As soon as we had put a few miles
between us and the checkpoint, Carlos pulled over and stopped. "It's
not safe to drive in the dark," he announced. "We'll sleep
here." Which we did, shifting uncomfortably from time to time.
At least it was cool.
In the morning we realized we were low
on gas, and lost time trying to find a station in the villages we
passed. It was New Year's Eve, and everything was closed. "Come
back tomorrow," someone told us at the third gas pump we found.
We found a café that was still open;
they served us coffee, fish and rice, and the owner let us use the
washroom in his family's living quarters. While we ate, he went to
find a friend who might have some gas. Afterwards, he led us down a
mud road to a back yard and a rusty barrel half-full of gasoline,
which his friend ladled into our tank using an empty oil can and a
dented tin funnel. I hoped the gas was clean, although it didn't seem
possible.
In spite of the delays we were all in
good spirits. Raquel and Paco were good traveling companions, relaxed
and cheerful, never complaining. Carlos talked constantly. George was
quiet; unusually so, I realized. On the first leg of the trip, from
Toluca to Mexico City, he had talked with Raquel the way he always
did with young women, joking and telling outrageous stories, but
since then he had let Carlos lead the conversation. Now I kept
stealing sidelong glances at him, wondering. He seemed content
enough; he still smiled at Raquel when she spoke to him. He would be
all right, I decided; it was just the crowded conditions. I wouldn't
worry.
It was mid-day before we got to the
border of Honduras, mid-afternoon when we finally pulled away from
the customs shed. Once again, the army helmet attracted notice and
sharp questions; when we re-arranged our belongings after the
inspection, Carlos buried it deep in the blankets. As we turned onto
the highway, I saw two guns pointing at us from a stand of shrubby
trees, camouflaged except for the last foot or so of barrel and the
black saucer-sized mouth. George was driving, now. I think he saw the
guns, too; he drove away very slowly, as if to show that we were not
escaping.
The section of highway that crosses
Honduras is short, just a thumb's breadth on the map, but when night
fell we had not reached the Nicaraguan border. There had been a
couple more checkpoints and the road in places was crowded with army
trucks. We were still afraid to drive in the dark, so in a village
that was little more than a gas station and a couple of houses, we
stopped. A building wore a sign; "Restaurant", but there
were no lights, and when we went over, we found the door locked.
Across the way, a few soldiers lounged in a porch. Someone shouted
drunkenly. Carlos went the other way, and knocked at the door of the
remaining house.
The door opened a bare crack, letting a
ray of light spill across the swept-dirt yard. Carlos spoke quietly
for a minute, and the door swung wide. A man stepped out, gesturing
towards us.
"Come in, come in!" he
called. "Come in, all of you!"
Inside, our host introduced himself. He
was the mayor of the town, he said. There would be nothing open
tonight, no place to sell us food; it was New Year's Eve. But he
would be honoured to count us as his guests for the night; would we
stay?
And we would be honoured, too. The
appropriate polite phrases were repeated, the women complimented, the
host praised for his hospitality, our men for their generosity in
taking succour to the earthquake victims, all with the required
disclaimers; "No, no, no, you flatter us."
We were shown to rooms where we could
change, mud-walled bedrooms with sagging beds; we would be sleeping
there later, but first there was supper waiting. Once again it was
rice, boiled green bananas and cheese, the worst cheese I had ever
eaten; sour, salty and with an after-taste of dust. Our host's wife
served us silently and retreated into the back of the house. The
mayor ate with us. When we had cleaned our plates, he shouted,
"Coffee!" and his wife reappeared with steaming cups. She
collected the plates and left.
It was New Year's Eve, which meant that
we had to stay up until midnight to see the year in. We sat on
straight-backed wooden chairs around the table for three or four
hours. Raquel and I, taking our cue from the woman of the house,
pushed our chairs ever so slightly backwards so that we were out of
the cone of light from the single bulb. The men formed a close
circle, elbows on the table, and talked.
In a situation like this, George
usually monopolized the conversation. He made an effort now, talking
about the situation in Nicaragua, and our car-load of supplies. But
Carlos had a better topic: our host himself. He knew someone in Costa
Rica with the same name, a very important man; was our host related
to him in any way? And with a little stretching of the rules, and a
transformation of possibilities into certainties, it turned out that
yes, the mayor was a kind of a cousin of Carlos' acquaintance, by now
become a close friend, almost, you would say, a brother. Which made
Carlos, then, the mayor's newest and best buddy.
Once this business was settled, George
attempted again to turn the talk his way. But the mayor smiled
politely at him, and turned back to Carlos, who had just said
something about tracing their kinship back to Columbus. George
subsided into a sulky silence.
In 1492, Carlos told us, the Jews in
Spain had been ordered to convert to Catholicism or suffer the
consequences. Many of them did; many others fled the country. Most of
the sailors on Columbus' ships were Jews, Carlos said.
Of course, they had to take a
"Christian" name to avert suspicion. But the names they
chose were a secret code. By changing a letter or two, you could find
the original family name. Carlos' own name was one of these;
Benavides. If you changed the letters back, you would get Ben David,
a good Jewish name.
In fact, Carlos informed the mayor, his
name, Andrade, was another of these code names. He, Carlos, hoped the
mayor was not offended by this, but he was a descendant of these
brave Jewish sailors who had first discovered the new world!
No, the mayor was not offended. He
threw his arms around Carlos, pounding him affectionately on the
back; they were brothers!
All this took much longer to tell, that
night; the story was corroborated with a great number of details,
occasionally confirmed with an "Isn't that true, Paco?" to
which Paco always nodded.
Finally, there were gunshots outside.
Our host looked at his watch: "Midnight," he said. "Happy
New Year, all!"
"Happy New Year!" we
answered. The mayor pushed back his chair and we all rose. He shook
the women's hands, embraced the men, pummeled Carlos' back again. The
evening was done; we went to bed.
Stories of Mexico: Non-fiction
©Susannah Anderson, 2001
©Susannah Anderson, 2001
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