He made it to the bottom floor, and now he could run. He wove past the shopkeeper who sold biscuits and around the plastic tables where some inmates were eating.
‘Taxi!’ Diego heard it again.
In the next instant, he was standing in front of Mrs Morales. Two other boys got there almost at the same time. They were fast, but not quite as fast as he was!
‘Diego, you are here first, so you get the job.’ She handed him a letter. ‘Take this to the post office. It’s to my brother in Canada. Bring me back a receipt, and I’ll pay you one Boliviano.’
‘The post office is quite far,’ Diego said. There were no fixed rates for jobs, but after years of being a taxi, he knew what a task was worth.
‘Two Bolivianos,’ Mrs Morales conceded. ‘But bring back a receipt or you get nothing. How will I know you didn’t throw the letter away and spend the money on candy?’ She handed Diego fifteen Bolivianos to pay for the stamp and waved him on his way.
Diego was slightly insulted by that remark. He was not a child, wasting money on frivolous things. He was nearly a man, and he had a family to support. Mrs Morales should know by now that he could be trusted.
Word travelled fast in a world as small as a prison.
‘You’re going out?’ gentle old Mrs Álvarez asked him. She’d been arrested after a lodger at her house had hidden coca paste in her shed. ‘You will light a candle for me in the cathedral?’
‘Of course, Mrs Álvarez,’ he said, accepting her fifty-centavo coin for the candle. She asked him to do this almost every day. He never charged her for these trips. Sometimes it was good business to do things for free, although he always wanted to tell her to save her money. All the candles she had lit, and she was still in prison.
Diego put the money and letter away in his special pocket. His mother had made one of his pockets very deep, so things wouldn’t fall out, and so thieves could not rob him in the street. Fifteen Bolivianos was a lot of money. It could buy them two days’ worth of bread and fruit. But he wasn’t tempted to keep it, not even for a minute. His mother would have to pay Mrs Morales back, and he would be finished as a taxi. For half a day he’d be rich, but poor forever after that.
He went up to the first door to get out—one of the two doors that the Angel Gabriel had failed to open on New Year’s Eve. The guards on duty had worked there for years and barely acknowledged him as he went through the door.
But between that door and the outside door was a small foyer, with a desk and another guard. This guard was new.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, without a smile.
Who are you? Diego wanted to ask in return, but he’d learned long ago that guards were always right, especially when they weren’t.
‘My name is Diego. My mother is Drina Juárez.’
He waited while she looked his mother’s name up in the prison records. It took a long time, because she wasn’t really sure where to look.
Finally, she found it. ‘And what do you want?’
‘I am a taxi,’ he said.
‘You want me to get you a taxi? That is certainly not part of my job.’
‘No, I am a taxi.’ He dug the letter out of his deep pocket, careful not to spill the money onto the floor. ‘I have an errand to run for Mrs Morales.’
The guard took the letter, held it up to the light, squeezed it, ruffled it between her hands.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘It’s just a letter. I do this all the time,’ Diego blurted out. He should have held his tongue, but how much nonsense could he be expected to take?
The guard frowned, kept her grip on the letter and went to the inner door to call another guard.
‘This boy says he’s going to mail a letter.’
The guard who was summoned had been at the prison as long as Diego and had let him pass many times without even a lifted eyebrow. Still, guards had to stick together. Diego was questioned on who had given him the letter and what he was supposed to do with it, until finally, as if bestowing a great favour, he was given the letter back and allowed to go through the final door.
‘I’m not a prisoner,’ he muttered, once he was safely outside. ‘You can’t boss me around.’
It was a relief to be on the good side of the prison walls for the first time in more than a week. Protests over who controlled Cochabamba’s water had shut down the whole city, including the schools, with campesinos coming from all over the district to take over the streets. The prison was shut for security reasons, and because a lot of the guards couldn’t make it in to work. Diego had to miss all the excitement. It felt good to be outside again.
The schools were still closed while the remains of the barricades were cleared from the streets, so Diego had the whole day to himself.
