One
HARDLY A DAY PASSES that I don’t recall the moment when the Río Roto I’d always imagined was suddenly replaced by the Río Roto I encountered arriving at the end of August of 1993, on the first dry morning following a week of rain. I’d pictured the river as a clear ribbon lining the green hills, an image that later seemed roughly as prescient as the hundreds of other slight and colossal suppositions that had driven me there. Instead I saw the brown waters ripping trees from the banks and a car pinned to the skeleton of a flooded bridge. Half a mile from the entrance to the town a mud slide had buried a quarter-mile of road, and the bus from Rabinal had to try three routes before finding a connecting passage. When I got off the bus I could hear the water half a mile away, gorging itself on the branches and rocks that had fallen into it. The process of displacement had begun while I was riding, as each corner glimpsed through the dirty pane belied expectation, but when I stepped onto the road, the Río Roto that had existed in my mind until then was irrevocably lost. The place I’d invented despite your silence and believed in for years suddenly disappeared, and I had no recollection of how the town, and I in it, were meant to be.
I stood in the road, holding my suitcase and looking down at the mud. The bus honked as it departed, leaving me and a handful of other men who scattered noiselessly. I stood facing west, overlooking the town center: a soccer field that was severed by two main roads leading north and drowned, on the side farthest from me, in a long, muddy pool. Stores lined the street on the east side of the field. A cement church, buckling under the weight of a brick bell tower, occupied the south side. While the streets around the field preserved a certain symmetry, the dozens of houses behind them staggered more and more crookedly into the surrounding hills, as though crushed against one another by an encircling arm.
A man in the grocery chewing a stubby pipe told me where to find the post office. I carried my suitcase around the block and introduced myself to Tomás Morelio, a thin man with a mustache whose shirt pocket sagged under the weight of half a dozen pens.
“Good morning,” I said to him. “I’m Nítido Amán.” I held my hand out.
He raised his eyebrows and looked at me, glancing at my crumpled pants and the jacket tied around my waist. “A week late.”
I paused. “I’m sorry? Didn’t I say September?”
“Felix,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m walking over to the sacristy.” A chair in the back room squeaked in reply and Tomás led me out of the post office and onto the road. “Here,” he said, as soon as we were out the door. “I’ll carry that.”
“I can carry it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “After that bus ride?”
“All right,” I said. I handed him the suitcase with some embarrassment, thinking that it probably weighed as much as he did. “It has been a long trip.”
He walked off half a step ahead of me, easily carrying the heavy suitcase, and I followed him toward the plaza and around the church. The sun had only begun to dry the dirt roads; my shoes were caked with mud after ten paces. He led me to a white house with a door varnished orange and took a set of keys out of his pocket. “The sacristy is the only house with a lock. And everyone has a key.” He smiled. He opened the door and put my suitcase on the threshold. “I’ll show you the boxes.”
I followed him to the back of the house, where a narrow passage covered with zinc roofing connected the house and the church. He’d stacked the boxes neatly against the wall. Nevertheless the rain had already disintegrated several of them. I could see the spines of my books through the broken cardboard, swollen to bursting with water. “Thank you,” I said to Tomás. “It looks like they’re all here.” He turned and walked with me the way we’d come and paused at the door. I glanced into the dark hallway and then back at Tomás, expecting him to offer some sort of explanation. For several seconds we stood there uncertainly, our arms at our sides.
“Would you like to go in?” he asked.
“All right.”
He motioned with his hand. “I’ll wait here.”
I hesitated for a moment before walking in. The house had four rooms, including the bathroom; the others were a kitchen, a bedroom, and a front room meant as a living room that felt more like a furnished hallway. The furniture had just been purchased; the sofa stood on foam pads, still wrapped in plastic. A set of folded sheets, cardboard backing included, lay at the foot of the mattress. In the corner of the bedroom a table the size of a bathroom sink had been repurposed by a cockroach for its final resting place. Its legs stretched limply toward the ceiling. I stood in the doorway and looked at the bedroom with some concern. I made an effort to recall exactly what I’d written to Tomás Morelio before arriving, but I couldn’t remember. A picture of a blond Christ wearing a crown of thorns hung a few inches above the headboard. When I stepped toward the foot of the bed his eyes rolled upward and when I stepped back to the door they closed. I moved back and forth, watching his eyes flicker.
