The Polish Boxer Read online

  I put a few bills on the table and stood. You don’t want something to eat, muchacho? Doña Lucky asked, and I said thank you, no. Some pork rinds or a little estofado, maybe? No, thank you. You know estofado is the local dish in Tecpán? I said no, I didn’t know. How do you prepare it, señora? Four different meats, she replied, pig, chicken, cow, and goat. You cook it in a big pot until the meat falls apart, with some thyme and laurel and orange juice and vinegar and a splash of beer and a splash of Pepsi. She smiled, but I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Excuse me, I said to the man, who was still sitting there, what’s the name of that cloth you have hanging from your belt? This? he asked, holding it up. It’s a knee cloth, he said. Very traditional, he said. The kids don’t want to wear them anymore, he said. I asked him what the Cakchikel name was, and cradling it like a wounded dove, he replied xerka. Excuse me? Xerka, he repeated, barely parting his lips. With an X? I asked, and he shrugged and said that he wouldn’t know.

  Technically, Pamanzana is a hamlet, though that’s a pretty benevolent way to put it. Half a dozen adobe and rusted sheet-metal shacks lined the road, looking like they were about to collapse. I parked my car and walked to the tiny shop with a Rubios Mentolados cigarette sign over its door. Outside, a dog napped contentedly in the only spot of shade. Inside, a girl sat behind a metal grille, looking incarcerated, and she stood when she saw me. Good afternoon, I said. She just smiled uneasily. There was a strong smell of dried sardines, and instinctively I took a step back. I’m looking for the Kalel family, I said, for a young man named Juan Kalel, but the girl just smiled, more fearfully than pityingly. Do you know Juan Kalel? Crossing her arms, she murmured something unintelligible. His father tends an orchard here in Pamanzana. No response. I stood silently for a few seconds. I thought about all the bars that stood between us, about all those barriers, and I felt helpless. I bought a pack of cigarettes and, after lighting one, went back out to the street.

  I walked toward the shacks, but there was no one in sight. The dog had awakened and was barking at something. A snake, maybe. Or a rat. I leaned against the car and for some reason thought of Annie Castillo, of her eyes, which had once struck me as molasses-colored, of her pallor, of her loneliness, and for a moment I felt a mixture of love and disdain and apprehension. I thought of all the students like Annie Castillo, who lived so close to hamlets like Pamanzana, but who also lived so blindly distant from hamlets like Pamanzana. And staring at the shacks and the dust, I thought about all the stories that, shut away in a more perfect world, we read and analyzed and discussed, as if reading them and analyzing them and discussing them actually mattered. And then I didn’t want to think anymore.

  I lit another cigarette. I was about to start reading some of Juan Kalel’s poems, when I heard footsteps behind me. It was a woman dressed in black, carrying a big bag of fruit or vegetables. She wore a fine white mantilla on her head. She stopped just beside me, solemn and sweltering. You must be Señor Halfon, she said with no expression whatsoever, pronouncing my name the same way Juan Kalel did. I smiled, perplexed. She still looked somber. Her face was cheerless and weather-beaten, like an old sailor’s. Juan has a book of yours, she said, and I recognized you from the photo. Are you his mother? She nodded just like her son. I told her I was very glad to meet her, that I’d come from the capital to speak to Juan a little but that I didn’t know where to find him. Without looking at me, she said I was lucky, that she had only come to Pamanzana to get some cauliflower from the orchard her husband tended and that she was on her way back to Tecpán now. I offered her a ride and she accepted without a word.

  Sitting uncomfortably in my car, she asked me if I was there to convince Juan to go back to school. Not at all, I said, I just want to speak to him. I decided not to mention his poetry. She was quiet for some time, staring out the window, holding her bag of cauliflower. I can assure you he won’t be going back, she said suddenly. I was about to repeat that this wasn’t why I’d come, but instead I said nothing. We need our Juan close by at the moment, she said, faltering. I didn’t turn to look, but from the tone of her voice I could have sworn she was crying.

  The Kalel house was on the outskirts of Tecpán, on the road to the Mayan ruins of Iximché. Once, as a kid, I visited Iximché with the family of a school friend, and the only memory I have is of eating green mango with lime and ground pumpkin seeds, and then vomiting it all up by the stones of some temple or altar. I remember my friend’s mother fanning me with something as she gave me bitter sips of tonic water.

