by Helen Young
Camilo came over and helped with the pillows. ‘You had a nasty fever by the looks of it. You should have seen the mess when we found you yesterday. Half of your workers went down with it too. No one’s dead but they closed the site at the weekend.’
‘They closed it?’
‘Yes.’
So the executives hadn’t come. He was absolved.
‘How did you get in?’
‘We persuaded the doorman it was a matter of life or death.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, Felisa’s here. She raised the alarm yesterday when you didn’t show for work. Be grateful, Telma tried to join us. I told her you were still infectious.’
‘Is he awake?’ Felisa entered the room. She was wearing Señora Rojas’ cooking apron, the cord looped twice around her waist. ‘Please drink this,’ she said, handing him a steaming cup.
‘Felisa,’ he said. ‘You came.’
‘That’s right, Luke, it’s Felisa.’ Camilo turned to her. ‘He’s delirious!’
‘Stop it,’ she said, but Luke had seen her blush.
He looked down at the contents of the cup. It contained what looked like cooked seeds swimming in a murky gravy.
‘Drink,’ she said, standing over him.
Luke raised the cup to his lips, poured the contents into his mouth and swallowed. It was awful.
‘It’s native medicine,’ she said. ‘It’s the only reason you’re not dead.’
‘Are you sure?’ he coughed. He could feel it, sliding like mud to his gut.
‘Felisa is a witch,’ Camilo said, ducking as she swiped out at him.
She took the empty cup and left the room. The bulk of the liquid had reached his stomach; he could feel it bubbling away inside him. He was starting to sweat again. It must have been an effect of the potion. He untangled his feet from the sheets. He might need to run to the bathroom. He might need to do that soon. He sat up, his stomach cramping.
‘Excuse me,’ Luke said, jumping up. ‘You can both leave now, I’ll be fine.’ His legs were weak and Camilo lunged forward to support him. Luke pushed him away and staggered towards the bathroom. Once the door was locked he sat down and his bowels relaxed. Whatever Felisa had given him was quick to work. Once the third wave had passed, he collapsed onto the cool tiled floor and closed his eyes.
‘Luke, are you all right?’ It was Felisa. She was standing on the other side of the locked door.
Luke pulled himself upright. He still felt weak but better in some sense. She knocked again.
‘Come on Luke, don’t die in there.’ Camilo had joined her outside.
Luke made himself rise. He checked the room was clean before opening the door.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked him.
‘What was in that?’
‘Dandelion, a little guarana for your stomach and other things for taste.’
‘Taste?’
She smiled.
‘Thank you,’ he said, managing a weak smile of his own and pushing past them. He stumbled into the lounge. Felisa and Camilo followed. Luke collapsed into the armchair beside the window.
Felisa went back to the bedroom and returned with a blanket. ‘I’m fine,’ he said as she tried to cover him.
She ignored him and came close, placing it across his lap.
‘I have to go back to work,’ Camilo said.
Luke pointed to the cupboard behind the journalist. He did feel better. Alert even. Another side effect of the potion, perhaps. ‘Up there,’ he told Camilo. ‘Take that envelope.’
‘What’s inside?’
‘A photograph, for your article. You wanted one, didn’t you?’ He’d found it the other day by chance. The envelope had become lodged behind the top drawer of the chest in the bedroom. He hadn’t seen it until he’d tried to get the drawer back in and couldn’t.
Camilo took the image out. ‘You’re so young,’ he said, showing Felisa. ‘And this one?’ There was a second photo stuck to the first. He pulled the two apart and turned it to face Luke. It was the missing image of Catherine from Albie’s party.
‘I’ll take that,’ Luke said.
Camilo handed it over. ‘See you soon, then, and thanks for this.’