Tomás stood waiting by the front door. “This is the sacristy?” I asked.
He held his hands together and nodded, smiling demurely. “I hope you like it. Everyone’s pitched in.”
I felt embarrassed. “It’s very comfortable. Much more room than I need.”
He nodded again.
“Am I going to share the house—”
“No, no,” he said. “Luz brings your meals. She’s across the street. You should have sheets and towels. She’ll take those too.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said.
“You’ll find your time taken up with other things,” he said.
I hesitated. “Yes, probably.”
“We’re glad to have you,” he said. He coughed into his hand. “You’re much needed,” he said in a low voice.
“Mr. Morelio,” I said.
“Please,” he said. “Tomás. You really are.” He looked at his feet and then in through the doorway of the sacristy. “It’s been empty too long.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Far too long,” he murmured.
I stared at the pens in his shirt pocket, which as he bent forward had begun to tip out. “Tomás, I just want to make sure we’re clear.” I hesitated, unsure of how to be clear myself. “You did you receive the letter I sent last month?”
“Of course.” He smiled. “I saved the stamp.”
“Ah,” I said.
That would have been the moment to press further, but I didn’t. Instead I smiled at Tomás and nodded.
“Well,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll want to rest. When you’re settled you’ll have to come have dinner with me and my wife.” He shook my hand and walked off into the road. I turned back to the house and realized I’d forgotten to ask him for a set of keys.
I AWOK E in a dark room to the sound of knocking. My neck hurt from the folded sheets under my head and I didn’t recognize the bed. I touched the figure-eights imprinted on my arms and chest by the mattress. Then I remembered—the bus, the mud, Tomás Morelio—and I swung my feet to the floor and stepped into my shoes. I pulled a shirt on and combed my hair with my fingers as I walked to the door. The knocking stopped. When I opened the door I found a plastic chair facing me on the doorstep. There was a tray of food on the seat: a bowl of beans, a tamale, a hard roll, a teacup covered with its saucer, and a glass of water. In the twilight I could barely distinguish the woman crossing the road toward the other side. When I opened the door her long braid spun around as she stopped to turn.
“Thank you,” I called out. “This is really not necessary,” I said to myself. She waved and stepped into the house across the street. I took the tray inside and set it on the plastic-wrapped sofa and flipped the light switch. A single bulb three inches over my head glared on the plastic and filled the hallway with shadows. I turned it off again and ate in the dark, wiping the bowl with the hard roll and swallowing the tea in gulps before it had time to cool. After washing the dishes in the sink I made the bed and crawled under the covers.
I AWOKE at seven in the morning to the sound of knocking again. This time I knew where I was. I put my shirt on and tripped to the door. The woman with the braid stood there holding another tray. “Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning, Father Amán.”
I thought I’d misheard her. “I’m sorry?” I said. I squinted at her. It was either not yet dawn or the sky was overcast; I could barely see her face in the shadowed doorway. “I’m the American—maybe Tomás Morelio told you.” I put out my hand. “Are you Luz?”
She looked down, disconcerted, and put her limp hand briefly in mine. “Could you give me your tray from last night, please?”
“Of course, I’m sorry. Come in. I washed everything.”
She stood without moving on the doorstep. “I’ll wait here. You don’t have to wash. If you just leave the tray outside when you’re done I’ll pick it up.”
“It’s really no trouble to wash.”
“Just leave it out when you’re done.”
“Won’t it get full of ants?”
She frowned. “I can see the front of the house from my window.”
I turned away, flustered, and went to get the tray. I’d stacked the dishes and thrown away the tamale leaf and teabag. She took it silently and handed me another tray with a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee on it. “Leave it outside when you’re done,” she said quietly.
