A Bright Moon for Fools
Page 23
While the old man spat, swore and haggled until he got himself a contest, Christmas held the chicken under his arm. Others swooped their birds close to test its reaction. They squawked and fluttered and provoked an urgent memory of Slade running at him with a knife. Running down back alleys in Rio Caribe. Being trapped in that bus – Christmas tried to push those thoughts away. What was he going to do about his passport that was still at Judith’s? And why wasn’t he busy trying to find a good place for Emily, for Montejo? Something was stopping him? What was it?
He saw Aldo ignore him and file into the evangelical meeting room across the street.
“What’s the matter with Aldo?”
“They complain about the noise when they are trying to sing. We complain about the singing when we are trying to shout. They only built that place a few years ago. This cockpit has been here since before I was me!”
Organ music piped up from the evangelicals as the first two cocks were dropped into the circle. Their legs and bodies were shaved. Their spurs were supported by tape wrapped around the legs. A man with a cowboy hat and a seedy moustache spat water over each animal to cool them down. Then, as the crowd raved and hooted, they pecked each other to death.
The whole thing lasted five minutes. Eventually one was left, hopping about its opponent on the ground and jabbing it in the head with its beak. The one on the ground stopped moving. Half the crowd erupted. The old man had won some money and he shook his cane in the air while others ran round the ring, high-fiving and embracing each other. The evangelicals sang on.
Christmas, still holding the old man’s bird under his arm and rather tired of being barged about by this rowdy mob, tried to translate the event into future profit. He needed to make some money. Could he get his own chicken and feed it some of the old man’s crack? Or coffee – perhaps he could feed it coffee? How long did chickens take to grow in any case? Ideally he would need one that went from egg to warrior in about a week. Betting was a way forward perhaps. But to bet, he needed money.
The old man pushed through to Christmas and took the cock, whispering encouragements as he passed it on to the man in the cowboy hat to have its spurs taped. Christmas wandered around the crowd as they waited. He looked across at the evangelicals. Theirs was a simple room. A man with a microphone was talking to the congregation as they sang, rows of different coloured plastic chairs facing an electric organist and an arrangement of flowers. The women covered their heads with scarves. “Dios esta aquí,” they sang, “tan cierto come el aire que respiro”. They got to their feet, applauding, swaying, crying ‘Hallelujah’.
“Hey,” someone nudged him, “your girlfriend.” Lola was walking down the street with a group of friends. Her head was covered with a scarf. She was coming to join her son. Could he be making a grievous faux-pas by being with the cockfighters? Panicked by this thought he skipped over the road and into the church, stepping next to Aldo who looked at him with surprise and then enormous pleasure. Christmas mumbled along to the words, “Lo puedo ver en el hermano que tengo a mi lado / lo puedo sentir en el fondo de mi corazón ...” planning out the casualness with which he would greet Lola when their eyes met. He even started to sway. “Hallelujah!” he shouted, joining in with the throng, “Gracias a Dios!” Suddenly Christmas was on his knees. There were tears in his eyes.
“Have you felt it?” said Aldo, grabbing Christmas by the shoulder. “Have you felt the love of Jesus Christ?”
“I felt the love of that woman’s elbow,” he grouched, “when she decided to embrace the Holy Ghost.” Bleary-eyed, Christmas got to his feet to see Lola outside. Standing in the shade of the saman tree, she took the scarf off her head and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she went into the cockfight. What was she up to? Was she about to admonish the old man? No, goddamit – she was placing a bet. Christmas made to leave, but some more worshippers had filled up the aisle and were in such rapture that it was impossible to get past. He heard the shouts of the fight starting up. The congregation increased their volume in response. Then they joined hands, trapping Christmas in a fleshy chain as he strained his neck to see the cockfight crowd cramming in around the action. Barely a minute had passed when a roar went up. Christmas was determined to see what was going on, but the congregation were now hugging each other; at every step forward he was clutched to the breast of another Christian. When he got to the door, there was Lola.
