‘Cool!’ said Fabián. ‘Maybe we’ll witness a famous sinking. Something historic.’
Boom.
‘Jesus, what is that? They must be using some pretty heavy weaponry.’
‘Could be mines going off.’
‘Could be torpedoes. Maybe the Peruvians are after one of our submarines.’
‘Do we have any submarines?’
‘Dunno.’
Boom.
‘That’s some battle.’
‘Yeah. Shit. This is serious.’
‘What the hell’s going on out there?’
‘Pelicans,’ said a voice.
We both swung round. An olive-skinned girl of about ten stood behind us. She wore a light summer dress in yellow and red, plastic-framed glasses that had broken and been repaired with Sellotape.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Pelicans,’ she said, again. She had a slight American accent when she spoke English, but I could tell it wasn’t her first language. ‘It’s brown pelicans, out to sea, dive-bombing for fish. They make that noise when they hit the water. Are you naked under that towel?’
Fabián clutched at his waist.
‘No,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, pelicans?’ I said.
‘What do you think I mean, pelicans?’ said the girl.
‘Pelicans?’ said Fabián, pointing a finger. ‘Bullshit.’
‘It’s rude to point. And my daddy says you shouldn’t say “shit” to strangers.’
‘I see. Where is he today?’
‘Just over there. Those are our cabins. Are you going to come and stay with us?’
‘I think we might,’ I said, picking up my bag. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Sol,’ she said, giving a cute little curtsy.
* * *
The girl led us away from the beach, between the guest cabins and towards a bar area under a thatched awning. In season this would presumably be packed with surfers, but now it was empty, save for a hippy with dirty, greying hair. He crouched near the bar at a charcoal brazier with his back to us, so low that his beard almost brushed the ground. He wore linen shorts and a white T-shirt cut off at the shoulders to reveal shoulders mottled with sunspots. From this angle, he might have been a hermit, crazed with hunger and solitude, waiting to devour some last resort of a morsel that had been unlucky enough to find its way on to his grill. As we got closer, we could see that, in fact, he was turning thin strips of beef on long wooden skewers. The flesh had curled in the heat, the cooked side blackened and hissing with juices and the raw side stretched over the curve, taut with bloody fibres. Hearing us approach, he looked up.
‘Hey, baby,’ he said to the girl. ‘What you got for me?’ Californian.
‘Hi, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Customers.’
‘Want a room, fellas? Or some meat on a stick?’
‘Both, please,’ said Fabián, dropping his rucksack heavily on the sand.
Sol’s father introduced himself as Ray. He repeated our names several times after we had spoken them, as if the words were new to him and he was trying them out. He pronounced ‘Fabián’ like ‘fable’. Ray’s appearance was daunting – his beard so overwhelmed his face that the rest of his features seemed to be peeking out timidly from behind it, and his teeth looked vicious for being framed with so much hair – but after we’d got used to his looks, Fabián and I quickly warmed to him.
Ray owned the cabins, but the business was known locally as ‘Juan’s’. Juan was a local fisherman who had decided to build beach huts for tourists when he retired in the late 1970s. Ray had been his first guest, staying before the majority of the cabins had even been finished (and when the town was still more fishing village than surfing resort). Ray had fallen in love both with Juan’s cabins and with his nineteen-year-old daughter, and put in an offer on both of them. Ever since then, the cabins should technically have been called ‘Ray’s’, but Ray hadn’t seen the point in changing the name. He liked the idea of continuing to honour his late father-in-law, and he didn’t think it would necessarily be good for business to have a gringo’s name over the door.
The guest cabins were clustered loosely around a central two-storey building that served as the owner’s house, and the main bar. One other shed housed a makeshift lavatory suspended over a sawdust pit and a shower fashioned from an old chain-flush cistern, with a bamboo drainage grille in the floor. The smells of charcoal smoke and lime juice clung to the whole area, and beneath the constant hum of suspended clouds of insects you could hear the trickle of an underground stream.
