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Minefields Express
“Andrés, don’t throw this all away. Tell the driver to turn around. Come back so we can talk in peace and quiet,” José María said by cellphone.
“I’ll come back if the wise men can stay with me,” Vinueza answered.
“What wise men? What are you talking about, Andrés? Didn’t these wise men imprison you and beat you in some catacomb for three solid weeks?” José María responded impatiently.
“Only through suffering do we find truth.”
“Okay, okay,” José María said, trying to compose himself. “I’ll rent them a room, but come back right away.”
Once they were both at the check-in desk, José María took Andrés by the arm and led him toward the elevators.
“What about the blind men?” Vinueza protested.
“Someone will bring them up to a room right next to yours. Stop worrying about your blind men, and think about what to say to the Canadians. I don’t know whether your sudden candidacy is going to appeal to them.”
“Why not? It guarantees them a safe investment. Of course, now I can’t appear as a director of anything. How would you like to be General Manager of the Eagle Copper Corporation?”
Walking toward Room 802 alongside Vinueza, José María couldn’t hide his joy at this news.
“You know what bothers me? Just when you finally start to understand things, they go and change the rules on you,” Benito said.
“Not always, ñañito. Sometimes it takes so long to understand that, by the time you get it, the opportunity has already passed you by.
“Hmm, so we’ve always got something to blame ourselves for? You want water?”
“Don’t kid yourself, sweetie, I’ve got a friend who says that the trick is to be suicidal without killing yourself. Guilt isn’t always personal. Just ice, s’il vous plaît.”
There were seven men gathered in the room. Men accustomed to buying, marketing, trading, and selling. Right now, international markets decreed that the commodity of the moment was copper. It was scarce, indispensable, and offered enormous profits. Making a deal with a corrupt government was just the icing on the cake of an excellent investment—albeit a volatile one. Therefore, only those who could demonstrate perseverance, patience, and discipline could get the necessary backing. The necessary concessions.
“We’re delighted to find you in good health,” said the man in an impeccable sea-blue suit accessorized with red silk handkerchief and tie. He was six and a half feet tall and his voice projected authority. Vinueza accepted the expression of goodwill, nodding like an obedient employee, and went on listening. José María stepped away to answer his phone.
“We’re also very pleased to know that now we can formalize our agreement after the unfortunate delay.” He had no accent, but something about the way he shaped his lips around the words suggested Spanish was not his first language. “After your inopportune disappearance, that is. We’ve had to wait three weeks to move ahead on acquiring the land, but I’m sure that with your presence, everything will be resolved.”
“That’s what I’m here for, Señor Holmes, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m going to have the documents drawn up right away. You can consider the land purchases in Intag as good as done. I just want to double check the figure. Are we still talking about 300,000 acres?”
“To begin with, yes.” Holmes had cut the tip of his Romeo y Julieta, and the man alongside him held a lighter at the ready.
“You’ll understand that my name can’t appear in the company’s founding documents, although we’ll be shareholders through the holding company, of course.”
“José María and my legal advisor can work that out. I know you’re a man of your word.”
Vinueza had grown fond of old-fashioned expressions in recent days, and to think of himself as that kind of man was particularly satisfying. He reached out his hand.
“You have my word on it, you certainly do.”
A bellhop led the five blind men to their accommodations, where, after asking whether everything was to their taste and receiving neither reply nor tip, he closed the door and left them alone. They found themselves in one of the hotel’s four suites. In less than five minutes they managed to break all the lamps and decorations in the first room before moving on to the bath. There they admired the cool feel of the tile floor, and one of them found the spigot of the sink. They were startled by the warmth of the water that flowed out. When they found the bathtub control they opened it too, but once the initial surprise was past, they grew tired of standing up and putting their hands under the water, so they returned to the living room where some sat down in the scattered leather armchairs while others sprawled on the carpet, which they compared to the fleece of the llamas their ancestors had raised. They considered themselves well on their way toward their objective. Given their exhausting day, they soon feel asleep. What woke them was a knocking on the door—tentative at first, then more insistent.
“What is happening?” three of them said, moving their heads from side to side while the other two remained asleep.
The knocking stopped and footsteps filled the room.
“Don’t you know you’re flooding the place?” José María shouted at them, stepping over the men lying on the floor on his way to the bath, followed by several hotel staff with buckets and mops. When he came back, the cuffs of his pants were soaked, his face was red as a pepper, and his hands had formed into fists that wanted nothing more than to pound on his boss’s new pets. Only the need to keep Vinueza on his side for the time being made it possible for him to maintain his self-control. The hotel manager was standing in the door.
“Charge any damages to our account,” José María grumbled.
“We already have. But wouldn’t you like me to find the gentlemen another room? Here we’ll have to take up the carpet before the water sinks into the floor and destroys the ceiling of the room below.”
