The Girl Who Remembered the Snow (12 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl Who Remembered the Snow
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“Is there anything within walking distance of the hotel?” Emma asked a desk clerk, a small man with greased black hair.
“If you go out the door and turn right, there is the nicest part of town where there are many restaurants. In the other direction there is not much but offices.”
“Except for the cambio and American Express.”
“If you are interested in changing money,” said the clerk, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “I have a cousin who can get you a better rate than the cambio.”
“Maybe some other time,” said Emma, feeling a little less green, a little more confident.
Outside at the hotel gates, Emma turned to the right and walked toward the group of money changers she had seen before. The hotel guards apparently made the men keep their distance from the hotel gate, but all bets were off where the property line
ended. The money changers convened around her, chattering their rates, shaking fistfuls of pesos at her, tapping their calculators.
“Dos cuarenta!
Two point four!”
“Tours of the city! Best tours of the city!”
“Better tours! Cheaper!”
Emma suddenly felt horribly vulnerable again, but she somehow manufactured a smile and shook her head. Most of the men seemed to take the rejection in good spirits, though a few stared after her with unsettling leers, laughing among themselves.
Emma kept walking briskly and didn't look back. She had done a lot of traveling alone and was used to the stares, the catcalls, the unwanted attentions. Long ago she had decided that she was never going to be a prisoner of fears, whether hers or anyone else's. Most situations that arose could be solved with the right attitude and some common sense. And, bum knee notwithstanding, she could still deliver one hell of a kick if she had to.
After a few blocks of large walled mansions with soldiers posted outside—embassies, perhaps, or the homes of high government officials—the street narrowed, and Emma found herself in a pleasant residential neighborhood.
The houses here were smaller and had the same baked-in-thesun-for-too-long appearance that most of the buildings in the city seemed to have. The architecture was vaguely Spanish. Each house had a wall around it, just as the mansions up the street had had, but here the numerous trees, the parked cars, driveways and sidewalks made it seem rather like a nice old suburb of practically any city in America.
Emma came to a few restaurants, also walled, with colorful signs hung out front. Each had the same slightly seedy look, though according to the prices posted on the menus, none of them was cheap. All took every credit card known to man, Emma noticed ruefully. Tourists who charged their meals on a credit
card would get the official exchange rate and thus pay more than twice what their meals would cost in pesos.
After a few more blocks the neighborhood changed abruptly again. The walled houses gave way to dilapidated storefronts. The trees vanished. Crowds of people, poorly dressed, jammed the narrow streets, traffic thickened and slowed to a crawl. The area seemed even poorer than the ones she had driven through on the way from the airport. Apparently the nice part of town was not very big.
A group of young men standing on a corner against a wall spray-painted with Spanish slogans spotted her and called out, laughing, passing a brown bottle between them.
Obviously this was not where she belonged. Emma turned around and headed back toward the hotel. In half an hour she had covered only a few blocks. It was clear that she'd never find out much about the island on foot. What she needed was a guide and a driver, someone who knew the island and spoke the language, someone who could keep her from getting into trouble.
A dozen of potential candidates were still waiting like a pack of wolves just outside the hotel property line when she returned. They started shouting their pitches again as they saw her coming.
“See the island. Take you everywhere.”
“My car! My car!”
“Sell dollars? Two point four. Two point four.”
Emma tried to look them over as she approached. Like many men on this subtropical island, they all wore dark pants. Most also sported enormous smiles and clean white shirts, which somehow made them look even more menacing.
Emma's heart sank. How could she just get into some stranger's car? These guys might be the salt of the earth for all she knew, but any one of them could just as easily drive her to a secluded spot and rape and/or kill her. But how was she going to find what she had come here to find from a tour bus?
Emma barely noticed the little hand slipping into her own, but the next moment she was being pulled toward a battered gray car at the curb by a black kid about ten years old.
“You come with me, lady. My uncle got car, we give you greatest tour of the island. You see everything, come on.”
The boy tugged at her hand insistently. At the curb, a small man with Caucasian features but the characteristic dark San Marcan complexion got out of the gray car—an ancient Ford—nodding happily and opening the back door.
Several of the other tour operators ran after Emma and the boy, complaining loudly in Spanish, but the boy shouted back in the same language what obviously were curses. A few men laughed in surprise at the boy's nerve, the others continued to shout. He hurled more curses and pulled Emma closer to the car.
“Don't pay no attention to those guys,” the boy said to Emma with a look of contempt. “They are the dirt under your feet. Animals. They would cut your throat for five pesos. You cannot trust them.”
