Borderless Deceit

by Adrian de Hoog

  The route curved towards the Great Smoky Mountains and as the road began twisting up with spectacular intermittent views back through the trees, I began to feel strangely well. I stopped watching the driver’s rearview mirror to determine if furtive eyes there were observing me. And I no longer cared whether I was the topic of nearby, hushed conversations. With the bus belching higher up into the mountains, encumbrances from my past began to vaporize. Only three days had passed since I promised Jaime I would run and hide, but already I had stopped thinking about my cell and the heavy files there of a world growing nastier all the time.

  And from this pleasant new perspective I began to speculate why I always overreacted to Service ridicule. Why had I allowed my guts to roil at every snub? What had been the good of it? Because now – here – who cared? In this way the superstructure of twenty years of negative attitudes was falling apart, and as it dissipated, so did the granite set of my face. A soft, hallucinogenic-like wonder took its place. I became glued to the window and watched big birds soar over deep folds in the mountains. There in the Great Smokies, during that ascent, I decided that no matter what lay ahead I would never go back. With that resolved, it was as if scales fell from my eyes. And more strangely still, with all clarity, I saw that monolith again, the symbol which set off the night with Jaime. How it had threatened, yet how different its portent was now. If anything, it lured me – symbolising vistas of freedom, scenes I had never before beheld. It caused contentment to fill my mind. Freedom, the monolith seemed to be announcing, is the basis for a charitable co-existence with one’s fellow man. Had it, I now wondered, all along been a symbol that explained Rachel?

  At the mountain crest there was a public area where the bus stopped. Passengers spilled out and headed for the restrooms. I wandered to a lookout which offered an expansive view west. The air was uncommonly clear. No dark clouds, no swirling fog welled up the slopes of the Smokies that day. I don’t know how far I saw. Tennessee rested below. Beyond would be Arkansas, and beyond that Oklahoma. From there the continent ran on through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. And farther still lay Silicon Valley, that prominent location for Jaime’s sense of family. I thought of her. Gotta hug ya. It seemed her desire for it came from the heart. And yes, I embraced her back, though it had startled me, and I must have looked more confused than happy. So she marched off. In the high-altitude air I quietly wished I could replay that moment.

  The bus, squeaking and shuddering, descended towards the east and lumbered onto the Atlantic plain. By evening it straggled into Charleston. That night I was on an Interstate express going south along the coast. In Fort Lauderdale I climbed out into a rising morning heat. It didn’t take long to find more transport…of the informal kind – a poor man’s water taxi, a stinkpot really, which set course straight east into the Atlantic haze. The Bahamas are not far off and before nightfall I stood on shore. Port Lucaya. No immigration officer in sight on that remote pier. Straight away the stinkpot putt-putted back. I slung my rucksack over a shoulder and sauntered off to spend the night in the shadows.

  This, more or less, was how it went for days – me seeking out rusting hulks with their operators delivering me for a little cash from one island to the next. I might be dropped off at a jetty, or in a bay, or sometimes in a port. Often on board, resting against piles of nets I’d doze off. Other times I would sleep a few hours under a palm tree just off a beach, or check into a rooming house of the unlicensed kind. No one paid me much attention because, I assumed, I was starting to look as scruffy as any other regular old salt.

  For a couple of hundred US, a corroded trawler with a bearing due south took me away from the Bahamas. When the Dominican Republic was a dark ochre pencil line on the horizon, we chanced upon a small trawler and in the gentle swell I jumped from one vessel into the other. The crew finished their fishing, then headed for land. A further dollop of cash paid for a motorcycle ride from the local quay to a town called Puerto Plata. From there I traversed the island by bus, thus slipping in to Santo Domingo. In its port I located a tramp steamer with a free cabin. Once it finished taking on cargo it sailed southwest. The Panama Canal was next.

  Looking back, it seems time stood still throughout that circular Caribbean trek. Ferried from island to island, leaning into the wind from the bows, mesmerised by the play of light on water, I was still further transformed. Pangs of well-being, that same lightheadedness I felt in the Great Smokies, grew stronger. Sea smells, the dull thudding of diesel engines, a shared gulp of cheap rum now and then, saltwater spray in the face, scenery so fine that either you wept or had to ignore it – all this gelled, and cleansed, and took me to a new pinnacle of serenity.

