pepsi challenge

Yesterday the daughters of Diego arrived. Ages nine and fourteen, they are bucktoothed and brighteyed. This means that Diego was a mere twenty-two or twenty-three years of age when he became a father. It is difficult to imagine him more boyish than he his. Their presence, however, renders him more youthful and goofy than any conjurable image. He is giddy. Heartbreakingly so. He can´t believe they are here and can´t seem to think of what to say. I had dinner with the usual crowd (eugenio, cris, mariana, diego) and the two quiet daughters. Diego cut their meat into small pieces and then watched them eat. Throughout the meal, he stroked their bushy hair and touched their elastic cheeks. His hands seemed unaccustomed to such delicate subjects. The girls clumsily ate their meat without looking up and then asked for dessert. They might have asked for anything and he would have complied.
Prior to their arrival, Diego was very nervous. He ran around collecting bedding, mattresses, pillows. He washed clothes, sheets, towels. He was out of breath and upset about the musty smell of the old mattresses. The girls will sleep (for the next few weeks) on these mattresses on the floor of Diego´s tiny room inside the tiny house just on the other side of the chicken coop from my little house. It is a two-week long slumber party.
But Diego must have been preoccupied, as he forgot to buy Pepsi-lite on his weekly shopping trip. This would normally not be a problem. We have stacks upon stacks of 24-packs of Coca-Lite in the storeroom. And who really drinks pepsi anyways? But today Pepsi-Lite was in very high demand. We are hosting the Argentine chapter of the PepsiCo Group. They come here once a year to do corporate bonding activities, watch power-point presentations, listen to motivational speakers and consume a lot of Pepsi products.
And so today I spent a good deal of time running around looking for Pepsi-Lite in all of the various refrigerators and storerooms. We had just about everything else made or owned by pepsi--Lays potato chips, Quaker cereal, Gatorade, 7-up, some diet drink called H2-oh-- but no Pepsi-Lite. This greatly upset the brand-loyal and calorie concious group. It was also quite difficult to explain, in my limited Spanish, that there was simply no Pepsi-Lite on the premises. They assumed it was my inability to speak spanish that was the problem, which in fact had nothing to do with the absence of the the zero-calorie soda. The staff and I discussed the possibility of serving Coca-Lite instead, a real Pepsi Challenge. Marcelo (general manager) found the test too risky, our jobs were on the line. He explained to me that they must not know that we serve any products made by Coca-cola. This was why I had spent the afternoon prior to their arrival looking for and then hiding products baring the Coca-cola logo. I discovered that pretty much everything is owned by either Pepsi or Coca-Cola.
And so, the dissapointed Pepsi employees drank the normal 150-calorie-per-can version of the soda. They drank a lot of them too. I wondered if they all liked pepsi before they started working for the company. And do any of them every slip up, drink a coke?

And so tomorrow poor sweet Diego will have to take an emergency run to the store, this time accompanied by his two daughters, in order to purchase Pepsi-lite. They group leaves the following day and so I suspect that most of that pepsi-lite, along with the normal pepsi and the H2-oh will go undrunk. Coke will come back to the front of the shelves and the blue and silver cans will grow warm and collect dust.

