When I came to an intersection, I took the La Oliva road south and cruised through Villaverde and on through more farmland. I was considering my options when I reached La Oliva and about to find a place to park, when I suddenly, urgently needed to use the toilet. I was furious with the impulse. I had wanted to explore the town, but I refused to chance the public facilities, if there were any. Sabotaged, I clenched my buttocks and headed back to the farmhouse.
Trust my bowels to force me back to Tefía. Duly relieved, I still had an hour or more to kill before I needed to drive to the gym. I looked on the map again and decided to check out the museum on the southern edge of the village, situated just past the turnoff to the windmill.
The museum was a site of interest that I had been passing and ignoring all week. I found it was well conceived, too. Set in neatly landscaped gardens of gravel, paving and small garden beds, a cluster of restored farmhouses and outbuildings contained all the tools and implements of the ancient life of the peasants and their overlords. Demonstrations were going on in some of the barns – a woman baking bread, one making clay pots, one on a loom and another basket-weaving. In the grand house, no one was doing a thing.
Were the local farmers peasants? Was it fair to call them that? Or was it insulting? I could call the locals resilient, hardy, tenacious, or perhaps desperate fools who had known no different. When had they stopped their ancient ways?
A bigger question haunted me. It had been bothering me since I arrived on the island. Where were the trees? Had there ever been trees or had the landscape always been so barren? What sort of trees grew here, if any, and what happened to them all? Plants grew here, you could see that in the gardens of homeowners – Brits or Germans, I bet – and in the carefully tilled fields waiting for the next burst of rain.
A quick Internet search on my phone using Spanish words for tree, culture and history and I found a scholarly article, in Spanish, on the story of the island's trees.
I was able to glean from the words and the photos that the whole island was once covered in trees and shrubs, thicker in the ravines and hollows, tougher, drought-resistant varieties covering the mountains. On north-facing mountain slopes, there had been thick forests. There had grown native pine trees, laurels and palm trees. The moment humans arrived, the article's opening paragraph said, a long, slow process of deforestation occurred, until the whole island was denuded. How sad. I saved the article to look at later in more depth.
I looked around at the rock and the soil with fresh awareness and was immediately reminded of Sandra Flint's shortlisted book, with its central theme of deforestation of the highlands of Scotland. I had had a lot of fun researching the issue. It was the main reason I took on the assignment. Flint's efforts may have lacked literary prowess, but I admired her choice of topic. I was facing the same deforestation issue here, but I couldn't write another book on the story of trees and deforestation. It would be too tedious and depressing.
If I was looking for inspiration for a new work, then perhaps I needed to stop looking around and dig deeper into myself after all. I shooed away that idea as fast as it came. Above all, I needed to land on originality, and I didn't feel the least bit original. All the best fiction I had read recently had an edge to it, the author's passion leaping from the page. What those authors wrote about meant something to them, and they wanted the reader to know it, to feel it. Authors wanted to share with the world fresh perspectives, ones that had for too long not been considered, or were overlooked. Sometimes it was an alternative to the bugbear of the times: white male privilege.
I was white, male and privileged but I didn't feel it. I wasn't sure what masculinity really meant. I put my lack of knowledge down to growing up in a house of women after my father, a man I scarcely recalled, had left. I was forced to bear a punishing femininity, all that dark Lilith-powered rage directed at me, the only male in the house. All I had back then for male company was Vince.
My adult friends had all been women too. For almost two decades I had been the house husband doing the school drop off and pick up. Jackie had worn the trousers. I wore the apron. She earned the cash, and I cooked, cleaned and pottered in the house. If I wrote about all of that, wrote from that perspective, I would come across as precious or pretentious, and even if I majored in the desperation I had sometimes felt, it would be seen by the wider community as self-indulgence. I, after all, had never had it so good and had no right to complain about my lot, absolutely no right at all.
Scrapping all that, when it came to whatever might be of interest lurking on the inside of me, I was left with nothing. I was in a creative void.