  On the tramp steamer, once out on the open sea, I went to lie down on my bunk. Flat on my back, eyes closed, sensing unity with the ship’s rolling, I was euphoric with the bearing I now had: physically it was southwest; metaphysically it was into an unknown.

  Had this happened to Rachel too? The future can’t be anything like the past. Was this her way of saying that henceforth each next day should be exalted as an inspiring new question mark? Anne-Marie had interpreted Rachel’s scribbled sentence differently. She saw it as an idiom for escape. Which was it? Or had Rachel meant it both ways? Once more I wondered whether Anne-Marie was right, that a dark grip had tightened on Rachel from which in the nick of time she’d slipped away. I might know soon. It might not be too long before I found her. I pictured the reunion and again rehearsed what I would say.

  The Caribbean crossing was smooth. Before the Panama Canal the ship dropped anchor, then waited. A whole flotilla was waiting to push through to the Pacific. I studied ships on all sides, port, starboard, from the bow and stern. The captain handed me binoculars and I made out people on other decks. I nearly waved at them. Even on the high seas with its distances I was now open to feeling togetherness.

  The Canal’s operation interested me. When a pilot came on board next day I pumped him with questions. My curiosity infected him, because on the bridge, in between instructions to the first officer, as we moved through the Gatun Locks and then into Gatun Lake, he described the Canal’s history, its hydrology and economics, even its politics. All in passable English. Then he fixed on himself. His name was Estavan. His family lived on the Panamanian coast near the border with Colombia, but he preferred to stay in Panama City. “Come and see me,” Estavan said. “Anytime. I shall introduce my friends to you. Where are you going now?”

  Nowhere in particular, I replied. “Just drifting.”

  “Maravillosa!” A decision was made on the spot that at the end of his pilotage I would join him on the launch to shore.

  In this way I put foot on land again without a passport being shown.

  But then the hours turned claustrophobic. Estavan’s social energy exhausted me. There was a ninety-minute super-tourist tour of Panama City with eyes laid on a cathedral, a presidential palace, and several important museums, me nodding mechanically at fact after explained fact and anecdote after narrated anecdote. With evening falling we settled under an awning on a quiet square, Estavan still reciting chapter and verse, as if from either a detailed tourist guide, the history books, or his complex family tree. Expansive views on the yanquis and Manuel Noriega and the drug trade followed until Estavan’s friends began arriving, each one joyously welcomed, each one loudly exclaiming his great happiness to be there. Cacophony, hilarity, endless rounds of drinks. Open-mouthed, I laughed along, yet was plotting an escape. Around midnight I penned Estavan a note consisting of one word: Gracias, stuck it in his shirt pocket and walked away. When I glanced back from the opposite side of the square I saw it was catching up with him. He unfolded the piece of paper and raised an arm to wave. Adios, amigo, he yelled. He tried to get up as if to follow me, but fell back in his chair.

  Eventually I found a small park with a bench where I waited for dawn. Until that evening no man had ever called me friend.

  Another bus now, this one going north. Not even the boozy night wi
th Estavan, nor the night on a park bench could take the shine off my anticipation. The bus’s end station was in a small border town. A stone’s throw distant was Costa Rica. I wandered up and down some streets and neared the crossing. The security was close. Passports were being checked. I drifted back to the bus station and crowded into a small van, a local service vehicle, which was departing for the coast, to Puerto Armuelles. Why not see what it was like there? I was accustomed now to casual lodgings in small towns where there were flexible captains owning small boats.

