Camille Cusumano

Las Garzas de San Blas

(from Mexico, a Love Story, Seal Press, 2005)

San Blas, it’s jungle out there

I had heard that Playboy Magazine called San Blas, Mexico, a dump, not worth the effort it took to get there. So I made a beeline for that Pacific Coast fishing village, not far north of the fleshpots of Puerto Vallarta. It sounded like just the place for me—low-key, authentically Mexican, not overrun with tourists, and a bit time warped. It was January, 1977, and I was 25. The last six months of my waking and sleeping life had been submerged in several centuries of French culture as I crammed to pass the written and oral exams for my master’s in French at San Francisco State University. I looked forward to renewal—a returning to my senses with the fire of chiles, tequila, Latin sun and men. Alternatively, I would doze under palm fronds to my heart’s desire before I spread my wings for the flyway of life.

I made my nest at the Flamingos, a cheap, sturdy 100-year-old hotel on Calle Juarez, off the town plaza. A large, faded reproduction of Our Lady of Guadalupe in my beamed-ceiling room watched over my dreams. The weathered lodging, a former German consulate, was across from the remains of a 19th-century customs house, both of which bespoke San Blas’s glory days. It was once a port center of trade with flamboyant Spanish galleons passing through. And this: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, unlike the jaded Playboy reviewer, was neither blind nor deaf to the charms of the village. His poem, “The Bells of San Blas,” was inspired by the chimes of a crumbling church now claimed by banana trees,

Adjacent to the morning market where the flies outnumbered the people and the odors, perhaps, outnumbered the flies, stood the decaying old church El Templo de San Blas (circa 1810), its stone and wood, a place of worship as much for the faithful as for life forms from fungi to smut to termites. Right next to it, the never-completed newer one (La Apostolica Romana de San Blas—begun in the 1960s), also in sweet decline, stood like a metaphor, perhaps for the never fully conquered spirituality of Mexico.

Everything of consequence happened twice daily in this town long governed by sun and sea. The blood-thirsty jejenes, mosquitoes the size of a poppy seeds, were active in the morning and again in early evening; the great-tailed grackles darkened the trees on Calle Juarez and around the plaza then, raising their chatter by noticeable decibels as they squabbled like crones and curmudgeons; and most importantly for someone coming down off her intellectual jag, the Mexicans, and the gringos gathered twice a day around the town square—to practice age-old courtship rituals

It didn’t take me long to deduce that I lacked the essential plumage—blond hair—among the migratory “birds.” Whether trailer-park or cover-girl grade, blond locks from the States or from abroad were the draw for the muy guapo dudes. Which was fine with me. Dead Frenchmen still occupied my brain, leaving my tongue less agile in the small talk that leads to romance. Besides, with few secrets in tiny San Blas, any amorous intercourse was fodder for public consumption.

I felt free to cultivate something less fleeting, friendship. When the jejenes bit and the grackles chattered, I gravitated to the plaza and slowly met the in crowd. I took pleasure in listening to the guys—Pepe, Hector, Pancho, Fernando, Carlos, Cavallo, Julio—pepper their speech (Spanish and fluent English) with American slang.

I met Fernando whose family owned the Farmacia where I bought coconut cream and turtle oil for the beach. Gentle and polished, he was dating Lynette from New Zealand and the word on the street was that he loved to wine and dine her. His sister dated Cavallo (Horse) whose real name was Helio. Cavallo was only 22 and studying to be an economics lawyer, so he spent weekends in Tepic (the state capital). The first night I met him, he was drunk on homemade tequila and told me he was one of ten children.

“Put it there,” I said extending my hand. “So am I.”

“My mother started havin’ kids at 13,” he said.

“Mine started at 19,” I said.

“Mine had nineteen kids,” he said, “but nine of them died.” he said. I couldn’t match that.

And there was handsome Julio, who was tall, with long muscular arms and said “yep” a lot. He liked to kibbitz with gringos and asked every one of us, “I look like Gregory Peck, don’t I?” He did, but I said, “No, you’re much more handsome.” One morning he thrust a copy of Pscychology Today magazine at me—he knew that I had been a psych undergrad.

