Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  She relives this ordeal every year, telling us that according to the Catholic faith this is a sin but the one who will pay in heaven is my aunt who wouldn’t allow him to have a decent wake even after everyone begged her. He died at thirty three years old just like Jesus Christ, and she has never gotten over it because despite the fact that they did not grow up together they were extremely close.

  “The ironic thing,” she says looking out of the window of the bus pensively. “Is that he did grow up with Sonia yet she never loved him, always preferred her precious cousin Eli. There’s something missing in my sister, something vital, indispensable because she’s not normal, a normal person loves her family first but not her, she grew up despising me and despising your Uncle Mario.”

  I don’t think any of us are normal but I don’t tell her that. I think a normal family has a father and a mother, and a normal child doesn’t grow up worrying about money all the time.

  “Life is so brutal,” she sighs as we get near the cemetery. “He got precisely what he never wanted, a sudden death. He thought that leaving the earth like a cloud, without a chance to say goodbye was the most terrible thing that could ever happen to a person. He wanted to die in bed, not necessarily of old age, but with plenty of time to say goodbye to his loved ones and he never got that wish.”

  “Why?” asks Oscar.

  “Because life is shit,” I answer.

  “Don’t get smart because I’ll smack you right here in front of everyone.”

  “I’m sorry, ma.”

  “La vida es una mierda, hija, pero yo solo puedo decirlo, entiendes?” [Life is shit, daughter, but only I can say it, is that understood?]

  “Yes.”

  “I earned the right to say it. When you earn the right to say it, you can say it too.”

