Chapter 3

A Catholic Education

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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Running From the
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding in the
Garage
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

By June the gringo had stopped trying to strangle me. I think I was disappointed. The fire was no longer present in his eyes. It may have been due to something as simple as Lima's weather. People who were born in other cities find it difficult to believe that Lima does not have a single day of sunshine between April and November. Not one. Not even a partly cloudy day. Every single day, every one, is covered by a thick blanket of clouds. This weather is caused by a current that brings cold water from Antarctica all the way up the Pacific Coast of South America to the equator. Everybody calls it the Humboldt Current, after Alexader Von Humbolt, the German naturalist who “discovered” it. Strangely enough, he suggested we call it the Peru Current. In any case, when you have cold water next to a hot desert hemmed in by mountains, you get clouds.

I also think it had something to do with the barriadas that surround Lima and line the road from the airport to the city. Barriadas. Ugh. Filthy slums of shacks with sloppy, drooping walls made from corrugated tin, rock, mud, sticks, or straw that the indian women weave into panels. If you live inside, light and dust leaks in through the cracks. The sound of people and the smell of cooking drifts into your shack from the shack upwind. Rocky paths, too narrow for even a wheelbarrow, wind between the shacks. They are wet with black dust that sticks to the toes of the children with bare bottoms who stand around waiting for something to happen.

We pretend not to see them. But we never forget they are there. People who come to visit Lima, they cannot pretend so easily. The day I saw him looking out the window, that day the gringo was at his most courageous. But I believe the barriadas had made his courage leave him. If he ran away, would he make it all the way back to America or would he get trapped in a barriada forever? Peruvians are used to accepting the decisions life makes against us, and we get our revenge by remaining happy in the face of them. Charly the American, he was not made that way.

I decided to speak to him. “Are you looking for the sun, gringo?”

The gringo frowned.

“Gringo,” I said. “The sun will come back in the summer. And this summer you will come with me to the beach. It’s never cloudy at the beach in the summer. You will be happy there.”

The gringo looked at me, trying to figure out whether I was teasing him so he could strangle me again. I made it clear to him that I was not. “You will like the beach, gringo. I promise.”

He frowned and turned away. I cannot explain to you why I liked him.