Inside, there were three old ladies in the front pew singing a hymn to Mary. Mah-ree-ah; they sang with passion but off-key; Mah-ree-ah. At the back of the church was a lady with a little dog, and five Indians. These pious people were overwhelmed - as who would not be? - by the moorish-style choir loft, the ornate Spanish altar-piece, the vast supine Christ covered with a lace-curtain and attended by a dark-robed Mary with seven silver daggers in her breast. All the statues were clothed and many of the bouquets in the heavy gilt vases were real. The walls were covered with murky gloating frescoes and stone carvings - trees, candles, sunbeams, flames; near the pulpit was a bas-relief of the Sermon on the Mount. Even the small dog was silent. Somehow this maniacally opulent church had survived a hundred years of earthquakes.
But the Polytechnic School further down the Avenida Reforma also was unscathed. It seemed only the most bizarre buildings had withstood the tremors. The Polytechnic was a fake fortress two city blocks wide, with fake watchtowers and sentry posts and what looked like slits for gun emplacements. It was painted grey and on the central tower was the motto 'Virtue - Science - Strength'. The wide shady avenue on which the Polytechnic stood was lined with statuary: a great bronze bull (its penis daubed with red paint), a panther, a stag, another bull - this one charging, a lion killing a crocodile, two large wild boars fighting-one biting the other's belly; at the junction of this avenue and a main street there was a statue - lions, wreaths, maidens and a succession of plinths surmounted by a patriot. Nearby was an open manhole, as deep as a well and twice as wide.
The street was empty; there were no other strollers. I walked and it seemed to me that the way the joke church, the fake palace and the savage statues had endured the worst earthquakes in the world had the makings of a maxim; they had remained intact, as fools survive scorn. I kept walking and, just after nightfall, found a vegetarian restaurant in a darkened suburb. The dining room held only three people, one of whom - in a turban and long beard and the silver bracelet required by the Sikh religion - was a young Californian. He told me that he was on the point of rejecting Sikhism, but had not got around to shaving, and the turban gave him confidence. These three were architects, designing houses for the people who had been made homeless in the earthquake of 1976, two years before.
'Are you just designing the houses?' I asked. 'Or are you building them, too?'
'Designing, making concrete blocks, planning villages, building the houses - the whole bit,' said the man in the turban.
I put it to him that this sort of idealism could be carried too far. Surely it was the government's job to see that people were housed. If they needed money they could sell some of those bronze statues as scrap metal.
'We're working under the government,' said one of the others.
Wouldn't it be better, I said, to teach people how to make houses and let them get on with the job?
'What we do,' said the man in the turban, 'is put up three walls. If someone wants the house he has to finish it - put up the fourth wall and thereof.'
I approved of this effort. It seemed to strike the right balance, the trust in idealism tempered by a measure of caution. I said that, so far, I had found the Guatemalans a pretty gloomy bunch. Was this their experience?
'You answer,' said one to the man in the turban. 'You've been here for a year.'
'They're heavy,' said the man in the turban, stroking his beard sagely. 'But they've got a lot to be heavy about.'
7
THE 7:00 TO ZACAPA
It was a brutal city, but at six in the morning a froth of fog endowed it with secrecy and gave it the simplicity of a mountain-top. Before the sun rose to burn it away, the fog dissolved the dull straight lines of its streets, and whitened its low houses and made its somber people ghostly as they appeared for moments before being lifted away, like revengers glimpsed in their hauntings. Then Guatemala City, such a grim thing, became a tracing, a sketch without substance, and the poor Indians and peasants - who had no power - looked blue and bold and watchful. They possessed it at this hour. There was no wind; the fog hung in fine grey clouds, a foot from the ground. Even the railway station, no more than a brick shed, took on the character of a great terminus: there was no way of verifying that it did not rise up for five stories in a clock tower crowned by pigeons and iron-work, so well hidden was its small tin roof by the fog the volcanoes had trapped. There were about twenty people standing near the ticket window of the station - in rags; but their rags seemed just another deception of the fog.
They carried baskets, cardboard boxes, bananas and machetes. They were Indians and weatherbeaten farmers, standing in silence in the dampness. One distinguished-looking man in a spotless sombrero and white moustache and frock coat smoked a cheroot. From the waist up he could have been the mayor, but his trousers were ragged and he wore no shoes - as the shoe-shine-boys lingering nearby were quick to point out. They too were barefoot.
A bell was rung. The gate was opened. We went through to the platform. The cars - in much worse shape than the ones that had taken me from Tecún Umán - had the further disadvantage of having been soaked by the fog. The padded seats were torn - springs and stuffing Protruded; the wooden seats were shaky; all the seats were wet. The car itself, a relic from the 1920's, was neither quaint nor comfortable, but merely a small uncared-for box, with bare wires hanging from the ceiling, and stinking of dirt. It was shaped, as all Central American rail-Ways cars were shaped, like a trolley car - wooden, with a curved roof and a verandah platform at either end. Zacapa was not on the tourist route; if it was, there would have been a well-sprung bus serving the Zacapa Department. The Guatemala Tourist Board was attentive to the needs of the visitors. But only barefoot peasants lived in Zacapa and their train matched them in looking woebegone.
We sat in the wet car listening to the jabber on a girl's green radio. The girl held it in the crook of her arm; in her other arm was an infant.
A man with a monkey-wrench walked through the car.
The man sitting next to me said, 'This car is broken.'
'That is true,' I said.
There was a shout, followed by a general stampede, as the passengers from this car ran into the next one. I watched Indians dragging baskets, and women pushing children, and men with machetes. Most people merely put their heads down and butted their way into the next car. I was alone in the car a few minutes later. 'Get out,' said the man with the monkey-wrench, so I followed the others - two cars' passengers jammed into one- and considered myself lucky to find a seat.
'Good morning,' I said to the Indians, trying to ingratiate myself with people who would share this all-day journey to the eastern province.'How areyou?'
A sniggering man to my left, dandling a large skinny boy on his leg, said, 'They do not speak Spanish. They know a few words -that is all.'
'That is all I know,' I said.
'No - you are doing extremely well.'
'On the other hand, my English is a little better.'
The man laughed - much too loud. I could see he was drunk, though how he had managed this so early in the morning I could not tell.
Our train was shunted back and forth, and the broken car - no more broken-looking than the one we were in-was removed. I had expected a delay; I had the morning paper and a novel to read, but on the dot of seven the train's harsh horn blew, and we began racing through the fog at the edge of a muddy road.
At the first level crossing, there was great confusion outside the train, and inside a woman stood up and began to laugh and shout. The train had slowed down for the crossing, and now 1 could see a boy running alongside with a bundle. The woman yelled to the boy, telling him to hurry, but at that moment a soldier by the door (there were two soldiers in each of the train's three cars) put down his automatic rifle and leaned out and caught the bundle. The soldier handed it to the woman.