A Man Melting

by Craig Cliff

  I needed to do this by myself. Please understand.

  Tuesday

  When I got to the airport this morning I couldn’t find the check-in desk for Aero Islas. I bought an English–Latin American Spanish phrasebook and walked around asking ¿Donde es Aero Islas? People smiled blankly or brushed past me like I wasn’t there. The staff of other airlines humoured me (I suspect they understood English just fine) and pointed to corners of the terminal which turned out to be vacant.

  I came across a man of light complexion wearing tan shorts, a loud floral shirt and an exasperated expression equal to mine.

  ‘Are you looking for Aero Islas?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s as if it doesn’t exist,’ he said.

  ‘Do you speak Spanish?’

  ‘No, but I understand some.’

  We teamed up, and eventually found a sign for Aero Islas leaning against a shut-up office by the sales counters. I picked up the sign and we walked over to the LAN airlines desk.

  ‘¿Donde es Aero Islas?’ I asked, shaking the sign.

  The woman behind the counter shook her head. She said something in Spanish and I looked at my friend in the floral shirt.

  ‘She says the airline is closed. ¿Cerrado?’ he asked the woman for confirmation.

  ‘Cesado. Terminado. No more.’

  ‘But we have tickets.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I only booked my flight on Friday,’ I said.

  ‘Goodness,’ my friend said. ‘Very sudden,’ he said slowly to the woman. ‘Muy rapido.’

  ‘Esto es Ecuador.’ This is Ecuador. A phrase I won’t forget in a hurry.

  The only other airlines flying to the Galapagos are AeroGal and TAME. All their flights are full until next Tuesday. One week away. Robert, my friend in the floral shirt, booked his seat then and there.

  On the plane from New Zealand all I could think about was getting to the Galapagos, finding and confronting charles. darwin@galapagos.co.ec. I’d booked a five-day tourist cruise around the islands, as it seemed a waste to go all that way and not see the wildlife. But standing in the Guayaquil airport, the cruise became the complicating factor. I decided to hold off booking another flight to Baltra until I’ve spoken to my cruise operator. It would seem an easy place to get stranded.

  Esto es Ecuador.

  Wednesday

  The tour company will not refund my money, but travel insurance should reimburse me. Tried booking another cruise for next week, then found all of Tuesday’s aeroplane seats have been taken.

  Walked along the Malecón again. Easier to see the grime between the paving. Seats with bolts missing. At sunset: plenty of bulbs need replacing. The west bank of the river is clogged with bright green weed. The water itself is somewhere between mud and tinted windscreens.

  The food? Well, I had a nice empanada from a street vendor. Waiting for the dysentery to hit. Many English language channels on the TV in my hotel room. Not quite what I travelled around the world for.

  Thursday

  I was robbed today. The highlight of my trip so far. It wasn’t a local but another gringo like me. He held an iguana under his arm like a sawn-off shotgun and threatened me with it.

  ‘These things carry dozens of diseases,’ he said. His scrappy beard was flecked with grey hairs. ‘Fancy a bout of salmonella?’

  The iguana was thrust at me, its mouth slightly open. I wasn’t sure if it was yawning or snarling. The man hopped from one foot to the other. His cheeks filled with air.

  I pitied him. Wondered what comedy of errors had led him to this moment. I gave him all the US dollars in my wallet. There but for the grace of God, and all that.

  ‘Thanks abundant,’ the thief said, bending forward in a kind of bow. The iguana dipped with him, its mouth still agape.

  Having nothing of value left on my person I walked to Las Peñas to see the colonial architecture. Surprising. Fresh paint like the Malecón, but locals walking around instead of gringos. Ordered my entire lunch using the phrase book, then remembered I had no cash. The waitress smiled, told me where to find an ATM. When I returned, all three courses of my almuerzo were waiting for me. Popcorn is big here. They put it in their soups, eat it with ceviche. Different. Delicious. No stomach upsets as yet. I should say No enfermo de estómago.

