Freedom Is a Feast

by Alejandro Puyana

Genres: Hispanic & Latino; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In the tradition of Isabel Allende’s career-launching debut, The House of the Spirits, a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause—and receives a late-life chance at redemption: “a tour de force” from “the new master” (Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene).

In 1964, Stanislavo, a zealous young man devoted to his ideals, turns his back on his privilege to join the leftist movement in the jungles of Venezuela. There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their romance is upended by a decision with consequences that will echo down through the generations.
 
Forty years later, the country’s political landscape has drastically changed, as have the trajectories that Stanislavo and Emiliana followed in the intervening decades. When a young boy is accidentally shot on the eve of the attempted coup against President Chávez, Stanislavo’s chance encounter with the boy’s mother forces a reckoning with past missteps and the ways his actions have reverberated into the present.
 
With its epic scope, gripping narrative, and unflinching intimacy, Freedom Is a Feast announces a major new talent. Alejandro Puyana has delivered an extraordinarily wise and moving debut about sticking to one’s beliefs at the expense of pain and chaos, about the way others can suffer for our misdeeds even when we have the best of intentions, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.

Release date: August 6, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 384

Sample

ON A NORMAL DAY María would have walked to the open window, and from the clothesline just beyond it she would have unclipped the dress: cotton, pink, knee-length, with a lacy white apron that began the day clean and accumulated stains as she cooked for the Romeros. She had two other dresses just like it, one mint-green and one baby-blue, all of them given to her by La Señora when María had started cleaning at Casa Verde four years ago. The bad year. The year her mother died. After taking the dress from the line she would have folded it and packed it in her workbag with a bar of Savoy chocolate for a midmorning snack. But La Señora had called the night before, asking her to stay home. They were going to wait and see what happened with the opposition march first, she said. Señor Romero had heard things were going to get rough.

María woke up at her regular hour nevertheless, the lazy light just crawling over the mountain, stretching thin on the zinc roofs of Barrio Cotiza. She had lived in the barrios on the west side of Caracas ever since she could remember. First in an apartment building in Catia—when her mom still lived with family—working-class but sturdy, made of concrete and iron, with an elevator that wended its way up to the fifth floor shakily and slowly, and a bus stop right outside the building. When her mom started cleaning at an office building, they’d moved up the mountain, to a rented room that was a five-minute walk from the street through sets of concrete steps. Then, when María was a teenager, they made another move—farther up the mountain and down the poverty line—to their first rancho, no more sturdy walls, no more dependable utilities. Her mom was both disappointed and relieved when María insisted she needed to work, that school could be something she thought about later. Finally, they got here, to the highest part of Cotiza, her mother already sick by then, María’s son, Eloy, already a boy without a father. The burden of work sat heavily, and solely, on María’s shoulders. There was no more barrio above them, only mountain, and in this city none but the poorest lived this high up.

She brushed her teeth and checked on little Eloy, sleeping on the couch wrapped in Disney sheets—hand-me-downs from the Romeros.

At noon she was still home. That never happened except when the Romeros took their vacations: summer visits to Miami, Christmases in Whistler. But she was thankful not to travel across Caracas to Casa Verde today. The protests had been making public transit impossible. Fewer than half the buses were operating, they all charged more, even if it was against the law, and you had to fight your way on. With schools closed for days, figuring out how to keep nine-year-old Eloy occupied while still getting to work had been taxing—for her; for Magali, her best friend; even for her neighbor Jacinto.

But it felt wrong to be still. On weekdays the only people who weren’t up before the sun and on their way to work were drunks and criminals. Even though La Señora herself had asked her not to come, María couldn’t help feeling she was disappointing someone: her dead mother? herself? her son? She wasn’t sure.

She crossed the tiny living room of the rancho, winking at Eloy, who was lazing on the couch, and walked past her folding table covered in flowered contact paper to the kitchen at the far wall. Her two-burner countertop stove and her small fridge had grown patches of rust, and sported numerous dimples and bumps. Her concrete floor had cost her a year’s savings to install, and she was proud of it. On the wall to her right, the only one made of brick (the others were corrugated zinc paneling), one door led to the bathroom and the other to the sole bedroom in the house.

