The Abundance of the Infinite by Christopher Canniff Page B

tonight,” she replies. “Apart from this: if you weren’t married, if I wasn’t—involved—I might be tempted to kiss you right now. Softly, on the lips.” She smiles.
    There is a fire beside us, a spitting grill sputtering the venom of fishy lime juice. There is a much larger fire nearby, students and faculty dancing barefoot around it, eating the flesh of freshly caught fish beneath the moonlight as if in some pagan ritual. There are several beautiful women standing beside the fire from whom I can’t seem to turn my attention away. Inés and Yolanda are among these women, and the sisters smile in my direction. Karen notices my distraction and, turning my head toward her, she hands me her drink. Feeling the effects now, I take another mouthful.
    â€œI’m flying out of Guayaquil,” she announces as she casts her shoes away. “In two days.”
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œWell if you must know, and I assume you must because you asked: Caracas, Venezuela. There’s a small island off the coast. My friend who goes to school there, I’m going to see him.”
    â€œWhy?”
    She pauses, and then sighs. “Well, I haven’t told you, and I don’t want you to tell the Señora. When I’m ready to, I’ll tell her myself.”
    â€œTell her what?”
    â€œMore explanations,” she says, sighing again. “Tell her that I’m pregnant.”
    I am silent for a moment, thinking of her smoking, her drunkenness, wondering about possible damage to the fetus, and I immediately think of harm coming to my own daughter. I have the impulsive urge, thinking of this, to go home, to protect my daughter from those who would do her harm. I have not received any letters from Yelena recently, although I have been writing to her now more than ever before, trying to entice her to come here. I could only know her state of mind through those letters, in which she wrote nothing about our child, and now I have no recourse to know anything about either of them.
    I return to the conversation, reflecting that I’ve never seen Karen with a man.
    â€œYou’re pregnant by whom?” I ask.
    â€œThe man I’m going to see in Venezuela,” she replies.
    â€œOh. So you won’t be back?”
    â€œI can’t give up on that apartment. One day soon, I’ll be back.”
    I pause for a moment before stating emphatically, while thinking of my daughter again: “I’m going with you.”
    â€œTo Venezuela?” she asks incredulously.
    â€œNo. To the airport.”
    â€œSo am I. But where are you going?”
    â€œI’m going home. To Canada.”
    â€œReally? Interesting ...”
    Among the students and professors, we move in rhythm to the salsa and merengue music in a ritual dance to our trip, to our safety, to a glamorous freedom I have never known. I have never known insomnia to be anything but terrifying, but now it is sensuality, uninhibited. Now it is spirituality. It is a faded opera soprano that comes from the sea. It is the voice of Annabelle, soft and sweet, fluttering like the wind through the leaves of the palm trees. It is anything but logical, this feeling.
    Seven years of abundance, seven years of drought for you Pharaoh, God said in His infinite wisdom.
    Dreams, one of God’s instruments for speaking to the individual.
    Did He intend for psychologists to interpret dreams?
    Prophets, God’s Dream interpreters, recipients of a divine word helping form the basis of faith.
    Jacob’s ladder, extending to heaven.
    God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
    The Warrior. The Father. The Creator. The Destroyer.
    Without dream images, would there be any religion?
    Without God, life is meaningless.
    Without my dreams, without my visions by day and night, what would I have?

14

    The next morning, I awaken with the memory of what was certainly one of the worst nocturnal panic attacks I’ve ever