  Friday

  My wildlife cruise around the Galapagos Islands left this morning with me still on the mainland. Me still in bed, actually. Couldn’t face another trip to the airport to be disappointed. Another phone call to the tour operator. Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow I will sort it all out. Only then could I get out of bed.

  Walked along the Malecón, eating fried plantain chips. Who should I spy but the thief from yesterday. He was walking along the promenade looking in rubbish bins, the iguana tucked up under his arm.

  I followed.

  He stopped at one of the fruit vendors, fished some coins out of his pocket and bought a large, misshapen fruit with dull green skin. He sat down on a bench, placed the iguana down beside him, removed a knife from his trouser pocket and began cutting into the fruit.

  ‘If you have a knife,’ I said, ‘why use the iguana?’

  He bit into the white flesh of the fruit, but needed to suck and pull to free it from the skin. ‘Confusion,’ he said and licked his lips. He looked at me. ‘Everyone knows what a knife can do.’

  ‘What is that?’ I asked.

  ‘This?’ He held up the fruit. ‘Chirimoya, guanábana, soursop, custard apple.’

  ‘Which is it?’

  ‘Depends where you are.’

  He cut a slice as you would from a watermelon and passed it to me. ‘Try it.’

  ‘I guess I did pay for it,’ I said.

  He exposed his maize-coloured teeth, his pointed incisors. The iguana seated next to him lifted its head, closed and opened its nostrils.

  The flavour of the chirimoya was slight but distinct, the flesh soft and slimy; it dissolved to leave a large black seed in my mouth. I removed it with my thumb and forefinger and held it up to the sun. It looked like a beetle.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s a bit like sherbet,’ I said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I was thinking what a nightmare it would be if the black seeds actually were beetles. Cutting into the fruit and the thing crawling with insects.

  ‘Have you tried naranjilla?’ he asked.

  ‘No. What’s it like?’

  ‘Sort of like a persimmon, I guess. What about taxo? Tuna?’

  ‘The fish?’

  ‘Go buy us a tuna.’ He pointed to the fruit stand. ‘Un tuna, por favor,’ he said slowly. ‘Mind the prickles.’

  ‘Prickles?’

  He waved me off.

  The taste was difficult to describe. I felt like I was at a wine tasting, searching for the right flavours: pineapple, lime zest, chalk.

  ‘That grows on a cactus,’ he told me. I stopped worrying about flavours.

  When we’d finished the tuna, I asked, ‘What’s tuna in Español? The fish.’

  ‘Atún.’

  ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘What should I buy next?’

  ‘Maracuyá.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Passionfruit.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had those before.’

  ‘Over here or at home?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Then you haven’t had maracuyá.’

  We worked our way through all the fruit on offer. Him sitting on the bench, slipping the iguana pieces of banana (smaller and sweeter than any of those back home) and tamarillo. Me standing. Occasionally someone walking past would wave or say, ‘Hello,’ or ‘Afternoon, Henry.’ In English. I figured he was a kind of local celebrity. Perhaps he was mentioned in the Lonely Planet. But by this stage I was more interested in the fruit. The maracuyá were the best. I must have had half a dozen.

  ‘The works of Nature,’ I said, holding up my last maracuyá half as if proposing a to
ast, ‘are to those of Art.’ The sun was setting. To look at the river was to look through a window into pitch blackness.

  ‘Come,’ Henry told me, standing and picking up the iguana.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘There are people you should meet.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘Don’t worry. This is not an ambush.’

  We walked to the end of the promenade. Children were playing soccer on a patch of dirt. Their shirts in four piles to mark the goals. The undersized ball barely visible in the dim light. There was a fire in the distance, already casting shadows.

  ‘There,’ he said, gesturing towards the fire with the iguana.

  ‘Does he have a name?’ I asked.

  ‘It is not necessary to name animals.’

  As we approached, I could make out three people standing, warming themselves by the fire, another two sitting cross-legged on the dirt. They were all tourists like me. All middle-aged, male. Standing closest to me was Robert, my friend from the airport. Still in his floral shirt, three days’ growth gracing his cheeks.

