Villa Pacifica

by Kapka Kassabova

  “Bienvenidos!” a voice startled them. They turned the corner of the veranda, and saw a middle-aged couple peering at them through a cloud of smoke. The woman was elongated and spindly. Her face of a wilted sun-worshipping beauty was framed with frizzy reddish hair threaded with silver strands. A pile of ledger books and a large seashell full of cigarette butts lay on the table before her.

  “English? Deutsch? Français? Italiano? Español?” The man sprung to his feet and grinned with nicotine-stained teeth.

  “English and French,” Jerry said, visibly relaxing, and then pointed at Ute, “Español and Finnish.”

  “OK, OK,” the man said. “Sehr gut. My English is not so good. My girlfriend speaks English and Espanish. And you speak Espanish?”

  “I pretend to,” Ute said modestly. Her Spanish was fluent.

  The man laughed and shed cigarette ash as he waved his hands about. Two tufts of grey hair frizzed up on each side of his bald patch. He had grizzled stubble, and grey hair curled out from the opening of his floral-printed shirt. He flip-flopped inside the house.

  “How many nights do you want to stay?” he asked in Spanish.

  Ute translated for Jerry. “Ten, twenty?” Jerry chanced. He smiled at Ute. Their host waved his cigarette impatiently.

  “Come in, come in, I’ll give you a key and take your passports. You can decide later. Stay as long as you like.” He switched the lights on inside the lounge.

  As Ute passed her, the woman gazed up at her dreamily. There was kindness in her eyes, and also something else, something like a shadow of… wariness. A distant memory. Pity for the flame-faced arrival.

  “Well done for finding this place,” Jerry said as their host copied details from their passports into a ledger.

  “It was the driver, not me,” she said.

  “You came through the back gate, didn’t you?” their host asked.

  “I don’t know, it was a large gate.” Ute said.

  “Did you come in a tricycle taxi?”

  “That’s right.”

  “From Puerto Seco.”

  “Yes.”

  “Those goddamn drivers, they know we don’t like people coming through the back gate, especially in the middle of the night like this. They do it to get more money off you, you know. But what can you do?”

  “We had no idea. Is there another entrance?”

  “Oh yes, just out here, that’s the main gate.”

  “Is it closer to the town?”

  “Oh, much closer. It’s a kilometre and a half along the beach. Maximum two.”

  “So which way is the ocean?” Ute asked.

  Small ticks worried the man’s face and hands.

  “Ah, you’ll see tomorrow morning,” he winked at her. “Mañana,” he said to Jerry.

  “How much is a double?” Ute enquired.

  “Depends how long you stay. If you stay two nights, five nights, ten nights, it’s thirty dollars a night. If you stay ten days or more, it’s twenty dollars a night. If you stay…”

  “Ten days!” Ute chuckled incredulously. “We don’t have that much time.”

  “Of course, you can stay as long as you like. Some people stay longer.”

  “How many guests do you have at the moment?”

  “Not many. We’re not busy at the moment, it’s the off-season. We’re going into summer. Normally, it rains quite a lot. We sure hope it’ll rain.”

  “Because of the garden?”

  “You got it. This garden needs lots of water, it’s a tropical garden. For you of course it’s no good, you’re here for the beaches and to get away from the rain. Ah, I remember the misery of autumn rains in Spain… But we pray for rain every day here. This region has suffered from increasing droughts. Every year, it gets worse. Climate change. Last year, we had El Niño. It devastated the garden, flooded the front cabins. People lost their houses in the villages, the malecón was wrecked, the beach in Puerto Seco was littered with uprooted trees, dead animals, house roofs, all manner of rubbish. Who paid for it to be cleaned up? The local council, you think? No, of course not. It was the rich gringos at Villa Pacifica, as usual.”

  Tiny bits of spittle sprayed them. His dopey grin had vanished. A frown split his curved forehead. “Yep, we shelled out yet again. Trouble is, it looks like our prayers will be answered only too well this year, and we’re about to have another spell…”

  “Mikel, amor, come,” the woman called out softly from the veranda. He seemed to reset himself with an invisible button, and the yellow-toothed smile was back.

