Here’s what you have to do. Get your hands out of Borricone. Claim idiocy, it doesn’t matter. Just say I got cold feet. Simply get out. I need you down here. I don’t know too many of these people, don’t know who to trust. My instincts tell me no one. Sell Brazil. I know you said we should sell months ago. Tough break, at least we still make a profit on that. Sell it all. Then open a new folder: Project Caribbean 1171. You will like this! This little island is bustling with potential. But unless you own a private jet, you can’t get here. We’ll redress that: a Caribbean airline to link the world with this godforsaken islet. We won’t need much: three or four airplanes should do. I’ve been discussing with a few people the feasibility of the project. It looks like it’ll take time but it can be done. Permits, routes, licensing, personnel, equipment, it’s all too much for me to do on my own. Open a line of expenses for PC1171 and get yourself down here. Don’t touch NASDAQ, there’s enough there to keep us afloat if this whole business goes bust, and it’ll be easy to run, even from here. Leave Charlie in charge of the office.
I look forward to seeing you. It’s been too long. Receive my love.
Happy Easter,
Nathe
Move message to deleted items folder. Message deleted. Dragon did not reply. He spent a week sulking on his own, cursing Nathaniel for having chosen Anguilla above the Seychelles for his Easter holiday the previous year. Good Friday now came and went, as did Saturday and Easter Sunday, and then the day arrived when the final contracts for the Borricone deal were supposed to be signed. Dragon wore his best suit, an impeccable tie, his sharpest shoes. His presence in the boardroom was brief, his demeanor imposing. As he walked into the room the rest of the table sensed the difference in his attitude. Jones Investments was not the major player in the deal but in an agreement of this nature every piece of the puzzle was crucial. Gentlemen, we have had a change of heart. We feel at the moment Croatia is not the right place to invest our money. There was no apology, no explanation, no negotiation. Dragon left the room with the same air of superiority that had accompanied him when he had entered it, let no one get a glance of his wounded pride.
One phone call later, the money invested in BOVESPA was also as good as back in the company’s account. As instructed, Dragon did not touch their NASDAQ stock. He felt an uncommon yet almost irresistible desire to trade technology for science but he repressed his instincts, and in the end canceled the operation. He called Charles into his office, gave him instructions, informed him of the purpose of his absence (to ascertain the potential of an activity suggested by Nathaniel). You will be in charge of the operation until I return. Without any further delay, Dragon bought a first-class ticket to Antigua and an inter-island connection to Anguilla in the only class available. CP1171’s expense line had been opened. From his car, on the way to the airport, he called the only two people who made a difference in his life: his mother Dorothea, and his best friend Linda. I’m late for my flight, I’m sorry. I promise to buy you a big gift and deliver it personally on my way back. Dragon had no idea how long he would have to stay in Anguilla—it never even crossed his mind it could be forever.
Nathaniel knew the transactions he demanded would take some time. He also knew Dragon had been injured by his seemingly deliberate attempt to undermine his authority. But even through the four weeks of silence that followed his explicit e-mail, he could rest assured that his orders would be carried out, that at some point Dragon would show up with a tiny suitcase and a ton of beef. Nathaniel’s token of trust was not to question Dragon’s loyalty, not to force communication between them before Dragon had reestablished it himself. Dragon took no steps in that direction until the moment he got to Gatwick airport. I’ll be there at seven thirty in the evening, please have me picked up at the airport.
XI
. . . The airline was a success from the start. We had to push hard to set it up on time, but once it was up and running our routes were so popular we even made a profit. I guess we just got lucky. It was a good season and people didn’t care that we were brand new. I think we all thought it would stay like that forever. At least that was what we all hoped. Of course, it didn’t. I don’t know how it happened but some months later it all seemed to fall apart. We won the bid for that plane in Florida and suddenly the economic pressure was too strong. We overburdened ourselves, and our prospects for the future never looked like they could bail us out of our crisis. Real soon it was obvious that the airline was not economically viable.
