by Paul Theroux
‘More words than English?’
‘Lots more,’ he said.
The railcar had halted to take on passengers. Now we started and not far from the track was a hairy mottled pig ploughing grass with its snout. Mario gestured at the pig.
He said, ‘For example, take “pig” – we have five words for pig. How many do you have?’
Hog, sow, piglet, swine. I said, ‘Four.’
‘Listen,’ he said, and counted on his fingers. ‘Cuche, tunco, marano, cochino, serdo. What do you think of that?’
‘And two words for “dog”,’ said Alfredo. ‘Chucho and can.’
‘We have about seven words for children, or child,’ said Mario. ‘In Honduras they have eight!’
Alfredo said, ‘How many have you got for dog?’
Puppy, mutt, mongrel, cur. ‘Four,’ I said. ‘That is more than you have.’
‘Well, we have four for bull,’ said Mario.
My God, I thought, what a ridiculous conversation.
Mario listed the words for bull: novillo, buey, torrete, guiriche.
‘You win,’ I said. The railcar stopped again, and while Alfredo and Mario went out to buy Cokes I dug my Spanish dictionary out of my suitcase and checked some of the words. When the railcar resumed its jangling progress I said, ‘Buey does not mean bull. It means “ox”.’
‘It is the same animal,’ said Mario.
We argued about this until Alfredo conceded, ‘Yes, in the United States the ox is different from ours. I have seen them in Arrisboorg.’
We were passing through lovely mountains, very steep and volcanic. On many of the lower slopes were coffee bushes. We were not very far from Guatemala even now, and it struck me as amazing that landscape could change so quickly from country to country. This was not only greener and steeper than what I had seen just over the border in the Motagua Valley, but had a cared-for look, a rustic neatness and a charm that made it quite attractive. I did not know then that El Salvador imported most of its vegetables from Guatemala, and yet El Salvador was clearly the busier-looking of the two, the better integrated. Its real burden was its size: what claim could such a small place make? I had heard that it was run by fourteen families, a melancholy statistic suggesting ludicrous snobberies and social jostling as well as an infuriated opposition to them, Marxist students sweating with indignation. Mario and Alfredo confirmed that this was true.
‘I do not like to talk about politics,’ said Alfredo. ‘But in this country the police are cruel and the government is military. What do you think, Mario?’
Mario shook his head. It was obvious that he preferred to talk about something else.
At about three-thirty we came to the town of Quetzaltepeque. Seeing a church, Mario and Alfredo made the sign of the cross. The women in the railcar did the same. Some men removed their hats as well.
‘You are not a Catholic?’ said Alfredo.
I rapidly made the sign of the cross, so as not to disappoint him.
Alfredo said, ‘In English, what is the meaning of huacha?’
What was this, some Nahautl word? Alfredo giggled – no, he said, there were no Indian languages spoken in El Salvador. Huacha was English, he insisted, but what did it mean? I said I was not familiar with it – could he use it in a sentence? He cleared his throat and hunched and said in English, ‘Huacha gonna do when da well rons dry?’
‘English,’ said Mario, with a derisory snort.
Although they were both travelling salesmen, they hoped to rise in their firms and, one of these days, be promoted to a desk job in San Salvador. Mario worked on a straight commission, Alfredo’s profit was based on a credit system which I could not understand – he had a salesman’s knack for long opaque explanations, exhausting the listener into submission without allowing comprehension to occur. I said that they both seemed very ambitious. Oh, yes, said Alfredo, Salvadoreans were much cleverer than other Central Americans.
‘We are like Israelis,’ said Alfredo.
‘Are you going to invade anyone?’
‘We could have taken Honduras a few years ago.’
‘I have an ambition,’ said Mario. He said the salesman in his company who sold the most boxes of Rinso that year was going to win a free trip to San Andres Island. He thought he had a good chance of winning – he had sold thousands of boxes.
