A Voice in the Night
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Ever since he was a little boy Santino felt the presence of his paternal grandmother with him. She had passed many years before he was born, but there was always a perpetual guiding voice that led Santino through even the darkest of times. On this night, he was begging for her guidance, but his pleas were met with silence. Not the kind of silence that one fails to hear when a word is spoken but the silence of the Divine; that little voice that guided Santino was nonexistent on this night—this night when he needed it most of all.
He stared blankly at the ceiling fan that was creakily whirling around, barely cooling the room on this very humid August night. It wasn’t the heat that was keeping him up, it was something far more 
perplexing. He simply didn’t know what the point of living was any more. In fact, if truth be told, he didn’t know if there was a point to living. He was confused and most importantly, he was in self-created pain. He begged for some mercy from a god he was uncertain was even there.
He tossed and turned but couldn’t go back to sleep. It was too early to rise to go to work, and even if it was time to go he knew it would bring even less relief than staying in bed. How did he get here? How did he get to the point of such hopelessness? How could he have lost his way so completely? The repetition of these questions haunted him each evening, and each sunset brought him fewer and fewer answers.
The monotonous ticking of the clock beside his bed sounded like a countdown to his final moments when in his haze he heard a voice. It was a voice he had never heard before. It was neither male nor female. In fact, it wasn’t even so much a voice as it was a very strong feeling that was so overpowering it jolted him to a sitting position in his bed.
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”
Santino had no idea from where this voice came nor did he know who possessed this voice, however deep within his heart he felt this voice had a wisdom that he failed to possess.
He looked around the room and he saw no one. There was nothing untoward happening in his small single-room apartment. Chills ran down his spine and sweat began furrowing at his brow. His heart raced. Again, he heard the voice.
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”
This voice was not that of his grandmother whom he always felt had been with him. This voice was different. There was a sagaciousness to this voice, and a peace belied the words the voice was saying.
He contemplated the meaning of the words and repeated them over and over in his head.
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”
The words did little to give him relief, but for the first time in a very long time he felt a spark of remembrance inside of him. It was the spark of a time long since passed where he held all of the knowledge of the Universe in his heart and where peace resided deep within himself. However, it was fleeting because as soon as he felt it, fear seeped back into his consciousness and with the fear came hopelessness. The two always seemed to go hand-in-hand.
Whenever he became the most disconsolate he always thought about Natasha. He loved her so, but he never had the courage to tell her. He sat side-by-side her at work and as the days toiled on she was always the thing that brought him some form of commiserate joy.
He was thinking about her now. Why couldn’t he find the courage to just tell her that he loved her? It seemed like such a simple act that could easily be arranged, but he would never do it. Why? Most likely because he had lost faith in relationships or at least the idea of relationships. He had worked for nearly 5 years in the Child Support Office for the government and he had seen the toils of relationships gone badly. Lovers who had once fawned lovingly over each other had now been reduced to name calling and blame. No, he thought, much better to love Natasha from afar than ever allow the love to transmute into hatred and resentment.
As soon as the thought of Natasha faded, his other greatest worry that always nagged at him entered his consciousness and snatched away the remaining morsels of his peace of mind—money. Would he ever have enough of it? The answer, it appeared, would always be “no.” He had been saving everything he earned so that one day, if he ever did change his mind about relationships and found the courage to pursue Natasha, he could support a family with her as his bride. It seemed fantastical in his mind, but fantasy was one of the few things that got him through his day.
Unfortunately, his cynicism always got the best of him and he would settle for simply smelling her glorious perfume as she sat next to him each day trying to assuage acrimonious former lovers to try to behave civilly for the betterment of their children. Few grown adults were able to do this and this only strengthened Santino’s resolve never to get married. Leave that for the suckers, he thought.
