Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Description of Service - Chapter 10

10. Of Rascals and Saints

On a warm day just before lunchtime, I sat with Juan in his office. My purpose at the cooperative had always been somewhat loosely defined, and over the first few months in San Juan, I had gradually fallen into a general consulting role which included frequent if incongruous chats about the range of issues Juan faced as manager of the branch. Despite having little idea what to do with a consultant, Juan was as determined to try to accommodate my efforts as I was to make them. He had gone so far as to successfully petition the main office for a computer, and a generator to power it, which he would often crank up on the mornings I spent at the office, at expense in fuel and noise hardly compensated for by my production, perhaps hoping that through my mastery of this newfangled machine I would somehow generate the solutions to his managerial quandaries.

By far the biggest of Juan’s work-related problems was that of the cooperative’s large portfolio of delinquent loans. With outstanding loans on many projects that, if they ever had been, were now far from profitable, given the falling price of coffee, the driving force of the zone’s economy, many clients now preferred to abandon their land rather than work to pay off a debt far greater than the value of the property guaranteeing the loan the cooperative had made to them.

On this particular day, Juan and I had just begun a new chapter in our on-going discussion of potential solutions to help mitigate the crisis of bad debt affecting over half of the branch’s loans. As Juan stared out the window, powerless to do much more than contemplate potential action, a look of surprise swept suddenly over his face.

I followed his intent gaze out to the street. Walking by outside was a portly old man sporting a weathered straw hat, which he held tipped across his face in what was clearly a haphazard attempt to conceal his identity, specifically from anyone who might be observing from our vantage point. He was obviously in a hurry, and not anxious to be spotted, but the scheme had succeeded only in drawing attention to his unusual behavior, as it had in the case of Juan, who, after the observing the man briefly, bolted for the front door.

“Don Santos!” he cried, letting the door slam behind him. Through the office window, I saw the man look back furtively, before doubling his pace towards the bustle of the market down the street.

I walked to the door, where Roque stood with a thinly veiled smirk across his face. “That Don Santos, what a character,” he said.

“The Don Santos?” I asked him.

“One and the same,” he said, returning his attention to the pursuit taking place just down the street, as Juan disappeared into the market, hot on the trail of the old man.

On a similar morning, Juan had told me in great detail the story of Don Santos and his coffee cooperative in a neighboring village. Of all the bad loans the cooperative had made, his was the largest, oldest, and generally most egregious case. A number of years ago, when Juan was still an accountant at the branch in La Esperanza, Don Santos had convinced his neighbors in the far flung aldea of Cangual, on the other side of Cerro Grande, to form their own coffee growing cooperative. Not coincidentally, it would turn out, Santos had also recently been named to the board of directors of our savings and loan cooperative. Using his authority as director of both cooperatives, Don Santos had proceeded to obtain, with negligible delay or bother, an extraordinarily large loan for activities at the coffee cooperative.

It was less than a year before Don Santos was unceremoniously removed from the board of the savings and loan cooperative, when his loosely organized group of farmers in Cangual failed to make even the first payment on the loan. The coffee cooperative had been delinquent on its loan payments ever since, and now owed the savings and loan cooperative upwards of ten thousand dollars, an astronomical sum in these parts, accounting for almost half of the branch’s bad loans.

It was now apparent how Don Santos, the sole mastermind behind the scheme, and unquestioned leader of his neighbors in Cangual, had deceptively arranged from the beginning for the loan to be given not directly to him, but to the coffee cooperative as a legal entity, backed by property which he appraised himself to be worth many times its actual value. Furthermore, the property pledged as collateral was split up piecemeal throughout the zone around the village, and belonged in title not to Don Santos or the coffee cooperative, but to several different farmers. These irregularities had been overlooked given Don Santos’ status at the time as a board member. Also ignored was a further, major breech of protocol, in distributing the loan disbursement directly to Santos, rather than to the whole of the coffee cooperative’s board. Given those mitigating circumstances, which Santos now used in his own defense, he refused to be held at all responsible for the debt. Since collecting the cash, it seemed Don Santos had lost his passion for coffee farming, and he hadn’t been seen much around San Juan, having moved to La Esperanza, where he bought a large house that he furnished with all the latest amenities.