She had been watching him pull faces at each embrace as if they were flavours of vinegar. She was laughing so hard she had to bend over and rest on her knees.
“What you doing in there, gringo?”
“I ...”
“Verga! Eres un corrupto! Too late for you! Here –” she said wiping her eyes and recovering, “somebody gave this to me. It’s yours, right?” She had Bridget’s wallet. It must have fallen out when he was hanging upside down from the tree.
“Yes,” said Harry, regretting his reply as he watched her open it.
“So this is your wife?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. She was examining the photograph of Judith and Bridget.
“You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.”
“That’s ... my niece. Her niece. That was my wife’s favourite niece.” Lola handed it to him.
“She was skinny, your wife,” she said. “Like a stick,” and then she walked off into the people collecting their winnings. The crowd fading away from the cockpit revealed the old man leaning over the wall, hugging and kissing his chicken as the dead one was picked up by its neck.
46
It was one in the morning. Slade’s light was off. He lay on the bed, his face gauzed in sweat. He heard the unlocking of the door, got to his feet and looked down through the curtain. Milagro was walking across the yard. Oscar had not come home. Slade had been there for two weeks. The time didn’t bother him. He knew Oscar would take him to Christmas eventually because Oscar, he was now certain, worked for Christmas. Milagro unlocked the gate and turned right into the dark street.
Slade left his room, went down the steps and into the house. He walked around the kitchen. He went into Oscar’s bedroom. There, asleep on the bed, were his son and his daughter.
He left the room, crossed the yard and went out. Around the corner there was a small crowd of people buying ices from a vendor beneath a streetlight.
He stayed in the shadows for a moment then walked into the light. People noticed him and Milagro turned round. She had just paid for a red ice cone on a stick. Once he got there she forced out ‘Hola’ then walked quickly back towards home.
Slade bought an ice. He followed her out of the circle of electric light into the darkness. The night was hot.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked her. She didn’t turn round but said something in Spanish. He was two steps behind her. She was wearing tight shorts. She flicked her long, curled hair. He watched it settle against her back. He glimpsed side alleys full of rubbish and saw The General was there, trotting beside him.
“Where’s my father?” Slade hissed.
“Que?” said Milagro, turning round, seeing he was talking to the ground. She jumped through the gates and ran across the yard, shutting and locking her door as Slade watched her go. He sucked on his ice. The General was gone.
47
Lola, Aldo and Harry were laying out cacao in the yard. They spread it out on plastic sheets to darken and shrivel in the sun. As Aldo emptied the sacks, Lola and Harry evened out the seeds. She was silent. The old man hadn’t come home since Sunday’s cockfight.
“No, he won’t have eaten,” she said suddenly, as if in answer to a question. The winning chicken stomped and clucked in a spill of corn. “I should cut that thing’s throat and turn it into soup. See if he can buy crack with soup!”
“I’ll say a prayer for—”
“Shut up, Aldo.”
“Why don’t we just go and look for him?” said Christmas.
“Because – because he’s stupid!”
“Aldo can stay here and f
inish this off so there’s someone here if he comes back. We can go and look for him. We—” Lola was crouching with her head in her hands. “We’ll find him. Come on.” He crouched beside her, put his hands round her shoulders and squeezed her a little. “He’ll be all right. This is a tiny village. It won’t take us long.”
For hours they walked across San Cristóbal. They went down paths Christmas hadn’t even realised were there. They appealed to everyone, Christmas entering many houses for the first time; simple, immaculate. If this is where Columbus first arrived, he thought, if it was from here that the plundered riches poured for centuries, then these people have certainly been denied their share. Their wealth was of a different order.
They searched the edges of the village and saw the two men that had fought in the nightclub – one with a badly bruised face – sharing a cigarette under a tree. They looked in abandoned corners, behind rocks, in rooms half-roofed and overgrown. They searched the old cement plant, then houses destroyed by flood and given back to the forest. They wrenched open doors fat with damp that stammered at the frame before giving way with a squeal. Huts of ragged people who shouted at Lola were peered into and rejected. The hunt went on.