As the night drifted on, Santino found even less peace. Even the melodious sounds of the crickets chirping were becoming a nuisance to Santino. He tossed and turned but there was little he could do to fall back to sleep. Finally, with little hope of returning to unconscious slumber, Santino sat up in bed and reached for the one other thing that brought him a modicum of peace in his life: a ring—his grandmother’s ring.
The ring was given to her by Santino’s paternal grandfather, Santino Fernando Reyes. He was young Santino’s namesake and always cast a large shadow for the younger boy.
Santino Fernando Reyes was one of the most preeminent Spanish painters and sculptors of his time. There was a longstanding rumor that Pablo Picasso developed his ideas on Cubism from the elder Reyes and it was only Santino Fernando Reyes’ refusal to go to Paris in the 1920s that prevented him from being more well known with the Bourgeois. He refused to leave Spain because he felt he owed it to his homeland to keep his creations at home. Because of this, his name slipped through the cracks of infamy and only those of the very highest taste in art knew his name.
In Spain, Santino Fernando Reyes was a national hero and young Santino discovered he could never quite live up to his grandfather’s bigger than life personality. There was an apocryphal story which purported that when Santino Fernando Reyes walked into a room even the ceiling fans would pause to take notice of this towering figure. The younger Santino could never escape his Mount Everest of a shadow and it wasn’t until his parents immigrated to Cuba in the hopes of one day getting to America that he was finally able to shed some of the expectations that were thrust upon him.
On this night, Santino had picked up the ring to bring him some semblance of peace. This ring was always his link to his grandmother. This was a woman that Santino Garcia Reyes never had the chance to meet for she died giving birth to Santino’s father, Leonardo Ortega Reyes. From the earliest of times, young Santino was always spiritually protected by his paternal grandmother. She was always with him, but Santino never mentioned this to anyone for fear of being ridiculed and taunted.
As Santino held the ring firmly in his hand in the dark of the night, he prayed for some form of peace. Let the misery subside, he thought. This ring was always his last bastion of hope. It symbolized what he viewed as his beginning and his end.
The ring was handmade by Santino’s grandfather and it became a national treasure in Spain. It was made of pure platinum and on the top of the ring was a diamond-encrusted butterfly that was made to appear blue with beautiful iridescent sapphire stones. Santino Fernando Reyes created the ring to win the favor Emanuela Flores Ortega who was a chambermaid at the Hotel Ramblas. Santino Fernando Reyes would watch from his room overlooking the hotel each morning as Emanuela walked into the lobby to start her workday. According to folklore, he painted nearly 40 portraits of her before he ever mustered the courage to invite her for a late afternoon siesta over tea. This seemed to be the one and only time that Santino Fernando Reyes lacked the courage to claim his desires.
When Santino Fernando Reyes finally did get the courage to court Emanuela it was said that he knew he would marry her after their first encounter. The ring, that beautiful butterfly ring, was his ultimate gesture of love. He presented it to her on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage. She agreed and they married soon after. She died giving birth to her only child, Santino’s father, Leonardo Ortega Reyes, eleven months to the day of their first meeting. Her death devastated Santino Fernando Reyes, which set off the most prodigious productivity of his career. He painted and sculpted some of his most famous works following this time of melancholia. What was Santino Fernando Reyes’ greatest tragedy became Spain’s greatest gift. Upon his death, he instructed that none of his works were ever allowed to leave Spain where his beloved lain in her eternal rest. All of the elder Santino’s works still reside in The National Museum in Madrid.
For young Santino, the ring gave him solace. It brought him back to a time when his own father would tell stories of his grandparent’s courtship. One day, if he found the courage—if only he could find the courage—he would present the ring to Natasha. He would love her if he could only learn to open his heart.
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”
The voice was guiding him but to where he did not know. How could he ever know? He felt so aimless and yet he couldn’t commit to the one thing he felt may give him some reprieve: death. He would have to rise again and meet the day and then wait for the night again. The night, when the pain came. The night, when terror arrived.
“Sometimes you have to be lost so that you can be found.”