A Bright Moon for Fools (30 page)

I
t was one in the morning. Slade’s light was off. He lay on the bed, his face gauzed in sweat. He heard the unlocking of the door, got to his
feet and looked down through the curtain. Milagro was walking across the yard. Oscar had not come home. Slade had been there for two weeks. The time didn’t bother him. He knew Oscar would
take him to Christmas eventually because Oscar, he was now certain, worked for Christmas. Milagro unlocked the gate and turned right into the dark street.

Slade left his room, went down the steps and into the house. He walked around the kitchen. He went into Oscar’s bedroom. There, asleep on the bed, were his son and his daughter.

He left the room, crossed the yard and went out. Around the corner there was a small crowd of people buying ices from a vendor beneath a streetlight.

He stayed in the shadows for a moment then walked into the light. People noticed him and Milagro turned round. She had just paid for a red ice cone on a stick. Once he got there she forced out
‘
Hola
’ then walked quickly back towards home.

Slade bought an ice. He followed her out of the circle of electric light into the darkness. The night was hot.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked her. She didn’t turn round but said something in Spanish. He was two steps behind her. She was wearing tight shorts. She flicked her long, curled
hair. He watched it settle against her back. He glimpsed side alleys full of rubbish and saw The General was there, trotting beside him.

“Where’s my father?” Slade hissed.

“
Que
?” said Milagro, turning round, seeing he was talking to the ground. She jumped through the gates and ran across the yard, shutting and locking her door as Slade watched
her go. He sucked on his ice. The General was gone.

L
ola, Aldo and Harry were laying out cacao in the yard. They spread it out on plastic sheets to darken and shrivel in the sun. As Aldo emptied the
sacks, Lola and Harry evened out the seeds. She was silent. The old man hadn’t come home since Sunday’s cockfight.

“No, he won’t have eaten,” she said suddenly, as if in answer to a question. The winning chicken stomped and clucked in a spill of corn. “I should cut that thing’s
throat and turn it into soup. See if he can buy crack with soup!”

“I’ll say a prayer for—”

“Shut up, Aldo.”

“Why don’t we just go and look for him?” said Christmas.

“Because – because he’s stupid!”

“Aldo can stay here and finish this off so there’s someone here if he comes back. We can go and look for him. We—” Lola was crouching with her head in her hands.
“We’ll find him. Come on.” He crouched beside her, put his hands round her shoulders and squeezed her a little. “He’ll be all right. This is a tiny village. It
won’t take us long.”

For hours they walked across San Cristóbal. They went down paths Christmas hadn’t even realised were there. They appealed to everyone, Christmas entering many
houses for the first time; simple, immaculate.
If this is where Columbus first arrived
, he thought,
if it was from here that the plundered riches poured for centuries, then these people
have certainly been denied their share
. Their wealth was of a different order.

They searched the edges of the village and saw the two men that had fought in the nightclub – one with a badly bruised face – sharing a cigarette under a tree. They looked in
abandoned corners, behind rocks, in rooms half-roofed and overgrown. They searched the old cement plant, then houses destroyed by flood and given back to the forest. They wrenched open doors fat
with damp that stammered at the frame before giving way with a squeal. Huts of ragged people who shouted at Lola were peered into and rejected. The hunt went on.

Calling the old man’s name, they walked into the trees and followed the river to shaded banks where the stones made seats in the water.

“Before he started smoking crack we never argued. He was a very peaceful man. Now we argue all the time. And the lying!
Verga
! Always he is lying to me!”

“Perhaps,” sighed Christmas, “he just got used to it and now it’s some kind of damned reflex, and even though he can see, even though he can hear himself doing it, he
just can’t stop and—” She crouched by the cool water to splash herself. Sunlight reached through the trees and touched her face. “My God,” he whispered to himself.

They found the old man by the sea under an upturned boat, surrounded by empty bottles of Cacique, lighters and tobacco leaves. He looked like driftwood. Another man lay next to
him, passed out in the shade, with a bald, pink scar that ran the length of his belly and a face so thick with drink and hardship he could no longer feel the sun. Lola’s father had spent all
his winnings on rum and crack and was gibbering in a half-dream about things that had been stolen from him. He wasn’t surprised to see Lola. He only widened then narrowed his eyes, his gold
teeth winking, weaving her presence into his mumbles. Christmas picked him up. He was as light as a child. Lola was crying.

