CHAPTER FOUR (4)

By 1912, a hardened and loquacious Pancho had created an empire. Along with his own contribution, the exports of salitre sailed to two million tons per year, and for every ton that was exported – a share went directly into the firm and deeply protected pockets of the Antofagasta family. So big did his fortune grow, that his grandfather (the second and only remaining son of Pancho Antofagasta) repeated listlessly throughout his exceedingly comfortable life, “A diamond as big as the Ritz, my boy. A diamond as big as the Ritz.” Of course, this was an exaggeration, because the Ritz was humongous. Carlos suspected that his grandfather only referred to it so often because it was built in 1940, and his grandfather spent a considerable amount of that decade chasing fast women and drinking there.

            His grandfather, Adelmo Meli Valdivia Antofagasta, squandered a vast amount of money but barely put a dent into the dome of his father’s financial legacy. During his younger years he was a pratical student and learned English by an American au pare by the name of Lucy. She was a cynic and taught Adelmo to be just that if not more, and eventually Adelmo’s newly-learned cynicism got the best of him and he self-medicated himself into late night rendezvous with femme-fatal want-to-be starlettes of the 40s.  He did nothing with his life but travel and study until the age of forty-five when, by chance, he met a nineteen year-old oblivious woman (girl, rather) named Olga Kuntzmann. She was daughter of the Kuntzmann beer company, comprised of a collection of German escapees after the war who had made their fortunes from it and settled nicely in what they deemed “some warm foreign country in South America.” Their Italian counterparts, whom they visited often, settled on the other side of the Andes in Argentina, and Carlos’ grandfather spent many a summer in Buenos Ares eating salty, oily pizza and drinking his warm ocean-sprayed days away.

            But after he met Ms. Kuntzmann, supposed heiress to the Kuntzmann kismet, and after he realized that his father was ailing from old age, his demeanor changed towards that mysterious human notion to progress one’s seed. A marriage ensued and a baby was born, and then a whole team of children were born and suddenly Adelmo found himself a responsible man with a family and a seemingly ever-profitable copper mine.

            His children took after him, but like he, did not nearly affect the substantial fortune that the Antofagasta family had built. His first son, Sebastian, fell victim to the ideals of Marxism. After long, drawn out roller-coaster rides within his family, Adelmo decided secretly to excommunicate his first son from the family, and in his own rapture, sent Seba to the very place he belonged, so he said. Adelmo told his family one night over a spread of duck and sauvignon blanc amidst gold-plated dining ware and silver spoons, that Seba had decided to visit Cuba to join what he’d hought was “righteous.” And so, Carlos never met his great uncle, Sebastian Meli Valdivi Antofagasta.

            But at that dining table that night, lined by illiterate Mapuche “help,” Carlos’ father Adolpho (named after Adelmo’s apparent righteous cause, but more influenced by a WWII adoring Olga Kuntzmann) watched with sparkling bright eyes. And so the tradition continued, the Antofagastas conservatively lived near their volatile land stuffed richly with copper, which exploded not more than four years ago. Of course, there were constantly explosions occurring in the mine itself, but a more political explosion tore the mine hill from hill, deep hole from deep hole.

            After the new, and quite liberal, Allende regime nationalized Chilean land, the fortune for the Antofagastas was more than put into jeopardy. In fact, as Olga Kuntzmann threw her milky head into the oven, Allenda addressed his new nation that “the state of capitalist exploitation based on the private property of the land, of the instruments of production, of change, of credit and of transportation, necessarily should be replaced for an economic socialist in which said state private property be transformed into collective.” The dynasty was over.

CHAPTER FOUR (3)

After the point at which Carlos dared not remember, his great grandfather – Fransisco Meli Valdivia Antofogasta – was a subsistence farmer on the border of Arica in what as then Bolivia. His name was a tossed salad of harsh colonization and indigenous persistence: Fransisco because his mother, supposedly, wanted to give an easy name that his siblings – which he was brought up to take care of – could pronounce as Pancho because, for whatever reason, Fransiscos at the time always ended up being called Pancho or Panchito when they were young. Meli (meaning “four” in Mapuche) retained his indigenous blood and became a source of conflict later on in his life when he joined the conservative riech of Pinochet. Valdivia represented the foundation of Chile, which, though his family should very well have been compelled to erase from their past, came from Pedro Valdivia himself – he who civilized the area. The story goes that the Mapuches in the seventeenth century had a choice: to take a last name (usually consisting of the Spainard whom they belonged to or were raped by), or die. Obviously, the Mapuche in which Carlos descended chose to wake rather than sleep, and so the curse of his oppression reached far beyond his days. Like in the Old Testament, thought Carlos to himself in the cab, where He smote those who sinned by punishing their future generations.

After serving his time as a lowly private in the war between Chile and Péru and Bolivia, which Carlos had heard by many generations in his family was known to his great grandfather as a “fluke,” a little schism between two countries that, as his great grandfather used to say, was just another war between who actually created pisco, he eventually retained land on which the entire subterranean level of his 2500 acres was a substance close to gold. Until 12, Carlos never understood why his family always referred to the substance that created his relative’s fortune as “close to gold.” But as his eyes poured after a seemingly annoying and insignificant history book, he found the word “salitre.” Ah, salitre: the foundation on which modern Chile was built, destroyed, taxed, exploited, and finally destroyed again. Nitrates went to fuel wars abroad and domestically, while making his great grandfather a literal trillionaire (in terms of Chilean pesos) – one of the first of his kind in a rapidly growing and even more rapidly inflating Chilean economy.

