No Safeguards

by H. Nigel Thomas

  Paul

  The card arrived on one of Anna’s days off, and she’d got it from the mailbox. “He didn’t even mention me. Jay, he didn’t mention me.”

  “Ma, he’s doing it deliberately because he knows you’ll be hurt. Cheer up, Ma. Don’t fall into his traps.”

  She did brighten up. Even ate supper that evening, and instead of shutting herself away in her bedroom, she stayed in the living room, and chatted about Georgetown of all places, recalling the people we knew there, mostly members of Caleb’s congregation, and wondering what had become of them.

  ***

  If the embassy doesn’t locate Paul within the next two weeks I think I’ll have to forgo teaching this fall, suspend my studies, and go in search of him. Not that that would bother Paul. When I began my doctorate Paul smirked and said: “If you truly had intellect you wouldn’t go chasing after degrees. See, I didn’t even get a high school diploma because it’s all in here.” He tapped his skull. “You must collect degrees otherwise people won’t think you’re bright. Wouldn’t you love to have my intellect?”

  ***

  The other postcard, six weeks later, came from Honduras. It features an impressive sculpture of a Neanderthal-like figure holding something. The printed explanation says it’s a monkey man, the Mayan Storm God holding a sceptre or a torch.

  Tegucigalpa

  April 21, 2005

  I’m in Honduras. You, a historian, should be here to see the impressive achievements of the Maya. It’s they who should have conquered Europe. Just think what they might have done, if they’d only discovered the wheel.

  Getting ready to move on to Guatemala. Have to see Tikal, the great Mayan site there, to compare it to Copán, the Honduran one.

  One love,

  Paul

  For a while I listen to Jonathan’s snoring. Of late I find myself trying to read but not seeing the words. Without realizing it, I discover I’m up and pacing the space from the bedroom door to the window. Definitely. I’ll have to go and check out the newspapers of the past months. How seriously is the Canadian High Commission working to find him? The week it became clear that Anna was dying, I sent Foreign Affairs several photos of Paul and a lot of personal data. Paul hadn’t registered with the Canadian High Commission, and the Guatemalan government has no record that he left the country. His visa was for three months. To continue living legally in Guatemala he should have left the country before the three-month expiry date and re-enter. “We will try contacting the language schools in Antigua in the hope of tracing his whereabouts,” a Marjorie Bligh from Foreign Affairs told me in an e-mail. “We’re fairly confident that he’s not in prison. The Guatemalan authorities are under international obligation to contact us in such cases.”

  ***

  I look down at the two letters on the bed and pick one up.

  Santa Elena

  Costa Rica

  May 11, 2005

  Dear Jay,

  I’m in Costa Rica. Skipped going to Guatemala and came here instead to find out if what I’d been hearing about Costa Rica is true — that it’s the Switzerland of the New World and Central America’s most ecologically conscious nation. Ticans definitely love nature. No ifs and buts about that. And that’s all fine by me.

  I travelled south on the Caribbean side. Stayed five days in a village called Cahuita. Lots of Blacks — Blacks are rare in San Jose — descendants of Jamaicans, live there. Their forebears worked for United Fruit, and now they work for the companies that have replaced United Fruit: Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, etc. I was struck by how friendly Cahuitans are. They live like folks back in St. Vincent: same kinds o’ houses, same sort o’ farming and fishing, and they’re friendly. There’s a national park there, and miles and miles of beach in the form of an upside-down L. Strangely, on the horizontal arm of the L the sand is black, and on the vertical — the more popular half and beachfront for the national park — the sand is golden. Much of it is unsafe for swimming. It’s full of dangerous currents.

  From there I took a day trip south, not far from the border with Panama, to Puerto Viejo. It’s a tourist slum for rich White boys who surf in the day and get stoned and laid at night. On the bus back, we were stopped by immigration officers who began to check people’s papers. I didn’t have my passport on me. Guess what, they didn’t check me. I mentioned this to my landlord. He said that it was because I looked exactly like one of the fellows who operate the Cahuita National Park. Now, of course, I know I have to carry my passport around with me while I’m in Costa Rica.

