Monastery Page 6

  Cruz Pérez Pablo was his name, and it took me a moment to realize that Cruz was his first name, Pérez his second name, and Pablo his last name. As though his entire name had been assigned backward. As though he lived back to front. Cruz Pérez Pablo. A gallant name, one that deserves to be projected onto a huge white screen. He was dressed in the traditional clothes of Todos Santos Cuchumatán: red trousers with gray stripes; a blue-and-white-striped long-sleeve button-down shirt with thick, colorfully embroidered trim down the front and on the collar; a small straw hat with a band made of the same fabric. I stood looking at his clothes, so beautiful, so colorful, such a proud and unequivocal symbol of his identity, although its origins dated back to Spanish rule, centuries ago, when the multiple patterns and colors were nothing but a system imposed by Spanish caciques to differentiate their indigenous slaves by territory.

  He personally had prepared the two cups of coffee as we waited for Iliana and her father. Hot robust coffee, slightly acidic, slightly chocolaty. We were drinking—taking communion, I thought at the time, with coffee from his own land, coffee cultivated by his old hands—and a few members were coming and going, and Cruz Pérez Pablo would introduce them to me and they would remove their hats or baseball caps and shake my hand firmly and introduce themselves again, welcoming me to town and to the co-op, enunciating their names with pride, casting them like fruit or like a poem onto that enormous white screen.

  THE BIRDS ARE BACK. The squirrels are back. The kinkajous are back. The raccoons and the coati and what people here call tusas. Really big moles. Really delicious too, if you can manage to trap them.

  Don Juan Martínez was squatting beside one of his plants. As he spoke, his hands seemed to work autonomously: gathering dry leaves from the ground, pulling out grass and weeds and sickly twigs. Iliana, beside me, simply let him speak.

  We’d stopped seeing birds, Señor Halfon. We’d stopped seeing animals. This hillside was all bare, completely stripped, not a tree left. You see, people had to chop down all the trees on their land in order to plant maize. Plus, he said, they needed the wood from those trees for their comales, to heat their homes, to cook. Don Juan stood. He pushed back his worn straw hat. Just look at this hill now, he said. It’s full of cypress and pine again, full of shade trees for the coffee, like cushín, which is that one there, and the one over there, which is what they call inga. He lowered his arm, taking his time, and went on. Now that the co-op is up and running, coffee brings us enough money to buy our maize, so we don’t have to plant it. Now our own coffee plants and our shade trees, when we prune them, give us enough wood for the comal, so we don’t need to cut down any other trees. Now we plant trees, said Don Juan. And there’s nothing better, Señor Halfon, than giving life. Giving life not just to coffee plants and trees, but to the mountain itself.

  The three of us kept walking, single file, down a dry narrow trail lined with very green coffee plants decked with very red fruit. Iliana was pointing out which plants were arabica and which were bourbon and which were caturra. Those are the best varieties, she said. That’s all I have here, on San Andrés Farm, said Don Juan, and smiled. We try to get members not to plant cataui or catimor anymore, Eduardo, since those varieties don’t produce such good coffee. Don Juan stopped, crouched before a plant, and pulled off a short branch at the bottom. You have to pull out the offshoots, explained Iliana, watching her father, to thin the plant so that it produces better beans, better coffee. At first, she said, it was very difficult to make the older members understand that. Don Juan seemed to stroke the plant’s trunk with affection after pulling out its offshoot. People around here were used to a plant producing a lot of coffee, said Iliana, and of course, when you remove the offshoots, that plant produces fewer beans, but those beans are much higher-quality. The plant invests all of its energy, you could say, into producing less fruit, but that fruit comes out better. As I listened to Iliana speak, as I observed her and her father, a forbidden question suddenly popped into my head, an almost biblical question, a question that must never be asked, a question that could only occur to someone with no offspring. And I swallowed bitterly. It’s like pledging quality over quantity, you see? Iliana went on, and that pledge marks a change not only in the way members grow coffee, but also in the way they conceive of themselves.

