Description of Service - Chapter 6

6. You Are Here Because You Are Not There

The state paid handsomely to maintain the telegraph line to San Juan. It paid people like Angel Perdido, after he was hired as the telegraph operator in San Juan, to learn Morse code. Chunks of the state budget went to train would-be technicians of that nineteenth century art. Having painstakingly learned the intricacies of his post, a telegraph operator in a small town like San Juan could then expect to sit idle for hours, or even days, at a time, at his work by the telegraph.

In the years since he had taken over the job from his father, Angel Segundo had become quite adept at sitting, as he labored in the relative tranquility of the self-employed, even if that description did not exactly fit his situation, which was similar mainly in that he worked unburdened by the threat of supervision, given that those directly tasked with overseeing his work lived in large, comfortable houses, in the capital far away, and a supervisory trip to a far-flung place like San Juan was not high on their agenda, since such an endeavor implied certain inconveniences, such as an overnight stay away from the comforts amassed through years of exploiting the state bureaucracy, and the even more grave and undesirable possible consequences of being physically absent from such post. One simply never knew when the fleeting opportunity for further exploitation of the system might arise. Faced with those circumstances, officials of the telegraph company, like those of other state run enterprises, preferred whenever possible to avoid work that required them to leave the immediate vicinity of their homes.

It was quite a simple matter, then, for the elder Angel, when he grew tired of working daily, to teach his only son to man the infrequently used line, then gradually disappear into the inner sanctum of the Perdido home, from his long-time post in the front room that doubled as the telegraph office. The townspeople carried on sending their occasional telegrams through Angel Segundo, and little changed. A smart man, Angel Segundo, rather than take his chances with the government bureaucracy, simply assumed his father’s identity, and collected the monthly paycheck. The switch worked flawlessly until the elder Angel finally passed away, at which point, in order to avoid inconvenient interruptions in their comfortable income stream, the Perdido family was forced into the unfortunate charade of reporting the death of the younger Angel on all official paperwork. The Perdidos buried the elder Angel, and mourned the younger, in a way that, if disingenuous, was apt given the new responsibilities Angel Segundo would take on as head of the household. After such a confusing experience, Angel Segundo felt obligated to more permanently and dramatically assume the person of his father, referring to himself as Don Angel, and behaving in every way like a man several decades older.

Given the circumstances surrounding the history of the post, it could be said that Angel took his job quite seriously. According to the operator’s manual, the telegraph technician was expected to man the machine all day long, lest an urgent incoming cable arrive and find no one to interpret it. His duties also included attending to the local population, eager to communicate with the outside world.

By the time I arrived in San Juan early that summer, however, it had become relatively clear to even the most aloof observers that not even the most traditional townspeople continued to believe, generally speaking, that the telegraph was a good way to communicate. Given its less than fail-proof design, the antique system was vulnerable to replacement by just about any medium. Indeed, the reliability of communication by telegraph left much to be desired by any standard. If, for example, a telegram came in, and Angel wasn’t at his desk in the office, awaiting it, the senders were apt to give up, and the communication would be permanently lost. It was partly for such reasons, and also because the conformity of the townspeople with of the idea of an outside party receiving and reading their personal messages had decreased significantly, that important communications to and from San Juan had long since begun to be carried in sealed envelopes on the bus, to La Esperanza, where further action was taken.

But no one had explained any of that to me. Indeed, my supervisors had quite the opposite opinion. In the short period our discussion had continued, after the Peace Corps sub-director had told me of my assignment in San Juan, I objected to the placement on the grounds, among other things, of lack of viable communication. The Peace Corps bylaws list reliable communication means in a work site as a fundamental necessity in case of emergency. The sub-director dismissed my concern by encouraging me to make frequent use of what she described as “the efficient and reliable telegraph system.” She further indicated that she felt it a good idea for me to, immediately upon arrival in San Juan, familiarize myself with the system by sending a telegram to her to convey my well-being and safe arrival. I suspected that request was designed mostly to assure her that I had in fact made my way to San Juan instead of off somewhere else, the latter option seeming to be the general consensus for the expected behavior of a worker facing the sort of non-sensical assignment I had been handed.

Nevertheless, that first afternoon in San Juan, after cleaning out as best I could the room in which I would sleep, hanging the hammock out back, and taking a rather extended nap in the shade of the patio overhang, I went straight to the telegraph office, anxious to make good on my promise to report my arrival, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that I was, in fact, in San Juan. It seemed like a simple enough task.

In the years since the first Don Angel had evicted Felicidad from her bedroom in his efforts to fashion the original office, the telegraph had been moved across the street to a front room of Felicidad’s house. After the death of her brother, Soledad had decided that there was no longer space in what was now her house for Angel Segundo and his telegraph, which she deemed to be irreconcilably haunted by Angel’s spirit. Angel tried incense, incantations, prayers, and overnight vigils, and even brought in the local priest, but Soledad was not to be convinced. In an ironic twist which no one in the Perdido family seemed to appreciate, Felicidad came to Angel’s rescue, renting a space to the telegraph company, at a slightly inflated price that took into account the unpredictable consequences of bringing a spirit into her home in such a cavalier fashion.

