Slade was visiting every luxury hotel in Caracas, every day squashed into the streets, heat fermenting his clothes, rain insulting his efforts. Each morning he rang his eorlderman; each morning he was told there was no passport or credit card activity. Christmas was still in Venezuela.
Slade paid five hundred dollars to the police and fifty dollars to each hotel staff member he had fought with while trying to chase Christmas. He gave both the police and hotel management all the information he had about Harry Christmas. They let him go, but only after he’d been waiting all day and half the night, in the hotel, in a police car, outside the police station where they wrote up their report on a table in the sun, back to his own hotel so they could search his room, back to the police station, standing in the police courtyard, perspiring, unable to work out if they had forgotten about him, following the guns in their holsters as the officers came in and out of the station. Did they know what he could do if he wanted to?
He took out some more cash with his credit card and bought a dive knife with a rubber handle and scabbard that he could attach to his belt. He bought a new rucksack and new clothes: shirts and T-shirts that were big enough to cover the weapon. He stayed in the areas the guidebook said were safe, but kept his hand on the knife handle whenever people or cars approached too quickly, or too slowly. He wanted someone to try to rob him again. He wanted the world to witness what happened when a Saxon warrior was ready.
He bought hot dogs at roadside stands to conserve his money. The slightest exchange was difficult, every question and answer a wrestle of repetition, incomprehension, confusion and delay. Slade often looked up suddenly, and imagined catching Christmas at a window with a long-lens camera. He questioned well-groomed concierges in glistening halls: “No. This man. In the photograph. I am looking for this man.”
“You want I take you photograph?” Slade was sure they all spoke English. He was sure they had been bribed to confound him.
In the evenings he returned to his den on the tenth floor of the Hotel Lux. It was a cubed room with tinted windows, white walls, white bed, white bathroom, white floor. He lay on his bed and drank whisky, staring at the photograph of Harry Christmas he had tacked to the wall, talking to it, promising. He threw the dive knife at it but it never stuck.
Slade barely slept, and when he did he always dreamt of The General, his father’s cat. He had hated that animal when he was a boy. He hated all cats; self-satisfied, scrawny vermin that belonged outside the house but had somehow gained protection from the world of men and languished there, pampered and plotting, servile and haughty. After he had been found tormenting The General, he was not allowed to touch the creature. He dreamt it was lounging on his father’s desk, licking itself. “Let the fat man escape twice,” said the cat, “Boo-hoo.” Slade woke up. Christmas’ face was being kindled by the city at night. From his bed Slade could see the lights of the cable car snaking up the El Ávila mountains. Christmas would go there, he decided. He imagined him surveying Caracas from above, laughing, spading expensive delicacies into his doughy mouth. That’s where he would pick up the trail.
It was late afternoon. The taxi dropped him off in the car park. He stood in the grey light and noticed a police station adjacent to the cable car’s entrance. He stared at it for long moments, trying to decide if and how he could enlist their help. Finally he returned to the sales booth and bought his ticket for the teleférico. No, she did not recognise the photograph. He walked through the empty turnstiles and into the passenger dock. He showed the photograph of Christmas to the attendants. They shrugged and shook their heads. He showed them again.
The cabins descended noisily, shunting and rattling into place. He was about to have a pod for himself, but just as its doors were closing a mother, father and their little girl stepped in. The parents each held one of their daughter’s hands. She was smiling. The cabin lurched. They left the dock.
It was going to rain. Soon they were surrounded by cloud. The child twisted in her seat, desperate for something to see. The father said something. Slade examined him, then his wife, then his daughter.
“English,” he announced. The little girl stared, kicking her legs. He produced the photograph. “Have you seen this man?” The family inspected it, then shook their heads, asking him questions he couldn’t understand. Slade put the photograph away. Rain pattered the windows. The lights and structure of a tower yawned out from the mist as they passed it, receding just as quickly. The ground was steepening. Again they were enveloped.
