The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

crack of her humerus, and now all that remained was the agony and the foolishness. In a blackout she caught sight of him disappearing on that motorcycle again, felt the tightness in her chest as she screamed for him to wait, wait. Saw for a brief instant La Inca praying in her room—the silence that lay between them now, stronger than love—and in the gloaming of her dwindling strength there yawned a loneliness so total it was beyond death, a loneliness that obliterated all memory, the loneliness of a childhood where she’d not even had her own name. And it was into that loneliness that she was sliding, and it was here that she would dwell forever, alone, black, fea, scratching at the dust with a stick, pretending that the scribble was letters, words, names.
    All hope was gone, but then, True Believers, like the Hand of the Ancestors themselves, a miracle. Just as our girl was set to disappear across that event horizon, just as the cold of obliteration was stealing up her legs, she found in herself one last reservoir of strength: her Cabral magis—and all she had to do was realize that once again she’d been tricked, once again she’d been played , by the Gangster, by Santo Domingo, by her own dumb needs, to ignite it. Like Superman in Dark Knight Returns , who drained from an entire jungle the photonic energy he needed to survive Coldbringer, so did our Beli resolve out of her anger her own survival. In other words, her coraje saved her life.
    Like a white light in her. Like a sun.
    She came to in the ferocious moonlight. A broken girl, atop broken stalks of cane.
    Pain everywhere but alive. Alive.
     

    ——
     
    And now we arrive at the strangest part of our tale. Whether what follows was a figment of Beli’s wracked imagination or something else altogether I cannot say. Even your Watcher has his silences, his páginas en blanco. Beyond the Source Wall few have ventured. But no matter what the truth, remember: Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an extraordinary tolerance for extreme phenomena. How else could we have survived what we have survived? So as Beli was flitting in and out of life, there appeared at her side a creature that would have been an amiable mongoose if not for its golden lion eyes and the absolute black of its pelt. This one was quite large for its species and placed its intelligent little paws on her chest and stared down at her.
    You have to rise .
    My baby, Beli wept. Mi hijo precioso.
    Hypatía, your baby is dead .
    No, no, no, no, no.
    It pulled at her unbroken arm. You have to rise now or you’ll never have the son or the daughter .
    What son? she wailed. What daughter?
    The ones who await .
    It was dark and her legs trembled beneath her like smoke.
    You have to follow .
    It rivered into the cane, and Beli, blinking tears, realized she had no idea which way was out. As some of you know, canefields are no fucking joke, and even the cleverest of adults can get mazed in their endlessness, only to reappear months later as a cameo of bones. But before Beli lost hope she heard the creature’s voice. She (for it had a woman’s lilt) was singing! In an accent she could not place: maybe Venezuelan, maybe Colombian. Sueño, sueño, sueño, como tú te llamas . She clung unsteadily to the cane, like an anciano clinging to a hammock, and, panting, took her first step, a long dizzy spell, beating back a blackout, and then her next. Precarious progress, because if she fell she knew she would never stand again. Sometimes she saw the creature’s chabine eyes flashing through the stalks. Yo me llamo sueño de la madrugada . The cane didn’t want her to leave, of course; it slashed at her palms, jabbed into her flank and clawed her thighs, and its sweet stench clogged her throat.
    Each time she thought she would fall she concentrated on the faces of her promised future—her promised children—and from that obtained the strength she needed to continue. She pulled from strength, from hope, from hate, from her invincible heart, each a different piston driving her forward. Finally, when all were exhausted, when she began to stumble headfirst, heading down like a boxer on his last legs, she stretched her uninjured arm out and what greeted her was not cane but the open world of life. She felt the tarmac under her bare broken feet, and the wind. The wind! But she had only a second to savor it, for just then an unelectrified truck burst out of the darkness in a roar of gears. What a life,