Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  “He seems to be a character straight out of the Stone Age,” says mother watching for him. “I’m afraid I would be too complicated for him. He needs a simple, unsophisticated soul.”

  “I bet you he doesn’t drink like Gustavo, though. He only had two beers and he was done with them.”

  “Probably not, he works six days a week and puts on long hours, he couldn’t do that if he drank like Gustavo, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”

  Juán returns and takes us back home. “I would let you in,” says mother at the door. “But the rooms are a mess, we haven’t had time to clean them working six days a week.”

  “I understand,” he says yawning and scratching his head. “I’m awfully tired anyway. See you tomorrow.”

  Mother closes the door after him with relief. “He’ll be easy to get rid of,” she says. “I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “How can you tell, ma?”

  “He didn’t insist at all, I think he’s very proud.”

  “Why did you say “rooms,” ma?” asks Oscar with mischief. “Last time I looked we only had one room.”

  “Don’t be smart,” she says giving him “un cocacho.” [“A tap on the head usually with a closed fist”]. We don’t have to flaunt our poverty to the world.”

  ~~~

  We pray daily for the bakery job to become permanent for us. It’s so gratifying to see mother relaxed, conversing with customers, laughing with Juán, that we allow ourselves to daydream. One day I become quite daring and ask him what kind of worker is Alicia, and how long she’s been at the bakery. He makes a funny grin and asks me if I have any ulterior motives for asking, and when I blush he takes pity on me and says she is actually a lousy worker, lazy and ill tempered, but he can do nothing about it because she is related to the owner. When I tell mother what I did she is furious, saying that she would never repay a kindness with a knife in the back, and she takes the trouble of explaining it to Juán in front of me so he wouldn’t believe she had put me up to it.

  “I don’t know why she’s always scheming,” she says looking at me reproachfully. “I don’t know what gets into her at times; she’s never satisfied with anything, she’s the most difficult of all my children.”

  Rolling his dough he smiles at us and tells us that he doesn’t think it would be a bad idea because he can’t stand the bitch anyway, and would be glad to get rid of her, but the owner would never fire her even if he demanded it, because blood is thicker than water.

  “I have power over him because I’m the best baker in town, but there are limits, and I’m afraid that firing his useless cousin is beyond the pale as far as he’s concerned.”

  “So you two don’t get along?” asks mother, incredulously. “Alicia is so quiet, so soft spoken that I’ve never known her to have any enemies.”

  “You’re looking at one right now. I hate her guts and she hates mine so she stays on her side of the street and I stay on mine, and that’s the only way we can survive.”

  “Well, I know she’s a little pretentious,” says mother. “She likes to dress stylishly; she had her eyebrows done…”

  “She should have had her head done because “mono vestido de seda mono se queda.” [“A monkey dressed in silk is still a monkey”].

  Mom laughs, and he says the bakery is a happier place without her and everyone knows it, but the old man will never fire her and she’ll never quit because it’s a cushy job, and she doesn’t do anything.

  “She’s always been a moody person,” observes mother. “But I’m surprised she has a bad attitude on the job - but that’s the way it is in this country, you have to know somebody to get a job and you have to be related to somebody to be able to keep it.”

  “Maybe she won’t come back,” says Juán. “Maybe she’ll die in childbirth or something.”

  “Oh, Juán, don’t even joke like that, that’s not funny.”

  ~~~

  “Why is life so unfair?” says mother going home with a wistful expression. “If I had her job I would be so grateful. I would get along with the baker and wouldn’t mistreat the customers, but Alicia doesn’t know the meaning of need, she’s always had someone to back her up.”

  “Let’s light a candle to St. Jude,” says Oscar passing by the church. “If anybody can pull a miracle he can.”

  “Yeah, and with what money are we going to buy the candles and give the donation to the church, smartass?”

  “I was only kidding, ma. We could pray to him in our hearts.”

  “Good luck,” she says huffing on the way to our home. Time is running out and she dreads going back to her knitting full time, I see in her face, I read it in her eyes.

  “Something else will come along,” I say to her gently. “Let’s have faith.”

  “That’s what I tell myself every day to keep going,” she says throwing her coat onto the bed and crying. “But nothing ever changes for us.”

  That night she sleeps badly, I hear her tossing and turning all night, and the next day she has circles under her eyes. Alicia is coming back in two weeks and she’s already feeling the pain. Oscar and I brace ourselves for the customary hard times. No more free pastries, no more loafs of bread from Juán, no more carefree times. He has stopped taking us out because mom has told him “her husband is working in Argentina,” and he has gotten the message, but he’s friendly and talkative as usual, and still seems attached to us, only in a different way. There is a reserve about him now that wasn’t there before. I feel bad because I like him; he seems to have a heart as big as his frame and has been very good to us, but mother doesn’t like him “that way” and there’s nothing to be done about it.

