Ecuador Monogatari, la primera maleta*
Dear Danarel,**
children, relatives and precious friends
4 November 2014
Quito, Ecuador
Abstract: “I hope to have found the road to salvation…at least I am doing the firsts steps and I plan to escape soon from the prison of bad luck in which I rotted the last two days,…Bad luck? It is a little bit exaggerated…First my health improved, it seems that without any medication I am intestinal revolution free, second the crème I bought in an unpleasant pharmacy nearby helps my wounded soles, slowly, not miraculously but conspicuously, and after that I found a laundry in the neighbourhood. Who says better?”
Nevertheless, before anything else, I should better hurrying to express my eternal recognition, to Banco Pinchichia, the one and only which
which recognized and honoured my credit cards and saved me from ambling with wounded bare feet and penniless like some gringos drug addicts who were crawling around like drunken cockroaches, on the damn cobbled streets of this Andean capital where even the air is rare and the heart starts stupidly thumping in the night. Better here to elude jolts or other or other sudden movements to avoid syncope or to be called a jerk what is even worst!
It is five o’clock in the morning…and I will have meditation soon together with upper body exercises. Even if the legs are not functional, let’s stay into an athletic yogi mood. More, I found for the computer that is heating like a wild oven, beastly furnace, a workshop where maybe (fat hope?) they will mend it (incorrigible optimist notwithstanding stark dark discourse) and bring it back to normal, alleluia. This city is highly religious. I spoke with the darling A. my daughter, they are planning to apply for a research grant in the States and stay there for a while. I think it is wise, the COUNTRY is continuously threatened with destruction, either by atomic bombs of the moderate Persians, local knife-killers cousins or the worldwide tsunami of hate, may God give Ebola to the mankind as a whole and not only to the poor niggers! Nigger? Schwartz? People are keeping calling each other names it seems. And what about Kike, Bones, Goldberg, Half-dick, Six-nose for Jews only in America, leave beside the dirty names they called us all long during history and everywhere?*** The issue is that nicknames called, sometimes really funny, and nicknames givers, always poisonous, are interchangeable. So what if I will stick to the tradition and I will call the whole bunch of haters or mad hatters, whatnot – “homo bestialis”, (I just coined the term)? Not monkey because that it is too much honour, Cesar called his soldiers ”apes” and they were flattered and tail wriggling. Whatever, my big problem was and is that often I am saying loud what everybody quietly thinks, what is a sign of imbecility…I always thought that the biggest virtue in life is to be an hypocrite…It seems that I am not too virtuous. Let’s go further! If the workshop (I am back to computer) will ask too much I will use the animal in bursts like now…
And now is time to turn my attention to the most important travelling incentives which seem to be some sexual excitement, vague cultural curiosity, a break in the crushing daily routine and basically the desire to investigate exotic food with the aim to adore it, to hate it or both. So there is no wonder that I stubbornly looked for and found the way to reach the best, small popular restaurants, called here “huecas” like the one yesterday, La Guatita del Inca, in a gasoline station baptised Puma located between the Avenida del Inca and Calle de las Gardenias. It sounds poetical and it was. There, I had a gorgeous “sopa marinera”, and more, you should be able to read the Spanish gourmet blogs, it is a must, and then I received a very inspired and kind letter from
P. (one who spent a quarter of century in Peru and Ecuador) who appears to be a man of taste and wisdom…Period, I will stop the computer before it will roast my belly and enjoy life I don’t know yet how.
