No Safeguards (20 page)

It's pleasant being in Costa Rica. People here are poor but dignified and except for Coca-Cola in San Jose, I feel safe in most areas. Unlike in Belize and Honduras, where the price for everything triples and quadruples once they identify you as a foreigner, I
never feel anyone here is trying to gyp me. I wonder how long Ticans would remain like this.

Tomorrow I head back to San Jose, and in two or three days I should be in Guatemala. My health is holding so far. I use my puffer a great deal at times and at times hardly at all, depending on where I am and how much dust or pollen is in the air. I've had to use my EpiPen only once.

Oh, yes. The birds here. My old passion. My Cahuita landlord was fascinated by all the time I spent watching the tanagers — in blue, red, and mixtures of yellow, grey black, etc.: four sub-species, six different plumages — feasting on the fruit he puts out for them. What a richness of species! And the plumage! But for my frail
lungs, I'd become an ornithologist. I never weary of watching them.
To date, across Costa Rica, I have seen 47 species or subspecies for the first time. I keep a bird chart to help me identify them.

I'm thinking more and more that, when I return, I should seriously consider writing. I wonder if I could convince Ma to release that $40,000. After all, writing fulltime is like attending university. Don't you agree? I would need that money long before I'm thirty because when I return I plan to be fully fledged.

One love,

Paul

It was some three months later that his Guatemala letter arrived.

Antigua, Guatemala

August 12, 2005

Dear Bro,

Sorry about the delay since my last letter. I've been busy learning Spanish and not much more. My money is almost all gone. I'm tempted to beg for some of yours. In fact, I'll have no choice. I've already sold my laptop. My binoculars and camera will be next.

Man, I thought Costa Rica was lovely (I mean physically lovely), but that's because I hadn't seen Guatemala. A pity they don't know better than to litter their highways and landscape with garbage. Do you know what it is to wake up every day fronting a perfectly conical volcano — Agua — in all its majesty! In the morning I go walking — up a hill from which I am able to see the steam rising from Fuego, a perpetually erupting volcano. Antigua is in a lake bed at the foot of three volcanoes. I hope none does any serious erupting while I'm here.

I've done a weekend trip to Tikal. Guess what? A monkey pissed on me there. The forest there abounds in wild turkey and quetzals whose plumes were once reserved for royal personages.

Yes, I had the chance to compare the Mayan sites at Copán and Tikal. I can't say which is better. Just that I don't know how Europeans can say that these people were primitive. At the Anthropological Museum in Guatemala City, there are tablets of their hieroglyphs along with a wealth of artefacts. Of course, there are
lessons to be learnt too. What made their civilization great was also
what destroyed it. One hypothesis is that they wreaked ecological havoc when they cut down the trees to feed the expanding city.

I've also visited the Western highlands — the city of Quetzaltenango — and saw some of the most stunning scenery ever. I was there a Sunday when a whole posse of people, men and women dressed in black, emerged from a church carrying what I can only call a mini island. There must have been a hundred or more people all dressed in black carrying the damn
thing on their shoulders. A marching band led them. It had a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary, one of Christ, one of John-Paul II, and a huge cross. All arranged with stones and shrubbery to form a landscape kind of. Guess you could call it an island of belief on human pillars. I've since learned that it's called
una anda
(whatever the hell that means, something to do with walking). Here you see that religion is indeed a burden. A burden people here take seriously. As seriously as Sisyphus his boulder. And I can see why. Most possess nothing else. Perhaps the burden is ballast.
(
Existential ballast. I've just finished reading Camus'
Myth of Sisyphus)
.

I know you know some Spanish, so I'm trying out my newly
learned Spanish on you. ¿Cómo son tus cursos? Es posible que estés
preparando tus exámenes. ¿Y Jonathan? Ahora que sea posible ¿Cuándo será el matrimonio? Espero que me invites. Pero, tienes que comprarme mi vestido. Porque ahora, estoy pobrísimo.

Enough of that. There's so much to tell you about Guatemala. This must be one of the most dangerous countries on the planet. I fear going to Guatemala City alone, afraid I would get robbed. Here they hold up buses constantly, rob all the passengers, and shoot dead any who resist. Here human life is cheap. I stay on because it's inexpensive to live and study here, if one follows the lead of the locals. It looks like the entire city of Antigua depends on its Spanish language schools
,
some 75 of them, a teacher per student. Whole families live off the room and board they receive from students; there's a travel agency on every corner offering tours to everywhere and to everything; every coffee farm expects you to visit — for a fee of course — and of course the schools are in collusion. If you don't watch it, you spend more time on dubious local tours than studying Spanish, but after a couple of weeks the serious students catch on. And you should see the large number of restaurants filled with foreign students, their prices closer to New York's than Guatemala's. Many of the ruins left over from earthquakes have been preserved. To visit them one pays of course.

