The Travel Writer

by Jeff Soloway

  My legs seemed to cramp in anticipation. To knock was to announce myself as a spy and a stalker; perhaps instead I should kneel by the door and try to listen to the conversation inside. But what if she spotted me through the peephole or opened the door suddenly? I crouched against the wall. I could hear nothing.

  Time passed while I gathered my courage and assembled justifications for following her. But just as I lunged to my feet, I heard a low, steady pulse from behind me. At first I thought it was my ears ringing from mental strain, but then I turned and saw, back through the corridor, across the glassy walkway, a tiny light flashing red and furious on the entry door, near the card key slot. Each flash was accompanied by a low beep. I stared at the door. Was the security device complaining of an intruder? Or warning the front desk that the door was open? Would they soon send a guard? I stepped slowly back toward the light and the tone, speeding up as I crossed the walkway. The sound continued. Was it getting louder? How long before a guest or housekeeping heard it? My heart was beating faster than the red light. I could just pull shut the door, I thought, but what if it locked and I was trapped in this dim, cold, unserviced outpost? I might never get back. But if instead I passed back through the doorway, back into the populated regions of the hotel, and shut the door, it would surely lock and I’d lose my chance to discover Pilar’s secret. I made my choice and slipped back through to civilization, closing the door behind me, leaving Pilar on the other side. The light and the pulse died instantly. I tried the door again—locked, of course, but at least it didn’t throw another tantrum. The only sound now was my own breathing. It was all right. I would speak to Pilar tomorrow, in the light of the morning. I knew where she was hiding. Now all I had to do was find my way back.

  A mere handful of twists farther on I heard ahead of me the rumble of hurrying men and angry Spanish. Arturo almost trampled me as he turned a corner.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  I did my best to look surprised and annoyed.

  “I was going for a drink,” I said. “I must have got lost. This place is a labyrinth. Where’s room three forty-five? Ah! This way.”

  “Have you seen Pilar?”

  “Pilar? Of course not. Soldán told me she’s in La Paz. She’ll be back the day after tomorrow.”

  “She is not in La Paz. She never returned to her apartment. You swear you haven’t seen her?”

  “Of course! Why do you need to find her?”

  “Hotel business. Not yours.”

  He and his men forged ahead.

  Chapter 23

  I had planned to sleep late the next morning, but a beam of sunlight squeezing through the half-open blinds woke me, and with that first flicker of consciousness, the day’s promise flooded my brain. I had penetrated Pilar’s defenses. She had promised to show me who the kidnappers were, and I would make her tell me why she was hiding in a neglected wing of the hotel. I would join the conspiracy. I sat up and chucked off the covers. It was 8:30. Everything was always so much better in the morning. Maybe Hilary really was alive; maybe Pilar really would return to New York with me; maybe the three of us—no, the four of us, Kenny too—really were too young, too spirited, too American, to be dead, or in danger, or even depressed. She’d deny it, but in her heart Pilar was as American as I was.

  Kenny was still asleep on his stomach, his sweating face mashed into the pillow. I fished one of my New Yorkers out of my bag but quickly gave up reading. I couldn’t endure the morning in this room. I left Kenny a map with the dining room circled, in case he wanted breakfast.

  Down in the lobby, Gabriela was at the desk. My morning luck was persisting.

  “Will you be joining the Jungle Jeep Convoy this morning?” she asked. “It departs in fifteen minutes.”

  “Not today,” I said. “Can I leave a message for Pilar Rojas? I understand she won’t arrive until this evening.”

  Perhaps Gabriela would report my activity to Arturo.

  “Would you like her voice mail?”

  “Just please tell her that I’m looking forward to seeing her again.”

  “Certainly.”

  I reproached myself inwardly for enjoying another woman’s smile and retired to a sofa to gaze out through the glass at the lush countryside. I wondered why anyone would live up on Bolivia’s windy highlands. Down here, crops spring effortlessly from the earth, evenings are warmer, locals smile. For me La Paz was a tourist bonanza; for its residents, so many of whom slept in unheated mud houses, it was a cruel accident of history. If only the city had sprung up here in the tropics, then even the homeless could make it easily through the night. I knew I should return to the room to tend to Kenny and wait for Pilar, but I wanted a few minutes’ rest in the energizing sunshine of the lobby.

  Early risers bustled by me, some of them dressed in full Jungle Jeep Convoy regalia (safari pants tucked into hiking boots, fishing hats, cheeks glistening with sun protection), others in sunbathing cover-ups. Arturo wandered past, cloudy-eyed and weary. His clothes and skin were rusty with red dust; he must have been out driving since we met last night. Perhaps he was the driver for the even earlier Jungle Jeep Convoy.

  “What’s up, kid?” I called, hoping to impress him with my cool. He shook his head, as if not quite believing anyone would choose to be up so early.

  “Good day,” he said. “What are you doing this morning?”

  “I was just leaving a message for Pilar. She’s coming back tonight, remember? I need to speak to her when she arrives from La Paz.”

  He stopped and rubbed his hair with his hand. The dust shook off like dandruff, and he stared for a moment at the cloud he had created around himself. “You left a message for her just now?” He gestured to the desk, as if he were going to verify my claim immediately.

