The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán

By Mike Robbins

When Silvia’s country falls apart after a coup, she flees to London. Picked up by the police, she is dumped for weeks in a bed-and-breakfast, then rescued by cold intellectuals. She finds she is a nuisance to one side and a cause to the other - until she meets another, earlier, refugee; and then she has a surprise for everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991437429

Mike Robbins

Mike Robbins is a sought-after motivational speaker and leader of personal development workshops and coaching programs for individuals, groups, and organizations throughout North America. He is the author of the bestselling book Focus on the Good Stuff and has been featured on ABC News, the Oprah and Friends radio network, Forbes, and many others.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Intro

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Third Rail Books

Mike Robbins is a journalist turned development worker. He is also the author of Even the Dead are Coming (2009), a memoir of Sudan; Crops and Carbon (2011), on agriculture and climate change; and a forthcoming work of fiction, Three Seasons (2014). He has also recently published The Nine Horizons, a pen-portrait of some of the countries in which he has worked and travelled since 1987. He currently lives in New York.

The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán

Mike Robbins

The lost baggage of Silvia Guzmán. Copyright © 2014 by Mike Robbins. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The characters in this book are entirely imaginary

and have no relation to any person, living or deceased.

Third Rail Books

[e-mail]

Design by Jasiek Krzysztofiak / www.jasiek.co.uk

Cover photo: Augustino Leon / Shutterstock

1862 map of South America by Justus Perthes and Stieler / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Suggested cataloging data:

Robbins, Mike, 1957-

Lost Baggage of Sylvia Guzmán / Mike Robbins. - 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-9914374-2-9 (e-book)

I. Robbins, Mike, 1957- II. Title.

PR6118.O232

--dc23

First published in the United States

Author’s note

The idea for this book first came to me after I had spent several months in South America in early 1991. It was written in London soon afterwards, but was not to be published for many years. I have not updated it. Any book is of its time, and is best left there. In any case, it would not be very different if I wrote it now.

Sincere thanks are due to Christina Harlow for her help with preparation of the manuscript, and to Sandrine Ligabue and Hazel Marsh for their reading of the final text, their invaluable advice, and their encouragement.

1

It didn’t rain much the day the turd came through the letterbox. This lack of rain was unusual in April. The morning could be fine; the sky would be clear by dawn, and the sun would lance into the white squares of the city throughout the early part of the day. But usually, in April, when the Pacific currents brought damp air, it rained by lunchtime and sometimes it continued for the rest of the day. Often they had hail, and every now and then its weight would press down on the rusting sheets of corrugated iron that roofed the shacks of the sprawling township across the river, and the shacks would collapse, trapping men and women, children and dogs.

On the day the turd arrived, though, it hardly rained at all, just a little light drizzle as they came back from Mass. By four, as Silvia gave her weekly lesson to the eldest daughter of Señora Vásconez in the latter’s gloomy house on the Avenida Cristobal Colón, the sun was already sinking. It shot its rays through the window, casting rectangles across the marble floor and catching the brass candlesticks on the piano so that they sparkled – and they did; for Señora Vásconez made her maid polish and polish and polish as if the devil were behind her and so he was, for she was the third maid in two years and dared not return penniless to her village, where her father was free with his fists. Lazy, the Señora had explained to Silvia the day after the last had left after knocking a figurine from the mantelpiece, the latest in a series of sins that had included scorching the best napery with the electric iron (a device that had puzzled her). Lazy, dirty, ignorant peasants, but where can we find better? asked Señora Vásconez. Silvia, we live in troubled times.

Silvia’s father had never cared for Señora Vásconez.

Stuck-up cow, he said at table one day, "I knew her father. I remember the first time I saw him, when I was a young man. It was raining and three indígenas were mending a gate on his estate. He cantered towards them without warning and when they couldn’t open it in time, he nearly rode them down. Straight through a puddle, so the horse soaked them with its hooves. Laughing ...A peasant there died of TB once and Dr Schröder went up to try and warn him that it might spread. He drove the doctor off the estate with a whip. If I were a campesino I’d grow coca for gringos with more money than sense and then drink the proceeds, just like they do. And when my sons and daughters joined the guerrillas, I suppose I’d wish them luck."

