Marching Powder

by Rusty Young

  ‘What did you do to her, inglés?’ he asked me through the bars. ‘She’s a very pretty girl.’

  ‘I didn’t hit her,’ I snapped at him, and suddenly kicked at the gate without knowing why, so that he jumped back in surprise. If it had been any other officer, I might have been in trouble, but that guy was my friend and he was also fond of Yasheeda.

  ‘All right. Tranquilo.’ The lieutenant shook his head and looked at me strangely. ‘I didn’t say you did.’

  Two days after our fight, Yasheeda went on another trip, this time to Rurrenabaque to do a tour of the Amazon jungle. After that, she was due to head home to Israel. Even though we had fought, I missed her a lot more than I imagined. She was the first thing on my mind when I woke up and the last thing I thought about before I fell asleep. During the day, I also had plenty of time to think about her. I was expecting a call from her any time and I must have checked that my phone was working at least ten times a day.

  To pass the time, I began cleaning my room again; once in the morning, again after lunch and a final time before it got dark, even though it was already spotless. I must have folded my clothes a million times, and the plates and cutlery were always sparkling clean. I wanted everything to be absolutely perfect in case Yasheeda came back to surprise me. It would be just like her to turn up without warning. I waited and waited to hear from her, but she broke her promise. She didn’t call or write to me – not even once.

  Whenever I could get hold of him, I sent Alejandro to check my email account for news from her. Alejandro was the son of one of the inmates, Emilio, who was in for trafficking. I don’t know how old the boy was, but he was only small and he didn’t speak much. At first he seemed shy, but you could tell that he was a tough little kid underneath, just like his father, which is exactly what his mother wanted to avoid. She had left Emilio when he was sentenced and taken their child and gone to live with another man in a small apartment. She had never visited her husband in jail and refused to let their son visit him either, but Alejandro used to sneak out from school and come to San Pedro. Whenever he came to the prison, his father sent him outside on errands in order to make a bit of extra money. With such a small and innocent face, he was the perfect mule; the guards let him in and out whenever he wanted and never searched him.

  There probably weren’t any Internet cafes in the jungle towns where Yasheeda was, but I kept sending Alejandro to check my email anyway. If he didn’t visit, I would ring him at home. Whenever his mother answered, she told me he wasn’t there. I knew that wasn’t true; when he wasn’t at school, she never let him leave the house. At first, I thought she was the one lying to me, but I later learned that it was Alejandro who was pretending he wasn’t there. He must have felt bad every time he had to tell me that Yasheeda hadn’t written.

  I started getting depressed. During the first week, I was worried that something bad had happened to her. I checked the newspapers every day for accidents involving foreigners, like I had the first time she went away. After ten days I knew there had been no accident – she was having a great time and had forgotten all about me. By then, I had forgotten about our argument, but she obviously hadn’t. She might have already returned from the jungle and left the country, or maybe she had met someone else.

  Each time I heard a taxista call my name, I prayed it was her and was always disappointed when it was another group of Israeli backpackers from El Lobo wanting to visit me. I was glad to have people to keep me company, but I still missed Yasheeda. Sometimes I couldn’t put my full energy into telling my visitors my stories and, although they found the prison interesting, I got the impression that they had heard incredible things about me and were a bit disappointed when they met me in person.

  A few times, I felt so depressed that I asked the taxistas to apologise and say that I was too sick to receive any visitors. I started having nightmares in which I could see Yasheeda kissing someone else, although I couldn’t see his face. I tried not to be jealous, but I wanted to kill him, whoever he was. After these dreams, I even began to hate her.

  26

  HASTA LUEGO

  When Yasheeda had been around, I had never had trouble getting to sleep. But after the argument we’d had, I was convinced that she was never coming back. I was looking at another four or five years in prison on my own. My insomnia returned and, with it, the little red button reappeared in the middle of my table. I increased the number of sleeping pills I was taking.