  “I’m not a liar, Arturo. I just finished leaving her a message. And right now I’m enjoying the view.”

  Arturo nodded, as if I’d finally said something that made sense.

  “I believe you,” he said. “Why not?” He gave me an oddly embarrassed smile before he sat down.

  “This is the most beautiful view in all Bolivia,” he said. “Many times I have said to myself, I wish my mother could have seen it. She died before the hotel was built.”

  “Did she like the Yungas?”

  “She was never here. She knew only the city. She was afraid to travel.”

  It struck me as ironic that she was killed by a trufi, but I didn’t say anything. I realized I felt some kinship for Arturo. After all, he liked and respected Pilar, who seemed to like him in return. I looked at him more closely. The sun streaming in from the window shone off his cheek, so that the old acne scars glittered like the facets on a disco ball. Even Arturo’s flaws shone bright.

  “How long ago did she die?” I asked.

  “Nine years.”

  “You were a child.”

  “I was already a driver.”

  “For Condepa?”

  “There was no Condepa then. We made it, we drivers, together. My father said I was a fool to join, but I didn’t listen. I told other drivers to join as well. That’s why the party hired me.”

  “It’s not the same now, right? Now you work with Dionisius. You’re not like him, that I understand, but you work with him. One day you will be like him. Understand?”

  He said nothing.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “He went to La Paz. Better for you to leave too.”

  “I won’t leave. I’m not afraid.”

  I expected Arturo to laugh, but he just rubbed his cheek with his hand, as if the sunlight were irritating the old wounds. “You don’t yet understand the danger,” he said.

  “If Dionisius is gone, then there is no danger.”

  “Go home.”

  “Why, Arturo? How could I bother anyone? I’m not dangerous. I write travel guides.”

  “You’re not dangerous,” he agreed.

  “Well. Then why not tell me some of the hotel’s secrets?”


  “There’s only one secret,” said Arturo. “And you will know it soon enough. I’m very sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  He shook his head.

  “The secret is about Mr. Matamoros,” I suggested. “How did he get so rich?”

  “Who knows?” He flipped his hands up impatiently. “Maybe from Colombians, maybe not. I don’t know. Listen. This is neither a secret nor a scandal. To build a hotel like this, you need men and equipment from La Paz. It’s not cheap. So Matamoros talks to Barrientos and the Mallku. The Mallku’s not stupid. If Matamoros gives him a bribe, he has money for one year and no more. So he tells Matamoros he must give us a percentage of his revenue, and also hire Barrientos to make sure everything runs smoothly. Then Matamoros has no trouble, and we have enough money to support the party for years. You have met Barrientos two times now. If that information does not satisfy you, then you may meet him again. That would be bad. Take your friend and leave.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I need to talk to Pilar first, tonight. Wouldn’t you also want to talk to someone as beautiful as Pilar?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I would also like to talk to Pilar.”

  After he left, I called up for Kenny, but he was either at breakfast or incapable of finding the phone. I myself wasn’t hungry, and it was still just 9:00, hours before Pilar would contact me. Gabriela suggested the one-hour Jungle Wildlife Adventure Tour, which, I gathered from the brochure, was identical to the Jungle Jeep Convoy, except that the guide pulled over now and then to point out birds.

  I spent the next hour bumping through the forest in an SUV with three Argentinian men and their queasy-looking wives. At the end of the track, we piled out by a swell in the river so the guide could show us some sort of parrot colony, but the men weren’t interested. They sat on logs, lit cigarettes, and after discovering my profession, explained to me which regions in Argentina most merited tourism; meanwhile, their wives strolled along the water with the guide. They asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told them I had fallen for a Spanish girl, and they had a lot to say about Spanish girls’ arrogant, tight-assed ways.

  “By the way,” I asked, “have you heard about Hilary Pearson, the young American journalist that disappeared here?”

  They had not. I briefly described the mystery of her disappearance. The men responded with dark intimations regarding Bolivian coca kings.

  The women rounded the bend. Their gazes were all following the guide’s outstretched arm, which was pointed up in the trees at some undoubtedly wondrous animal, hidden from our view.

  “Forget the cocaleros. She probably ran off with her guide,” one of the men said, and his friends laughed.

  * * *

  When I returned to the lobby, Soldán spotted me and beckoned me to him.

  “Would you have a moment to speak with me in my office?” he asked.

  He was as red-faced as a drunk, and his graceful lope was jerky and quick. I had to skip-step to keep up.

  He opened the door to his office to reveal nobody, not Dionisius or Barrientos or a pack of snarling Bolivian cops waiting impatiently to beat a confession out of me. Soldán hung an embroidered No Molestar sign on his door handle and shut the door behind him so loudly he flinched.

  He sat behind his desk and rolled a ballpoint pen back and forth between his two palms. He didn’t lift his eyes.

  “Something terrible has happened.”

  He bent his head and spoke into the rolling pen, as if into a microphone. I thought of a convicted defendant, ashamed and defeated, murmuring his apologies to the judge before sentencing.

