Villa Pacifica

by Kapka Kassabova

  Ute got up and stumbled outside. Her head was spinning. It was definitely the middle of the night. Barefoot, she walked in the direction of the noise. It was coming from the back gate behind their cabin. Inside the closed gate, she found two guards in plastic chairs, playing cards. Their rifles were on the ground.

  “What’s up, what’s that noise?” she asked them.

  “Supporters of Gonzales,” said one.

  “It’s cos they know Señor Mikel isn’t here tonight,” said the other.

  She listened. True: whoever they were, they weren’t selling fruit. They weren’t even selling a president – Gonzales was already in power. Ute caught fragments like “power to the people” and “an end to the division of wealth” and “we will implement revolutionary changes”. Spotlight beams hit the gates.

  “What are they doing here?” she asked. “Why don’t you tell them to get lost?”

  “Because we don’t know who they are. They might be armed.”

  Someone was coming down the dimly lit path. It was Alejandro. His slow-moving body was encased in satin boxer shorts and a T-shirt that stretched across his belly.

  “What’s happening?” he demanded. The guards explained. Next, Max turned up.

  “What’s that noise, amigos?” he asked. The guards explained again.

  “Give me that gun.” Max reached out for a rifle.

  “We’re not opening the gate,” one of the guards said. “They may be armed.”

  “We’re armed too, goddamn it, what do you have these rifles for?”

  “Señor Mikel—” the guard began.

  “Get out of here,” Max pulled the rifle from his hands and unlatched the wooden gate. The guard tried to stop him, but Max shook him off. The other guard, galvanized into action, grabbed the second rifle to back him up. Pointing the rifle upwards, Max stepped outside and yelled with powerful lungs, “Basta yaaa!” But the music continued, so he fired a shot in the air. Ute had never heard a gunshot so close-up. It was deafening. The obnoxious noise died down at once.

  “Why the party?” Max shouted.

  “Who are you?” A male voice shouted back.

  “I’m the guy in charge here. What’s up, amigos?”

  No reply from the voice except an engine being started. The Cumbia came on again. The light beams moved away from the gate. Whoever they were, they were leaving. Soon, the roar of the engine died away, muffled by the forest.

  The two guards sniggered and scratched themselves sheepishly. Max stayed outside the gate some more, strutting over the tyre-trodden grass, rifle in hand. Eventually, he came back inside. “Take it.” He threw the gun at the guard who managed to catch it.

  “See? Easy. No pussyfooting with these guys.”

  “True, true,” the guards said.

  Alejandro was full of awe. “They could’ve shot you,” he said.

  “Nah. They wouldn’t dare shoot a tourist, and they saw I was a tourist. They knew they’d get into trouble.”

  The three of them headed back, leaving the guards to their card game.

  “Where’s your other half?” Max asked Ute. She was wondering the same thing.

  “He’s sleeping,” she lied. “He doesn’t mind noise.”

  “Sleep like a baby, huh? So what’s going on,” Max moved on, “why’s this place got so many enemies?”

  “Yes, very strange.” Alejandro shook his head in agreement.

  “I tell you why.” Max stopped, forcing the other two to stop as well. Ute glanced at his hairy chest and looked away. “Cos they killed someone here, that’s why. They killed a gringo, man, and got away with it. Why? Cos they’re gringos themselves.”

  Alejandro didn’t seem surprised. He had no doubt heard this from Max already, on the way back in the boat tonight.

  “They did it man, they killed someone. The little guy in the kitchen, what’s his name, he knows everything, he told me on the boat. Uddar heard it too, right?”

  Ute didn’t say anything, and Max continued: “This place is fucked up. I mean, you saw the gaucho tonight, with his gun—”

  “You had a gun too,” Ute said. “And you didn’t have to use it.” She started walking again.

  “Well, I used it to protect us.”

  Ute took the tortuga turn-off from the main path, but Max caught up with her, grabbed her shoulder and turned her to him.

