Dance With Snakes Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Copyright Page

  Biblioasis International Translation Series

  General Editor: Stephen Henighan

  I Wrote Stone: The Selected Poetry of Ryszard Kapuściński (Poland)

  Translated by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba

  Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki (Angola)

  Translated by Stephen Henighan

  Kahn & Engelmann by Hans Eichner (Austria-Canada)

  Translated by Jean M. Snook

  Dance With Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)

  Translated by Lee Paula Springer

  The old man scratched his chin. Snakes are like people, he said. You have to get to know them. Then you can be their friends.

  Allal hesitated before he asked: Do you ever let them out?

  —Paul Bowles: “Allal”

  ONE

  None of the tenants could say exactly when the yellow Chevrolet had first parked in front of the building. There were too many cars that spent the night on that street, a double row that ran the length of the housing project’s four blocks. But the yellow Chevrolet attracted attention for a number of reasons. It was a heap that looked at least thirty years old, with a smashed-up body and windows boarded up with pieces of cardboard. It looked like an old wreck that a neighbour wouldn’t take to the scrapyard for sentimental reasons.

  The first to notice that there was something strange about the car were the housewives and maids who went out in the mornings to go shopping or just to gossip. At that time, a ragged man with grey hair and a beard would emerge from the Chevrolet, looking like someone who’d just woken up after spending the night in his wreck.

  Niña Beatriz, who ran the store, made it her business to keep tabs on this strange person and to tell the neighbours about his activities. It was through her that we learned of his daily routine. He’d leave the car at ten in the morning, wander off to some unknown part of the city and somewhere between eight and ten at night, he’d come back carrying a canvas bag full of trash and shut himself up in the car until the next day.

  I was the ideal neighbour to snoop on this individual. Unemployed and without any real hope of finding a decent job in these new and troubled times, I was living in the apartment of my younger sister Adriana and her husband Damián. Every month, as a symbolic gesture, I gave them some of the money sent to me from the United States by my older sister Manuela, the one who’d raised me, the one who loved me the most. My situation was very difficult – my degree in sociology (a major no longer offered by most universities) wasn’t helping me find a job, as there were too many teachers around, companies didn’t need sociologists, and a career in politics – the only other field in which I could have applied my knowledge – was a profession alien to my abilities.

  I spent most of my time in the apartment, watching television and reading the newspaper. (I still hoped that one day, I’d find the classified ad that would change the course of my life.) I also helped Adriana run errands and, once in a while, when the opportunity presented itself, I would go see one of those solemn types who, after looking at my résumé, would ask me to give them a call – a call that was never answered.

  I first met the man in the yellow Chevrolet on my way to the store for some cigarettes. He was getting out of the car, holding his canvas bag. He wore jeans that had once been blue, grubby running shoes laced up with string, and a tattered T-shirt. His belt looked like a snake. I politely said hello. He didn’t answer. Instead, he shut the car door and limped down the street, sullen and reeking of alcohol and urine.

  “He’s a disgusting drunk,” said Niña Beatriz, a plump older woman with a sharp tongue, while she looked for a pack of cigarettes. “He doesn’t talk to anyone. Who knows how he ended up here. We should do something to get rid of him.”

  I talked about him with my sister and brother-in-law at dinner. He didn’t look like an ordinary beggar, but seemed to have once been a middle class sort of person. I thought the Chevrolet might really belong to him. My brother-in-law had never seen him, but he had seen the car and wondered whether it still worked.

  “He got here somehow,” Adriana said, “it’s been here less than two weeks.” When I told them about the snake around his waist, I was met with their usual unbelieving stares.

  A few days later I ran into him again, this time at night, when he was coming back to the car with his canvas bag loaded with what I assumed was trash. I caught up to him, said, “Good evening,” and started to walk beside him. “I’m Eduardo Sosa, your neighbour,” I said. He didn’t turn around to look at me, but kept walking, as though I’d never spoken to him, as though I weren’t even standing next to him. I continued: “Living in a car must be pretty uncomfortable.” He gave off the same rancid stink and he was moving his lips, muttering to himself. I kept walking beside him. I’d already had a coffee, there wasn’t a movie worth watching on TV that night, and he’d piqued my curiosity. He wasn’t wearing the snakebelt. “The neighbours are complaining about you. They’re going to call the authorities to come and take you away.”