With one or another of those details on his mind, Juan soon emerged from the market, with a broad smile across his face. At his side, also smiling, somewhat less confidently, was the recluse Don Santos. Juan marched back towards the office, discretely but firmly pulling the old man along by the arm, like a father herding a disobedient child. The pair crossed the street, and Roque opened the door dutifully with his usual salute. After thrusting Santos through the doorway ahead of him, Juan went inside. With a resolute expression I had seldom seen on his good natured face, Juan waved me into his office as he advanced, all the way pushing the indisposed Santos along in front of him.

When all three of us were in the office, Juan shut the door firmly. “Have a seat,” he said to our new guest. It sounded like more of an order than an invitation.

“Kawil, I’d like to present to you Don Santos Mercedes Vasquez de la Cruz,” Juan said with exaggerated grandiloquence, as he regained his formal attitude.

“It’s a pleasure Don Santos.” I said, sitting down next to him, with a feigned cordiality to imitate Juan’s. At the same time, I inched my chair around the corner of Juan’s desk, to face this man about whom I had heard little good.

“Don Santos has come to speak with us,” Juan said, rather inventively I thought, considering half the town had just witnessed his capture in the market. But Juan had been scripting this moment in his mind for quite some time. Now Santos had finally appeared, and he recognized the need to act quickly, if he was to take advantage of this fortuitous turn of fate.

The pair chatted informally for several minutes, as if they were old friends, as I looked on. Juan asked about Don Santos’ family and his health, while I remained quiet, as I studied the old man. I couldn’t help but feel empathy for him, even though he was somewhat heavy, as the few who eat well in these parts invariably are. In the context of village life, I had somewhat unavoidably developed a lack of tolerance for overweight individuals, reasoning that fatter people were unjustly consuming more than their share of the scarce resources. But this man’s eyes now spoke of remorse, like that of a child who had been caught in lie.

“Don Santos is the head of the coffee cooperative in Cangual,” Juan said to me, when he had finished with pleasantries. Juan was fully aware that I knew the entire story, having told it to me himself, but he seemed to want to reprise some of the facts before getting down to business.

“Kawil has come to work with us here, as an advisor,” Juan continued. “I have told him much of our difficulties. Perhaps Kawil can help us with this problem as well, Don Santos. I have explained the situation to him. He is an expert in finance from the United States.”

“Thank you,” Don Santos said, when Juan paused, indicating that it was time for him to say something for himself. “Of course, I cannot be involved the situation, since I long ago sold my interest in the cooperative in Cangual. I live in La Esperanza now, you know.”

With those initial words, my original sense of empathy immediately turned to annoyance. I let out a grumble of disapproval.

“Certainly, Don Santos,” nodded Juan, much calmer and calculating than I. Perhaps he had expected this turn of events. “At any rate we simply must find a way to help your cooperative. The last thing we want to do is resort to the contract.” By that, he meant take the farmers’ land. That was a losing proposition for everyone involved, as the cooperative was not interested in owning land. In any event, the real losers from such an action would be the poor landowners of Cangual, to whom Don Santos had apparently sold his worthless share of the mortgaged land.

“I would suggest the following, then,” continued Santos with a sly smile, smug behind the barrier of his manipulations. “I really have nothing to do with the matter, as you will see if you go to examine the deeds in Cangual. You should take your little gringo, and go talk with the people there. Organize them to produce, and open the road, which has been closed off by a landslide. I would do it myself, but I don’t want to take advantage of my neighbors. There is much potential for gain, and I would prefer that they are the ones to benefit.”