  Don Juan stood and we continued walking in silence among the coffee plants, traversing the slippery, uneven terrain. We heard the distant cry of a falcon, then the sweet metallic trill of a motmot, then the joyous cackling of a flock of parakeets.

  We came upon some dilapidated, rotting wood huts. What’s this, Don Juan? I asked, but Don Juan made no reply. Perhaps he didn’t hear me. He stood before a lone coffee plant, tall and dense and bursting with red fruit. All of that, said Iliana, jerking her jaw toward the row of huts, was my brother’s chicken coop. No one has kept it up for the past three years. Ever since he was murdered.

  Don Juan turned his back to us and seemed to step into the enormous, lone coffee plant. As though hiding among its green leaves, searching for something among its green leaves. As though wishing the old plant would protect him. His back still to us, he was plucking beans off the old plant, slowly, tenderly, his campesino hands letting the red fruit fall soundlessly onto the dry ground. He bent a little and picked the lower beans. He stretched to the upper branches, pulled them toward him, and his expert hands stripped them clean. The ground around his feet was turning red. His straw hat crackled in the branches. He now looked more hunched, smaller. He kept on plucking beans and dropping them onto the ground. He kept entering the foliage of the old plant, the greenery of the leaves and branches, until the whole of him disappeared entirely.

  White Sand, Black Stone

  The young officer was reading the pages of my passport diligently, scrupulously, as though they were the pages of a gossip magazine or a cheap novel. He held them up. He looked at them against the light. He scratched them hard with the nail of his index finger. It occurred to me that he might fold over the corner of one of the pages at any moment, bookmarking it, as though planning to return to his reading later. You travel a lot, he said suddenly, as he looked over all the stamps. I didn’t know whether this was a question or an observation and so I remained silent, watching him sitting there in front of me, on the other side of a black metal desk. He couldn’t have been twenty. His face was beardless, dark brown, gleaming. His green khaki uniform fit him too tightly. He seemed unbothered by the beads of sweat that ran slowly down his forehead and neck. So you like traveling, he mused without looking at me, in the contemptuous tone of a new soldier. I considered telling him that all our journeys are really one single journey, with multiple stops and layovers. That every journey, any journey, is not linear, and is not circular, and it never ends. That every journey is meaningless. But I didn’t say anything. Through the open door I could make out the noise of motorcycles, trucks, vans, a ranchera being sung on a transistor radio, thunder in the distance, swarms of flies and mosquitoes and men shouting offers to buy and sell Belizean dollars. Revolving in the corner, an old floor fan simply circulated the humid afternoon jungle heat.

  It was my first time there, in Melchor de Mencos, the last Guatemalan town before crossing into Belize. I had left the capital early in the morning, and driven to the border stopping only once, at the halfway point, at Lake Izabal, to put in some gasoline and have some lunch—a seafood broth, a handful of dark tortillas with queso fresco and loroco flowers, and plenty of coffee.

  Señor, your place of residence? the officer asked me all of a sudden, still looking through the pages of my passport and jotting down my details in a huge accounting ledger. Guatemala City, I lied, although it wasn’t altogether a lie. And the reason for your trip to Belize? I’m going to visit some friends, in Belmopán, I lied, although that wasn’t altogether a lie either: I had been invited to give a reading at the University of Belize, in Belmopán; traveling by land had been my idea, to get to see the road, to get to know Belize’s beautiful white-s
and beaches, Belize’s idyllic turquoise blue sea—an idea that now, having seen the distance and the terrible state of the highways, I was starting to question. And your profession, señor? Engineer, I lied, as I always lie, as I always write on immigration forms. It’s much more advisable and prudent, especially at a border of any kind, to be an engineer than a writer.

  The officer said nothing, and slowly, with all the lethargy of the tropics, he continued to note down my details.