The valleys were deepening, the mountains growing shadowy in the setting sun. The railcar was small, but at no time was it full, and I guessed that it would not be long before it was removed and the railway service suspended except for shipments of coffee. Towards late afternoon we passed through dense forest. Alfredo said there was a swimming pool nearby, fed by a waterfall; it was a wonderful place for picking up girls. He would be glad to take me there. I said I had to be moving along, to Cutuco and Nicaragua. He said he would not go to Nicaragua for anything in the world. Neither Alfredo nor Mario had ever been to Honduras or Nicaragua, which were next-door.
San Salvador remained hidden. It lies in a bowl, surrounded by mountains which trap the air and keep it smoggy. To our right was a highway – the Pan-American Highway. Alfredo said it was a fast road, but had its dangers. Chief among these was the fact that, ten miles out of San Salvador, the Pan-American Highway is sometimes used as an emergency landing strip for planes. I said that I would rather be in this railcar pottering gently through the coffee plantations than in a bus careering towards a taxiing plane.
What were these two going to do in the capital? Business, they said, see the manager, file orders. Then Mario said a bit hesitantly that he was also going to see his girl-friend – he did not yet have a girl-friend in Santa Ana and was being driven to distraction by the provincial morality of the place. Alfredo had two or three girl-friends. His main reason for this trip to San Salvador (‘please do not tell my manager!’) was to see the football game that night. It promised to be one of the best games of the year – El Salvador was playing Mexico at the National Stadium and, as Mexico was scheduled to play in the World Cup in Argentina, it was El Salvador’s chance to prove itself.
I had read about Latin American soccer – the chaos, the riots, the passionately partisan crowds, the way political frustrations were ventilated at the stadiums. I knew for a fact that if one wished to understand the British it helped to see a soccer game; then, the British did not seem so tight-lipped and proper. Indeed, a British soccer game was an occasion for a form of gang-warfare for the younger spectators. The muscular ritual of sport was always a clear demonstration of the wilder impulses in national character. The Olympic Games are interesting largely because they are a kind of world war in pantomime.
‘Would you mind if I went to the game with you?’
Alfredo looked worried. ‘It will be very crowded,’ he said. ‘There may be trouble. It is better to go to the swimming pool tomorrow – for the girls.’
‘Do you think I came to El Salvador to pick up girls at a public swimming pool?’
‘Did you come to El Salvador to see the football game?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
The San Salvador railway station was at the end of a torn-up section of road in a grim precinct of the city. My ticket was collected by a man in a pork-pie hat and sports shirt, who wore an old-fashioned revolver on his hip. The station was no more than a series of cargo sheds, where very poor people were camped, waiting for the morning train to Cutuco: the elderly and the very young – it seemed to be the pattern of victims in Central American poverty. Alfredo had given me the name of a hotel and said he would meet me there an hour before kick-off, which was nine o’clock. The games were played late, he said, because by then it wasn’t so hot. But it was now after dark and the humid heat was choking me. I began to wish that I had not left Santa Ana. San Salvador, prone to earthquakes, was not a pretty place; it sprawled, it was noisy, its buildings were charmless, and in the glare of headlights were buoyant particles of dust. Why would anyone come here? ‘Don’t knock it,’ an American in San Salvador told me. ‘You haven’t
seen Nicaragua yet!’
Alfredo was late. He blamed the traffic. ‘There will be a million people at the stadium.’ He had brought along some friends, two boys who, he boasted, were studying English.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked them in English.
‘Please?’ said one. The other laughed. The first one said in Spanish, ‘We are only on the second lesson.’
Because of the traffic, and the risk of car-thieves at the stadium, Alfredo parked half a mile away, at a friend’s house. This house was worth some study; it was a number of cubicles nailed to trees, with the leafy branches descending into the rooms. Cloth was hung from sticks to provide walls, and a strong fence surrounded it. I asked the friend how long he had lived there. He said his family had lived in the house for many years. I did not ask what happened when it rained.
But poverty in a poor country had subtle gradations. We walked down a long hill towards the stadium, and crossing a bridge I looked into a gorge expecting to see a river and saw lean-tos and cooking fires and lanterns. Who lived there? I asked Alfredo.
