Monastery Page 5
Please excuse me, Don Juan whispered, and leaned in a bit closer to me, as though about to tell me a secret. The two of us only just fit on the bench. In front of us, the women had nearly finished cooking dinner. None of them seemed to notice the neighbor’s evangelical cries. We were out checking on my coffee plants, Juan said, out on my farm. Then added: San Andrés Farm, it’s called. And he smiled an enormous white smile.
Don’t pay any attention to him, Eduardo, Iliana said from the stove. That’s what he named his little coffee plots. She turned to us. You see, my father loves naming things, she said.
Don Juan crossed his arms and sat watching his five daughters. Iliana Lucía, he suddenly whispered. Iliana because we saw that name in the paper, and Lucía because that was the name of a nun who used to come out from the capital back in the eighties to teach the town’s children. He paused for a moment. Judit Orquídea, he said, pointing with his eyes. Judit because my wife was always taken by Judit in the Bible, for her bravery, for her dedication, and Orquídea because someone told us that was the name of a flower, and what a pretty name for a girl, no? Another daughter scurried by, once again chasing after the three- or four-year-old girl, and Don Juan took her hand and held it in his as he spoke. Regina Guadalupe, he said. Regina because that was the name of the American nun who used to teach our catechism class, and Guadalupe, Señor Halfon, because my family is very devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He kissed his daughter’s hand, let it go, and glanced over at the comal. Patricia Amarilis, he said. Patricia just because my wife always liked that name, and Amarilis because in those days there was a woman who used to come to town, a teacher, and she was never able to have her own children, so she asked my wife to name a daughter Amarilis for her, and that’s what we did, in her honor. Hitler had roused himself and was now prowling around our feet. I pulled him onto my lap and the cat got comfortable between my thighs and then dozed off almost immediately. Teresina Mancruz, said Don Juan. Teresina was a nun who came to Huehuetenango to teach the village children to read, and Mancruz, Señor Halfon, because back then we used to listen to the radio, since there was no electricity in town and radios ran on batteries, and Mancruz was the name of the protagonist on a Mexican soap opera. Don Juan smiled, and I realized that he still hadn’t said anything about the name of his only son, the son in the garden photo, the dead son. But I didn’t dare ask. Instead, I just asked him why he’d named his farm San Andrés, and Don Juan smacked his lips, as though to thank me for my complicity, and then whispered that it was for a priest he’d met when he was young, there in town. Father Andrés, he added. A good man, he added. I suddenly thought I saw his eyes begin to get misty, but the kitchen was dark and smoky and I couldn’t be sure. We kept silent for a moment, and I got a fleeting urge to hug Don Juan Martínez. Maybe for consolation. Maybe for his nostalgic tone and his sad and subtle sense of humor. Or maybe for reasons much more my own.
ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE sat a roast chicken with pineapple and herbs, whole potatoes in butter, avocado crescents, hot tortillas wrapped in a dish towel, and a jug of coffee. In Guatemalan towns, it’s customary to drink watered-down coffee with dinner.
Iliana’s sisters helped set the table and then left. Doña Ernestina sat at the head of the table, said they had all had their dinner earlier, and only poured herself a cup of coffee. Hitler, on the prowl and begging under the table, was going crazy with all the food smells. The evangelist was still delivering his sermon, providentially muffled by the thick adobe walls and a light drizzle falling on the corrugated tin roof. As Doña Ernestina dished me out a little of everything, I asked Don Juan how the co-op got started and he said it had been a project of the Maryknoll Fathers, a North American Roman Catholic missionary congregation that was very committed to helping Guatemalan communities in the sixties and seventies. He said that’s how they got their name, Cooperativa Esquipulas, after the famous Black Christ of Esquipulas, the town’s patron saint. He said, looking at his wife, that they had both worked with the Maryknoll Fathers quite a bit. I was their driver, he said, and Ernestina their cook. That was many years ago, he said, spreading avocado on a tortilla. Before all the priests had to flee the country, he said, during the difficult years—Don Juan’s euphemistic way of referring to the decades of war between the guerillas and the army. Well, said Iliana, the priests who got out in time, at least, before they were murdered or disappeared by the military. We remained silent a few seconds, as though cautious in the face of so weighty a topic. Or as though in memory of the many priests murdered and disappeared. The Maryknoll idea was that if we started a co-op, said Don Juan, that if all the small coffee growers in the region banded together, if the poor united, then we’d be stronger and more able to compete with the two or three big plantations, the rich ones. Don Juan took a sip of coffee, and I thought briefly of the word solidarity, a word that to me, until that moment, had been nothing but an old, worn-out word, a word in disuse, a word from another generation. And were they right? I asked. Did the Maryknoll idea work? Don Juan took another sip of his thin coffee, put down his cup, softly stroked Iliana’s forearm as she sat on his left, and said: Now, after almost fifty years of having to endure trouble and persecution and extortion, I can say that yes, Señor Halfon, it worked.
