Denis Johnson: The Stars at Noon

First you have to fight your way to the front of the crowd, and pay. I estimated the length of my call: “Five minutes.”

“You will pay in dollars,” the little man behind the counter said.

For a moment I simply floated on my oceanic resentment of that one. “It’s customary that I pay in cordobas,” I said, pronouncing the Spanish phrases the best I could. “It’s customary.”

Beside me and on top of me and underneath me before this counter, as if we’d all been bulldozed up against it, were dozens of other people trying to get their messages across.

“Your passport,” the little man said.

Passport was always the final word in this argument. I paid in dollars — day rates; fifteen bucks! — and stood waiting beneath the high clock in the room of tears.

This is a small chamber in a big building — out the door is a monstrous ground-floor, marbly, resonant, like Grand Central Station. Towering murals depicting the red-scarved heroes of the revolution prove that this administration’s been around long enough, at least, to affect the decor. Soldiers with their Chinese AK-47’s slung barrel-down march back and forth — they were just little boys when first handed those weapons, but they’ve grown with the revolution, now they're older and steadier, sometime soon they’ll start shaving. .

Was I calling somebody for money, or what? By the time I was actually summoned to my booth, I’d forgotten what it was all about. . But, of course, I was a journalist, I was calling my editor . . There was a crepitation in the earpiece, his voice, supposedly. .

Soon we were quarrelling.

“Louder,” I told him, “slower, I can’t quite—”

“Why would a collegiate fashion magazine be interested in anything, any person, any event, in the fucking continent of Nicaragua ?”

“Your geography is a little loose, there. I’m saying I can get you a wonderful piece on San José, Costa Rica . . ”

“Is this the same routine as last time? Is this Telex me X amount of cash and never hear from me ever in your life again?”

“You’re hearing from me now. Just get me to San José and I’ll get organized. Things aren’t as simple as you want to think.”

“Does this sound simple, fuck you? Does fuck you sound simple enough?”

“Please bear in mind that I am employed by you.”

“Are you on drugs, honey? You are not, and never have been, employed by me. Never never.”

“Just what are you trying to say?”

“Something along the lines of what I just said, darling.”

“I have a press card right here in my — in my stupid, sweaty purse — wait a minute—”

“You sound great, Managua, let’s get together soonest, and have lunch—”

“W ait a minute — it says Roundup Magazine —”

“Bye-bye, Señorita.” Click. Clackety — whack buzz hum — nothing’s uncomplicated this morning in Centroamerica, not the phone calls, not the phones, not the mechanical expletives of the phones. . Half a dozen terrorists were gesturing helpfully that I should now replace the receiver on its hook. “Señorita . . Señorita . .”

For a long time I had felt the matter of me shrinking to where I was known only as the last place: they’d say, “Hello, New York,” and start glancing through the bad checks, “Hello, Spokane,” and go for the buzzer . . These days I was down to nowhere, to nothing, now I was down to Señorita. .

Home! New York! Goddamn it! The smug Judases! The lying hypocrites, et cetera — around me were people whose lies were at least desperate and unabashed. Of course, I’d been the one lying the most over the phone . . But the other party had been evasive! shady! unwholesome!. .

And now, cretinously mumbling, a young sentry blocked my way out the door.

“Por favor, motherfucker, hable más despacio,” I said. Not that even abject pleading ever got them to talk any slower.

“You have to use the other door,” he said.

And them too! Don’t forget them! Pay in dollars! Use the other door! As if this one didn’t work, wasn’t wide open! Goddamn them also! . . I longed for the sight of U.S. tanks further chewing up the streets of this slovenly capital where it was possible only to get nothing done and nobody seemed to think nothing not enough . .

Down here, the sight of a lady weeping crazily in front of a big public building warms everybody’s heart. They smile at me as they pass. . “Taxi!”—I scream it like an oath, and the whole capital screeches to a halt: in the Inferno, 1984, anything that moves is for hire . .

I SPEND the rest of the morning battening down at a patio restaurant across the main road from the InterContinental: Los Paraquitos, I suppose it’s called. . Incarcerated birds are their trademark . . The sound system plays Spanish-language versions of “Under the Boardwalk” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” I’m out of the sun; the breeze across the flagstones is not hot enough to ignite my clothing. This little corner of the game opens for business at ten, but I’m the only living thing on the patio at this hour, aside from four parrots in a big cage.

To the extent that I wear skirts and cheap nylon slips, I’ve gone native. But it doesn’t take long to find me out. Already the waiter realizes I don’t have much Spanish. Out of respect for my homeland, the waiter’s bringing me ketchup and mustard . . He gives me a vast, four-page menu of which, he explains, one meat item is actually available; one vegetarian; several fish.

“Rum,” I say. Never any shortage of that.

Several soldiers passed along the low hedge beside me and crossed the street, all of them, in the macho manner, without looking right or left. Didn’t they ever get knocked down?

Would such people really come banging at my door to count my cordobas and arrest me? Was there honestly an investigation?

Oh, what was I panicking for? — as reason returned with a drop of Tres Rios rum and a minute in the shade . . I had thirty-five U.S. dollars, in most circles a phenomenal stash. If I spent only cordobas today, and found a customer to pay in dollars tonight, I’d have enough money for the five p.m. Aeronica out of here tomorrow.

If I hesitated, if I spent my dollars, I'd have to ride a bus to Liberia in Costa Rica, and that would take ten hours on post-revolutionary Nicaragua’s decimated section of the Panamerican Highway. . Diesel and dust — sweat, rain, and wet straw. The children along there are streaked with dried mud. Their hair is in knots. They don't seem to have any parents. Or so much as a prayer — the small Catholic church this side of the southern border crossing is closed, padlocked, all boarded up, I know that much . . I went out back of it, the day I came across, to squat down daintily over the crawling flowers and relieve myself.

I crossed the frontier from Costa Rica in the south, down from the cool hills, through the soggy checkpoints, and right into the factory of bugs in the towering grass this side of the border, bugs raining down through the air, a perpetual cloud of them overshadowing the Lago de Nicaragua so that they cake, absolutely putty —I'm talking about bugs —all these leprous diesel-spewing vehicles trying to crawl through the choking deluge . . I don’t know at what point, maybe it’s as you pass the second or third miserable sugar refinery looking just like a prison, that you realize you’ve been ejected from Paradise. And whatever these stunned, drenched people did to get themselves banished here is an absolute mystery. Like your own mortal error. . Because, after all, the damned don’t arrive carrying the memories of their fat black sins in their heads, you don’t think of yourself as taking up your citizenship in Hell, nobody expects to cross the border and immediately start licking dirt like a snake — I myself would have perpetrated suicide at Checkpoint One if I’d imagined I’d come here as anything but an observer. But to observe is my designated agony, the sharpest punishment is just to watch . . While being treated always and everywhere, incidentally, like a sucker — ripped-off — laughed at — exposed and hated — forced to show the midnight-blue passport like a stain on my hands. .