I desperately needed some rest. After finishing my beer, I decided to head back to the hotel for a nap.
Chapter 9
By the time I awoke from my slumber, it was around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. On my way out, I found Blanca in the lobby flipping through a fashion magazine. I asked if she wanted to join me for tea and she answered with a beautiful smile.
We walked slowly downtown and entered a café that offered a wide range of creole dishes and cuisine typical of Bolivia’s eastern provinces. I settled for a bowl of rice pudding, while Blanca opted for rice, fried plantains, eggs, and beef. The place was small and clean, run by an attractive and efficient lady from Trinidad.
“She makes a lot of money selling this stuff,” Blanca said.
“You could start a place just like this in your hometown,” I responded.
“I would need around five thousand dollars.”
“I could get used to the heat.”
“There isn’t a lot to do, but the people are nice. You could run the cash register. I’m terrible with numbers.”
“To grow old and die in a hammock, watching the wind blow over the pampas of Beni . . . it would be nirvana, Blanca. What else could I ask for?”
“Better than working like a dog in an American city.”
“If it weren’t for my son, I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. But first I have to see him.”
“Doesn’t he plan to come back?”
“What for? To be someone in this country you’ve got to get into politics, the drug game, or dirty business deals with the government. I’m a poor guy with no future. I can’t do anything for him. I’ll let him stay there. Even if he works as a laborer, he’ll never run short of money in America.”
“I want to make a decent living and take it easy,” she said. “My life has been too hectic.”
“You’d never guess it. You look like an aspiring schoolteacher who’s about to get her education degree.”
“The joke’s on you.”
Living with Blanca for the rest of my life wasn’t such a bad idea; she would be a lover, a mother, and a nurse, all in one. It was easy to put up with her. She didn’t say much and when she did, she didn’t talk nonsense. She had within her the serenity of the great rivers that traverse her homeland, the repose of the savannas lulled by the Amazonian sun. It was relaxing to spend time with her. She wasn’t very cultured, but it didn’t matter. She was intelligent and simple, courageous and patient. If I had met her ten years earlier, I wouldn’t be at the crossroads I was at now. Of course, I still had the option of convincing her with a single word and changing my future; I could trash my visa plans and stop writing my screenplay for robbing Doña Arminda. But the idea was already planted in my head like a shrub in the tundra, deeply and tenaciously rooted. It was a cursed obsession that was growing and beginning to suffocate me.
We stood on the sidewalk opposite the Foreign Ministry. From one of the windows on the third floor, an official dressed up like a stage actor watched us with disdain. In the Plaza Murillo, Blanca took me by the hand as if we were a couple.
She retired to her room as soon as we returned to the Hotel California. She said she was going to shower and then try on a new pair of spandex shorts. She invited me to see her in full battle gear, but I was too busy preparing for what I was up against that night. Since this was to be my premiere as a violent criminal, I lay down on my bed and tried to recall some movie or television series or detective novel that would give me a clue as to what I should wear. The English, who tend to dress formally, usually put on a casual get-up of a raincoat and overalls to rob a bank. Dressing down might be a good way to dupe the police. As for the Americans, they generally wear jackets in which a revolver can be easily tucked away. I was in a bind because my weapon was a measly lead club. I ended up settling on the outfit I’d bought in Oruro to impress the U.S. consul, the elegant Prince of Wales suit, which would turn me into an enigma. Doña Arminda, the crowd at Yujra’s bar, and the shoemaker on Colón Street had all seen me dressed like an impoverished gold runner, so it was wisest to go for a refined look.
