tended to rely on cigarette burns, but there were fancier methods—forcing a mixture of chili piquín and bubbly water into the nasal cavities, for example, and then attaching electric wires to the genitals.
I couldn’t think about that. I had to stick with my first hunch: that the Red Bishop would have gone to war over Stefan’s disappearance if he thought it were a political kidnapping. I had to stick with Jonah’s growing conviction—mine too—that my brother had gone off on his own to accomplish some secret purpose entirely unrelated to the obvious issues of church and politics. Thankfully, in less than forty minutes, we saw the first lights on the Mexican side of the river.
Compared to the immigration station at Bethel, Corozal’s was a palace, a Spanish adobe with a tile roof and a long veranda. Jan left us with the luggage and went off to get the lay of the land. After a murmured conversation at the door with someone I could not see, he came back and told us we could put up our tents on the lawn. Pathetically thankful to finally be in Mexico, I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, only to bounce back out of bed when the roosters began to crow. From the veranda steps, I had a ringside seat on Stefan’s world. Smoke from breakfast fires drifted in the air. Women with enormous striped jars on their heads made their way toward the river across a field of stubble. Three barking dogs chased each other around the comedor beside the dock where we had come off the boat the night before. Far off, in the opposite direction from the rest of town, lay an acre or so of palm frond shelters, most of them collapsed, and part of a surrounding wire fence that was still standing.
The immigration officer-in-residence, still damp from shaving and looking very spruce in his green uniform, came out to sit beside me on the steps. He could have been an older brother of the Italian at Tikal. I had my automatic thoughts, especially about how long it had been. He asked me in Spanish how I had slept. I told him wonderfully well. He asked where we had been. I was not sure what to say, so I pretended not to understand. He asked how I liked Corozal. I said it was delightful to be in Corozal.
We were getting along just fine.
I pointed to the ruined encampment up the road and asked him what it might be. Refugees from across the river, he said. But they are no longer here. He shook his handsome head. The Guatemalan army kept violating the border to get at them.
“That is very sad,” I said.
We sat watching the women go by with their striped jugs. “Did you grow up in this town?” I asked.
“No, no,” he told me. “I am from Tuxtla Guittérez, do you know that place?”
I shook my head.
“That is where my wife and son are,” he said, giving me a regretful look.
“I see,” I told him, equally regretfully.
Jan chose this special moment to come crawling out of his tent, yawning and stretching and looking like a rumpled Dutchman, with Rikki following in short order, checking his watch. The bus was supposed to leave for Palenque at 8:00, but who knew when it would really go, since we could see it parked behind the comedor minus its driver, who was presumably inside enjoying his beans and rice and tortillas. We went down to join him, accompanied by our friendly officer, and by the time everyone finished breakfast and wandered out to our ride, it was nearly 9:00. The officer stood with us in the crowd and the rumble and the black fumes while a couple of nimble guys tied boxes and satchels to the roof. When it was time, he helped me up, his brown hand big and warm under mine, and we gave each other one last regretful look.
Our bus pulled into town ten hours after leaving Corozal, and the young bucks climbed back on the roof to unload our packs, which I could not stop myself from immediately checking after a long day of secret fretting. No matter how often I sally forth in this vagabond life of mine, I am constantly plagued by worry about my equipment. Not only do I have thousands of dollars invested in all this gear by now, it’s what allows me to live the life I live. Losing a camera would be like losing an arm.
She—the wife—wasn’t at the bus stop to meet us, so we took a taxi, which ferried us through the hotel district and past the zócalo in front of the church, then north to a residential district on the outskirts of town. The neighborhood surprised me. I hadn’t let myself think much about the wife or where she—they—would live, but this collection of small farmsteads was not the kind of barrio in which you’d expect a gringa to take up residence. We passed fenced yards with chickens scratching in them, some with pigs and burros. At one place, a good-sized Brahma cow hung her mournful head over the gate.
The taxi stopped in front of one of the poorer-looking places, a cheap box of cracked yellow stucco with a burro tied up in the front yard and an old red jeep parked in the driveway. Puzzled, I looked at Jan. He was gazing intently out the window as though this were not his house and his wife were not inside it. Rikki, on the other hand, was already climbing out of the car, dragging his hand over one long ear of the donkey as he passed it on his way to the porch. “Mom,” he called, “we’re here. Merry Christmas!” And then went in and closed the door behind him.
Jan sat for another couple of moments, and I wondered if the two of us were going to wind up going off somewhere to rent a hotel room together. Finally, he sighed and slowly got out of the taxi, giving me a sad, abstracted look as though he’d forgotten I was there. Together we unloaded the trunk and the backseat, and he paid the driver. Then he turned toward the house. “Six months ago,” he said, as though I’d know what he was talking about, “she would have at least been out on the porch.” I had no idea what to say. “Well, come on in, then,” he said. “She will be dying of curiosity by now.” That didn’t sound so good either, and I thought about climbing back in the taxi and taking off for San Cristóbal, where at least I had something important to do.
Chapter Seven
Jan scraped his feet on the straw porch mat a couple of times, still stalling, then opened the door and went inside. I hung back as long as I could, until Rikki came back out. “Eva,” he said, “what are you doing?”
I followed him obediently, through the empty living room decorated with a small Christmas tree and down a hall to what, it suddenly occurred to me, could only be a bedroom. Oh, God, I thought, she’s sick. That’s the deal here. And then Rikki stepped aside and gently pushed me into the room, and I saw for myself: a bed with a thin woman in it, her eyes as brown as the immigration officer’s, and classic cheekbones, too sharp, as though she never ate enough. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a dark blue Indian skirt and sandals, and was propped up against pillows. She didn’t move, except to turn her head, and the curious limpness of her arms and hands made me think for a moment that she was paralyzed. But then she brought one hand up and extended it out toward me, and I saw the way that it wavered in the air like kelp shifting in the tide. She couldn’t even shape a symmetrical smile.
“This is my mom, Anne,” said Rikki.
I stepped forward and took her limp hand. Her skin was smooth and cold, and I could feel the bones inside.
“Eva,” she said slowly in a slight but unmistakable British accent. “How nice to meet you.”
I was still holding her hand and not sure what to do next.
“I am so sorry not to be up when you arrived. Felice went off to the market to get the things for dinner, and it’s hard to make it into the chair on my own these days.”
The accent, also a surprise, added a note of class to a scene that seemed to be drifting dangerously close to the rocky shoals of melodrama, but then I made the mistake of glancing around at the rest of the room. Sure enough, there sat a serious-looking wheelchair,