            In 1879, el Compañía de Salitre y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta was created. This is where, like Velcro, Pancho affixed his final origin: Antofagasta. From what Carlos had picked up between long conversations between his family members, and dreary days at school, Antofagasta was a region that came from other indigenous languages not of the Mapuche idiom. Apparently, it meant “hidden copper” because the land of Antofagasta was home to millions of dollars in more than one resource. Why is great grandfather chose salitre instead of copper, Carlos could not discern. But, the business was more than profitable: it brought connections and more resources turn in turn was currently allowing him to call the affluent barrio of Bellavista his home.

CHAPTER FOUR (2)

A wretched gust blew suddenly in all of their faces and the girls were quieted and the boys even more sombered. Carlos peered out from the laquered wooden window sill and curiously wondered why in hell those wonderful school girls would stop laughing just because of a little wind. But the moment soon passed and again the chatter raced by the window. Above them the Andes cowered ominously and degradingly, their caps gleaming some unspeakable white against the grey sky and whispering to their sea just out of reach. The beer was beginning to hit him harshly and he could feel his cheeks blush and his ears heat up. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes on the crowd and remained nursing the ever-emptying glass before him.

            A few hours later and a few more beers, it had turned dark outside but the diner remained perfectly well-lighted. Customers went in an out, the crowed varied as it always did. It was always constant, regardless of tribe, regardless of their make or their model. It was almost eight. Eight was when the streets became empty shells of the lively asphalt ridden ways and avenues they had been during that afternoon. Eight was when everyone turned-in, when the entire city of Santiago fell silent and scared. 

            It was at this time that Carlos decided to head up into his portion of the city. He bundled himself in his alpaca sweater and threw on his plastic windbreaker and prepared for the journey – at least to find a cab. As he stepped outside the wind instantly threatened his pores and took his breath from him. Winter in Santiago had always been on the colder side (perhaps because the humidity from the ocean could not extend to the area), but this particular winter in 1974 was especially frigid.

            As Carlos sat in the back of the cab rubbing his gloved hands together to ignite some sort of feeling in them, he maneuvered himself.

            “Barrio Bellavista, Cerro San Cristobal porfa…”

            The cab driver, wearing a pauper’s hat made from steely looking wool, glanced in his rear view mirror. His face seemed condensed like it had become the victim of a trash compactor, and his teeth were few. The salt and pepper hair so inherent to the Mapuche plagued this man, and though Carlos knew that they were proud of this, he despised the fact that his father, too, sustained the mark of Chile’s poorest, Chile’s most ignorant, and most restrictive group to his own political beliefs.

            “Si, señor. Esta desde aca?” asked the cab driver.

            “Si, si, po. Conduzca, porfa.”

            Carlos felt he’d been quite frank with the man, but it was what one must do to his class. The street beyond was dim now, but Carlos could still feel the penetrating wind and deep, humidless chill in his being. His father had walked these streets, his grandfathers had walked these same streets, and his great grandfathers had walked these streets. Beyond that he was ashamed. He dared not recess into his past beyond that point, for he was just like this man in front of him: a man caught between famine and servitude and crushed beneath his government. Below was all that could afford him, and even then he could only go six feet deep.

CHAPTER FOUR (1)

CHAPTER FOUR: Las Latifundistas

           

            Swift, piercing winds swept across the foothills of the ever-snow capped Andes as Carlos sipped on a smooth lager in a dirty glass. The city was filled with sounds of business; impenetrable humming emanated off of the concrete sidewalks where men in business suits and multi-faceted ties walked briskly, but not too briskly, for the severe chill in the wind kept them quite at bay. Their thick dark hair and wild eyebrows blew softly despite the rigorousness of the wind, revealing smooth coffee foreheads and tiny but intense eyes. They all carried briefcases made from genuine Argentine leather and most carried a Lucky Strike between their teeth.

            Carlos watched from inside a well-lighted diner on a corner in Santiago’s business district. Those men, all alike, all alike, would ebb out into the sidewalk in waves with their fancy briefcases and disappear past Carlos’ window. They were faceless; all that prevailed were the dark skin and the bushy thick hair. Every so often one of these might drop his cigarette in the face of wind that was so intent on going against his own path, and then he might stop to pick it up off a muddy concrete square, then proceed on after replacing it between his lips. But after the come-on in high capacity, the crowd would dissipate for the most part, and Carlos would find himself akin with half a beer and an empty window.

            At about five, the men would stumble back in the opposite direction – this time their hair a bit oily and faces a bit sullen. And everything was all just a bit more of this and a bit more of that. Their faces were more haggard and tough like a sinewy piece of steak. The entire visage seemed to be a kind of strange dream to Carlos – men falling back from their nine-to-fives broken or at least somewhat dismantled. But they continued to rear like drones, one after the other while the wind made them squint and silently plead for their penthouses and five bedroom flats and wonderful wives and astute children.

            The flow of men again began to wane, and those astute children replaced them. The tribe of school children flooded rather than flowed into the street. The girls dressed in pleated navy-blue skirts with leg warmers and Mary-Janes. Their cornstarched and heavily ironed white shirts peeked out beneath navy-blue windbreakers embroidered with La Escuela Santa Maria, or Corazón Sacrado, or something of the like. Bright teeth and long black hair, sleekly brushed or tightly platted fought against the wind with youthful vigor. They giggled and played with their red and blue striped ties.

            And the boys watched them if they were old enough. Some watched them even though they weren’t old enough. More somber, they carried heavy loads of mathematic books and copies of Paradise Lost and the Bible. These boys did not smile, but they looked on as their fathers had. Carlos could see in those deep brown irises that there were secrets that were untouchable by a fourteen-year-old’s mind, some untouchable by any mind.  

CHAPTER THREE (18)

Amanda turned from the table and immediately the corners of her mouth turned from fake smile to an intense scowl. Pigs, she thought, and walked over to the computer station to input the orders. As she entered in the last drink, she felt a tapping on her left shoulder. There stood the man with a sunglasses tan and an affinity for gin asking her to please take his credit card.

