Old Man on a Bike. Simon Gandolfi
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English at the village high school: that I have already learnt that this is incorrect, that he gives private lessons.
Much is happening in the village and the Monk is suspicious of my sudden appearance. He asks where I learnt of Eoin’s mistake and how I knew where to find him. I reply that Eduardo of the garbage informed me and add that this is a small village and that most villagers must know the Monk’s movements – certainly those who are interested.
The Monk admits this truth. However, he remains suspicious and excuses himself. He has students in the afternoon and must prepare.
‘Perhaps later,’ I suggest.
Yes, perhaps later – although he is unenthusiastic.
I order a beer in the palapa and watch the surfers out at the point. Later, I notice the Monk in conversation with a tall young blonde woman under the second palapa that shades the hammocks. The towel is up, protecting the Monk’s privacy.
A loud confident voice heralds the arrival of four men and a young, tall, good-looking woman, perhaps a gringa. The voice is a big burly man overaccustomed to dining people on a corporate expense account: black hair streaked with silver, clipped moustache, fleshy sensual ears. Confident of his power, he wears shorts and a T-shirt; the other three men are uncomfortably warm in slacks. One wears a long-sleeved shirt and round-lens spectacles and carries a briefcase. The gofer, I calculate, as he crosses to the bar to order. I catch his attention. We find that we share Cuba as an experience, he having studied tourism in Havana for two years. Now he is an official at the Department of Tourism.
‘The torneo,’ I presume – as if fluent in village happenings.
‘Yes, the torneo.’
Mister Big represents the money, the sponsors. He lays plans and papers on a table and does all the talking. I am at the far end of a double table and am unable to overhear. Frustrated, I order the grilled snapper at the bar and then return to the end of my table closest to the money group and can hear much of Mister Big’s discourse. The plans for the torneo show where marquees must be sited, new palapas, judges’ stands.
The gofer is a non-contributor – at most he holds a watching brief. Of the remaining two men, one is quiet and yet clearly necessary and in need of persuasion. Later I discover that he is the president of the community. The other man is also of the community. I will call him Mister Keen. He wears a shirt with no sleeves and a baseball cap and, in eagerness, leans across the table to hungrily inhale the big city power emanating from Mister Big. The woman interjects the occasional remark and orders watermelon from the bar. (Is she with Mister Big? Related to the sponsors? Or a TV company?)
Listening, I wonder what Mister Big really wants. Unbelievable that those behind him would fund, out of the goodness of their hearts, an international surf torneo on an unknown beach that possesses no infrastructure. I look down the perfect beach with the perfect surf and imagine the apartment blocks and the hotels and the swanky surf club at which the villagers will be servants. It strikes me as intolerably sad. Yet this is the perfect moment for the money men to make their move. The villagers fear a future in which passage to the north is closed. How many will reject alternative blandishments? How many can afford to resist?
I imagine that Mister Keen is already mounting the yes campaign.
And the president of the community? He seems bewildered, and as much by the physical force of Mister Big as by Mister Big’s fluent exercise of the language of persuasion.
The discussion ends. Mister Big rolls his plans and passes my table. He is professional in his attention to detail and has noticed my conversation with the gofer. Could I be influential in even the smallest way?
Am I being cruel, vindictive? Am I demeaning a decent man, a man who is naturally friendly (although friendliness is also his stock-in-trade)?
He delights with the open warmth and charm of his greeting.
‘How’s it going?’ I ask with equal warmth.
‘Difficult, although we’re giving them everything they ask for,’ he says – then dismisses the weight of difficulties with a lift of those powerful shoulders. ‘I’ve had easier tasks in the capital on major projects.’
‘In the capital you know who to pay,’ I say.
‘Precisely.’
My understanding is proof that we are on the same side – whatever the side is. He is employed by a company of lobbyists, men who know the right people, the movers and shakers who can make things happen. He writes his address and his email in my notebook. We shake hands and I watch him lead his group back to his outsized 4x4. He has a powerful walk and meets the world square on. Be crushed or move out of the way. And I muse sadly that the teeth are already here, the teeth of the mouth that will devour a community.
The staff of the palapa have observed Mister Big stop at my table and our conversation. Now they watch me, perhaps waiting. I worry that I am arrogant in judging the best interests of a community of which I know so little. What is now a simple surfer’s paradise is possibly a purgatory of penury for the villagers. And yet …
I order a fresh beer and sit at the table closest to the bar with my back to the sea and address the women. The torneo – what do they think?
They answer with small shrugs of uncertainty.
‘We will see,’ the pretty one says, and the others nod. Yes, they will see.
Yet it seems to me obvious that they have no concept of what they might see. I recall for them my first visit to Flores, a small town on a lake near the wondrous Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala. Thirty or more years ago the women of the town met at a different house each night to arrange the flowers and decorate the church. A mere ten years later, television had reached the town. I found only three women arranging the flowers. The rest were at home watching TV. The companionship of those evenings had been killed. The rich sense of community was dead. Nothing remained that would tempt their children to return.
The older woman, the chef, is the first to nod. I ask where I can sleep and the women direct me to a row of small wood-walled palapas by the entry gate. The owner was the first of the village to reach Taos. In Taos, he was legal and had his own business. He has returned for good. What does he think of the torneo?
‘We will see.’
I unload the bike, shower, change into shorts and return to the beach. The Monk is reading at the centre table beneath the palapa. The towel protects him.
Brave, I approach. I ask whether he is free. Might I sit with him? So we begin what quickly becomes a friendship to be treasured.
The Monk went to the US when he was eleven years old. He recounts his schooling in the US: of scholarships to private school in California, Berkeley and grad school at Harvard. He interspersed his later studies with spells in the world of banking. He was respectable. He did the right thing. He wore the right suit and the right shoes and the right tie. And sometimes he surfed.
Harvard Business School undid him. He was studying finance with grad students from similar money-management backgrounds. He discovered something missing in them. They had no fixed beliefs. Their judgement of right and wrong depended on the situation. These were the future leaders of corporate America. The Monk envisaged an endless parade of Enrons, of small investors bankrupted or robbed of their pensions. At first he was merely uncomfortable in their company. Perhaps he became nervous of infection. Perhaps he became nervous of his father’s judgement (his father is a famously crusading and respected newspaper editor back in Korea, a poet, a writer of important books). So the Monk loaded his surfboards on his truck and drove south and discovered a beach with the perfect wave.
Only later, and little by little, did he discover a community that was self-protecting and to which each member contributed. Teaching English is the Monk’s contribution. He teaches both children and adults. This seemed to him sufficient contribution until the torneo surfaced. He finds it remarkable that I understand the threat and that we share a near-apocalyptic vision. He suspects