Calling the old man’s name, they walked into the trees and followed the river to shaded banks where the stones made seats in the water.
“Before he started smoking crack we never argued. He was a very peaceful man. Now we argue all the time. And the lying! Verga! Always he is lying to me!”
“Perhaps,” sighed Christmas, “he just got used to it and now it’s some kind of damned reflex, and even though he can see, even though he can hear himself doing it, he just can’t stop and—” She crouched by the cool water to splash herself. Sunlight reached through the trees and touched her face. “My God,” he whispered to himself.
They found the old man by the sea under an upturned boat, surrounded by empty bottles of Cacique, lighters and tobacco leaves. He looked like driftwood. Another man lay next to him, passed out in the shade, with a bald, pink scar that ran the length of his belly and a face so thick with drink and hardship he could no longer feel the sun. Lola’s father had spent all his winnings on rum and crack and was gibbering in a half-dream about things that had been stolen from him. He wasn’t surprised to see Lola. He only widened then narrowed his eyes, his gold teeth winking, weaving her presence into his mumbles. Christmas picked him up. He was as light as a child. Lola was crying.
Christmas pulled the old man’s wrist around his shoulder where, once upright, he fell asleep. They took him home. People came from their stoops, inspecting, throwing jokes, shaking their heads. He slept for eighteen hours. When he woke, Lola was primed.
Christmas couldn’t understand what they were shouting at each other – the Spanish was too garbled, too high-pitched – but the volume that came from such a gnarled, shrunken frame as the old man’s was certainly impressive. As Lola and her father warred, Christmas took Emily’s book and stepped out through the kitchen and into the yard, intending to read it in the sun. He bent himself through the hole in the wall and stood listening. He heard something be knocked over and stood there for a moment, chewing at a finger. He decided it was better to leave them alone.
He sat down on a log, opened the book and closed it again. He didn’t feel like reading it. Why wasn’t he searching for her beach? I don’t want to say goodbye again. Christmas put his head in his hands. Lola was screaming.
After a moment, he got up and went inside the adobe hut. It smelt of dust and rot. Aldo was at his workbench, bent over a piece of paper.
“So,” started Christmas, “how goes the tattooing?”
“Do you want a tattoo?”
“No.”
“Have you come to talk about Jesus Christ?”
“What’s that you’re doing there?” Christmas leant over his shoulder. It was a drawing of one of the pigs. The boy was trying to unite all its previous tattoos into some kind of nativity scene. New shouts came from the house.
“You know,” said the boy, “there are many problems in this village.”
“There are many problems in every village.”
“Corruption. Drugs. There are many drugs here. People smoking crack. Grandpa. The Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Smoking crack?”
“They don’t believe in hell,” Aldo sniffed.
“Very interesting design,” said Christmas, tapping the paper. “Been working on it long?”
“My pastor says I must use my talent to spread God’s message.”
“On the pig?”
“Everything,” said the boy solemnly, “belongs to God.”
“How do you get it to stay still?”
“Rum and sleeping pills.”
“And you think drugging a pig is part of God’s message?”
“Have you come to talk about Jesus Christ?”
“Why? – Do you have some news?”
“Jesus is helping me turn my back on my wicked life.”
“Oh, you’re fifteen, Aldo,” Christmas scoffed, “What can you have possibly done that is so bad?”
“I have told lies.”
“Come on. The occasional lie isn’t so—”
“I have smoked marijuana.”
“And the odd joint doesn’t do—”
“I have masturbated.”
“Let’s talk about Jesus, shall we?”
After the argument was stopped by a coughing fit, Christmas was put in charge of the old man while Aldo and Lola went to Guiria to sell their sacks of dried cacao. Christmas was not allowed to let the old man leave the house. The old man was irritable. He insulted Christmas, then begged him for money, moaned with shame, drank some hidden Cacique and fell asleep.
Christmas spent the afternoon on the porch. He made a pot of coffee. He took out Montejo again.