It was in that new office that I found a middle aged man with unusually light skin bent over a table, distracted in the process of rewiring one of an assortment of old radios, and similar devices, piled on the floor behind his desk, an activity which I would later find occupied the majority of the time that the second incarnation of Don Angel did not dedicate to shouting insinuating comments at adolescent girls as they passed by on the street in front of his office.

I stood in the doorway quietly.

“Ah, mister gringo,” the man said, when he eventually looked from his work. “Don Angel Segundo Perdido, at your service.”

“Good afternoon,” I said. “This is telegraph office?” I stepped forward into the room.

“Come in, mister gringo. I heard of your arrival.” Word had spread, at least through this house. “You’ve come to Aida’s for dinner? That’s good. Sit down, have some coffee first.”

“Patricia, some coffee for the afternoon break. The gringo has come to visit,” he yelled through the doorway at the back of the office, which opened into the corridor leading to the kitchen. A loud yelp signaling affirmation emanated from space beyond the doorway.

“Thank you, Don Angel. In reality I have come to see about sending a telegram to my supervisors in the capital,” I said, handing him a small piece of paper with the wording of the message to be sent.

“Ah, a telegram.” He took the paper and placed it on his desk, smiled at me, and then looked out the front door. “Greetings, Don Jose,” he yelled through the open door in front, at a passing man. A similar cry came from the street outside. Angel smiled as he continued to look out onto the street. Slowly, he focused his attention back on me, “tell me mister gringo, how do you like San Juan?”

“You can call me Kawil, Don Angel. Kawil is my name.”

“Kawil? Gringo is easier. Like me. They call me chele because of the light color of my skin.”

Patricia came in with two cups of coffee on a tray. “Ah mister gringo,” she said, “you’ve met chele Angel? So many white people in here it would seem we are in the U-S-A.”

“Yes,” I replied, giving up on the name issue for the time being. “I came to see about sending a telegraph.”

“Ha!” She laughed. “Send a telegram, mister? I don’t think chele Angel even knows how! Forget about that and come have some dinner.” With that she left the coffee on the desk in front of us, and walked out through the back door.

“Yes, the telegraph’s down,” Angel continued, as he stirred a heap of sugar into his coffee, with a matter-of-factness that should have made it apparent there was nothing unusual about such a state of affairs. “The line is - not so good. Do you like much sugar in your coffee?”

“When do you think the device might be fixed?” I asked, pressing the matter.

“It’s not the telegraph that’s broken,” Angel replied patiently, as he took a sip of coffee, and looked up at me once more. “It’s the line to La Esperanza that is down.”

“Well, that telegram is urgent. It is going to my supervisors to let them know I have arrived,” I explained. “When do you think I can send it?”

“Your supervisors?” Angel said with a laugh. “They should know you are here from the fact that you are no longer there. Tell me, where are your supervisors, if you are working for the cooperative?”

Angel seemed intrigued, both by my arrival, and my interest in his telegraph line, which must have been unparalleled in recent memory. I thought it impolite to press the subject of the telegram further just then, so I let the conversation turn to other matters as the street outside grew dim in the fading afternoon light. I worked on convincing him that my name was not in fact Mister Gringo, and he told me a little about San Juan, the telegraph business, and fixing radios.

In the last light of dusk, Juan arrived, having shut the cooperative for the night. “I looked for you at the house,” he said, stepping into the office from the patio, and taking a seat comfortably on a bench along the wall of the office. “Then I imagined you might be here.”

As the night quickly descended on my first day in San Juan, Angel closed the door to the street, and the three of us passed through to the corridor, and on to the kitchen for dinner. We sat down around the old wooden table, placed in the alcove in a way that left its occupants staring into the adjacent kitchen, where Aida and her two daughters were at work preparing the evening meal.

“Ah, Juan,” Patricia said, with the same surprise that she had greeted us earlier in the day. I was beginning to think that bewildered demeanor to be her natural state. “You’re early. No football today?”

“No Patti, it’s been a long day, with the journey. We are hungry. Let’s see if Aida can move a little faster tonight,” Juan replied, laughing again.

“Savage Indian,” Aida quickly snapped, this time with much more energy than she had displayed in the afternoon.

The only thing I had eaten all day had been the small lunch, and I was hungry. Aida served plates of chicken, avocado, and refried beans, accompanied by the ubiquitous corn tortillas and a salad of vegetables. I began to eat eagerly, as Juan picked the onions out of his salad. Angel observed me closely.

