Excerpt from the Novel
TIMESHARE
by Mark
Plimsoll
Lejardo calls while I'm cleaning the pool. He and girlfriend
Sophoclit will come by at four o'clock, with two dogs, and we're going camping
with another couple and a girl, as Franco says, "An extra girl we can fight
over. Ha ha ha ha ha!" Drive 60 miles with dogs in trunk of A's 57 bright yellow
with Bondo splotches Chevy. HOT.
Alex and Sophoclit ride with the other three and two mountain
bikes in the little red sport car, "cherried" out and just added oversize tires,
which they notice rubbing half way. Our destination is a waterfall and "a place
to swim" Called Thousand Cascades about 60 kilometers from Cuernavaca. Sunset
arrives with us to the tiny mountain village named Acuitlapan after General
Acuitla. During our first minutes of relaxing in the town square Franco's Chevy
springs three radiator hose leaks, hissing and fuming white clouds of vapor,
a vent from a hell of thinking we're trapped in rural Mexico. We walk up the
hill to a closet sized store and buy a different kind of hose, tapered, but
manage to saw it to the right length with my Leatherman tool. We seem to have
fixed the car, "Al huevo," by the egg, as they say, roughly equivalent to rural
Michigan's "nigger rigged." A testament to the resourcefulness of the disadvantaged.
It's dark when our seven horses arrive, tiny skinny creatures
that I immediately felt sorry for. We are looking at an eight kilometer downhill
ride through the darkness on a dirt and cobblestone mountain trail. The owners
of the horses tie our packs onto two horses, and the two younger men ride the
mountain bikes. As we walk along through the darkness lit by a flashlight that
the woman who owned the horses aims at the cobblestone trail, as wide as a one
lane road, she goads the horses with low guttural Hue hue hue heu and a slap
on the rump. Almost none of us know how to ride, so it's a challenge keeping
them from dragging us through the brush or smashing all together
In the intense halogen beam of my underwater flashlight
I can see that the place has travertine pools, waterfalls, and great curving
walls of calcium that hold in little gardens of swamp plants. The campers can't
even start a fire and then drag huge logs of a pricker tree, green, into the
fire so the trailing branches cover the only good seats, on a long cement pillar
that serves as a bench. I had to interfere.
We eat crackers and dip, and a half of a ham and cheese
sandwich. Then suddenly shots ring out, we all just sit there, and I notice
Francisco is gone. Lejardo tells me, while more shots ring out and bullets whistle
over our heads, that he is letting the neighborhood know that we have protection.
Then a little later Alex fires off his gun, almost an automatic, and the boys
compare guns, one has a laser beam to sight with, impressive in the darkness.
I had no sleeping gear, ended up gutting my pack and laying it across my legs,
wearing most of my clothing and on
my head and upper body, a super thin transparently yellow
rain poncho. The next morning we hike a couple of hundred meters down, and see
some waterfalls that would be spectacular in the rainy season of summer, but
now is just a trickle. The water is clear, almost cold, maybe 72 degrees, and
deep enough and long enough in troughs under the cascades to snorkel. Snorkeled
two pools myself and talked Franco and Alex into trying it. Refreshing.
I plan to be totally wet when we hike out of here, uphill,
in the early afternoon.
Back at camp the horses have arrived, other Mexican families
have arrived also, we're packing up in the noonday heat while we try to eat
up the four pounds of meat that the boys have brought along.
I want to know why there are retaining walls around the
road here, and above us are more walls of stone, fortifications along an uninhabited
cobblestone road, still used by Mexicans on horseback or herding flocks of sheep.
The group is taking off, Franco is having trouble with
his dis-obedient one-year old dogs, and I am neither wet nor ready to leave
without more exploring. It's just dumb to walk out during the hottest part of
the day, we should have stayed the day and walked out about 4 AM when it's chilly.
A little boy that came with the horses says there is a cave where the water
comes out of the mountain, offers to guide me in. Franco doesn't want to explore,
so I tell him to go ahead, I'll catch up if he can ever get his dogs to follow
him. After jumping the fence around large solid gate, we are in an animal enclosure
with a small herd of cattle, trees, and even a long swamp. On the other side
are the tall stone walls of what looks like a monastery, or a thatched roof
hotel. He takes me to a caretaker to get permission, then tells me to follow
the water upstream for ten minutes.
As I start up the tree filled valley I see a long tail,
black and banded with white fur, disappear into the interlaced branches. The
cave has a small sand dune in its mouth, pushed up by torrents of water, remnants
of which still rumble and growl deeper underfoot below the broken boulders.
There is a small stream on the sand, and from inside the yawning blackness bats
squeak and chirp.
On the way back I explore the other side of the buildings,
and there is a beautiful man-made swimming pool with a Mexican family seated
on the spillway. The caretaker tells me a rich gringo built all this, put in
the ruined cobblestone road, had rooms here for thirty servants. The pool is
overlooked by a huge open pavilion with a sinuous counter of cement containing
seven cooking holes where a charcoal or wood fire could be, and still is, used.
They talk me into swimming with all my clothes on, so I did, fit into my plan
of being all wet for the climb up the road. The boy comes to tell me someone
is calling for me. Outside Franco is wondering where I went, and if I swam.
I don't want to tell him a thing because he refused to follow me, and therefore
doesn't deserve it. So I strike off up hill. I have the liter of water. I made
it myself with stream water and iodine pills.
At home we shower, then take Alex's dogs back to him, then
E wants to go to a disco. It's a huge tri-level room filled with children and
a great three color laser light show, probably hazardous to the eyes. I wait
outside for about two hours, notice this place next door with elegantly dressed
couples, older crowd. It's called Zúmbale which this woman says means Spank
Him. Much later in the evening, about 2 AM E and I are hungry and eat at a puesta,
a street-side food cart, for meat tacos. The next day E admits to felling a
little bad, but I have fully developed Moctezuma's revenge, Can't convince him
to go get medicine until I threaten to use his bathroom. The next day it occurs
to him to ask if I had a fever. Yes. Took three days for my system to feel almost
normal.
