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PARTISAN REVIEW
glasses.
"The people of Belize will rise ..." Mr. Mandala - or Nelson, to us–
was saying in a most factual and satisfied voice.
The plane was drawn up quite close to an anti-aircraft gun emplace–
ment manned by camouflaged pink-faced Tommies, boys from Belfast itself
perhaps. Looking past Mandala out the porthole-window my imagination
blurred into a double image and his face fused and grew confused with theirs.
We flew under ominous rain clouds over jungle between mountains into
Managua. We lined up for Customs, first to pay the sixty-dollar hard cur–
rency compulsory exchange for
cordobas
at a risible rate, for overpriced local
currency, amounting to a
tax,
an octroi in effect, and then for an hours-long
intensive
search
through our belongings, every handkerchief and sock un–
folded, undone. (What are you searching for with such
detenimiento?
I asked
pleasantly in Spanish addressing one young female guard. She was wearing
gloves while searching, and I was reminded of the Civil Guards at Spanish
airports doing the same when Franco was in power. She replied in a dim but
surly voice,
"Hay que mirarlo todo, nunca se sabe
... ").
Nelson Mandala had indeed been met by ajeep with military personnel
in it when we landed. He went off noiselessly, without saying farewell to
anyone. He had been spared
all
this.
At the airport in Managua no one smoked. Their delicious Flor de
Nicaragua cigars were on sale. No one indulged. It was a smoke-free airport
when we were there. We stood around for hours for unknown reasons.
Perhaps we were being surveyed from a distance through peepholes, being
watched for some provocative impulse towards an attempted break-out.
Were we being tested?
Later, at the Yankee built-in-the-form-of-a-pyramid Intercontinental
Hotel, we spied Nelson Mandala himself ensconced on a sofa in the lobby,
surrounded by awestruck and obviously North American student gulls and
geese. Immediately next to Mandala, our Nelson, was another red-faced
non-Redskin Anglo-Irish type in black with a large pectoral cross on a chain
hanging around his neck. Was that a Bishop's ring on his index finger? The
two imperious beefeaters seemed to be addressing the flock simultaneously.
At the hotel bookstand
El libro verde de Muhamar El Kadafi
was the
geometrical cynosure of
all
eyes, and superseded any need to focus.
It
was
the green centerpiece in a reredos ofMarxist literature bound in red.
From our bedroom window my diva ("lover") and I gazed out over a
wasteland of ruins and antitropical nonlandscape. No one was at work in or
on the ruins. All the bustle was military.
Next morning, we read the morning's authorized "press," two sheets,
over a many-coursed and wonderfully endless sweet breakfast. A layered
garden spread out below. Ah, Nelson Mandala was in town:
HA LLEGADO UN "CHIEF" INDIO NORTEAMERICANO
