“Yes,” Ute said. “I think a lot of people feel this way. Have you seen the visitors’ books?”
“No, what visitors’ books?”
“Oh, they’re downstairs, there’s a whole shelf of them. Just… guests of the Villa writing down their comments. Apparently, everybody who stays here writes something down. Those who don’t, either never arrived, or never left.” She tempered this with a sardonic smile.
“Oh, I like the sound of that,” Tim said in a dreamy voice. “Never smell another reheated airplane meal again. Never have to be insulted again by drunk redneck pigs in economy class… I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my job, it’s got a lot of perks, but sometimes I dream of escape. I guess everybody does.”
Suddenly here was Liz, coming up the stairs.
“Oh my God, have you seen the rain?” She shook her hair.
“No I haven’t,” Tim said. “So how was your skinny-dipping with the gaucho?”
“Oh, you’re just jealous, Tim!”
“You bet I am.”
“Well, it didn’t happen. He had to go across to take care of the animals. Something about the lion pit getting filled with water. I offered to go with him and help, but he wasn’t interested.”
“You know, I hate to disappoint you, but I think he’s the lone-wolf type,” Tim said.
“Bummer.”
“I wish,” Tim sighed.
“I better go and change. See ya later.” She waved and was gone.
Ute walked to la tortuga, soaking up the warm rain like a moving sponge. The water was soothing on her inflamed face. Through the netted window, she saw that Jerry was sitting on the bed inside the netting, scribbling something.
She took off her sodden shoes and pushed the door open. “Hi. Are you all right? Have you been lying here all day?”
“I’m all right. Where have you been all day?” He got up, stepped out of the bed netting and put his arms around her, as if he knew that she needed soothing. She embraced him back. It felt like they hadn’t touched for ages.
“Just to Puerto Seco and back,” she said. “What’s the time?”
He looked at his laptop. “Coming up to five.”
“I don’t know where the days go here. Do you?” Ute was taking her clothes off and looking for somewhere to hang them to dry. But there was nowhere dry inside or out.
“We’re on holiday. That’s what happens when you’re relaxed and enjoying yourself,” Jerry said breezily, and ducked back inside the bed netting.
“Speaking of which,” Jerry continued, “why don’t you come and join me in here?” He started removing his own clothes. “In this biblical deluge, we may as well get biblical.”
Ute smiled. She was tired and clammy inside and out. And yes, vaguely, distantly aroused. She stepped inside the netting. Jerry was reclining on the bed, naked and white, so white he was like a glow-worm in the darkened room. His middle was slightly thickened, despite his slender boyish physique. Even boys hit forty, eventually, and became soft and doughy around the waist, and Jerry was about to hit forty. Some men – Carlos, for example – held up well and would look powerful all the way into their seventies, she suspected, but Jerry was a desk worker and wasn’t going to be one of them. It wasn’t that she cared much about that, but she was suddenly filled with sadness for him.
He drew her to him and she closed her eyes, feeling Carlos’s hands over her breasts and back and buttocks, Carlos’s hard panting body and urgent weight on her. When she reopened her eyes, the fantasy vanished. She was herself again, and for a moment she was afraid that Jerry could see the betrayal in her pupils. She listened to the impersonal rain.
Jerry’s hand was stroking her back in that affectionate, therapeutic way he had. She disliked it, but had never found a way of letting him know.
She had never been unfaithful to Jerry, except for a short, drunk, non-penetrative tumble in the sheets of a dingy hotel on a starless Bolivian night. There were mitigating circumstances – namely that the Norwegian was very insistent, which was flattering; she had felt achingly lonely and far away from Jerry, and not sure whether he really loved her – and besides it was years ago, at the start of her guide career, so long ago it almost hadn’t happened. She had been unfaithful in her mind before, but never like this. Still, she had no doubt that Jerry had been fantasizing for years about having sex with beautiful women – well turned-out university colleagues, young students, perhaps even random passers-by or foreign waitresses. Beautiful women were everywhere. It was only natural.
