American Visa (29 page)

The young man started to count his money, his hands trembling and his expression sinking into one of profound hatred. “I'm screwed,” he said. “I only have twenty dollars left.”

“Enough to get back to your parents' place in Sucre.”

“What parents? What do you know?”

“You're all alone?” I asked.

“I have a brother who's a Franciscan priest in Sucre. I got the money to travel by saving for three years. I have a job lined up in Seattle.”

“I was planning to work at the House of Pancakes in Miami.”

“That Ballón is a real son of a bitch. If I see him, I'll kill him. Could you loan me ten pesos?”

I handed him a bluish bill. The kid was still incensed. “Come with me to pick up our luggage,” he said.

At the Lloyd ticket counter, we found the señora foaming at the mouth and on the verge of crying.

“What's wrong?” the young man asked.

“Our luggage left on the plane to Miami.”

I couldn't stop myself from laughing.

“What's so funny?” the woman asked. “It's a disgrace—no papers and no luggage.”

A taxi driver came up to us and offered his services for half-price.

“Luckily, I still have some money,” the woman said. “Who wants to split the taxi with me? Our luggage got the visa. We won't get anywhere waiting in the cold.”

“Go ahead, buddy,” I said to the young man. “I'm going for a walk. I need to get my head straight.”

The taxi left and the woman waved goodbye. I went on foot toward the toll booth at the airport entrance. Crossing a paved highway, I arrived at an enormous ditch. I took a leak and tried to think. I felt as empty as the black sky above me. The wind was lashing my face. I took a gulp of 13,000-foot-high air, climbed out of the ditch, and started down a dark and deserted street. A dog resembling a sheep emerged from a shack and started to bark. I threw a rock at it. Frightened, the animal took cover in the shadows.

I was in Aymara territory. I roamed aimlessly over muddy, shadowy streets. Suddenly, I found myself at a paved thoroughfare with heavy traffic. Apparently it was the road to Oruro. I was surprised by the number of stores open at that late hour. Dozens of heavy trucks were coming and going.

I was looking for a tavern, any tavern where I could drink
aguardiente
and stop mulling over my hard luck. Not until I reached Tiwanaku Street, which is actually a cross between a road and a mar- ket, did I spot a joint on the ground floor of a four-story building with an exposed brick façade. It was an Aymara tradition not to cover the façade with stucco or paint—to save a few pesos and conceal your wealth.

The tavern, curiously named The Swan, was located in the back of a hole-in-the-wall video store. Four tables stood atop a layer of cement. A waiter wearing a dress shirt and practically freezing to death served me a double shot of
pisco
with a slice of lemon. A pair of peasants were arguing with each other in their native tongue. You could tell they were bricklayers by the dried mud on their hands and the bits of wet dirt covering their shoes. Never before had I seen the City of the Future so up-close; I always used to cross it without stopping on my way from Oruro to La Paz. El Alto is the bedroom city you have to pass through before descending to the nation's capital. It's a completely Aymara city, the largest in the world and the only one built exclusively by them; three hundred thousand souls at 13,000 feet above sea level, and more peasants arriving every day from the Andean plateau, which was becoming as empty as a Martian steppe. You didn't hear a lot of Spanish. Harsh, choppy Aymara was the primary language, with the occasional Spanish word to round off a sentence.

At that altitude,
pisco
rises to your head almost immediately, and it took just a few minutes for me to feel its beneficial, comforting effect. Even though I didn't want to think about anything, thoughts crisscrossed my mind like restless flies. It was that son of a bitch Ballón's fault that my dreams had been thwarted and that I was now surrounded by this surreal reality. What to do? Go back to the hotel like a defeated man, like a clown? No way. I already had one city crossed off my list: Oruro. Now, I had crossed off a second one: La Paz. With a thousand dollars, I could survive for a year lying low among the restless people of El Alto.

Maybe fate would have me live here undercover until my money ran out, before I either put a bullet in my brains or drowned myself in
pisco
to the point of turning my liver into a useless sponge. Cirrhosis plus a heart attack and I'd be done. I motioned to the waiter and asked where I could get a bite to eat.

“On Antofagasta Street at El Trigo Verde there's a snack bar.”

I ventured out into the frigid Andean plateau. Antofagasta is a wide road lined with an incredible variety of markets, hardware stores, car repair garages, pharmacies, and delis. It was El Alto's version of the Avenida Buenos Aires, without the smells that festered in that city buried in the valley below. The wind up there sucked the life out of every last smell and there wasn't a single mosquito it didn't leave dizzy.

El Trigo Verde was more like a refrigerator than a restaurant. The cold was so intense that the meat looked as if it was shivering on the kitchen counter. A copper-skinned cook served me a hamburger with french fries . . .

What the hell are you going to do now?
I asked Mario Alvarez.

I don't know
, he answered.

How about you drink and drink and then throw yourself over the edge
of the cliff where La Paz's shanties begin?

I don't like empty space—I'm afraid of heights.

Then pay a butcher five hundred dollars to slice open your belly as if
you were a cow.

The problem is the pain,
said Alvarez.
I can't stand pain
.

With a lot of
pisco
you won't feel a thing; it's a good anesthetic.

Where can I find a butcher?

Ask the waiter if he can recommend one to you.

“Waiter,” I called.

A skinny, stooped-over Indian man approached me. “Yes, sir?”

“I'm looking for a place to stay.”

“Nice or so-so?”

“Let's say, the best in the neighborhood.”

“In the Plaza Azurduy de Padilla there's a place called Primavera. It's first class.”

