I wanted the universe to bend down and kiss its own creation, like a parent does a child just after it's born, as if a tenderness were the purest expression of the world for itself. The Maya live in white plastered huts, thatch-roofed, dark little boxes. A cross between County Rye and the Kalahari, he thinks, speeding down the narrow two-lane highway. His rented black sedan arrows through a village, then open country, low scrub. Another village, he downshifts.
Children sit on a stoop, dogs pant in the clay-colored dust.
Squat women in white sack dresses eye the car warily. Flashes of red, rose, jungle green. A bare-chested man butchers a pig. Its squealing fades like the rattle in the car's air-conditioning. He is Albert Andrade.