  “I’ll put you in The Tortoise. You’ll like it. Breakfast is from eight till eleven. We also have a restaurant, so you can have lunch and dinner here. It’s the best restaurant in a radius of 500 kilometres, each way. We have Italian, Spanish, local, and only the freshest produce and ingredients.”

  “Is the kitchen open now?” Ute asked.

  “No, the kitchen is closed now,” their host replied, shaking his head sorrowfully. Everything about him was exaggerated. Then his body jerked joyfully. “But we have lemon cake, if you want.” He waved at an enticing half-cake along the bar counter. They bought two pieces. Just then, a man materialized in the far, darker end of the lounge and beckoned them over.

  “Buenas noches, good night,” their host said cheerfully, and returned to the table outside.

  Ute and Jerry hurried down a dark path behind their guide, stuffing the moist, fragrant cake into their dusty faces. La tortuga was a small wooden cabin on stilts with an overhanging thatched roof. It was partially swallowed by huge plants reaching out on every side to the indigo sky. There was a well-used printed-cotton hammock outside. The windows were simply square holes with mosquito nets stretched across. The single light inside was dim. There were a few pieces of wicker furniture, including a small table, and a simple but attractive bathroom with lots of shells and a huge natural sea sponge large enough to towel yourself with. The centrepiece was the large bed, enveloped in a cascading mosquito net suspended from a hook in the ceiling.

  They could hear the crickets screeching on their tiny violins outside. A heavy, gritty fragrance, like incense, filled the cabin. There was no luxury here, but such tasteful simplicity that no five-star hotel could have pleased Jerry more. He was partial to creature comforts, though he wouldn’t always admit it, because Ute was just so tough by comparison.

  “I don’t believe this place,” Jerry said. “From hell to paradise in twenty minutes.”

  “Isn’t it just?” Ute dumped the dead weight of her pack on the floor. She heard her torch crunch at the bottom, but who cared – they didn’t need the torch any more.

  “You know,” Ute said, “I thought El Niño hit the Pacific coast in 2006 or 2007, I can’t remember exactly. Did the guy say ‘last year’?”

  “Oh, who cares,” Jerry said. “What does your guidebook say anyway?” He laughed, and she didn’t.

  Without unpacking she undressed, washed her hands, swallowed her malaria pill, applied some medicated cream on her raw face and crawled inside the net. Jerry was splashing in the bathroom. She was asleep the second her head hit the pillow.

  ‌3

  Ute woke up feeling drugged. Jerry wasn’t there. It was semi-dark in the cabin, and Ute couldn’t tell what time of day or night it was. She looked at her watch: eleven o’clock. She’d slept for almost twelve hours, a freak event for someone who normally didn’t need more than six. And she’d had a bad dream – another freak event. She hardly ever had any dreams. Jerry said it wasn’t normal to have so few. He said she must be repressing them.

  This time, she had dreamt of her mother. Except her mother was a child in an oversized military coat. She was in a petrified forest where the trees were twisted, unfriendly shapes. Ute was observing her from above, but somehow, in that horrible way only possible in dreams, she also was the child. She crunched for ages among the dry branches, lost. There was no path. Ute knew this was a dangerous forest. She wanted to protect the little girl in the militar
y coat from whatever was lurking in this dead forest. She could hear the child’s breathing and the child’s beating heart like a wounded bird inside her own chest. The dry branches scratched her face and reached for her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils. Somewhere far ahead, she could hear the sea.

  Ute sprang out of bed angrily and put her aching head and stiff body under the dribbly shower. How absurd – to come all the way to a godforsaken coastal retreat in South America, and then dream of her mother in 1945.

  The water was lukewarm and a sign said in English: “Care about the water. There are not many left in the world’s.” She smiled and just then she caught a glance of her face in the shell-encrusted bathroom mirror. She instantly wished she hadn’t. Her face was ablaze with a fresh flowering of eczema. It must have flared up on the long bus ride here. Sometimes it happened overnight.

