The Path of the Jaguar

by Stephen Henighan

  Amparo watched her go, surprised to find that she no longer liked Nancy. The soldier’s attention had turned her head.

  “Show me your weaving,” Ricardo said. “I want to see the jaguar. Then I’ll know whether the bag I bought in Chiapas was made by you.”

  “Oh, Ricardo, I sold it! Some tourists — ”

  “You don’t have any more?”

  “I’ll weave more. I’ll show them to you next year.”

  “I hope I’ll be here.”

  A stroke of fear crossed her chest. “You work here, no?”

  He looked at the concrete floor. “Our program’s not going well.”

  The edge in his voice unsettled her. This would mean less work at Escuela Tecún Umán. Having lost Sister Consuelo, Don Julio and the señora gringa, she did not want to lose Ricardo. “But you’ll stay here . . . You’re living in Antigua . . . ”

  Fingering one of the wall hangings, he said: “My wife can’t visit me here. She travels a lot for work.”

  He shrugged his shoulders with a helpless gesture that reminded her of Eusebio’s gestures at the time they had married. Her breath tightened in her throat. “Ricardo,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry. What I just said was a lie. My husband doesn’t work in a maquila. He went to the United States.” At the sight of his astonishment, she said: “I felt so bad lying with you standing there. I thought, ‘How can I lie to Ricardo . . . ?’ But I can’t tell Nancy. She might tell Don Teófilo and he knows the police and gringos from the State Department . . . ”

  He nodded, the blueness of his eyes shining with candour. “Did you have to pay a coyote . . . ?”

  “Yes, we had to pay a coyote.”

  Ricardo asked her more questions in a very soft voice. He backed off two steps. “So my wife is in another country and so is your husband. Ret jatq’o ayo’n, re’n jinq’o ayon. You are alone and I am alone.”

  “Ja,” she said, her voice a single cautious breath. Heat rose through her body; his Cakchiquel drew him hideously close to her.

  “Our students’ semester here is over. Brett and the others,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder, as he continued in Spanish, “will be going home next week.”

  “Does Nancy know . . . ?”

  “I assume Brett’s told her . . . ”

  She felt a pulse of concern. “I’ll make sure she knows.”

  “I have some free time before the next group arrives.” He shook his body in a way that made her feel the length of his gringo limbs. “I’m going to take a trip across the north of the country, from Cobán to Nebaj . . . ”

  “I went to Nebaj with my brother and my husband. Be careful, Ricardo. There were all sorts of terrible people on the bus — ex-guerrilleros, ex-kaibiles . . . ” Wondering why he was making this trip rather than going to see his wife, she asked: “And when you come back . . . ?”

  “Re’n ninjo jinq’o pa Antigua. Re’n manäq iwatan si ri nusamaj . . . ” He wanted to be in Antigua but he didn’t know if his work . . . He shrugged his shoulders.

  His gesture filled her with loneliness. “Please don’t leave Antigua without coming to see me.” She spoke in Spanish to make sure he understood.

  “I promise,” he said. “I won’t leave without saying goodbye.”

  NINETEEN

  A MONTH LATER RICARDO RETURNED. THIS time he didn’t phone to warn her. One afternoon, when she was sitting at the back of the market, almost slumbering in morose drowsiness, his face poked around the corner of her stall.

  “¡Ricardo!” Jumping up from the chair where she had been sitting, she seized his wrist without thinking that she had never touched him before. The high-altitude sunlight of the mountains had burned his skin without purging it of its pallor. She felt her grip on his wrist; she relaxed her hold and took a step back. “Sakar, Ricardo. La utz a’wech?”

  “Utz matiox, Amparo. Y ret?”

  “Life is hard,” she said in Spanish. She found herself hoping, with the desperation of an adolescent, that he would notice that she had paid a hairdresser in Antigua to wave her hair. She did not know why she had done this. Esperanza teased her that in her husband’s absence she was reverting to girlhood. Amparo had laughed, yet she heard a warning in her sister’s voice.

