American Visa (31 page)

I dozed off for half an hour. A heavy nosebleed woke me up. I wet my neck with water and managed to position my head off the edge of the bed, tilting it backwards, which stopped the nosebleed. Three additional painkillers kept my suffering under control until almost 9 in the evening. Around then, a raucous mêlée broke out at the hotel entrance. I heard the drunken voices of the half-breed landlady and her husband insulting each other. The tumult lasted a solid half-hour. It apparently ended with the woman locking him out in the street. Since the guy was still ranting and raving, the woman tossed a bucketful of urine on him from the balcony, which succeeded in quieting him down.

With the return of silence, that sad and anguished silence of the Andean plateau, the pain that had been momentarily held in check attacked me with intensity. I had never imagined that a beating could leave you so devastated, incapable of any movement. And that wasn't all; I became feverish. First came the chills and then my esophagus felt like a burning chimney. One hundred and four degrees? One hundred and five? I'll never know how high my fever was that night. I simply thought that my time was up, that the moment I'd been hoping for and fearing, that I'd seen as inevitable, had finally arrived. I decided to play my last card.

I swallowed the rest of the painkillers, more than twenty of them. I had enough time to pay my respects to the saints and the sinners, to Blanca and to Isabel, the unattainable one. It was a sinister and laughable fate to die alone in a rented room in El Alto, penniless, frustrated, and defeated. It couldn't be worse. When the half-breed lady found me cold, she would throw me to the hogs for sure. All for an American visa that in the end turned out to be fake.

“If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it, Alvarez,” as Don Antonio would say.

When I opened my eyelids, a Kafkaesque scene slowly became frighteningly real. I could see that I was in a room painted entirely white. Through the window, the sun shone with a blinding intensity. A strong smell of disinfectant pervaded the place. Opposite me, a fully dressed man had been laid to rest on top of a cot. Beside his bloody head, I made out a motorcycle helmet. One of the guy's arms was dangling off the side of the cot. In the far corner stood a sink and a small table. Under the table, a cat, which appeared to be suffering from terrible allergies, was scratching its back with zeal.

I thought I was delirious so I pinched my cheek. It worked. I was awake, in some sort of clinic. I felt my body up and down. I was almost naked, except for the black underpants covering my family jewels. Luckily, I hadn't been operated on; there weren't any signs of scars or incisions. The pain from the beating, the memory of which abruptly returned, had ceased. The only thing I felt was a kind of pleasant drowsiness. I was obviously under the influence of a sedative.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps. Clacking heels approached through what I gathered was a hallway. They stopped in front of the door. A few seconds later, a short nurse entered and came straight toward me. Her face was small, dark, and almost completely covered by enormous sunglasses. She smiled happily and declared, “It's about time you woke up.”

“Where am I?” I asked.

“In a clinic in El Alto. They brought you here the day before yesterday, in the afternoon. We thought you had poisoned yourself. We pumped your stomach. What made you sleep like that?”

“More than twenty painkillers. I was in a lot of pain.”

“Painkillers? Thank goodness. Up here there are people who take rat poison. Of course, they don't just fall asleep—they die.”

“And that guy on the stretcher?” I asked.

“He's dead. He was driving a motorcycle drunk when he crashed into the back of a truck. He forgot to put on his helmet; it was tied to the back of his seat.”

“He's really young.”

“Old people don't ride motorcycles.”

“Who brought me here?”

The nurse started to delicately wash the dead man's face with a sponge after freeing him from his leather jacket. “A young woman and a half-breed who said she was the owner of the place where you had been staying.”

“I feel great. What did they give me?”

“A shot of Demerol. You got the living daylights beaten out of you. I bet there were lots of them.”

“Four; they stole everything.”

“You were lucky. Usually, if they rob you, they kill you. How much did they take?”

“About a thousand dollars.”

She stopped cleaning up the motorcyclist and looked at me incredulously. “And what were you doing with a thousand dollars in that part of El Alto?”

“I missed my plane to the United States. I got drunk because I was upset.”

“You could have waited for the next flight.”

“It's a long, sad story; tragic and funny at the same time. I'd be better off dead.”

The nurse looked at me with a mother's tender gaze. “The young lady who brought you here doesn't think so. She cried her eyes out thinking that you were going to die. She was very happy when she heard you still have a lot of time left on earth.”

“What young lady? I don't know anyone in El Alto.”

“She seems to know you well. It's good to have someone like that at your side who loves you. Besides, she's very pretty. She'll be back in a few minutes. She went to the pharmacy to buy you some medicine.”

“Will I be able to leave?”

“Of course.”

“I don't even have money to pay for the medicine.”

“It doesn't cost much. You've got two broken ribs. I think she looked in your pockets, and when she didn't find anything she said she would cover it.” The nurse took the limp arm of the motorcyclist and placed it on top of his chest, forming a cross with the other. She then crossed herself and said: “Nobody has come for him since yesterday. But a thousand dollars! Are you telling me the truth or are you pulling my leg?”

“You have my word. Those bastards won the lottery.”

She smiled benevolently. “Are you going to report it?”

“Better to just forget about it. In any case, I won't get the money back.”

“The important thing is that you're alive. Your life isn't worth losing over a thousand lousy dollars,” she said.

At that moment Blanca arrived. Upon seeing me awake, her face lit up. I had never seen her so radiant. She greeted the nurse and approached my bed.

“Who told you?” I asked.

“The owner of the Primavera; she had written down that your previous address was the Hotel California. The manager's helper took the call and told us. Your friends say hi. Don Antonio wanted me to give you this book.”

The nurse was a witness to this affectionate encounter between a sentimental whore and a survivor. Had she been a priest, she would have married us on the spot.