When I went to shave, guess what the magical mirror had in store for me? A light-skinned face, large thick eyebrows, a thin straight nose, a mouth without much personality, a prominent chin that made women swoon, a wide forehead riddled with wrinkles that converged in a kind of delta, black wavy hair with a few specks of gray, and skin that cried out for some moisturizer. My face was run-of-the-mill, the kind you forget almost immediately. And yet, there was something striking about it, something I had cultivated like an exotic orchid: a moustache that you don’t find every day in these Andean latitudes, a French-style moustache that curled up, à la Hercule Poirot. It was my touch of distinction, the thing that drove the ladies crazy when I went down on them. It wasn’t a Mexican, Argentine, Brazilian, or half-breed moustache; it was a French moustache, and for what it was worth, it lent my appearance an enigmatic quality.
I vanished from the hotel like a ghost. The hostesses watching a Brazilian soap opera didn’t see me, nor did the manager who was sweating a river and trying to sell six Italian tourists on the merits of the hotel, nor did the bellboy who was busy booting a shoeshiner out onto the street. Perfect! No one had seen me leave. I walked down Illampu and within a few minutes reached Plaza Eguino. Eight o’clock was still an hour away, so I took a seat in the patio of a café called Stephanie. Actually, “patio” is a bit of an exaggeration; they had simply arranged two tables on the sidewalk facing the plaza. At one of them, a pair of lovebirds held hands. With their lips nearly touching, they shared a dish of ice cream doused in chocolate syrup. A girl wrapped in a greasy apron took my order.
“A beer, but I don’t want it if it’s warm.”
On that windless afternoon under clear skies, Protestant preachers were singing a Christian rock song in the middle of the plaza. I thought about how within a few years, Bolivia and the rest of Latin America would cease to be majority-Catholic to make way for those singing missionaries who fought for their faith in the streets, mixing with the locals in an effort to disseminate simple but seductive beliefs. The money came from somewhere else, but that’s the free-market era for you.
“Beer and tamales,” the girl said as she placed them on the table.
“I didn’t ask for tamales.”
“They’re free because it’s the first day our oven is working,” the woman reassured me. “But just for today.”
Plaza Eguino serves as a kind of funnel through which thousands of people pass en route to buses headed for El Alto, the bedroom city that the MIR party naïvely baptized “The City of the Future.” The hustle and bustle starts at 7 o’clock in the evening. Ninety-nine percent of the people are dark-skinned, but every once in a while you’ll come across a native or foreign white person. You can easily pick out the tourists by their style of dress, their height, and their skin color. The blond people look like ears of wheat in a pile of charcoal. The tourists seem happy and unworried; compared with Europe or the U.S., it’s cheap to shop in Bolivia.
I was growing mesmerized by the bustle of the crowd, by the chanting of the Christians and the blaring horns of the buses, taxis, and minibuses stuck in traffic, when I saw her . . . none other than Isabel Esogástegui. If she was a celestial apparition in the bookstore, here in the Rosario neighborhood she was galactic. She was accompanied by a tall young man who appeared to be in a bad mood. There was a certain unkempt elegance about him. At that hour, there weren’t too many hoodlums or vagrants on those desolate streets, but a woman of her pedigree was still taking a risk. She was wearing a raincoat and loafers, with a plaid wool scarf wrapped around her neck. When they passed by Stephanie’s, I stood up and called out, “Isabel!”
She turned around and looked over without recognizing me.
“I’m Mario Alvarez . . . from Mabel Plata’s book signing.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
I got a whiff of her expensive perfume. “I li
ve in a hotel on Illampu Street. And you?”
“I came to pick up my brother. He loves hanging out here.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“Thanks, but as a matter of fact, today is his birthday and I’ve got to take him to his party. There are a hundred guests waiting for him.”
The birthday boy was a little older than Isabel, and, just like her, had refined, upper-class features. He was a handsome guy, with a lean yet robust build. He looked pale and had dark bags under his eyes, which wandered as if in their own far-off universe. From what Isabel had said and from his spaced-out expression, I gathered that he was high on some drug, probably homegrown Bolivian cocaine.
Without paying her any mind, the young man sat down and called for the waitress. “One dark coffee,” he requested.
“Tamales are free today,” the girl said.
