by Jay Cantor
We took a table by the window, ordered. A waiter brought us three cold bottles of beer on a round wooden tray, with a dish towel across it. “Nothing for you, sir?” the waiter asked me again.
“A glass of water.”
“Water?” the waiter said, his face expressionless. He was a mestizo in a short red jacket.
“He wants to drink,” Fernando said, “so he doesn’t. He doesn’t touch women, either. He wants to, so he doesn’t. Get it?”
Chaco looked at me queerly, his thin lower lip pushed out. “He’s one tough guy.”
“Water,” I said, smiling. I took pleasure in denying myself things, even mate; a small exaltation of willfulness. Fernando didn’t yet understand the joy of austerities. My chastities repelled him also. He allowed himself ironies.
The waiter snapped the caps from the beer, and foam gushed from the bottles. He clasped the froth in his hand and wiped it on his towel.
We sipped our drinks and watched the plaza. An old man walked slowly about, trading furs from a deep pile on his shoulders; a forest creature prepared for an awful winter; a line drawing from a children’s book, the young hero’s half-human grandfather, teacher. I wanted to hug him to me. The city was filled with snares against him. His life could be turned to infertile garbage by paper money, by bright evenly woven textiles, by manufactured shoes that would, by an infamous irony, be the death of his gods. Every few steps the old man stumbled. Fernando saw others in the plaza jerk forward a bit too as they walked, like mechanical toys whose gears mesh unevenly. A small mystery. It didn’t long engage my friends. They elaborated militant responses to Eisenhower’s demands.
My friends ordered three more beers. Chaco took two mangoes from his pants pocket. Fernando had two limes in the breast pocket of his Eisenhower jacket. We sliced up the fruit for lunch, a sweet tart flavor that tasted to me of chastity and health. The waiter came back with the bottles. The price had gone up.
“Why?” Ricardo asked. He was a serious man; each indignity, no matter how often repeated, must be questioned.
The waiter shrugged his shoulders. “That is what prices do, gentlemen. They’re like children. They grow up. You gentlemen can afford it?” He looked at me, my shirt still open, my chest hairs covered with a grease that had been totally lacking in magic. The waiter had a broad Indian face with dark brows. He stared openly, without embarrassment.
We didn’t look as if we could afford it. Chaco’s jacket and pants were all folds; he had slept in them for days. Fernando had peculiar shoes. Ricardo had dirty fingernails and gave off a rich acrid body odor. I wore wide brown pants, held up by a piece of rope, a stained nylon shirt, unmatched shoes, and a brown leather jacket, grime in its creases, strips of leather hanging from its sides. (An outfit emblematic of a vow.) The waiter’s eyes narrowed. (Not the place to explain about my vow.)
“Of course we can afford it. And we can afford waiters to open it for us,” Chaco said in a friendly way, as if his cruelty had been an accidental flick.
The waiter snapped the caps open. Chaco and Fernando both grabbed for the foam.
“Money will come to you,” the waiter said amiably to Chaco.
“But probably, alas, in bolivianos.” When Chaco talked he twisted his lips to one side, and squinched his eyes shut. One couldn’t decipher the inflection this was meant to give his words. Perhaps that was the point. This constant face-making said: “This is a world of buffoons (I know, I am one); it is impossible to be serious. And yet it is too painful a world not to be serious. So make of my sentences what you like.” Even at rest Chaco’s puss was grotesque. His nose extended at least five centimeters into the air in front of him. His ears, too, were large, triangular. The frame of his face, supporting all this stuff, was narrow, with little chin. And his hair was very thin, wispy. (He was vain about it, though. Once, when he thought no one was looking, I saw him rub a tin of President’s Cream into his hair, to make it seem thicker.) His forehead was wrinkled, like a nut. The whole ensemble was by turns funny, charming, and hideous; a gnome, an animal, a clown, a dwarf. What kind of creature was he? How should one take his words?
“Why does beer cost so much?” Ricardo asked, slowly. Was still asking. Repartee with waiters didn’t interest him. Other thoughts didn’t intervene when he held a question. He would worry the question slowly, slowly, until the bitter taste was gone.