She opened her last bag of Harina P.A.N., a quarter full. She would have to figure out how to make it last, since she most likely wouldn’t have another for days, maybe weeks. The stores had been out of stock for a while now (though you wouldn’t know it from the pantry at Casa Verde, where María stacked the bright yellow bags one atop the other, like bricks in a wall). There were countrywide shortages of basic goods, including arepa flour, sugar, coffee, rice, even pasta. She made the arepas smaller than usual, leaving some flour for tomorrow, and placed the disklike corn cakes in a black skillet. While the arepas cooked she walked to Eloy, who lay reading a book, a blanket with a Donald Duck pattern wrapped around his skinny legs.

“It’s almost ready,” she whispered in her son’s ear and stroked his hair. When she kissed him, Eloy rolled and nuzzled his face into the cushions.

María went back to the kitchen and considered turning on the news. She had been avoiding it, knowing it would be more coverage of the march, more news about people hating Hugo Chávez or people loving Hugo Chávez. Why Chávez was the worst thing ever to happen to Venezuela, why Chávez was the savior of the people and the only way to Bolívar’s promise. Her own mind was a mess of contradictions, of memories of her mother and her devotion to the president, of her own feelings about him. On one hand, she liked him, the way he spoke to her and to her struggle in a way no other politician ever had. The way he looked: a strong, handsome man—but not in the way TV told her a handsome man should look. How could she not have fallen in love with Chávez, seeing him through her mother’s eyes? Seeing bits of Eloy in him—someone in power who looked like her son, his brown features devoid of European influence—made her feel good, gave her hope that her son could become someone important too. But Chávez also loved a fight, pitted people against one another. Four years since his election, and even though the magic of that day had not left her—it never would—he was starting to feel like just another politician. She wondered if her mom would feel similarly. The answer was no. She’d be out there with her red shirt and her beret, marching and carrying signs. Maybe she would have been able to prevent the thought of Chávez from turning rancid in María’s mouth, like old ham.

María decided to turn the TV on anyway. News about the day’s opposition march snowed in and out. She fiddled with the antenna until the picture fizzed into place. Men behind podiums had been calling for marches against Chávez most days now. The noise of people banging their pots in protest had become a nightly occurrence, even here in the barrio—a metallic concerto to lull Eloy to sleep. Still, what she saw now on the TV was unexpected: a mass of people so large that she had trouble making it fit in her mind. A helicopter flew overhead, following the highway from one side of the city to the other. The mass was like a snake so large it seemed poised to swallow the city whole—each marcher another of its infinite scales. There were so many people that they couldn’t all fit on the highway, some of them overflowing into side streets. How many times had Magali told her that it was just a bunch of sore losers crying over the power they used to have? Just white people horrified that someone unlike them held the presidency. Enraged that the revolution couldn’t be brought down by sifrinas and their rich husbands.

But the last few days had not looked like rich ladies throwing a tantrum. It was a country up in arms. People like La Señora, sure, but also people like Magali. Like her mom. The announcer said the horde was heading to Miraflores, the presidential palace. The sound the masses made—a tumult of whistles, clanging pots, and chants calling for Chávez to leave—got under her skin and made her hair prickle: “MI-RA-FLORES! MI-RA-FLORES! MI-RA-FLORES!”

As Eloy zombied through the confines of their small house—looking for a shoe here, a crayon there—María cut open the first arepa, the crust toasted and crunchy, but inside as soft as a pillow. Steam rose from the opened corn cake, and her face blushed at its warmth. She filled the arepa with yesterday’s tuna salad. Eloy was already sitting at the table holding a card.

“I tricked you! You thought I would forget!” he said as he handed it to her.

Sometimes his smile was so big, his light so bright, that María didn’t know if her body could hold all of it. She marveled at each small freckle on his brown face, one of the only things he’d inherited from her. He looked so much like his father otherwise: the dark skin, the tight curls, the sharp jaw already squaring. He fit in Cotiza, unlike her. Her light bronze skin packed with freckles had shone a spotlight that turned her inward and made her easy prey for playground bullies telling her to go wipe the stains off her face.

“¡Qué gafo!” she said.

The card read “Feliz Cumpleaños” in red. She imagined Eloy making it in secret while she was at work, all his colors out on the floor. Eloy’s attempt at cursive handwriting, unpracticed but still quite beautiful, read “Te quiero mucho mami” and was punctuated by a drawing of an orange bird.

María reached across the table and grabbed Eloy’s face in her hands. “Gracias, mi amor. I love it.”

“You like the bird?”

