The Travel Writer

by Jeff Soloway

  Arturo gunned the engine and plunged us into the middle of what appeared to be a vast chandeliered neoclassical ballroom, with a concrete floor instead of parquet. A bewildering network of entrance and egress routes was marked in dotted lines across the floor. A forest of Corinthian columns upheld the ceiling. I turned around and couldn’t find the tunnel through which we had entered. Perhaps the giant Kallawaya had stepped down to roll a boulder before the entrance, trapping us forever in his prison of kitsch.

  “Here we have arrived deep in the heart of the Hotel Matamoros,” announced Arturo. “As you can see, Matamoros Station was carved out of the living rock of the hill, just as the mines were carved out of El Cerro Rico in Potosí. The ceiling is painted gold and silver, to remind us of the ancient wealth that flowed from the bowels of Bolivia to nourish the Old World in the time of Spanish rule. Did you know that, at one time, our city of Potosí was richer than Paris?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you think Pilar is here already?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “I want to see her. Immediately.”

  Our vehicle had passed through the ballroom colonnade and was navigating a maze of bubbling fountains. “She’s probably busy,” Arturo said. “She has a very important job. You are the least of her concerns.”

  “I want to speak to Dionisius as well.”

  “This you do not want.”

  Arturo eased around the last fountain and stopped beside a mahogany-colored platform, where three bellhops with much better posture than the guards outside waited to assist us with our luggage. I shook Kenny half awake but still had to open his door and drag him out. Arturo waited patiently in the car. When we were clear, he glided off to park—engine sounds were muffled in this neoclassical underground garage. I thought of a ghost searching silently for its resting place in a mausoleum.

  “What do you think, Kenny?” I said. “They carved this whole thing out of rock.”

  Kenny blinked the crystallized gunk from his eyes and examined his surroundings. He had been sweating in the car, and his hair was matted kelp.

  “I’ve been to Disneyland,” he said. “I don’t care how flashy this place is. This is where they lost Hilary.” He craned his neck to gaze up at the gilded ceiling, as if she might be hanging like a bat. I felt the urge to clap him on the back. He was a dork, but he was my dork.

  Two of the bellhops shouldered our dusty bags and bore them to the service elevator, smiling to make their pleasure in the task as obvious as possible. Too bad for them; I had vowed not to tip in the Matamoros, where anyone could be a murderer or kidnapper.

  Their leader, unsullied by baggage, approached us only after my glance unfroze him. “Mr. Smalls!” he said, smiling like a gruff old man trying vainly to disguise his delight. Despite my aching head and anxiety, I nodded in approval. Good service never fails to impress me. “Have you brought a guest?” he said in English.

  “We’re here on business,” said Kenny.

  “Very good, señores. This way, please. Fernando, take these men to the lobby!”

  You could have driven a minibus comfortably into the elevator; perhaps the drivers did for busloads of older or handicapped guests, or those who insisted on magnificent feats of service to justify the magnificent rates. The elevator walls were hung with woven Andean textiles. Fernando, the elevator operator, stood at attention beside the controls, which consisted of a single button the color of jade. He started to press it, but another van came honking like an angry goose, and we had to wait while more passengers unloaded.

  “Careful,” Kenny whispered. “This guy might speak English. So what did they tell you? Where’s Pilar?”

  “Arturo says she’s already here,” I said, in a normal voice.

  “Are you a dummy or something?” Kenny hissed. “Take it from me: you can’t trust these guys. You shouldn’t have let her get out of sight.”

  “Please don’t give me advice. You don’t even know which side of the equator you’re on. Do you?”

  “Maybe I don’t know everything,” Kenny said. “I’m no hotshot writer like some people. But guess what? I’ve done a few things right.”

  “Name one.”

  “Scored with Hilary. Can’t take that away.”

  Fernando took no notice, politely pretending to have lost both his English and his hearing. What would it have taken to make him flinch? Here was a prince among elevator operators. Perhaps he was filing away our conversation for a report to his superior, which would later be distributed to rest of the hotel staff, including Arturo and the other drivers. Still I admired his unobtrusiveness.

