Q: For better or for worse?
Godunov: [Pause.] It's more complicated than that.
* * * *
Pato Rochereau Paraguana: My brother, Pedro, was born on the floor of our apartment. That was when we lived above the Good Foot. It was three-thirty on a Saturday morning when my mother pushed him out. Downstairs in the club, my father used to say, there was a band playing with twenty drummers, two basses, two guitars. Big horn section, lots of singers. It was some party down there. My mother said that my brother didn't cry once. He just hit the floor, put his ear against it, and started taking it all in right then. The band, the cheers from the crowd, the stomping feet against the club's floor. He never cried. But never slept either. Just listened and listened.
Q: So you knew he'd be a musician early?
Paraguana: From birth.
Q: How did you become a fisherman?
Paraguana: A bet. Nothing else to do. School and I, we never shook hands. I was on my first boat by the time I was sixteen. Pedro was in his first band when he was six.
Q: What did he play?
Paraguana: Whatever they asked him to.
Oroyo Batide, bass player, the Silver Diablos: He could play bass, drums, guitar, guitarr?n, requinto, mbira, banjo, violin. Some trombone. And he could sing. You've heard the bootlegs. So you know. I had only been playing a year when I met him. He was seventeen already. He heard me playing in a vale callampa band—a very bad one—and asked me to play with him instead. I knew who he was. We all did. Why do you want me to play with you? I said. I don't understand what you do. And he took both of my hands in his and said, these do.
Buto Longo, drummer, the Silver Diablos: We practiced together above the Good Foot for a few weeks. That was all. Then we played the Good Foot. They invited us back, and we played there, oh, many times. Soon we had gigs all over the place, in the towns all around here, in the capital. That was when the war was still on, before the peace accords. There were firefights in the jungle, militias going up and down the highway, ambushing each other, and here were us three musicians in a little green truck with all our gear in the back, trying to make a living. The things we saw on the road. [Shakes head.] I could tell you some stories. We came across roadblocks all the time. Sometimes they took all the money we'd just made. Sometimes they threatened to take our instruments, but somehow Pedro always talked them out of it. We were just kids, though sometimes the fighters were younger than we were. They'd put the barrels of their guns right in our faces. You could see the rifling on the inside. [Pause.] We should have all been dead a long time ago.
Q: When did you first hear the name of Charles Patrice Hodges?
Batide: Who? [Laughs.]
Paraguana: Right after the peace accords. A month or two after, maybe. They brought in big yellow wrecking machines and just razed the top of the hill. I thought the war was over, I remember thinking. Why are they destroying the city now? Then they started bringing in all this ... metal and plastic, by the truckload, by the shipload. So many ships. Some days, we had to stay out to sea. One day, a third of our catch rotted in the hold. But when our captain complained, they [Hodges Enterprises—ed.] paid us for it anyway. The captain came back, shaking his head and laughing. We ought to catch rot more often, he said.
Hodges: The metal and plaster was what E.G. Saro [architect of Apus Apus—ed.] had called for. They really built the building in Malaysia, I think, then took it down again and brought it over piece by piece and fit it all together in San Marco. Those soaring wings—I had told Saro about the swifts, you see—came off the boat already in flight. Apus Apus was up in a week. It was marvelous.
Longo: But then for the first nine months, it was dark.
Celine Newton, general manager, Apus Apus: There were, how to put this, numerous unforeseen obstacles to creating a destination like Apus Apus in a place like San Marco. For starters, there was no beach to speak of, and I told Mr. Hodges that he'd best make one before the first party if he hoped to have another one there after that. Within days it was also clear that we would need our own power supply. Food was a nightmare, at first. The people at Development International were concerned, they said, that we weren't creating sufficient sustainable employment for the San Marcan community. I told them if they wanted us to create something sustainable, they could start by having someone grow some fresh basil. I know how uncharitable that sounds. But I don't get paid to be charitable, and, frankly, I don't think people like being treated charitably. Which is why I disagreed so much with the way that Mister Hodges dealt with people there. They didn't want handouts. They wanted jobs.