“I will explain,” Chaco said. “ ‘My first talk on the price of beer.’ A drama for two players, called: ‘Why Isn’t There More Beer?’ Or: ‘The Boozer’s Lament.’
“You ask” (he turned to Ricardo, and imitated him, talking slowly, in a deep voice), “ ‘Why isn’t there more beer?’
“Chaco says”—and here he imitated himself, exaggerating his facial tics —“ ‘Because in a revolution everyone wants a drink, and because this is a national revolution, the government thinks everybody should have a drink. So they give everybody money so they can buy something to drink. There isn’t more beer, only more money. So the price goes up.’
“So you say to Chaco”—and here he put his hands on the table, the way Ricardo would, and made his face motionless—“ ‘Chaco,’ you say, ‘why isn’t there more beer?’
“And Chaco replies, ‘Because there’s more hard currency to be made smuggling it into Paraguay than selling it here. So the beer goes to Paraguay. It’s the religious law of supply and demand. The law called, The devil eats where he can.’
“And you say—because you’re a goodhearted serious man, the likes of which I’ve never seen before—you say, ‘Chaco, you’re confusing me. Why do they send the beer to Paraguay, if people want it here?’
“And I say, ‘Ricardo, you goodhearted serious man, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, it’s because Paraguay’s currency is sounder.’
“And you say, ‘Why isn’t Bolivia’s currency sound?’
“And I say, ‘Ricardo, you’re making me dizzy. I told you, it’s because prices keep going up.’
“And of course you’re not content with that, and you say, ‘Why do prices keep going up?’
“And Chaco says, wearily, ‘I told you Ricardo, it’s because the government loves the people and wants them to have a drink, so they can toast the health of the democratic revolution.’ ”
Ricardo, the real Ricardo, stared at him. Ricardo and the waiter looked alike; they both had broad faces. Ricardo’s dark brows weren’t drawn together in puzzlement. He sat, indifferent to Chaco’s vaudeville. “Why does beer cost so much?” he asked. A placard for a slow march.
“I will explain,” Chaco said. He stood up by our table, weaving. At this altitude two beers could make you tipsy. “ ‘MY SECOND TALK ON THE PRICE OF BEER.’ ”
“How did you know before that there would be a second talk?” Fernando asked.
Despite myself, I smiled; for the moment Chaco delighted me.
“What?”
“Before, you said that that was your first talk on the price of beer, as if you knew there’d be a second one.”
“Oh. Well, this is an old story,” he said. “And no one ever understands a talk on economics the first time. They let their minds wander. And then it’s too late. This time be attentive. You especially.” He leaned towards me admonishingly, bringing his tapir’s nose close to my face. Prehensile thing; he should be able to pick up silverware with it.
“Now certain manufacturers,” he said, “friends of the government, and their friends, and their friends’ friends, are given a special right, called a ‘cupo.’ The cupo is magic. With it you can not only turn straw into gold, but shit into North American dollars. The holder of a cupo can exchange bolivianos for U.S. dollars at the rate of 190 bolivianos per dollar. The market rate, out in that square, is 13,000 per dollar. Get it? No? Well, follow me. I take a dollar out into that square, and I get 13,000 bolivianos. I take my bolivianos over to the national bank, and give them my name. They consult a ledger, and find I hold a cupo. Lucky me! They give me 68 U.S. dollars. I take my 68 doll
ars out into that square and get 884,000 bolivianos. I take my wheelbarrow of money over to the bank, they’re not even surprised to see me—maybe I’ll remember them come Christmastime—and they give me 4,652 dollars. Your eyes glaze, Guevara. But it’s too late. It’s already happened. The price of beer has gone up. You can check my figures. They’re correct. I run through them at night on the floor to put myself to sleep. Now, why does the government give cupos? Are they crazy, like Chaco? No. It’s to allow a subsidy from the government to promote national industry, so the manufacturers can buy the machinery they need inexpensively, from North America. National industry should develop. But it’s more profitable just to manufacture inflation. And instead of machinery they buy luxury items, science-fiction cars, and television sets where there’s no television station. If they do produce any beer or silk or bread they smuggle it into Paraguay, where they can get a good price in a sound currency. Your eyes glaze again, Mr. Guevara. I knew they would. But too late. The line for the few remaining food items forms at the right. It’s already happened.”
