Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  My aunt had confessed to a “little beating” but he had no idea of the ferocity of her actions. The fact that he had gone from an active, mischievous child to an invalid overnight, taught me a harsh lesson about the unreliability of life. My uncle promised him a dog when he recovered, and he fulfilled his promise by getting him an adorable pure breed boxer. The chocolate colored puppy was playful and frisky but he soon became the bone of contention between Carlos and Ramiro who couldn’t agree on anything relating to the puppy, including his name. Carlos wanted to call the puppy “Adolf” to mock Adolf Hitler and Ramiro favored, “Mussolini.”

  Ultimately, Carlos won, and the puppy was called “Adolfito.” [“Little Adolf”]. The first heated argument was over his ears, with Ramiro insisting they should be cut short to show off his race and Carlos weeping that it was his dog, and that it was cruel to subject him to such torture just because boxers looked better with their ears short.

  Unfortunately Ramiro won the battle and the poor puppy endured the procedure which took a long time to heal because he kept pulling out his stitches. He was lovable and brave but no match for Ramiro who would delight in poking and teasing him hoping to turn him ferocious. Carlos would come to his defense and there would be endless fights till my aunt issued an ultimatum, one more fight over the dog and he would be history.

  Carlos made his father swear they would never get rid of his beloved “Adolf,” and he promised, but he didn’t count on my aunt’s treachery who taking advantage of a trip Carlos took with his classmates to “Yungas,” [“a diverse landscape of rugged terrain and steep precipices”] got rid of the dog permanently by claiming he got lost during his daily walk. My uncle searched everywhere for him but nobody ever found out what happened to the ill fated puppy. My aunt kept saying the maid didn’t adjust his leash properly and he ran away, and that’s all there was to it.

  Mom was convinced she had threatened Josefa with her job if she spoke up because whenever we asked her, she got extremely uncomfortable and evasive, lowering her eyes, biting her lower lip and shaking her head.

  Eventually life returned to normal but Carlos never seemed to completely recover from the loss, he became distant, withdrawn and more accident-prone than ever. He was always falling down and splitting his chin wide open, and one time he got hit by a car necessitating hospitalization. It was around this time too that he started exhibiting funny behaviors by locking himself in his room to play with a piece of string for hours at a time, oblivious to the time or the people around him.

  I remember the puppy vividly for the way he had bonded with Carlos right from the beginning, as if guessing he was the reason he had been purchased – their playful moments when he filled Carlos’s face with kisses while he laid down on his back laughing - the way he chased him all over the apartment to get a hold of his pants, refusing to release him till Carlos handed him his favorite toy and played tug of war with him - his loud, sonorous bark and the mischievous look in his eyes when Carlos got home from school and with a crooked grin called him “Adolfito, Adolfito,” whispering German endearments to him.

  The two boys attend German school which is one of the most prestigious schools in La Paz, and are fluent in the language which Carlos uses to insult me whenever we have spats, or to mock his mother behind her back, calling her “The Fuhrer.” German influence is very strong in South America, and it began in 1848, lasting ninety years. Mother says Chile and Argentina got most of the good Germans while Bolivia got the Nazi criminals on the run. In our own family, we have a strong German ancestry dating back to my grandfather who was born there.

  ~~~

  Smarting from the incident of this morning, mother says we are going to move, that we are not going to stay in a place where she can’t even take the sun which is free for everyone because her sister, who thinks she is God on earth herself, forbids it. I hear her ranting and raving for hours but I know we can’t move, no matter how enraged mother is because we depend so much on my aunt. We live in her house rent free and she is always giving us used clothes and shoes. When Oscar was born and mother couldn’t work for a few months, my aunt sent us food daily with the maid.

  Mom would complain that the food was spicy and greasy and that she was getting all the leftovers, but without her help we would have starved. Mother says that a sister should do more, has the obligation to do more, but my aunt prefers her cousin Eli and says she is the sister she should have had because “contra el corazón no se manda.” [“The heart always rules”]

