While working on a novel in Guatemala City, Norman Lewis hired a driver named Calmo to take him to the remote city of Huehuetenango, where the below tale takes place. This is an abridged extract trimmed from pages 484-497 of ‘A Quiet Evening, The Travels of Norman Lewis’, selected and edited by John Hatt and published by Eland. We are most grateful for Eland for the permission to reproduce this text online as part of our collaborative ‘Great Travel Books’ series. Mention Intrepid Times when ordering any book from Eland’s website and receive a free gift of ‘On Travel and the Journey Through Life’ edited by Barnaby Rogerson.
Huehuetenango was a place of apathetic beauty, built out of the ruin of a devastated Indian city. There was a sadness, a sense of forgotten tragedy in the air; and here it seemed that silence was a part of the natural condition. As Calmo had so often said, ‘We Indians are a reserved people. Even in our fiestas. Our joys and our weepings are hidden away inside: for us only, you understand – not for the world.’
There was a notice over the hotel door that said, ‘Distinction, Atmosphere and Sympathy’. The atmosphere was all-pervasive. The garden had been turned into a floral jungle encircled by borders of Pepsi-Cola bottles stuck neck-down in the earth. Quite ordinary flowers like stocks and hollyhocks were throttling each other in a savage struggle for living space, and hummingbirds like monstrous bees zoomed about the agonised sea of blossom. Goldfish bowls containing roses hideously pickled in preserving fluid, stood on every table-top. The bedroom towels were embroidered with the words, ‘Sleep My Beloved’.
After dinner I resigned myself to an early evening, and went to bed under a religious picture consisting of an eye that projected rays in every direction, and beneath it the question: ‘What is a moment of pleasure weighed in the scales against an eternity of punishment?’ I had hardly dozed off when I was awakened by an explosion. I got up and opened the window. The street had filled up with people who were all going in the same direction and chattering excitedly. A siren wailed and a motorcycle policeman went deafeningly past, snaking in and out of the crowd. There was another explosion and, as this was the homeland of revolutions, it was natural to assume that one had started. I dressed and went out into the courtyard, where the hotel boy was throwing a bayonet at an anatomical chart given away with a Mexican journal devoted to home medicine. The boy said that so far as he knew there had been no pronunciamento, and the bangs were probably someone celebrating his saint’s day. I then remembered the lean horseman.
As the tumult showed no signs of abating, I walked down to the plaza, which had filled up with blank-faced Indians moving slowly round in an anti-clockwise direction as if stirred up by some gigantic invisible spoon. There were frequent scuffles and outcries as young men singled out girls from the promenading groups, breaking coloured eggs on their heads, and rubbing the contents well into the thick black hair. The eggs were being sold by the basketful all over the plaza, and they turned out to have been emptied, refilled with some brittle, wafer-like substance, repaired and then painted. When a girl sometimes returned the compliment, the favoured gallant stopped to bow, and said: ‘Muchas gracias.’
This abridged extract from ‘A Quiet Evening – The Travels of Norman Lewis’ is published online with permission from Eland. Order this book directly from the publishers and mention Intrepid Times for a free copy of ‘On Travel and the Journey Through Life’
Calmo, whom I soon ran into, his jacket pockets bulging with eggs, said it looked as if there was going to be a fiesta after all. He couldn’t think why. There was really no excuse for it. The fashionable town-Indians, most of them shopkeepers, had turned out in all their finery, headed by the ‘Queen of Huehuetenango’ herself – a splendidly flouncy creature with ribbon-entwined pigtails down to her thighs, who was said to draw her revenues from a maison de rendezvous possessing radioactive baths. There was a sedate sprinkling of whites, hatted and begloved for the occasion.
Merchants had put up their stalls and were offering sugar skulls, holy pictures, plastic space-guns, and a remedy for heartsickness which is a speciality of Huehuetenango and tastes like inferior port. We found the lean horseman launching his rockets in military fashion from a wooden rack-like contraption. They were aimed so as to hiss as alarmingly low as possible over the heads of the crowds, showering them with sparks; sometimes they cleared the building opposite and sometimes they didn’t. Other enthusiasts were discharging mortaretes, miniature flying bombs, which leaped two or three hundred feet straight up into the air before exploding with an ear-stunning crack. The motorcycle policeman on his scarlet Harley-Davidson with wide-open exhaust, and eight front and six rear lights, came weaving and bellowing round the plaza at intervals of about a minute, while a travelling movie-show was using part of the cathedral’s baroque façade as the screen for a venerable Mexican film called Ay mi Jalisco featuring a great deal of gunplay.