  Ricardo stood over her. To her shame, she felt his presence as a man; but he was also an old friend to whom she could speak openly. Glancing down the aisle at the nearby stalls, she waved him into her stall and offered him her spare stool.

  “I come to the market every day and hope for tourists,” she told him. “I try not to spend money and I thank my god that I have my house and my children . . . I envy you having the money to make that trip.”

  He hesitated, as though he had not expected such frankness. “And your husband? Has he found a job in the north? Is he sending you remesas?”

  She avoided his eyes. “My husband’s stay in the United States has not been a success.”

  “He’s still there?”

  “Still there. Still living with my brother.”

  “So he could still become successful.”

  Shame engulfed her. She looked away.

  When she looked up, he was shrugging something off his shoulder. “Re’n q’o jun ya’l q’iak. I have a red bag.”

  She started forward in astonishment and dug her fingers into the red weft. “Ricardo, I made this bag!”

  “This is the bag I bought two years ago in Chiapas.”

  “But you said you’d given it to a friend . . . un amigo.” She could not bring herself to use the feminine form.

  “Una amiga. I met this amiga in Todos Santos Cuchumatán last week. She gave me back the bag.”

  “This is one of the bags Don Julio sent to be sold in Mexico . . . ” Her voice trailed off at the thought of Ricardo, a married man, a man she respected, meeting an amiga in a remote town in the mountains. She should end this conversation; she should not speak to him again. Six months ago, she was sure, this was what she would have done. Now, in spite of herself, she felt deluged by sympathy and a contradictory need to understand how his life worked.

  A scuffing noise came from the aisle. Four women in huipiles had shuffled close to the stall to listen to them. Fortunately, Doña María was not among them. “He is my client,” she told them in Cakchiquel.

  They tittered and shuffled away.

  “Come on,” she said to Ricardo in Spanish. “Let’s go talk in the square.” They walked down the aisle. “Ever since my husband left, I’ve been surrounded by women who want to spread ugly gossip . . . Let’s show them how little I care what they think!”

  She linked arms with him. He seemed startled by the gesture — she was startled herself at what she was doing — yet his initial awkwardness melted as he kept stride with her. She pulled him along, recovering an energy that had been buried deep in her body. She basked in her own strength and determination. The women who had gathered in front of her stall scattered like clucking hens. Arm-in-arm, they walked towards the front door of the market. A girl who was learning how to weave on the tela de cincha looked up, and the neighbour who was teaching her laid her hand across the girl’s eyes, muttering.

  “Ri äk nusik’in chuwajay! The hen is clucking in my house!” In Spanish she continued: “She should cluck in her own house before she clucks in mine!”

  When they reached the bench in the square, she felt herself burst into rollicking laughter. She hadn’t laughed this hard in months. “Ay, mi Dios . . . Ixmucane is laughing with me . . . I can feel her . . . ”

  “But, Amparo, your community . . . If they see you walking with a gringo man . . . Won’t they . . . ?”

  She was laughing too hard to reply. At last she sat up, feeling the tears that glistened on her cheeks. “It used to be like that, Ricardo . . . Even recently. But not any more. This community no longer has the power to destroy anyone’s life. It is too weak and unsure of itself. My friend Raquel has done scandalous things — things that are wrong and which I would never do,” she added to hea
d off any misunderstanding, “and she continues to live in her house and nothing has happened to her.” Watching him absorbing this information, she changed the subject. “There are still just enough tourists coming to the market to keep us all alive. The members of my savings club have suspended their monthly payments. For the moment, we’re not giving anyone micro-credit.”

  “There’s no work at Escuela Tecún Umán?”

  She shook her head. “A few tourists. No university groups, no missionaries, no State Department. Since the gringos started fighting in Iraq they have stopped coming to Guatemala.”

  They talked about a Mayan mayor who was running for president, about the latest scandals in the FDR Party. Ricardo looked uncomfortable: “Amparo, the company I work for has collapsed.” She regarded him in incomprehension. “It’s gone bankrupt. I’m unemployed.”