But the day the turd arrived, Señora Vásconez seemed cheerful enough, and enquired as to the progress of her eldest daughter before wishing Silvia good afternoon at the door.

Until next Sunday, Silvia, she said.

I expect so, Silvia replied. I don’t know, Señora. Papá has said that we may go down to the city and he has talked of my going away completely.

Oh? Señora Vásconez smiled with her mouth. He is sending you to study? Will you go abroad?

He would like me to.

To New York? Miami? My cousin has a son in Miami. It is a hard place, Silvia, but at least you can manage without speaking English. You don’t speak English, do you?

Oh, yes. Some. And I read it well enough. Silvia smiled. But I can’t say, Señora. It seems he has somewhere else in mind.

Then I trust we will see you before you go.

Oh, I’m sure you will, said Silvia. I don’t think he’ll do anything before next Sunday. As yet she knew nothing of the turd. Thank you for letting me bring Carmelita today. Carmelita, say goodbye to Señora Vásconez.

And she took her 10-year-old sister by the hand and walked, straight-backed, up the Avenida Colón, towards the network of little streets that flanked the Plaza.

As she did so, she drew a glance or two; she always did, although she never noticed. At 19 she had a bearing to match her looks; a proud heart-shaped face, paler than most, that spoke of a Spanish gene. Look at my daughter, her father had said, proud, to a guest with whom he had split a bottle too many of Chilean wine of an evening a year or two earlier. Look at her face. They came, they conquered, they stole the gold, but they left a little of their own behind! Eh! She had flushed, a little confused; then her mother had pushed her gently from the room, frowning and laughing at one time. But when Silvia had reached her room, she had laughed too, and looked in the mirror and seen two wide-set deep-brown eyes gazing back, and above them thick black eyebrows to match the black, almost blue hair that fell over her shoulders, stark against the red or white blouses that she liked to wear. Yes, you’ll do, she had told herself for the first time that evening; your skill’s in your hands, but your looks may serve you well enough, should your hands fail you. Her small mouth drew back in a smile, then sprang out of it as she remembered her father’s warnings about vanity.

Will Papá send me away too?

Hmm? Her thoughts returned to the present; striding along the Colón on this Sunday of the Turd, although she had yet to make its acquaintance.

I don’t really want you to go away, Silvia. Papá always says that the gringos don’t really like us, anyway. They just pretend to when they’re here.

I don’t think Papá is going to send us away, said Silvia. She tugged at Carmela’s hand; the girl had been falling back. Stop picking your nose, Carmelita, she admonished her.

Is it true?

The gringos? Papá says lots of things, darling.

"No, silly. I mean, will he send you away?"

I don’t know yet.

Can I have your bedroom? If you go away?

You can ask Mamá. And – She halted, crouched down and took her sister by the shoulders, glaring fiercely at her – and you can wait till I’ve damn well gone, you little minx.

Carmela gazed at the ground.

If I go somewhere nice, asked Silvia, softening, will you visit me?

Will there be elephants?

"Will there be what?"

Señora Ponce showed us a book and it had elephants. They’re big and grey and have long dangly bits on their noses.

So have you, said Silvia, taking out a handkerchief and tweaking her sister’s nose with it. No, I don’t think they’ll have elephants. Now come on and stop dawdling. She flicked the fringes back from either side of her forehead with her fingertips, took her sister’s hand anew and led her on to where the Avenida Cristobal Colón petered out into a narrow little street of two-storey houses.

The houses were painted white, but the finish was poor and had flaked; the windowsills and shutters were sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes yellow, but most had seen better days, and here and there bare wood could be seen below the paintwork, losing a 200-year battle with the rain, and with the sun that raked harshly across them every morning; the sun strong because the city was so high, 3000 metres above the Pacific Ocean that washed yellow, palm-strewn beaches barely 400 kilometres away. Today the afternoon sun shone through the buildings and made ochre squares of light that moved slowly up the faded paintwork of the little houses as the afternoon progressed, towards the deepening blue of the sky. In the doorway of the nearest house was the form of a man, sitting with his legs half-bent, half-straight before him, his torso keeled over, the face invisible below the rim of the wool sombrero. He did not move; his hand clutched the neck of an empty bottle that had contained Medellín rum. A half-dry patch of vomit could be seen below the crook of his knees. A few yards away, two youths kicked a football against a wall, the scuff, squeak and thud of the ball against the plaster clear in the quiet of the afternoon. The youths stopped briefly to let Silvia pass, looking at her with even, empty stares. Good afternoon, she said politely. They returned a muttered greeting. She did not look back but felt somehow easier when she heard the football resume its squeak and thud behind her.

