RATIONAL MIND OR WHISPERING INTUITION: WHICH TO FOLLOW?
San Pedro, Guatemala 1993
"Stay on the boat,”
Jaime urged. “I will show you where the hotel is. We will go to the next dock,
just a minute away."
The next dock? I was sure the boat captain had said this was
the last stop, the end of the line. But Jaime lived here, he should know, shouldn’t
he? Had I misunderstood the captain?
Maybe I had misinterpreted Jaime. I had talked to him only during the hour and
a half boat trip, so I didn’t know how to evaluate his invitation. I had been
glad to find a seat on the bench next to him. His articulation was clear, even
above the din of talk and the radio music blaring from the captain's cabin. We
were having a real conversation in Spanish, I told myself. I hoped that was not
merely an illusion, and that my months of Spanish lessons had finally begun to
kick in.
Jaime smiled. Fine
sunshine lines splayed from the corners of his eyes, but something like sadness
seemed not far beyond his crinkly-eyed smiles. His weathered mocha brown face
reflected myriad feelings as he spoke of his life and ambitions. If I had been
with a friend I would have had the advantage of checking out my perceptions with
her. Our pooled perceptions would have given us a workable hypothesis about
whether Jaime could be trusted. But this was one of the times when I had given
up that luxury in favor of meandering solo.
In unfamiliar terrain I especially
appreciate casual connections with locals such as Jaime. When it comes to
following the advice or responding to invitations of local people, my head and
my gut feeling are often at odds. Confining itself to facts, my rational mind weighs
the pros and cons of taking some questionable action, It leaves it to my
intuition to say whoa, when
appropriate. In that case I might slow down because an
indefinable something seems is off kilter. But such a warning wouldn’t necessarily
come in the form of words. It might be a stomach rumble indicating “this is
risky; back off.” But it could just as likely be delivering an alert to a
trivial concerns such as, “you’re supposed to turn left.” On the boat, my
intuition apparently had no message to impart, other than its apparently
complacent silence, implying, no problema.
I interpreted that as “Trust Jaime and see what adventure develops.” But, veering
back to my mind again, I ticked off reasons for caution: the contradiction
between Jaime’s statement and the captains’ about the last stop; puttig my trust
a man I had just met; following him to a place I’m not familiar with, and finally
the question of why was he eager to have me stay on the boat? What was his
hidden agenda? Should I listen to the mental bean counter, or to the silence of
my intuition?
San Pedro is one of the tiny pueblos that circles Lake
Atitlan in central Guatemala. As
we neared the dock, my watch said it was still early evening. But darkness had
blackened the sky, and obscured the shoreline. Peering out the open sides of
the small boat, I could locate nothing resembling hotel lights. I had heard
that San Pedro offered tourist rooms in two or three small hotels, and I had my
fingers crossed that one would be waiting for me. It could be great to have a
local person guide me around town. I looked at Jaime. His dark, dark eyes and
soft, musical speech had drawn me to him from the start of the trip, and I
concluded once more that he intended me no harm. I reviewed what I knew about
him.
At the beginning of our boat trip from Panajachel, he had begun a
friendly conversation with the usual questions, starting with, “Where are you
from?”
“Seattle,”
I said, “but I live in Mexico
half the year. Do you live her in San Pedro?”
He said he lived in San
Pedro with his wife and child, and was forty years old. His next comment was a
surprise. “I am a painter,” he said. “I own an art gallery.”
An art gallery? Here? I might have expected
my intuition to kick in at that assertion. The San Pedro population hovered around five
thousand, and until very recently had attracted few tourists. It had a
reputation for still being relatively free of us gringos, which was good news
for some of us seekers of off track places. But those facts also added to my
distrust of Jaime’s claim that he owned a gallery here. How could he sell enough
to keep such a business afloat? But I needed more information. Maybe it was in
some more fashionable tourist town.
“Really?” I said. “Where
is it?”
“Here. Right here in San
Pedro.” Jaime sat up straighter, and smiled his pleasure at my surprise. “You
can come and see it.”
But he must have sensed
my skepticism because his smile quickly faded. “I support my wife and my
daughter by working in the fields,” he said. After a brief pause, he added,
“Will you give me your Seattle
address?”
“Why Seattle?”
He said he might visit
me there. My mind added that odd request to the list of negatives. But I
figured Jaime wasn’t likely to get to Seattle,
and if he did, I wasn’t likely to be there. So I found some paper, and we
exchanged addresses.
As if trying to paint my
identity into his mind, Jaime focused intently on my questions and comments. He
leaned toward me to peer into my eyes with a warm appreciation that disarmed me.