Christmas pulled the old man’s wrist around his shoulder where, once upright, he fell asleep. They took him home. People came from their stoops, inspecting, throwing jokes, shaking their
heads. He slept for eighteen hours. When he woke, Lola was primed.

Christmas couldn’t understand what they were shouting at each other – the Spanish was too garbled, too high-pitched – but the volume that came from such a gnarled, shrunken
frame as the old man’s was certainly impressive. As Lola and her father warred, Christmas took Emily’s book and stepped out through the kitchen and into the yard, intending to read it
in the sun. He bent himself through the hole in the wall and stood listening. He heard something be knocked over and stood there for a moment, chewing at a finger. He decided it was better to leave
them alone.

He sat down on a log, opened the book and closed it again. He didn’t feel like reading it. Why wasn’t he searching for her beach?
I don’t want to say goodbye again
.
Christmas put his head in his hands. Lola was screaming.

After a moment, he got up and went inside the adobe hut. It smelt of dust and rot. Aldo was at his workbench, bent over a piece of paper.

“So,” started Christmas, “how goes the tattooing?”

“Do you want a tattoo?”

“No.”

“Have you come to talk about Jesus Christ?”

“What’s that you’re doing there?” Christmas leant over his shoulder. It was a drawing of one of the pigs. The boy was trying to unite all its previous tattoos into some
kind of nativity scene. New shouts came from the house.

“You know,” said the boy, “there are many problems in this village.”

“There are many problems in every village.”

“Corruption. Drugs. There are many drugs here. People smoking crack. Grandpa. The Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“Smoking crack?”

“They don’t believe in hell,” Aldo sniffed.

“Very interesting design,” said Christmas, tapping the paper. “Been working on it long?”

“My pastor says I must use my talent to spread God’s message.”

“On the pig?”

“Everything,” said the boy solemnly, “belongs to God.”

“How do you get it to stay still?”

“Rum and sleeping pills.”

“And you think drugging a pig is part of God’s message?”

“Have you come to talk about Jesus Christ?”

“Why? – Do you have some news?”

“Jesus is helping me turn my back on my wicked life.”

“Oh, you’re fifteen, Aldo,” Christmas scoffed, “What can you have possibly done that is so bad?”

“I have told lies.”

“Come on. The occasional lie isn’t so—”

“I have smoked marijuana.”

“And the odd joint doesn’t do—”

“I have masturbated.”

“Let’s talk about Jesus, shall we?”

After the argument was stopped by a coughing fit, Christmas was put in charge of the old man while Aldo and Lola went to Guiria to sell their sacks of dried cacao. Christmas
was not allowed to let the old man leave the house. The old man was irritable. He insulted Christmas, then begged him for money, moaned with shame, drank some hidden Cacique and fell asleep.

Christmas spent the afternoon on the porch. He made a pot of coffee. He took out Montejo again.

He must find the right beach. There were plenty about but yet ...
You came here to say goodbye
. Something didn’t feel right. Was it because of his feelings for Lola? Was it because
a farewell to Emily in this place now seemed wrong? Or was this Emily’s final gift to him? Had her spirit led him here to find Lola? Pushing her book into the sand – that really would
be it, a last goodbye. Was he ready for Emily to leave him again? To free up his heart for another?

“Just listen to yourself,” he said out loud. “‘
Free up your heart
’. Listen to how you’re talking, you bloody fool!” He stared out into the day
and realised with a tiny laugh that even though Lola had been gone only a few hours, he missed her.

He stood up and took his coffee over to the pigs. They honked and scrabbled in their pen. He laughed at himself again. He looked back at the house. Heat waves were belly-dancing off the roof.
England. He didn’t want to go back to England. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He wanted to be with Lola. “Bloody hell, boys,” he said to the pigs, “I think I’m
falling in love!”