The rest of the day, in spite the pain in the legs, was handled with strength, determination and stubborn antics which are the hallmark of my personality, so to say…I begun by going for the laundry, found that the laundry moved from the moment that it was highly appreciated in another blog, tracked it down, ran into internet joint, printed the letter to the bank asking them to send money to A., faxed it, burned the joint down, I HAVE PROTECT MY MILLIONS, ran to the post office, sent the same letter by mail, fainted when they asked 45 dollars for a three days delivery, burst in tears and got an agreement of 8 to 10 days for ten bucks, may they blaze in hell with all the swine that they like so much (PORK EVERYWHERE) and the ruthless butchers by scores, INFIDELS!!, bought a pair of “ersatz” eyeglasses from the same stinking pharmacy, ran into a taxi to the first computer maintenance address, was asked to show my papers, it reminded me of Molloy when the policemen asked him for documents, but I didn’t dare to do the same, Molloy was a genuine genius moron, I am only an old Jew coward. They told us that we were cowards during centuries, when the odds were one to hundred thousand, now we are damned warlords, who cares, it was a big company I went to show my weird computer, I am not Molloy, to a fat elderly wench, let’s face it, beautiful girls are quite rare here, and the men are basically ugly and polite, she was not and flatly refused, the technicians were somewhere in the wild, went down cursing, found the ground floor store full with soldiers heavily armed, they are all over the city, soldiers and police, like flies on stink, I throw them flowers, they protect Me, I know. Got desperate, broke into technical shops nearby, asked insistently for a computer hard egg, coming out of a dream a hairy man indicates a commercial centre at the end of the street, dealing in folk arts, who is buying these horrors?, met there a young guy, he will clean the tool, activate the ventilator, ran to the corner, into the telephone high joint named “Claro” ( bloggers told it is a lost cause ) I am kindly received by the Inca security fellow who likes me and helps me to get a number from a machine, machines make me nervous and I am too lazy to read the instructions, to make it short after some deep confusion, I got a SIM card, a local number, and later even an internet flow, I feel like a MAN, doesn’t matter if I will use it or not, to hell with that, so further into other taxi, here taxis cost nothing, everything else is quite pricey, but if you want you can pass your day, your life in one or more taxis, that is an idea to develop, dropped to Mercado central, the spot from where I got the intestinal turbulence, me who am able to digest stones, and had a FRITADA, that being pork pieces, a lot of fat and very little meat, that were boiled to death so to speak, that means till they ran out of water, and served with potatoes cubes, chickpeas and some roasted seeds I was unable to identify, all lavishly sprinkled with a supper spicy mixture, while ….a sensuous fat young women bearing proudly the marks of plenty ran to bring me a bottle of beer, dark beer, Helada? she asked, Helada! for sure I answered…the food was not great, but good, something good can be better than great? A shabby idea old boy…so the Third World can be for some a tangible pleasant experience even if it is not EXACTLY BIO BOBO, let’s get out, the legs were hurting, I forgot to tell the cause, that is other creepy story, I ran into the predicament when I searched bare footed Bora Bora sandals all over the city, mine broke in the middle of the street, like whales on the shore, they, the merchants, do not carry more than 43 size, and hurt my soles on the uneven cobbles to bone, got some thing that I was able to wear after some five hours of dement torment, returned to hotel a walking dead, and kept the bed for two days, but now I am walking more or less, from one taxi to an other well, argued in a store where I went to buy markers with a greedy hag, insulted a hooker, an old hooker who was proposing, ran into the taxi and after some emotions got my computer in a pristine state, covered with praise the young boy who did it, paid 50% more of what he asked, bounced in a taxi, got my laundry cleaner and better stirred than it ever was, returned to hotel, paid unwilling some of my fee, had ice cream, in the busy and mediocre corner pastry shop, Latins from Mexico to Patagonia are lousy sweets makers, it was the need for celebration not having hard liquor at hand and ran into my room in a kind of euphoric state.****
*Seeing that the travelogue of my journey to South America was not taking off the ground, I decided in despair to tear a couple of pages from my diary, to pad them with some hasty chosen photos and to launch the whole into ether, what the heck? Sorry, no offence meant, I hope that you understand……By the way, my dear Angel and holy patron, there is very little link between the images and the following text, if any. In homage to my preferred director, Peter Greenaway, I will send them by parcels and call them Suitcases (Maletas). Also, I fancy the the Japanese word Monogatari which means story, because it has a nice sound and I adopted it too. All this without being especially an Esperanto buff, there was too much hope in that Zamenhof extravaganza.
**Danarel is my guardian angel whom I officially retrieved during the last journey to Romania. With this occasion what wZaas till then a silent relationship became a more vocal and even writing one. Therefore I decided to address from now on my letters to him for two reasons. First he has not the choice and should read my travelogue, which assures me of at least of one reader; second, he will know better than anybody when I tell the truth and when I heavily plaster the ugly reality. Not that the fact is per se too important. Whatever, I hope that this correspondence, one way, because angels don’t write, will not lead to a change of heart when the time will come and I will need him more, that is to say…always.
***And because the word jumped into talk please have a look upon the murderous verbal heritage of LeRoi Jones aka Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of New Jersey, please, with his enormous sadistic outbursts (to crack…… “steel knuckles in a jewlady’s mouth”) pogrom notwithstanding having been married with a Jewish woman and fathered two Jewish daughters and who is still considered a kind of humanist freedom fighter…while me who have ran a five long years hot affair with a black girl without any broken teeth and didn’t fathom to slaughter anybody, except a LeRoi one or two, I will be called racist by the weird politically correct who met dark people once a year in a politically caucus or trendy art opening, till the end of my life…It breaks my heart…but I hope to survive
**** In the middle of the night, D. who is staying for a week at my Parisian residence called to tell with an unearthly outer world voice that there is a fine water leakage in the bathroom, the worst news after the burst of a new world war. Once the first panic overcome we dealt with the crisis in adult like manner, the chance was for something, and I hope that tomorrow C. the charming black plumber ( no niggers any more) middle aged marital outlaw, will take care of the problem. I have to say that between one call to other I slept like a holy man, one more proof of the strange improvement of my mental equilibrium. I wonder where all this will lead?
PRIMERA MALETA, QUITO ONE