Masashi Shimura, relief worker, Global Crisis Response: I don't think the Apus Apus folks ever understood how dangerous the situation really was. It was common knowledge that the only reason the rebels signed the peace accords was because they ran out of bullets. There were rumors that the army had bombs planted all over San Marco, and if it ever looked like the rebels were going to take the place, they'd just blow the whole city up. Nobody ever found any bombs after the accords, but a lot of people here still think that's because the army just hid them really well, and now they're all still here, ready to go off. If Miss Newton had ever gone to a party at the Good Foot, she would have understood a little better, I think. In that place, people say they dance like they're going to die tomorrow. Because the next day, a couple of them always do.
Longo: [Laughs.] You know, all of these people—the government people, the aid and relief workers—they mean well, they really do. I know that. But whenever they want to talk about how dangerous it was, they always put a story in our mouths. San Marcans say this. San Marcans say that. I'm not saying they're liars. Maybe someone told them those things once. But I never say any of those things, and I don't know anyone who does. I also don't think San Marco has ever been as dangerous as they say. You just have to know who to stay away from. Who not to look at. But it's not hard to learn those things. [Pause.] I think they see what they want to see. They make up the story they want to tell. But who doesn't?
* * * *
Q: What was the first party at Apus Apus like?
Batide: Like an invasion. They had lights on the outside walls; searchlights sweeping the sky, back and forth; and this throbbing dance music going boom, boom, boom. [Accents with fist.] The speakers they must have run the sound through, I never got a good look at them, but they must have been something. Then a flock of helicopters flew over the city, a fleet of ships landed in the harbor, and the people on them were driven up in jeeps with fresh coats of red and white paint. More jeeps came down the highway from the capital, same new paint job. They were all in by midnight, and then Apus Apus really lit up. My mother watched the whole thing from the roof of our house. Is the war on again? she said. I said no, it's just a big party. And she gave me this look, and I could tell she was wondering what the difference was.
Longo: Nobody thought it would be like that. The size of it, and how long it lasted.
Batide: Looked like fun.
Hodges: Yes, the first party was a massive success, a full week of the best music I could buy, the best food, the best accommodations, for a few thousand people. A small village. It got a little out of hand, you know, the way it's supposed to. More people started coming on the third day, after word got around that the party was good.
Q: Where did the people come from?
Hodges: Everywhere. Tokyo. Shanghai. Singapore. Bratislava. Johannesburg. Buenos Aires. S?o Paulo. They couldn't have all stayed at Apus Apus, I don't think. Though I don't know where they stayed if they didn't.
Batide: We saw them sleeping on the street in the morning, or in the black sand on the shore, looking like they fell out of the sky with their bright clothes and dirt on their knees. Or they'd wander around town, so altered they didn't know they'd left the party. I remember one of them stopped me and asked where the beds were. I pointed back up the hill, and he said—really, my English isn't good, but I'm pretty sure he said thank you, Purple Walrus. And made a m
otion in the air like he was shaking a tusk.
Alfonse Guerrera Machado, former mayor of San Marco: Of course there were robberies the first year. People taking advantage. I tried to warn the manager that would happen, but either she didn't believe me or she lost control of the situation, or maybe let it get out of control. But then the second year, there was much less crime. And the third and fourth years, almost none at all.
Paraguana: Well, the crime went down because Apus Apus started paying people more not to mug the partiers than they'd ever get by mugging them.
Q: How did they know who'd been doing the mugging?
Paraguana: They had their own security force, lots of cameras. Which was how they caught us later. Anyway, some of the seediest people in San Marco started showing up in the banks with checks from Apus Apus. I don't know whether to cash it or frame it, one of them said, but of course he cashed it. You could always tell who'd tapped the Hodges fortune. New cars, fancy clothes. An expensive wedding. Other things, too. Lots more smuggling boats coming into the harbor a couple of weeks before the parties. Someone else bought up some jungle not far out of the city, cleared it, and started growing ... basil, I think. All I know is that all that money wasn't making the fish come any closer. But the paying people not to rob—that was what gave my brother his big idea, though he would never have guessed how big it would turn out to be. He might still not even know.
Q: You don't think he knows what happened here?
Paraguana: My personal opinion? No. If anyone even reported it, wherever he is, I doubt he read about it.