  He was less than sociable. He looked at me with contempt and blurted, “What’s it to you? Why are you sticking your nose in? Go away. Leave me alone.”

  We got to the yellow Chevrolet. He rummaged through his bags, took out a key and before opening the door, angrily turned to face me. Through clenched, filthy teeth he asked, “What do you want?”

  “To see what’s inside that car,” I said without hesitation. Bewildered, and almost fearful, he turned his back to me, opened the Chevrolet’s door and quickly got inside. I couldn’t make out a thing. I knocked on the side windows and the windshield, but sheltered behind the cardboard, he didn’t answer. I went to the store.

  “We’ve got to call the authorities to come and get rid of that filth,” I told Niña Beatriz. She agreed. “Why don’t you call the police and get them to send somebody,” I suggested. She looked doubtful. I warned her that having someone like that parked in front of her store was bad for business. We should act right away. Otherwise, he’d never leave.

  The police car arrived about ten minutes later.

  “This Chevrolet has been parked here for about two weeks,” said Niña Beatriz. “And a suspicious-looking man is sleeping inside.”

  “So what’s the problem?” asked the police officer, who’d said his name was Dolores Cuéllar.

  “What do you mean, what’s the problem?” she cried. “We don’t know if the car is stolen. The guy is living on the street. And he’s a beggar. Understand?”

  Two neighbours who had just come into the store agreed with Niña Beatriz. I stayed discreetly in the background. Officer Cuéllar seemed to understand. He walked up to the Chevrolet, knocked on the driver’s side window, identified himself as a police officer and demanded that he open the door. There was no answer from inside. By now, half a dozen onlookers surrounded the car.

  “He’s there. He just got in. This man’s a witness,” said Niña Beatriz, pointing at me. The officer tried again, this time harder, as though his next step would be to smash the window.

  The man stepped out of the car. But instead of being intimidated by the sight of so many people, especially a policeman, he was aggressive, like a caged animal. He said his name was Jacinto Bustillo, that the car belonged to him and, as proof, he showed the officer his car’s registration papers. He said he didn’t understand why we were bothering him. Parking on the street wasn’t illegal.

  “Parking her
e isn’t, but you’re living in there,” Niña Beatriz said, pointing at the car. “And that isn’t normal. It’s against the law and decent people don’t do it. You can’t live in the road.”

  “Why not?” he asked defiantly. “There’s no law that says I can’t live in my car. Do you know of any law that says I can’t be here?” he asked a surprised Officer Cuéllar.

  “Well, honestly, no, I don’t,” stammered the policeman.

  He got back in his car.

  We stood frozen, not knowing what to say, looking at one another. The officer was the first to leave, saying there was nothing more he could do.

  “How can this be!” cried Niña Beatriz, as I walked her to the store.

  “I think we were going about this the wrong way,” I said. “We shouldn’t have called the police. They aren’t responsible for this kind of thing. We should go down to City Hall.”

  She promised to call the municipal authorities first thing the next day. That Jacinto Bustillo wasn’t going to get his way. Tomorrow morning he and his filth would have to go someplace else. I started back to the apartment. When I got to the Chevrolet, I knocked on the driver’s side window again. “Don Jacinto,” I called, “would you like a cigarette?” He didn’t answer. I knocked again and repeated the offer.

  “Get out of here! Leave me alone!” he yelled, without even poking his head out the window.

  I shut myself up in my room to watch TV and enjoy a smoke. I cleaned the dirt out from under my nails with my old pocketknife, the one with the bone-coloured handle.