Normally, he assured us, Ray had plenty of paying customers, but for now we were his only guests. Although he was, in his own words, ‘a bum’, he admitted to having plenty of inherited money with which to compensate for the fact that Juan’s ran at a loss for most of the time. Like many Californians, he was a bum with a private income.
‘Why would I ever want to go back to the States, man?’ he proclaimed. ‘I have everything I need here. Can you think of a better job in the world than to show people how to have a good time?’
That evening, we built a bonfire on the beach and sat round it eating meat on sticks and drinking cold beer. I tried to imagine what it would be like to stay on this beach for twenty years, like Ray; to be so sure that this was the place for me that I would happily settle within the square mile. It seemed impossible to me. I couldn’t envisage feeling strongly enough about any one place or person to want to bind myself to it indefinitely.
Ray’s wife was called Cristina. She claimed never to have cut her hair, and it flowed abundantly from silvery roots right down to a dark, frayed little wisp somewhere below her hips. She wore loose-fitting clothes in indigo and pink, and her quiet confidence and comfortable, lived-in face were a reassuring counterpoint to her husband’s more agitated demeanour. In spite of her generous build she moved gracefully; a wise gorilla to the manic monkey she had married.
Early in the evening, Sol fell asleep face down in the sand, at which her mother calmly scooped her up and took her off to bed. When she returned, Cristina instigated what was obviously a familiar ritual. There were large, flat stones on the beach, gathered round the fire. You waited until each stone was so hot you could only just bear to touch it, and then passed it round the fire, each person taking turns to absorb the heat. Meanwhile, Ray’s main occupation was preparing more meat on sticks: soaking the strips in fresh lime juice before seasoning them and suspending them on a grill over the smoking fire. We alternately passed round the hot stones and the skewered strips, moonlit clouds towering above us like silvery nuclear explosions. I remember thinking that these charred, tangy mouthfuls, washed down with litre bottles of Pilsener and bulked out with handfuls of soggy rice from a pot by the fire, were the best thing I had ever tasted. My mouth loaded to bursting, I looked over at Fabián. Like me, he had been eating steadily for some time, but had now taken one of his leftover skewers and begun poking around inside his plaster cast with it.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘I lost something down the cast,’ he said. ‘Itches like crazy.’
‘What is it?’
‘My Maradona ’86 medal. I can’t lose it. It’s one of the only things my dad ever gave me.’
The Maradona medal was a stained, bent object which Fabián kept on him at all times. He would flick it from finger to finger in idle moments, and it was the prop for many of his disappearing coin tricks and other sleight-of-hand gimmicks. Fabián had claimed to me early on that it was a genuine player’s trophy from the 1986 World Cup, but that had turned out to be nonsense put about by his father when Fabián was young. It was nothing more than a freebie given out by a cereal company at the time, but I knew that it had attained for Fabián a kind of totemic power, and I guessed that the part about it being a gift from his father was true.
‘You aren’t going to lose anything up there,’ said Ray. ‘Wait till the cast comes off. Have a stone.’ Fabián threw the skewer into the fire and took the s
tone from Ray’s outstretched hand.
‘Now,’ said Ray. ‘What brings you boys here? Forgive me for saying so, but you’re a little younger than my usual guests.’
‘Treasure hunting,’ I said, before Fabián had a chance to break his promise.
‘First I’ve heard of any treasure hunting,’ said Fabián, amused at my desperate efforts to keep him off the subject of the clinic.
‘You don’t know the story?’ said Ray. ‘Cristina, baby, tell them the story of Francis Drake.’
‘Only if they want to hear it.’
‘Course they want to, don’t you guys?’
‘Okay, but they probably know more about it than I do.’
‘Trust us: we don’t know anything,’ said Fabián, burping mid-sentence.
‘Nothing at all,’ I agreed, keeping quiet about what I knew. To have shown too much local knowledge would be as good as to declare to Fabián that I had manufactured the newspaper cutting.
‘Okay then,’ said Cristina, gesturing out to sea as she spoke. ‘So, it’s fifteen eighty-something, and out here, a great sea battle is in progress.’