            “You see,” he rubbed his neck nervously and whipped his head around to see if the other man at his table was spying, “I don’t want my father to pay tonight. Could you just slip this is your little book there and pretend like nothing happened, I just don’t want him to know.”

            “Absolutely,” smiled Amanda.

            “Great.” And just like that the man sauntered back to the little booth that presumably held his mother, his father, and his wife. Yes, he was the responsible child.

            Amanda focused her eyes on the black credit card the man had given to her, the name read in tiny machine printed letters, John P. Babbit, M.D. and below that in the same type, Babbit Chiropractic Care. She smirked and put the card in her book, as he’d instructed, for safe keeping until it was time to pay the bill. Absolutely you can pay, Mr. Babbit, she thought to herself.

            And so, work continued on at the little Italian restaurant Corrotto’s. Everything was warm and swell as if Tuscany’s breathtaking grass fields and deep green cypress tress were floating just outside the heavy mahogany doors. A composure was brought to Carlos, wafting on those famous Italian breezes between ancient, woody, olive trees. A certain equilibrium settled beneath his salt-and-pepper hair as he greeted more and more guests, as he watched his dutiful minions pour out drinks and drop off steaming wicker baskets of bread, as his bank account piled and his corporate superiors above watched over him like benevolent gods who’d just created another Hercules, another David. Yes, this was his restaurant and he was proprietor. This was his Jerusalem, and his restaurant the holy temple.

            But beyond the city on the hill, Amanda thought of the sweet immortality and boundlessness of Tribulations. How sweet, how much sweeter than any known confection created by paltry man, would the body of Christ be as she finally embraced him. How sweet it might be…

            But Mitzi thought only of his perfect half-organic half-machine contraptions that lay waiting for him in his bedroom when he returned. The suck, suck of the water as it nourished though plastic, gossamer tubes as they stuck this way and that out of the body of the whole monster. His heaven would be here soon…

            But Toddy thought only, as he gulped down the remaining drops of a nice bottle of chianti left on table forty-three, how entirely inebriated he really was, and how entirely he liked it that way. Only four more hours until his shift was over, and then, then he could caress the pleasant saccharine fluid of Schwampagne betwixt his tongue and palette and dream about the mischief that might ensure later on. Only then, only then…

            But clearly outside the bounds of sanity, as though it appeared, Squirley swam deeper and deeper into the murky coy pond of paranoia and wondered when exactly it would culminate into Amanda’s ridiculous notion Tribulations. When might all these rules stop? Then, when might he trust a man like Gato or a man like Carlos or a man even like Toddy with his very identity, his very being? Man, he thought, might it be sweet… 

CHAPTER THREE (17)

Amanda had headed to the other side of the restaurant and hovered over her table. Her pink tie, covered in a pattern with tiny white crosses embroidered into the silk, hung dangerously close to the olive oil dish. She addressed her table of four, two couples. The first couple on her left side had to be in their seventies by now; the man sat hunched over and continuously chewed his cud. His fat, purple lips grinded painfully together, but at a sideways angle, lubricated only by what came from the cud turning tumultuously in the throat below. His eyelids drooped; they had given up to the endless fight of gravity and their capillaries exposed red and purple lines. The woman, perhaps ten years younger, seemed weighted down by so many ounces of gold and limitless karats of diamonds. Her scrawny vein-ridden arms sat folded neatly on the table, while a shawl covered her shoulders. Of course she had thinning but well curled short hair but close to the head, and just a dash of blue shadow about her eyelids.

            The couple that sat directly across from them in the booth looked at ease. They were probably in their late forties to early fifties. The man had an expensive light blue polo shirt on to cover his small gut, a leather braided belt that connected with a clanging, metal coverlet, which held up khaki golfing shorts. His hair had just become frail, and he probably cherished every hair that remained peeping out from his reddened scalp. His nose was globular and swollen, a fact most gin drinkers beheld. He had a subtle sunglasses tan from being “at the holes” too often, especially on Fridays, when his chiropractic office closed early at two. His wife was blonde and drenched in too much perfume. Her nails were manicured by a woman name Choi, who worked at the most prestigious Vietnamese spa in town, named aptly, Happy Nail. The woman wore an enormous diamond encased in platinum that hung between two flawlessly proportioned breasts – the work of Dr. M. Goldenstein, plastic surgeon and golfing buddy to her husband. The chiffon shirt she wore to cover them was faintly diaphanous which paired well with her personality. Amanda more than understood that this woman wouldn’t be eating much tonight, or any night for that matter. No, she would stick to either her wine, a Flirtini, or a combination of the two.

            “Good evening folks! How are you doing this fine Friday night?” began Amanda.

            They all nodded and the older man who was too hunched over to look at her muttered something that seemed like, “We are all doing fine.”

            “Excellent. Can I start you of with a glass of wine, perhaps a bottle from our very selective wine list? How about a martini, ma’am?” she directed the message to the woman with fake breasts. “I’ll start with the ladies first. For you, ma’am?” She turned her head to the older woman who could barely lift her neck to address her waitress, due to the onslaught of precious metals.

            “I’ll have a glass of the Veramiente sauvignon blanc, oh, and a glass of water.”

            “And for you, ma’am?” She now directed her attention again towards Fake Breasts.

            “Me? Hmm. I am thinking about either a white zinfandel or an apple martini. What do you think?”