  “Now who’s being the idiot?” continued Kenny. “You. Call yourself an investigator. You ask questions, but you can’t see what I have in my brain. I have memories. You’ve never even seen Hilary. I talked to her. I had beers with her. I felt her lips. You know what that’s like?”

  “Of course I do. So does everyone else over fourteen.”

  “No way.” There was no doubt in his voice. His mother had kissed him, maybe a fourth-grader in the school yard had, on a dare; Kenny knew kisses. Hilary’s was different.

  I turned to watch the bustle around the van. A pale, wrinkled woman clutching the hand of the man behind her stepped uncertainly from the van to the ground, like a calf testing its legs. The team of bellhops waved us on; unloading the van would take a while. The elevator doors closed.

  “Did you kiss Pilar last night?” Kenny asked, as the floor pushed at our feet.

  “Yes.”

  He paused. “You know what?” he said. “She knows this country; she’s a smart cookie. She’ll be okay.”

  Shame and gratitude surprised me suddenly; this smart-ass virgin (who ever heard of such a thing?) had taken pity on me. I noted his grotesqueries: his bristly Adam’s apple pulsing, his latex-tight sweater (mine) dying at his forearms, his high-top sneakers dirty and limp at the tops. Who had ever pitied him? No one who knew him.

  * * *

  The elevator door opened, and we exited beneath an arena-size dome of glass, stretching from the heavens to the floor. This huge room was somehow perched atop an outcropping of the mountain. All around us, beyond the glass, was the tropical forest, rising and falling in a stormy sea of green. It was as if we were flying.

  I stepped carefully forward past a grove of banana trees to the end of the floor, until a shimmer of reflection warned me from bumping my nose. A lone hawk skimmed the treetops far below, not even shaking his wings. Patches of fields, probably coca or coffee, rippled up the hillside or held their ground on the ancient terraces. The river at the bottom of the valley glistened in the sun. I looked up at clouds directly above the glass dome and jumped as a man in a rope harness dropped like a spider, almost into my arms. He laughed at my fright and waved cheerily through the window with a rag. He was cleaning the glass. And really flying, or dangling at least, from a crane anchored somewhere on the mountain. His fine dark hair whipped about his eyebrows and his eyes, and I shivered with pangs of sympathy vertigo.

  A man in a dark suit slipped up from behind us, his hands clasped behind his back. “Everyone is drawn immediately to the glass,” he said in English. “As if the view won’t be just as fine in another minute, or an hour, or the day to come.” His slicked-back hair shone wetly in the sunlight. Other guests clustered together across the long wave of glass, art lovers at a living gallery.

  “Maybe they’re looking for their missing friends,” said Kenny, who was keeping two steps back from the edge.

  The man nodded and lifted his eyebrow, as if impressed with Kenny’s perception. “Please, Mr. Smalls, make yourself comfortable. We have of course been expecting you. Your Orientation Specialist will be with you shortly. I am Victor Soldán, associate general manager. Can we offer you a tropical drink, such as a pisco sour, piña colada, mai tai, or tropical juice? I particularly recommend the guanábana.” He looked Bolivian, but his English sounded better than Kenny’s.

  I declined for both of us. “This i
s my photographer, Kenny Rawls,” I added.

  “Of course,” said Soldán.

  “There, on the terrace.” I pointed, partly to flaunt my rudeness. “What are they growing?”

  “That’s a small coca plantation. Traditional family growers are still permitted by law in Los Yungas, you know. That plot has been run by the local villagers for three centuries. We can take you there by jeep tomorrow morning, if you’d like.”

  A llama trotting across the grounds caught my eye. It pulled up suddenly and lowered its long neck to the ground to graze. I knew the Matamoros kept these animals, as well as alpacas and even vicuñas, about the grounds, both for the guests’ amusement and to keep the grass short. An animal keeping the grounds, sustaining itself, and amusing the guests with its exoticism, all in one motion. Most people struggle all their lives to find just one useful task to perform.

  “We’re so pleased that you and your colleague could join us,” said Soldán. “We have your Caravan Guide to Bolivia and Ecuador in our library. I often recommend it.”

