He was probably watching me too, his killer, and thinking how much of an idiot I had been not to make off with the entire loot. So, the heart attack story was the official one. I ate calmly. The beer loosened me up somehow; it whetted my appetite for more beer. I paid, and after roaming about for fifteen minutes or so, ruminating and dillydallying, I came across El Putuncu, a watering hole on Potosí Street. Fifty or so drunkards were making a ruckus, imbibing beer and playing dice games. They seated me at a table next to a couple of quiet boozers, the kind that blurt out something after every drink. They were so tanked that when they turned their heads, they remained still like a couple of antique dolls and then struggled to bring them back to their original positions. Three-quarters of the way through a pint of beer, it occurred to me to ask them if the place was always so rowdy.
“It gets worse later,” one of the guys commented. He kept his mouth shut for a whole half-hour, then said out loud, “How much money must these owners make?”
His companion fell asleep sitting up. Periodically, he shot suffocating blasts of his buffalo breath our way.
The clock struck 8 and I had to exchange some dollars to pay the tab. The waiter converted the money and took a cut for himself. I decided to call the hotel and ask if Blanca had arrived. The manager responded in jest: “Blanca who?”
I stumbled through Pérez Velasco. On the cement terrace, a policeman was busy emptying the pockets of the shoeshiners. Boys between the ages of ten and twelve years, high on paint thinner, were trying to hide the residue of various toxins in little boxes, hats, and shoes. Three gay vagrants, dressed in rags, huddled together on a bench and watched the rascals play cat-and-mouse with the cop. Onlookers made fun of the solitary policeman, who ultimately gave up and left. Around twenty shoeshiners emerged from the La Paz night and began to inhale paint thinner in a sort of group dance.
On the steps that link Comercio and Ingavi Streets, a scruffy-looking, completely intoxicated rabble-rouser delivered an impassioned speech to the masses. Nobody understood a damned thing.
The man would laugh, shout, and, from time to time, point to his own behind. Through his shredded pants you could make out a pair of skinny thighs, black with filth. The unavoidable Christians wasted no time pulling together a chorus of paid spectators and a country bumpkin guitarist who started singing a ballad in praise of Christ. The La Paz night felt like a labyrinth around there. Thousands of the city’s inhabitants ambled from place to place for no particular reason.
I escaped the crowd and took a taxi to Villa Fátima. The red light-bulbs showed me the way to the brothels. In the house where Blanca worked, the oglers were congregating. The madam, escorted by the Peruvian gorilla, was surveying the action with a crabby face. I asked her about Blanca.
“She should have been here already,” the woman answered. “Today’s the busiest day of the week.”
The Peruvian stuck out his chin and added, “If she’s not here by now, then she’s not coming.” I didn’t trust that brute’s judgment, so I waited a little while longer.
At 9 o’clock, El Faro was a market for sex slaves in constant motion; on Fridays, the whores of Villa Fátima worked from 8 at night until the break of dawn. Twenty pesos at a time, they filled their pockets with the wages of sin at the expense of dozens of lowlifes who had climbed the city in search of erotic detoxification. Unfortunately, the sessions lasted at most ten minutes. For the first time in the history of Bolivia, the Indians had access to white pussy.
A few years earlier, a white hooker wouldn’t have slept with a peasant for all the gold in the world. But now, the fanciest clients were the Indians whose payments of ten to twenty pesos allowed them to earn their daily bread. The hookers had gotten used to these interracial exchanges, dispatching their clients with extraordinary speed.
Bored of waiting, I went back downtown. If Blanca had passed up the busiest night of the week, it was because she was walking arm in arm with that cattle man. I would have liked to see her, invite her out to an expensive restaurant, take her dancing, and seriously propose to her that if I was successful up north and she was willing, I would send her a ticket so that she could join me.