            What Amanda actually thought was this: This woman knows nothing about wine because, one, she is thinking about drinking a white zinfandel with… well with probably a half a meatball, if that. Secondly, she knows nothing about her age because she is also considering a martini that high school girls drink when they have busty little sleepovers. Amanda wanted to tell this woman that her body was, as they say, a temple, and that she shouldn’t be putting a drop of liquor in her already emaciated and adulterated blood stream to begin with. Who knows what the effect of saline stuffed between muscle and major organs added with alcohol could be. Instead, she replied:

            “Go with the zinfandel ma’am, its light and probably sweeter than the martini in comparison.” Plus, the glass of wine was almost double what the martini in price.

            “I’ll go with that, then, thank you.”

            “Gentleman?” coaxed Amanda.

             The drooping man said, after swallowing a little bit of cud though as not to spit any out, “I’ll have a Manhattan… bourbon.”

            “Excellent choice, sir. And for you, sir?”

            “Let’s see… I’ll have a gin martini, on the rocks. Make it as dry as possible. And tell your bartender over there not to be shy, m’kay, sweetie?”

            Amanda nodded and loathed this man.

            “Alright, folks, I’ll get those drinks out as soon as possible. And, of course, some of our fresh bread.”

            The four had already started discussing some other matter – something about the man’s chiropractic business – and barely noticed that she had said her goodbyes. 

CHAPTER THREE (16)

“Young man?” called a lady patron at the table with the Italian soda and perfectly ringletted child.  Who me, thought Squirley to himself, I’m like twenty-eight, lady. But he responded sincerely, “Yes?”

            “My Cindy here is complaining that the soda isn’t sweet enough.”

            “Well, let me get you another one right away Ma’am.”

            Ryan reached for the Italian soda. It’s cream had begun to separate from the watery liquid of the soda water, forming what looked like a sour layer of milk gone bad. On the bottom, a layer of thick raspberry syrup loomed; all three layers had separated and Ryan realized that the concoction needed merely to be stirred again. Shegently took hold of his wrist as he reached for it and eyed him up and down breaking him with a scowl, “Next time, add more syrup.” With total seriousness, she moved not a muscle in her tightened face and looked him directly into his eyes. “You got that?”

            A pause. The hate welled up in him. “Yes Ma’am.”

            He thus imagined a game show as he took the drink in question to the kitchen, with a skinny bronzed aged man in a preened black suit and striped red and blue tie. He held a thin microphone with a bulbous piece of felt at the top and reminded the audience to “spay and neuter you animals.” Squirley often imagined this show, the set embellished with browns and mauves and oranges and turquoise; the set was right from the seventies. Big blocks of color and straight edges formed the furniture and the prizes behind a wheel-of-fortune type deal. The audience cheered for Squirley as he took the pegs in his hands and swayed his body, using all the force he could possible muster, and spun the wheel. The cheering grew louder and louder and he raised his eyes towards the contraption’s title: The Tip-O-Meter. The wheel kept spinning and spinning, and finally began to slow, but the clapping never ceased, the cheering only roared like waves crashing against some sublime cliff. The skinny man with the microphone became larger and larger, and the audience cheered and the wheel’s colors were spinning too fast. As the wheel began to seriously slow, he saw his demise, the flapping peg landed on a “$0” sign and the audience booed, and the announcer sang, “Too bad for Mr. Squirley! Too bad for Mr. Squirley! Too bad, too bad.”

            He sprang out of his thought as Amanda raised her voice to him, “You gonna move or sit there all day?”

            Squirley stirred the same drink without adding anything to it, and sped out of the kitchen through the white flapping doors that shut tightly behind him.

            “Here you are Little Lady,” he set the same drink (though now stirred for the second time) in front of the child. He caught the eyes of her mother and his heart had begun to beat furiously – he feared the beating beneath his tie would give him away.

            “Much better, mommy.” She wiped her mouth with her sleeve leaving a frothy stain.

            The mother’s eyes softened on her daughter, but scorned Ryan’s presence. He walked away with the “$0” sign stuck in his temples.

CHAPTER THREE (15)

His wife probably didn’t even want eggplant parmesean to begin with. Mitzi looked at her and wished he could ask her what she wanted, but that would send him right out of the restaurant on his ass without a job, and Mitzi simply couldn’t afford that. Waiting long enough, he interrupted the man’s gaze:

            “Tonight for soups we have our ever-famous pasta Fagioule, a chicken noodle soup, a rather spicy fish chowder, or the popular minestrone. As for salads, we offer a wide selection of different vinegrettes ranging from balsamic to raspberry.”

            “I will have the chicken chowder.” Mitzi again tried not to wince – the insolence! Follow my words, you fool, he wanted to tell the man.

            “Sir – do you mean the fish chowder or the chicken noodle?”

            The man looked confused. Mitzi turned to look over his other four tables quickly: the stringy man sitting to his left in the next booth needed a refill of water, the booth to his right held a man who was eying Mitzi and pointing his finger to the empty bread basket on the table. His eyebrows formed two pointed arches above his puny, deep set- eyes, saying, I thought you knew how to do your job. Mitzi became extremely impatient and tapped his foot beneath the booth while keeping up with that pseudo-smile. What could he do? This idiot old man was taking forever, taking for what seemed like fifteen minutes, completely unaware of how busy his server was, and –

            “George,” said his wife unexpectedly, “I think this young man is busy enough. Can you move it along, please?”

            “Yes, honey.” He looked up at Mitzi with angry, contemptuous eyes, “We’ll” – he looked at his wife, half-heartedly, “have the chicken noodle and those wonderful mashed potatoes as our side. Oh, and don’t forget a little more bread.” The man smiled, feeling that he had fully punished Mitzi by needing more bread; his wife does not just yell at him without the punishment being adhered to the source.

            “Yes, Sir. And more iced-tea, Sir?”

            “Please.”

