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Would retracing my route be wise or cowardly? Fear of seeming cowardly has dumped me in many a catastrophe over the years. I am older and wiser – or older and more cowardly. Either way, I turn and swoop back down the mountains and take the Pacific Highway to Tehuantepec. The highway follows a river, the river escapes, the road recaptures it. The road surface is excellent. I make good time. The coastal heat beckons. Vast trucks creep upwards or race past on their descent to the port at Salina del Cruz. Coaches gleam in their livery.
I stop for a juice at a roadside shack. The woman owner is thrilled that I am a Brit. Her daughter, Patti, is learning English at high school. Patti is shouted for. Patti has fled. She is captured and returned to a table in the shade at the side of the shack. She is a shy girl with a sweet smile and a few last remnants of puppy fat.
The mother waits expectantly for her daughter to speak English. Patti looks glum. I imagine doing the same with Jed if a Spaniard passed by. Jed would kill both me and the Spaniard. Patti, thank God, is a pacifist.
A car stops and Mum leaves to serve the driver and passengers. Patti and I speak in Spanish. Patti says that she has learnt a few English words and can write a little but has no practice in speaking.
Jed and his friends would say the same of school French – although, as with Patti, they would probably succeed in conversing if left alone with someone of their own age.
Mum returns and I assure her that we have been speaking English.
Mum beams.
Patti looks grateful. I give her one of my visiting cards: El Viejo y Su Moto. The old man and his bike.
A further fifty kilometres to the coastal plain: the Honda kicks up its heels. We speed at ninety kilometres an hour. Ha! to Jed and his friends who mock that I even delay other oldies when driving our ancient Honda Accord back home.
Tehuantepec is a small town, peaceful after Oaxaca. Most houses are single-storey. Good signposting leads me directly to the central square. A heavily built townsman is parking a big Nissan. I ask directions to an economical hotel and find myself a block away at the Doraji. The hotel has a welcoming central patio and a large café. I take a spotless single room with fan and functional bathroom on the top floor.
It is late and most restaurants are closed. Fortunately the café around the corner at the Hotel Oasis is open. I eat devilled prawns (yes, once again). And so to bed.
Tehuantepec, Wednesday 24 May
Tehuantepec is home to a tribe of Boadiceas. For the ignorant, Boadicea was a Brit queen reputed to have minced invading Roman soldiers beneath scythes attached to the wheels of her chariot. Tehuantepec’s Boadiceas stand in the back of moto-caros – small three-wheeled trucks based on a motorcycle and always driven by men. I haven’t seen these elsewhere in Mexico. The women wear long dresses and appear imposingly fierce. I avoid being minced and discover the Caféteria Pearl on the street opposite the Hotel Oasis: excellent breakfast – eggs, ham, juice.
I return to the hotel and brush my false teeth. Idiot! I drop them on the tiled floor. The upper plate snaps in three places.
The concierge at the Doraji directs me across the church square to an orthodontist. The orthodontist, Fernando, is dark-skinned and medium rotund. He has ambitions to be a writer. I sit at his desk and read a polemic. Here is deep anger at the PAN (Conservatives), the oligarchy and their servants in the media. Fernando has no expectations that the candidate of the PRD (centre left), Obrador, can cure the ills of Mexico. But at least Obrador would try.
So much for politics. We progress to Fernando’s first novel, almost complete. We discuss personal loves. Fernando recommends the Mexican realists (Jose Emilio Pacheco: Las Batallas en el Desierto).
My teeth are fixed. Fernando drives me to his home. We drink beer. Fernando’s wife Elena serves us enough nibbles to feed an army. Their sons arrive: Juan Pablo, eighteen, and young Fernando, almost sixteen. The boys have a band. They won a national youth competition with their rendition of ‘Californication’ by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers – my son Josh’s favourite group. Josh has seen them live twice.