Manhood sucked if a man couldn't be a man.
The hour soon passed, and I headed to Puerto del Rosario, pulling up outside the gym at a quarter to four. Luis greeted me with a wave as I entered. I went straight to the exercise bike and did the required ten kilometres. As I eased myself off the seat, he came over and watched me do the hammer curls.
After the first set, he commented on my technique, told me to pull my shoulders back and lock my elbows, not to lean forward and sway, and not to swing the weights or perform the reps too fast.
'That's it,' he said, moving my shoulders back and pushing my elbows into my waist. As I studied my form in the mirror I caught the gaze of a bulldozer of a man on the other side of the gym who had been taking a sneaky look at me. He quickly looked away, but I saw his wry smile as he turned his face to the wall. Asshole.
Consumed by an indignant rage, I managed the other three sets of ten reps without too much strain.
Luis was in a serious and non-communicative mood. His sole focus was on my form. Next, he had me on the bicep curl machine – which wasn't too onerous – followed by table triceps pushdowns super-setted with eight reps of overhead triceps extensions using a dumbbell, which were. He had me doing all those exercises, correcting my form on each, and he watched me attentively as I forced my way through the required number of reps. As much as my arms and especially my poor shoulder would have loved a reprieve, neither I nor Luis was about to let them have one. The twinges, the pings, the burns, the aches – I pushed through all the discomfort knowing that, with Luis beside me, I had become the object of intense scrutiny, and I would not countenance failure under his gaze. Quite the opposite. I wanted to excel, to prove to him how good I was, or rather, how much potential to be good I had.
'You are doing well,' was all the encouragement he offered.
After that, I still had four sets of ten skull crushers combined with as many triceps dips as I could manage. I didn't understand the logic of so much emphasis on triceps but I wasn't about to argue. Despite the searing agony, I found overall that arm day proved far less onerous than any of the other body-area days. Although I wasn't sure I could judge. Maybe the steroids were working. Or I was getting stronger. Or I was simply getting used to the pain.
I thanked Luis for his time and jumped back on the bike for the cooldown.
Two kilometres in, and my guts went into spasm. Something was definitely amiss with my bowels. I held on until the five kilometres were done then, knowing I would never make it back to Tefía in time, I dashed to the men's before I left the gym. I chose the cleaner of the two cubicles, the one with a decent amount of toilet paper. As I lowered my pants and released my anal sphincter, emitting a sudden gush of smelly waste, the toilet room door squeaked open and someone entered. They were in conversation with someone else, presumably on their phone. The exchange sounded heated, at least from this end. As I waited, toilet paper in hand, for the peristalsis to settle, I listened, curious to see how much Spanish I could make out.
The words “la merca” and “el químico” and “el laboratorio” along with 'Dónde está el dinero?' stood out and had me joining the dots. Merchandise? A chemist and a lab? The money? That man could only be talking about one thing – a drug deal gone wrong.
My hand hovered over the cistern. As soon as I pressed the button, I would need to exit the stall, but I wasn't
keen on emerging to face whoever was out there.
All went silent. Did whoever it was know I was in here? They must, since the door was closed, or maybe they hadn't noticed the cubicle door was locked. Then again, no one talks about drug-deal business in a public lavatory before checking to make sure no one else was listening. Besides, it stank in here, a smell that must have pervaded the entire toilet area.
I held my breath.
The silence continued.
Nothing happened.
I knew someone was still out there as I had heard no squeak of the toilet room door. It felt like a stalemate. But I couldn't wait forever. The cubicle was small, and I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. On a small upsurge of confidence, I flushed and unlatched the cubicle door.
I came out to face Juan's uncle, Mario, a heavy-set man with a grey-bristle beard and tattoos. He eyed me with suspicion, and I quickly looked away. Or perhaps his expression was one of disgust since he moved away from the sink to make room for me to wash my hands.