If it hadn’t been already, it was now clear to me how this episode would play out. The trusted community leader had devised a scheme to defraud everyone around, in this case selling his property twice, once to each cooperative. With no more gain to be had, he now wanted nothing but to distance himself from the situation, a result for which his scheming had set him up perfectly. The savings and loan cooperative had no legal claim against him, since the loan had been given in the name of the coffee cooperative in Cangual, not his. So many things in this country ended in such a way. Still, Juan was determined to press on with the interview.

In the meantime, I stared out the window, contemplating what could be done about my irritation with this man. Perhaps a few months before, when I had recently arrived, my outrage would have been less fleeting, and I would have made my opinions known by arguing with Don Santos, perhaps screaming at him for a time, and certainly calling him a liar and a scoundrel. And all that would have gained me very little, apart from a reputation as a hot head with none of the patience required to deal with the situations life here presents. But I was beginning to understand that firm reactions were usually not the best option for resolving matters in these parts. The best thing to do seemed instead to be what Juan was doing now. Go along with things calmly, and search patiently for an out. But I wasn’t ready to play exactly that game. Maybe I was half way there, if not prepared to smile at hypocrites, or to nod at ridiculous explanations, at least composed enough in the face of this nonsense to validate the trust Juan had placed in me by inviting me to be present. My best choice, I concluded, was to tune out the rest of the exchange.

So I looked out the window, and watched the townspeople passing by on the street. Mid-morning is one of the busiest times of day around the market. Less so in the summer heat, but still, that block of the main street was the busiest in town, and provided ample entertainment to distract me. I saw Patricia on her way to the market, little Aidita in hand, taking two steps for each of her mother’s, perhaps headed to pay a visit, or to purchase the ingredients for lunch, which I was now looking forward to.

Across the way, a grand municipal auditorium was under construction next to the town offices. An ambitious project that would be the tallest building in San Juan if successfully completed, it had been conceived by Don Santiago immediately after he took office nearly a decade ago, and progressed through various states of construction since then. The structure seemed to be coming along well now, nearing the final phases of building after constant delays in funding, material deliveries, and a host of other generally expected if not individually foreseeable problems.

Of late, I understood, a large part of the construction delays were attributable to the mayor’s decision to contract his brother-in-law once removed to finish the roof. A confident veteran of the construction trade, Anhiel worked deliberately when he was in San Juan, where few substitutes for his labor were available. Of late, he had spent much of his time away from the town, in the native village of his wife, on the other side of the capital. Though Anhiel had long ago come to see San Juan as his home, his wife, who he had met on a sojourn to the capital, preferred to raise their numerous offspring in her own town, given its proximity to the city, and the resulting access to everything San Juan was without. But Anhiel still frequented San Juan, where his connections made it easier to get work, including his present job, on the roof of the municipal auditorium, where I now observed him from my vantage point at the window.

I stood up slowly from my seat by Juan’s desk, excused myself from the discussion in which I, at any rate, had played little part, and pushed my way through the door. From the front step of the office, I gazed up at my friend on the roof of the now nearly completed auditorium building.

“Hey, idiot, wake up,” I yelled skyward. “The mayor isn’t paying you to sleep.” Roque, getting more than his usual share of daily entertainment from his post next to the office door, laughed in amusement.

A number of the pedestrians scattered about the street, curious to see what I was shouting about, paused, their attention drawn to the roof of the auditorium. There, Anhiel had been at work installing long panels of roofing material over the wide expanse of the building’s frame.

Though he was famous in town for sleeping on the job, Anhiel, in fact, had not been asleep this time, as my shouting had somewhat deceptively indicated. My intention had been simply to have some fun, and distract myself from the irritating conversation taking place inside the building I now stood in front of. But my good-natured chiding set off of an avalanche among those on the street below.

“Anhiel, you lazy bum, come down from there if you’re not going to work! The mayor is not paying you good money to sleep,” a passerby jested loudly.