“That explains nothing,” Ricardo said. He put his large fists on the table, like the character in Chaco’s play, and spoke with consideration, judiciously, slowly.
“Yes,” Fernando said. “That just explains how it happens. Not why. Not really.”
“Why does beer cost so much?” Ricardo thought he would sound the depths of the universe if only he held to his simple question. How could he be denied?
“I don’t know, Ricardo,” Chaco said. He looked exhausted, and sat down. “Perhaps we speak the wrong language.” He jerked his head at something behind him.
At a table nearer the center of the room four men in business suits were talking in English to each other. They were officers of the Department Bank, or the International Cooperation Administration. Or the Economic Commission for Latin America. Or the Export-Import Bank. Or the International Bank for Reconstruction. Or they were lawyers come to negotiate leases for the international oil companies. Or agents of the mines come to determine repayment schedules more acceptable to the former owners. Ricardo looked down. His silly question would be answered with per-capita production figures amortized over the life of, and renegotiation rates for, recapitalized loans. Or with indifferent silence. The bitter taste would just go on, no matter how long he chewed it. In Bolivia the price of beer goes up because the price of beer goes up.
I felt disgusted by Chaco’s fooling, by North Americans, by the sophistical science of economics. I wanted to pull Ricardo’s hair and force his head back up. Chaco was right: my eyes glazed. I hated this sort of thing. I hated Ricardo’s cowed posture. I didn’t want to understand Chaco’s nonsense. Every way you walked imperialism tripped you up, hampered you. Chaco delighted in surreal twists: that if you wanted to develop the silk industry it caused lines to form outside the grocery each night, people waiting for the morning’s opening, praying something might be left on the shelves. (A new national industry had developed: waiting in line at night for wealthier people.) Chaco liked that; it proved the mind’s inadequacy to its tasks; he delighted in proving failure over and over. (What else could be done? his burlesque implied.) I despised it. The point of morality was not to revel in your own destruction, but to rise above the urinous snares of this world. I wanted to burn this world up with my indignation. “I’ll tell you why beer is so expensive. It’s not cupos. It’s human greed. That’s the root of the problem. That’s what Chaco is really talking about. Greed. We have to change ourselves basically, radically, totally. We’re greedy because our lives are empty, and we’re afraid to die. We think if we get enough money we won’t be empty, we won’t die. Human greed is the problem. And people don’t need beer. It’s pois—”
Ricardo turned and stared at me. His frank gaze interrupted my thoughts. He put his fist down on the table. “I think you’re right about greed. People are too greedy. They don’t want to work. But I don’t ever want to hear that shit again about beer. You don’t like beer. Fine. Don’t drink it. But I like it. So no more of that Gandhi shit.” He put his glass to his mouth.
“Oh, no,” Fernando cried, wincing theatrically, pursing his lips around a sour taste. “Oh, no. Please Ricardo, don’t say ‘shit.’ Anything but that. I couldn’t stand hearing about that again.”
Ricardo and I laughed. Fernando had reconciled us, restored us to the world that the language of the men at the center table had garbled up.
“I think I would like another beer,” Ricardo said; enormous spaces opened between each small word. He wiped his lips with the sleeve of his brown sports coat.
Fernando and I put some money on the table.
I turned towards the window and marched dizzily in the dry sun with the Indians. What did we care for cupos or lines in front of the city grocery stores? The world would be just again when we returned to our proper place, our villages. Our demand was simple: land to grow our food on. Hundreds of small processions walked back and forth, up and down the narrow colonial side streets, in military formations, scattered like colored ribbons on the hills about the center of town. Over their heads the balconies almost touched, the stone leaves of a feudal forest. Men waltzed gravely, in groups, machetes attached to their belts like ceremonial swords, tools home from a savage harvest. They held their hands together in front of their chests, and walked as if to measure. Women in bowler hats, and black ponchos striped with green and red bands, carried their babies trussed to their backs, and followed after the men, running thread as they walked, bobbins dangled and jumped at their feet, familiars kept in place by spells.
