Quotation

Hans-Peter Schneider is in a berth aboard his long black boat off Key Largo. He listens to a woman sobbing on the V-berth in the bow. He imitates her sobs. He is a good mimic. His own mother’s voice comes out of his face, calling the crying woman’s name. “Karla? Karla? Why are you crying, my dear child? It’s just a dream.” Desperate in the dark, the woman is fooled for a second, then bitter wracking tears again. The sound of a woman crying is Hans-Peter’s music; it soothes him and he goes back to sleep. === In Barranquilla, Colombia, Jesús Villarreal lets the measured hiss of his respirator calm him. He breathes some oxygen from his mask. Through the common darkness he hears a patient out in the hospital ward, a man crying out to God for help, crying “Jesús!” Jesús Villarreal whispers to the dark, “I hope God can hear you as well as I can, my friend. But I doubt it.”