T A B L E_T A L K Have e-mail, will travel. Share your favorite Internet bars from around the world in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Making travel plans? Visit barnesandnoble.com for all kinds of great travel book bargains! ___________________   R E C E N T L Y Hot spots of the millennium Where will people be traveling in 2000? Travel experts predict the destinations of choice in the new millennium (12/24/98) Not finding God in Rome By Zachary Karabell At Christmas in the Eternal City, a seeker of truth discovers that sometimes the answer you don't get is the one you need (12/23/98) An innocent abroad, Part Two By Bill Barich A young writer in Florence encounters enduring lessons in art and love (12/22/98) An innocent abroad: Part One By Bill Barich A semester in Florence shapes a young writer's life (12/20/98) If you film it, they will come By Steve Rushin A passionate sports fan begins his cross-country pilgrimage with a visit to Iowa's Field of Dreams (12/18/98)   Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives     Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		DEATH IN ANTIGUA | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - I asked for more details, and Gilda continued, though she knew I wouldn't understand everything: There had been a serious accident. Gilda's nephew and niece were driving to Antigua from the capital with their parents when another car veered onto their side of the road. The nephew and niece were killed. Their mother ended up in a neck brace, and broke both her legs; doctors thought it would be six months before she would walk again. "Seis meses?" I asked lamely, so Gilda knew I had some idea. She nodded, and looked down sadly. I was silent, too. Gilda was a woman who had not asked a lot out of life. She was bright and curious about the world, but had never had a career beyond raising three sons and three daughters. Family mattered. To her, I knew, the accident was a cruel blow, especially coming two years after the peace accords had announced to everyone that life would be more calm now. I wasn't going to explain all this to the Englishwoman and the Australian, but I did tell them the basics in English: that Gilda's nephew and niece had been killed in a car accident. They nodded their heads in a show of sensitivity, but within a few minutes they were chatting in English. As newcomers to Antigua, they might not have understood how rude this was to chatter in a language Gilda and her family did not understand, but even so, their tone grated on me: They were smiling and joking and carrying on exactly like two unconcerned foreigners who could not be bothered to show something like true empathy, or even good manners. I excused myself and retreated to the room where I'd read Russian poetry to that overnight guest the previous year. I felt horrible and ashamed. Days went by and still I could not come to terms with what felt like proof that for visitors to Antigua the place really is a veritable Disneyland, a glorified backdrop for postcards home. You don't ask Mickey Mouse how his family is doing, do you? Late in the week, Gilda announced she was leaving for the weekend. She and some family members were heading for the coast. I pulled her aside, uneasily, and told her I wanted to discuss something, but it could wait until she returned Sunday evening. Her interest was piqued. She insisted I speak my mind. So I sat down and told her that I felt bad, that I felt as if we as visitors had failed her. This was all in my rudimentary Spanish, of course, but I asked her if it had seemed as if the others had not seen her family's terrible accident as something important. Gilda thanked me with her eyes for my concern, and tucked the corners of her mouth into a sad smile. Then she gave a gesture for the ages, waving her hand through the air like someone tossing a wrapper out of a moving car: "They're young," she pronounced. "They're full of so many new things. They're distracted." I nodded a couple of times, fighting back a pained look, and over that long weekend I tried to take satisfaction in having at least raised the matter with Gilda. The water for the shower disappeared sometime Thursday and never returned, giving me and the Australian something to complain about. He and I went for a beer and he told me a story about being in the Guatemalan countryside a month earlier when he and another traveler had been trailed by the lovable dog belonging to the family where they were staying. Their host adored this dog. A car approached and offered to take the Australian and his traveling mate into town, an offer they accepted, bringing the dog along. But when they finished up their errands in town and went to find this car, which was supposed to meet them, it was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the dog. Weeks of frantic searching followed. Still no dog. Their previous host was crushed. "I felt quite badly about it," the Australian told me, his lean features taking their best shot at a grimace. "And the American woman you were traveling with?" I asked. "She didn't seem terribly concerned." We walked in silence through the stone-paved street, trying not to trip on the undulating concrete sidewalk. A pregnant silence dragged out. "But the funny thing is, I received an e-mail today," he continued. "They found the dog. The people we'd met in the car were taking care of him. Everything is fine." We walked a while farther and it dawned on me: I was the one who had stayed with Gilda before. I was the one who was upset over the deaths in her family. And yet I did nothing. I did not attend any funeral services. I did not put flowers down on the fresh graves. I did not stop at a corner shop and buy the local version of a Hallmark sympathy card. All I did was look sideways at the Australian and the Englishwoman, and then sound out Gilda before she took her trip, an exchange not unlike thinking about doing something nice for someone, and not doing it, but telling the person anyway, just so you get some points for thinking-but-not-doing. Monday morning and my shuttle to the airport rolled around. Gilda gave me her card and told me her family would pick me up at the airport whenever I returned for more study, in a few weeks or a few months. I thanked her, and slumped into the back seat, knowing full well that I did not deserve so kind a gesture. SALON | Jan. 4, 1999 Steve Kettmann is a writer who lives in San Francisco.