“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”
I ATE BREAKFAST standing in the kitchen. When I’d finished eating, I stacked the dirty dishes and placed the tray on the chair outside. Then I closed the door and stepped to the edge of the window and watched the walkway. A moment later Luz opened her door. She took the tray and glanced at the window and walked back across the street. As she was reaching her doorstep I heard a sharp whistle and she turned to look over her shoulder. A man leading a mule stopped by the stick fence and pointed in my direction. Luz shifted the tray to her hip and walked up to him and they talked for some time, gesturing, their faces serious.
Even though I’d slept more than twelve hours, I felt exhausted. From the bedroom window, I stared out into the passageway at the boxes sitting in the shadow of the church. I knew my books had begun rotting, but I couldn’t bring myself to unpack. There’d clearly been some misunderstanding, and after sorting things out with Tomás Morelio I would probably have to move. There was no point in unpacking the books until then. As I stood there staring, the church door across from me opened and a woman stepped out holding a short broom. She shook the broom briskly and then she paused, holding it aloft, and took a few steps toward the boxes. After a moment’s hesitation she crouched on her heels to examine the books that showed through the wet cardboard. She ran her hand slowly along the spines, turning her head as if to read them. Suddenly she looked up and peered at the window. I stepped away from the curtain and sat on the bed. For some minutes I sat there, listening. Then I stood up and walked to the back door and opened it quickly and looked out, but the woman was gone and the church door was closed.
I took a shower, dressed, and prepared to leave the house. On the front doorstep I found a green plastic basket. As I put it on the chair, the door opened across the street and Luz’s head appeared in the doorway. “Laundry,” she said.
“I don’t have any, thank you,” I said.
Her head disappeared and the door shut silently. At eight the sun had already begun baking the road, cracking the mud puddles. The post office was closed, so I decided to walk around for an hour before returning. I headed north, past the central plaza. At the side of the otherwise empty field an old woman sat on a bench, poring over the contents of a plastic basket. Most of the houses had their doors partway open and through them came the hoarse buzz of the radio, the rushing of faucet water, and the sound of wood being split, though the sources of these sounds were invisible. The street climbed uphill. The open sewer next to it ran with muddy water that choked on clots of garbage and, at one corner, over the immense haunches of a speckled toad.
The town ended abruptly on the north side in a line of houses. A cistern partly blocked a footpath leading uphill into the brush. From that vantage point, most of the shallow valley was visible; it sloped east, plunging sharply to meet the river. Beyond it and on the other three sides of town, the hills spread outward in ever-tightening creases until they met the horizon. There seemed to be no roads through them, and yet the maps I’d brought showed footpaths traversing them in every direction.
No doubt it was the sense of vastness provoked by the view that made me suddenly, incautiously confident. The openness of the valley gave the impression that anything I looked for would be there, just within view. I turned and walked past the houses to the other end, where a road led northeast. An old woman sitting on a three-legged stool peered out at me from behind her stick fence. When I greeted her she clucked and grinned, tucking her toothless smile behind her hand. “Resting,” she said, as if to account for herself. She squinted at me. “Off to work?”
“Not yet,” I said, vaguely.
She laughed warmly at this and murmured, “Lazy, lazy.”
I smiled and pointed at the road that led away from town. “Is this the road to Naranjo?”
The woman’s wrinkled face froze. She scowled, her dark eyes puckering. For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then a hoarse sound formed in her throat. “Go to hell,” she growled. She pushed herself up with difficulty and leaned tremulously on the fence. For a moment she muttered to herself and then she said again, “Go to hell,” as if unable to think of anything stronger. She shook the stick fence for emphasis and turned away and hobbled to her door. At the doorway she turned and her voice shook. “You’ve no respect,” she said.
I stared at her, realizing that she must have misunderstood me. “I’m sorry; you heard me wrong.” I walked up to the fence and spoke over it so she would hear me clearly. “I’m just wondering where Naranjo is. Is it here, in town, or somewhere else?”
She looked at me with apprehension, as if I’d threatened to kick down her fence. Then she shook her head at me and shut the door.
I stood in the road, my face burning, staring at the crooked door on the other side of the fence. The woman was now on the other side of the thin wall, stomping to the back of the house. There was no one else on the road. I repeated the question to myself, thinking about the words I’d used, the way I’d taken hold of the fence. I thought about going to the door to apologize.