Slade felt unbearably heavy. He rubbed his face and looked out into the mist and remembered being in the Peak District with his father. They were walking across the dales. They were lost. His father was getting angry because he had misjudged the route. It grew dark. William was cold. He was panting and sweating and nursing the back of his head where his father had clipped him for complaining. They came to a stone wall. His father was shouting at him to hurry up and get over the stile. The next field was full of horses. They were agitated. William was frightened. His father grabbed him by the arm and dragged him over. A horse came out of the mist, whinnying with curiosity and his father whacked it across the mouth with his walking stick. It reared and fled and William cried out. His father turned round cursing and hit him with the stick and William fell over and then ran off into the mist and he was alone. He could hear the shouts of his father and the braying of the horses and he clutched his head and prayed for Diana to come and get him.
After almost an hour the cable car arrived at the top of the mountain. It was cold. The family hugged and shivered. They said goodbye to him. Outside the cable car station rows of fast food stalls were closing. He went into a fondue restaurant built from dark, heavy wood. He sat at the bar and showed round the photograph. He drank whisky and then left, following the path past a playground and an ice rink to one of the many observation points. There was no mist here, only Caracas, a glittering hell of light. Slade gripped the handrail.
He turned to find the family beside him, the parents lifting their daughter so that she might see through one of the old coin-operated telescopes. Beyond Caracas, the dark giants of the Valles Del Tuy slept on to the south, rolling towards the Amazon, towards Brazil. He was sure Christmas could not survive in such territory. He must be down there. He must still be in the city.
The family was having a problem with the telescope. “What’s the matter?” he called to the father.
“No work,” said the man, “We put the money. No work.” Slade went over. He looked through the telescope but it was blank. He began examining the machine. “No problem, no problem,” said the father.
“I can fix this,” said Slade. He put in some change. He looked again. It still didn’t work. He rattled it.
“No problem, no problem,” repeated the father. His wife said something in Spanish. Slade hit the telescope with the butt of his hand. He looked. He hit it again a few inches further up. He looked again. He went round the other end and looked into it. The family was talking to him. He hit the telescope harder. Nothing. He shook it and kicked it and cursed.
The family was walking away.
He watched them go. He put another coin in. He looked. Nothing. He hammered it with his fist. He looked. Nothing.
There was nothing.
17
Christmas arrived at Judith’s hotel with his second new suitcase. He had not paid his bill at the Jolly Frankfurter. Despite the painkillers, his headache was still acute, his body ringing out with distress. They had breakfast. Judith was in a very good mood. She sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and had the waiter bring him a croissant with a candle stuck in it. Her own birthday was in three weeks. “That means we’re both Geminis, Harry. Isn’t that funny?”
“Spooky,” he smiled. His real birthday wasn’t for months.
They were in the car before nine, shunting through Caracas before joining the highway going east. They drove along the northern coast of South America, from one traffic jam to the next, threading between mou
ntains and the sea. The potholes cracked pain through his hip and up his arm. They shifted alongside fields of sugar cane and roadside stalls, beneath gannets and cormorants, past weirs and patchwork shelters and cars that were becoming part of the ground. Chávez appeared on billboard after billboard embracing diminutive state governors: ‘POR AMOR A VENEZUELA!’
“So you’re a potter. What sort of things do you pot? Pots and so on?”
“It’s more like ... I create thoughts. I mould ideas, objects, forms – I really try not to put a label on them.” Christmas saw her knuckles twitching. Had she not been holding the wheel there would have been quote fingers pumping all over the dashboard. “I just let my hands communicate with the clay. Try and find where our energies meet. And once I’ve found that place I just let the energies take over.” Ah, thought Christmas, so they’re shit. “I have my wheel right at the edge of the garden. It used to be in the most wonderful gazebo but the insects munched it to death so now I’ve got an open-sided tent. We’re quite high up so you can look straight out over the sea. Oh, it’s a wonderful place for creativity, Harry. So vital. I’m sure it’s just what you need to get your juices going, though I’m afraid we don’t have a computer or anything like that. We’ve been waiting to get the internet connected for months and months.”
