“Hamlet,” he says. “Here we go.”
Their homework was to read Act I, up to the part where Horatio informs Hamlet of his father’s nightly patrols. “My father—” he says, trudging back and forth on the sand, rubber boots leaving deep imprints. “Methinks I see my father.” He wiggles his naked toes, the front of the rubber boot cut away so his U.S.-size-ten foot can fit. “What’s interesting about Hamlet saying this?”
One of the stones volunteers that it’s ironic that Hamlet says this (in my mind’s eye, Horatio) without realizing that Horatio really has seen his father. “Good, good.” The yellow leaf thinks that Do not mock me, fellow student; I think it was to see my mother’s wedding was pretty funny. “Yes—what an image! The funeral meats on the table barely grown cold! That Hamlet, such a snarky little dude!” The twigs giggle at his use of the word dude, but he lets them get away with it, even offers them the flicker of a grin. They all enjoy it, he knows they do: his undeniable gringo-ness, his casual teaching lingo, his speck of Southern California lighting up this corner of the Amazon jungle like a tiny golden flashlight in an ocean of green.
“A big theme we’re going to see in the next couple of weeks,” he says, scratching the bites on his arm, “is the theme of Hamlet’s madness. His antic disposition, as he calls it.” He twists his head so that he can cast a quick glance at the child-size notebook on the ground behind him, double-checking his notes. “That’s what makes the fact that Horatio sees the ghost particularly interesting. Can you genuinely be crazy if someone’s having the same hallucination as you?”
This is by far the biggest pleasure of teaching Hamlet—how easy it is to remember direct quotes. At night, locked up in the shed, he tries to remember as many as he can, writing them down in his notebook in whatever order they come to him, so that Hamlet’s mournful oration for Ophelia (the cat will mew and dog will have his day) is written alongside the pipe speech (you cannot play upon me), which is scrawled beneath the near entirety of to be or not to be (he has it almost perfectly memorized; it’s only after what dreams may come that it gets a little fuzzy). So many memorable lines! The joy of using words straight from the source material! He learned his lesson from The Scarlet Letter (his first class a year and a half ago, when he was just starting out and didn’t know any better)—he gave up after the opening chapter, which was all he could remember (“Hester Prynne represents purity—that’s basically all you need to know”). As I Lay Dying wasn’t too bad, not with those occasional gorgeous gems: My mother is a fish and my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time. Mrs. Dalloway, that definitely had its moments too—life; London; this moment of June. But Hamlet! This is what he’s been waiting for all fall semester, writing out as many quotes as he can remember by candlelight at night, in the teensiest tiniest handwriting possible, as César’s flashlight shines through the cracked shed door during bi-hourly checks. This is what they’ve been building up to. This moment.
“So,” he says to the fern the size of an armchair. “A little more than kin, and less than kind.” He’s backtracking a bit, quoting an earlier scene, but they don’t mind, they can roll with it; they always do. Behind him he hears Julisa’s voice, shouting something. When he turns to look, though, it’s César who’s staring straight at him, locking him in a brief second of direct eye contact. Then César jitters the safety of his gun a couple of times, and as he turns back to the class he can still hear the faint click-click-clicking drifting through the air toward him, like an audible dust mote.
The tree is making a remark about I am too much i’ the sun. “Sun—son! Excellent. Keep paying attention to that kind of wordplay.” Somewhere in the branches above a bird screams the high-pitched shrill of a gym class whistle.
In an hour and a half they’ll break for lunch, and they’ll all say goodbye in a chorus of voices (See you tomorrow, Mr. B! Hasta luego!). He’ll walk away with a huge smile on his face and a light tickling sensation in his chest—the faintest feeling of warmth.
—
After lunch (rice and lentils, with the unexpected surprise of a fish head on the side), there are a variety of different options he can choose from. There’s Spiderweb Inspection or Boot Cleaning. Toucan Watching or Facial and Vocal Exercises (these are especially important during the weeks of randomly enforced silence, when his cheek muscles start to droop and his voice transforms into an old man’s creak from lack of use). Aerobics and Strength Training he saves for midafternoon, to prevent stomach cramps (his current fitness goal is to hold the plank pose long enough for two verses and a chorus of “Eleanor Rigby,” sung silently in his head). Sometimes there’s even Magazine Reading, depending on whether he can bear to pick up the 2005 copy of Semana he’s had since day one, week zero, month zero (“Here you go, profe,” Pollo said, dumping it in his lap) or the rotting 1990s computer manual stained with rat droppings.