I had no choice. Under his watchful gaze, I pumped the soap bottle, turned on the hot tap and gave my hands a thorough scrub. There were no paper towels. I shoved my dripping hands under the air dryer for a brief blast and then yanked open the door only to collide with Mario's associate, the drug-dealing behemoth, who stood back then changed his mind and pushed past me to enter, acknowledging me with a dismissive grunt.
A chill ripped through me. I broke out in a cold sweat. My pulse started racing and my vision blurred. My reality shrank to what was immediately in front of me. I was jittery. It was as much as I could do not to cascade into a full-blown panic attack. I rushed over to the bikes to retrieve my bag. My bowels contracted anew, but I took no notice. I couldn't get out of the gym fast enough.
The Money's Secret
All eyes were on my back as I pushed open the entrance door. I could feel the gazes boring into me. I was as ever the only man of English-extraction in the building and invariably the others stared, but this time I found the attention menacing. Out on the pavement, breathing the salty sea air, imbibing the liberation of the space around me, I might have let go of my fear, but the gym door swung open and out came the nameless drug-peddling associate of Juan's uncle. As he walked up behind me, I thought any moment I would feel a shove on my back, and I would be launched face-first into the gutter, but instead he strode on down the street, stopping beside a small, red hatchback.
I hurried over to my car. I didn't wait for the heat to exit the interior before I got in, and I ignored the sting of the hot steering wheel as I rammed the key into the ignition. A quick manoeuvre in reverse and I was heading up the street on my way out of the city, gulping air and exhaling hard, trying to slow my heart rate.
The sight of the red hatchback pulling away from the kerb made my guts roll over. My bowels threatened a sudden release. I wanted to put my foot down, but I had a green sedan in front of me and besides, Puerto del Rosario's streets were not cut out for high-speed getaways and it would only draw attention.
The behemoth followed me all the way up Calle Juan de Bethencourt, but that wasn't unusual. Everyone leaving the city went that way. I felt sure to lose him at the ring road roundabout.
It was when I took the La Oliva turnoff – heading to Tefía via Tetir – and glanced in the rear-view mirror to find the red hatchback do the same that a fresh wave of raw panic washed through me.
I was being followed.
I scrambled to rationalise.
The guy might not even know it's me in this little white car. He's probably just going home. He probably lives in La Asomada or Los Estancos or in Tetir itself. There are houses dotted all over, and he could live in any one of them. It was no use. He was stuck fast behind me.
The further I went, the more certain I grew that he was on my tail. Why? If he wanted to know where I lived, he only needed to ask Luis. Then again, that was confidential information, and Luis did seem to be a decent, rule-abiding sort.
I drove through Tetir, making every effort to keep to the speed limit, watching the hatchback in the rear-view mirror, hoping, willing the behemoth to turn off.
He didn't.
At the village edge, I pressed the accelerator. The mountains loomed up ahead. The only grace in an otherwise terrifying situation was the behemoth didn't tailgate. He hung back, cruised along, a nightmare. We passed through more small villages and each time, I held my breath hoping he would indicate, slow, turn off or park.
Tamariche?
No.
La Matilla?
No.
The turnoff for Tindaya?
No.
My palms slid on the steering wheel. My pulse boomed in my head, and I felt faint and nauseous.
There was only one village up ahead: Tefía.
I kept going.
He kept going.
He maintained the same distance behind me, casual as you please.
At the entrance to the village, I slowed. I kept an eye on the rear-view mirror, hoping and not hoping he would turn off. If he lived in Tefía, I didn't want to be anywhere near the place and if he kept going, he would see where I was staying; I had no choice other than to pull into my drive since the farmhouse was situated on the main road. I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead I carried on, and drove to the dirt-road turnoff which led to the windmill. I breathed a sigh when he remained on the main road and disappeared.
I had lost him.