  “Don’t touch me,” she hissed in his face.

  “I was protecting you,” he shoved a finger at her. “Cos that Jerry of yours would have left it to the women. Now you go back to your man.”

  “Max, for Christ’s sake!” a tired voice came from the darkness behind them. It was Eve. She was standing on the dark path leading to the Whale cabin, in shorts and baggy T-shirt. Max let go of Ute, and she walked to her cabin, shaken. Jerry still wasn’t there. She shut the door quickly and bolted it.

  She lay in bed, her head and heart thumping. She hated the sight and sound of Max, but in his brutish way he was right. Jerry was not a man who could protect his own. He wasn’t even there. Of course none of this mattered back home, where there was no need for animal instincts because their life was set up so safely that you could be a perfect coward and no one would notice. You could go through life standing for nothing, fighting for nothing, believing in nothing, and therefore leaving nothing behind you. Not even a memory. You could slip through the very same safety net that held your life together and, again, nobody would notice. Nobody would try to stop you with a single rifle shot in the night.

  Jerry loved her. But his love was complacent, passive, a shadow that walked a few steps behind him. And she loved him, no doubt about that either. She had always loved him. A life without Jerry didn’t bear imagining. He was her family, he was all she had. Without him, she was alone in the world. She had to love him.

  She squeezed her eyes, and hot tears trickled out of them and onto the already damp pillow. Humidity must be close to ninety per cent here in the wet season. She rehearsed the facts for her new entry in the updated guide. The National Park of Manteño covers twenty-thousand square metres, with a rich wildlife above eight hundred metres, including howler monkeys.

  ‌12

  Ute dreams that a woman is walking along an empty beach. The woman is either Lucía or her, it is hard to say. She can’t see her face. The sea is lapping gently to one side, and sand dunes stretch on the other. She is walking towards something important, something vital, and enjoying the serene path that is taking her to it. It’s a kind of extended holiday. But gradually anxiety rises in her. She has been walking for ages, and still nothing in sight. How far is it? It’s too late to turn around now. She’s been walking all her life. And this is not a beach. It’s a desert with a sea on one side. Some beaches are like that, and both sand and water are uncrossable. She is alone and, even if she screams, no one would hear. She screams anyway. But her throat is so parched that nothing comes out except a rasping sound, a noise that an iguana with a severed tail might make. She has definitely missed the turn-off. She is doomed to wander in this desert, on this endless, pointless, barren holiday, until she grows old, and that’s not so far away. She was a young woman when this journey started. And now the sand of her life has crumbled, blown away by impersonal winds. She has nothing left. She starts running, but the sand is heavy and sluggish, it’s pulling her back, she’s wrestling with the fabric of time itself, a hopeless battle.

  Ute woke up whimpering with distress. Jerry was sleeping next to her. She took a gulp of warm water from the plastic bottle on the bedside table and lay still for a while. She could almost taste the grit of sand at the back of her throat.

  She looked at Jerry’s breathing face and had the unsettling feeling of seeing someone she didn’t know. Someone very familiar of course, someone you saw every day, like the man at the corner shop, but, all the same, someone she didn’t know. She didn’t know his dreams, the contents of his laptop, what he got up to in the middle of the night.

  She looked at her useless wat
ch. Just past nine. Which could mean a.m. or p.m. She must get away today, as far from Villa Pacifica and its restless inhabitants as possible. She was still in her crumpled and damp clothes from yesterday. She ran a hand through her hair, splashed water on her face, applied some Eucerin to the inflamed patches, avoiding the mirror, brushed her teeth, put on her flip-flops and went outside. The morning was surprisingly fresh. Water sprinklers gurgled among the giant leaves. Birds chirped above her. All was well.

  On the veranda, Carlos was eating an omelette. His greasy hat sat next to his plate.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Morning,” Ute pushed her hair over her eyes. Her lips were dry, her face felt taut and scaly.

