Alice - Tuesday Morning
The mountains flared up, I never expected this, these mountains and then this
refreshment of liveliness again, like walking on joints and muscles you've
forgotten about, slowly more flexible. I strode out, well, I drove the
rented Toyota through a spacious plain dotted by wide-winged cedars. The
lanky American sat cramped beside me. Now I'd got the number of the lorries
and the smoking buses. Now I was driving high on a hogs back and the
horizon was rococo with mountains; to the north-west rose the huge
volcanoes Oh'lan, Vuhcapan and San Pablo. Fields hung on the line of the mountains,
powder dry, brown rugs pinned to the air.
Great pines clinging to the balded brows of
crags, their last tufts. Placemat fields still pencil-marked with charred
stumps. Verges eaten down by goats herded by princesses in azure and
pomegranate scarlet. Cheryl craned back out of the little car: "It's
so beautiful. So incredible."
She stuck her head out and waved back after
a herd of chestnut- coloured goats. The eleven year old in charge waved
shyly.
We passed a military base. At the gate a
colossal concrete steel helmet rested its chin on a pair of colossal
concrete army boots. Right or wrong, I thought of Northern Ireland: to have
averted my eyes from its dull violence, its occupying army, wasn't this
what the City people did here? On either side of the huge boots stretched
twelve foot high walls and there were two guard-towers, with a soldier in
each. Children chattered along the verge, some in gingham pinafores, some
in huipils and Mayan skirts. A freshly painted notice stood by the side
lane: LA LIBERTAD ES EN LA ALMA.
"Liberty is in the soul." Cheryl
told me though I didn't ask. "That's cool," she said dreamily,
"I'd go for that." She waved at the kids and they stopped dead
and stared.
"I've brought sandwiches and some beer." I draw in on the top
ridge. Chattering spine of trucks, stalls, handcarts, laughing people,
pigs, dogs, evil buses debouching people one way, engulfing people another
way, suitcases, bundles, sombreros, animal-embroidered huipils, chewing
gum, chemical drinks from the First World topped up with water from the
Third. Beyond all, the volcanoes.
"... Would you rather sit in one of
those bars?"
"Yeah, that'd be neat, we could eat
there, I don't suppose they'd mind if they're just selling drinks. I'm
starving. Alice, you're the worker around here, aren't you
starving?"
She hangs over me like a golden-leaved tree.
Wrinkled women are running towards us from the wayside stalls, humping
blankets, scarves and the twists of exuberant sashes over their stick
arms.
"No gracias no gracias."
Cheryl accepts a Pepsi, I have a light beer,
a Gallo. A red cock crows on the bottle. "Gallo means a cock?" I
ask her.
"A cock?" At last Cheryl flashes
real curiosity through her blue circles. "In England, doesn't that
mean. ..?"
"Um, I meant a rooster."
"Oh. I get you." She looks mildly
disappointed. "Cock equals rooster in Britain?"
"In English."
"OK, I know I'm just a dumb Californian
who speaks American." She says it happily.
"Not dumb, you speak Spanish like a
Latin American. Salud."
"Salud, Alice. It's in their election
too. Gallo is the President's picture. El General El Cock..."
The mountains are gracious and wicked and
the shy young woman out of the shack behind stands beaming with four
missing front teeth so that she has canines like Dracula. "Quiere
más?"
"I've been asking around, the mountains
are terrific, so high, sharp. I tried to climb but I couldn't get a guide
because of bandits on the trail. Last week an American woman was beaten up
and raped. Did you hear about it?"
"Oh dear. No. Er, so when did you start
your wanderings?"
"Two weeks ago. Spring Break. Flew to
Mexico City, then hiked and took the buses down here." She scruffs her
brown toes in the grit; their nails are neat and square. "No más,
gracias. ..The Tiotemalans are really sweet, nicer than the Mexicans,
really sweet." She shuts her eyes behind their owlish blue. "I
don't ever want to go home." She seems to doze.
Should I interrupt? At her age I was polite,
deferential - the day of Lester and revolt long disappeared. I was looking
forward just to a friendly chat, for heaven's sake.
"I do hope this is all right." Why
am I so ingratiating? I bring out the sandwiches: rolls and sausage. Lazily
she opens her eyes. The fanged young woman expostulates till it's
negotiated we buy more drinks. There is beer but I stay dry - the San
Miguel road is reputed all bends and I am nervous enough. Cheryl eats.
"Mmm." Behind her buses smoke, passing and repassing, grinding
down the forks either north-west to Lago Oh'lan or north-east to San
Miguel.
Not far along the verge a woman lies in the
grass with a tiny girl who languidly holds a chocolate brown piglet on a
string and allows it to push its nose in the bare earth.
My Angie left home last week and went to her
father's mistress.