  “Yes.”

  ~~~

  I don’t remember Uncle Mario, for I was too young when he died, but I know him through my mother who talks about him all the time. She is always saying your Uncle Mario would have said this and your Uncle Mario would have done that. She is always comparing him with Uncle Jorge who is his exact opposite in every way.

  “Tell us how he died again, ma?” asks Oscar, clutching my hand as we start going through dilapidated buildings, housing body after body in little boxes in this grim, horrible place we call cemetery which makes me quiver with fear because I can’t understand how a human being can ultimately be reduced to a little box like this.

  “On that last fateful day of his life, the city had decreed “toque de queda, hijo” [“curfew, son”] but against the wishes of his wife who begged him not to go out, your uncle risked his life by going to the drugstore to fill a prescription for his sons who had come down with bronchitis. Witnesses in the drugstore say he was smoking a cigarette outside pensively while he waited for the prescription when a stray bullet hit him, killing him instantly.”

  She pauses painfully. “It took the police days to retrieve his body from the foot of the mountain, and the task of identifying him in the morgue fell to me because his widow was hysterical and had to be sedated. Your Aunt Sonia took to her bed in a panic as usual and your Uncle Berto had to accompany me to the morgue, where holding onto to his arm to support my weak knees, I saw row after row of bodies unceremoniously piled up on top of each other for what seemed an eternity before finally noticing a hand sticking out from the bottom of a pile. “That’s him” I cried. “That’s his hand.”

  “Oh, ma, how horrible,” says Oscar covering his eyes dramatically.

  “He had beautiful, distinctive hands with long, elegant fingers like a pianist so I knew it was him right away.”

  “Oh, ma,” shudders, Oscar. “What did you do next?”

  “I fainted, and you uncle brought me to my feet and gave me the courage to continue.”

  Mother said that the bullet had entered his heart and the mountain had damaged his body, but his face had remained miraculously intact. She said the handsome features were still there for everyone to see – a dark, thick head of hair and long, thick eyebrows and eyelashes – a perfect, aristocratic nose and sensuous lips highlighted by a slim mustache he kept immaculate at all times. Only his deep brown eyes, which had once shone with such life, were now dead, glassy and she had closed them lovingly, fulfilling a promise she had made to him during happier times.

  “He was such a good looking man, a real Adonis,” says mother drying her tears. “They tormented him incessantly as a child because of his looks. Kids can be very cruel and very jealous. They insinuated mother slept with a foreigner, possibly an Arab because of those eyes. They called him a bastard, a reject of society and a sissy because he didn’t fit in. He looked like a movie star and they hated him, he brought out the worst in them. I got into so many fights defending him,” her voice trails off, and she is far away remembering.

  We finally locate the small, hardly perceptible gray case containing his remains in a corner of the last building in the upper left side of the wall, which mother says it’s the cheapest and the shoddiest in the cemetery. The way is dirty and muddy because of the recent rains and the wind is strong. “Su última morada” [“His last resting place”] she says crossing herself, “as humble a place as his life.”

  She prays and cries and we watch her quietly. She can’t afford to bring him flowers but she cleans the dust with a cloth so she can at least see his name. She is extremely disappointed in the children he gave his life for because they seem indifferent and cold and have forgotten all about their heroic father. “Asi es la vida” [“That’s life”] she says drying her tears. “Perhaps your aunt was right to slight them. I accepted them from the beginning and look what they do. They never come to visit their father and they never come to see me either, they’re ingrates, after all I did for them.”

  There is a small cross in the box containing his remains and under the cross the inscription, Mario Anaya, June 3, 1922 – May 15, 1955 – Martyr. The words for the revolution have faded and mother says that it’s just as well because he was a martyr in life and in death. She tells us that the irony of his life was that he was never a political person, yet the media adopted his story with screaming headlines after he died, making him a martyr for the revolution. His bitter widow let it stand feeling that it was a most accurate description.

  Mom says that due to his mocking nature and the fact that he abhorred politics, Uncle Mario would have gotten a big kick out of it. Mom had given the eulogy at the burial and there hadn’t been a dry eye in the crowd. She had also written a poem for him that had been published in the papers, and she kept the yellowing clipping in a small box under her bed.

  Mother says Uncle Mario suffered a lot as a child because nobody loved him. The aunts that raised him preferred my Aunt Sonia who looked like a little doll, right from the beginning. My grandma was too overwhelmed by her own problems to love anybody, so he was lonely and sad most of the time.

  “As an adult he covered up that sadness with easy laughter and an irreverent nature,” she says as we wait for the bus back home. “But he was basically a very sensitive man. You had to know him real well to know that because most of the time he was a clown with a great sense of humor and a genius for imitation.

  “Like you, mom,” I say remembering the times she makes laugh with her dead on imitations of Seňorita Clementina, my aunt, and other people in our lives.”

