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MARCHING POWDER

being in the one place all the time and never meeting anybody new.

The worst days were Thursdays and Sundays, which were visitors’ days. You might think that I would have enjoyed the contact with the outside world, but I didn’t. There were certainly more people around on those days — families queued up outside the gates from early in the morning and stayed until the last bell, and in between times the place was filled with the colourful dresses and lovely smiles and laughter of wives, girlfriends and children. But all this only made me feel lonelier. I had no family in South America, so no one came to visit me. The few inmates I had made friends with were busy with their own families and didn’t want to be disturbed. I needed to do something about it.

One Saturday I was feeling even more restless than usual. It had been months since I had been dancing and talked with pretty girls, so I decided that I would go out and find some action. I took a shower, dressed in a casual shirt with my best suit, which I’d had drycleaned by one of the wives, put on some cologne, and went to speak with the major on duty about taking supervised prison leave for a night on the town. The major said that it would cost me one hundred dollars, plus the cost of my police escort, which I calculated would probably be another thirty dollars. I agreed to the price. I left San Pedro prison that afternoon at three o’clock through the main prison gates, in full view of all the other inmates. I had twelve hours of prison leave before I had to be back in my cell.

My escort was a short, stocky policeman called Jaime. He had strict instructions to keep an eye on me and make sure that I returned to the prison on time. The first thing I wanted to do was eat a nice meal, so I ordered the taxi driver to take us to the most expensive hotel in La Paz. On the way, we stopped at a jewellery store on the Prado so that I could buy a watch to replace the one the FELCN police had stolen from me. When Jaime wasn’t looking on the way out, I bought him a cheap watch also and gave it to him as a present in the taxi. Our relationship was off to a good start.

We must have made an odd couple walking past the hotel reception — a Bolivian dressed casually in old jeans and a red T-shirt accompanying a foreigner dressed in a smart suit.

‘A table for two, please,’ I said to the head waiter as we entered the restaurant. He raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.