The Path of the Jaguar

by Stephen Henighan

  Amparo hugged her daughter and kissed her. Releasing her, she carried the beans to the counter and told Inés to set them to soak. Mama left; they ate before darkness closed in. In the absence of the television, Eusebio tried to distract Pablito by leafing through a magazine with him. They named the objects in each colour photograph until nightfall erased them. Pablito jumped to his feet and hugged Amparo’s leg. “I’m afraid, Mama.”

  The walls of the valley deepened the night. The maestras at Escuela Tecún Umán told her that in Antigua the power had remained on most nights, but even when it had gone off they could open their shutters and see the distant orange of lava, high in the dark sky, sculpting the blackness as it spilled down the cone.

  She put the children to bed with a candle. She and Eusebio retreated to their bedroom.

  Even when the electricity was working, they undressed in the dark. They had acquired the habit as shy newlyweds. Amparo rolled under the sheets and slid her hand over Eusebio’s hips to ascertain his nakedness. The miracle of shared nakedness dimmed the day’s irritations, cancelled out her accumulated resentments: the way Eusebio doted on Pablito, his diffidence towards her siblings across the compound; the way, in a time that was even more remote from their present-day life, he had made false accusations. Now the thought of their nights together balanced the days they spent apart. Sometimes, in the middle of a difficult lesson, the weight of last night’s embrace would overwhelm her with the reassurance that she was loved. The most private corner of her existence, which she could discuss with no one, had surged back with unexpected heat. Feeling Eusebio’s weight at night, she fantasized about having a third child. The clasp of his hands on her curves, more womanly now than when she was a new bride, moulded this yearning inside her. She longed to give flesh to the fierce outcome of their reconciliation, their revived passion. She continued to spend precious money on condoms for Eusebio, purchased in a pharmacy where no one knew her in the village of San Felipe, on the edge of Antigua. Only when she thought of the world beyond her bedroom did she pause. If she ignored her own advice as a woman of thirty-six she would be unable to face the young girls she had recruited into the Savings Club in the wake of Yolanda’s flight. She gave the girls lessons on health, education, self-respect, and the importance of having no more than two children and raising them responsibly. As she had grown older, she had become aware of the influence of her example. When she smothered her moans in Eusebio’s collar bone and dug her fingertips into his shoulder blades, confident that no child would emerge from this coupling, the community’s judgment weighed on her.

  Eusebio lay on his back in the darkness. The sting of his sweat filled Amparo’s nostrils and tingled in her pores as the cool night air settled over their bodies. He ran his hand down her side in a parting trailing-away of passion that yielded to their falling-asleep trickle of conversation.

  “That boy I told you about who came into the shelter last week . . . He’s gone. The boy in the next cot says he went to El Norte. The boy who left invited the other one to go with him but the second boy was afraid.”

  “He’s right to be afraid. Imagine what’ll happen to him, trying to sneak into Mexico by himself then over to the other side, all without a coyote.”

  “That’s what worries me. That he’s willing to try. The shelter used to get people coming down from the highlands. They got stuck here on their way to the capital. Now a lot of the people who end up on the street were born right around Antigua. Their families don’t look after them. But we’re getting fewer from the highlands because they’re all going north . . . What kind of country do we live in, Amparo, that so many people want to leave?”

  “You see why I try to promote my culture? If young people value their traditions — ”

  “But if they can’t eat . . . ”

  “Yes, people must eat. But when times are hard being secure in your culture gives you strength. Look at Raquel. I thought she would go to north after Jorge left her. Her aunt in Arizona could have paid for a coyote. I was sure she would go! And she stayed. She stayed because she rediscovered her culture.”

  “But Raquel is a person with a house, with means.”

  “She has a house. She barely has an income.” Amparo felt soothed that they could talk about Raquel without the spectre of Ezequial intruding. She took his hand and laid it on her side.

  “I’m worried about my job, Amparo.” He snuggled closer to her. “The contract is up for renewal again. I don’t know if the gringos will pay for another five years. Last time Guatemala was a country coming out of a civil war, a country everybody wanted to make into a democracy. Since September 11th they’ve forgotten about us. Señor Robinson says that when he talks to Washington everything is about the Arabs . . . ”

  “But our problems are getting worse.”