  Next day a cheerful boy, a fisherman’s son who catered to the odd tourist, took me on a cruise in a high-speed outboard, first south along an isthmus, then north on the other side. Somewhere during that outing the waters became Costa Rican. Some hours later, skilfully avoiding rocks between two close heads, he put me ashore and drew a primitive map in the sand. Hand language helped explain that diez minutos inland was a track and dos horas walking to the north lay

  Punta Banco. Adios. Buena suerte. I paid, thanked him for his good luck wish and disappeared into the coastal forest. Here and there the sun broke through an opening in the dense, cathedral-like canopy. Guided by shadows I maintained a straight line inland. It really was only ten minutes until the predicted track appeared. Endlessly it wound its way north. Occasionally I heard a vehicle roaring up, which caused me to jump into the undergrowth until it passed leaving behind it a swirling tunnel of dust. Some hours later trails began verging off the track to the left, to beaches, I presumed. The track turned into a road and traffic picked up. Occasionally I saw people moving amongst the trees. In this way, I eased into Punta Banco and from there, really, I could travel around in Costa Rica as much as I wished. The next day I arrived in Turrialba.

  20 CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Rachel?” I called softly. The house had a large verandah and on it a figure in a deck chair had her back towards me. I moved forwards. “Rachel? Is that you?”

  The figure moved. A hand on the armrest pulled forward and there was a turning around, a deliberate movement, as if it sprang from a mild irritation at the disturbance. Behind sunglasses the face was motionless. But a split second later, the quickest of reactions, surprise burst out. The sunglasses flew off and crash-landed. Bare feet, agile and quick, pattered along the porch and down some steps. The whirlwind rushing at me consisted of a loose white blouse unbuttoned far down the front and a long and flowing, red cotton skirt. And above all of it was Rachel’s matchless, uncombed ash-blond hair. She looked wild, more beautiful than ever. Her arms were open and outstretched.

  “Carson, what…what is this?”

  “I’ve been looking for you, Rachel. For days. There isn’t a back road around Turrialba I haven’t been on.”

  I hadn’t exactly decided to give up on finding her, but all the same, as days went by, discouragement set in. Diego, my driver, perceiving this, took an opposite tack. His hope became stronger, unassailable even. As his taxi bucked the trails to their inevitable dead ends, whereby my face dropped, his shone ever brighter. “This lucky,” he would say, wheeling the small car around to go back the way we had come. He would add, “God, he smile,” or, “The holy saints, they love us, sure.” I asked why. “Because,” he answered, “my car no break down here,” or, “Because you see my country close. Ees beautiful, no?” or, “Because I drive you good.” At the end of one muddy track he stopped and got out to climb onto the hood. On this soap box he delivered a speech: “In this country, Señor, freends no disappear.” He did a slow full circle with a finger tracing the mountain tops. “In countries north and south of Costa Rica freends make sadness. One day they no there no longer. They no come back. But here freends stay because God, he smiles. So we lucky. Your freend, we find her, no problema. Then you give me tip.” Pep talk finished, orders given, Diego jumped down laughing. Well, it was true – with me, his prospects for a decent tip were never better.

  Diego had decided in an instant that his near-term future prospects lay with me. He picked me out, not the other way around. The bus from Cartago to Turrialba had been packed, several passengers being foreign adventurers on small budgets. “You here for the volcanoes, then?” a chatty Brit asked me from across the aisle. His name was Harold. The bus was swerving through bends in the road as if with a sufficient speed it could straighten them. Harold’s girlfriend, trying to sleep between him and the window, her head tight against his shoulder, rocked back and forth with him in unison. I too gripped the handle on the seat before me.

  “Might try one,” I replied.

  “Semantha and I are doing them all – Irazú and Turrialba this week. Last week it was the lava flows off Arenal, and then Poás. Next week Chirripó. Fall in with us if you want. We can share, you know, the cost of vehicles for getting around.”

  “You look fit,” I observed. “I’d hold you back. I’ll stick to lower elevations. What did you call the volcano you climbed? You liked it?”

  “Arenal. Sure did.” Immediately, Harold was unstoppable. With Sam on his shoulder groaning at the bus’s every lurch, for the next hour he delivered a painstaking description of their trek, step by step, of the way up and down. It was overwhelming. No wonder Sam insisted on sleeping. Following the pair off the bus I moved quickly to the left when they were looking right. And in this way I stood confronted by Diego. He was slight, about my age, spoke enough English, and had eyes so bright I believed they’d never once beheld misfortune.