‘Just like this afternoon,’ said Fabián, settling in.
‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘Please carry on, Cristina.’
‘Your Englishman Drake has been chasing a Spanish galleon for months. His men are tired and hungry. They have been away from land for so long that they are living on seagulls, which they have taken to fattening up with the flesh of dogs for a few days before they cook them, to stop them from tasting too fishy.’
‘Cool,’ I said.
‘Why not just eat the dogs?’ said Fabián.
‘No more interruptions,’ said Cristina. ‘In spite of this hardship, the men are not disheartened, because the prize in their sights is so magnificent and they have resolved to do anything to get at it. Drake is chasing a ship that Spanish sailors nicknamed the Cacafuego because it was so fierce in battle that it looked like it was shitting fire. After chasing it all the way up the coast from Chile to Peru to here, Drake finally captures it, and all of the treasure on board. It is a triumphant victory. He is out there, ready to take both of the ships back to Plymouth and his waiting queen, where he will receive a hero’s welcome. Not only his own ship but the Cacafuego as well, and all of the silver in its belly.’
‘Nice work,’ said Fabián.
‘Very nice,’ said Cristina. ‘Sadly, the Spanish have other ideas. Before the last of them are captured, they have enough time to scuttle the Cacafuego.’
‘What’s that?’ said Fabián.
‘It’s when you sink your own ship to stop it being captured,’ Ray explained. ‘Very noble behaviour. Personally, I would just say, “Take the ship, dude.” Not these guys.’
‘Do you mind?’ said Cristina, laughing at Ray in spite of herself. ‘So, the Cacafuego is going down. But Drake vows not to lose one piece of Spanish silver. His men manage to rescue all the silver from the Spanish ship just before it sinks. Now, this, on top of what the Golden Hind already carries, creates a serious overload of treasure. One of the Spanish prisoners starts calling Drake’s ship the Cacaplata, because it is now virtually shitting silver.
‘It’s actually a problem. The ship is now carrying so much treasure that Drake doesn’t know what to do with it. Sailors are skimming silver coins off the side of the ship to watch them bounce on the water. Even the youngest little cabin boy – let’s call him Hawkins, like in Treasure Island – even he is running around on deck with shining silver buttons in his jacket. The cook begins experimenting with it in the food. Silver is spilling over the sides with every lurch of the ocean. Do you get the picture?’
‘We get the picture,’ said Fabián. ‘There’s a lot of silver.’
‘There is a lot of silver,’ said Cristina. ‘People aren’t even bothering to steal it off each other. There is so much of it around that it has lost all of its value. You see?’
‘We see,’ said Fabián, getting impatient. ‘So what happened?’
‘Drake calculates how much weight they need to lose to get back to England without sinking, and then he has to decide what to do with the rest of it. He sails into a tiny cove, near here, on an island called Cano – which we now know as the Isla de Plata. While the ship is taking on water and turtles for their journey home, Drake gets hold of a copper bowl and starts ladling up equal amounts of the treasure to his crew. And when he’s done that, he throws seventy-two tons of it over the side, somewhere in the bay. He notes the spot so that, eventually, he can come back and claim it. But he never does. And it’s still down there to this day.’
Fabián had finished eating and now lay on his back with a hot stone on his belly, looking upwards in the direction of the Southern Cross. ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should go treasure hunting after all.’
‘Maybe we should,’ I agreed, keen to establish any new quest, however absurd.
‘Ray’ll take you tomorrow, won’t you baby?’ Cristina said.
‘Okay. But first I think we should have a story from one of you two,’ said Ray. He pointed at Fabián. ‘I bet you’ve got a good one up your sleeve. Some highland folk-tale. I can see you’ve got the blood for it. Bet you can speak a bit of the runasimi too.’
‘No,’ said Fabián, sitting up. ‘My father spoke a little, but I don’t.’ Ray’s remarks had unsettled him. I don’t think anyone had ever recognised his Indian blood before.
‘Runasimi?’ I asked.
‘It’s the word that Indians use to describe the language everybody else decided to call “Quechua”,’ said Cristina. ‘It means “the language of real people”.’
