by Jon Bilbao
Joanes placed the bucket near the bed and added the smallest pieces of wood to it.
“It’s too damp,” said the professor. “It’ll need something else if it’s going to catch.”
There was nothing suitable in the cabin. Joanes opened his backpack and pulled out the notebook where he’d made his notes about the reduction to the hotel offer the night before. He tore off a few blank pages, scrunched them into balls, and put them inside the bucket, under the sticks of wood. He held a lighter to them. The wood resisted. Joanes was forced to go on tearing out pages until he reached those where his notes were written. He tore them out, too. At last, the wood caught fire. It let off a load of smoke, and the residue at the bottom of the bucket gave off an acrid stench as it melted. But the fire gave them light and heat. The professor turned off the flashlight.
The three of them watched the flames in silence.
In spite of the cabin, the hurricane, and the exhaustion, Joanes was pretty pleased with himself. He’d shown conviction. He was sure that nobody expected that when the hotel owner told him get out, his response would be a cool “fine by me.” He felt a certain degree of pride at spending the night in that place, in the middle of the wilderness and a Category 2 or even Category 3 hurricane.
He thought about the telephone call he’d been waiting for all day. There in the cabin, in the thick of night, surrounded by the whistling wind, all of that seemed a million miles away. And then, as he watched the fire, he realized with absolute certainty that the call was never going to come, that he would never supply air conditioning to that hotel. To his surprise, it didn’t bother him in the slightest. He told himself that his business would survive. And if that wasn’t the case, well, that didn’t matter, either, because he’d find a way to keep going.
As soon as he’d warmed himself up a bit, he moved away from the professor and his wife. With the intention of catching a few winks, he sat down on the floor with his back against one wall, stretched his legs, and closed his eyes.
He imagined himself adrift in the waters of the Caribbean, lying on a piece of driftwood, a fragment of some vessel or another. He was exhausted, on the brink of passing out. He’d spent hours at the mercy of the waves and currents. He could hardly keep his head above the surface.
Then an island appeared. It was very close, but until that moment he hadn’t been able to see it. The current gently drove him toward it. He was escorted by a flock of shrill seagulls flying above him.
The waves left him on a deserted beach. His legs could barely support the weight of his body when he set foot on the sand. He stumbled a few steps forward, just enough to reach the shade of a jungle of coconut trees, where at last he could collapse to the ground and give in to his tiredness. Coconuts thumping against the sand as they fell from the trees were the heartbeats of his sleep. Red crabs scurried around with pincers raised, like frightened Lilliputians, not daring to touch him.
“Did you two hear that?” asked the professor’s wife.
Her husband, who was sitting on the floor next to her, looked at her wearily. Joanes opened his eyes. They couldn’t hear anything other than the wind and the rustle of the vegetation outside.
“It was probably a branch snapping,” said the professor.
“It wasn’t a branch. It sounded like something metallic. Like jangling.”
They listened again, but couldn’t hear anything like jangling.
“It could have been anything. The wind dragging along some—” began Joanes.
But he was interrupted by a noise coming from outside. Sure enough, it was a metallic jangling. It sounded close. Next thing they knew, they heard a deep, masculine voice ordering someone to keep walking and then reassuring him, saying, “We’re here now.”
A moment later, the door rattled. Someone had pushed it from the outside.
“What the fuck!”
More blows came and almost brought down the door.
“Manco! Beluga! Are you in there?”
Inside, nobody said a word. They watched the door, their hearts beating hard in their chests.
“Open the door, you sons of bitches! Can’t you see it’s us? We’re going to drown out here!”
“Don’t open it,” the woman whispered to her husband. “If we keep quiet, they’ll go away.”
The professor tutted.
“They’re not going to go. They’ll see the fire.”
The shouting stopped suddenly, and the jangling sound came back, moving around the cabin. It paused in front of a window. Whoever was outside peered through a crack in the boards.
“I can see the light! What’s up with you guys? Are you going to just leave me to drown out here?”
The jangling retraced its path back to the door, and the banging started up again, this time even louder. The door shook, as if about to come off its hinges. Whoever was pushing was putting his whole weight behind him. With each bang came a whimper of pain. And still, the jangling.
Joanes got to his feet.
“What are you doing?” asked the professor.
“If he knocks it down, we’re fucked.”
“You’re going to let him in?” asked the professor’s wife.
Joanes didn’t have time to answer. An even louder bang made the board bolstering the door fall to the ground. The rope still held the door closed, but now there was a crack wide enough for the man to poke his head in and furiously ask, “Manco! Beluga! What the hell is up with you?”
The crack opened on the opposite side of where the group was, which meant they were in the intruder’s blind spot.
Since nobody answered, the man who had been pounding on the door decided to finish the job. Through the crack, a foot-and-a-half-long machete blade poked in. The man proceeded to begin cutting the rope.
“Wait a second!” shouted Joanes, “Wait!”
He ran toward the door to rescue the rudimentary lock system that was keeping the wind and water from flooding in.