  Diego did more than drive a taxi. He also offered services as guide. I was soon deposited at an economical hotel, where he waited. An hour later he drove me to a back street eatery on the edge of town and again remained outside. “Girl?” he asked after I had dinner. I shook my head. He frowned. “Boy?” I declined again. He looked puzzled. “Why you here?”

  “A friend, Diego. She’s staying somewhere around here in a house of some kind, maybe on a farm, or hacienda, something like that.”

  “A freend! I take you. Now? Tomorrow? Casa is where? You show me.”

  “I don’t know.” Anne-Marie’s rough directions were of a ten or twelve minute drive along a main road out of town, then a turn right and fifteen more minutes down a side road of some kind.

  “Ees eesee,” Diego laughed. “I know road. Tomorrow I take you.”

  Four main roads connect up in Turrialba. How far is a drive that lasts ten minutes? And what is a side road? A dirt track that heaves and falls like storm waves?

  I tried to point this out, but Diego dismissed the uncertainties. With eyes closed and two hands raised to stop my bickering, he said, “Please, señor. Señor, please. You no know here. Here I know. Your freend is mystery. Whoamen are mystery. But I am Diego. I good detective. Tomorrow I do this work for you.”

  Next morning the sky was cloudless, the light gentle, the air vital, a day for horoscopes to allude strongly to fulfilment. Diego, having first stated that money talk was beneath him – sleuthing being a higher calling – finally agreed to a day rate. The road southeast was repaired tarmac, smooth enough, but as the taxi picked up speed it began to shake. Diego often yanked the steering wheel sharply clockwise to tame the shimmy, but a little quiver soon crept back, which then grew into a major vibration. Dash, doors, windows – everything rattled. Within this madhouse we advanced, Diego making up his mind on turnoffs to the right. No…No…No…Ha, aqui, si…One by one the often muddy, winding arteries into the back country were checked out. All eventually turned into dead ends: fields, bits of tropical forests, dipping furrows in the land. The countryside around Turrialba is busy. Numerous small square houses painted bright pink, dark blue, red or yellow were everywhere, all of the same design, all with metal roofs. Now and then Diego stopped at one to ask excited questions, which caused much hand-waving and finger-pointing into random directions. Here and there stood grander places. Once we stopped at one because the place had an expatriate look. A heavy young woman with three niños came out. She engaged Diego in a cheerful, high volume shouting match. They went at it for a while, perhaps det
ermining that they were each other’s long lost freend now happily refound.

  On day two, in between several spectacular downpours, the area southwest of Turrialba, back in the direction of Cartago, was similarly methodically eliminated.

  Day three, Diego proclaimed, would bring luck. For this reason he took the road towards the north and west as far as Santa Cruz, the Vulcán Turrialba looming as backdrop the whole way. The motif made me think of Harold. I assumed that at that very moment he was driving poor Sam crazy the whole way up, informing her he’d just finished putting his boot on this rock and was about to place the other on one a step farther along. But as for Rachel, we had no luck, which only drove Diego’s optimism higher. “Case feeneeshed almost,” he concluded as we came to yet another halt on a track leading into a forest. The vegetation was luxuriant and inviting – it being the rainy season – and I was ready to continue into it on foot. “Now close,” he added, turning his back to the trees and pointing at the hilly landscape below. Everywhere there were dots of trees and beneath them the black-green hues of coffee shrubs. “Very close, no? Tomorrow. Yes. You too feel?”

  That evening I patrolled the town. I checked out sidewalk cafés, or peered into restaurants through windows. A premonition was building that tomorrow fate would deliver a twist, that one way or the other there would be a new direction. Suppose Rachel could not be found? What then? Should I stay for a while, maybe help Diego start a tourism business? I had to admit that driving through the countryside with him was unbeatable. In charming English he explained local customs, his family, Costa Rican politics. I had begun to like him as much as the deeply contented feel of the whole country. All Diego needed was some money for a new vehicle, some coaching on the finer points of service, and away he’d go. I could help him. Who knows? Around here I might have nothing better to do.