“He eats with a great appetite, not nearly as picky as Juan, but this is not gringo food,” Don Angel said out loud, as I grabbed another tortilla.

“No, Don Angel, but it’s very good,” I said, loud enough so that Aida, who was glancing at us furtively from her post in the kitchen, could easily hear. “I usually don’t eat much after travelling.”

After the meal, we lingered around the table, as we drank our evening coffee. Other diners, who had been served at the tables in the front room by Nancy and Patricia, had come and gone. I gazed into the dark kitchen, where the embers of the fire burned orange in recess of the earthen stove, fighting a losing battle with the encroaching dark of the country night. Blackness seeped through the open windows and doors, and swept in from the gaps in the roof created by the broken, irregular tiles. There the night momentarily sequestered the furls of smoke as they huddled among the rafters of the dilapidated roof, each awaiting patiently the chance to escape through one of the openings, to meet the stars shining in the cool night beyond that precarious barrier.

My mind drifted as well, as Juan told Angel of the journey to the capital and back, and of the plans for the cooperative. As they spoke, Aida, nearly finished with her daily work, took a moment’s rest, motionless in a chair along the wall of the kitchen, next to the warm stove. As the flickering light from the fire bounced weakly off the mud walls, her profile was occasionally revealed amidst the shadows there. As a slow current of cold air began to flow in, conspiring with the darkness in its battle against the light from the dying fire in the corner oven, another shadow rose from the courtyard and stole into the kitchen, gliding on worn, bare feet across the dirt floor, towards the place where Aida rested. It was a woman, her slight frame bent against the weight of her body, covered in loose garments, a faded old dress and apron, a shawl covering her head. Aida moved gently aside, and the old woman fell onto the bench next to the fire. She spread her bony fingers in the front of the stove, as the shadows danced along the walls and ceiling.

“Good evening, aunt,” Don Angel said solemnly.

“Good evening, Doña Felicidad,” Juan called out.

The woman said nothing. Angel turned to me. “My aunt is old and doesn’t hear very well. Mama,” he said, calling loudly into the kitchen, “here is mister gringo. He has come to work with Juan in the cooperative here.”

The old woman continued to sit silently for quite some time, warming herself against the stove. Eventually, she lowered her hands and turned slowly towards the table.

“A gringo,” she said slowly, long after it seemed as if she would remain quiet. “That is good. He will do good here,” she whispered as she squinted towards me, through the darkness. Her dark eyes caught the low glint of the fire as they peered at me from a warn face starkly outlined by her coarse, white hair. “He looks like others who have come,” she said quietly, turning her attention back to the fire.

Juan stood up. “Ready to go?” he asked, as he headed into the kitchen to bid goodnight to the women there. I slowly got up as well.

Aida had returned to work, washing dishes in the basin by the sink. I approached her carefully, stopping a few steps short of the countertop. She hadn’t directed a single word towards me yet, and I was a bit wary of her.

“Doña Aida,” I said quietly, “may I eat here each day, as Juan does?”

She paused from her dish washing and looked at her mother in the corner. The old woman gave a quick, firm nod. Aida then slowly transferred her gaze to me. With a sincere nod, she communicated a thousand words of sincere acceptance.

“While there is food, you can come here to eat. It’s late now, go home,” she said. I began to open my mouth to speak, but I was interrupted by a loud voice from the corner.

“Go home, you silly Indians,” cried Felicidad, in a commanding voice, markedly different from her previously whispers. “Get to your homes before the spirits come.”

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Those first days in San Juan passed in the slow motion that mocks those with few immediate plans or prospects, exacerbating the quandary of the present. The roosters woke me each morning at daybreak, as the gentle morning sunlight streamed through the small window of my room, coaxing me from the long, deep sleep that can only be had away from the loud, bright inventions of the modern world. Awakening there, in that starkly outfitted, four walled room, I would wonder for a moment, as so often is the case after a long sleep in an unfamiliar bed, where I was, before recalling the strange reality that had suddenly become my life. Perhaps in those days it took a few moments more than it might normally have to convince myself that San Juan was not an invention of some long, mid-summer’s dream. It would be quite some time before such confusion ceased to invade the first consciousness of my days.

Confronted with long, empty days, I needed to find a way to pass the time. Working at the cooperative did not seem to be the immediate answer. Juan was constantly in and out of town, and we delayed talking about work, as he was repeatedly called to make runs on his motorbike between San Juan and La Esperanza, in order to pass along messages or retrieve cash. Indeed, his role as a courier seemed to be the most important aspect of his job.