The streets are of uncemented cobblestones. Much of the ancient colonial architecture is preserved here. (In fact, the city is a UNESCO World Heritage site). And the yard of every house is entered from a locked gate. There's a solid wall from one street corner to the other. You cannot see into anyone's yard or around anyone's house, giving the impression that every house is a fortress. One disadvantage of this is that the streets are like tunnels that trap vehicle exhaust — of which there's plenty. Vehicles here are poorly maintained. They emit thick, oily, black diesel smoke. It's a challenge for me to breathe in these streets. There are some areas I avoid completely, if I don't want to cough up my lungs. Like the bus terminus, which, unfortunately, is beside the market; there fruits are abundant and cheap, but because of the choking air, I'm forced to buy my fruits at the supermarket.

As you would have already surmised, I'm keeping a detailed journal. I plan to use it when I come back and try my hand at writing. How about these entries?

Observing the volcanoes sentinelling Lake Atitlán, I think of the grandiose in nature but also of its destructive forces that we flee from or surrender to, depending. To the extent that we carry parallel forces within us, my question is: How do we deal with them? Etc.

This lake, Atitlán — its grandeur and splendour — makes me think of God in the way early humanity, without the benefit of science, would. Here, people's religion isn't far removed from that. In Antigua, my landlady went to mass daily and believed that tracing the sign of the cross on her grandchildren's forehead would protect them from danger when they're outside the house. It's pathetic to see how people are too stupid or too lazy to discover God for themselves — if they need God. In any event, like Grama, I believe that God is everywhere, is inseparable from phenomena, and is eternal only in the sense that phenomena are or aren't eternal . . .

Here, as elsewhere in the developing world, missionaries are busy saving souls because it's easier and cheaper than saving bodies. The conquistadors and their successors raped the indigenous populations of their land and material treasures to build their European and Euro-American empires. They laid an impregnable base that has completely deformed the psyche of Third Worlders. Now the descendants of those made wealthy through rapine are busy saving souls and protecting wealth, and further impoverishing Third-Worlders for American, Asian, European, and their own interests . . .

Here, no doubt, there must be the dignified poor. I'd love to meet them. Today I met a Mayan girl selling trinkets — she looks twelve but is really sixteen or seventeen — who was fascinated by my beard, and wanted to fondle it. I gave her a quetzal. She wanted to give me a necklace, and I hope nothing else . . .

The family I stay with, who live six in two rooms in their four-room rented flat (one room's for the boarder who pays the rent, the other for the boarder who pays for the family's food and other bills), has concluded that dignity's too expensive to preserve. They beg and borrow from the boarders, and hope that what's borrowed won't be repaid — and forever lie about being robbed, medical bills, and heaven knows what.

Forty-four percent of Guatemala's population is under 15. What does the future hold for them? Already, in Guatemala City, many are Pandilleros and Pandillas (adult and juvenile criminals).

Everywhere there are the inveterate sellers. They use their children strategically. If they are lucky they make enough for beans and tortillas.

And there are paradoxes. Overweight shoeshine boys with gleaming gold teeth and cell phones — which probably lead some to believe that material poverty is apparent rather than real.

Jay, you think that with a little polishing and editing, newspapers or magazines would buy such stuff?

You who are squeamishly clean will have a hard time in Guatemala. Here you wipe your arse after shitting, fold the paper and throw it into a garbage bin, often one without a cover. I'm not sure how many people wash their hands after. Sometimes there's no washbasin nearby and quite often no soap. I
saw my landlady's grandson wash his hands after using the toilet in the same water that she later used to wash the dishes. At times like these I wish there was a God I could pray to for special favours — like sparing me from fecal-borne diseases. Unlike Costa Ricans, who don't gyp you, here everyone gyps you or tries to. You've got to do some serious bargaining here. Vendors here will strip you of every penny if you let them.

Living here is imposing a rigid discipline on me — not quite a straitjacket but close — that I didn't have in Montreal. I'm up at five — then the temperature's somewhere around 12 — and walk for an hour. By the time I shower and breakfast, it's 7 o'clock. I read until noon, then have lunch and head off to classes. Classes end at five. There's nothing for me to do in the evenings except read. By now, you've guessed it — I who crave attention 24/7 am lonely, unbearably so at times. The foreign students in Antigua throng the bars, but, apart from their being smoke-filled (legislation is pending to make them smoke-free), my asthma medication, not to mention my poverty, prevents me from drinking, so I stay away from them. I have no access to television where I'm staying. The set is in one of the two bedrooms the family occupies, and as I've mentioned earlier, I've sold my laptop. Here you can buy in English pretty well all the books written about the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, including a couple by the Canadian Ronald Wright. At the moment I'm reading a very interesting one written in early colonial times. It's called the
Popol Vuh
.