  I wonder if I’m ever going to like anyone “that way” when I grow up. I’ve seen so much trouble with relationships that I think I will never allow myself to like anyone “that way.” Laura is still unhappy and she’s always running to my aunt’s house with her gripes against her husband. She tells my aunt she wasted the best years of her life on a poor provider when she could have had lots of men with a lot more ambition who would have done everything for her. She is so miserable she has taken up smoking and says her life is nothing but drudgery. She adores her three children but they are a lot of work, and they have to rely on a part time maid because he doesn’t make enough to pay for full time service.

  My aunt tells her not to feel bad because she married the love of her life and not many people are that lucky. She says she would change it all for a more solvent man now, but my aunt says she doesn’t mean it, because if he didn’t come to get her every time they had a fight she would go crazy. Laura lowers her face and dries a tear.

  “I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.”

  “Don’t make romance Laura, the time for that is over. Let him come over and work out your problems.”

  Moments later her husband arrives and they embrace in the living room quietly. Intense emotions register in their faces and after going over their problems with my aunt for awhile, they leave together holding hands.

  “Laura should have never gotten married,” says my aunt ironically. “She doesn’t want to be a wife; she wants to be a mistress, that’s her entire problem in a nutshell, because there is really nothing wrong with her husband.”

  “But she has such a nice apartment,” I say puzzled, because I’ve seen her place a few times when my aunt sent me there on errands, and it always looked beautiful and immaculate. “I don’t understand the fuss about the maid.”

  She utters a big laugh. “It has nothing to do with her apartment, or the part time maid or the kitchen being too small. You’re too young to understand it now; in another ten years or so you will know exactly what I mean.”

  But I understand a lot more than she thinks I do, and already think that relationships are extremely complicated and cause a lot of pain, and maybe that’s why I prefer my relationships with animals. The truth is that I feel a sense of despondency about the future which is very pernicious and
hard to overcome. What is the use killing myself studying when I may never amount to anything with a government so unstable it’s always on the verge of collapsing, and with an economy that’s always in ruins despite our rich natural resources?

  Mother says Bolivia is rich, we have petroleum, gas, zinc, ore, tungsten and rubber in abundance, plus more forests than we can count, but we have the most corrupt government in the world, and the wealth is distributed among “cuatro gatos corrompidos” [“four corrupted cats”] while the rest of us go hungry and live at poverty level. Mother says there are no heroes in Bolivia, and no matter who inhabits “El Palacio Quemado” is the same “mono con diferente pollera,” [“same monkey with a different skirt”] interested only in lining his pockets and robbing the country blind.

  My aunt shares mother’s sense of doom that nothing will ever change in our country, so I don’t see what’s the use of studying or learning about the world, when I will probably spend the rest of my days worrying about money the way mom does. I envy my friend Jenny who has a clear plan for the future, to get married and have two children. I don’t want any of those things. I just want to be free because when you live day after day tormented about money, you don’t have freedom. In another year I’ll be finished with primary and will have to go to secondary school and then what? I can’t get over the sense of hopelessness and sadness that sweeps over me when I think about getting older and nothing changing, nothing improving, feeling as trapped as a dog chasing its tail in the same spot over and over endlessly.

  ~~~

  One day, during one of our midweek walks with Uncle Berto, I finally gather the courage to ask him how come he had never gotten my mother a job in his office.

  “She is so happy with her job at the bakery because it’s steady income, unlike knitting which depends on whether she sells her knits or not,” I say to him, reddening. “It would have made all the difference in our lives if she had been able to get permanent income like that.”

  He looks at me with a puzzled expression and says he had offered to get her something, but my aunt was opposed to it, feeling that it would be viewed as nepotism, and that my mother was so unreliable and unskilled, she was bound to make him look bad.

  “What’s nepotism?”

  “It is favoritism shown to relatives, Vicky, and every company discourages it.”

  “She is not unreliable, Uncle Berto. She kills herself working all the time. She would have never made you look bad.”

  His face tightens. “I tried, Vicky, I really tried but your aunt was adamant.”

  Somehow I had suspected it and he had just confirmed it. Something in my heart sours at the realization that my aunt had been the culprit of our misfortune, and things would have been very different for us if she hadn’t always felt that way. I walk back home reliving our coming to La Paz, my mom leaving the security of her job in Oruro, only to be abandoned by my aunt here. Tears roll down my eyes remembering the years of agony I saw her go through, years during which she cursed my aunt and my paternal grandmother who had ruined her marriage and her life, and I had never really understood any of it, but I understand it now and feel a deep sadness for her.

  I want to take her in my arms and show her that I understand. I want to tell her that I know now why she lashes out at us when things don’t go right. I want to help her, to bring back the smile on her face and the song in her heart as it was when she was first working in the bakery and not dreading Alicia’s return. I want to tell my aunt that I know the truth now and that I’ll never believe anything she says anymore, but I know that I’ll do nothing of the sort when I see her.

  Out of fear I’ll act like nothing happened, and when I see mother I won’t be able to tell her any of the things that are in my heart either. I won’t tell her the conversation with my uncle, and I won’t hug and tell her I love her. I don’t know why but I have all these feelings bottled up inside of me that I can’t express. I see mother bent over her knitting machine till late at night after working all day in the bakery, and I want to reach out and tell her that some day I will put food on the table and she won’t have to struggle so much anymore but something always stops me, immobilizing me and I just turn my head away and wrap the blankets over my head to drown out the noise of her machine and the sight of her tense, tired face. I understand that’s the reason she calls me “the indolent one” and thinks I don’t have a heart but I can’t help it. I’m made a certain way and I can’t change it.

  At times like this I wonder what would have happened if my father had loved us, if he hadn’t betrayed us, if he hadn’t taken his mother’s side against mother during the divorce. Mother had said many times that whenever I suffer physically and mentally I should blame my grandmother, that horrible woman who had made mother’s life hell for the brief year she was married, but something inside of me blames my father, the person who never acknowledged me, never tried to know me, the person who has written me out of his life as though I had never existed. Mother says he got himself a whole new family and we were history, but I couldn’t even replace Bello in my heart when he went missing, how could you possibly replace your own child?

  This is so hard for me to fathom that I try never to think about it, never to analyze it but it comes around like a sneaky wave at times and I have to struggle not to give in to it, not to constantly wonder why my father doesn’t love me. I see what it does to Oscar when he starts wondering about his own father, especially when mother hits him unfairly and he feels he has nobody to defend him, and I don’t want to get depressed like that.

  “When I grow up I’ll never desert my children,” he tells me with conviction. “I’ll never do to them any of the things my father did to me. I’ll stay with them till the day I die.”

  At least he knows he wants to get married and have children. I only know I want to go to America, the land of my dreams. I don’t even dream of London or Spain like my brother does, I want to go to America. Will I ever get there? It seems to be such an impossible dream. I envy my cousin Ramiro with all my heart, he got a scholarship playing tennis and he left for Texas a few weeks ago. My Uncle Jorge is already there too because my aunt sent him a year ago, and she is very pleased her son will have a close relative in America.