The Indians moved with profound, inexplicable deliberateness, like monkeys, children, growing trees. Ten or eleven sat in the square; suddenly they all rose and walked off together in a short parade, as if a single vein ran through them; they circled about the plaza once, then returned to their spot and, as if on signal, sat down. “I feel like there’s a secret they all know,” I said to Fernando. “It’s a dance. Each one has a part. And I can’t even hear the music.”
“If it’s a dance,” Fernando said, smiling fondly, remembering my debacles in Buenos Aires night clubs, “you’ll never get it. Even if you hear the music.”
“Look at the way they move around,” I said. It filled me with a deep excitement, as if there were a solemnity to it. “They’re so curious. They’ve come into their mansion, some rich strange place they built but were always excluded from. They want to walk in all the rooms. They’re serious about the furniture. They don’t know what any of it is for. See? Look! That family, the little boy in a woolen hat walking between his parents, they go up and down the same street, stopping at every store window. Boxes that voices come from.”
“Dead people’s voices,” Chaco said.
“Yellow coats on plaster figures?”
“Saints of these people,” Chaco interpreted.
“They want to palpate the city, feel the stones against their bodies, taste it, see every inch of it.” It gave me joy to imagine this. “They don’t want to live in the house. They didn’t think of building something like this in the first place. They don’t want to buy that silly junk. They don’t even know what money is. If they got some they’d only bury it under a rock. This is what ownership means to them. That they can look their fill.”
“Idealist.” Fernando laughed tenderly. “That’s what you think. You don’t know them. Those are your Indians. If I were one of them I’d like to have one of those yellow raincoats, to wear, for my own.”
“No. Not them. They have it already, all they want of it, the sight of it. They bought that during Holy Week. The city is theirs now. They’re marching through their domain, their inheritance, taking possession of it by walking in it, seeing it. Anyway, where would you wear a thing like a raincoat? Would you wear it to go planting?”
“I would if it were raining,” Chaco said, nodding, his head turned to the side. “But I’ll tell you what I’d really like if I were one of those Indians. I’d like a ballpoint pen! I rea
lly would.”
“But you wouldn’t know how to write,” Fernando said.
“The MNR will teach them how to write.” Ricardo made a covenant. APRA and the MNR shared the same promises. (I was sure then that he was right.)
Four men in loose-fitting white pants and colored belts walked by our window, carrying rifles. Their wives followed after, wearing leather bandilleras.
Chaco waved to the people near us, construction-company owners. (In a government office somewhere, a man drew red lines like welts all over a map, planning roads. Roads would cause the land to prosper.) The men looked out the window at Chaco’s direction. The middle class of La Paz sat terrified of the Indian militias. They demanded the government disarm them, reorganize a regular army to protect them. (Who knows these Indians? They might suddenly, as if on signal—one that we couldn’t hear, that we couldn’t see—go berserk in the capital. A dummy in a store window might order them to kill us all.) Chaco smiled at the others, his fingers and thumb forming a gun pointed at their heads. One of the men frowned severely. Chaco scratched his thick earlobe with his gun barrel.
No, I thought, fear is not the way to produce national unity before imperialism, the common enemy. It is the readiness to die for what one believes that impresses others and would unite all classes of the nation. But Chaco’s flapping earlobe made me smile.
Near our window two men in brown felt hats blew on long wooden Indian flutes, wide ones, tied round the top with blue thread. The song was a few high notes played over and over. A simple song, a children’s song, even I could tap out its rhythm. A group of dancers stepped out to the center of the square in broad steps, six men in wide white pants and long red-and-yellow woolen caps that formed tasseled peaks. Around their waists and necks they wore woven squares of cloth thick with an intricate embroidery of smaller and smaller squares. The flaps of cloth overlapped one upon the other, like the tiles of a roof. These embroidered men formed a line. Three other men, taller ones, stood opposite. They wore black ponchos over white pants.