Marching Powder

by Rusty Young

  He was drunk and high that night, but since he had a perfect memory, he remembered our conversation word for word. We laughed about it afterwards, but at the time it was scary. It happened shortly after Ana, Mike’s Bolivian girlfriend, had broken up with him. They had been together before he was sent to prison, but had separated over some small incident. When Ana began to visit him in San Pedro, the relationship started up again. They had only been back together for two months, however, before Mike got himself so twisted up with jealousy, imagining what she did on the outside, that he destroyed the relationship. Every time she came to visit him, he would abuse her in public: ‘You’re late, you fucking prostituta. Who have you been with this time?’

  On one occasion, Jack and I pulled Mike aside after Ana had left in tears. ‘Hey Mike, chill down,’ we told him. ‘You can’t treat her like that, man. She’ll leave you.’

  ‘I don’t care. She’s a puta.’

  But Jack stood up to him. ‘You’re a prisoner, Mike,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful. What she is doing in here with you, I will never know.’

  Mike glared at him. I think Jack wanted Ana for himself, because whenever she was around he took his sunglasses off and moved his head around to different angles so that the light would catch his green contacts.

  ‘That girl loves you. You’re just paranoid, Mike,’ I told him, but he insisted he wasn’t.

  ‘She’s fucking with someone else. I know she is. I can smell it on her.’

  It turned out I was right – he was paranoid, but I didn’t find out the full extent of his paranoia until the night he actually went crazy.

  Eventually, Ana got sick of the way Mike treated her and said she would never come back to see him. She left her answering machine on and didn’t return his calls. Mike’s relatives had given him some money to buy a better room. Instead of upgrading, he sold his existing room in San Martín and then went on a three-day binge with the proceeds.

  At four in the morning on the third night, he came knocking at my door. I didn’t want to let him in because having visitors after one in the morning was against the section rules and could cause big trouble with the delegate. However, Mike said that he needed to talk to me urgently. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder how he’d got from San Martín into Alamos when the section gates were locked.

  ‘What’s wrong? What happened to you?’ I asked as soon as I opened the door. His clothes were covered in dirt, especially his knees, and his hands were cut.

  ‘That roof needs cleaning. Fucking lazy Bolivian police never clean it,’ he snarled, striding into my room. ‘Too busy stealing our money and snorting our drugs. Now, where is she?’ he demanded, his eyes darting everywhere.

  ‘Where’s who?’ I laughed, knowing exactly who he meant, but thinking he was joking.

  ‘You’ve taken her. I know you’ve got her in here. I heard her voice when I was standing outside.’ Mike pointed at me threateningly between the eyes. His finger was shaking. ‘What have you done with her, McFadden?’

  When I saw the look on Mike’s face, I stopped playing games. Every muscle in his neck was tensed and the veins in his forehead were throbbing. His eyes were big and wild, and he was sweating heavily.

  ‘She’s not here, Mike. Why would she be in here, Mike?’ I said quietly so as not to agitate him. I also kept repeating his name softly, which usually calms people down.

  Reasoning with him only made him angrier. He started searching everywhere for his girlfriend. There were only two small rooms in my apartment – nowhere you could hide a person – but Mike ran from the kitchen back into my bedroom, then back again, thinking I was changing her hiding spot. He looked under the bed, behind the curtains and even between the mattresses. It was the first time I’d seen Mike so confused and it scared me. He was delusional.

  ‘Calm down, Mike … Mike, you’re being silly. How could she be under the carpet, Mike?’ But even when he was crazy, Mike was still totally switched on. On the next trip back from the kitchen, he was clutching my new kitchen knife.

  ‘Fuck you, McFadden. And stop saying my name, will you? I’ve studied psychology too and this is not a hijack situation. It’s kidnapping and you’re the fucking kidnapper,’ he held the knife up under my chin. ‘Now, what have you done with her?’