in the kitchen

The guests are dull these days. There are lots of them, but they are relatively unremarkable. There was a wedding party a few days back. It was a wedding between an Argentinian woman and a German man. There were onehundred germans and argentines milling around the grounds and eating barbeque under a large white tent. The athletic adults played a spirited soccer match on a field that we had specially set up for them while the children jumped around in an inflatable castle. Then we had a group of Americans here for someones 60th birthday. They unhinged me. It was four couples, in their fifties and sixties from Grenwich, CT. They reaked of investment banking and spoke often of Duke, Yale, Princeton, of team colors and golf scores. They were bores and I hated them. The girls could not understand why these seemingly inoffensive guests aroused such dislike in me. I explained one afternoon to Vani and Xime that these were the odious people that more or less owned America. They listened with owl-wide eyes. They came and went along with some lively british couples (flyfishing enthusiasts), a young attractive Swiss couple (fitness enthusiasts) and some friendly Argentines (leisure enthusiasts).
The season has a feeling of slowing down. Even the weather has become chillier. The nights are crisp and the afternoons less appealing for swimming. With fewer guests, Manu, the chef, works alone. Maria, her unpleasant counterpart, has left along with Gabi and Mica. For this I am glad. I like Manu more and more. She is both harsh and controlling, stormy and unpredictable. Her face reveals, with expressive drama, her everchanging mood. I have learned to read it very well. Her wide dark eyes watch my every move, they check and recheck that I have set the tables correctly, placed the gristini in the bread basket correctly, filled the water glasses the correct amount. But she rarely finds fault. She likes me, which I realize is a rare priveledge. She talks to me about her private life--she lives with her boyfriend, Luis, in town. They live in a big house but will soon move to a smaller apartment. She shows me magazine pictures of the kitchens she would someday like to have-dream kitchens. Unlike her country people, she doesn´t like to share mate and she hates sharing food. She asks me questions about my life and we often have a sort of stilted version of what would otherwise be girl talk. We are both not real sharers and we recognize that in one another and exist in one anothers company quite happily. I somehow know she feels the same. I love to watch her work, the way she plates the food, the way she watches (like a hawk) the guests eat, the way she gets flustered, annoyed, often nearly enraged. I also love to hear her speak in english, timid and sweet. Speaking english makes her blush. Most of all, I love to see her at the end of a shift when she is out of her chef´s shirt, apron and hat. Her hair is wavy and long and she wears tight jeans and worn t-shirts, sometimes puffy jackets and big sunglasses. She drives a little black VW Golf, which she drives very fast on her way out, down the long dirt road and home to Luis.
Manu has an understudy, Silvana, who does prep work and prepares dinner or lunch when there are only a few guests. She has a round, open face and smiles easily. Working with Silvana is always fun. It is just the two of us, two amateurs let loose to take control of the night, the meal, everything. We are like children left home alone to make dinner for ourselves. She is very nervous when she plates the food and when each course is brought to the table, she exhales loudly, releases her tense shoulders and paces back and forth in the dishroom, smiling, giddy. She always makes an extra dessert for us to share and she does not judge me for eating the guests leftovers and drinking wine on the job. She likes this about me, I can tell. We are always teaching eachother words, as she has more patience than the others, always glad to spell out words for me on dirty napkins. When the meal is done, her joy and relief is palpable, the mood is celebratory. I want to break out the champagne and toast to a night well done. But instead, she leaves, breathless and exhausted, usually with some scrap of leftover venison, and I am left with millions of dirty wine glasses to wash, dry and polish.