Another bus growls up the hill from Santa
Cruz, stuffed with people and on top with enormous earthen water pots
cradled inside rope bags, and suitcases, crates, and an armchair over all,
its four legs raised stiffly as if after slaughter. At first it seems that
the bus is trailing numbers of pots and pans and kettles, because a great
noise clangs behind; as if the stuff that couldn't be squeezed onto the
roof has been attached to chains and left to take its chance. But then a
tank, its long grey-brown snout poking up from behind, at last bellows over
the brow of the hill and moves in parallel with the bus and stops in the
dead middle of the road, so that a jam begins to form in the opposite lane.
But the trucks, rickety or international and gigantic, sit there without a
hoot. Behind the tank an army truck draws up and soldiers jump out with
machine-guns. The officer sits above our heads, a large handsome young
mestizo sitting cross-legged across the gun turret. He sees me and Cheryl
and smiles amiably, then charmingly salutes us, bowing his head. My jaw
drops, I hope not into an answering smile. Cheryl calls, "Hi!"
She's stupid. My elbow grazes the money belt, fat under my flowery print
blouse. Roses are red, violets are blue, Miguel, Miguel, I love you.
Violets blue, roses red, Miguel, are you dead? For heaven's sake why should
he be? Charlie's hands clasp my waist.
The officer sits up with his hands on his hips,
smoking. A filthy plume is floating away from the bus' chimney exhaust. Six
or seven soldiers, moving their guns from side to side, advance on it. The
officer nods. Out of the bus at least forty people, old and young, babies
and old crippled people, young men in baseball caps, girls in their diamond
blouses and long skirts, descend one by one in silence. Silence up here,
all along the road. The soldiers wave the people back, and four of them mount
into the bus with their guns forward. A baby cries in the thin air, the
sound carries.
"What's going on?"
I heard shots yesterday at dawn. I heard
them, it was an unreported skirmish, except via the leaves of the trees in
the park. I touch the belt. It's there, stiff, scraping. And I was in the
post office standing a head taller than the Mayans queuing. Sent the
telegram to Miguel, whose throat he told us they've said they'll cut if he
goes on with his communist subversion. The young man who took the telegram
had a moustache; so has Miguel: his full lips are less pink, more of a pale
brown. In my kitchen, polite at my rusty Spanish. I shouldn't go to the
church steps. I won't go. But at least here at this very moment (though now
a coward, a tourist) I can be a witness to whatever is going to happen.
International observer. There's a funny taste of iron in my mouth.
The soldiers have disappeared into the bus,
the officer sits up and smokes while the sergeant makes the driver drag a
good third of the luggage on the roof down onto the verge. He hands down
the great water pots fast.
The bus says CHELÉ - LAGO OH'LAN - PIAXOLAK.
The soldiers jump out, now they are holding bundles of documents, they are
dealing them round to the old people, the women, the few youths; who take
them limply, eyes cast down. The whole hill falls silent. The guns are
pointing level into the crowd.
"I'll go see," Cheryl strides off.
She smiles down at the nearest soldier, "Hola". He stares through
her upper body. His finger on the machine-gun trigger releases something,
safety catch? Under his black beret his face is smooth, triangular. His
eyes flash their whites. The gun swings at her. I'm glued, my jaw glued
open. The officer waves his hand at the man and grins, the cigarette
waltzing in his large manicured hand. The soldier boy brings the thin black
tip round towards Cheryl, his eyes flash again.
Then the bus with a hoot and a black snort
swings down the Oh'lan road. The crowd standing by the roadside turns
inward quietly; The soldier rejoins the others and they all go back and
vanish into the truck. The people look sideways at Cheryl. And the tank has
gone off, gambolling, smashing our ears, the officer grins at me.
"Putas," he calls down; his teeth are white and perfect, and they
spread at me under the gold insignia of his cap.
She bends. She brings back a small badly
printed leaflet. Someone has trodden on it already, there is the dirt mark
of a bare sole.
"You could have got - " I jerk at
her.
She smiles airily. "Not very mature, I
guess." She pushes back her frizzy cloud of hair. "I wouldn't
have done time for anything as it turns out. All it says is - "
The leaflet begins TIOTEMALTECANOS!
CAMPESINOS!
"Gee, it's like school here,"
Cheryl pores over it, "YOUR ARMY SAYS, roughly, it says - don't get
drunk down at Lago Oh'lan, and your Army says, remember this is a tourist
area, act with the dignity of a true Tiotemaltecano, blah di blah di blah
and - hey, don't go swimming in the lake after dark, gee, I mean, I bet
it's what they were all just planning to do."
"Ready to go on?" I say brightly;
my heart smashing itself against the walls of my chest.
(© Judith Kazantzis,
from Of Love and Terror, 2002 Saqi Books, London)
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