  Outside, it was cloudy and thick and the sky looked ready to burst. After wiping my forehead with my hand, I started looking at a huge map of Guatemala that was stuck on the wall just behind the officer, and I remembered how, as a boy, in the seventies, I had won a prize at school for having drawn the best map of the country. My drawing, of course, still included the then province of Belize, the largest one, located in the far north. It wasn’t until 1981 that Belize gained its independence—and until 1992 that it was recognized by Guatemala—thereby ceasing to be the upper part of the map that I’d learned to draw as a boy. I was never very good at drawing. But that one time, I remember, I really made an effort. And my prize, which I took with some astonishment from the hand of my teacher, was a small green mango. I still can’t see a map of the country without thinking of a green mango. I still can’t see a map of the country without thinking that Guatemala, in a more than figurative sense, had been decapitated.

  NO GOOD, SEÑOR.

  It took me a moment to understand that the officer, without looking up and barely audible over the wheezing of the fan, was talking to me.

  What did you say? I asked. I said this is no good, he said, closing my passport and dropping it onto the metal desk as if in disgust, as if it were something stiff and rotten. Your passport, señor, it expired last month. I felt a light blow to my gut. That’s not possible, I stammered. The officer, impassive, just kept scribbling something in the old ledger. Was it possible? How long had it been since I’d gotten it? How long since I’d even checked the expiration date? I reached out and picked up the blue booklet from the desk and opened it to the page. It had indeed expired a month ago. No good, the officer muttered down toward the ruled yellowish pages of the old ledger, and for a moment I thought he meant that what wasn’t any good was me. So what now? I asked. So what now what, señor? he replied without looking at me. Is there no other way I can get into Belize? None, señor. I can’t cross the border with my ID card? He shook his head just once, definite. Belize, he said, is not a part of the Central America agreement. It was true. All the Central American countries had recently signed an accord allowing their citizens free passage across their borders—all of them, of course, except Belize. I sighed, already picturing the drive back to the capital, already calculating all the hours and all the kilometers here and back, crossing almost the entire territory of Guatemala here and back, all in a single day. I opened my leather pouch to put the passport away and was surprised to see the red cover there. It hadn’t occurred to me. In fact, even if it had occurred to me, I usually leave that red one at home, and I wouldn’t have expected to find it there, in the leather pouch I always travel with, and in which I keep other credit cards (just in case), my medical insurance card (just in case), my diving license (just in case), a couple of condoms (just in case). I gave a triumphant smile. Here you go, I said to the officer, and I held it under his gaze, over the same pages of the ledger. What’s this? he spluttered, confused, still suspicious. I am many, I said to him somewhat satirically. But today, I said, I am two.

  The officer, perhaps for the first time, raised his eyes, and looked at me slowly, skeptically, as I held a booklet in each hand, a passport in each hand: the Guatemalan one in my right, the Spanish one in my left.

  Excuse me, he said, and stood up. On his green khaki back the dark round patch of sweat was growing.

  He walked slowly toward a bigger and more important desk, at which sat a bald gentleman, plump, with a thick ash-colored mustache and reading glasses, dressed in the same green khaki uniform. His boss, I presumed. The young officer handed him the passports and pointed at me and the two men began to go through my documents, comparing them, judging them, whispering I don’t know what. Suddenly, the older officer took off his reading glasses. He looked up and stared at me for a few moments. As though something in me had enraged him. Or alarmed him. Or as though trying to find something in my face, perhaps some detail or expression that would prove my identity. Then he lowered his gaze, handed my passports back to the young officer, and feeling for the reading glasses hanging around his neck, returned his attention to the papers on the desk.

  Sign here, said the young officer no sooner than he had sat down, pointing at an empty line on the ledger, beside my name. I signed with relish, in a flowery, stylized hand. The officer stamped the ledger way too hard, maybe with the rage of the defeated, and handed me both passports. Next, he shouted toward the line of people who were waiting their turn behind me. I put everything inside the leather pouch, turned away unhurriedly and, without saying a word, as I was leaving the immigration office, already hearing the drops of rain on the corrugated tin plates of the roof, I noticed that the mustached officer was watching me gravely over the top of his glasses.