The sitting room is uninhabitable, every chair and sofa covered with assembled and disassembled and partially assembled pieces of sound and recording equipment. We sit in the dining room. Out come electric guitars. Juan Pablo sings Pink floyd – Josh’s other favourite. We drink more beer. Elena places more food on the table. Young Fernando fails to connect to my website: while downloading music, they have infected their computer with a splendid array of viruses. Their father keeps his laptop locked in his office. The sons protest that they need a new computer. This computer is six months old and already an antique. Where have I heard this conversation? Guess. We are in Old Home Week!
Fernando insists that I must see a side to Tehuantepec no foreigner visits. Juan Pablo accompanies us. Young Fernando has school in the afternoon. Elena owns a mobile phone store and must attend to business.
I should have guessed from Fernando’s girth that he wishes to show me a restaurant. The restaurant is on the banks of a canal ten kilometres out of town. The family swim in the canal on Sundays before and after eating. Today Fernando orders monster shellfish cocktails of shrimp, baby octopus, oysters and crab in a hot sauce. A dish of grilled crayfish follows. And we talk.
Young Juan Fernando is off to university in Mexico City this year to read history and intends to be a research historian. We discuss Bush and Blair and an ignorance of history that has led them into the Iraq war. We discuss the border that is not a border. They refer, as do most Mexicans, to ‘El Norte’ rather than ‘the United States’.
Fernando has brought a bottle of Terry brandy. We discuss the European Union. Then racism.
My doctor friend from Oaxaca suffered from racism at medical school and while working as an intern. So has Fernando. Fernando wonders at the Islamic ghettos created in English cities. He asks how he would be treated in an English taverna – a pub. Would he be mistaken for a Muslim and be in danger?
More probably a West Indian, I answer, and no, he wouldn’t be in danger.
I am seated across the table from Fernando and his son. Beyond them are the canal and a line of great trees shading the water. This is one of the most pleasurable meals of my life, both in food and in conversation. I am incredibly fortunate and deeply grateful.
Back in town I duck into Elena’s shop to offer thanks for such hospitality. Elena gives me a medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe to watch over my travels. I leave her store. The steel security shutter isn’t fully raised. My forehead crashes into its edge. Blood flows down my face. Rather than display the Virgin’s failure, I stride off across the square. Elena must think me exceedingly rude for not turning back to wave goodbye.
The concierge at the hotel finds disinfectant and a plaster. She and a maid and I sit in the lobby and watch a Mexican TV soap. All the characters are white or whitish. Certainly none is indigenous. The maid and the concierge are medium dark. Wine and Terry brandy have made me mischievous. I ask the concierge whether the soap is Mexican.
The maid giggles at my stupidity. ‘Of course it is Mexican.’
‘But the characters: are they Mexican?’
‘Of course they are Mexican.’
I admit to being confused. ‘From which part of Mexico do they come? Is there a province where all Mexicans are white?’
How could I believe such nonsense?
‘But look at the soap,’ I say. ‘Even the servants are white. Everyone I see on television is white – except on the news programmes. Although the presenters are always white.’
The concierge says, ‘It’s true.’ And to the maid, ‘Yes, it’s true.’
They were content watching the soap. I have made them uncomfortable. The job of a writer is to provoke thought – particularly uncomfortable thought. I wish that I were a better writer. What is worthy in a good writer is merely arrogance in the mediocre.
Chapter 5
The Monk and Mister Big
An idyllic beach, Thursday 25 May
Be patient. This chapter concerns a small Mexican village on the Pacific coast, a community in which the villagers take turns collecting garbage, being police officer or whatever requires doing. The community is under threat.
I heard of the village from a delightful young Irish traveller in Oaxaca, Eoin Hennessy. Eoin was flying home from Mexico City after exploring much of South and Central America. Eoin was the first person with whom I had talked in English since boarding the bus in Dallas. He suffered my verbal diarrhoea patiently, learnt of my interest in students and told me of a Korean American teaching at a school in a village on the Pacific coast: surely a curious and unique combination? The village is 145 kilometres north. I should head south to Guatemala but the temptation to investigate is too strong.