free days

The Brits with the fast-drying pants did get more interesting. Much more interesting. Turns out, she is a guilty secret smoker and he most likely an alcoholic who never eats sweets. We became fast friends after I startled her while she was sneaking a smoke by the lake. I told her she looked glamorous with a cigarette and not to worry. They invited me to go horseback riding with them and I did. Turns out Tony is a natural on a horse, which pleased Lisa very much. They kept repeating the same joke, which was basically Lisa asking Tony how his ´backside´ was feeling and Tony replying that she shouldn´t ask personal questions while I was around. That night they had braised lamb, which Tony felt was the best he´d ever had. They also drank bottles of wine and once Lisa had returned after a cigarette, they shared quite freely about their personal life. Tony is fifteen years older that Lisa. Tony has three children from a previous marraige with a woman named Lainette. His children are very cross with him on account of the divorce. Lisa assured me that she had no part in the divorce and I assured her that she was worth divorcing for, which they both loved. Lainette is a very difficult ex-wive and a pushy mother. She still makes sandwiches for her children (all in their thirties) and has turned them against poor Tony. Lisa thinks they have a right to be cross with Tony and Tony, with wine-glazed eyes did not object.
The next day was my free day. I had two freedays this week. The first was a bit of a bust. I took the bus to a local town where there are supposed energies oozing from the rocks and has thus brought hippies from all around. I was just curious, which I shouldn´t have been, but everyone said the bus ride itself is worth the trip on account of the scenery. On the hour and a half ride there I saw little of the mountains. The bus, which picked me up on the side of the gravel road, was full and so for the entirety of the curvy ride, I was forced to stand over a woman who was feeding her baby from her enormous breast. The baby, judging by its watery eyes and embryonic features, could not have been more than a few days old. Her nipple, resembling the phalliic end of a steamer clam, continually dripped milk all over the baby´s contorted face and rarely into it´s gaping mouth. On the ride back I got a seat by the window and must admit the scenery was lovely if not breathtaking.
On my second free day, I went on a lengthy and often perilous trek along the top of a giant mountain ridge, resting at a mountain refugio. I went with three men. One an enthusiastic local climbing guide, one a gentle, kind-eyed regional travel agent and the other a silent employee and climber from the rufugio. The guide and the travel agent kept up a steady stream of conversation, which I was rarely able to keep up with. Turns out the refugio employee was in fact a carpenter from Italy who had come here for a change of life. We exhausted conversation options very quickly. The hike was, without a doubt, the most incredible I have ever experienced. The views, at every moment were beyond dramatic--giant spires of granite extending above us while miles below lush green valleys with curving turquoise rivers and neon lagoons. Really something.
At the refugio I experienced the climbing ´scene.´ It is not one I want to be a part of. It consists of climbers, trekkers and hippies fueling-up and discussing their conquests in the mountain or on the rock face. Directly above the refugio there is a giant creviced rock wall providing constant entertainment for the people resting and eating below. The worst were the Australians. They kept up a constant stream of conversation concerning the level of difficulty of various cracks or crevices. They name dropped a lot of mountains and talked a lot about gear, particularly carbon fiber. The hippies who don´t climb sat around too and talked about how hungry they were on various treks; this is a subject everyone has something to add to. Based on their behavior I imagine that the Argentinians were acting just as badly. We spent a good deal of time there, as the enthusiastic mountain guide knew everyone and had a lot to say to them. The silent Italian ex-carpenter went into what was actually a hole in the ground, his sleeping quarters. And the travel agent, Augustine, and I drank mate and spoke about fatherhood. He has two young daughters and is nervous about upcoming adolescents. Augustine is a dear, gentle soul and I imagine a very good father. One of the Australian hippies began juggling sand-filled socks and I was ready to go. We resumed our descent some time later, leaving behind the Italian. We traversed our way through forests filled with wild flowers and little creeks. We arrived at the lake some hours later, where a boat was waiting for us. It took us on a speedy ride across the lake, back to my home just as the sun was disappearing behing the mountain. I kissed the two men goodbye and then picked sweet peas in the garden for a while, had dinner at the boys house, cleaned the girls house, and went to sleep.
The girls house is very empty these days. We are in the slow season. Gabi and Mica left to go back to Buenos Aires and the other girls spend more and more nights in town with their children. I was glad to see Gabi go. As for Mica, I was growing very tired of her constant weeping and giggling over boys. She will, however, always hold a special place in my heart. This has meant that I spend my evenings with the chicos(Diego and Eugenio) and Cris, the woman horse wrangler who lives in the stables with the horses and many cats. I like cris, a lot. She is nearly forty, wiry, and wild-eyed. She has a very large mouth with lips that she often paints red and when the weather is fine, can be seen running around in a red bikini. She has a very special way with the horses and with animals in general. She calls and they come to her. She and the chicos have been more than welcoming of me. I am happy to be in their nighttime scene, which usually consists of watching badly dubbed episodes of Friends and eating dessert.
But today, eight new guests arrive. They are a group of friends celebrating someones birthday. I think she is turning fifty.