A number of councilmen emerged from the municipal building to see what all the fuss was about, and a small crowd now gathered below the auditorium, laughing and shouting obscenities up at Anhiel, who stared down in confusion from his perch. Women covered their children’s ears and scurried into the nearest open doorway. It seemed I now wasn’t the only one intent on having a moment of amusement in my day, at the unfortunate expense of Anhiel.

“We’ll send the gringo up to replace you, he knows how to work,” called one of the councilmen, eliciting an explosion of laughter from the street around me.

Anhiel, finally getting a sense of what was going on beneath him, tossed a piece of scrap metal down in protest, in the direction of the group below.

“Shut up you bastards,” he cried from the roof, in feigned anger. “Get up here, then, you silly gringo. Stop your talk and criticizing, and demonstrate how it’s done.”

“Go on,” came a chorus of voices from the crowd, urging me on. “Climb up there and show him how it’s done.”

I looked around at the expectant crowd. Many people in town had come to believe, in those short months, that I was capable of most anything. I had played soccer with most of them, rode with the mayor around the country in his car, and addressed the town as one of their leaders on Independence Day. Certainly it would be a small matter, they must have thought, for me to now show this lollygagger how to install a few roof panels. Of course, I had no idea how to perform such a task, but I had gotten myself, and Anhiel as well - somewhat unfairly at that - into this mess, and now I would have to follow through.

I crossed the street self-assuredly and walked past the gate of the auditorium, to the base of the building. A rickety ladder leaned precariously against the side of the structure, leading up to the roof nearly forty feet above. Despite a mild fear of heights, I would have to climb, if only to demonstrate that I did belong here, in this town, where it seemed clear that any male my age should, among other things, feel confident in scaling a ladder and putting on a roof.

I began up the ladder. Before I knew it, I was on the roof, scurrying along the newly installed fiberglass panels to the summit to meet Anhiel. The crowd below was satisfied, and the men shouted their approval as they began to disperse. “That will show that lazy Anhiel,” several of them agreed, as they meandered away. It seemed I had proven my worth yet again.

I made my way carefully over towards Anhiel, treading as lightly as possible on the panels, which looked quite fragile, while trying to maintain my balance on the slick rooftop. Despite my care, I soon heard a loud crack under my foot.

“Not there!” shouted Anhiel with concern. “Damn. This gringo. You’re too heavy. Don’t step on the panels. Step on the beams.” I backed off the broken segment and crawled over to the plank of wood Anhiel had installed as a walkway for just this purpose. As I reached it, there was yet another crunch.

“Crap.” Anhiel said, frowning, as I walked slowly along the beam to where he was standing.

Anhiel sat down on another board, and scratched his beard. “That’s going to take a while to fix,” he said, after a minute’s contemplation, “since we’ll have to undo this morning’s work first.”

He certainly had the right to be angry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have had so much fun with him, I thought. I had started an avalanche of unwarranted criticism, then I had come up onto the roof and ruined a whole day’s work. Despite all that, Anhiel remained calm, smiling at me as he shook his head, in between glances at the broken roof panels.

“Idiot gringo,” he said with a broad grin, when he had finished his preliminary assessment of the damage, laughing even as he tried to remain stern in his rebuke. “Talks big and then comes up here to ruin my work. If I had in fact been asleep, as you claimed, I would have accomplished more in my slumber than you have here.”

Perhaps a lifetime permeated by far worse injustice had left him more willing to accept this additional one. Whatever the reason, I appreciated his leniency. I wondered how I would have reacted in his place.

“I’ll come back this afternoon and we’ll redo the work,” I said. It was the least I could offer.

