by Roy Kesey
Over time the waiter brings a second beer, a third and a fourth, and the sun goes down, not as in Colán but not unbeautifully. The mosquitoes come out. I am careful to read no more than half a meter per hour. For a bookmark I am using a cancer brochure, its cover a sketch of a woman checking herself in the mirror.
Finally it has been long enough. I call to the waiter, scribble in the air. He brings the bill and I pay. Another taxi, another bus. Huaquillas, like everywhere else in this world, is less ugly by night.
Customs, and then Immigrations.
- But you have been in our country less than a day! says one officer.
I pantomime distress.
- Ecuador cannot be seen in a day, says another.
- Yes, I know. I wish there were something I could do. But I have been called back. What can I do? They have called me back.
- Who has called you back? Your employer?
- No. My friends. They—
- You are lying to me, sir. You have come to Ecuador only for the visa. You care nothing for our country. You will not be allowed to leave.
I bow my head, reach mournfully for my wallet, and ask if there is any way this uncomfortable situation can be rearranged so as to make it more comfortable.
One of the officials takes out a calculator, punches random numbers.
- The fine will be one hundred dollars, he says.
So this is now the starting point.
- I am so sorry, I say, but one hundred dollars is far too much. I could perhaps pay twenty.
- Twenty? Twenty is unreasonable, sir. It is insulting. You must pay the fine, and the fine is one hundred dollars. Though we could also possibly accept ninety.
It takes ten minutes for us to meet at sixty-eight. The men thank me for visiting Ecuador, and ask me to return soon, to stay longer next time, to enjoy their country, for it is a marvelous country, and they are right, and I say so.
Another colectivo, and this one has no windows, and though it is still very hot there is enough wind to make me pleased that I remembered to bring a sweater. It is a fine wool sweater, blue and thick, and living in Piura I have no need of it except for night trips back from Ecuador.
Tumbes, the bus station, the lines. Then the tiny damp dark bathroom, the fetid hole, footprints worn into the cement on either side. I am there much longer than I mean to be, am lightheaded coming out as the motor of the one waiting bus is started. Perhaps the fish in the ceviche was less than fresh. I pull myself on and the bus sways toward me. I push through, and find a small dark man pretending to be asleep in my window seat.
The overhead rack is full of bags. I stuff my knapsack in on top of them, and tap the man on the shoulder as lightly as I am able under the circumstances.
- It was you, wasn’t it, I say.
I say this only because it seems a likely means of success—this man’s ears protrude sharply from his head.
- What?
- If I’m not mistaken, you’re in my seat.
He does not contest this, and I am happy for him. He stands and moves so as not to impede my entrance. His shirt is thin and his sandals are old. One of his ankles is swollen oddly, bulging above the joint.
The lights are dimmed as I sit down; the bus lurches and turns and the man lands mostly in my lap. I pretend this has not happened. He apologizes, lifts and slides and stares out the far window.
We stop briefly in front of the Customs office but are waved through uninspected, and it does not take long for the driver to turn on the music: salsa, fine bus music. If Mariángel were here, she and I would dance in place. On through the dark. Out the window is the Southern Cross, and its lowest star can almost not be seen, but the constellation points in the direction we are heading. Perhaps this will help.
The ocean appears but cannot be heard, not with the music, not with the noise of the motor. Máncora. Perhaps sleep, and now Talara, the oil wells lit a blurry brown. The bus stops wherever people wait, and the aisle fills. At some point the salsa becomes merengue, even better, smoother, kinder—merengue is a sort of love—but in Peru the waxing crescent moon is a malevolent smile. I suspect this is not widely known.
A light cramp begins at the base of my stomach, fades, returns and fades again. My neighbor’s head begins to bob. At last he gives in, slumps, his head resting against my shoulder. For a time I attempt again to sleep, my cheek against the top of the man’s head, but it does not quite work, bruises my cheekbone and gums. I straighten and watch him as well as one can watch something so close to one’s eyes. One magnificent ear. His mouth, slightly open. His face twitches, he smiles and frowns in his sleep. I do not wish to know his dreams.