He must find the right beach. There were plenty about but yet ... You came here to say goodbye. Something didn’t feel right. Was it because of his feelings for Lola? Was it because a farewell to Emily in this place now seemed wrong? Or was this Emily’s final gift to him? Had her spirit led him here to find Lola? Pushing her book into the sand – that really would be it, a last goodbye. Was he ready for Emily to leave him again? To free up his heart for another?
“Just listen to yourself,” he said out loud. “‘Free up your heart’. Listen to how you’re talking, you bloody fool!” He stared out into the day and realised with a tiny laugh that even though Lola had been gone only a few hours, he missed her.
He stood up and took his coffee over to the pigs. They honked and scrabbled in their pen. He laughed at himself again. He looked back at the house. Heat waves were belly-dancing off the roof. England. He didn’t want to go back to England. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He wanted to be with Lola. “Bloody hell, boys,” he said to the pigs, “I think I’m falling in love!”
Christmas went onto the porch and finished his coffee, the extra heat swelling sweat across his back and brow. He saw the tortoise approach, jaws ready to clamp on his toe. “You scaly rogue!” he cheered. As if in answer, there was a thunder roll. A new wind thrashed the trees. The sky quickly turned dark blue and then there was rain; sudden and furious. The mountains disappeared. The rain came crashing down in volumes he had never seen before, tipped from the sky as if from a pail. The pigs squealed. Christmas went back into the house, wind slamming doors. He stood in the kitchen and watched the harrying of the yard; the bent, corrugated roof sluicing in the water. The whole area was filling like a pool, especially on the sloped side where the washing machine leant against the wall. The motor, he thought, the motor is going to get flooded.
He took off his shirt and dashed through the rain. He stood in a plastic bucket to earth himself and disconnected the plug. He pulled out the intake hose that ran from a tap and then wrestled free the outtake tube and flung it away. Grunting and swearing, he scraped the unit to the back door. He rocked one end up onto the step, straightened himself, let out a breath, spat on e
ach hand even though they were already wet, and bent over. The water from the roof sloshed down his back. Christmas grabbed the machine and prepared to lift.
Lola was on the boat, the cash from her cacao folded and thick in her pocket. Everyone was listening to the married couple opposite. The man looked embarrassed but he was smiling. The woman was laughing so hard she could only hoot out the story in chunks.
“– and then – and then my brother – my brother left his phone in our house and – and I say to him look, my brother’s left his phone and he says to me – he says –” The man folded his arms. “– he says don’t worry I’ll call him so –” The man was laughing too now. “so I watch him call my brother’s phone, the phone that is in his hand, and he looks down at it ringing, ringing in his hand and – and I think now – now he’s going to realise how stupid he’s being but – but no he – he – he passes me the phone and says, ‘Here baby can you answer that?’” Everyone was laughing, his wife doubled up beside him, the man shaking his head.
Lola put her fingers over the side of the boat. She looked at Aldo lying on the prow with his eyes closed. She felt the sun on her skin, the light spray of water. She picked her T-shirt off her belly, adjusted her baseball cap.
The couple were embracing now and the conversation turned to a gringo woman raped in Rio Caribe, the forthcoming elections, an actor who had just died, yet more drugs murders in Guiria. Aldo shifted his position, covering his face with his arms. Lola thought of Aldo’s father, a slow-moving, tall man. A liar. Just like her father. Would Aldo follow their example, or be more like Harry? Would he offer up his seat for women, work without complaining, always ask if there was anything he could do to help? Would he make his wife laugh like this couple in front of her?
Thunder boomed. The sky changed. The captain gave control of the rudder to his son, then went underneath one of the hull’s slats, pulling out a roll of plastic sheeting. The rain started. The passengers unfurled the plastic over their heads and tucked it into the sides. The boat bounced over the waves as the rain hammered the sheet, the passengers all looking at each other in their sudden blue room. It was cold. Lola winked at Aldo who had slid from the prow and was now crouched beside others on the deck.