  Outside, it was raining hard. I quickly dodged the sellers of chewing gum and other sweets, the sellers of sour oranges sprinkled with pumpkin seed, the sellers of Belizean dollars with wads of dirty bills in their hands and little nylon pouches tied around their waists, and I started running through the pelting rain to where I had left the old sapphire-colored Saab. As soon as I arrived, I opened the door and got inside and hurriedly stuck the key in and started the engine. I sat still, half-soaked in rain, or perhaps half-soaked in sweat, just listening to the sudden shower hit the bodywork, and to the thunder in the distance of the Petén jungle, and to the unbearable metallic clicking of a dead battery.

  YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TROUBLE finding a trucker who’ll help you here.

  His accent sounded Salvadoran, or perhaps Nicaraguan. He was wearing crocodile-skin cowboy boots. His button-down shirt was open, and over his heart, in green ink, he had a tattoo of another heart with an arrow through it, encircled by a ribbon with somebody’s name. His woman, I presumed. Or one of his women. He had a long machete in a black leather sheath hanging from his belt. And immediately, as I saw him approach and smile at me with his silver teeth, I felt a flash of distrust and panic and I was about to close my eyes and say please, just the money, let me keep my credit cards and the rest of my papers. But he quickly greeted me and told me that his truck was that one over there, the white one, that he was headed for Mexico, that his name was Roldán. I didn’t want to ask if that was his first or last name. Nor did I want to ask what he was carrying in his truck.

  I’d had to sit in the car for nearly an hour, waiting for the rain to subside. From time to time, I would open the door a little to air out the heat and my cigarette smoke (the electric windows, of course, were not working). But it was raining too hard and the water would rush in at once and so I had to fester in there for an hour, submerged in my own smoke and steam. On several occasions, I thought I saw—through the windshield and the sheets of rain—the mustached officer standing at the door of the immigration office, maybe watching the rain shower, maybe watching me.

  No trucker here is going to give you a hand, said Roldán. My compañeros will say they’re in a hurry. He scratched his stomach. But they’re making it up, he said. They’re just a bit cruel.

  With a couple of whistles, he summoned over a teenaged kid who was walking past. You, help me push, he told the teenager, who reluctantly agreed. You put it in neutral, Roldán shouted to me, and when I say, shift to second and try to start it up. We tried three times. The engine didn’t even respond.

  Oh boy, said Roldán, widening his silver smile. That battery won’t go anymore, mi rey. The kid, without a word, had made himself scarce.

  I got out of the car. I held the pack of Camels out to Roldán and he took a cigarette and we
both stood there a moment, smoking in silence. The sun had come back out. In the distance, a veil of warm mist covered part of the mountain. Have you got jumper cables? he asked me suddenly. I think so, I said, in the trunk. My truck has a twenty-four-volt battery, he said. We’ve got to find a driver with a twelve-volt battery. Maybe we’ll be able to charge it up. He asked for another cigarette. For later, he said, and put it behind his ear. So where are you coming from? he asked, and I explained that I’d left the capital that same morning, that I was on my way to Belize, that I wanted to cross over to Belize, that I wanted to get to the white-sand beaches of Belize. Not with that battery, mi rey, he said, still smiling. But don’t you worry. We’ll figure it out right away. God willing.

  Roldán stopped two truckers, and from their cabs both of them merely shook their heads and went on up the highway. Soon the owner of the truck that was parked next to me arrived. Roldán approached him and explained the situation and the guy said that yes, he had a twelve-volt battery but that he couldn’t give me a jump. Why not, old man? Roldán asked, and the guy just shook his head, reluctant. But Roldán was so insistent that the driver finally agreed. We connected the two batteries. The trucker started his engine, and we let it run for a few minutes. Nothing. Then we left it running a few minutes more, and I tried again, and again, nothing. The trucker detached the cables and got up into his cab and, almost offended by me, as though I’d stolen something from him, went on his way.