by Helen Young
24
‘Happy birthday!’ Felisa reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘That one is for today,’ she whispered.
‘Thanks,’ he replied. Something flashed between them and he had a mind to kiss her properly.
‘Sit, please, eat,’ Sofía said. She placed a plate of eggs and yellow arepa down on the table and moved Camilo along. Luke sat down and ate. The arepa was still hot from the fire. It was fresh and incredibly good. Camilo and Felisa had already eaten theirs, he noticed.
‘José’s getting the mules ready,’ Camilo said. It was obvious that he was treating the whole expedition as a joke. The statue Felisa had purchased in Guatavita was on the table beside her.
‘It’s a fertility symbol,’ she said.
Sofía emptied more eggs onto his plate and looked at Felisa. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t know.’
Luke chewed and looked at it again. The mouth was more a deep slit, really, surrounded by a pair of fleshy lips and below this, exaggerated breasts and a bulbous middle.
‘We put our wishes in here,’ Felisa said, signifying the space between the lips. ‘So that when we cast it into the lake, Chia will hear them.’
‘And we can write anything?’ Camilo said, with some interest. ‘You won’t read it?’
‘No one can,’ Sofía said, ‘unless you smash the thing on the floor.’ She grinned at Luke.
‘We thought,’ Felisa said, turning to him, ‘that you might like to go first, because it’s your birthday.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘There might be something you wish to let go of – you can write that down too.’
‘What could Luke possibly have to let go of?’ Camilo asked. ‘What do you know that I don’t?’
‘My terrible Spanish, my fear of heights, my appalling dancing…’ Luke said.
Camilo shrugged. ‘God, how average. Do try to wish for something better than that, Luke.’
‘I’ll try,’ he said, catching Felisa’s eye. She looked relieved and so was he, in more ways than one. It was clear she hadn’t said a word about what he’d revealed to her, not until then.
Felisa ran off to find paper while Luke finished his breakfast in silence. Today, he was forty. Double the age of the friends who’d gone to Europe to fight. Catherine would be forty now, too. They’d all left for the front and never come back. Forty years had brought him here. In his life, there were things he had seen coming and even things he had not, but which had seemed inevitable afterwards, but his life, thus far in Colombia, fell clear of both categories. He smiled, wondering if it might be possible to let go of the past; at least, that which he had revealed, as Felisa said he could. Perhaps, though, it would make more sense to wish for the future.
After breakfast he left them and went to dress. He still hadn’t contributed anything to the list of wishes the others were eager to pen and he told them to go ahead without him. He would decide upon what to include later. Something in the way Felisa had presented it to him made him feel responsible for his contribution. From the open shutters he could see José saddling up the mules. Three had been led from the stables to the courtyard. They were a scrawny-looking herd. He lifted his bag onto the bed and found the shirt he’d worn on the journey up. It had been a mistake to bring only two. Luke took the photograph out of his wallet and looked at it – Catherine on the Rocks, his one-time goddess. He would wish to be rid of her.
‘Luke?’ It was Felisa, calling him from the hall.
‘Coming,’ he replied.
‘We’re leaving without you!’
He pocketed the photograph and pushed his bag back under the bed.
*
After the main road, the mules knew what to do, kicking a path along the familiar dirt track that would take them to the summit. On the highway, they’d travelled in single file. José had said this was best before they’d set off, but here they abandoned formation and Luke found himself alongside Felisa while Camilo cut a path in front.
‘You’re a natural!’ Felisa shouted forward at him.
Camilo didn’t reply. She looked different out here. The landscape had changed her. She shouted again and the ears of her mule pricked up. Felisa patted its side gently and they carried on side by side at the pace set by the animals. It was the first time they had been alone on the trip so far.
‘Last night,’ Luke said. ‘I heard you talking about Gaitán.’
‘Sofía likes to know what’s going on in Bogotá,’ Felisa said. ‘You understand more Spanish than you let on, don’t you?’
‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Is the Pan-American Conference mentioned at the meetings you go to?’
‘It is,’ she said, fixing him with a stare, ‘but not what’s planned for the city afterwards.’ Felisa kicked her mule so it moved ahead of Luke’s. ‘Camilo!’
Luke watched her catch up with the other mule. He felt in his back pocket. The photograph was still there. He was completely decided on what his sacrifice would be. Luke smiled a little to think of Catherine ending her days in the gut of a cheap souvenir.
It was a steady two-hour climb to the top of the mountain. At first, he’d been cautious of them heading out alone without a guide or even José’s machete for company. You could never be sure who you might meet. Out here they were easy targets. When nothing happened in the first hour, he relaxed. There were times when he was happy to be alone, watching the landscape as one seeing it for the first time. They passed untouched fields with nothing to spoil their greenness but the odd hut for grazing sheep, outbreaks of trees he didn’t recognise, and bearing down on this a cap of endless blue, the shade of which forced him to question whether he had ever really seen the sky until then. Felisa came and went from his side, where they carried on safely inside of other subjects.
‘This must be very strange for you,’ she said, joining him again. ‘I mean, the mules, the landscape, us.’
