Vinegar Soup

by Miles Gibson

  Frank tried to imagine the compound blazing with lights and music and laughter, a window cut in the forest’s darkness. It wasn’t impossible. They would need to clear the rubbish and fill the holes where the ground had cracked in the heat. A coat of whitewash for the walls. They could make it work. They must make it work. People would find them. Things would be different.

  ‘How many tables do we have outside?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll count them after breakfast. Some of them need a lick of paint. But that’s no problem.’

  ‘We could paint the walls too,’ said Frank.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert, his eyes shining. ‘And find some new clothes for Happy to make him look more wholesome.’

  ‘A uniform,’ grinned Frank. ‘With brass buttons.’

  ‘Tell Happy the plan. Ask him what he thinks about it.’

  Frank turned to Happy and tried to explain. ‘Gilbert giv ba fo sing an dans toude afta toumoro. Plenti smol chop for glad pipli. Gilbert say you go be nomba won man fo kouk dis ting.’

  Happy looked confused. He glanced up at his winklepickers, down at his dusty, bare feet and let out a tremendous fart.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ asked Gilbert, amazed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Frank.

  When Gilbert had eaten the rest of the sandwiches and filled his pockets with warm, boiled eggs, he took Frank out to inspect the tables and chairs. The furniture had been standing against the mud wall of the compound for a long time and was rusting into a scrap metal pyramid.

  ‘Why do you think Sam left it out here to rot?’ said Frank as they tried to untangle a clutch of chairs.

  ‘It’s a mystery,’ said Gilbert.

  They worked all morning, trying to dismantle the pyramid. Towards noon the metal burned so hot it blistered their hands.

  They salvaged five tables and seventeen chairs. The rest of the furniture was good for nothing, although Gilbert thought he might straighten it out with the help of a hammer. They arranged the best of the tables and chairs around the compound and made another, smaller, pyramid from the remains.

  When they had finished Veronica came strolling from the hotel with Chester under arm. She was wearing a white cotton shirt and a pair of plastic sunglasses.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she demanded, pulling her sunglasses over her nose.

  ‘We’re sorting out the furniture,’ replied Frank. He glanced apprehensively in her direction. She was standing by one of the tables. The white shirt dazzled his eyes. Beneath the shirt her bare legs gleamed with cooking oil. She was scrubbed, peeled and ready for roasting. She looked remarkably composed for a woman who had been attacked in her bed by a brawling drunk. She caught Frank staring at her legs, stuck out her tongue and gave it a waggle. Frank blushed and looked away.

  ‘Why are you sorting out furniture?’ she said, turning to Gilbert.

  Gilbert stopped work and sat down on one of the chairs. His hands were red. His shirt was drenched with sweat. ‘Because after we’ve knocked off some of the rust, you’re going to paint it,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘What colour?’ she demanded.

  What sort of paint do we have in store, Frank?’

  ‘Green paint,’ said Frank, taking hold of a chair and sitting down beside him.

  ‘Green,’ said Gilbert. He pulled a boiled egg from his pocket and cracked the shell against his knee.

  ‘I can’t do any painting,’ said Veronica indignantly. She sat down beside the men and stuffed Chester between her knees.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is my last clean shirt,’ she said, shaking an arm in Frank’s face.

  ‘Take it off,’ said Gilbert.

  Veronica said nothing. She leaned back in her chair and studied the sky. She opened her legs and let Chester tumble from between her knees. She unbuttoned the shirt and slowly pulled her arms from the sleeves.

  ‘Holi Gost!’ whispered Frank.

  Gilbert turned and looked at Frank and then peered at Veronica. ‘You daft bugger,’ he mumbled, stuffing his mouth with boiled egg.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Veronica. She wrapped her arms around the back of the chair and stuck out her legs. She was stripped to a pair of little lace pants.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything else to wear?’ demanded Frank, pretending to study his shoes.

  ‘It’s hot!’ said Veronica. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t look.’

  ‘But what happens if Boris finds you like that?’ said Gilbert. He stared at her thoughtfully, his cheeks bulging with egg.

  ‘Like what?’ murmured Veronica. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun.

  ‘Like that,’ said Gilbert. ‘Walking around in next to nothing.’

  She opened one eye and peeped at him. He stared brightly back with his old mischievous, crumpled grin until she felt flustered and raised an arm against her breasts. ‘Don’t stare!’ she scolded. She snatched up her shirt and threw it at him. The shirt caught on his ears and covered his face like a veil.

