The Heart and the Fist Part 7

"Why?"

"Come on, Qui Que. Qui Que we need them to sit on."

"We already have tickets."

"But it's good for your--," and they laughed as they used a word for "b.u.t.t" that I'd never heard before.

"Come on, let's go in."

The boys were punching and wrestling and shoving wildly as we walked into the stadium, a giant concrete oval with concrete steps cut for seats. I understood now why the guy selling the makes.h.i.+ft cus.h.i.+ons had customers. The kids thought I was a tightwad for not buying them.

"Nice seats, Qui Que. Now my b.u.t.t hurts," Pablo said. But we didn't sit for long.

As soon as the game started, the stadium exploded with energy. The boys were yelling, and around us men were stomping, drumming, singing, shouting. The tickets we'd bought were cheap even by Bolivian standards. We were standing next to s.h.i.+rtless men covered in dust; they had clearly come to the stadium after a day at hard labor. These men shouted at each good pa.s.s, punched their fists through the air, and cheered each solid tackle, the workday behind them and the sun now set.

At one point a fire broke out in the stands. Men had torn open the newspaper cus.h.i.+ons and lit them on fire, and more and more newspaper was piled on as the fire grew and the crowd moved back. The players kept playing. The ref kept reffing. The fans kept shouting. This is crazy, This is crazy, I thought, I thought, this is great, this is great, and I jumped with the kids and shouted, "Vamos!" I didn't even know the name of the team we were rooting for. and I jumped with the kids and shouted, "Vamos!" I didn't even know the name of the team we were rooting for.

Goals were scored against our team, and when our side seemed unable to press back on offense, the crowd grew restless. What looked to me like a bottle rocket was fired from the stands at the opposing goalkeeper and exploded in the gra.s.s. I can't remember if beer was sold or alcohol was smuggled in, but as we left the stadium in a chests-pressed-against-backs throng, I was struck by the smell of sweat and cheap alcohol. It was dark, and the air held the electric energy of men looking to fight.

Finally we stepped out of the stadium. I took a head count. One, One, two, three, four, five, six ... One, two, three, four, five, six... two, three, four, five, six ... One, two, three, four, five, six... I had come here with seven. I now had six. Who was missing? I had come here with seven. I now had six. Who was missing?

Rodrigo.

"Where's Rodrigo?" I asked the kids.

"He was just here," one of the boys said.

"OK. Let's wait for him."

Fans flowed out of the stadium, and I stood there scanning the crowd. Maybe he'd been separated from us in the crush. Eventually the crowds thinned. When a single drunkard stumbled out of the stadium, I realized that I'd lost Rodrigo.

I could not go back to Mano Amiga minus one child. And what would happen to him? Then I remembered something Rodrigo had told me: he'd once collected fares on the micros. He knew the whole city and many of the drivers. He wasn't lost, I realized. He was off on a little adventure. He could be anywhere. The streets, Jason and Caroline told me, had a constant tug on many of the children, especially those who'd experienced the pain and pleasure-filled freedom of s.e.x and drugs and violence and drifting.

"Where is Rodrigo?" I asked the boys again.

"We were just following you. We don't know," they said.

They were unable to suppress their smiles, and it took a measured effort for me to remain calm as they lied to me. They understood our situation perfectly. I wanted to find Rodrigo, and that meant I had to search the streets. Rodrigo running away had created an adventure for them all.

"OK. Follow me," I said.

I started walking, vaguely hoping to head in the direction of the micro stands, but not sure where I was going.

The kids bounced behind me. I was thinking, Should I talk to the police? Should I wait in one spot? Should I talk to the police? Should I wait in one spot?

One, two, three, four, five ...Five heads. ...Five heads. I lost another kid. I lost another kid. I scanned the street. Carlos had fallen behind, chatting with a girl. I scanned the street. Carlos had fallen behind, chatting with a girl.

"Carlos, come on."

"Qui Que, I'll catch up soon."

"Carlos!"

"Yes, Qui Que," and he jogged to rejoin our pack.

As we wandered down the streets, the kids drifted away just far enough to linger outside shops, to yell to girls. We walked down street after street for hours.