“Read the story on Plato’s Retreat,” he urged, a profile of a then-popular public sex venue, Plato’s, in New York City. The article (by Sam Keen) talked of the Love Generation aspiring to have a soul mate with whom they could have a communion of “head, heart, and genitals.” I wondered if that was what I wanted from life. I never learned what Julio thought of that heady piece—he was always on the run tending to some mysterious business. But I later learned that he had an “earthy” side to him, too—finding, for a fee, women to sleep with local fisherman.

One morning, I lay on the surfing beach, Matanchen Bay, reading Katzanzakis, how Zorba the Greek calls his penis the key to paradise when Carlos, the owner of El Mezcalito, a thatched-roof bar, appeared with his red surf board. I admired his radiant, ivory smile, and long curling lashes.

“How’s the surf?” I asked, knowing well how bad it was.

“Not very good, it’s been bad all year.”

“Where did you learn English?”

“I spent a year in San Leandro [near San Francisco] with my aunt who is married to an American. How do you like San Blas?”

“I wish I could stay.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Well. . . I feel responsible to people up North, but I know I’d come back.”

“Could you live here?”

“For a while, but I would crave those things I left in the city. I’ve been conditioned a certain way you know. I need intellectual stimulation, a movie, play, more education.”

He was silent and I went on too long about how we city folk tended to complicate our lives, so when we get by the sea and nature we had to learn to relax. He listened so raptly, I said, “I can’t tell if you understand me.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. I live here all my life.”

“And you never get bored?”

“No! Never! I can always find something to do. Surfin’, soccer, runnin’ on the beach. You have the sun and sea always, and good food.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I could live off your pineapple, coconut, mangoes, papayas.” I made a face of ecstasy and we laughed together. I regretted he was claimed by a Canadian—blond.

“But, don’t you ever want to do anything else with your life?” I asked.

“No. I’m happy now. Maybe someday I gonna get a sailboat and sail. I really like that.”

““I envy you.”

“Nah! You can stay here, too,” he said as he left me to ponder my state of post-grad, pre-career limbo.

As I sat and read, I noticed a man and his little girl approach my spot. The man looked out over the bay with binoculars.

“Que veis usted?” What do you see? I asked idly.

“Las garzas,” he told me—herons. The leggy, long-necked fowl congregated on a rock outcropping just offshore. Then he said very casually, “Te gusta marijuana?” Before I could answer, he said in English, “Come tomorrow at 11 A.M. here.” He whispered, “Tengo veinte kilos.” His little girl’s eyes studied mine with great interest. Bring my friends, he continued. There is plenty of mota (slang for marijuana) for all of them. Set up or not, I didn’t like pot—it made me paranoid. I told him I wasn’t interested. He insisted I come. Bring my friends. I wondered how much his little girl understood as they backed away.

Evenings, I went to El Mezcalito’s. One night I sat at the bar and ordered a coco loco—the acrid tequila-laced coconut milk served in a coconut shell. Idilio, the manager of one of the hotels, sat next to me. He was older than the other men and not a plaza habitué. He was married with five children and everyone, surely even his wife, knew that he had a girlfriend— several, some said. At the reception desk of the hotel he managed, he kept a large framed photograph of Pope John Paul II, with the words “my beloved holy father” emblazoned across the frame. We chatted about his family and he spoke of them like a loyal husband and proud father. The juke box was blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird. All of a sudden, I realized that in the convivial background where gringos and Mexicans were dancing, several of the male patrons were armed with automatic rifles. They had begun systematically to frisk every male in the place. They came toward Idilio, who said, “Excuse me,” and stood up to be patted down even as he kept on talking to me about his family.

“It happens every night,” he assured me. “They search for weapons.” The police were dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts like civilians, and after they had done their job, they stood around, looking harmless and bored.

Rolling Stones’ Beast of Burden played as I nursed my tropical drink and took in the barfly gossip—Julio had tried to sell yet another young woman to a fisherman at the Playa Borrego—the beach at the end of the main street. Everyone speculated why Julio had turned down the advances of a frosted blond, an actress on the American soaps. Hector had been swept off his feet by an Aussie in town just two days (fair-haired), Cavallo was not allowed to see Fernando’s sister until he quit drinking.