“Couldn’t you do that tomorrow? These gentlemen are extremely tired and weak, so moving them to another room now would be too much for their fragile state,” said José María, thinking that over his dead body were they going to charge him for another suite, on top of the damages to this one and its daily rate.
The manager hesitated but then agreed. José María stayed where he was until the staff had finished cleaning up. The blind men, meanwhile, had retired to the bedroom farthest from the bath and closed the door. When the cleaning was done, José María left without a word and took the elevator in order to join Vinueza and the Canadians. The formalities completed, they were gathered around the room’s mini-bar drinking Chivas Regal, and barely took notice of his arrival.
“My dear Andrés, I hope I may call you that?”
“Of course, Mr. Holmes.”
“Are you acquainted with Lao Tse?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“A font of wisdom. Do you know what he says about governing?”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
“In Book Sixty, he says that ruling a great kingdom is like frying fish.”
Since no answer was required, Vinueza took a long swallow of whiskey and nodded his agreement. José María thought this would be an opportune moment to interrupt.
“Andrés, could I speak with you for a minute?”
“Excuse me, Señor Holmes, I’ll be right with you.”
The two moved toward the door. José María recounted what had happened with the blind men.
“Go back and don’t move till I get there, I’m almost finished here,” Andrés ordered José María.
José María left and Vinueza headed back toward Holmes, who was speaking with a voice of authority that suggested some message was being delivered.
“True, true, in Plato’s First Alcibiades, Socrates stresses the need to know oneself in order to govern . . . Andrés, come on over, we’re discussing the challenges you’ll be confronting in the coming weeks.”
Holmes took André
s by the arm and drew him into the group.
Sun Yi was not one given to taking unnecessary risks, but ever since expelling her most recent client at heel-point, she’d felt trapped in the High Horse. She decided she needed fresh air to clear her head. She put on a jacket to head out for a walk, though she wasn’t sure of her location because she’d come directly from the airport in a taxi, and this was her first visit to the capital. Therefore, on the off chance of some unexpected difficulty, she put the box containing the fer-de-lance into her purse. That morning, due to an oversight, she had failed to milk the day’s venom. She decided it would be best to walk on the median strip that separated the two lanes of traffic on Naciones Unidas, practically devoid of traffic at this hour. The chilly night air felt good, so she decided to walk to the Atahualpa Stadium, which she recognized in the distance, rising like a sizeable gourd from the Parque Carolina. She had crossed the Avenida de los Shyris when a black SUV with tinted windows stopped a few yards from her. Feeling uneasy, she tightened her hold on her purse and decided she could do without seeing the stadium close up tonight. She turned around and began retracing her steps. The car followed suit.
“Son of bitch,” she whispered to herself, and decided she needed to change tactics if she were going to avoid becoming one more statistic of social disorder. Survival, she had learned, was all about adapting to circumstances. She walked to the edge of the median and waited for the car to come to her.
“And how might I be of service to the gentleman tonight?” she asked, leaning against the driver’s door with her elbow on the partly opened window.
She could barely make out the eyes of the man driving. Someone in the back seat said something, and the door opened.
“Wait a minute, I always make the deal first, before getting into any stranger’s car. About the monetary issues . . .”
At this point, Sun Yi remembered she was wearing slippers, sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and an old jacket, and had gathered her hair into a ponytail. Whoever had given the order to open the door wasn’t thinking about negotiating any deal. She changed tactics again and got in. She found a chubby man with tiny hands who told her she just needed to cooperate and nothing would happen to her and in the morning they’d let her go. She didn’t like the sound of that but decided to see where they were taking her before finding a way out. She didn’t have much time to think, because in less than five minutes they stopped in front of a hotel with golden doors, and the little man told her to follow him. Which she did, still remaining silent. She didn’t see anyone around to come to her aid, especially if the man was a guest here. Anyway, what could she say? That she’d been picked up on the street in the middle of the night and been brought to a luxury hotel? She followed him into the elevator.
“What do you want me to do? Tell me straight out, I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfying agreement.”
Silence was his only answer. The door opened and they walked down a hallway. They came to a room that, once inside, she could see was a disaster. Things strewn around the floor, carpets rolled up in the corners, and everything smelling like a trap. The little man told her to stay there, and disappeared down an inner hall. She used the opportunity to check the door, but it was locked. Soon the man returned and told her to follow him. They came to another room where a group of blind old men, half-dressed, were waiting. By now she had discarded every plan of action she’d turned over in her head, and she was starting to get quite nervous.
“What do they want?”
“Not much. Really, we could say it’s very little. An heir.” That’s what the little man said as he edged back toward the door.
“What? You’re going to leave me here? How long?” a worried Sun Yi asked as the men began to surround her.
“There’s been a change of plans. You can leave in nine months.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him.
“What??” Sun Yi’s cries echoed off the walls of the half-destroyed room.
XI
The Bottom of the Empty Glass
“Are you planning on moving in?”
“Are you throwing me out?”