But instead I looked away, turning my back to the road north, and walked toward town. The houses on the east side varied only in their color—turquoise, pink, yellow, white, green—and in their state of disrepair. Cement blocks, roofed with zinc and cluttered with tiny windows, they faced one another through their back and side doors as much as they did the main road, with knotted footpaths linking one to another through the coarse grass. A woman hanging laundry on a line strung up to her neighbor’s window stopped and watched me pass. Out of nowhere a pair of little girls appeared, holding hands, following me, halting each time I turned, until we reached the plaza and they braked as if against an invisible wall. I walked past the stores and then south beyond the edge of the soccer field.
Beyond the church the houses grew smaller and shabbier, as though everything south of the plaza had been rained on too hard, too often. Two blocks south of the center an entire square block stood abandoned. The grass grew unchecked; a bougainvillea rooted in the corner had engulfed a fragment of cement wall. The floor of whatever building had once stood there still clung in pieces to the ground, partitioned by weeds and the crumbling remains of walls at regular intervals. I stepped onto the grass and walked toward the middle, where a world map painted onto the cement years earlier had broken up into cracking, faded continents.
I heard a bell ring then and a man came up the road pushing an aluminum barrel on a wheelbarrow. As soon as he saw me he stopped, still holding the handles of the wheelbarrow. He stared at me.
I watched him for a moment. “Good morning,” I said. He was silent. “I’m Nítido Amán.”
He put the wheelbarrow down and pushed the brim of his hat back. He didn’t offer his name. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking around.”
He went on staring. “What are you standing in the school for?”
I looked down at my feet and then at the ruins of the rooms around me. “This is the school?”
“Was.”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
“It was the school.”
“Where’s the new one?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t know.”
We were silent. I realized he was waiting for me to leave. I began walking away from the map and toward the road. “What happened to the school?”
“You’re not from here,” he said, squinting.
“No. Just got here yesterday.”
He picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and prepared himself to keep walking. “Fire, I think,” he said. “Can’t really remember.” He walked away and the bell started tinkling and he stopped at the corner of the burned schoolyard as a woman came out of her front door holding a plastic pitcher. He filled the pitcher with milk from the barrel and handed it to her and she went back into the house. Then he pushed the wheelbarrow up the street toward the other houses.
When the milkman was gone, I noticed an old woman sitting on a plastic chair two houses away. She was watching me and smoking, holding the short pipe with her thumb and forefinger. She nodded at me when I looked up and I walked toward her slowly, turning back to look at the ruined schoolyard. When I reached her walkway, she pointed to the chair next to her and I thanked her and declined. “I heard about you.” She frowned. “But you don’t look so much like a foreigner.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You dress like it, though.”
“I can’t help it.”
She smiled and her brown teeth showed around the stem of the pipe. “Walking around?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of the church?”
“I haven’t been in yet.”
She leaned back and crossed her ankles. “We haven’t had a priest for years.”
It had slipped my mind that Luz had called me “Father” that morning on the doorstep, or perhaps I’d willfully ignored it. But now it returned to me, and the confusion I’d started to feel seeing the ruined school was compounded. I answered the old woman vaguely. “That’s what I hear.”
“You don’t know how hard it’s been without one.”
“I can imagine.”
“I used to go to services twice a week. Now—nothing. I can barely remember the Lord’s Prayer.” She smiled and winked.
I smiled back. “How’d the fire start?”
“What fire?”
“At the school.”
She frowned. “Can’t recall.” She stood up. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Thank you, no. I’m just heading back.”
“Well, welcome. We’re glad you’re here.”
WHEN I RETURNED to the sacristy I sat on the bed, watching the curtains sway against the open window. Río Roto had no telephone, and there would be no buses for Rabinal until the following day. I decided to unpack some of the things I needed. I could always pack them again.