Last Friday at his Bohemian Bar experiment, he had a five-piece
group of guitar balladeers that couldn't sing, so he tried to make a bohemian
jazz backup band to his poetry reading, building to atonal crescendos at the
end of each 'saying'. I had fun playing mandolin, guitar, and upright bass.
Tues. 3 11 Cleaned the two cars of Franco for an hour,
adjusted the seats on the Volkswagen, which were practically reclining and we
were using pillows and pretending they ere comfortable, with my Leatherman tool,
tried to brush out the sand in the tracks and found about four cups of sand
around the battery, under the back seat. The Chevy couch-style seat is a lost
cause, hopelessly tilted back, chunks of wood partially support the drivers
side. Then at One he goes to put more adds in the paper, and drops me off at
La Espiga bakery to help Lejardo recover some lost Excel spreadsheet with product
information. Alex has gone to the Municipal Authorities to report last night's
robbery and is not around, so I wall to the Zócalo and get my dancing shoes
polished after finding Cuernavaca's first Cyber cafe, a bar called "Sports and
Internet" which is the first one, just a couple of months old. There is one
Internet provider in Cuernavaca, they tell me in spite of it being almost
rich suburb just two hours two the south of, and a mountain
ridge away from Mexico City. So now I have a local E-mail address at
Sportbar2(at)nfosal.net.mx
This Windows code page for Spanish is not letting me type
an AT character, not even with the Charmap utility and standard Arial font!
The particulars of Mexico are what holds so much charm,
the population overwhelmingly 90%, black-haired Aztec and Mayans, the thousands
of chirping birds in the green canopy above the Zócalo where I get my shoes
shined in one of the thirty or so green stalls that all feature a poster of
this lady that is running for State Governor from the PRI party, they've run
Mexico for 40 years or so. I asked the shoe-shine about it, he says the Union
of Lustradores belongs to the PRI party. Occasionally someone without black
hair walks by, usually with a day pack on their back, tourist from Europe or
US, and the shoeshine guy says these two girls are my countrymen, so I ask how
he knows they're not German, "Germans have a more serious expression".
He's about my age, silver lined teeth, fine features on
a broad, handsome Indian face. He lives in Cuautla, an hour away, then 15 minutes
beyond so it's an hour and a half commute everyday. It's 3 PM and he's made
90 pesos so far, about $11 which is pretty good. Everyday is about the same
he says. Charges me 5 pesos, about 80 cents for the shine which includes a slightly
reddish-black color applied to the edges of the soles. He likes to speak English
because he once worked in Stockton, CA.
Driving down streets in Mexico gives one the impression
that all the buildings have been turned sideways so their walls meet. The sidewalks
follow these walls of various sizes, shapes, building materials and often bright
colors in various states of age, with doorways and what looks like garage doors
as punctuation. The garage doors during the day reveal open-air storefronts
and restaurants. Franco says the puestas, or carts that serve as mobile taco
stands, make four hundred pesos a day, about four times $14 or about $50 to
$56 depending on the rate of exchange which has climbed to near 8 pesos to the
dollar. Good for me. The carts feature a vertical spit which rotates a Top-shaped
object made of stacked slabs of pork meat, with a Pineapple roasting underneath
in the gas flames that charge out through and from behind a couple of decorative
cement blocks. Franco orders Tacos at about 10 PM. made of Eye, and asks the
man to hold it up for me, foot-long piece of shredded face meat topped off by
a vaguely round object the size of a tennis ball. The stand had a lot of sauces,
cilantro, red and green chili sauces, avocado, onions, and it all looked pretty
good but since getting sick I try to logically decide whether the meat is fresh
or had been sitting out warm all day.
My system isn't as tolerant as his, that we know.
I FEEL LIKE A PSYCHOTHERAPIST TO A MEGALOMANIAC here with
Franco. He never listens. He occasionally has a good line though. My favorite
is "Tears are the flowers of emotion." He's a charming happy guy, a tall dapper
Spanish man. When he's not dominating the conversations or interrupting with
"hold on, just let me record this one thing" to record some gibberish about
Being or Myself, the main theme of this one-trick pony. Kind of a Mexican Tao,
he lived for a time in Japan. Most of it is advice in terms of absolutes about
how to deal with relationships, children, how to live, integrity, economy, politics,
beauty, health, self, love, all arranged by chapters based on those themes.
I finished translating A's book, just the first imperfect
word for word versions, last weekend because I was here alone. Friday night
we explored Cuernavaca after printing the book on his brother's computer. Anyhow,
I wanted to make sure a file was backed up on the computer, so I went into the
computer room, turned on the lights, and started the computer.
I heard Franco coming so I hid behind the door. I grabbed
his stomach and scared the beejees out of him, he looks behind the door, sees
it's me, and socks me in the jaw.
So he's laughing and walking to his room, so I kick him
in the butt, because my mouth and jaw hurts from his knuckles against my teeth.
So we go into this karate battle, laughing, I push him over his worm-wood trunk
and onto the bed, he stands up and jumps back over the bed with a midair kick
and lands, crumples, and lies there writhing in pain. He has bent his good knee
out to the side. It happened a long time ago to the other knee, and he never
had a Doctor look at it.
So Saturday morning he decides to drive to this great cheap
family bone manipulator in Mexico City. Then a couple of hours later he calls
to say the Doctor won't be back until Monday morning at 6 AM so he's going to
stay and rest with mom and dad.
His leg seems OK, he limps a little.
|