            Mitzi calmly took the menus from them and walked with his hands forced straight down right beside his Dickies pants, for fear that he might sock the man. Right, Mitzi though, Next: I have to get bread for table sixty-four, water for table sixty-two, and more bread and iced-tea for this asshole at table sixty-three. Oh – and I must not forget to spit in that man’s drink. An enormous smile broke out on Mitzi’s face, revealing large pearly wake-boards.

            “Hey, Matt. What’s the big smile for?” asked Ryan as he whisked past carrying one too many frothy sodas on a cocktail tray.

            Mitzi smiled on past Squirley and walked quickly with a little extra pizzazz: iced-tea, bread, water…

            Meanwhile, Squirley balanced the dangerous sodas, veering this way and that out of other servers’ pathways. One turn around the corner could be impending doom, and Squirley could imagine the sodas flying all over the place. A coke might land squarely on a woman’s newly coiffed wig, might ruin a man’s freshly bought but nevertheless hideous silk tie, might spoil the leather penny loafers a regular customer just bought as he made his way to the little boy’s room. Yes, it was a risky operation but the fruits of Squirley’s risk would measure up if he succeeded. And so, he waved in and out, his plump buttox moving fluidly with his chunkier hips in some sort of aerodynamic phenomenon. He rounded his way beyond the bathrooms – what he called a high-risk, no fly zone because of the customer traffic – and made it past the first obstacle. Past the bar he waddled, where he had to raise the sodas above his head as a petite elderly woman flew by beneath. Mayhem, total mayhem. Not a drop spilt, though.

            With a twist of his body, a pick and roll past the women and men waiting to be seated, he made it to the first of his tables, dropping of a 100% iced coke and a water, on to the next table where he dropped off two iced-teas, and on to the next where a snotty-little girl with perfect blonde ringlets cried until she grasped the Italian soda that Squirley had pined over in the back of the house preparing. He looked around, after a job well performed, not a black man in the restaurant. Just another Friday night. 

CHAPTER THREE (14)

Bruce, the aging bartender, might look up for a moment. But finding that even if there was foul play at hand, there could be nothing done at the moment because of all of the guests seated around the horse-shoe shaped bar, and remind himself to investigate later on at closing time. By the end of his shift, there wouldn’t be an ounce of suspicion in his mind and the whole matter was thus forgotten.

            “Oh, we just love coming to Corrotto’s,” said an enthusiastic overweight man in his fifties. He could only sit at a table because the coral-colored booths that lines the walls of the restaurant impeded his “growing out instead of growing up,” as was his euphemism. Carlos stood above the table with his hands clasped behind his back, and smiled. 

            “Well I see you here nearly every week, Mr. Johnston! Next time you might even get an employee discount, you are here more often than them!” Carlos nudged the man’s pudgy arm as he attempted one of his acquiescing but altogether dim-witted jokes. It was what got him through the night with these types… The man’s moustache curled up into a moon shape and his non-existent hairline revealed wrinkles trying to push through all of the fat. His wife sipped her Sirah with ancient scrawny fingers, and shrewdly chuckled behind her polished glass.

            The man roared like a deflating bellow at Carlos. The commotion of this squeezed tiny drops of liquid through the man’s pores on his forehead, and Carlos thought he might stroke.

            “Alright, Mr. Johnston. Go ahead and get back to your spaghetti. I’ll leave you alone for a while.”

            “Right-o, Carlos!” The man sopped the sweat from his puffy brow and continued eating. His wife watched, nursing her glass.

            Nearby, a very busy Mitzi dealt with the same type of customers: fat, obnoxious, rich, but cheap. He set down the remaining iced-tea on the table before a couple in their late sixties and began the spiel:

            “And, now, Sir, what can I offer the lady to eat this evening?”

            The man brought his spectacles down towards his thin little nose and studied the menu. “Why do they keep it so dark in here?” he said, straining his eyes.

            “We try to maintain a certain… atmosphere, Sir. I’ll see if I can talk to my manager.”

            “Right,” the old man said condescendingly. “Well, I think we will begin with the crab puffs.”

            “Absolutely, sir. And for your entrees?” Mitzi scribbled a nearing-illiterate “cp” on his server’s paper.

            “ We’ll split” – oh those awful words! To split an entrée meant a disappointing ticket total, which of course meant a disappointing tip –“the eggplant parmesean.”

            Mitzi tried not to wince, and muttered through clenched teeth, “Yes, Sir. Now that comes with a soup or a salad and a side dish.”

            “Yes.” The man looked down on towards his menu again. Mitzi pondered on whether or not the man would actually find the place in which the soups or salads on resided on the main – in plain black-and-white – and then how long it might actually take to decide which one his wife might want. 

CHAPTER THREE (13)

Regardless of the futility of the color, he looked professional and commandeering. As he stood close to the hostess stand in front of the entrance, the lavender light of the setting sun peeped in with every shift of the mahogany front doors. It saturated the wonderful floors and turned them a sinister black with shadow. This is the violet hour, thought Carlos to himself as he continued to show his perfectly white, broad teeth. This is the hour in which I make my sales. The drone of the machine dining room was muted in Carlos’ mind. His eyelids produced a thin slit in order to focus on all of his customers dining on all of their favorite foods. This is how it should be in the violet hour.

            As if in a tunnel, he rounded the dining room in a thorough donut shape and made his way back to the hostess stand. He walked with the ease of a manager, the ease of a proprietor with a functioning, lucrative business; his hands perched folded on his lower back and his nose slightly elevated. With an intense whoosh the racket of the room came back to his ears with extra verve and someone tapped him on the back and asked, “Carlos… I fucked up. Can you come void this chicken parm for me? Lady says she ordered a veal parm – I dunno. I swear to god I heard her say ‘chicken parmesean.’”

