work in a converted elementary school classroom that used to be open air on one side but has long since been boxed in. Guillermo and Manuel rigged up the trestle table that the computer rests on.
“Tough luck?” Manuel snorts. “It’s a catastrophe!” He hovers over his friends, smelling the coffee no one has offered. “I could be blacklisted, never able to leave. The only reason I can survive in this backwater is because I get out whenever I please.”
“Lucky you,” Mónica says.
Guillermo is silent.
“You two are used to being stuck here,” Manuel rails on. “But I’m not. They might as well haul me off in a straitjacket.” He knows how this sounds, but he’s too upset to care. They’re jealous of his privileges, but he’s earned them, and through his travels he brings honour to the country.
Guillermo taps on the keyboard, slurps coffee, and peers at the screen, which is fast-forwarding through the garden scene: Papa and the boy find the bleating goat, look up to see a man with knife in hand. This is where Manuel composed a sprightly arrangement of the children’s song “Señora Santana, Why Does the Boy Cry?”
“I’ve been invited to attend festivals in Madrid, Seville, Lyon, and Zurich next year,” he says. “It’s inconceivable that they can hold me prisoner here.”
He waits for reassurance.
Mónica, without glancing up, repeats, “Inconceivable.”
Her tone, inflected with irony, enrages Manuel. “Lucia is gouging me. She must have her trips to the massage therapist and special shoes for arch support. I can’t possibly survive on the pittance of my conservatory salary.” Realizing that his colleagues are forced to survive on a similar pittance, he quickly adds, “When I go abroad, don’t I bring you domestic items and computer software and —” He searches for an item that made Guillermo shout with joy. “This external hard drive, super-megabyte —”
“Which got fried in last week’s electrical seizure,” Guillermo reminds him.
Blackouts are a regular occurrence, often followed by a sudden disruptive surge as power returns. Mónica rubs her husband’s shoulders. “Pobrecito.”
Again the resigned tone. It is this attitude that Manuel must regularly flee, or he, too, will be drawn into the sinkhole of passivity.
An idea strikes him, an old one, many times courted and just as many times denied: this time if he wangles a visa, he may never return. It would serve them all right for not appreciating his talents. With Lucia on the warpath, recent life has been a misery. Their daughter is well placed as receptionist at the hotel. His job here as father and husband is over.
Mademoiselle Gagnon from Montreal has been trying to reach Manuel all day. “Is something wrong with your phone down there?” she asks.
Manuel has to laugh. He’s talking over the din of late-afternoon conversation at Café Bohemia, a place frequented by tourists that features an operating telephone.
“We’ve pulled it together,” Mademoiselle Gagnon tells him. Her French accent is musical, sliding into his ear like Afternoon of a Faun. The knot in his stomach finally begins to uncoil.
“Thank you,” he says after a moment, realizing he is close to weeping. His future is in the hands of others. The patrons of the café, mainly tourists and local guides, watch with interest. He’s become a familiar figure in recent days, darting in and out to use the phone.
Mademoiselle Gagnon says, “Of course you must finalize things on your end.”
Manuel doesn’t feel a shred of guilt about Eric’s arrest. Until three months ago when Lucia booted Manuel out of the house, his only involvement in Eric’s shenanigans was eating the roast chicken that magically appeared on his plate several times a week. Since then it’s been rice and beans with a scoop of Chef Ana’s unnamed fish when he’s desperate for protein. He pictures Montreal’s shiny streets and bustling bistros, a riot of flavours. Fortunately, he’s been granted a generous per diem. His attendance as judge at the festival guarantees a higher quality of competitors. This is not vanity but simple fact.
Manuel spends the following day cycling between state funcionarios in their cubicles, watching them laboriously type the necessities of his case. None seems to share his sense of urgency. Of course, he hides this urgency by sitting with an arm slung over the back of the chair and legs crossed. One must be slightly haughty and never reveal a hint of desperation.
He is sent to the next office and the next carrying his growing dossier and multiple copies of his passport until he ends up in a tiny cabinet where a young man earnestly dabs at a cracked keyboard and stares at the monitor that remains blank. Without speaking to Manuel, he disappears for twenty minutes and returns with a plug-in hard drive retrieved from another office, but soon realizes there is no cord to attach it to his own computer and begins to rummage around in a box at his feet, pulling out wires and cords and tossing them onto the floor. Tourists find such poverty quaint, along with the crumbling facades of the once-noble colonial buildings.
Manuel clears his throat. “I have business with you,” he reminds the functionary who has worked himself into a sweat. Startled, the young man pulls himself up. He is light-skinned, almost blond, with blue eyes. Manuel has copperish hair, what’s left of it, and freckled skin.
The lad grabs his file, then begins to scrutinize each page for an interminable length of time.
Manuel shifts in his seat. “I understand there will be a further tariff to pay,” he says with the proper mix of pride and obsequiousness.
The young man rises from his chair, closes the door, and returns, pressing his buttocks against the edge of the desk. Now he is facing Manuel.
“Fifty dollars,” he says, meaning the convertible pesos worth twenty-five times the national currency.
Without moving a hand toward his wallet, Manuel says in an equally calm tone, “Shall we say thirty?”
The youth considers, drops onto his chair, and puts his feet up on the desk. “Forty-five.” He stares at the ceiling, the picture of patience.
Manuel peels off the bills and slides them under a coffee cup on the desk.
Suddenly, the computer screen springs to life, and Manuel spots his own name printed on the monitor. A rash of typing ensues, then without a word the functionary disappears from the room, clutching an ancient floppy disk and leaving Manuel to cool his heels for another twenty minutes. Will there be another “tariff” to pay? He’s half asleep in the airless little room when his tormentor returns with a freshly printed form.
“Your visa,” the youth announces, handing the paper to Manuel with reluctance. The precious tarjeta blanca.
Nine
Mark’s uncle has finally pushed off. Out the door he goes, spry as a bird, tossing his vinyl suitcase down the front steps, not bothering to thank Lucy or Mark for their hospitality, nor offer a farewell to the boys who’d already left for school. His forehead shines as he smiles. In his mind he’s already disappeared from this sorry excuse of a city. The limo idles curbside, plumes of exhaust meeting autumn air while Uncle Philip’s suit jacket whips in the wind.
He wears no overcoat, having left this bulky