Avenida Antofagasta seemed endless, and it started to rain.
Pisco
hits you differently at 13,000 feet; the reduced oxygen seals the deal. The alcohol boiled in my brain. My heart's throbbing reverberated inside my skull like the shaking of a Brazilian samba dancer. The sky turned dark in the wink of an eye and the wind began to blow with unusual force. I was dressed Miami-style: a linen jacket, T-shirt, and loose pants. Things were getting ugly.

I arrived at Plaza Azurduy de Padilla frozen stiff. The Primavera, located on a corner of the plaza, was a one-story building that looked like a shack on the Argentine
pampas
. Above the bright blue door, someone had painted the words,
Family friendly, budget prices
.

The lobby was plain and half-empty. All they had for furniture were a table and a pair of chairs. Behind the table was a fat half-breed who resembled an Italian friar from medieval times. She looked at me somewhat surprised. Her regular clients didn't roll in with that kind of summer wear. She had an unfriendly face, a hooked nose, and small, penetrating eyes. Her braids brushed against her back like a pair of mooring ropes.

“A room with a bathroom,” I requested.

“It's a shared bathroom,” she said. “Where are you from?”

“Nowhere.”

“You're pretty drunk. We don't take drunks. The police come to check. Besides, you don't have luggage.”

I took out a hundred pesos and placed them on top of her grimy folder.

“I'll pay up front, let's say for a week.”

“Double bed is ten per night. The room has electricity.”

“Hallelujah!”

“Do you have ID?” she asked.

I showed it to her. She reviewed it meticulously, then opened the grimy folder and started to write in tiny characters. “Previous address?”

“Hotel California, La Paz.”

The woman looked up; her eyes seemed to be carrying the load of her bountiful body, which must have weighed around two hundred and twenty pounds.

“No women here,” she stated. “The police don't allow it.” She stood up and grabbed an enormous key hanging from a nail in the wall.

I followed her colossal derrière through one side of a small enclosed patio in which a few half-starved dogs were playing. From the ceiling in one of the hallways hung a cage with an old, sleepy-looking parrot inside. As for my room, it was worse than the one I had at the Hotel California. That says it all.

It was so cold that I might as well have been in Tibet. On top of the bed there was a straw mattress, two blankets, and a pillow covered with grease stains.

“The bathroom is at the end of the hallway,” she said. “Showers only until noon.”

When she left, I sat on the bed and puffed on a cigarette. As I exhaled, the smoke was illuminated by a solitary lightbulb. I finished the cigarette and left the hotel in search of another bar. I came across a cabaret with a blue and red awning. The place was deserted; not a single patron.

The bartender, a black guy, didn't even notice I was there. I had to walk up to the bar. “A double shot of
pisco
,” I requested.

The guy was almost invisible in that vast parlor, which was lit up by a series of colorful bulbs hidden behind peeling pillars and ugly flowerpots.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“The girls come at 10:30. You'll have to wait.”

“Are you from the Yungas?”

“From Coripata.”

I settled into a corner table, depressed and eager to transform my personality with the
pisco
. There was a wood platform set up in the middle of the club. I smoked one cigarette after another. I was on my third drink when the dancers appeared. They arrived in a group, babbling like a herd of terrified hens. There were four of them; their faces revealed the wear of a thousand sleepless nights. One of them yelled, “Turn on the stove, Robledo, or else they're gonna be fucking corpses!” The other three laughed as Robledo, the black guy, worked on lighting a battered gas stove.

Upon seeing me, the ugliest one walked up and said, “Hey there, hot stuff.” Laughter all around. “We'll be right back,” she said. “Wait for us and get your money ready.”

They disappeared through a side exit, joking and bumping into each other. Fifteen minutes passed before they came back. The makeup had worked miracles; they looked more presentable. Huddled beside the stove, they awaited the arrival of the first shadows. Their El Alto clientele, who looked like the living dead, began to trickle in. Some of them would cautiously open the door, shoot a timid glance around, and then return to the street. At 11, the performance began. About ten guys dressed as if they were in Siberia sat at the tables closest to the platform. The show consisted of a fully clothed dance for the first song, a striptease for the second, and buck-naked gyrating, without grace or spice, for the third. Those part-time strippers had a lot of extra pounds on them; rings of fat covered their washed-up bodies at waist-level.

By then I was very drunk. As with nearly every other time I've been wasted, I sat there motionless with a serious look on my face. The world seemed to be spinning like a merry-go-round. I got up to pee and, zigzagging through the crowd, found a toilet at the back of what looked like a patio. While I urinated, a young man was combing his hair in front of a mirror. He shot occasional glances my way, as if to make sure I was still there. When he left the bathroom, the guy, who appeared to be about twenty-five years old and had a riffraffish, upto-no-good vibe, commented in a casual tone: “It's cold.” I assented without saying a word.

At the table, I asked for a soda. I wanted the storm in my head to die down. But then the lowlife approached and sat down uninvited.

“Pal,” he said, “you're all alone. Can I join you?”

“I'd rather be alone,” I replied.

Paying no heed to my words, he motioned to the waiter. “One cold beer.”

The waiter left. Three young friends of my companion appeared. Each was brazen enough to take a seat.

“Hey, man,” one of them asked, “did you come in a car?”

What did they want from me? Free drinks, perhaps? They were cocky, insolent bastards, but you couldn't expect angels in the heights of El Alto.

They drank a toast to my health and then started to make fun of a stripper who was struggling mightily to dance to a rap song.

“Get your ass to a nursing home!” one of them shouted.

“This one doesn't have HIV, she's got leprosy,” added another member of the crew, who looked like a Russian
mujik.