The Travel Writer

by Jeff Soloway

  “That she loved him and that life was finally opening for her. I told her that’s how I felt when I left my father’s café to work for my first hotel, the Gran Hotel Colonial, in Santa Cruz. I had a college degree but I was waiting on tables while I looked for a job. I had studied English every day since I was five years old. My best friend was an English child, the son of an engineer from Sussex.”

  “What was so great about her life?” I asked, annoyed that her story had so quickly morphed into his.

  “She was in love,” said Kenny, rolling his eyes at my density, even as he beamed at Soldán.

  “Perhaps. Who knows?” said Soldán. “But in truth, only misfortune was waiting for her, as it was waiting for us. Our guests come to enjoy the natural beauty, the spirituality of our Kallawayas, the vestiges of the past. They don’t want to be haunted by the ghost of a young woman.”

  “So you think she’s dead?”

  “No, certainly not,” Soldán mumbled, rubbing his face harder and looking as if he needed another cigarette.

  “This boyfriend she mentioned,” I said, “did she describe him?”

  “She just told me that she had met him in the United States, but that he never seemed to … I believe she said ‘fit in.’ And she didn’t know where the two of them would end up.”

  “That’s it,” said Kenny softly.

  Soldán stopped rubbing and examined his palms, as if to see what had rubbed off.

  “The reporters asked insulting questions, but the truth is we supported the investigation completely,” he said. “The Bolivian police questioned the staff for a day and then went home to write a report. What could they do? But the American agents were more impressive. They brought dogs and sniffed about the grounds. And then the parents came. The wife screamed like a crazy person when she saw our vicuña. It refused its food for days. A vicuña is a highly valuable animal. I do not think Mr. and Mrs. Pearson enjoyed their stay.”

  “They appear to enjoy very little,” I said.

  “In my experience, Hilary was different. She enjoyed many things. Mojitos, for example. Our bartender makes excellent mojitos.”

  “Did she also enjoy the bartender?” I asked. Stupid joke. I thought Kenny would take a swing at me, but he was gazing into Soldán’s desk, imagining Hilary in love.

  “Mr. Smalls, I enjoy your wit!” said Soldán. “My hotel is dying and perhaps my job as well. As I said, my father owns a café. In Santa Cruz. It’s hard work managing a café, and Bolivians have no money for fine dining at responsible prices. I don’t want to take over after he dies.”

  “When you talked to Hilary, did she seem afraid or suspicious?”

  “No.”

  “Soldán,” I said, “I don’t want to hide my concerns from you. I’ve heard disturbing rumors from a number of my contacts. I think Hilary Pearson may have been kidnapped. What do you know of the political party Condepa? I think they may have been involved.”

  “I am not myself interested in politics,” he said. It was not the dramatic statement I had hoped for. “However, in this country, and especially in this business, involvement in politics is perhaps inevitable.” He looked uncomfortable, but maybe he was confused. Even I didn’t know what I meant by “Condepa may have been involved.” If Hilary had been kidnapped, then some individual or individuals had ordered the operation, planned it, carried it out; perhaps still others knew and helped, or failed to prevent the crime. Condepa was just a name to put to a conspiracy I didn’t understand.

  Soldán stood. “Perhaps now I shall take you to Mr. Barrientos?” he said. “He may be able to answer more questions. He will not keep you long, but he told me very directly that he wanted to see you. This is the only thing he has said to me this week. Mr. Barrientos is an excellent manager—he is rarely here! Ha-ha!” The laugh exploded from his throat like a sneeze and ignited a fit of coughing. He extracted from a desk drawer a bottle of Genuine Lake Titicaca Purified Inca Water and took a slug to calm himself. “In all seriousness, he spends much of his time in La Paz cultivating our political contacts. He is the most important man in this hotel—except Mr. Matamoros, of course.”

  “Will I meet Mr. Matamoros?”

  “No. But Mr. Barrientos is impressive in his own right.”

