startled Jan. The fire-breather, finished with his act, had turned back to wait for his reward. Only then did he notice that Jan was seated next to a colonel of the Mexican Army. Slowly, the fire-breather's face turned from a broad smile to a quizzical frown. Still, the man stood there, not moving. He was still staring at Jan and Guajardo, as if in a daze, until the light turned and the sedan pulled away.
Suddenly realizing that she was leaning against the colonel, Jan sat up straight and moved back to her side of the seat, running her hand through her hair. As she began to regain her composure, she glanced over at Guajardo. He was looking at her.
Seeing that he was studying her, waiting for her next action, Jan faced Guajardo. 'I'm so sorry, Colonel. I wasn't expecting that. He caught me off guard.'
'They are called tragafuegos, our slang for fire-breathers.'
'Why do they do that? I mean, isn't it dangerous?'
Guajardo looked at Jan and let out a cynical laugh. 'To live, my dear Ms. Fields. They do what is necessary to live. On a good day, a tragafuego can make eight or nine thousand pesos.'
Doing some quick mental math, Jan figured how much nine thousand pesos was in dollars. Guajardo watched as she did so, smirking when Jan's expression turned from a blank to a look of surprise. 'But that's only a little more than three U.S. dollars.'
With a self-satisfied look on his face, Guajardo nodded. 'Yes, somewhat better than the average minimum wage.'
'But it is dangerous. It must be easy to burn himself.'
Realizing that he had her, Guajardo played with her. 'Oh, if they are careful, and use diesel instead of gasoline or cooking oil, they do well.'
As he talked, Jan's face showed signs of surprise. In a rather nonchalant manner, Guajardo continued to drive his point home. 'The problem is not the burns. They can heal. What does not heal is the damage the tragafuegos do to their health. The first thing they lose is their sense of taste. The petroleum products, regardless of what they use, are corrosive.
They eat at the human tissue. Eventually, the tragafuegos lose all feeling in their mouth, followed by their teeth.' Then, as an afterthought, he added, lightly, 'And of course, ulcers on the tongue are not at all unusual.'
Jan's expression was slowly turning to disgust. 'That, however, is only the beginning, Ms. Fields. The worst is the brain damage. The speech becomes slurred as they become brain dead, unable to fend for themselves. The process is slow, taking eight to ten years. Eventually, they will simply disappear, their places on the streetcorners taken by younger men who are still able to perform.'
Jan was becoming uncomfortable. In part Guajardo knew that it was because she was no longer in control. Like most Americans, Jan was used to having things her way. That she couldn't, bothered her. Even more disturbing, though, was the fact that she no longer had the option to pick those things that fit neatly with her preconceived ideas and images. She had not been ready, or willing, to face the reality of Mexico. That face, one easily ignored, was not pleasing to her. Guajardo could see this and was quite pleased. The trip was paying off. 'And what, Colonel, is the government doing? Aren't there social programs, or welfare, or something better than that? Doesn't he know what he is doing?'
Turning his face away from Jan, he looked out the window as he answered. 'Yes, Ms. Fields, he knows.' Then, looking back to her, his eyes narrowed. 'But he is a man, a proud man. What you just saw was the result of failed or sham programs that the former government used to justify its existence. I have no doubt that somewhere along the line, a politician or social worker arranged a mediocre job for the tragafuego that we saw. And no doubt, the tragafuego worked at it until the funds ran out or the program closed down after the politician was re-elected. As for welfare, I shouldn't need to remind you that we are a proud people. Your North American ideas of welfare serve only to break the spirit. That man, the tragafuego, would rather die a slow and miserable death than lose his pride.'