A curious hollow structure looking like a cupola sliced in half had been built on the top of the town hall, and about this time powerful lights came on in its interior and nine sad-faced men in dark suits entered it by an invisible door, carrying what looked like several grand pianos. A moment later these pieces of furniture had been placed end to end to form an enormous marimba, under an illuminated sign that said ‘Musica Civica’. A cosmic voice coughed electrically and then announced that in response to the esteemed public’s many requests the municipal orchestra would have pleasure in rendering a selection of notable composers’ works. Eighteen hammers then came down on the keys with a responding opening flourish, and the giant marimba raced into an athletic version of ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’.
Calmo and I took refuge from the torrent of sound in a tavern called The Little Chain of Gold. It was a place of great charm containing a shrine and a newly installed jukebox in addition to the usual accessories. The main room was decorated with beautiful calendars given away by Guatemalan bus companies, and a couple of propaganda pictures of mutilated corpses put out by the new government after the last revolution. The Little Chain advertised the excellence of its ‘hotsdoogs’. Most of its customers were preparados, Indians who had done military service and had rejected their tribal costumes in favour of brightly coloured imitations of American army uniforms. Some of them added a slightly sinister touch to their gay ensembles of reds and blues by covering the lower part of their faces with black cloths, a harmless freak of fashion which I was told had originated in a desire to breathe in as little dust as possible when footslogging along the country roads.
Calmo said that the main difference between a preparado and a tribal Indian was that the preparado, who had acquired a civilised taste for whisky, couldn’t afford to get drunk so often as an uncivilised drinker of aguardiente. We drank the aguardiente. It smelt of ether and had a fierce laboratory flavour. Every time the door opened the marimba music pressed on our eardrums. Calmo made an attempt to detain one of the serving girls. ‘Don’t go away, little treasure, and I’ll bring you some flowers from the gardens in the plaza, whatever they fine me.’ He received so baleful a stare for his pains that he dropped the girl’s hand as if she had bitten him.
At last the hour of civic music ran out. From where we sat, we saw that the Mexican outlaws had ceased to gallop across the cathedral wall. The crowds had thinned into groups of stubborn drunkards. Calmo was becoming uneasy. ‘In my opinion it is better to go. These people are very peace-loving, but when they become drunk they sometimes assassinate each other in places like this. Not for malicious reasons, understand me, but as the result of wagers or to demonstrate the accuracy of their aim with the various firearms they possess.’
We paid our bill and had just got up when the door was flung open and three of the toughest-looking desperadoes I had ever seen reeled in. These were no shrinking Indians, but hard-muscled ladinos, half-breeds who carried in their faces all the Indian’s capacity for resentment but none of his fear. They wore machetes as big as naval cutlasses in their belts. For a moment they blocked the doorway eyeing the company with suspicion and distaste, then one of them spotted the jukebox, which was still a rarity in this part of the world. His expression softened and he made for our table putting each foot down carefully as if afraid of blundering into quicksands. He bowed. ‘Forgive me for addressing you, sir, but are you familiar with the method of manipulating the machine over there?’
I said I was.
‘Perhaps then you could inform me whether the selection of discs includes a marimba?’
I went over to the jukebox. These ladinos, I thought, would still be living the frontier life of the last century; a breed of tough, illiterate outcasts, picking up a livelihood as best they could, smugglers and gunmen if pushed to it, ready, as it seemed from the frequent newspaper reports, to hack each other – or the lonely traveller – to pieces for a few dollars, and yet with it a tremendous, almost deadly punctiliousness in ordinary matters of social intercourse. I studied the typewritten list in Spanish. There were several marimbas. The ladino looked relieved. He conferred in an undertone with the other two fugitives from justice, came back, bowed again, and handed me a Guatemalan ten-cent piece. ‘If you could induce the machine to play “Mortal Sin” for us, we should be much indebted.’