Anhiel cleaned his hands with a rag, then wiped his forehead. The chalk from the fiberglass panels left a white smear across his face, accenting his ever jovial countenance, as he stared past me into the hills around town, still smiling. With few other options, I laughed as well at my own shortcomings, as I followed his gaze into the distance, and noticed for the first time the sweeping view of the valley from that roof, the highest point in town. There was certainly something calming to that vista of green hills on the horizon, rising softly into the clear, pale blue sky, punctuated by full white clouds sauntering aimlessly above the land. I could see why Anhiel was in a good mood.

“Not to worry, gringo pendejo,” he said. “We’ll fix it, maybe tomorrow. This afternoon, it may rain. Better to rest. Let’s go home, it’s time for lunch.” Without further discussion, Anhiel sprung to his feet and glided quickly past me, down the plank towards the ladder. I followed him slowly, as he turned and started down the ladder.

“Be careful this time!” he yelled to me, as I made my way back across the roof. “If you finish breaking those panels, you’ll fall through to the floor!” Forewarned, I managed to get across safely, and climb shakily down the ladder to the ground, as Anhiel led the way, hopping downward with the agility of a squirrel. Even with his pot belly and work-ravaged old frame, in this task he was as nimble as someone half his age.

Safe back on the ground, we crossed the street and found Juan at the door of the cooperative, in the process of locking up for the midday siesta. Having recovered my sense of tranquility on the roof of the auditorium, I had quickly forgotten about our unexpected visitor.

“What happened with Don Santos?” I now asked Juan.

“Long gone, Kawil. He escaped as fast as he could, with his tail between his legs,” Juan said ruefully.

Anhiel laughed. Just as most everyone in San Juan knew of Anhiel’s reputation for laziness, they knew as well the story of Don Santos. For that matter, everyone in San Juan knew the story of almost everyone else. As for Don Santos, it seemed I was the only one around, except perhaps Juan, obligated by his job as manager of the cooperative, who felt any need to judge what he had done. The rest of the community, even the cooperative’s members, who would, in the end, pay the actual costs of his crooked scheming, seemed content to leave the matter be.

As the three of us turned the corner and headed to lunch, Anhiel described to Juan with great amusement the events that had just taken place at the auditorium. “How they screamed at me from below,” he recounted, before laughing once again about the smashed the roof panels. “All because of this Kawil, the gringo Indian. They wanted to send him up, to show me how to install the roof. But, rather than help, well...”

“I told you, Anhiel,” I interrupted, feeling ashamed once again at my lack of agility, “I’ll help you fix it. We’ll go this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry,” Anhiel said, “we will fix it, all in good time.”

“No, Anhiel,” I insisted. “Right after lunch, I’ll help you to fix the damage I caused.” This time he didn’t respond immediately. Not until I continued to press him to set a time to go back to work that afternoon, did he offer more information.

“Ah, you crazy Indian, don’t you see,” he said, in a more serious tone than before. “There are no more roof panels. They have been brought all the way from the capital, counted and measured for this job. We’ll have to wait for more to be ordered now.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. But before I could speak, Juan did.

“We have several extra roof panels behind the cooperative,” he said to Anhiel. “You can come get them after lunch.”

“After lunch I sleep,” Anhiel said with a wink. We had arrived at the Perdido house. “Isn’t that right Mr. Construction Foreman?” he asked me ironically, once again in a joking mood, as he thrust the screen door open, and stood aside while Juan, and then I, passed through.

That was the last I heard for some time about the roof panels. At some point, Juan sent the panels over, and Anhiel fixed the roof. Several times over the following weeks, as Anhiel worked, I climbed up that rickety ladder to the roof of the unfinished auditorium, for the view, but more to spend some time with a good friend, even if we both realized it was best for me to leave the work to him. When the job was finished, Anhiel steadfastly credited me with helping complete the labor. The broken roof panels remained between him and me, and Juan.

Not until some time later, when the cooperative’s auditor inquired as to the disposition of the missing panels, did I find out how expensive they were. Juan simply explained that, as in so many other cases, no one knew exactly what had happened.

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