VPLA 2024
Panajachel

Title: Panajachel

Author: Rachel Morton

Photography by Sarah Walker

Judges’ report

Panajachel takes its name from a lake town in Guatemala. Narrator Ruth is listless and dissatisfied with life in New York and decides to return to Panajachel where she had been happy ten years ago. On this return trip she meets two very different women. The calm and predictable Emilie and the turbulent and haughty Carmen. While she works a series of jobs – as a nanny for a wealthy Guatemalan family, then teaching English – Ruth pushes away Emilie’s secure love and practical outlook in favour of Carmen’s intoxicating unpredictability.

Ruminations on belonging and the sense of being an outsider, reveal how an insatiable desire for something more from life can sometimes cause harm rather than good.

In a meditative and hypnotic style, Morton has drawn in-depth characters with complex relationships. The judges were impressed with how contained the story was and how the plot, while centred mostly on emotional stakes, remained unpredictable, but believable.

Extract

The day after San Marcos, I decided to sit outside in the courtyard, rather than in my hotel room. I had taken down a book from the ‘free books’ bookshelf. I was reading a book called Mexico by James A. Michener. I was reading in the garden and at first I felt uncomfortable and conspicuous, then I felt as though the garden was mine, then I forgot about the garden and about everything as I became absorbed in the book. It was a fictionalised account of the colonisation of Mexico. It felt real even though it was made up.

I heard but did not really notice when two people sat down at the table next to me. They spread out their things and started sorting them as though the patio was their living room. The girl was thin and athletic, with long wet curly hair. The boy was the same size as the girl and wore his black hair very short. They spoke Italian to each other and when I looked at them, they stopped talking and both smiled at me. Their smiles seemed genuine. I felt timid and uncool.

Despite their good looks, they were friendly to me, and after some time, they pulled out some bread and some cheese and a half-empty bottle of wine. They introduced themselves as Olivier and Sofia. They poured out three cups and handed one to me, and then handed me some bread and a piece of cheese. We ate together and they asked me about my life and I quickly asked them about theirs. It was easier for them to talk about their lives and I made sure I asked them lots of questions. They were open and clear and they wanted to talk. They told me they were travelling but they were tired of it. There had been no jobs at home and they had gone travelling instead of being unemployed, but they were tired of it now and they wanted to go home, even though they knew what that would mean for their lives. The wine had been enough for one cup each and when that was finished they decided to go to the bar.

They did not invite me specifically; they assumed I would go with them and packed up their things and they told me they would be back down in ten minutes, and we could all walk to the bar together.

I did not want to go out that night, and I did not want to go to the bar. This couple was nice but not interesting. But I was trying to do things differently to how I had done them before, so I went.

El Nahual was different at night compared to during the day. At night it was a rowdy place. It was much busier now than it was in the day. Some of the tables had been moved from the floor. Some people sat at tables along the wall, but mostly people stood around and held their drinks in their hand. I entered with the Italians and felt hit by a wall of sweat and alcohol and noise and heat. There was a band playing in the corner and some people were watching it; most were not. Olivier went and got us all drinks and brought us back two beers each. We held one in each hand. Sofia looked around and bobbed up and down to the music and she smiled at everything. The music was loud. We couldn’t talk. I didn’t mind about that.

I watched all the people and I had that feeling again that nothing here was real. Like with the waves. I felt separate, like I was watching through a screen. There was nothing here for me. I had tried. What I was looking for was not here.

I signalled in the noise to the Italians that I was going to the toilet. They nodded and they both smiled at me. They were moving around so much that they were almost dancing now. The toilet was out the back, through another room. On my way through, I saw the girl I had seen in the street, the one with the long blond hair. She was in the corner of the back room. She was sitting on the table, not on a chair, surrounded by a group of people who were standing. They were all about to do shots. The people around the woman were not foreigners. They looked like Guatemalans, ones from the city; they were shorter than her and had long black hair and wore rock T shirts with the sleeves cut off. The Guatemalans from the lake did not dress like that; the women mainly wore Mayan clothes, the men wore collared shirts and baseball caps. This was her, the woman I had seen in the street. In the street she was alone and wore baggy brown clothes; she had seemed preoccupied. Now a light seemed to shine from her. Her hair was out and brushed long, it was so bright it was almost white. She wore a floor length blue kaftan. She was strange. The kaftan was not the fashionable sort, it was not delicate like silk. It was a proper seventies heavy-cotton kaftan and it was unfashionable and it was strange. It did not drape elegantly but stuck out around her legs where she sat at the table. I knew she was strange. I wanted to know her.

The group of people around her were laughing and talking and slapping each other on the back. This woman was not saying any much. She watched them with an unself-conscious face, like a child or a young teenager. Then suddenly, she changed and she raised her glass and she said something and they all cheered. She didn’t say much but when she spoke they listened and they all answered back. I would never be like her. But she was the only real thing in the room.

When I passed her again on my way back out, she looked at me like she was a cat. I almost stopped but I acted cool and I kept going back into the front room. I could feel her behind me but when I turned to enter the room and looked at her from my side, she was no longer looking at me but was leaning down with her hand on the shoulder of one guy and was talking to him and they were laughing.

In the front room Olivier and Sofia were drunk and now they were dancing properly, not just bouncing around. Everything felt fake again. It felt even more fake now than it did before. I took my jacket from the chair and I walked out into the street without saying goodbye to the Italians.

I was glad for the fresh air of the street, and the coolness and the sudden solitude. The silence made things seem real again. I felt cold rise from the cobblestoned street. The hotel was not far and I walked slowly. The moon was bright. I had tried, I told myself. I had tried and what I had tried had not worked. I would keep trying, I promised myself there in the street. But I would have to try something else.

About the author

Rachel Morton is writer from South-West Victoria. Her poetry has been published in various publications including Meanjin, The Moth, The New Welsh Review, and Crannog. Rachel was short-listed for the 2019 Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry. Panajachel is her first novel.