I ATE IN SILENCE, attempting to piece together—through the narrative chaos and the neighbor’s evangelical ruckus—the onslaught of trouble and persecution and extortion. Don Juan, salting a potato: The co-op almost went under during the difficult years. Doña Ernestina, snatching the shaker from her husband: At that time, holding meetings was very dangerous. Don Juan, in a sad voice, an invisible shaker still in his hand: In the difficult years, saying the word co-op was almost like saying a bad word. Iliana, sucking on a leg bone: Plus, for years there were several directors who stole money from the co-op. Doña Ernestina, refilling my coffee without asking: The last one, a man from right here, stole over a million pesos. Don Juan: Getting rid of him took a lot of doing, but we finally got rid of him. Doña Ernestina: In this country, it’s hard to be honest. Iliana, with Hitler’s front paws on her knees: Then came the coffee crisis, in 2001 and 2002. Don Juan, shaking his head: During those years, the New York Stock Exchange told us we had to sell a quintal of coffee for fifty dollars. Iliana, caving in, giving Hitler the bone: Today we know exactly what a quintal of our coffee costs. Don Juan, grabbing a lime wedge: Some Englishmen came. Iliana: That is, today we know that producing a quintal of our coffee costs a coffee grower one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Don Juan, squeezing the lime onto an avocado crescent: You see, some Englishmen came to conduct an economic study, and that’s what they told us, one hundred and twenty-five dollars per quintal of coffee, net cost. Doña Ernestina: Imagine, the coffee growers worked for two whole years just to lose money. Don Juan, with avocado fingers: But those men from the New York Stock Exchange, who had never in their lives so much as laid eyes on a coffee plant, still made money. Iliana, smiling: That’s right. Don Juan, also smiling: Nothing new, right? Doña Ernestina, standing: And that’s when the Italian showed up. Don Juan, with a sigh, almost in unison: The Italian showed up. Doña Ernestina, now far from the dining room, maybe far from it all: You tell him, Juan, the story of the Italian. Hitler, as though terrified and hiding under the table, meowed.
AN ITALIAN CAME TO TOWN, Señor Halfon, a charming, handsome man, and he discovered that our coffee here is very high-quality, what they call strictly hard bean, which means intense flavor and very aromatic. He made an offer to the co-op members, to promote our coffee in Italy. We gave him a small sample and he took it to Italy, and after some studies and analyses, he confirmed that indeed, due to the type of soil and the altitude and the local climate, coffee grown here was quality coffee. Then the Italian succeeded in getting Italy to label our coffee premium-quality. A great achievement, Señor Halfon. A gold seal for our co-op. The Italian signed a contract with us and began selling our coffee throughout Italy as luxurious, special, very expensive coffee. He took it to fairs
and festivals. He sold it in gourmet shops. The bags of coffee, I remember, came in a very pretty package, which said that part of the profits went to the indigenous of the Guatemalan highlands. His contract with us was for four years. During those four years, the Italian paid the co-op whatever he wanted, far below the internationally quoted price. As co-op members, we had to beg him to pay us what he had offered, what he owed us, but the Italian’s payments were always low, and late. And we never saw the percentage of profits promised on those pretty packages. That’s when Iliana came back. She’d been studying and working in Huehuetenango—When they murdered Osmundo, Doña Ernestina shouted, still from afar, and Don Juan, for a moment, paused, looked down, let out a long loud sigh—and we appointed her director of the co-op. As soon as she started, Iliana discovered that the co-op had just over one dollar in the bank. I’m not exaggerating, Señor Halfon. We were broke. We had an ex-director who stole. We had debts all over. We had an Italian partner who was making millions on the back of our sweat and labor. But little by little, Iliana began to impose order, and she managed to achieve several things. My daughter managed to dissolve the legal partnership we had with the Italian, though it took a lot of work. She got short-term financing for every one of the co-op members. She brought in experts from the capital to teach us how to produce better coffee, and the importance of pruning and thinning a coffee plant, and what the best varieties are, and what the best shade trees are, and why doing a soil study is vital, and how to taste the parchment beans, and how to judge a good cup of coffee. Then Iliana got funding so that every member, on their plots, could build their own wet mills, their own drying patios. She also got funds to build our office and warehouse. She forged an alliance that provided workshops for members on exporting and international commerce. But the most important thing, Señor Halfon, is that she managed to start selling our coffee abroad, our premium-quality coffee, at prices that we ourselves set. Imagine that. Now we set our own prices. This year, for example, when the international price for a quintal of coffee was one hundred and eighty dollars, Iliana managed to sell the co-op’s quintales at two hundred and eighty dollars. Now, at last, we sell our coffee at the price it’s truly worth. Not at the price imposed on us by New York.