  ~~~

  My aunt calls me during the week and introduces me to her stepdaughter, Ana de Malta, who’s back from Cochabamba and will be living in her house from now on. I know all about her from mother but I’m taken aback by her natural warmth and beauty. She has dark hair, brown eyes and clear olive skin with dimples on the sides when she smiles. She’s seventeen years old, tall and plump and she does resemble my uncle around the eyes. I know that she was five years old when my uncle married my aunt, and that she was sent to live with her aunts in Cochabamba six months later because my aunt didn’t want the responsibility.

  She’s kind and lovable and we become fast friends. She wants to see my mother and we wait till my aunt goes out to come downstairs and surprise her. Mom is dusting and she has her hair up in a kerchief when we walk in. She embraces her warmly and asks about her aunts. Ana tells her everyone is fine but she is dismayed with our cramped room at the end of the patio.

  “Couldn’t she give you the bigger room down the hall? This one is so small.”

  “That’s nothing,” responds mother. “Look at the humidity on the walls, look how grotesquely they’re swollen, that’s the worst part because it’s bad for the kidneys, that and the fact the it’s always so dark, so musty in here. But she prefers to rent the big room to that quiet bachelor who’s hardly ever around because she uses that money, and the money for the rent on the first floor for her card games, you know how she is about her games, let everything go to the devil, she has to play whenever she feels like it.”

  Ana shakes her head and looks around her in disbelief. “This is the room that should be used for the maids when they live in the house; this is not a room that should be used by a relative, much less a sister.”

  Mother laughs bitterly. “Are you kidding? I’m supposed to be grateful, to kiss her feet in gratitude.”

  Ana looks around her with a perturbed expression. Our room has two beds, a big picture of Christ in the middle of the beds, a “vitrina” on a side of the room where she keeps her dishes, a tiny dresser stuffed with our underwear and night clothes, and a wooden closet that contains our shoes, coats, her wools and knitting machine. We have two chairs and a table pushed against the corner where we eat and drink, and an “anafe” [“kerosene range top”] where mom does all her cooking.

  The sink where we wash dishes and clothing is outside, and the toilet is on the side of the courtyard. We have no shower or bathtub and we bathe in the sink or get sponge baths from the bucket inside when it’s too cold in the mornings, which is most of the time.

  “How long have you been living here?” asks Ana glumly.

  “Five years, ever since Sonia brought us from Oruro, but it feels like an eternity.”

  She shakes her head sadly. “Do you regret coming here?”

  “We didn’t have much in Oruro but it was better than this,” sighs mother. “Our room there wasn’t the Taj Majal either but it was a bigger room and I could move around without bumping into things like here. I also had a good job at the library that I loved and a chance to live with dignity, to say nothing of culture. I could read all the books I wanted, but now I haven’t been able to read a line since I got back, because if I don’t work I don’t eat. I have all these masterpieces under the beds that I stole from the library, and they are collecting dust and getting ruined with the humidity.”

  “That’s terrible,” says Ana.

  “Luckily Vicky is a big reader like I was, so they are not completely wasted, but it
is still a sin to treat great books like that. After my divorce, I had lots of friends and I made a life for myself in Oruro, but Sonia kept urging me to come to La Paz, saying that Vicky had no future in that dinky little town and that I should do it for her and not be selfish, but what kind of future do you think she has here living like this?”

  “I don’t know why she always has to interfere in people’s lives,” says Ana, pouting. “Look what she did to me, separating me from my father after I tried so hard to get her to love me. I don’t know why my mother had to die so young and of such a terrible disease, what did she have to get cancer? My father would have never met Sonia if it hadn’t been for that damn illness, sometimes I get very upset when I think of all the years I missed with him.”

