Evening in Paradise

by Lucia Berlin

  “It’s tough, this living in paradise,” Buzz said.

  Maya wondered how long they could stand living in paradise. At night while she read at the table Buzz would lie in the hammock smoking weed, staring out to sea.

  “Are you okay, Buzz?”

  “I’m bored,” he said.

  Maybe if they had a farm, a real one, or started a real school. The problem was Buzz didn’t have to do anything. He never had. His father had been a wealthy Boston physician. Handsome and bright, Buzz had been an honors student at Andover and Harvard, Harvard graduate school. In his second year of medical school he had begun to play saxophone, to go hear Dizzy and Bird, Jaki Byard, Bud Powell. He had become addicted to heroin, was expelled from medical school for morphine. He had married Circe, a Boston heiress, got off drugs. They went around the world. They settled in New Mexico, where he played saxophone and raced Porsches, in the U.S. and Europe. For something to do he started a business. He bought the first Volkswagen franchise west of the Mississippi, almost instantly became close to a millionaire. He stopped racing cars, he stopped playing saxophone. He and Circe were divorced. He and Maya fell in love, had an affair.

  “Give me something to live for—you and the boys” was how he had proposed to her. Maya had actually thought that was romantic. They were married. He adopted Ben and Keith and they had Nathan. She had not known he was back on heroin until a month after they were married. Heroin is easy to hide if you are rich, because you always have it.

  When he was off drugs their life was wonderful. They loved each other, they had beautiful children. They were wealthy and free, traveled in their little plane all over the United States and Mexico.

  But finally drugs became Buzz’s only reason for living. Soon the children would be old enough to be aware of it. The only people they saw were connections and dealers, the narcs that followed them. Heroin was the focus of every day, all day, for both of them. The move to Yelapa was their only chance.

  Little by little it began to seem all right. That Yelapa could be home. Buzz started to fish from the boat inside the bay, catching sierra or red snapper. He did free dives near the rocks, coming back with oysters and lobster. More and more Ben and Keith went with him. Illogically, since she was so afraid of coconuts falling on their heads, Maya didn’t worry about the children, out to sea in the tiny open boat. True, sometimes there were dangerous swells, sharks, manta rays that played with the boat. Underwater there were stingrays, moray eels. But they returned with fish and clams and lobster, tales of dolphins and humpback whales, giant sawfish. Maya loved to hear Buzz and the boys telling about their trip, arguing, exaggerating. Keith was the best fisherman, patient and determined; Ben was the finder, of fine conches or the tip of blue lobster feeler hidden in the rocks.

  After a year Buzz got a generator that he set up on the point. They filled scuba tanks and hunted for fish underwater, with spear guns. Little by little more village boys learned to dive and get fish, began to make their living this way. Sefarino and Pablo bought their own boats and tanks and sold fish in town. A little restaurant opened in town. Ronco and Buzz bought a motor and a fiberglass boat. They went farther out to dive, as far as the islands. When they anchored in the late afternoon their calls and laughter floated across the ocean.

  Days and months passed in an easy rocking rhythm. Just before dawn the roosters crowed and at the first light a thousand laughing gulls flew past the house upriver. Flocks of parrots flashed green dazzling against the cool gray coconuts. A different Nile, green iguanas sunned on the river rocks. Pigs grunted in the mud and horses from Chacala snorted on the trail. Spurs. The gentle surf whispered day and night and the palms rustled with the same beat as the sea. At noon every day the Paladín would dock in the bay and twelve tourists would ford the gentle surf to the beach. They would wade in the river, or let Nathan ferry them if it was too deep. Some rode horseback upriver or through the village and up to the waterfall. Sometimes Ben and Keith, like the village children, would act as guides. The tourists would often ask Nathan directions but he didn’t speak English. If they wanted to cross the river he would simply point into his dugout and say, “Sit!” They would sit, holding tight; he stood imperiously at the back, poling or rowing, his pale blue eyes serious in his brown face, curly blond hair shining.

  At three the Paladín would be gone and only the six or seven gringo houses and the two hundred people of the village remained. Dogs barking, chopping wood. When it got dark the pulsating sound of crickets and peepers, and later the cry of owls.