  Next morning, Niña Beatriz told me she’d phoned City Hall, but they’d told her it would take days to send the inspectors over because they were swamped with work. Back in the apartment, I leafed through the newspaper. At a quarter to ten, I went down to the Chevrolet to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the morning sun. He got out, right on time, with his empty canvas bag, looking furious, either because he’d seen me or because that was just the way he was. “Good morning, Don Jacinto,” I greeted him brightly, the way you would the most wellliked person in the neighbourhood. He limped past, glaring at me, annoyed. He still reeked of alcohol and stale urine. As usual, I had the whole day ahead of me and nothing to do. “I admire you for what you said to the police last night,” I said. “It’s important to have some character, to not let other people intimidate you. Of course, I’d already warned you they were coming.” I was walking beside him, talking with my hands, happy to be in his company. He stopped.

  He stared right into my eyes, and with all the anger he could muster he said, “I’d like to ask you a favour. Leave me alone. Just go away.” He didn’t speak, he spat the words out.

  “Don’t worry, Don Jacinto,” I said. “I haven’t got anything else to do. Relax. I’ll go along with you.” He started walking again, as if it were possible to ignore me. “I bet you follow the same routine every day,” I continued. We were heading downtown. He walked at a steady pace, without stopping, his gaze fixed on the ground. “Tell me about your life, Don Jacinto.” But there was no way to break his silence. Maybe he was waiting for me to get tired of this, to give up and trudge back to my sister’s apartment. But I was wound up. I told him about my two sisters, about my parents who’d died before their time, about my unemployment, and about the feelings of loathing that sometimes came over me. I think that was how I managed slowly to soften him up. Under an increasingly hot sun, we walked towards the industrial part of the city. It was an area I was unfamiliar with, where asbestosroofed sheds housed hundreds of women who slaved under the whip of cruel, dirty Chinamen; at least that’s what the newspapers said. It was the perfect setting for Don Jacinto to begin telling me his story, the very excrescence I’d been sniffing out – a sewer of garbage, the remains not of the infamous sweatshops that surrounded us, but of a life so ruined that all that remained of it was the wretch by my side and his yellow Chevrolet.

  “An accountant? You? I never would have guessed,” I exclaimed, brimming with curiosity. I was happy that he was finally confiding in me. The sun was nearly unbearable now and I couldn’t get used to the sight of the sweaty old man poking through the dumps near the stream than ran behind most of the factories. He swigged from a bottle of rum that he stubbornly refused to share, distrustful as ever.

  I watched him pick up useless junk and throw it into his canvas bag. As though with a picklock, I pried open the story of a man who years ago had been chief accountant of one of the factories we were walking behind. A man who’d been fired suddenly with a generous settlement, but who was nonetheless completely destroyed, not so much because he’d never find another job, or because of the psychological impact of his sudden dismissal, as though the life he’d given to the company had been worthless, but because without a job, he found himself trapped in a miserable home with a repulsive wife and an adolescent daughter who was just like her mother.

  “It was revolting, young man, just revolting,” he mumbled after we’d wolfed down sandwiches on a street corner under the midday sun, surrounded by workers changing shifts. He took another swig from his bottle of rum. I lit another cigarette.

  The whole time we were walking he’d ask me over and over again what my intentions were, what I was looking for, why I wanted to follow him, to find out about his life. I must be up to something fishy, he said, to be wasting my time like this. But he had nothing to lose now, nothing mattered anymore, not even the yellow Chevrolet. He bought the old heap when he’d decided to give it all up and dedicate himself to mere survival. With nothing but his car, he slept in different parts of the city, far from the filth that the rest of us called family, success, work. In a charming yet evasive way, I answered that I was just curious, I wanted to see the world in a different way. It had nothing to do with sociology or field work. It was more like a premonition that somehow my life had something to do with his wandering.

  We left the industrial area and walked to streets crammed with pawnshops, where the foul-smelling man who said his name was Jacinto Bustillo opened his canvas bag to show off his precious junk and was welcomed like a valued customer. I stayed out of the way on the sidewalk, smoking, like a bodyguard hidden behind the crowd of transients. I kept a careful eye on Don Jacinto’s dealings. Every once in a while, he’d take out his bottle of rum and, without allowing the other party to make even the slightest objection, he’d propose a toast. His partner would then raise his own flask, and the deal was sealed.

