Coralie Duchesne

The Bat

The town was set in a narrow horseshoe shaped valley between low mountains, which Caitlin believed trapped the heat, air, and humidity. Although the house Lorenzo had found for them was not far from the sea no cooling breezes reached them. The sun blazed most of the day through the long line of windows in the front of the house. Sudden downpours of rain brought brief relief then the sun would blaze forth again. Their neighbours were two ancient twin sisters. Desiccated, stiff limbed as two grasshoppers they circled the house numerous times a day, spying on Caitlin.

Lorenzo had brought her and the four children to the house and the town sight unseen. His description had made it sound appealing to Caitlin who interpreted the description, (as she usually did) through novels, or paintings she knew; the town was near a beach, in a landscape of mountains and trees and had a population of over sixty thousand. She discovered Lorenzo had omitted significant details from what he told her, (as he usually did.)

The town was famous for a hurricane that had destroyed much of it. The hurricane and its aftermath of rebuilding had turned the town centre into a jumble of flat roofed concrete boxes among pocked streets where mangy dogs sniffed at discarded beer cans and plantain chip bags and the town drunks sprawled wherever they could find some shade. Most of the inhabitants of the town lived, as they always had up in the mountains. The beach consisted of a tiny cove.

In the first weeks after their arrival Caitlin went on expeditions around town, pushing the baby in the stroller with the other three children in tow. This bewildered the townsfolk who were unused to anybody but the wretchedly poor walking on foot anywhere they could use a car. People asked her if something was wrong, could they help? When she told them she ‘liked walking’ rumours abounded, as they touched their foreheads with a finger, that the doctor’s wife was ‘un poquito trastornada’-- crazy.

She quickly had to adjust all her imagined visions of an ochre and pink town splashed with hibiscus flowers, a white washed colonial church in a plaza full of flirting couples or strolling families in the evenings, lively side walk cafés. The church was a drab concrete building with metal blinds and an ugly little Madonna. La plaza was a concrete square without a single tree. A sweating Spanish priest reminded her sombrely that he had not yet seen her or her family at Sunday mass. Instead of side walk cafés there were the racket and fumes from the ‘publicos’; these were the taxis which served in lieu of a bus service and the drivers operated their business with radios blasting in front of the plaza.

“I should have asked more questions before agreeing to come here,” Caitlin told Lorenzo.

He was puzzled. “I gave you all the facts.” In any case fresh out of his internship, already with four kids, he urgently needed a hospital position. “Be realistic, Caitlin!”

She wrote letters to friends from her student days where she described quaint things about the town. When she re-read them she wanted to cry and never sent them. Her friends, her past were lost.

Caitlin had encountered Lorenzo when they were squeezed together on a crowded bus in Madrid, where Lorenzo’s parents had sent him to study medicine and where she had come on a summer course with a group of art students. He stared down at her and followed her off the bus. She found this sinister but liked his brown compact body, (which reminded her of an Aztec statue) enough to pause when he spoke to her. Ignoring the dismay of both their families they were married eight months later.

If she tried to explain to him now how she felt about life as she had known it sliding away Lorenzo would never understand the terms she used. He liked words that were exact and inescapable like the names of diseases. They had never had real conversations. She accepted the silences between them because hadn’t she found him attractive because of his likeness to an Aztec statue? Statues are mute and unbending.

Lorenzo often returned late. After the children were in bed Caitlin would sit out on the balcony. There was a solitary tree on the corner of the street. Once it began to grow dark there would be a soft whirring sound as a dark cloud twirled round and round the tree. These were the bats. Lorenzo didn’t know why but this was a bat custom. At first she was scared, spooked by stories she had heard as a child of bats that flew into women’s long hair and nested there, making them go mad, or of blood sucking bats that would silently suck the life out of a sleeping couple. Lorenzo laughed, the bats here were harmless. Besides they would never enter the house. Gradually she could watch them calmly. They were never there in the morning; seemingly they flew off to some bat world when dawn broke.

But one morning after Lorenzo’s departure when Caitlin was giving the children breakfast she heard a scuffling in the living room. She told the children to hush-- a mouse? She took a slipper from her daughter and opened the front door. If she threw the slipper at the mouse it would flee through the door. The children perked up, excited. She aimed the slipper at the sound. No mouse ran out, more scuffling. The children giggled. Caitlin approached the sofa warily. The children craned to get a look. Caitlin peered round the sofa and screamed.

It was a bat, fluttering feebly on the floor, one webbed wing damaged. It must have entered at night when they left the front door open before going to bed. Caitlin found the thought of it flying about the house while they all slept repulsive. The bat struggled upwards and pitched towards her. In a panic she rushed to snatch up the baby, yelling at the children to run to the bedroom. Scared now by her fear they scrambled after her, a chair was knocked over, a glass of milk spilt.

They huddled on the bed confused. Was the bat really dangerous? Caitlin was embarrassed but could not bring herself to face the bat again. They would wait here for papi to come home for lunch while she entertained them with stories of--what else--bats.

This was where Lorenzo found them to his huge amusement.

“Watch me!” They looked on from a safe distance as Lorenzo got the broom from the kitchen and advanced on the bat, which was now only twitching on the floor. He took two swings at the bat then swept the remains out the door. The children were tearful, not certain they had wanted the bat dead.

“Everything is all right,” Lorenzo said. “Everything is fixed”. He put his arms around Caitlin. “See, everything is all right now.”



© Coralie Duchesne
1205-65 Sherbrooke East,
Montreal, QC., H2X 1C4
(514) 287-9335
xanadu@magma.ca