He looked around quickly. He wasn’t noticing the flowers blooming in the park in the middle of the square, or the water from the fountain sparkling in the morning sunlight. He was too busy looking for friends and enemies.
He didn’t look closely enough. No sooner had he taken a few steps away from the prison than he was surrounded by one of the gangs of older boys who roamed the city with nothing to do but make trouble for hard-working kids like Diego. Diego recognised them. They usually hung out at one of the video game cafes up near the Plaza Quintanilla. They had bothered him before. They weren’t really dangerous, just bored, but Diego wished they would find some other amusement.
‘What’s in your hand? Anything you’d like to share with us?’
One of the guys snatched the letter out of Diego’s hand. He held it upside down, pretending to read it.
Diego reached for the letter, but the gang passed it around, too high and too fast for him to get hold of it again. He blamed the new guard. If she hadn’t kept him waiting so long, he’d have remembered to put the letter back in his pocket. At least his money was safe.
‘Give me my letter!’ he yelled, even though he knew it would do no good.
Something pushed at the biggest kid from behind. Then another kid was pushed the same way. Diego’s letter floated down to him. He grabbed it and ran.
‘Saved you again,’ his best friend, Mando, said as they darted in and out of traffic. ‘That makes ten thousand times that I’ve saved your life.’
‘Not ten thousand,’ Diego corrected, yelling over his shoulders. ‘More like eight thousand.’ He checked to see if they were being followed, but the older boys were too lazy to run, unless they were chasing a sure thing or running from the police. ‘Plus, I’ve saved you a few thousand times, too, so you’re not that much up on me.’
Mando, short for Armando, was thin and wiry, at least a head taller than Diego. Diego didn’t think he’d ever seen his friend being still. Every part of his body always seemed to be moving.
Mando’s mother was dead. He lived with his father in the men’s prison. Unlike Diego’s parents, Mando’s father really had tried to smuggle coca paste, to get the family out of the debt they had run up trying to pay for his mother’s medical bills.
‘Did you see what I did?’ Mando asked, dancing and weaving down the sidewalk. ‘In and out. Move in fast, zoom out of the way. That’s what boxers do.’
‘So now you’re a boxer?’ Diego asked. ‘I thought you were going to be a race car driver.’
‘You need money to be a race car driver. I’ll be a famous boxer first. Then people will buy me cars to race and won’t care if I smash them, because it will be such an honor for them to have me smash up their cars.’
‘I’m going to the post office,’ Diego said. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘The market,’ said Mando. ‘One of the cooks wants potatoes. Then I’ve got to deliver some sandals. Coming to watch the football game later?’
‘I’ll see how the day goes.’
‘Okay, big shot, big tycoon. Soon you’ll do your errands in one of those big fancy cars with the dark windows.’
‘When I get one of those cars, I’ll hire you to do my errands. You’ll have to work
hard, or I won’t pay you.’
In response, Mando tried to throw Diego into the fountain. Then Diego tried to throw Mando into the fountain, but it was a work day, so they put a stop to the fooling around, and went to work.
The post office wasn’t really that far from the prison, but Mrs Morales was from Potosí and didn’t know Cochabamba at all. Besides, her relatives sent her money. She could afford to pay him an extra Boliviano.
With his conscience clear, Diego broke into a jog and ran the whole length of the square. He ran by the corner of the square where chairs, bed frames and dog houses made in the woodworking shop of the men’s prison were stacked. He ran past the old Aymara woman selling saltenas from a charcoal-heated stand, and he ran by the dogs who lived in the park. The dogs were too sleepy in the sunshine to even look up as he ran by.
The streets and footpaths were more crowded than usual. Many of the campesinos had gone back to their villages after the protest, but others were still in the city, celebrating their victory over the big companies that wanted to take over Cochabamba’s water.
‘Hey, my friend,’ an old man called to Diego, raising a box of chicha in the air in a salute. ‘Come join our party. Bolivian water for Bolivian thirsts!’