Whatever I had left of a conscience was bothering me. She was nowhere to be found. To kill time, I decided to go to the movies. They were showing a David Lynch film at the Cinemateca. I wasn’t much in the mood when I got there, but within ten minutes I had forgotten my fears and tribulations. It was called Blue Velvet, and it revealed a microcosm of American society, with all of its innocence and perversity: the United States laid bare, stripped of the American dream. If I was escaping misery, it was only to fall into the complacency of the absurd. Lynch really knew the human soul—as much as Ingmar Bergman—so well that it could drive a person crazy.
Afterwards, I walked into a wretched bar, a refuge for local bums across the street from the movie theater. There were four tables, an owner with a face like he’d died and come back to life several times, and a waiter who resembled a French buccaneer. I chugged two shots of stiff pisco and walked out into the mist. The sky was drizzling lazily, as if it didn’t really want to. I traversed the high reaches of the city, which day by day were getting deeper under my skin. I arrived at the hotel and threw myself on the bed. I waited for Blanca to finish up her date and come to bed to sweat out her troubles, though she didn’t seem to have any. I fell asleep and started having nightmares, then woke up around 3. A dog howling like a wolf marred the silence of Rosario. My head hurt and my heart was pounding as if it belonged to somebody else. It accelerated on its own and then quieted down without my consent. As I was already dressed, it didn’t take much for me to go out to the patio, immerse myself in that whirlwind of twisting and turning hallways, and come upon Blanca’s room. First I knocked a few times; anxious, I started to shake the door. Seeing as I wasn’t getting any answer, I resorted to kicking it. I woke up the entire floor. A foreign tourist came out of his room and, pointing to his head, exclaimed, “You crazy fool! Is late!”
He was right. I returned to my room and read the paper five times before going back to sleep.
At 10 in the morning, Don Antonio was waiting for me with a cup of hot chocolate and a bread roll.
“Seems like you’ve been seeing ghosts all night,” he said. “You don’t look good.”
“I couldn’t get to sleep. I was thinking about my trip. Have you seen Blanca?”
“She’s a nocturnal creature,” he replied. “But unlike me, she leaves the hotel, while I just stay up because of my damned asthma.”
I thanked him for the chocolate and resumed my search. Blanca apparently hadn’t slept in the hotel. Putting aside my thoughts of her, I decided to set out for the Andean agency. Though the drizzle had ceased, it was still a cloudy, gray day with that high-altitude melancholy that can depress anybody.
In the taxi, I asked myself several times, What on earth will I do if Ballón hasn’t been able to get the visa? I didn’t have an answer. I consoled myself by recalling over and over that the fat guy had assured me I would get the American stamp. I got out of the car, trembling. Ballón was in his office, chatting with a guy who had been cut from the same cloth as the tireless salesman from the Hotel California. The secretary was painting her nails and she asked me to wait a moment. A few min- utes later, Ballón received me with a smile that settled my nerves.
“There was no problem. We had to do some arm-twisting with our contact at the consulate, but I told him that it was for you, a serious person. I had a hard time getting the plane ticket from Lloyd; I spent a half an hour trying to convince a deaf bureaucrat to do the heroic deed. The hundred dollars softened him up. Here’s your passport with a multiple-entry type B-2 visa, valid for three months starting today, and your ticket for the flight tonight. Be at the airport by 8 o’clock. You owe me a hundred dollars.” Upon receiving the greenback, he added, “Please, not a word about any of this. I don’t want anybody to find out about the operation. People can be real nosy, know what I mea
n? They could screw everything up.”
“Mum as a painting,” I said.
“Have a nice trip. You’ll be fine at the airport in Miami; everything’s in order. Adiós, Señor Alvarez.”
I saw it and I didn’t believe it. Out on the street, I stared at the visa that had cost me a brutal crime. It had been expensive, more expensive than the visa you need to enter Paradise.