As a consequence, he would often be away overnight, and I found myself quickly and frequently alone in the house. Much of those first few days I spent at home in the hammock out back, wiling away the hours, as I stared at the mountain in the distance. I needed some time to assimilate the shock that the sudden change had brought to my life, and I soon found that quiet time by the garden was one way to slowly adapt to my new surroundings. There I passed the long afternoons, watching the weather pass, from sun, to rain, then back again. I might have remained there indefinitely, when I wasn’t taking my meals at the Perdido house, had it not been for one particular factor, which motivated me to leave the house, late each day. Following the afternoon showers that transformed the hot, hazy midday into a cool cloudy afternoon, I would make my way to the town’s soccer field.

One of my first discoveries in San Juan had been a shared passion with every other man and child, from six to sixty, in town. In those first days, the routine of soccer became a crucial element of adaptation to my new life. Juan, when he was in town, would hurriedly shut the cooperative a few minutes before five, then hurry home to change into soccer gear. Not anxious to let on that I had spent the better part of the afternoon lying in the hammock, I would quickly scramble to my feet when I heard the rattling of the door to the patio from his room, as he unhitched the internal iron bar he used as a lock. Juan would soon emerge onto the back patio, and with the excited smile of a small child anticipating a game, would ask, “Kawil, are we going to play football?”

The answer had been established on the second day after my arrival, when Juan had mentioned the afternoon game. Even on the days that Juan was away, I would go to the field alone to join a game. When he was in town we would religiously follow the same routine. After he arrived and dressed quickly, we would head out the door together, towards the field, up the road past the Perdido house.

The field spreads over two city blocks at the far end of town. Like many fields I would come to know, in the rural areas of this country, it was less than perfect. Sloping gradually downhill along its length, it provided a subtle advantage to the side that played in that preferred direction, causing the players, when assigning teams, to define the two sides as “up” and “down.” The grass would grow to nearly knee length in the rainy season – the condition I found it in upon arrival - then dry out and disappear completely, turning the pitch to a dustbowl by late summer. Cows and other livestock generally displayed less than the desirable hesitancy to meander onto the field during play, roaming about wherever they pleased. But like any other unexpected obstacle, these obstructions were considered part of the game, and were played around without a second thought, except on the amusing occasions when a player of some repute in the village, for example the mayor or one of his staff, on one of their occasional forays onto the field, would haplessly tumble into a pile of cow manure.

But before getting as far as the field, Juan and I had stops to make along the route. The most important detour was to the corner store.

“He’s going to say that he is too busy to play,” Juan would say, as we approached, of the store’s proprietor, Sandro.

“We will convince him, in the end, that sport is more beneficial than work,” Juan continued with a smile, as we stepped off the road into the store, speaking in his particular way, loudly enough to be overheard but not to be accused of speaking directly to anyone.

The store’s owner, Sandro Martinez, was one of San Juan’s success stories. He did not come from one of the traditional families of San Juan, but had still managed to build on that corner a large and successful general store, which amply supported his family. Sandro loved to play football, but his economic endeavors and family took precedence. Sandro had befriended Juan years before, when Juan first arrived in town. Having made his own lot in life, Sandro was not intimidated by outsiders, unlike many of the established families, who perhaps feared losing their tight grip over the town’s affairs.

Each day, despite being short of time on the way to the field, Juan insisted on stopping by Sandro’s store, in an attempt to convince him to leave his affairs at the shop for an hour or two of sport. Invariably, we would find Sandro behind the counter, twirling the end of his long black moustache with long, bony fingers weathered from years of hard work, as he contemplated the barren street in front of his store. And each day, the exchange followed the same basic pattern.

“No football for me today,” Sandro would say, as he looked at us, dressed in our sporting clothes, cleats in hand. “I need to count the inventory.”

“All right Sandro, give up the charade,” Juan would quickly reply. Juan preferred to budget an extra five minutes or so along the way for this conversation, but the soccer game was a pressing engagement, and there was little extra time for the beating around the bush that was standard in discussing less important affairs.

Temporarily frustrated, Juan would take a seat restlessly on the large sacks of grains stacked in the corner, and begin to talk to whoever was in earshot, describing the fun we were about to have at the soccer field.

“It’s a shame you won’t play,” he would say to Sandro, opening whatever product was close at hand, and beginning to snack, “because the games have been very good lately.”

If Sandro refused to give in easily, Juan would scale up his efforts at persuasion by moving behind the counter and raiding the store’s gas-powered cooler, extracting soft drinks, and handing them out as if he were the owner of the store.

Sandro might resist for a few minutes more, before throwing his hands up in capitulation. “If I don’t go,” he would yell out, calling in his wife to look after the store in his place, “these two will eat the entire inventory and there will be nothing left to sell.” Then he would disappear into the back of the store, which doubled as his family’s home, where he would dress quickly, before the three of us headed for the field.

On any given day, anyone might show up to play. High school students played, alongside their professors. Don Angel and Anhiel were there as frequently as their work and past-prime legs would allow. They had formed a team which they called the “Veterans,” a collection of older men, bellies rounded by the years, who attempted to make up for in guile what they had lost in mobility. Even the mayor would come out on the rare occasions that he was in town.