  “It’s very quiet. Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “Nobody’s up yet.” Carlos’s strong jaw kept chewing.

  “What’s the time?”

  Carlos shrugged. “Probably about six-thirty.” He didn’t have a watch.

  “Oh.” Ute sat in a chair two tables away from him. She felt disoriented.

  “My watch is playing up,” she said.

  “Bueno,” Carlos said.

  They were silent for a long time, then he said: “Conchita’s not here yet. If you like muesli or something simple, I can get it for you.”

  “Oh, I just wanted some hot chocolate.” He got up. “No, please finish your breakfast first,” Ute added quickly.

  “It’s OK, I need to get myself some more coffee.” He walked to the kitchen in his unhurried, deliberate way. She couldn’t picture him being on the run from anything or anyone. She couldn’t imagine him having regrets. He looked like someone who did everything for a reason, even plot somebody’s assassination. He was someone she would trust to dig a well with his ropey arms and bare hands when stranded in a desert. She looked for the baby iguanas on the high plant and, amazingly, they were still there, on the same leaf, in their decorative yin-yang shape.

  Perfection existed in the world of animals and plants. And perhaps even in the world of humans. Lucía and Mikel’s exclusive, reclusive love was perfection of a kind. It was something worth holding on to at any cost.

  Carlos returned with an espresso, a hot chocolate and an orange juice. She thanked him. It was strangely intimate, like a breakfast the morning after, but without the night before.

  He stirred a spoonful of sugar into his cup, then looked at her, amused.

  “You don’t have to sit at the other end of the terrace. Do I smell?”

  Ute’s face flushed. She had always been terrible at flirting, and being in a secure relationship for so long had crushed the last stalks of womanly artfulness in her.

  “No, no,” she said quickly, avoiding his eyes. “I just didn’t want to invade your space.”

  “I can look after my space all right.”

  Ute moved one table closer to him, spilling her chocolate a little on her trousers. She wiped the spillage with a napkin. “I heard the shot. Last night,” she said.

  “It scared the animals. I don’t like using my gun. But it was either that or getting into a scuffle.” He paused, and Ute wondered how a scuffle between him and Max might look.

  “Max is bored,” Carlos continued. “Occasionally we get that kind of guys. I don’t know why people like that come here. I don’t know what they expect to get out of this place. They always come with their families. Spoilt wives and fat kids.”

  “Or fat wives and spoilt kids,” Ute said, but Carlos didn’t smile. “Are you going to ask him to leave?”

  “Oh no. It’s not up to me. That’s Mikel’s decision. It’s his business, he deals with the guests. And anyway, Max is so bored he’ll want to leave soon. It doesn’t worry me either way. Eventually, everyone leaves.” Carlos put his hat on.

  “Last night… There was somebody at the back gate…” She wanted to keep him a bit longer.

  “Yes. Noise carries a long way here.”

  “Who are these people?”

  He shrugged. “Could be Gonzales fanatics. Could be animal traffickers disguised as Gonzales fanatics.”

  “But why do Gonzales supporters harass a retreat like this, run by someone like Mikel? I mean, he’s got Che Guevara in the kitchen!” She hoped Carlos would smile at this, and he did. He shrugged again.

  “Politics don’t follow logical lines here. For the Gonzales hardliners, any gringo who’s making money from a business here is an imperialist. Unless he shares that money with them. You know, I came here to get away from politics. But even in the jungle, you can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere, it’s in the air. That’s why I stick with the animals.” There was a short pause, then he went on:

  “It could be anyone. It could be malicious folk from Puerto Seco harassing the guests with noise. We’ve had this sort of thing before, though it’s got worse since Gonzales was elected. People have been brainwashed by his rhetoric. Let’s throw the IMF out, let’s throw the World Bank out, let’s throw everybody out, and that’s all good in my view, but he’s taken it too far. Did Mikel tell you about the mangroves?”

  “Lucía did.”

  “Yeah well, you can imagine how Mikel and Lucía feel about that.”

