Christ Will Come Like a Thief in the Night

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The festival's main attraction is that they show their feature films in a big cave by the ocean. But this year, because of the accident, they would not be screening in the cave.

"Oh," our waiter told us, wringing his hands as we started in on breakfast, "it is a tragedy, a terrible, terrible thing that happened."

Two months prior, a happy couple's wedding day took an unexpected turn when their photographer, squinting into his camera's viewfinder to capture that money shot by the cave, got hit by an errant boulder and died.

Our waiter was a birdlike young man in formal white waiter's garb (worth mentioning that the place was a cheap, dirty hole in the wall). He had a delicate, pained way of approaching the story, as if he had to tell it out of civic obligation, despite the grave harm it could cause local tourism.

And so I did my best to suppress laughter. Despite his delicate mannerisms and tittering talk, this guy had been allotted one of the most savage corners of the Earth. You'd expect Chile to be inhabited by Marlboro men, at least. Instead, there's a certain meekness to those who must bear witness to the wrath of God.

Where do I start. Chile is one of the most seismic zones on the planet, but unlike Japan it's also doused with largest concentration of UV rays known since the Creation of the World. The second largest mountain range peers over but a thin strip of land (Chile) which quickly falls off into deep, treacherous ocean. No swimming allowed. A third of the north hasn't had a drop of rainfall since meteorology was invented, and the southern third is a giant glacier, down to the chunk of Antactica where Chile proudly staked it's flag.

That leaves you with a neat little strip of land in the middle of Chile that is inhabitable by humans, a veritable island. And in the center of this little island you have a once-idyllic valley where a third of the country's population lives. Santiago, however, has a visibility problem -- you can't see the mountains that surround it. Santiago is suffocating in its own smog.

And then there's Pinochet, the world's lamest dictator. He imposed a 17-year curfew on the country. You couldn't be out past 11pm (or whenever, the hour changed arbitrarily) or you'd be shot. Needless to say, this killed what had been a bustling nightlife, music scene, everything.

All this plus, of course, errant boulders. In short, if there ever were a Most-Self-Flagellating-Monk award, Chile would win it.

Which goes a long way in explaining their indifferent attitude toward the availability of hand soap in public facilities. And that's totally fine, I can deal. But I really don't think it's too much to ask to not want to change money with the guy guarding the bathroom and charging thirty cents. I gave him forty, and said "keep the change." It just wasn't in my comfort zone to, you know, touch anything that he'd...touched.

But he wasn't having any of it. That Change Must be Made. And that's how it started.

This all happened after we came back to that upstairs diner for lunch the next day, and I'd gone off to the restroom. To get there, I had to walk through the labyrinthine "market". In Latin countries, "market" usually means a large, dismally lit indoor area with many doors going nowhere and everywhere a vague smell of something rotting.

Same here, and the entrance to the bathroom was one of the gloomiest corners in the market. The man waiting there startled me. He was standing in a wet trough running out from the Men's room. Like he was growing out of it, a sickly, blackened mushroom. He wheezed like Gollum, and demanded thirty cents.

Done.

But no. Please, no. Keep the change.

He huffed and grunted his refusal, and thrust the coin toward me, but I just wouldn't accept it. On my way out, he did the same and I pretended not to notice. I made my way back through the market and into the restaurant. I thought I'd lost him.

Upstairs at the lunch table I felt relief and the conversation was pleasant. Afternoon sunlight sparkled in through the window, our laughter was angelic and happy.

Suddenly, however, the record scratched to a halt and my heart sank. At the bottom of the stairs ornery figure appeared, and rapidly ascended the stairway, huffing and grunting. No. This couldn't be. The bathroom toll man had come to pay me back.

From there, the details are hazy. I remember shouting hysterically, "No, no, I don't want it! Go away!" But the man's grunts grew louder and he wouldn't go away. At this point all eyes in the restaurant were on us. What was this man trying to get rid of? Why had this normal-seeming tourist lost control?

A frenzied compromise was worked out, and the coin was left at the end of the table, ostensibly under my ownership. The man left, his work complete. I remained there, terrorized. Everyone else in the restaurant, totally confused.

In a town like Lebu where large red letters proclaim that Christ Will Come Like a Thief in the Night, and a sunken fishing boat peaks up from the surface of the lagoon, and the boatman calls, and the bell tolls, and the boulder ambles...in a town like Lebu, there must be an unwritten Bible verse, something like "Christ is a Good Thief, you are a Bad Thief." Or perhaps, "If I Catch You Stealing Even Ten Cents from a Tourist, That's It. No More Bathroom Toll Job For You!" (Leviticus, II:13).

How's this for religious graffiti: "Keep the Change."

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