Idilio left and Pepe took his barstool next to me and ordered a cervesa. He sang to himself, I never be your beast of burden and I chuckled to myself. I had mainly known Pepe as the aloof, very business-like manager at the Flamingos. Although, a few days earlier he seemed as silently amused as I was by a loud, short Brooklynite, Boomer, who sat in the Flamingos’ courtyard, detailing for everyone the nature of his turista—“Hehr-shey squehrts,” he described.

“Do you get tired of all the gringos,” I asked Pepe.

“Oh no, I like them—they bring fresh blood for the jejenes.”

Of all the guys, I liked Pepe best. He hid behind an unkempt tangle of curly sun-gilded brown hair and Siamese cat eyes. Although he could party like the rest, he had a serious, retiring side, an artistic temperament perhaps. He made beautiful line drawings and airbrushed T-shirts when a gringo supplied him with the materials. I asked him if he dated Mexican women and he said it had been a long time. He didn’t have a girlfriend now. Then he said to my surprise, “I’m tired of being a machine. I see people come and go and I get cold. You don’t really know me and I don’t really know you,” he said. I was touched by his blunt sharing and behind these pronouncements I sensed losses, but I didn’t press him.

I admired how Pepe took care of his close friend, Hector, whom he referred to, in rare public displays of affection, as Squirt or mi hijito, my little son. Hector, who was irrepressibly childlike with his gleaming gold-framed front teeth, brought out the old-soul Pepe. I gathered that Hector’s susceptibility to the fair gringas was a concern (indeed, a year later, Hector was married to a very pregnant Minnesotan—who was “pretty sure” that Hector was the father.)

The torrid days melted seamlessly into each other, distinguished only by some delightful discovery I might make in my routine wandering—the little bakery, where I bought coconut-cream- or pineapple-filled empanadas to have with my morning coffee. I lived simply on coffee and papaya in the morning, a seething slab of chile-lime-spiked jicama from a street vendor during the day, and one full meal at night at one of the restaurants—Amparo’s, MacDonald’s, Diligencia, Torino’s, Las Islas. I found their simple interpretations of the fresh local shrimp, oysters, lobster, red snapper, pampano, or butterfish revelations worthy of the Book of Gastronomy.

In a matter of weeks, I fulfilled my own prophesy to Carlos. I needed a stimulation not available at Mezcalito’s or on the beach. I returned to San Francisco. To disappointment: I failed to nail one of three spots in Stanford’s French doctoral program. I found a job I liked on a French publication. I cocktail waitressed at night to pay down debt. I was thrilled when Pepe and Hector, traveling the States like Mexican Huck Finns, visited me briefly that summer where I lived in the Haight Ashbury. I introduced my friend, Deborah, to Hector. The chemistry wasn’t quite right, but by winter, she and I, both uncertain about our futures, headed south to the border. Several long bus rides through the state of Chihuahua, we were in San Blas with a new wave of gringos, and little else changed. The grackles and jejenes and the plaza hummed on schedule. The unfinished church was still in a protracted state of decay. The mercado pulsed. Mezcalito’s was a den of alleged scandal in progress. Matanchén Bay throbbed with surfers. Las garzas held court on their rock.

Little children played in the packed dirt streets. But one morning Deborah and I learned that a tiny coffin being lifted into a hearse was filled with the body of a child we might have seen running by days ago, who had said “Hola, señoritas,” to us. He had died suddenly, swiftly from a parasite. We could not see or hear his mourners—where were they?—who surely must have been so grief-stricken. The sun went on beating. The hibiscus and bougainvillea went on bursting against stone walls.

Young people went on giving their hearts away in the square. Deborah gave hers to lanky, hood-eyed, and sad-faced Pancho whom everyone called Champion. I gave mine, like before, to everyone and everything.

