The Tesseract

by Alex Garland

  Then his vision clouded. Teak was a crime and fishermen were poor. Arranged to meet a man whose name was a black joke, told quietly in bars around Manila. Don Pepe’s prayer before he sleeps? Forgive me Father, for I am sin. If Don Pepe slept at all.

  Dropping to his knees, Sean grabbed his overnight bag and jerked open the zipper. A change of clothes spilled onto the carpet, followed by a pair of sunglasses he never wore and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

  “Come on,” Sean hissed. He gave the bag a shake. A toothbrush joined the pile, then a single AA battery, then a spare magazine. He paused to put the magazine to the side before shaking the bag again. A ballpoint pen, some coins, a loose shell, a flashlight, another AA battery, and a charm.

  4.

  A charm only because Sean said it was. It didn’t have the credentials of a Buddha’s head or a crystal skull. It was just a passport photo of a girl, stuck to a small piece of card so she wouldn’t bend. Easy for her to bend, rattling around in Sean’s bag. In many ways, it would have been better to keep her in his wallet. But wallets, one was always hearing, weren’t safe in Manila. Pickpockets, razors, guns, badges. Only two days ago, Sean had heard about a Japanese tourist held up by a couple of cops near Roxas Boulevard.

  A face that would have launched a thousand ships? Probably not, but that was okay. Dunkirk launched a thousand ships; launching a thousand ships was nothing to shout about. Enigmatic smile? No, and that was okay too. Enigmatic smiles were hype, good for nothing but messing with your head. This girl you could trust. Honest, solemn, especially in the eyes. Eyebrows raised a little. Could have been about to ask a question or to hear one answered.

  Exhaling, Sean lay back across the carpet, resting the photo on his chest. He noticed the room was big enough so that—should you happen to be lying on the floor—the ceiling was about all you could see. A flat beige plane above, fading to darkness in his peripheral vision. A flat plane above, might be a plain below. A desert, with cracks as dried up riverbeds.

  Calm stole into Sean’s solar plexus, radiating from the girl’s point of contact. In five minutes, she’d be easing down his limbs, reaching up his neck. He came close to smiling. At this rate, sleep was in the cards. Seemed like a funny idea, having a nap when the mestizo’s Mercedes was weaving through the streets toward him.

  Keeping pace with the girl’s progress across his body, the desert fleshed itself out. Water marks were shadows on the dunes, blistered paint was scrubland. From the dunes to the scrublands, an indistinct line of dots made the tracks of a camel train. Were the remnants of the spiderweb a mirage, or was it the other way around? Sean was finding it increasingly hard to tell.

  A waste, he reflected, all those temazepams last night. Sat up for hours, frigging around with those weak little pills, when he could have been drifting over some corner of the Sahara. Crazy, not to have thought of it.

  But forget last night. What about ten minutes ago?

  Or was it fifteen?

  Whatever. Ten, fifteen, he’d been a headless chicken. Punching the wall, freaking out. This time, Sean had to smile. He could picture the expression he must have made when the phone had started ringing. Jaw dropping, pulse jumping.

  All okay now, thanks to his charm, his beta-blocker angel.

  One day, he hoped to meet the girl in person. He’d see her in a street or something, and he’d walk up and introduce himself. Tell her all about the tough times she’d helped him through. The way she had of relaxing him, coaxing him out of trouble. He’d thank her, very politely but also genuinely, with warmth and feeling. Then he’d say good-bye, and they’d go and live their separate lives.

  Poignant. The daydream could put a lump in his throat. Especially because it was a dream that would never come true. Sean didn’t know the girl’s name and address, or even her nationality. Since he had found her, abandoned on the floor of a passport-photo booth in Le Havre harbor, clues had been thin on the ground.

  Sean continued his aerial scan. Over to his right, a network of parched tributaries. Over to his left…What was that? A meteor crater?

  Forcing his way out of his drowsiness, he managed to focus for a couple seconds.

  “Oh,” he murmured. It was a bullet hole. Well, no great shock. Unexpected menstruation had been clutching at straws, and shaving accident was plain stupid.