holiday

Today is International Women´s day. We did nothing to celebrate it here. Yesterday seemed the real holiday. There was nothing to celebrate but the fact that the two egg eating guests were on a day long trek and thus the grounds were free of outsiders. When I arrived at the Casa Principal to perform my usual morning tasks of sweeping, mopping, fluffing pillows and beating rugs, the girls were already at work. The furniture was all moved to the edges of the living room or turned on it´s side. They were playing, blasting, euro-club hits. Mostly remixes of american or eastern european dance hall classics. Such a festive air, as if we were all finally preparing for an event we had been anticipating for quite some time. It was like spring cleaning or else Thanksgiving preparations. Everyone had their task and seemed genuinely thrilled to be doing it. My task was to wash the outside of the windows. I was indeed happy to be doing it. Eugenio was cutting the grass nearby and the sun was bright and the wind fresh. I could watch the girls inside often dancing or singing along to the club music, only slightly muted by the triple pane glass. When the place was spotless, Vani, Gladis and I ate fruit and fried chicken in the kitchen.
Vani and Gladis are cousins, but this is a secret. For reasons I could not seem to understand, they want no one to know. Vani is bad, like a naughty child bad. She lies a lot and says mean things and makes dirty jokes. She loves to say english words and is obsessed with money. She wants to know the cost of everything, my plane ticket, my shoes, my rent, my salary, my boyfriends salary, my moms salary. She wants me to be rich. She has this very grand vision of the United States--all disneylands and hollywoods-- and my being here mopping floors with them distorts her image. Regardless, she is glad I am here. I can tell. She has cruel little nicknames for me and always brings me special pastries left over from breakfast.
I like Gladis and Vani together. Vani acts bad and Gladis laughs. I like to think of them growing up together. Gladis has two sisters while Vani has five. Now, they both have children. Vani has one boy and Gladis, three. Vani said she killed the father of her child and also her father and gladis giggled a lot. I assumed it was a lie and so laughed too. They told me all this while we sat and ate chicken during our break from holiday cleaning. We then shared with one another all the words in english and spanish for male and female genitalia. Vani was especially intent on learning the words, though Gladis, whose english pronunciation is nearly perfect, repeated the english words with more ease than even I. Gladis is cool. So collected, unfased, observant. We laughed quite a bit and then Diego came in to wash his calloused hands and pick at the chicken. The girls repeated the words for him and then a lot of other spanish words I didn´t know, which made the girls laugh a lot and Diego smile and blush. Jokes concerning human genitalia are a universal crowd pleaser.
After lunch, we polished the silverware at the same low table we had been eating chicken at (also the same low table the guests had eaten ten eggs at the previous afternoon). There is something about polishing silverware that inevitably makes one feel a certain anticipation for something grand. It is a hopeful activity. It speaks of someone coming to dinner.
The fact is, someone is always coming to dinner here. Today, a retired british couple came to dinner in travel sandles and fast-drying pants. They spoke so softly as they ate their venison that I had trouble making out the conversation, which was frustrating. I do know that they are going to go horseback riding tomorrow to see if tony, the man, can keep up with lisa, his wife. She rides and he doesn´t and they want to know if it is a potential activity for them to share in their retirement. I also know that he only brought one pair of pants on this trip, the rest all shorts. He also likes to run, though has only managed two runs in the last three weeks. I hope they get more exciting.

eggs

We are in the midst of a few quiet days here. The couple from the Netherlands left this morning. We had become quite friendly by the end of their stay. I liked them, though they were always a good half-an-hour early for cocktail time. Last night two new guests arrived. She is from Czech republic while he is an American, from Manhattan but has three homes elsewhere and spends most of his time in Connecticut with his family. She continues to reside in her home country. The best I can understand, based on their discussion of their separate lives--families (children included) and jobs in their separate countries--as well as their constant nauseating affection for one another, they are having an affair. They have been "together" for ten years and only meet to travel, which they are very quick to say is difficult on their relationship. She is a spunky blonde with wide set blue eyes. She speaks with a sort an earnesty and volume that is both heartwarming and irritating. Her accent is charming and somehow lends itself very well to the endless flow of words constantly coming from her mouth. He is a body builder though his income is earned through owning golf courses. He is very short with leathery skin and protruding veins. What he lacks in height he makes up for in width and girth. He is a massive little man. Today they went horseback riding and I simply could't imagine what he would look like on horseback. His eyecontact is unnerving, steady and blank. For all of her many words he has very few and they are all delivered in soft, gentle tones that give me the bad kind of chills.
He does not drink wine, but instead drinks bottle after bottle of water. Though the tap water here is the purest on the planet (in fact you can drink straight from the lake), he insists on bottled. This afternoon they approached me in the kitchen and asked for a snack. No mind that dinner was only an hour away, they were hungry: He told me in a serious, quiet almost-whisper that they could eat all day, and she repeated this in a shout that ended with laughter. What they wanted was eggs. She wanted hers soft boiled (6 minutes) while he would have his hard. They made themselves comfortable in the kitchen, which is not really a place for guests, while I boiled them some eggs. He ate six eggs while she could only manage four. They also ate several pieces of toast each and finished off a jar of jam. She drank coffee and wine and he, bottled water. Full of eggs, they then showed me pictures of their trip to some waterfalls in Brazil. There were many photos of them kissing and touching. Afterwards, she insisted on taking a picture of me with him. He told me, huskily, not to be nervous. I was very nervous.
Half an hour later they came down for cocktail and appetizers. They were very hungry and they both repeated, in their respective manners, that they could eat all day. When I served dessert, it was clear that she had been crying and she was holding her neck in a funny way, all stiff with her chin tucked. She told me with tears in her eyes that she hurt her neck and he would't give her pain killers. They went off to bed early. Their last request before retiring was for more boiled eggs in the morning; "we can just peel them as we go," she said, still choked-up, red-faced and stiff-necked. I will see them tomorrow.