‘That’s not water you’re drinking,’ Diego said with a grin.
‘No, but this is also for Bolivian thirsts!’
Diego waved and kept going. It would be wonderful to sit and listen to stories of the blockade, but he had work to do.
Diego tried to find the least crowded of the streets. He turned up Avenida Ayacucho, past the movie house where Batman was playing, and four blocks later he was at the post office.
‘I need a receipt,’ he said to the teller.
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Please,’ Diego said with a grin. The woman behind the counter smiled back and handed him his receipt. He put it carefully into his deep pocket.
To be a taxi was to always be on the lookout—for dangers and opportunities. The world was full of chances to make a few Bolivianos. It was also full of people who wanted to take those Bolivianos away. Diego kept his eyes open and headed toward the cathedral to light Mrs Álvarez’s candle.
The cathedral was a few blocks across town, on the Plaza 14 de Septiembre. The plaza was a very grand place, with covered walkways all around it, and gardens that were larger and better cared for than the ones in Plaza San Sebastián.
Another celebration was going on in front of the cathedral, with musicians blowing into the long reeds of the sanka and drumming away on the bombo. Diego heard fragments of a speech a woman was giving as he turned into the cathedral. ‘Today we will burn our water bills,’ she said. ‘Bolivian water belongs to Bolivian people!’
Mass was coming to an end up by the main altar. Diego lit a candle for Mrs Álvarez at a side altar to St Peter and watched the nuns behind the grill talk quietly with visitors. He liked the cathedral. It was clean and quiet.
A lot of prisoners needed a taxi that day. After giving Mrs Morales her receipt, he went out again to buy some tomatoes and onions for one of the inmates who operated a little diner in the prison, and to pick up something at the pharmacy for someone else. When he got back from those trips, his mother sent him out for wool.
‘Get used if you can, new if you have to, and if you have to buy new, go to the stall by the coca market, not the shop down the street.’
Diego knew. He’d gone on wool runs often enough. On his way out, he was asked by the woman who sold coca leaves to other prisoners to replenish her supply.
‘Go to the woman who sold them to you last time. They were a good quality.’
More money went into his pockets. He kept track of the amounts in his head. So much for wool, so much for coca, so much was his pay from the jobs he had already done. He didn’t need to carry a notebook to write things down. The notebook in his head kept track of everything just fine.
The second-hand clothing market was first, and Diego was lucky. He found two old jumpers, torn and dirty but made with the right kind of wool. One was yellow and one was pale green. His mother would wash them, unravel them, then knit something new with the wool.
In the coca market, merchants dished out small packets of dried coca leaves from the big sacks in front of them. Diego didn’t remember very much about growing coca, but he liked talking to the merchants as though he shared their knowledge of working the soil and pruning the branches. He wasn’t just a prison boy. He was a cocalero.
He asked about villages and rainfall as he wound his way through the women in woolen shawls and bowler hats and the men with their cheeks puffed out, full of coca leaves. Deep in the market, he found the merchant he was looking for.
‘Compliments on your coca,’ he said in Quechua to the old woman surrounded by sacks of the little green leaves. ‘The women in San Sebastián like it very much.’ He told her how much he wanted to buy.
Instead of measuring out the leaves, she looked at him with practiced eyes.
‘You are an honest boy?’
‘I am a taxi,’ he said. ‘I am a good businessman, and being honest is good business.’
‘Then I have a job for you.’ She gave him a parcel of leaves. ‘Take this to the American consulate. Their people have been warned to stay inside because of the protests and I know they will soon run out of coca leaves for their tea. They pay well, and I want to keep them as customers. Here is the address.’ She wrote it down on a slip of paper. ‘Do you know how to get there?’
‘It’s on the same road as the university,’ he said. ‘No, don’t pay me now. Pay me when I bring back your money.’
‘Good business,’ the merchant nodded. ‘Let the gringo women see how cute you are. They’ll give you a big tip. I will hold your bundle for you until you get back.’