In the Plaza Murillo, a hundred people had gathered to see off Don Gustavo, the ex-ambassador, ex-congressman, ex-mayor, ex-rector of San Andrés University, ex–coup leader, and former crook. A military band was taking a break, waiting for the corpse to pass by. Political and military figures were amicably rubbing elbows. I positioned myself in the plaza under the shade of a tree. I managed to catch the arrival of several solemn police lieutenants with moustaches. Suddenly, everyone turned around toward the presidential palace. The president of Bolivia, accompanied by his entourage, was heading toward the Congress building. Minutes later, the band director raised his baton. A funeral march took control of the scene. A dozen congressmen carried the coffin in which Don Gustavo, all quiet and cold, was taking one last spin around a plaza that had been like a second home to him. Behind the coffin followed the entire family. There was Isabel, and Doña María Augusta covered with countless black veils. The president took the first step and the rest of the crowd proceeded down Ingavi Street. From the Foreign Ministry, somebody threw a bouquet of roses, which was quickly picked up by an Indian boy who had mixed in with the passersby.
I concentrated on Isabel; I was seeing her for the last time. She was dressed, fittingly, in black, without affectation, plainly, with the kind of class that is only God-given. It’s one of the few things you can’t buy in this world.
Chapter 12
Igot ready to leave. I made some final arrangements, dug up the money, and stowed it away in one of the pockets of the new jacket I had bought from the Israeli. I then left my luggage in the lobby, before the sneering gaze of the manager. I didn’t owe the hotel a penny. I took the pleasure of tipping the Scotsman’s helper and the bellboy. I held out hopes of finding Blanca at the last minute. I went out to the street and walked past El Lobo and two or three gambling houses nearby without any luck.
Upon returning to the lobby, I bumped into Don Antonio, who was getting ready to leave the hotel for the used bookstores with a work by Tolstoy under his arm.
“I need something to read during the trip,” I said. “I’ll take it for fifty dollars.”
“Always the jokester, Alvarez,” he replied.
I placed a fifty-dollar bill in the palm of his hand.
“I’ll always remember you,” he stammered, clearly moved. “Read it carefully; the old man’s got important things to say.”
“I can’t find Blanca.”
“You’ve grown fond of her, eh? She loves you in her own way. She’ll be sad too. Those girls have their soft spot. I’ll tell her you were looking for her.”
We embraced, and then I asked the bellboy to hail a taxi. Don Antonio went out to the balcony and raised his hand with that gnomish, mocking smile of his.
“Smoking or nonsmoking?” the ticket agent for Lloyd Bolivian Airline asked.
“No preference,” I answered.
The girl scribbled something down on my boarding pass and said: “Please go to immigration. The flight is delayed.”
When I asked a Lloyd employee the reason for the delay, he answered that it had something to do with passports. After buying the magazine Cambio 16, I duly stood in line before the immigration windows. A man advanced in years, with a well-groomed white beard, commented with an Iberian accent to his wife: “I don’t know what the problem is with the passports. What a bunch of crap!”
It was my turn to show my passport to a young man who was dressed like a city slicker. The man reviewed it meticulously and handed the document to a policeman in the office.
“Please, señor, would you be kind enough to follow him?” the immigration guy indicated.
“What for?”
“They’ll explain it to you. Go on.”
The game’s up, I thought. Just as I feared. They know everything about the murder. They’ll frisk me and find the dollars. They’ll know the serial numbers for sure.
The policeman led me to an adjacent office, opened the door, and showed me in. Standing casually against the edge of a desk, another policeman observed me as I entered. Beside him, also standing, a tall suntanned man with blond hair and Anglo-Saxon features studied me with a certain benevolence. Seated on the sofa, a fortyish woman wearing an eccentric, flowery dress was crying and using an old handkerchief to dry her tears. Beside her, a young man about twenty years old, pale and visibly shaken, shot me a frightened stare. The police officer was handed my passport by his subordinate, who called him “captain.” After giving me a quick once-over, he passed it to the Anglo guy, who was wearing a Bogart-style trenchcoat. The gringo leafed through it and carried it over to a beat-up computer, into which he punched mysterious figures. A cathedral-like silence prevailed. The Anglo returned and informed the captain: “This is another one.”