I returned the ladino five cents change, found a US nickel – which is fairly common currency in Guatemala – and put it in the slot, while the three ladinos edged forward, studiously casual but eager to watch the reptilian mechanical gropings by which their choice was singled out and manoeuvred into the playing position. ‘Pecado Mortal’ turned out to be a rollicking son – a kind of paso doble – executed with the desperate energy of which the sad music-makers of Central America are so prodigal.
Mention Intrepid Times when ordering any book from Eland and receive a free copy of ‘On Travel and the Journey Through Life.’
Calmo and I were halfway through the door when I felt a tap on the shoulder. The principal bandit was insisting that we join him for a drink. ‘Otherwise, my friends and I would feel hurt, gentlemen.’ He laid bare his teeth in a thin, bitter smile. We went back and sat down again. While he was getting the drinks Calmo said, ‘In the education of our people the most important thing taught after religion is urbanidad – good manners. Even those who have no schooling are taught this. I do not think that we should risk offending these men by showing a desire to leave before they do.’ A moment later our bandit was back with double aguardientes and a palmful of salt for us to lick in the proper manner, between gulps. The music stopped, and his face clouded with disappointment. Behind him a lieutenant loomed, swaying slightly, eyes narrowed like a Mongolian sage peering into the depths of a crystal, mouth tightened by the way life had gone. He was holding a coin. ‘Might I trouble you to perform the same service for me, sir?’ he asked politely.
It turned out that the second mestizo wanted to hear ‘Mortal Sin’ again. ‘It is remarkable;’ he said, ‘and most inspiring. I do not think it can be bettered.’ The three tough hombres moved away uncertainly towards the jukebox again, simple wonderment struggling beneath the native caution of their expressions. The needle crackled in the ruined grooves, and we heard the over-familiar overture of ear-splitting chords. Someone found the volume control and turned it up fully. Every object in the room was united in a tingling vibration. The second bandit drew his machete with the smooth, practised flourish of a Japanese swordsman, and scooped the cork out of a fresh bottle of aguardiente with a twist of its point. Two more members of the band stood waiting, coins in hand.
‘Mortal Sin’ had been played five times, and we were still chained by the polite usage of Central America to our chairs, still gulping down aguardiente and licking the salt off our palms, when it suddenly occurred to me that it was unreasonable that an electric train should be rumbling through a subway immediately beneath us in Huehuetenango. I got up, grinning politely at our hosts, and, balancing the liquid in my glass, went to the door. The lamps in the plaza jogged about like spots in front of my eyes, and then, coming through the muffled din from The Little Chain of Gold, I heard a noise like very heavy furniture being moved about in uncarpeted rooms somewhere in space. The world shifted slightly, softened, rippled, and there was an aerial tinkling of shattered glass. I felt a brief unreasoning stab of the kind of panic that comes when in a nightmare one suddenly begins a fall into endless darkness. Aguardiente from my glass splashed on my hand, and at that moment all the lights went out and the music stopped with a defeated growl. The door of The Little Chain opened and Calmo and one of the ladinos burst through it into the sudden crisp stillness and the moonlight. Calmo had taken the ladino by the forearm and the shoulder –
‘And so my friend we go now to buy candles. Patience – we shall soon return.’
‘But in the absence of electricity,’ the ladino grumbled sadly, ‘the machine no longer functions.’
‘Perhaps they will restore the light quickly,’ Calmo said.
‘In that case we shall play the machine again. We will spend the whole night drinking and playing the machine.’ The ladino waved in salutation and fell back through the doorway of The Little Chain.
We moved off quickly under the petrified foliage of the plaza. Nothing stirred. The world was solid under our feet again. A coyote barked several times sounding as if it were in the next street, while a distant clock chimed sweetly an incorrect hour.
‘A quiet evening,’ I remarked. ‘With just one small earthquake thrown in.’
‘A tremor, not an earthquake,’ Calmo said. ‘An earthquake must last at least half a minute. This was a shaking of secondary importance.’
There was a pause while he translated his next sentence into English. He then said: ‘Sometimes earthquakes may endure for a minute, or even two minutes. In that case it is funny…No, not funny, I mean very serious.’
You can claim your copy of ‘A Quiet Evening, The Travels of Norman Lewis’ directly from the publisher, Eland. Mention Intrepid Times when ordering any book from Eland’s website and receive a free gift of ‘On Travel and the Journey Through Life’ edited by Barnaby Rogerson.