Later, he’d ask himself over and again why he’d done it, why he hadn’t stopped the stranger from getting in. He could have asked the professor to help him keep the door closed. They could have shouted that there were too many people inside and that there was no room for any more. They could have buttressed the door with more boards. They could have dragged the bed over to block it. They could have done a lot of things.
He unhooked the rope. The wind swept open the door with a bang, knocking Joanes on his back. Eddies of air filled the cabin, and within a second the interior wall facing the door was splattered with leaves.
The professor was on his feet, and his wife had sat up in the bed. They watched as the soaking figure, well over six feet tall, stepped inside, looked at them one by one, and grunted, “You’re not Manco and Beluga. That’s for sure.”
He was protected by a waterproof poncho that had been mended with strips of tape. His feet were wrapped in trash bags attached with elastic bands, and he had protected his legs with more bags, also strapped on with bands. The man was covered, shoddily but from head to toe, in plastic. He was wearing a backpack, also wrapped in trash bags, with makeshift padding on the straps made out of rubber foam. From the backpack hung a frying pan, a pot, and other odds and ends. And yet this wasn’t the source of the jangling sound that followed him. In one hand he was holding the machete, and in the other a wooden cane. He placed the machete inside a leather sheath he wore on his waist and threw back the hood of his poncho.
He was a black man, his face covered with deep lines and his hair and beard woolly and gray. A chain poked out from beneath his poncho—this was the source of the jangling. It was attached to his waist. The other end of the chain was attached to the collar of a chimpanzee, which came trotting into the cabin. The monkey moved as far away from the door as the chain would allow, looking for a dry patch of ground. Once he’d found one, he crouched down and, imitating his
master, looked at Joanes, the professor, and the professor’s wife.
“Good evening,” said the black man.
An ambiguous accent from the American South obscured his words.
Before Joanes or either of the others could react, he closed the door, pressed it shut with his shoulder, and secured it with the rope. He guessed the function of the board now lying on the floor and placed it back against the door. Then he looked around, his beard dripping wet.
“Is the lady all right?”
“She’s fine,” answered her husband.
“Yes, she’s fine. But she can’t walk,” added Joanes.
The stranger chewed over this information, then simply nodded as if he understood everything now, and carried on as if he’d forgotten they were there. He left his cane leaning against the wall and, taking his time, proceeded to take off his backpack and the poncho. He removed the sheath of plastic bags from the backpack. He also took off the bags wrapped around his legs and feet. Dragging the monkey’s chain behind him, he took the poncho and bags into the bathroom. When he came back, he grabbed his backpack and the cane and, with the chimpanzee trotting along behind him, walked around the cabin looking for a corner that was more or less clean and dry.
Joanes had moved back to the fire with the others, and from there he didn’t miss a single detail of what the new arrival and his pet were up to.
Under the poncho and the plastic bags, the stranger was wearing a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a jacket, which was also denim. The clothes were so filthy that they’d taken on a kind of drab, brownish hue. On his feet he was wearing a pair of heavy work boots. His pants were held up at the waist by a piece of cord, and attached to that was the machete’s sheath, which he also took off before sinking to the floor with a sigh. He rested his back against the wall and closed his eyes. The monkey hopped in front of him in one swift motion. The chain swept the trash on the floor to one side. The chimpanzee sat down, attentive to his master’s every move. Every now and then, he scratched his nose or looked over his shoulder at the others. He was soaked, and the water dripping from his chin formed a puddle beneath him.
“I haven’t forgotten about you, my friend,” said the stranger, opening his eyes.
He produced a threadbare towel from the backpack and began to carefully dry the monkey, who settled himself down between his mater’s legs and closed his eyes.
“Lift your arm,” said the man. “Lift it up,” he repeated before raising his own left arm by way of example.
The chimpanzee copied him so that his master could dry him properly. Afterward, they repeated the routine with the other arm. As he rubbed him down with the towel, the owner said, “That’s a boy. Today the heavens opened up right on top of us. Right, my friend?”
Once he’d finished with the monkey, he used the same towel to dry his own face and then wiped it across his beard and neck. He folded it, and put it away again. The man rummaged again in his backpack, this time pulling out a plastic bag, from which he then produced an onion. Using the machete, he peeled it and cut it in two, giving the group huddled around the fire ample opportunity to see the weapon in all its glory. In the places without nicks, the blade of the knife was perfectly sharpened. The handle was made of wood and had been reinforced with rope.
On seeing the master take out the onion, the chimpanzee began jumping up and down on the spot, making a few imploring squeals.
“You know it’s for you. Of course it is. Come here.”
The chimpanzee did as he was told, squatting back down between his master’s legs, his back resting against the man’s chest. The stranger set one half of the onion aside and with the other proceeded to massage the monkey, rubbing him with the side that had been cut. Not long after, the man began singing in English, in a deep, gentle voice.
“What are you doing that for?” the professor’s wife wanted to know.
“Don’t bother him,” said her husband.
But she repeated the question. The man had stopped singing.