  He took her in his arms. She lay against his broad, accommodating body. As he shifted his weight to secure his grip, his flaccid penis gave her thigh an amiable nudge. The sealed-up darkness felt thrilling. “I’m just warning you,” he said.

  “We’ll get by. I’ve got my job at the language school. We have our house, we have our children.”

  “We’re lucky Sister Consuelo recommended you to Tecún Umán.”

  “Yes! She told Don Teófilo that I was a good teacher and he should hire me.” She stared into the blackness, giving free rein to her doubts. “If only it were more reliable! Look at the last few months — all Don Teófilo was able to offer me was one student who stayed in Antigua for two weeks. A lot of the maestras didn’t work at all during the five months before Christmas. We couldn’t live without your job.”

  They slid apart and lay side by side. “So,” Eusebio said, “if — ”

  “For the moment we’ll be fine. These Canadians have just arrived and after that there are gringo students and some people from the American government. Don Teófilo says there’ll be more tourists again soon. The gringos won’t stay at home forever.” Feeling herself grow tired, she said: “Tomorrow morning we have a meeting. The manager is going to talk to us about the students. Then I’m going to go see Yoli — ”

  “Amparo — ”

  “I have to try to bring the family together.”

  “Why is it always you? With so many brothers and sisters . . . ”

  “I feel bad for Mama and Papa. They’re so ashamed. They refused to mention Yoli’s name the whole time she was away.”

  “She’s married now. There’s no more scandal. And they say she and her gringo live in a mansion. If you can call him a gringo . . . ”

  “He’s a kind of gringo. He came here to do the gringos’ work during the war.” Amparo pulled the blanket up to her chin. “I’m still angry with Yoli. Getting what she wanted meant more than respecting her family . . . But she’s my sister! And nobody’s set foot in her house. And when she comes here, Mama and Papa just look at the ground”

  Eusebio wrapped his arm around her. “ . . . Amparo . . . always trying to make things better . . . ”

  They fell asleep. In the morning Amparo woke sneezing and pulled on her nightgown. She hurried to get Sandra ready for the minibus that she and other parents funded to take their children to school in Antigua. Pablito, who was attending the village school until they found the money to send both children to private schools in Antigua, dragged his feet.

  “I don’t like school, Mama. I want to stay here with you.”

  “You can’t stay here with me because I’m going to Antigua to work.”

  “I don’t like the way the teacher looks at me when he’s drunk. The other kids make fun of me.”

  “Nobody makes fun of you. You’re a boy like all the others. When I was a girl I had to go to school barefoot. Everybody laughed at me but that didn’t stop me from learning.”

  “I’m afraid!”

  “Sometimes I think you’re afraid of life!”

  “Amparo,” Eusebio said, in a warning tone.

  They stared at each other. She bristled at the tensing of his j
aw, the dull simplicity of his eyes, as though he were innocent of responsibility for her anger. At the table, Inés, thin-waisted in her Quiché uq, was placing Sandra’s toast and frijoles in front of her. Pablito began to cry. Amparo turned away, her fury defeated by protectiveness. As she hugged her son, tenderness towards Eusebio ebbed back. By the time they left the house half an hour later, she felt drained. The minibus had honked outside the compound and picked up Sandra; Inés was walking Pablito to school. She and Eusebio sat side by side on the Bluebird bus down the mountain. They held hands and did not speak. When they arrived, they made their way out of the market, crossed the Calzada and went their separate ways through the cobblestoned streets.