“Wonderful news. I’m a paper and pen man.”
“But for the typing process – are you Mac or PC? I simply can’t decide which way to go.”
“I use a typewriter.”
“Isn’t that rather slow?”
“It comes with a secretary.”
“You’ve got a secretary that uses a typewriter?”
“It’s historical fiction, this next one. I’m trying a kind of method acting-writing thing. Stanislavsky. Drive myself up the fourth wall.”
“But I thought you didn’t know what you were going to write?”
“Have you read my other books?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh good.”
“Good?”
“They’re almost as dreary as the Noo-Naa whotsit. Anyway, fed up with my own dreariness, I decided to take my work in a radical new direction, experimental, you might say.”
“Interweaving narratives?”
“Victorians with removable vaginas.” Christmas eyed her, wondering whether he had pushed it too far.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A gothic experiment conducted on insane women by a gynaecological Dr Frankenstein.”
“Oh Harry, be serious. Are you serious?”
“It’s a work in progress that’s currently out of progress. Thought myself into a cul-de-sac. Probably going to abandon it.”
“And what are its, you know, themes and so on?”
“Multiculturalism.”
“But insane women with removable minnies ...? I mean aren’t you objectifying ... I mean won’t people, the critics and so on ... won’t people think that’s kind of anti-women?”
“It is anti-women! It’s anti-men. It’s anti-children. It’s anti-blacks and it’s anti-whites. It’s anti-God and it’s anti-the unbelievers.”
“Well, what’s it pro?”
“It’s not pro anything. What the devil is there to be pro about?” Then Judith started to ask him all sorts of odd questions. His head, his neck, his backside, his upper body clamoured with injury, yet this woman refused to shut up. Did he like beetroot? What was his favourite type of jacket?
“Oh, how funny!” she laughed, “How funny you are!” What is this bloody woman on about? he thought, unable to find humour in anything that had been said in the last hour. He shifted in his seat. His breakfast had taken a wrong turn in his guts and he needed to force a re-direction.
“There,” he said, spotting a roadside restaurant. “Why don’t we pull over and stretch our legs a bit. I’ll take a turn with the driving.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, going straight past it and continuing with anecdotes about her ex-husband.
“There!” said Christmas, spotting another, “Judith, you must let me take a turn at the wheel. Let’s stop at this place here.”
“Really, Harry, don’t worry. I’m enjoying it.”
“Well, I’m afraid we need to stop anyway. I need to use their conveniences.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” she said, shuddering to a halt. They were on the side of the road. “Out you pop.”
“Judith, the restaurant is just up there.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, squeezing his leg. “I won’t peek.”
“Judith, I require a cubicle.”
“A number two? Why didn’t you say? Oh, how funny!” Judith started laughing. She started the car up again.
As with all roadside restaurants in Venezuela there was rubbish everywhere and a three-legged dog. Uniformed waiters stood behind a counter that announced a vast array of arepas, and Christmas left Judith admiring the choice as he went off to find to the toilets. They bore no sign, were completely hidden from view, and by the time he had located them Christmas was desperate.
A filthy shed housed a couple of buckets and a contingent of insects straight from the Old Testament. He barged into the only cubicle to find a toilet bowl in the middle of some profound alchemical transformation. With trousers down and actual contact out of the question, Christmas assumed the Johnny Wilkinson position, his podgy discoloured thighs shaking with strain and disagreement. Then a cockroach crawled up his ankle at exactly the wrong moment. A flurry of batting, squeezing and shouting ensured that Christmas left the toilet more agitated than when he’d entered it.
“Harry,” said Judith as he rejoined her at the food counter. “Whatever is the matter? You look awful.”
“I saw a ghost. What have you ordered?”
“Bits and bobs, Harry, darling, but a ghost? What was it doing in the toilet?”