Christmas went onto the porch and finished his coffee, the extra heat swelling sweat across his back and brow. He saw the tortoise approach, jaws ready to clamp on his toe. “You scaly
rogue!” he cheered. As if in answer, there was a thunder roll. A new wind thrashed the trees. The sky quickly turned dark blue and then there was rain; sudden and furious. The mountains
disappeared. The rain came crashing down in volumes he had never seen before, tipped from the sky as if from a pail. The pigs squealed. Christmas went back into the house, wind slamming doors. He
stood in the kitchen and watched the harrying of the yard; the bent, corrugated roof sluicing in the water. The whole area was filling like a pool, especially on the sloped side where the washing
machine leant against the wall.
The motor
, he thought,
the motor is going to get flooded
.

He took off his shirt and dashed through the rain. He stood in a plastic bucket to earth himself and disconnected the plug. He pulled out the intake hose that ran from a tap and then wrestled
free the outtake tube and flung it away. Grunting and swearing, he scraped the unit to the back door. He rocked one end up onto the step, straightened himself, let out a breath, spat on each hand
even though they were already wet, and bent over. The water from the roof sloshed down his back. Christmas grabbed the machine and prepared to lift.

Lola was on the boat, the cash from her cacao folded and thick in her pocket. Everyone was listening to the married couple opposite. The man looked embarrassed but he was
smiling. The woman was laughing so hard she could only hoot out the story in chunks.

“– and then – and then my brother – my brother left his phone in our house and – and I say to him look, my brother’s left his phone and he says to me –
he says –” The man folded his arms. “– he says don’t worry I’ll call him so –” The man was laughing too now. “so I watch him call my
brother’s phone, the phone that is in his hand, and he looks down at it ringing, ringing in his hand and – and I think now – now he’s going to realise how stupid he’s
being but – but no he – he – he passes me the phone and says, ‘Here baby can you answer that?’” Everyone was laughing, his wife doubled up beside him, the man
shaking his head.

Lola put her fingers over the side of the boat. She looked at Aldo lying on the prow with his eyes closed. She felt the sun on her skin, the light spray of water. She picked her T-shirt
off her belly, adjusted her baseball cap.

The couple were embracing now and the conversation turned to a gringo woman raped in Rio Caribe, the forthcoming elections, an actor who had just died, yet more drugs murders in Guiria. Aldo
shifted his position, covering his face with his arms. Lola thought of Aldo’s father, a slow-moving, tall man. A liar. Just like her father. Would Aldo follow their example, or be more like
Harry? Would he offer up his seat for women, work without complaining, always ask if there was anything he could do to help? Would he make his wife laugh like this couple in front of her?

Thunder boomed. The sky changed. The captain gave control of the rudder to his son, then went underneath one of the hull’s slats, pulling out a roll of plastic sheeting. The rain started.
The passengers unfurled the plastic over their heads and tucked it into the sides. The boat bounced over the waves as the rain hammered the sheet, the passengers all looking at each other in their
sudden blue room. It was cold. Lola winked at Aldo who had slid from the prow and was now crouched beside others on the deck.

“
Dios Mio
!” exclaimed Lola when she ran into the house with an umbrella. “The—” but she saw the washing machine, safe and in the dry.
Christmas sat at the kitchen table.

“You got that?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes.” Lola blew a long note of approval.

“
Verga
– OK, you come outside. The pigs need—”

“That won’t be possible.”

“What?”

“I cannot get out of this seat.”

F
or the next few days Christmas was confined to the house with a bad back. He couldn’t have cared less. When he was close to Lola it was as
if all the points of her face were points in his mind, the configuration to a forgotten safe, something unlocking. He found himself enslaved by a constant analysis of how she was acting, if she was
playful or grumpy, and whether that meant he was more or less in favour. Neither back pain nor mosquitoes meant anything to him, as long as he could dimple that face with a smile.

She fed him plates of
guayaba
fruit, toasted sweetbread with butter and eggs, fried chicken with small, sweet peppers, rice with fish and carrots and fried
cambur
. He watched her
flick her hair over her shoulder. He watched her buttocks barge each other forward, her green eyes shimmer and her brown skin shine.