  “Do such things happen in your country?”

  “Sometimes. Some of the Canadian students may come back next year, but if they do, their universities will arrange it by themselves. I have to go home and look for another job.”

  “Can’t you find a job here?” She was taken aback by the urgency in her voice.

  “It’s easier if I look at home. At home it’s easier for me to see my wife.”

  “You’re lucky that you can see your wife sometimes,” Amparo said, her fingers closing around a fold of her uq. She was glad that she was wearing this black skirt, whose traditionalism cancelled out the allure of her waved hair.

  “I want you to have the bag,” he said. When she hesitated, he said: “It’s yours. You made it.”

  He offered it to her. She took the bag in her hands. She was aware of their awkward postures, turned half towards each other on the bench in the deserted square. She looked at his concerned, sunburned face. “You’re trying to give me back the culture that’s been taken from me,” she whispered. “I’m not sure anyone can do that anymore.”

  “Only you . . . ” He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t have any answers. Not for you or me or anybody. But I think you should have the bag.”

  “Thank you, Ricardo.” She realized she would not see him again. He was the last in her line of wealthy, cultured mentors. Don Julio, Sister Consuelo, the señora gringa . . . She would not befriend anyone like this again. Even if she met such people in the future, she was too old to be a protegida, a young indigenous woman full of potential. With the fading of post-war optimism, few people cared if Mayan women had potential. She longed to hold onto some shard of those years when her life, her village, her country, had felt as if they could change and grow. On impulse, she asked: “Will your cellphone work in Canada?”

  “My cellphone? I bought it here. I assume it won’t work in Canada.”

  “Will you give it to me?”

  “Of course.” He seemed disappointed. He reached into his pocket and hefted the cellphone in his hand. He leaned forward. “You press that button to — ”

  “I know how they work.”

  He did not reply. Up the street a schoolbus honked its intention to leave for Antigua. He got to his feet. “Goodbye, Amparo,” he said in a slow voice that came from low in his throat. “I’m very grateful for your friendship.”

  She stared at him, feeling a longing she could not define. “You will always be my friend.”

  They shook hands with a slow clasp. She turned away and walked into the market.

  PART THREE

  2005

  TWENTY

  WHEN A WOMAN’S HUSBAND HAS left her alone for almost three years, she loses the ability to share. Working away from home like a father, Amparo felt herself to be less of a mother. Even as she promised herself that everything she did was for her family, she worried she was doing less for her children, her parents, her community. Don Teófilo phoned her when missionary groups came to Antigua to learn Spanish, or when a gringo student or professor asked for a Cakchiquel course. But she had no time for Escuela Tecún Umán. For months now she had been on the move, travelling all the time; she would not commit herself to a schedule of going to Antigua every morning.

  In the last meeting of the Cakchiquel Women’s Savings Club prior to the December 2003 elections, she had urged the young girls to vote. They looked at her with helpless expressions. Their husbands had gone north: like her, they were alone with their children. “You must participate in this society,” she told them, “or it will never get better, and your children will leave as well.”

  “I don’t know who to vote for,” one of the girls said.

  “You don’t know that we must get rid of this corrupt FDR government?” Amparo almost lost her temper. “You don’t know that? Isn’t it obvious?”

  Against her own principles, she told them that she would be voting for Óscar Berger, the rich Belgian coffee-grower with the big moustache. Neither a former militar nor a former guerrilla, Berger was untainted by the civil war.

  She never learned whether the girls had voted, but it was clear that others thought as she did because Berger was elected president. In the village, though, the FDR mayor was re-elected. In the first week of 2004, one of the three civil servants who worked in the town hall next to the market banged on the door of the compound, demanded to see Amparo and handed her an envelope containing a legal document. She leafed through the pages in confusion until she realized that her licence to run a stall had been revoked. The reason given was “commercial malpractice.” She had twenty-four hours in which to remove her belongings from the market or they would be impounded by the municipality. The twenty-four-hour period had started twenty-three hours ago.