  She looked like a clown – a big, sad, female clown. The area around her mouth and her eyelids and eyebrows was flaming red. Nothing new of course, but it never failed to make her stomach sink. It had settled down in the mountain air of the Andes. The coast with its damp climate was good for the skin too. But buses and dust and heat were a killer. She applied some Eucerin – she didn’t go anywhere without a tub of it – pushed her damp hair into a peaked hat and pulled it low over her face. The practical, unisex look of the travelling Nordic gringa.

  The air outside hit her like a Pacific beach wave. It was warm, sweetly putrid and full of insect noises. The giant plants were an intense chlorophyll green, and flowers she’d never seen before peeked from foliage, their faces seductive and predatory. Birds fluttered in a bush nearby. Two locals in Panama hats were hose-watering each plant section by hand. They murmured a muffled hello into the ground in response to her greeting. She crunched along the pebble path. The low-hanging sky was overcast, mushroomy. It looked about to rain.

  Ute climbed up the stairs to the veranda of the main house. There was nobody about. Then, suddenly, she saw water through the foliage and – across the water – a glimpse of wooded land. They were right on the seashore! More bizarre yet, across the water came the roar of a large animal, punctuated with the squawks of monkeys – or was it birds?

  She walked from the veranda down a gentle slope to the sandy shore. It was a small beach. There was a crumpled towel near the water line. The water was a mossy colour. It looked still, stagnant even, like a lake. Ute took off her sandals and walked to the water’s edge. It was warm like soup. To the right, the water continued all the way to the horizon, opening up and losing all land as it went. To the left, there was a sharp bend. The land across was a swimmable distance. It looked like a tropical island. The invisible animal startled her with another roar. She almost felt the land shake.

  “She’s just a cub,” rang a loud voice over her shoulder. Ute yelped and jerked around. She hated it when people crept up on her. A man stood right behind her with a loutish grin. “Imagine what she’ll be like when she grows up, right? A man-eater.”

  He had a loud American accent and a big, square head. He was a bit shorter than her and built like an ox, with a thickset neck, a naked beefy torso covered in curly black hair and thick limbs. His vigorous cheeks were flushed with health. Still, his face had a touch of Latino charisma.

  He towelled his hair – his alert, dark eyes still on her. The dense flesh of his olive-skinned body shuddered.

  “Didn’t mean to give you a fright,” he said.

  “What’s on that island?” she nodded across the water.

  “It’s not an island, it’s the other side of the inlet. It’s the deepest inlet along the coast. Used to be a river, but it’s been drying up and now it’s more like an inlet. Runs for a coupla miles after this bend and stops. What you see up there,” he pointed to the horizon, “is the Pacific. Between here and the Galápagos, for five hundred miles, there’s sweet fuck-all.”

  “Really?” Ute said. She was the last person he should be teaching geography to. She’d been to this continent half a dozen times.

  “So Puerto Seco is this way, along the shore,” Ute said.

  “You got it.” He tossed the towel onto the sand and started stretching his upper body, not shy to show her the carpet of black hair that covered both front and back. “Where you from, Europe?”

  She’d heard Europeans say “South America” and expect to be congratulated for having guessed a person’s nationality. It was the same thing.

  “Britain,” she said.

  “Max,” he stretched out an arm, “from Miami. What’s your name?”

  “Ute. Spelt U-T-E,” she said, enunciating “ooh-tah” slowly, as she always did. She felt somehow naked even though he was the one in shorts and nothing else.

  “Uddar – that’s a funny name,” he said, crushing her hand into pulp. She squealed involuntarily and withdrew it.

  “Sorry.” He released her hand. “I always forget.” She hoped he was leaving soon.

  “So what sort of a name is Uddar?” he said.

  “German,” Ute said. And to prevent further probes, she asked, “What’s over there? Some kind of park or?…”

  “Refugio para animales,” he said in perfect Spanish.

  “What, there’s an animal shelter there?”