  ‘Anyway, I’m nothing special,’ she added, glancing hopefully at Frank.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gilbert, from under the shirt. ‘I’ve seen the way Boris looks at you sometimes. Hungry. You shouldn’t tease him. Men can turn nasty. Something inside them snaps.’ He wiped his hands on his trousers and fished for another of Happy’s boiled eggs.

  ‘Men! You’re such children. There’s nothing wrong with Boris. He’s always behaved like the perfect gentleman. Ask Frank.’

  Frank whistled and shook his head.

  The perfect gentleman returned at dusk with beer and fresh fruit. They gathered on the veranda to watch him unload the car. He waved when he saw them, threw a pineapple into the air and laughed.

  ‘Hank, help me shift these bastard boxes!’ he bellowed as he dragged a beer crate into view. He kicked the crate to rattle the bottles and paused to wipe his face.

  Frank left the safety of the veranda and walked out to him. He had expected some kind of confrontation. But Boris looked neither guilty nor apologetic. He behaved as if the previous night’s attack had been nothing more than a high-spirited game, something to be enjoyed and forgotten. There was nothing in his voice or manner that suggested he remembered anything about it. Frank was flummoxed. He helped Boris carry the crates to the kitchen and fill the fridge with beer.

  Later, when they were assembled for their evening stew, Gilbert announced his plan for the grand supper-dance.

  Boris beamed with pleasure. ‘I go to town,’ he said. ‘Most days. Every day. I tell those bastards this hotel is under new management. Make them come for carnival night.’

  ‘How many customers can we expect?’ asked Frank.

  Boris spread out his fingers. ‘Fifty. A hundred. Maybe. Everybody want to drink. Everybody want to dance,’ he said eagerly.

  Gilbert looked surprised. ‘Do we have enough beer for so many?’

  ‘They drink the beer. They drink the palm wine. They drink any damn thing. Boris knows how it works,’ said Boris.

  ‘We could find some paper and make a few posters,’ suggested Veronica.

  ‘Posters?’ grunted Boris. He stared at Veronica as if he were looking at her for the first time. He frowned and pulled his nose.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, glaring at him. ‘You stick ’em up around town. It’s called advertising.’

  ‘The bastards don’t read!’ shouted Boris. He threw back his head and let out a great, explosive laugh.

  Veronica squirmed and fell silent.

  ‘It’s a small town,’ said Gilbert. ‘The word will spread.’

  ‘News spreads like fire,’ said Boris. ‘We make it a night they don’t forget.’

  So the next day they set to work. Veronica painted the furniture green while Frank whitewashed the walls. Happy dug a pit outside the kitchen big enough to roast a horse and Gilbert counted lightbulbs. At the end of the count he was forced to abandon his plan to fill the compound with electric light but found candl
es instead and declared them to be more romantic. Boris donated a box of Christmas decorations to use as bunting. Happy was sent into town for ten gallons of palm wine.

  At the end of the week the hotel compound had been transformed. Long strings of tarnished tinsel fluttered on the perimeter walls. The tables and chairs were drawn into a circle. A dance floor had been cleared and swept of stones. The gramophone, an early German machine in a wooden suitcase, was brought out and cleaned. Everything was ready and waiting.

  And then it rained.

  All night the clouds came boiling and foaming out of heaven. Beneath the clouds the air began to rush through the forest, shaking the trees and banging on the hotel shutters. Dust devils danced in the compound. The tinsel broke loose and took flight. At dawn the sun came out like a bruise and, all around, the sky was a rumbling canopy of water.

  The hotel felt cold. Gilbert woke up shivering, deafened by the drumming on the loose, metal roof. He dressed and went running for the kitchen. The compound was flooded. The ground bubbled beneath his feet. Tables rattled. Shrieking chairs bled rust.

  ‘What a mess!’ he shouted as he splashed through the kitchen door. He was fighting for breath, his stomach jumping beneath his shirt.

  Frank and Happy were huddled against the pot-bellied stove, watching the rain as it seeped through the ceiling. ‘All that wasted work,’ moaned Frank.

  ‘It will dry out,’ Gilbert said cheerfully, stepping closer to the stove. His boots were squelching with mud.