  Admiring him, I said, “You’re a master businessman, Don Jacinto.” He smiled reluctantly and stroked his grey beard.

  It was well into the evening and his canvas bag was still full of trash. Each of his transactions took enormous amounts of time, trial and effort. We headed to the red-light district, where sordid, putrid flesh seeped from every seedy hole-in-the-wall.

  “Looking for any bar in particular?” I asked. His bottle of rum was nearly empty.

  “It’s called Prosperity,” he said.

  We walked inside. It was murky, fetid, with sawdust-covered floors and a couple of rickety tables. The tiny, filthy bar sold only hard liquor.

  “So the old dirtbag has company tonight,” said a mocking voice at the back. Don Jacinto went up to the bar to have his bottle filled and then straight over to the wretch who’d made the remark, a bald, toothless dwarf with almond-shaped eyes called Coco. Don Jacinto offered me his bottle for the first time. I took a long, hard swallow, enough to set my guts on fire in a single shot, and the burning started right away.

  “And who’s this gorgeous creature?” Coco asked lustily.

  “A curious little shit who hasn’t left me alone all day,” Don Jacinto said, passing me the bottle again. I took another swig, this time with more conviction. “Who knows what he’s up to.”

  “A little angel from heaven,” said Coco, with a perverted sneer. A hateful smile played at the corner of his mouth. I took the bottle from Don Jacinto again, while he insisted that I was a regular piece of shit who’d conspired with a bunch of vile old women last n
ight to get the police to take him away.

  “On the contrary,” I explained, “I went to warn you about Niña Beatriz’s intentions. Don’t be ungrateful.”

  “Now you’re going to tell us the truth,” Coco said.

  “He wants to know why I lead this kind of life.”

  Coco let out a guffaw. He wanted to look sinister, that fucking dwarf, so he could make a good impression on Don Jacinto, but the old man wouldn’t stop passing me his bottle. Then, suddenly, glassy-eyed, he said we should get out of this dump and get a refill. He went back to the bar, got his bottle filled and went outside, followed closely by Coco and me, the unemployed sociologist. I was starting to get dizzy walking along the dark and winding streets with this pair of miserable indigents who shared nits as well as hiding places, like the laneway we found ourselves in now. We sat down outside to have a drink with our asses on the stairs and our backs against a foul-smelling wall.

  “I’m going to taste that meat,” mumbled Coco, rubbing his hands together. I thought the mangy dwarf was coming on to me, but instead, he lunged toward Don Jacinto’s fly. Don Jacinto let him do it, sipping at his bottle, breathing more and more heavily while that bald queen quickened his pace. All of a sudden, Don Jacinto let out a yell and Coco rolled onto the ground, laughing.

  “You bit me, you son of a bitch!” he howled. Then, with one swift movement, he smashed the bottle into Coco’s face. “You goddammed bastard!” He stuck the broken end of the bottle over and over again into Coco’s belly, while he covered his bloody member with his other hand. Coco wasn’t even struggling now. He was a bloody mess, his face a hideous grimace and his guts spilling out on the ground. I got up, afraid that Don Jacinto would turn on me, but he sat back on the stairs, exhausted, and moaning over the spilled rum. He swore at Coco’s body and told me to go to the store to get more liquor. He was looking through his canvas bag for an empty bottle when I took out my pocketknife, the one with the bone-coloured handle, and slit his throat. His eyes were open in shock above his grey beard. I rifled through his pockets until I found the key to the yellow Chevrolet, picked up the canvas bag and headed back. I crossed the city as fast as I could, anxious to get back to the car, to uncover the private life Don Jacinto had guarded so jealously. I was smart enough to stop off and buy some candles to light up what I sensed would be a dark cavern full of booby traps. I got there just as Niña Beatriz was closing her store. The group of neighbours who collected there and on the corner had already cleared out. I headed straight for the yellow Chevrolet, opened the door and climbed into the dark interior.