What a morning! A heavy rain fell in the night and you can taste a sharp fresh cleanliness to the air. An excellent highway unwinds through hills speckled with the white blossom of frangipani trees and trees that resembles wild figs. There are sudden patches of deep-rose creeper and startling blue. Vultures and buzzards hang overhead on dawn patrol for whatever has been squashed by the night’s traffic. Between the hills, I catch glimpses of the sea and miles of deserted beach. I rested yesterday. My bum has un-numbed. This is biking at its best.
A short stretch of newly laid concrete track leads off the coastal highway. The concrete ends at the crest of a ridge. I ride cautiously downhill on powdery dirt to the village. I park at a home on the square opposite an obviously official building and enquire of a man seated in one of those bought-on-sale white plastic chairs whether the building is the school. He asks why and I relate my search for a Korean American teacher.
‘Sit a little,’ he invites and introduces himself as Eduardo. The Korean (no villager refers to him as ‘the American’, not even ‘the Korean American’) doesn’t teach at the school. He gives private lessons. He lives in a house nearer the beach. At this early hour he will be watching the surf through binoculars.
Eduardo will lead me to the Korean’s home. In a short while Eduardo will collect the village garbage in the black Ford pickup that he has driven home from El Norte. Collecting the garbage is the time for Eduardo to show me the house that the Korean occupies. Meanwhile I must give an account of myself and why I wish to meet with the Korean.
Children surround us, a small tribe, the elders perhaps listening while the young giggle and shove each other. Eduardo is in no hurry. I must adjust to the slow tempo of his investigation.
I recount my journey and that I am a writer, an Ingles.
‘Inglaterra? Is that close to El Norte?’
‘Not close,’ I say. ‘In Europe. In the north of Europe.’
Perhaps satisfied, Eduardo relates a little of his own life, of the three years in Taos where he worked as a roofer for a gringo, a good employer who insured his workers, even the ilegales – fortunate, as Eduardo injured two fingers while on a roof.
In turn, I speak of my father-in-law, a fine, dearly beloved Irishman. He came to England in search of work as a labourer and his arm was trapped in a cement mixer while he worked alone on the roof of a tall apartment building.
My father-in-law and two of his brothers came to England on the false promise of well-paid work. Eduardo paid a smuggler 1500 dollars to lead him across the frontier. Later Eduardo saved the same amount to have his wife brought across. A daughter was born in El Norte and has papers.
Eduardo intended returning to Taos in June. He is a good worker. His gringo employer keeps a job open for him. Now there are new laws in the north, and greater difficulties and dangers in crossing the frontier. Eduardo is unsure whether crossing is possible.
The economy of his family depends on his going. These are anxious times.
‘Do many villagers go to the north?’
‘Many,’ Eduardo says. ‘To Taos, alone, more than one hundred.’
‘Do they return?’
My question is stupid. Naturally people return. This is their village. Although now, those that are away will be afraid to return home. The new conditions will force them to stay in the north to be sure of sending money home. How could families survive without money? Here in the village there is no work.
Then, almost casually, Eduardo mentions the torneo.
In June an international surfing tournament will be held on the village beach. Outsiders are organisers of the tournament. The tournament will be shown on television and reported with photographs in magazines and newspapers. The village will be famous. Many people will visit.
‘More money will come,’ I suggest.
Eduardo agrees, although he seems uncertain, hesitant.
‘The value of property will rise.’
‘Yes,’ Eduardo says. ‘Yes, many people will wish to buy lots.’
I tell him of the early days in Ibiza, the fifties, and that all the young men were friends. We, the few foreigners, together with the Ibicencos, partied together. We went to the beach together, went fishing. Twenty years later my first wife, Cate, and I returned to Ibiza and dined at the Olive Tree in San Antonio. The owner was one of those young men.
‘How is Paco Tuels?’ we asked. ‘How is Juan Jesus? And Antonio of the Ferry?’
The restaurateur’s replies were non-committal. Later, when the rush had cleared, he sat at our table and we drank brandy together and he told us, sadly: ‘In the days you remember, we were all friends. Now we are business competitors.’
