Chapter 15

15

VALENTINA STOOD OUTSIDE THE FRONT DOOR OF IRINA PRIETO’S HOUSE AND PATTED her hairpins to make sure they were secure. She was wearing the same dress she had worn when they arrived in Gatún the day before—she hadn’t anticipated needing a change of clothes—and on top of that, without her usual cremes, her hair was a mess. Renata, apparently, did not even own a comb somehow. Yet despite her dishevelment, Valentina had forced herself to leave the house. The first thing she needed to do, she determined, was to talk to the neighbors, to find out who among them had received the same paper and who had signed it already.

She rapped her knuckles against Irina’s door.

“Valentina! Is it you?” Irina gasped when she opened it. Irina was ninety years old, and impossibly her hair was still a light shade of brown, though she did look frail in her housedress. A gray cat slunk around her ankles. “You remember Simón,” Irina said.

Valentina reached down to stroke the cat, but he whimpered and ducked away.

“Bah, ignore him,” Irina said. “He is more temperamental than me. But why are you here? Do you want to come in? For a coffee? Or a sweet? I have a few of those caramels that you used to like.”

Valentina smiled. She did like the caramel candies that Irina had always kept in a jar, but no, she was there for a different reason today.

“Irina, did you receive a notification about being required to move because of the plans for building a dam here?”

Irina’s face clouded. “Ah, yes.”

“Did you sign it?”

“Heavens no!”

Valentina smiled again. “Good. I just came to make sure.”

Irina scooped the cat up into her arms. “Tell her, Simón. I may be old, but I am not senile yet.”

At the next house, Salvador Bustos, too, invited Valentina inside, but Valentina got right to the point and was pleased when, like Irina, Salvador scoffed. “Why would I sign it? No. Absolutely not.”

At the house of Xiomara Vargas, Valentina also found Josefina Santí. Since being widowed, Xiomara and Josefina had become the best of friends, and when they insisted Valentina come in, not taking no for an answer, she saw that the two of them were embroidering a tablecloth. “I started at one end and Josefina at the other,” Xiomara said, “and the idea was to meet in the middle, but you can see how much farther I have gotten than her.”

Josefina laughed as she pulled the needle through. “Yes, and you can also see whose stitches are neater.”

Valentina quickly complimented the work of each before inquiring about the notification.

“You mean the eviction notice?” Xiomara said.

“I threw it in the garbage,” Josefina said without looking up.

“Claro, where it belongs.” Xiomara nodded. She looked at Valentina. “Why are you asking?”

“I just wanted to check. Renata received one, and she has not signed it, but I hear that other people”—she did not want to name names—“have.”

“Other people are imbeciles,” Josefina said.

Xiomara nodded again, but she looked at Valentina nervously. “Is it a lot of people? You can tell us.”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“So what if it is?” Josefina said. “Those who sign it will go and those who don’t will stay, no?”

Xiomara glanced at Valentina again. “Is that how it works? I can’t remember what the notice said.”

Valentina chewed the inside of her cheek. There were too many questions, and going door-to-door like this was not the most efficient way to get to the bottom of them. “Perhaps we should have a town meeting,” she suggested. Both Xiomara and Josefina said they would attend.

At each house after that, besides asking about the eviction notice, as she started to call it, Valentina also mentioned the meeting. The majority of people she visited had not signed the paper yet, thank God, although a handful confessed that they had—some because they felt that they had no choice and some because they viewed the relocation as, truthfully, not that bad. The latter rationale left Valentina stunned. Both rationales broke her heart.

At the end of the day, Valentina circled back to Irina and Salvador to invite them to the church, too. Irina said, “Wonderful. A church is the perfect place for us to figure out how to give them hell.”

***

THE INTERIOR OF the Catholic church in Gatún was traditional in design, with fifteen rows of wooden pews to either side of a center aisle and a modest altar in front of an equally modest wooden crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to the cross in his crown of thorns. Two lancet windows were on each of the walls.

Into this space, in addition to herself, Renata, and Joaquín, fewer than a dozen people had amassed, a number that to Valentina was slightly disappointing. She had hoped there would be twice as many.

