American Visa Read Online Free PDF Page A

travel?”
    â€œWhat would I do in another country? I’d rather try to get by here.”
    â€œYou’re as fatalistic as the Arabs.”
    â€œYou know what I really want? To save a few pesos and set up a grocery store in Riberalta, where I was born. If I can, I’ll get married, and if not, I’ll go it alone. Either way, I’ll be okay. I would like to have a boy, though. I already have a little girl who lives with my parents.”
    She put out her cigarette and then stroked her muscular hustler’s arms delicately as they took in the sun. “And if they deny you the visa?”
    â€œDon’t talk like that. You’ll jinx it.”
    She left ten pesos on the table and said, “I’ll be in the hotel. If they give you the visa, we’ll go out for some beers.”

Chapter 3
    O utside, the wind was whipping up tiny clouds of dust on the edges of the sidewalks. It tugged powerfully on the tents set up by the street vendors. In a seemingly endless line, half-breed women were preparing to spend the day selling every sort of trinket imaginable and struggling to keep their butts warm on the frosty asphalt. I bought a wooden charm from a scraggly old lady. She told me it was from Chiquitanía, and that it would bring me good luck. It was a miniature bull made of palm wood, but it had only three legs and one horn.
    â€œA demon ate one of the legs and a horn when the bull conquered it,” she said proudly.
    I started down Santa Cruz Street. It was one of those mornings that make you forget that life is hard and then you just die. When I arrived at Plaza San Francisco, a fortune-teller approached me and waved a hand of playing cards right in front of my nose.
    â€œTake one. These Tarot cards don’t lie. One peso to try your luck,” he said.
    It didn’t seem prudent to size up my luck after buying a charm, so I continued straight ahead. I felt sure I’d be able to find my way from Plaza San Francisco to my godfather Ambrosio’s barbershop, which I hadn’t seen in years. My haircut was boxlike. If the American consul were to see my long hair, the conversation would be over before it had even started. A visitor’s external appearance matters a lot to those yuppie gringos. I’d seen it a hundred times on television. The ones who belong to “the establishment” are immaculately dressed and the rest look third-rate.
    I strolled through El Prado. It had been ten years since I was last in La Paz. The city had grown enormously, vertically more than anything. The newly erected skyscrapers downtown didn’t compare to those of Dallas or Houston, but they impressed migrants from rural provinces who let themselves get duped by mirages. As in nearly all Latin American capitals, in La Paz “progress” is enshrined in framed cement blocks that give a false sense of prosperity. It’s when you start snooping around the place that you smell the misery and underdevelopment.
    I vaguely remembered that my godfather’s business was in San Pedro. I asked the first traffic cop I spotted on Riobamba Street for directions. With his nearly unintelligible mumbo jumbo, the officer led me to understand that I should go up to Plaza Sucre and ask someone there, which I did. Once in the plaza, I approached a shoeshine boy. With the use of universal hand signals, he showed me the way to go. It didn’t take me much longer to find it. The Oruro Feeling hair salon was built into the first floor of an old tenement. It faced the street and received the morning sun head-on. I pushed open the Wild West–style swinging door and found myself inside a tidy, traditional waiting room.
    Three poor-man’s barbers, each wearing a white work coat, received me with Chaplinesque bows. One of them beckoned to me and said, “Over here, señor.”
    I recognized my godfather; he was the oldest and thinnest one. He came close and I thought he was going to