“Ute, are you crying?” Jerry propped himself up on an elbow behind her turned back and put a hand on her tense shoulder, trying to peer at her face. “Ute, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ute whispered, and turned her face into the pillow. She never cried in front of Jerry, why start now? She never cried full-stop. Jerry switched on the dim bedside lamp.
“It’s the rain.” Ute cleared her voice and pulled herself together. This was true, in a way. It was everything else and the rain. Jerry massaged her shoulders.
“Has someone upset you?” he said gently.
“No. It’s… all this stuff, coming up to the surface. Out of nowhere.”
“What stuff?”
“Just stuff. Dreams. Memories. Stuff I never think about. Like my whole life is flashing before my eyes.”
He continued massaging her shoulders as she spoke, and she wished he’d stop. It made her feel like a sick dog about to be put down by a kind animal-shelter worker.
“Your parents. Childhood stuff,” Jerry guessed.
“No, it’s not just that.” Tears made the eczema on her eyelids burn, so she dabbed her eyes dry with a corner of the top sheet.
“Maybe it’s just the… I don’t know, the stillness? Being still?” Jerry guessed again. “After being on the move for a few weeks, you know, you suddenly find yourself alone with your thoughts.”
“Yes, I know you think I’m not introspective enough,” was her brittle reply, and she sat up.
“Nonsense.”
“But you do. You think I’m addicted to travel because it’s a way of escaping from myself.”
“Well, isn’t all travel an escape in some sense?” He had stopped stroking her. They were now both propped up against the pillows.
“Isn’t writing an escape in some sense?” she said.
“Sure. But it’s an escape into a world you yourself have created.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“Well, maybe there isn’t a difference,” he said irritably. “I suppose one is more passive than the other.”
“So sitting at your desk is somehow more active than taking a trip around a foreign country.”
“Well, perhaps not more active, but I think it’s more imaginatively involved. But so what? I don’t see why we have to compare. Why are you so defensive anyway? There’s nothing to be defensive about!”
“Anyway,” Ute said. “I don’t think it’s being still. I think it’s this place. Even this smell… There’s something about it.”
“The incense you mean?”
“Yeah, the palo santo bark. It’s supposed to have cleansing and anaesthetic properties, but it’s having the opposite effect on me.”
“Really? I rather like it. It’s quite… exotic. Look, if you’re not happy staying here, we could just leave tomorrow. I mean… I don’t mind.” He did mind. He was loving it here. If they left tomorrow, he’d be sulking for the rest of the trip.
“No, no, we don’t have to leave,” Ute roused herself and sat on her edge of the bed, her back to him. “Besides, I haven’t done my research yet. I’ve just been so unproductive here. I don’t know what I’ve done with my time.”
“Just relax. We’ve only been here three days.”
“It feels like three weeks,” she said, and scratched the angry eczema patch in her elbow. She wanted to tell him about Consuelo, about the paintings, her theories on this place and its inhabitants. But the moment for it had passed.
�
��Well, funny you say that, because I’ve done more writing here in three days than I normally do in three months – it’s amazing. It must be the palo… the incense thing.”
“The rain has stopped,” Ute said.
15
The rain hadn’t stopped: it had quietened down to a weak shower, invisible in the dark. Under the canopy of moisture, Villa Pacifica breathed heavily with its animals and humans, all scattered in the darkness among the dripping plants. Birds and monkeys screeched from the other side.
Along the white-pebbled paths, the lanterns came on. The main house was lit up with a warm, festive glow. Or so it must have appeared to Luis, his mother and Helga with the baby strapped at her front, who were arriving there for the first time. From the upstairs games room, Ute watched them walk in a single file.
She was upstairs because Max – and everyone else – was downstairs. Jerry was browsing through a book. The others were finishing their dinner. Lucía and Héctor were looking through ledger books at the reception bar. Mikel was out walking the collies on the beach. And Carlos was of course on the other side. The Villa Pacifica family in perfect harmony.
Ute and Jerry had managed to eat before Max entered the scene, all excited after his afternoon in the animal shelter.