Again the cramp and fading. My neighbor starts to drool, and I consider waking him. The drooling continues, intensifies, and there is a voice, a woman’s voice, from the back of the bus. It is not clear what she is saying. I shrug to wake my neighbor.
- I am not your pillow, I say, but I say this kindly.
The man blinks and nods and shifts away. The cramp is now somewhere between present and not-present, seems to be biding time. The woman’s voice is slightly louder. We are not far from Sullana, and Sullana is not far from Piura—I will be home by three in the morning if all goes well, if the bus does not miss a turn and slide off the highway and come to rest not quite at its tipping point, not quite killing all of us.
Unfortunately my neighbor appears to be unnerved by the woman’s words or voice. Maybe he knows her, or someone like her. She goes quiet for a time, then starts up again. My neighbor takes out a knife and opens it. It has a fine blade.
The voice silences again. The man puts away his knife. The woman shrieks, he brings the knife back out, and the shrieking lessens to murmuring as if this were a kind of game. There is also something that might be begging, though it is not easy to hear, not with the motor and merengue and cramps that come in series. My neighbor stands, and if he goes there will be blood, and police, and I will not see Mariángel for many, many hours.
- I wouldn’t, I say. What if he’s got a gun? He could be a policeman, you know. Your knife is a good one, but you’d never get close enough to use it.
He considers, sits back down and fidgets. He checks his watch, fidgets some more. He curses and stands and I catch his arm.
- You’ll just get yourself in trouble. A few more minutes and we’re in Sullana. Maybe one of them will get off there.
I let go, shake my head, turn to look out the window, clutch at my stomach and am fortunate: the woman has gone quiet. My neighbor sits down and leans back. The knife is still open in his hand.
Dim light filters in: Sullana, its bus station, cement and dust. Passengers exit and enter. My neighbor and I, we wait. He appears to be holding his breath. A woman slides past us and off the bus, a woman with dyed-blonde hair, and she looks like the sort of woman who might become upset late at night on a bus and begin to shriek.
When she is gone the door closes and the bus pulls out of the parking lot.
- You see? I say. It’s better this way.
My neighbor closes his eyes. He looks very tired, and somewhat disappointed. Then we are unfortunate, the woman’s voice again, murmuring and moaning. My neighbor looks at me. I shrug and look away. And a thought: perhaps this was how it started for Pilar.
A scream, more begging, and I am up and grab for my neighbor’s knife but he holds it away from me, pushes at my chest, brings the blade to my throat, thin and cold against my skin.
- What the fuck are you doing? he says.
- I was wrong, I say. If you want him, go and get him. But if you do not, give the knife to me and I will take care of it.
He tells me to sit calmly back, and I do. He stands and limps down the aisle. He stops near the back, and I wait for the glint of metal, the sound of the knife plunging home not real but imagined and it will stay with me for months of bad nights but this is not what happens. The man has turned to the seat on the other side of the aisle. He appears to be chatting, and puts his knife awa
y.
Then there are sirens and lights. The bus pulls off the highway and the motor and music die. The door opens and three customs officers board: apparently they have changed their mind about us. I take my knapsack and follow other passengers off the bus. My passport is checked, my knapsack searched.
I look up at the bus windows, and behind them are shadows, figures moving along the aisle, and now there is a scream. I wait for the officers to pull someone out onto the ground—the man, the woman, someone else. In the end only the officers themselves descend.
The stomach cramps are gone. Back in my seat I wait for my neighbor to reappear, but he does not. I close my eyes. As the motor starts I feel someone sit carefully beside me. I open my eyes. This man is carrying a briefcase, has a beard and glasses, is smiling triumphantly. He could surely tell me the story but I do not want to know. I feel that if I say anything he will start laughing, and I will not be responsible for that.
