Today, as I walked home from work, I passed a man lying on the street. I live right next door to a hospital and the man was on the sidewalk near the entrance. His eyes were shut, he wasn’t moving. There was a police car parked on the street next to him. Cops stood over him but didn’t appear to be doing anything. A small crowd of people gathered at the doors to the hospital.
I thought he was dead. I thought this because he wasn’t moving and no one seemed to be in a hurry to do anything with him. I passed by quickly, stepping around his body and a puddle of blood near his head.
I didn’t feel well. Not sick but angry and like I might cry but I might just as easily not cry. Why had I just seen a dead man on the street? I knew he was dead because my co-workers we just talking about seeing bodies—on the side walk, in the park—this happens here. He was dead.
Only he wasn’t dead.
When I was twenty-four and travelling through Central American I almost saw a dead body. I was on a bus with an Australian man. We had just met and he was worried about our journey across the border from Guatemala to Honduras. He kept asking me questions and I gave him answers I’d found in the guide book, even though he had the very same book. I didn’t really like him, but I didn’t really dislike him either. If I had known then what I know now I would have called him a clinger, a type of traveler who is traveling alone but is not really capable of traveling alone so just grabs on to any person he finds and stays with them until he finds someone new.
The week I met the Australian had been particularly hard. I had just come from Guatemala where three emotionally draining things had happened to me. The first was at a resort on the shores of Lake Atitlan where I had stayed for two nights. It was recommended by a friend and although it was out of my price range at $13 a night, my friend assured me it was worth it.
The resort was the nicest place I had stayed but ill-fated as it turned out. I should have known this the first day I arrived. Because it was such a popular tourist destination, reservations were essential but hard to arrange while traveling. So, I had to stay at another hostel (only $3 a night), and take a boat over to the resort to make reservations for the following day. The resort was a collection of rooms connected by winding trails that rose from the boat dock up a steep hill until they reached the main lobby. The day I went to make a reservation, I was standing at the desk when I heard someone yelling for help. There was a lot of commotion and it wasn’t until later that I learned a woman had fallen getting off the boat and broken her spine. They were sending for a helicopter to evacuate her. I probably should have taken that as a sign not to stay at this hotel.
The next day was nice. Most of the people staying at the resort were much older than I was but I’d met a lot of cool people. One of them was a teacher from Alaska named Kayla, we hit it off right away and made plans to go horseback riding and hiking together. I also met a woman and her daughter who were from somewhere in the US (I think the south), and were on vacation together. They said they were having a wonderful time.
The next morning Kayla and I left our bags in the hotel office while we went for a hike. When we got back we found the girl whom we’d met before sitting a corner office talking on the phone.
She said over and over again “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” Then she was yelling. The phrase she kept saying was so clear to me at the time that I thought I would never forget it, yet now, years later, I can’t quite remember. Maybe she said “you’re wrong,” or maybe it was “I don’t believe you” whatever it was she repeated it like a mantra, only desperate and angry. “I’m in the middle of Guatemala” she said, again turning the statement into a chant until she was alternating between two or three at a time: “You’re wrong, it’s not true, I’m in the middle of Guatemala.” Finally she turned to us, I hadn’t quite understood what was going on, hadn’t yet come to the conclusion that something was terribly wrong.
“Go find my mother” she said. Then, as soon as we left, her urgent insistence that the news she was hearing was wrong, turned into mournful wailing. I found the woman who ran hotel. “I think there’s something wrong with her boyfriend,” I said. I don’t know how I knew this; the girl must have said something that I no longer remember. By that time, it was clear to me that her boyfriend had died.
Kayla and I left the girl with the owner and went to find her mother. Someone said she was in a hammock by the shore, others said she was on the deck. We split up, Kayla found her in a hammock reading. She told me later that the mother somehow already knew. “I think there’s something wrong with your daughter’s boyfriend.” Kayla said. “Is he dead?” the mother asked. Kayla said she thought so, the woman fell silent. Kayla had to hold her steady as they climbed up the steep hillside to get to the daughter.
I was there when they found each other. The mother was almost catatonic. She went from mumbling prayers, one after the other, to becoming completely unresponsive. She did not comfort her daughter who was howling “He’s dead,” screaming it. A doctor was called, he would bring a sedative.
I had never seen agony. I remember thinking that no television show, no movie, had ever looked like this. Kayla and I went for a swim to get out of the way. We bobbed in the lake, not knowing what to say.
I left Lake Atitlan, a place that would, only one month later, be hit by hurricane Katrina which would wreak much more devastation and death on the area than that phone call had.
I headed east and settled into a hostel on the Caribbean coast. I waited there for a sailing trip that promised to take me to Belize. I waited three days. The hostel, right next to the shore, was run by volunteers from the States. It had a large sleeping loft that overlooked the lobby. The second night I couldn’t sleeping. I heard the phone ring and a man answered in Spanish. There was some confusion and he handed the receiver to an American volunteer who must have been standing next to him. I heard her say the words “I don’t understand,” then some things I couldn’t make out. She hung up the phone and said that her ex-boyfriend had been in an accident and he hadn’t survived.
I thought I was dreaming. I did not question it.
The next morning I asked around. It was not a dream, someone really had died.
My sailing trip was canceled, my mother emailed me to tell me that my sister, in Colorado, had West Nile Virus and was in and out of the hospital. She would be alright, don’t worry the email said. I did worry.
Soon I found myself on the bus sitting next to this strange Australian man on my way to the Bay Islands in Honduras. When the bus stopped and the Australian looked out the window and said “Someone’s been hit by a bus. I think he’s dead,” I didn’t look. There was no part of me that wanted to. I had an overwhelming need to be comforted. I wanted to hug the Australian, just cry in his lap. I didn’t say anything.
When he asked if I wanted to share a hotel room I said sure, not really wanting to but wanting to be alone either. I’d shared hotel rooms with so many random people at that point it in the trip it hardly seemed to matter—was just the nature of traveling. That night, I had the first nightmares of my entire trip. I dreamed that someone was trying to get into the room. I woke up instantly and was thankful he was there in the next bed, even if he was still essentially a stranger.
The man lying on the street by my apartment was not dead. As soon as I got in the door I told my roommate about him. We looked out the window and saw the crowd of people had moved in closer, the policed were still standing around, and the person I thought was dead was sitting up.
The ambulance finally arrived which was perplexing because they were literally right outside the emergency room doors. My roommate and I decided to check it out. Now that no one was dead I felt okay. As we walked by the scene, a man with a hose washed the blood into the gutter. The victim was inside the ambulance but it was not going anywhere. I’m not sure how long it stayed there but I never saw it leave.
The dead body that I almost saw in Honduras sticks with me. It’s almost as if I had looked out that window, I can’t imagine it feeling any more potent. Everything that was happening at the time sort of clings to that body: the dead boyfriends, the Australian, and my sister’s illness. There was something surreal about those things together. If I saw a body today lying on the street, if the man had really been dead, how would that stay with me? What if it didn’t? I don’t want to find out.
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts by William H. Gass
Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room by Geoff Dyer
It seems like every December for the past couple of years I’ve gone on a reading binge. Last year, while I was in India, I read seven books. This year I read four over Christmas. I thought I should make more of an effort to read throughout the year and not just at the end of it. So call it a new year’s resolution. I am going to read everything I can and I’m going to write about it because a.) I often forget half the things I’ve read and b.) I could use the practice.