"Qui Que, let's do this every night!"

I couldn't return to the home one kid short. But I also couldn't stay out all night. I kept turning corners, hoping to spot Rodrigo.

Then I figured out what I should have done from the beginning. I gathered the boys.

"OK, if we find Rodrigo in the next thirty minutes, I'll take each of you out tomorrow night to get ice cream."

"This way, Qui Que, this way!" The kids ran, and I ran after them down an alley and then into a square and past three policemen who-seeing a white man chasing children of the street-started to run as well until I said, "It's good, it's good. No problem"

"There he is!" one of the boys shouted, and we all stopped running.

I saw Rodrigo's red jacket and the back of his head where he stood in a line at a micro stand.

"OK. Be quiet, all of you."

I walked up behind Rodrigo quietly and then grabbed him by his shoulders and turned him around.

"Where were you? What were you doing?" He started to speak very quickly and to say something I couldn't understand, but a lying fourteen-year-old in Bolivia is the same as a lying fourteen-year-old in America, and I understood him well enough. I held a fistful of his jacket as we walked. The other kids formed a circle around us: close enough to laugh at Rodrigo, but not too close to me. We hopped on a micro and made our way back to Mano Amiga.

"Thanks, Qui Que!" the boys yelled as they ran into the home.

I couldn't help but wonder which of their number would ultimately succ.u.mb to the lure of the streets.

One day Juan Carlos, a boy from Don Bosco, a neighboring home for children of the street, was taken to the hospital. His injuries were minor-a broken collarbone-and he was expected to recover quickly, but poor medical care caused complications that led to an infection, and then Juan Carlos contracted typhoid, and then he died. His casket was brought to a small chapel near the home.

I walked Eddie and Adolpho in to see Juan Carlos. The open casket rested on a pedestal three or four feet high, and I picked Adolpho up underneath his armpits and held him so that he could see Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos rested at peace. Dark hair. Closed eyes. He was wearing a white s.h.i.+rt (new), blue pants (clean), and a plastic cross like many of the other children. His hair was combed smooth. The boys said a prayer and ran out. I sat in the chapel to watch as the other children came through.

Pablo, fourteen years old, walked in with Carlos, ten. They stood side by side looking at the body of Juan Carlos. Then Pablo laid his arm over Carlos's shoulder, in direct imitation, I thought, of Jason when he comforted the boys.

Eddie came to me at lunch and dove onto my legs. I pulled him up.

"Como estas, Eddie?"

"Bien."

He was unusually subdued. He lay down and I held him as if he were a baby, his head resting in the crook of my elbow, his eyes shut, his limbs still. For a child normally so energetic, it was odd. No punching, no singing, no monster faces.

In Spanish he said, "I am like Juan Carlos." He folded his hands in prayer over his chest.

"Do you think that Juan Carlos is asleep?" I said, careful in my Spanish.

"No, he's dead."

"Do you think that Juan Carlos is in heaven?"

"No, he's in the chapel."

At the Ma.s.s for Juan Carlos, I stood along the wall, my camera in my hands. I wanted to share this; I wanted people to know what had happened here. I could rattle off a boatload of statistics about poverty and health care in the third world and people would feel nothing. Viewing just a single picture of this boy, who died because of a broken bone, people might understand. But this was a Ma.s.s and it didn't feel right shooting pictures, so I kept my camera at my side.

Juan Carlos's father was in the chapel that day. Juan Carlos's mother was-I understood-long dead. His father had wet, red eyes and a slight, birdlike body. He was dressed for his son's funeral in a brown jacket, brown pants, Converse sneakers.

If Juan Carlos had a father, why had he ended up in a home for street children? Was his father abusive? Had he loved his son? Dumped him in the street?

A priest hurried into the church, almost a half hour late. In view of the congregation, he put a robe on over a nylon sweatsuit wet from the day's rain. He spoke of his experience with funerals of children and the admirable way the community had dealt with this death. He mentioned Juan Carlos's name twice.

The crowd, wanting consolation from the priest, found none. The eulogy offered no clear outlets for their sorrow. A few solid weepers were in the crowd, but mostly they were left to uncoordinated grieving.