“The visa was fake,” I said. “They beat the hell out of me. I've got nothing left.”

“You have me. That's not much, of course.” Blanca sat on the edge of the bed and kissed my lips as if they were part of some crystal palace. I choked up and shed a tear . . . That hadn't happened in a long time.

“You can take him with you, señorita,” the nurse said. “Sign some papers for me on your way out.” Turning to face me, she added, “The next time you come up to El Alto, stay away from the dump.” She left the room, but not before shooting an indifferent glance at the motorcyclist. “That guy's dead,” I said.

“I know,” Blanca responded.

I felt a kind of raw, unspoken love . . . the love of a poor sinner.

“You got yourself into quite a mess,” Blanca said.

“All for nothing. I don't even have clothes.”

“When we leave, we'll stop by a used clothing store. They have stuff from Switzerland that's good and cheap.”

“I don't have plans to go back to the Hotel California,” I said forcefully. “That would be too much.”

“We'll travel to my hometown,” she said. “I'm sick of Villa Fátima.

I want to go home. You're coming with me.”

“I don't need a visa?”

“Just goodwill.” She laughed and stroked my hair. “The truth is that I was glad you didn't leave.”

“Where were you on Friday?” I asked.

“Wandering around. I don't like goodbyes. I wasn't feeling well. I wanted to talk to you, but I knew it was hopeless. You were obsessed with that visa. Did you get over it?”

“By force,” I said. “What day is today?”

“Tuesday.”

“I was here for two days. How much did they charge you?”

“A hundred pesos.”

“I'll pay you back once we get to . . . to . . .”

“You don't want to go down to La Paz?”

“If we're going to travel somewhere, I'd rather wait for you here at the hotel. I paid for a week.”

Blanca stood quietly for a few moments, then said, “I can go to La Paz to get my things and my money from my savings account. It won't be a lot. I'm going to write a check and cash it at a bank in Riberalta. I'll look into whether it's possible to get a flight back home today on a cargo plane. In the meantime, buy yourself some clothes. I'll come back this afternoon, whether it's to travel today or sleep and then go tomorrow.”

Her idea made sense to me. I put on my pants and a shirt that she had bought me. I still didn't have shoes. We left the hospital, which was in La Ceja of El Alto. Blanca gave me fifty pesos for the clothes and then left on a bus for La Paz. Before parting ways, we kissed tenderly.

A couple of blocks ahead, in the middle of Tiwanacu Street, I stopped at a used clothing store. The place smelled like Swiss cheese, mothballs, and dirt. I bought myself a horrible, coffee-colored checkered jacket and a beige shirt, which had belonged to some Swiss farm boy, and a pair of shoes that had been around the world but were still usable. On my way out, I looked at myself in the mirror. Charlie Chaplin couldn't have made me laugh that much. The strain hurt my broken ribs.

I walked sluggishly down Avenida Antofagasta and arrived at the Primavera. The half-breed was startled to see me. To calm her down, I told her that I would leave that afternoon or the next day at the latest. “You stay out of trouble, sir,” she warned.

The dogs recognized me and accompanied me back to my old room. I lay down and mentally recapped everything I had been through in the past week. I had gone from being a poor visa reject to a wealthy killer, only to turn into a dud from El Alto. I had survived the most humiliating beating of my life and a simple peasant girl from Beni had rescued me and saved me from a schizophrenic future. That's destiny for you: It makes us win, it makes us lose, it gives us hope, it screws us over, it makes us happy, and it makes us see life for what it is.

Someone knocked on the door and I got up. It was the half-breed lady offering me a glass.

“This
chicha
just arrived from Tarata. It's ice cold,” she said, then left.

I drank the
chicha
, a cold and tasty balm. Then I took off my jacket and shoes and slept.

Around 2, Blanca returned with her luggage and two tickets to Riberalta on a cargo plane, an old DC3.

“When does it leave?” I asked.

“Tomorrow at 6:30 in the morning. It's a good time to fly. We'll have a stop-over in Trinidad. What do you think?”

“We'll get married in Riberalta. Isn't that what you want?”

“Aren't you still married to that woman who left you?”

“According to the law, I'm as free as a bird . . .”

She took off her clothes at the foot of the bed and got under the sheets. During the act of lovemaking, she called me several names, including “visa wannabe.” She was happy, and I was glad about that . . .

As for myself, I didn't know what to feel. But the girl had grown on me. She was returning to me the soul of my adolescence. I no longer had dreams, only Blanca.

I peered out the window: The City of the Future, and in the distance Mount Illimani, the majestic protector of the valley and the bedroom city of El Alto. In some way, I was now part of their misery, their hopes, and their humble people.

“I'm free—will you marry me?” I asked.

She laughed the way people do in eastern Bolivia, with that happiness that doesn't disappear even in the hardest of times.

“I think I'd like that, Don Mario.”

I imagined a child taking in the sun, bathing in a river, with the sincere and tender eyes of Blanca.

THE END

Afterword

Mario Alvarez may escape from La Paz a changed man, but has he exorcised his demons? Is this the end of his peripatetic existence? His restless imagination has spurred him to make hasty decisions before.
Un hombre cualquiera,
an everyman with a strong survival instinct, he now appears reconciled to his fate. But is he?

During the course of the novel, Alvarez proves to be a modern Raskolnikov. His moral dilemma pushes him to the edge. His plight is utterly Kafkaesque. Like Joseph K. in
The Castle,
he's lost in a labyrinth without exit, condemned to a miserable life. He might be a patient guy eager to uproot himself, but how many blows can he endure? Will the environment drive him mad? And is he fully aware of the extremes of his personality?