Watching Ayacucho

This is a short story about traveling. There's a voyeurism to traveling, a tendency to watch rather than do, which I tried to write about. 

What is this feeling? He shuddered. A mix, a mix of grief and joy and loneliness – and the realization that he could do anything he wanted.

Max walked down a small street in Ayacucho, watching the yellow in the streetlamps shine against the sky. It had rained during the night and the day; and though the sky was clear now, thin drops of water still fell from the gutters of the buildings above; the cobblestone, smooth and wet, reflected the yellow beams of the streetlamps, in a glowing yellow.

His scarf was wrapped around his neck, French-style and in his hand he held a book by Jack Kerouac. As if, thought Max, I have pretensions to be free and without fear. Though he knew at times that he did.

Yes, yes, he thought, who am I kidding? I am free. He smiled. I, a poor man's Kerouac. Nobody knows me here and nobody knows where I am. Free to glow on the margins and make love to that nothingness and do nothing. I can do everything. Freedom as weakness. Freedom as invisibility. Free because I am small. That's Kerouac's freedom. Max saw himself beneath the yellow streetlights. He felt vicious and even trembled. How simple it is to be a mouse.

The Plaza de Armas was filled with people. A crowd of fifty-thousand or more, Max guessed, circling the street. He had come to Ayacucho to see the final days of Holy Week. Ayacucho was famous for Holy Week. Tonight was Good Friday and late tomorrow night was Easter Mass. It wasn't as a pilgrimage or anything, that Max came. He traveled simply because he could, and because he wanted to. Sometimes things where he lived were sad; the girls felt trapped and alone and the whole hotel that they lived in was like net for hatching butterflies, and then lettering them go. Max could leave too, and he had. That was part of his feeling. He hoped that by leaving, just leaving he would find something real and big. For that is what his heart persistently sought.

In the Plaza, people moved about. Max, having nothing to do, sat on a bench. He listened to the clacking of shoes. He watched couples dance in the street. A drunk man danced alone, looking sad. A little girl jumped in a shallow puddle. Above these things – the hundreds of families and vendors and murals that lined the ground – sitting at the center of the square was a large bronze horseman statute. Max admired its noctilucent beauty. Beneath it a tiny old woman sat selling candy applies. She was murmuring something soft. Surely, thought Max, Christ would bless that woman and those apples. He had no doubt about that.

Continue here.