  Soldán led us down a hallway. He was almost as tall as Kenny, but he moved with a lean elegance, bouncing slightly on the balls of feet, like a basketball player strolling to center court to start a game. I had to walk briskly to keep up with his and Kenny’s strides. After a handful of corridor twists and passage choices, I was befuddled.

  “How does anyone find their way?” I asked Soldán. New employees must spend their first two weeks just wandering the hallways, lost and confused.

  “Have you been to your room yet? The guest rooms are arranged in a far more complicated manner. We provide each guest with a map. We feel that privacy is priceless.”

  We came upon a moving walkway in the center of a wide tubular passage—the artery of the hotel, out of view of any guest.

  “Observe our private collection of Nuevo Indigenous art,” he said, pointing to the wall as he stepped up to the path of flowing metal and shot ahead. “We often hold exhibitions in the lobby.”

  I’d never been on such a rapid walkway; it was like the straightaway of a roller coaster. Contemporary Bolivian representations of chola dresses, sacks of fruit, llama and alpaca body parts, and coca leaves flashed by in a blur of thick, vigorous brushstrokes. I felt I understood how an Olympic sprinter feels, the effortless motion, the wind in his face, the beautiful. meaningless colors rushing by.

  * * *

  Barrientos’s office was empty, to Soldán’s professed astonishment, so he led us back to the lobby, where he stopped to print out maps to our room, and then accompanied us to the top floor, demonstrating our route with his finger on the printout.

  “This is the Llama Wing,” he said. “Follow Tupac Amaru Way to the end and take a right at the Hall of Orchids. We were able to reserve for you one of our finest suites. Unfortunately, as we only recently received word of your photographer companion, we do not have an extra room available for him, but he will surely be comfortable in the suite with you.”

  “I’m surprised the hotel is full right now.”

  “The Llama Wing is entirely full,” said Soldán. I remembered the rumor that the other wing had been closed to save money. “Your suite has two bathrooms, a sitting room, and a master bedroom with an emperor-size bed and an alpaca sofa. All sofas in the suite convert quite cleverly into additional beds.”

  “Emperor-size bed?”

  “King-size would hardly do it justice.”

  The walls of the Llama Wing were speckled with prancing llamas; in the Hall of Orchids section of the wing, the beasts were festooned with orchids. Presumably that was Tupac Amaru with the sword and proud gaze standing over the llamas in the eponymous hallway.

  After Soldán had patiently walked us through the doodads of the room, I collapsed on the bed. Kenny made the circuit again with wondering eyes, flipping switches and fondling furnishings and knickknacks, such as the silk canopy over my bed and the slick leaves of the tropical plants that dangled from the ceiling.

  “Who waters these?” he asked, as if suspecting we’d be suckered into the job.

  “The maid,” I said, but he had darted out of sight.

  “There’s a TV in the bathroom!” he reported.

  Silence. I closed my eyes.

  “But it just gets Spanish!”

  Doors opened and shut.

  “Check it out!”

  I opened my eyes.

  He was hefting an iron over an ironing board that had somehow sprung from the wall behind a palm tree like a Murphy bed.

  “You know how this works?” he asked.

  “The iron?”

  “Yeah. I got wrinkles.”

  I shut my eyes again. “Can I show you later?”

  “No prob.” I felt the bed give beside me as Kenny sat, but it didn
’t groan. It was a very comfortable bed.

  “Jake?”

  “What?”

  “That guy, the general manager, who do you think he meant when he talked about Hilary’s boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know, Kenny.”

  “You do know, you just don’t believe. And you don’t believe the old guy with the leaves either, do you? About me and Hilary.”

  “No. Why should I?”

  He paused, searching for and failing to find an answer to my question. I wanted to help him out by answering for him: Because he’s seen so much in his life, because he’s so respected by his indigenous countrymen and all the guests, because his mind isn’t muddled with our modern complications. I didn’t know whether Kenny lacked the imagination to formulate these answers or was clear-minded enough to reject them.

  “Because you’d enjoy life more if you believed things like that,” Kenny said. “And you’d let me enjoy it more. It wouldn’t kill you, you know.”

  “To lie to you?”

