The Abundance of the Infinite Read Online Free PDF Page A

horse, observed from above by a glowing angel as he carries a wooden cross. Santo Domingo of Silos and the Spanish King Ferdinand are meeting outside of castle walls. A repentant Saint Jerome stands before an incomplete cross as Mary Magdalene sits on an unadorned throne. Jacob and his brother Esau exchange birthrights for lentils beside the risen Christ, His haunting red eyes, red hair, red face and blood contrasting against the pallor of His face. The apostles are caught in a storm in the Sea of Galilee beside the prophet David and Lazarus, resurrected.
    I realize, of course, that my Spanish is insufficient to describe any of this.
    The Señora suddenly stops talking, and looks over at me. “You look for an apartment here in Manta, just like your father?” she says, adding, half-mockingly: “I don’t believe you.”
    â€œI would prefer to rent one in this building. You do have apartments for rent—”
    â€œI don’t understand. You have no wife? No children?”
    â€œI do.”
    The Señora looks around, as though they might be lurking around a corner or beneath a window, awaiting a signal to enter.
    â€œThen where are they?” she asks. “Why are you here, and they are in Canadá ? Why did you leave them, just like your father left to you and your mother?”
    I am silent.
    â€œHow you pay?” Yolanda asks abruptly in English. I reply that I have brought enough money for whatever payment was necessary.
    They converse amongst themselves, and minutes later, after I pay for a month’s rent and agree to teach the girls English in exchange for meals once or twice a day, I am thanking the Señora and her beautiful daughters and departing with a key.

5

    There are two bedrooms in this dusty apartment, and a long windowed hallway that stretches out to provide an extended view of the beach. Three walls of the main living area are mostly comprised of windows.
    An elongated balcony overlooks the inlet with a view of several fishing boats lying on their sides at low tide, one boat standing upright on stilts in the dehydrated bay. At the end of the hallway there is a sizeable washroom with a standing shower, which I soon discover produces more of a trickle than a shower.
    My first dream in this new apartment is lucid and confused. I have been transformed into another person. I realize who I am, and I understand that I am dreaming, as happens in a lucid dream. There is the feeling, however, at least in my own mind, that I am someone else to those observing me. I have not been transformed into Kafka’s monstrous vermin—nothing like that—but instead, I am a man who is prideful in believing himself to have transcended his former life, and to be somehow more adept at dealing with pain than those around him. A man, whose shadowy figure does not allow me to discern his identity, asks if I believe that as a result of my travels, I have somehow moved past the anger and guilt I have over my daughter—as though she has died.
    â€œYes,” I reply definitively and too quickly, “I have.”
    â€œGauguin,” I continue a moment later, as though to further convince this stranger, who seems to doubt my words, “has done this, too. His pain was civilized society. Tahiti was his destination though, Paris his origin. Gauguin wanted a simpler life.”
    â€œIs that what you want, the abstraction of ostensible simplicity?” the stranger asks.
    When I do not reply, he continues. “ Gauguin wanted to further his ambitions as a painter, but you are no painter.”
    â€œPerhaps I could be.”
    â€œNo. You have forsaken your wife and daughter and your chosen profession. How dare you compare your artwork to Gauguin’s.”
    â€œI wasn’t. You’re misunderstanding. I could never—”
    â€œWhy are you here?”
    â€œTo see my father one last time.”
    â€œWe both know that’s not true. How could you