She was a small friendly woman, Iliana, with skin even darker than her mother’s. She must have been thirty or thirty-five. I’d pictured her much older. Perhaps because of the seriousness of her e-mails. Or perhaps because of the enormous responsibility and quality of her work managing the local coffee growers’ cooperative: the first co-op in the region, set up in 1965 by a group of men — including her father, Juan Martínez — who owned small coffee plots. I asked Iliana where her father was, and she was about to say something, when Doña Ernestina raised her arm, as though requesting permission to speak, and whispered: That’s Osmundo. Her index finger pointed to the photo of a young couple in a garden, he seated in a plastic chair, she on his lap. There was a silence, both from us and in the neighbor’s evangelical cries. As though he too had heard Doña Ernestina whisper and was waiting for her to keep going. But Iliana was the one to break the silence. That’s Osmundo and his fiancée, she said. Osmundo was my brother, she said. He was murdered.
The evangelist began chanting about God and His mercy and Doña Ernestina said dinner was almost ready.
HIS NAME WAS HITLER. He was splayed out on the kitchen floor tile, before the wood-fire stove that was flickering and crackling and heating the comal. I crouched down. I scratched his chin and heard him purr, and only then did I discover a short black mustache that looked penciled in below his little white snout.
There were five sisters. One was making tortillas and greeted me from the comal, smiling timidly as she clapped out a tiny ball of masa. Two more were slicing lemons and avocados. Another darted in and out, chasing her three- or four-year-old daughter; she lived with her husband in the house across the way, she explained, on the other side of the street. Iliana told me to sit down, pointing to a small wooden bench painted red and pushed up against the wall. I thanked her, taking in the women’s serene choreography, and thinking about my sister, and my brother, and our own choreography, and thinking that that smell — coffee, smoke, pine, coal, ground maize — was the closest thing there was to the smell of family.
Juan Martínez walked slowly into the kitchen. He was wearing an orange shirt — neon orange, fiery orange, even fierier against his toasted skin. Iliana introduced us and he held out his hand in silence. His hands were leathery campesino hands. His thin body gave the false impression of fragility. He had a sad withdrawn look, and it was a moment before I realized it was the same look Iliana had. He invited me to sit beside him on the small wooden bench.
Please excuse me, Don Juan whispered, and leaned in a bit closer to me, as though about to tell me a secret. The two of us only just fit on the bench. In front of us, the women had nearly finished cooking dinner. None of them seemed to notice the neighbor’s evangelical cries. We were out checking on my coffee plants, Juan said, out on my farm. Then added: San Andrés Farm, it’s called. And he smiled an enormous white smile.
Don’t pay any attention to him, Eduardo, Iliana said from the stove. That’s what he named his little coffee plots. She turned to us. You see, my father loves naming things, she said.
Don Juan crossed his arms and sat watching his five daughters. Iliana Lucía, he suddenly whispered. Iliana because we saw that name in the paper, and Lucía because that was the name of a nun who used to come out from the capital back in the eighties to teach the town’s children. He paused for a moment. Judit Orquídea, he said, pointing with his eyes. Judit because my wife was always taken by Judit in the Bible, for her bravery, for her dedication, and Orquídea because someone told us that was the name of a flower, and what a pretty name for a girl, no? Another daughter scurried by, once again chasing after the three- or four-year-old girl, and Don Juan took her hand and held it in his as he spoke. Regina Guadalupe, he said. Regina because that was the name of the American nun who used to teach our catechism class, and Guadalupe, Señor Halfon, because my family is very devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He kissed his daughter’s hand, let it go, and glanced over at the comal. Patricia Amarilis, he said. Patricia just because my wife always liked that name, and Amarilis because in those days there was a woman who used to come to town, a teacher, and she was never able to have her own children, so she asked my wife to name a daughter Amarilis for her, and that’s what we did, in her honor. Hitler had roused himself and was now prowling around our feet. I pulled him onto my lap and the cat got comfortable between my thighs and then dozed off almost immediately. Teresina Mancruz, said Don Juan. Teresina was a nun who came to Huehuetenango to teach the village children to read, and Mancruz, Señor Halfon, because back then we used to listen to the radio, since there was no electricity in town and radios ran on batteries, and Mancruz was the name of the protagonist on a Mexican soap opera. Don Juan smiled, and I realized that he still hadn’t said anything about the name of his only son, the son in the garden photo, the dead son. But I didn’t dare ask. Instead, I just asked him why he’d named his farm San Andrés, and Don Juan smacked his lips, as though to thank me for my complicity, and then whispered that it was for a priest he’d met when he was young, there in town. Father Andrés, he added. A good man, he added. I suddenly thought I saw his eyes begin to get misty, but the kitchen was dark and smoky and I couldn’t be sure. We kept silent for a moment, and I got a fleeting urge to hug Don Juan Martínez. Maybe for consolation. Maybe for his nostalgic tone and his sad and subtle sense of humor. Or maybe for reasons much more my own.
ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE sat a roast chicken with pineapple and herbs, whole potatoes in butter, avocado crescents, hot tortillas wrapped in a dish towel, and a jug of coffee. In Guatemalan towns, it’s customary to drink watered-down coffee with dinner.
Iliana’s sisters helped set the table and then left. Doña Ernestina sat at the head of the table, said they had all had their dinner earlier, and only poured herself a cup of coffee. Hitler, on the prowl and begging under the table, was going crazy with all the food smells. The evangelist was still delivering his sermon, providentially muffled by the thick adobe walls and a light drizzle falling on the corrugated tin roof. As Doña Ernestina dished me out a little of everything, I asked Don Juan how the co-op got started and he said it had been a project of the Maryknoll Fathers, a North American Roman Catholic missionary congregation that was very committed to helping Guatemalan communities in the sixties and seventies. He said that’s how they got their name, Cooperativa Esquipulas, after the famous Black Christ of Esquipulas, the town’s patron saint. He said, looking at his wife, that they had both worked with the Maryknoll Fathers quite a bit. I was their driver, he said, and Ernestina their cook. That was many years ago, he said, spreading avocado on a tortilla. Before all the priests had to flee the country, he said, during the difficult years — Don Juan’s euphemistic way of referring to the decades of war between the guerillas and the army. Well, said Iliana, the priests who got out in time, at least, before they were murdered or disappeared by the military. We remained silent a few seconds, as though cautious in the face of so weighty a topic. Or as though in memory of the many priests murdered and disappeared. The Maryknoll idea was that if we started a co-op, said Don Juan, that if all the small coffee growers in the region banded together, if the poor united, then we’d be stronger and more able to compete with the two or three big plantations, the rich ones. Don Juan took a sip of coffee, and I thought briefly of the word solidarity, a word that to me, until that moment, had been nothing but an old, worn-out word, a word in disuse, a word from another generation. And were they right? I asked. Did the Maryknoll idea work? Don Juan took another sip of his thin coffee, put down his cup, softly stroked Iliana’s forearm as she sat on his left, and said: Now, after almost fifty years of having to endure trouble and persecution and extortion, I can say that yes, Señor Halfon, it worked.