DOÑA ERNESTINA RETURNED to the dining room carrying an enormous clay pot full of whole mangoes in hot syrup, and set it on the table. Four years of crops were lost, Iliana said, serving me from the pot with a large metal spoon, four years of hard work and suffering just for the Italian to make a lot of money. The syrup was exquisite. It had clove and cinnamon and a little ground allspice. But I will say, Don Juan declared as he sucked a mango pit with gusto, that thanks to the Italian, Señor Halfon, we got something very valuable. Absolutely, I said, because of him you got the international premium-quality seal, which made your co-op’s coffee one of the most sought-after in the world. Don Juan wiped his lips with a paper napkin. We did, yes, but we also got something even more valuable. The evangelist preacher, in tune to some organ or accordion music, suddenly intoned: May God continue to use you for His glory. Don Juan smiled, perhaps at the evangelist’s euphoric chanting, or perhaps at what he was about to tell me, or perhaps because he was a man whose smile comes naturally and means nothing. The Italian gave us faith in our product, he said. The Italian made us believe in ourselves. And if the price we paid for that was four harvests, well then, Señor Halfon, we got it cheap.
THE BLOCK ACROSS THE STREET from Pensión Peñablanca was onerously defended all night by a loud and territorial street dog. He would bark awhile, then stop barking awhile—just long enough for me to begin to doze off—then start barking again. Close to dawn, I gave up. I threw off the heavy quilt and went to rummage in my backpack for the last of my cigarettes. Smoking faceup on the bed, I watched the objects in the room gradually turn to light, come to life. I couldn’t stop thinking about Don Juan Martínez, about the coffee growers, about Iliana’s work at the co-op, about the pictures and diplomas hanging in the hallway, about the sisters’ silent dance, about the dead brother. And once again I started thinking about my own brother, and my own sister, and our own sibling dance—an ungainly dance, an awkward dance, sometimes even a furious dance. Perhaps because of the cold, or perhaps because of the lack of sleep, all I could think of were our quarrels and fights. The early ones, flailing and hysterical, were typical of spoiled children. The later ones, with my brother, even came to blows (in the last of these, he wound up in the emergency room with a broken foot when he tried to kick me in the stomach and I blocked his kick with my elbow). The adult ones, although still violent, were now waged not with our fists but with our silence. And the most recent one, the hardest and most silent one, had been before my sister’s Orthodox wedding, in Israel.
I showered and dressed slowly. When I went out, I came upon the same dog—big, black, dirty—fast asleep against the wall of a house. I considered waking him up, throwing a rock or a shoe at him. But instead I just walked up the steep cobblestone road, barely managing to sidestep several piles of lukewarm shit.
THE TOWN SLEPT ON. There were almost no pedestrians, or drivers, or buses. Shops and businesses were closed. The buildings all seemed improvised. Cinder-block facades poorly painted in primary colors. Red or grayish corrugated tin roofs. Rusted rebar sticking out of posts and columns for intended second stories. Narrow streets full of rotten fruit, paper, wrappers, plastic bags, boxes, trash from the wandering women vendors at the market the day before.
