A Bright Moon for Fools (37 page)

He kept his back against the wall near the bars. He had just about got used to the stench when someone else took a shit. The man was ill, the violent-smelling silage of his intestines poisoning
the air. Everyone covered their noses. Christmas retched. The man threw the newspaper full of shit out into the corridor. Later a fight started in the opposite corner. All the men crowded round to
watch something unspeakable happen that Christmas couldn’t see. He heard crying, and when he could bear to look over he saw somebody on the floor shaking uncontrollably. Various people tried
to talk to him. One man said he had been tortured by the police. He showed Christmas the burn marks from electric shocks and a charred divot in his shoulder where he had been touched by the hot
iron.

Christmas could not risk sleep. Instead, he let his eyes shut down and lose focus, snapping back when he sensed movement nearby. In this way he had a smeared dream of being in a public toilet
and trying to dry his hands, but the machine just made them wetter. Then some female prisoners were taken past and there was a rush to the bars. The women snarled and fired out insults. The men
made ugly promises.

Christmas, stunned by hunger, fear and fatigue, stared vacantly at the floor. He was at the reception after Emily’s funeral. They served beef sandwiches. She hated cold beef. He picked up
a sandwich and started laughing. Everyone was staring at him, the widower laughing at his wife’s funeral, and he thought how funny she would find it, him laughing and everyone thinking he had
lost his mind, all because of a beef sandwich. He laughed even louder. Then he drank to blackout.

It was the day she died. He was in Waitrose. He was looking for Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water. It was her favourite drink. He had driven to the supermarket from the hospital. She was
resting. She was fine. The baby was fine. He had left his mobile phone on the windowsill. Standing in the aisles, he couldn’t find the barley water. A girl with braces showed him where it
was. She told him it was her first day on the job. He congratulated her. He told her his wife was in the hospital having their first baby. She congratulated him. He paid for the barley water. He
got back into the car and turned on the radio. The station was playing ‘Hotel California’.

When he walked onto the maternity ward he was told undiagnosed eclampsia meant Emily had started having massive convulsions. She had gone into a coma. They had taken out their child, a daughter,
by emergency caesarean section but due to acute foetal distress her heart had already stopped. Then Emily suffered an intracranial haemorrhage. She died moments later.

He was led into Emily’s room still holding the bottle of barley water. There was a bag of flesh in her bed, wearing the mask of her face.

Christmas was watching a line of ants cross the cell floor. They carried bits of a bigger ant. Lola. He wanted Lola, massy with life. The smell of coconut oil on her skin, the heat of her, the
peel of her laughter. His arms around her belly, kissing her neck as she leant her head towards him. On the porch with Aldo and the old man. Cooked fish and the evening wind. He didn’t even
have her telephone number.

The door slammed.
Lola
.

But it was three new men.

As soon as they set eyes on him, Christmas could feel their greedy hatred. One wore a baseball cap. One was bare-chested with faded tattoos and a strangely distended stomach. One had a swollen
eye and was cut around the mouth. All three had scrappy beards. Their eyes glittered with narcotics. They said things to him that he didn’t understand. Christmas didn’t respond. He felt
too tired, too broken. Then one of them spat on him.

It hit his shoulder. Those next to Christmas inched away.

He looked down at the spit. He looked up at his enemies. Their glare was crushing him. He breathed deeply, trying to control his terror and then, suddenly, he felt a familiar pain in his
chest.

The tightness knuckled his heart. It tugged at his breathing.
Not now
, he pleaded to himself,
Not now
... The pain increased.

“This is ...” he whispered to the deadly men, “this ...”

“What? What’d you say, you gringo piece of shit? I am going to cut out your fucking heart.” The gang fanned a little and moved on him. He saw one had something rough and metal
in his hand.
Pepito
, he thought,
Pepito Rodriguez Silva
s. Christmas closed his eyes. He gave up.

“Motherfuckers to the wall!” The policeman, holding a new prisoner by the neck with one hand and his gun in the other, appeared the other side of the bars. The gang cursed at the
interruption but backed away. Everyone else did the same except for Christmas. The policeman put his gun through the bars and into his face.

“Move, gringo.”

“Pepito ... Rodriguez ... Silvas,” Christmas whispered, squeezing his chest.

“What?”

“Pepito ... Rodriguez ... Silvas.”

“Pepito?”

“The policeman. He is my very ... good ... friend.” At this a great wave of insults exploded over Christmas. He felt spit hit various parts of his body. He was kicked. The policeman
cocked his gun and the inmates receded.

