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Show coast of Africa. This is because the island is really a high volcano. At its top, which is called Tiede and where few men have stood, is a crater so large it could swallow the city of Madrid, and on most days it can be seen smoking still, evidence of the explosion some people say sank a continent. And soon after my return each year I would go to see my father where I had buried him: on a grassy shift of land which juts out into the sea, his worn boots pointing toward Africa but his head inclined toward America. It was a time to remember him, and I measured those years we were together by the length of his beard. The time we nearly froze outside Leningrad it reached the top button of his coat. The year we both fell sick with tropical typhus it fell halfway down his chest. But one thing I have come to realize with the passing years is that my father, for all his strength, was a fearful man. No matter where we were we were always really running from the last port rather than approaching the next, since all places could be reckoned by their distance from Ellis Island and my mother's lifeless form. I smoked another cigarette. The young man leaned across the table. Whenever I got close to death, I had noticed, he tried to get closer to me. I knew what he was after, and it reminded me to tell him in my |