  A few days later I went back to San Jose and caught a bus to the Pacific Coast, to Jaco of all places. It’s worse than Puerto Viejo. A one hundred percent tourist town. Nothing but surfing, swilling, and pleasuring. Giant waves that surfers love are the pull there. Further south is Manuel Antonio National Park. There are a couple of good beaches there — the only ones that could compare to our Grenadines beaches. I enjoyed bathing there. I had the pleasure of seeing sloths hanging upside-down in the trees, fat agoutis running across the paths in the Park, and iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks right beside the bathers, unafraid of people.

  But the best part of my trip so far has been my visit to the erupting volcano Arenal. Imagine my surprise when the bus arrived at La Fortuna on the other side of the volcano. There were scouts looking for people to fill the hotel rooms. I’m glad I didn’t book ahead. I got a room with hot water for US$10 a night. In the evening, a group of us: Swedish, Dutch, New Zealander, and British, boarded a minibus to see the volcano. We saw about a dozen bursts of lava lighting up the night sky. Afterwards we went to bathe in the thermal baths nearby. When I entered the first pool a White woman touched her husband and pointed at me. They both glared at me and got out of the pool quickly. It was only then that I became conscious that I was the only Black person there, and it occurred to me then that I was often the only Black person on the buses once I left the Caribbean coast.

  All the members of the tour except me spoke to the chauffeur and workers at the spas in Spanish, which they said they’d learned in Antigua, Guatemala. Bro, I’ll be heading there. I plan to come back to Canada fluent in Spanish. People here are friendly but, once you leave the Caribbean coast, few speak English, so when they begin talking to me on the buses, the conversation goes nowhere. I have to remedy that.

  The next morning, I was part of a tour that took five college students from Brooklyn and me across Lake Arenal. The students left on a hiking tour once we disembarked, and a vehicle took me along a gravel road to Santa Elena (where I’m writing you from now). I’ve come here to visit the Monteverde Cloud Forest: El Bosque nubloso. I wanted to ascend it on foot, but, considering my frail lungs, I took a cab; inexpensive by North American standards. Once on the summit, I took one of the forest trails and was lucky enough to see a toucan. There’s something majestic about being in a forest like this. I’ve recognized the cottonwood — here called the ceiba; one grows in our orchard in St. Vincent; it’s the biggest tree in it — and the naked Indian (el indio desnudo). Many, many more of them are trees that grow in St. Vincent. There are some magnificent subspecies of balisier here that I’ve not seen in St. Vincent. Being in nature is what I most enjoy about Costa Rica. I’ve bought a videocassette of the Cloud Forest especially for you, so you’ll have an idea of what I’m writing about.

  It’s pleasant being in Costa Rica. People here are poor but dignified and except for Coca-Cola in San Jose, I feel safe in most areas. Unlike in Belize and Honduras, where the price for everything triples and quadruples once they identify you as a foreigner, I never feel anyone here is trying to gyp me. I wonder how long Ticans would remain like this.

  Tomorrow I head back to San Jose, and in two or three days I should be in Guatemala. My health is holding so far. I use my puffer a great deal at times and at times hardly at all, depending on where I am and how much dust or pollen is in the air. I’ve had to use my E
piPen only once.

  Oh, yes. The birds here. My old passion. My Cahuita landlord was fascinated by all the time I spent watching the tanagers — in blue, red, and mixtures of yellow, grey black, etc.: four sub-species, six different plumages — feasting on the fruit he puts out for them. What a richness of species! And the plumage! But for my frail lungs, I’d become an ornithologist. I never weary of watching them. To date, across Costa Rica, I have seen 47 species or subspecies for the first time. I keep a bird chart to help me identify them.

  I’m thinking more and more that, when I return, I should seriously consider writing. I wonder if I could convince Ma to release that $40,000. After all, writing fulltime is like attending university. Don’t you agree? I would need that money long before I’m thirty because when I return I plan to be fully fledged.

  One love,

  Paul

  It was some three months later that his Guatemala letter arrived.