Standing at the front of the church, Valentina waited to see if any more people would file in. The residents who were there, however, were growing restless—Dante Bustamientos had already gone outside once to smoke—and when Father Suárez, who was sitting in the first pew next to Renata and Joaquín and who had granted Valentina use of the church, gently motioned that perhaps it was time to begin, Valentina cleared her throat.

“Friends,” she said. It had seemed like sacrilege to stand on the altar, so she was standing in front of it instead, level with everyone else. “Friends, bienvenidos.”

She waited for people to quiet. She had never addressed a crowd before, yet she was not nearly as nervous as she had thought she might be.

“It brings me great joy to be here with you all, but the reason for our gathering brings me enormous concern.” She had come up with those words earlier this morning and had been waiting to say them out loud. “You all received the paper saying that by April the entire town of Gatún will be forced to move to the eastern bank of the river so that here, where we are at this very moment, a dam can be built for the canal.”

Several people nodded.

“Well, I for one do not think that is right.”

“Neither do I!” Salvador Bustos shouted.

“Nor me either,” said someone else, but Valentina did not catch who it was.

“Bueno. We are here, then, to discuss our options.”

Alfredo Ríos, the local barber who was seated in the third pew, said, “Options? We don’t have options, do we? We all know the dam will be built. The work will not stop just because we happen to be in the way.”

Irina said, “But couldn’t the dam be built somewhere else? Why does it have to be here?”

“That’s a good question,” Valentina said. “Does anyone have a pencil with them?” In her pocket she had Renata’s eviction notice, which she had folded into quarters and brought with her in case she needed to reference it during the meeting. Now she pulled it out and smoothed it open on her thigh, and when Father Suárez handed her a pencil, she wrote the question down.

Hilda Sáez said, “One option we have is to pray.”

Alfredo said, “Prayer is not going to help us right now.”

Calmly, Hilda responded, “Prayer helps everyone always.”

Alfredo rolled his eyes, and Father Suárez momentarily stood and turned toward the crowd. “We should continue to pray,” he said, smiling, “for in prayer we communicate our true selves with God, but of course that should not stop us from doing other things as well.”

“Like what?” Alfredo asked when Father Suárez sat down.

“I agree with Alfredo,” Dante said. “There are no options for us. For the dam to exist, the town cannot. It is as simple as that.”

“If that’s what you believe, then why are you here?” Raúl Saavedra shouted to him.

“Because I was invited , Raúl,” Dante said.

“Not by me,” Raúl muttered.

Again, Father Suárez stood up and turned. “Gentlemen, please.”

Dante and Raúl had a long-standing antagonism, something to do with a fence, but Valentina did not want to get into that now, and she was grateful when Father Suárez looked at her and said, “Go on.”

“Thank you,” she said, and looked out again over the small crowd. “According to the notice we have six months until the relocation begins. That gives us six months to fight. Even if today we do not know what to do, even if some of us believe we are without options, six months gives us time to think of some, no?”

Everyone was quiet. Valentina had hoped for some agreement, but when she looked to Salvador, who had been the first to say that he, too, did not want to go, he said nothing. Josefina, she noticed, was silently sewing the tablecloth she had brought. Dante could not stop bouncing his knee up and down.

“We cannot just surrender!” Valentina said.

Alfredo scoffed. “I would rather surrender than be crushed beneath rock.”

“Who is being crushed?” Esmeralda asked.

“You, if you stay.”

Esmeralda gasped, and Father Suárez stood for a third time and said, “Let us all remember to speak with the love of the Lord in our hearts.”

Valentina felt the meeting getting away from her. Alfredo’s fatalism had infected the air, and aside from Irina’s question and Hilda’s invocation for prayer, no one had yet produced any ideas as to what they could do. Including her. She glanced at Joaquín, but he merely sat there with his beatific grin, a grin that was usually endearing but that at the moment was extremely irksome. How could he be grinning at a time such as this? Was he even listening? She had the urge to shout her line about requiring his undivided attention, but as she was standing in front of so many people, she did not. She looked at Renata instead, hoping that she might chime in, but Renata was staring at Valentina as though she were watching a theater production instead of attending a meeting she might participate in herself. Valentina loved her sister, but there were times—and this was one of them—when she would have appreciated Renata showing some fire, some verve, for God’s sake! But since they were children, that had not been her way. Renata instead went along with the current, a trait that could often be useful, except that in this instance going along with the current would mean ending up on the other side of the river.