  “You don’t have to lie. You just have to be less of a jackass sometimes.”

  He lay down on the bed. For a minute I thought he was going to roll over and make a pass at me. I was now too tired to open my eyes, let alone resist. I could dream he was Pilar, stretched and distorted like a rubber doll. And hairier. I almost giggled.

  Kenny had no such plan. “What do we do if we don’t find her?” he asked. “What’ll I do with myself?”

  “Same thing you do if you find her. You’ll go home, and go back to your job at Folgers.”

  The sheets rustled as he stretched. “I could get used to this. I think I want to try your job when this is over.”

  “You and everyone else in the world.”

  There was a long silence.

  “How can I enjoy anything if she’s not okay?” Kenny said. “You got your girl back. That big guy took her, but she came right back. Feels good, right? I want to feel that way.”

  I forced myself to open my eyes. He had his chin in his hand but looked merely lonely and wistful rather than thoughtful. He wasn’t imagining his reunion, I realized; he was wondering why he’d never had a union in the first place. I closed my eyes again.

  “I guess I don’t believe either,” he said. “Want to know why?”

  I pretended to be asleep.

  “Because remember that guard? That guard I thought I knew before? I got it now. He was Hilary’s boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. I think his name was Ray something. Maybe they got back to together.”

  Now I looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember the one I told you about? The Latin guy, didn’t speak English. The handyman in her apartment building. She said he was hilarious. They broke up, and I got him booted from the office once. Remember? That’s the guy I saw in the lobby. The guard.”

  “How do you know, Kenny?”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “You can’t tell Bolivians apart, can you?”

  “I’ve seen a million Bolivians since I got here. I see four million Spanish guys every day in New York. I just never figured the connection till now. I hung out with this guy more than once. I got to know his face. I dreamed about it a couple a times. His eyebrows have pointy edges. They’re space alien eyebrows! I know it’s him. Now what do we do?”

  “We ask about him,” I said. “What else can we do?” I shut my aching eyes one last time.

  Chapter 20

  Later in the afternoon, Soldán’s phone call blasted us from our nap, and all too soon, Kenny and I found ourselves groggily following him on the moving walkway, which deposited us before a mahogany door. “Mr. Barrientos’s office!” Soldán announced. “Mr. Barrientos is not completely comfortable with English. Shall I accompany you?”

  I assured Soldán my Spanish was adequate. But what kind of resort hotel manager doesn’t speak English?

  Soldán looked relieved. He knocked, timidly pushed open the door, and hopped back on the other side of the walkway. We entered.

  A cherry-colored desk, empty of all but a few sturdy black pens and a “Morning in the Matamoros” coffee mug, occupied the strategic center of the room. Behind the desk, dressed this time in a suit and a tasteful paisley tie, was the man who had interrogated us in El Alto. He stood up to shake my hand.

  “Mr. Esmalls! I’m very happy to see you again, and your enchanting friend,” he said in Spanish.

  Kenny’s arm was extended as well but wilted as the man ignored it. It was the man from El Alto, wasn’t it? I wasn’t one of those ignorant gringos who can’t tell one Bolivian from another. Right?

  “You are Mr.… Barrientos?” I said.

  Perhaps the general manager was folded in a vault somewhere in the office, still alive and gasping for air.

  He pressed his hand quickly to his head, as if once again my questions were giving him a headache, but instantly recovered himself and gave me his business card.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “And who …” I paused, but there was nowhere to go but onward. “And who is the chief executive officer of Condepa?”

  “The chief executive officer of Condepa is of course the Mallku himself. I, Barrientos, am the first officer of the party and the chief executive assistant of the Mallku, as you will remember.”

  Kenny flopped on one of the chairs and shot me a worried glance. “You’re gonna think I’m nuts,” he whispered. “But do we know this guy?”

  “You don’t mind if I sit here?” I asked, indicating the available chair.

  “Of course not! How could I mind?”