  When she got to the market, police were strolling the aisles. Doña Rosa was sobbing as her daughter helped her stuff her exquisite blankets into plastic bags. “Anchi jat jech’ël?” she said when she saw Amparo. “They don’t believe I didn’t vote . . . How can I vote when I can’t read?”

  “You’ve destroyed her life with your stupid club,” Doña Rosa’s daughter said in Spanish. “You’d better give her back her money. She’s going to need it now!”

  Doña Soledad, coming in from piling her weavings on a bench in the park, scowled at Amparo. Doña María and her daughter were also packing up their merchandise: they were moving into the stall at the front of the market from which Doña Rosa had been expelled.

  “I knew you were using your stall to hide the money you stole from that savings club,” Doña María said in a loud voice. “Your corruption . . . !”

  “The corrupt person in this village is our mayor!” Amparo shouted.

  The police stepped forward. “You’re defaming a public official,” the older officer said. “You’re committing a crime, señora.”

  “Your mother committed a crime when she gave birth to you!”

  The police seized her arms. They were small men, barely taller than she. Their shortness frightened her, reminding her of the Mayan men, press-ganged into the army during the civil war, who had massacred villages full of people like themselves. Their boots scuffed the concrete as they hustled her towards the door. The clear daylight made it even more horrifying that this was happening. She recoiled against them, falling back on her heels. They whipped her forward, shouting that she was a puta.

  She realized they were going to lock her in the cells in the town hall.

  “Save me!” she screamed. “Soledad! Doña Rosa! Don’t let them do this to me!” She twisted around, seeking out her companions from the Cakchiquel Women’s Savings Club. Humble women bent over plastic bags. The young girls stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders, pretending not to watch what was happening to her. “Tell Esperanza,” she gasped, as the men hustled her across the stone. “Tell my sister — ”

  Their fingers slipped on the snarled sleeve of her blouse. The door of the town hall appeared in front of them. She dug her heels in. “No!” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong. You’re supposed to enforce the law — ”

  “¡Puta!” the younger one said, punching her in the shoulder as she half-suc
ceeded in wriggling free. This boy’s youngest sister used to play with Sandra.

  “How’s your little sister?” she asked, reeling from the ache spreading through her shoulder. She retreated from the door of the town hall in slow backward steps.

  They crept towards her. The older policeman glanced at the younger one. She kept moving backwards, sensing women spying on them from the door of the market.

  The men halted, their crouched combat postures stiffening. Amparo realized they were looking over her shoulder. She glanced around and saw Raquel approaching. She wore a black Mayan skirt with a black Western blouse; her hair was loose.

  “Let her go,” Raquel said. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

  The police slipped into the apologetic slouch of poor men. “She defamed the mayor,” the older policeman said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “If you don’t let her go, you’ll regret it.”

  Raquel was the curandera. In spite of their uniforms, these men feared the spells she could cast on their families.

  “My gringo friend is coming on Saturday,” Raquel said. “When he complains to the United States Ambassador, you’ll be the ones who go to jail.”

  “We’re not doing anything against the United States,” the older man said.

  “We’re not doing anything against the Ambassador,” the younger man said.

  “Then let her go,” Raquel said.

  The policemen shrugged their shoulders and walked towards the town hall.

  Raquel gave Amparo a hug. Amparo resisted for an instant, then felt herself bite back on sobs as she crumpled into Raquel’s arms. “Go clear out your stall before they steal your weaving,” Raquel said. “Then come and see me.”

  When she returned to the market, no one spoke. The women from her club avoided her; the Evangelicals and the Catholics did not speak to each other; the women who had returned to Mayan spirituality gave both groups the cold shoulder. A vast sadness clogged her at the sight of the village’s women separating their belongings into antagonistic clusters. At last, she lugged her textiles towards the door. She was despairing of carrying them home, along with her loom, stools, wooden poles and coathangers, when Esperanza arrived. Taking turns, they carried everything back to the compound and piled it in Amparo’s living room. Amparo hugged her sister and went to see Raquel.