The dirt road was narrow and allowed little room for a three-point turn. I kept going and arrived at the gravel concourse before the windmill, where I turned around, pulled over and killed the engine. Sitting there in that lonely spot on the windswept plain, feeling the car interior heat up under the rays of the violent sun, I became acutely aware of the hostel down the tree-lined drive to my left, an awareness that reinforced the feelings of terror I had succumbed to since I emptied my bowels in the toilet at the gym.
How did I end up here, of all places? I could have driven anywhere, turned off the main road at any intersection I had passed. Instead, I had brought myself face-to-face with the horrors of this plain. The idiot that I was, I didn't think to turn off later for Puertito de Los Molinos. If I had, I could have given the behemoth the impression I was heading to the beach. For all I knew, he might have taken that turn off and be heading here using the other route to the windmill, due to appear at any moment in a cloud of dust.
Alarmed, I fired up the engine, threw the gearstick into reverse and with a deft manoeuvre, I headed backwards up the hostel drive, braking before the car hit the gates. The car wasn't completely hidden from view, but I felt less exposed as I could no longer be seen from the Puertito road. I sat, waiting. Ten minutes passed, and there was no sign of a red hatchback.
I was in the clear, at least for now. I didn't feel all that confident driving home, yet I couldn't remain where I was, already sweaty and tired and hungry and beginning to cook in the car. I got out, stepped into the raised garden and climbed over the driveway wall, and then headed off around the outside of the compound, following the eastern perimeter where I was guaranteed not to encounter a living soul.
Seeing no gap anywhere, I clambered over the wall and crunched my way down the hill to the three rectangular huts. The prisoners' huts. Some effort had been made to screen those huts from the main compound with a dense planting of shrubs and trees. As though to block out the history.
The sun, low in the western sky, was hot on my back. No thought entered my head as I approached the whitewashed walls of the flat-roofed cells: three stone boxes, rectangular, with a single wooden door at one end and a wider cavity at the other that must have served as another door. It occurred to me the buildings had been built as barns for animals. I walked around the back to find two high windows set high in the rear wall, the shutters closed.
My first impression was the lack of light inside. That, and the cells would have baked in the heat in summer. As I pictured twelve men squashed into each room, as I stared back up at the
military compound, as I looked around at the rocky plain and the barren mountains, I could think of no worse place to be imprisoned. Of course, there were plenty of examples worldwide of such hellholes situated in extreme locations – after all, humanity did like to major in cruelty to its own – but I was standing right here beside this particular example, an example too few knew about, and I couldn't help but feel its significance. Touching a cell wall with its flaking paint, I could almost feel the energy of the men in there, smell their bodies, sense their despair.
I had never regarded myself as sensitive and least of all psychic, but standing beside those cells on the narrow concrete path strewn with dust and pebbles and overhung with half-dead weeds, I was consumed by a disturbing sadness and a sickening discomfort all at once. From the moment I had set foot in Tefía, I had been clouded with doubts and speculations regarding my own sexuality, and what a luxury that was. The men in those cells never had any such indulgence. How much had changed in sixty years! Or had it? The zeitgeist had changed enough to allow the likes of me to toy with what for those men would have been an agony, a curse.
As I pulled away and trudged up the hill to the compound, I wanted to rip out all those shrubs screening this awful truth and erect a sign pointing all the youth who stayed at the hostel down the hill to experience what I just had.
I mounted the perimeter wall and hurried to my car, keen to leave the locale. Feeling as I did, I could only imagine what it would be like if I were to attempt a novel based on that prison. Never mind cultural appropriation. I would be plunged into creative purgatory.
Back at the farmhouse, my own difficulties resurfaced. I knew I could have no clear idea if that behemoth had been following me, but the chances were high. Whatever the case, I needed to act and act fast. Besides, now Juan's uncle would know I was staying in Tefía, and it wouldn't take long to find out where. I needed to leave the farmhouse, and I needed to waste no time doing that. All things considered, I could think of nothing more appealing than getting off that plain.
A Prison in the Sun Page 11