How quick things can change, Grandpa. How sudden. When trouble hit us I think we didn’t know how to hit back. I think we just soaked it in and hoped for the best. I don’t know what else we could have done. We tried to apply simple strategies, we concentrated on marketing, we tried to survive. But the real problem, Grandpa, was not the business side. The real problem started from within. Once the crisis hit the company we began to blame each other for things that were not really our fault. Maybe we were already tired from the effort of setting up the airline. Maybe we just got cocky because in the beginning everything was so easy. I don’t know what it was, Grandpa, but I saw our relationship, our friendship, disappear. I don’t mean only me and Nathaniel. I mean all of us: me, Dragon, Nathaniel, Sam. I saw all of us grow apart and do nothing to help it, either. It was a terrible time, Grandpa. We weren’t friends no more. We were nothing but resentful partners. We fought against what the other said just because of who had said it. We were insulting and thoughtless. We just couldn’t hold it together. And throughout this whole nightmare, there was only one thing I could hold on to, only one genuinely caring shoulder where I could lay my head . . .
In the end, there were too many voices in Dragon Wings, Grandpa, and every one of them had different opinions. Everyone else on the island seems to have their opinion about it too. I’m sure you have yours as well. But I don’t want to know. I ain’t never want to know nothing about Dragon Wings again. The details bore me and I just don’t want to have nothing to do with it no more. I don’t care where it ends up. I don’t care how it works out. I ain’t going be here to see it and I ain’t going make much of an effort to find out, either. It can all crash and burn for all I care, Grandpa, honest to God. I’m too tired. Dragon Wings drained me out. It took more out of me than I was ready to give. It involved a commitment I just couldn’t keep.
So, this is how it all ends. This is where I have to go. I can see the trees outside. The sky is blue, the sun will soon be out. I need to start again, Grandpa. I need to find peace and happiness. How can I do that here? How can I do that among my family? How can I look at you without shame? I know you can’t forgive me. None of you can. I ain’t even asking for forgiveness, all I’m asking for is understanding. All I wish is that you read this and give yourself a chance not to hate me. All along, the only thing I have wanted has been a life of my own. I won’t get that in Anguilla. I won’t get that in the company of Nathaniel Jones. By the time you read this I’ll be somewhere else, with someone else. And I’ll be sending you all my love, all my good wishes. I hope you can do the same for me.
I love you, Grandpa. Please don’t forget. I’ll send you a postcard, I’ll send you my details, and hopefully we can keep in touch. Please put in a good word for me with the rest of the family. If anyone asks, if anyone cares, tell them I’m alright, tell them I’ll be fine.
I will take you with me wherever I go, Grandpa. Always.
Your SHE.
Part III
I
While Sheila Rawlingson-Jones compiled her magic list of potential local partners, only to spend the best part of a long month crossing them out one by one, Arturo Sarmiento experienced in full the frustration of his life. Entrapped in a failed career which offered no fulfillment and little promise, engaged in a relationship that was cemented by routine rather than passion, lodged among the memories of his childhood in a small apartment in the most dangerous city on the planet, Arturo knew that somewhere along the line something had gone terribly wrong. He had consider
ed Dragon’s offer in all seriousness, but had discarded it after coming to terms with the fact that the person Dragon thought he was addressing—the careless adventurer who had once been Dragon’s best friend—had vanished in the maze of fear and violence and anger and frustration that was Caracas. Until the magnitude of the misery that surrounded him hit him in the face. The lightning went unseen. It was the sound, really, which made the greatest impression. And the blood—blood pouring like a river out of a nameless stranger’s stomach, draining life from him by the minute, by the second, by the milliliter: just one of the hundred-odd lives claimed by the city every weekend; just another corpse to be piled up in the overflowing compartments of the morgue in Bello Monte; just another number reflected in the unreliable statistic published by the papers on Monday morning—maybe not even that much. Yet, a number that was tallied right beside Arturo Sarmiento; a number with a face, if not a name; a number that had instilled fear, sympathy, anger, even sadness in Arturo; a number that had sent him deep into his own thoughts; a number that had led to a resolution. I’m leaving. I’m out of here, Eduardo. I’m out of this dump.
