My Costa Rican Days: A True Story

My Costa Rican Days:
A True Story

This is a true story. This really happened.

I was traveling in Costa Rica, back in the late Seventies, staying in the capital, San Jose, in a run-down little casa de huespedes in the poorer part of town. There was a taco stand next door to the hotel, called El Gallo, where I would get a cheap breakfast from the proprietor, a Spanish-looking gentleman who wore waistcoats and a big moustache. He closed during the hot afternoons, but reopened late at night, and sometimes, laying awake on my stiff, paper-thin bedding, listening to bits of conversation beneath the noise of the overhead fan, I would be moved to rise, get dressed, and descend for a bedtime snack and a plastic cup of horchata.

There were regulars at El Gallo whom I came to recognize during my brief stay at the hotel: truck drivers, policemen, students, young lovers on a cheap date. But none so regular as the woman in black with the monkey-faced boy. She invariably took the stool at the near end of the stand in front of the grill, with its sizzling strips of beef and onions and sweet plantains, right in front of the Spanish-looking proprietor. The monkey-faced boy squatted beside the stool, his back to the grill, his monkey face turned frankly towards all the customers, and reaching up with one hand to clutch her long black skirt while with the other he fidgeted.

I never saw the woman eat anything. But on occasion she would let loose a shrieking cacophony of expletives at the Spanish-looking proprietor, which would last for a good ten minutes (yes, I timed her), after which she would lapse into a quiescence which endured for at least another hour. This happened, oh, six, seven times a day. She was like Big Ben, though not as regular. The other customers were so used to it that they did not react anymore. The Spanish-looking proprietor never looked at her; it was as if he were deaf.

Once, quietly asking a young man with dark sideburns sitting next to me, I came to gather from his few mumbled words and oblique gestures that the crazy woman in black was in fact--or perhaps only in her mind--the rejected lover of the Spanish-looking proprietor, and the monkey-faced boy his disputed son. Beyond this, I know nothing more, and so have nothing more to add to this true story, except that on my last night at the hotel, I went down for a final taco, only to find the man closing up. I hesitated, watching from the doorway of the hotel. The woman in black was still there, and the monkey-faced boy, but everyone else had gone home. I looked on in disbelief as the Spanish-looking proprietor, without so much as looking at the old woman, handed her a leftover grilled sweet plantain. She ate it ravenously, and gave nothing to the monkey-faced boy.

I have nothing to add, but I do feel I should come clean. This is not a true story. I made it up. I have never been to Costa Rica, back in the Seventies or at any other time.

There is no taco stand called El Gallo. No Spanish-looking proprietor with waistcoats and a big moustache; no shrieking madwoman in black, no monkey-faced boy. There was no paper-thin bedding, or overhead fan; no young man with dark sideburns, mumbled words, or oblique gestures. There was no moment when the Spanish-looking proprietor handed the woman a grilled sweet plantain, no moment when she ate it ravenously, giving nothing to the monkey-faced boy, because none of them--the man, the woman, the boy, even the sweet plantain--ever existed.

Coming to my defense, out of politeness, perhaps, you may say "Well, it all sounded plausible enough. It might have been true."

But here I disagree.

My story is literally not true, but neither is it true in any other sense. Having never been to Costa Rica, I know nothing about Costa Ricans and their social relations, how they interact, what they eat and at what hours. I don't know how disputes are settled, or not settled. The poignant moment at the end of my story, with its suggestion of some emotional truth, is utterly phony and cheaply contrived. Yes, it all sounds plausible enough, and that's exactly the problem. The story is entirely a creature of my imagination, pulled from experiences in other countries, pictures in National Geographic, other stories I've read, movies I've seen--i.e., other plausiblities.

You listened to my story and imagined it in much the same way, having never been to Costa Rica, having seen pictures in National Geographic, read other stories, seen movies, etc. Ours is a culture of plausibilities; in fact no one knows anything anymore of genuine experience.

And because it is all plausible, here is the scariest thing of all: what if there really is a Spanish-looking taco stand proprietor; what if there really is a madwoman in black, with a monkey-faced boy? Except she isn't mad, and the boy is quite normal-looking. Except it's not El Gallo but rather La Concha; open all day but never at night. Except there is no familial dispute; no redeeming tender gesture. Have I not defamed these people? Have I not spread the most vicious of all lies, that someone is like this when they are really like that? And worse, passing off my fiction as a kind of figurative truth, I obliterate the real truth about these people, because, having heard my story, you will look no further, and move on. I have robbed the Spanish-looking gentleman of his history, disgraced the woman in black, left the boy orphaned from his true self.

But then it's not really about them, is it? The taco seller, the madwoman, the monkey-faced boy: mere actors in some else's play. Innocent bystanders, their story just happened to get in the way of my story, this story, the one I can't seem to tell without lying. Because the man is really my father, the woman is my mother, and the boy is me.

No need to drop bombs on Baghdad. Let our fictions rain down on them instead. Let them tremble at the awesome power of our plausibilities.