  ‘We can’t dry that out,’ said Frank, nodding at the floor. He had been too late to rescue the gramophone. It was sitting in a puddle of dirty water. The suitcase had swollen and started to split at the seams.

  ‘It doesn’t look too bad,’ said Gilbert. He sniffed and wiped his head. The gramophone was ruined.

  Frank didn’t bother to argue with him. He tried to fight back his disappointment, squatted in the warmth of the oven and waited for Gilbert to speak again. But Gilbert said nothing. He looked worried. He paced about the kitchen, squinting up at the dripping ceiling.

  Veronica arrived pursued by Boris. She scampered into the kitchen and danced about the floor with bare, muddy feet. Her nose was red, her spiky yellow hair washed flat against her skull. Boris had cut a polythene sack as a shawl for her shoulders.

  ‘I think it’s lifting!’ she said breathlessly, shaking the water from the shawl.

  ‘No,’ said Boris. ‘Getting worse.’ He took off his old straw hat and beat the living daylights out of it against the edge of a table.

  ‘How long do you think it will last?’ asked Gilbert.

  Boris grunted and shrugged. ‘Two, three days. Maybe. A week.’

  ‘We’ll drown!’ shrieked Veronica, laughing.

  ‘Maybe. The rains come and everything drown.’

  ‘Daso!’ said Happy, very excited. ‘De ren he fol. Notin dray. Smol tarn we go be waka fo wata!’

  ‘Be quiet you bastard!’ roared Boris.

  ‘Walker for what?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Waka for wata,’ said Frank.

  Happy nodded and made swimming movements with his arms.

  They cooked a hot breakfast and, one by one, set out again into the rain. Beyond the compound the trees were screaming. The forest had vanished behind a wall of water. Boris went to investigate the smoke that had been spurting through the planks of the generator house. Veronica went back to her room to try to repair the shutters that had blown from their hinges during the night. Frank followed Gilbert to the dining room to look at the hole in the ceiling. A thin yellow soup was splashing through the broken plaster and forming a pool on the floor.

  ‘The roof is rotten,’ said Frank furiously. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’ He turned away. ‘I’ll bring a bucket.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Gilbert. ‘We’ll have to plug that hole or we’ll have the ceiling down on our ears.’

  He sent Frank to fetch rags and hammer and, while he waited, dragged a table into position beneath the hole. He gingerly climbed aboard and poked his hand through the sodden plaster. A gush of soup caught his face and splashed the front of his shirt.

  ‘You knew it would rain,’ said Frank, squelching back into the room. He had raided one of the laundry baskets. His arms were full of dirty towels. ‘Sam told you it was going to rain. He warned you in his letters.’

  Gilbert made a sausage from one of the towels and stabbed at the ceiling. ‘Yes, I knew it was going to rain!’ he roared impatiently. ‘I thought we could beat it. We only needed another few days. We could have done it.’

  Frank offered him another sausage. ‘It can’t rain for ever,’ he grunted.

  ‘You heard Boris,’ said Gilbert. He forced the second sausage into the ceiling and gave it a punch with his fist. ‘Where’s that hammer?’ He took the hammer and used it to prod home the rest of the towels. ‘This hole is full of bird shit!’ he muttered, pausing to sniff his fingers. ‘Anyway, it gives us time to make a few repairs. Once we’ve got this room sorted out we can bring in the furniture, make a proper dining room and forget about the damn weather. Paint the walls. Build a bar in the far corner. A big potted palm by the door to the veranda. We can dig one out of the forest. Dig out a dozen of ’em.’

  He climbed down from the table. The Garden Restaurant. Wine and dine among giant jungle flowers. Try a cold beer and a charcoal grill. Meat to please you. Pleased to meet you.

  Frank peered doubtfully up at the repair. The ceiling creaked and farted a string of evil smelling, wet, cloth sausages.

  ‘It’s no good!’ bellowed Gilbert. ‘Bring a bucket!’

  All day the rain slashed at the forest until the hotel seemed to sink through a furious ocean of trees. The rafters rattled. The walls felt soft. The baked, red earth was a slippery pudding of mud. The log pile collapsed. The veranda broke loose from its moorings. There was a rush of water in the shanty town that knocked down Boris, swept under the kitchen floor, flooded the garden and drained into old Sam’s grave.

