“Carlos Méndez here. Welcome to Guatemala. So glad you made it safe and sound.” English. British schoolboy accent.
I apologized for barging in on a Sunday, and he to me for the country’s communication services. “There have been a few strikes, you see, work stoppages, mail and telephone off-kilter.” I was enrolled, no question. Everything was “hunky-dory,” he said. He had a tutor waiting for me, a very fine tutor, and a place for me to tuck myself in, “a nice middle-class home with a nice Ladino family.” He would be around in just a moment to wrap things up and take me to my residence.
He came “around” through a side door into the office. A small trim man, Hispanic in appearance despite the British accent, pulling a large napkin from his neck and running his tongue over his teeth. I had interrupted his breakfast. This estate was apparently his home. He pulled out my file, checked my ID, passport and immunization shots. I paid for three weeks, with a fourth reserved as an option.
Then he bustled me into his car, a clean black late-model Lincoln, which he drove with great care through the narrow streets, his eyes just reaching over the steering wheel.
“Are you a family man, Professor Peterson?” he asked.
I answered with only a split-second delay. “One daughter, in college now. My wife’s daughter, that is.” Still my wife, at the moment, on paper.
“Good,” said Méndez. “Because there are two teenagers in this home. They will also be your instructors, if you let them.”
We stopped in front of a house similar to those I had just passed, where we were greeted effusively in Spanish by Don Francisco Ávila Espinoza, his wife, Doña Rosa, and Marco and Juanita, their kids, all four on the plump side. The smell of roasting meat filled the house. I hadn’t smelled a Sunday roast since I lived with my mother in Rhode Island. It made me vaguely uneasy.
“You are in good hands, Professor Peterson,” Méndez said, patting me on the arm, and left.
The Ávila parents turned me over to the kids, who gave me a tour of the first floor: a parlor (“La sala, señor”) with overstuffed furniture and a television set considerably larger than my own, a formal dining room (“El comedor”), the table covered with a flowered plastic cloth, and a tiny inner courtyard (“El patio”) grated overhead but otherwise open to the sky. Cement statues of saints, all with eroded noses, circled a tiled pool. A parrot perched on the head of one of them. “Mandatory parrot,” said Marco, without a trace of accent. “What’s his name?” I asked. “Polly,” he said.
My room was on the second floor. The kids insisted on carrying my bags up the narrow staircase, and I gave in for fear of offending them. They led the way, Marco with the suitcase and Juanita with my pack over her shoulder. Halfway up, out of earshot of their parents, Marco stopped and set the suitcase on a tread. “Caramba!” he gasped, wiping his brow with his sleeve. “Excuse my French, señor.” Juanita was staggering ahead, hamming exhaustion. In the room she collapsed into a chair, her hair over her face. “Dios mio,” she gasped. “You see what life ees like in dees contry?”
“Que sera, sera,” I said, applauding.
When they were gone, I unpacked, clothes to the hangers on the back of the door and into the one dresser drawer in four that actually slid open. The room was tiny, shared disproportionately with the Holy Family, dolls dressed and bewigged on top of my bureau, Mary holding the baby. I deposited the straw hat over their three heads. A single bed lined the opposite wall, an intrusive piece of furniture with head and footboard. There were two windows, one to the street and one opening into the courtyard. Down there the parrot whistled and called. I could have sworn she said “I’m Elvis Presley.”
I was feeling a little better. Or so I thought until I encountered the last item in my suitcase. I had layered a gray sweater across the bottom. As I drew it out, the little room filled with a waft of Rebecca’s perfume. The sweater had not been worn for a full year but had retained in its fibers—as it seemed to me now—its last hug, before the hugging ceased. She had come up behind me as I stood at a window. I lifted it with both hands and buried my face in it for a long time, breathing deeply, until the scent negated itself and vanished. Then I returned it to the bottom of the suitcase, which I shoved under the bed.
I considered calling her, finding a phone and just letting her know, a matter of civility, that I had arrived safely, had a room of my own and a pot to piss in. In fact, as the well-heeled owner and director of my classy escuela just told me, everything is “hunky-dory.” But it was not the time to call, not yet.
FIVE
At eight o’clock the next morning I sat in the courtyard of the school, surrounded by tubs of flowers and the civilized murmur of two dozen voices in assorted languages. The voices belonged to the other students, some of whom were already at work with tutors at tables set up in the sheltered periphery.
Carlos Méndez buzzed about. He had just made a little speech of welcome to all newcomers, explaining the immersion system of language study and emphasizing his “one personal request,” that Guatemalan politics and current affairs not be discussed here on “these neutral school grounds,” either in class work or personal conversations. Neutral between what and what, I wondered, but didn’t ask. No one did. He actually requested a show of hands in promise. I raised mine, not high, a palm up, as others did—everyone, I assumed.
I sat alone with a cup of coffee, waiting for my “very fine tutor” to arrive. The hiatus was welcome. The sun had not yet cut through the morning mist and a moist sweet warmth enveloped the courtyard. In a tree just a few yards from me, two tiny yellow birds flew from branch to branch. The guard who had admitted me yesterday was now gardening, turning the earth under rose bushes. A woman in Mayan clothing made fresh coffee in an urn.
So far I’d met two of the other students, a Peace Corps veteran with a long gray ponytail, back now to polish his Spanish for another project, and a nun from Belgium in a white habit, and one of the teachers, a young man from El Salvador I hoped would turn out to be my own tutor. But he was not. My tutor was delayed by a personal matter, Carlos Méndez told me, but she should be here any moment.
So I knew it would be a woman, and I was thrown off guard when a man entered the courtyard. Nothing else I saw in that first glance told me otherwise—height, shoulders, chinos, white long-sleeved shirt, a black baseball cap with the Yankees logo, and the stride of a lanky guy, a little lift at the top of each step. He was carrying a big multi-colored bag. I rose uncertainly as he approached me. “Buenos días,” I said.
“Señor Peterson?” The voice was light, clearly feminine.
I nodded.
“Me llamo Caterina. Yo soy su tutora.”
“Glad to meet you,” I said. I was startled by her height. If she was shorter than me, it was not by much. I surveyed the ground we stood on, to see if it was even. It was, and she was wearing sneakers.
“Six two,” she said, following my eyes. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She extended her hand. It was thin, muscular. I released the grip quickly. If it were not for her height I’d have classified her as Guatemalan, or of some Latin American origin, dark eyes, black hair—tucked up into that cap, I saw now.
“Shall I call you señora?” I asked. She was wearing a wedding band.
“Oh. No. Solo Caterina.” Her lips worked, as if she was resisting a smile. “Don Teodoro?”
It took me a second. “No,”