  “No, Vicky, that’s nothing. He was the talented one in the family. He would imitate the way your aunt walks and talks to perfection. He would sweep into our room pretending to be a dance instructor and carry me across the courtyard so we could do the waltz, the way he saw it in the movies. He would make fun of the English by playing with his Adam’s apple and putting on a stiff walk.”

  She smiles sadly and continues. “He had a boisterous voice and a raucous laughter that you couldn’t miss. He delighted on praying pranks on people, especially your Uncle Jorge, but he had a big heart and nobody but I understood that about him.”

  “Why do
people have to die, ma?”

  “That’s the law of life, Vicky. We’re all on borrowed time here, and we have to die to make room for other people.”

  “I never want you to die,” says Oscar, hugging her.

  She pats his head. “I hope it happens when you’re old enough to fend for yourself, son. I hope you never have to be an orphan.”

  I think about the mystery of death all the time and get depressed. Life doesn’t seem to make any sense if we are all going to die sooner or later. I had a friend at school that died suddenly, and it took me a long time to get over the shock. It didn’t seem possible that you could be here one minute and gone the next, but mother says we don’t leave this earth in chronological order. She says the minute you are born there is a date in the calendar of God already marked with your death number. I hope he made a mistake and forgot about me all together because I want to live forever.

  “Despite our different households as children,” says mother, riding back home. “We loved each other as though we were twins. He made me swear I would close his eyes if he went first, and he promised he would do the same for me. I’m very glad I was there for him, but I couldn’t get over his stillness, he had always been such a whirl of movement that I expected him to get up momentarily and startle me the way he did so many times before.”

  “His eyes were open?” asks Oscar, terrified.

  “We all die with our eyes open, son.”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind. You’re too young to know these things.”

  “How did Uncle Mario meet Elvira, ma?”

  “She owned a store in “calle Tumusla” [“Tumusla Street”] and he went there looking for bargains and met her there. My brother wasn’t known for his discriminating taste and he ended up with a big bargain alright.”

  “How come she is so cold when we go to see her?”

  “Because she thinks I’m like your aunt, and that I secretly despise her because she is of mixed race, Vicky.”

  I know Elvira Mamani is half Indian half white, and that Aunt Sonia refers to her as la “Chola,” who gave birth to two dark skinned boys she will never acknowledge as her nephews. I also know she is a fierce and dominating woman who takes no nonsense from anybody and that her two sons, and everyone she encounters, are afraid of her.

  “As painful as this is, I’m not surprised that a member of our family got killed during a revolution, because curfews and unrest are a way of life in our country,” says mother mordantly. “Since I was a little girl, I can’t remember a day when the government wasn’t being overthrown, bullets weren’t flying all over the place or the country wasn’t convulsed over some issue or another. The paralyzing general strikes, insurgencies and utter chaos are second nature to us, and we face them with resignation.”

  “Why is that, ma? Why don’t we fight back?”

  “We do, we have revolutions but nothing changes so we go back to the lethargic way we’re so used to living with. The papers and magazines exploit this inertia in their caricatures by portraying characters being hit by a myriad of disasters hardly reacting. The same goes for the endless lines to buy kerosene for our stoves, bred, sugar and the basic necessities of life. Inflation runs rampant from day to day, and schools and colleges are closed so frequently due to striking teachers and student’s protests, that it’s a miracle anyone gets an education in this country. It’s a miracle we all survive here, period.”

  “Was it like that in Oruro too, ma?”

  “It was worse in Oruro, child.”

  The bus gets very crowded and we’re happy we are sitting down because people begin fighting and shoving each other. The poor “Boletero” [“ticket seller”] is usually a boy a few years older than my brother who is in charge of making sure everyone pays their way and gets abused and sometimes shoved right out of the bus in the process. He has to go around screaming “boletos, boletos,” [“tickets, tickets”] and people treat him like an annoying fly. When the bus gets very crowded he has to hang outside and there have been many accidents and mishaps that have cost these Indian children their lives.

  He comes by us and we notice that his nose is running with green mucus and he dries it nonchalantly on his sleeve as he gives us change. He’s a scrawny little boy with dark skin that’s dry from too much exposure to the sun and wind, and short, unruly hair, who seems very intense about his job and is determined to find the “fare beaters.”

  He is wearing an alpaca sweater and the typical “alpargatas” [“open shoes, similar to sandals”] Indians wear in all kinds of weather, under long, dirty nails. There is a peculiar body smell about him and around his waist he has a belt that holds his tickets and change making funny little clinking noises as he passes.

  “Boletos,” yells my brother imitating his high pitch voice. “Show me your boletos.”

  Mother gives him a withering look and tells him never to make fun of anybody’s job, especially not someone as defenseless as this poor Indian kid whose miserly wages are surely keeping him from starving to death.