barbeque

The day before yesterday I had a day off. I was supposed to go on a trek high into the mountains and spend the night at a refugio. I was going with two guests from the Netherlands; he looks like Steve Jobs and wears a Lehman Brothers hat where as she resembles a more animated Lauren Bacall. Our guide was to pick us up in front of the Casa Principal promplty at 9am. I arrived only to learn that lightning storms were to be arriving in the afternoon and so instead of the hike, Carlos, a knowledgable local taxi driver, would take us on a driving tour. I was rushed into the back of the cab without the time nor the opportunity to say I´d rather not. The couple had been given time to change their clothes, but I was stuck, quite self-conciously in a pair of what are basically hot-pants and a ridiculously large pair of hiking boots (which I borrowed from the generous estancia owner). Carlos, with tight crunchy curls and brawny exposed chest was a good guide. He took us to all the important vista points and tourist attractions, pointing out this lake and that tree as we drove in what seemed like circles. It was impressive on account of the natural beauty, but not what I had bargained for. My legs, as a sat pressed up against my backseat companion with whom I was making continuous small talk about business and government, have never felt more exposed.
And so, my return to work yesterday seemed a let down. I had been cheated, and was sour about it. Then there was the barbeque, the Asado. It was an important event for us as a group of 25 or so Argentians from a special travel agency were coming to experience a traditional day at the ranch--horse rides, massages and a barbeque. The crowd was rowdy and demanding. They drank equal amounts of soda and wine and the girls and I were left running drinks around as meat -chorizo, blood sausage, all parts of beef, lamb, pork- was pulled off the fire and placed before these blood thirstly guests. I was very hungry, all the girls were very hungry, and so we ate the leftover sausages in the dish room, tore at the steaks and sucked at the rib bones. It was disheartening to watch these hungry women gnaw on discarded pork fat and suck at empty sausage casings. But the mood was lively. Xime washed dishes and I fed her pieces of steak. We all laughed about this and we licked our fingers and went back to work.
There was a lot of clean up and then a short break before dinner. The large party had left and it was dinner as usual-salmon, creamed carrot soup, some puffy cold dessert with cassis liquor. I returned to the girl´s house, my house, weary and already nauseated on account of having finished all the guests leftover dessert liquor. The girls were home, sitting in the steamy kitchen watching music videos. They were gathered around a large tray containing the afternoons barbeque remnants. There was more fat to be gnawed at and still more bones to be sucked dry. Sweet Mica, sensing my exhaustion, took it upon herself to make me a blood sausage sandwich. She first microwaved the little black package and then pierced its skin so that the bloody innards poured out, releasing both steam and odor. She offered it to me between two crusts of white bread and I felt I would vomit. I had liked blood sausage, quite a lot. I had liked the different cuts of meat, the whole thing. But standing over that trough of gray and pink torn flesh, the wafts of animals, the sound of fat between teeth, I felt very much akin to all those queasy vegetarians. I begged out of the morcilla sandwich and Mica, so sweetly said she would put it in the fridge for me. It is waiting there for me still, 24 hours later. I imagine it has developed a solid consistancy and has little immediate odor.