Q: You sound envious.
Paraguana: [Pause.] Sometimes I feel like I'm walking backward all the time, always looking at what happened years ago. To this country. To our parents. My brother never fell for that. He just worked with what was right in front of him, what he could put his hands on. And I think that's how he got out, while the rest of us are still here.
* * * *
Batide: All Pedro wanted was a gig. He was hoping for a set a day, but he would have settled for less. On the dance floor if they wanted, or in one of the bars or lounges. By the pool. Anywhere at all. I told him it was a bad idea. They're not interested in our music, I said. If they were, they would have hired us by now. Because Pedro really was the best at what he did. I saw other guitarists put away their instruments when they saw him walk through the door. Three or four younger musicians, teenagers, followed him around town, staring at his hands. Too afraid to talk to him. He was a hero to them, or a ghost. Something unreal.
Newton: I know that Pedro Paraguana came to visit me, but in all honesty, I can't remember talking to him. I've had to look at the security tapes to see what happened. He looked to me like the men who worked at the pier, except skinnier and quieter, and he had a beat-up old guitar case with a broken handle, held shut by a piece of rope, that he was carrying under one arm. He had a stammer. What do you play? I said. San Marcan music, he said. And I said, yes, like what they play at the Good Foot. That's right, he said. I play there all the time. I'm not sure we're the right place for you, I said, but if you have a recording, I would love to hear it. He said he didn't have a recording, and he started to get out his guitar. I must have said something disparaging then, or maybe the look on my face was enough, because then he got very quiet, and he tied the rope around the case again and patted it, saying it's okay, it's okay. As though it was his child.
Batide: After the peace accords, things got so bad. A lot of the people with money left the country, and pffft, there went the parties we used to play in the capital. The weddings, the holidays. Just like that. We sold the truck to buy strings and fix a crack in the back of Pedro's guitar.
Q: Did you still play?
Batide: Oh, all the time. There just wasn't any money in it anymore. But I don't think Pedro could have stopped playing if he wanted to, and we didn't want to stop playing with him. There was something in his music, something you couldn't destroy. And the worse things got, the happier the music became. [Pause.] I miss him so much.
Longo: But money is money, and Pedro is no fool. He knew how much Apus Apus could give away just to keep people pacified, and he figured that the people who came to the parties probably had a lot more than that. But it wasn't just the money. I believe to this day that if Apus Apus had given Pedro Paraguana that gig, none of what happened would have happened. What else could have been the signal?
Shimura: There's no question that what Pedro Paraguana and the Silver Diablos did started everything. And on the other hand, you could argue that if that's all it took, then anything at all could have triggered it. Anyone who was there at the time could see it. A quarter of the ships coming into San Marco were carrying guns, and they weren't for the army. There were rumors—more than rumors—that the rebels were training again, in the jungle where the government helicopters couldn't see. Every other night at the Good Foot something seemed to go down, a lot of money moving around, people shaking hands. Now and again, someone getting shot in the back of the head. People said they were rooting out traitors early, not that the police ever found any evidence. Oh, they investigated, but it always ended in nothing. Or a detective would get shot, and that was it.
Q: What about the army?
Shimura: [Pause.] Let me tell you something. I worked in the clinic in San Marco near the water, and I was involved in knife fights and shootouts. I saw a man almost beaten to death with a hammer. But I never felt more unsafe than I did when the army showed up.
Q: So given the choice between the rebels and the army—
Shimura: Look, I just worked in the clinic there. I'll be back there again in a couple of months. I treated the sick and the hurt; I didn't ask what their politics were. It wasn't in my job description. But to be unaware of what the different sides meant for my safety and the safety of most of the people in San Marco, who just wanted to get through it—to not know it or act on it would have been naive, bordering on stupid. You don't get involved, but you don't stay out, either. And you never give a straight answer if you want to get home.
Q: Did you know the rebels were moving guns through San Marco in the Apus Apus days?
Machado: [Pause.] Turn that recorder off, and I'll tell you some stories. [Laughs.] I'm not an idiot, and I know that politics don't follow the laws of physics. But sometimes they do. You have a balloon full of hydrogen and a match. What do you think is going to happen?