Valentina took a deep breath and peered at the faces before her. What could they do? What could any of them realistically do? But there had to be something, no? She was about to ask whether anyone other than Alfredo had something to say when, in the fourth pew from the rear, Justo de Andrade, who must have been seventy years old by now, gripped the seat in front of him and stood. It took several seconds of effort before he was up on his feet, by which time everyone had turned around to watch.

“It is a matter of respect,” Justo said.

Justo had a tree farm with orange trees and lime trees, caimito and calabash. Every year at Christmas, he welcomed the children of Gatún to the farm to pick as many oranges as they could carry, no bags or buckets allowed. It was a tradition that Valentina had loved when she was a girl.

In a slow, measured tone, Justo went on. “Gatún is an important place. It has been important for centuries.” From the crowd came a smattering of assent. Salvador briefly clapped. “Sadly it seems the North Americans do not understand that. To them, we know noth ing and have nothing—nothing worth knowing or having, as far as they are concerned. I have heard them say that the work they are planning will bring things like progress and civilization and modernity to this place—I am sure you have heard those words as well—as if the tools we have already created, the buildings we have already constructed, the land we have already cultivated, the society we have already organized is not, somehow, progress or civilization or modernity, but outside of those things. As if we are nothing more than primitive people with a few primitive huts that can be so easily moved. We—all of us in this church—know that is untrue, and even if they do not, I ask at the very least that they respect us, respect us as we for so long have respected them.”

For a moment there was absolute silence. A stunned vibration coursed through the air. Justo nodded, as though he had said his piece, and lowered himself back into the pew.

“Thank you,” Valentina finally said, near tears.

“Justo for president!” Raúl shouted, and a few people laughed.

“I’m sorry,” Alfredo said once everyone had turned around again, “but they are not going to give us respect just because we ask them to.”

“Well, they certainly won’t if we don’t ask,” Irina said.

“Forgive me,” Xiomara said, “but respect aside, what makes them think they have the right to force us out of our homes?”

Alfredo said, “Because our own government gave them that right.”

“Is that true?”

Máximo Pérez, who was an attorney, said, “Yes. According to the terms of the original treaty.”

“But why would our government have done such a thing?”

“Because the United States paid them ten million dollars!” Alfredo said.

“But no one paid us,” Xiomara pointed out.

“Well, perhaps they should,” Salvador said. “Either they pay us fairly or we refuse to go.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Dante said.

Xiomara said, “Forgive me again, but I still do not understand. Our government gave them the right to do what exactly? Build a canal?”

Máximo said, “And to use any land necessary for the purpose of the canal, yes.”

“And that is Gatún?”

“Yes.”

“But don’t we also have rights?”

Josefina, who was sitting next to Xiomara and through everything had been sewing, said, “Perhaps we should ask that as well.”

“Ask who?” Salvador said.

“Our government. Or the National Assembly. Or whoever is in charge.”

“We could write them a letter!” Valentina said, holding up the paper and pencil she still had in her hands.

“A letter?” Alfredo frowned.

“We all received letters, no? So we will reply with one of our own.”

“A letter of resistance,” Salvador said.

“Yes, we can ask all of our questions and list our concerns.”

“And then what?” Alfredo asked.

Valentina thought for a moment. “And then my husband can deliver the letter to the government offices when he goes to the city for work.” She turned toward Joaquín, who looked at her startled, like a schoolboy caught not paying attention in class. “Won’t you?” she said.

It was possible he did not even know what he was agreeing to, but Joaquín, bless him, said, “Of course, my love.”

***

FROM GATúN, THE train took nearly two hours to reach Panama City, and quickly they had become the best two hours of Joaquín’s life. Actually, that was not true. The two hours home, after a day of work was done, were the best, but the two hours there were a close second. Two peaceful hours in which he had to do nothing but sit and rest.