  “Right. Right. Villa Pacifica – the peaceful place, get it?” But he was more interested in her right now than the shelter. “Are you the better half of the tall skinny guy with the girl’s name? Jenny, is it?”

  “Jerry,” Ute corrected. He sniggered.

  “My wife’s over there too, with your Jerry, giving him the guided tour. I hope that’s all she’s givin’ him.” He guffawed.

  “How long have you been here then?” Ute asked. She was tempted just to wade into the water and swim across – anything to get away from him.

  “Ah, let’s see. It feels like I’ve put down roots here. Two days? Yeah, two days and three nights. And I’m bored, man. We’ve seen all the sights. Like, the dry forest, the beach. Yawn. The animals are kinda cool. For about five minutes, then they get boring. But Eve loves it. I guess I’m doing it for her, doin’ it for my lady. Cos I believe in synchronicity, making things happen, you know, right place, right time. Place like this, no way it’s not gonna work for us. I offered her a flash vacation somewhere, dunno, in the Bahamas. I said: ‘Look honey, you can have a six-star vacation, or I can take you somewhere simple, back to nature and all that. Eco-logical.’ And anyway resorts are so boooring, man. But this is kinda boring too.”

  Ute tried to imagine the sort of woman who would voluntarily couple herself with this man. She couldn’t, and this made her curious.

  “So how long are you staying?” she said, trying to sound casual.

  “Ah, long as it takes. We’re working on number four, and aaah, she’s not young any more. They say after thirty-five a woman’s fertility does a nosedive.” He winked at her conspiratorially. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine,” she said dryly. “And you?”

  “Same. Thirty-nine. Getting on. Getting on and there’s so much left to do before I turn forty. Nah, don’t wanna think about turning forty.” Before Ute could ask what he had to do before forty, he shot at her again. “But for you ladies, it’s worse. After forty, it’s no good. Have you and Jerry, aah…”

  “No,” she interrupted him, and kicked the water.

  “Eve’s a baby machine. A super-breeder. It’s probably a done deed already. Usually takes only about a week. And how come you missed the train?” He cocked his head, studying her. She felt like a finger was poking inside her.

  “I’m sorry. None of your business.” Ute strode up the sandy bank, picking up her sandals. This happened very rarely, but she was actually shaking.

  “Hey, hey,” he said after her, mock-playful. “What did I say! I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  Back on the veranda, Mikel was smoking over a book and an espresso.

  “Good morning,” he said brightly. “Or, rather, good afternoon.”

  “Hi,” Ute sm
iled. Last night, after three days in Jerry’s company, Mikel had seemed manic, but after Max he was positively sedate.

  “Howdy,” Max said. He’d come up behind her. Their host crushed out a cigarette in the already full ashtray. Max kept going down the path to his cabin.

  “Everything all right?” Mikel enquired, leaning back in his chair. He was like a sprung mechanism. Parts of his body were always moving. Right now, his cracked heel was measuring time in his flip-flop.

  “I didn’t know there was an animal… shelter across there.” Ute sat down in a wicker chair at the next table.

  “Oh yeah. We’re a sanctuary for endangered species. Animals, humans…” He coughed a warm emphysemic laughter. “Animal trafficking is a massive problem here. The Galápagos in particular. It’s big business. Up in the Andes it’s even worse, cos nobody gives a shit. Local government will pay thousands of dollars in prize money for cockfights, but they won’t sponsor animal refuges like this. Not that we’d ever ask them. But people who are trying to do this elsewhere, they all run on volunteer labour and goodwill, and donations. We give them money too, we sponsor two animal shelters in the Sierra up north. It doesn’t take much money. We get a lot of the animal food for free, and we’ve already got everything else in place. Of course we’d like it to be bigger, but there’s only so much space. We can’t cut down the forest. It’s all protected dry forest around here, for ten kilometres that way.” He pointed inland with a nicotine-stained thumb. His fingernails were dirty and broken. “And you know the funny thing? We’ve got animal traffickers coming here, offering us money for the lion cub, the monkeys, the iguanas, the parrots. The bastards, they just don’t get it.”