San Salvador

The run into the city is the same. Pot-holed roads, busy and fast, sliding down the mountain sides, and the plastic signs of Burger King and McDonalds, like toy flags stuck into any patch of land in which there are rich, successful, fat people. Perfect squares of predictability and cleanliness in the surrounding dirt.

Three lanes of traffic at a complete standstill. Shards of light, solid and swirling, black and silver fumes. Police blowing whistles, and horns rupturing further the restless unquiet, as though in an effort to disperse the vehicles with noise alone.

By the time I weave through the cars, to the centre of San Salvador, it is three o´clock. A stagnant, sticky hour, the sun´s heat reaching its climax. At three o'clock street-vendors can gauge whether they have enough money in their pockets, and, with the knowledge that there are less than three hours to change fortunes, the noise becomes a cacophonic bawling; a clamouring of products and prices, screamed into the hot and seething air.

A bus with a flat tire blocks the last remaining lane, the cause of the gridlock. The rest of the road has been invaded by people trying to make money.

Clothes stalls. Christmas decoration stalls. Fruit and vegetable stalls. Meat and fish. People carry their wares on shoulders yelling into the crowds; Dresses $3!! Brooms $1.25!! Old ladies sit in front of baskets of bread, waving plastic bags tied to sticks to keep away the flies. Young girls sit in front of open bags of chicken´s feet, and heads, and limbs unidentifiable, doing nothing about the flies taking meagre bites from the warm, wet flesh and defecating over it.

Bootleg CDs and DVDs, porn magazines and cooking magazines, TV times and crossword puzzles. Fake Puma, Nike and Quiksilver. Men with missing limbs, and women with babies strapped to their breasts, with hands outstretched, and eyes that turn. Pleading. Desperate. Gone.

The sound of sizzling oil comes from somewhere. The sound is indistinguishable almost from that of running, inconstantly trickling water, but the scent of pupusas frying, and the melting cheese within them, rises sweet and strong, amongst the pungent smell of rotting meat and discarded fish bones lying on the floor, and the acrid sweetsick smell of ripened fruit, decomposing in the sun.

Whole rows of stalls selling nothing but coconuts, nothing but tomatoes, or cucumbers. And with a strange conspicuity that forces the question, which came first? the supply or demand? Barcelona football shirts are everywhere. In downtown San Salvador it seems that about 10% of the population wear Barcelona shirts. In the crowded throbbing streets it would appear as if match day had arrived, and the stadium were drawing close, if only there was some consensus of direction amongst the blue and burgundy stripes.

Boys in T-shirts, black with dirty oil, crawl out from under the bus. Huge metal wrenches are passed in sweating urgency as horns crescendo their disapproval. On the other side of the bus the street is empty of vehicles, full of people, and I glance down side streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of a hotel or hospedaje.

...


The sign says ´Feliz Noche,´ Happy Night, without even the plural to suggest that one might return. Certainly, the iron-barred gate, and the heavy padlock don´t look happy. Nor the razor wire, spiralling around the roof. Nor, when the padlock is unlocked and the gate squealed open, is there a happy face to greet me. Rather, the proprietor, if that´s what he is, has the face of a nasty, underfed rodent, with a thick black moustache, glaring eyes, and unmovable scowl. He folds his arms against a dirty, stained vest, that used to be white, and tilts his chin back to look at me.

He pauses for such a long time when I ask him how much it is per night, that I am left in the silence wondering whether he is simply not used to calculating the cost for a whole night, or if he´s slowly trying to work out how much money he can squeeze out of me. Both, perhaps. $10, and I´m too tired to argue.

I have to be out by 8am. This must be a peak time for the establishment I realise, and I smile at the sense that makes as he shows me to my room.

The walls in the bathroom don´t reach the ceiling, and negotiations from next door filter through the gaps. I can´t understand what the man is asking for; only that it´s going to cost him $3.50 extra. Everything I can imagine makes the room seem even more expensive than it did before, and I leave to find some food before they stop talking.

...


Outside in the dusk, under the dirty plastic sheets covering the market place, her face is painted, an unwell white. So shudders run, to think that what it hides could appear worse, more startling and desperate, more unwell, than the mask itself - shining almost, glowing and sick, against darker surrounds - and out of it, staring, those cold brown eyes.

Hands clinging now to my hand, and my arm, cold in the heat of everything else. But moist, as though waking in cold nightmarish sweat. Though the eyes stare, not feverish, but business like, with something in them that may be approaching cruelty, so that when the proposition comes, not in the teasing, coquettish language of a whore, but in her other language, in that simple need to be understood - "para llevar" she says, with the eyes still cold and staring, and the hands gripping tighter still, "to take away" she says - so that when the proposition comes, the subsequent refusal owes nothing to a distanced consideration of morality, but, rather, to an instinctive biological repulsion and the need to tear myself away.

On the streets around my ´hotel´ people lie, sleeping already, on cardboard boxes. A man lies, face down, half on the road, half on the pavement; grey curling hair, lips, and thick, dehydrated, alcoholic dribble, touching the concrete. Men stagger past me and faces lose distinct features in the slowly surrendering dusk. 8am, I think, is not too soon.