  ~~~

  The house was in an uproar with the preparations for months and everyone was very happy for Ramiro, including my aunt, who reckoned America will be the medicine that will finally make him grow up. I told mother about it and she tried to console me, saying that if it was meant to be for me, it would happen some day.

  “How is it going to happen?” I asked, hotly. “I don’t play tennis, I can’t even hold a racket and nobody is ever going to give me a scholarship.”

  Before he left for America, Ramiro surprised me by coming to see mother at our new address. He showed up wearing a yellow cardigan and tailored pants with brown moccasins. He looked handsome and happy, and he even managed a coy smile for me. Mother was delighted to see him and received him warmly. He kidded her about our street saying that she could have chosen a better name than “Pasos Kanki.” Mother explained that it meant (Steps of the Devil) in Quechua, and that the street did justice to its name. He laughed and said he couldn’t argue with that, and she told him she was going to miss him.

  “Then you’ll be the only one, Aunt María, I overheard my mother and father this morning saying that if this didn’t happen, they were going to have to send me to the army to get rid of me.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh, they meant it, alright, but it really doesn’t matter. I’m very happy to get rid of them too.”

  She shook her head. “Did my sister instigate the conversation?”

  “Yes, but he went along with it, the way he always does.”

  “You mustn’t take this seriously, Ramiro, I’m sure they’re both going to miss you very much.”

  “I wouldn’t bet any money in it.”

  She embraced him and he returned the embrace lingeri
ng in her arms.

  “Wait, I want to take a good look at you. You’re getting handsomer by the minute. I hope we see each other again, Ramiro.”

  “Of course we will.”

  “So many things could happen…”

  “Nothing is going to happen, Aunt María. I’ll be back or you’ll go there, we both have a lot of time ahead of us.”

  She smiled, making a sign of the cross over him. “God bless you, Ramiro. I have loved you like a son; you know that, don’t you?”

  His expression was perturbed, emotional. “Do you know how many times I have wondered why you couldn’t have been my real mother, and why my father had to marry the wrong sister?”

  She smiled sadly and said “Los diseňos de la vida, hijo]. [“The designs of life, son”]. There is one thing I really want you to do for me though.”

  “Anything Aunt Maria, just ask it.”

  “Let go of the rancor you feel towards your mother, don’t live your life that way. She’s made mistakes but she basically grew up without a mother and father. You have the advantages of a wonderful father and a stable home, forgive her, and realize where the deficiencies are coming from. Don’t nurse your grudges like she did, for the four lousy minutes we happen to live, it’s not worth it, Ramiro, you’ll be a lot happier in this world if you learn to forgive people’s imperfections, that’s my parting gift to you, those simple words taught to me by a lifetime of suffering.”

  He lowered his head and wept, exposing the vulnerabilities he had always covered so well with a mask of invincibility and cynicism that I was shocked to see he was capable of true sentiment. She cradled his head and kissed him. There was genuine affection between them, but I had never been able to understand it before this moment. To me, he had always been cold, cruel and indifferent but my mother saw him differently. Watching him dissolve at her words, I liked him for the first time in my life, perhaps he wasn’t the sadistic monster that haunted my dreams, but a lonely, sad person taking refuge in her. I was sick with envy he was going to America so effortlessly, however. I wanted to get into his luggage and make the great change in my life once and for all.