Here the antipode to the story above. Santo-Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, has officially around two million inhabitants, but the real figure — when all orphans, homeless or otherwise unregistered citizens and clandestine Haitians have been hypothetically counted — might well be three million, there is no way of knowing for sure. As can be expected in such circumstances there are a lot of people desperately seeking to make their services profitable. One of them is a lively, short man who habitually hangs around Hotel Barcelo presenting himself as a tour guide with bright prospects on practically anything from mountain biking to prostitutes — concertina-like their pictures fall out of his hands as soon as he opens his folder, and he’s more than happy to give you a quote, since some of the girls, depending on quality, are more expensive than others.
This agile man, with a kind if somewhat toothless smile, caught me in the right moment. I had spent the better part of the hot afternoon searching for a shoemaker who could fix my Italian designer sandals. But the one I had been referred to had recently moved to an unknown address. As I was getting pressed for time, while asking around for alternatives — I had a rehearsal with the Dominican Symphony Orchestra that same evening and they were the ones paying for the fancy hotel — he offered me to bring the shoes to a place where they would be instantly repaired. Well knowing that I shouldn’t take the risk, I gave him not only the shoes but also advanced the money he asked for to cover expenses. We agreed to meet later in the evening on the same spot, across the crowded highway from the hotel and casino complex towering in the background. But although he did indeed turn up at ten o’clock, as agreed, he didn’t have the shoes with him. This anomaly didn’t prevent him from asking for more money in order to cover for a taxi trip he wasn’t supposed to be taking in the first place. I don’t know what got into my mind at this point, but for some reason I gave him even more than he had asked for. Whereafter he disappeared, promising to bring the shoes directly to my hotel first thing in the morning.
Morning come there were no signs of neither shoes nor man. The day passed. In the evening I had the concert with the Symphony Orchestra. Returning late, I again inquired at the hotel lobby about the shoes, but no one there had received or seen them. Next day I had to check out, by now clearly aware that shoes and money were gone. I cursed myself for being such a fool but it didn’t make the situation better. I simply would have to leave without them. Brushing past the doorman behind his tall desk, I was halted by the same. I suspected more trouble in the making, since the check-out procedure so far had been anything but a bona fide operation. When I approached the desk crowned with the sign Check Out, the staff on duty had begun to eye me suspiciously. No ‘Good Morning’, no ‘Good day’, not even a ‘Hello’. Only a pair of immutable eyes and three laconic words heightened by an ominous question mark: ‘Your room number?’
Before she had even had the time to type my name, so far still hidden inside the computer, the girl attending to my business grabbed a microphone. I heard her icy voice echo simultaneously through the cool air of the lobby, from the restaurants, the casino, the pool area and throughout all the eleven floors: ‘Number 427 is checking out, number 427 is checking out’. That was me: number 427 (an Orwellian scene in the tropics).
As soon as the alarm had sounded, there was, for the first time since my arrival, immediate room service. Seconds later a bottle of water was reported as being missing from the mini bar and, even more gravely, the glass covering a table was found to have a crack in it. I was informed that it was my duty to pay for this reckless destruction of hotel property. But I was not in the mood for it and asked her to get me the general manager. To him I explained that the crack had not occurred as a result of wanton violence, but from my posing a bottle of rum on it. This explanation, having the minor merit of also being true (although it technically speaking was my friend Hector who carried out the actual deed), eventually got me off the hook. I maintained that it was the deficient quality of the glass that was to blame for the accident. After some deliberation the manager decided not to press charges against me — ‘this time’. I was relieved, paid the rest of my dues (mini bar, restaurant etc.) and wished the princess on the glass mountain a good morning. The last thing I now wanted was to once again be held back by a ‘Señor, por favor!’. But this was exactly what happened. Unwillingly I readied myself to face yet another insidious challenge to my purse. I slowly turned round: ‘Are these yours?’ The doorman held out a plastic bag, urging me to peep inside it. There they were, my Italian designer sandals, repaired, even cleaned.
It came as a complete surprise. Although I had paid the man more than well, I had been so convinced that he had left without a trace that I could hardly believe my eyes. I felt a vague trust in humankind regain foothold inside me. Exhilarated I threw the bag over my shoulder and stepped out into the traffic, as always hectic on this thoroughfare. Among its many ramshackle vehicles the city taxis are in a league of their own. You’d be lucky to come across one where the doors are still hanging onto their hinges and where all tires are of the same dimension — that they are never of the same brand goes without saying, not even the caps are. Typically, the provisional, tiny spare tire will never come off the wheel either unless it too goes flat. The indention these cars have sustained, while still rolling, are impressive. They don’t just look like wrecks. They are. Which doesn’t prevent them from serving as collective transportation, accommodating up to ten people at the time. Each of them usually consists of so many different pieces, in so many different colours, that they look as though they were wearing military camouflage. Indeed, they blend in perfectly with their natural environment.