He would have liked to actually sleep on the train, but despite the early hour, he had found that since staying in Gatún, he was never tired enough for that. Renata had made a bed of straw and grass on the floor of the unused bedroom, a bed that had appeared lumpy and uncomfortable, but after sleeping on it the first night, Joaquín had woken up more rested than he had been in years, perhaps because of the bed, or perhaps because of how much quieter it was in Gatún compared to the city, or perhaps because of how much cooler the air was on the floor of the house than on the second story of the apartment building, even with its breeze. The important thing was that in Gatún he was sleeping like a rock. The salubrious effects of their environment must have extended to Valentina as well, for even she had not woken him up with her dreams.

Notably, he was also eating better than he had in some number of years. The news that Valentina and he were staying in Gatún had motivated neighbor after neighbor to come to the house, their arms laden with sugared breads and bowls of arroz con pollo and platters heaped with tender tamales. On top of that, Renata, it turned out, was an excellent cook. In recent years, now that Horacio was gone, Valentina had not put the same effort into cooking as she once had. Joaquín had thought at first that something had happened to his tongue to cause the meals that had once tasted flavorful to be so unflavorful now, but when he bit into a banana or a pineapple or slurped the pulpy juice of a coconut, those all tasted the same as they ever had. Perhaps Valentina was skipping steps in the recipes or neglecting to add salt, but the bottom line was that she now cooked with less care than she used to, and the food—and his belly—suffered for it. Not so in Gatún. In Gatún his belly was as full as the sea.

In reality, the only negative aspect of staying in Gatún was that Valentina would not stand for any frisky behavior due to the fact that they were sleeping in what used to be her parents’ bedroom. It was not entirely clear to Joaquín why that should stop them, but when he tried anything, Valentina tsked and said, “Not here.” His wife, after all this time, still drove him wild, and he would have liked to do something about it. The most Valentina would allow was a kiss, but the kisses, far from satisfying his desire, only strengthened it. He resorted to taking care of his needs in the dark after she dozed off. Come to think of it, perhaps that was another reason he had been sleeping so well.

In Panama City, Joaquín stepped off the train and began walking in the direction of the Presidential Palace. It had taken over an hour for the residents at the meeting yesterday to write a letter to the government officials in Panamá. There had been vociferous debate over what to include. Joaquín had tried to stay out of it for the most part. But in the end they had come up with a letter comprised of several fundamental questions: Why had the government done this to them? Was there nowhere else the dam could reasonably go? Did anyone, either the Panamanian government or the United States government, care about the misery they were inflicting upon the people of Gatún, people who were being forced to sacrifice everything they had worked for and built? Did they not deserve more respect? And what would happen to them if they went? Were they not entitled to fair compensation for all that they were being obligated to give up? Would they be entitled to future protection if they acquiesced? Could anyone guarantee that after this they would be left in peace?

All logical questions, Joaquín thought, and now it was up to him to make sure that their questions reached someone.

Joaquín had never been to the Presidential Palace before, and it was refreshing to see different buildings and plazas as he made his way there. He smiled at the bougainvillea blooming on the balconies, and when a woman leaned over the railing to shake out a towel that rained dust down over his head, he even smiled at that. He knew the general direction—south from the passenger terminal, then east to the bay—and as the streets were more or less laid out in a grid, it was easy to keep track of where he was. Except that after walking for ten minutes, Joaquín had the feeling that somehow, at some juncture, he had taken a wrong turn. He walked up to the nearest street sign, which said in Spanish, “West 13th Street.” For a moment, that only made him more confused. “West 13th Street” was not a street name that was familiar to him. He stood on the corner and turned around and around. It was not until he saw the cattle warehouse in the distance that everything became clear. This was Slaughterhouse Street. Or it had been Slaughterhouse Street until someone had apparently renamed it. Joaquín looked at the street sign again. Truthfully, he had always found Slaughterhouse Street to be a disgusting name and of course West 13th Street did not sound disgusting in the least, so arguably the new name was an improvement. But West 13th Street! Joaquín shook his head.