  ‘Welcome to the waiting room,’ he said. The others smiled.

  ‘You were all booked on Aero Islas?’ I asked.

  ‘More than that,’ Robert said.

  One of the seated men stood up, dusted his backside. ‘You know he’s been there.’ He pointed at the man with the iguana, Henry. ‘He’s met them.’

  ‘Met whom? Been where?’

  ‘There.’ He pointed towards the west bank of the river, the ocean ninety kilometres beyond, the archipelago nine hundred and seventy-two kilometres further.

  We were all standing now, all facing Galapagos.

  Henry placed the iguana on the ground and it walked to the vacant side of the fire. It was no surprise that he had been to the Galapagos. I had built them up to such mythical status, it seemed obvious a visit to the islands changed people. For the better, for the worse, it didn’t matter. It changed people.

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said, staring out across the river, ‘I went there. I tracked them down. I burst into their office — what a disappointment that was. I shouted, “I am Henry Devon, acting manager, data analytics division. I intend to grow three inches this year.” They just looked at me, of course. Eight of them, sitting at their terminals. Posters of frigate birds and giant tortoises on the walls. What did I expect? To see him?’

  ‘You … Charles Darwin emailed you too?’

  ‘All of us,’ Robert said.

  ‘The funny thing’, said a man with a pair of reading glasses hanging from a cord around his neck, ‘is we come for different reasons. Some to escape, some for the wildlife, some for the language, some’, he looked at Henry, ‘for confrontations, and some as if guided by an invisible hand.’

  ‘A surprising number arrive mad,’ said Robert. Henry had wandered into the shadows to retrieve his iguana.

  ‘He emailed you all?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, we’re not unique,’ said another man who until that moment had been silent. He had a comb-over, except the hair wasn’t covering his scalp but was left to flop down over his right ear. ‘There must be thousands of recipients. Thousands. Only a small percentage must come. That’s all they need.’

  ‘When I discovered the hyperlinks,’ Robert said, ‘I was disappointed.’

  The others all agreed.

  ‘But we came.’

  ‘Hyperlinks?’ I asked.

  ‘In the emails,’ the man with the uncombed comb-over said. ‘All those phrases to do with travel. Across vast oceans.’

  ‘Years of indolence,’ said Robert.

  ‘This fair planet.’

  ‘Those islands.’

  ‘A magic flute,’ said the man with the reading glasses. ‘That was what got me.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Hyperlinks,’ I repeated.

  ‘To the ministry’s page.’

  ‘Ministerio de Turismo.’

  ‘This is all part of an advertising campaign?’

  ‘I don’t think he clicked the links,’ Robert said softly.

  ‘Didn’t click the links?’

  ‘He thought it was really Darwin?’

  ‘That’s not possible. Is it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But you didn’t click the links.’

  I looked over the river again. Imagined those chunks of rock in the middle of the ocean, battered by waves, ignored for centuries: a sudden tourist destination.

  The men around me continued to fire off questions.

  My stomach twisted.

  ‘Leave him be,’ Henry said from the far side of the fire. ‘He’s had a lot of fruit today.’

  Evolution, Eh?

  Ricky and me were sitting in Midland Park. He offered me a smoke but I told him I don’t smoke coz of that ad where they squeeze a tube from a smoker’s heart or something and it’s full of yellow gunk. He said, ‘Whatever.’ I had only hung out with Ricky a few times and felt a bit stink when he said whatever but I don’t want yellow gunk in my tubes, eh? I feel clogged up enough already with all the hard-out things at home, like my head is full of mashed potato or something.