  “Thank you. I’ll need to speak to your publicist, Pilar Rojas, as soon as possible.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t seen her today. I’ll let her know as soon as I do. I’m told she’s staying in La Paz for a few days, but I’m sure she’ll wish to speak to you.”

  He shepherded us across the room to a nook of leather sofas and mahogany-colored coffee tables. I peered above the sofa back and through the palm and banana tree groves to observe the staff. Women in indigenous outfits were cleaning the stainless-steel panels that lined the nonwindow wall; men at wooden tables were plaiting reeds for the tourists’ benefit; meanwhile, guards dressed in sporty white uniforms nodded and grinned. There’s no reason for us to be here, they seemed to say, but how could we resist stopping by? Soldán pressed a button on the coffee table, and a flat-screened monitor unfolded from the tabletop to list the day’s excursions. Helicopter tour to Lake Titicaca 2:00. Coroico River kayak adventure 2:15. Coca village tour and sampling 2:30. Helicopter tour to Lake Titicaca 3:15. And more.

  Our Orientation Specialist arrived at our nook, bearing another press packet, local and hotel maps, and various informational and promotional leaflets, all of which she promised both to deliver to my room and to FedEx to my apartment in New York. Her name was Gabriela, and she was breathtaking. Her nose was sharp and pointed, like the end of a box cutter. She kissed Kenny and me both on the cheeks, which made him blush. “Are you suffering at all from the altitude?” she asked, in a vaguely British accent. “We’re much lower than La Paz here, but still high above sea level. Would you like the traditional remedy for altitude sickness, or soroche, as we call it?”

  A woman in full chola regalia disengaged herself from a clump of curious Germans and presented us with a picnic basket full of green leaves. A bowl in the center held an ice cream scoop of dark mush.

  “Permit me,” said Soldán. He wrapped five or six green leaves around a pinch of mush, handed me the package, and then produced a replica for Kenny. I inserted mine between my cheek and gum, and glanced at the Orientation Supermodel to see if she noticed my expertise. But she was staring at Kenny’s sneakers, perhaps wondering if they were as shabby as they looked or if limp, grit-crusted footwear was the new fashion among young American photographers.

  Kenny looked at the package as if it were a cockroach.

  “Coca,” I said.

  “As in cocaine?” he asked.

  “But coca is not cocaine!” assured Soldán. “Coca leaf is an ancient and legal component of the indigenous diet. The leaf contains nutrients that have protected Bolivians from malnutrition for hundreds of years. And no modern soroche remedy is as effective, despite all the advancements in medical technology.”

  Kenny popped the leaves into his mouth and swished them to the side with his tongue and forefinger. “Tastes like—” He paused. “Like doo,” he said, not wanting to offend the Orientation Specialist.

  She didn’t know that word. “You’ll find local Yungas coca tastes much richer and less bitter than Chapare coca, though the leaves are not so large,” she said.

  “It’s good for your headache,” I told him.

  “Would you like to meet with your Kallawaya now, or wait until you’re settled in?” Gabriela asked.

  “Our what?” asked Kenny.

  “A Kallawaya is a traditional Bolivian wise man,” Soldán explained. “A healer and an adviser. And a bit of a fortune-teller.” He winked. Some guests would take the Kallawaya achingly seriously; he knew I wouldn’t. He couldn’t tell about Kenny and probably didn’t care. “The hotel employs a total of about thirty Kallawayas in residence,” he informed me, speaking slowly, in case I wanted to take notes, “all chosen carefully from Quechua and Aymara altiplano communities. Our Kallawaya recruiters, being purists, tend to select the Aymara, which is an older tradition, but since some guests prefer to have services conducted in the language of the Incas, we have some Quechua as well. There’s no accounting for taste! We also employ a handful of Amazonian medicine men, for a splash of color.” He smiled again, as if he took the issue so seriously he had to fake whimsy to avoid embarrassment. “Perhaps you would prefer a massage first.”

  “We want to see the Kallawaya now,” I said, remembering Pilar’s instructions.