Eager to get out of this dusty city, in which I had spent almost three weeks intermittently playing the violin in the city’s orchestra, I turned to the next pedestrian, asking him if he knew where I could catch a bus headed for the Zona Colonial — I didn’t feel like spending money on a cab. He indicated the way while at the same time seizing the opportunity to introduce himself. He was a haggard man in his fifties, with dark, but not really black skin, and wavy hair. He had a searching regard, as though he were preoccupied with assessing my credibility and divining my wishes. His voice was raucous, more like a harsh whispering really. I noticed that he was dressed in a striped business suit, although it struck me as not being of absolute apex quality. His shoes too seemed just a bit too rustic and simple to accompany a business suit. In all it was a very hot ensemble to wear under the Caribbean sun.
He presented himself as a lawyer of civil law but did not hand over a card, explaining that he had forgotten them in his office. Instead he began telling me all about his family, his wife, his daughters, even his mistresses, emphasizing that he was a Latin man in natural need of the diversions such could provide. Meanwhile he considered himself blessed by God and was grateful for the health of his family and the success he had enjoyed in his professional life. Every now and then he looked me deep into my eyes as though he wanted to make sure I understood that he really was my friend. He asked me where I was off to. I truthfully answered that I hadn’t quite made up my mind. He told me he had his roots in a central region of the island and recommended me to visit its capital. ‘The people are honest and kind there, not like here,’ he added with a tired smile. He even criticised my choice to stop by in the local Colonial Zone, which he considered good only for gullible tourists and pick-pockets. After having found out that I intended to take a bus to get out of town altogether, he came up with an idea.
He had a friend running a car rental company. If I wanted, he could find out how much it would cost me to rent a car for the remaining ten days of my stay in the country. Why not, I said, thinking I had nothing to lose by hearing him out. He asked how much I was willing to pay per day, and I said: give me an offer I can’t refuse. He answered he might be able to provide me with a car for as little as $10 a day, insurance included. But for this deal to come through he needed, technical
ly speaking, to be the one renting the car, thereby assuming full legal responsibility for it, although I would be the one actually driving it. I said it’d be okay with me provided he made sure the vehicle was properly insured and that we had a contract to that effect. In fact, I could hardly even believe my good luck: on this fine day I first got my shoes back, then this good man had nothing better to do than strolling up and down the road trying by all means to help me to a car deal that would enable me to visit the entire island at my leisure.
But not only had he forgotten his business cards in the office. His cell phone was also there. So he needed to find a telephone booth — I didn’t have a phone either. We found one and he placed a call. I heard him saying that I seemed to him a quite trustworthy gentleman and it almost made my heart swell for pride to have my humble self described in such flattering terms. In between his own comments, he mouthed ‘nine dollars’, to me, that is, even less than he had predicted. It all seemed too good to be true.
After hanging up, he told me he needed to call back in half an hour to verify that a car was available. So we went for a stroll and sat down at a cafe to talk. He wanted to pay for our drinks, but I felt that the least I could do for him was to take care of that, and I told him so. He responded, saying he valued above all friendship and kindness in life, and that he was sure that I, given the opportunity, would do the same for a foreigner in need of something in my country. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but before I was able to find out, the half hour had elapsed, and we went back to the phone boot from which I could hear him finalise the deal. He then invited me to cross the main road. Some money dealers offered us an exchange of dollars for pesos. I said we had everything we needed, but I could see they kept watching us intently as we paced up the street. We went through a small university campus. He pointed towards a building and said that he was lecturing there on civil law twice a week. We ended up in a MacDonald’s where the brisk air conditioning allowed us to cool off. He was perspiring profusely from having kept his jacket on in the heat. I asked him if he wouldn’t be more comfortable hanging it on the chair. He took it off. At this point I wasn’t quite sure what we were still waiting for, and downright bewildered as to why we had entered a MacDonald’s restaurant, but I went with the flow, confident that I would eventually be able to figure out what was going on.
While walking he had explained to me the intricacies of the deal that included a 130 dollar security deposit on top of the 90 dollars rent for ten days. He assured me he would pay this deposit himself so that I only would have to pay the remaining 90 bucks. Problem was that his cash was also at the office, while the car itself was just around the corner. If I could only give him the 230 dollars, he’d be able to conclude the deal in no time and bring the car to me: ‘Did you say you wanted an automatic or one with a manual gearbox?’
I believe, that for a second or two, I saw nothing objectionable in giving him the money needed, because by now I had already begun to picture myself behind the wheel, steering into adventure land. Two hours had gone since we met and the time it had taken to bring the whole thing together started to wear on my patience. I was anxious to get it over and done with. But then, once that euphoric second had passed, a small but intensely luminous red lamp lit up on the inner panel. The fact that I had got my used sandals back was no guarantee that another service-minded person, offering to carry 230 dollars out of the room and from some mysterious location bring me a car in return, would in fact also do that. It also dawned upon me as strange that he continuously kept deflecting my suggestion to follow him to where the transaction allegedly was going to take place — he would only go so far as to ‘allow’ me to wait for him in the park. I in turn didn’t know of any park, so I said: ‘Don’t you have any money yourself?’ He admitted having 30 dollar on him, but he needed the rest from me. I objected that he could surely draw the remaining sum from an ATM-machine, but soon understood that his credit cards too were, of course, in the office...