For the time being, he settles for watching a session of Parasite Squishing, since César has already gone ahead and gotten started on Pollo. César takes a perverse personal pride in being the best Parasite Squisher in the camp, and even now it’s hard not to admire his commitment as he hunches intensely over the red-rimmed holes in Pollo’s arm. He watches from a respectful distance as César pinches Pollo’s skin as hard as he can, eyes tearing up with the effort, forehead sweating, gasping for air. Pollo just sits motionless, eyes closed. After enough squeezing and massaging, a stream of watery liquid bursts from the hole in Pollo’s arm, followed by a hardened black marble that emerges with a thick slurp that is both delicious and horrifying.
“You should do that for a living,” he says as César wipes the hole in Pollo’s arm with a ragged scrap of cloth. Pollo’s eyes are still closed, lips curled inward.
“We’re not done yet,” César says, eyes wide and bright. “We have to get the mother.”
A minute later she follows, enormous and sluglike, in an eruption of blood and pus.
Pollo heads immediately to the hammock—it’s always a good idea to lie down for a bit after an intense session of Parasite Squishing. César’s eyes are still bright, flicking slyly around the camp. “You next, profe?” he says with a grin.
He turns away as César laughs, the high-pitched giggle following him through the camp like an irritating fly.
It feels like a good time to transition into Thinking and Picturing—it always works to kill an hour or two, provided he’s strict with himself about not opening his eyes and checking his watch. Usually he does it sitting cross-legged on the ground, but today he sits on a bench at the rickety wooden table. Behind him he can hear César tearing open a packet of Frutiño juice powder with his teeth, his tongue lapping greedily against the aluminum surface. Raspberry flavor, most likely.
Yesterday he was working on his apartment bedroom, so today he backtracks and focuses on the entrance. He starts with the door, scanning it up and down, his mind’s eye a camera, a superbly efficient piece of bomb-detecting antiterrorist technology. The rickety silver doorknob. The faint scratches on the reddish wood. The gold-bordered peephole he never used. He takes his time, moving slowly, reconstructing the details as fully as possible (it’s amazing how well you can reconstruct something you haven’t seen in five years, eight months, two weeks, and five days if you really try). The multicolored rug he bought in Taganga, constantly speckled with dirt and dead leaves. The cream-colored tiles, delicious to walk on in bare feet during the summer, holding a glass of ice-clinking passion fruit juice. The faint yellow walls, tiny cracks in the paint branching out like miniature trees, surrounded by black mold confetti. There are his posters: Return of the Jedi and Blade Runner, wrinkled by the long-ago journey in his suitcase from California, and a vintage black-and-white poster in Spanish of The Martian Chronicles purchased at the local Unicentro mall. And there on the table: a hardback copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. His next assigned reading for eighth-grade English.
Was that really it? There wasn’
t anything else? Stained coffee mugs? Scribbled syllabus notes for class, attendance lists, flyers for parent-teacher conferences? Empty plastic water bottles with the sides caved in, crumpled Éxito receipts, torn tickets from salsa concerts?
He takes a deep breath but it’s happening. The camera is getting frantic, darting rapidly around the apartment from item to item, scene to scene, his vision jittering. He shuts his eyes, tries to slow down, returns to examining everything one piece at a time. But it’s too late. Everything is blurred, and before he can help himself he’s there.
