A Blue Night, in:
Gruta de Huagapo
I admit, at hearing her voice, and the few words she said, made me shudder as she came closer to me. There was a thrill in my stomach, I could not feel my legs, neck, arms, and I had fallen deeply into a hole in the cave called Gruta de Huagapo (in the Andes of Peru). When I fell deep into it, excitement came over everybody, everyone’s eyes, as they looked down upon me, were hard, with a dry glitter to them, seriously interested in what to do with me, for the roof of the cave was opening up, and dirt falling on everyone, it was just a matter of time before my wife, Delilah, our guide Steven, and the taxi driver, and his wife, the one I paid to take us here, and the one I paid their way into the cave to help me as we journeyed to and fro.
There was a shade of blue it seemed in the cave, from the light that reflected into on the walls of the cave, through its entrance it was almost mystical, yet I felt entrenched.
“Delilah, you must go back, out of this cave: bring her with you Steve, please, when you go!” So I said in fear knowing the ceiling would yield at any moment. I couldn’t move, and couldn’t afford to keep four people in harms way.
“As clearly as I see you, I will not leave you,” responded my wife.
“Steve” I said, “…take her forcefully.”
“What is the use she wants to stay, but we cannot carry you out of here, you most likely broke every bone in your body.”
“How was it that none of us saw him slip and caught him before he fell?” asked Delilah (feeling somehow, someway there had to be an escape route, as she looked at her husband, broken, bones split right through his skin, eyes staring as if paralyzed, he was all but dead).
“Do not think I’d not have stopped this tragedy should I have known this part of the cave better.” Said the Guide, Steve (Delilah just looked, as if there were no words left to describe his incompetence, and it wouldn’t do any good anyhow, plus escape for her and her husband preoccupied her mind at the moment, above reprimanding him).
“You say the cave will cave in soon,” asked the male Taxi driver, looking at Steve, then his wife.
“I expect so!” replied Steve with a worrisome voice.
“No!” said Delilah, “I am staying.”
I thought as I looked up at everyone trying to figure out what to do, what a nice blue darkness befalling me I thought, along with the damp and raw looking walls that surrounded me; I could even hear the running water, a stream not far away.
“What is the pain like?” asked Steve to me.
“There is no pain; I feel nothing, not a thing at all.” I answered with almost paralyzing lips.
(The ceiling was starting crackle, open wider, and more dust fell upon all of us. Steve and the Taxi driver grabbed Delilah, and forced her up to the main floor of the huge cave, as I remained where I was. And the cave ceiling particles fell again, and not just over me, over them, and other parts of the cave, I could hear the rumble by the entrance; they grabbed Delilah again, and they ran out of the cave. I tried to feel my knees but I couldn’t reach them, my wrists were broken. I think if I was moved, it would present immense pain. Now the walls caved in under the weight of this event, and I started to pray, and pray, I knew I was next to death, one knows such things, and if helpless to turn the tides, only God can.)
As I was saying a moment ago: I admit, at hearing her voice, and the few words she said, made me shudder as she came closer to me, but could it really be her, I mean, here I am dying, and the cave entrance has almost collapsed I expect and to get to me now, one has to crawl under debris, but the voice I hear is saying, “I’m coming, don’t die yet!”
I cannot positively say it is my wife’s voice, I am half in a daze, but it looks like here looking over me, and it sounds like her when she spoke.
“I can see, my husband, you have as usual gone over everything in your mind, so now we need only to hold one another’s hands, and die together, as I said I would umpteen time throughout our marriage, and prayed many a time this be true, that God take us together.”
I looked up again, it was her, her in the flesh, yes really, she must have snuck out of the grips of those two men, I can’t remember their names any more.
“Tell me Delilah, in the same breath, is it really you?”
“Don’t be so silly, of course.”
It was true, Delilah did escape from the grips of Steve, and the Taxi man, she couldn’t help it, but she never made it back to her husband, she died, like him in seclusion and solitude, she died several feet from the entrance of the cave, as she had tried to get back to him; or at least physically tried (spiritually she may have done just that).
I do not know how to present alternative theories to balance this story out, between one against the other, but according to Lee, she was there, right there by him, every minute of the way (once she arrived that is), just the way they had lived all through their marriage, side by side, as sidekicks.
Note: From a daydream, walking through “Wang’s” grocery store in Circle (looking for cream, in the Cream isle), Lima, Peru, 4:30 PM, 3-7-2008; the author had visited the giant cave, in this story called Gruta de Huagapo, in November, of 2007; and was actually in the hole he was talking about, but did not of course break any bones, but came close to it; dedicated to my wife; dedicated to Rosa.
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