A Bright Moon for Fools

by Jasper Gibson

  Lola, undeniably, had a growing affection for Harry Christmas. In San Cristóbal, even this clumsy pink bear counted as exotic. His behaviour was certainly unusual. What other man in this village always offered up his seat if she was lacking? Who else rushed to open doors for her, or thanked her for everything she did, however small? And he was funny. That morning he had been in the kitchen, a ventriloquist singing English songs with fish heads for puppets. Even the old man had joined in, clapping and banging on the floor.

  Lola was wearing a brightly-coloured wrap-around dress, hair pulled back against her head, face sparkling with make-up. All the women dressed up on Saturday night. The village had three bars and they were all open, people crowding them inside and out, drinking rum and beer, playing cards and pool on uneven tables. As he watched Lola saunter off into a group of friends, he was beckoned to a stoop where the fishermen from his first walk around San Cristóbal were drinking Cuba Libres from plastic cups, Vallenato shaking the house behind.

  “Epalé! Hey, brother!” they welcomed him. “Sit down, sit down.” Orlando, Gabriel and Ricardo shook his hand, pulled him down and they all sat there, spitting, drinking and watching the village alive.

  “So,” asked Gabriel, “have you—” and he made an obscene gesture with his fingers, “with Lola again yet? Hoch-too.”

  “No.”

  “Verga! Why not, brother? Hoch-too.”

  “For some reason, women don’t think hanging from a tree covered in vomit is very romantic.” The men collapsed over each other with laughter. “But you’re working on it, right?” Christmas smiled. They all slapped him on the back.

  “Good luck, brother. And if nothing happen, no problem. Plenty of women here, and they all like you. We hear them talking. Hoch-too.”

  “Yes, man – don’t worry. We support the English team, oíste?”

  “Roo-ney,” said Ricardo, pointing at him.

  “Beck-ham,” said Orlando.

  “George Best, more like,” said Christmas. They gave him a blank look.

  “Can you dance salsa?”

  “No.”

  “Oooo,” they crowed in a low tone of disapproval, biting on tongues and shaking their heads. “If you want a Venezuelan woman, brother – hoch-too – you must learn salsa. If you can’t dance with her, what’s she going to do? She’s going to dance with someone else.”

  “Tonight we go to the disco. It’s just over there. Everybody goes. You coming, brother?”

  “No,” replied Christmas, “Absolutely not.”

  The disco was a youth club that had once been a basketball court. Roofed above the bar but otherwise open to the night, couples with expressionless faces simulated sex to calypso music. Men and women of all ages crowded the tables, lined the walls and filled the street outside. They danced through the steam of cigarette smoke, bright ends blinking in the dark. The music was so loud Christmas felt as if the beat was trying to take over his heart.

  He sat with his companions a little way off from the dance floor. They had a bucket of Cuba Libre bobbing with ice and lime, from which they scooped full their plastic glasses. Christmas watched them drink. He was given a glass of Coca-Cola. Again and again giggling women of all ages tried to pull Christmas onto the dance floor but he refused. He watched his friends dance. The steps were simple but there was something too unfamiliar in the rhythm. He thought he’d look like a fool.

  The music changed from calypso to soca and then to salsa. The younger ones sat down and the older generation stood up. Christmas felt some ice hit him in the chest. Lola had arrived with her girls.

  “Verga – why aren’t you dancing, gringo?”

  “Because I have already suffered enough embarrassment in this village for one lifetime.”

  She blew a note of disagreement through tightened lips. “Rubbish,” she said, scooping her glass into the bucket while his friends nudged him in the ribs.

  “Christ alive, it’s like being a fucking teenager,” he mumbled in English. Lola and her group sat down on a nearby bench. Man after drunken man asked her to dance. She waved her finger, tutting ‘no’. Ricardo asked her and he watched her pout towards him. The man returned slapping him on the shoulder. “OK, brother. Now you have to help me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she would dance with me, OK? But only if you dance. Hoch-too.”