  I stopped arguing and helped him search for Ana. All the time, Mike kept the knife pointing at me in case I tried to escape. Eventually, I got him to leave by playing along with the delusion: ‘Maybe she’s back in your room. Maybe she wanted to surprise you.’

  Mike looked at me and then left in a hurry, taking my knife with him. I locked the door behind him and leaned against it.

  It wasn’t long before Mike realised that he no longer had a room to go back to, because he had sold it. He came straight back across the roof, thinking that I’d tricked him because I really had stolen his girlfriend. This time, the delegate heard him coming and was already outside when Mike landed on the Alamos roof.

  ‘Get down,’ hissed the delegate, trying to keep his voice low so as not to wake anyone. There was a strange rule in our section that prohibited anyone except the delegate from climbing on the roof after 9 pm. ‘Now,’ he insisted. ‘Or I’ll call the police.’ But Mike refused to obey and the delegate was forced to send for the major.

  Mike was lucky that the major who was on duty that night was reasonable. Otherwise, the police might have shot him for attempting to escape. The major also tried to persuade Mike to climb down, but he wouldn’t come. So, the major decided to go up after him.

  The chase that followed was like a stunt scene in an action movie. The major went around to San Martín with his men to intercept Mike, but then Mike jumped across the roof to Alamos. Then, when the major came back around to our side, Mike leapt back again. Every time he cleared the two-metre gap between the sections, he would make a loud yelping sound, like a wounded animal. He made so much noise, what with his yelling and crashing about on the metal roof, that the inmates from both sections woke up and came out to see what was the matter. Jack appeared by my side in his pink pyjamas and fluffy rabbit slippers.

  ‘Look at that piece of mierda. He’s overdosed,’ he said, blowing his nose and rubbing his eyes under his sunglasses. ‘What time is it, anyway?’

  None of the police was brave enough to get up there and bring Mike down. Some parts of the roof were rusted and if you slipped and fell, the drop was three storeys. But Mike was so high that the danger didn’t worry him. He made the jump successfully every time, screaming out something crazy that no one could understand. And once he realised there was an audience, he even started to jump back and forth just to show off, bowing dramatically after each successful leap. A few of the inmates applauded until the major started getting mad. The policeman tried everything to get Mike off the roof, but Mike wouldn’t listen. He said that if anyone came up, they would have to fight him man to man. I didn’t tell the major that Mike also had my knife in his back pocket, in case I got into trouble too.

  Eventually, the major posted two guards in San Martín and two in Alamos to prevent Mike from crossing any other roofs and escaping. The guards had to wait there all night and all the following morning until Mike climbed down on his own. They locked him in La Muralla for four days. When he got out, he wanted to come and stay with me, but I said he couldn’t. I didn’t tell him that I was afraid he might go crazy again. He went back to the punishment section for somewhere to sleep until his relatives sent him more money to buy a room. After that incident, he shaved his head, told everyone he was ten years younger and decided to quit using cocaine.

  36

  PRISONERS’ DAY

  After Mike went crazy, I decided to slow down on the cocaine. The amount I was doing was way too much for my system. But although I promised myself many times to stop, I kept taking it; we may have been locked in prison, but there was always something to celebrate.

  In addition to the weddings, birthdays and baptisms inside the jail, the prisoners celebrated al
l the traditional festivals and holidays on the outside: Christmas, Easter, la Noche de San Juan, la Entrada de Gran Poder, Bolivia’s Independence Day, Peru’s Independence Day, Ecuador’s Independence Day. In fact, any country’s Independence Day or anyone’s ex-girlfriend’s birthday that we could remember. And if there was ever a dispute as to the correct date, we would have two parties – just to be sure that we hadn’t miscelebrated.

  Basically, the inmates used any excuse to throw a party, but one day stood out as being particularly special, Prisoners’ Day, because it was our day. On the twenty-fourth of September every year, people on the outside were supposed to spare a thought for us – all the unfortunate inmates incarcerated around the nation. Even if they didn’t think of us, it was certainly our biggest party of the year.

