Foreign Real Estate
(This Being the Version that
Will Never Appear in
Holiday Magazine)
Despite owning 15 hectares of beachfront, Julio is the Latino equivalent of a hillbilly farmer. His spread lies a mile or so from the Pacific, on a dusty arroyo, stocked with a full quota of geckos, iguanas, spiders, snakes (including coral snakes), donkeys, chickens, fierce-eyed scrawny dogs, and babies.
With excellent foresight, we managed to arrive at two p.m., in the apex of the day's heat. The hovel consisted of two rooms with no windows, tarpaper roof, sagging supports, with a lawn of dust, used disposable baby diapers, and chicken-shit. Our official witnesses for the transaction was a dug-laden bitch, a lusty Rhode Island Red rooster busy trying to hump Chickin-lickin', two snot-nosed children sprawled asleep in rickety bedsteads, and off to the right, hanging in the doorway, a sagging plastic hammock complete with baby #3. The radio was going great guns --- local ranchero music ... "No, No, No," being the fave right now. It has to do with a young lady who knows better than to give into her boyfriend's invitation to a party, a very small party of two, over at his place.
Antonio and I waited in red beaten plastic chairs in front of a white beaten plastic table for the "Notario" to arrive. Notarios have the same function here as title companies to the north, only their operating system is one that has been in place since colonial times. Their tools are huge black leather volumes with lined pages, each laboriously numbered, filled with Ditto copy of fading blue legalese covering --- for example, for our simple sale --- seven pages, with the Spanish equivalents of "Hereby" and "Forthwith" and "The Party of the First Part" and "The Party of the Second Part."
Don Rogelio, the notario, is a thin, pale, wasted type, with, like me, a full-complement of dewlaps and age-blotch. Unlike me, he wears the country's regulation dark glasses and moustache. When all were in place, he opened Vol. MCDLVIX to Page 253 and read the entire text of the agreement in the voice of the dead and dying. I barely understood, watched instead a mean little street-dog humping a heavy-dugged bitch who acted as if she had seen and heard it all before. After that show was over, I watched the rooster run down into the arroyo to murder a black leaf beetle.
The baby came to life and squalled. A south wind came through from the nearby ocean and sweetly ruffled my hair. Juana, Julio's plump, round-faced live-in lady, came through on her way to the wood-fired comal to make supper. Throughout all our dealings, there was the unbearably delicious smell of heated tortilla. One of the thin daughters ran out to pick up the wailing child. The afternoon sun cooked the rooftop (and us) and an old woman with a shawl and prune-face and a straw whisk moved the dust from one side of the palapa to the other and then back again.
Julio, I am sure, was recently enlisted by Central Casting to appear in our movie. Formerly, he had played Pancho Villa and various other feckless revolutionarios and he still sported a ratty black moustache, restless tar-pit eyes, and leathern skin. Rather than carrying an ammunition belt over his shoulder and a campesino sombrero and boots with spurs, he wears a grey Yankee baseball cap pulled low over the eyes and a tee-shirt that says "Acapulco Is For Lovers." It is rumored that the reason the ceremony took place here rather than in the notario's office downtown is because Julio has some unnamed felony hanging over his head and he didn't want to get nabbed in the midst of enjoying his new-found prosperity.
There was one other presence here. Since I am a little foggy on local jurisprudence, I bought my lawyer-for-the-day, Ramon. He too had also been sent in from central casting. He had impeccably trimmed fingernails, white shirt casually unbuttoned (two buttons down) over a hairy chest, a tiny gold cross suspended in the veldt, tight black pants, alligator-pointy boots, and an ever-ready, ever-friendly toothy smile.
When the reading dribbled off, el abogado lifts up the backpack, which I had earlier delivered to him, complete with Donald Duck, and dumps the twenty-eight fat packets of smelly pesos on the table. The Notario's face is blank, Julio scarcely lifts an eyebrow, but he and his brother --- both dark, scratchy, shoeless --- smarten up enough to pull up to the table and, without missing a beat, count the money rapidissimo.
When he nods, Don Rogelio turns his big black note-book around. With his field-worker fingers, Julio scrawls his signature, opens one of the packets of pesos, gives 3000 of them to the Notario, shakes hands with everyone and disappears --- complete with loot --- into his dark, hot, spicy house. Presumably to announce that the ceremony is over, he turns the radio up ... way up: Amor sin besos no es amor, sings a trio at top volume, through shattered speakers and windowless windows. Love without kisses just ain't love.
A year ago, some friends of mine went through exactly the same procedure when they were buying land in El Culito. They said that it reminded them of a mafia-sponsored drug deal played out somewhere in upstate New York.
I gave Ramon the lawyer a ride back to town. He told me how terrible it was to be a lawyer for so many unappreciative people. "You represent one side and the other side hates you," he said. "You represent someone else and even your friends hate you." When we got to his house, he motioned to the Donald Duck backpack. I held it up and from somewhere deep inside he pulled out a packet of 200 peso notes, winked at me, and slipped it into his pocket.
