by
Stephanie Wacha
Leaving the bartender, he quickly slipped into the conversation
his friend was having with some foreigners who had made homes in their town- a
town that was a special kind of bubble, a time capsule, where the cobblestoned
streets and heavy walls of ancient temples seemed to freeze time and stop the
forceful frenzy of time’s passing, which in other cities devoured the lives of
its inhabitants. A place where the general melody evoked an ode to Death. That
subject wasn’t broached in those night-time haunts filled with citizens of the
world, in that small dot on the map formed by the creases on his hand, where he
sought refuge from the country’s consuming savagery.
Pablo Alvarez, “Chau Muerte Chau”
“The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken
by a traveler.”
-Franz Kafka
The old Blue Bird pulls into a lot with forty other buses that are all painted a
little differently. They all have specific destinations and routes and nothing
is labeled. Thankfully, I have come into the highlands, 1,500 meters above sea
level, and it’s no longer so hot that my skin is sticking to the cracked vinyl
seats. I wait quietly for my turn to file off. There is no rush. There is a
small sign by the driver with a cross hanging above it. Sin tu amor,
soy perdido. Without your love, I am lost. I am taller than most
locals and it feels like an imposition; I try to make myself smaller with
respectful smiles. I sling on my pack with a customary heave and with a deep
preparatory inhale step off the bus.
I turn around in a circle to orient myself before heading in the direction of
the market, knowing the heart of the city likely lies on the other side. I set
off in this new city to what has by now become a familiar din of bus drivers
calling their destinations. Coming up to the backside of the market, the smell
of grease is thick and hints of fried chicken and plantains in unseen pots.
There are a few stalls with used clothes hanging from ceilings and electronics
tacked to temporary wire walls. I find a place to cut-through the middle of someone’s
shop, but have to navigate carefully with my giant pack in such a tiny space.
Now in the main aisle, there are fruit and food vendors. Pineapple, mango,
melons, and papaya are laid out in front of bins of spice and bricks of
chocolate.
I buy a bag of cut pineapple for cheap, cinco quetzales, and
make my way to the front side of the market. Brightly colored Mayan fabrics,
bags, notebooks, jewelry adorn the front of these stalls, and now, only a few
hundred feet from the bustling heart of the locals, the vendors are calling to
me, la mochillera, the backpacker, to see what
they have. But I’m not shopping today, and they are met with a series of polite
but unengaged nods and “Buenos días,” often followed shortly by a quieter “No
gracias” that is tinged with guilt.
Antigua feels, at first blush, bigger than any city I have seen in months.
Granted, most of my time has been in villages of no more than 300, and I have
avoided capital cities for the last four countries. I follow its cobblestone
streets for several hours, glad to stretch my legs after almost a full day of
wildly uncomfortable chicken buses from El Salvador. I make mental notes of
where the best street food might be, and I am immersed in a passing stream of
colors, sensations, and impressions.
I pass open doors of language schools, ruins of churches, hostels galore,
coffee shops and fine art galleries. I again and again find myself strolling
down Calle de Arco, with the arch of Santa Catalina framing the
volcano just north of town. Calle de Arco will become a
touchstone, leading me from the hostel to Parque Central, the
center of town. All of these main tourist areas have swarms of short, square
Mayan women in bright traditional dress, often with a small child in tow,
rainbows of scarves, elaborate woven fabrics, and beaded jewelry draped over
their arms. They are beautiful, and I want to take their photograph. But they
are pushy with their wares, and soon I am crossing to the other side of the
street just to avoid being hassled.
Antigua was settled in the 1500s by the Spanish as the capital of what was then
the Guatemalan Kingdom, but has since been destroyed by earthquakes and
volcanoes, and the whole city moved slightly, maybe two or three times. It was
largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1773, and now there are remains of these
Italian-renaissance inspired churches. There are crumbled cathedrals both in
the center of town and on the outskirts. Much of that has been restored, or is
new, and all of it is quite beautiful. The houses and shops lining the streets
are brightly colored, like all colonial cities, and there are even a handful of
horse-drawn carriages to accent the tourist nature of all of this.
There’s an abundance of language schools and international non-profits. A
healthy number of both American and European retirees contribute to a fairly
decent population of expats in this city of 35,000, not much bigger than my
hometown in the States. After a day or two of settling in and seeing the
sights, I make my way down to the Rainbow Café and bookstore, where a local
non-profit is hosting a talk about developing arts and education while
maintaining cultural preservation for the children in the local villages. The
woman seated beside me is plain and elegant, and reading Murakami. She is also
from Arizona, and we become fast friends, at least for a time.