  During the day I was overcome by drowsiness. I wanted to die. I went back on the higher-dosage pills and one evening, when Ricardo didn’t come around to watch the news, I decided it was time to stop thinking about it. Before I went to bed, I swallowed an entire box of pills. I didn’t feel anything for a long time. I watched television and I don’t remember falling asleep.

  In the morning I woke up with blurry thoughts and the feeling of having been cheated. My neighbour was pounding on my door, because I hadn’t appeared for lista.

  ‘Hurry up!’ he called. ‘The major will send you to La Muralla.’

  I fell out of bed and went downstairs in my pyjamas, holding on to the railing.

  ‘Presente,’ I answered when the major called my name. No one noticed anything different about me except for my neighbour, who saw that I wasn’t walking straight. He laughed and asked me if I was drunk.

  ‘I’ve got a cold,’ I told him.

  Three weeks after Yasheeda had left, a taxista called up to me that I had a visitor waiting at the gate.

  ‘Who is it?’ I yelled through the closed door, assuming it was another tourist and not really caring if the taxista heard me or not.

  ‘Tho-mas Mc-Fa-dden,’ came the call again, closer this time. I opened the door. It was a taxista called Freddy. He had climbed the two flights of stairs and was now looking up at me from the bottom of my wooden ladder and waving for me to come down.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked him again.

  ‘Your chica. Your girlfriend.’ My heart started racing. I had to be careful not to get too excited, though; the taxistas always said that any girl who came to visit was my girlfriend.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘Your chica! The beautiful one! Hurry up! She’s waiting.’

  It had to be her! But I wanted to be certain, so I asked again. ‘What does she look like, Freddy?’

  ‘How many novias do you have, inglés?’ he teased me, showing his toothless smile and holding out his hand for a coin.

  ‘Freddy, I’m serious. What does she look like?’

  ‘You don’t even know what your own girlfriend looks like! Lend me a boliviano, Thomas. Please! I haven’t eaten. I’m hungry.’

  I reached into my pocket, threw him a silver coin and received my answer immediately.

  ‘Long black hair. Good body. It’s her. The one you have been waiting for. Your israelita. The one from before. ¡Apúrate! Everybody is trying to steal her from you!’

  I was so excited that I slammed the wooden door behind me without thinking and leapt down the stairs, two at a time, almost falling over at the bottom. Freddy chased after me, begging for more coins, but I was going too fast for him to keep up. I rounded the second corner without looking and crashed into Ricardo, who was on his way up to visit me. I didn’t have time to stop and explain. Halfway down the next set of stairs I began to worry about whether I looked OK. But it was too late for that now. I had to get to the gate in case the guards turned Yasheeda away. Behind me, I could hear Ricardo calling something after me, but I was already too far away to hear what it was.

  Yasheeda!

  There she was, more beautiful than I remembered. One of the guards was trying to make her leave. I went straight up to the bars, ignoring the head taxista’s warning to keep my distance.

  ‘Yasheeda!’ I called out, but I must have yelled louder than intended. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me. Yasheeda looked up and when she saw me, she smiled.

  ‘Just wait there! I’ll get you in.
Don’t leave!’ However, the lieutenant shook his head when I asked him.

  ‘No turistas allowed in. Governor’s orders.’ Apparently there were television crews outside the main gates. The lieutenant turned away and headed towards the office.

  ‘But she’s not a tourist,’ I protested, rattling the gates in frustration. ‘She’s my wife! You know her. She’s been here before.’

  ‘No importa. No visitors today,’ he called back over his shoulder. At the last moment he softened. ‘You can have an interview, but nothing more.’

  I told Yasheeda to quickly go to the women’s interview room and I raced around to meet her.

  Up close, Yasheeda looked even prettier. Her face was glowing and healthy and she had put on a little weight, which made every part of her body stand out and her skin stretch tighter over her muscles. Her long hair was tied back so that I could see every feature of her face clearly, from her dark, sparkling eyes to her tiny ears that stuck out a bit. We stood there, just staring at each other, not knowing what to say. She spoke first, sounding slightly awkward.