In bed. Blinking fuzzy eyes open, stomach sour from last night’s aguardiente drinking session and Marlboro chain-smoking with Ms. Márquez (eighth-grade world history, his most reliable hook-up ever since Ms. Simón from third grade moved away in ’99, a weepily dramatic scene he doesn’t care to dwell on, not now, not ever). He’s in the shower, standing under a low-pressure trickle of blessedly hot water. (Whenever he washes himself now, peeling off his clothes for a session of River Bathing, it’s impossible to tell if the yellow color of his skin is jaundice or dirt.) He moves through the apartment faster and faster, reliving the first moments of the last morning, a manic sped-up cartoon. The way he skipped breakfast, didn’t even have coffee because he knew he could buy it from the lady with the thermos at that one traffic light, chug it like a tequila shot in its disposable plastic cup. The way he opened the cupboard door, lingered briefly over the bananas and tangerines, opened the fridge next and took a quick swig of orange juice. Didn’t even glance at the Styrofoam box of leftover lemon pie from the French bakery, the glass bottles of ají sauce and Poker beer. (Ají sauce! Imagine what he could do with ají sauce now! His mouth waters and he swallows hard, shifting his position on the bench, doing his best to ignore the sounds of César behind him sucking his teeth.)
What does the apartment look like now? Bananas rotted, tangerines shriveled into nothingness? A Connecticut Yankee covered in mold, pages curling? Would they have sent somebody by to pack everything up, put it all away in boxes and into storage? Somebody from the school or police or the international embassy? Who would have done it? Who would have cared?
He keeps going. He’s using up about three weeks’ worth of Thinking and Picturing at this rate, but his cartoon character legs keep carrying him out the door, down the apartment steps, a whirring Road Runner blur. Smiling. Greeting Freddy the doorman, Qué más? Nada mal, un poco de guayabo, jaja! Gray early morning light, redbrick apartment buildings. Into the car, the Volvo he bought from Mr. Rover, the eighth-grade English teacher he replaced in the fall of ’93, the year he arrived.
You’re going to love Colombia, Mr. Rover said as they walked across the parking lot. It’s a very…special place.
Special how?
Oh, you know. Mr. Rover paused by the Volvo, their untucked shirts flapping in the breeze (one of the benefits of working at the American international private school, as opposed to the British or German or French one, was the casual dress code—it even got mentioned in the recruiting brochure). Special like a girlfriend you know you shouldn’t be with. At a certain point you get a bit crazy from the constant paranoia—always on the lookout. Always worried you’re going to “dar papaya.”
Dar papaya? The car keys jingled as Mr. Rover dropped them into his hand.
You haven’t heard that expression? He must have frowned or made a face at this, because Mr. Rover immediately said, It means, don’t put yourself in a position where others can take advantage of you. Easier said than done down here. And then Mr. Rover laughed in a way that was maybe happy or maybe sad or maybe even a little bit angry.
Enough of that, then: back to the original memory (it’s important not to get too sidetracked during Thinking and Picturing, not to go spinning off into the stratosphere of endless, dangerously random thoughts). Now he’s turning the ignition key, on his way to work. Down the street. Walls with jagged teeth of broken bottles on top, automatic gates. He likes living on the edge of Cali, away from the hustle and bustle of the center, the legless bums and toothless women selling chewing gum, the children juggling and tumbling at traffic lights. It’s a true pleasure, driving past the fields of cows and horses, men on white bicycles holding on to the backs of buses, the two-lane highways that are constantly turned into three when a car tries to overtake a milk truck.
At the intersection he has to decide which of the two main routes to take to school: the first, his usual route, a nerve-racking drive through the heavy suburban traffic; the second route longer but often quicker, a more isolated road through rural countryside. Despite the indifferent green numbers on his dashboard flicking closer to nine A.M., he chooses the second, turning right off the Pan-American Highway, hitting the gas pedal.
He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t let phrases like if only and I should have and of all days creep into the scene. Instead he likes to linger on this moment, on Rod Stewart singing “Maggie May” on the CD player, that epic acoustic guitar solo. On his tongue, fuzzy and sour in his mouth, the anticipation of aspirin in his desk drawer. The split feeling in his stomach, one half shivery from the knowledge that he’ll arrive for first period ten minutes late, the other half hazily calm with the knowledge that today will be easy, a breeze, he’s taught Connecticut Yankee so many times he could do it in his sleep, let alone hungover. The green numbers on the dashboard say 8:37.
It’s hard to know at what point it became What Happened.
Maybe it was when he saw the soldiers standing on the side of the road, their tiger-striped fatigues and M16s slowly coming into view as he approached.