  “You mustn’t think of the inequities of life, Ana; that will only make you sad. Cancer knows no boundaries; it happens to the good and bad in this world. For all I heard your mother was a wonderful woman and she really loved him. I can’t say the same for Sonia unfortunately, because she doesn’t know the meaning of the word; she only loves herself and that is her biggest problem in life. She doesn’t love her children and her children don’t love her either. I remember when she was pregnant with Carlos; she would write to me saying she wished she could abort him. She hated being pregnant. She only wanted one child and Carlos was an accident. I don’t think she ever forgave the poor kid for being born, but she has never been too happy with her first born either, in fact, I think she hates him.”

  “Ramiro can be very difficult too,” says Ana. “He’s insolent and disrespectful most of the time.”

  “There is a reason for it, Ana. Ramiro is always here pouring his heart out to me. She has harmed him in a very serious way and I don’t think she realizes it. He keeps telling me that his father married the wrong sister, that he would give anything if I could be his mother. The reality is that my sister should have never had children because she doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body. All she cares about is how pretty she looks and how many new rich friends she can attract; meeting this high society people is the most important thing to her, it seems to fill a vacuum in her life or something. She leaves her husband and children alone night after night to play cards and gossip with those shallow women.”

  Ana shakes her head and bites her lower lip pensively.

  “And look what she did to you, she never forgave our mother for giving her up when she was five years old, and she does the same thing to you, but the main thing is that you’re back at home now, so you must forget the past and start over. You have turned into a real beauty, Ana, and I’m sure your father is very proud of you.”

  Ana smiles and mother serves tea and talks about our home town, but I only have vague memories of Oruro. [“Named after the ancient tribe “Uru-Uru” who used to inhabit the city”]. Our room there was close to the station and our beds shook morning and night with the vibration of the train. As in a dream, I remember leaving the town holding her hand and boarding the bus for a whole new life. I remember sensing her tension and saying goodbye to her best friend, Luisa Calero, who came to the bus terminal to see us off.

  Closing my eyes today I can still hear the distinctive whistle of the train approaching closer and closer to its destination. The bus ride is a blur to me but mother has described the arid, monotonous landscape and the distant snow capped hills of the Andes rising majestically in the distance. She says she cried the entire trip and that I tried to console her.

  They keep talking and I start daydreaming, my favorite pass time and one that gets me in trouble with mother and at school all the time. The teacher taught us a sonnet yesterday about llamas, [“a native camelid used as a pack animal”] by a Bolivian poet, and she tells us that it really captures the soul of this humble, magnificent animal who should be our national symbol instead of a condor.

  I had wanted to memorize the sonnet to feel again its power and beauty in every line, but my memory failed me. I hate that about myself. I have the worst memory in the world and have to write everything down not to forget it. Mother says that’s because my head is always in the clouds and I guess it’s true because I can’t remember anything. She says it’s a miracle I remember my own name because I never pay attention to anything. Her favorite nickname for me is “volada” [“absent minded”] and I guess it’s true because I’m always losing things.

  I pestered mother day and night to write down the poem about the llama but she refused, saying that it was trash anyway and that I should memorize Gabriella Mistral’s poems. She adores Gabriella Mistral, the Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize and talks about her all the time as though no other poet existed in the world. This makes me mad because I don’t understand this poet, and whenever our teacher reads one of her poems, I feel restless and bored.

  C hapter Two

  After tea and bread, I go outside to the patio to draw on the walls. I love to draw houses with nice steps leading up to the bedrooms. When I grow up I want a house like that, I don’t even want a nice apartment on the top floor with tenants downstairs like my aunt. I want a whole big house to myself and I don’t want to share it with anybody. Oscar sneaks up behind me and scribbles over my house. I grab him by the hair and he kicks me on the knee and we get into a big fight. Mother and Ana come out running and stop the fight.

  “Calma Indios” [“calm down Indians”] scolds Ana. “What is this? There should be peace and love in the house.”