Increasingly uncomfortable, Fabián claimed that he didn’t know any folk-tales. Cristina told him he should make one up. She said that there were only a few rules you had to remember:
‘First, start with guinea pigs, for dramatic effect. Either with “All the cuyes in the house woke up at once” or with “All the cuyes suddenly fell silent at once”. Second, make sure you stick in a symbolic animal or two somewhere. Third, draw your audience in at the end by addressing them personally and telling them you’ve got them a piece of cake from the wedding feast, or that your character still lives on, to this day.’
Ray liked the sound of the challenge. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘If you make up a good story for us, I’ll take you out to the Isla de Plata in my boat tomorrow, all expenses paid, and we’ll find some of Francis Drake’s treasure.’
I was lying on my back, balancing a hot stone between my knees and watching sparks from the fire fly away from me into the sky, so I couldn’t see Fabián’s reaction. But I knew that this incentive, as well as the challenge, would be too much for him to resist.
Okay. We’ll call this story ‘The Boy Who Said Nothing’ (said Fabián). The story goes that it was midnight in the village. It was a clear night, and the Southern Cross was twinkling away in the sky.
The boy knew nothing of this. He was in his bed and his mother was in the next room. His father was out night-fishing, and wasn’t expected back until the morning. Suddenly all of the cuyes started making noise at once. They had been disturbed by something outside. The boy lit his candle and waited for the cuyes to settle down again.
He walked into the next room where his parents slept, and saw that his mother’s bed was empty. He felt it, found that it was still warm, and assumed she had gone outside to piss, or to heat some chocolate for herself, as she sometimes did when his father was away for the night and she couldn’t sleep.
He went outside. His mother lay on her back over a fallen tree. Her skirts were hitched up about her, her legs were spread and a great white bull was on top of her. Its hooves were planted squarely on his mother’s shoulders, pinning her down, but she didn’t seem to be struggling. Quite the opposite. Already, the boy knew that the sound of her cries would stay with him for the rest of his life.
The boy ran back to his room, pacified the cuyes and put himself back to bed. In the morning he told himself that wh
at he had seen was a dream, and not the truth. He resolved to put it to the back of his mind. But the vision would return to him two months later.
He and his father were carrying sacks of barley to the market, and his father, unable to contain his happiness, told the boy that he was to have a baby brother or sister. The boy was old enough and tactful enough not to say anything about the bull, but for the next seven months, he woke in the night from atrocious nightmares about his mother being punctured from within by horns as she tried to birth the bull-baby.
And still the boy said nothing. On the night of the birth it was raining hard in the village. The priest came to the cottage. He told the boy he was getting in the way and asked him to leave for a while. The boy was only too happy to go. He was tormented by what might happen.
The boy ran through the fields, slipping in the mud as he went, trying to escape the vision in his head. Whenever he tried to return to the hut, his mother’s cries of pain would send him off again into the wet night.
The boy ran for hours, finally collapsing to sleep beneath a quiñua tree that kept the rain off him. When he woke up the next morning, he was covered with dried mud and leaves and the valley was shot through with the widest, most colourful rainbow the boy had ever seen. Everything he saw seemed filtered through it.
Taking this as a good sign, the boy made his way back to the cottage. The air was fresh and cold after the storm. The highland sun blinded him as he descended the mountain, and made his nose run. As he approached his home, he heard the sound of a crying baby and not the sound of a lowing calf, as he had dreaded. He started running, but the priest stopped him at the front door.
‘Your mother is dead,’ he said. ‘But you have a baby brother. It’s sad, but life will go on.’
The boy saw that life would go on. But he saw at the same time that the morning, and the rainbow, were illusions – that the previous night would now never be over, and that a part of him would be stuck inside it, running up and down the mountainside in the rain, for ever.
Over the next year, the boy tried as hard as he could to love his brother, but he could not look at the child’s face without seeing twisted bull-horns emerging like tree roots from his forehead. He began to fear that he might harm the child.
The Amnesia Clinic Page 14