  Barrientos sat too, revealing on the wall above and behind him a framed photograph of himself with his arm around another man. They had their chests puffed out like professional wrestlers and were mugging unashamedly at the camera. I felt that this new Barrientos might leap over the desk, put me in a headlock, and drill noogies into my skull in a spasm of dangerous joviality.

  “I hope you are enjoying your stay in Bolivia’s first truly luxurious resort hotel.”

  “You see his nose?” whispered Kenny. “It’s all squished up. The other guy’s was just like it. I remember these things.”

  “From now on, I insist that you translate your companion’s interesting comments!” said Barrientos. “But let us continue. You will forgive me for being ignorant of your impressive credentials as a journalist of travel guides. I am now fully aware of them.”

  “Very good,” I said, stashing his card in my pocket. “You are evidently a very busy man.”

  “True. My political work leaves me little time to manage this hotel. No! Better to say, my work at the hotel leaves me little time for politics. No! Better to say, I sleep little.”

  He laughed and rapped his palm against the desktop, filling the room with his echoing slaps. Kenny smiled instinctively and looked to see if I was laughing too. His faced snapped to attention when he saw I wasn’t.

  “I want to understand clearly,” I said. “This hotel and Condepa—”

  “Let’s not speak of politics, Mr. Esmalls.”

  “Very well. Another question. Why do your men continue to molest me—”

  Barrientos hefted a coffee mug and slammed it down on the desk. “Enough! Enough! Mr. Esmalls!”

  “He’s not happy,” warned Kenny.

  “Yesterday you approached our constituents on the street in an extremely impertinent manner. You raised suspicions that required my personal attention. Though I am now aware of your temporary employment by the hotel, I cannot permit my guests and my staff to be annoyed with your irrelevant questions. My operative in America, Mr. Gonzales, has informed me of your past incidents of public rudeness. Nonetheless, he maintains that you will remain loyal; let us hope he is right!”

  Barrientos tried to recover his jolly persona by wrenching his lips into a smile, but he must have sensed how the result repulsed us.

  “Evidently you are surprised at my dual role with the hotel and the party,” he went on. “It is in no way unusual. I
have long been active in politics. Many businessmen prefer to expand their interests outside the workplace. If I were to describe to you in detail all of my interests, political, economic, literary, and sportive, we would be conversing until the early morning. Naturally, I cannot spare the time. Both causes, that of the hotel and that of Condepa, are of the utmost importance to me. They are in reality one cause.”

  “Impossible,” I said, flinging my hand out before me. Kenny watched me sidelong, not daring to pull his eyes completely from Barrientos. I hoped my dismissive confidence impressed them both—it impressed me. But not even the stupidest thug would murder two Americans in the same resort back to back. “There is business, and there is politics.”

  “In this country, they are the same.”

  I wished he would launch another harangue so I could mull everything over. So the general manager of the hotel was the number two man at Condepa. How had he muscled his way into the job? No wonder Soldán seemed to do all the work. Did this mean that the “greater Mallku,” that renegade superseding Felipe Quispe as chief rabble-rouser in Bolivian politics, was really Matamoros, the owner and overlord of the hotel?

  “Who is that?” I pointed over his head to the picture. Barrientos didn’t have to turn to look.

  “The owner of the hotel. Enrique Matamoros. A good friend of mine.”

  I was getting better at this.

  “The richest man in Bolivia,” I said.

  “That’s him.”

  “Is he your Mallku?”

  “Idiot! What does an American neoliberal cowboy”—he pronounced the word in hideously nasal English—“know about the Mallku! Are you familiar with the history of Bolivia? This was once the richest country in the world, but the Spanish dug the silver from our mountains and shipped it back to Europe to feed their empire. Now it’s all gone, and the mountains are barren. Capitalists in Chile stole our access to the sea. Americans drop poisons on our rain forest, and tell the farmers to grow oranges and avocados instead of the coca they have grown since the dawn of history. Bah! Here am I, a businessman and a servant of the poor, struggling to build an economy to feed the hungry in this nation, many of them indigenous people, uneducated, hopeless. Do you know how much the average Bolivian earns per month? Eighty-five dollars. Do you know how many indigenous people this hotel employs?”