A Bright Moon for Fools (33 page)

“Take it. I want you to have it.”

“Lola, for God’s sake, I’m the one who should be giving you necklaces to repay you for all the—”

“Please, Harry. I want you to have it.”

“Lola, listen to me, this is worth a lot of money. There is absolutely no way I can, or will, accept it. You’ve already done too much for me.” He tried to take if off but she
stopped him.

“I don’t care how much it is worth. You saved Aldo’s life. I want you to have it, Harry.”

“No, Lola, please, it’s too much—” She held his face and kissed him. He could taste the salt of her tears.

“Lola—”

“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes closed. “Thank you, Oh God, for sending this man into my life to save my son.”

The plaza was crammed full for the band. There was a hamburger trolley, a blue wooden popcorn cart, racks of handicraft jewellery and inflatable toys. Rockets screamed into the
night sky, strings of bangers popped and smoked. Adults drank beer, rum and whisky. Teenagers drank anis.

Christmas and Lola were seated on plastic chairs beside the dance floor, eating
empanadas
from the teenage mother’s stall; a pot of oil bubbling on top of a gas burner, the
semi-circles of corn dough filled with fish or meat fizzing golden. They ate one after another, squeezing
guasacaca
sauce all over them – puréed avocado mixed with onion and
coriander – chomping and wiping their chins. Lola was all in white, heels, tight trousers, tight top, nails painted, hair done up high. Christmas, in a clean shirt with his hair cut, fiddled
with the chain. It felt like a medal. A line of men walked past, shook Christmas’ hand and gave him the thumbs up.

“Who were they?”

“The ones who tied you upside down to a tree.”

“When are you two going to dance?” asked the teenage mother. A bottle smashed. The ingredients of a fight dissolved into nothing.

“He can’t dance.”

“How do you know?”

“He tried before and he can’t do it.”

“Lies!”

“You can’t dance to this music. If you could dance, we would be dancing, no?”
The devil take this woman
, he thought.
She knows just how to manipulate me
. For the
first time that day, Christmas thought of Emily. He sat up, shocked. Never had he gone a day without thinking about her. He looked at Lola. She smiled, and her Caribbean beauty hit him almost like
pain.

“Look at you – too frightened to dance, old man.
Verga
! You’re chick-en-shit.”

“Oh, really?”

“
Si, Señor
,” Lola leant back on her chair and gave a little burp. “Chickenshit.” Christmas looked at the band. “He won’t do it,” she said
to the teenage mother. “He’s a pussyman.”

“Oh, I am, am I?”

“Pussyman.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Chick-en-shit-puss-y-man.” Christmas got to his feet. The teenage mother burst out laughing. He was off. He had no idea what he was going to do. Even before he got to the dance
floor people were watching. Couples on the perimeter saw him approach and made a gap. The gap became a space. The singer noticed what was happening and sang with arms outstretched in special
welcome for the foreigner. The entire village was looking on.

Stepping over the edge of the dance floor his dread was so basic, so complete, that it permitted only one thought: whatever was about to happen was best done with his eyes closed. So, like
someone searching for a light switch, Harry entered the circle. He felt the music and the crowd around him. He put his hands on his hips, tapped a foot and then ... he felt a hand on his, an arm at
his waist and he opened his eyes. “I thought I better save you,” Lola said, and there they were, swaying together in a tiny, crooked circle.

“You know, Lola,” he whispered, “I badly want to make love to you.”

“Badly?” she pouted. “I would prefer if you did it well.”

W
ith Oscar gone, Slade was alone in Guiria. It was the middle of the night. He lay on the bed of his hotel room, listening to laughter outside. He
couldn’t understand the voices but he was sure they were talking about him. A door closed. The voices stopped.

Slade went back to concentrating on the filaments of light shed by the curtain. He had been that way for hours.

“Can I book an appointment?” someone said. Slade sat up. “Our office wants to go paintballing.” There was no one else in the room. He peered over the side of the bed.
There was The General, sitting on its back legs with its eye hanging out.

“You’re fucked. I know you. Oh boo-hoo,” said The General, “I hate you too.
Be quiet, William
.”