On our first Sunday, a day that was always festive, the village emptied as Matanchén Bay became carpeted with Mexican families. At the plaza, a dozen of us squeezed into someone’s car and drove the five miles to the beach, laughing all the way. Julio bought freshly caught shark from a fisherman and Hector and Pepe roasted it on a large grill under a palapa. Breaking off pieces of the succulent flesh with fingers, everyone shared in a communion that reminded me of the best of times, simple and spontaneous, in my own family. As I watched the ingenious Mexicans stave off the afternoon attack of sand fleas by burning green coconut husks, I thought this was the communion I longed, not the one described by Sam Keen. I watched beach goers throw back cervesa after cervesa and camerones cocktails in the shade of grass-hut canopies or under palapas. I drank Presidente brandy. The party revved. Life felt good, contained, in the present tense.

I went for a swim in the warm bay then felt the need for solitude.

“I’m going to walk back to town,” I announced to Pepe.

He made such an unexpected hissing sound, I got chills in the heat of day. He said, “Are you crazy? You can’t walk!”

“Of course, I can walk.” I was taken aback but stood my ground.

“Listen to me, its dangerous!” His narrow black eyes raged with some inexplicable fire and his usually impassive countenance came disturbingly restive.

“I can walk if I want to,” I said calmly. I had loved these Latin men who treated me like a peer.

“Eets dangerous, you don’t know!” I knew he was upset–his accent was more emphasized. This exuberantly protective stance was so startling it gave me pause as my madness rippled through the throng—She wants to what? Walk home?! Julio, Hector, Pancho, Carlos bore down on me, saying I absolutely could not walk. I’d be totally loca. But when I asked why, not one of them would say. I had ridden over the route several dozen times in the bus and it seemed perfectly pastoral and harmless.

We piled into the car back to town. Everyone went to Mezcalito’s for more beers and margaritas. I said good night and went to bed early. I was wide awake at 6:30 A.M. The sun was bright. A chamber maid’s disco music sounded reveille. I stuffed my net bag with book, towel, and lotion, and slipped into long gauzy pants to protect me from the jejenes. I covered my head with a paisley scarf and left a note for Deborah who was asleep in Pancho’s arms. I started down San Blas’s only paved road (pocked with potholes) to Matanchén Bay. Two or three vehicles passed, their occupants yelling something in Spanish.

San Blas was practically an island, with “liquid” boundaries on all sides—ocean, lagoons, or mangrove swamp. On my first trip there, I had glided in a motorized panga (on the La Tovara River Trip) through one of the jungle-smothered estuaries, San Cristóbal. It crawled with crocodiles, coatimundi (a cross between raccoon and anteater), iguanas, and geckoes. More than 300 species of birds—endemic, migratory, and vagrants—flitted through mangrove, coral vine, gumbolimbo and soft-shell fig trees. I had watched crows, from their roost drop the fruit of a sour custard tree feeding turtles below. I saw swarms of dragonflies, butterflies the color of papaya, and carnivorous plants that awaited flies. I knew that just beyond the tropical lowland I walked through was habitat where I would be prey to predators. But I felt content on the unshaded macadam even as it began to boil.

I never saw where he came from. He was just there all of a sudden, slowly pedaling his bicycle. I was deep in thought.

“Hola!” I blurted out, so startled by the presence of the dark man with a thick pelt of shiny black hair, gleaming in the heat. I needed the reassurance of my own firm, loud voice.

“Hola,” he said calmly.

“Hola, Señor, como estas . . . hoy?” I repeated, trying to hide my slipped composure.

Where were the cars now?

Adonde vas, Señorita?

A la playa, Señor.

He peered at me through unblinking eyes so dark I didn’t dare hold his stare for long.

He asked if I lived in Mexico. No, I said.

“Climb on my bike, Senorita. I’ll take you to the beach,” he ordered cordially enough. His Spanish was a strange, musical dialect, of which I understood about half. His diction was not that of Pepe and friends. He added curlicues and pronounced trills to his words.

“Oh, no, no,” I laughed hoarsely. The clunker certainly could have carried us both.

“I love to walk . . . me gusta mucho caminar,” I said, sweat dripping from under my scarf.

My pulse quickened as I searched my repertoire for diversionary conversation until we reached the beach, which seemed so distant.