  Liz and Jay often came down from their house on the rise. They were old friends, from New Mexico. The couples would drink jamaica juice or manzanilla tea, smoke marijuana and watch the sun set pink on the bay. Maya would grill fish or chicken, with beans and rice, fresh greens from the garden. During the rainy season, especially, they would stay up late playing Scrabble or Monopoly or gin. Sometimes Ben and Keith spent the night up at Liz and Jay’s, cooking fudge, sleeping on a waterbed under the stars. Liz and Jay were weavers; the boys made a hundred God’s eyes from scraps of wool.

  They had to renew their tourist cards every six months. Maya, the children, Liz, and Jay just made a quick trip to the border and back, but Buzz usually had several weeks of business in New Mexico. Talks with his business partner, tax papers, leases to sign. In the beginning, each time he went he scored heroin, but it was less each time. A week of staying high, a week of being sick. He has the “dengue,” Maya told Pilla and Teodora. Once Teodora brought him a tea to cure him, and it did, overnight, all the withdrawal symptoms gone, even though it was a cure for dengue, a kind of malaria. A tea of papaya leaves, chamomile, and a horse turd. Finally, the second year, when Buzz made his trip he came back clean, with no drugs. That was the time he came back with the scuba tanks. And as the days and months went by that world began to seem far in the past. Connections and dealers and police, fear seemed far in the past.

  Everyone was strong and healthy. There was no candy or sodas. No one fell from trees or rocks. The rare times anyone was sick Maya and Liz consulted the Merck manual and a PDR, if necessary gave antibiotics.

  Keith got a bad sore throat that didn’t get better even with injections of ampicillin. Maya took him in the Paladín to Puerto Vallarta, flew with him to a clinic in Guadalajara. The doctor there took his tonsils out and kept him for a few days. After he was better he and Maya had a three-day holiday. They took taxis and buses all over town, spent hours in the market and shops buying presents and supplies. Keith loved the telephone and the television. They called room service for hamburgers and ice cream, went to a movie and to a bullfight. El Cordobés himself was staying in their hotel, signed his autograph for Keith.

  And then getting out of the elevator she saw Victor, a drug dealer, in the lobby. She tried to shoo Keith back in but the doors closed and there Victor was. Out of prison. For years he had always found Buzz, in New Mexico, in Chiapas. Several times he had burned Buzz for thousands of dollars. But there is no recourse when that happens. It was because Maya had gone to buy the heroin, and didn’t test it. Maya’s fault, Buzz had slapped her so hard she fell, cracked her head. In Guatemala Buzz had been strung out and sick. Victor made him crawl across the floor to get a fix.

  Close, always he stood so close you could smell him. Dark, almost black, lean, feral. He was an orphan, from Mexico City streets. They had first met him in Acapulco. He had been a gigolo then, too, a handsome beach boy with a throaty laugh, shiny white teeth. One night he had stolen all of an old woman’s money and jewels and had also taken her false teeth.

  In front of the elevator Victor gripped Maya’s arm. “Where’s Buzz?”

  “Ajijic,” she said. “We live in Ajijic.” She in turn gripped Keith’s wrist, praying that he wouldn’t speak. “Don’t come, Victor. He’s clean now.”

  “Oh, I’ll stop by sometime … Give me some money, Maya, so I won’t join you for dinner. I only have a … Give me some money, Maya.”

  She gave him what w
as in her purse. Fifty thousand pesos. “Ciao.”

  The next morning Maya and Keith flew to Vallarta, arrived in time to catch the Paladín. The radio on the Paladín blared the Rolling Stones and the tourists were drinking rum, laughing and talking, necking, throwing up. The sea was rough. Keith cheered when they finally reached the white rocks and saw the bay of Yelapa. Pelicans dove all around them; dolphins raced the boat. Buzz and Ben and Nathan waved from the beach.

  Maya and Keith talked at once while they unpacked presents. Butterfly nets, games, a periscope, a telescope, a globe of the world. Peanut butter! Chocolate bars! They had brought a knife for Juanito and a canary in a wooden cage. Cans and cans of flowers and vegetables for Maya and Teodora, who insisted they had to be planted this very moment as tonight was the new moon.

  Buzz helped them plant, starting the holes with a pick, carrying buckets from the river. When they were through they sat outside. Ben was in his hammock, insisted he could read perfectly by the light of the stars. Keith stood at the fence with the telescope, cried out when he spotted a school of phosphorescent fish in the bay. “Quick let’s go swimming!”