“Not at all, sweetie. Let’s just say I’m asking because I don’t know your situation but I have to work and this bed is my office, so if you don’t get off of it I’ll have to go on welfare, and you know how things are in this country—those kinds of amenities just don’t exist.”
“But it would be so easy to just stay in your bed, you know?”
“Especially since we didn’t do everything we might have . . .”
“Ummm, are you going to throw that in my face again?”
“Admit it or not, the night was a little on the bizarre side. I’m not in the habit of rescuing guys who are drunk as a skunk before the cops pick them up, bringing them home, having them pass out and then get up in the middle of the night to start philosophizing and reciting poems.”
“But you know something about reciting yourself, let me try to remember it:
But what happens at the precise moment of giving birth?
What do we do
when it’s more Monday than Friday
when our veins are more than a gallows?”
“I told you, I spent my teenage years reading poems. What else could I do, knowing I had to become someone else? And my best friend is a poet. His name is Villalba. Everything I recite is his.”
“Where can I find his stuff?”
“I’ve got some loose pages and a bunch of napkins in an envelope, and my memory never fails me either. But books? Benito, darling, I think you’re still plastered. What country are you living in?”
“Okay, I’m leaving, but only if you memorize this and recite it to your friend the next time you see him.” The poet stood upright on the bed, very carefully seeking out the exact center and holding himself as stiffly as an orator. “Tell him it’s in his honor.”
No better disguise for the fierce than the pelt of the meek. He who rules through terror is his subjects’ slave. Only he who kills with love can command your life.
The poet’s saliva washes away the warrior’s blood,
but no one cleans the one who does not resist,
whose blood flows into the conscience and stifles the breath.
To be a lion is no easy thing, but it’s so much harder to be a lion if you’re a lamb.
The one watching from the chair by the night table stood and applauded and then walked toward the bed. The upper part of his face was made up with elaborate eye shadow, but below the nose everything was a pure act of will.
“In return, here’s one from Villalba to you. When I’m done, then, ciao ciao brown cow.”
The man who called himself Martirio smiled his most dazzling smile and moved his hands like castanets to perfectly accompany his words of farewell. Then he stretched out an arm so Benito could help him up onto the bed, and he waited for the poet to take a seat in the chair before beginning his recitation.
Everything is like a cry linked
to the type of music
in your veins
music of birds
of a feather
winged fairies with cocks in hand
like me,
slipping into another morning
once more bent and broken
5:30 in my ear
the cylinder spinning
bullets in the chamber:
these fatal memories
of butterflies and ugly christs,
when did all this happen?
but I unwind
and go on unwinding
far from the rendezvous.
What happened? How many
boys and girls sacrificed their retinas
for just a momentary glimpse of you,
just the sight of you,
it’s your hand,
an infinite sacrilege
but it sounds the alarm
and this sonofabitch dawn is worse than a dagger,
the booze still running
like a r
ing of fire
down my throat
and in spite of the warning
when there was still
time to waste
“Listen, guys, we’ve got to get organized. This way is never going to work.”
Sun Yi had judged that she could turn the tide in her favor if she took charge of what was going to ensue. After all, no one had stayed to oversee things, and here she was in a room with a group of decrepit old men who were blind to top it off. For once, she had figured wrong, but luckily for her, not completely. The blind men were fossils but they were determined and they had her outnumbered five to one. All that she had in her favor was that none of them could get an erection. They tried but they couldn’t, and since she had no idea what was going on, she devoted what time she had to thinking about how she could get out of there. It wouldn’t be that hard, she just had to create some kind of distraction and then call the front desk and say, as calmly as she could manage, that her door wasn’t working and she needed someone to open it. Someone would come and she’d walk out, as simple as that. She didn’t take immediate action because the blind men seemed fairly confused and disoriented, but then her luck ran out. They grabbed her by the arms and legs and laid her down on the floor and began tearing her clothes to shreds. She hadn’t let go of her purse all night, and now with the men’s naked, ruined bodies all over her, she decided things had gone too far and she pulled the box holding the fer-de-lance from her purse. She rolled on the carpet and unhooked the top of the box to let the viper drop onto the sunken belly of one of the blind men. The viper did not slither very far, because, feeling herself threatened, she sank her teeth into the first protuberance she found, which was the limp member of one of the men. The scream that came out of his toothless mouth scorched the nerves of his comrades who crawled toward him to try to help. The scream must have penetrated into the corridor because almost immediately the door opened and Vinueza came in. Sun Yi dashed out, half dressed. She took one look back inside before disappearing for good, and what she saw was a bruised and trembling patriarch dying in the arms of the little man. She decided, while vanishing down the nearby streets in the first light of day, that city life was not for her. She would take the first bus that left the station in the direction of Salango, not even going back to Quevedo. She’d rather help her family with the fishing than get involved in the kind of dark doings that had unfolded, one after another, since she’d come to the capital. Her faith in Dale Carnegie had grown weaker and weaker since she’d found herself in need of putting it to the test.
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