“Hey, guess what! Guess what!” he’d shouted. “I fed the lion cub today, and then we moved her to the new pit. She was good as a kitten. And we fed the jaguar, two kilos of rabbit meat – boy does he eat. It wasn’t a live bunny this time round…”
Ute didn’t feel social tonight. She was subdued and a bit fragile. Being in constant proximity to fellow tourists she didn’t like always unsettled her. It used up the precious energy she needed to stay alert and record things accurately. Still, the idea of their dingy tortuga with nothing to do but lie on the bed and listen to the buzzing of mosquitoes wasn’t alluring either.
“Hey, hey, hey, we’ve got new arrivals! Buenas!” Max’s voice carried up. There was the scraping of chairs downstairs. Jerry came up the stairs.
“New arrivals from Puerto Seco,” he said. “I think they’re just here for dinner. Local guy with his mother, and a sort of feral-looking woman with a baby. I thought you might want to meet them.”
“I met them already,” Ute said. “In the village.”
“Oh, did you?” He sat next to where she was reclining, on the cushioned bank by the windows. “Are you OK?”
“Fine. Just not in the mood for Max tonight.”
“Yeah, I know. Everybody’s sick of him. Except the Australian woman, she finds him hilarious.”
To confirm this, Liz started braying with laughter downstairs. The baby joined her with a piercing cry. Ute covered her ears. If this was their baby, it would be calling out to them, an adorable tadpole from the amoebic depths of their combined genetic pools. It would no longer be annoying. Down on the path, Mikel was returning with the two collies.
“You know that I love you, don’t you?” Jerry said suddenly, and flicked his fringe. He stared at her with an imploring, puppy-like look.
Why, she wanted to ask, why do you love me, still? No other man has ever loved me, not even my father. Carlos here doesn’t even notice me. Are you sure it’s love and not habit?
Ute put her hand on his thigh reassuringly. Because that’s what the statement signalled: he needed to be reassured, not she. “Of course,” was her flat answer.
“I’m going to have some cheesecake and coffee. Want to join me?” Jerry said. He was visibly relieved. She felt a pang of pity – for him or for herself, she wasn’t sure.
“Sure.” She smiled. She felt numb, and it was better that way. Jerry never drank coffee in the evening.
Downstairs, all the diners had gathered around Mikel on the veranda. Luis nodded at Ute in friendly acknowledgement. Helga and the mother ignored her.
“…Heavy rains and storms over the next days and weeks,” Mikel was saying. “Perhaps not tomorrow or the day after, but definitely some time this week. The entire coast will be affected, so I’d advise those of you who want to avoid it to leave first thing tomorrow and drive inland, away from the coast.”
“What’s he saying?” Liz asked Max.
“There’s a storm on the way,” Max translated. Eve looked relieved. Finally, there was a reason to leave.
“But we just had one now,” Liz said.
“Could we leave tonight?” Alejandro asked anxiously, and looked at Alma. She blinked with heavy eyelashes and said, “Whatever you say, corazón, I don’t mind.”
“Indeed, do as you like, corazón,” Mikel mocked good-naturedly, then got serious again. Ute caught a whiff of alcohol off him. “But you’ve seen the holes in the coastal road and the bad signposting. And anyway, it’s coming to nine o’clock, where are you gonna spend the night? There’s nowhere to stay within three hours of driving, in any direction. That’s why I said, first thing tomorrow. I think the night will be calm.”
Lucía and Héctor were listening from reception, their elbows propped on the carved wooden bar. With his crazy hair, glasses and Hawaiian shirt and shorts, Mikel looked like a mad zoology professor gone native in some tropical jungle, evangelizing to a loyal gathering of disciples.
Except they were neither loyal nor disciples. All they shared was the random fact of being inside Villa Pacifica tonight. Otherwise, their lives had nothing in common. Luis’s mother gave no sign of interest in the world. The baby had closed its eyes, its tiny face screwed up in disgust, as if saying, “Take me back to where I came from, I don’t like it here.” Helga uttered something in German to Luis, but he was already addressing the group.
“I remember reading in Germany about El Niño on the coast along here – what, about three, four years ago?”