‘You’re not strange to me.’
Felisa looked away. ‘Will you tell me about England? If it’s not painful to speak about it?’
‘Yes, if you like. Ask me anything.’
‘London. Is it as bad as the newspapers said it was? Bomb damaged, and the people too?’ She stopped, as if alarmed by something she had said or was about to say. ‘I’m sorry, the way I express things, after what we spoke about that night, it might not be right.’
‘No, it’s all right to ask questions. Thank you for not telling Camilo what I told you. I thought it might have cheapened things to swear you to secrecy then. I trusted that you hadn’t, and this morning, it was clear to me I’d been right to do that.’
‘I know. I understood that,’ she said. ‘Also, can you imagine, ruining his article?’
‘He’d be devastated,’ Luke said, laughing too.
‘Yes, he would. The truth is that I have great respect for what you did. It takes courage to stand up like that.’
‘And stupidity.’
‘No. You brush off as a joke something which has pained you, I think.’
‘You’re very wise to say so.’
‘Me? Ha! Not really, perhaps I kept quiet because I was flattered. Perhaps I wondered, why is this celebrated man telling me? Why is this Englishman even looking at me? Me, a nobody – a barely-junior draughtsman. A peasant girl.’
‘That’s not how I see you.’
They both turned forward to look at Camilo.
‘He’ll want to know what we’re talking about,’ Felisa said.
‘And I haven’t answered your question,’ Luke said. ‘About London. You asked me about the damage there. Let’s say places take a long time to heal. A lot of people lost their lives and sometimes buildings can’t recover from that, from the absence of warmth – the people too. I was too young to know it at the time, but the Great War was the one that changed everything.’
‘Great War, so it was special?’
‘That’s just an expression they used afterwards to justify the loss.�
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She was watching the horizon.
‘And Armenia – what is that like?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to see it.’
‘It’s a great mess,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it’s beautiful.’
‘It is, but sometimes people can make a place ugly, don’t you think?’
‘The work on the redesign, Felisa, I’m going to make it a success. It’ll be something to be proud of. I’d like to think Gaitán will approve.’
She was quiet for a moment. Their mules had strayed close and they were practically touching. Luke waited to see if she would move away. Camilo wasn’t very far in front of them now.
‘London is very different to Bogotá,’ he said when she didn’t. ‘But the city isn’t everything. I grew up somewhere else.’
‘Where?’
‘In a small village, west of the city. Nothing much happens there.’
‘That’s what Quimbaya is like, the area I’m from.’
He nodded. ‘Mine is called Liddington and from there, if you head south across the Downs, you’ll reach the sea. Have you seen it? The sea?’
She shook her head.
‘There’s a place off the Dorset coast where the waves are as much a part of the landscape as the earth itself.’
‘That’s where it differs from Quimbaya, then. The Pacific is a long way west. People don’t stray far from where they grew up and so everyone looks inwards. They squabble and fight over the most ridiculous things. You’re meant to marry and die there.’
Luke smiled. ‘Then it’s very similar.’
‘If you do leave, there’s something wrong with you. It’s the people you leave behind who suffer. It’s unforgiveable.’
‘It’s normal to want more.’
‘They’re good people, though,’ she said, perhaps feeling that she owed them more. ‘For as long as I can remember, my family have been there, working on the plantations.’
‘Growing coffee?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, laughing. ‘It’s the wealthy landowners who benefit. Most of the crop ends up in big city cafés: New York and London, in your skyscrapers.’
‘There aren’t any skyscrapers in London, not yet. Somebody should draw them first. Somebody good.’
‘Don’t tease me, Luke.’
He smiled. ‘Is that why you fight for those outside of the city?’
‘It isn’t funny. I don’t understand you sometimes. You claim to take our side, and you have been on that side yourself, but now you work for the men who are against change. Not change that benefits only themselves, but social change. I know you would like to but you can’t understand. I wish it was different, that we really were on the same side, but we’re not, are we?’
‘We are,’ he said, loud enough so that even Camilo in front turned. ‘Only I understand that the change you’re talking about has a price.’
When they were close to the summit, they tethered their mules at a drinking spot and trekked the rest of the distance on foot. Luke was upset. He wanted to talk to her again but Felisa had made it clear that she wouldn’t; they couldn’t whilst Camilo was close by. This wasn’t how he’d imagined the trip at all. Ahead of them and around him the route was densely forest-fringed and wound upwards, seeming to curl back on itself.
‘Like a coiled snake,’ Camilo said, looking at Felisa.
A bird with a wingspan that actually shut out the sun flew overhead. They all stopped and looked up.
‘A condor,’ Felisa said, ‘sacred and very rare.’
They pushed on and the track upwards suddenly dipped and they were walking downhill, through thicker foliage, until the walking became a run and Luke had to bear backwards so he didn’t snowball forward as his bad leg gave way.
‘Is this right?’ he asked.
‘Are you afraid?’ she called back.