“I think it had quite understandably mistaken it for a portal back to hell.” He scanned the board overhead. As long as you wanted an arepa, anything was possible.
“Give me an arepa with bacon,” he asked in Spanish.
“We don’t have bacon today.”
“With prawns?”
“No.”
“With quail eggs?”
“No.”
“With beef? With chicken?”
“No and no.”
“With sausage? With fish? There are fifty options here, man, are you telling me you don’t have a single one of them?”
“Cheese. We have cheese. Don’t you like cheese?”
Judith refused to let him drive. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harry. You’re completely black and blue, you’re in a state of shock, it’s your birthday and you’re my patient now. I’m taking care of you.” Back on the road, they drove on through Barcelona and Puerto La Cruz, through mud flats and beaches of salt. They saw flamingos, the sky in sudden blossom. They drove past painted stones announcing the revolution while roadside Santa Maria’s prayed in their boxes. A refinery shone and flared. It began to rain. They entered a desert of rusting hills and hit another traffic jam. It dragged them past a crowd standing over a body on the road next to an upturned car emitting black smoke. Then the rain stopped and the sun came out. The rocks and scrub became fields of corn and ocumo. The hills rolled with jungle. Christmas thought of Emily.
It was late afternoon. They stopped and bought fish empanadas and cold beer from a child. The road overlooked a bay, overgrowth and flowers sweeping down to a fingernail of sand.
“We’re in Estado Sucre, darling. Not long now.” Christmas nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes from the coastline. He felt for the poetry book in his jacket pocket. We’re here, Ems, he thought, giving it a squeeze. See how beautiful it is?
Two hours later, the traffic stopped dead between Carúpano and Rio Caribe. Drivers hung from their windows, shouting ahead to find out what was happening. Another accident. No one was going anywhere. As soon as the news broke, all the car doors opened, everybody spilling out onto the road. Salsa music bu
rst into the air. Boots were popped open and people began to mix drinks. “Come on!” said, Judith, jumping out.
Christmas leant against the car and propped up his Panama hat with a cowboy finger. He smelt the sun and the sea salt. A man leant beside him. He gave Christmas a plastic cup filled with rum, ice and lime juice. The two men toasted each other. Barefoot strangers were dancing to invisible pianos and trumpets and drums, and there was Judith, in the middle of it all, laughing and swirling. A teenager in nothing more than shorts and a bra took his hand and he twirled her round once before he had to give up. His shoulder was too painful. Someone new filled up his glass. They all wanted to know him. Where was he from? Where was he going? What did he think of Venezuela? Judith swayed past and patted his cheek. Cars came up the other lane beeping and whooping as they rolled slowly by, drinks poured into the passing mouths. These people, Christmas thought to himself, are magnificent. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Doors shut, the cars began to move. The jam moved on.
“Wasn’t that fun!” said Judith, breathless as she jumped back into the car. “Rio Caribe just coming up. Then we’re onto the Paria peninsula proper. My place isn’t far.” A blackened chassis appeared on the side of the road.
“Not another accident?” asked Christmas.
“Nope. Some fellow from Caracas came down here for the weekend and got so drunk he had a fight with one of the locals, pulled out a gun and shot the man in the leg, so they all beat him to within an inch and set his car on fire.”
Pelicans perched on beached fishing boats. Families sat in front of their doors drinking beer. Every house was a different colour and men with big bellies strode around in shorts.
Once through Rio Caribe, they headed inland, meandering between hills and villages, carried up for a view of the lumpy valleys before dipping back to follow the coast. They passed huts selling balls of cacao and bottles of chocolate rum, bowls of avocados for sale on the road, donkeys grazing, old men sitting outside, bright flowers and groves of short cambur bananas. After an hour or so they turned up a track into the hills, the car bouncing between potholes until they went through a gate and began to wend up a steep slope. “And here we are!” she said as white walls became visible through the trees. “Casa mía.” It was completely isolated. Harry Christmas felt a thunderous urge for a drink.
A Bright Moon for Fools Page 9
