American Visa (5 page)

“Honor doesn't mean anything here anymore. What matters is money. It doesn't matter if you earn it selling cocaine or renting out your rear end. The issue is getting a piece of the pie.”

“This was once a country of decent people.”

“The new money isn't clean, that's for sure. Is that why you're going?”

“I'm leaving because I'm washed up and I want to see my son and raise him so that he doesn't end up looking like me.”

“Your father, he was a great man,” Don Ambrosio said. “A poor but impeccable man. He didn't owe a cent to anybody and never refused to do a favor. You don't find people like that around here anymore.”

I was starting to look more and more like Humphrey Bogart from
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
. Don Ambrosio was removing locks of my hair furiously, like a sheep shearer.

“My father used to say you were the best basketball coach that Bolivian Railway ever had,” I said.

Don Ambrosio stopped cutting my hair. He smiled, obviously pleased. “Those were good times. Oruro was once a promising city: theater, good cafés, excellent brothels, and Slavs everywhere. The brothels were lounges with pianos, and the hookers used to wear long dresses. The money flowed back then. British pounds!”

The haircut I saw taking shape didn't bear the least resemblance to the one in the Spanish magazine. He gave me the same haircut all the half-breeds usually get, with a tacky part down the middle. It was actually more of a path than a part. The sides of my poor head resembled coca crops planted on a hillside.

“After the shave, you'll look like that Argentine singer Carlos Gardel,” Don Ambrosio said.

The shave felt like Turkish torture, not so much for my godfather's trembling hand, as for how dull the blade was. With each stroke, I felt my skin peel. All the scraping had left my chin the color of a carrot.

Even so, the face I saw in the mirror after that hazardous haircut looked ten years younger.

“How do you like it, godson? The visa's in the bag. Scent!” he shouted. “The kind we spray on the tourists.”

The short, fat helper shot me with a squirt of German cologne made between the first and second World Wars. I smelled like a cheap whore from a half-block away.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Not a cent. It was a pleasure. I did it in memory of your holy father.”

“Sensational!” declared the pot-bellied man, “When the boss puts his mind to it, no hand in the neighborhood is better.”

“You're missing something,” Don Ambrosio said. “Something . . . something . . . The gringos don't like handsome Latin men, they think they're going to screw all the blond women. They want them drowsy-looking. I've got the solution.”

He pushed open the front door again and spat without looking for the second time.

“The eyeglasses,” he said. “With these, it's a done deal, godson.”

He opened the drawer of one of the sideboards and proudly displayed a pair of round lenses with metal rims that exuded somnolence. He turned the armchair around and put them on me. I looked like a mountain-sick James Joyce.

“These glasses, my dear godson, have quite a history. I got them from a German man who used to come to me for his haircuts in the '50s. Back then, I rented a place on Comercio Street. The owner, a real bitch, kicked me out so she could open up a shoe store. This German guy was a wreck when he escaped from his country. Being a Nazi and all, the authorities wanted to jail him. He came over here with a few pieces of jewelry that he'd undoubtedly robbed from some Jews and set up a cake shop. He told me that in Berlin he'd worked in theater and he'd sometimes worn these glasses for fun. They're not prescription, just plain old glass. They go with your hair; they give you a serious look. What profession did you put down in your passport?”

“Businessman.”

“Not bad. If you had put down teacher, they would send you home right away. The gringos know what our poor educators earn.”

“I've got everything I need.”

“They pay attention to everything, and it's even worse now, what with the cocaine and all. They imagine that every one of us is carrying at least a hundred grams.” He looked at me, grinning. “Talk to them in English,” he advised. “That flatters them.”

“I know the bit I'm going to tell them by heart.”

“Before you leave, stop by if you need anything else; I'm not talking about money, because I'm broke. Cutting hair doesn't pay what it used to. Those damned peasants have moved here from their villages and set up hundreds of barber shops.”

He walked me over to a special mirror that looked like something straight out of a royal court. It was an almost magical mirror, one that retouched images. I looked more like a pharmaceutical salesman than I did Carlos Gardel.

“Good luck,” he said. “You want a beer?”

“Better not. If I start with one, I won't stop until two dozen.”

“What do you plan to do in North America?”

“Anything.”

“My little boy, Raúl, is in Chicago. He knows a lot of people. Earns eight dollars an hour selling telephone books.”

“A fortune!” I exclaimed.

“You've gotta have experience to work there.”

I looked at my godfather for the last time. He resembled a withered scarecrow: bony, yellow, with a bitter face and the unmistakable veneer of a hardened drinker. I shook his hand, left the shop, and hailed a taxi at Plaza Sucre. The driver was already taking a few passengers to the Finance Ministry and said he would leave me close to the consulate at the corner of Ayacucho and Potosí.

I arrived just before 10 in the morning, a chic time to see the gringos. I found the consulate in a run-down building. The line of visa applicants was gathering on the steps leading to the second floor and a pair of city policemen were busy cramming all the people together. Everybody seemed on edge; at least thirty people were pushing and shoving each other. A few were protesting the slowness of the line and others were waiting silently like obedient lambs.

I've always been good at tricking dumb people. I went up to the entrance with the pretext that I was carrying official correspondence. Once face-to-face with the policeman guarding the access to that sacrosanct consular delegation, I slipped him five pesos with the agility of a pickpocket. The policeman was confused and embarrassed, but he looked at me proudly and then indicated with a laconic head gesture that I should proceed. Next up was a second policeman who was seated behind a little table beside a rectangular wooden arch that served to detect metal objects: guns, knives, etc. The guy asked me the reason for my visit. I answered that I had come to apply for a tourist visa. He stared at me without batting an eyelid, holding the stolid expression of a Gurkha sentinel.