            It was Devin. One of his best servers, but he had bad nights, he got too busy, just like all of them. He, with an almost inorganic hand, waved his swipe card in the slot beneath the computer screen and voided the chicken parmesean. His response? “Don’t let it happen again.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            He saw Ray – his manager – expediently work at the exhibition kitchen: a perfect sight of spotless stainless steel and millinered in white kitchen staff – hiding their pomodoro stains. Meals flew out onto the expedition area, a quick dust of green parsley to put off the overpowering red of the eggplant parmesean, and out it went, to table twenty-three, to table sixty-five, to table one-oh-one. Then the quick wipe down of the perfectly manicured steel, and the next order ensued. Yes, this is my restaurant.

            This was when the bartenders were most busy. Orders came through little black sachets, connected into the entire computer system. Their noises were endless: the err err err of the printer, and then a low-pitched beep, and then the heavy no-slip shoes of a bartender scampering over to fullfil his duty. One of the bartenders, dressed in all black, mixed the cocktail, poured the wine, blended the specialty drink in a nuance of oranges, pinks, whites, and yellows and carefully pushed the drink out into the well. A server braced it and carried it away, it contents to be enjoyed by a patron. Like a beautiful machine at my disposal, mused Carlos. But it was when they were this busy that Carlos might take a check – written by whom, no one knows – slip into th bar area and cash it out without the greedy little eyes of the bartenders. A tiny clink of the coin drawer as he opened the bill drawer with it would be the only sign of any foul play. 

CHAPTER THREE (12)

“I’ll talk to my guy at the hospital.”

            Carlos pulled the cigarette from his mouth and walked over to the green trees that stood before him. He took the cigarette from his quivering lips, savoring the last drag and put it out in one of the black plastic pots. It sizzled and instantly went out. Gato peered from the kitchen counter and felt uneasy about his greens being contaminated with wretched tobacco ash.

            “You can lead yourself out,” said Gato, now filled with scorn. The two eyed each other again. Carlos invaded Gato’s chestnut Mexican eyes and tried to delve into them. He felt as if leagues and leagues might pass before Carlos could decipher the code behind those eyes. The wrinkles beneath them seemed to drip off his face like searing wax, and Gato didn’t have to grimace for Carlos to see the pain within. Mexican blood seemed to run only green these days, Carlos thought, thank god I’m Peruvian.

            “Of course.”

_______________

 

            Customers began pouring in right around dinner-time in the little shopping center. Servers clad in white pressed uniforms and colorful ties stood at the entrance next to the tin man with the dog, endlessly reaching for a noodle – the ONLY noodle, and beckoned the hungry customers into their world. Unbenounced to the guests, an animal house ensued behind the closed white kitchen doors. Carrots, tomatoes, garlic – especially garlic – fennel, peperoncini, bay leaves, butter, heavy crème, everything moved in theatrical motion in the back of the house. Mexicans here and there called out slang terms; Vamos pendejo, vamos vamos vamos! The “rush” in the back smeared the walls with extra extra virgin olive oil and garlic paste, while little brown men in plastered, food encrusted uniforms flew about the red tile in a whir of commotion. Some stood in front of heavy stainless steel stoves watching syrupy liquids bubble and splatter in enormous pots above a ménage of blue an orange flames. Others garnished with parsley, rosemary, lemon peel, kale, basil, and capers. Their stubby fingers raw from chopping, their eyes watery from the constant abuse of onions, and their arm hair unfailingly burned off from the in-and-out of bread, meatballs, sausages, lasagne, manicotti, from the oven.

            But outside of those tightly closed flapping doors, the dining room was a flood with a different context. Customers in business suits and women doused in pearls and severe eu d’ toilette were coaxed to a fro from table to table as if cattle. A purr inundated the room, reverberations bounced off the picture-adorned walls with the low murmur that always accompanies a dining room. Orders were taken, and the men and women in tightly pressed white uniforms ran to their computer stations to input the next order, to input the next overpriced meal or costly glass of wine. The motto was: Charge ‘em 200% plus a dollar of wholesale.

            Carlos revolved this maxim in his mind as he stood next to the front entrance, smiling a wide smile between two-freshly shaven cheeks. He was wearing a pastel mauve tonight, maybe close to salmon.  

Interruption 2: Art 203 Sketches

Literary Theory and Modern Art: Decadence Then and Now

 

Postmodern literature, in terms of how it relates to modern art, illustrates and advances a theory created in the late 19^th century known as “decadence.” Initially roused by Rousseau’s Discours de Dijons (an offspring of the Enlightenment Period)2, writers began to seriously consider the West’s elaborate culture as a “degeneracy, rather than the pinnacle of human achievement.” Industrialization and harsh capitalistic ideals which ultimately lead to consumerism in Europe forced many to believe that instead of civil advance, humanity was beginning to experience its antithesis. In other words, institutions created by man were actually helping to deteriorate humanity instead of improve it. This idea spanned a wide range of cultural aspects, including art in many forms. Yet, as thought provoking as this theory was, it began to dwindle, as modernism began to invade the literary world.

Basically on the back burner, the idea of decadence simmered until after WWII, in which the Western world began to realize the absurdity of technology (due to compassionless warfare that objectified humans as chattel rather than animate beings), religion, and for the sake of this essay, art. Post modernism, in lieu of the earlier theory of Decadence, offered a reason why civilization was behaving the way it was. In concurrence with the Pop Art phenomenon – art as “being used to defend the lively man-made environment” [1], literary theorists and authors alike commented on what they thought was art’s role in their work. Briefly, they posited that urban existence is a machine that destroys men through its capitalist emphasis on commodity exchange2 and the advertising as its catalyst. Artists showed these commodities, such as Andy Warhol’s famous reproduction of a Campbell’s soup can, with an ironic milieu.