  ‘Hi! How are you?’

  ‘Fine. And how about you?’ I replied. I hated those types of conversations. There were so many things I wanted to say to her, and so many questions I wanted to ask, that it was hard to know where to start. ‘How was your trip?’

  ‘Good! We had so much fun,’ she answered, forcing a smile. Again, I sensed something strange in the way she was acting. I began to worry that she had bad news to tell me.

  ‘So, how was the jungle?’

  ‘Excellent. Really good. Thanks, Thomas.’ She never called me Thomas. It was always Tommy.

  ‘Oh, that’s good. You had a good time, then. I’m glad.’

  ‘Yeah. It was good,’ she repeated calmly, nodding her head as though she were somewhere else, far, far away.

  ‘And your friends?’

  ‘They’re good, too,’ she nodded again, and looked down.

  ‘Good. That’s nice.’

  There was a long pause. I thought of asking her if something was wrong, but I didn’t want to push her. When she looked up, she noticed the dark circles under my eyes.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. A bit.’ I still felt sleepy from the pills. She looked down once more.

  When she looked up again, our eyes met for a moment and she smiled, properly this time. I could feel her coming back to me. I had to say something before she looked away.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to come.’ I started to stutter. ‘I thought … when you didn’t send any emails … I thought maybe you left without … I thought that –’ She interrupted me.

  ‘No. I would never … I mean, there was a landslide on the road back to Coroico. We had to wait three days for them to repair it. And I had no way of calling you. At first we were going to get the plane, but all the tickets were sold out so we had to get the bus.’

  ‘Oh. So nothing bad happened, then?’ I asked, finally coming out with it.

  ‘No. Of course, nothing bad happened. Don’t be silly, Tommy! Why would you think that? I’m here, aren’t I?’ When she said that, all the stupid doubts and fears went away and in their place I felt a rush of happiness and relief. I gripped the metal poles with both hands and leaned forward to kiss her.

  ‘Hey. You look beautiful! I really missed you, you know?’

  It was the wrong thing to say. Yasheeda stood back and folded her arms and immediately a deep panic went through my insides. All of my fears came back, only twice as strong. Something had definitely happened. I was absolutely sure of it now. I stared at her, waiting for her to speak, but she said nothing.

  ‘Yasheeda. What’s the matter? Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing. Why?’ she answered quietly.

  ‘Are you sure? You know you can tell me,’ I whispered back.

  ‘No, nothing. I promise.’

  Yasheeda kept insisting that nothing was wrong, but I could sense that there was. We stared at each other a while longer, then she looked down and I knew that I was losing her again. I waited and she finally looked like she was about to say something, but then a guard came over to tell us that our interview time was up.

  ‘Five minutes more, my brother,’ I begged, flashing him some coins I had ready. I’m sure he would have accepted them, but Yasheeda seemed to want to leave.

  ‘I’d probably better go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble with the police or anything.’

  ‘OK, then. You can come back tomorrow. I mean, if you want to, that is. We can talk. I’ll arrange permission for you to get in. I can ring the governor tonight to make sure.’

  ‘I’ll try my best, Thomas. But I’d better go now.’

  She came up to me at the bars to say goodbye. I moved forward and closed my eyes, hoping our lips would meet, but she kissed me just to the side of my mouth and when I opened my eyes again she had her back to me and was squeezing her way past the Bolivian wives who were blocking the corridor. At the last moment, she turned and mouthed the words ‘Hasta luego.’ Then she was gone.

  27

  SAN PEDRO PRISON TOURS

  After Yasheeda left, I was in a state of shock for several weeks. I was too numb even to think about killing myself. I didn’t need to kill myself, anyway; I already felt like I was dead inside. The only things that made me aware that I was alive during that time were regular visits from Sylvia, who continued to keep a watchful eye over me, and Ricardo’s friendship.

