Old Man on a Bike. Simon Gandolfi
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and say that I am just fine.
Up the last few hundred metres, and then over the brow and halt at a café on the right side of the road. My legs tremble as I dismount. The driver and passengers from the bus gather round. One of them asks, ‘Hey, grandfather, how old are you?’
I tell him and another asks where I am going.
‘Argentina,’ I say. ‘Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego …’ For the first time, I truly believe that I can make it.
The woman of the café brings coffee and sets a chair against the wall in the sun. I sit and absorb the warmth while the bus passengers ask questions as to my true intention and where I come from and does my wife approve of my absence and how many children do I have and what do they think of my travels?
I answer with what has become my standard reply: ‘What should I do with the last years of my life? Sit in front of the TV?’
‘No,’ They all agree. ‘It is a good thing to travel, to meet different people.’
The woman of the café shouts at her daughter to check the hens for fresh eggs. I eat the eggs scrambled with spicy chorizo, a side serving of refried beans and warm tortillas. The fresh orange juice is perfect. Unfortunately, the coffee is watery and tastes of mud. For once I don’t give a damn. I have climbed 2900 metres. The sun is warm. Ahead lies that queen of Mexican cities, Oaxaca, and then country after country, pathways to the romance of exploration and experience.
The road down is equally steep and serpentine. I have to remind myself continually to sit back and not put all my weight on my hands, otherwise my fingers cramp. The valley into which the road descends is dry and dusty, the trees scrappy, the greens of the vegetation lacking the voluptuousness of the northern face. Road signs are immaculate, black curves hand-painted on a yellow background. Each sign is an attempt to portray the road ahead. Common is a broad squiggle rising to a strong arrowhead. There is the tight bend and the right-angled bend and sometimes a double right-angled bend. Most serious is the written warning of a dangerous curve – a curve tighter than a right-angle, that turns back on itself. The boys on bikes would have a ball.
I rest halfway down at a café opposite a primary school and drink fresh orange juice. I chat with the café owners. They have a son in El Norte – the North, the United States. A US flag hangs on the wall. The road climbs again through dry, dusty mountains. The pass is lower than the first. I am more confident.
Finally I arrive in Oaxaca. I have ridden 230 kilometres. Apart from the first short stretch and the immediate approach to the city, I have encountered no more than two straight stretches of road of 200 metres or so.
My intended hotel has disappeared since the publication of my guidebook. I find another, shower and hunt a shoemaker to replace the leather soles on my only shoes. I sit in the shop and chat to the woman owner for an hour and a half. I then stroll in re-shod splendour to the zócalo, the central square, in front of the cathedral. On the way I spot the Hotel Central on Independencia, possessor of a charming patio, and book a room for the following night. In the zócalo, I sit at a café, order a cold beer and chat to my neighbours at the next table. Rain spatters the square and I delay leaving. The rain only strengthens. Suddenly very tired, I walk the few blocks in the rain to my hotel. It isn’t there. Stores are closing. Everything looks different in the dim light of the few street lamps. I walk and circle and retrace my steps and begin again. The rain has become a torrent. I can’t see through my spectacles. My feet hurt. Everything hurts. I spot, through an open doorway, an obvious foreigner, a young blonde woman, writing emails at a computer. I circle the block once more, the rain ever heavier. I return to the young woman, an American, explain my idiocy – that I can’t find my hotel and don’t recall its name – and ask whether she has a guidebook. She has the Lonely Planet. My hotel isn’t listed. I try one last time to find it and then return to the Hotel Central. I feel immensely foolish as I explain my predicament and lack of luggage and ask for a room. I drop my soaked clothes on the floor and crawl into bed.
Oaxaca, Friday 19 May
The Hispanic buildings of Oaxaca glow a soft rose in the morning sun. The Hotel Central is a resurrected Spanish colonial townhouse two blocks from the zócalo. My room is furnished with period copies: bed and bedside cupboard, wardrobe, table and an upright chair. A simple cloister surrounds three sides of a flag-stoned patio where a neighbouring restaurant serves breakfast and light meals. Comfortable benches stand against the cloister wall; there are tubs of red hibiscus and jasmine.
This morning I dress in wet clothes and go in search of my bike and luggage. I find the hotel immediately. It is where I knew it was. I searched this street in the rain again and again last night. Fatigue must have left me confused. I need to be more careful. Hence my decision to enjoy a day of rest – although first I will leave the bike at the local Honda agent for its first service.
Mid-afternoon and I work at an internet café without the coffee and a connection that takes forever. In San Andres Tuxlas, I spent an hour trying to post photographs. No hope. Oaxaca is as bad and the mouse has a habit of sticking.
In the evening I sit on the steps in the zócalo and watch a poorly attended political rally. The speakers are drowned by a twenty-piece dance band playing outside the cathedral. A schoolteacher tells me that there will be a strike tomorrow. He asks whether I am an American. I answer that I am English and he sits beside me: ‘That ignorant Bush. All the hypocrisy of celebrating the fall of the Berlin wall. Now he’s building a wall to keep us out. For us the border is meaningless; we all have relations on both sides.’
Oaxaca, Saturday 20 May
Oaxaca, city of churches. The exteriors are uniformly simple and beautiful. As to the interiors, my prejudices are in good shape. I find the interior of the cathedral abysmal; railings enclose the central aisle and great iron gates forbid entrance to the side chapels. Sinful to chop such magnificent space into tiny pens.
In San Felipe Neri, the vast altarpiece reminds me of the worst excesses of Ukraine’s Orthodox decor.
And yet, professing to love simplicity, why am I overwhelmed by the beauty of Santo Domingo’s interior with its voluptuous basting of gold leaf? To see this one great church is worth the trip to Mexico.
Most touching to me is the Church of the Society of Jesus. A side chapel is dedicated to the Society’s martyrs. I read their names and dates written on the walls and am welcomed by familiars of my Catholic childhood: Edmund Campion, Hugh Walpole, Edmund Arrowsmith. Such English names. I sit in the peace and quiet of the chapel as if among old friends. High above the arched entrance to the chapel is an inscription: Compañeros de Jesus, amigos en el Señor. In the chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary is written in thirteen indigenous Mexican languages and in both Spanish and English: ‘Am I not here for I am your mother …’
The Catholic Church in the USA, Ireland and England may be disgraced for its shielding of sexual predators, but in Mexico the Church is very much alive. These churches are the temples of today’s Mexico. Services are full. At any hour you find a scattering of people at private prayer. Watch people cross themselves as they pass on the pavement. The one danger to the Church in Latin America is that a reactionary pope will enforce its withdrawal from the active struggle for social justice.
A day of sightseeing and I retire in the evening to a café on the zócalo, order a bowl of soup and people-watch. Mexicans of all classes dress smartly for Saturday evening in the city. A group of US students stride at speed diagonally across the square. Unbrushed hair, shorts and T-shirts, sandals, sleeveless tops: these young seem to me so untidy and disrespectful of local mores.
Disrespectful