“I can trust you?”
“Sure, I'm okay. My uncle got good car, we take care of you. Give you excellent tour.”
The other men threw a few insults of their own and backed away, except for one gigantic hairy fellow, who strode right up to the boy and growled in low, threatening Spanish. The boy listened to him for a few seconds, then yawned and spit on the ground.
Well, not exactly spit. It was more like controlled stream of drool, which apparently was even more effective. The hairy brute bellowed like an enraged bull and looked as if he would have started swinging if two comrades hadn't restrained him.
The boy barely flinched. He said something else in guttural Spanish (which further enraged the man) and spit/drooled on the ground again. Then slowly, deliberately, he turned to Emma.
“You don't have to worry about him. He is not a man at all, he
is a worm. He is full of shit. I tell him to crawl back into his hole. I'm Timoteo. You come with me, okay? What's your name?”
“Emma.”
“Emma, that's a good name. You come with us, Emma. You come with Timoteo. We give you good tour of the island. You have fine day.”
The hairy competitor shouted some final curses at the boy and let his friends usher him away. Timoteo pulled Emma toward the car again. The driver—the man the boy had said was his uncle—nodded happily and gestured to the back seat.
“Wait a second,” said Emma, having second thoughts. And third. “How much is this little tour of yours going to cost?”
“Fifty dollars,” said Timoteo.
“How about fifty pesos?”
Timoteo went over to his uncle and began chattering animatedly. The man finally shrugged.
“Okay,” said Timoteo, returning. “He accepts.”
Emma was still telling herself all the reasons why she would have to be crazy to go off with this boy as she let herself be pulled into the back seat. The time had come to make a decision. If she hoped to find the
Kaito Spirit
and her grandfather's killer, she would have to trust someone. Whom better than this boy? What other choice did she have?
“This my uncle, Changee Money,” said Timoteo, breaking into a big smile as he shut the car door. “He change your money, that's why they call him that.”
“Changee money?” said Uncle Changee Money, taking an immense wad of pesos from his pocket. His huge smile revealed teeth that looked as if they had been filed down—or perhaps they just came to sharp points naturally.
“You are very good-looking lady, Emma,” said Timoteo with an innocent smile. “I am glad you come with us. No good-looking lady ever come with us before. They all afraid Changee Money kill them.”
“What have I gotten myself into?” muttered Emma, as Changee Money started the car. With a sound like that of a dishwasher digesting a place setting of silverware, they screeched away from the curb.
 
 
W
hat she had gotten herself into, Emma discovered to her great relief, was simply a tour of the island.
For the next two hours, Timoteo and Changee Money drove her through the crowded streets of San Marcos City, pointing out the local attractions: memorials to the late dictator, fountains and churches, natural rock formations, an enormous outdoor market complete with plantains piled to eye level and pens full of live turkeys.
Only once did they find themselves in an area obviously not on the standard tourist route, a street of what could only be called shacks, gray hulks of rotting timbers built directly on the dirt. Each shack was no more than ten feet square and was built only inches from its neighbor. Emma assumed they were some kind of deserted storage facilities, until she saw a woman with a baby in her lap sitting in the doorway of one of them. As they passed, the woman looked up and made eye contact with Emma. There was no anger in her gaze, no hatred, no despair—which was somehow even more disturbing. There was nothing at all.
“People live here?” Emma exclaimed.
“They're nobody,” sneered Timoteo. “Poor people. You don't want to see them. You wait. In a minute we're coming to great statue, twenty feet tall.”
The boy was an endless source of chatter, laughter and charm. He regaled her with questionable information about the island's attractions (for some reason Emma doubted that the scenic highway along the coast was really two hundred years old) and boasted endlessly about his own talents.
“I am best of all the boys where I live,” he declared as they drove past a group of ancient buildings that apparently had been built by the Spanish conquerors of the island in the seventeenth century. “Many girls chase after me. I have gone to school and am always the smartest one for I know all the answers.”
“Why aren't you in school now?”
Apparently Timoteo didn't know the answer to that one.
“You like old buildings?” said the boy, looking out the window, changing the subject. “There are many old buildings in San Marcos, built by the Spanish, long time ago.”
For his part, Changee Money—who spoke no English at all, but smiled endlessly with his sharpened teeth—leered at Emma good-naturedly and offered through Timoteo to change all her dollars into pesos.