Looking forward to finishing the Spanish course. I don't think I'll visit any more countries — haven't the funds for it — so you're likely to see me in a month or two. Prepare yourself for long nights of conversation.

One love,

Paul

I remain seated on the side of the bed, still holding the pages of Paul's Guatemala letter. I'm happy that there's been tangible emotional growth in Paul — and yes, I think that Paul's writing is worth something — but if he's dead none of it will matter. It's ten months since this letter was written. And Paul implied that he was tired of travelling and would be home within a month or two. Two months would have taken him into October, the month when Stan struck. Last night I dreamed that Paul had been arrested for drug possession, and I was on my way to bail him out of prison but couldn't get to the airport.

All this criminality he wrote about. If he's been killed, they'd eventually trace his identity. He wouldn't be so foolhardy to travel without identification. He implied as much in his Costa Rica letter. Of course his body could be in some shallow grave or in some forest off the beaten path. Sometimes it's where adventures end. I think of Timothy Treadwell who created a new persona and went to the wilds of Alaska to prove he could interact with grizzlies and protect them from human predators; and after 12 successful summers finished the 13th in a grizzly's maw. Sometimes it's where adventures end.

I
T'S 5:45 PM, OCTOBER 7
, my birthday. Jonathan's mother has invited me for supper at 7. I'm rushing. I have to get to the Radisson metro station. The telephone's ringing. I don't have time to answer it. The answering machine comes on. “This is a message for Mr. Jay Jackson, from Marjorie Bligh at the Canadian High Commission in Guatemala City. It's to let you know we have news of your brother Paul. The Guatemalan government informed us that at 9:15 am Guatemalan time, he boarded a flight for Miami, and from there will take one to Montreal. He knows you've been looking for him.”

“Ms. Bligh, this is Jay Jackson. Thanks for letting me know. Is Paul alright?”

“I think he is. I just wanted you to know he has been located and is on his way to Montreal. If the flights were on time, he should be there already.”

“Thanks.” I hang up the phone and feel slightly dizzy. I sit on the sofa. My heart is racing. I try to control my breathing. The phone will be ringing any time now. It's 14 months — 14 months
. Too fast, Jay. Too fast. He hasn't told you his story yet. Wait.

The phone rings. The caller ID screen says it's a public telephone.

“I don't know if I should speak to you,” I say.

“You're expecting me. Good.”

Silence.

“Shouldn't you be welcoming me back? Glad that all's well?”

“So all
is
well! And you want me to kill the fatted calf?” Silence. “I don't have all evening. I'm dressing to go out.”

“Okay. Okay. You're in a position to make me crawl, so I'll crawl. I'll brown-nose if that'll make you happy.” Silence. “Jay, I need to get into the apartment.”

“Ma could let you in.”

“Ma is dead, Jay.”

“You know that, Paul! You know that and you didn't come home.” I hang up the phone and the dizziness returns.

The phone rings again.

“Jay, calm down. Please. I found out yesterday. I went to Guatemala City with a friend, and I ran into my ex-Spanish teacher in front of the Cathedral tour-guiding a group of students. He told me somebody had come to the school trying to find me and had placed ads to let me know my mother had died. I booked my passage immediately — at great risk — right away and went back to Huehuetenango to collect a few things. I have been on buses and planes for the last 36 hours.”

“Paul, it's my birthday and I have a supper engagement at 7.”

“Happy birthday.”

“I'll leave a key under the mat at the front door.”

“I need money for the cab too.”

Of course you do.
The opposite would have been news. Guess I shouldn't knock it; cheaper than getting you out of jail.

“I have only eight US dollars, and I'm hungry and stink.”

“I'll leave $60 with the key, enough for the taxi and a meal. It's a loan. Understand? A loan!”

“Not so fast, Bro. Not so fast, my Kuk-kuk! Wait until I explain myself.” He hangs up the phone.

Jay, let him explain himself
. My eyes overflow. The dizziness is gone and I feel calmer.
Fool, phone Mme Beaulieu. Tell her Paul has arrived and you can't come.

“I am
soulagée.
Wait your brother and
amène-le.
One
instant. Jonathan, Paul est arrivé. Je te passe Jay.
”

“
Pas vrai! Paul est arrivé!
”

“
Oui. Il vient tout juste de me téléphoner de l'Aéroport Trudeau
.”

“We can go get him.”

“He's already on his way.”

“Wait for him. I'll come get you. We have to celebrate this. Whoo-hoo!”

I'm silent.

“Cheer up, man. He's alive and back home.
A tout à l'heure.”
He hangs up.

I go out to the corridor and put the money under the mat and return inside and leave the door unlocked.