  A black doll hung disconcertingly on the front door. Please, sit. Juan will be back very soon, his mother told me. The house looked clean and comfortable, in spite of everything. In one open area were the kitchen, a small table-cum-dining room, and a rustic black leatherette sofa. Candles cast a hazy light in one corner. I went over to look at a shelf with framed photos of the children at their First Communion, not realizing I’d been toying with a cigarette until Juan’s mother brought in an ashtray. You can smoke, she said, placing it on the table. I thanked her and sat down, but I decided to slip it back into the pack. Without asking, she brought me a cup of plantain atol and then sat down beside me. I’d never tried plantain atol before. I asked her how it was made. She didn’t reply. Do you know, Señor Halfon, why Juan left his studies? I said that I did not, that at the university they wouldn’t say anything other than for personal reasons. That’s what we requested, she said, looking down, but in an exaggerated way, as if her eyes would bore through the floor and into the ground. She remained like that until the door opened abruptly and Juan appeared in the doorway, holding hands with a girl of perhaps six or seven. He wore a too-small white shirt, with a too-small black vest over it. The girl looked like a miniature version of her mother: dressed in black, with a white mantilla on her head. I turned and saw that in the corner, around the candles, were wilted flowers and a rosary and some old photographs, and all of a sudden everything made sense.

  For lunch we had turkey—which we call chompipe and they called chunto—and sweetened crookneck squash. Then, as we walked together to the central square, Juan told me that his father had been sick for many years, that he had had prostate cancer and eventually it spread all over. He said that his father had refused to go to the capital to have a doctor look at it, that he preferred to keep working. My father died in the field, he said, and that was all he said. There was nothing else to say, I suppose. But the image of his father dying in an orchard, on land he tended that was not his, stayed with me.

  Juan treated me to a cup of coffee. The best in Tecpán, he boasted, paying a woman who had her little table set out right in the center of the square. She poured a squirt of coffee extract, a little hot water, and a little milk into two plastic cups. When she said something in Cakchikel, Juan just smiled. In silence, we walked toward an empty bench.

  This is yours, I said, handing him the notebook and the poem he’d mailed me. I thought he’d try to refuse them, but he took them with no comment whatsoever. A barefoot woman passed by, selling cashews. I’ve read your books, Halfon, Juan said, looking over at a group of men shining shoes beside the fountain. And then for a time, neither of us said anything. I wanted to tell him that it made perfect sense to me why he’d dropped out, that he didn’t have to explain it. I wanted to tell him how much I missed him in class. I wanted to tell him to keep writing poetry. But there was no need for that. Someone like Juan Kalel could never abandon poetry, even if he wanted to, mostly because poetry would never abandon him. It wasn’t a question of form, or aesthetics, but of something much more absolute, something much more perfect that had little or nothing to do with perfection.

  A girl came up and said hello to Juan and the two of them began speaking in Cakchikel. It sounded beautiful, like drops of rain falling on a lake, perhaps. When she left, I asked Juan if he also wrote poems in Cakchikel. He said of course. I asked how he decided whether to write them in Spanish or Cakchikel. He was quiet for a time, looking out at the fountain where the shoe-s
hine boys gathered. I don’t know, he said finally. I’ve never thought about it before. Then we fell back into that natural silence we had, as if neither of us really needed to say anything or as if everything between us had already been said, either way. The air smelled of roasted corn on the cob. In the distance, a boy was selling baby chicks, and people were ignoring a preacher. Do you know, Halfon, how to say poetry in Cakchikel? Juan asked suddenly. And I said no, I had no idea. Pach’un tzij, he said. Pach’un tzij, I repeated. And I savored the word for a time, taking pleasure in it purely for its sound, for the delectable lure of its pronunciation. Pach’un tzij, I said once more. Do you know what it means? he asked, and although I hesitated, I said no, but that it didn’t really matter. Braid of words, he said. It’s a neologism that means braid of words, he said. Pach’un tzij, he intoned, giving it an elegance that could only be gained through unskeptical spirituality. It’s something like an embroidered blouse of words, like a huipil of words, he said, and that was all.

