Mirrors

The following are short sketches of three images. They are from separate instances, and the narrative is weak.

· · · · · ·

The bus makes its final roll forward after seven hours ascending the Andean mountains, and as it does, a wild dog barks at the yellow beams cast by the headlights. The passengers pass single file through the bus door, and the dog continues to bark. Though no one seems to notice the dog; somehow his noises only contribute to the quiet and dusty darkness of the night. The bright nearly-full moon makes clear, even in the darkness, the impossible magnitude of the mountains – their dark shadows go on forever – and also in a way the impossible smallness of us.

Max descends from the bus and the dog´s bark is like the crack of a felled tree; everyone now notices the dog. He crouches then he jumps forward and for a moment there is a fight between Max and the dog. For a moment there is a fight, and everyone sees the beast´s wild red pupils. A man beside Max kicks the dog hard in the chest and picks up a stone from the dirt road. He holds it over his head. The dog, pushed back, hesitates.

He looks over the mountains beneath him and then back at the shadowy path towards the man with the stone. Then he puts his tail down and his legs begin to weaken.

· · · · ·

At some point between Chosica and San Pedro, Max noticed the mirror on the dashboard. It was held by the hands of a Jesus figurine and trembled over each pebble on the unpaved road. Off the surface of this small, minutely cracked mirror was another mirror, that of the driver´s face, whose Aviator glasses were shinny and curved. In this remarkable and cruel double reflection the world in front of the bus was revealed and distorted: the cacti were metallic spider webs and the yellow road was indefinite. Max discovered then (with the inevitability of discoveries made in the heat of the sun) that there is something grotesque about mirrors.

· · · · · ·

“¿Qué quieres Joven?” asked a woman, who was quite young, probably the café owner´s daughter. Rather than walk, she seemed to glide to the table. This is because the concrete in the plaza is smooth, as if it were cut from ice, and covered with dust. Max did not notice this until later, however, because he was thinking deeply. Though the night was alive and sexual, it was also dark, and in the dark alone it is easy to sit and sip coca-cola and think deeply, or to watch pretty girls walk about the plaza and think about nothing at all. Perhaps now he was doing both, as he reflected on the wrinkled woman he saw, with an indigenous colored skirt and dark braids, who sat on the corner of the street huaking nock-off deodorant to a hurried public. That is the solitude of this land, he thought, to be at once very old and very young…

“Joven, vas a pedir?” the woman asked, this time more loudly. When he looked up, she smiled a great facetious smile. Everything in her face pulled smooth but the rims of her eyes, as if they were dual keepers of some great wisdom. Her smile was so nice that he thought, if only I knew her language…

Around the plaza, faded pinks and green covered the low walls and smoky reflections drifted in the light of the lamps, like gray clouds gently dripping dust.

In fact, Max was so diligently engaged in the activity of watching the girls in the plaza and thinking grand thoughts, that he hardly noticed – as if in a daze – when a crooked man (Max would later remember seeing him picking through the dump) walked to his table, lips shining, and grabbed at Max´s Coke bottle. His hands were shaking, like the of humming vocal chords passing through his body.

“Hey, don´t, sir” Max said, but he was passive. The crooked man took the Coke bottle and held it with two hands. He went to the center of the plaza and with two hands, he drank the Coca-Cola. He placed the bottle on the ground with tenderness, and then, hurried, went towards the dump, around the corner, out of sight.

The waitress had her hands on her hips.

“Más Coca-Cola Joven?"

“Sí por favor” he said. She walked away, and as she did, Max watched her slightly revealed waist, the smooth, brown skin above her jeans, gently wrinkle and tighten with the movement of her hips.

Immediately, of the crooked, old man, he wondered: How different is this country, engaged in dizzying modernization, from a crazy man with a coke bottle, picking through the remains of others refuge?

As the woman reached for a second coke bottle, she absently shook her head and smiled, “los gringos.”

It was only later that Max wondered: How different am I?