Luke waited for him to leave before looking at the image. She was as he’d remembered, Catherine, in all her dangerous beauty. In it, he had his arm around her. They had been deeply in love at the time, he’d thought. He brought it closer to his face. There was something there he hadn’t seen before; a hand creeping in at the side of the frame. It was resting on Catherine’s arm. Luke turned the photograph in the light, trying to make sense of its presence there. Something about the angle meant it couldn’t have been his. The rest of its owner was out of shot. He looked again. He wasn’t hallucinating. It was there. He couldn’t remember anyone from that night but his thoughts were still muddied by fever. He could ask Felisa, ask if she saw three people too. She was busy across the room sorting something out on the floor. No, it wouldn’t do to ask her that. He looked again. In the picture, Catherine wasn’t leaning into him at all, but towards this other hand; towards this other person. He’d never have seen it even then but Felisa’s potion had sharpened his senses. Luke tried to remember, but the party had been before the war and there had been so many… Felisa returned. She was clutching a pile of newspapers.
‘Jornada,’ she said, holding them out for him to see. ‘They’re old editions. I went and got them. I thought you might have time now, while you recover.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. He placed the photograph face down on the table beside him. She dropped the pile on top.
‘About the other night, Felisa.’
‘With the sickness, I was so worried you might die.’
‘But about before…’
‘And Camilo was worried.’
‘You didn’t come to work the next day.’
‘I suppose I was sick too,’ she said, sitting down beside him.
‘But not like I was?’
‘No. In a different way.’
He wondered what she meant. She was always with Camilo. Perhaps she was sick for him. ‘He’s in love with you, I think.’
‘Camilo?’ she said, looking horrified. ‘Please don’t say that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he coughed. ‘I must still be unwell.’ She went silent. ‘Perhaps you should go.’ It was wonderful, her being there, but he’d ruined it now. Catherine and that stupid photograph had set him thinking of the other man in Felisa’s life.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Your housekeeper isn’t due until Thursday, Mr Draper said.’
‘Was Karl here?’
‘Yes, he came yesterday and left this.’ She handed him an envelope from the top of the pile of post on the dresser.
‘I think I’ve upset him by being ill. He’ll worry we’re behind.’ He’d open it after she’d left. Why wouldn’t she leave?
‘We’re not behind,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t worry about that.’
‘Well, all right, but Karl’s not good at hiding his emotions.’ Another bout of nausea briefly stopping him from speaking. ‘I don’t want it to get back to Osorio.’ He tried to rise. ‘He shouldn’t think that I’m stalling.’
‘Camilo won’t care.’
‘Not Camilo, and he will if he’s told.’
‘I don’t understand?’ No, she didn’t. Gabriel Osorio needed to know he was on board. ‘You stay where you are. If you have a message, I’ll take it to Mr Draper or Telma.’ She went back over to her bag and pulled out a piece of paper and pen. ‘Look, write it here.’
It was the same sheet he had given her, torn from his diary.
‘There’s clean paper in a notebook over there,’ he said, gesturing to the bureau.
‘Of course,’ she said, folding the sheet and putting it back inside her bag. Felisa brought over the notebook and placed it open on his lap. She handed him a pen but it was awkward to grip.
She pulled a chair over and sat down. ‘Shall I write it for you?’
‘
Leave it,’ Luke said.
He just needed to sleep. Felisa took the notebook and pen back. From the open window, a cool breeze caught the back of his neck. Luke closed his eyes. Better to be well and face Karl and the executives in person. He was still so tired. He opened his eyes to find Felisa had risen. He heard her moving things in the kitchen, trying to be quiet. She really should leave, he thought, closing them again. But he was glad when she didn’t.
He woke sometime in the early hours and knew immediately that he was alone. The window behind him had been closed and the blanket pulled tighter. He freed himself of the covering and rose, feeling weak but mended somehow. He’d slept dreamlessly, like one returning to life after an absence. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. The small room was spotless. Back in the lounge, he went over to the table where Felisa had left the copies of Jornada. Beside them, there was a single sheet of paper that had been torn from the notebook. He picked it up. It was a freeform sketch of a sleeping man drawn from life. He looked worse in the image than he realised, but it was a good likeness. She had signed it: Felisa Mejía.