They turned a corner. Ahead, partly lit by the decaying sun, an arch rose up across the street between the houses – which were a little taller here, three or four storeys, but scarcely in better repair. Two women in shawls and hats stood talking in the narrow road. Towards the arch, a couple of barrows were parked on the pavement. A yellow Toyota taxi was behind them, and along the edge of the cobbles were scattered remnants of the Saturday market – fruit-skins, paper, a few old newspapers, all that remained of the bedlam of the morning before, when the street had been lined with rickety clapboard or trestle stalls hung with jeans and slacks and leisure-bags and contraband jars of coffee, all smuggled across the border some kilometres to the south. Others had held row upon row of cheap digital watches with multicoloured plastic straps, jewellery – mass-produced and home-made – and, as always, piles of hats. Straw hats. Panama hats, hats with bands and hats without, and massed ranks of wool sombreros from Ecuador, in black and white and grey and red and green and purple, all with their bands of plaid.

Now there was no-one in the street but the youths, and the two middle-aged women, who stopped talking and watched her as she walked past.

Good afternoon, she said again, but this time there was no answer.

On the wall to her right was a legend in letters of red, each a metre high. VOTA LISTA 7, it said, with a symbol below, and to the side a rough stencil of a man’s face; no work to grace a gallery, but clear enough with his thin, strong face and thick white hair. Papá! There’s Papá! Carmela cried, pointing and laughing. Silvia heard the sound of a foot scraping the ground as the two women behind turned to look.

She clutched her sister’s hand more tightly.

Ssh; anyway, he is all over the city, she said quietly, and to herself: And much good it did us. And why must those posters still be there, when the election has been fought and lost for six months?

They passed through the arch, and Silvia gave a small shudder of relief as its white stonework passed between them and the women; she was unsure why. She turned sharp to the left. Ahead was a flight of steps, wide, divided by an iron handrail in the centre, its black paint streaked with rust. From above them came the sound of traffic. At the top of the steps they walked out into the Plaza Seis de Mayo with its broad expanse of green, dotted with clusters of palms and set with benches. A few couples and the odd family drifted around the Bolívar monument in its centre. The white church soared above them, the bells in the twin towers silent for now. Knots of campesinos crouched on the church steps. All were men. They moved little. Two or three bottles littered the ground around them. A priest left the church by the wicket-door, shutting it firmly behind him. He stepped down between the immobile men, and seemed not to notice them. On the right side of the square stood three short, snub-nosed buses, roofs piled high with luggage, and the sound of a conductor came from a quarter of a mile away, calling the destinations. A large, newish Land Cruiser wound its way around the square, a prosperous middle-aged couple inside; its licence plates, black with silver lettering, showed it to have come from Colombia.

At the left exit from the square stood a tank, large, squat and ugly. Its gun-barrel, raised a few degrees from the horizontal, pointed down the Calle Bolívar. The dark-green paint of the tank seemed drab against the bright colours of the buses on the other side of the square, and barely caught the late beams of sun that still streamed down the side of the Plaza like a molten river, touching the white towers of the church with gold. Behind the tank were three men in uniform, apparently the crew. They had arrived late the previous afternoon. Silvia had been walking through the Seis de Mayo at the time and had seen it, clanking and squeaking; at the entrance to the plaza it had run off the cobbles and onto the sealed road surface, which had cracked into angled plates below its tracks. The plates formed sharp edges between each other, and a motorcyclist, passing that way a few minutes later, had had a lucky escape.

Now, the three soldiers were clustered around a small spirit-stove set up on the roadway, a few pots and pans around it; two of the men crouched like monkeys, forearms resting on knees, hands dangling in the air. The third, their officer perhaps, was lying half on his side reading a two-day-old paper from the capital. He looked up.

"Now there’s a sight in this dead-end place." He was speaking to his comrades, but looking at Silvia.