The number of players varied by day as well. Some days, only a dozen or so showed, and we played a small-sided game. Other days, there would be more than thirty men, too many even for that huge field. But seldom was anyone left out, and the game could grow into a fifteen-a-side melee.

I met most every resident of the town on that field in those first few weeks, excluding, of course, the women, who stayed at home at that hour, preparing the evening meal. Soccer was a part of village life in which even an outsider could have a role that everyone could understand. On the field all the rules changed. In a place where clocks have very little use, the one punctual engagement each day was the football match. The game began each afternoon at five sharp. And the criteria for understanding one another changed as well. It no longer made sense to judge by appearance, language, or anything else not directly related to the play on the field. Young and old, conservative and liberal, local and foreigner, all began as equals there.

So in soccer, which, happily, I had grown up playing, I found an equalizing factor that highlighted my similarities to the locals. My work at the cooperative couldn’t do that, since few understood what I, or anyone else there, actually did. Even if my association with the bank did give me a certain immediate legitimacy in the community, the institution of banking was unfamiliar to most in the area, and though my presence in town could be more easily understood through my presumed role in the mysterious activities taking place behind that counter where money was dispensed and collected, in that context I remained a foreigner engaged in generally incomprehensible work. But with each day on that rain soaked, overgrown, bumpy soccer field, I became that much less of an outsider. On the field, I was judged by what I did with the ball, and that was a language in which I was much more proficient.

After each daily session wound to and end, the players would gather together for a moment’s rest on the sidelines, as the sun sank low in the sky. Then each would head for home, several of us, including a number of Perdidos, Angel and Anhiel, and their nephew Oduber, down the same road.

“The gringo is not a bad football player,” Angel began, on one such afternoon late in my first week in town. “He plays as well as some of the better players from this town.”

“Better,” Juan said, in his usual congratulatory manner, to which I was growing accustomed. I appreciated his flattery, though I had been a bit surprised to find that I wasn’t as good as the best players in that town. Soccer was like a religion there, and I was amazed at the concentration of skill. Juan, himself, I later found out, had played semi-professionally in La Esperanza before retiring to a more sensible life in banking.

“He plays so well, in fact,” Angel continued, “that the teams in town are wondering for which one he will play.” I knew that he was talking about the local tournament. It hadn’t taken long for me to be made to understand that, aside from the friendly scrimmages during the week, the town put on weekend matches in which teams from the village played against teams from the outlying settlements.

“There is no doubt which team he will play for,” Anhiel interjected authoritatively, embracing me firmly with one arm as we walked. “He is from the Perdido house, and will play for the Eagles.”

“Sandro might have a different opinion, as the captain of the Independent side,” Juan said, somewhat bashfully.

“But Sandro is not here,” Oduber said. Sandro had left town on one of his frequent trips to purchase merchandise for the store. “Besides,” he said, looking at me as he spoke, “it wouldn’t be right for someone who lives and eats with us at the house to play for the opponents.”

As we arrived at the Perdido house, and the group filed in for dinner, Angel pulled me aside.

“About that telegram,” he began. I had been by his office frequently to ask about progress in sending the telegram to the capital, but the line remained out of order. “Tomorrow I will go to fix the line. Perhaps you are as good with a horse as you are with a football. You can come along if you like.”

In a moment of confidence inspired by the newfound feeling of inclusion on the soccer field, I didn’t think twice. “Of course I will go with you,” I said.

“Tomorrow we go after breakfast then,” Angel said with a pleased expression.
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“Aida, prepare two lunches to carry away– one for me and one for my assistant,” Angel said in a commanding voice. He had come into the kitchen to find me finishing my morning coffee and chatting aimlessly with Patricia.

“Wait for me here,” he said, as he headed out the door.

“So you’re going out with Uncle Angel to fix the line?” Patricia asked, smiling cheerfully as she came over to clear the table.

“Yes, we’ll go fix it, I suppose, we’ll see what it takes,” I said, realizing that I had little idea what fixing a telegraph line might entail.

“So you know how to ride a horse?” she asked. In truth, I had never ridden a horse before. But I assumed that I could.

“Of course,” I replied confidently, with a feigned air of assuredness that made me feel uncomfortable. I was not anxious to provide ammunition to support the idea that I was getting into something over my head, “- so the horse is necessary…” I said, trailing off and leaving the sentence unfinished, hoping that she could complete it with more information.

“The horse is necessary,” she said, echoing my words but failing to add anything. She extracted a few potatoes from of a sack next to the table, then headed off down the corridor to wash them, smiling at me as she passed. “Oh, mister,” she sighed.