the servants and their quarters

As I mentioned, I live with the girls. We live in a one-story characterless house on the outskirts of the resort. There are four bedrooms each containing one or two beds and one or two girls. The number of girls depends on the day. Some have husbands or boyfriends or children in nearby towns, and leave us on the days off. I have my own room, a luxury. There is a small and quite stuffy kitchen which doubles as a laundry room and telenovela viewing area. I choose to spend little time in that space as it is either hot with laundry steam or stale with the previous nights chicken bones filling up the sink. The girls, despite their fanatacism in the guest´s rooms, do not keep their quarters so spic and span. The girls are as follows:
Gabi: generally unpleasant, unsmiling, bossy, complaining and condescending. She is from Buenos Aires and her work period terminates in just a few weeks. She will be glad to go. I will also be glad. I have fought with her several times already, in spanish. Her eyes have a way of searching for fault in each of my actions. When she finds it, she likes to speak to me as if I were a young retarded child with whom she has had enough. When she does not find fault, her eyes flash with something like hatred and she storms off. When we are not working, we feign cheerfulness with one another.
Maria: One of the cooks. She has a boyfriend in Bariloche with whom she spends half the week. Generally bored by her work. She does not like the things she cooks and would prefer McDonalds (or so she says). Instead she is stuck whipping up raspberry wine reductions and wild boar wrapped watercress. She is generally unpleasant but I make her smile when I drink the last drops of wine from the bottles and pick at the unfinished food of our picky guests in the dishroom.
Mica: Sweet Mica. She is the only one who speaks english, though it is worse than my spanish. She wants to practice her english, and I my spanish and so we have an arangement where she speaks in english, I in spanish and we correct eachother. There is much laughing and saying "I no know" or "no se". She is bright, fresh and optomistic to a fault. Though she has been experiencing boy trouble and she comes into my room at night, in her tiny girlish nightgown, to talk about love related woes. She is a little gem.
Gladis: Gladis looks wounded. She is small, quiet, dark. Thick bangs and a long thick ponytail. She does things very slowly as if exhausted by the weight of the day. One night, a few nights back, we all went dancing at a hippie rave full moon festival at a campground nearby. She danced with more spirit than expected and together we laughed at the speed freaks and dirtbags. We left the party before the others and on the way back she told me that she just divorced her husband and has three children in town. She speaks very quietly.
Xime: Very short, older than the rest. Laughing eyes and a very fierce manner. She is not afraid to make demands but I am glad to take them from her, as she is organized, efficient and no-nonsense. She also thinks it is very funny when I speak english very fast. They all seem to love that game.
Vani: Pretty and doe-eyed. She is most curious about me, and especially fixated on the fact that for me, coming from the US, the salary is not very much. She cannot seem to understand what it is that I am doing here, but she is also very kind to me. She and I like to steal chocolate and mini cremetarts from the special store room. In the mornings she practices her english, saying: "hello, good day." It pleases her to say this.
Mani: The other cook. I don´t know what it is in her freckled face, her sturdy build, her frantic mannerisms, but she seems to me the perfect stereotype of a chef in training. Perhaps it is that I have seen too much top chef. She is fierce and unfriendly with the other girls but somehow is a bit kinder to me. I translate for her as best I can the conversations of the english speaking guests. She thinks this is funny, especially when I call them estupido. I want her to like me, I try very hard with her.

Those are the girls. There are others. YOu will hear about them later. But those are the ones I am most in contact with, either in our steamy little house or in the casa principal, in which the meals are served.

Next to our house is a chicken coop and then on the other side of the chicken coop are the male servants quarters. There are only three residents there:

Eugenio: Young, sunburnt, loud. He is often seen dressed as a gaucho (shawl, funny hat, braided belt) on horseback leading guests through the woods. He is also seen mowing the lawn. Mica had a short-lived fling with him and he left her heartbroken. I tell her that he is not worth it. no vale la pena.
Samuel: Very quiet, dark, shy. He once saw me picking beets from the green house. I looked very guilty and asked him if it was ok. He said yes and quickly scampered off. He seems to work with much diligence.
Diego: the pride of the ranch. Strapping, brawny and bright, Diego is a man of all tasks. Fishing, boating, building, digging, guiding, etc. Diego does it all. He has longish dark hair and chiseled features. He takes brisk nightly swims in the lake and speaks in a soft brusk voice. I think the female guests are happy to have him on the premises.