  The Chilean car deal went wrong, so Abregon and I lost our money. After a month I was forced to sell my room in Pinos and move into Alamos in order to pay my lawyers’ fees. Transferring my possessions into a new place helped me to face up to the fact that this was going to be my home for the next five years. I began the appeal process immediately because the sentence had to be certified by a superior court – if an appeal wasn’t lodged, they assumed you were guilty and could increase your sentence.

  Gradually, I started to come out of my depression. As I did so, I discovered that although Yasheeda was gone, she had left behind a gift for me: the tourists. At first, my only visitors were a handful of Israelis who had heard about me through Yasheeda and her friends. However, La Paz is a small city with only a few hotels and bars catering to foreign tourists, so word spread quickly.

  The San Pedro prison tours began slowly, but it wasn’t long before they really started to take off. My second and third years in San Pedro were the busiest and happiest of my whole life. Tourists began arriving at the gates in larger and larger groups, sometimes up to ten or fifteen at a time. When they came, the taxistas would send for me. I would explain to the tourists through the bars that they had to leave their passports with the lieutenant and then he would let them into the main courtyard. Once they were inside, I would introduce myself properly before taking them straight to my room where I would offer to make them a cup of tea or coffee. When everyone felt comfortable, I would give them some background information on the prison. Then I would show them around the various sections, except for the five-and-a-half-star section of Posta, which you needed permission to enter.

  Everything was quite peaceful in San Pedro during the day and there really wasn’t all that much to see. What the tourists enjoyed most of all was the thrill of actually being inside a prison, as well as hearing about how the San Pedro system worked. As I took my visitors around each part of the prison, I told them about my own experiences. I showed them the prison church, the abandoned building where I had slept the first night, as well as la piscina – ‘the pool’ – and explained a little about the property system, the prison economy and the prison hierarchy. They were always fascinated by the luxurious cells they saw and by the fact that there were young children about as well as cats and dogs.

  The tour itself ran for less than an hour. What happened afterwards depended on what the tourists wanted. Sometimes we ate a meal at one of the restaurants, which the tourists often claimed served better food than the one
s outside. Then, if there wasn’t another group waiting for me, we would go back to my room for a chat. When it came time to leave I would accompany them to the gate to make sure that they got their passports back and made it safely out of the prison.

  Running the tours was quite easy money and a lot of fun. Within a few months, I had worked out which parts of the prison and which stories the tourists found most interesting. I established a kind of routine in the way I did things, but I never got bored because no two groups were ever the same and I never got tired of seeing people’s reactions to how crazy San Pedro was. However, being a tour guide wasn’t all smooth sailing. There were a lot of people I needed to keep happy, which involved a lot of juggling.

  First, the police wanted their cut. In the beginning, they were content to receive ten bolivianos per tourist, which was three bolivianos more than the standard entry price paid by the locals. However, they worked out very quickly that the foreigners would be willing to pay more. I had no choice but to agree to whatever terms the guards set, because without their cooperation there would have been no prison tours in the first place.

  Eventually we struck a deal that I would increase the tour price and they would receive half the takings. However, the real cost of bribing the police was much more than that. I paid the fifty per cent directly to the major on duty after the tours, but on top of that I had to keep the low-ranking guards happy by buying them food and soft drinks and handing out small propinas, as well as paying larger sums to any new officers who arrived at the prison.

  For policemen, working at San Pedro was one of the most profitable postings you could get in the whole country. In fact, many of the officers actually paid to be transferred there. The cops had their hands in absolutely everything and with so much money involved, a lot of power struggles and politics went on behind the scenes. As a result, the prison administration was constantly being reshuffled and, unfortunately for me, every change of personnel meant starting again from scratch with the bribes. Just when I had started to get a good relationship going with one of the majors or captains, he’d be replaced by a new man, who would pretend not to be corrupt in order to get bigger bribes. At any one time there was a governor, three majors, four captains and about five lieutenants. The staff turnover was so high that it was impossible to remember all of their names, so I took to calling each policeman by his rank. The privates I just called ‘amigo’.