He stared at her and then broke out in laughter. “What did she say?” he asked me.
“Tamales are on the house today; it’s the first day they’re offering them.”
“A black coffee, nothing in it,” he said. He flashed me an inquisitive glance, and Isabel had no choice but to settle in next to me.
I suddenly wanted her so badly that if the Devil himself had offered me five hundred years in hell in exchange for a relationship with her, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. She looked gorgeous. She possessed the kind of beauty that seems unreal and invisible to poor guys like me; invisible because we don’t even want to look at it.
“Hopefully the coffee will clear your head a little,” Isabel said.
The guy smiled, straightened his tie, and ran his palm through his blondish hair. “My name’s Charles,” he said in an affable tone. “My dad is a serious anglophile. You don’t get classier than the Brits. He went to school there.” Charles paused. “Since you’re from around here, you must know Virrey Toledo Street . . . ?”
“No.”
“It’s just past the train station and those shacks that the Bolivian Railway workers built to house the company bureaucrats.” Isabel’s face turned red. She tried to shut him up, but he continued: “You have to jump over a wall and the house is right there, a little yellow house. I didn’t leave the place for two days. Know why?”
“I can imagine.”
“Isn’t it shocking?”
“Well, it’s your birthday,” I said.
“I had forgotten all about my birthday. Besides, I couldn’t care less. My mother planned this great party for me.”
“Go on, tell him your life story,” Isabel muttered.
The waitress brought him his coffee. As Charles sipped away, his mind cleared up enough for him to remember he had come in a car. The problem was, he didn’t remember where he had parked it.
“You’re so irresponsible!” Isabel exclaimed.
“Where do you usually leave it?” I asked.
“Sometimes in front of the train station, sometimes at Plaza Kennedy.”
“Drink your coffee and stop being such a pain,” Isabel said. “Let’s go look for it.” She stood up and made as if to leave.
“I’m free until 8 o’clock,” I said. “If you’d like, I can help you find it. What kind of car is it?”
“A Toyota Corolla,” Isabel replied. “New and red.”
“I thought I came up in the Nissan,” Charles said in jest.
“Idiot,” Isabel mumbled.
It took us fifteen or twenty minutes to find the car. We spotted it between two large dumptrucks, near Virrey Toledo Street, in a dark alley in which a few boys had created a makeshift soccer field with some rocks.
“It’s a miracle nobody stole it,” Isabel said. “Today’s your lucky day.”
Charles rested his arm on my back. “Isabel’s always hanging out with boring guys,” he said. “I like you. Where did you two meet?”
“In a bookstore. I’m not her friend, I’ve only seen her once before.”
Isabel unlocked the car and sat down in the driver’s seat. “Thanks,” she said. “You don’t want to come to Charles’s birthday party? That is, unless you have something more important to do.”
Charles pressed his palms together, as if in prayer. He took everything like a joke. The look on Isabel’s face shot a chill down my spine like a centipede doused with morphine. I forgot that I had a robbery to attend to; there’s nothing sex or love or the two together can’t do. With my heart dancing a merengue, I hopped into the Toyota.
Charles fell asleep just as we pulled out. Isabel drove through congested downtown without saying a word, irritated by our slow pace. Only after we reached Avenida Seis de Agosto did she take a deep breath. She recounted for me the disturbing life story of Charles, her only brother, the apple of their mother’s eye and their family’s white knight. He had been a model child until the age of twenty-five. He graduated with honors from the Catholic University of Chile with a degree in Economics, and then returned to Bolivia with the energy and euphoria of a young lion. As soon as he arrived, he was lucky enough to land a job with an American company that paid him two thousand dollars a month. An elegant economist and graduate of a Chilean university who speaks English fluently, comes from a good family, and wants to rise to the top isn’t something you find every day in Bolivia.
