Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue - 27*
Two other friends that we made while we lived in Costa Rica, Gus and Beulah, we met through Horace and Jane. Gus was the former Dean of Communications for Boston University, and he had held this position through the turbulent sixties and seventies. Now that he was retired, he wanted nothing more than peace and quiet. Well, he certainly picked the right place! Where better than the Land of the Lotus Eaters? He moved to Costa Rica with his wife of many, many years, Helen, but she had died before we met Gus. Gus loved to tell the story of when they first moved down to Costa Rica, and Helen didn’t speak Spanish yet. She would peer at advertisements proclaiming that a particular establishment sold sandwiches (literally, “there are” sandwiches, with the “here” implied) and repeat in astonishment, “Hay sandwiches?” She couldn’t imagine anything less appealing and less digestible.
Everyone who knew Helen found her delightful, and so everyone felt terrible when she died. Gus was devastated. He was in his late seventies by then, and they had enjoyed a deep and mutually satisfying partnership. I’m sure that he didn’t expect to fall in love again at his age.
However, Jane, an inveterate matchmaker, decided that Gus was too wonderful to go to waste, and she had another friend she thought would be perfect for Gus. Beulah was half North American, half Chilean in descent, and she had lived most of her life in Chile. Beulah represented a quintessential Latin American woman with emphasis on the “woman,” a lovely, vivacious, warm-hearted soul who managed to be incredibly sexy and incredibly maternal all at the same time. Beulah was twenty years younger than Gus, but Jane had decided that Gus had a lot of good years still in him, especially if he was happily married.
Gus, of course, was not looking for a match, so when Jane took them both out to the theater along with a couple of other friends, hoping that they might hit it off, he pretended like he didn’t even notice Beulah. Besides, he told us, it never occurred to him that such a young woman would be interested in an old codger like himself. But Jane brought them together during other social occasions and they eventually became friends. One day, Gus, who knew that Beulah was looking for a place where her mother could live, shyly offered the small servants’ cottage that resided behind his house. “Why, no, Gus!” Beulah exclaimed. “I want to live with you!”
It was a joy to see a couple so happy together. Gus radiated the deeply contented, almost dazed energy of a man who feels so blessed it’s almost incomprehensible—if not illegal—and Beulah was clearly delighted to have married such a kind, thoughtful, intelligent man who appreciated her so much. Periodically, they invited us over for bocas, those little bite-sized hors d’oeuvres that are muy typico of Costa Rican hospitality, and rum-and-cokes, and we sat outside on their screened-in back porch and visited in the gentle breeze carrying the scent of hundreds of different flowers and fruits. Gus grew his own coffee beans, which he got a tremendous kick out of, and the house that he had bought had several mango trees on it that bore bumper crops. It tickled him no end that the neighborhood boys liked to come and ask him if they could pick some of the mangoes off of his trees. The generous fecundity of Costa Rica seemed to represent to Gus the absolute goodness of the earth.
During our sojourn in paradise, Jane and Horace threw a big party for just about everyone they knew in the country. They invited all of our teachers from language school, as well as Garth and David from Quepos, and some visiting friends of friends, one of whom published an magazine about antiques, while another man owned an art gallery in Ft. Lauderdale. Ana and Lijia cooked for days before, making up tons and tons of bocas—toasted miniature rounds of rye toast topped with sweet onion and melted cheese, Swedish meatballs, puff pastries filled with mushroom pate—and for the night of the party, Jane and Horace hired waiters to circulate throughout the enormous living room, offering bocas and drinks. Costa Ricans seemed to like three drinks and three drinks only: rum-and-coke, scotch-and-soda, and beer. Often, at a bash thrown at a country club or restaurant, waiters would simply plop down fifths of rum and scotch, liters of Coca-cola and club soda, and big metal bowls heaped with scallop-shaped slivers of ice. It did make stocking the bar very simple and straightforward.
Our friends from the language school ended up completely blown away by the opulence of it all, and in fact, Pilar, the meek, motherly cook from the school who had borne twenty children, absolutely refused to come in through the front door. There wasn’t really a back door to the house, which was what she wanted, but Ana found a side door that Pilar felt comfortable entering. Of course, Richard and I had rarely attended such elegant soirees ourselves, but after living with the Keltons for a while, we were starting to adjust. It was fun to be able to include all our friends in such an elegant fiesta, and they talked about it for weeks afterward.
During the party, Jane told the art dealer and magazine publisher to feel free to take a tour of the house, which they did, and when they’d seen all the rest of the place, they asked if they could take a peek at Richard’s and my quarters. We were happy to oblige, and fortunately, Ana and Lijia cleaned up the place every single day, so it was entirely presentable. But then, as I realized that an art dealer was going to see my work—which had become fairly ubiquitous in those rooms, the longer we stayed—I panicked. In fact, I couldn’t bear the thought of glimpsing his face when he first took it in, so I slunk back to the party while Richard escorted them to our digs.