“It’s very good,” María said. “Maybe next year we can have our birthdays together. What do you think? I know they’re a few days apart, but we could be birthday buddies.”

“Can I still have my own cake?”

“Of course, mi amor, you can have your cake.”

The sound of gunshots on the TV interrupted their sweet moment. The voice of the announcer came into focus for her again: “We are getting footage of marchers encountering the president’s supporters close to Miraflores Palace. The first protesters have reached Miraflores and have been met with stones, tear gas, and now gunshots. We are confirming that two people are dead, one of them a reporter. Again, this is live footage from Avenida Baralt, close to the presidential palace in Miraflores.”

Avenida Baralt went south to north on a hill. At the top of the hill, Chávez supporters roared; at the bottom of the street, opposition marchers did the same. Dividing them was a no-man’s-land wrapped in a cloud of gray tear gas—with rocks, bricks, and debris of all kinds arcing above the smoke. One wall of officers in blue uniforms, Metropolitan Police protecting the marchers, stood their ground with masks and anti-riot weaponry, preventing a clash against the pro-Chávez mass. Another wall of army forces, in green uniforms, did the same with the Chavistas protecting the palace.

“What’s going on, Mami?” Eloy asked.

But María was mesmerized by such a big thing unfolding in such a small square. It felt to her like it could explode out of the TV and suddenly she and Eloy would be placed there, in the middle of it. Then the announcer broke in again: “We’ve just received footage of the first confirmed death. Warning, the images you’re about to see are graphic. We can confirm that photographer Jaime Soto has been shot dead by what seems like fire from pro-Chávez counterprotesters. Again, journalist Jaime Soto is dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Peace to his remains.”

Before she could even think to turn away, or shut the TV off, or cover her son’s eyes, María watched the footage. A man, wearing a multi-pocketed vest, aims his long-lensed camera toward the top of the hill, and in the next moment he is felled, as if by some invisible, godly ray. The man’s limp body is carried by other men to some sort of safety. María wondered if the people helping him thought there was still hope.

The footage kept jumping from skirmish to skirmish, to the people far away from Miraflores still marching and protesting, to opposition politicians calling for change. Different streets, different people screaming, different clouds of tear gas swirling in looping variations. But all of the same rage exploding in the sounds of banging pots and gunfire.

And then she heard another shot, but not from the TV. It was much louder and echoed inside her rancho. Then another, and then a few more in succession. She dropped to the floor, under the table, pulling Eloy with her. The floor was cool against her cheek and the scent of dust filled her nose.

“It’s okay, Eloy. It’ll be over soon,” she whispered.

She wondered if the protests had reached them here, but of course not. Why would protesters be this high up in Cotiza? It was just gunshots. They heard them every day here, regardless of politics. Actually, the barrio had become safer during the recent turmoil. As the city had slowed down with the protests so had the gangs of malandros.

“Lots of plomo, Mami,” Eloy said as the gunshots persisted. His eyes were shut tight, his nose scrunched up.

María could still hear the news on the TV, the march happening far away: “Miraflores! Miraflores! Miraflores!” people chanted. “Not one step back!”

“Stay down,” she said.

She crawled over to the front door and opened it a crack. Across the street she could see Don Jacinto’s house, with his myriad hanging ferns, the only green things in sight. She had always admired them. It was rare to find anyone in the barrio willing to dedicate time and money to something as ephemeral as plants. This was, after all, a very pragmatic place. You lived here because you had to. Spending money on something without the expectation of a return was considered frivolous. More than once María had heard Magali comment on the ferns: “Does he think he’s better than us?”

Don Jacinto was crouched behind his motorcycle, a clunking old Honda, taking refuge from the bullets, clutching a rag so tight that María wondered if the motor oil it had absorbed throughout the decades would suddenly start dripping back out.

“Vecino!” María yelled.

“Señora María! Are you two all right over there?”

“Yes! What in heavens is going on?”

“Gangs! Some sort of turf thing. And today of all days!”

“I know, it’s crazy!”

Magali came down the road toward María’s rancho with the languid pace of a Sunday promenade. Fearless. Unbothered by the commotion. She wore her red MVR shirt, Chávez’s face next to his party’s logo on her chest.

“Hermana!” Magali said. “What are you doing on all fours? Those gunshots are coming from way down the mountain. Get up, mujer.”