  “Last night, a driver received news that one of our vans had fallen from the road, not far from the hotel. Just above the last waterfall.”

  Nothing to do with me then—thank God. It was just another Matamoros disaster. How unlucky for Soldán that an American writer was here when it happened. He was making a preemptive strike by telling me now, before I could find out myself from a more gossipy source.

  “We investigated,” he said. “The driver of the van that fell was Pilar Rojas. We brought her back here—our doctors are better than any in Coroico, and of course there are none in Yolosa”—he lifted his head at last to explain this—“but it was too late. It appears that she was hit by a large truck and could not control her vehicle. I am … very, very surprised. And sad. I spoke to the doctor this morning. I have not yet informed the staff.”

  His fingers finally stopped rolling the pen, or maybe my mind stopped registering the movement.

  “Pilar? Are you saying … she’s dead?”

  He shut his eyes, searching for words.

  “It is very, very sad” was all he could come up with.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t understand. Why would she be on the road last night? Was she going back to La Paz? It was so late.” Maybe she was fleeing. But from whom? And why hadn’t she told me? Maybe she didn’t have time. Maybe she had somehow heard the alarm I had set last night and run from the hotel immediately.

  “She appeared to be driving here from La Paz. We’re not sure why. She was to meet guests at the airport in La Paz this evening, and then bring them here. So she should have stayed there in the city. Perhaps she needed something at the hotel. In any case, one of our drivers found her last night. The roads here can be dangerous, and she was driving alone. We are now trying to reach Mr. Barrientos. He returned to La Paz this morning in his private car. She was like a daughter to him.”

  She was driving from La Paz? Of course; Soldán thought Pilar had obeyed Dionisius’s order to stay in the city. So he had this wrong. He must have everything wrong. “You say the driver found her last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “At what time?”

  “Around midnight.”

  “Ah! Then it’s a mistake! Soldán, I have to tell you the truth—she was here yesterday.”

  “Yes, she was driving here last night.”

  “No, no! She was here all day, and most of the night too, well after midnight. I saw her. I think she had private business to take care of. But I saw her. Maybe you shouldn’t tell anybody about this. But it’s all right.”

  Soldán looked me full in the face, his eyes bewildered and terrified.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Smalls. There is no doubt.”

  “But—then I want to see her body.”

  Soldán winced.

  “I—I know her family. I could identify her. There might be a mistake.”

  “You knew her family?”

  “Her aunt. The only family she has. Please, Soldán. I’ll call her aunt if it’s true. I met her once.”

  * * *

  A moving walkway bore us once again through the complex. Strange fears sprinted across my brain. Perhaps it was not Pilar but a ghost I met last night and followed through the tunnel to the starry landing. Yes, in the moonlight her skin had been ghostly pale and indistinct. And she hadn’t touched me—at least, not in the light. But how could a ghost unlock and open doors, not to mention light a cigarette? Perhaps I was lying to myself, even now, or insane. Or my brain had misfiled a dream as a memory. People do go insane. But I’d never been insane before. And Kenny had seen her too, in the afternoon, hiding like a rabbit in the Kallawaya’s den.

  I wasn’t insane. I remembered my childhood fear that the whole world was conspiring to hide its true nature from me, that every other human was an actor or a robot, and I was truly all alone, a specimen under observation. Even as a child, I could rarely summon the paranoia required to trust in my fantasy. After all, what could possibly be the point of such a trick? But who knows the point of the universe? Planets, species, and civilizations have sprouted like mushrooms for no purpose anyone has ever discovered. Why was the Roman Empire created, or the dinosaurs? There’s no reason for anything. Believing in the most elaborate of conspiracies is no more illogical than believing in the long series of improbable coincidences that make up the history
of life. Perhaps the entire hotel, or even all of Bolivia, including Pilar, was in on the plot.

  The walkway left us at the heavy threshold of a freight elevator.

  “Are we going to the infirmary?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “We brought her upstairs. To wait for … the person who examines these cases.”

  The elevator doors opened directly on a kitchen. Young men stopped washing dishes and chopping vegetables to stare at us, then returned to their work. A lone cook shaking a sizzling pan nodded his head for no reason. Swaths of unused counter space sparkled in the fluorescent light. I’d never seen such a roomy kitchen. Space was plentiful in the Hotel Matamoros.

  Then I noticed a barricade of spice carts and barstools on the far side of the kitchen. Behind it two cops in camouflage were muttering rapidly in their country accents. Soldán waved to them and pushed aside a barstool so we could pass. The cooks and dishwashers had abandoned this part of the room. A massive chrome freezer door stood slightly ajar. Measuring cups were overturned and forgotten. A meat cleaver lay on its side upon a block of wood. Thin dried juice—the blood of a steak—had stained the blade. Why hadn’t anyone removed it? Or shut the freezer door? A senior cook in a mushroom hat gazed forlornly across the divide, a refugee from the disaster. Soldán introduced me to someone named Dr. Sanchez. With him were two younger men in civilian clothes, who just stared at me.

  “We don’t have the facilities,” the doctor explained, in English, obviously resentful that he had to express regret for something that wasn’t his fault.