Excerpt
His friend Desjardines spent many long hours consoling Ken over his
unspeakable loss. The Canadian ambassador was not the only person
who tried to comfort him – Rui and Juoan listened and sat or walked
with him, too. The love they and Francisco poured out may have been the
only thing that prevented him from taking his life.
Desjardines was in regular communication with Ken and his father
over the next few months. Ken Sr. had settled in Vancouver and had negotiated
a contract with Bartle & Gibson, a large plumbing and heating
company. When his family ran into immigration problems, Ken Sr. contacted
Ellen Fairclough again and she assured him she would find a way
to bring his family to Canada.
Six weeks later, just as Ken was beginning to live in the world again, he
found Juoan waiting for him once again at the hotel. “You have to come,”
he said. “I have very bad news.”
Ken’s face drained of colour. Was this some cruel joke? Was the past
going to play itself out all over again?
“Francisco is dead,” Juoan said. “He died from a huge heart attack.”
Ken sank into himself. With a feeling of utter helplessness and resignation,
he once again took a taxi to Parede, and for the first time he
actually entered Francisco’s house on the outskirts of the village. He had
met Francisco’s wife only a handful of times in all the years he had been
so close to the old man. She was small with an almost angelic face. Over
the next days Ken spent many hours with her, sitting in her presence and
reminiscing about the man they had both loved so much.
Juoan and Ken took Francisco’s body to the beach and wrapped it in
many layers of burlap, sewing them together with netting cord. They
placed heavy stones at his feet and laid him in the bottom of the big rowboat.
They rowed out to where the shallow water dropped off abruptly – to
one of the deepest chasms in the Atlantic Ocean – and there they heaved
him over the side: giving his body to the world he had loved most dearly.
When they came back, their muscles aching, they pulled the boat up
on the beach and sat on the sand. Slowly people arrived from the village
and sat with them, and talked, and told stories of Francisco, until the sun
set and the moon rose in the sky.
Libros Libertad 