  After Ricky took a few drags from his smoke, some pigeons started walking towards us. It was the middle of the afternoon so all the suits were back in their offices and it was only us two sitting in the park. I thought maybe the pigeons thought we had food, but it was just Ricky smoking and me sitting there, waiting for him to decide what we should do next coz I was out of ideas and low on dollars. Ricky said, ‘Watch this,’ and he tapped the ash from his cigarette down by his feet and the pigeons kept coming, but stopped just out of range of his feet, probably scared he would boot them or something. After a few seconds of not being booted, one of the pigeons stepped closer, right up to the ashes at Ricky’s feet and pecked at them like it was eating the ashes.

  Man, the bird was eating the ashes.

  Ricky tapped his smoke again, just to the left of the first pigeon, and the other pigeons waiting out of booting range walked up and started eating his ashes too.

  ‘That can’t be good for them,’ I said, thinking about what the ash would do to the tubes inside the pigeons if just the smoke could gunk up your insides.

  ‘They’ve been eating my ashes for a few weeks,’ Ricky said. ‘Haven’t seen any of ’em drop dead.’ He kinda laughed. ‘Evolution, eh?’

  I don’t know why this made me angry but I didn’t want to hang with Ricky anymore after he said that.

  ‘I’m going,’ I said.

  ‘See ya,’ he said, like he didn’t care, and I left him smoking and feeding his ashes to pigeons.

  I crossed Lambton Quay to get a feed at BK. Like I said, I was low on dollars, but if you wash out a used cup in the bathrooms you can totally get free Coke coz it’s self-service. And if you ask for a soft-serve but tell them to put it in a sundae container instead of a cone, you get more for your fifty cents.

  I was thinking about all the tricks as I rode the escalator up, until I saw a dead leaf and a cigarette butt at the top of the escalator getting pushed up against the comb thing that the steps go into. People were just stepping over the leaf and the butt like they didn’t notice or like they didn’t want to notice, but I thought it was cool. The leaf and the butt looked like they were dancing as they bounced against the comb and the steps slid into the floor. Like they were happy or something. Even though it was a dead leaf and a cigarette butt.

  I stood at the top of the escalator and watched the leaf and the butt dance and wasn’t even worried about looking weird or gay coz it made me feel a little lighter, like someone had taken a handful of mashed potato out of my head.

  The Spirit of

  Rainbow Gorge

  After three unsuccessful elections in two different towns, Noah ‘Rusty’ Kissick settled on a trout-centric campaign to become mayor of Rainbow Gorge — the fish were, after all, what the town was named after. While he alienated many with his claim during a candidates’ deb
ate that trout were not good eating, he managed to convince the townsfolk that protecting the trout and luring more fishermen from the city were not mutually exclusive. Compulsory catch-andrelease was the future, and Rusty Kissick would deliver.

  As mayor of the small town he had few administrative duties and even fewer ceremonial ones. Between the closing of one fishing season and the opening of the next, he busied himself petitioning the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to grant Rainbow Gorge an exemption from the imposed season and allow year-round fishing. But petition as he might, MAF continued to reply with a ‘No Exceptions’ boilerplate. He liked to think it was the disappointment that sapped the fire from his hair — so that it now resembled vermicelli — but he clung on to ‘Rusty’, the only nickname he’d ever liked.

  The day before he opened his third fishing season as mayor, Kissick was trying on his regalia when his personal assistant walked into his office.

  ‘Good god, Mrs Johansen! You really must knock.’ He blushed like the time his mother caught him trying on her heels.

  ‘There’s a new letter from MAF, your highness,’ she said drolly, which again reminded him of the incident with his mother’s heels.

  He looked at the envelope, which appeared to be thicker than the previous one-pagers, and said, ‘Well, I’m chuffed,’ with his queer habit of describing his emotions in lieu of offering thanks.

  ‘Glad to hear it, sire,’ she said and curtsied, but Kissick didn’t notice — he was furiously trying to open the envelope. Mrs Johansen tutted and went back to her sudoku puzzle.

  According to the letter, MAF was sending up a sustainability consultant to evaluate whether to grant Rainbow Gorge an extended fishing season.

  ‘Extended?’ Kissick huffed to himself, but felt confident that, face to face, he could talk the MAF consultant into a total exemption.