Theorists then began to speculate the idea of entropy involved with Decadence. The idea that the world, and indeed the universe, had only so many building blocks and that everything created was a recreation or a rearrangement of those blocks, was applied particularly to the art world. It gave reason to the Pop Art phenomenon on a cultural level: because there were only so many ways in which to rearrange an allotted amount of energy, artists were simply running out of ways to arrange them in original ways. In other words, the institution of art had been closed because no new ideas were pouring in.

For instance, Thomas Pynchon asserts in his novel V.3that humankind has no more “energy” (or original ideas) to supplement the closed system of art, and therefore art is in decline rather than progressing. Since all art is in decline, we have no alternative but to arrange and rearrange the same combination until artifice is no longer about the physical art or it’s meaning. Instead, it is technique for the sake of technique, where technique is just a different way of creating the same art: Decadence. Pynchon explains this point perfectly:

A few like Slab actually did what they professed; turned out a tangible product. But again, what? Cheese Danishes. Or this technique for the sake of technique – Catatonic Expressionism. Or parodies on what someone else had already done (324).

In this same way, Pop artists such as Warhol made works that mimicked commodities created and advanced by capitalism, but was also a product of the decline of the art world4. Warhol created many, many other works (such as Shoes located at the Contessa Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio which is a sketch of a brand name pair of shoes; Mineola Motorcycle at the Acuavella Gallery in New York City which states “we ship worldwide, credit cards” and portrays an advertisement for a motorcycle5) that not only recreate a product/someone else’s invention, but recreate a product of capitalism itself.

Decadence accepted in Capitalism is just one institution in which makes the Man the same as his civilization, rather than an individual possessing passion (the ability to create original ideas) or love. And so, artists like Warhol (because of the work of entropy in our civilization in general) could not possibly create anything completely and perfectly original, but rather parodies what his world is consumed in4: capitalism that treats man as an object; a consumer.*

---

 

[1] Alloway, Lawrence. Topics of American Art. “POP ART: The Words.” W.W. Norton and company, Inc.: New York, 1975, pp. 121. University Readers.

2 Mandal, Anthony. The Literary Encyclopedia. “Decadence (1870-1914).” Litencyc.com. 9 Feb 2001. 15 Sep 2009.   <http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=256>

 

3 Pynchon, Thomas. V.. Harper Perennial Inc.: New York, 2005. (Specifically page 324 as cited).

4 Not a personal assertion, but one assertion created some members of the literary world.

5 Andy Warhol: 1928-1987. “Artworks.” Artnet.com. 15 Sep 2009.  <http://www.artnet.com/ag/fulltextsearch.asp?searchstring=warhol&currentCategory=Artwork&page=2>

* In the interest of saving paper, I decided to single space this essay since it was on the longer side for this particular assignment and because of footnote citation. Please don’t mark me off for it!

 

I did this as a first draft, I dunno exactly if I want it the way it is. But it was good to post it, and then look back on it without it being a mere word document. I see some changed that have to be made...

Interruption: Some art 203 sketches

Brian Stauffer: Subtly Timeless Concepts

As I walked into the stuffy University of Arizona Museum of Art, I thought to myself, I read books for a living… I don’t look at art and pretend it makes sense. As an English major, I looked at my surroundings with War and Peace in hand: a silent hall shadowy except for the glass doors behind me. As I made my way toward my destination – the “Hard Eyes” exhibit – my footsteps were booming upon impact with the freshly mopped floor, their resonance lasting forever, ricocheting off the walls and making my heart beat quickly. I was out of place. I turned in haste toward the glass doors, my vehicle to freedom, when my eye caught a piece of art that wasn’t a picture of water lilies, that wasn’t a ridiculous Campbell’s soup can, and that certainly was the farthest thing from an empty white canvas save a thick black line.  I was instantly immersed in a grotesque realm, a bony skeletal hand in black and white poured into my pupils. Atop the hand perched a dove and in its mouth a twig.

            Of course, having read the Bible, having noted that every major author since the beginning of time has alluded in one way or another to the Bible, I was taken back. Everything in the hall faded instantly into shadow, and only the piece and I remained. I took note of the simplistic style; the subtle shading and the black and white definitive lines. But on a closer look, I realized that this was no sketch, rather, it was digitally created. The image seemed verging on cartoonish but still retaining some kind of traditional craftsmanship. The room, along with its other pieces, came back with a silent woosh into my peripheral vision and I stood there in tacit awe. This piece had stimulated me. It was my White Whale, the Minister’s Black Veil, the heart beating beneath the floorboards. Suddenly, this man named Brian Stuaffer (as noted on the placard below) was equated in my mind with Dickens, Faulkner and Poe. Stauffer had roused in me the same grotesquity as they did, and what’s more, with the same intensity.

            I melted into his concept, and flooded into the rest of his pieces. Here, a woman was encased in a suitcase handled by man clad in a tux. There, exuberant colors excited my senses in a flurry of references to nuclear bombs, weddings, death, drugs… and the list goes on, all with heavy political implications. I could not only see Stauffer’s concept, but could feel it. Why? His concepts dealt largely with situations I deal with everyday. Each of his pieces, most of them generally colorful with high contrast, played into my sphere of society and the political nuance that most readily affected me. Though some dealt with more distant concepts (such as the violence in Darfour), I still related to them on a personal level because of his style. Indeed, he bordered the Pop Art threshold, but what differentiated his art from the Pop Art of the 60s and 70s was that these topics were inherently modern, but also timeless. Though Darfour is a conflict born out of modernity, its raison d’être remains the same of war throughout the history of Africa. His concept of drugs, again, is a concept dealt with from water-to-wine days of Christ to the trainspotting days of Kurt Cobain and beyond. Just as Thomas Pynchon writes so well the post-modern human condition (whose basis is also formed on such timeless grotesquities of man) so did my new favorite artist, so did Brian Stuaffer in his exhibit, “Hard Eyes: Images in Empathy.”