  “Exactly!” said Kenny. He smacked the bottom of his fist into his palm, like a judge banging a gavel, to add authority to his shaky voice. “We got to start getting answers. If a Kaya–wise man doesn’t know what happened to Hilary, who does? Unless he does.” He jabbed his finger in Soldán’s direction. How could he be so bold in such a strange environment? I admired his forthrightness almost as much as I despised his ignorance.

  Soldán smiled the wide smile of someone who doesn’t know what else to do with his face. I glanced at the supermodel. Her smile had faded, but she quickly reinforced her sagging cheek muscles.

  “As you can imagine, many New Yorkers are still very concerned with the case of Hilary Pearson,” I said, as if following up Kenny’s thrust was all part of my plan of interrogation. “I’m sure I’ll be asked about it when I return. Perhaps we could discuss how the hotel’s investigation is proceeding—off the record, of course.”

  “I believe the matter would best be discussed with Mr. Barrientos, our general manager,” said Soldán. “He shall be in his office shortly. Perhaps you would like to meet with your Kallawaya first?”

  Gabriela handed Soldán a Nextel walkie-talkie.

  As Soldán made the arrangements, I fixed my glare on Kenny, who was staring off across the room.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  “You ever think you see someone you know?” he said. “See that guy? I think I know that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guard over there, behind that big leaf. Wait. He’s gone. Maybe it was somebody else.”

  “They all look alike to you, don’t they?”

  “They do not! I know a shitload of Spanish guys. Like half my high school.”

  “Listen to me.” I bent my head to him. “If you ever ask another question like that,” I whispered, “I’ll kill you. You’ve got to stop talking to people about Hilary.”

  “How come?”

  “Because gathering information at a luxury resort requires delicacy and tact and perception, and you’re a buffoon. You’re not even smart enough to be embarrassed by your sneakers. Investigating is not a collaborative sport. I’ll handle it.”

  He wasn’t fazed. “Sure. You’ve done great so far, hotshot.” He thought of himself as the loose-cannon cop on television, the one who gets results while his prissy partner cites department regulations by the subsection. I never bought the stereotype. Sometimes the loose-cannon cop is twisted and corrupt; more often he’s quick-witted, bold, and golden-hearted. Why isn’t he ever just a moron?

  Soldán announced that our Kallawaya was ready to receive us.

  Chapter 18

  The Kallawaya’s aerie was set on the other
side of the mountain. To spare his guests the ignominy of having to skirt or scramble over the peak, Matamoros had drilled a Tunnel of Anticipation straight through the rock. Torches lined the tunnel, their flames lapping gloomily at the air. Kenny paused, mesmerized by one of the Sacred Cultural Artifacts fixed to the wall. It appeared to be an Amazonian blowpipe. Its neighbors included a jaguar fur, baskets of coca leaves, a few dried piranhas, a jungle orchid, and various green plants whose medicinal properties were explained in little placards in Spanish, English, German, French, and Japanese. Soldán’s footsteps echoed ahead.

  We emerged onto a mountain terrace that had been steamrolled preternaturally flat. In its center was a hut made of stones cut in the Inca style, fit as tight as ice bricks in an igloo. Surrounding the hut was a ring of ten stone altars.

  The Kallawaya presided behind one of the altars upon a massive throne of rock carved to accommodate his eminent butt. His eyes were closed in sacred meditation. Strings dangled from his wool hat like a Hasid’s side curls and danced in the breeze, but their motion only emphasized the impassivity of his face. A boyish attendant watched him carefully, as if he might leap from his perch and hurl a lightning bolt at any moment. The other altars sat lonely and forlorn. Perhaps all ten were occupied at once on busy days in the high season.

  “When you’re finished we can share a chat in my office, if you wish,” said Soldán. He gave us a thumbs-up and disappeared back down the tunnel, whistling a tune distorted by the rock walls and the wind to a high-pitched moaning.

  “Please sit, gentlemen,” the attendant intoned in English and stretched his arms toward two cushions before the altar. Kenny tried to sit cross-legged, couldn’t manage it, and instead folded up his knees in front of him and bound his legs with his arms.