One new development in my art had occurred through chance when I put some small sheets of stained glass that I bought in New York in my suitcase for my return trip. Even though I had braced them with cardboard, they still arrived shattered. At first I felt frustrated that I’d wasted all that money, but then I realized that the glass had splintered in some terrific patterns. So I simply foiled and soldered the broken pieces together and added some other pieces, such as rusted metal, cloth, and stones, to the design. I liked the result so much I considered packing sheets of stained glass in suitcases with a bunch of towels and shipping them to and from different destinations on buses to see what I might come up with.
I’d also picked up some very nice pieces of rusted metal while we were in the States. The articles I’d packed in our carry-on luggage created a huge ruckus at the security check-point in the airport. When the security officers opened our bags and saw these mangled, rusted cans, springs, and hub caps, I could tell that they thought I was trying to mess with their heads and be funny somehow. They didn’t really want to touch them, but they didn’t want to leave them in our bags, either. I told them I made found-object art with these things, and they eventually accepted my explanations and let me go with my loot. However, one of the security guards, a young man, appeared fairly pissed off about the whole thing and clearly didn’t trust me not to fashion some sort of found-object bomb on board and blow the plane to smithereens. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he had warned the stewardesses to keep a close eye on us during the flight (“… If she starts brandishing a rusted soup can, take her down immediately!”).
In Costa Rica, the customs official who pulled out the same stuff gave them a very curious look while I explained to him that these things, or cosas, were “arte.” He grinned. “Ah,” he replied knowingly, “cosas raros, verdad?” He was making a pun on the word “raros,” which meant rare and therefore possibly valuable, but it also carries the connotation of peculiar and funky. Oh, those silly Costa Ricans!
At any rate, although I was having lots and lots of fun with my art projects, the thought of an art dealer viewing these primitive pieces scared me to death. I could only imagine that it would be monumentally embarrassing and I definitely didn’t want to be there when it happened. But shortly, Richard came back up to the party looking for me because the art dealer wanted to talk to me about my work. Apparently, he loved it! So I went back down to the apartment and explained my methods to him, and before he left, he told me if I ever got serious about my art to give him a call. I’m sorry to say that I never did call him. But it thrilled me to think that someone like this guy would like what I did so much.
When I returned to the party, Garth joined me and entertained me by making catty remarks about some of the guests (“Oh my God, that plaid suit! That person looks like a walking sofa! Doesn’t he?”), and as the party wore on, the noise level got louder and louder until I couldn’t hear anyone say anything in particular, I could only discern this roaring hum punctuated by loud guffaws of laughter. Jane warned us that some guests would stay until two or three in the morning, possibly even later, so we were glad that we had our separate apartment we could crawl to after we’d partied down so low we were prostrate.
It was one hell of a party. And if I’m not mistaken, I think some revelers still remained when we got up the next morning.
Above: The flanks of the volcano Irazú, one of the volcanoes that ring the central valley of Costa Rica, circa 1983. Photo courtesy of Ted James.
*Intro:
At the end of 1982, both Richard and I had been out of work for a year, despite constant looking, and the best we had been able to come up with was scrounging for odd jobs. It was an economic climate much like the one we’re in now, and we were feeling both dejected and panicked about what the future might hold for us. We certainly could never have imagined what happened next: a dream job in a dream country for a dream boss.
This is Chapter 27 of the memoir I wrote about the year-and-a-half that Richard and I spent living in Costa Rica. It was quite the adventure, living with a an eccentric and flamboyant heiress** from Dallas, her elegant and erudite husband who wrote Westerns, and their handsome, bad boy son, whom Richard used to babysit. Oh, yeah, and next door resided the safe house for Eden Pastora, aka “Commander Zero,” leader of the Contras who were waging a civil war with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua at that time.
This was a particularly golden era in Costa Rica’s history, before it became “discovered,” even before the introduction of television there, really (it started coming in during the time we lived there). It was wild and exotic and magical and amazing.
So once a week, I’ll be excerpting a chapter from Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue until I’ve told the whole tale. I hope you enjoy these stories!
**Jane, sadly, passed away not long ago, but she left a legacy as colorful as she was. In 1984, she commissioned one of the largest environmental sculptures in the Western Hemisphere, a set of standing stones in Arlington, Texas that were designed and built by sculptor Norm Hines. Caelum Moor has been a source of enormous controversy over the years, which I’ll write about one of these days. In the meantime, feel free to Google “Caelum Moor” and see what turns up. It’s fascinating.
Thursday, September 10, 2009