Sitting uncomfortably in my car, she asked me if I was there to convince Juan to go back to school. Not at all, I said, I just want to speak to him. I decided not to mention his poetry. She was quiet for some time, staring out the window, holding her bag of cauliflower. I can assure you he won’t be going back, she said suddenly. I was about to repeat that this wasn’t why I’d come, but instead I said nothing. We need our Juan close by at the moment, she said, faltering. I didn’t turn to look, but from the tone of her voice I could have sworn she was crying.
The Kalel house was on the outskirts of Tecpán, on the road to the Mayan ruins of Iximché. Once, as a kid, I visited Iximché with the family of a school friend, and the only memory I have is of eating green mango with lime and ground pumpkin seeds, and then vomiting it all up by the stones of some temple or altar. I remember my friend’s mother fanning me with something as she gave me bitter sips of tonic water.
A black doll hung disconcertingly on the front door. Please, sit. Juan will be back very soon, his mother told me. The house looked clean and comfortable, in spite of everything. In one open area were the kitchen, a small table-cum-dining room, and a rustic black leatherette sofa. Candles cast a hazy light in one corner. I went over to look at a shelf with framed photos of the children at their First Communion, not realizing I’d been toying with a cigarette until Juan’s mother brought in an ashtray. You can smoke, she said, placing it on the table. I thanked her and sat down, but I decided to slip it back into the pack. Without asking, she brought me a cup of plantain atol and then sat down beside me. I’d never tried plantain atol before. I asked her how it was made. She didn’t reply. Do you know, Señor Halfon, why Juan left his studies? I said that I did not, that at the university they wouldn’t say anything other than for personal reasons. That’s what we requested, she said, looking down, but in an exaggerated way, as if her eyes would bore through the floor and into the ground. She remained like that until the door opened abruptly and Juan appeared in the doorway, holding hands with a girl of perhaps six or seven. He wore a too-small white shirt, with a too-small black vest over it. The girl looked like a miniature version of her mother: dressed in black, with a white mantilla on her head. I turned and saw that in the corner, around the candles, were wilted flowers and a rosary and some old photographs, and all of a sudden everything made sense.
For lunch we had turkey — which we call chompipe and they called chunto — and sweetened crookneck squash. Then, as we walked together to the central square, Juan told me that his father had been sick for many years, that he had had prostate cancer and eventually it spread all over. He said that his father had refused to go to the capital to have a doctor look at it, that he preferred to keep working. My father died in the field, he said, and that was all he said. There was nothing else to say, I suppose. But the image of his father dying in an orchard, on land he tended that was not his, stayed with me.
Juan treated me to a cup of coffee. The best in Tecpán, he boasted, paying a woman who had her little table set out right in the center of the square. She poured a squirt of coffee extract, a little hot water, and a little milk into two plastic cups. When she said something in Cakchikel, Juan just smiled. In silence, we walked toward an empty bench.
This is yours, I said, handing him the notebook and the poem he’d mailed me. I thought he’d try to refuse them, but he took them with no comment whatsoever. A barefoot woman passed by, selling cashews. I’ve read your books, Halfon, Juan said, looking over at a group of men shining shoes beside the fountain. And then for a time, neither of us said anything. I wanted to tell him that it made perfect sense to me why he’d dropped out, that he didn’t have to explain it. I wanted to tell him how much I missed him in class. I wanted to tell him to keep writing poetry. But there was no need for that. Someone like Juan Kalel could never abandon poetry, even if he wanted to, mostly because poetry would never abandon him. It wasn’t a question of form, or aesthetics, but of something much more absolute, something much more perfect that had little or nothing to do with perfection.
A girl came up and said hello to Juan and the two of them began speaking in Cakchikel. It sounded beautiful, like drops of rain falling on a lake, perhaps. When she left, I asked Juan if he also wrote poems in Cakchikel. He said of course. I asked how he decided whether to write them in Spanish or Cakchikel. He was quiet for a time, looking out at the fountain where the shoe-shine boys gathered. I don’t know, he said finally. I’ve never thought about it before. Then we fell back into that natural silence we had, as if neither of us really needed to say anything or as if everything between us had already been said, either way. The air smelled of roasted corn on the cob. In the distance, a boy was selling baby chicks, and people were ignoring a preacher. Do you know, Halfon, how to say poetry in Cakchikel? Juan asked suddenly. And I said no, I had no idea. Pach’un tzij, he said. Pach’un tzij, I repeated. And I savored the word for a time, taking pleasure in it purely for its sound, for the delectable lure of its pronunciation. Pach’un tzij, I said once more. Do you know what it means? he asked, and although I hesitated, I said no, but that it didn’t really matter. Braid of words, he said. It’s a neologism that means braid of words, he said. Pach’un tzij, he intoned, giving it an elegance that could only be gained through unskeptical spirituality. It’s something like an embroidered blouse of words, like a huipil of words, he said, and that was all.
It had gotten late. The sun was starting to go down and we decided to walk back to Juan’s house. Near the colonial church, an old man stood before a small white cage. We approached. He had a yellow canary in it and was whispering or singing softly to it. Juan told me that the canary was a fortune-teller, and I smiled. No, really, he said. How much? I asked the old man. He raised two fingers. I took two coins from my pocket and handed them to him. But it’s for him, I said, pointing to Juan: I’d rather know his future than mine. The old man took a wheel full of colored slips of paper and then whistled softly to the canary, placing the wheel in front of the bird. With its beak, the bird pecked out a pink slip of paper. Then the old man took it, whispered something to the bird, folded the paper in half, and handed it to Juan, who was staring fixedly at the canary. There was no tenderness in his stare, no compassion. Instead, he looked angry, almost violent, almost furious, as if the canary were divulging some dark secret. Juan unfolded the pink paper and read it in silence. I simply watched, also silent, and maybe it was the streetlight, or maybe it was something else, but I could see the purple scar clearly on his right cheek, which now looked like much more than a blow from a machete. And then very slowly, as if emerging from a nightmare, Juan began to smile. I thought of asking him what the paper said, asking him what future the canary had predicted for him, but I decided against it. Some smiles are not meant to be understood. Juan said something to the old man in Cakchikel, slipped the pink paper into his shirt pocket, and looking up at the sky said it would be getting dark soon.