I was left alone in the kitchen with Aida. She paused from her work in the kitchen, slicing vegetables, and looked up at me, intently. “You really want to go jaunting off through the countryside to try to fix the line?” She asked, with a serious expression. “It’s Angel’s job, not yours.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I answered, growing a bit concerned. It was the first time Aida had showed any interest in my affairs, but my answer must have seemed overly terse, and dissuaded her from pursuing the matter. She put her head back down and continued her work.

“May God protect you,” she murmured. I finished my coffee in silence.

Angel returned after about a half hour. “Let’s go,” he said. “The horses are waiting outside.”

I went outside with him, and surveyed the animals, which he had hitched to the post of the front door. They were smaller than I had expected, and seemed calm, grazing on the overgrown grass alongside the road.

“That one is the more docile,” Angel said, pointing at the smaller of the two horses. “You can ride her without any trouble. Get on up there.”

He leapt effortlessly onto the other horse, with a degree of dexterity that surprised me, after having observed his almost comically uncoordinated exploits on the soccer field. I mounted my horse with considerably more difficulty. Once up, I grabbed hold of the reigns, and we were off. My horse followed along slowly behind the one carrying Angel, with minimal instruction or coaxing. I was pleased to learn that I seemed to know how to ride a horse after all, at least this one.

We rode out slowly along the main road, along a wide stretch frequently travelled by residents of the outlying villages, as they made their way to and from town. Homes, humbled in their isolation by the expanse of the countryside, sat perched above the route every so often. Smoke spat unevenly from the soot-blackened chimneys at the corners of their bright-red tiled roofs. At irregular intervals on either side of the road, small trails and footpaths led off into the countryside. Angel pointed each one out to me in turn, along with the names of the settlements to which they led.

As we advanced around a wide corner, flanked by low embankments where the road bed had been cut through the middle of a low hill, a group of middle aged women, dressed in colorful patterns of bright green, pink, and red, approached on foot from the opposite direction. Many of them carried small children on their backs, tightly wrapped, and clinging to their mothers. Along with their offspring, they carried an assortment of fruits and vegetables which they appeared to be bringing, slowly, to market in town.

“These women come down from the hills with their produce,” Angel told me, as he tipped his wide brimmed hat to the women. I was sorry to not have a hat like his to tip. He spoke loudly even with the women close by, as if they could not understand him, and indeed they seemed not to. Their loads looked excessive for their small frames.

“Don’t they have husbands to help, or animals to carry their loads?” I asked, observing how the women, already weighed down with their children, still managed the heavy loads by carrying larger burdens in pairs, each taking one handle of a woven basket. As I spoke, one of the women happily yelled something at us in a tongue I couldn’t understand.

“They don’t trust their husbands to bring the goods down to market,” Angel said, as we left the group behind. He interrupted his explanation to shout a greeting at a man who was making his way quickly along the road towards town on a large horse, unburdened by cargo. “Perhaps the produce would arrive,” Angel continued when the man and his horse had passed, leaving us and the women in his wake, “but the money would not get further than the cantinas at the crossroads.”

“What was it that the woman said to you as we passed?” I asked.

“I have no way to know,” Angel said. “These women speak Lenca, as they have for centuries. I can not understand them and they cannot understand me. In communicating with them, you and I are equals.”

As we continued out along the road, winding through the valley, among the low hills and bluffs, I tried to envision the life of those women, deep in that countryside. The telegraph line which we were monitoring split from the main road, and ran off into the fields, following a more direct path to La Esperanza than the road. Angel soon guided us off onto one of the rough side roads.

“Down this road, we’ll find the line again,” he explained.

Far narrower and less manicured than the main road, the trail would have been impassable by all but the most rugged vehicle. It was deeply rutted and had not been graded for years, if ever. Large shade trees grew overhead, providing a refreshing break from the growing intensity of the mid-morning sun. We advanced down that road at more leisurely pace, descending gradually towards a slow river, where the path disappeared under a clear, meandering current. When his horse balked at the notion of entering the water, Angel gave a shout and, twisting a small branch off a low hanging tree, whipped the animal into motion, as it splashed its way across the river. I gave my horse a little kick, and she jolted quickly behind, following her companion across the shallow, rocky stream.

“That’s the way,” Angel observed, looking back with approval, “you’re the boss of that beast.”

Angel had been relatively quiet on the way down the road. But as we ventured farther down this side road, in the unhurried manner that comes most naturally in places where time is just a glare, the old man began to speak in low intonations.

“We head this way another two or three kilometers,” he said, trailing off, as if he were trying to convince himself of the route. I thought I heard him say something about climbing a mountain after that, but I wasn’t sure. He repeated the instructions to himself every so often as we moved along.

In that way, we rode along the shaded bank of the stream, to an opening in the forest, where the road led into a large field. The trees on the edge of the field were shorter, but no less thick than those of the wood we had passed through. I could see the ruins of a number of mud brick houses scattered around the clearing.

“Here the road ends,” Angel said. “Before there was an aldea– a small village, here, many years ago, but it is gone.” He got down slowly off his horse.