14
Inside of the envelope was an invitation from Osorio to join him for dinner when he was better. Alongside this was a letter from Karl. He wrote that the executives and Osorio thought the fever might finish him off. That it was a good bit of luck for everyone that La Merced was almost complete, and as for the Pan-American project? Well, perhaps it was best that he hadn’t started it, if his intention had been to die.
A week later, Luke had regained enough of his strength to join Karl for the trip to Osorio’s hacienda outside of the city. Beside him in the back seat, his boss talked the entire journey. Luke tried to drown him out. Outside of the car window, there was another exodus along the highway – workers returning to their homes on the outskirts, mules weighed down with onion and potato crops, construction workers, dusty and tanned as old hides and other types of labourers with tools and battered machetes slung across their shoulders. Listening to Karl, he’d have given anything to join them. The car slowed at a junction alongside the caravan. He smiled at a man close by, knowing any reply would have been toothless and rare. He gave the rest of the journey over to thoughts of Felisa.
When they’d crossed paths in the office, she hadn’t mentioned the visit to his apartment or the role she had played in his recovery. She kept her head down. Since nursing him back to health in whatever godawful state he had appeared to her in, she’d become withdrawn, so that the moment came and passed in which he might bring up the drawing. The kiss seemed even further lost to time. He’d wanted to remind her. To talk to her about Jornada too, which he’d read cover-to-cover. His recovery could be attributed as much to what he found there as to Felisa’s medicine. Even on the page Gaitán spoke with an urgent need for justice with a capital J: legal Justice; social Justice; Justice in the workplace; Justice in the home; Justice in the field. One road and all upon it, he said. This man worked the people up into such frenzy that they probably dreamed about him, tossed and turned for him; saw him lucidly, keeping watch as they slept, Luke thought. He’d seen a picture. There was always a picture of Gaitán in Jornada – dark headed and titan-like in the fullness of his features – he was a broad-browed, wide-eyed demi-god and the people worshipped him. They opened their doors to him. They loved him.
‘When we’re inside, just agree to whatever Osorio says,’ Karl said, interrupting his thoughts.
‘Agree?’
‘You know, say yes.’ Karl sat forward. ‘We’re here, Luke.’
They’d stopped in front of a wooden gate as wide as it was tall. The driver wound his window down and one of the two guards stationed there came forward. He was armed with a gun, and as an alternative to that, a silver-bladed machete. The guard shone a flashlight into the back of the car, blinding them and then the driver.
‘Are we going to be kept here long?’ Karl asked, shouting through his window. ‘Let us through, good man.’
The man sucked on his teeth and spat on the ground. ‘Abra esa mierda!’ he said, shouting across at his friend on the gate.
‘That’s better,’ said Karl. ‘I haven’t had a drink since we left.’
The gates were opened, and they drove through. It was a short distance to the house itself. The car rolled to a stop in front of the main building and Luke got out. So, this was Osorio’s hacienda. It was vast and whitewashed. Each set of windows was flanked by a pair of heavy wood shutters. Above these, a sloped roof of terracotta disappeared beneath a horizon of trees. He thought of all the generations of Osorios who had prospered under that roof, as far back as those who had claimed the land and planted out the estate.
‘A sweet pile of bricks, wouldn’t you say so, Vosey?’
‘Yes, Karl.’
The night was crisp and filled with the sound of a thousand crickets and above this, an indigo sky purpled the horizon. Here, it might be possible to forget the city with its cramped streets and wild order. Osorio came out of the house to greet them. Luke smiled up at him. If he were to prosper, he needed to learn to like the man, at least.
‘Just telling Luke, here, that if this project comes off he might be looking at his own little hacienda, no?’ Karl went up the steps and shook Osorio’s hand.
‘Perhaps,’ Osorio said.
‘Nothing as big as yours, of course,’ Karl said.
‘Welcome, Mr Vosey.’ Osorio greeted Luke, taking his hand. ‘You know, when Karl was last here, he brought his wife.’
‘We’re acquainted,’ Luke said.
