Arnon Grunberg

Limes for Cochabamba

I was recently crossing the Bolivian jungle by cab. This wasn't entirely my own choice, let's get that straight. I am not an adventurer. I have no need to climb mountains in Nepal, to go on safari in Kenya, or to go crocodile hunting in any country. When you're looking for adventure you can find plenty of it at the drugstore around the corner. I've always been satisfied with the drugstore around the corner.
I recently flew from New York, via Miami, to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I did this to visit someone. And for that reason only. Because once in a while you have to keep a promise--for a change.
On Sunday morning at eight thirty, after a twelve-hour trip, I arrived in Santa Cruz. Customs consisted of a man, a table, and a copy machine. The copy machine was even older than the man. I'm used to the customs people looking at your passport. But this man didn't look at them, he merely copied them. The only problem was that the copier kept jamming. Then he'd fiddle some with the machine, give it a few slaps, and, with a screwdriver, pry the jammed paper out of the machine. The more the machine jammed, the unhappier the man became. The annoying thing was that everyone started to interfere--not just with the customs official, but with the copy machine itself.
When the customs official started unscrewing the machine, the mood among the passengers dipped considerably. After about five minutes he fished out a small piece of crumpled paper, which he held up triumphantly. A few passengers started clapping spontaneously. The customs official resumed copying our passports. When this was all done, we got back our passports. That took a while, because he didn't remember exactly which passport went with which person.
Now I had to buy a ticket for my ultimate destination, Cochabamba. Unfortunately, there was no one there yet from the local airline. I asked the lady behind the information desk if they might have overslept. But she said they were always this late on Sundays.
After sipping a cup of coffee for an hour and a half, and spending another hour standing in line, I was told by a man from the local airline that all planes for that day were fully booked. I was wondering when and how I would ever get out of Santa Cruz. My friends in Bolivia had urged me not to leave the airport since I barely spoke any Spanish.
I went outside and stood in the sun, cursing the whole mission.
After about ten minutes a young man came up to me and asked if I was heading for downtown Santa Cruz. I told him I was heading for downtown Cochabamba.
He looked at me like I was out of my mind. Pointing to the ground he said, "Santa Cruz."
I told him I knew very well this was Santa Cruz but that I didn't know anybody in Santa Cruz and that I had to go to Cochabamba.
He spread his arms and said something that sounded like "aeropleno", to which I responded, "No, no aeropleno."
He called a friend. The friend came over to us. The first young man started talking animatedly to his friend. The word "Cochabamba" kept coming up. Now and then they stopped talking and they both looked at me as if I were a rabbit they had caught and they were now wondering how much they could get for me. I realized they were cabdrivers.
More and more cabdrivers now gathered around me. More than fifteen hours earlier, when I had taken a cab from my home to the airport, the driver had said, "God bless you." I had decided that maybe cabdrivers were smiling on me lately.
The first cabdriver came up to me. "Cochabamba?" he said.
"Si, si," I said, "Cochabamba." An incredulous murmur erupted. I was probably the first person who wanted to go to Cochabamba by cab. But I had no choice.
"Dollars?" the cabdriver said.
"Si, si," I said, "dollars."
He named an amount I didn't understand, so I took a pen and a piece of paper and let him write it down. It was two hundred dollars. Where in the world can you get a five-hundred kilometer cab ride for two hundred dollars? In New York, just the trip from the airport to the City costs you forty dollars.
He pointed to himself and said, "Amigo Romeleo."
I pointed to myself and said, "Amigo Arnon."
Then I got in the car with my suitcase. It was a small, dusty car. After about ten minutes we got off the highway and turned onto a sandy path. I refused to believe that this sandy path lead to Cochabamba, so I tapped the driver on the shoulder and repeated the name of the city I wanted.
"Si, si," was the only thing he said. He just kept driving. The thought crossed my mind that he was going to kill me. I had my passport on me, my American visa, five hundred dollars in cash, three credit cards. People have been killed for less.
"Cochabamba," I repeated a couple of times, "Cochabamba."
But the driver didn't say anything. He kept going along the sandy path. Each time we hit a bump I hung in the air for a split second. We finally stopped in front of a house with a gas pump. A homemade house, by the look of it. There were more houses along the sandy path, but this was the only house with a gas pump.