“Last year,” Mikel said.
“What’s happening?” Jerry asked Ute.
“There’s some bad weather on the way.”
“No kidding,” he snorted.
“More rain and thunderstorms.”
Jerry frowned. “I thought rain was good news. Didn’t they want rain because of the droughts?”
“Yeah,” Liz joined in. “We heard the same on the Galápagos. They’ve had a really dry year, and they were hoping for some rain this summer.”
“Sí, we want rain,” Mikel said. “But not El Niño.”
“I don’t know about you guys,” Tim said in a languid way, “but I’m loving it here, So if you wanna go” – he flicked a hand at them – “then go. Liz, what do you reckon?”
“Yeah, we’re gonna stick around another coupla days,” Liz agreed. “We’ve just come face to face with sharks in the Galápagos, we’re not gonna be scared by a bit of rain.”
“I like your attitude,” Max approved. “We’re not going anywhere. I wanna see the storm too!”
“All right, you stay right here and fight it out with the elements,” Eve said with controlled fury. “The children need me, and I’m going first thing tomorrow. And I’m not packing your things this time.”
“Bueno,” Mikel said, and lit up a cigarette. “When you’ve decided, let me know.” Then he withdrew to his habitual table around the corner at the other end of the terrace, out of view.
“So,” Luis said in Spanish, turning to Ute, “will you and your husband be staying another day? I still want to go snorkelling tomorrow, if it’s not raining… I don’t believe El Niño is gonna hit again. It doesn’t ever happen less than five to ten years apart.”
“Even if it’s raining, we could still do it, it doesn’t matter,” Ute said to Luis.
“Perfect,” Luis beamed, and explained in turn to his partner and mother that they were staying another day.
“All right folks, so who’s staying for the snorkelling?” Max said, and put up a hand. “Alejandro and Alma are chickening out.” Alejandro opened his mouth to say something, then shut it.
“You’re not going,” Max counted Eve out. She’d just taken a bite of cheesecake.
“Mi amigo Luis here has more guts. You’r
e stayin’, right?”
“Right,” Luis said in an American accent and crossed his short, muscular arms.
“The Australians are staying, right?” Max looked at Liz.
“Yep,” she chimed.
“Uddar and Jerry?” Max turned to them.
“Are you taking a census or something?” Jerry chuckled.
“OK,” Luis said in English. “We need minimum six persons. How many we have now?”
“I definitely wanna go snorkelling,” Liz said.
“What’s the story with the snorkelling?” Tim asked.
“It’s from the Agua Sagrada beach, on the other side,” Luis explained. “We catch a boat at eleven in Puerto Seco.”
“Sounds good. I mean” – Tim looked at Liz – “we snorkelled a lot in the Galápagos. I feel like I’ve seen every fish under the ocean – but what else are we gonna do here, eh Lizzie?” Liz agreed.
“Are we going?” Jerry asked Ute.
“I’m going. I need to check it out for the guide.”
“OK, four people,” Luis summed up. “With me and my mother, six. Enough.” He turned happily to the pile of seafood Héctor had placed before him.
“Plus two is eight,” Max yelled from the reception bar, where he was helping himself to another piece of cheesecake.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, remember?” Eve reminded him from the veranda.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Max shouted back.
Soft music started up inside the reception lounge. It was ‘Dos Gardenias’ from the Buena Vista Social Club.
“Dos gardenias para tí,” Mikel crowed out of tune from his table round the corner… “Te quiero, te adoro, mi viiiida…”
Max couldn’t bear to be upstaged, and snapped into action.
“Dos gardenias para ti…” he sang along in a loud baritone, and went down on one knee by Liz’s chair, offering her the remainder of his cake. “Un beeeso…”
Liz giggled, took the cake, and popped it in her mouth. She was a practised party girl. Tim arched an eyebrow and looked at the seated Eve, who was busy folding a napkin into tiny pieces. Helga was breastfeeding the baby, and Luis looked at Ute, as if asking “What’s going on in this madhouse?” Ute shrugged with a philosophical non-smile.
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