‘Poor people,’ he said.
Others were walking to the stadium, too. We joined a large procession of quick-marching fans, and as we drew closer to the stadium they began yelling and shoving in anticipation. The procession swarmed over the foothills below the stadium, crashing through people’s gardens and thumping the fenders of stalled cars. Here the dust was deep and the trampling feet of the fans made it rise until it became a brown fog, like a sepia print of a mob scene, with the cones of headlights bobbing in it. The mob was running now, and Alfredo and his friends were obscured by the dust cloud. Every ten feet, boys rushed forward and shook tickets at me, screaming, ‘Suns! Suns! Suns!’
These were the touts. They bought the cheapest tickets and sold them at a profit to people who had neither the time nor the courage to stand in a long rowdy line at a ticket window. The seat-designations were those usual at a bullfight: Suns were the cheapest, bleacher seats; Shades were more expensive ones under the canopy.
I fought my way through the touts and, having lost Alfredo, made my way uphill to the kettle-shaped stadium. It was an unearthly sight, the crowd of people emerging from darkness into luminous brown fog, the yells, the dust rising, the mountainside smouldering under a sky which, because of the dust, was starless. At that point, I considered turning back; but the mob was propelling me forward towards the stadium where the roar of the spectators inside made a sound like flames howling in a chimney.
The mob took up this cry and surged past me, stirring up the dust. There were women frying bananas and meat-cakes over fires on the walkway that ran around the outside perimeter of the stadium. The smoke from these fires and the dust made each searchlight seem to burn with a smoky flame. The touts reappeared nearer the stadium. They were hysterical now. The game was about to start; they had not sold their tickets. They grabbed my arms, they pushed tickets in my face, they shouted.
One look at the lines of people near the ticket window told me that I would have no chance at all of buying a ticket legally. I was pondering this question when, through the smoke and dust, Alfredo appeared.
‘Take your watch off,’ he said. ‘And your ring. Put them in your pocket. Be very careful. Most of these people are thieves. They will rob you.’
I did as I was told. ‘What about the tickets? Shall we buy some Suns from these boys?’
‘No, I will buy Shades.’
‘Are they expensive?’
‘Of course, but this will be a great game. I could never see such a game in Santa Ana. Anyway, the Shades will be quieter.’ Alfredo looked around. ‘Hide over there by the wall. I will get the tickets.’
Alfredo vanished into the conga line at a ticket window. He appeared again at the middle of the line, jumped the queue, elbowed forward and in a very short time had fought his way to the window. Even his friends marvelled at his speed. He came towards us smiling, waving the tickets in triumph.
We were frisked at the entrance; we passed through a tunnel and emerged at the end of the stadium. From the outside it had looked like a kettle; inside, its shape was more of a salver, a tureen filled with brown screeching faces. In the centre was a pristine rectangle of green grass.
It was, those 45,000 people, a model of Salvadorean society. Not only the half of the stadium where the Suns sat (and it was jammed: not an empty seat was visible); or the better-dressed and almost as crowded half of the Shades (at night, in the dry season, there was no difference in the quality of the seats: we sat on concrete steps, but ours, being more expensive than the Suns, were less crowded); there was a section that Alfredo had not mentioned: the Balconies. Above us, in five tiers of a gallery that ran around our half of the stadium, were the Balcony people. Balcony people had season tickets. Balcony people had small rooms, cupboard-sized, about as large as the average Salvadoreans hut; I could see the wine bottles, the glasses, the plates of food. Balcony people had folding chairs and a good view of the field. There were not many Balcony people – two or three hundred – but at $2,000 for a season ticket in a country where the per capita income was $373 one could understand why. The Balcony people faced the screaming Suns and, beyond the stadium, a plateau. What I took to be lumpish multi-coloured vegetation covering the plateau was, I realized, a heap of Salvadoreans standing on top or clinging to the sides. There were thousands of them in this mass, and it was a sight more terrifying than the Suns. They were lighted by the stadium glare; there was a just-perceptible crawling movement among the bodies; it was an ant-hill.