To escape from him I think of Pilar, that first trip to a beach, the day of the photograph on the flyer. Yacila is not far from Colán, and the water is most often too cold for stingrays but warm enough for swimming. There was an old woman in a long black dress waist-deep in the surf, netting sand lice; there were men digging under their stranded fishing boats, pushing logs beneath, rolling the boats forward into the waves; there were children paddling rafts beyond the break, and there was also a stingray, in spite of all we had been promised there was a stingray, and I learned too late the importance of scuffing one’s feet. Someone brought boiling water. Pilar put her mouth to the wound, sucked and spat for twenty minutes. The pain filled and erased me.
At the El Dorado station in Piura I grab my knapsack and push forward. Waiting outside are taxis and mototaxis and constant honking. I take the largest taxi though the driver asks twice the standard fare. He believes I am new to Piura and know nothing of the fares and distances here, and tonight I will let him persist in this belief.
We come to the Virgin, my street, my house. It is still very hot, and there is no wind, and my sweater has become a ridiculous thing. For some reason the dogs are quiet and the streetlight has not yet been repaired and these things are helpful but I think of tomorrow, of the following days, of what is waiting. Perhaps in Machala I should have taken a swim, and headed due west, and kept swimming.
16.
VIGILS END WHEN DAWN IS UNAMBIGUOUS. Mariángel still sleeps. The night has left me riven. I gather our things and lift her. The walk home through the hot wet air feels slower than it must actually be.
Casualidad is waiting in the kitchen and Fermín is in the back yard watering the almond tree. Their presence confuses me—I did not ask or want them to come so early, did not ask them to come at all except as guests for the party, and even then only if Casualidad was feeling well. My mouth is slow to get words in the correct order, and halfway through my question Casualidad laughs loudly. It is the first time I have heard her laugh, or very nearly so. I ask how she is, and she says that she is feeling much better. She asks how our time at the cemetery went, and her eye is mainly clear.
There is a large cake now on the dining room table. It has nothing to do with the larger of the two cakes I made. This cake is still larger and much more beautiful, with hard smooth white frosting, and yellow rosettes of icing around the upper edge. It is not leaning in any direction, and my first thought is that Casualidad has somehow encased the cake I made within this other, better cake. Of course that cannot be true, and I try to ask how it happened that my cake is gone and this cake is here. She laughs again mid-question and as answer this will have to suffice.
Casualidad takes Mariángel, and I ask her not to let me sleep for more than an hour. When I wake it is almost noon. I shower and dress and walk to the nearest store, return home with what I should have bought days ago: ice cream and plantain chips, beer and varied soft drinks, plastic cups and plates and forks, paper napkins and cardboard birthday hats.
Here plantain chips are called chifles, and while similar to potato chips they are superior in every way. I pour a bag of them into a large bowl, and at the bottom of the bag are two glassine packets, one filled with dried and shredded beef, the other with massive corn nuts. I sprinkle these across the top of the chifles and already Arantxa arrives.
I present her with the largest and finest hat, the kind a cardboard corsair might wear. Her gift is an orange shirt that should fit Mariángel by late in the year after next. I pass Arantxa the bowl of chifles, and as she chews we examine the arguments for and against each English professor erasing the words and drawings and schematics from his or her chalkboard at the end of each class, and I promise to do better in the future.
The doorbell rings again. On the stoop now is a crowd of an unlikely size, and I ask Casualidad to arrange for the delivery of more chifles, more soft drinks, more cardboard hats, and also a good deal of beer. The delivery charges will not be negligible, but there is no other clean option. I had thought that not many of my English Section colleagues would come—only the good-hearted, the best-hearted, and those few with nothing better to do. Instead all seventeen have come, and their gifts for Mariángel involve prominent ribbons and knitting, and there is a shortage of chairs.