  “With her?”

  “She said she doesn’t want to dance with you.” Christmas deflated. “Anyway she says you won’t because you’re a coward.”

  “What!” Christmas looked over. Lola bared her teeth at him with a smile. He tightened his lips and blew a note of disbelief. “Dammit,” he grumbled, “Dammit all to hell.” Christmas stood up. His friends cheered. He walked over to Lola’s bench and bent his face down close to hers.

  “Hello, gringo.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Do you want to say something?”

  “Yes. Would you –” and he turned to the women next to her “– like to dance with me?” Lola sucked her teeth. “What’s your name?” he continued.

  “Beatriz,” said the woman.

  “Harry,” he replied and he lead her off to the middle of the dance floor, followed by Lola and Ricardo. He felt very pleased with himself, but his moment of victory soon dissolved. Everyone was looking at him. They were laughing. He had no idea how to dance salsa. He held Beatriz’s hip. He held her hand. He wobbled about a bit. Beatriz was biting her lip, giggling, trying to guide him. He looked at Lola, and she cocked her eyebrow. “It’s like a nightmare,” he whispered to himself, “a waking bloody nightmare.”

  “Como?” said Beatriz. Christmas didn’t reply. He carried on tottering unevenly to the trumpets and drums as best he could, praying for the end of the song. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a child was dancing beside him, doing an impression of his efforts. Overcome with this excuse to stop dancing, Christmas let go of Beatriz and chased the kid around the dance floor to the whoops of the crowd. He caught the kid and tickled him without mercy. Sheeting with sweat, Christmas returned to his bench. He fanned himself with his hat and ran ice cubes across his face and neck. With the confidence of having accepted her challenge, he tried to talk to Lola. She sucked her teeth and turned away.

  “Hey, brother,” nudged Ricardo, “why didn’t you ask Lola to dance?”

  “But she told you she didn’t want to dance with me.”

  “Gringo,” he said, pouring Christmas another Coke, “you don’t know nothing about women.”

  At that moment a scream went up beside them. A fight had broken out and a group of women were running out the way. Two men had each other by the T-shirt, throwing wide punches. They fell onto the floor. Others tried to pull them apart. One wrestled free from the pack, picked up a length of wood and dodged around the side, swinging it into the other man’s face. It cracked into him with a sound so sickening it stopped the fight. The unconscious man was lying in the dirt, surrounded, while the other was pinned up against the fence, men shouting into his face. Christmas watched the loose body be picked up and carried away as other scuffles started, calmed, then started again. The music stopped. Everyone was shouting.

  “Always the same,” said Lola beside him. “I’m going home.” He followed her out into the quiet of the village, people buzzing past them to get in on the action. The night creaked with crickets.

  “So,” he started, “you don’t have a boyfriend?” He couldn’t believe the stupidity of his question.

  “Do you know,” she said, “the last boyfriend I had said he wanted to marry me – si, Señor – and he proposed to me, and when he proposed to me, he got my name wrong. Not just a little bit wrong. Completely wrong.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. ‘Ah’.”

  When they arrived home, Lola stopped at the doorway. The old man was on the sofa, stuffing white crumbs of crack into the end of his rough cigar. His hands were shaking. He hadn’t noticed them.

  Chri
stmas expected Lola to start shouting and explode into the room, but she didn’t. She watched him hold a flame to it, inhale, hold the smoke, let it out through his nostrils, his face licked with pleasure. Then he began to cough, an ugly cough that chipped and tore things out of him. Tears were running down her cheeks.

  44

  Christmas dreamed he was at an old friend’s house that was somehow also a pub. Emily was there but she was different. She was taller, with long blond hair. She was in a glamorous dress and came out of a room with another man whom he didn’t recognise but then later in the dream became Simon, his business partner when he ran a travel agency. Simon, his staunch friend and drinking companion, whom he had finally driven away by insulting his wife and children. Simon, who no longer accepted his calls, to whom he still owed several thousand pounds, was smiling with forgiveness. Christmas was overjoyed. He rushed over to greet them.