  Later Buzz told her that it was dangerous to swim around the phosphorescent fish, because sharks are attracted by the light. But that night they dove among them with masks and flippers, treaded water and watched the patterns on the tapestries made by the fish. Skinny, shivering, Ben and Keith lay with the telescope on the beach, taking turns looking at the stars. Out in the rocking of the sea Buzz and Maya embraced, salty and intertwined, laughing wet into the warm night sky. They lay on the sand later, by the boys, and passed the telescope back and forth. Buzz stroked Maya’s arm, laid his hand gently on her belly.

  “It must be a girl,” he said. “You’re still so small.”

  Maya sat up on her elbow, kissed Buzz’s salty lips.

  “I’m glad about the baby now. What a lucky baby!”

  At that moment, then, she believed that their baby would be coming into a sweet safe world.

  Keith reminded them that they had brought marshmallows from Guadalajara for cocoa. Buzz built a fire in the huge copper pot on the living room floor; Maya cooked hot chocolate on the Coleman stove, beat it frothy with a wooden whisk. It was one in the morning, but they got Nathan up out of bed to join them.

  For the next few days, instead of school, Buzz and the boys and Juanito caught butterflies that fluttered undulating in the killing jar and were mounted on cotton batting under glass. What they hadn’t bought, what they really needed, was a butterfly book.

  Early one morning Buzz and the boys packed sandwiches and jamaica juice and went up river, looking for the neon-green-and-black butterflies they had seen in the lavender lantana on the trail to Chacala. Nathan had begged to go too, so after Pilla built the fire and brought water Maya told her she could have the rest of the day off. Sulking, Pilla left. She wanted to be with Nathan or to stay in the beautiful garden.

  Maya raked the floor, lay in a hammock to watch the gulls go upriver. From time to time she got up to check the beans, lay back down in a lazy reverie. A hawk soared high above the strangler fig and on the far bank zopilotes flapped around the carcass of a deer.

  It was pleasant to have the house alone. She lay in the scent of the datura until she heard the whistle of the Paladín. She got up then and put more wood on the fire. With a long fork she toasted green chilies, peeled them with a paring knife. They were pungent and hot. Tears came to her eyes and she wiped them with the back of her hand.

  Victor had appeared without a sound, without warning. The river was too high to cross. He must have walked across the beach and over the trail. His expensive shoes were dusty from the path. Maya smelled his sweat and cologne. She didn’t speak or think. She stabbed him in the stomach with the paring knife. Blood gushed down his white sharkskin pants. He laughed at her, grabbed a rag.

  “Get me a bandage.”

  She didn’t move. With a thief’s instinct he went straight for the basket where the first-aid kit was. He put alcohol on the still bleeding cut, bound it tightly. Blood seeped red against the white gauze, his black hard skin.

  He went up the tapanco, came down wearing a pair of Buzz’s pants, a T-shirt that said SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH. It had been a present, a joke. He poured himself a glass of raicilla and stretched out in a hammock near her, rocked himself with one foot, bare now.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “it was only a flesh wound.”

  “Go away, Victor. Buzz is clean. I’m having a baby. Leave us alone.”

  “I can’t wait to see old Buzz.”

  “He’ll be back late. You’ll miss the boat.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  They waited; Victor in the hammock, Maya still standing at the stove, still holding the knife. The Paladín whistled and set out to sea.

  They came back, laughing on the trail. Oh what wonderful butterflies. But Ben and Keith had wood ticks, in their hair, on their legs. They knelt in the grass while Maya got them out; some had to be burned out with a cigarette. The boys took soap then and went running to the river to bathe.

  Buzz and Victor sat at the table, talking softly, sharing a joint.

  “Were you surprised to see Victor?” Buzz asked. Maya didn’t answer; she chopped meat and onions for tacos.

  “She was surprised,” Victor said. “Gave me a swell welcome.”

  She sent the boys up to Liz and Jay’s with some green chili and a note asking if they could spend the night. They were pleased, took the telescope, and the butterfly nets for morning.

  Dusk began to fall. Teodora and Donasiano passed by the gate with her dishes. Her chickens squawked as they settled in the bushes and trees for the night. After dinner Maya cleared the table and took Nathan into the adobe room. She lit a lantern, checked the bed for scorpions. Nathan’s eyes were closing; he was tired after going upriver, but she continued to sing to him and stroke his hair even after he was asleep. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” “The Red River Valley,” she sang to herself, tears soaking the pillow.