I follow Eduardo through the village and wait while he loads garbage from other families. Many of the homes are in that curious and very Mexican condition of waiting for more funds to be extended or finished or painted. It is a small village, at most a hundred houses, and easily swallowed – a small mouthful to a rich, powerful investor with the right political links. This was the story of Ibiza.
The road to the beach is gated. The village commune charges visitors an admission of ten pesos. Eduardo enquires for the Korean. The surf is good. He went to the beach an hour or more ago.
Eduardo stops my hunt for change. For me, entry to the beach is free. Thus I am placed under an obligation of friendship to the village. This seems to me to be quite deliberate. I am, of course, a writer, and possess a writer’s imagination.
The dirt track to the beach has been graded. A rich irrigated vegetable garden – huerto – of papaya and citrus lies below the track to the left. The huerto ends in a lagoon that fills at high tide and is flooded with fresh water when there is heavy rain. The track leads to a sand parking lot shaded by a few small trees. A concrete hut houses clean lavatories and showers – his and hers. A big palm-thatched hut, a palapa, shades a bar and kitchen and a score of standard white plastic tables and chairs. A few hammocks swing in the shade of an adjoining palapa. A steep hill hooks round the right end of a gently curving mile of perfect sand. The hill jabs a point of massive boulders into the sea. Waves break at the point. The surf is vertical and forms a perfect barrel again and again and again … and again.
The palapas belong to the community. Two young women tend the bar. One is remarkably pretty. An older woman is the cook. She should be described as the chef. The snapper she grills for me is perfect, skin crisp, flesh moist, a touch of garlic. But I get ahead of my story …
I ride into the parking lot and spot the Korean crossing from the palapa towards a 4x4. He is unmistakable. He possesses the perfect body of a movie Kung Fu warrior. He wears a towel draped over his head as if he were a monk striving to concentrate on his breviary or merely exclude the distractions of the outside world. The villagers call him ‘the Korean’. I prefer ‘the Monk’ – although I doubt that he is celibate.
I said, ‘I think I’ve come to see you.’
Even monks can be surprised.
I explain my mission – that a young Irishman had told me of him and that he teaches English at the village high school: that I have already learnt that this is incorrect, that he gives private lessons.
Much is happening in the village and the Monk is suspicious of my sudden appearance. He asks where I learnt of Eoin’s mistake and how I knew where to find him. I reply that Eduardo of the garbage informed me and add that this is a small village and that most villagers must know the Monk’s movements – certainly those who are interested.
The Monk admits this truth. However, he remains suspicious and excuses himself. He has students in the afternoon and must prepare.
‘Perhaps later,’ I suggest.
Yes, perhaps later – although he is unenthusiastic.
I order a beer in the palapa and watch the surfers out at the point. Later, I notice the Monk in conversation with a tall young blonde woman under the second palapa that shades the hammocks. The towel is up, protecting the Monk’s privacy.
A loud confident voice heralds the arrival of four men and a young, tall, good-looking woman, perhaps a gringa. The voice is a big burly man overaccustomed to dining people on a corporate expense account: black hair streaked with silver, clipped moustache, fleshy sensual ears. Confident of his power, he wears shorts and a T-shirt; the other three men are uncomfortably warm in slacks. One wears a long-sleeved shirt and round-lens spectacles and carries a briefcase. The gofer, I calculate, as he crosses to the bar to order. I catch his attention. We find that we share Cuba as an experience, he having studied tourism in Havana for two years. Now he is an official at the Department of Tourism.
‘The torneo,’ I presume – as if fluent in village happenings.
‘Yes, the torneo.’
Mister Big represents the money, the sponsors. He lays plans and papers on a table and does all the talking. I am at the far end of a double table and am unable to overhear. Frustrated, I order the grilled snapper at the bar and then return to the end of my table closest to the money group and can hear much of Mister Big’s discourse. The plans for the torneo show where marquees must be sited, new palapas, judges’ stands.