Sitting alongside the road were girls with bottles of coke, shrunken-looking mandarin oranges, and cake.
The driver shouted something out his window, upon which people started emerging from the house. He motioned to me to get out of the car.
I got out. The people from the house started talking to me, some of them shook my hand, or even embraced me. That's how I met amigo Romeleo's family. I found that quite reassuring. Someone who is about to kill you will not introduce you to his family. That defies all the laws of logic.
Amigo Romeleo pointed at the pump. I realized that it was time to fill up the car with gas so our trip to Cochabamba could begin.
He pointed at my pocket. I had to pay for the gas. I had thought that the two hundred dollars would include gas. But I didn't have a chance to make a fuss about that.
I gave him twenty dollars; that would be enough. He accepted the money and thanked me.
After the car was tanked up, a second car was driven over to the pump. I have no idea where they got that from so quickly. This car also had to be tanked up.
Again amigo Romeleo pointed at my pocket. Why this car had to be tanked up at my expense as well was not clear to me.
"Dos?" I said, "dos?"
"Si, si," amigo Romeleo said, "Cochabamba."
"Cochabamba," I repeated, "Cochabamba." As if it were the name of paradise. Again I took twenty dollars from my pocket.
The family was still surrounding me asking me questions. Since I couldn't understand the questions, I gave answers like "Nueva York", "Cochabamba", and "Lindo, lindo" .
They didn't seem to mind that at all.
That same morning, another three cars were tanked up at my expense. I knew I was being exploited, but I prefer being exploited to being killed. Besides, it is my opinion that everyone should have at least one opportunity in his life to exploit someone else.
Finally I was introduced to a brother of Amigo Romeleo, Amigo Ernesto. He was going to take me to Cochabamba. His family embraced him as if he was never coming back.
He took me to his car, a small, old, dusty, Japanese car. An image of the Virgin Mary was glued to the windshield.
Since the trunk was filled with limes, I had to keep my suitcase in my lap. His younger brothers ran after us barefoot as we drove off on the sandy path. I held my hand outside the window until they had disappeared.
Once we were on the highway, Ernesto put on some dance music and drummed the steering wheel with his hands. There was sand everywhere. The windshield was caked with sand. My seat was covered with sand. The limes were lying in sand. The windows, the rearview mirrors, Ernesto's hair, sand everywhere.
We were driving with the windows open, so the sand just blew through the car. Old sand blowing outside, new sand blowing inside, even though we were driving on asphalt--the sand started right next to the asphalt.
At times there was so much sand blowing through the car that I could hardly see the driver. I wondered how he managed to see the road with all this sand blowing through the car. About ten kilometers outside Santa Cruz the engine died for the first time. It was to happen many more times after that.
Ernesto turned around and patted my shoulder reassuringly. He got out of the car and opened the hood. Smoke came out, but that didn't scare Ernesto.
He got back inside and sat in the car with the car radio on. That's how we waited for a half hour or so.
Fortunately we weren't the only ones alongside the road. There were many more people. Most of them were children who all had something to sell. Some were only selling bruised mandarin oranges. Others had CDs. The next one sold chewing gum. Or cigarettes by the piece. They had all kinds of stuff for sale. Even eggs and roses. If you could think of it, they sold it by the side of the road.
And indeed, the second time the engine died, the driver got out with his supply of limes.
In my best Spanish, I made it clear to him that I hadn't just paid him two hundred dollars to sell limes at the side of the road with him.
My best Spanish wasn't good enough. Again he slapped me on the shoulder and told me we were friends. Fortunately, he sold his entire supply of limes within fifteen minutes to a man in a jeep. The man also wanted to buy my luggage.
Ernesto told him he had to negotiate with me about the luggage. I explained to him that my luggage wasn't for sale. The man in the jeep couldn't believe that. He wanted to know what was in it.
"Dirty underwear," I said, "just dirty underwear."
The man in the jeep shook his head. He probably didn't understand any English. Or maybe he did. He dashed off.
For at least half a minute we were standing in a sandstorm, but by now we had gotten used to that. The engine had cooled down sufficiently so we could go on. In the middle of the jungle the driver got hungry. We had already been on the road for six hours by then. He started making gestures, moving his hand towards his mouth. There was no mistaking that he wanted to eat.
We stopped at a roadside cafe that said "Pension". The pension was a building that had never been completed.