Up to this point there had, for a person endowed with the capacity for wishful thinking, been something almost credible about the whole set up. From now on, however, the situation quickly deteriorated while the last act drew to its close. ‘You must realise’, I said, ‘that I find it very hard to understand why I can’t survey this transaction, especially since you have already explained to your business partner that I seem to be an altogether trustworthy gentleman. In other words, this person must already know that you’re renting this car on behalf of somebody else.’ Whereupon my friend, almost teary-eyed, rose from his chair, pointed to his striped jacket hanging off the back of the chair, saying: ‘I can leave this here as a security’. ‘That!’ I retorted. ‘What am I going to do with that once you’re gone?’ ‘It’s worth 400 dollars,’ he exclaimed. ‘400 dollars!’ I sighed. ‘I need your watch, your wedding ring, your...’ to my utter surprise he began to strip his watch from the wrist. I had to stop him. It was time for the estocada. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’s not possible for me to give you 230 dollars in cash and then sit back here holding on to your dirty nylon jacket and a dinky toy wristwatch until it so pleases you to materialise in front of me with a Porsche Cabriolet for nine bucks a day. The deal’s off. Please excuse me, I’ve got to go.’
I will never forget the genuinely sad eyes he cast on me while realising that his carefully concocted con act was not going to meet with success. I nearly felt sorry for him. So much ado about nothing. Truth to tell, there hadn’t just been ridiculous pretension but also some very convincing lines on his part in this make-believe drama. Clearly he knew much about both law and history, and for the better part of two hours we had entertained a cultivated, almost learned conversation. Furthermore, his conversations over the phone had seemed altogether genuine.
Still, everything, from his first to his last word, had served the unique purpose of persuading me to give him my money for nothing. It was like seeing an animal of prey yawn after having missed its carefully prepared attack. Resigned, he fished his jacket from the chair, looked at me one last time with his sad, searching eyes, and said: ‘I’m truly sorry you don’t trust me, but I can also understand why.’ With these words he turned round, walked towards the door and disappeared into the blistering sun.
For me there was nothing left but to resume the narrow path of virtue I had so frivolously abandoned. Embarking upon it I again had to pass by the money changers with their thick swaddles ready at hand. This time they didn’t offer me dollars or euros for pesos, they only wanted to know how much I had given him. ‘Nothing’, I said, and one of them replied, ‘We really wanted to warn you, this guy walks this street every day up and down looking for tourists. He’s a crook’. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Luckily nothing bad happened. Thanks anyway for trying to help me out: Que les vaya bien!’
Boca Chica
Half an hour’s ride along the coast east of Santo Domingo, Capital of the Dominican Republic, there is a small resort town called Boca Chica. It has a pleasant beach inside a bay dominated, to the west, by the tall riggings of oil refineries. But these are quite far away and, seen from a local hotel, not absolutely blatant eyesores. The reason why Boca Chica enjoys local fame, however, is not only that it does have sandy beaches, otherwise conspicuously absent from Hispaniola’s south-east coast — with the notable exception of tourist infested Punta Cana sitting right on its east coast. Its real claim to fame is that it arguably has one of the largest and easiest to access prostitution markets in the entire Latin American hemisphere. To go here together with your wife or fiancée would probably be a big mistake, even if you yourself were to behave in an exemplary way and pretend not to notice what’s going on around you. Because even so, your wife will, and she’s probably going to want to know what your opinion is in regard to this meat market. At night time the girls are simply everywhere; they are many, they are young, and at least some of them very beautiful. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell what they look like since they are so
extravagantly dressed and their makeup so heavy that they seem more like exotic creatures from the jungle, or even outer space, than human beings. But this they are and in fierce competition with one another at that.
Technically the Dominican girls aren’t prostitutes since they can show the police a paper certifying that they are actually employees of the bars in and around which they carry out their trade. But the Haitian girls not only undercut Dominican prices, they are also illegal immigrants, so they tend to come out around midnight when the police officially withdraws from the scene. And that’s when the place gets really crowded. Not necessarily with tourists though. It might be that you, as a single man, find yourself surrounded by twenty, thirty girls, all happy to offer you company to an affordable price.
During my first visit to town, and perhaps a bit paradoxically, I made the acquaintance of a Dominican woman who was neither quite young nor a prostitute. She was on the contrary doing the laundry and cleaning the kitchen in the small French-Canadian owned hotel where I stayed, and she was a very spontaneous, charming lady with a great sense of humour and a laughter that always would put me in a good mood. Part of Olga’s story was that she was indebted to an eighty year old Canadian man with whom she felt obliged to stay whenever he was visiting in the Dominican Republic. As of now, he even wanted to marry her. But although that would doubtlessly give her some financial security, she wasn’t too happy about the idea for several reasons, one being that she loathed having to patiently sit on the sofa and keep him company while he was watching NHL hockey games. In short, he demanded that she’d be with him all the time.
Incidents of Travel in Latin America Page 9