Once again I asked myself if I should take up his offer to guide me to a hotel
at the alleged next dock? If I had consulted with sensible friends, they would
have warned me not to trust this man. They might well have been right,
but if I had listened to “sensible” friends, I would have missed a lot of
adventures. I still didn’t want to dismiss Jaime’s invitation without weighing
the pros against the likelihood of a con.
Earlier that day I had
met Paul, a thirtyish British architect on a bus where we pooled our ignorance about
San Pedro. Now he sat in front of me. I tapped him on the shoulder and invited
him to join me in staying with Jaime. I figured that old maxim, “safety in
numbers,” would resolve my ambivalence. Slowly Paul scrutinized Jaime and hesitated.
The captain had already cut the motor, and just then the boat lurched into the
dock. Half a dozen young boys came aboard to offer services as guides and
baggage carriers. Paul nodded to a muchacho, withut a word turned his
back on Jaime and me, and was swallowed up in the disembarking crowd. What, I
wondered, had his intuition whispered
to him?
I glanced back over my
shoulder. All the benches were being vacated. Everyone was abandoning ship. I
asked myself one more time whether I wanted to follow a strange man to a
never-heard-of port at some dock I couldn't even see in the dark with only the
boat captain as witness? The scenario
included a shade too much of the unknown.
I hastily stood,
scrambled into my backpack and said no thank you to Jaime. Straggling after the
last of the passengers, I hoped to catch a muchacho-guide before the last of
them disappeared into the blackness. But I was the last to reach shore, and Paul
and the other passengers had all disappeared.
The boat pulled away
from the dock. I could barely discern a hill straight up what appeared to be a
dirt road. Here and there, mostly near what I assumed was the top, a dozen
scattered lights gave me hope. I tried to beam my gaze out into the terrain but
could distinguish neither buildings nor any form of life on the hillside.
Before I had time to worry, a small boy hurried toward me, and said he
would show me to a hotel. I handed him my extra bag and followed. My instinct
was to trudge up the hill toward those lights that indicated at least a bit of
life. When I made that suggestion, the muchacho, whose name was Pedro, said,
"No, we walk this way.” With apparent confidence, he turned left. I fell
into line behind him. We plodded along parallel to the water, which I couldn't
see, but sensed was about a hundred yards away. As we made our way along the
path I heard rhythmic clapping. My heart quickened at the possibility of an
indigenous ceremony or fiesta.
"Que es?" I asked. “What’s that?”
"Los
Evangelicos,"
answered my guide.
So much for romantic
assumptions about the indigena.
The thin sliver of the moon
was of no help as I picked my way along the narrow, dark, rocky path. I stayed
as close to Pedro as possible. Our single-file positions didn't lend themselves
to extensive conversation. But seven-year-old Pedro asked, in the tone of a
professional guide, the usual questions about where I was from, how long I
would stay and where else I'd visited.
The clapping
Evangelists’ presence faded away. A dog barked. Otherwise, the silence of the
night was broken only by the soft pad of our two pairs of feet on the dirt and
the occasional clunk of a kicked rock. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I
could make out buildings here and there, yet I couldn't shake the sensation
that we were moving farther and farther from the center of the village. Pedro
had become my security blanket and without him I wouldn't even have known a
path existed. In rejecting Jaime’s offer I had prudently erred on the side of
caution. And here I was, at the complete mercy of this seven-year-old, who
claimed he could guide me safely through nearly invisible territory to a
destination that remained obscure.
As I was becoming discouraged
again, Pedro and I approached a small wooden building with a sign I was sure
indicated a hotel, and I pricked up my optimistic ears. But no. It was only a comedor,
a small eatery. At least I knew where I could find food the next day, assuming
I could locate it in the light. It was about then that I realized I might as
well accept the fact that this walk would simply take as long as it would take,
and I began to relax. An Anglo man, about fifty, skinny and bearded, emerged
from out of the dark. When I asked if he knew of a hotel nearby, he cheerfully
assured me I was close to it.
Pedro and I hadn't
walked much farther when he led me through a wooden gate which he said was the
entry to a hotel. In the low light that seeped out from a window, I could make
out a spacious yard of barren dirt. Half a dozen plants stood here and there. Rows
of low buildings I guessed to be of cinder block made a U formation. Pedro led
me to the office, but the manager waved us away saying he had no singles. My
shoulders drooped for only a moment before I was inspired to ask the price of a
double. The equivalent of about two dollars and twenty cents, the man said. This
place was definitely upmarket compared to the one I had earlier rejected at a
dollar forty.