  “Can I ask you something,” Ute said suddenly. “When were the last elections? You know, when Gonzales was re-elected.”

  “Gonzales hasn’t been re-elected,” came the answer, just as she’d feared. “It’s his first term as President.” And he looked at her hard, as if to say, “Silly gringa, you’re writing a guide about this country and you can’t even get the basic facts right.” He got up. “Anyway, time to feed the animals. We’re moving the lion cub today.”

  “Where to?”

  “Her new pit. See you later.”

  Ute watched him disappear down the white path.

  A voice startled her. “You’re up early.” Héctor stood in the lounge. Seen from the brightly lit veranda, he was a small, dark outline. He was well turned-out as always, as if he got out of bed pre-groomed. She wondered if he’d lurked in a dark corner of the lounge, listening to their conversation.

  “I guess I am.” Ute said.

  “Shall I get you breakfast?”

  “I thought Conchita…”

  “She hasn’t arrived yet, but I’ll make it myself. Don’t want our guests to go hungry.” He gave a wan smile.

  “Did you hear the commotion last night?”

  “What commotion?”

  “The music outside the gates and the gunshot.”

  “You mean the guards shooting?”

  “No, it was Max. It was resolved pretty quickly.”

  “Good,” Héctor said. “I’ll talk to the guards.”

  Don’t bother, Ute thought, but didn’t say it. Perhaps shooting at intruders was a regular occurrence here, nothing to get excited about. Perhaps the whole thing had been a bad dream.

  Héctor brought her a second hot chocolate and guava juice. He hadn’t asked her what she wanted. She thanked him.

  “And continental breakfast,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but a statement. “What are you doing today?” he then enquired.

  “I haven’t decided yet. My husband is still asleep.” It was a lie. She wasn’t waiting for Jerry in any sense. She had already decided she’d spend the day without him, exploring, moving. Physical inactivity was always bad for her, and especially here.

  “Yes, he must be tired.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I went to bed very late, but he was still here working on his computer. Is he writing a story?”

  “Yes.”

  “A story about Villa Pacifica?”

  “I don’t know.” She forced a smile. “You can ask him.”

  “I don’t like to intrude,” he said, and went through to the kitchen.

  And here was Eve, creaking up the veranda steps, puffy-faced. She sat at Ute’s table and tied her hair into a ponytail.

  “How are you?” Ute tried to sound friendly.

  “I’m all right.” Her voice was hoars
e. “Given that Max and I almost killed each other last night.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ute said. “What were you arguing about?”

  “Oh, just everything, as usual! I wanna go, he wants to stay, which is ridiculous, because I’m enjoying myself here and he’s bored like hell, which is precisely why I want to go. Cos when he’s bored, he’s impossible. Thank you.” Héctor had brought her a milky coffee. “I want him to stop behaving like an idiot and shooting at people in the middle of the night. He does everything by force. He thinks that’s the only way to get what you want. He always goes the other way to how I want it, just for the hell of it.” She stopped stirring her coffee and took a sip.

  “Look,” Ute pointed at the baby iguanas on the plant leaf. “Baby iguanas. Have you seen them before?”

  “Yeah,” Eve said absently, and looked at Ute with long-lashed, sad eyes. Ute felt sorry for her for the first time. “You know what? If Max went running in the forest today and never came back, life would be so much easier.”

  The casual intimacies of Americans abroad always amazed Ute.

  “I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said.

  “Sure I mean it. I don’t wanna see him today. I don’t wanna be here when our host – what’s his name?”

  “Mikel.”

  “Yeah, when Mikel comes back and asks Max to leave, I don’t wanna be here. So, what are you two gonna do today?”

  Funny, Ute thought: from the boiling hell of that marriage, Ute and Jerry’s seemed blissful.

  “I haven’t decided yet. Jerry’s working on something, so I thought I might go for a walk…” That sounded like an open invitation, so she quickly added. “But I’ll talk to him first.”