María did, feeling ridiculous. This was the power that Magali had on her. María could somehow siphon her friend’s confidence and make it her own for a while. She dusted herself off, but still, with every gunshot she ducked her head.

“I’m going down,” Magali said, matter-of-fact. Like she was announcing a trip to the bodega.

“For what?” María said.

Don Jacinto had also stood, no longer behind his bike, and looked at Magali with disbelief.

“To defend what’s ours, coño! I should have been there already. Fucking escualidos.”

“Maga, they’re killing people. What are you going to do down there?”

“Protect the revolution, catira!”

It was her nickname. No one outside the barrio would ever have mistaken her for white, much less blonde, but still, catira had stuck, and as far as nicknames went, she had suffered much worse growing up.

“They’re taking it away from us,” Magali said. “Today! They hate that one of us is president, and we’re not going to let them kill him. Come with me!”

“I’ve got Eloy here, I can’t leave him. And it’s too dangerous down there. No way.”

“María, get your head out of your ass, we need everyone to show up. If we don’t defend Chávez, no one will, and we’ll be back where we were before, or worse.” She turned toward Don Jacinto. “Viejo,” she called. “Will you look after the boy?”

“Stop!” María said. “I’m not going.”

“Coño, comadre, está bien. I’ll do the fighting for both of us. But in this new Venezuela we’re going to need balls. I’d start growing a pair if I were you.”

María gulped down her response. She couldn’t stand up to Magali. Magali who lived with her nose in the newspaper, who went to barrio meetings and played dominoes with the elders, talking about Marx, Fidel, and Mao as if they were buddies who hadn’t visited in a while. If María’s mom had met Magali they would have been close. Maybe that’s why María gravitated to her; she saw her mom in her friend.

A new cascade of gunshots popped, so near this time that the bullets seemed like whispers whizzing by their ears. An engine revved up the crest of their narrow street, tires screeching, and a black jeep appeared. Then a shirtless man with half his body out the window shot his pistol at two motorcycles following the car. María saw him so clearly, a large mole on his left cheek, the tattoo of a cross on his left shoulder, his hair cropped tight to his head. She had never heard a gunshot so close before. It sounded like it was coming from inside her body. Even Magali joined María on the ground now. Glass exploded somewhere and then the vehicles passed them, gone in a cloud of dirt, the scent of gunpowder seared into the air. María stood up and brushed the dirt off and saw the broken windowpane, and below it a single tiny hole in the zinc panel that acted as one of the walls for her home.

She ran inside. The light coming in through the hole in the wall made a thin beam filled with galaxies of dust and floating particles. She followed the beam through her little rancho—she’d never known the space could feel so big—all the way to Eloy, who held his crimson belly with both hands and looked at her.

“What’s going on, mi amor?” María said, even as she already knew the answer.

ELOY FELT WARM. Like when he rolled himself tight in the blanket and rested his head on his mother’s lap while she read him stories. Like when he ran from third base to home plate and his friends all slapped him on the back. It was like someone had taken all those feelings and compressed them into two red dots, one in his belly, one a couple of inches off his bony spine.

Everything moved slowly, everything sounded far away. He could see his mom screaming but it was like the noise was lazy and didn’t quite reach him. He couldn’t understand her face, had never seen her move this way: her eyes wet and skipping, like she was looking for something important that was lost; her chest going up and down so fast, like his own after racing his friend Wili up the barrio stairs. When she finally reached him, and hugged him, and picked him up in her arms, he felt her vibrating, like her whole body was a heart. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. An earthquake in each beat.

His mom carried him outside, and his madrina shouted, “Jacinto, the child is shot!”

His neighbor took him from his mom and flipped him around, lifted his shirt. It made a wet sound as it came away from his skin.

“El plomo went out the back,” Jacinto said. “That’s good.”

“Viejo, what do you mean?” his madrina said.

“The bullet isn’t in there—the doctors won’t have to go digging for it—but he’s bleeding a lot. We don’t have much time. Magali, get me some towels from the house.”

His madrina ran into the rancho and Don Jacinto rushed him and his mom to the Honda. Eloy loved that bike so much. He would sit with Don Jacinto after school and help him work on it. It’s where he had learned most of his cusswords. Hija de su gran puta was used for the motorcycle in general, whenever she would not start. But there was also the coño e’ su madre carburetor, the pendejo clutch, the brakes de mierda, and the engine of los cojones. When his mother wasn’t around, Eloy was allowed to jump on the bike and pretend he was driving it. Jacinto would bring his radio and they would listen to the baseball games together as Eloy made vroom sounds from inside the big helmet.