Felisa led the way with Camilo following and him last. Her hair had come down and as she travelled, it seemed to lift and sway of its own accord, adding to his sense of disorientation. In front of him Camilo pursued her recklessly, so that Luke wondered if they were both under her spell. They went on in silence until Felisa broke cover through the trees and they emerged after her onto the sharp bank of the lake itself. It was enormous, an almost perfect circle, its colour jewel-like – a glassy, emerald hue.
‘Could be a meteor, or a sinkhole,’ Camilo said.
They picked a path sideways, holding on to branches to steady themselves until they came across a small clearing where it was safe to collapse. They all struggled to catch their breath. Felisa opened her bag and brought out the figure.
‘You’re not going in?’ Camilo asked, horrified.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘Luke is tall, he can throw it – he can probably reach the middle from here.’
‘How will we get back?’ Luke asked. It would be an almost impossible uphill scramble the way they’d come.
She looked disappointed and went back into her bag. This time she produced a cloth which she placed on the ground and unwrapped. It was a picnic from Sofía made up of chorizo and cold arepa. Felisa sat down and broke a piece off from the cornbread and passed it to Luke.
‘I thought you’d be braver,’ she said.
Luke tore what remained in half and handed the rest to Camilo. The chorizo followed and the three of them ate in silence. It was hard to swallow. They were almost level with the lake and it was easy to see how it might be thought sacred. It was eerily quiet. He heard a bird call somewhere on the opposite bank and the echo of it skimmed the water as though one bird had become many. It was a place for the ghosts of things, he thought, remembering the photograph. She was wrong about him. He could be brave.
‘I have something for the goddess,’ he said.
He took the photograph out of his pocket and held it up.
‘Luke, you shouldn’t,’ Camilo said.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Felisa. ‘Who is she?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s the love of his life,’ Camilo said.
Felisa just stared at him.
‘Oh, give it here, please,’ he said, pulling the figure over.
‘Don’t!’ Felisa reached forward. Luke was faster and had already pushed it through the hole.
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, on the brink of tears. ‘We’ll have to break it.’
‘It’s my offering,’ he said, feeling the panic rise up in him. He hadn’t intended for her to see the photograph. He hadn’t thought what might happen if she did. ‘I thought it was meant to be a sacrifice.’
Felisa cradled the figure and nodded.
‘Let me,’ Camilo said, reaching over and snatching it from her.
He rose, wiping chorizo grease on his trousers, and shuffled carefully towards the edge of the lake. Camilo leaned backwards and sent the object through the air. It was a good throw. They watched as the little fat figure made it halfway towards the centre before disappearing beneath the surface in a single gulp.
Felisa was quiet on the way back. Her head hung low whenever Luke tried to bring his mule alongside hers and so in the end he left her to it. The sun had peaked and gone and with the coming dusk, the journey felt longer, as though the goddess on the mountain was chewing over her precious offering. When they met the main road, they were blinded by the stationary headlights of a car. The animals didn’t startle. José left the truck and came towards them.
‘Can you drive it back?’ he asked Luke. ‘I’ll take the mules.’
25
Back at the finca, Luke went straight to his room. Sofía, he’d noticed, had washed and pressed his trousers and shirt and left them hanging on the front of the closet. At the lake, the past had been brought face-to-face with the present. The way Felisa had acted when he’d brought out the photograph, she’d looked at him like he’d deliberately tried to hurt her. He hadn’t meant it to be like that, but rather a declaration on his part. Camilo had found the whole thing wildly amusing. He wouldn’t
have, Luke thought, if he knew what was between them.
‘Luke,’ Camilo said, coming to the door of the bedroom. ‘I’m instructed to tell you to hurry up.’
Luke did as he was asked while Camilo waited outside the room. He took some water from the basin on the sideboard and tried to smooth down his hair. He wasn’t in the mood for company but would try to look like he was. He joined Camilo in the corridor. ‘Can I ask what this is about?’
‘You cannot.’ Camilo grinned, leading him towards the kitchen. The room was in darkness.
‘Go in,’ Camilo said, shoving him from behind.
‘Cumpleaños feliz! Happy birthday, Luke!’
Inside of the room, Felisa, Sofía, as well as two couples he didn’t recognise, had stopped singing and were staring at him. It was unbearable. Sofía came towards him with a cake thinly spread with candles. He blew them out and was grateful to return the room to darkness again. Someone flicked the switch and the single electric bulb that hung over the table was reintroduced and more candles lit to compensate.
Luke took a deep breath. ‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling at them all.
‘These are friends of ours,’ Sofía said.
She put the cake to one side and brought a bubbling pot to the table. They all sat down; Luke in the middle with Camilo and Sofía either side of him. Felisa was opposite and the friends further along. José had missed it. He was still outside with the mules.
‘Do you like sancocho?’ Sofía asked, serving him first.
They were all hungry and had been waiting, it seemed.
‘It’s a chicken soup from Armenia,’ Felisa mumbled.
It was the first thing she’d said to him since the lake. Luke was handed a bowl of broth – chicken, cassava and sweetcorn. It smelled wonderful. He was hungrier than he’d imagined.