I had heard that Juan Carlos's injury had resulted from his slipping in the shower at Don Bosco. I had also heard that this story had been invented to get the hospital to admit the boy, though it was unclear to me why such a lie would have been necessary. The other story was that Juan Carlos-who had been in and out of the home for children of the street-had been brought to Don Bosco, broken bone and all, by his father.

Was it true that Juan Carlos's father had visited him in the hospital only once in three days, and then for only twelve minutes?

A steady rain turned the roads muddy as we drove from the church to the grave. The coffin rode in the back of a pickup truck. The truck bed was not long enough for the coffin, which hung out the back, through the open gate. Older boys from the home sat in the back of the truck, one hand gripping the side of the truck and the other holding the coffin. Each time the truck hit a b.u.mp in the road the boys tightened their grip. We listened to the slap of rain on metal and wood and the rev of the engine and the splatter of the mud.

At the paupers' cemetery, I whispered to a woman who seemed to have some blood relation to the boy. "Yes, please," she said. "I want you to share this with people." I moved to the back of the crowd and raised my camera.

The same priest who was late to Ma.s.s at the church spoke at the burial site. At the very end of the service, he said, "Adios, hijo"-Good-bye, son-or was it "A Dios, hijo"-To G.o.d, son? The dead boy's father, silent up until that moment, leaned his head back and wailed, as if he'd only just then realized that Juan Carlos was truly dead. He touched the casket, and his fingers lingered there, and then he cried out again as he let his fingers slide from his son.

The older boys bent down, picked up the coffin, and lifted it to their shoulders. They slid the casket into its slot. A small, un.o.btrusive man-a bricklayer dressed in s.p.a.ckled pants-walked over and quickly, cleanly, set the bricks and applied the mortar, sealing Juan Carlos away with the other lost children of the street.

When almost everyone else had left, a young woman wrote, with her index finger, an epitaph in the still-wet mortar: J.CO.R.

ERES UN ANGELITO.

QUE.

ESTAS EN CIELOJUAN C CARLOS.

YOU ARE A LITTLE ANGEL.

WHO.

IS IN HEAVEN.

Riding with me in a car on the journey home, a college student who had recently arrived to volunteer held my hand as she slept on my shoulder, exhausted by this death. Back at Mano Amiga, Eddie found me to play a game, and he told me, "Juan Carlos is not in the chapel now."

For all of the violence and tragedy and pain that armed conflict brings, I thought that it might be easier for a child to lose a parent or a limb and to live through war than to grow up abused and abandoned. Most of the children on the streets of Bolivia had never known the comforts of family life, were never going to go to college. Few of them, I guessed, would ever know one whole carefree and happy day in their lives.

If we want to change something, we must begin with understanding. But if we want to love something, we must begin with acceptance. The beauty of what Jason and Caroline had done was to begin with acceptance and love. Then, by virtue of their courage, their intelligence, and their compa.s.sion, they were able to change the lives of the children in their charge in a profound way. Their love was built on patience, and their faith helped them to know that they couldn't do everything, but they did have to do what they could.

Later, in the military, I'd read briefs of well-intentioned officers who had designed "programs" to "swiftly rebuild civil society" after war, after inst.i.tutional collapse. I admired their intentions, but if Bolivia taught me anything, it was that there are some things-like civil society, like character, like a child's belief in the future-that cannot be achieved overnight. Humanitarians, warriors, scholars, and diplomats all do best when we recognize the difference between what we can fight for and what we must accept, between change that can be catalyzed and change that must be built over time, from within. I was twenty-two, and I still believed that I could shape the world through service, but I'd learned in Bolivia that patience and acceptance would be part of the journey.