Was this the unpronounceable danger?

He asked my name and I told him. His was Rogelio.

Silence again. He stared—he jumped off his bike and walked alongside me, his two hands on the handle bars. He adapted his gait to mine, which was brisk, economical, and straightforward. An observer might’ve thought we were in competition.

With a start, I noticed the machete as long as one of his legs swinging from his belt. I hugged my net bag to my torso.

“Ah, si, me gusta caminar,” I repeated. I babbled on in broken Spanish how in America, I run four miles everyday, but here it is mucho calor, so I walk only. I walk fast, very fast, because it pleases me. Me gusta, caminar rapido.

Rogelio smiled. He asked a few questions like an immigration officer doing his job. After each, I said ¿como? He might have been asking me to walk more despacio, slowly, which I ignored. He was incapable of slowing down his speech to help me. I said claro, que si “for sure” a lot, at inappropriate times, judging from his expression.

He asked how old I was, where I was from. Was I married. Yes, I lied, very married, and even produced a left hand with a banded finger. He adjusted his machete and I swallowed hard. I answered in the present tense, because I knew the present tense best in Spanish. I felt very present and tense.

Your husband, where is he?

He’s waiting for me at the beach. Yes, he’s definitely there waiting for me. He doesn’t like to walk, so I walk alone.

We passed a full set of clothes, on the road side, pants, shirt, huarache sandals, and straw hat, lying next to a half-empty bottle of liquor. I wondered where the owner of the clothes was. Certainly not in that dense, critter-ridden jungle.

I asked Rogelio if he lived in San Blas and was dismayed when he said no. He pointed beyond the jungle where he lived. No, he didn’t know Pepe, Pancho, Hector, Carlos . . . . He picked oranges. I glanced behind us at the clothes on the shoulder and then at his. They were of similar style. He wore green cotton pantalones, a white shirt, and huaraches. I asked if he were married and he said no.

Una novia? Surely he had a sweetheart—that would make for good conversation.

No, no girlfriend. And then he said something that translated in my ears as Mexican women, you know, are not as easy as Americans.

¿Como? I mean claro que si. How not to go there. His look was unsettling. His gaze pierced. I picked up the pace and at times he had to run to keep up with me. The machete kept swinging, its blade slicing the air like a third arm of his. He remained oblivious to it, but I kept the distance between his hand and the menacing blade in my peripheral vision.

Does señor, hablas inglese? Even un poco? I pressed. Smiling almost devilishly, he said not even un pochito.

Hadn’t he met Americans before? I asked. No, I was the first one. He lived with his parents, he said. He was 30 years old.

Do you want a girlfriend, I asked sloppily. He of course construed this to mean I was asking if he wanted my help or me, even.

Si, very much, he answered eagerly. Do you have one for me? I assumed he was asking to meet a girlfriend of mine and said yes. I could go along with that.

Si, Señor, I have a friend. His eyes widened. I meant to say amiga but it came out masculine, amigo.

You have a boyfriend, too, at the beach? You mean it’s not your husband?

No, no, there is my husband and our amigo, and an amiga. He looked bewildered. What don’t you get?

“Your husband will want to fight me?” What don’t I get?

“No, he’s a nice guy. Un hombre d’onore” My voice quavered with exhaustion. We probably had a mile and a half to go. No cars passed. The beach was so far.

“Entonces, you will give me a woman?” he repeated again. I slowly translated his words into English. Yes, that is exactly what he said. I thought I had said I would introduce him to a woman. I tried to change the subject but he wasn’t interested in talking about the weather, a subject on which I could converse eloquently in Spanish.

“How much money will she want?” he persisted.

“Money?!” I thought of Julio.

“Si.”

Despairing, I answered nada. But I sensed his skepticism growing. How could I give him a woman, for free no less, if my husband and another male were there?

Attitude is half the battle of survival. We were alone. He had the machete. My only weapon, a disarming charm, felt dulled by the minute.

“What about you and me, Señora?” he asked slyly.

“Oh, don’t be silly!” I laughed as if I were turning down a generous offer on his part. “Mio marido,” I pointed to my ring, shoving my fist forward. But if I were the type who was willing to sell a friend, why would I have respect for a marriage vow?