Diego handed over the jumpers he’d bought for his mother and headed off quickly. The fastest way out was through the witchcraft market, full of herbs, good-luck charms, and yatiri telling fortunes. In and out of the stalls he wove, until finally he came out into the open air, where the bread sellers were competing with cars and minibuses.
The American consulate was high up in a new building. Diego felt the scruffiness of his clothes as he walked into the shiny, clean entranceway. He wondered if the city dust on his shirt would lessen his tip. There was an elevator, but he wasn’t sure he was allowed on it, so he took the stairs instead, after checking on the sign for the right floor. The steps were clean and bright and wide.
At the right floor, he left the staircase. The hall was also bright, and at the end was a double set of glass doors with two guards with guns standing in front. Diego saw the American flag through the glass and knew he was at the right place.
‘I have a delivery,’ he said to the guards, who didn’t reply. He tried to go in, but the doors wouldn’t open. A voice came out of nowhere and spoke to him in English. It had to repeat itself before Diego thought to reply.
‘I have coca leaves,’ he said in Spanish, holding up the package so they could see through the door.
The first set of doors clicked open. Two more very tall men in uniforms and no smiles motioned to Diego to put his package on a moving belt. It went through a machine while they frowned at it. Diego had to walk through a doorway beside the machine—a doorway that didn’t really go anywhere. Finally, he got his package back and was allowed to go through the second set of doors and into the consulate.
A blonde woman in a clean and pressed light blue dress greeted him. He gave her the leaves.
‘The merchant said you might be running low,’ he said in Spanish. He hoped she understood this was business, not a gift.
‘I have a little boy just your age,’ she said, smiling kindly. Her fingernails were shiny and pink. Diego thought about his mother’s nails, cracked and worn down from hard work.
The American woman paid him—plus a good tip—and he left the consulate.
Just outside the glass doors were posters of American cities—San Fra
ncisco, with the long bridge over blue water, New York City crowded with buildings, and some place with an endless beach. Diego wondered briefly if the cities he was looking at had prisons. Then he was on his way again.
After all, he was a taxi, and a taxi needed to keep moving.
THREE
Diego headed back through the market. The coca seller was pleased to see him. She told him to keep his tip for himself and added her own delivery payment. Then he paid for the coca and for two hunks of legia—one sweet and one salty. Legia was the chalky paste that people chewed to help draw the juice from the coca leaves. He asked for a written note of the price. He never wanted anyone to question his honesty. Cheating was bad, bad business.
He picked up his bundle of coca and the jumpers for his mother and headed home. The food sellers were putting more coal on their grills to make them hot enough to cook all the food they would need for their evening customers. Scents of grilling meat from anticuchos, of hot oil on fried potatoes, and of smoked corn husk filled the air around Diego, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten all day.
He fingered the Bolivianos in his pocket. His mother didn’t mind if he spent his earnings on food for himself. ‘Eat and be strong,’ she always said. The grilled sausages and milanesa were tempting, but he knew the chupe was more filling, and cheaper.
He bought a bowl of chupe and sat down at a table to eat it. The soup was thick with grains and tomatoes. He even found bits of meat among the potatoes. He didn’t realise how hungry he was until he started eating. He shovelled the soup in without stopping until the bowl was empty.
‘A boy who likes to eat. Very nice,’ the chupe seller said, as she put his bowl and spoon in a bucket to wash.
Diego sat for a moment to let the food settle, and to catch his breath after eating so fast. He knew the market well by now. He loved its rhythms of people doing business and getting what they needed, and being tired at the end of a day of doing things well.
When he first started out as a taxi, he was afraid to go beyond Plaza San Sebastián. Cochabamba was much bigger than the little town he had come from. He’d gotten lost a lot in the beginning. But bit by bit, the city had revealed itself to him. He now knew most of the streets and knew where everything was in La Cancha, Cochabamba’s giant street market. It was good to know things.
Diego, Run! Page 2