Luz knocked on the door at twelve and handed me a plate of chicken and rice, and after I’d eaten I left the tray outside and went behind the house to look through the boxes. The books I left mostly untouched, though I couldn’t help taking the ones that looked most damaged and setting them on the walkway to dry. I found my coffee press in one of the boxes along with the letter from Tomás Morelio that I’d received before leaving. I’d remembered it somewhat differently. It read only,
We are delighted that you have had the great kindness to accept the post. Everything will be prepared and made ready and comfortable for your arrival. I am at your service to receive the boxes that you mention in your letter and although there is no telephone in Río Roto I may say that we have a very reliable postal service as long as no cash or checks are sent in which case I can vouch for our locality but not the officials in the capital so you may feel free to use the postal office here as your future forwarding address. Cordially,
Tomás Morelio.
I was reading the letter for the second time when I heard a knock on the door, which I’d left open.
I stepped into the corridor. “Amán?” the man said. He was a head shorter than I, with a full beard and glasses. His shirt was tight around the waist. He held out his hand to me. “Estrada. Doctor.”
“Come in,” I said. I cleared the papers off the plastic-wrapped sofa and offered him a seat, which he declined, and then coffee, which he agreed to, following me into the kitchen as I went to put the press together.
“I like the books on the walkway.” He grinned. I replied with some embarrassment that I’d probably brought too many. He looked around at the small kitchen and walked into the hallway, then the bedroom. “I’ll help you put some shelves together.”
“Thanks, I don’t think I’ll need them.”
“Course,” he said. “You have all that room in the vestry. Where are you from?” He picked up the bag of coffee I’d brought, and opened it and sniffed it. “Bring coffee to the land of coffee. Don’t blame you. They export the good coffee. Local they mix with blood to darken it.” He laughed. “Chicken blood, usually.”
I took the coffee from him with some confusion. “I wasn’t thinking when I packed it.”
“Your accent’s a little funny,” he said.
I looked away. “I was born here, but I moved to the States with my parents when I was young.”
“Ah.” He laughed. “That explains it. Worst of both worlds—our looks and their personality. Right?” He laughed and clapped me on the arm.
I flushed. “I guess so.”
“When did you get in?” I told him I’d arrived the day before and that I’d spent the morning walking around. I fumbled with the coffee press. “Let me do that,” he said, taking it from me. I filled the kettle that I’d found in one of the cabinets and put it on the stove. “Electric stove,” he said. “All the luxuries.”
“It’s very comfortable.”
“Not saying I envy you though,” he said. “There.” He handed me the press and I spooned the ground coffee into the glass base.
“Do you live in town?” I asked.
“Northeast corner. Come by sometime. So what made you pick this place?”
I looked around at the nearly empty kitchen. “Tomás Morelio brought me. He made all the arrangements, I think.”
He laughed. “Right. But seriously, you might still reconsider. I’m saying after a few months, a year. Costa Rica is beautiful, right around the corner, nice beaches.”
“Oh, that. Just my parents.”
“They’re from here?”
“Somewhere around here.”
“There aren’t any Amáns in Río Roto.”
I turned away. “Maybe in the other towns nearby.”
He shook his head. “I’ve never heard the name.”
I lowered and then raised the heat on the kettle. Estrada silently inspected my coffee and I thought about how to bring the conversation around. “Just now,” I said, “I saw an empty lot with some old foundations, and someone told me it was the school.”
The doctor looked at me over his glasses. A smile spread slowly across his face. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Where’s the new one?”
His smile grew broader. “What new one?” He laughed. “We haven’t had school here in ten years. I tell you. They like to stay dumb.” He pulled his thumb and forefinger over his lips, zipping them shut, and then tapped his temple. “Dumb and dumb, you know?”
I looked down at the floor.
He patted my shoulder and I resisted the impulse to pull away. “Wait a few days. You’ll believe it.”
I looked back up at him and the kettle whistled. I turned to make the coffee and the doctor laughed again in a tired, rumbling way. “Don’t even mention the school. They look at you like it’s a dirty word.”
I poured the water into the press and watched the grounds float.
“I don’t take sugar,” the doctor said.
“All right.”
“But if you do you should use your own. The sugar here tastes like fertilizer.”
It took me a moment to grasp what he’d said. “Don’t they grow sugar here?”
He shook his finger at me. “They grow cane, not sugar.”