She continued to walk.

A sight to move the spirit, men. A mane of hair so black it is blue, and those eyes could swallow you up.

The two soldiers remained intent on their billy. One of them lit a cigarette and the smoke drifted away in a thin cloud, across the garden behind them, which was now in shadow so that the smoke was tinged with pale blue. The young officer glanced at his companions and then stood.

I see a goddess, indeed, in human form.

Silvia did not meet his eyes but continued to stare down the Calle Bolívar, towards which she was walking. He took a step in her direction as she passed.

It seems the señorita is not disposed to greet us, comrades. How sad. It is not often I see a goddess in the Plaza Seis de Mayo.

It’s all too often that I see young men in need of a shave lying in the road, replied Silvia.

He was a little tubby round the waistline; not tall, and had indeed not shaved for several days. For a moment Silvia felt a smile creep towards her lips but she resisted, although she thought it might have reached her eyes.

If you like my looks so much, she said, you might tell me why you and your friends have parked a tank in front of the city hall.

Because they let us use their toilets, said one of the men still crouched by the spirit-stove.

This time Silvia did allow herself a tiny smile.

We ran a main bearing, said the officer, smiling back, and lost all our coolant while we were trying to take a short-cut back to barracks, before it seized. This was as close as we could get to home. Now we await a low-loader to move our miracle of modern technology to the workshops.

They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry.

No, and may God bless them for that, now that I have laid eyes on your perfect face, Señorita.

You oaf. She grinned. Try not to freeze to death after the sun goes down. Come on, Carmelita, or we’ll be late for supper.

But she found she was walking quickly as she left them, and Carmela had nearly to run to keep up.

After two minutes or so they arrived at the narrow frontage in a street just off the Bolívar. It was deceptive, as was the narrow hallway behind the door; for the house ran back some way and spread out to either side at the back. Silvia’s father, late to marry, had extended it to accommodate the family that he had not expected.

As she opened the door, she saw her mother standing in the hallway, arms hanging down by her side. Señora Guzmán was in her 50s, having been left a widow after her first, childless, marriage, and her children had been born very late. Slim, not as tall as Silvia, she was a handsome woman with a steel-grey head of hair and neat clothes. But today she looked different; she leaned forward a little, and something had changed her expression since lunchtime.

Silvia stepped forward and kissed her; then her mother bent down and kissed Carmela on the head. Go and get ready for supper, Carmelita, she said quietly.

We saw another of Papá’s signs, Carmela told her.

Don’t mention those, said her mother. She turned to her elder daughter, who was about to mount the stairs. Where are you going?

To my room, to drop my case. And then I will take my skirt off and put on my jeans. Silvia looked at her mother, puzzled; her foot was already on the second step of the polished wooden staircase. As I always do. What is the matter, Mamá? Has something happened?

Go and see your father in his study.

Silvia took her foot from the staircase and began to go down the passage. Then she stopped, and turned to her mother again.

Mamá, what’s happening?

And we saw a tank, said Carmela, a big tank, in the Seis de Mayo. The men spoke to Silvia and said it had broken down.

Go and get ready for dinner, her mother repeated. Go now. She half-walked, half-ran into the dining-room, her arms across her breast.

Silvia watched her for a moment, then turned down the dark passageway and knocked on the door of her father’s study. A grunt answered her from within. Pushing open the door, she saw that the sun still streamed in through the window, but it was so low now that it lit only the top half of the wall, marking out the hairline cracks in the plaster near the ceiling. Halfway across the room the rays crossed her father’s desk and just caught his silver crown. He looked up as she entered.

Sit down, he said, and turned back to his work; he was writing something, a letter.

She picked her way across the floor, which was strewn with books; Papá was not a tidy man. He stood up and went to the record-player in the corner, moving a wad of papers off the perspex cover in order to open it. He moved the arm from its cradle, clicked his tongue, returned the arm and pressed the ‘on’ button, whereupon a mighty fart came from the speakers, followed by a few seconds of crackle that subsided as he set the stylus down upon the record already in place on the turntable. A few seconds later the sound of a grand piano issued forth in a rendition of Chopin, a performance by Arrau.