  ~~~

  It’s July 16 and it is time to go to the “Desfile de teas” [“Parade of torches”] in honor of our great patriot and martyr, Pedro Domingo Murillo. We’ll start at his house and then proceed to the center of town carrying torches that symbolize the flame of freedom he lit for all of us on July 16, 1809. He was captured and hanged by the Spaniards on January 29, 1810, but not before uttering the immortal words, “compatriotas yo muero pero la tea que dejo encendida nadie la apagará.” [“Compatriots I die but the flame I have lit nobody will extinguish”].

  He was a wealthy man of mixed race who gave up his life and privileged position in society to fight for our freedom. It’s a cold day but the sun is out and as we walk holding our torches, I try to imagine the scene at the gallows where he was murdered among many other patriots. I try to feel his terror as he was about to be hanged, and break into a sweat at the mere idea of it. I ask my friend Jenny Torres if she thinks he died quickly and didn’t suffer too much, but she says he was tortured before he died and he surely experienced a lot of pain. His house is now a museum and Jenny says it is hard to believe he gave up all that comfort for an idea. She whispers in my ear that she wouldn’t do it and I agree with her.

  Jenny is my best friend in the whole world. We have a lot in common because she is a tireless reader like me and we like to collect pictures of our favorite movie stars which we stick in a book with glue. Jenny is near sighted and wears thick glasses. She has brown, curly hair, a round face and puffy cheeks. She keeps to herself at school because kids call her a “four eyed chipmunk,” and inflate their cheeks as they see her coming. I am the giraffe, and she is the four eyed chipmunk, and we were drawn to each other from the beginning because we received so much abuse from the others.

  Jenny is short, heavy set and not very pretty but she is bright and sincere and I would rather be with her than anyone else at school because I can really talk to Jenny and she understands. Her whole family has poor eyesight and they all wear thick glasses. She tells me that her parent’s eyesight has deteriorated so much, they walk around bumping into walls despite the strongest prescriptions available in the market, and that they don’t go out much anymore because Jenny’s mother almost got killed by a car she didn’t see while crossing the street.

  Jenny tells me she reads like a maniac now because she is afraid her eyesight will fail someday too, and she will no longer be able to pick up a book. I try to reassure her that such a horrible thing will never happen to her, but she knows all the odds are against her and worries constantly.

  “What rotten luck,” she tells me, wistfully. “That my mother who was blind as a bat since childhood had to get together with my father who was even worse. There should be a law against it, look what they did to us children. I can’t remember a time when they didn’t call us four eyes and we didn’t wear magnified glasses, sometimes I think we were born wearing them.”

  Today I’m going to cheat by not going st
raight home because mother won’t know what time the parade ended. We get to Jenny’s house and I can see her family is inside by the windows below our feet that have all the lights on.

  “Mom is probably fixing lunch right now so we can’t take too long,” she tells me opening the big, white gate with a key.

  There’s a pebble courtyard where she has a table and chairs and that’s where we spend most of our time. She motions me to wait and quickly goes down to her apartment. The family lives in a big, dark basement with lots of rooms resembling the catacombs of Rome. Her rich uncle and his family live upstairs and they let Jenny’s parents live in the catacombs, rent free. They have a huge terrace upstairs so they hardly ever use the courtyard, except to go in and out of the property. Her situation reminds me of mine and that also makes me feel closer to her. I don’t know which is worse, my house or Jenny’s but at least she has a lot of rooms to disappear in when her parents fight, while I only have one.

  I take off my knapsack and search for the pictures of her favorite movie star, Liz Taylor. My aunt subscribes to Life Magazine and I’m always able to get wonderful pictures of my own idol, Marilyn Monroe there, but Jenny is very resourceful and often finds pictures of Marilyn that are not found anywhere else. I have two big pictures of Liz that I’m sure she is going to go crazy for, but I will only show her one to bait her. I will show her the one at the beach where she is wearing a white bathing suit and lounging in the sun. I will keep the one in the beautiful pink gown to trade her on another occasion.

  There’s no doubt that Liz is a beautiful woman but Marilyn is better. Jenny thinks Liz is the most beautiful woman in the world and I think Marilyn wins hands down, so we often get into long, heated arguments about it without any of us giving an inch, and that’s when I call her pig headed and storm out of her house, but we never stay mad at each other for too long. She comes back with a black and white picture of Marilyn playing the guitar with fishnet stockings, and another where she is smiling in a white dress. I pull out the picture of Liz at the beach and offer it to her in exchange for her two pictures.