“The lady isn’t bothering me,” he said, without interrupting the massage. “I do it because it relaxes him. And after what he’s been through today, he needs to relax. My very good friend here can’t handle these sorts of upheavals anymore. Right, my friend?”
The chimpanzee was indeed very relaxed. He’d slowly curled into himself, and now his chin was resting on his chest. He looked like he was just about to fall asleep. His hands were resting on his knees with his palms facing up, allowing the others to appreciate how extraordinarily long his fingers were.
“I thought you were Manco and Beluga, two friends of ours who come here sometimes.”
“What’s the monkey called?” asked the professor’s wife.
“Gagarin. Like the astronaut.”
“Gagarin.” She repeated.
“That’s right. It’s the name they gave him in the circus. At first he didn’t much like it. Me neither. But we’ve both gotten used to it. Isn’t that right, Gagarin?”
The chimpanzee threw him a sleepy glance then closed his eyes again.
“You worked in a circus? What did you do?” she wanted to know.
“That was a long time ago, ma’am,” said the man. “Gagarin did what monkeys do. I cleaned and did a little of everything.”
“Did you act? Can you do anything?”
“Darling,” said the professor. “Don’t bother the man.”
The stranger laughed, a sort of broken snort through his nose. The kind of laugh you could easily mistake for an irritated sigh. He stopped stroking the chimpanzee and offered him the half onion.
“Here, buddy.”
Gagarin opened his eyes, grabbed the onion slowly, and took a bite. He had enormous, yellow fangs. They could hear him chewing.
“No, ma’am, I didn’t act. I wouldn’t have known where to start.”
“Did you look after Gagarin?”
“That I did do, yes. And I liked looking after him a lot. We became real good friends.”
“Did you rub him down with onions?”
The man laughed again.
“Hear that, Gagarin? This good lady is asking if I used to rub you down. No. I learned that later on.”
“Did you escape together from the circus?”
The answer took so long in coming that they all thought he wasn’t going to give one. The man petted the chimpanzee, who was polishing off his half onion.
“Those sons of bitches told us they weren’t earning enough money and that they were going to sell to the animals. So we left.”
“Gagarin looks very tired.”
“He is, ma’am. Gagarin’s no spring chicken, and we’ve walked a long way today.”
Just like his owner’s, the monkey’s face was covered with wrinkles. The lines of his face sunk downward, as if it were collapsing, sliding off in sheer exhaustion. His eyes were watering.
“And he seems very sad,” the professor’s wife added.
The stranger nodded slowly.
“You’re right about that. We’re both real sad. Isn’t that right, my friend?”
“Why are you sad?” Joanes interjected.
“Gagarin’s lost his girl. She escaped three days ago. The two of us have been looking for her ever since.”
Joanes reacted without surprise. He’d already noticed some moments earlier that Gagarin’s collar was exactly the same as the one worn by the chimpanzee he hit.
“How did she escape?”
“Lolita was very smart. And a bit naughty, too. She worked out how to get her chain off.”
The man stopped short and gave his pet a few pats on the back.
“I’m sorry, Gagarin. I mean she is ver y smart.”
The monkey gazed into the distance with what they all understood to be a pining look.
“Are we to understand that this Lolita is als
o a chimpanzee?” asked the professor.
“That’s correct,” answered the stranger.
And then he asked, “Do you mind if I make use of the fire, friends?”
“No. I guess not,” replied Joanes.
From the odds and ends hanging from his backpack, the man picked out a grease-incrusted metal grill with four little support legs. He also took a pan, which he filled with water from the plastic jerry can that he was using as a canteen. Next he delved around in the backpack and took out a packet of instant soup. Carrying all of this, he moved over by the fire. He fueled it with more wood, placed the grill over the flames and the pot on top of the grill, and then sat down to wait for the water to boil. The chimpanzee stayed where he was, still linked to his master by the chain and dozy after the massage and his frugal dinner.
Joanes studied the stranger. He was an old man, or almost old. He could have been any age between fifty and seventy; his disheveled appearance made it hard to tell. Not only was his face covered in wrinkles, it also had fresh cuts and scars and infected mosquito bites on it. Two wide, gray bags hung from under his eyes. He watched the flame intensely. He looked as though he could’ve happily sat there in silence for the rest of the night.
“What do you three do?” the professor’s wife asked him. “What do you do with your monkey friends?”
“I don’t understand, ma’am.”
“What she means,” Joanes clarified, “is what do you do for a living.”
“We do the odd show for the tourists. Things we picked up in the circus. We earn a little cash that way.”
Joanes looked at the chimpanzee, who was dozing on the floor with his legs curled up. Just like the monkey he’d hit, this one had lost some hair on several parts of his body, and in other parts the hair was gray. He was a sorry sight. Old and weary. You could see his ribs. Joanes couldn’t picture him dressed up in a tutu or a clown’s hat, scampering up streetlamps and capering about for the entertainment of tourists, who could have their picture taken with him for a few more pesos afterward, as a keepsake.