NO GOOD, SEÑOR.
It took me a moment to understand that the officer, without looking up and barely audible over the wheezing of the fan, was talking to me.
What did you say? I asked. I said this is no good, he said, closing my passport and dropping it onto the metal desk as if in disgust, as if it were something stiff and rotten. Your passport, señor, it expired last month. I felt a light blow to my gut. That’s not possible, I stammered. The officer, impassive, just kept scribbling something in the old ledger. Was it possible? How long had it been since I’d gotten it? How long since I’d even checked the expiration date? I reached out and picked up the blue booklet from the desk and opened it to the page. It had indeed expired a month ago. No good, the officer muttered down toward the ruled yellowish pages of the old ledger, and for a moment I thought he meant that what wasn’t any good was me. So what now? I asked. So what now what, señor? he replied without looking at me. Is there no other way I can get into Belize? None, señor. I can’t cross the border with my ID card? He shook his head just once, definite. Belize, he said, is not a part of the Central America agreement. It was true. All the Central American countries had recently signed an accord allowing their citizens free passage across their borders — all of them, of course, except Belize. I sighed, already picturing the drive back to the capital, already calculating all the hours and all the kilometers here and back, crossing almost the entire territory of Guatemala here and back, all in a single day. I opened my leather pouch to put the passport away and was surprised to see the red cover there. It hadn’t occurred to me. In fact, even if it had occurred to me, I usually leave that red one at home, and I wouldn’t have expected to find it there, in the leather pouch I always travel with, and in which I keep other credit cards (just in case), my medical insurance card (just in case), my diving license (just in case), a couple of condoms (just in case). I gave a triumphant smile. Here you go, I said to the officer, and I held it under his gaze, over the same pages of the ledger. What’s this? he spluttered, confused, still suspicious. I am many, I said to him somewhat satirically. But today, I said, I am two.
The officer, perhaps for the first time, raised his eyes, and looked at me slowly, skeptically, as I held a booklet in each hand, a passport in each hand: the Guatemalan one in my right, the Spanish one in my left.
Excuse me, he said, and stood up. On his green khaki back the dark round patch of sweat was growing.
He walked slowly toward a bigger and more important desk, at which sat a bald gentleman, plump, with a thick ash-colored mustache and reading glasses, dressed in the same green khaki uniform. His boss, I presumed. The young officer handed him the passports and pointed at me and the two men began to go through my documents, comparing them, judging them, whispering I don’t know what. Suddenly, the older officer took off his reading glasses. He looked up and stared at me for a few moments. As though something in me had enraged him. Or alarmed him. Or as though trying to find something in my face, perhaps some detail or expression that would prove my identity. Then he lowered his gaze, handed my passports back to the young officer, and feeling for the reading glasses hanging around his neck, returned his attention to the papers on the desk.
Sign here, said the young officer no sooner than he had sat down, pointing at an empty line on the ledger, beside my name. I signed with relish, in a flowery, stylized hand. The officer stamped the ledger way too hard, maybe with the rage of the defeated, and handed me both passports. Next, he shouted toward the line of people who were waiting their turn behind me. I put everything inside the leather pouch, turned away unhurriedly and, without saying a word, as I was leaving the immigration office, already hearing the drops of rain on the corrugated tin plates of the roof, I noticed that the mustached officer was watching me gravely over the top of his glasses.
Outside, it was raining hard. I quickly dodged the sellers of chewing gum and other sweets, the sellers of sour oranges sprinkled with pumpkin seed, the sellers of Belizean dollars with wads of dirty bills in their hands and little nylon pouches tied around their waists, and I started running through the pelting rain to where I had left the old sapphire-colored Saab. As soon as I arrived, I opened the door and got inside and hurriedly stuck the key in and started the engine. I sat still, half-soaked in rain, or perhaps half-soaked in sweat, just listening to the sudden shower hit the bodywork, and to the thunder in the distance of the Petén jungle, and to the unbearable metallic clicking of a dead battery.
YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TROUBLE finding a trucker who’ll help you here.
His accent sounded Salvadoran, or perhaps Nicaraguan. He was wearing crocodile-skin cowboy boots. His button-down shirt was open, and over his heart, in green ink, he had a tattoo of another heart with an arrow through it, encircled by a ribbon with somebody’s name. His woman, I presumed. Or one of his women. He had a long machete in a black leather sheath hanging from his belt. And immediately, as I saw him approach and smile at me with his silver teeth, I felt a flash of distrust and panic and I was about to close my eyes and say please, just the money, let me keep my credit cards and the rest of my papers. But he quickly greeted me and told me that his truck was that one over there, the white one, that he was headed for Mexico, that his name was Roldán. I didn’t want to ask if that was his first or last name. Nor did I want to ask what he was carrying in his truck.
I’d had to sit in the car for nearly an hour, waiting for the rain to subside. From time to time, I would open the door a little to air out the heat and my cigarette smoke (the electric windows, of course, were not working). But it was raining too hard and the water would rush in at once and so I had to fester in there for an hour, submerged in my own smoke and steam. On several occasions, I thought I saw — through the windshield and the sheets of rain — the mustached officer standing at the door of the immigration office, maybe watching the rain shower, maybe watching me.
No trucker here is going to give you a hand, said Roldán. My compañeros will say they’re in a hurry. He scratched his stomach. But they’re making it up, he said. They’re just a bit cruel.
With a couple of whistles, he summoned over a teenaged kid who was walking past. You, help me push, he told the teenager, who reluctantly agreed. You put it in neutral, Roldán shouted to me, and when I say, shift to second and try to start it up. We tried three times. The engine didn’t even respond.
Oh boy, said Roldán, widening his silver smile. That battery won’t go anymore, mi rey. The kid, without a word, had made himself scarce.
I got out of the car. I held the pack of Camels out to Roldán and he took a cigarette and we both stood there a moment, smoking in silence. The sun had come back out. In the distance, a veil of warm mist covered part of the mountain. Have you got jumper cables? he asked me suddenly. I think so, I said, in the trunk. My truck has a twenty-four-volt battery, he said. We’ve got to find a driver with a twelve-volt battery. Maybe we’ll be able to charge it up. He asked for another cigarette. For later, he said, and put it behind his ear. So where are you coming from? he asked, and I explained that I’d left the capital that same morning, that I was on my way to Belize, that I wanted to cross over to Belize, that I wanted to get to the white-sand beaches of Belize. Not with that battery, mi rey, he said, still smiling. But don’t you worry. We’ll figure it out right away. God willing.
Roldán stopped two truckers, and from their cabs both of them merely shook their heads and went on up the highway. Soon the owner of the truck that was parked next to me arrived. Roldán approached him and explained the situation and the guy said that yes, he had a twelve-volt battery but that he couldn’t give me a jump. Why not, old man? Roldán asked, and the guy just shook his head, reluctant. But Roldán was so insistent that the driver finally agreed. We connected the two batteries. The trucker started his engine, and we let it run for a few minutes. Nothing. Then we left it running a few minutes more, and I tried again, and again, nothing. The trucker detached the cables and got up into his cab and, almost offended by me, as though I’d stolen something from him, went on his way.