The manager showed me a
space enclosed by four gray walls containing three beds: an unmade single and
two doubles. I didn’t ask why it was called a double. Feeling like Goldilocks,
I sat on one of the doubles and concluded the mattress had been constructed of
leftover concrete. The other one was soft, but lumpy. The manager pointed
toward the communal bathroom, about fifty yards away and I checked it out. It
was clean but there was no toilet paper. "You buy it at the restaurant,
right there," said the manager. He pointed to an area with tables and
chairs set off by a bamboo fence. I caught myself viewing the situation as if I
were cruising a mall for the best deal. But Pedro made it clear this was the only deal, and suddenly it looked better.
I snapped it up.
I treasure my ability to
sleep under conditions most agemates deem impossible. But I was afraid the lumpy
mattress would present too great a challenge. I chose the concrete bed. Tired,
and relieved finally to be settled somewhere, I stretched out and. eager to
find a hint of what San Pedro would offer me, I opened the Lonely Planet. But it only took a moment for it to slip onto the
floor as I fell sound asleep.
At dawn I was startled
awake by a couple of querulous parrots screeching at two caged monkeys about
injustices in their universe. Grumpily, I opened my door, but immediately the
scene a few dozen yards away wiped out my embryonic irritation at being rudely
awakened. The lake had become a red sea reflecting the flaming sky. I strolled toward
the shore and lazily watched women duck into the shallow water. They soaped and
then finger-combed thick blankets of hair that glistened black in the sun. Another
group of older women scrubbed brilliantly woven clothing on the rocks. Perhaps
fifty feet away from the water, men in white, delicately embroidered pants
raked coffee beans. The rich ocher color of the beans was enhanced by its contrast
to the deep brown of the earth. In the distance a few small boats were
silhouetted, their noses lifting out of the water like optimistic porpoises. A sleeping
volcano loomed over the lake.
Although I wanted to
continue drinking in the shifting pageant, another desire rudely ran its
fingernail along the blackboard of my serenity. That alleged art gallery of
Jaime’s nagged at me. Did it exist or not?
Had I been right to trust my rational judgment that advised me not to
stay on the boat alone with Jaime? Or should I have relied on intuition, which
had discerned no reason not to trust him? I expected the manager to laugh at my
question about whether there was an art gallery in San Pedro. But he surprised
me by just pointing down the road.
I followed his direction,
and the farther I walked, the dustier the road and the fewer the buildings. Tiny,
one-story houses appeared here and there. They looked more or less alike, some
of them neatly whitewashed, others with gray clay crumbling from the walls. It
seemed ludicrous to think anyone could sell paintings from such an obscure,
unlikely location. But just as I began to consider turning back, I noticed an
open door to one of the well kept houses. I could catch only glimpses of the
inside, but dramatic splashes of color peked my curiosity. A girl stood in the
doorway, as if waiting for me. I moved closer and beyond her I saw paintings on
the walls. In answer to my question, the girl said, yes, this was the art
gallery. She motioned me inside.
The room was bare of
furniture except for a small table and two chairs. Brilliantly colored
paintings covered the four whitewashed walls. The girl summoned her mother who
emerged wiping her hands on a red and white checked apron.
"I'm looking for
Jaime Gomez," I said.
"This is his house.
I am his wife," she said in clear Spanish. "My name is Rosa."
I told her about meeting
Jaime, and she said he was at work in the fields. As she talked about his
paintings, I viewed the art that surrounded me. Soon Jaime arrived. A huge
smile showed his delighted surprise that I had shown up.
The gallery displayed
the work of his two brothers as well as his own. The men were self-taught, and
the paintings mostly featured portraits of women in indigenous dress in
dignified poses, some with deeply creased faces. I was drawn to the naïve
quality, strong lines, bold color and sharp definition in Jaime’s work.
He entreated me to buy. I
waffled. I was short of cash, and the hotel manager had told me San Pedro had
no bank. I didn’t want to disappoint Jaime but I hadn’t budgeted for art, and I
didn’t look forward to adding a cumbersome painting to my baggage for the rest
of my trip. Still puzzled about his invitation to stay with him on the boat, I
was wondering how I cuold politely ask for an explanation when Jaime brought up
the topic himself. He said he perfectly understood my hesitancy to stay on the
boat. Then he explained that the captain usually docked near his house for the
night, and took Jaime home on the way.
He had been
telling the truth. Had I decided to trust Jaime I would have had only a ten-minute
walk to my hotel. I'd have been spared–or deprived of–the uncomfortable walk
along that narrow path in the dark with Pedro. My intuition that Jaime was not
a dangerous person had been sound, but my mind had also been correct about one
thing. He had hidden at least part of his agenda. Now I was certain one reason
he had urged me to stay on the boat was the hope that he could sell me a
painting.
And he did.