The sights and sounds and smells of San Marcos City were exciting and exotic at first: policemen in white pith helmets, armed with automatics and truncheons; yellow banners stretching across the narrow streets proclaiming the wares of cafeterias and camera stores; food peddlers and tropical flowers and throngs of people in colorful clothes.
Eventually, however, Emma grew weary of the endless travelogue and depressed about her prospects of ever locating what she had come here to find, the
Kaito Spirit
. The city was too big, too unfamiliar. And there was no reason to assume that the boat her
grandfather had once owned had ever been anywhere near here. She'd have to search the entire island.
“Are there any marinas near the city?” she asked.
“Marinas?” said Timoteo, sticking his head back in the window with a quizzical expression. “What is marinas?”
“Places where boats are docked. I'm looking for boats.”
“Sure.” The boy laughed. “We have lots of boats in San Marcos. I have been all everywhere, so I know. I went to San Barnados, once—on the other side of the island, thousands of miles away. There are many marinas there, but we can't go there now. It is too far away. Changee Money has to go home for dinner. He like to eat a lot. We go back to your hotel now, okay?”
The boy let out a spurt of rapid-fire Spanish, which Changee Money answered with a leer, a wink, and a few grunts.
“Would your uncle let me hire his services for a few days at a time?”
“Where you want to go? To see boats?”
“Yes.”
“Then you don't want him,” said Timoteo, laughing, not changing his tone of voice, though his eyes seemed to narrow slightly. “His car's a piece of shit, won't get you nowhere very far. My uncle will try to cheat you, too. He's not so nice a guy like me. Hey, Changee Money, you don't want to drive lady around a lot anymore tomorrow, do you? You're the armpit of a smelly dog, aren't you?”
“Changee mon'?” said Changee Money uncomprehending, looking back at Emma in the rearview mirror with his usual leer.
“Forget it.” Emma sighed. “I'll find somebody else.”
“Why not you go rent a car?” exclaimed Timoteo. “Then I come with you, show you everywhere you want to go. All you need is a guide, and I'm your best guide who has ever lived. You drive, I bet. Everybody in U.S. drives. Everybody has big new car. You rent car, okay?”
“We'll see,” said Emma, wondering why she hadn't thought of it herself. Why wouldn't they have car rentals on San Marcos? They had Coca-Cola, according to the billboards that were everywhere. They had Kodak film. They even had Indians who had had their own culture before Columbus landed. Were any of them still left?
“Do you know the Kaito, Timoteo?”
“Sure. What's that?”
“They're an Indian tribe from the island. Do they still live here?”
“Yeah, they got Indians in the country. They make stuff and sell at market. You want to buy?”
“Maybe.”
“We stop on way back to your hotel. Hey, Changee Money. Go to South Market.
Ve al Mercado del Sur.”
Changee Money muttered something that sounded like a complaint, but the boy persisted. Changee Money turned the car down a series of side streets and in a few minutes they came upon an open square full of outdoor vendors, most of whom were packing up their wares. It was nearly six o'clock.
Changee Money waited in the car, smoking a cigarette, while Emma and Timoteo got out. The boy led her by the hand to a booth near the edge of the square. There, an incredibly thin black man with graying temples, dressed in white slacks and shirt, was beginning to collect wooden carvings from an outstretched blanket and pack them into cardboard boxes.
“Beautiful carvings,” said Timoteo with an expansive sweep of his hand. “Made by Indians. You buy many. This man give you good deal.”
As Timoteo chattered in Spanish at the old man who listened without changing his tired expression, Emma bent over and picked up one of the black wood carvings.
Like the carvings in Jacques Passant's bedroom, it was surprisingly heavy—almost as if it were made of cast iron instead of
wood. There, however, the resemblance ended. These carvings were angular and crude compared with Pépé's rounded, graceful ones. The shapes of these were simpler, too—there were none of the counterbalanced squatting men, the long-jawed warriors or the stacked faces, just androgynous standing figures that all looked alike.
“Are these all he has?”
“A carving is a carving. What's wrong with them? They are beautiful. He give you good price.”
“I'm looking for older pieces,” said Emma, trying to figure out how to explain the difference between tribal art and cheap souvenirs. “These are just for tourists. I'm looking for more authentic things.”
“Indians make these. They are very poor and stupid. They don't have houses, they live in the jungle. They don't know anything. This man buys from them. They make all these things. He give you deal.”
“Tell him thanks, but this really isn't what I want.”
Timoteo growled in Spanish at the man, who shrugged and went back to packing up his wares. Emma walked back to the car, followed by the disappointed boy. Obviously he had planned to take a fat commission from any transaction.