Or maybe it was when he obeyed their waving arms and pulled over, saw their knotted bandannas, noticed the way one soldier’s hair fell to his shoulders in black greasy locks.
Or when the soldier leaned in close to the window, motioning with his rifle for him to pull up behind their truck, and he saw the word EJÉRCITO stenciled in clumsy black letters (worse than a child’s handwriting) above the soldier’s shirt pocket.
The black rubber boots. The Fidel Castro hats. The way they passed his school ID card among themselves, chattering so rapidly that he only caught one word: gringo. His slow realization that no, actually, these were not soldiers from the Colombian army.
And now he’s opening his eyes, blinking in the dim sunlight, the greenness of the moss and leaves and ferns closing in around him with the density of a fog, and because he’s fucked it up this much, he might as well fuck it up even more. He lets his eyes drift down to the black plastic watch on his wrist.
Not even ten minutes.
—
Dinner is rice, lentils, and soggy fried potatoes. Julisa doesn’t bring him any chocolate or coffee to drink, and when he asks her if he can have some, she just says, “No.”
“Did we run out?”
“No.”
“Then why…”
He loses energy midsentence, lets his voice die an abrupt death as if by sniper fire. Somewhere in the air is the faint scent of fried fish, and if only Julisa were to take a step forward, stand closer to the flickering candle, he bets he would see it: smears of grease around her mouth, thin slivers of bone stuck between her front teeth, the dark stain of coffee dregs on her tongue.
“Because I said so, profe,” Julisa says, reaching for his plate. Her glittery hair band sparkles in the candlelight as she walks away.
He turns toward Pollo. “Any news today?” he asks.
“No.” Pollo is eating while standing, holding the plate close to his lips, rapidly shoveling in the food. “Tomorrow, profe.”
“Yesterday you said today.”
“Tomorrow. We’ll have news tomorrow.”
“Why the change?”
“Who knows?” Pollo’s jaw makes a twisted motion, as though swallowing an enormous piece of gum. A random memory swims across his eyes, a slow-motion cinematic flashback sequence: that one girl slyly looking at him, sticking a huge wad of bright pink gum under her desk. First row, third desk. Head tilted back,
hair streaming down her back like a waterfall, brown turning to blond if the sunlight hit it the right way. What was her name again? Something Lansky? What happened to her; where did she go?
“Do you think orders will come soon?” he says, speaking loud enough to chase the image away. “From el comandante?”
“Who knows?” Pollo slurps up the last of his lentils. “It’ll be better in summer next year anyway. The roads and trails will be clear. It’ll be easier to release you then.”
Summer 2009. In two days, it’ll be Halloween 2008. Halloween will be five years, eight months, three weeks exactly.
Julisa reappears, carrying the padlock. Her acne looks puffier than ever, angry and swollen beneath her skin.
“What?” he says. “So early?”
“Orders.”
“What orders?”
“Just orders.”
“From who? You?”
“I already said,” she says, voice still flat. “They’re orders.”
He scratches the bites on his wrist. “Well, I have to go to the latrine first.”
“No.”
“Why? Because I said so?” He mimics her voice, as high-pitched and mean-sounding as he can make it, as nasty as a group of girls gossiping in a bathroom stall. Julisa doesn’t say anything, just keeps standing there holding the padlock. Clenching his fists is a good way to stop his hands from trembling.
Inside the hut, as he listens to the clinking sounds of Julisa outside looping the steel chain around the door handle, it hits him like a sharp intake of breath. It’s finally happened.
Today—five years, eight months, two weeks, and five days—is officially over.
Tomorrow, just like yesterday—and the day before that—and the day before that—won’t begin yet for hours. And hours. And hours.
—
“ ‘Seems,’ madam?” he says. “Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems.’ ” The students listen respectfully, while in the distance César lets out a loud phlegmy cough. Getting locked up early last night meant he had even more time to scrawl down quotes in his notebook. Discussion today was originally supposed to focus on the ghost (“Real or imaginary? From heaven or hell? Go!”), but it’s fine, they’ll get to it soon enough. They’ve got time.
The Lucky Ones Page 3