No sooner had Guajardo said that than the sedan stopped. Jan turned to see where they were. She had been so absorbed in her conversation that she had not noticed they had driven into an area that was little better than a shantytown. The sudden transition, from the clean, broad boulevards of the city center to the squalor of this slum of Mexico City, was unsettling to Jan. She was not ready to deal with this. In her travels, she had been in such ghettos before. Still, she never grew used to them. She had a great deal of difficulty accepting that people had to live in such conditions, and that there was nothing she could do to change that. Whenever she knew she would need to go into a ghetto or into a place like this, it took her days to condition herself to deal with the despair, filth, and poverty she knew she would see. She had not been able to prepare herself for this trip, and it threw her mentally and emotionally off balance, a condition she was struggling to correct as Guajardo prepared to leave the safety of the sedan.
The driver opened his door, jumped out, and ran to open Guajardo's.
When Jan looked back at the colonel, he smiled a sly smile, one that reminded Jan of a cat eyeing a bird. 'At the Palacio Nacional you asked what motivated us to do what we did, Ms. Fields. Come with me, and I will show you.' Without waiting, Guajardo turned away and exited the sedan.
The stench hit Jan before she even left the car. A dizzying combination of decaying garbage and human waste assaulted her nose, irritating its lining like pepper and causing her to gag. Pausing, Jan instinctively brought her hand up to her mouth and nose. Guajardo, waiting for her several feet from the sedan, watched in amusement. For a moment, he felt like calling out a snide comment, but decided to wait. There would be ample time to rub her nose into the reality of Modern Mexico.
Regaining her composure, Jan swung her legs out of the sedan, planting her feet into the discolored goo of the unpaved and rutted street.
Again, a momentary expression of disgust registered on her face, causing the smirk on Guajardo's face to broaden.
Jan, looking up at Guajardo, realized that she was not only making a spectacle of herself, but was reacting in a way that Guajardo, no doubt, had anticipated, perhaps even had counted on. This, and her own inability to control her reactions, suddenly angered her. Determined to show that she was made of sterner stuff, she sucked in a deep breath, distasteful as this was, and forced herself to stare back at Guajardo with a face that was as determined as it was defiant.
The change in Jan's demeanor wiped the grin off of Guajardo's face.
Realizing that she had managed to rally to his first challenge, he decided it was time to press on. Time was valuable and he was already falling behind. In a tone that was, for the circumstances, artificially polite and sweet, Guajardo invited Jan and her crew to follow his driver, Corporal Fares.
As if on cue, Ted and Joe Bob came up, equipment at the ready, on either side of her. Placing a free hand on her left shoulder, Joe Bob leaned over and whispered in Jan's ear, 'You okay, Miss Fields?'
Reaching across her chest with her right hand and lightly grasping the hand Joe Bob had on her shoulder, Jan nodded. 'I'm fine. Now let's go see what the good colonel wants to show us.' With that, she let go of Joe Bob's hand and stepped off.
The strange procession caused the people in the streets of the slum to stop what they were doing and watch as it went by. Corporal Fares, wearing a nervous look on.his face, led the group. Every so often he looked to the side, nervously nodding his head at a neighbor who recognized him. Behind him came Guajardo, walking tall, erect, and seemingly unconcerned with the squalor of his surroundings. Several feet behind the colonel were Jan, Ted, and Joe Bob, all traveling in a tight little knot with Ted and Joe Bob holding their equipment at the ready.
Only the soldier who had driven the van for the camera crew remained behind, occasionally shooing away dirty children dressed in rags when they came too close to the sedan and van.
The tumbledown shanties, shacks, and hovels that lined the filth-strewn dirt street were constructed of every imaginable material. Some were made with cinder blocks, either loosely piled up one upon the other or cemented together with uneven layers of mortar used by the amateur builders who laid the blocks. Scattered between the hovels made of cinder blocks were other homes built with irregular scraps of plywood or wooden boards. These, like the cinder-block homes, varied depending upon the skill of the builder. All were no more than six or seven feet high, had a single door, often without a frame, and few if any windows. Their roofs, flat and barely visible to Jan, were either boards covered with a thin layer of tarpaper or loosely connected strips of corrugated metal.
As they trudged along, Jan began to take note of the people. They parted as Corporal Fares and Colonel Guajardo approached, slipping away into their homes or into the dark, narrow spaces between them. Jan looked at