  “They fight all the time like cats and dogs; you don’t know what I go through with them,” complaints mother.

  “That’s no good,” she says pointing her finger at me. “You’re bigger than he is, you should know better.”

  Ana leaves and it starts to rain, mother puts some buckets outside to collect rain water which she says is very good for the hair. The sky gets very dark and I know we are in for a big storm. I put on double sweaters and mom makes us hot chocolate. She is upset because money is low again and the store hasn’t sold any of her knits. It starts to hail and Oscar who loves the rain and hail, goes out and starts collecting the big, frozen balls of hail in a pot. Mother orders him to come inside at once and pulls him by the ear.

  “How many times have I told you not to do that? You don’t have a strong constitution like your sister, and all we need is for you to get pneumonia again.”

  She is remembering no doubt, the time he got very sick with bronchitis, and she was told by a native that wrapping his chest with hot compresses of kerosene would do the trick, and he woke up hours later screaming with first degree burns on his body. She knows he has a weak chest and worries about his lungs. He helps her with her knitting because he has proven to be a very adept pupil, but she is afraid the fine dust the machine lifts will damage his health some day.

  She tried to teach me to knit a million times but I was a disaster from the beginning, so declaring me hopelessly incompetent she gave up, and now she doesn’t even bother me with household chores anymore because she says I peel the potatoes badly wasting most of them with the peel, and that I burned her only good pot. She doesn’t know what kind of future I’m going to have in this world when I can’t do anything right. She says I’ll have to marry a man older than me and be a princess like my aunt because otherwise I’ll be in big trouble.

  The truth is that I don’t try too hard to learn because I hate the hum drum noise her machine makes, and when I hate something my brain shuts down and I can’t follow directions. This makes me feel guilty because most of the chores fall to my brother but I’m good at collecting her wages from the store, and that has become my job.

  ~~~

  Sunday breaks sunny and mild and my uncle announces that we are going to the tennis club to take advantage of the good weather, so there won’t be a movie this afternoon. I feel happy and excited. I love going to the tennis club with him because it’s a beautiful place with manicured lawns, swimming pools, tennis courts and restaurants, one hour away from our house. It has great views of the rugged red mountains surroundi
ng that part of the region, and the most famous one by far is “La Muela del Diablo.” [“The devil’s tooth, it got its name because of a very distinctive peak that resembles a decayed molar”]. The teacher gave us these statistics when we came here recently with our class, and I learned that this mountain is also another dull volcano which had erupted a long time ago, dispersing enormous red rocks which are still visible only to the most intrepid climbers, way up in the mountain.

  The tennis club is only a few miles away from this mountain, and I feel proud that I am the only one in the group who has a relative that belongs to this exclusive club. I brag to the girls at school who don’t like me that I come here all the time, and delight in their jealousy. They don’t have to know that this is the world of my cousins, who could live here if they wanted to, and that I would have given anything to belong to that world, not merely as an occasional guest but as a full fledged member.

  We hail a cab to the club, and the sense of fun and anticipation starts from the moment we get into the car and I am sandwiched between Carlos and my uncle, while my aunt is sitting in the front with the driver, applying cream to her face and shielding herself from the sun with enormous sunglasses and a hat because she views the sun as her enemy and never lets it catch her unprepared.

  “None of my friends can come close to me when it comes to my skin, and that’s because since I was a little girl I have worn hats and sunglasses to protect myself, that’s what you have to do if you don’t want to end up prematurely wrinkled like my friend Clarissa Ascamón,” she tells me with disapproval, noticing I left the hat she gave me at home.

  But I’m not listening to her, the car is making sharp turns and my uncle is leaning on us, making it a game of who’s able to withstand the most pressure, with us always losing to him because he’s the biggest and the heaviest in the vehicle. We are laughing ourselves silly, and my aunt takes off her sunglasses, looks at us with irony for a second and says, “Cada loco con su tema.” [“To each his own”].