Slade turned around in his bed. His heart was beating so hard his pillow sounded like a drum.

He stayed in his room all the next day. He left when it was dark. It was Friday. Across the other side of the plaza were neon lights he hadn’t seen before. The karaoke
bar was open for the weekend.

The barman recognised the photo of Harry Christmas though he spoke no English. Slade tapped the image until another man was brought forward who could muster a hesitant pidgin. Christmas had been
here. He was very drunk. He was singing, then they threw him out. He went to San Cristóbal and the villagers tied him to a tree by his leg. Yes, he was still in San Cristóbal. He was
living with a woman there.

Slade went back to his hotel room. He stuck the photograph onto the wall. He lay down on the bed and looked over at Christmas. Slade held the dive knife with both hands, the blade flat against
his chest, a Saxon funeral pose. With a cry, he lept up and stabbed the photograph. Then he took the knife in one hand and pushed the point of it against his forearm. It quivered against the skin
before splitting it, Slade holding up his arm so the blood ran to his armpit.

He lurked in his room until dawn. When the sun came up he had an uncontrollable fit of crying. He checked out of the posada and was directed to the pier. The boat left at three in the afternoon.
He sat down in a café and tried to eat but he could not.

The Saturday boat was already full when Slade eventually picked his way over luggage and loud families, and settled himself against the prow. Everyone was in fiesta mood,
bottles of Cacique passing back and forth, people greeting the foreigner with a cheer. Two ladies shifted to make a place for him and then pulled faces at each other when Slade ignored their
kindness. He stared straight down into the hull. It was a deep, open boat with slats for benches that covered the bags and supplies crammed in below. A child started the engine while his father let
loose the rope. They pushed off from Guiria’s quayside. It was two hours to San Cristóbal.

Slade felt sick from the motion. The smell of gasoline was intense. He looked around the boat. They were all talking about him.

“Boo-hoo,” said a voice. He looked down. The General was curled up on some luggage, staring up at him between the slats, his eye hanging out. Slade slipped off his seat to boot him
but The General was gone. He sat back. People were saying things to him in Spanish.

That morning Christmas woke with a hangover. It was still dark. His body felt like someone else’s, his mouth a dead fire. The last thing he could remember was Lola
sitting on his lap, boxes of expensive whisky being passed around, and him saying, “This stuff doesn’t affect me.” He put an arm round Lola. She took it, kissed it, then wore his
elbow as a beard. Christmas fell back to sleep.

When he woke again she was gone. It was dawn. He slaked his thirst at the sink, his legs weak, a podgy colt staggering out into the yard’s early light. Lola was wearing an apron. There was
a table set out in the front of the porch with a cast-iron hand-operated mill clamped to one end. Lola dropped in handfuls of toasted cacao seeds, turning the handle. The rifled screw cracked and
demolished them against a circular plate. Its rim oozed rich chocolate paste into a container below.

“
Epalé
!
Cariño
!” she said, “How do you feel?”

“I feel like my stomach is trying to process a square shit – why are you laughing?”

“Let me see, let me see,” Aldo pushed past him in the doorway, examining his face.

“Turn around, turn around,” ordered the old man, shuffling across the yard. Christmas turned round. “
Verga
!” The old man started laughing too. Christmas went to
check himself in the bathroom mirror. His moustache was gone.

“The devil take you, woman!” he thundered, stomping back outside, “You’ve shaved off my – my – my –”

“Harry—”

“Butcher! Delilah!”

“What’s he saying?” asked Aldo.

“He’s very happy.”

Christmas frantically exercised his naked lip. “How dare you!”

Lola wiped her hands of chocolate, grabbed his face and kissed him. “You look much better,
Papi
. Much younger.”

“Younger?”

“Try this.”

“What is it?”

“Rum with cacao.”

“But dammit, woman, there’s a principle here and that principle is, ‘Thou shalt not bloody shave a man’s whiskers when—’”

“But you look
much
more handsome.”

“That’s not the issue! Do I?”

“Much. Drink that.”

“You can’t just assault me and then wind me round your little finger just by saying – oh, that’s good. That
is
good. That is very good indeed.” The taste
made his eyes water; dark oils, forest butters, hidden wells of rum.