  So the telephone torturer had shot upward, maybe with the barrel under his chin or in his mouth. Then again: pistol, low velocity, lead bouncing around the bone, no guarantee the bullet’s going to come out the other side let alone keep its trajectory. So maybe the guy had missed the first time. Missed because he was nervous and an idiot, and he’d had to try again.

  Probably the latter, Sean decided with a satisfied nod. That the guy was an idiot was a given. Obviously he’d been here for a meet: nobody could have checked into Patay for pleasure. So what did he need? Signposts? Hotel Patay was the hit hotel. It was written all over its bleeding sheets and empty rooms. If he hadn’t seen it straight off, he was in the wrong line of…

  The desert shimmered and disappeared. Sean sat up, the photo tumbling off his chest, forgotten. On the floor, half covered by dust and broken plasterboard, the steel plate coldly reflected the light of the bedside lamps.

  “You,” he said, raising an accusing finger. “Are all about me.”

  The moon orbits the earth. High tides and low tides come and go, the cause being gravity but the reason being nothing. The moon might have been bigger, farther away, closer. It just happened not to be.

  There was no point in Sean’s asking himself why Don Pepe wanted him dead. Mundane as the moon, the question wasn’t worth a second thought and barely worth the first. And anyway, even if he’d been inclined to ask, he’d have found there wasn’t time. At the same moment he was pointing at the steel plate, a gray Mercedes was pulling up opposite the hotel. It was instantly recognizable in Patay’s quiet cocoon; there weren’t many engines in Manila that purred.

  No fool, Don Pepe. Called to say he was coming late, then arrived early, catching the mark unawares. The car’s doors opened and closed. Four slams, four men. Even the driver was on his way up. Told, Sean speculated blankly, that there was no need to keep the motor running, as this job could take a while.

  Now, magically, the room was cold. A sauna transformed into an icebox with a jingle of car keys and a low murmur of conversation, floating up from the street outside.

  5.

  Watched by the telephone, the dial its insect eye, Sean unconsciously traced the dead torturer’s last movements. He hovered by the door for several seconds before remembering that Patay had only one staircase, one exit, and the men were already approaching the building. Next he wrenched pointlessly at the bars on the window, which would have dislocated his shoulder before shifting an inch. And finally he ended up in the bathroom, where he established that there would be no escape through the tiny air ducts.

  The telephone made for an indifferent witness. But Sean’s reflection in the bathroom mirror, making contact as he turned away from the vent, was less detached. Even under pressure, the sight was arresting.

  His face seemed to be in a state of flux. Unable to resolve itself, like a cheap hologram or a bucket of snakes, the lips curled while the jaw relaxed, the stare softened while the frown hardened. Fear, Sean thought distantly. Rare that one got to see what it actually looked like. Other people’s, sure, but not your own. Intrigued, he leaned closer to the mirror, ignoring the footsteps that were working their way up the stairs.

  The Conquistador

  1.

  “Aaaah, we’re going to be late,” said Don Pepe, breaking the tense silence of the last five minutes.

  Jojo nodded and nervously pushed his thumbs into the padding around the steering wheel. “Yes, sir, we are. I’m sorry.”

  “The hotel, now this.”

  Jojo paused a moment before saying, “Yes, sir,” again. He was leaving time for Teroy to add his own apology. After all, he’d been the one who had suggested Hote
l Patay in the first place. But Teroy, sitting in the front passenger seat, wasn’t saying a word. No sense diverting Don Pepe’s irritation onto himself when he could keep his head down and his mouth shut and let Jojo take all the abuse. Fair enough. Jojo would have been doing the same thing if their roles had been reversed.

  Clearing his throat, Don Pepe continued. “Aaaah, interesting, Jojo, that you should have chosen to come through Quiapo, when you know how the road works are holding everything up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I suppose you thought that at this time of night the traffic would be light.”

  “I did, sir.”

  “But, eeeeh, now you can see that actually the traffic is quite heavy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hired as a driver, and you don’t know where the traffic will be heavy in Manila.”