His madrina ran back to them now with the towels.

Jacinto, astride the bike, was struggling with the ignition. “Hija de su gran puta,” he muttered.

Eloy’s mother picked him up and squished him between Jacinto’s back and her body.

“Señora Magali,” Jacinto said, “have María put pressure where the bullet went in and out.”

At first it didn’t hurt, he just felt something leaving him, like when he was little and peed the bed.

“Mujer, listen,” Magali told his mom. “Go to Vargas Hospital. That’s the best place for treating bullet wounds. Don’t stop for nothing, you hear?”

Don Jacinto was still struggling with the bike, one kick after the other with no luck.

Magali applied deeper pressure on Eloy now, holding his mother’s hands with hers. “Like this, María. Hold the towels like this.”

Then a sharp pain traveled from Eloy’s belly, half of it down to his toes and the other half up to his head. He screamed, loud and high-pitched, and his mom kissed him on his crown as the pain radiated outward, through his mother and his madrina and Don Jacinto, through la hija de su gran puta, through Don Jacinto’s green ferns, through the million ranchos and the million bullets flying through them, through Cotiza and down the mountain.

At last, the Honda sputtered to life—the mechanical whirr seemed to echo inside him—and his madrina placed the helmet on his mother’s head.

MARÍA WRAPPED HER ARMS around Don Jacinto’s waist, squishing Eloy’s thin frame in between them. The blood pooled, soaking the towels held in place against his belly and back. With every bump on the road her shirt squished like a wet mop. The blood was warm, but the rest of Eloy was cold, though she could still feel his small torso expand against her with the effort of his breathing.

In the frantic ride downhill she caught glimpses of the barrio. How as they descended the buildings became more solid. There were actual walls that could stop bullets, colorful paint, barred windows, porches and balconies. There was dignity in every cement block, in every metal door. Still, it was a different barrio today, with businesses shut down, the porches of the houses empty, the plazas and basketball courts lifeless. People were marching down in small groups, dressed for a fight. They carried sticks, bats, the occasional gun. They wore Chavista garb, berets and red shirts, singing and chanting as they made their way down the mountain to protect the president.

María held tight to Don Jacinto, pressing Eloy between them.

Don Jacinto was having trouble navigating through the increasing mass of people making their way to the presidential palace. They were the opposite of those on the TV, who had called for Chávez’s resignation, removal, or death. This was the other side. “¡UH, AH, CHÁVEZ NO SE VA! ¡UH, AH, CHÁVEZ NO SE VA!” they chanted in defiance of the multitudes on the TV screen. María wished for the protesters to vanish, to let them pass unimpeded.

Then the motorcycle squealed, the back wheel skidding back and forth, and somehow, without throwing the three of them off, Don Jacinto managed to halt before a burning barricade. People were tossing things into the fire: rubber tires, pieces of wood. A blue plastic pupitre, the kind Eloy sat on in class, flew into the pyre. A line of men carried items out of a preschool—chairs and desks—and two others pushed a bookcase into the blaze, the books falling from the shelves like teeth from a rotten mouth. A short, hairy man hurled a blackboard still marked with chalk. Everything, sacred or not, was food for the fire. The smoke, thick and black, vomited into the gray sky. Through the rubble, María could see the gathering of men in blue uniform—Metropolitan Police tasked with protecting anti-Chávez marchers—on the other side.

“Get off, Señora María,” Jacinto said. “I can’t get through here. Let me talk to some people… see how we can get to Vargas Hospital.”

On a normal day it would have been only a couple of minutes more, but their path was blocked. María placed Eloy on the ground and applied pressure to his belly. He was unconscious now, but still breathing. With her free hand María gripped her necklace, the black jet carved into a fist that had been her mother’s, had seen them both through so much. Under her breath she asked her mom for help.

Don Jacinto was arguing with some masked men. All of them brandished weapons—bats and lengths of oxidized rebar—and two boys gathered and piled rocks while other masked men, with T-shirts wrapped over their noses and mouths, threw the rocks over the barricade and at the police with the expertise of years of sandlot baseball.