“Now you do this and I’ll cook you breakfast.” She put the apron on him and went inside.

“Helpless,” Christmas muttered to himself. “Putty in her hands.”

There had been a storm during the night and all the talk was of the damage done. After breakfast Lola and Harry walked round to see metal roofs torn open or tossed out into the
street. Some trees were down, fencing blown over.

People in red T-shirts and red caps were taking measurements and discussing repairs with the villagers. They were from PDVSA, the state petrol company, and they had come to rebuild the roofs and
survey the village to see what else it needed.

“See?” said Lola, pushing him. “This is Chávez. The storm was yesterday and they come today to help us.”

There was also a policeman, who observed the foreigner with distaste. He was a short man with a pronounced double chin who considered it his professional duty to harass gringos. Overseeing the
PDVSA officials was a rather boring job, so it was with great relish that he stepped in Christmas’ path and folded his arms.

“Who are you? Why are you here? What is your name?” Christmas squinted at this new event.

“I am Christmas,” he answered in English, “thy boon companion,” and delivered the policeman a courtly bow. The policeman asserted his authority with a single word:
“
Pasaporte
.”

“Leave him alone,” said Lola.

“Where are you staying?”

“With me.” Lola squared up to the policeman. She looked him up and down. He wasn’t from San Cristóbal.

“Do you have a licence to run a posada?”

“He is not my guest. He is ... my lover!”

“This gringo?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t like Venezuelan men?”

“Me? Yes – why, do you?”

“Where is his passport? Where is your passport, gringo?”

“Why don’t you leave us alone? It’s festival time!” The policeman cast a look out to sea.

“If your gringo lover cannot produce his passport, I will arrest him.”

When they rounded the bay Slade heard the deep thump of reggaeton. He saw the quayside and jetty thick with revellers. His vision was pulsating. He took off his sunglasses,
cleaned them, put them back on. The other passengers started waving. He stood up and scanned for a white man. Crackheads and children waited on the jetty with wheelbarrows to carry luggage and
supplies. Slade stepped off the boat and up the concrete steps into a plague of offers. He kept his eyes on the village. It was five in the afternoon.

Slade took out the photograph. A shout went up and a crowd formed. “
Amigo
?” they asked him. Slade tapped his chest.

“Me.
Amigo
. Where? Where is he? This man?” The crowd assigned him a small boy. Slade, his rucksack slung over his shoulder, followed the child off the jetty and into San
Cristóbal. Music pounded the village with his heartbeat. Unbearable smells flew into his nose. Everything had an echo.

Slade scanned every doorway, every face. Gangs of people cheered and toasted him as he walked past. The little boy shouted things and Slade understood the words
gringo
and
amigo
.
People patted him on the back and offered him rum. Slade walked through a football match. He walked past a great mass of dancers. He followed the boy down a quieter street, then through some bushes
to a stream strewn with rubbish. They followed the stream for a while until they came out through a grove of cambur and into Lola’s yard.

“He’s here? In here?”

“This woman’s—” the boy replied, and he made an obscene gesture with his fingers. The boy ran inside. Slade followed. He was sweating.

Lola wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “You friend of Harry?” Slade felt for his knife.

“Where is he?”

“He back soon.” Lola looked at the clock. It was quarter past five. She said something to the boy and he ran out. Slade looked at her tits.

“So you’re his girlfriend?”

“Yes,” she shrugged, smiling, “I guess.” Slade dropped his rucksack.

“Good.”

T
hough terrified by the overtaking, there was something magical about swooshing from curve to curve on the back of a motorbike, moisture leaking
sideways from his eyes as if he were crying in space. Yet his enjoyment of the ride was only momentary. Christmas was heading back to Judith and Bridget’s. He didn’t expect they would
be pleased to see him.

Christmas told the policeman that his passport was in Rio Caribe. After a long argument, he was given until the end of the day to produce it. Should he disappear, he was assured, the
consequences for Lola would be severe.

Gabriel, one of his fisherman friends, offered to take him there on the back of a motorbike that he kept in Guiria. Christmas had no choice. If he was arrested, only money could free him, and he
had no money. It was still early in the morning.