Jon Bilbao
Still the Same Man
A man doesn’t alter because you find out more about him. He’s still the same man.
PART I Road
The animals were hiding, or perhaps they sensed what was coming and had fled inland looking for refuge. Since arriving in Mexico, Joanes had only seen birds — raucous and all pervasive — and the large-footed geckos that loitered around the hotel swimming pool. Not one sign of the anacondas, jaguars, or monkeys that he’d hoped to find showing off for him from the tops of knotty branches.
Nor was the vegetation how he’d imagined it; by no means did the picture correspond to his idea of the jungle. There were no trees blocking the light of the sun, no vines, no orchids flowering from the crevices in the tree trunks. Instead, what he found was a thick, unvarying mass of vegetation covered in dust from the highway traffic and no more than fifteen or twenty feet in height — a tangle of stunted trees and creepers that looked more like overgrown weeds than tropical jungle.
He was driving south on the highway that stretches along the eastern coast of Yucatán and connects the towns along the Riviera Maya. With the window rolled down and his elbow resting on top of it, he divided his attention between the road and the sky. He studied the bank of clouds over to the east above the island of Cozumel, looking for any change in them, clouds identical to those he’d seen over the last few days — greenish at the bottom, innocuous-looking, and in no way suggestive of an advancing hurricane.
Two hours earlier, his father-in-law had pounded on the door to the room where Joanes, his wife, and his daughter were packing their suitcases.
“Let’s grab a sauna,” he said when Joanes opened the door. “We’ll loosen up a bit and forget all about this damn hurricane.”
It was more an order than an invitation. This was how his father-in-law asked for things.
“Do we have time?”
On the edge of the conversation, Joanes’s wife went on folding and putting away their clothes, and his father-in-law directed his comments exclusively to Joanes. He knew he was trapped.
“Sure we do!” his father-in-law burst out. His rotund figure, six feet in height and weighing two hundred and sixty pounds, filled the doorframe. “Let’s take a sauna. Then we’ll file onto those damn busses and get out of here.”
The busses were going to transfer the hotel guests to new lodgings in Valladolid, further inland on the peninsula, where they’d stay until the hurricane had passed.
“I still have to get my things together,” said Joanes.
But his father-in-law wasn’t going to let him get away. He answered as if he hadn’t heard him.
“Move your ass! I already greased the sauna guy’s palm. He’s scramming, too, and I had a hard time convincing him to heat up the sauna so late.”
The sauna was, in fact, a typical Mexican temazcal sweat lodge. Right next to the pool, there was a small, dome-shaped adobe construction that looked like an igloo or a bread oven. You entered by a door so tiny you had to crawl in on all fours, so tiny the father-in-law’s great carcass almost got stuck in it. From outside, Joanes spent a moment staring at that fat, tanned, waxed ass, only partially covered by its yellow Speedo, fighting its way through the door, then he averted his gaze. With considerable effort, huffing and puffing, pleas for help, and reproaches directed at the temazcalero who was inside preparing the fire, his father-in-law finally squeezed through the door.
Inside, the roof was little more than three feet high. Joanes and his father-in-law settled themselves as best they could on the bench skirting the circular wall. On the ground, the temazcalero stoked the wood fire before placing a few porous stones over the burning logs. Once they were well and truly piping, he poured an infusion of aromatic herbs over them, releasing an eruption of steam.
“You done?” asked Joanes’s father-in-law.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then leave us to it.”
“I’m supposed to control the steam, sir.”
“Forget about it. Leave us in private.”
“But it’s part of the custom,” insisted the temazcalero.
“So I have to pay you to take a hike, too, do I? Get out of here. I’ll tell you when we’re done.”
The temazcalero balked and then slipped out through the tiny door. Once they were alone, Joanes’s father-in-law smiled and placed a moist hand on his son-in-law’s shoulder.
“How’s all that going?”
Joanes, sweating and with his head bent and his elbows resting on his knees, looked up.
“How’s what going?”
“Your thing. The deal you’ve got going on.”
Joanes looked at him through the cloud of steam. He had absolutely no desire to answer.
“My daughter told me everything,” his father-in-law explained.
Joanes could guess what had happened. His father-in-law would have employed his usual interrogation strategy — a well-shaken cocktail of paternal concern, inquisitorial interest, petulance, and overbearingness. And she’d have been left no option but to sling the beast a hunk of meat to appease him. What with her father having supported them financially over the past several years, she had no choice. And what’s more, he had covered the cost of this trip, a trip that neither Joanes, his wife, nor their daughter had wanted to take.
Joanes’s father-in-law was a painter. His work was sufficiently well recognized that two of his paintings formed part of the Saatchi collection. Oil paintings in earthen tones were his forte; he plastered the canvas with ochre hues, reds and browns, uniformly colored areas, then played with the texture by mixing gravel and bits of bark and small twigs in with the paint. On top of all of this, he would fix a few small, felt squares and rectangles of black, gray, or white. The result, when you looked at it from far enough away, evoked aerial photographs of devastated or deserted landscapes where the rectangles looked like the outlines of edifices lost in the earthy immensity. The color of the felt cuttings, the number of them, and the way in which they were distributed on the canvas defined the different phases of his work.
Six months earlier, the celebrated painter and widower of ten years had surprised the family with the announcement of his sudden engagement to be married. He’d met a girl in the tanning salon where he went twice a week. She worked there. At the end of each session, she would go into the individual rooms with disinfectant spray and a roll of paper towels and clean the sun bed for the next customer. She was twenty years his junior, didn’t have a clue about painting, had a subscription to a personalized online horoscope site, and held a lifelong dream of getting married in Cancún with the turquoise blue of the Caribbean as a backdrop.
“What can you do,” his father-in-law had said, shrugging his shoulders. “The girl has a whim.”
A few days later, he’d called to let them know that they’d chosen a date for the wedding and that he’d reserved flights and hotel rooms for everyone. It was going to be an intimate affair. Immediate family only. He’d pay for everything. The wedding was set for the end of August, when it would be summer vacation for both his granddaughter and his daughter, who taught philosophy of science at a university. Last but not least, he took it as a given that his son-in-law could put any obligations to his floundering air conditioning business on hold for a few days.
The ceremony and subsequent reception had been a succession of kitsch scenes all teeth-grindingly tasteless for anyone with the slightest aesthetic sensibility. The pièce de résistance had been the arrival of the cake, which came down from the ceiling on a platform, accompanied by a carefully choreographed laser show.