Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

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ago and was handed a US$40 thousand check with which 
she bought a car and a house in the eastern department of 
Zacapa. To this day, she cannot look her brother in the eye 
when he asks her how she could lie so brazenly in order to 
steal an old man’s money. 

Meanwhile, Tranquilino continues to live off his nephew’s 
charity and complains that he cannot afford the US$64 
arthritis remedy that he was prescribed by the doctor.

XXVII

A few hours later, we were sitting in the main square of 
the town of Sansare, the local hub where buses travel to 
and from Las Cabezas. A few meters away from us, sat 
one of those bolos, as Guatemalans colloquially refer to the 
drunks that wander around rural towns at the weekend. 
Suddenly, the spectrally thin man got up and with comically 
uncoordinated movements, crossed the road, oblivious of the 
approaching traffic, and wandered into a restaurant, only to 
be unceremoniously expelled a few minutes later.   

“I was a heavy drinker and I ended up in hospital because of 
booze”, said Tranquilino, looking at the drunk. “But I never 
walked around the streets like that”, he added, hastily, as if 
he felt the need to excuse himself and present extenuating 
circumstances.

“I had lost the will to live and there were times when I was 
completely unconscious”, remembers the old man. During 
one of his worst binges, he drank 130 liters of aguardiente 
in one month. 

He never re-married. Today, at the age of seventy, he still 
drinks but he swears that he now drinks for pleasure rather