7. Oxford

IN BOLIVIA, I REREAD Albert Camus's Albert Camus's The Plague. The Plague. In the story, Bernard Rieux, a local doctor, and Jean Tarrou, a visitor unable to return home, are caught up in a plague epidemic in the Algerian city of Oran. Taking a break-for a moment-from fighting disease, Rieux and Tarrou discuss what it means to live well, and Tarrou says, "Of course a man should fight for victims, but if he ceases caring for anything outside that, what's the use of his fighting?" In the story, Bernard Rieux, a local doctor, and Jean Tarrou, a visitor unable to return home, are caught up in a plague epidemic in the Algerian city of Oran. Taking a break-for a moment-from fighting disease, Rieux and Tarrou discuss what it means to live well, and Tarrou says, "Of course a man should fight for victims, but if he ceases caring for anything outside that, what's the use of his fighting?"1 Doing humanitarian work overseas, I had come to realize that it's not enough to fight for a better world; we also have to live lives worth fighting for. for. In my senior year of college I applied for a Rhodes scholars.h.i.+p, awarded annually to men and women who are meant to "fight the world's fight." Scholars are sent to graduate school at Oxford University in England, and it was at Oxford that I really began to appreciate all of life's beauty: joy, delight, rest, love, tranquillity, peace. These are things worth fighting for, for others and for ourselves. In my senior year of college I applied for a Rhodes scholars.h.i.+p, awarded annually to men and women who are meant to "fight the world's fight." Scholars are sent to graduate school at Oxford University in England, and it was at Oxford that I really began to appreciate all of life's beauty: joy, delight, rest, love, tranquillity, peace. These are things worth fighting for, for others and for ourselves.

Oxford offered an almost unimaginable gift of time, and more opportunity for revelry than I'd ever known. Oxford offered, above all, incredible freedom. I took cla.s.ses, but there were no grades. At the end of the year, I simply had to show up and pa.s.s an exam. The Rhodes offered a modest stipend, and provided that I budgeted well, I could use it to travel widely. The only real guidance I'd been given was: "Make the most of it."

With its manicured grounds, Queen Elizabeth House looked like an English country manor, and after an interview with the director of an academic program in development studies, I was admitted into a diverse cla.s.s of students from South Africa, Spain, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Belgium. During my time there, I would learn as much from the other students as I would from my professors.

I soon found that Oxford not only welcomed diversity but embraced the eccentric. One scholar, "Turkish Tom," who was over six and a half feet tall-if you included his mad-scientist hair-walked the halls of the college in a black trench coat, mumbling about his dissertation, then seven years in the making. Oxford academics really did bike through town dressed in tweed.

A dark wooden desk sat in front of the window in my attic room, and in the morning I'd read and write there as the sun rose over the college chapel. The university hosted lectures on a wide range of subjects, which were open to every student, and one morning I sat at my desk reviewing the university lecture list. With a yellow marker I highlighted lectures in British history, contemporary literature, moral philosophy, the history of science, modern art, Greek civilization, parliamentary politics. It was an academic all-you-can-eat buffet. One day I dropped in on a philosophy lecture. In an ancient room lined with wood shelves weighted with leather-bound books, the professor began, "What is truth?"

Dinners lasted all night. At Lady Margaret Hall, my college, I sat down to "Formal Halls" with British historians, Swiss chemists, Chilean anthropologists, and Polish conductors. In a letter to my family I wrote, "I have no idea how people get work done here. At 5 we start with pre-dinner drinks and then go for c.o.c.ktails and then sit down at 6:30 for dinner and eat one course after another, and then just when you think it's over you go into another room for chocolates and drinks, and then everyone goes to the pub after that. When you add in two tea times per day and lunch with a friend, I feel like I spend all day eating and drinking and talking."

The Rhodes Trust owned a large log cabin in the Alps, and I was invited there for a "Reading Party." We'd read in the mornings and take extraordinary alpine hikes most of the day, and then each night a member of the group would make an informal presentation and lead a discussion. My presentation was not very memorable, but I did introduce a bunch of international scholars to the American s'more.

I spent a week in an English country manor with friends. We read philosophy and took long walks over worn brown paths that wound through a vibrant green countryside dotted with packs of white sheep. Back at Oxford, we all went punting down the river. With sixteen-footlong sticks we pushed flat-bottomed boats, ate strawberries, drank champagne and juice, and periodically crashed into the bank.