Batide: Pedro first told me about his idea after a gig at the Good Foot. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't laughing. We haven't really had a decent gig in six months, he said. Six months isn't so bad, I said, though Pedro could tell I was listening, that I needed the money. Then he said, if we do this, we can make enough for the next six years. All we have to do is disappear for a while, meet somewhere else, far away, and we can play what we want to.
Longo: I thought it was a great idea. The only trick was what to do afterward. You had to take the money and then disappear from San Marco, never see the piers and the boats, or the Good Foot, again. Not so hard a trick, you say. But we're all San Marco boys. Which is why Batide and I ended up in jail, then back here worth nothing, and we haven't seen Pedro Paraguana in ten years.
Paraguana: My brother was so quiet about it, I didn't know what he was planning. I didn't see him bring in the uniforms or the guns. He must have done it in his guitar case. But then, two days before, he took me out to the Good Foot and said the drinks were on him, which he'd never done in his life. Then he told me that he loved me, and he'd always respected what I did—being a fisherman, he meant. He said he was almost a little afraid of it, because I did something that fed people, and what did he do? Make noise. You can't feed people on noise, he said. Then he told me about his plan. Did I want in. I said yes without thinking. We had to help each other home afterward, and all I can remember is me lying in bed, and him in the next room playing guitar and singing to himself, and the window open and the sounds in the harbor coming in, the waves against the shore. I haven't slept like th
at since.
* * * *
Godunov: It's not news how controversial Apus Apus was from the beginning, even before the news got out about how the city had helped Mr. Hodges buy the land. I know the San Marcans always said that Hodges could have done more. But they never talked about what Hodges did do. The commerce—legitimate commerce—he brought to the port, freight and passengers. Additional income for local farmers.
Q: But Apus Apus never hired anyone from San Marco to work inside the facility, where the money was.
Godunov: We and the development people talked to Mr. Hodges about that many times. But you have to understand, also. He needed people with significant experience in the high-end hospitality industry, no, don't interrupt, because I know what you're going to say: couldn't he have trained San Marcans to do the work? The answer is obvious: yes. But to me, Apus Apus never quite realized its enormous potential. It ran, what, five years? And not full-time. That's just enough time for a venture like that to figure out where the bathroom is. I think if Apus Apus had lasted ten years, fifteen, twenty, you would have seen local training and employment, community projects, infrastructure improvements, maybe some social services. But people can't wait that long. Not that I blame them, but that's where the tragedy lies. The need is always so great, and the remedy takes so long.
Newton: I remember that last party being the biggest, though looking at the books, I know it wasn't. There were over a hundred fewer people at it than there'd been at the one before, and one less band. Which meant fewer support staff. Fewer animals slaughtered. All the way down the line. Perhaps it seems like the biggest in my mind because it was the hardest to put on. Supplies kept disappearing. Trucks from the capital bringing in the most mundane things—linens, liquor—kept being held up on the highway, much more than before. A few of the trucks vanished. And the port was right there, but it wasn't any better. I understand now that it was the rebels, making a last sweep before the war started, but at the time, it was just a logistical nightmare. In the end, we were using our own planes, our own helicopters, to bring in the more expensive items we needed. [Pause.] You know, I told Mr. Hodges that this one was going to be a real loss. It's a bad year all over, he said, in that quasi-mystical way of his. He still wanted to throw the party. Honestly, I don't know how he ever became so successful. They always call him a visionary businessman. I saw plenty of the visionary, but not much of the businessman ... anyway, you can imagine that we were very worried about how to get the guests to and from the facility without them losing, how should I put this, pieces of their persons. If I had to do it all again, I would have demanded big raises, for me and my staff. Oh, we lived well in San Marco, of course, the strength of our currency to theirs being what it was. But for us to go back home on that? At any rate, before the whole thing started, about a dozen people cancelled. Have you been reading the paper? they said. Have you seen what they're saying about San Marco? They described it to me over the phone. Sounds like every other piece I've read about San Marco, I wanted to say, but I'd already lost them as clients. Anything else I would have said might have tarnished the brand.
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