the blueshift journal

The problem with the Dictator is that he has dreams. Dreams from which he wakes screaming and crying, wet as an unloved child. Though this is the account of the Dictator’s mistress who has proven time and time over that she cannot be trusted. He tells no one the contents of these dreams, not even his son Alberto whom he loves the dearest. Alberto assures his father he will find a cure, then goes out into the city to meet with Tomas, who fucks him on a street corner until bleeding in exchange for three pills of valium. Tomas is abusive. He wants to love Alberto in the same way he wants to love his wife, Anita, and their three children, but every time he opens his mouth to say ‘I love you’ he instead mutters something about the Dictator having a flaccid cock. Flaccid cocks are a sign of impotence. When a man goes impotent it is rumored to be due to witches living on the island-state of the Dictator, just east of the islets of the communist pigs. How rumors like this are begun, nobody knows. Rumor has it that the cockfighters in the farmland talk about the breasts of their wives to one another, and when they get bored they begin talking about the Dictator’s dreams. “He dreams of papayas: rows and rows of papayas,” says Alberto, the papaya farmer. “He is a papaya man.” Scoffing, Rosario, a vendor in the market, takes one of her own overpriced fruit and cuts into it to show her customer that it is fresh. The insides are black and full of maggots.

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Tonight, one of Rosario’s children will fall asleep hungry and not wake up.

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Hundreds upon thousands are not waking up in the morning. It is fiesta, and only the poor have reason to get up. Anita is not poor; her husband Honesto is a banker. Every day, Honesto dreams of leaving his job and becoming an artist. Local artists are not well liked on the island-state, which finds that art is a luxury, and that the productions of its people are a bore compared to those of the communist pigs. “Only the Dictator can afford to have dreams,” says Maria to a sandwich in a café. Maria has no friends, and resorts frequently to talking to her sandwiches. It is difficult to make friends on an island-state, where you are constantly surrounded by people you know. Knowing banter is exchanged by Rodrigo and Estoy, the radio hosts over their morning show. Both of them have slept with the producer in order to get their jobs and both of them hate one another. “So Rodrigo, what do you think of the Dictator’s dreams?” asks his mother on the phone as he is driving home. The traffic stretches out for blocks and honking fills the air. “I imagine he dreams that he is not a Dictator, that he is an ordinary man like me who has ordinary wants and ordinary frustrations.”

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The secret police think this is hilarious. They put a gun to their prisoner’s forehead and fire. Afterwards, they burn his body, the flames eating around but not through the name patch on his uniform, which reads Arturo Verdad. Verdades Street is where they burn pottery in a kiln. Manuela marvels at the perfection of a vase she has spent hours on. Her masterwork totters over the edge as she turns to cool the kiln. For kilometers around the air smells like fire. “Save me, God,” cries Teresa, as she jumps from the burning building. Hundreds watch as the fireworks rocket into the sky for fiesta. Each year, fireworks are stolen from the factory and launched by amateurs who blow off their fingers. “Very pretty, but the smell was awful,” Paulo tells Romeo as they drive away from the whorehouse. Paulo has syphilis.

 

In the morning, he sees his doctor, in the afternoon, his witch doctor. The witch doctor gives him a pickled snake to guard against witch’s impotence. The impotent guards of the Dictator’s palacio discuss what would happen if the Dictator died. “Poor little Alberto, the faggot, left to rule! That must be what causes the Dictator such night terrors.” The Night Terrors is the name of a comic book produced by a communist author which Inigo reads. Inigo is twelve years old when he tells his mother Samantha he wants to be a communist. Communism is often rumored to be the founding ideology of the band of rebels on the island-state, who hide at the base of its solitary mountain, who shit on the floor of its solitary woods. Rumor has it the rebels are plotting a revolution. There is no word for revolution in the native language of the island-state. “Revolution,” explains Gina as she writes the word on the chalkboard, “is the circling of a planet around an orbit.” Andres raises his hand. He is the only one. “Majority has no objections then. We’ll begin downsizing immediately.” Papers are shuffled, people rise from their seats. The judge takes off his spectacles and winks to the prosecution. Ricardo screams that he is innocent as he is sedated by the police. Several hundred are lying sedate in the huge sanitarium of the island-state, which is coated wall-to-wall in filth. “Do they have dreams?” wonders Rosario, watching as the tiny coffin is lowered into the shallow grave dug by her neighbors.

 

“Of course,” says the Dictator’s mistress. “They are all about me. Don’t you notice he never has them when I’m in his bed?” Roberta and Agnes watch as the red dress slinks across the stony floor of the cathedral, waiting until the Dictator’s mistress becomes a wagging tongue in the distance, followed from behind by men in a row, black as rotten teeth. Someone spits in her direction. Eva is appalled. She holds her hands clapped in a position of prayer like a good nun is meant to, but she cannot help but furrow her brow as she looks at the children playing ball with plastic bags full of rotting fruit and the hundreds if not thousands who lie prostrate in the streets dreaming that God’s goodness will merely fall from the sky.

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All around them the city is a skeleton. When she goes home to the nunnery that night she wrings her hands in frustration. Alberto frustratedly tells Tomas the valium isn’t good enough and Tomas hits him in the face. The secret police live within the palacio from then on, and the guards can no longer say anything about the Dictator’s son. On the day his son is born, Honesto runs three kilometers and gets on a boat and rides all the way to the islets of the communist pigs to be an artist. The streets are crowded full of citizens wanting to see a foreign artist, pushing and shoving so violently that Maria drops her sandwich on the road to be trampled by the violent crowd. She picks it up, dusts it off, and takes a bite, passing a missing persons poster for a man named Arturo Verdad. Somewhere, there is a noise like a hand reaching out of the waters for just a moment before once again, it is dragged into the deep. Teresa returns to her home at last after her stay in the ER. Her cockatiels, Jasper and Martin, are dead. The doctor says Paulo will be dead within a year. One day, Alberto asks if Rosario’s papayas are fresh. She tilts her head back and screams. Out of the woods come the rebels, their pants still around their ankles, fleeing from witches.

 

The sun rises and sinks. Once again, the Dictator wakes up.

 

This happens only every now and again, on that island-state where pineapples and papayas are grown, east of the islets of the communist pigs, where all day and all night, the people dream the Dictator’s dreams.