  Unlike most of the language schools in Antigua, Escuela Tecún Umán was not arranged around a courtyard. The small tables across which students and instructors faced each other from eight to twelve every morning, and sometimes again in the afternoon, were indoors. Squeezed between a secondary school and the walled-in ruins of a gigantic church that had crumbled in the 1773 earthquake, the sprawling old house did not offer the familiar sensation of faceless adobe walls relaxing into the ample proportions of a sunstruck courtyard or garden; this experience was so familiar that she remained perpetually surprised by Escuela Tecún Umán’s lack of access to the heavens. A government administrative building that had fallen into disuse before becoming the Antigua home of the coffee-growing family who had sold it to Don Teófilo, the school had a high-ceilinged entrance hall from which a spiral staircase revolved to the second floor. Two large ground-floor rooms had been filled with wooden tables and chairs. Don Teófilo and his sons had offices at the back of the ground floor.

  The front room was full when she arrived. The Canadians must be bringing a lot of students for Don Teófilo to have called in so many maestras. She did not recognize some of these young women. Don Teófilo stood against the wall wearing his white shirt and V-necked dark blue sweater beneath a black jacket.

  A throat cleared. The maestras turned their heads. She realized that her arrival had interrupted the canadiense manager, a trim, compact man, who was standing at the head of the room. His small blue eyes transmitted displeasure. She wished she could speak English to apologize. As she looked around in search of an empty seat, she found she had no alternative but to meet his unyielding stare. His voice swooped towards her in supple, educated Spanish without the usual comical accent. “Before you entered the room, señora, I was saying that Antigua is not a large town and so there is no excuse for either students or maestras to be late for classes. I hope you agree?”

  “I agree, but I don’t live in Antigua. It takes me longer to get here because I live in a village.” She could not believe she was uttering these words; Don Teófilo might fire her for such insolence. But the man’s stare provoked her.

  “You think that’s a good excuse for being late?” the manager said. “Which village do you live in?”

  Offended — what would the name of her village mean to this käk winaq? — she noted the other maestras’ scrutiny. Searching for an empty seat, she muttered her village’s name.

  “Ah,” he said. “You must know Doña María.”

  “Yes, señor, I know Doña María.”

  “Please send her my regards. Tell her Ricardo remembers her. As I was saying . . . ”

  She turned her face into a mask, praising the heart of the sky and the heart of the earth for enabling her to hold back her tears. Don Teófilo was pointing her towards a chair at the front of the room. She dreaded what he would say to her when this was over.

  The manager said that each maestra would receive a textbook corresponding to the level of the student she would be teaching. She must follow the textbook thoroughly — ¡detenidamente!, he said, repeating the word — to ensure that she completed the assigned chapters during the month of January. This was vital because the students were receiving credit for their courses; if they did not complete the relevant chapters they would be unable to continue their studies when they returned home. So completing these chapters was more important for them than learning to talk? Most gringo clients, such as the Christian universities from the United States, simply wanted their students to be able to speak Spanish to go into the villages and flip people upside down. That was what the tourists wanted, also: to be able to ask directions and order meals and bargain in markets; they didn’t care about textbooks. Amparo didn’t dare ask the question; no other maestra asked it either. They would all bow their heads and nod, then go on to teach as they had always taught, engaging the student in conversation. Amparo felt her irritation growing with this man and his insistence that they all waste their time at his meeting.

  “ . . . It is indispensable,” he said, “that you teach the textbooks rather than criticizing them. You may find that the books contain some colloquial expressions or structures with which you’re not familiar. This doesn’t mean that the Spanish in the book is wrong. It simply means that, in addition to exemplifying the Spanish you speak, the book exemplifies the Spanish spoken in other countries, such as Spain and Argentina . . . ”

  Indispensable, colloquial, exemplify . . . Most of these girls wouldn’t understand those words. If Don Ricardo knew Guatemala well enough to be acquainted with Doña María, he should be aware that teachers had little education. Amparo understood him only because Don Julio had made her read novels. As his fine phrases unfurled, her anger returned.

  When he finished they applauded him. His tight face sagged into a smile as he sidled over to exchange a few words with Don Teófilo. Amparo, relieved to see the jefe occupied with this client, decided to escape. When she reached the door of the room, Luisa Méndez, who had been teaching at Escuela Tecún Umán for more than a decade, was talking to Nancy Robelo, a curvaceous young girl in tight bluejeans who had streaked her hair blonde, a style she was able to get away with because her skin was a soft medium-brown, lighter than that of the other maestras, or even, although it would be scandalous to voice such a thought, that of Don Teófilo. Unlike some of the other maestras, Nancy did not pretend to be more than she was.