The gofer is a non-contributor – at most he holds a watching brief. Of the remaining two men, one is quiet and yet clearly necessary and in need of persuasion. Later I discover that he is the president of the community. The other man is also of the community. I will call him Mister Keen. He wears a shirt with no sleeves and a baseball cap and, in eagerness, leans across the table to hungrily inhale the big city power emanating from Mister Big. The woman interjects the occasional remark and orders watermelon from the bar. (Is she with Mister Big? Related to the sponsors? Or a TV company?)
Listening, I wonder what Mister Big really wants. Unbelievable that those behind him would fund, out of the goodness of their hearts, an international surf torneo on an unknown beach that possesses no infrastructure. I look down the perfect beach with the perfect surf and imagine the apartment blocks and the hotels and the swanky surf club at which the villagers will be servants. It strikes me as intolerably sad. Yet this is the perfect moment for the money men to make their move. The villagers fear a future in which passage to the north is closed. How many will reject alternative blandishments? How many can afford to resist?
I imagine that Mister Keen is already mounting the yes campaign.
And the president of the community? He seems bewildered, and as much by the physical force of Mister Big as by Mister Big’s fluent exercise of the language of persuasion.
The discussion ends. Mister Big rolls his plans and passes my table. He is professional in his attention to detail and has noticed my conversation with the gofer. Could I be influential in even the smallest way?
Am I being cruel, vindictive? Am I demeaning a decent man, a man who is naturally friendly (although friendliness is also his stock-in-trade)?
He delights with the open warmth and charm of his greeting.
‘How’s it going?’ I ask with equal warmth.
‘Difficult, although we’re giving them everything they ask for,’ he says – then dismisses the weight of difficulties with a lift of those powerful shoulders. ‘I’ve had easier tasks in the capital on major projects.’
‘In the capital you know who to pay,’ I say.
‘Precisely.’
My understanding is proof that we are on the same side – whatever the side is. He is employed by a company of lobbyists, men who know the right people, the movers and shakers who can make things happen. He writes his address and his email in my notebook. We shake hands and I watch him lead his group back to his outsized 4x4. He has a powerful walk and meets the world square on. Be crushed or move out of the way. And I muse sadly that the teeth are already here, the teeth of the mouth that will devour a community.
The staff of the palapa have observed Mister Big stop at my table and our conversation. Now they watch me, perhaps waiting. I worry that I am arrogant in judging the best interests of a community of which I know so little. What is now a simple surfer’s paradise is possibly a purgatory of penury for the villagers. And yet …
I order a fresh beer and sit at the table closest to the bar with my back to the sea and address the women. The torneo – what do they think?
They answer with small shrugs of uncertainty.
‘We will see,’ the pretty one says, and the others nod. Yes, they will see.
Yet it seems to me obvious that they have no concept of what they might see. I recall for them my first visit to Flores, a small town on a lake near the wondrous Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala. Thirty or more years ago the women of the town met at a different house each night to arrange the flowers and decorate the church. A mere ten years later, television had reached the town. I found only three women arranging the flowers. The rest were at home watching TV. The companionship of those evenings had been killed. The rich sense of community was dead. Nothing remained that would tempt their children to return.
The older woman, the chef, is the first to nod. I ask where I can sleep and the women direct me to a row of small wood-walled palapas by the entry gate. The owner was the first of the village to reach Taos. In Taos, he was legal and had his own business. He has returned for good. What does he think of the torneo?
‘We will see.’
I unload the bike, shower, change into shorts and return to the beach. The Monk is reading at the centre table beneath the palapa. The towel protects him.
Brave, I approach. I ask whether he is free. Might I sit with him? So we begin what quickly becomes a friendship to be treasured.
The Monk went to the US when he was eleven years old. He recounts his schooling in the US: of scholarships to private school in California, Berkeley and grad school at Harvard. He interspersed his later studies with spells in the world of banking. He was respectable. He did the right thing. He wore the right suit and the right shoes and the right tie. And sometimes he surfed.