After a time the doorbell seems done, and then it rings again. At the door is Reynaldo. Instead of congratulating Mariángel immediately as did all the other guests, he first says that he is sorry for last night. I tell him the truth, that it was nothing, or nearly nothing, and that to the extent it was more than nothing it was at least two-thirds my fault. He smiles and hands me a bottle of good pisco.
I ask how his research is going and he says that the deer are shitting cleaner seeds than ever, but that he doesn’t know if he has enough pods in stock to last until harvest. His face appears suddenly fuller than I remember, the flesh of his neck straining at his shirt collar. I ask if he has been putting on weight, and he seems to become afraid or something like it, and punches my arm hard in a friendly manner as though practicing for American citizenship.
Everyone is now present and hatted and I ask Casualidad if she knows where the birthday candles are. She nods, takes up the cake and is gone for some time. I go to the kitchen and find her crying. The cake holds perhaps thirty candles, their layout apparently random. In her hand is an empty matchbox. Dozens of used matches have been stacked like miniscule cordwood on the counter.
- I got confused, she says, and all these matches, I can’t remember why I kept them.
I tell her not to move, and after a small amount of searching I find Fermín standing alone in the front yard. I ask what he is looking at, and he says that there is nothing. I say that his mother is ill, and he nods. I say that she needs to see a doctor, not tomorrow but today, and give him a hundred soles.
He takes the bill and hides it in his underpants. Then he follows me into the kitchen, helps me to remove the candles and to convince Casualidad that I want her to rest for a day or two.
- But you will fire me if I don’t come to work, she says.
- No. I will fire you only if you do come to work.
- You will fire me?
- Yes. I mean, no.
- So I am fired.
- No, but I want you to see a doctor. I will take care of Mariángel today and tomorrow by myself, and you will visit the doctor and rest. On Tuesday, if you are feeling better, you can come back to work.
- And if I’m not feeling better?
- Then you will rest for another day. You will rest for as many days as you need. And when you feel better you will come back, and we will be waiting to welcome you.
She does not believe me, but when Fermín repeats everything I said word for word, she allows us to walk her to the front door. Fermín runs to the corner for a mototaxi, and they are gone.
I attempt to repair the cake but the hard smooth frosting will not spread in any direction. After a time I desist, place a clean candle at its center, find a new box of matches and light the wick. I bring the cake in, locate Mariá
ngel where she sits on Arantxa’s lap, carry the cake to her. Again there is singing, only “Happy Birthday” now but as always in both languages.
I walk Mariángel around the room to kiss and be kissed by all the guests, and she falls asleep halfway through. I take her to her crib and close her door. Back in the dining room, Arantxa is cutting the cake in fancifully shaped and roughly equal portions, and Reynaldo is serving the ice cream. When all of it is gone, humming begins and the cardboard hats come off.
These are two of many ways in which Piurans intimate that it is time for the dancing to start. The music alternates, rock and salsa, as is one possible custom here. I take a turn with each of the female professors, and two turns with Arantxa. Too sweaty to be comfortable close to anyone, I walk out onto the patio, and a moment later Arantxa comes with the bottle of pisco and two shot glasses.
- It’s from Aránzazu, she says.
Pisco is made from grapes, is something of a brandy; this bottle is from the region that gave the drink its name and I have no idea what Arantxa means.
- My name, she says. Haven’t you ever wondered?
I try to remember whether I have or not. It does not seem likely. She fills the glasses, hands me one, we drink and she pours again.
- Aránzazu, I say, just to try the word in my mouth.
- It’s Basque. You, among thorns. One of our Virgins.
She moves her chair closer to mine and begins to speak of distance, mentions an article she has read, quotes it on cultural differences as regards personal space: a Brit at arm’s-length and a Zambian’s breath on one’s cheek. The phrasing is familiar. Perhaps I have read the same article.
- I could stay tonight and help you with Mariángel, says Arantxa.