My American cla.s.smates and I tried to make our own cultural contributions. We tried, for example, to introduce the international graduate students to a game of American football. My friend Ed aimed to be a professor, and he patiently explained the rules of the game until all of the international students nodded back at him. On the first play, I called hike, and as I brought the ball up, I saw an open receiver-a British chemist-running across the field. I overthrew the chemist, and when the ball flew past him and hit the ground, a German historian on the other team grabbed it and started running. A Polish engineer tried to tackle him. Ed yelled, "No, no, the play is over!" but just then a Greek linguist threw her shoulder into the German, who crumpled to the ground. Then a South African lawyer on my team threw himself on the downed German, wrestled the ball away, and threw it ten yards forward to an Australian biologist, who bobbled the pa.s.s, dropped the ball, picked it up again, and ran into the end zone. My team went wild in celebration.

"Yes!" "Ja!" "Nai!" "Tak!"

Ed was doubled over laughing, his hands on his knees, and I said, "I guess that's a touchdown. Do you want to explain the whole kickoff thing?"

Oxford can be magical at night. As the light of the day softens into dark and the bright traces of modern life recede, what is left are the winding cobblestone streets, the colleges built like castles, the gargoyles who have been smiling and frowning and clowning in permanent expressions of mischief and terror for five hundred years. One night before a concert, I stood outside the old Sheldonian Theatre as the river rush of the crowd's energy flowed around me and people pressed into the theater. A beautiful woman rode past on her bicycle and flashed me a smile. We were together for the next five years.

On Sat.u.r.day mornings we would make a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and cheesy eggs, and then pack fruit in a backpack and head out for a walk along the Oxford Ca.n.a.l. We'd take different forks in the path, turning left where last we had turned right, making our way through overgrown fields and along rivers, and eventually-it works like magic in England-we'd come across a pub where we'd stop for a lunch of fish and chips.

We walked to open-air markets on the weekends, pulled fresh fruit from the stalls, and then packed our backpack with French bread and tomatoes and smoked turkey and Brie and avocado. When the days were long, we'd start off early in the morning and bike for miles over hills and past green fields filled with running horses and grazing sheep. We'd roll past farmers striding with tall wooden walking sticks, their sheepdogs behind them. We'd leave with a map and a "let's head for that town" notion of a plan, and at the end of the day we'd find a pub that served as a bed and breakfast and we'd sit down to a dinner that tasted delicious in our near exhaustion, and then we'd shower and scrub the splattered mud of a day's ride from our bodies and we'd fall into a happy, deep sleep. In winter we'd walk over to the Trout Pub, where we'd order hot chocolate and sit near a fire where they actually roasted chestnuts over the open flames.

Other weekends I'd bike to Rent-a-Wreck and rent a cheap car for a few days, and we'd roll out to explore Britain. Once we headed to Hay-on-Wye, a village full of old bookstores, and once we drove to the Lake District, where we walked through heather-filled fields. In northern Wales we scrambled up a steep hill to the remains of a twelfth-century castle. We sat on the partially collapsed stone walls and talked, and then we walked down the hill across green fields and past a roaring white stream into a Welsh village, where we took shelter from the rain in a teashop.

We went to Malta and spent two weeks snorkeling in the Mediterranean, exploring the famous old city of Knights Hospitallers and driving around the island in a rented open-top jeep. We took the ferry to Northern Ireland and walked through the city of Galway on Good Friday in 1998, the day the peace accords were signed. On several weekends we escaped to Paris, where we'd wake up late and head downstairs to the local boulangerie to buy a bag of croissants and pains au chocolat pains au chocolat and walk beside the river Seine. and walk beside the river Seine.

One morning at the Rodin Museum in Paris I was waiting outside for my girlfriend next to Rodin's sculpture The Thinker. The Thinker. The sun was high and I sat peeling an orange. As I split a section in half, every fiber of the bursting fruit seemed to glisten silver. The whole world had opened itself to me. Here was all its beauty, right here in my hands. The sun was high and I sat peeling an orange. As I split a section in half, every fiber of the bursting fruit seemed to glisten silver. The whole world had opened itself to me. Here was all its beauty, right here in my hands.