I ATE IN SILENCE, attempting to piece together — through the narrative chaos and the neighbor’s evangelical ruckus — the onslaught of trouble and persecution and extortion. Don Juan, salting a potato: The co-op almost went under during the difficult years. Doña Ernestina, snatching the shaker from her husband: At that time, holding meetings was very dangerous. Don Juan, in a sad voice, an invisible shaker still in his hand: In the difficult years, saying the word co-op was almost like saying a bad word. Iliana, sucking on a leg bone: Plus, for years there were several directors who stole money from the co-op. Doña Ernestina, refilling my coffee without asking: The last one, a man from right here, stole over a million pesos. Don Juan: Getting rid of him took a lot of doing, but we finally got rid of him. Doña Ernestina: In this country, it’s hard to be honest. Iliana, with Hitler’s front paws on her knees: Then came the coffee crisis, in 2001 and 2002. Don Juan, shaking his head: During those years, the New York Stock Exchange told us we had to sell a quintal of coffee for fifty dollars. Iliana, caving in, giving Hitler the bone: Today we know exactly what a quintal of our coffee costs. Don Juan, grabbing a lime wedge: Some Englishmen came. Iliana: That is, today we know that producing a quintal of our coffee costs a coffee grower one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Don Juan, squeezing the lime onto an avocado crescent: You see, some Englishmen came to conduct an economic study, and that’s what they told us, one hundred and twenty-five dollars per quintal of coffee, net cost. Doña Ernestina: Imagine, the coffee growers worked for two whole years just to lose money. Don Juan, with avocado fingers: But those men from the New York Stock Exchange, who had never in their lives so much as laid eyes on a coffee plant, still made money. Iliana, smiling: That’s right. Don Juan, also smiling: Nothing new, right? Doña Ernestina, standing: And that’s when the Italian showed up. Don Juan, with a sigh, almost in unison: The Italian showed up. Doña Ernestina, now far from the dining room, maybe far from it alclass="underline" You tell him, Juan, the story of the Italian. Hitler, as though terrified and hiding under the table, meowed.
AN ITALIAN CAME TO TOWN, Señor Halfon, a charming, handsome man, and he discovered that our coffee here is very high-quality, what they call strictly hard bean, which means intense flavor and very aromatic. He made an offer to the co-op members, to promote our coffee in Italy. We gave him a small sample and he took it to Italy, and after some studies and analyses, he confirmed that indeed, due to the type of soil and the altitude and the local climate, coffee grown here was quality coffee. Then the Italian succeeded in getting Italy to label our coffee premium-quality. A great achievement, Señor Halfon. A gold seal for our co-op. The Italian signed a contract with us and began selling our coffee throughout Italy as luxurious, special, very expensive coffee. He took it to fairs and festivals. He sold it in gourmet shops. The bags of coffee, I remember, came in a very pretty package, which said that part of the profits went to the indigenous of the Guatemalan highlands. His contract with us was for four years. During those four years, the Italian paid the co-op whatever he wanted, far below the internationally quoted price. As co-op members, we had to beg him to pay us what he had offered, what he owed us, but the Italian’s payments were always low, and late. And we never saw the percentage of profits promised on those pretty packages. That’s when Iliana came back. She’d been studying and working in Huehuetenango — When they murdered Osmundo, Doña Ernestina shouted, still from afar, and Don Juan, for a moment, paused, looked down, let out a long loud sigh — and we appointed her director of the co-op. As soon as she started, Iliana discovered that the co-op had just over one dollar in the bank. I’m not exaggerating, Señor Halfon. We were broke. We had an ex-director who stole. We had debts all over. We had an Italian partner who was making millions on the back of our sweat and labor. But little by little, Iliana began to impose order, and she managed to achieve several things. My daughter managed to dissolve the legal partnership we had with the Italian, though it took a lot of work. She got short-term financing for every one of the co-op members. She brought in experts from the capital to teach us how to produce better coffee, and the importance of pruning and thinning a coffee plant, and what the best varieties are, and what the best shade trees are, and why doing a soil study is vital, and how to taste the parchment beans, and how to judge a good cup of coffee. Then Iliana got funding so that every member, on their plots, could build their own wet mills, their own drying patios. She also got funds to build our office and warehouse. She forged an alliance that provided workshops for members on exporting and international commerce. But the most important thing, Señor Halfon, is that she managed to start selling our coffee abroad, our premium-quality coffee, at prices that we ourselves set. Imagine that. Now we set our own prices. This year, for example, when the international price for a quintal of coffee was one hundred and eighty dollars, Iliana managed to sell the co-op’s quintales at two hundred and eighty dollars. Now, at last, we sell our coffee at the price it’s truly worth. Not at the price imposed on us by New York.
DOÑA ERNESTINA RETURNED to the dining room carrying an enormous clay pot full of whole mangoes in hot syrup, and set it on the table. Four years of crops were lost, Iliana said, serving me from the pot with a large metal spoon, four years of hard work and suffering just for the Italian to make a lot of money. The syrup was exquisite. It had clove and cinnamon and a little ground allspice. But I will say, Don Juan declared as he sucked a mango pit with gusto, that thanks to the Italian, Señor Halfon, we got something very valuable. Absolutely, I said, because of him you got the international premium-quality seal, which made your co-op’s coffee one of the most sought-after in the world. Don Juan wiped his lips with a paper napkin. We did, yes, but we also got something even more valuable. The evangelist preacher, in tune to some organ or accordion music, suddenly intoned: May God continue to use you for His glory. Don Juan smiled, perhaps at the evangelist’s euphoric chanting, or perhaps at what he was about to tell me, or perhaps because he was a man whose smile comes naturally and means nothing. The Italian gave us faith in our product, he said. The Italian made us believe in ourselves. And if the price we paid for that was four harvests, well then, Señor Halfon, we got it cheap.
THE BLOCK ACROSS THE STREET from Pensión Peñablanca was onerously defended all night by a loud and territorial street dog. He would bark awhile, then stop barking awhile — just long enough for me to begin to doze off — then start barking again. Close to dawn, I gave up. I threw off the heavy quilt and went to rummage in my backpack for the last of my cigarettes. Smoking faceup on the bed, I watched the objects in the room gradually turn to light, come to life. I couldn’t stop thinking about Don Juan Martínez, about the coffee growers, about Iliana’s work at the co-op, about the pictures and diplomas hanging in the hallway, about the sisters’ silent dance, about the dead brother. And once again I started thinking about my own brother, and my own sister, and our own sibling dance — an ungainly dance, an awkward dance, sometimes even a furious dance. Perhaps because of the cold, or perhaps because of the lack of sleep, all I could think of were our quarrels and fights. The early ones, flailing and hysterical, were typical of spoiled children. The later ones, with my brother, even came to blows (in the last of these, he wound up in the emergency room with a broken foot when he tried to kick me in the stomach and I blocked his kick with my elbow). The adult ones, although still violent, were now waged not with our fists but with our silence. And the most recent one, the hardest and most silent one, had been before my sister’s Orthodox wedding, in Israel.