“We must leave the horses and walk from here. They will tire on the hill faster than we will.” He tied his horse to a tree, and then, as I dismounted clumsily, secured the second horse. The horses began to graze indifferently in the shade of the forest, as Angel led the way out into the field, towards the battered frames of the abandoned houses.

Suddenly, I felt the odd sensation that sets in innately, if inexplicably, when one is being watched. I looked up towards a house at the far end of the clearing, but saw only Angel racing on ahead of me. Moving at an impressive pace for a man past his prime, he had already rounded a corner where the forest juts out into the clearing, and hurried on, away from the ruins. I had to move quickly to catch up to him. He stopped on the edge of a broader, open area where the forest met the rocky incline of the hills, now before us, at the beginning of a long ascent to impressive pine-covered peaks well above. Angel, a bit winded from his sprint, sat down under a tree and opened the pack he carried with him.

“Lunch time,” he said. “Aida has packed our meals.” She had prepared corn tamales wrapped in banana leaves. We ate in the shade of the trees at the point where the clearings came together in a narrow field, as we looked, slightly downhill, at the abandoned town below.

“At the far end of that field,” Angel said after several minutes, pointing to the area below the hill on the other side of the clearing, where the trees were shorter than elsewhere, “you can see the half buried homes. The avalanche that wiped out this community buried many of its people alive. The elders in San Juan, my sisters, for example, insist that their spirits are still here.”

“They don’t like me to come here,” he continued. “And they were quite irritated at the idea of bringing you along. But it is mostly superstition.” With that he finished his tamale, tossing the banana leaf off into the field. Then he leaned against the tree under which were sitting, and pulled his sombrero down over his face.

“Time for the siesta,” he mumbled.

As he slept, I lay in the cool grass of the shade along the edge of the field. This trek had already taken much of the day, I thought, with questionable results. I gazed out towards the buried town, and breathed deeply, drawing the pure country air into my lungs. The thought of spending the entire day on such a dubious adventure didn’t bother me in the least. I had no appointments. Time had suddenly become as meaningless to me as it was to Angel, or anyone else I might find out here.

My mind clear with those thoughts, I gradually drifted off into the shaded realm of a mid-afternoon nap surrounded by nature. I had little idea how much time had past when Angel woke me up, but the afternoon breeze was lisping through the trees, and the air had cooled significantly.

“Ready for the climb?” Angel asked, with renewed vigor in the cool of the afternoon. “God willing, we will find the problem with the line.” He was already on his feet and headed for the base of the hill. I scrambled up quickly and started after him, still a bit disoriented from my deep sleep. The incline was just steep enough to take on upright, but required significant effort. As we climbed, I could see the lay of the land around us. The forested ravine through which we had approached the hills engulfed the mid section of the valley, on either side of the small river we had crossed. As we climbed a bit higher, I could make out among the trees the shaded road we had taken, as it ran between two steep hills into the clearing where the abandoned town lay. Every few steps brought us several meters higher, and before long, the entire valley was visible, San Juan at its center, a large cluster of deep red roofs, flanked by the stark backdrop of Cerro Grande. From the town, the main road ran northwest in a chalky white strip along the base of the mountain, towards the dryer, flatter west. Angel took a seat on a boulder, pausing for a rest as he stared out into the valley.

“In the west on the horizon, that mountain you see is Celaque. It watches over Gracias, the capital of the province to the West, just as Cerro Grande guards San Juan. Jaguars and other creatures still roam those mountains,” he said, mysteriously. “To the south, over there, that long hill is known as the Retumbador. Its name comes from the sound that the thunder makes as it bounces off the side of the hill, and resonates across the valley. There is no way out of the valley on that end, except over the hill. Much as there is no way out in this direction, except over this hill.” With that, he sprung back to his feet and continued quickly upward.

“No time for sight seeing,” he called back as he hurried on, “we should get up the hill. The sun is beginning to drop and the afternoon will be cold if we’re stuck too high on the mountain.”

I scampered upward after him. When we reached the top of that hill, several hundred meters above the clearing where we had started, Angel paused. On the other side of the peak, the telegraph line appeared, held aloft by occasional poles forged from tree trunks, as it ran along the side of an adjacent slope. Every so often, just as the line nearly reached the ground, a flimsy wooden post would appear a few hundred meters on, to affect a gradual climb back upward. It was no wonder, I thought, that the line was usually out of order. We walked down towards the cable, and Angel continued to a place where he could reach up to handle it. There, he pulled an apparatus out of his pack and connected it to the line.

“It’s dead here as well,” he announced in a matter-of-fact way. “The problem is onward.” He paused for some time, considering the line as it ran into the distance, up and over another large hill on the horizon. The sun had sunk behind the peak we had just summitted, and clouds were beginning to set in. The breeze picked up, as if to remind Angel of the limited time. It was already getting cold.