  Antigua, Guatemala

  August 12, 2005

  Dear Bro,

  Sorry about the delay since my last letter. I’ve been busy learning Spanish and not much more. My money is almost all gone. I’m tempted to beg for some of yours. In fact, I’ll have no choice. I’ve already sold my laptop. My binoculars and camera will be next.

  Man, I thought Costa Rica was lovely (I mean physically lovely), but that’s because I hadn’t seen Guatemala. A pity they don’t know better than to litter their highways and landscape with garbage. Do you know what it is to wake up every day fronting a perfectly conical volcano — Agua — in all its majesty! In the morning I go walking — up a hill from which I am able to see the steam rising from Fuego, a perpetually erupting volcano. Antigua is in a lake bed at the foot of three volcanoes. I hope none does any serious erupting while I’m here.

  I’ve done a weekend trip to Tikal. Guess what? A monkey pissed on me there. The forest there abounds in wild turkey and quetzals whose plumes were once reserved for royal personages.

  Yes, I had the chance to compare the Mayan sites at Copán and Tikal. I can’t say which is better. Just that I don’t know how Europeans can say that these people were primitive. At the Anthropological Museum in Guatemala City, there are tablets of their hieroglyphs along with a wealth of artefacts. Of course, there are lessons to be learnt too. What made their civilization great was also what destroyed it. One hypothesis is that they wreaked ecological havoc when they cut down the trees to feed the expanding city.

  I’ve also visited the Western highlands — the city of Quetzaltenango — and saw some of the most stunning scenery ever. I was there a Sunday when a whole posse of people, men and women dressed in black, emerged from a church carrying what I can only call a mini island. There must have been a hundred or more people all dressed in black carrying the damn thing on their shoulders. A marching band led them. It had a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary, one of Christ, one of John-Paul II, and a huge cross. All arranged with stones and shrubbery to form a landscape kind of. Guess you could call it an island of belief on human pillars. I’ve since learned that it’s called una anda (whatever the hell that means, something to do with walking). Here you see that religion is indeed a burden. A burden people here take seriously. As seriously as Sisyphus his boulder. And I can see why. Most possess nothing else. Perhaps the burden is ballast. (Existential ballast. I’ve just finished reading Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus).

  I know you know some Spanish, so I’m trying out my newly learned Spanish on you. ¿Cómo son tus cursos? Es posible que estés preparando tus exámenes. ¿Y Jonathan? Ahora que sea posible ¿Cuándo será el matrimonio? Espero que me invites. Pero, tienes que comprarme mi vestido. Porque ahora, estoy pobrísimo.

  Enough of that. There’s so much to tell you about Guatemala. This must be one of the most dangerous countries on the planet. I fear going to Guatemala City alone, afraid I would get robbed. Here they hold up buses constantly, rob all the passengers, and shoot dead any who resist. Here human life is cheap. I stay on because it’s inexpensive to live and study here, if one follows the lead of the locals. It looks like the entire city of Antigua depends on its Spanish language schools, some 75 of them, a teacher per student. Whole families live off the room and board they receive from students; there’s a travel agency on every corner offering tours to everywhere and to everything; every coffee farm expects you to visit — for a fee of course — and of course the schools are in collusion. If you don’t watch it, you spend more time on dubious local tours than studying Spanish, but after a couple of weeks the serious students catch on. And you should see the large number of restaurants filled with foreign students, their prices closer to New York’s than Guatemala’s. Many of the ruins left over from earthquakes have been preserved. To visit them one pays of course.

  The streets are of uncemented cobblestones. Much of the ancient colonial architecture is preserved here. (In fact, the city is a UNESCO World Heritage site). And the yard of every house is entered from a locked gate. There’s a solid wall from one street corner to the other. You cannot see into anyone’s yard or around anyone’s house, giving the impression that every house is a fortress. One disadvantage of this is that the streets are like tunnels that trap vehicle exhaust — of which there’s plenty. Vehicles here are poorly maintained. They emit thick, oily, black diesel smoke. It’s a challenge for me to breathe in these streets. There are some areas I avoid completely, if I don’t want to cough up my lungs. Like the bus terminus, which, unfortunately, is beside the market; there fruits are abundant and cheap, but because of the choking air, I’m forced to buy my fruits at the supermarket.