In a short time Ernesto had wolfed down a cup of soup, half a chicken, and a questionable substance that turned out to be rice pudding. I didn't eat anything. I just drank some coke. I was hungry, but I figured the last thing I needed was diarrhea. I have a rather sensitive stomach.
In the bathroom, there was a urine puddle an inch deep. I was lucky to have thick soles. When Ernesto had finished eating, he motioned for me to go ahead and get in his cab, he'd be there in moment.
I got into his cab. A whole bunch of kids came up to the cab. They all wanted to sell stuff, but I didn't buy anything. Some even climbed in through the open windows, but I just sat there and stared straight ahead. Finally I ended up buying a pack of gum, but that made things even worse. I was wondering if we'd ever reach Cochabamba.
A child with a guitar with two strings on it started to sing for me. I handed out the gum I'd just bought. It was hot. Mosquitoes had invaded the cab. I assumed they were malaria mosquitoes. On the plane I had just read a long article entitled, "The Advance of Malaria."
Twenty minutes later, Ernesto still hadn't returned. Maybe his intestines were giving him trouble.
Finally, after having spent forty minutes in a cab by myself in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by about twenty kids on, next to, and underneath the cab, I decided I had no choice. I got out of the cab and took my suitcase. I dragged my luggage through the wet grass. Now and then I slapped a few mosquitoes and flies off of me, but it wasn't even worth the effort.
"Ernesto," I called, schlepping my suitcase through the jungle, "Amigo Ernesto!"
Nobody answered, except for the kids, who now had also started calling "Amigo Ernesto."
I didn't feel imperialistic so much as lost, completely lost.
The undergrowth got thicker, but there were still people around. There were some people sitting here and there. I didn't consider it impossible that Ernesto was around here somewhere. Maybe he had gone to see a relative.
At last I found him. He was sitting under a tree, at a rusted kitchen table. With three other men. They were shooting craps. In his hand was a bottle of water. This turned out to be pure alcohol, with a little sugar mixed in. I realized that my dollars had found a destination.
I was encouraged to drink along. It burned my throat. But I thought, "that's good, at least this is a disinfectant."
I had to wait for at least twenty more minutes. Then Ernesto returned to his cab, with no money left. He went ahead, I followed. With my suitcase. And with those kids tailing us again. Now melancholy had taken hold of Ernesto. The dance music tape had to go. We now had to hear funeral music. He was driving fast.
Gradually we left the jungle and entered the mountains. It was starting to get dark. I no longer had the idea that he wanted to kill me, I was merely thinking about the possibility of us going off a cliff together.
At the peak of a mountain we were stopped by a jeep with four soldiers. They wanted to search Ernesto's car. They were looking for cocaine. They thought I was smuggling cocaine. Or Ernesto. Or both of us. They searched my luggage. That didn't have any cocaine in it, fortunately. They looked underneath the car, they fumbled in the sand where they found a stray lime, but no cocaine. For a moment I thought they wanted to take the car apart, but right before they got to that, they lost interest and we were allowed to move on.
At ten that night we came to a sign that said, "Cochabamba fifteen miles". We were at two thousand meters elevation or more, and I had put on two sweaters, even though they had no real effect. Ernesto stopped the car. He said he wanted to turn back right here and that I would be fine on my own. I started whining quietly. My whining impressed him. Ernesto told me that a little bit of money would take care of the rest. I gave him another forty dollars.
He said he was prepared to take me into downtown Cochabamba, if I would at least fill up the tank with gas once more.
We had become friends. In the light of the gas pump he showed me pictures of his wife and children. I noticed that quite a few teeth were missing from his mouth. About half of them. The remaining teeth were the color of strong coffee.
In a small building next to the gas station five women were sitting with blankets on their laps. I don't know what they were waiting for. One woman was breast-feeding a child. There was a dog as well.
I asked where the bathroom was but nobody answered. I waited for another moment, but nobody said a word. At last I went out. The dog followed me.
When Ernesto caught sight of the dog he picked up a stone and threw it at the dog. He hit it right on the nose. The dog ran off, yowling.
Ernesto was very excited about his throw. He showed me how to throw stones. The melancholy seemed to have lifted.
When Cochabamba was five kilometers away, he put the dance music back on. Ernesto was drumming the wheel with both hands, like never before. Sand was still blowing through the car.