  “How boring!” Nancy said. “None of the other foreigners make us listen to them like that.”

  “He thinks he’s important because he’s bringing a lot of students,” Amparo said.

  Luisa Méndez lifted her finger. “We had Canadians when I started teaching here. They don’t even believe in God — ”

  “But they’re Protestants,” Amparo said, “like the ones from the United States?”

  “They don’t talk about God, like you or me or the Yanquis,” Luisa Méndez said, shaking her head. “But they want to make the world better.”

  “A better world without God?” Amparo looked past Luisa’s wagging finger. Don Teófilo was clapping the manager on the shoulder. She, in turn, touched Luisa, then Nancy, on the elbow. “I have to go. My sister’s waiting for me. My sister who’s married to a gringo who runs a security company . . . I’ll see you on Monday.”

  She walked out of the room without looking around. If Don Teófilo wished to fire her, he could phone her. She wasn’t going to be humiliated in public. But, ay Dios, let him forgive her! What if he actually fired her? And if Eusebio’s Señor Robinson couldn’t get his contract renewed, and if they had no work . . . ? She shouldn’t have responded to the manager with such disrespect. This Sunday the first sin in her confession would be pride.

  TWELVE

  THERE WAS NO EASY ROUTE to Yolanda’s house. It was not in a village but in a field outside Antigua where the mayor had given one of his cronies a concession to build houses outside the boundaries of any village. A place that lacked a history to the point where its women did not know which design to embroider on their huipiles. Amparo followed a narrow cobbled street towards the edge of Antigua. She could not imagine living in a place that did not have a huipil.

  Trucks ground past, forcing her to step into the mounds of garbage rotting on the roadside. Gaunt dogs cast her wary, whimpering looks. Bitter smoke fr
om a peasant’s fire of immature branches stung the air. She came around a corner and saw the wire mesh fence corralling the dozen two-storey stucco houses with red-tiled roofs, set down like enormous booths for watchmen among tall yellow grass. She entered the lot with a wave at a bored security guard and looked for the house whose number Yolanda had given her.

  A small grandmotherly woman wearing a Santa María huipil answered the door. When Amparo, using Spanish in deference to her surroundings, asked for Yolanda, the woman called: “Señora! There’s someone to see you.”

  Yoli swept into the room wearing a gold-trimmed black dress falling to just below her knees. Her shoulder-length hair curled up at the ends. Amparo’s head buzzed as she struggled to accept that the ch’i’p, the youngest of the family, was this great lady. “How are you, Amparo? And Eusebio? And my little Sandra and Pablito?”

  She did not ask about Mama and Papa. She led Amparo through large rooms with big windows that let in the light through fine-meshed grates. One upstairs room contained a computer, a printer and a fax machine. Next door was the bedroom — Amparo felt heat in her face at the sight of the double bed — and across the hall were two empty rooms. “You have plenty of room for your children,” Amparo said as they descended the stairs.

  Yoli’s hand fell on her arm. “Oh, Amparo, I don’t know if I’m going to have children.”

  “How can you not have children? Everybody has children!” When Yoli had run away, Mama and Papa were terrified that she was pregnant; now that she was twenty-three and married, it was her childlessness that was a scandal.

  Yoli tugged Amparo closer as they sat down on the living room couch. Two glasses of Coca-Cola awaited them on a bronze tray. “David is fifty-one. He was married in his own country when he was nineteen. His daughters are almost thirty. He’s already a grandfather. I don’t think he wants more children.”

  “You don’t think? Why don’t you ask him? Ask him, for heaven’s sake! Explain that in Guatemala every woman must have children!” As she peered into Yoli’s face, her awareness that her little sister would always be younger and more beautiful than she, retreated before her observation of a tightness of cheek, a wariness in the eyes, that reminded her of Yoli’s years in a faraway country that appeared on television as a war zone.