The plaza was just about deserted, except for a couple of guys trading kicks and punches beside the statue of the founder of La Paz. A few curious onlookers formed a circle around the rumble without the least intention of getting between them. It was an entertaining match. Neither one had the faintest idea how to land a good blow, so they ended up just grabbing each other by the hair.
I climbed Evaristo Valle up to Plaza Eguino, where a solitary street vendor was hawking Korean umbrellas for five pesos. Two scruffy homeless men, as happy as Arab sheiks, carefully settled themselves into the cardboard house in which they were preparing to spend the night. A hooker with a medium build and a serious face was loitering in one of the corners of the plaza. She opened up her flowery umbrella, put one leg forward, and waited.
The cold was growing unbearable. Chilled to the bone, I returned to the hotel.
* Since 1950, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) has occupied the Bolivian presidency more often than any other political party.
* The principal right-leaning political party opposed to MNR rule during the 1950s and 1960s.
Chapter 5
Before dawn I woke to a gentle, tickling caress. It was Blanca reminding me of our date. I had been fast asleep and didn’t hear her come in.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“About 5 in the morning. I couldn’t come any sooner because it started to rain.”
“Rough day, huh?” I murmured under my breath. As she came closer a pungent alcoholic aroma blew into my face, shaking me wide awake.
“It’s like a pigpen,” she said.
“What?”
“The second patio.”
She switched on the light on the night table and started to undress. When she snapped off her corset, her breasts popped out wildly. She stood there completely naked, her light cinnamon skin shuddering at the slightest touch. She wiped her genitalia with some lotion and a piece of cotton. Without her gaudy get-up, she was like a different person. Who would have guessed that in a couple of hours she had gone through maybe twenty guys?
She slipped under the covers. Her body radiated heat like it was on fire, and when she covered my body with hers, from head to toe, it felt like I was inside an enormous banana peel. She wasn’t used to being touched affectionately or delicately. The guys at the whorehouse humped her without even looking at her. Resigned and disgusted at the same time, she put up with their crude jerking and shaking. She got used to five-minute copulation sessions where she didn’t experience the slightest physical pleasure. She had learned to detach herself from any kind of pleasant sensation, and over time evolved into a peerless screwing machine. But this night was different. I think she was discovering what it really felt like to be caressed and to hear sweet salacious nothings. Her movements stopped being automatic and she let my hands and my insinuations guide her. I witnessed a remarkable transformation. The word “spiritual” is too pompous to describe what I believe Blanca was beginning to feel. I can only say for sure that it was something she had sensed her whole life. It was always inside of her, but she had never before dared to experience it.
By the time the sun rose, Blanca was spent and sleeping serenely. That left me all alone with my angst, my ridiculous speculations, and my absurd answers for the puzzle in which I found myself. I didn’t sleep. Instead, I stayed up listening to the thunderous pealing of the bells at Rosario’s church and the early-morning shouts of vendors hawking hot empanadas. When I switched on Blanca’s transistor radio, an announcer with a voice from beyond the grave remarked that the East Berliners wanted to put the Wall back up because even though they had lived poor, peacefully, and obediently before, now they didn’t know what to do with so much freedom. I stood up and took a swig of pisco and soon dozed off.
Blanca gently shook me awake at 10 o’clock and made me a boiling cup of watered-down coffee.
“You don’t look so hot.”
“I feel like my hands and feet are tied,” I said.
“Well, I slept like a queen,” she proclaimed.
“Before I came back last night, I went for a walk on Lambaque Street. I had no idea so many half-breed chicks have flocked to the fornication business.”
“They come here from the countryside,” she said. “Because the economy’s so bad, they put their asses out there for a couple of months and then go back home to be with their families and rest up. Then they come back here again as soon as the money runs out.”
“It amazed me to see how well you know your business. I saw you make a lot of trips back to your den.”
“That was nothing. You should see me on Fridays. By the time I finish I look like I’ve been beaten.”
“I just hope you’re saving so you don’t run into the same problems as me.”
She smiled. Her teeth shone as healthy as any I had ever seen.
“What does your dad say about all this?”
“Nothing—it would be a joke for him to try to teach me about morality. They eat with my money. Besides, money has no smell.” She fluttered her eyelashes like Popeye’s girlfriend. “How’s the coffee?”
“A bit sweet, but good.”
“What’re you gonna do to get that money?”
“No idea.”
“I’d never loan it to you even if I had it. I want you to stay here with me.”
“Great, and what would I do?”
“You could take care of my daughter.”
She tried to kiss me on the lips, but she didn’t know how. She ended up just pressing her lips against mine.
“We’ve only seen each other three times. I could be a crook.”
“My ex-husband was one of those. You’re not like him.”
“Who was he?”
“He worked in a sawmill in Riberalta. That’s where I met him. He was a distant cousin of my mother’s. I fell for his sweet talk, and only later did I find out he was a womanizer and that he snorted a lot of cocaine. He’s totally irresponsible. These days he ships drugs to Brazil and goes around having kids all over the place. I haven’t seen him in two years.”
