Old Man on a Bike

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The artist’s son was twelve or thirteen when I last visited. Now he is a six-foot-six Adonis back from college in Colorado. He guides tourists up volcanoes and teaches rock climbing. He is exceptional in having returned. The majority of his generation, the offspring of my Guatemalan friends, are in Spain, Canada, El Norte, even England. Do they sense, if only subconsciously, that they have no future in Guatemala? Or that Guatemala has no future?

Eugenio arrives to collect me in his pickup and I meet his wife, Monica, for the first time. She is young and dark and classically beautiful. Their son, Andresito, aged twelve months, is a darker replica of Eugenio. The Honda is loaded onto Eugenio’s pickup. We drive down from Antigua into the capital and lunch on a delicious lasagne at the apartment of Eguenio’s mother. Parents and grandmother play with Andresito while I make notes in my journal of a conversation earlier in the morning.