The Myths of Living Page 5

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  Astrid stood in the red light of the dark room watching the film floating in its semiotic developing fluid. How does the old saying go? Nothing eases the pain of a death like a birth? The words on the image undulated under the moving fluid. Astrid tried to see them as a single image, a visual representation, not a coded one. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t memorized the words on the note, but to bring out the essence of the picture, to let it take on the best life it could, she had to avoid being caught up in the message. It was the only way she could bring herself to produce the final print using paper negative processing, giving the image of the words an ethereal look. The right touch.

  Astrid took the print out into the light and laid it on her studio table. The photograph showed two notes laying side-by-side written in two different hands. On the left-hand side was Rogie’s smooth explanatory note. When the Guatemalan gang attacked the medico’s convoy, Rogie had been turning the page of a diary, so when he was thrown clear, the page he had in his hand tore away from the binding and flew out of the Jeep with him. He had no good explanation for why he stuffed the sheet in his breast pocket while he ran for his life into the jungle, but that’s what he did. It was only later that he remembered he had been reading Simon’s diary, and the crumpled, torn sheet contained a passage from Simon’s Suelo entry. He thought Astrid might want the scrap. In the last paragraph, Rogie said he was sorry, that he admired Simon, and if he could do anything for her, she only needed to call. He ended with his number, but Astrid had cut away that last paragraph before taking the photograph.

  On the right, the note torn from Simon’s diary fought through the crinkles in the paper: The ángles they called us—angels and English—laughing at their own pun. These were the village’s best men fighting a disease, an enemy they couldn’t see and didn’t know. They had heard of us, they said. The word had come down from San Miguel. We were surprised, and they laughed. “Death does not recognize the boundaries of countries. Should hope be so different?

  She had taped Rogie’s last paragraph to the window above the table, and she looked at it now as she typed out the label card for the photograph: “Blue Notes”—paper negative—Rogatien Dupuis, Simon Kent and Astrid Kent.