There had been a time during La Separación when he had been hopeful about the fate of Panamá. It had seemed that at last, freed from the tentacles of Bogotá, Panamanians would be allowed to manage their own destiny. They would be allowed to take advantage of their geographic good fortune and reap the rewards. And yes, he had understood that it was not quite as simple as that, nothing was simple of course, but he had believed that in time, everything would work out. But now with the letter in his pocket and the new street sign before him, Joaquín felt his hope drain away. He cringed, remembering himself standing atop a crate in the fish market, sermonizing to the crowds. He squinted again at the sign. West 13th Street! No Panamanian would have given this street that name. It was so... bland. Scrubbed spotlessly clean. Disconnected entirely from the history of what this area had for so long been, which, yes, yes, was poor and smelled to high heaven, but that is what it was. That was the truth. There on the street corner Joaquín made an agonized sound—something between a moan and a roar. Then he took a deep breath and turned.

Eventually, Joaquín found his way to the Presidential Palace, a beautiful mansion facing the bay. It was surrounded by security forces who would not allow him to enter, so the best he could manage was to give the letter to a guard who said he would deliver it, even though Joaquín did not really believe that he would.

***

THAT EVENING, WHEN Joaquín walked into the house in Gatún, he found Valentina on her hands and knees, her face inches from a newspaper that was spread open on the dirt floor.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She did not move. Her rear end up in the air like it was gave him a shiver of pleasure.

“I’m reading the newspaper,” Valentina said.

“But why are you down on the floor, my love?”

“Because the table is covered.”

The table was indeed covered with dishes and utensils and bowls, which Joaquín assumed had been left behind by Renata, who he noticed now was nowhere to be found.

“Where is your sister?” Joaquín asked.

“She had an errand in town.”

“Oh?” Joaquín grinned. It had been a dispiriting day, but perhaps now, if they had the house to themselves...

Before he could get any further with such a thought, Valentina said, “Did you deliver the letter?”

“I did,” he said slowly.

“What does that mean?”

“I took the letter to the Presidential Palace, but I was not permitted inside.”

Finally, Valentina sat back on her heels and looked up at him.

“Okay. So?”

“So I gave the letter to a guard who promised he would deliver it.”

“Promised?”

“Said.”

“Deliver it to whom?”

“The president, I suppose.”

Valentina sighed. Joaquín knew that she had hoped he would have something more encouraging to report. He himself had hoped the same.

“Perhaps we should think of something else,” Valentina said.

Joaquín looked at his poor wife down on the floor, newspapers scattered about. He suspected she was trying to glean any new details about the dam. It was a shame because if she were in a different mood, he would gladly get down on the floor with her. He would not object to certain activities down on the floor. And then Joaquín had an idea. He would not have called himself a visionary. If anything, Valentina was more that than he. But the sight of her sitting before him now inspired a thought.

“We should sit,” he said.

“What?”

“In front of the house.”

Valentina pushed out her lips as if what he was saying did not make any sense.

“To protect it. Or at least to show that we are willing to protect it.” Joaquín’s voice rose. He believed he was onto something. “Imagine if everyone in the town did the same. Imagine every resident sitting in one long line in front of the houses along the river here. It would be like a wall. Like a barricade! Like a demonstration of solidarity that cannot be ignored!”

Valentina cocked her head slightly. Joaquín could see she was coming around to the idea.

“And we could chant,” she said.

“Yes, yes, we should absolutely chant.”

“And hold flags in the air.”

“Flags are very symbolic.”

“And perhaps get even more people involved. People from other towns.”

“The more the merrier.”

“We would welcome anyone who believes in the cause.”

“And who wouldn’t believe!”

She gestured at the newspapers arrayed around her. “Maybe the newspaper will even write about it.”

“They should.”

Valentina struck the fist of one hand into the open palm of the other. “We are not a people to whom things can be done.”

“No.”

“We are a people who can do things!”

“Yes,” Joaquín said excitedly. He loved it when his wife got animated like this. “That could be the chant!”

“No, that is a terrible chant.”

“Of course. We will think of some other chant.”

Valentina, his beautiful wife, looked up at him with a determination that might have been forged out of steel. “So we know what we will do. We will sit and we will not be moved.”