“Is there a car-rental place near the Casimente, do you know?” Emma asked after Changee Money had started the car and begun driving them back to the hotel.
“Around the block from the Casimente there is best car place in San Marcos,” said Timoteo, brightening. “You rent good car there, one that not break down like this piece of shit. Timoteo take you everywhere. Show you all the boats. You safe with me. I won't cheat you like Changee Money.”
“Or split the fee with him,” said Emma. “How much do you propose to charge me for your services, by the way?”
“You pay me what you want. I don't care.”
“Come on, Timoteo.”
“I'm not like the rest of these guys, everything for dollars. I don't care about that. I do best job. You pay me whatever you decide. It's okay. I trust you.”
Timoteo stuck to this line until they got to the hotel, then he and Changee Money conversed in Spanish, both anxiously scrutinizing the crowd of money changers still waiting at the curb outside the gate.
The group was smaller now—no more than six men. Happily the big hairy fellow with whom Timoteo had had the argument before was gone. Changee Money brought the car to a stop a few feet from the group.
“Fifty dollar,” said Changee Money, turning in his seat to face Emma.
“Fifty peso,” said Emma, reaching into her pocket and counting out the bills. “As agreed.”
Changee Money shrugged, leered, and took the cash, adding it to the roll he kept in the front pocket of his shirt. Apparently he and the boy would settle later—if the boy got anything at all.
“You meet me tomorrow at car-rental place,” said Timoteo, getting out the car with her and speaking low so none of the men could hear. “You turn left when you get out the hotel gate, then right. Car place is one block past American Express office, okay? We have a great day, see everything there is. You buy many Indian carved statues.”
“I'm still thinking about this,” said Emma.
“It's okay,” said Timoteo. “You can trust Timoteo. What time you want meet me?”
“Nine, nine-thirty, maybe,” said Emma. “But I'm still making up my mind.”
“Okay, nine-thirty,” said Timoteo, getting back into Changee Money's decrepit Ford. “Don't be late.”
The group of money changers had already convened around Emma, waving their pocket calculators and wads of cash as Changee
Money roared away. Timoteo waved his hand at her from the window.
 
“Yes, there was corruption and cruelty under Peguero,” said Celia, taking another tiny bite of her dinner—a sautéed sole amandine with wild rice. “But my father says Peguero had vision for San Marcos. He also had the power to impose this vision. Now there is no vision, only constant fighting for power. Many people long for the old days.”
The hotel restaurant reminded Emma of the most expensive place in a small town. Unlike the rest of the hotel, which was spacious, informal and airy, the Casimente's dining room was a stuffy, pretentious place full of white linen tablecloths, tuxedoed waiters, and candelabra. It even appeared that someone wanted the tourists to believe that Michelangelo was still alive and decorating ceilings in the Caribbean.
“The drive from the airport was very impressive,” said Emma, trying to extract a final morsel of meat from her duck a l'orange, also with wild rice. “But this afternoon I saw some shocking poverty in between monuments.”
Emma felt pretty ridiculous, flying to the Caribbean to eat a duck. She had had little choice, however. All the entrees in the restaurant were old-fashioned American fare. Most of the customers, in fact, were old-fashioned Americans. If this really was the best restaurant in the city, San Marcos was in deep culinary trouble.
“Yes, there is great poverty on San Marcos,” said Celia, putting down her fork. “Many families live without plumbing and know nothing of personal hygiene. Not that things were so much better under Peguero, but at least Peguero tried to improve matters. Peguero gave every family a cow and a piece of land. The cow had to be milked, and the land had to be tilled. There were grave penalties for killing this cow, even if the crops had failed and the
people were starving. Now most people have no cow, no land, nothing. Now little is certain and nothing is done. And there is still cruelty and corruption.”
Emma took a sip of coffee—a rich dark brew that had been the best part of the meal so far, and the only thing that didn't taste like something she could have gotten in Indianapolis.
The island's politics were obviously complicated and not a subject Emma wanted to delve deeply into. She was just a visitor here, one with very specific objectives. She couldn't get the picture of the blank-eyed woman in the doorway of the shack out of her mind, however.
“How do the people feel about Americans?” Emma asked.
“Oh, they like them. On the whole we are just the opposite of people on many of the other islands. San Marcans do not resent the Americans. We admire you, almost too much, I think. It is like the people here have a cultural inferiority complex. Everything American is better than anything that is San Marcan. We watch American movies and listen to American music. I think we must find our own culture and learn to value it more.”

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