He worked like a Japanese executive for six months. Right at the one hundred and eighty day mark, he met a woman from a humble background who had money—a social climber, typical of the class that came out of the national revolution. She grabbed onto him tooth and nail, sucking the life out of him through sex and orgasms. One happy day they got married without telling Charles’s mother, his sister, or his father, who had been living in New York ever since escaping the condescension, haughtiness, and manipulation of his wife. It was a huge scandal, and the Esogástegui line suffered a severe devaluation in the ranking of La Paz’s top pedigrees. They were forced to swallow it, and then they got on with their lives. What the family didn’t know is that the girl was a huge coke head. She ended up getting Charles, for all his sophistication, hooked on the stuff. At first they sniffed and soon they started shooting up. She caught a strain of Hepatitis B, which landed her in a hospital in São Paulo, where, despite her money and the doctors’ best efforts, she died. Disconsolate, Charles was left a widower and an addict. He got over her death but never the addiction. And there he was, unemployed, down on his luck, and living off the family fortune, with one foot dangling over the abyss.
“We don’t know what to do with him,” Isabel confessed. “I think he’s a lost cause.”
They lived in a Provencal-style mansion in Achumani. I calculated their property at a third of an acre. The house, which measured at least seven thousand square feet, was ringed by a garden of exquisitely trimmed grass and clusters of rose bushes. An illuminated pine tree stood at one end of the garden. When Charles pushed open the gate, a pair of mastiffs galloped to meet us, barking ferociously. They quieted a little upon seeing their master, but my presence provoked distrust. They wouldn’t stop baring their fangs at me.
“Calm down,” Charles ordered in English. The dogs obeyed and awaited the next request. “They’re bilingual,” he explained.
“They’ll go far,” I replied.
Isabel showed us to the main parlor. There, an impressive number of guests, ranging from twenty to fifty years of age, danced with aban- don to the beat of a DJ who was harmoniously operating a collection of multimedia devices. A colossal television screen showed a tantalizing black woman, none other than La Toya Jackson, gyrating on a dance floor to new age rock music, while a strapping black man with oiled skin mimicked a sexual act with a mulatta wearing a thong no bigger than a child’s handkerchief.
Isabel approached a lady with the face of an Incan empress and kissed her on the forehead. I guessed that it was her mother. Isabel whispered in her ear, and the mother flashed an apprehensive glance at Charles. The young man’s arrival was received with repeated rounds of applause. He greeted his peers confidently, and the older guests res
ervedly. His mother gave him a long hug. They made a champagne toast, and then Isabel motioned for me to come closer.
“My mother, María Augusta. Mother, this is Mario Alvarez.”
Doña María Augusta was a miraculous Spanish-Indian amalgam. Her face was an Oriental bronze hue, and her lips, nose, and slanted eyes could have been drawn by one of those painters of the tombs of the royal mummies in ancient Egypt. She was a masterpiece of miscegenation.
“Mario helped us with Charles,” Isabel said.
“What was wrong with Charles?” María Augusta asked with genuine surprise.
“He was a little drunk,” Isabel continued. “With those punks he has for friends!”
“Charles has this ridiculous habit of getting mixed up with the wrong crowd,” María Augusta averred. “I don’t know who he inherited that from.”
“Not from my father.”
With a penetrating gaze, Doña María Augusta tried to size up my family tree. She asked me where I was from.
“Uyuni, in the Department of Potosí.”
“Decent people used to live there before ’52.”
I tried to explain that my father had been a simple working man, but Isabel made a face that stopped me cold.
“Señor Alvarez is a literature professor,” Isabel affirmed.
“How wonderful!” María Augusta remarked. “I’m a big admirer of Miguel Ángel Asturias. I can’t stand García Márquez or Cortázar. Vargas Llosa got off track, but he’s turned it around.”
“It’s because he spends most of his time in London,” I said.
“The environment has a lot to do with it. You must have your favorites too . . . I imagine.”
“I like José María Arguedas, from Peru, and Osvaldo Soriano. I also like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.”
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