Don Jacinto turned from the men to walk back to the motorcycle and it seemed he moved in slow motion. He wore an old pair of slacks nearly black with oil stains and a white T-shirt now all but crimson. It was as if she had never looked at him, not before he wore Eloy’s very life on his clothes. He was tall, his skin the color of coffee with too much milk in it, and balding, but with enough white hair remaining to comb some long strands over his bald spot. His was a strong old age, a fibrous one, with wiry muscles, scruff on his cheeks, and callused hands. He was kind, she knew. He was a good man. He was trying to protect them.

“Vámonos,” he said. “We’re not going to get through here with the bike. We have to walk.” He lifted Eloy from the pavement gently, like something already dead, and went to an alleyway littered with rubble and debris.

María couldn’t stop coughing. Neither could Don Jacinto, whose cough was deeper, scratchier, tobacco-haunted. Smoke from the barricade mixed with tear gas made her eyes water and itch. But she did not hear Eloy cough as he lay on Jacinto’s shoulder, and it terrified her. She walked behind them clutching the azabache necklace. Emerging from the alley, she saw the police officers on the other side of the barricade. They wore black helmets and carried tall shields, shotguns, and tear-gas launchers, buzzing around each other in unorganized fashion like wasps around a nest. One of the men, his body half-obscured by wisps of rolling tear gas, noticed them.

“Hey. Hey!” he screamed. “Stop right there, coño!”

Flanked by two other men, the officer ran at them with his shotgun raised. María and Jacinto froze. For once the only thing that seemed to move was Eloy, his little body coming to life with a squirm.

“What do you have there? Drop it!” the cop screamed at Jacinto.

The glint of the shotgun’s metal hypnotized María.

“I can’t!” Don Jacinto screamed back. “It’s a boy, it’s a boy, it’s a boy!” he cried, sobbing through his words, his left arm up, his right arm still holding Eloy.

The policeman flipped up his visor, then cocked his head, like a curious dog. He lowered his weapon. With his hand he motioned the other officers to do the same. “It’s a kid,” he said, and ran toward them.

“My son’s been shot,” María said. “Please. We need help.”

“Come with me,” the cop said and tried to take Eloy from Jacinto’s shoulder.

Jacinto recoiled.

“Okay,” the man said. “Easy. It’s okay, you can carry him. I have a car two minutes that way. Let’s get your boy to the hospital.”

IT WAS MERELY day one, and the only thing worse than the mosquitoes drinking Stanislavo for lunch was the July humidity. The thick of rainy season promised no reprieve, even though today the sky was untroubled by clouds. He didn’t understand how insects could fly in that soup—Stanislavo practically had to push the air apart as he walked. Everything was hot: the air he breathed; the sweat weighing down his clothes; the back of his neck, already lobster-red and sprouting new freckles by the minute.

The northeast of Venezuela had become a center of guerrilla activity, spurred mostly by the lack of military police and the zigzag coastline—remote coves, islotes, morros, and tropical forest. But with the election of President Leoni the year before, the guachafita that had existed under his predecessor ended. Leoni immediately began operations, both open and covert, in any place that had guerrillas, to keep the Movement busy, tired, and spending its limited resources.

The Movement had assigned Stanislavo to lead a yearlong mission to secure shipments of weapons and ammunition coming in from Cuba, to organize the militia in the area, to recruit new members from nearby communities, and to create a reliable system of trails that could accommodate possible new camps. By then Stanislavo had grown sick of university activism: meetings, marches, debates. Revolution from Caracas apartments. The assignment felt like a chance to prove something to himself—better yet, to prove something of himself.

“We must be close now, right?” he asked Molina and Nunzio as he wiped his face with the soiled handkerchief, his machete stabbed in the dirt. But the sweat kept pouring down his face, gathering in his thick orange mop of a mustache.

The Mochima camp was supposedly tucked into a forested foothill an hour’s trek from the beach, according to their boat driver. It would be a tiny clearing swallowed up by jungle and abandoned banana crops. But the three of them had been at this for two hours, confounded by a web of game trails and innumerable shades of green.

“We are as close to it now,” Molina said, “as we were when we took a right at the split cacao tree, which looked exactly like this one right here.”

He leaned against the cursed thing, from which a spotted branch hung broken in the exact same angle as half an hour earlier, and wiped his eyeglasses—round and gold-rimmed—with his sweat-soaked shirt, showing off his belly. Molina looked out of place in the jungle, but then he looked out of place everywhere—except maybe sitting at a tabl