Twenty minutes later Paul raps and enters the apartment. He drops the grey carry-on case, all the luggage he has, at the door and comes toward me with his arms wide open. His beige shirt and white cotton slacks are crumpled. He seems thinner. His eyes are red and his forehead glows. His head is shaved and his face is clean-shaven with some of its roundness gone. He reeks of stale sweat. I stay seated on the sofa, my arms folded. He sits beside me and puts an arm around me. We sit there for what seems to be a long time until I hear Jonathan's stomping heels followed by his rapping and the key turning the lock.

“Go have a quick shower, Paul. Jonathan's mother wants you to come for supper.”

Paul leaves us, and Jonathan sits beside me. “He's lost a lot of weight, at least ten kilos. What do you think, Jay?”

“Jonathan, I'm not thinking.”

Jonathan puts his arm on my shoulder. We sit in silence while Paul is getting ready.

Paul comes into the living room. He's dressed in olive green slacks and a pale grey knitted long-sleeve shirt. A teal-blue hand-knitted cardigan printed with geometric Mayan motifs is draped over his left shoulder. His eyes are riveted on Jonathan. “Congrats. Have you guys got married?”

“
Tu te trompes,
” Jonathan says. “We're not a couple, if that's what you're implying.”

Paul's lips retract, one hand goes to the back of his head and the other to his chin.

“Let's go,” Jonathan says.

Raymond Beaulieu, his thick white hair glossy under the foyer light, squinting in spite of his glasses, is at the door when we arrive. I introduce Paul. Raymond is 77, 15 years older than Cecile. I admire him. As a young man, barely in his twenties, Raymond worked to unionize his co-workers, and was branded a communist by Premier Duplessis. For 18 months he'd had to sleep in a different house every night to avoid being arrested and thrown in jail. In his later years he joined the administration of the CSN.

Inside, Cecile Beaulieu — coiffed with a gleaming gold pom-pom, cheeks pink and round, pendant jade earrings, an emerald-green silk dress, a beige apron — pulls me to her bosom and gives me a loud lip smack on both cheeks. “
Bonne fête, mon fils!
”

I introduce Paul and she searches our faces for resemblances.

Supper is onion soup au gratiné, stuffed tomatoes, lamb with rosemary sauce, roasted potatoes, and a mixture of roasted red, green, and yellow peppers, washed down with Beaujolais red wine.

While Cecile is in the kitchen putting together the dessert, Raymond says: “So, Monsieur le Voyageur, tell us about your trip.”

“Nothing special to tell. I got malaria once, stomach trouble a few times. Got robbed once. On another occasion had to crouch behind a car until a gun battle ended.”

“
Ça alors! Parle-nous ça.
”

“The robbery or the shoot-out?”

“
Le vol d'abord.
”

“
Maman,
” Jonathan calls. “
Viens écouter ça.
”

Cecile comes and stands at the entrance between the kitchen and the dining room.

“It happened a Saturday night. We'd gone clubbing, four of us, in Guatemala City. We'd arranged for an SUV to pick us up at 3:15 am to take us back to Antigua, less than an hour's drive from Guatemala City. When we left the club, we saw a black car following us. About half way between Antigua and Guatemala City, on a stretch of downhill road, the car sped past us, stopped, and blocked us. Three masked guys came out from the black car, their guns trained on the SUV. ‘Get the fuck out and put your hands up,' one of them shouted in perfect English. Next they shot bullets into the tyres of the SUV. We got out of the SUV. They ordered us to face a steep bank and to empty our pockets. We did. One frisked us to make sure we'd handed over everything, while the others trained their guns on us. They demanded our watches too. Hans — from Germany — lost his Swatch. I'm sure it all took less than three minutes but it felt longer. Then they got into their car and sped back toward Guatemala City.

“Ten minutes later a police cruiser with two officers came by. Our chauffeur explained what had happened. They squeezed us into their cruiser and took us back to Antigua.

“‘
¡Estén feliz que no hayan muertos!
” (Be glad there were no deaths) the officer who did all the talking said to us.

“Eleven days after the robbery, the police officer who'd interviewed us came to the school with our wallets. He said somebody found them in a forest somewhere outside of Guatemala City. Everything except our money and credit cards was still in them. I lost about $30. I kind o' knew this sort of thing could happen, so the only ID I had in my wallet that night was the data page from my passport. I'd left my ATM and credit cards at home too. The other guys weren't so lucky. Of course, the robbery never made the news. Too routine I guess.

“All in all, we just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I stayed in Guatemala for 13 months after that and nothing like this happened to me again. And of all the students in the school — there were over a hundred of us — we were the only ones that got robbed . . . Guess because we'd had the temerity to go into the capital on a Saturday night.”

“
Et pourtant tu y'es resté pour encore combien de temps
?” Raymond asks.

“Thirteen months. That's a long story that will take more than a thousand and one nights.”

“Coffee's ready,” Cecile says.

Long before the party is over Paul falls asleep on the living room sofa. Around 1 am, Cecile prepares the spare room for him. I share Jonathan's bed.