“If he’s in the cocaine game, he must do well for himself,” I remarked.
“He spends it all on women and booze. He’ll probably turn up dead one of these days.”
Barefooted and wearing a simple linen robe, Blanca was strutting around the room stealthily, like a mountain lion. She stopped to stare at me for what seemed like an eternity.
“You need someone to take care of you. You’re gonna crack up. It’s not good to be alone. Loneliness kills,” she said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and embraced me. Having seen her perform in Villa Fátima so naturally, it would be easy for me to think of her as just like any other tart: indifferent, uncouth, bitter, and beaten down by her tough life. But the girl lying on my lap didn’t have a thing in common with those other high-altitude harlots, those boneheaded twenty-peso bimbos. Sure, her body had passed through hundreds of buyers, but her internal essence was still that of a country girl from the sweltering savanna. She was innocent and devoid of the slightest tinge of malice. The classic concept of sin did not exist for her. Her job was a simple business. Getting in bed with a new stranger every fifteen minutes didn’t infringe the least bit on her morals. Her livelihood couldn’t corrupt her little girl’s soul. Her desire for affection was immense and she thought the only way to get it was by asking me to be her pimp. Ironic as hell, but life can be funny like that. Life makes a mockery of us all in the end.
The announcer for Radio Fides reported that striking miners were crucifying themselves in front of the public university.
“Where’d they ever get an idea like that?” Blanca asked.
“TV,” I said. “Spartacus was on the other day.”
An hour later I walked out to the patio. Don Antonio was having a foamy hot chocolate with a piece of bread, which he would dip and then grind with his bare gums. The solitary tooth left in his upper gum looked li
ke a lighthouse in the middle of a reef.
“Alvarez, dear friend,” he greeted, “how would you like some delicious chocolate?”
“Thanks, but if I mix that with the watered-down coffee I just had I won’t feel any better than those wretched miners from Potosí.”
“Look what we’ve come to!” he exclaimed. “The heroes of the national revolution crucifying themselves so that they don’t get laid off.”
“It’s a great way to attract attention.”
“A veritable banquet for the human rights folks,” he stated. “I’m sure it’s part of a plan hatched by the Bolivian Mining Company’s foreign consultants. It is true, though, that our miners have always had a finely tuned sense of the pathetic. I’ll head down there around 2 o’clock to cheer them on. We the dispossessed need to give each other a hand.” He paused for a moment. “How’d it go with the agency?”
“They can get me a visa for eight hundred dollars.”
“They went overboard. I don’t think the lady from Tarija had that much dough. They must have thought you were a millionaire.”
“If they look good, women don’t need money to fix their problems.” “So you don’t have eight hundred?”
“Not even close.”
“Try mooching.”
“The one who might eventually cave is my godfather, the barber. But he’s so damn stingy . . . Mission impossible.”
“And your son?”
“I don’t even know where he is.”
“Damn!”
“No one in Oruro would loan me the money. I owe a few pesos to the bank and to a shark, the one I gave a bad check to. I’m going straight to jail the minute he sees me.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
“I’m going to pray to the Lord Jesus of May.”
“Where is the Lord Jesus of May?”
“In San Agustín.”
“Has he performed any miracles that you know of?”
“They say his shrine is filled with thank you notes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding, Alvarez. I don’t think of you as much of a believer. I see you more on the side of the agnostics or the atheists.”
“I have faith. Only a miracle can save me.”
“Lucky you. The Lord knows I’ve never been a believer.” Changing the subject, Don Antonio added, “My intelligence service informs me that you’ve been receiving conjugal visits.”
“No secret’s safe around here.”
“The manager would have a heart attack if he found out. In his fantasy world he’s the Lord Byron of Illampu Street. He wouldn’t allow for any challengers. The poor guy is obsessed.”
“Where are the other guests of the second patio?”
“Gardenia is asleep. After a night that you could call hectic, it’s a good thing he didn’t bring any special friends back. The goalie rushed off to pick up the memorandum that will probably transform him into the new manager of the Customs Union in Santa Cruz, and the wine salesman is busy running around the city. The guy’s a relentless walker, a pro at selling and even better at saving . . . I have a question for you, Alvarez. Could you spare five pesos?”
I handed them over to him. He kept his eyes on me, trying to discern my reaction.
“Tomorrow I’ll be getting some cash from the hotel owner. I proofread an article he’s writing about the Pacific War.” Don Antonio served himself a second cup of chocolate. I noticed his asthma had intensified, perhaps because of the added humidity from the previous night’s rain.
“I’m heading over to the university to check out the crucified miners.”
“Careful the police don’t whack you over the head. They’re all on edge. Watching people crucify themselves is enough to knock anyone off his rocker.”
An odd atmosphere pervaded downtown La Paz. Thousands of onlookers headed toward San Andrés University. On Avenida Montes, a column of police marched in pairs, helmets strapped on and army boots pounding against the pavement. An ancient fire truck sounded off a languid siren. Nobody could get into Plaza Venezuela; it was totally roped off. Hundreds of busybodies crowded against the statue of Marshall Sucre on horseback. You could make out the suffering miners from there. A Red Cross ambulance was parked in front of the Health Ministry, ready to intervene in the event of any fatalities. The crucified miners had covered their bodies with tin cans that brightly reflected the sun. A police lieutenant was pointing and barking orders for the officers to take their positions in case the racket got out of control.