  It had gotten late. The sun was starting to go down and we decided to walk back to Juan’s house. Near the colonial church, an old man stood before a small white cage. We approached. He had a yellow canary in it and was whispering or singing softly to it. Juan told me that the canary was a fortune-teller, and I smiled. No, really, he said. How much? I asked the old man. He raised two fingers. I took two coins from my pocket and handed them to him. But it’s for him, I said, pointing to Juan: I’d rather know his future than mine. The old man took a wheel full of colored slips of paper and then whistled softly to the canary, placing the wheel in front of the bird. With its beak, the bird pecked out a pink slip of paper. Then the old man took it, whispered something to the bird, folded the paper in half, and handed it to Juan, who was staring fixedly at the canary. There was no tenderness in his stare, no compassion. Instead, he looked angry, almost violent, almost furious, as if the canary were divulging some dark secret. Juan unfolded the pink paper and read it in silence. I simply watched, also silent, and maybe it was the streetlight, or maybe it was something else, but I could see the purple scar clearly on his right cheek, which now looked like much more than a blow from a machete. And then very slowly, as if emerging from a nightmare, Juan began to smile. I thought of asking him what the paper said, asking him what future the canary had predicted for him, but I decided against it. Some smiles are not meant to be understood. Juan said something to the old man in Cakchikel, slipped the pink paper into his shirt pocket, and looking up at the sky said it would be getting dark soon.

  Twaining

  I arrived in Durham wanting to vomit. The passenger next to me, a huge black guy with the friendliest southern accent possible, had been talking to me throughout the three-hour flight about the furniture business in North Carolina, while the plane heaved and shook like a damn spinning top. Try sucking on an ice cube, he suggested when he saw me turning pale, or green, or both. That always helps. I closed my eyes for the last stretch of the journey, and when we finally landed and I dared to open them again, the big black guy was fanning me worriedly with one of the in-flight magazines. Nice people, southerners.

  I’d studied engineering in the same area, just twenty minutes from Durham, but I hadn’t been back for twelve years. Why would I? That prim nostalgia that Americans drum up for their alma mater has always seemed really pathetic to me. I walked out of the airport and the November chill made me feel better, or at least not so dizzy. I wandered between taxis and suitcases. Because of the tinted glass, it took me a while to make out my last name in the window of a plush limousine—well, not exactly a limousine, but a Cadillac or a Lincoln, which as far as I was concerned came to pretty much the same thing. I asked the driver if I had time to smoke a cigarette and he said of course, that we were still waiting for a passenger from Utah. I sat down on a bench. He stayed on his feet. I offered him a Camel, but he looked serious and shook his head. We talked about the weather, though it’s possible that I’m wrong and that’s just how I remember it. He was surprised to learn that I came from Guatemala and more surprised when I told him I’d been born there and still lived there. But your English is excellent, he remarked, and I said thanks very much, yours too. He just exhaled an enormous cloud of cold air.

  After a while the passenger from Utah appeared. Harold Lewis. Professor of political science at Brigham Young University. A Mormon, of course. He was in Durham to take part in a conference on Mark Twain. Me too, I told him, and he was obviously surprised to see me in jeans, unshaven, and smoking like some Latino revolutionary. Yes, I told him, I was a university professor as well, but I don’t think he believed me or perhaps he did and just decided to look proud and disdainful. There was something shepherdlike about Lewis, though I’m not even sure what I mean by that. We put our suitcases in the trunk of the limousine, I took a last drag on my cigarette and jumped into the backseat of the sumptuous vehicle with the excitement of a child arriving at an amusement park. The driver told us that we could relax, that we were fifteen minutes from the hotel. Lewis asked me where I was from, and when I told him he raised his eyebrows, but I don’t know why. Gringos. I turned to look out at the immense pine forests that girded the highway, and I remembered what a three-or four-year-old girl once asked when she saw the trees passing by her car window (Why are the trees running backward?), and smiled. Some memories are harmless. Or at least they seem harmless. Look, how tragic, Lewis said, pointing to a dead deer on the road. Real common, said the driver, to see deer run over around these parts. It occurred to me then, as a limousine carrying a Guatemalan and a Mormon rumbled past deer carcasses toward an academic conference on Mark Twain, that I was in the wrong place. Sometimes, just briefly, I forget who I am.

