The Inability to Breathe

The war ended in 1996 so it must have just ended when I showed up in Guatemala. But I didn't know anything about it. I was just there to play guitar on the street and meet funny people. From a bus window, someone pointed out the camps where the rebels were being held for demobilization and all that. But I just nodded. It didn't seem all that interesting to me. The only other war-related thing I saw when I was there was graffiti on some house out in a mountain village saying, "the peace of the nation was bought with the blood of the pueblo." I think that's what it said anyway. My Spanish wasn't all that good.

Regarding music and funny people, though, a few anecdotes stand out.

I used to play music in the park in Antigua next to the big stone fountain, and this big guy with a big voice asked if I wanted to play in his band so I did. First we played at a little restaurant there in Antigua, a funny little town, to well-dressed men and women sitting at sporadic tables sipping wine and eating veal. It was dark outside (cobble stone streets and volcanoes dark against the moonlit sky.) We played for a while, and I sat there smug because it's funny finding myself before a foreign crowd and plus they gave me money and meal.

And Ricardo, the bar tender watched me affectionately out of the corner of his eye as he ran to and fro with bottles, trays and meals because one afternoon as the rain poured down I sat with him in a little bar called La Estrella and together we drank a liter or two of Gallo and talked of who knew what and somehow he lost my Walkman which was okay.

And the Mexican boyfriend of the restaurant's proprietor yelled out and hollered machismo euphorics inspired by the rock and roll and alcohol.

Three peace corps volunteers I had met two weeks before were sitting at a table, happy as happy could be.

It was getting late; I was getting drunk and soon I'd have to begin walking home. Down the narrow streets and past the park and fountain arching rainbows spraying in the night and the lame and homeless insane poet named Francisco who loved to scare away the little children with a very loud song as he beat on the strings of my guitar: "Palomita, donde vas?" And the little boys and girls would run away and scream, but not tonight. It was very late and everything was silent. And everything was freeze-framed like a Polaroid and I walked through the petrified wood forest of the stillness of my memories.

Later we had a gig in Guatemala City. It was my last day there and I was out of cash and I was going to be hitching back across Mexico to the States, the next day. So I hoped the bar owner would give us lots of money.

Before heading out to Guatemala City, I wandered around the park, trying to sell all my books, to make a little extra cash.

"Want to buy a book?" I asked everyone I met. "Do you like to read? This is a very good book. I'll sell it to you for ten Quetzals."

Happily, I found a couple buyers ("Yes," they said, "I'll buy that book") and walked away three dollars richer, three dollars more in my pocket. Then I went to Guatemala City.

First we went to the bar owner's house for dinner. His four young daughters, between seven and twelve, loved me calling me Pablo.

"Call me Pablo," I said, when they could not pronounce my name.

"Nate," their father corrected sternly.

"Pablo," the four girls chuckled behind their hands.

Then he took us to his bar, outside of which was a big poster announcing the arrival of our band: Live From Canada! And we played music and late that night, during one of our breaks, a brawl broke out and that was pretty funny.

I guess somebody pissed somebody off because everybody was shouting and shoving each another. People ran in from outside, wanting to join in.

I was leaning on the bar, in this little cantina in downtown Guatemala City, chuckling to myself at everybody bustling by in the smoky shadows. I took another sip of my beer. The rhythm guitar player on his fleet-footed exit grabbed me by the shoulder, so I followed him out the door. Out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody crash into a table, collapsing sprawled out on the floor. The two girls (daughters of a colonel) who came to all our shows, they were beside themselves with panic. By the time I got outside, their chauffeur had already whisked them away to the wealthy part of town.

We stood outside, waiting for everyone to calm back down. The son of the owner of the bar was standing with us, shaking his head disapprovingly.

"Before," he said, "Every weekend people are fighting here. Now not so many. There was much fighting here, before."

Eventually, we went back inside and signed a bunch of autographs for drunk people. I signed a Led Zeppelin CD cover. Then we left and walked back to the owner's house. We walked through Guatemala City alleyways, along the walls and fences, skirting puddles and crumpled newspapers on the ground, through the scattered buzzing flickering lights, orbited by our ever shifting shadows.

We walked back to the owner's house and lay down to sleep on his living room floor. But I could not fall asleep because I could not breathe. I lay there, arching my back with every breath wheezing in my lungs, tossing and turning and sitting up, my elbows locked, palms pressed against the floor. I lay back down and tried to fall asleep. The stale smell of smoke and alcohol clung to our clothing, as we lay sprawled out on the floor, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. The other three breathed deeply, regularly, ticking off the time with every breath. Tossing and turning a few hours later I found myself the patient of four very young nurses who hovered over me as the sun rose and they kept me awake, whispering, "Pablo, estas enfermo?" I had told them to call me Pablo. Nate was too hard to pronounce.

Eventually the sun itself came through the panels of the window on the east and through the lacy curtains in opaque beams diffracted.

"His name is Pablo," they whispered to one another. "Pablo, are you sick?"