  As you would have already surmised, I’m keeping a detailed journal. I plan to use it when I come back and try my hand at writing. How about these entries?

  Observing the volcanoes sentinelling Lake Atitlán, I think of the grandiose in nature but also of its destructive forces that we flee from or surrender to, depending. To the extent that we carry parallel forces within us, my question is: How do we deal with them? Etc.

  This lake, Atitlán — its grandeur and splendour — makes me think of God in the way early humanity, without the benefit of science, would. Here, people’s religion isn’t far removed from that. In Antigua, my landlady went to mass daily and believed that tracing the sign of the cross on her grandchildren’s forehead would protect them from danger when they’re outside the house. It’s pathetic to see how people are too stupid or too lazy to discover God for themselves — if they need God. In any event, like Grama, I believe that God is everywhere, is inseparable from phenomena, and is eternal only in the sense that phenomena are or aren’t eternal . . .

  Here, as elsewhere in the developing world, missionaries are busy saving souls because it’s easier and cheaper than saving bodies. The conquistadors and their successors raped the indigenous populations of their land and material treasures to build their European and Euro-American empires. They laid an impregnable base that has completely deformed the psyche of Third Worlders. Now the descendants of those made wealthy through rapine are busy saving souls and protecting wealth, and further impoverishing Third-Worlders for American, Asian, European, and their own interests . . .

  Here, no doubt, there must be the dignified poor. I’d love to meet them. Today I met a Mayan girl selling trinkets — she looks twelve but is really sixteen or seventeen — who was fascinated by my beard, and wanted to fondle it. I gave her a quetzal. She wanted to give me a necklace, and I hope nothing else . . .

  The family I stay with, who live six in two rooms in their four-room rented flat (one room’s for the boarder who pays the rent, the other for the boarder who pays for the family’s food and other bills), has concluded that dignity’s too expensive to preserve. They beg and borrow from the boarders, and hope that what’s borrowed won’t be repaid — and forever lie about being robbed, medical bills, and heaven knows what.

  Forty-four percent of Guatemala’s population is under 15. What doe
s the future hold for them? Already, in Guatemala City, many are Pandilleros and Pandillas (adult and juvenile criminals).

  Everywhere there are the inveterate sellers. They use their children strategically. If they are lucky they make enough for beans and tortillas.

  And there are paradoxes. Overweight shoeshine boys with gleaming gold teeth and cell phones — which probably lead some to believe that material poverty is apparent rather than real.

  Jay, you think that with a little polishing and editing, newspapers or magazines would buy such stuff?

  You who are squeamishly clean will have a hard time in Guatemala. Here you wipe your arse after shitting, fold the paper and throw it into a garbage bin, often one without a cover. I’m not sure how many people wash their hands after. Sometimes there’s no washbasin nearby and quite often no soap. I saw my landlady’s grandson wash his hands after using the toilet in the same water that she later used to wash the dishes. At times like these I wish there was a God I could pray to for special favours — like sparing me from fecal-borne diseases. Unlike Costa Ricans, who don’t gyp you, here everyone gyps you or tries to. You’ve got to do some serious bargaining here. Vendors here will strip you of every penny if you let them.

  Living here is imposing a rigid discipline on me — not quite a straitjacket but close — that I didn’t have in Montreal. I’m up at five — then the temperature’s somewhere around 12 — and walk for an hour. By the time I shower and breakfast, it’s 7 o’clock. I read until noon, then have lunch and head off to classes. Classes end at five. There’s nothing for me to do in the evenings except read. By now, you’ve guessed it — I who crave attention 24/7 am lonely, unbearably so at times. The foreign students in Antigua throng the bars, but, apart from their being smoke-filled (legislation is pending to make them smoke-free), my asthma medication, not to mention my poverty, prevents me from drinking, so I stay away from them. I have no access to television where I’m staying. The set is in one of the two bedrooms the family occupies, and as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve sold my laptop. Here you can buy in English pretty well all the books written about the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, including a couple by the Canadian Ronald Wright. At the moment I’m reading a very interesting one written in early colonial times. It’s called the Popol Vuh.