“Go ahead,” he said, indicating the metal detector.

I passed below that investigator of bad intentions without sounding off any alarm. Immediately, I went up to an American Marine wearing a spotless uniform who was asking for IDs from behind a glass window.

I handed him my ID. My pulse deviated from its normal rate and started to gallop nervously. The Marine, a handsome young man, shot me an emotionless glance with his deep-set blue eyes.

“Take a number and wait your turn,” he said in correct Spanish. My pulse raced like an astronaut's; it must have been about a hundred beats per minute. I discovered a vast carpeted waiting room, in which there were various rows of armchairs. All of the seats were filled and a number of people were standing. I obtained a number from a ticket machine: thirty-eight. I found a space to stand at the back of the waiting room near the windows through which the warm morning sun penetrated.

The visitors exchanged notes quietly, as if in a convent. The murmurs were an unmistakable sign that they were wetting their pants out of fear, and with reason. The three interviewers, two men and one woman, protected behind a wide desk, announced the numbers. They were at number fourteen. The two men were clearly American and the woman, young and attractive, looked Bolivian. I studied them thoroughly, as my fate was now in their hands. The one in the middle, who looked like the boss, was a well-built guy weighing about 220 pounds with a bull's neck and the thick head of an American football player. His round and tough-looking face was the prototype of the uncouth, kindhearted American. He was dressed appropriately, with a tweed jacket, white shirt, and bow tie. Everything about him gave off the impression of clinical asepsis. He didn't smile easily and maintained a certain distance as he conversed with the interviewees. He looked over the documents they gave him without much conviction and, depending on the case, either returned them or put them into a pile on a nearby desk. The second man was a non-Hispanic black, of pure African stock. Standing about 6'3", he had the body of an athlete. His shirtsleeves left exposed his long, wiry arms, which he waved around parsimoniously. His enormous hands shuffled through applicants' papers like two mas- sive crabs. He appeared to be a “shut up and obey” kind of official. Without being very friendly, his demeanor was polite. He had the face of a middle-class educated black man, eager to make a career as a public servant. He didn't speak much Spanish and whenever he couldn't think of the right word, he'd say it in English. I decided it would be better to talk to him than the burly white guy, who seemed shrewd and tricky. The woman, who looked slight and fragile, initially seemed the most reasonable, but as the minutes passed I noticed her inflexibility with the people she interrogated. In short, the most prudent strategy was to try to come across the black man and then to ingratiate myself with a little gab and some lies.

I endured the languid passing of time. Half an hour later they called number twenty-five and I was finally able to sit down in the back. My pulse was still off-kilter and I felt increasingly apprehensive. I began to notice intermittent wails coming from the other side of the room. Applicants for visas who didn't have their papers in order were sent to a confessional booth, where they tried to explain everything to the consul himself, who had the final say in the matter. About one in every three people was sent over to chat with the big boss. If he had any doubts about you,
ciao
—you were out on the streets. The consul wasn't physically impressive—he was chubby, seemed good-natured, and laughed often—however, upon finding the slightest defect in someone's papers, he became as rough and stubborn as a mule. He listened to my fellow countrymen's whimpering with the smug smile of a friendly policeman, but later, with the severity of a public prosecutor, he denied them tickets to paradise.

I was seated beside a woman in her twenties who was accompanied by her father. The girl was a bundle of nerves. She continually rubbed her hands together, wiped her nose as if she had a severe cold, and took her glasses off and put them back on every three seconds. Her father, a man in his fifties, was trying in vain to calm her. It was useless. The girl, staring straight ahead as if surveying a scaffold, seemed not to hear anything.

Her father said to her, “With the shares from the beer company, there won't be any problems. It's a lot of money and I have twenty thousand dollars right here with me. Don't be ridiculous. Besides, we have the deeds to our houses here with us. Calm down, you're even starting to make me nervous.”

The girl's mouth was dry and she was on the verge of crying. The Americans were strict when it came to your assets: proof of properties, current tax records, and checking accounts. I had everything I needed, but my documents were all forged. My only hope was that the consular officials would fall for the fraud. It wasn't impossible, I just needed the luck of a gypsy.

At 11:30 on that fateful morning, a suffocating heat prevailed. So many people and so much anxiety seemed to raise the temperature. The three consular employees drank coffee, chatted, and paced around, sweating, seeming ever less friendly. With the hours' passing, they began to look embittered and tired.

“Thirty-one,” announced the female interviewer.

The young woman at my side stood up and hesitantly lugged her pile of deeds and documents that would have sufficed to liberate a Jew from the hands of the SS. She stopped before the big-headed man with the tweed jacket and handed him her papers, then turned around to look at her father for encouragement. Her father smiled at her. The girl and the guy in tweed conversed for a few minutes, with the former responding timidly to the latter's interrogations. The torture didn't last long; the executioner seemed to be sick of interviewing. He had decided to shorten the questioning. The girl left gracefully and returned to her seat, looking satisfied. Her father happily kissed her on the cheek and asked, “What did he tell you?”

“He told me to come back in three days; they're going to verify everything.”

“Did you show him the shares from the beer company?”

“Yeah, that impressed him. I don't think there'll be any problems. He tried to confuse me, but I didn't let him.”

The color had returned to the girl's face. She said goodbye to me with a hint of a smile.

Verify the documents
, I thought.
What the hell is that about?
Trembling, I moved forward to the first row and settled into an empty armchair. That bit about the verifications was like a knife through my heart.
If they try to verify them, I'm screwed
.