CHAPTER THREE (11)

“Corporate is too worried about expanding – they don’t have to know where.”

            “And border patrol?”

            “Leave that to me.”

            “Right. And do you have people lined up en México who will do the driving?”

            “Yeah. Two guys. Family members of the guy who does the salads five times a week at the restaurant. I offered them a social security number and a job, as well as one of my trailers – 5C. You know, the one right down the next row.”

            “Did they take it?”

            “They took the offer. Who could refuse a relatively safe trip to the states?”

            “Does 5C have air conditioning?” Gato wiped his brow and drifted his eyes to the air conditioning unit located in one of the two windows in the trailer on its southern side. He’d ended up buying it himself.

            “I’ll see to it.”

            “Any English?”

            “Enough.”

            “More than me?”

            “No.”

            “See to that, too.”

            “And where are you gonna hold up all the marijuana? Just leave it in the truck?”

            “Well I was thinking that we could put most of it in my vacant trailers, and get the rest of it off into the streets the day it arrives. What do you think?”

            “Damnit Carlos! Do you see this place?” Gato violently brushed his hands toward the coveted trees that took up most of the space of the triple-wide, “We can’t keep stocking up here. The police are becoming weary.”

            He went to the fridge and whipped out another Tecate. Droplets of sweat that had subtly formed on his head felt icy as he stuck the top half of his body in. Nothing but Tecate. Some limes in the corner. Tequila might be better right now, Gato thought to himself, and refrained from grabbing another can. Instead he slammed the fridge shut, but not too forcefully – things could go awry in minute with this man, Carlos – and popped his eyes to the top of the machine. A bottle of Patron silver in a solid, clear, glass bottle shown like heaven as it perched. He took it down and produced two tumblers and two pieces of ice.

            It was smooth as the liquid went down, even though it burned Carlos’ stomach. He only slightly winced. He pulled his slender lips, European lips, back against his teeth and smirked. The alcohol put him somewhat at ease, but the tension was still obvious. Both of them took out mini black cigars and lit them.

            “Police? They can be bought.”

            “Not anymore, Carlos. They are getting smart.”

            “Fine. But this could be the last time. When will your corporate logos be done so we can end this dry spell?”

            “Next week, this time.”

            “And your drivers.”

            “The same.”

            “So you can have the city sopping wet with green blood by next Thursday?”

            “That is the plan.”

            Gato poured another four ounces into each of the tumblers. They both streamed the fire down their gullets. This time, nobody winced.

            “One thing,” resumed Carlos. His Spanish was slurring slightly because of the liquor. “I need IDs before any of this can begin.”

            “For who? The two men?”

            “Yeah.”

            “You got pictures for me, my friend?”

            Carlos handed over two pictures, photographs that had been photo-shopped to look like they’d come directly from the printer of a corner drug-store.

            “These official quality?”

            “Yeah,” Carlos replied, “I got them re-done at a Wal-Greens. Like always.”

CHAPTER THREE (10)

 

            Gato opened the door after finishing his second Tecate. A man flew in with a menacing look on his face making his salt and pepper hair wisp around his head. Carlos Cuadros’ dark skin, but not as dark as Gato’s, seemed slippery because of the heat of the corrugated steel jungle euphemistically named “Los Cerros Frios Trailer Park.” The heat crept inside with ominous desert tentacles, and Carlos instantly shut the door with a flimsy bang behind him. The plastic window rattled. And this is one of my better rentals, he thought. The two men eyed each other, not threatening glances, but a look of surprise. Having sized each other up, they proceeded to speak in the Sonoran Spanish dialect, mingling some English terms with Spanish slang; an incoherent form of communication that, at times, even native Sonorans had difficulty with.

            “Gato, this shortage we’ve been having – how long til its over?” Carlos began.

            “Our boys in Nogales have been on the run. We need another way to transport. I can’t be selling this tiny amount of mota out of my trailer alone. This can’t keep us going forever.” Though Gato could barely grasp English, he was first and foremost an intellectual businessman; a rhetorician highly erudite in the art of persuading a fellow Spanish speaker.

            “Well – what do you want me to do?”

            “You have done enough, Señor Cuadros. You keep our men working for pennies, pocket change really, at that Corrotto’s,” his sentiment changed to patronizing, “and yet you still charge them six-hundred a month to live in this repellant septic tank of a trailer park. For God sakes, man, you pay them and take what little you give them right back.”

            “Damnit, Gato! I didn’t come here to speak about my ethics. I came here to talk about weed, and you give me the fucking guilt trip.”

            “I talked to our man at the hospital.” Gato goaded him to respond, pausing for a few seconds.

            “And?”

            “And he says that the FBI has been showing up frequently now. I dunno how long our guy can get a hold of those birth certificates. He says it getting sticky.”

            “Dios mio…”

            “He says it isn’t worth it to keep the death certificates under wraps until he can bump them off. But that’s another story, my friend. Now – you have come to me about the shortage?”

            “About the different transport. I-“           

            “Sh, sh, sh.” Gato put his index finger to his lips, exposing that dastardly stump of a pinky finger. He squinted his deep coffee eyes and stuck his other hand between the mini-blinds. Looking askance, he strained his pupils through thick black eyelashes, was relieved, and gestured for Carlos to continue.

            “About the transport. I bough a semi – “

            “Is it here!?”

            “No.”

            “Good. Go on.”

            “It used to be a local high school’s, they used it for transporting football supplies for away games. I figured I could strip the sides, slap on some official corporate logos, and maybe do a little campaigning for Corrotto’s in the name of a border store.”

            “Sounds sketchy to me.”