Sheila had not yet reached the end of the first column of names on her list when Arturo Sarmiento showed up outside Dragon’s house on the Tuesday morning when impetus was unwittingly injected into his efforts to build the fleet of a commercial airline. Just a few days after a conversation with Nathaniel in which his father had tried to get him fully committed in the construction of an actual, rather than a hypothetical, airline, Dragon found himself in a mental cul-de-sac, doubting his ability to live up to the task at hand, finding himself out of ideas, when the lucky strike of chance opened two unexpected avenues for him to explore simultaneously: within half an hour, Dragon had been offered a plane and he had found a pilot.
Meanwhile, Sheila had to wait until the morning of the day after the end of the extended celebration that is carnival in Anguilla to begin her pilgrimage around the island. Once that day arrived, she got out of bed long before Nathaniel Jones, made herself ready, and departed the house before he awoke. He did not notice her absence until he heard the front door slam shut. As soon as he rubbed his eyes, even before he looked at the time, he knew it was the tenth of August—the first anniversary of his wedding to Sheila. Nathaniel’s immediate reaction was to assume she had gone to look for something: a cake, a gift, something. It never occurred to him that she had left the house to deliver the packages she thought, or maybe only hoped, would ensure the future of Dragon Wings. Half an hour later, once the clock had reached the time when he usually woke up, he tried for the first time that day to speak to his wife, but Sheila was out of reach until well into the afternoon, by which time Nathaniel no longer had any interest in reminding her that this was the anniversary of the day when she had officially added a hyphen and a Jones to her name.
Sheila Rawlingson-Jones did not have the remotest idea what was going on when she reached her home, long after dinnertime, to find her house full of flowers, dinner served in a romantic setting, and a sparkly silver dress hanging from her wardrobe. Since the disease of purpose had first infected the perfectly idle lodgings of the Jones-Rawlingsons, Nathaniel’s den of love had progressively turned into the private workplace where the couple shared everything but each other’s company. Consequently, in recent times Sheila’s lurid demands had repeatedly been met with the various sources (time, energy, willingness) of Nathaniel’s resistance, and conversely, on the less common occasions when Nathaniel took the initiative and tried to seduce his wife, he had also experienced the scorn of his neglected lover. Nevertheless, the fortress of abstinence that had been erected around Nathaniel’s king-size bed during weeks of purposeful focus was hijacked for a night when forgetfulness was forgiven and enterprise rewarded, when lust was rekindled between a loving pair, when the not-so-distant memory of seven nights and one day of secluded pleasure was complemented with one more anecdote for their private diaries.
Yet, now there was no time for a week of debauchery. On the morning of the second day after the end of carnival in Anguilla, Sheila Rawlingson-Jones woke up at the same time as her husband, an hour later than usual. She shared her coffee with Nathaniel, pressed her lips against his, allowed a fragile string of saliva to linger between their slowly retreating mouths. Then she picked up the folder with the remaining twenty-four copies of the alluring proposition to invest in Dragon Wings and departed on a new excursion around the island to carry out the task she had appointed to herself.
II
This island is already getting on my nerves. Who in his right mind would come up with the idea to set up an airline here? Look at this: nothing but dry bush and rubble. The drive from one end of the island to the other takes you not only less time than you would need to count your problems, it also takes you through some of the ugliest scenery you have ever seen. Buildings in Anguilla look derelict long before they’re finished. Even when they’re inhabitable, everybody seems to have this delusion of grandeur that makes them think they will need a second floor to their house which they will be able to build almost immediately, so every house has a handful of girdles reaching out to the sky from all corners. All for nothing, anyway, because the salt water, the rain, and the sun take care of rusting the metal long before the drawings for the extension have been sketched. Assuming anyone uses drawings here, which is assuming a lot.
And these roads! Compared to these roads, Caracas is paved in gold. These are not potholes, they’re craters! Except, of course, when you go to the west. The west is kept tidy, clean, and beautiful for the sake of the tourists. To think that this place is considered one of the most exclusive holiday destinations in the world. In the world! There’s more luxury in the backyard of my house in Caracas than in this whole island. Luxury: an old school bus rotting on the side of the road; the remains of a discarded Caterpillar slowly fading into the bush on a construction site that has long been turned into a junkyard; an unrecognizable chassis, a dismantled engine, a set of wheels resting over split concrete blocks; a collection of truck tires littering someone’s garden: the other side of luxury.