  That was the day we prisoners were allowed to really let loose. The sections hired bands and we danced and drank all day, all night and all the next day. You could do anything you wanted and the police wouldn’t bust you. Besides, they were usually too drunk themselves. One year, the major on duty even sent me a few grams of coke. And because you could do anything, there was no limit to the number of tourists I could have to spend the night.

  The biggest-ever Prisoners’ Day celebration occurred during my third year, which was also when the tours were at their peak. I started inviting people I met on the tours in the weeks beforehand. Others, I invited from the tours on the actual day. Over the course of the afternoon, the small crowd in my room grew bigger and bigger. When we did a headcount at four in the afternoon, the total number of tourists came to forty-five. About half of them stayed the night. We tried to do another headcount at two in the morning, but no one would sit still. Everyone was moving around, talking and dancing. There was cocaine everywhere. It was absolutely out of control.

  There wasn’t enough space in my room for everyone to be in there at once, so they took it in shifts. There was a constant line of traffic going up and down my wooden staircase as the tourists came in to charge up on cocaine before returning to the main party in the courtyard, where the band was playing. But some of them got stuck talking and forgot to leave, so every now and then I had to drag people out of there to make space for new arrivals.

  I eventually gave up on making the lines of coke for everyone myself. It was too slow; no sooner had I finished making ten lines than I’d have to make another ten. If things had stayed like that, I would have had no chance to go downstairs and socialise myself.

  ‘Here, man. You seem to know what you are doing,’ I said, dropping ten grams onto a CD case and putting a guy from New Zealand in charge of it. His eyes were already popping out of his head and his hands were shaking, but he was proud that I had chosen him over the other tourists and set about carefully carving up the crystals. He seemed to like his new job and settled in for the night. The fact that he would be in the same spot making lines of coke the entire time didn’t worry him in the slightest, and it didn’t stop him from talking, which he did a lot of.

  When I came back upstairs for my next line, the conversation in the room had stopped completely. I assumed they’d had too much coke and I tried to liven them up.

  ‘Who wants to come downstairs and meet some of my Bolivian friends?’

  But no one would look me in the eye. Everyone looked very guilty, none more so than the New Zealander, who was kneeling on the ground holding two credit cards in his hands. Something bad had happened.

  ‘I’m really sorry, mate. It was my fault. I admit it. I’ll pay for it all.’ He looked down at the carpet in front of him where the CD with all the coke had fallen and started trying to scoop it up using the cards. ‘I think we can save most of it, but there are bits of dirt and carpet in it. Just tell me how much I owe you.’

  ‘We’ll all chip in,’ added a British girl. ‘Won’t we?’

  The others nodded, but I could see them trying to calculate how many days’ travelling budget ten grams of coke would cost them. They would all have to cut their holidays short.

  ‘Stop it! What are you doing, you idiot?’ I shook my head and took a step towards the New Zealander. He coiled back, worried perhaps that I was about to hit him. ‘Here. Give me those.’ I pointed at the credit cards and he handed them to me, thinking there might be some special way of recovering spilt cocaine that he didn’t know about. Then, I grabbed hold of my broom and swept the coke out the door.

  ‘It’s only coke. It’s not like you spilled beer or anything,’ I said.

  He looked at me in complete shock. The others didn’t know how to react either; they thought I’d gone crazy.

  ‘But as punishment, you have to make ten more lines. And make them quickly.’ I handed the cards back to him, along with ten more grams and a different CD cover to work with. ‘You’ve lost us a lot of valuable time.’

  I probably could have saved most of the coke, like he had suggested, but this was during the time I was working in the cocaine laboratories at night, so I had fifty more grams of it sitting in my cupboard that hadn’t cost me a cent. Besides, I did it for a laugh. I knew that everyone in that room would be telling the story everywhere they went for the rest of their lives.

