The Neighbor

Our neighbor Tony is one of these people that reveals too much information about themsevles too quickly. I tend to get put off by this sort. So does Kristin. But I’m having a change of heart, at least in this case, with this man.

Oddly enough, Tony has the face of an older, more weathered Tony Danza, for one. He wears his life’s baggage in his eyes, and there is a heaviness and a great distance there. He drives an expensive car, has nice Italian leather furniture, nice clothes, but never has any money.

Unemployed due to cancer and a subsequent operation on his leg (in other words, he had some time on his hands), he was instrumental in getting my Internet connection established, for which I am hugely grateful. His efforts with the “Convergence” cable company were relentless and beautiful. He gave us drinking water when we ran out, shared his washer and dryer, helped us order an enormous and overpriced Dominos pizza for delivery, and has poured out his miseries over meals we paid for. He is divorced, and his wife would see him behind bars. Attorney’s come by weekly, rapping on his door.
But he has a warm and generous heart. He invited us to church our first weekend here. The congregation was warm too and jocund and the service went over two hours, but it made me a little sad because its wasn’t much different from the charismatic-evangelical fare you get in so many American churches—same songs, same parlance, same homiletical cadences—only in Spanish. There was nothing there I didn’t recognize, didn’t already know by heart. I guess I was hoping for something different, some bit of ural influence altogether new to me, something fresh or genuine or, well, Guatemalan. Tony stood next to me on his bad leg clapping but not singing. He didn’t seem to fit in, but had been going there for twenty-years he told me.

Tony has constant leg pain from this operation I mentioned. He says they put a long piece of metal in his leg that he needs desperately to get out. He gets shots for the pain. I’ve already bought him a shot for twenty-five quetzales, and have delivered numerous Advil to his door. He’s told me the story more than once of how you’d be lucky to get three meals a day of cold rice and beans in the military hospital where he had the operation. There were no nurses at night, he told me, and one of the kinder soldiers would carry him to the bathroom. He says he’s a miracle. That his heart stopped for two minutes in that hospital.

Tony is the sort that fixes you in your tracks with a stare, the kind of stare that makes times stand upright if not still. For example, “I am still ually active, Daniel.” [staring, staring, still staring…] Or, “I can’t live with anymore, Daniel.” [staring, staring, still staring…] Or best of all, referring to Zona 10: “This is fantasy land, Daniel. This is not Guatemala. The real Guatemala is out there. It’s a hole.” [staring…]

I like Tony, but I tend to like eccentric people. That he keeps a shotgun I confess worries me a little. I have loaned him close to fifty-dollars, which I don’t expect I will see again. His quirky self-revelations I attribute not to his being emotionally needy, as Kristin suggests, but to his need for the bare honesty of life which he finds so essential. “If I can’t be honest, Daniel, I’m no better than that woman that wants to put me in jail.”