Jaime came running. Lex went outside to warm up the Jeep. Jaime turned in the doorway and waved a silent good-bye to Robert — he had yet to call him by name. Farewell here was signified by a beckoning gesture. The motion startled Robert every time; it startled him now. He took a step forward, as if the child were really summoning him. Then he halted, hissing. This place! An invitation to come closer was made in an equally ass-backward manner: wrist limp, you wagged the back of your hand at the person you wanted, as if shaking him off.
Was the child laughing at him? No, it was only one of those wet smiles. Robert dutifully mimicked Jaime’s come-hither movement. He felt like a cop directing traffic. He felt like a dirty old man. Jaime grinned and banged out. Robert bolted for the bathroom.
HE SPENT YOM KIPPUR EVE with a gaggle of gentiles. They weren’t bad, Lex’s fellow workers. A high-minded couple in their sixties, slack of belly, gray of hair, giving their final years to just causes. A pretty young nurse. A second, older nurse, freckled and tough. Some others. They ate rice and beans, expertly seasoned by Lex. Jaime played on the floor. Occasionally he whined for Lex’s attention. Lex would finish what he’d been saying, then he’d turn his eyes to the boy and listen to the high voice repeating short, insistent phrases, and reply with a “sí” or a “no” or some grave explanation.
The adults talked of the torments of the country, the centuries of cruelty as one generation mistreated the next. “The church has a lot to answer for,” said a fierce Canadian woman. “Those first missionary schools — they taught us how to inflict pain.” He wondered what she meant by “us”; then he remembered that she was a Native American, a member of an indigenous people. He had met her earlier in the week when she’d dropped by. With her untidy hair and glasses and dissatisfied mouth she’d reminded him of his cousin from the Bronx. He’d met the churchy couple earlier also, at an evening lecture on cooperatives that Lex had taken him to. But this was the first social gathering Robert had attended, and he realized belatedly, when it was almost over, that it was a party in his honor.
Early the next morning they packed up the Jeep. They were to spend the weekend visiting orphanages in the mountains — Robert, Lex, Jaime, and Janet — the freckled nurse, not the pretty one.
Janet did the driving. She knew how to handle a Jeep. She drove fast on the two-lane highway, passing whenever she could. When they were stopped by a pair of very young men in fatigues, each holding a tommy gun, she answered their questions with such authority that Robert expected the teenage soldiers to stick out their tongues for her inspection. Instead they waved the Jeep on. Robert jounced along in the front seat. In the back Lex showed Jaime how the big bricks of Legos fit together. Jaime watched indifferently, his fingers around his toy car.
They stopped late in the morning in a lush little town. There were coffee estates nearby, Janet said. In the courtyard of a restaurant, parrots watched from fronds. Jaime ran toward a cat he knew and settled down in a corner of the courtyard. The proprietress-cook brought the child a dish of pasta before welcoming the others in perfect English. She had a large, curved nose and a wide smile. “She’s Chilean,” Janet said when the woman had returned to the kitchen. “Her corn lasagna is terrific. She’s been active in revolutionary politics.” Robert understood: arms smuggling.
Two graceful waiters with angelic faces served them. Robert knew not to take their androgyny seriously. “Girlish on the outside, tough guys within,” Lex had said about similar men. “Not gay.” Robert did not ask whether Lex had enjoyed a native lover. Some years ago he had ascertained that his son practiced safe sex; he and Betsy wanted to know nothing further.
The corn lasagna was indeed delicious. Jaime shared his pasta with the cat. Robert would have liked to linger over coffee, to walk around this town and visit its museum of martyrs; to return at the cocktail hour and enjoy an aperitif with the South American adventuress while the parrots dozed. Instead he paid the bill and shook her hand and bid good-bye to the birds with the proper summoning gesture.
In an hour they had left the highway and were climbing. Farms gave way to trees, boulders, scrub. Janet expertly circled craters in the road. Bracing himself against the plunges of the Jeep made Robert weary — or perhaps it was the lunchtime glass of Chilean wine. He leaned against the headrest, closed his eyes … and was awakened by something creeping along the side of his neck. He slapped the creature. It was a small hand.
“Sorry, Jaime. Excúlpame. Hey!” for the child had slapped him back.
“Jaime.” Lex’s voice was as authoritative as Janet’s. Some low, rapid Spanish followed. Then came a tap on the shoulder and a presentation across that shoulder, in front of his face, of three Lego bricks imperfectly joined.
“Asa,” Jaime said.
Casa. House. “Bueno,” Robert said, mustering enthusiasm. He turned to meet those attractive eyes, that odd mouth. Lex smiled primly.
Just before two o’clock they reached the town where they were to spend the night. Robert carefully got out.
“You need a back rub,” noticed Janet.
The town square was a bare knoll. A church faced the square. Its stucco walls seemed to be unraveling. The one-storied inn sagged toward its own courtyard. Robert was shown to a rear bedroom. From his window he could see oxen.
Janet and Lex invited him to walk to the orphanage with them. “Thanks, no,” he said. “I’ll sit in the courtyard and read.” And write another postcard to little Maureen.
But as soon as they had tramped off, he felt forlorn. He would not stay; he would follow his son.
They had told him that the orphanage lay two miles out of town, on the straight road west. He walked fast, at first. Within five minutes he had caught sight of them, and soon he was passing the low stone huts that they had just passed, each with its open door revealing a single room, the same room — a couple of cane rockers, a table. The same expressionless woman stood in each doorway. Children played in the mud. Had Jaime been born in such a home? More likely he had sprung from a shack like those Robert was passing now — tin and slats, the latrine in back made decent by a curtain.
Lex and Janet walked together in the middle of the road. Jaime darted from one side to the other. Janet was taller than Lex. Her light brown hair humped over her backpack and draggled, khaki on khaki.
At the end of the road a crowd of small boys waited behind a gate — just a couple of horizontal logs — a not entirely successful attempt to keep out nearby animals. Jaime scrambled between the logs. Lex and Janet vaulted them.
Robert climbed over the top log, his bones creaking. He heard, as if in the distance, the sound of crying. Perhaps it was his own old-man’s wail.
HE HAD LANDED amid the boys. Boys, boys everywhere. Boys: grimy triangular faces under black bangs. Boys: wearing clothing that a decade ago and a continent away had been high style — rugby shirts, jams. Boys: none seeming above ten years old, though he knew better. Perhaps some were twelve. Boys: waiting for guns and cholera.
“Bob!” Janet cried. Lex smiled a welcome.
They made immediate use of him, sending him to listen to the complaints of the orphanage director, a fiery young man with a thin mustache. Robert, sitting down, surrounded by boys, riffling through his dictionary every few words, managed to make out that the problem was money, both cash and credit. Supplies were low. The last cook had made off with the radio. Robert wrote down everything the fellow said and then got hustled away to umpire a three-inning softball game. The boys were not adroit. Then Lex arranged an obstacle race. Robert was assigned to hold an inflated clown’s hand in front of his chest. This hand had come out of Janet’s backpack; she’d blown it up in three exhalations, her freckles enlarging and then diminishing on her cheeks. Each obstacle racer had to slap the hand; some kids slapped Robert by mistake. Their teeth were as white as Chiclets.