The police officer cleared his throat and raised his chin, unbuttoning his shirt collar. “Señor Mario Alvarez?” he barked with the tone of a jailer.
“That’s me,” I said. “Is something the matter?”
“Where did you get your American visa?”
“Through a travel agency, why?”
“What’s the name of the agency?”
“Andean Tourism.”
The policeman and the Anglo exchanged conspiratorial glances. The latter smiled an imperial smile. “Did you pay money for the visa?”
I didn’t know how to respond. The woman was sobbing and the boy was sending me vibes of metaphysical pain.
“A little something to speed up the paperwork.”
“Like how much?”
“I don’t remember; enough to cut out the bureaucracy.”
“American visas are free. Did you know that?”
“Yes, I did, but Señor Ballón said that they would take two weeks to give it to me.”
“He said the same thing to me,” the señora pleaded.
“And to me,” the young boy chimed in.
“Not only to you three, but to many others. He tricked you,” the police official said, driving the point home.
I felt my heart in my throat. It wasn’t about the murder; Ballón had pulled a fast one on us. He had taken our money when we shouldn’t have paid a cent. He had ripped us off. Now what? “If it was free, then Ballón is a crook,” I said.
“That’s not the only thing,” the American commented with a slight accent. “He falsified the visas. These passports never went to the American consulate.”
My throat went dry. My backside stiffened. “That can’t be,” I said. “Nobody falsifies American visas.”
“Señor Ballón is part of a ring of international counterfeiters,” he explained. “Our immigration officials in Miami caught a dozen Chinese people with fake visas. It was a professional job. They had us confused for several months; the Chinese people got their visas at the Andean Tourism Agency.”
“It’s not my fault,” I said. “I thought the visa was real. I was certain he sent it to the consulate; he assured me he’d done it to speed up the paperwork.”
The American official took several steps forward and held out his hand to me. “My name is Jack Martin. There’s nothing to be afraid of. If you didn’t know what Ballón was up to, you’re innocent.”
“That’s right,” I stressed.
“Señor Alvarez, why didn’t you go to the consulate yourself? Don’t you know you’re supposed to apply in person?”
“I went one day, but the line was really long. So I decided to look for a faster way, you know, a travel agency.”
“Are your papers in order?”
“Sure, the deed to my house, my bank statements, everything . .
.”
The American sm
iled to himself. “Why Andean Tourism? It’s out of the way; there are other travel agencies downtown, better-known ones . . .”
“A friend who used them to go to Brazil recommended them to me. They seemed to know what they were doing.”
“Didn’t Ballón tell you that you’re supposed to apply in person and that sooner or later you would have to go to the consulate?”
“Yes.”
“How much did you pay him? We’ll find out anyway.”
“Ask Ballón yourself,” I said. “Ask him or his secretary.”
“What time did he give you the visa?”
“Ten, ten-thirty.”
“Didn’t he seem nervous?”
“Ballón? Happy as can be.”
The señora, brimming with anger and frustration, got up from the sofa and stood face-to-face with the American. “Ballón knows everything. What do we have to do with it?”
The American took a step back, as if his face were being sniffed by a rabid dog. “Ballón escaped by a hair,” the police captain said. “He beat us by half an hour.”
“Some cop must’ve given him the heads-up,” the boy said. The captain directed a sinister look at him.
“Do you have any relatives in the U.S.?” the American asked me.
“My son lives in Florida. He bought me a ticket to go visit him.”
“What does he do over there?”
“He’s in school.”
“With a scholarship from the U.S. government?”
“No, I send him money.”
“How much?”
“Sometimes five hundred dollars, sometimes more.”
“You can’t live on that over there,” he responded.
“I suppose he makes ends meet with some job or other. The kid’s really frugal.”
“Then you must make a lot of money.”
I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I had to play it cool. “I’m a businessman.”
He smiled again, smugly, arrogantly. “The police have to look into whether or not you knew what Ballón was up to.”
American Visa Page 20