  As it grew dark the rain stopped and mosquitoes arrived. They swarmed against the doors and shutters, crawled through every chink and crevice, keyhole, knot-hole and floorboard; sizzled like tiny electric needles as they settled down to feast. Happy slept with the lid on his barrel. Boris got drunk to poison his blood and stumbled around in the mud, cursing and slapping himself with his hands. Frank and Veronica slept in their clothes with their heads buried under their pillows. Gilbert, sponged down with vinegar, retreated behind his mosquito net and watched the insects invade his room.

  Look at them flitter. There must be a thousand. Specks of plague on gossamer wing. A man’s blood, stolen in droplets, carried away in the night. Vampires. Men turning into mosquitoes. Ghosts of the forest. We only needed another few days. We could have done it.

  At daybreak the hotel was hidden by a soft, grey fog. Gilbert hauled himself from bed and hurried out to the kitchen, anxious for bread and cake and coffee. The cold, damp air took his breath and tried to pull out his teeth. His boots slithered in mud. Beyond the compound, in the dripping forest, a solitary bird was hooting.

  As he splashed towards breakfast he heard Boris shouting in shanty town. It was a long bellow of frustration and fury. A terrible rumble of thunder. He turned from the kitchen towards the maze of shacks and waterlogged cabins. In the darkness of the generating shed he found Boris raging, banging the works with a spanner.

  ‘We got no oil. Finished. Bastard drink it. No lights. No power. Nothing,’ he screamed when he saw Gilbert watching him. He was wearing a vest and a pair of greasy underpants. His arms were shining with mud and oil.

  ‘Can’t we get fuel in town?’ frowned Gilbert.

  ‘No good. No money. You got money? I got no money. What you want me to do about it?’ roared Boris. He turned on Gilbert and threatened him with the spanner. His face was scarlet with mosquito bites. His mouth looked swollen. One of his eyes had closed.

  ‘But you’re always buying stuff in the market,’
protested Gilbert. ‘I thought Sam must have left you something…’

  ‘Sam?’ screamed Boris. ‘What a bastard. He leave me nothing but trouble. He sit all day. Drinking and sleeping. Drinking. Sleeping. Watch the house fall down. People come out here. Want a room for the night? He scare them away. Shout and scream. Chase them around with a hunting knife. His brain gone. He think everybody want to hurt him. Pretty soon no one come out here no more. Pretty soon we got big trouble. What happen? Nothing. He just sit there. Drinking and sleeping until he take the fever and drop down dead. Bastard leave me nothing but trouble.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ barked Gilbert, puffing out his belly. ‘Sam was a good man. I trusted my life to him. He knew this country. And he loved the forest. There was nothing wrong with his head. He had a good head. He had plans. He asked me out here to help him.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ shouted Boris. He threw down the spanner and kicked it away. His hair jumped. Foam gathered in the corners of his mouth. ‘You think the sun shine out of his arsehole? You wrong. He was a mad old bastard. I work so my fingers bleed. He done nothing.’

  ‘So how did you manage?’ demanded Gilbert.

  Boris collapsed against the generator and hung his head. For a while he said nothing. He was exhausted. He looked at his hands as if he expected to see them drip blood. ‘I sell what we got left,’ he said sadly. ‘One day I sell a picture of Jesus. Maybe. Bring home a fish and a bag of beans. Another time I take a blanket, a few lightbulbs, whatever I find.’

  ‘Here’s my wristwatch,’ said Gilbert suddenly, pulling at his sleeve. ‘It’s gold. How much is it worth?’

  Boris wiped his hands on his vest and gave a hoick to his underpants. ‘You want me to go down to town?’ he said, taking the wristwatch and holding it against his ear.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘Will it get us out of trouble?’

  Boris stared at the watch. ‘Gold?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Boris. He picked at his nose. He didn’t look convinced.

  ‘We’ve got money,’ said Gilbert, trying to reassure him. ‘I sold everything I owned to come out here. We’ve got enough money to build the biggest damn hotel in Bilharzia. But we have to wait. Do you understand? It takes time. There’s a lot of legal paperwork. When the rain stops and we get the money everything will be different. We can have anything we want. So we have to stay alive for another few weeks. We have to stay alive.’ Boris grunted, strapped the watch to his wrist, for safety, and splashed back to the hotel for a change of clothes. Gilbert followed him across the compound and went out to wait on the capsized veranda. While he leaned on the rail, staring down at the smoky, blue jungle, Frank came looking for him.