“Quiero un Americana,” he said firmly and unequivocally. “I want an American woman.”

“Hay un problema . . . , ” I answered weakly. There is one problem. I didn’t have a woman for him.

The sun pummeled me mercilessly. Sweat flowed from my turban. “Hay mucho calor,” I tried.

“Si,” he finally conceded to talk of weather. His machete bumped the spokes of his bike and he adjusted it. My heart beat so fast, I felt dizzy. “Eets toooo dangerous!” ran through my mind to the tune of I told you so.

He repeated his request and I said, “No comprendo, Señor. A pregnant silence followed. He was breathing very heavy—from the frantic pace I set. Did I care to rest a bit? he asked. Well, no, my husband, my HUSBAND would be waiting.

“Just a few minutes, Señora. It won’t matter a great deal,” he said.

The heat was fierce. I was losing my cool. He wouldn’t take his gaze off me now.

“Let’s rest, just un momento. I insist, Señora,” he said. All I needed was a cloud, not a rest, to block the sun and I could outrun him—and that sword-like appendage of his.

Suddenly, everything did seem cloudy, my legs were completely rubber. I was leaning back on a pile of hay staring up in the cool shade of friendly faces. I had run and jumped on the flatbed of the old bus to Matanchén Bay. I saw through glazed eyes, my good friend Deborah.

“Sister Woman,” she addressed me by the salutation we started using for each other after watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, “you’re nuts walking in this hot sun.”

“Where’s the guy with the machete?” I asked.

“Who?” she asked. My pulse was still racing. “We almost couldn’t get the bus driver to stop,” she said, “but I guess he felt sorry for you the way you were running to catch him.”

“How far are we from the beach?” I asked.

“Not far,” she said, “see right up ahead where that guy on the bike is turning left? It’s just beyond.”

There he was pumping his clunker with his machete at his side. Had he abandoned his hope for un Americana, or would he continue to search?

I thought of the endings this episode could have had and treasured my friends more than they knew. I realized that although they used expressions like bummer, dude, friggin, and out of sight, as if weaned on American slang, they couldn’t quite convey to me the lurking danger of the backwoodsmen who were isolated from their enlightened culture. I never told them or anyone about the dark stranger for years—it gave me a creepy feeling.

Weeks later, Deborah and I stood waiting for our bus in front of the unfinished church. “Forty more years until it’s done,” said Pepe as he handed me a going-away gift—an ink drawing that he had done, called Isla de las Garzas and signed para mi amiga Camille, Pepe. It was a beautiful rendering of the herons at Matanchén Bay, a faint tequila sunset (or sunset) igniting it from behind.

I framed the drawing and kept it with me through nearly two dozen moves spread over thousands of miles, chasing career goals, finding love, losing love. I wouldn’t have guessed that it would be twenty-seven years before I saw those herons again. Returning for a long overdue visit to San Blas (still dodged by most tourists), I called Pepe. We met in the square. He had changed little—his hair was longer. He filled me in on the mostly married gang, Hector to a second blond in Seattle. Pancho, married with daughter, ran the automotive shop down from the now upscale Flamingos (which was beautifully renovated with marble bathrooms, tiled courtyard, garden, and pool). Pepe had married and divorced a woman (American) from Washington and he had a 23-year-old son—his age when we met. Not surprisingly, Pepe was best of friends with his ex-wife and her husband. He had a girlfriend whose name (Digna de Virgen de Guadalupe) translated to “worthy of the Virgin of Guadalupe.” He called her Lupita. Would he marry again? “When the church is finished,” he said, ever sardonic.

Although damage from the 2002 Hurricane Kenna was visible in the shape of decaying or abandoned buildings (but not the churches!—they stood solid), there was a lingering sweetness in San Blas. I found yet another layer of it—in the birds. In two days’ time, with the help of local guide, Armando Santiago Navarrete, I logged fifty-seven species, including many along the jungled lagoon. They were always there, but before I had lacked the ocular device to see them. I felt great to be back in San Blas, jumpstarting a new life list.