We meet the next night at Café no Sé for drinks and to exchange books. It’s
dirty, divey, candlelit, and feels like a throwback to another time and place.
Bob Dylan and other scratchy things are playing on the speakers in the back
with a small live band up front. It’s the musical theme for the entire city:
Bob Dylan and Bob Marley blare from every speaker. It is smoky and filled with
grimy good-looking people, full of bad habits and big thoughts. We drink
the Ilegal Mezcal Mules in copper cups, the jalapeno so strong
it’s burning.
Eventually we make our way over to Kafka, highlighted in the guidebook for its
rooftop bar. This late on a Tuesday, though, we find it empty except for us.
It’s dark, large and modern, but with nice traditional accents. Old glass
bottles and dusty hardcover books are tucked in to built-in shelving high above
eye level, and there is an antique typewriter sitting at the end of the bar.
The bartender is also the owner. He is friendly, clean, professional, and
speaks perfect English. Running Kafka is new to him; he used to work for some
program for the University of Arizona, and also as a translator. When he
finds out that we have both walked the ancient pilgrimage route across Spain,
over 500 miles on foot, this shared experience peaks his interest. We spend the
evening chatting, and his stares grow long and intent, gathering weight in the
air around us. Before heading back to my hostel that night, I tear an ad from a
local magazine and slip it in the old Smith Corona. The keys are cold, smooth,
familiar. I rob a line from ee cummings: here’s to one undiscoverable
guess, and leave the question dangling on the paper. But it immediately
feels false. Maybe it would have been better to steal from Kafka: May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as
well open the window and kiss the night air. It has already
been discovered, and there will be no guessing. His name is Alvaro, and I will
take him as a lover.
It’s no great romance. He makes clear both his intentions and that there are
limitations on them. The next night, we go through the ritual dinner date (no
drinks tonight) before he takes me to his home. A beautiful old heavy wooden
door opens to a courtyard, where half-finished paintings by his handsome
Bohemian roommate on canvases taller than me lean against the stone walls,
bicycles interspersed, a stand-up bass in a dark corner. It feels familiar,
reminds me of a house of friends in Berkeley. He takes me to his room, which is
lined almost floor to ceiling with books. We make love, and I’m not even sure
why I’ve agreed to this. He finishes, collapses, says “Thank God for American
girls,” and I could slap him. But he has a point, at least in this instance, so
I curb that impulse, and we talk for a while, but ultimately, I’m really ready
to go. We’re dressed and sitting at the foot of the bed when he goes to the
bookshelf in the corner, pulls off a slim black volume and hands it to me.
“Chau Muerte Chau.” Bye, death, bye. I turn it over in my hands, skim
the back. Alvaro is the editor. “Un regalo,” he says. A gift. I thank him for
the book and let him walk me out, without any ceremony or pretense at meaning
or caring. It’s too late to be alone, and the emptiness of the dark cobblestone
streets feels threatening. A few blocks later, I hear a low voice from the
shadows. “Chica,” it purrs, followed by a low breathy whistle. I don’t turn
around but quicken my pace, trying to remember which upcoming street might be
better lit, or at least one that might have another human being. “Chiii-ca!”
This time it is more energetic, higher, sing-song, and there are foot-steps
clacking on the street behind me. I reach a bright corner, and the sound of the
foot-steps disappears back into the darkness.
The next morning, after the sun has risen and warmed the cobblestone, when the
city is awake and the Mayan vendors are finishing arrangements on their wares,
I make my way to my favorite coffee shop on Parque Central. It’s an open-air
affair with four dollar lattes made from coffee grown in country, a respite
from the pervasive instantado because most of the country
can’t afford to drink its own coffee, and it must go to export. There is talk
that Pacaya, the volcano just outside the city, has erupted over night and is
still erupting now. It’s more of a “bubbling over” really, just a bit of lava
and heat. But it’s enough to be a reminder of the fire and movement underneath
us, that even the continent is only a crust floating over tumultuous deep
rumblings. The crumbled cathedrals could testify, but they remain silent. Folks
in here could talk of these things, but we don’t. People only speak of secret
tours being run up there now, illegal hikes that get you so close your
flip-flops melt. The clientele is half the local business crowd and half
travelers and expats, what seems to be the common ratio.