  “It was a bad decision, sir. Please accept my apologies. In future, I will remember to avoid Quiapo when the road works are still unfinished, even at this time of night.”

  In the rear view mirror, Jojo saw Don Pepe reach into his breast pocket for his silver matchstick dispenser. “I would hope you would remember. I wouldn’t want to have another evening like this.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Naturally, I shall have to telephone Mr. Sean to explain the situation, which will certainly be embarrassing. I don’t yet know him well, but I expect that Mr. Sean is the kind of man to be serious about punctuality. As a European, we can expect him to be serious about such things.”

  Jojo glanced sideways and thought he saw Teroy roll his eyes.

  “Perhaps I could call him for you, sir,” said a syrupy voice from the seat behind. Bubot had chosen his moment to speak up. “If it were more convenient for you…”

  “Convenient?” Don Pepe interrupted. The car held its breath while he sucked his toothpick. “Convenient to hide behind others, rather than accept responsibility for my mistakes?”

  Bubot shut his mouth with an audible snap.

  Jojo had been Don Pepe’s driver for eighteen months. He had taken over from Uping, who’d been killed in the same botched kidnap attempt that had killed Bing-Bong, Don Pepe’s overweight and psychopathic nephew.

  Eighteen months, and not once had a day gone by without Don Pepe’s making some kind of reference to Europe and Europeans. Usually the reference would be subtle or banal. A passing comment on a change of political office in France, or, noticing a tourist through the Mercedes’s tinted windows, a remark on the endless variety of Caucasian hair color. Nothing that, to a casual listener, would suggest anything close to an unnatural interest.

  Unnatural became clear only when he turned to one particular subject. When, after time spent in his company, you realized that this was a man on a constant hair-trigger. One glimpse of the Fort Santiago ruins, the Intramuros walls, and he’d be off. Betraying himself with too much knowledge, too much passion, and too much fluency. Out went the aahs and eehs and the long pauses.

  “Pizarro took Peru with one hundred and eighty men. One hundred and eighty men against the Inca civilization! So on whose side, I ask you, must God have been fighting?”

  “Naturally, you must understand that although Magellan was Portuguese, his service was to Spain.”

  “Legaspi’s only failure was Mindanao. And listen to me, calling Legaspi a failure. By 1571, Manila was in his hands.”

  “Imagine, now, what it must have been for the Aztecs to see a horse. And not just any horse. A war horse, armor-plated, with teeth like razors!”

  “There are no churches in the Philippines. No houses of God, only huts. Iglesia Ni Christo? It’s an insult! In Spain there are churches. Real churches. Here, you have only huts.”

  Here, you have only.

  Here, you have only.

  But neither Don Pepe’s father nor grandfather had ever been to Spain. Don Pepe himself had been just once. In December of the previous year. Five days in Madrid, and two days in San Sebastián, the hometown of his ancestors. The one thing Spanish about Don Pepe was his blood, and you had simply to look at him to see that it was mixed. Not that anybody would ever dare to mention it.

  Nor, indeed, would anybody ever dare to mention his trip to the motherland. Relentlessly discussed in the buildup to his departure, instantly taboo on his return. Taboo for no reason other than the expression on the old man’s face when Jojo had picked him up from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. He hadn’t looked sad or disappointed, or even angry. He’d looked shell-shocked. For the next few weeks, the familiar lectures had been painfully muted. Omelettes rather than Cortez. Even now, half a year later, they lacked their original length and vehemence.

  “Mr. Sean is British.”

  Jojo, who had been lost in the blinking taillights of the jeepney in front, straightened in his seat and murmured, “Yes, sir.”

  “In 1762 the British occupied Manila, returning it to our control in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. I’d imagine that most Spanish are a little ashamed that the British took their land from them, even if it was two hundred years ago.”

  “I suppose they are, sir.”

  “But I’m not ashamed. The British also were great empire builders. Personally, I respect the fact that they were strong enough to take the Philippines from us.” Don Pepe paused. “And anyway, they had it for only a year.”

  “A year is not long.”

  “Of course it isn’t. Next to four hundred years of Spanish rule, eeeeh, it’s a mere bagatelle.”