I came to the central plaza, or what had once been the central plaza and was now a paved soccer field and basketball court, the requisite lines painted on the cement, goals and baskets on either end—one sponsored by NaranJugo, the other by Frutada. I wanted to buy more cigarettes, but everything was closed. I sat down on a bench and just stared at the green of the hills and bluffs around La Libertad, a deep green, alive, the kind only seen in the rainy season. To my left was a row of shops and corner stores; to my right, the police department, painted in grays and blues, with two officers standing outside, smoking, watching me and judging me conspicuously. On the opposite side of the plaza, directly across from me, was the town church: small, gabled, its facade and bell tower painted somewhere between sky blue and bright turquoise. A woman, sitting on the steps leading up to the doors of the church, was arranging her basket to sell tostadas and atol for breakfast. Far from it all, as the backdrop of it all, a thick blanket of fog shrouded half the mountain.
SHINE. A BOY OF TEN OR TWELVE had approached me silently, from behind. Shine, he repeated, more a command than a question, and I said no, thank you. He had faint polish marks on his dark face and wore an old pair of enormous adult shoes, patent leather, and no socks. He needed both hands to bear the weight of his black wooden box of jars and dyes and waxes and brushes and dirty rags and who knows what else. Shine, mister, he said, not looking at me, almost not even trying. The two police officers were still staring at me from a distance. The woman with the basket had a stick in her pot and was stirring the atol. The boy suddenly plopped down onto the bench, at a slight distance from me, and deposited his wooden box on the ground. I asked him his name. Macario López y López, he replied decisively. Do people call you Macario? Sometimes, he mumbled. And sometimes Maca. I asked him if he knew where Doña Tuti’s café was. Where’re you from? the boy asked, and I said in my best Guatemalan accent that I was Guatemalan, same as he was. He smiled, not looking at me, incredulous. Don’t look like it, he mumbled. Where do I look like I’m from, then? He shrugged his shoulders. Don’t know, he said, not here though. I asked him if he knew the Esquipulas Co-op offices. The coffee co-op, I said. Iliana Martínez’s place, I added. Do you know Iliana Martínez, Don Juan Martínez? But the boy said nothing. He stared straight ahead. Buy me a tostada, mister, for my breakfast? I noticed that the two police officers were walking toward us, by the NaranJugo goal. They were still watching me, solemn or maybe just curious. Suddenly, they flicked down their cigarettes onto the plaza, as though getting ready to do so
mething. I slid my hand into my pants pocket and was about to pull out some change so the boy could buy a tostada from the woman, when he bluntly, almost nonchalantly, said: Oh, that Martínez family is kin of the one that got killed, right?
THE CO-OP ENTRANCE WAS a high, wide-open warehouse that served as storage unit during harvest time. From the white walls and corrugated tin ceiling hung ribbons and strings and papier-mâché streamers—perhaps a failed effort to give the place a more festive air, or perhaps they’d simply forgotten to take down the decorations after a birthday or anniversary.
I was standing in the middle of the warehouse with a coffee grower, a co-op member from the village of Chanjón, in the municipality of Todos Santos Cuchumatán, who that morning had made the long, arduous, four-hour drive to La Libertad.
Good coffee, yes? he said suddenly in an obstructed Spanish, a protracted Spanish, a Spanish molded by his Mayan tongue, Mam. We were each holding our cup of coffee. It is, I said. Very good. We appreciate it now, he said, we know how to drink it now, but before, at home, all we drank was instant coffee, or sometimes backwash coffee, pulp coffee they call it here, or sometimes we drank nutcoffee. I hadn’t heard him properly or else I didn’t understand. What’s that? He stood silent a moment, looking up, his mouth half-open, as though allowing each of his words the time to make the leap from one language to another. That’s what we called the very cheap beans brought in from the lowlands, he said, from the coast, where people from town went to work in the cane fields or in the cotton fields. He smiled weakly. He was holding an imaginary cheap bean between his thumb and index finger. We toasted them on the comal, he said, and then we crushed them with a grindstone. Tasted a little like coffee. But it wasn’t coffee. That’s how it got its name. Not coffee. Or notcoffee. Or nutcoffee. Something like that. That’s what we used to drink, before.