On the terrace in front of the university building, a red hammer-and-sickle flag was burning. Enormous portraits of Marx, Engels, and Trotsky hung from the windows of the top floor of the building. I hiked up Landaeta Street and then approached the university on J.J. Pérez. At the beginning of Avenida Seis de Agosto, a police cordon blocked the onlookers from getting any closer. The anti-strike dogs, a peculiar cross of native breeds and German shepherds, were kept on lockdown by the police. Egged on by the atmosphere of confrontation, the dogs barked as if they were staring at a hundred full moons. A couple of students on the university terrace tested the officers’ patience, tossing stones at them like Palestinians in the Intifada.
The crucified miners were mortified by the unrest around them. If the cops set the dogs on them, the students would make a dash for the university building, leaving the miners for dead. The stalemate lasted about a half-hour, until the students got tired of throwing rocks and went home exhausted. A slender police officer with sunken cheeks ordered the troops to withdraw. The dogs retreated and the mass of people moved toward the terrace, where the miners had tied themselves to the fences surrounding the university garden. The spectacle was painful to watch and also, to a certain extent, laughable. The miners could have passed for actors in one of those Australian science fiction flicks. A veritable concert of banging metal pans and revolutionary songs started up. A photographer from a German television station set up his video equipment smack in front of one of the miserable crucified miners, just as the anchorwoman, a young Teutonic lady dressed warmly enough to scale Mount Illimani, smiled at the camera with a take-charge look. The crucified guy, a bearded miner, looked like a Thracian slave about to expire.
“How arre you doink?” the interviewer asked.
“Bad, really bad. Very cold. Nothing to eat.”
“You spent ze whole night outside?”
The miner assented with a slight head nod.
“Can you hang in zere for anozer night?”
“We’ll die here if the government doesn’t give in.”
“Vat do you vant?”
“To get our jobs back. They threw us out of the mines like dirty laundry after we spent twenty years frying our lungs to make the bourgeoisie richer.” The miner was communicating in proper Spanish and seemed to be in good shape in spite of the cold, the wind, and the rain the previous night.
“Vat is your name?” the German lady asked.
“Benedicto Condori. I’m from Huanuni.”
“Ven vas ze last time you ate?”
“A bowl of soup three days ago.”
“How mutsh ver you making ven zey laid you off?”
“One hundred fifty pesos a month.”
The German lady turned to face the camera and explained incredulously that that sum didn’t even add up to two hundred German marks. The conversation came to a close and the camera crew ran off to look for more suffering miners. Another crucified guy was dramatically perched all alone on the edge of the university building’s second-floor balcony. He was strung up loosely about two steps away from the abyss. The tin cans covering his body shook dangerously with the blowing wind. The guy didn’t have a beard, but he did have a full head of hair that was tangled in the shredded wooly ropes lashing him to a flagpole. I figured the guy could tip over at any moment and, like a metal bird, come crashing down twenty yards below. Maybe that’s just what the crowd was hoping for—a tragedy to put an end to their boredom.
A few minutes later, the terr
ace had become devoid of police and rock throwers and metamorphosed into a kind of outdoor fair. The miners elicited sentiments of pity and respect from most of the people, and in a few cases astonishment and mocking smiles. Classical music that would have been the delight of Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff was blaring from the speakers on the fifth floor, serving as a kind of backdrop to that Pasolinian stage.
I walked along the railing to see if I knew any of the miners. After all, I was from mining country and I used to visit the great state mines four or five times a year. I soon noticed a guy named Justo Rojas, a deep miner who had been in the army with me. We were stationed together in an inhospitable barrack on the dry, frozen Andean plateau near the Chilean border at 16,000 feet elevation. Justo was graying and his bronze face had wrinkled, but otherwise he looked exactly the same. He recognized me as I got closer.
Chapped by the cold, his skin had acquired a violent tone. He was covered by part of a gasoline barrel that he had probably cut out himself and a few newspapers. A bowl-shaped sombrero crowned his head. Twenty years earlier he had been a sad, lonely guy. Maybe we had become friends because I honored his silence. I was the one who dragged him out to his first brothel, and I was the one who got him into his first fight in boot camp with a sadistic and racist sergeant who gave him an awful beating. A good Indian is a quiet Indian, and Justo started to talk too much. He’d been a Communist since he was a kid because of his father, a miner from Potosí who read Pablo Neruda and could handle dynamite cartridges like they were frisbees. He first went to the mines to work at age twenty and returned every single day for the next twenty years. He studied the classical Marxists, and as far as I knew he never softened up like Gorbachev. Stern and proud, he was never an intellectual type or a yakking leader. He was always close to the grassroots, his feet firmly planted. I hadn’t seen him in ten years. His black eyes brightened when he saw me.
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