  The poor New Zealander was so relieved that he would have been happy to stay there until sunrise, serving cocaine to everyone, but by then the party was in full swing and he couldn’t keep up with the demand. Instead of having just him on line-making duty, I handed out my entire CD collection so that people could do it themselves. However, there weren’t enough CD cases to go around and some people had to resort to cassette cases, which weren’t anywhere near as good.

  Eventually, my room got so full that people were spilling out onto the landing or sitting on the staircase, chopping up coke and drinking whatever they could get their hands on. No one was interested now in dancing or meeting any of the Bolivians. They just wanted to talk. I couldn’t even get into my own room and in the end I gave up and let them do what they wanted. With not even enough room to stand up, it would have been impossible to find space for people to sleep. Luckily, no one was interested in sleeping. They were way too high.

  The party kept getting bigger and bigger. People who had never met before decided they would go travelling together, starting the following day. Others, who had nothing in common whatsoever, decided they were best friends and would visit each other on the other side of the world. A few small romances between the backpackers also sprang up over the course of the evening. I even caught one of the Canadian tourists, a blond guy who was really shy and couldn’t have been more than twenty, deeply involved in a conversation with one of the Bolivian wives, who must have been about fifty and had no teeth. She was feeding him chicha and they were flirting outrageously. He hadn’t spoken a word of Spanish when he came in, but he was now jabbering away at a million miles an hour, and she was enraptured by what he was saying.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t speak Spanish,’ I interrupted him. ‘I couldn’t. But I’m fluent now. It just came to me all at once.’ ‘Be careful,’ I warned him. Her husband had fallen asleep drunk, but I was worried that he might wake up and wonder where his wife was, or that the inmates might talk.

  ‘It’s OK. She’s teaching me to speak Quechua, too.’ Later I caught the two of them dancing together. He was enjoying himself, but I didn’t want him to get too carried away.

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t dance?’ I called to him as I went past.

  ‘I couldn’t. But I’m a very fast learner. This stuff is excellent.’ The party kicked on until seven the next morning. The New Zealander was still sitting in the same position on my bed, chopping up lines, even though everyone had stopped taking them. I wanted to keep going also, but once it was daylight, many of the tourists suddenly remembered that they were in a prison and became paranoid. Some panicked and wanted to leave immediately, but the major, who had just come on duty, made them wait until after nine o’clock and then exit in small groups so that it wouldn’t be so obvious. It was clear that none of them had
slept, and twenty-two drunk, coked-up foreigners pouring out of a Bolivian prison during peak-hour traffic looking like they had been to a nightclub might lose him his job.

  I took the tourists to the gates in groups and said goodbye. ‘Thanks, Thomas. This is the best night of my life,’ declared my new New Zealander friend, even though the sun was shining and the music had stopped. He had done so much coke that the party was still going on in his head. One of the girls who was in a similar state gave the major a big hug when she got through the gate, and all his men laughed.

  I was extremely tired, but with all the drugs still in my bloodstream, it was several joints and many hours before I finally managed to get some sleep. The day after that, the truce with the police ended and they went back to busting us as per usual. It was one hell of a party, though, and I had a two-day chicha hangover to prove it.

  37

  THE AUSTRALIAN’S WALLET

  It may sound strange, but I had never had friends like the tourists I met while in prison. I had always had friends on the outside who were ready to party whenever I turned up with a few kilos of cocaine in my suitcase. But where had they been when I needed them? Who had sent me money when they had heard that I was stuck in a Bolivian jail? Who had bothered to find out where I was?

  Doing time is a real test of friendship. None of my old friends passed that test. Maybe none of them had even noticed that I was missing. To me, that made it even more special that people I had never met before came to visit me and did stick by me.

  Most of the travellers who had visited me were just passing through La Paz and couldn’t visit more than once or twice. However, many of them stayed in contact by letters and email. I glued the postcards they sent me from all over the world onto my wall. I received mail from the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, England, Israel, Turkey and Japan. Whenever I felt sad, I would read what the tourists had written to me, and I would soon feel better again.