  “Simon and I are getting married,” she told him as his guts screwed into a jealous ball. “He’s good for me.”

  On Sunday there was a storm. The mountains disappeared and the horizon came forward onto the quayside. Out of the haze, rain littered the ground before it beat the roofs, silencing everything. They gathered at the doors to watch it rearrange the earth and bring that brewed stench of regions in the sky that filter black space. They monitored the water level in the yard. They rescued clothes and machines.

  The electricity still worked so, beneath the clatter, they watched television with the volume up high. Some senior officials in the state-run Mercal, the distribution network for free and cut-price food for the poor, had been arrested on corruption charges.

  “Always corruption!” said Lola picking her T-shirt off her belly. “Now we’re teaching the children something different, but my generation is used to another mentality: you want something done, you pay for it. They criticize Chávez for wanting to stay longer as president, but these problems take a generation to solve. Maybe two.”

  “So,” ventured Christmas, passing the old man a lighter for his cigarette, “everyone in San Cristóbal supports Chávez?”

  “She loves Chávez,” he replied. “She is one hundred per cent chávista.”

  “Chávez is a great man! For one hundred years Venezuela was ruled by thieves who cared nothing for the people, who robbed the people, so the people were poor. Now, with Chávez, poverty is twenty per cent less.” She bent back the points on her fingers. “Now, with Chávez, we have education. He built our school here in San Cristóbal. He built the infocentro so we have computers and we can educate ourselves about the world. He started Misión Ribas to teach reading and writing, especially to the indigenous people who did not have the schools before. He started Misión Robinson for the adults who never had the opportunity to get a high-school degree. He has changed what we teach to the children. They used to teach us your history, European history, but we didn’t know about our own history. They taught us about the Christian martyrs in Rome, but we didn’t know about the history of the indigenous people, of black people. Chávez has changed all that.

  “Before Chávez almost half of the people didn’t have clean drinking water. Now almost everyone does. He start Misión Barrio Dentro for when the people are sick – twenty thousand doctors in poor communities. There used to be one hospital miles away; now there are three places in this area where the people can get treatment for free. And you!” she pouted towards the old man, “When are you going to let them take a look at you?”

  “Bleurrgh.”

  “Did you know that Chávez came here, to San Cristóbal?” Lola shifted to the edge of her seat, “and he came on his own! Driving a jeep, like one of us. The people were looking and they say, ‘Verga! It’s Chávez!’ And everyone ran out and they see – look, it’s Chávez. Like this he came to our village. Not hanging by his foot and covered in vomit.” Christmas bared his teeth at her with a smile. “Before Chávez all the big companies, the electricity, the petrol, the cement, the phone – they were all were owned by foreigners and they took all the money out of Venezuela. Chávez took them back for us. He is freeing the people, like Bolívar before him.”

  “He’s not afraid of the gringos,” smiled the old man, smoke curling out from behind his gold teeth.

  “Are you chávista too?” Christmas asked him.

  “Well, I used to be, yes of course, but now I listen to him, the state must own all the companies, the state must own all the land and I think ‘Bleurrgh. He is just another man who wants to be in charge of everything.’”

  “You are a stupid old man! The state must be strong to fight against the international companies. What about you, Harry? Are you for Chávez?” Lola was glaring.

  “Well ... anything that helps people out of poverty or gives them more freedom, I’m for, but I’m not for anyone. I don’t think its people’s job to be for leaders. It’s the people’s job to criticize, and—”

  “Typical!” she snorted with disgust. “Latinos are for everyone. Gringos are always for themselves.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “Why don’t you make a movie about Chávez? So people can learn the truth.”

  “Me?”

  “You are a movie producer, no?” It was what he had told her when they first met. Now he could admit he was lying. Now he could admit that he’d just said it to impress her.

  “Documentaries aren’t my genre.”

  “What about a movie about an old crack addict? Killing himself! In front of his family!”