  Buzz had built a big fire in the copper pot; the men sat cross-legged by it, drinking coffee, smoking marijuana. Maya sat at the table with a glass of raicilla. She left, obediently, when Buzz said she must be tired, ready to hit the sack. “Duerme con los angelitos,” Victor said.

  The surf crashed on the far beach, the river lapped at the bank just outside. Somewhere someone was chopping wood, someone else was playing a guitar. She tried not to hear their voices beneath those sounds, but couldn’t keep from listening.

  “I figure you owe me five thousand. Dollars,” Buzz said.

  “Jesus that was a raw deal, ese. What a scam … I lost ten thousand on it myself. That’s why I’ve been looking for you. I can make it up to you, wait till you see what I got.”

  “What, some of that caca-colored Mexican shit?”

  “No way. This is a sealed box. Sealed. Glass vials inside. Pure medicinal morphine. Ten milligrams a pop. Check it out, man. Sealed. We’re talking unadulterated high. This is my apology to you, brother.”

  Silence. She didn’t want to hear, to look. She drank more raicilla, covered her head with a pillow, but she couldn’t keep herself from crawling to the edge of the tapanco and looking down, like people stare spellbound by a fire, a fatal accident. She watched, even though she was sickened by that look on their faces, both gaunt, skull-like in the firelight. The look of the addict about to fix, intensely sexual, a look of greed, desperate need. Close to each other they tied up each other’s arm. Victor heated the spoon in the fire. “Go easy, man, this shit ain’t cut like we’re used to.” Buzz filled the needle first, tried and tried until he finally found a vein. The needle filled with blood and he jammed in the plunger. The tie fell from his arm. His face turned to stone, his eyes euphoric, hooded. His body too seemed to turn to stone, but he rocked slowly, smiling, the erotic smile of a figure on an Etruscan tomb. He was moaning, softly, like a chant. Victor watched him, grinning, and then he filled the needle and fix
ed. The minute Victor got a hit he fell forward into the flames. Maya screamed but Buzz didn’t move. She leapt down, far, landed on her knees. Her knees were scraped; tears stung her eyes, a child with skinned knees. There was a nauseating stench of burning hair and skin. She grabbed Victor and beat his head into the sand. He was dead. Buzz was lying down now. He was breathing shallowly, his pulse was slow. Maya couldn’t wake him. She covered him with a Navajo blanket. She blew out the lantern and sat in the dark. Shaking, Maya sat at the table for a long time, utterly alone.

  She checked on Nathan. He slept soundly. She kissed his damp salty hair. Back in the living room she hid the needle and the box of morphine in a canister. She emptied Victor’s pockets, burned his wallet and ID in the remaining coals. She rolled his glasses up in the SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH shirt and put it in the tapanco.

  She dragged his body by the feet, out of the house, over the grass and out the gate. She rested then in the moonlight. There was a swiftly moving line of cutter ants in the path. Maya began to giggle, hysterically, but then was quiet, hauling him over the rushes to the riverbank, where she finally heaved his body into the boat. He stank of burned skin and shit. She gagged and vomited. She shoved at the panga but it didn’t move; at last she got down on her hands and knees and pushed it with her shoulder until it slipped slowly into the water. Splashing in the cold water she chased the boat and jumped in, tugging at his arms and legs to get at the oars. The dugout glided smoothly as she paddled, a breeze blew in her sweat-soaked hair. She pulled the oars in when she reached the boca, praying to hit the incoming surf just right. A wave sent the boat high into the air. It landed with a whap, spinning wildly. She rowed furiously then, humming to calm herself, paddling first to one side then the other.

  The canoe was in the middle of the bay, skimming smoothly and evenly now out toward sea. A mist had covered the moon and stars so it was dark, but the waves hitting the receding beach shone neon silver. There was only one tiny light on in the village. Her hands were blistering but she kept rowing, past the white rocks, past the point. She rowed until the light in the village disappeared and until she could feel the boat being pulled south by the swift current outside the bay. The little boat spun and teetered as she pulled and shoved at Victor’s body. At last she heaved it into the water where it regained its lightness and sank in an instant.