  Jojo and Teroy exchanged a glance. “Bagatelle?” Teroy mouthed, and Jojo gave a fractional shrug. Don Pepe frequently lapsed in and out of foreign languages. Curiously, English more than any other.

  “So,” Don Pepe continued. “There you are. The British once occupied Manila. A little-known fact.”

  Not in this car it isn’t, thought Jojo, and released the handbrake, letting the car roll forward another couple of feet.

  2.

  Bubot was the sip-sip king, all nods and smiles and feigned interest in the mestizo’s diatribes. Practically his job description. Not that Bubot was complaining—he’d wanted to be Don Pepe’s right-hand man for as long as anyone could remember. The moment the news of Bing-Bong’s death had come through, Bubot had been falling over backward to catch the old man’s eye. People said he’d have cut his balls off if he’d thought Don Pepe would have been impressed. There had even been a rumor that the true purpose of the botched kidnap attempt had been to get Bing-Bong out of the way. Crazy rumor. Anyone who knew the sip-sip king also knew that he didn’t have the wit for anything so elaborate.

  The sip-sip king could keep the backseat. As far as Jojo and Teroy were concerned, the front seat was the place to be. At least they had their backs to their boss. Like kids in the corner of the classroom, they could let the teacher’s voice fade to a background murmur. They could gaze at girls walking down the street and exchange sly winks. They could even have conversations. With plenty of time to practice, they had perfected the art of talking at a level that was just audible between them but that didn’t carry beyond the leather headrests. And when conversation failed, perhaps suppressed by a sixth sense that Don Pepe was listening a little harder than usual, Teroy had his gun to polish—the shiniest pistol in Luzon—and Jojo had his jeepneys to study.

  It was, Jojo often reflected, a mystery. The wildly customized mini-buses chugged down every street of every barrio. Jeepneys were like the faces of your family or the feel of rubber sandals on your feet. Jeepneys were like the taste of rice. Who’s aware of the taste of rice? But Jojo was aware of jeepneys.

  The catalyst had been glass. Lack of glass in the windows of the jeepneys, and mirrored glass in the windows of the Mercedes. For some reason, cruising through Quezon City one morning, this had occurred to Jojo, and it interested him. The fact that he was provided with a slide show of lives in the shifting traffic, and that the people outside the Mercedes were provided with nothing but their own reflections.

  Only an observation, no great mean
ing, but it had been a hook. A slight tilt on an everyday sight, to make him look at the everyday sight with fresh eyes.

  From that moment, Jojo’s appreciation of public-transport vehicles grew from each traffic jam to the next. He began rating jeepneys from one to ten, based on anything from the quality of side-panel paintwork to general cleanliness and upkeep, and felt genuine pleasure when he saw a design worthy of an eight-plus.

  The nameplates above the windshields had been one of the last revelations. Extraordinary that he could have known Dragon Punch Lady ran the length of Edsa, or Future Shock ran from Makati to Bicutan, but that he’d never wondered who the dragon punch lady might be, or what shock the future had in store. Extraordinary to live in a country that teemed with carefully considered messages, brightly emblazoned on huge plastic strips, that almost nobody ever bothered to read. Maybe this was why the owner of My Secret Lover felt so confident about letting his secret out.

  Like most things in Manila, the jeepneys came into their own after dark. Their colored lights were switched on, their fake chrome glowed dully under neon shop signs. Tonight, they looked to Jojo like miniature mobile nightclubs, packed with a tired and listless clientele. Or packed with bandits. Many of the passengers had tied handkerchiefs over their mouths to filter the exhaust fumes. Bandit commuters, lit by the soft red and green interior bulbs.

  “Aaaah, phone,” said Don Pepe.

  Bubot dived for it. The car phone, installed six weeks ago, sat within easy reach of Don Pepe’s hands, and so far he hadn’t picked it up once.

  “I shall call Mr. Sean now.”

  Teroy coughed and half turned in his seat. “Actually I am not sure that Patay’s lines are operational. If you remember, sir, it is why Jojo needed to hand-deliver your note to him this morning.”