‘A well-dressed woman,’ he said, smiling. ‘Lets her spend all his money on fur, here in Bogotá of all places! Isn’t that right, Karl?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘That’s how he’s different to us,’ Osorio said, leaning in close. ‘No control.’
‘What’s that?’ Karl asked.
A dog ran out from behind the house and then a man soon after. ‘Neron!’ the man shouted.
‘Jesus!’ said Karl as Neron took off, leaping up and onto the porch. The man caught the lead before Neron could reach Karl. They watched the man fight with the dog until it tired and allowed itself to be reeled back in.
‘Dangerous fish, that,’ said Karl, breathing quickly.
Luke tried to bring his own breathing back under control. Control, that’s what he needed. That’s what Osorio expected.
‘Shall we go in?’ Osorio asked.
Luke smiled and followed his host into the house. Osorio led them past a number of closed doors, through a paved hall studded with hurricane lamps and out into a courtyard garden. It was lush and in full bloom. The scent of citron and sandalwood hung heavy in the air. At the centre of the courtyard was a working fountain. He saw now that the house was arranged around a quadrangle with an internal balcony running the full sweep of the upper floor. All of this lay open to a sky now black and twinkling above.
‘What will you take?’ Osorio asked, going over to a small trolley that had been wheeled outside for their use.
‘Anything,’ Karl replied, sitting down on a low bench close by.
‘Cold champagne, then.’
The man who’d brought the trolley went back into the house for the bottle. Luke went over to the fountain for a closer look. It was Moorish in style with four glazed frogs, seated one on each corner, spurting water into a giant lily pad at its centre.
‘All the way from Andalucía,’ Osorio called over to him.
Luke nodded and rejoined the two men. He sat down beside Karl. The champagne arrived and Osorio got busy twisting the cork out with a cloth.
‘I like to do this myself,’ he said. ‘It tastes all the sweeter for it.’
The cork was freed and disappeared into the shrub on the far side of the courtyard.
‘Salud,’ Luke said, taking the offered glass and raising it to the others.
‘So,’ Osorio said, placing the remainder of the bottle into an ice bucket. ‘You’re well again?’ He sat do
wn and crossed one leg over the other, revealing the immaculate silk of his socks.
‘The fever was out of my control, you understand,’ Luke said. He could mention Camilo’s involvement in his recovery but wouldn’t.
‘Had us worried it might slow things down, though,’ Karl said.
‘Which it hasn’t,’ said Luke.
Osorio nodded. ‘You were lucky.’
Luke wasn’t sure what lucky meant in this context.
‘Let’s continue our conversation from the opera. The one we started before you were sick?’ Osorio nodded. ‘Now we’re in agreement, plans need drawing up of the new city centre.’
‘You can get your draughtsman onto it,’ Karl said.
He hadn’t thought to involve Felisa but perhaps he should. A maid came out of the house and over to their host.
‘There’ll be time to discuss details after dinner,’ Osorio said, rising. ‘Shall we?’
At table, Luke found himself seated across from Karl with Osorio at the head. They were an intimate little group.
‘Just us three?’ he asked.
‘My wife is in town tonight,’ Osorio replied. ‘We have a modest villa there.’
‘Not as modest as mine,’ Karl said.
Luke ate sparingly, picking at his trout. The fish arrived whole. It had been submerged in a garlic and cream sauce that was too rich for his stomach. The fever had not left him. It had waited until he needed to feel strong, to remind him he wasn’t. Across the table, Karl didn’t seem to be having any trouble with his fish. From somewhere on the estate, a dog howled. If he could just get through dinner… Luke heard the sound of a motorcar approaching the house. A moment later the room was illuminated and the three of them were half-blinded by the glare from its headlights. Soon after, a man could be heard in the hall.
‘Please, don’t get up,’ he said, entering the room.
Osorio rose to greet this new arrival and the two men came to rest at Luke’s side.
‘You’re the architect? Señor Vosey, yes?’
Luke looked up at a fleshy face that seemed completely without structure.
‘Sit down, Tomas, join us,’ said Osorio.