  “All my life I worked,” exclaimed the old man, one finger raised, “now I can do what I want!” His nose was running. A shouting match ensued. Then a news item appeared about Iraq – scenes of wreckage after a suicide bomber blew himself up in a queue of police recruits.

  “May Christ help them,” said Aldo.

  “They’re Muslims,” said Christmas, “Christ is the last person they want to see.” Aldo knelt in front of the television and began praying. “May the love of Christ help them to stop this violence.”

  “Verga!” shouted the old man, throwing the cigarette packet at his head. “Get out of the way, boy!”

  “May the love of Christ help Grandpa,” he continued, “and the gringo.”

  “What’s wrong with us?”

  “You are wicked men.”

  “Lucky for you,” said Christmas.

  “For me?”

  “Where’s Christ without the wicked men? Without us he’d be a nobody.” Tanks rolled across a wall and into someone’s front room.

  “Don’t tease my son. Aldo is right,” Lola puffed, “This violence ... they will not win their war with violence. Wars are not won with violence.”

  “I am afraid they are,” said Christmas. He wanted to keep quiet, but could not. “We won the Second World War with violence. Quite a lot of it, actually.”

  “You won that war because the Americans helped you. You won it with friendship.”

  “Yes, but they helped us win it by dropping a great big bomb on the Japanese. Which was pretty violent.”

  “Men!” she cried, “Verga! Always you want to make everything about fighting!” Christmas looked at her father. A weary look advised silence. Then the old man started coughing.

  “We must persuade,” said Aldo, “with faith and reason, just as the Christian martyrs converted the pagan Roman emperors, with the force of good deeds and God’s love.”

  “And horse racing,” said Christmas.

  “‘Horse racing’?”

  “There was this early Christian saint called Hilarion, lived out in the desert, did a lot of miracles, cured a lot of illnesses – that sort of thing. Anyway, a Christian racehorse owner in Gaza asked him to bless his horses because there was a rival pagan who was winning all the races with the help of a sorcerer. Hilarion blessed the horses and the next race they won, and they kept on winning, and this so impressed the crowd that they all started converting.”

  “You see!” the old man shouted, lifting himself onto his elbows, “I a
m no sinner!”

  “Shut up! And you!” Lola turned to Christmas, “You would be a different person if you really were as intelligent as you think you are.” Christmas didn’t understand what she had just said. He filed it away for postponed consideration. Lola left the room.

  “Hey, don’t worry,” said the old man, “she’s like that all the time. What does she know? She’s just a woman. But we are men! Can you lend me five dollars?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  The old man took a deep drag of his cigarette and wiped his nose with his fingers.

  “But your money is coming soon, right? To the bank in Guiria?” It was what he had told him when they first met. Now he could admit he was lying. Now he could admit he was just embarrassed by his circumstances.

  “Yes.”

  “When do you think it will get here? Before the festival?”

  “I hope so.”

  The old man lowered his voice. “Then you can help me, OK? Like I helped you. Lola didn’t want you here, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “It was me that said, ‘Cut him down from that tree and bring him to my house. He is our friend.’”

  “I know, and I am very—”

  “So you can help—” Lola came back in the room and the old man stopped talking. He gave Christmas a wink and then pouted at his daughter behind her back. “Anyway today is a special day. Today is God’s day,” he started up again in a loud voice. Aldo turned round from the television screen, scowling. “And gringo man, I need your help.”

  “With church?”

  “Verga!” cursed the old man. “Don’t be stupid! With the cockfight.”

  45

  Under an avuncular saman tree dripping with Spanish moss, the cockpit was a circular wooden fence surrounded by benches. At the weekend the villagers brought their roosters down to square off against each other and, if the conditions were mutually agreed on, to fight. What these conditions were, Christmas never found out. Young men wandered round shouting at each other. Eventually there was calm, two chickens were chucked in the middle and the shouting started again. Betting was done on a double-or-quits basis only.