National anthems were played, amplified songs from scratched records, and then the game began. It was apparent from the outset who would win. Mexico was bigger, faster, and seemed to follow a definite strategy; El Salvador had two ball-hoggers, and the team was tiny and erratic. The crowd hissed the Mexicans and cheered El Salvador. One of the Salvadorean ball-hoggers went jinking down the field, shot and missed. The ball went to the Mexicans, who tormented the Salvadoreans by passing it from man to man and then, fifteen minutes into the game, the Mexicans scored. The stadium was silent as the Mexican players kissed one another.
Some minutes later the ball was kicked into the Shades section. It was thrown back into the field and the game was resumed. Then it was kicked into the Suns section. The Suns fought for it; one man gained possession, but he was pounced upon and the ball shot up and ten Suns went tumbling after it. A Sun tried to run down the steps with it. He was caught and the ball wrestled from him. A fight began, and now there were scores of Suns punching their way to the ball. The Suns higher up in the section threw bottles and cans and wadded paper on the Suns who were fighting, and the shower of objects – meat pies, bananas, hankies – continued to fall. The Shades, the Balconies, the Ant-hill watched this struggle.
And the players watched, too. The game had stopped. The Mexican players kicked the turf, the Salvadorean team shouted at the Suns.
Please return the ball. It was the announcer. He was hoarse. If the ball is not returned, the game will not continue.
This brought a greater shower of objects from the upper seats – cups, cushions, more bottles. The bottles broke with a splashing sound on the concrete seats. The Suns lower down began throwing things back at their persecutors, and it was impossible to say where the ball had gone.
The ball was not returned. The announcer repeated his threat.
The players sat down on the field and did limbering-up exercises until, ten minutes after the ball had disappeared from the field, a new ball was thrown in. The spectators cheered but, just as quickly, fell silent. Mexico had scored another goal.
Soon, a bad kick landed the ball into the Shades. This ball was fought for and not thrown back, and one could see the ball progressing through the section. The ball was seldom visible, but one could tell from the free-for-alls – now here, now there – where it was. The Balconies poured water on the Shades, but the ball was not surrendered. And now it was the Suns’ turn to see the slightly better-off Salvado
reans in the Shades section be having like a swine. The announcer made his threat: the game would not resume until the ball was thrown back. The threat was ignored, and after a long time the ref walked onto the field with a new ball.
In all, five balls were lost this way. The fourth landed not far from where I sat, and I could see that real punches were being thrown, real blood spurting from Salvadorean noses, and the broken bottles and the struggle for the ball made it a contest all its own, more savage than the one on the field, played out with the kind of mindless ferocity you read about in books on gory medieval sports. The announcer’s warning was merely ritual threat; the police did not intervene – they stayed on the field and let the spectators settle their own scores. The players grew bored: they ran in place, they did push-ups. When play resumed and Mexico gained possession of the ball it deftly moved down the field and invariably made a goal. But this play, these goals – they were no more than interludes in a much bloodier sport which, towards midnight (and the game was still not over!), was varied by Suns throwing firecrackers at each other and onto the field.
The last time play was abandoned and fights broke out among the Suns – the ball bobbing from one ragged Sun to another – balloons were released from the upper seats. But they were not balloons. They were white, blimpy and had a nipple on the end; first one, then dozens. This caused great laughter, and they were batted from section to section. They were of course contraceptives, and they caused Alfredo no end of embarrassment. ‘That is very bad,’ he said, gasping in shame. He had apologized for the interruptions; for the fights; the delayed play. Now this – dozens of airborne rubbers. The game was a shambles; it ended in confusion, fights, litter. But it shed light on the recreations of Salvadoreans, and as for the other thing – the inflated contraceptives – I later discovered that the Agency for International Development’s largest Central American family planning programme is in El Salvador. I doubt whether the birth-rate has been affected, but children’s birthday parties in rural El Salvador must be a great deal of fun, what with the free balloons.