David Unger - The Mastermind

He walks down Twelfth Avenue by the Geminis 10 Mall and the Mercure Casa Veranda hotel. There are Chiclets and cigarette vendors on the street, an old half-blind Indian woman selling sweet rolls on the avenue, but none of them pay him any notice. It is as if he were gliding invisibly through the Zona Viva.

There is a long line of cars snaking along First Avenue toward the Radisson valet. Breakfasters get out of their cars, receive ticket stubs from the valets, and watch their cars disappear into the basement garage.

Beyond the driveway, the ten a.m. Pullmantur bus to El Salvador drives up. Guillermo hurries toward it. As soon as the driver opens the door, he edges up the steps.

“You have to buy your ticket inside the hotel,” the driver says.

Guillermo gives the driver two hundred quetzales and tells him to keep the change. Before the driver can say a word, he hastens to the back of the bus and nestles himself in, curled into a ball, about to pass out.

When did he last sleep? Two nights ago? He hardly knows.

His eyes simply close on their own.

But his mind is alive and he cannot sleep. He recalls that the Stofella is less than two blocks away. His thoughts turn to Maryam and the various afternoons they cavorted there with total abandonment. He remembers the touch of her body, her full breasts begging to be embraced by his mouth. He starts crying, half asleep, as he recalls her mango-flavored mouth, the perfect fit of their bodies, the hunger with which she would ride him thrust after thrust until she would let out a low, widening scream.

Guillermo remembers reading what García Márquez wrote in The Autumn of the Patriarch , that “el corazón es el tercer cojón.” The heart is the third ball . He was so right. And at this very moment Guillermo’s heart is throbbing. He remembers that someone in Love in the Time of Cholera had said that “el corazón tiene más cuartos que un hotel de putas.” The heart has more chambers than a whorehouse. And he knows this is also true.

He opens his eyes to see the bus driving down Los Próceres, en route to the highway that will take him to El Salvador. Guillermo needs alcohol — his body aches for it. His throat has clenched and he feels a tug that turns his insides out. But there is nothing on the bus to indulge his craving.

Eventually, fatigue takes over, he settles into his seat, and finally sleeps.

He wakes when the bus stops at the Guatemala/El Salvador border an hour later. All fifteen passengers have to disembark and go through immigration in a small, concrete, windowless building surrounded by empty wooden pallets and half a dozen uniformed soldiers lounging on broken chairs under blooming jacarandas. This is a first-class bus, but the procedure is the same: everyone has to bear the insufferable heat which within minutes speckles Guillermo’s cotton shirt with sweat.

The passengers are directed to some high tables and instructed to fill out tourist cards. They are told to line up single file in the center of the room once they have finished filling out the cards.

Guillermo is the fifth person in line, behind a middle-aged woman whose jewelry jingles whenever she moves her rather impressive behind. She is wearing so much perfume that his nose suddenly twitches and he sneezes. She turns to look back at him.

“Salud.”

“Thank you,” he says, sniffling a bit.

“Why do they insist on demeaning their own citizens?” she whispers to him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This doesn’t offend you? If we were on an airplane they would simply usher us through. Is it because we want to save a little bit of money by taking the bus? I don’t know about the others here, but I’m scared of airplanes.” She winks at him knowingly. “And though I could drive my Lexus, I’m afraid of the kidnappers. Communists and kidnappers rule this country.”

Guillermo nods at her. She must belong to the Salvadoran elite, the fourteen families who have ruled that little crumb of a country for over a hundred years.

“I know you are a chapin from your passport.”

Guillermo’s Central American passport indicates his Guatemalan nationality with embossed gold lettering on a blue background.

She smiles. “You don’t know how lucky you are, Mr. . ”

Before he has a chance to answer, a man calls out to her: “Come over here, lady.”

Guillermo can see the three customs officials sitting at the same table. The first examines the woman’s passport for its validity. The second evaluates the tourist card, matching it to the passport, and asks some mundane questions that have already been answered on the card. The third official sits with an open ink pad and stamps the Salvadoran seal with the date of arrival and waits for the visitor to ink his or her finger onto the card. When he asks the woman for her fingerprint, she goes into a tirade. She yells something about the misfortune of living in a shitty country — not exactly an effective way to charm customs officials.

When it is Guillermo’s turn, the first officer beckons him with one finger. Guillermo hands him his fake Central American passport. As the agent opens it to the photo and information page, Guillermo realizes that from now on he will be Rafael Ignacio Gallardo, a resident of Los Aposentos, Guatemala — a new man with a new identification number and a totally new identity. The questions are all normal enough: name, address, passport number, place of residency while in El Salvador, length of stay. The agent looks up at him and smiles, handing his passport to the second man, who validates the information on the card against that on the passport. When he reads the address Guillermo has given for where he is staying — the Hotel Princess — he says, “I hope you enjoy the princesses of San Salvador.” He smiles lasciviously and passes the card to the man with the pad, who looks at Guillermo and adds, “We don’t need your fingerprint. You don’t look stupid enough to want to stay in our country illegally,” and waves him through.

Guillermo feels relieved that he hasn’t had to provide prints, even pleased to be visiting a “shitty country” where his passport, looks, and birthplace give him greater status than the woman before him in line.

Before getting back on the bus, he takes a leak in a stinky bathroom, then buys a squash blossom, a red bean pupusa, and a large Coke. He wolfs them down as if he hasn’t eaten for years, and then reclines his seat to watch the thick vegetation catapult past him. He hopes that the Coke will ease the migraine behind his eyes, but no such luck.

He should sleep, but is kept awake by a machine gun of questions running through his mind. He has no idea what he will do in El Salvador, or how he will survive. He only knows that he has died, and he hopes to rise like Lazarus and live again in another land.

* * *

When the Pullmantur stops at the Radisson in San Salvador’s San Benito neighborhood, a wealthy enclave of huge walled-in homes, boutiques, and expensive restaurants, Guillermo decides it would be a big mistake to stay in the nearby Hotel Princess. If the police believe he has somehow eluded death and crossed the border into El Salvador, they will most likely look for him in hotels like these. He needs to find simple, safe lodgings in a working-class neighborhood where no one will think of searching for him — where he can grow a mustache or a beard, shave his head, disguise himself. He’s better off finding a room in a cheap pensión or boardinghouse amid the junk dealers, the modest, cavernous stores selling suitcases, shoes, or toasters right on the street.

He has not brought a single suit. He gets off the Pullmantur with only his bulging knapsack and walks down 89th Avenida Norte to the Paseo General Escalón. Here he takes a mostly empty public bus toward the cathedral on Plaza Barrios, where Archbishop Romero was gunned down, and to the north end of Calle Rubén Darío.