Readers
will also know that for the last several months, I’ve been besieged by men
working to depave and brick the street below me; they’ve put in new sidewalks
as well. What you may not know is that while all of this has been going on, a
ficus tree has been growing relentlessly on the side of the wall of my interior
patio, between my floor and the floor above.
In fact,
the tree grew some fifteen feet or so, and the roots extended some fifteen feet
easily below. They also extended into our apartment, growing against and onto
the walls of the gallery. Oh, and roots shot through the gallery ceiling as
well, since a tap root had grown laterally underneath the floor above us, and
then hurtled downward. Such is the power of thirst in either the mammalian or
vegetative world; we had the unique if not particularly enjoyable experience of
living under a tree.
Here’s an
example of what I mean:
…and here’s
what it looked like from the roof:
This, mind
you, is from a building in Los Angeles; my own photos are locked in a camera
with a low battery.
A ficus on
the side of the building is picturesque, right? Absolutely, as long as no one
is living in the building, and you have no particular disinclination to see the
building gradually tumble down from damp and rot. For that’s what happened to
us, or rather, what might have happened. Because I just examined the thickest
section of the taproot, and it was easily half a foot in circumference.
Which meant
that the root of the tree had caused a six-inch crack in the wall, and had
lifted up the floor of the apartment above me. And that six-inch crack? Well,
every time it rained, water poured into the gallery from above. And the walls
are stained green—no, not stained. The walls are green, but not with paint—with
mold. Right—so we were living under a tree as well as in a Petri dish.
The problem
was that rain, when it falls in the tropics, tends to fall hard, and at an
angle. And the winds—as luck would have it—blow directly against the wall in
which the crack had developed. Thus, water was being directed against the wall
as if from a garden hose. Or rather, a hundred garden hoses.
For a long
time, I was a sort of meteorological prisoner—would it rain today? For most,
that means a decision no weightier than whether to take the umbrella. For me,
it meant whether I would cancel my classes for the day and stand in wait with
the mop.
That was
one tool of the trade; the others were two white plastic basins Taí had bought
to soak her feet in, and three or four disposable turkey roasting pans that Mr.
Fernández had ridiculously kept, claiming that at some point in this century or
the next a use might be found for them. He was not slow to point this fact out,
when I reached in panic for the pans….
And then it
occurred to me. I had complained for years about the activities of the neighbor
or tenants above us. We had filed a complaint with the pertinent government
authority—nothing was done. With the neighbor below, we filed a lawsuit that
dragged on forever, and was eventually settled.
Nor were we
alone in our complaints—everyone on the street, especially those who had done
business with the neighbor, had a story of their own. Oh, and I’ve just checked
the webpage for ramajudicialpr.gov—the judicial system’s electronic records.
The neighbor has six cases against her listed. Seven, since our own does not
appear….
We do many
things superlatively well in Puerto Rico. We make extraordinary friends; we
work harder and smarter than many, many other people. What is our stumbling
block?
In an
island where everything is intensely personal, we tend not to think of systems.
Which means that our own system of law and order is, in general, broken. If, in
Wisconsin, I had a problem with a neighbor about a tree that needed pruning /
removing, I would talk to the neighbor. Most likely we would agree, the problem
would be resolved, and life with the neighbor would proceed—if perhaps a bit
coldly.
But
everyone I know has a neighbor story—a man or woman is vacuuming floors above
them at 3 in the morning (my in-laws), or leaving the building door open at
11:30PM (also my in-laws, but because of a different neighbor), or using
surreptitiously the hot water (my sister-in-law).
It was my
sanity or else; the Stockholm
syndrome set it. In the face of continued assaults, I gave in; which is not
to say that I fell in love with what had become my captor. Rather, I stopped
caring.
I also
stopped mopping up the floor; as well, I removed the buckets collecting the
water that was pouring into our apartment. I let the water fall—as it was
already falling, despite my futile efforts—into the store on the ground level
below.
A store
that is part of a nation-wide chain of shoe stores, with headquarters located
in some Midwestern city. And then, the predictable happened.
Well, not
before my friends and I had made a joke of it. The store had the predictable
gunmetal gray industrial carpet, which became sopping wet.
I spurred
Nydia into—at least in our imaginations—walking into the store, wrinkling her
nose, and saying loudly, “¡Ay,
fó! ¡Qué peste!” (“Ugh! It stinks in here!”)
Or how
about….
“Oiga,
¿dónde conseguió este tono de verde para estas paredes?” (“Hey, where’d you get that shade of
green on the walls?”)
Or my
personal favorite…
“¿Cuánto
cuestan esas setas en la parte de atrás de la tienda?” (“Say, how much are those mushrooms in
the back of the store?”)
At last it
happened. Corporate home office called the owner of the first floor, and told
him bluntly to fix the problem or else they’d walk, if a store could walk.
A meeting
was called, voices were raised, photos were taken, and the air was thick with
invective. Yesterday, I spent the morning opening doors, counting cats, dealing
with Carlos and José, and especially with the Spanish-born, volatile owner of
the first floor, who was shouting from the roof to the workers who were working
in the patio. And they, of course, were shouting back.
Today?
They
reappeared, with ropes and pulleys. A man has lowered himself from the roof,
entrusting his life to a rope and a ratchet. The tree has been cut—a simple
affair that took no more than five minutes and a machete. The real problem was
the taproot, which had burrowed fifteen feet down and in the side of the patio
wall.
Well, it
took no more than an hour to remove the limestone / cement surfacing that
covered the side of the brick / sand / rock / who-knows-what-else mixture that
forms the three-feet walls of our building; this is called mampostería, for those who have lived in Old San
Juan. We now have a fair portion of the wall exposed to the elements.
Was it
enough? For the workers had gone silent. Had they gone? Was I free? No—they
were downstairs, eating lunch, and when they returned, they brought with them a
second weapon of assault: a large, gasoline-powered device the size of a
generator. What did they propose? To roar the thing to life in my patio, in
order to power-wash its walls.
It’ll only
take various minutes, they said.
It’s been
two hours.
And now?
I have
dared to peek out the window.
There is a
man attached to a rope and ratchet with a power washer walking, and lashing
jets of water…
…down the
wall of my patio.