  We arrived at the Duke Inn. Out of habit, I gave a few dollars to the driver and found it odd that Lewis didn’t do the same, but I didn’t overthink it either. There were dozens of golfers in the lobby. The click of their spikes on the parquet floor, not to mention the cocktails golfers seem to need after a round of eighteen holes, made me think of my father. Besides being a hotel and conference center, the Duke Inn was also a private golf club. The receptionist, an Indian or Pakistani girl I thought was quite cute, handed me my room key and a folder with instructions and timetables for the days ahead, and I saw with relief that I still had an hour before the welcome dinner. I asked the girl if I could smoke in my room. Looking at her computer screen, she told me no, that she was very sorry but she didn’t have any more smoking rooms. Oh wait a minute, she said with unnecessary excitement, there is one, but I’m afraid it’s for disabled people. That’s no problem, I’m a writer, I wanted to say, but instead I said nothing and she explained to me that the room was designed for guests in wheelchairs. That won’t bother me, I told her. Excuse me a moment, she said, and conferred in whispers with a somewhat effeminate man. Her boss, I assumed. No problem, Mr. Halfon, I just need you to sign here, next to the X, and I signed right away, without even reading the damn thing.

  Like some Gulliver, like Alice in an exotic wonderland, or even better, like Snow White in the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs—that’s how I felt. Everything was lower down than usual. The bed, the desk, the TV, the nightstand, the sink, the toilet, even the peephole you looked through to see who was at the door was at waist level. There were rails everywhere and a ramp in the shower. I’m in an invisible circus, I thought, and lit a cigarette. I liked feeling submerged in a more literary environment, or who knows, maybe I just liked feeling bigger.

  I took a shower. Wrapped in a towel, I decided to lie down for a minute before going back downstairs, and I dozed without meaning to. I may have dreamed that I was Mark Twain or someone very similar to Mark Twain, sailing down the Mississippi River while writing that I was sailing down the Mississippi River. It was already late when I woke up, but I got ready quickly and arrived in the dining room on the first floor just as they were serving the salads. A young woman greeted me with her eyes and came up to me. Mr. Halfon, I assume. I apologized. Your seat is at that table ov
er there, and she pointed to it. There were sixteen people invited to the conference and, as I would realize later, I was the only foreigner. I introduced myself as I sat down. A young woman named Mary Catherine something—I can’t remember her last name—told me that she taught economics at Yeshiva University in New York. Disconcerted, I asked her if she was Jewish. God no, she said, and I didn’t want to inquire further. A shy young man was working on his doctoral thesis on English poets of the fourteenth or fifteenth century—I can’t remember which and I can’t remember his name. I’m a professor of public choice at Notre Dame, an older woman told me, and I still have no idea what public choice is, despite her having spent more than twenty minutes explaining it to me. To my right, a little old man was taking sips of his zucchini soup in silence. He must be at least ninety, I thought as I watched his hand tremble every time he tried to bring it to his mouth. Hi, I said to him. He put his spoon on the table and glanced up. He looked at me for a while, as though trying to decide whether or not it was worth talking to me. He had bright blue eyes, long fingernails, and a scraggy beard that somehow seemed fake. Did you know that zucchinis are an aphrodisiac? he whispered. Really? I asked. No, he said, but that’s what I tell my wife so she’ll make them a lot. He smiled. But please, kid, he said conspiratorially, patting my forearm, don’t tell her that. He smiled again. I can’t be sure, but I think I grew fond of Joe Krupp straight away, even before I knew who he was or what he did.

  After dinner and some pretty dull speeches, they herded us all into another room to drink a few cocktails. Hospitality hour, they called it. I drank a port and, without saying a word to anyone, decided to slip back to my Lilliputian room. I don’t like drinking with intellectuals. When I got there, I saw that there were two little chocolates on the pillow and that the TV was tuned to a channel offering porn films for seven dollars each. I was told once that the average man watches three minutes of a porn film and I wondered whether it was different for women. I still don’t know the answer. I ate both chocolates. I went out onto the little balcony to read a bit about Twain’s life and smoke a cigarette, but I hadn’t even opened the book when my eyelids started to droop. As I stubbed my cigarette out, I thought I could hear sobs coming from the balcony to my right, and peering over cautiously, I managed to see the dark trembling silhouette of a woman sitting with her arms folded. She was whimpering softly, like a baby tired of crying. I suppose she also saw me but it was very dark, so I couldn’t be sure. I thought of asking her if she was all right, if she needed anything. Then I thought it would be inappropriate and just went silently back into my room and fell asleep.