“On the other side of this mountain,” Angel said after some time, “is the town of Yaramanguilla. Those volcanoes in the distance belong to the country to the south.” He pointed to two cone shaped hills on the horizon.

“You’ve been there?” I asked him, as he put away the device he had used to test the line. He began to walk along the line, and I followed, up the next hill, climbing to a peak even higher than before, from which we could once again observe most of the valley below.

“There? Never,” Angel answered after a long delay. “The domain of the Perdidos, is this valley,” he said, still moving along as he turned back towards the valley, partially hidden behind the summit of the first hill. “Onward, by those hills, over there on the other side of Cerro Grande, is Belen. That’s where our family comes from. My father left Belen with his sisters, Felicidad and Soledad, to come to San Juan. But that was a long enough trip for us, at least for a few generations. We stay here, in this valley. Aida, for example, has never been beyond the valley, nor has tia Felicidad or Soledad.” He stopped talking as the climb became a bit more strenuous. When we reached the top of the hill, he spoke again.

“I have been as far as La Esperanza many times, and to Gracias, near Celaque, that mountain we see in the distance.” Angel motioned deliberately as he looked into the distance beyond the valley. He seemed intimately familiar with the geography surrounding this hill, from which he could map out the comings and goings of several generations, and his entire lifetime.

I was still considering the uniqueness of his situation, in a world as big as the one I knew, when Angel started off, back down the hill. I followed after him as he hurried quickly downward.

“And the telegraph line?” I yelled after him, unable once again to match his ambitious pace, as he descended, back towards the valley below, at nearly a run.

“The problem is onward, towards La Esperanza,” he said definitively. “My responsibility ends at the top of the hill.”

The descent was breathtakingly quick behind Angel, who moved down the hill with the agility of a person who had lived a lifetime among rocky inclines such as these. Painstakingly measuring each step as I broke my descent, I fell well behind. The sun was sinking quickly in the sky as we reached the clearing of the buried village. Behind the forest, the setting sun cast long, dark shadows across the field, as dusk visited once more this town that many dusks ago had ceased to count in days. As we walked among the abandoned homes, I again felt a strong premonition, which this time gave rise to a desire to move on as quickly as possible. The horses seemed to share the concern, as they wasted little time, once we untied and mounted them, in trotting quickly back down the path towards the river crossing, where they galloped across the water without any of their previous hesitation.

Angel said nothing as we forded the stream once more, and rushed through the darkening woods towards the main road. When the forest gave way and we had reached the familiar expanse of the main route, he slowed his horse to a trot and pulled back, alongside me. “The spirits are all about out here in the night. They listen to everything we say, and consider each thing we do,” he whispered. “But we are safe now. They have let us pass the woods without problems. They recognize me, but I worried that you would be unfamiliar to them.”

“You said that the stories about the spirits were superstition,” I said, speaking too loudly for Angel, who glanced about worriedly.

“Superstition, in the midday sun, my friend,” he said in a solemn manner, once he had assured himself that we were alone, “becomes reality in the country night.”

Despite his concern, Angel was obviously relieved to be free of the forest, and he became more talkative as we rode along the wide road back into San Juan. The horses themselves strode rather triumphantly back up the hill into town, past the main square and up the block to Aida’s house. There I dismounted, and Angel took his leave, pulling my horse along behind his. I went inside, tired and suddenly quite aware of the soreness of my body.

I found the kitchen dark and empty, with only a glimmer of light from the receding flames of the stove complementing a dim lantern on the table. I took a seat at the table and gave a shrill call, trying to imitate the greeting I had now heard on several occasions. Soon Patricia emerged from one of the back rooms. Yet again, she looked surprised to see me.

“Oh, mister, how did it go? Did you fix the telegraph?” she asked as she continued into the kitchen.

“The problem was farther along the line. Our efforts were of no use.”

“Yes, the problem is always along the line further on. Nothing ever happens on this side to disrupt it,” she said, as she shifted some pots around on the stove. I got the sense she had already known the answer to her question, as, it seemed, did Angel, even before we had set off in the morning.

“Then, Patricia,” I asked, as she began to pile food onto a plate for my dinner, “why did we go? Why would Angel allow his time to be wasted?”

“It’s not a waste,” she said. “That is Angel’s job. You need to send a telegram, you have asked, and his job is to send it. Just as my job is to provide this food for you,” she said, setting a heaping plate on the table in front of me. “Each in this world has his role.”

I wouldn’t ask again about telegrams. When the line was fixed, months later, Angel sent the telegram anyway. He had kept the paper I had given him in a drawer in his desk. Nevertheless, when I eventually spoke with the sub-director about the issue, she complained that she had never received news of my arrival. Perhaps the operator in the capital had not been at the telegraph when it came through, I explained to her. But she had no way to understand what I meant.