I told Irene: "I had to shut the door to the passage. They have taken over the back part. She let her knitting fall and looked at me with her tired, serious eyes. "You're sure?" I nodded. "In that case,” she said, picking up her knitting again, "we'll have to live on this side."
Julio Cortázar, “Casa Tomada”
When my dear wife departed, she left behind – in addition to a host of unforgettable memories – a grand three-level colonial house which we had built in the suburbs, mostly to her specifications. The house was way too big for just the two of us, but she had suggested that in time its resale value would be much greater than if we just bought a two-bedroom split-level. In that, like everything else, I followed her advice.
She proceeded to furnish and decorate the house beautifully. Other than footing the bills, I had little to do with the way the house ended up looking and feeling, but it was quite comfortable. I intended to remain there as long as I could, for moving to an assisted living facility was anathema to me.
So, I planned to live my retirement years in a mausoleum that could have accommodated a large family or two. I was not alone; my unmarried daughter Eileen moved in with me, bringing along her black and white shorthair cat Tux to partner with Chekov, my snow-white Persian.
Our basement was fully furnished and had two bedrooms, a living room with an entertainment center, a bathroom, and a windowless den; it had a separate entrance that led to our garden and could be turned into an apartment that I could have rented out, but I prized my privacy and decided to sacrifice the extra income to preserve my solitude. Thus, Eileen and I shared our cocoon in perfect isolated harmony. I was writing what I hoped would be this century’s War and Peace; she, an accomplished photographer, has turned my wife’s office into a dark room where she worked until the small hours of the morning developing her museum-quality pictures.
All was as fine as it could be until last Tuesday night.
I was getting ready for bed but felt a little hungry so I went down from my upstairs bedroom to the kitchen on the main floor to get a glass of milk. As I was taking my beverage to the breakfast nook, I heard a thud coming from the stairs to the basement. What could it be? Had a piece of furniture collapsed? Had a deer or a racoon walked in from the woods behind the house? Were we being invaded by prowlers?
I am not a brave man, but decided I had to investigate. I went slowly down the steps and made a spine-chilling discovery: the walls on the sides of the staircase now sported crude cardboard signs, each containing a threatening or insulting message like: “GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY,” “FORREINERS OUT OF HERE,” “WE’LL GET RID OF YOU, SCUM,” and “WE’LL DEPORT YOU ALL.” At the foot of the stairs lay another, overturned sign that was evidently the source of the noise.
Trembling, I proceeded into the basement and noticed other signs lying on the sofa, leaning on the recliner, and stacked on the center table. The doors to the bedrooms and the den were closed, but whispers and the sounds of shuffling feet came from inside them. I turned tail and ran back upstairs.
I was met in front of the kitchen by Eileen, who had come out of her studio as she heard my hurried footsteps. “What’s happening?” she asked, alarmed.
“They have taken over the basement,” I replied tremulously.
“They who?”
“The government, or hoods acting under its authority.”
“But why?”
“They want us out of here! They want to throw us out of our house, out of this country, maybe out of the world!” I was almost shouting with hysteria.
“Can they do that? We are here legally” objected Eileen.
“Might make right,” I replied.
“Should we call the police?”
“I’m sure the police let them in through the back door, or at least allowed them to force their way in.”
“What are we going to do then?” her voice cracked with newfound terror.
“Nothing for the moment. Let’s just barricade the door to the basement to keep them contained.”
With great difficulty, Eileen and I piled chairs, tables, and a heavy sideboard from the dining room against the stairway door. Exhausted, I went to my bedroom and collapsed on my bed. I presume Eileen followed up sometime later and disappeared inside hers.
Late Wednesday morning we convened in the breakfast nook. I had woken up from my unquiet sleep and made some coffee. I was having a chocolate croissant and some freshly squeezed orange juice when Eileen joined me, showing signs of insomnia on her puffed face and disheveled hair.
“What are we going to do?” she repeated the question from the night before.
I replied with false assurance: “Nothing. We are legally in this country and have broken no laws. I own this house and, other than the mortgage, I owe nothing to anyone. I have paid my taxes and there are no judgments or pending suits against either of us. They cannot dispossess us.”
Eileen knew me well and could see through my false bravado. “And yet…?” she questioned softly.
My façade collapsed. “You can’t use reason to fight brute force” I conceded. “Let’s hope that, now that they realize we are in on their game, they will leave us alone and go after easier targets.”
“What if they persist?” she repeated relentlessly.
“I got a call from a lawyer friend of mine. I’ll see what he recommends. In the meantime, I have transferred a lot of money from my retirement fund into my checking account. It will be murder at tax time, but that is months away. We will have enough cash to tide us over if we need to leave.”
“I’ll do the same,” she confirmed. “But what if they freeze our accounts?”
“That will take time. The moment we see we have to go, we’ll take the money out.”
Eileen seemed unconvinced, but did not reply.
Nothing new happened on Wednesday, but I was awakened early Thursday morning by the sounds of furniture being dragged across the foyer. Drawing courage out of cowardice, I came down to the main floor, brandishing a fireplace poker, ready to challenge the intruders no matter the consequences. I met nobody on the main floor, but the barricade Eileen and I had erected had been moved so that it now blocked the entrance to the living room and the adjacent family room. The posters that I saw along the basement staircase and its main room were now hanging on the main floor walls.
Eileen came slowly downstairs from her bedroom. Her face was white as chalk, and she was trembling visibly. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
“They have taken over the living room, the family room and the porch” I reported woodenly. “Soon we will be trapped in our bedrooms upstairs.”
“What did your friend the lawyer say?”
“He is drafting a motion for a temporary restraining order and bringing it over so I can approve it and he can take it to the district court and file it.”
“Will that work?” she asked dubiously.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But we have a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“If we stay in the house, who knows what will happen to us. However, if we flee, the trespassers can claim title to it under a legal doctrine known as adverse possession. Normally it would take years of their occupying our property against our will before the doctrine kicks in, but under current conditions the government can go before a favorably minded judge and ask that the waiting period be waived and the intruders take title right away.”
“We are screwed,” lamented Eileen.
I replied, gritting my teeth. “Let’s load all that we can take with us into our car. These cowards won’t do anything during the day, but will emerge like rats at night. We have a few hours to get ready.”
After packing, I went to the garden supply store and bought a large container of chlordane, a highly flammable insecticide. I inserted chlordane-soaked rags in every corner of the rooms still under our control, tied to each other by thin strips of cloth soaked with chlordane that would serve as fuses. I took out a book of matches, lit a match to a strip of cloth, slammed the bedroom door, and ran downstairs.
“Let’s go!” I ordered, and Eileen, the cats and I zoomed out of the garage and sped away, as blinding flames and smoke erupted out of what had been the house of my dreams. “They will get us for arson!!” cried Eileen. “Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. If we escape, we have enough money to start a new life somewhere else. If we are lucky, perhaps we’ll even get a homeowners’ insurance payout.”
I was on the freeway crossing the state line when a message flashed on my cell phone advising that my house was on fire. My face registered a grim smile as I wondered what the investigators would find when they went through the ruins.
END
Bio:
Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Well over two hundred of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books, and podcasts. A novel, an autobiography entitled “Cuban Transplant,” and four anthologies of his stories have also been published.