A South American pianist, said her father thoughtfully as he lowered himself back into the wooden chair and rested his elbows on its arms. We do not have many. The thought occurred to me this afternoon, while I was writing this letter – which I will now finish. A moment.

She nodded. He wrote.

You’ve been out to Señora Vásconez? Teaching the old cow’s filthy brood? He was writing, not looking at her.

They’re doing quite well, Papá. Especially the eldest.

My heart sings.

The sun, in front of her, lit the frizz of hair on her head like a halo. He had lit a cigarette and the smoke curved upwards into the path of the sunbeam.

Well, you will shortly be free of the lot of them, he said suddenly. Look at these.

He handed her a paper wallet as tall as a sheet of A4, and half as wide. As he wrote on, she looked at the cover. It showed a man sitting beside a window in an aircraft, surrounded by children, and the words: To fly with Avianca is to fly with the family. She opened the wallet and took out four strips of paper, stapled together.

"This is a reservation to fly

Reviews for The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán

[harrywhitewolf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“There are plenty who seek to gain advantage from the misfortunes of others. Some are simply bad; but there are also those who are too conscious of their own good¬ness to possess it in reality. There are good and bad people, but the distinction is often blurred.”This quote from The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzman appears towards the end of the book, and I think it sums up the book better than I could myself. Ultimately, this novel is about that universal theme of good and evil, and how it is down to each of us to choose our sides (whether in business or in government or in personal lives). Do you help others or do you help yourself? The author builds the story and the characters around these themes in an enriching, entertaining and thought provoking way, with many different strands surrounding the central character of good hearted Silvia.In essence, you have a story about a South American refugee ending up in London, living with a couple who treat her more like an au pair slave than as someone who has encountered atrocities and is in need of asylum, care and guidance - despite the couple’s delusive belief that they are first and foremost helping her. The many hypocrisies of Silvia’s hosts are played out exceptionally well – for example: Tom is a famous writer who is a champion of humanitarian causes, who regularly shoves cocaine up his nose whilst countries like Silvia’s are falling apart because of the drug trade.This is quite an ambitious book: there’s an abundance of characters, sub-stories, timelines, and even a novel within a novel, and Mike Robbins has a real talent for threading these together. There’s post-Marxist contemplation, media satire, themes of selfishness, feminism, sex, money, homelessness, kindness, cruelty, injustice… with a backdrop of London and South America which are both written about with highly descriptive detail; and the two places contrast and compliment each other well.There’s also a lot of humour in this book. Some lines are so poignantly funny that I had to pause and re-read them several times. But apart from the one liners, there’s a real wry wit that accompanies the whole of this emotive tale, and which lifts it up from its serious undercurrent subjects so much that it becomes captivating, page turning entertainment.Occasionally this book lagged in its focus and sharpness, but not enough for it to take much away from its whole. Mike Robbins is a seriously talented fiction writer, whose writing style sometimes reminds me of Anthony Burgess or Kingsley Amis. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.

[katevane · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received a free ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review.Silvia Guzmán is a young woman who flees from an unnamed South American country to claim asylum in London. The novel describes the people she meets as she struggles to find safety and stability in a strange city – from fellow refugees, to police officers, to the city’s middle class.Silvia’s inner life is rich and complex. She recalls her life in South America, the sights, the smells, the sounds. She loves music. She is from an eminent, politically-engaged family. She is also deeply traumatised by events in her own country. But when she comes to London, she is stripped of all that identity. People see only a refugee. In a clever reversal, many of the London characters are caricatures. This is particularly true of the middle-class couple who take her in. Despite their supposed liberal credentials, they have no sense of who Silvia is and they make no effort to find out, treating her instead as cheap labour. The husband, Tom, is an exuberantly unpleasant character, a media-friendly author who writes about exploitation but is concerned only with his own interests. The book was written in the 1990s but surprisingly little has changed. Silvia probably wouldn’t need to leave South America but there are plenty of other countries experiencing conflict and civil war. Life for refugees in London is probably even harder now than it is in the book. Breakfast TV is as awful as it ever was.The book interweaves a number of themes linking the superficially different worlds of London and Silvia’s country. The author has successfully combined biting humour with a sensitive handling of some very dark events. While Tom can’t make the connection between global injustice and the people in his own home, the author certainly does.