To the Ends of the Earth

They were of course singing a hymn. In a place where Jesus Christ was depicted as a muscular tough, a blue-eyed Latin with slicked-down hair, a deeply handsome young fellow, religion was a kind of love affair. In some Catholicism, and frequently in Spanish America, prayer has become a romancing with Jesus. He is not a terrible God, not a destroyer, not a cold and vindictive ascetic; he is princely and with it the ultimate macho figure. The hymn was a love song, but very much a Spanish-American one, crowing with lugubrious passion, the word heart repeated in every verse. And it was extremely loud. This was worship, but there was no substantial difference between what was going on here in this old church and what one could hear in the jukebox down the street in El Bar Americano. The church had been brought to the people; it had not made the people more pious—they had merely used this as an opportunity to entertain themselves and take the boredom out of the service. A mass or these evening prayers was an occasion to concentrate the mind in prayer; this music turned it into a distraction.

Music of this special deafening kind seemed important in Spanish America, because it prevented any thought whatsoever. The goon with the transistor in the train, the village boys gathered around their yakketing box, the man in Santa Ana who brought his cassette machine to breakfast and stared at its groaning amplifier, all the knee jerks and finger snapping and tooth sucking seemed to have one purpose—a self-induced stupor for people who lived in a place where alcohol was expensive and drugs illegal. It was deafness and amnesia; it celebrated nothing but lost beauty and broken hearts; it had no memorable melody; it was splinters of glass ceaselessly flushed down a toilet, the thud of drums and the grunts of singers. People I met on my trip were constantly telling me they loved music. Not pop music from the United States, but this music. I knew what they meant.

Meanwhile, the priest had sat down beside the altar, looking pleased with himself. Well he might: the music had its effect. As soon as it had started, people had begun to pour into the church: schoolchildren with satchels and wearing uniforms, young children—barefoot urchins, kids with twisted nitty hair who had been frolicking in the plaza; mumbling old men with machetes, and two farm boys clutching straw hats to their chests, and a lady with a tin wash basin and a gang of boys, and a bewildered dog. The dog sat in the center aisle and beat its stub of tail against the tiles. The music was loud enough to have reached the market up the street, for here were three ladies in full skirts carrying empty baskets and leather purses. Some sat, some waited at the back of the church. They watched the band, not the tabernacle, and they were smiling. Oh, yes, this is what religion is all about—rejoice, smile, be happy, the Lord is with you; snap your fingers, He has redeemed the world. There were two shattering clashes of cymbals.

The music stopped. The priest stood up. The prayers began.

And the people who had come into the church during the song pushed to the rear door. The eleven old ladies in the front pews did not move, and only they remained to say the Confiteor. The priest paced back and forth at the altar rail. He gave a short sermon: God loves you, he said; you must learn how to love Him. It was not easy in the modern world to find time for God: there were temptations, and the evidence of sin was everywhere. It was necessary to work hard and dedicate each labor to the glory of God. Amen.

Again, a wave of the hand, and the music started. This time it was much louder, and it attracted a greater number of people from the plaza to hear it. It was a similar song: yowl, thump, heart, heart, yowl, crash, dooby-doo, thump, crash, crash. There was no hesitation among the onlookers when it ended. At the final crash, they fled. But not for long. Ten minutes later (two prayers, a minute of meditation, some business with an incense burner, another pep talk) the band again began to play and the people returned. This routine continued for a full hour, and it was still going on when I took myself away—during a song, not a sermon or prayer; I had a train to catch.

The sky was purple and pink, the volcano black; lurid chutes of orange dust filled the valleys, and the lake was fiery, like a pool of molten lava.

To Limón with Mr. Thornberry

“THIS SCENERY,” SAID MR. THORNBERRY, “IT BLOWS MY mind.” Mr. Thornberry had a curious way of speaking, he squinted until his eyes were not more than slits; his face tightened into a grimace and his mouth went square, mimicking a grin, and then without moving his lips he spoke through his teeth. It was the way people talked when they were heaving ash barrels, sort of screwing their faces up and groaning their words.