Most backpackers, unless staying for language school, use Antigua as a
stop-over to Lago Atitlan, or in place of Guatemala City. It’s generally
regarded as being “too American” or not giving a feel for what Guatemala is
“really” like. I vaguely consider this as I dig into Chau Muerte with
my cinnamon roll, knowing I was heading off for the “real” highlands and
experience the following day. (“Where were they? The foreigners straddled two
worlds from the best seats in the house. They enjoyed the culture through the
safe distance of critique and sarcasm.” – Alvarez)
I spent two weeks in the jungle and remote villages in the highlands, sometimes
riding for hours over winding dirt roads in the mountains standing in the back
of a pick-up to get to the destination with the smell of wild cardamom thick in
the air. There were no stores and only one very unappealing restaurant at the
hostel in this village, so I walked up to the door of a hut where I had heard
that the woman who lived there sold food. She understood why I was there, and
gestured for me to wait while she went in to her one room dirt-floored home. I
shifted my weight awkwardly in the falling dark, while her three year old
daughter stared, shy but not afraid. The chicken was thin and tough, and tasted
like it had been freshly killed. But the heat and the grease were comforting as
I made my way back in the cool night air. Cacao trees lined the pathways
through the jungle, tempting with their luscious pink fruit and complex white
flowers shining in the dark, but taking from those trees would have been
stealing from the locals. The little girls roamed through the open air hostel
at meal time with aluminum foil-wrapped ground cacao and sugar. “Choco-late?”
they would sing imploringly, and pout accusingly if you ever said no. Was this
the “real” Guatemala?
Further north and in an even more remote location, I began a six day trek to El
Mirador, an ancient Mayan city dating from sixth century BC. To reach it,
I followed a man with a machete through the roadless, pathless swampy jungle to
reach the as yet unexcavated largest pyramids in the world. When we arrive at
the ancient city, the sacbe, the ancient limestone pathways
between pyramids, are still firm underfoot. This Mayan civilization once
numbered 100,000; now there are about twenty people living here. They are men
for whom Spanish is a second language, interspersing their native Quechua when
Spanish fails them. They are men whose jungle life is endangered. There is talk
from the Gautemalan Tourism Department that there will be a road built in the
next five or ten years, that Mirador will be spit-shined and sanitized, and the
jungle and the quiet ways of life here will be destroyed.
After adventuring in the northern regions, I make my way back to Antigua for a
few days of rest before the final trek home, back to the States. I have
read Chau Muerte Chau by now. It’s a series of vignettes, with
Death personified, and how people chase her. But Death, you see, and her twin
sister Life, wanted a break from their stigmas and the emotional baggage people
project on them. So Death and Life went off to Tahiti, after Gauguin, in search
of Paradise and pleasure. One of the characters orders a glass of nothing, from
the Buddha disguised as bartender, and finds himself admitted to Paradise,
where Death and Life and Jesus and Shiva and Ganesh are all hanging out and
playing poker. Gauguin had ordered a glass of amnesia and never left. In the
end, the primary narrator roams the streets of Antigua reciting poetry, shaping
the body of his beloved with cigar smoke, in search of Death, his love, until
he finds her at home in the hammock, waiting for him. They agree to dance and
drink martinis until dawn, every night until nothing is left.
It’s all in my mind on the long flight home. There is certainly a reality of
poverty in Guatemala, and all the challenges that come with that. It’s true
that the complexities of those challenges are hidden to the casual traveler.
The Mayans are more than an ancient culture to turn to for new-age answers. The
Mayans maintain an identity that has been adapted to a modern world, for better
or for worse, and however tenuous that might be. El Mirador stands, mostly
untouched and unseen, a testament to thirteen hundred years of civilization,
and to all the love and life and work and death contained therein.
It is also true that there is a reality beyond poverty here, and it is not
American or European but uniquely Guatemalan, or possibly beyond nationality to
be simply human. The intelligentsia, the culture, the art and
the creativity are all refined and owing to themselves, not necessarily to the
bombardment of expats. Alvaro, his artist roommate, and most of the locals I
met showed that to me over and over again. I have read and reread Chau
Muerte Chau, not only for the images of the city it evokes, but for a
greater understanding of what it is, which in all honesty, is a non-cohesive
and disorganized novella. If Death and Life follow Gauguin to Tahiti, are they
intending the same erotic journey that he was? If Death necessitates the end of
life and pleasure and joy, isn’t it natural that to escape her, we crave more
of it, often in the form of making love, and dancing and drinking martinis till
dawn?
Pacaya looms large beyond the city limits of Antigua, bubbling, burning,
threatening, enticing. Everything could go in one big fiery explosion. All
existence is delicately dancing on an edge. The city that evokes an ode
to Death. Cities, peoples, and entire civilizations go through their
cycles, they endure and they fall away. But when it comes right down to it, it
is the collective of individuals having a human experience. And maybe that was
why I let Alvaro be less than an undiscoverable guess. I walked into Kafka,
ordered a glass of nothing from the laughing Buddha, and entered Paradise just
long enough to put off my date with Death till another sunrise.