What do you do on your day off in Anguilla? Nothing. Every day is a day off. Every day. There was one week of “carnival” when I first arrived when everyone seemed desperate to party—if you can call the hullabaloo that took over town every night that week partying. But then again, everything is hard to describe in Anguilla: the stadium isn’t a real stadium, town isn’t really a town, and partying certainly isn’t anywhere near close to what we call a party in Venezuela. Now, that is a proper party. And yet, even if carnival wasn’t a real party, at least it was something. Since then, it feels like there is nothing to do in this place. On your day off, you drive around, you get depressed by the surroundings, you arrive in a beautiful beach and either scorch because there isn’t a single place where you can take shelter from the sun, or you get extorted by a local mercenary for a chair and an umbrella on his beach. So you sit on your towel and you scorch, or you pay for your space and you don’t (for fifty bolívares you can buy your own chair and umbrella in Venezuela, but after all, I am getting paid a pilot’s salary for doing nothing at all). And then what? You read, you listen to some music, you walk. But with all this solitude at some point your thoughts have to catch up with you. Thoughts of home, thoughts of missed opportunities, thoughts of Alicia’s fine ass. Thoughts of what the hell am I doing in this place? And what the hell am I doing in this place?
So you go, you look, you search for someone who might distract you for a little while. But tourists are so boring in Anguilla, so one-sided. They’re all old and tired and ridiculously rich, or they’ve just married and have small children and are discovering that motherhood is the best way out of domestic disillusionment. And the locals are so fat and so loud, and they all hang out in gangs, and in the odd case that you find one who might be halfway attractive or appealing or something, you find soon enough you have been dragged into this entire community of people which is always surrounded
by endless amounts of kids who seem to reproduce by themselves—and almost inevitably two of them, at least two of them, turn out to belong to the girl you were chatting up. And you don’t want to know the name of her grandmother and you really don’t want to know the name of the children, and by the time you know her first child’s father is also on the beach, teaching his son by his second wife—the one he got after this one—how to swim, you’re thinking, He’s so young, how did he get time to marry twice? And how did you get time to give birth twice? And what the hell am I doing here? And before you find out that he hadn’t had time to marry twice because her first child was a mistake that happened out of wedlock, and his second child is with a woman who was already married when he met her, such that in fact the guy isn’t even married at all, by that time, you just walk away and return to the peace of your iPod and your solitude.
Even when it comes for doing nothing at all, a pilot’s salary is hardly enough to allow you to eat out in most places in Anguilla. Not that you would want to throw away your money for an over-elaborate meal that has nothing to do with the sun and the sea and the Caribbean, anyway. The funny thing, though, is the food is generally not the problem when you go to a restaurant here. If you like your pretentious nouvelle cuisine and you don’t mind eating three sticks of chopped carrots with one slice of beef from a huge plate which has been sprinkled with what looks like the chef’s makeup, then you’d probably enjoy a few places on the island. What I’m sure no one can tolerate is the rehearsed stiffness of the environment where you eat your food. The view is generally picturesque but the service—the service! Most of the time islanders have an attitude that would make a madman happy to stay in his asylum. Even getting to your table can be dangerous, as someone might very delicately address you as milord or milady. Milord! Where the hell did they learn this sort of bullshit? You couldn’t make it up, really! And then ordering your food is the next frontier, particularly if you’ve chosen one of those places where neither you nor the waiter actually know the meaning of the words written on the menu. However, the real torture doesn’t start until the wine arrives. It would be so much simpler if they allowed their sommeliers to hold the wine like they grab their rum and pour it like humans do. Instead, you’re faced with the farce of an amateur sticking his thumb under the bottle, holding it with his four fingers, pouring the wine with blank fear, and dribbling it all over the glass, the bottle, and the white tablecloth. Because this technique means half the bottle actually goes to waste, and because even the simplest plate on the menu is so extravagant it takes an hour to cook, you have to repeat the ritual until you get so bored—so, let’s say, after the second glass—that you simply snatch the wine out of the waiter’s hands and pour it yourself. The sneer of contempt you will get from the owner if he sees you disrespecting the strict etiquette observed in his restaurant will forever remain his way of greeting you in the future, but because you’re the customer and the customer pays the bill, he won’t say a thing.
On the Way Back Page 13
