed his secretary (get me the names of 10 reasonably credible charitable organizations) and went to have lunch at La Brisa, which was starting to get crowded. The drink glasses looked frosted when first served, but in no time at all they were dripping water and the beer was warm. He ordered another cold one to replace his first.

It started to rain again and, at once, he felt pent in. Even if he wanted to, he could not leave before the week was up: all flights were booked, some with waiting lists. He felt cold sweat on his forehead. Pent in. He was not a hotel guest, he was a prisoner. That simple. Again he regretted having come.

He promised himself not to work, since he was on vacation, but the lack of activity was doing him in. He spent part of the afternoon in the hotel lobby, watching the downpour and boring himself window shopping in the lobby craft shops, where they sold maracas, wooden statues, dyed fabrics, paintings, and straw hats, some with bands made of shells. He looked at poster-sized photos of tourists with flower leis ($10.00) and parrots on their shoulders or head ($15.00), or swimming smilingly alongside dolphins.

He got information and prices on other activities at a counter in the lobby: there was scuba diving, water-skiing, hang-gliding, motor boat ballooning, day trips to neighboring villages, or island picnics. Everything was obviously priced for tourists, which came as no surprise, since the locals depended on the tourist industry.

The rain stopped later on. He signed up for an $8.00 tour of the nearby village.

To him, the village seemed like nothing more than a huge pile of dirty little houses, all painted in tacky bright colors, orange, yellow, blue, and red. There were flower designed grates over the windows, and in some cases over the doors. But, the guide explained, the grates were really only decorative, since the village had one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

They went through the church and the village market place. It was so hot, he wanted to get right back on the bus. Instead, he found himself among the stalls, amidst an indescribable quantity of trinkets spread out all over the booth counters and dangling from arms, being hawked to cries of "dollars, dollars."

He felt uncomfortable, as if he were being suffocated. Someone might attack me, it occurred to him. One of these hands could be a killer's.

He yelled, louder than the hawkers, and made his way through the crowd, pushing, shoving, and tussling until he finally reached the bus. He sat down, his shirt soaked in sweat.

Swarms of children pressed against the windows from outside, reaching with their hands. Some tourists opened their windows and tossed things out, pens, pencils, t-shirts, handkerchiefs, packages of cookies, or hats - all of which the children grabbed noisily.

Back at the hotel, he took a swim in the pool, then sat on an immersed stone bar stool and ordered a Scotch on the rocks. The waiter served it on a floating tray. He sipped the Scotch and drifted with his eyes closed until dinnertime. Then he went up to his room, showered and, as he dressed, glanced through the e-mail his secretary had sent with the ten names he had asked for.

But, he thought, the money and the dream were unrelated. The idea was ridiculous, brought on by stress.
At the restaurant,he ordered a bottle of champagne with dinner, in a bucket with ice. Plenty of ice, he emphasized.

He procrastinated and made excuses, because he had no intention of fulfilling the vow,he thaught as he opened the menu and glanced through the choices. No, no, that wasn't it, he was just trying to find the best place to make the donation. Within reason.

As a matter of fact, if he procrastinated indefinitely (on the premise that he would do it), he could ward off indefinitely any possible harm that might come his way as a result of the unfulfilled vow. That is, if there were, after all, some link between one thing and the other. But they were not related. He knew that. He could donate 10 million dollars and still keep having the dream.

Nevertheless, he did not have the dream again. He got up early the next morning (the buffet opened at 7 o'clock). When he went down to the beach, the staff was still sweeping up the seaweed, cleaning the sand with fan shaped rakes, and collecting garbage bags from the day before.

He swam for at least two hours, dried out his trunks walking along the beach, bought some newspapers at the reception desk and sat down to read in a beach chair.

At 12:30 he ate lunch at La Brisa (he was a man of habit). The lobster looked good, but was bland, he thought. He chose something else from the menu. There was taped music coming from somewhere and he recognized some of the songs, I just called by Stevie Wonder, Fascination, Les Feuilles Mortes, and parts of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

He ordered a piña colada and settled in at the same table, where he spent most of the afternoon, reading a pocket book he had bought at the airport before taking off. The cover promised violence, romance, adventure, and figures with lots of zeros in between.

Later on he went back down to the beach, drank two Scotches, took a swim in the pool, and finally went up to his room to dress for dinner.

The following days were very much the same, the only difference was in the evening entertainment: one night there was a couples dance contest in which prizes were given for the best lambada, merengue, tango, and chá chá chá. The following night, awards were given to the winners of the ping-pong and tennis tournaments and to those of the other sporting events. A fat master of ceremonies, sweating in a tuxedo and bow tie, yelled into a microphone: el señor mister, la señorita miss. Another night, the same master of ceremonies organized a race wherein two teams rushed around the room collecting ashtrays, menus, and matchboxes while an assistant kept time on a stopwatch.

The vacation had done him good, he thought to himself on the afternoon of his last day, although sighing with relief that it was over. He realized he had not gone to the coral reef, nor jet skied, nor ridden on a motor or paddle boat; just as he had not gone scuba diving, visited any other islands or gone hang gliding. But I can do that next year, he thought. As he counted down the hours before his departure, coming back the following year even seemed like a possibility.

He swam way out, then rested in a beach chair, staring up at the sky through the branches of the coconut trees. The sky was pale blue, perhaps would look darker in a photograph. He remembered he had neglected to bring his camera. Still, he could buy one. Or maybe a video camera; there were people carrying video cameras all over the place.

But the truth was, even if he were to take videos, he never would have watched them. He had neither the time, nor the patience. And he did not want to bore anyone else with them either. Besides, who was there to bore? Strangely enough, he was unable to conjure up any names or faces.

He dragged his chair over to the shade and fell asleep, his hat covering his face.He woke up hours later to the sound of voices. A group of young people were playing volleyball and, right near him, a jazz dance class had just started.

The noise seemed deafening and he took the opportunity to go for a walk on the beach. The sand stretched out to the right of the hotel where he had walked on his first day. After all, he had never made it all the way to the cove where he had seen the tourists horseback riding. He still had time to go there, or at least to go most of the way; the wagon taking him to the airport was only due to pick him up at ten o'clock that night.

He walked by the hotels, the overgrown lots, the pools, and scattered houses. This time the girl doing yoga was not sitting in the garden.

The further he went, the fewer vacationers he saw. Actually, most of them were headed in the opposite direction, probably back to the hotels.

He saw the same birds and the same thick, unfamiliar shrubbery; and the same sense of discomfort took hold. And once again, he was reassured by the feeling of safety derived from the wire fence and the silhouettes of the guards that appeared every once in a while, their billy clubs dangling at the waist.

He could go further without any problem, he thought, passing the shacks with the beach gear, the piles of junk, buoys, motors, broken-down boats. He was safe.

At any rate, he had come upon a non-touristy area, strewn with waste, garbage, crushed coke cans, empty water bottles, everything hidden away from the daily bustle of the well kept and swept hotel grounds.

He passed the fenced area and the plants were increasingly overgrown. He noticed some of the coconut tree roots were exposed and dried out. Bulbous roots of other plants also protruded from the sand, and he tripped over them as he walked.

The birds were returning to their trees and, in the distance, the horseback riders had disappeared. It was nightfall and the wind was picking up.

It was time to go back, he decided. Just then, someone jumped out from the bushes. Someone who would have attacked him from behind, if at that very instant he had not turned to head back. He felt the blows of the billy club on his head. He saw his assailant was the guard, or he thought so. If his eyes were deceiving him, it was too late to find out.

Copyright Teolinda Gersão,2001

Translated by K.C. S. Sotelino