“Pepito knows you?”

“I go ... to his brother’s bar in Sabana ... Grande and we ... became friends he ... picked me up from ... the airport ... in his taxi.” The policeman scrutinized Christmas for
a moment, opened the door, shoved in the prisoner and beckoned the foreigner out. Christmas staggered out of the gate, wiping spit off his face, avoiding the screwed-up bundles of newspaper and
puddles of urine, breathing in quick shallow stabs.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m old,” said Christmas, the pain disappearing as his respiratory system rediscovered its stride. He turned round for the scowls, but his eyes were drawn instead to the man
who had been on the floor shaking. He was crouched at the back, hugging himself. He looked at Christmas.

Christmas was taken back through the corridors and left in an interrogation room for four hours. He watched the door, hoping like a child that Lola would appear, but when it
finally opened there was Pepito, holding a small bottle of water, tracksuit bottoms and a plain blue T-shirt.

“
Señor
Christmas!” he cried, “My English friend! You really fucked up.” Christmas let out a long sigh and hung his head. “Look at you – nobody
kills you – you survive the night! Drink this and change you clothes, OK? You dirty. But why don’t you tell my name to the people before?” Christmas took the water and drained it.
Pepito put the clothes down on the bench beside him.

“They don’t let me – they didn’t understand – Pepito – I – I have to eat.”

“Hey, no problem, I get you an
arepa
, OK?”

“Yes. Yes, please.”

“Cost you two thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

“I don’t—”

“Only joking!” He opened the door and shouted some instructions. In a few minutes, Christmas was devouring the tastiest thing he could ever remember eating and telling Pepito what
had happened in Sucre.

“So, what’s going to happen to me?”

“Why do you do that? You crazy man. Why do you leave Gran Melía hotel and not to pay? This is very stupid,
Señor
Christmas. Why you do these things?”

“I didn’t mean to do it! I lost my wallet with all my fucking money in it! In fact it was in your brother’s bar – I went to your brother’s bar—”

“I know this. I was there, remember?”

“You were there?”

“
Dios mio
– you don’t remember? Me and my brother and you, we drink very much.”

“I – no. I don’t remember.”

“And you left your wallet there. Next day I went to your hotel but they say you ran away.”

“But I ran away because you – you have it? You’ve got it now?”

“Well. No.”

“But—”

“This is weeks ago,
amigo
. I don’t think I see you again. The money is gone. The wallet I give to my brother. I can ask to my brother if you want the wallet ...”

“But I need that money.”

“I told you. It has gone.”

“Then you owe me! You’ve got to get me out of here!”

“The only way you get out of here is if the sergeant is paid, and the money in the wallet is gone,
Señor.
I do not have it to pay the sergeant. If I had it, I would pay, but
I do not have it.”

“But – but you have to do something, damn you!”

“Hey! You calm, OK? If it was not for me you still be in the cell, and you will not last long in there, OK? Now put on those clothes! You fucking stink, gringo.” Christmas put his
head in his hands. “Just call someone in you country to give you the money.”

“There is no one I can call,” Christmas replied, holding the new T-shirt out in front of him. He began pulling off the one he was wearing.

“No one? A brother? A sister?”

“No one, I told you! Jesus fucking Christ!” Christmas threw his old T-shirt onto the floor.

“What is that?”

“What is what?” Christmas looked down at his belly.

“Around your neck. Is it gold?” Christmas covered his neck. “
Señor
Christmas—”

“No.”

“Or it is prison, the real prison. To be honest, I am not even sure the sergeant will accept, but you lucky. I try, because I am your friend. You will lose the chain in prison. You will
also lose much more than the chain. Understand yourself. There is nothing else you can do,
Señor
Christmas.”

C
hristmas, his passport returned, was released into Pepito’s custody. He was given new clothes. He arranged his flight. They went to a sex
hotel that rented rooms by the hour and Christmas took one to shower and change in.

He stepped under the faucet. There was warm water, controlled and plentiful, but when he pushed the door, it did not open into Lola’s yard. He squeezed out a luxurious dollop of shower gel
onto his hand and wished that it was the fading lozenge of pink soap, picked off the concrete and covered in hair. The mirror wasn’t cracked. The towels were not bald.

After he had washed, Christmas sat on the bed and dressed himself beneath his own reflection. He was alone in a sex hotel. He held his head in his hands. He looked at the phone from between his
fingers. He didn’t have her number. He didn’t have her chain.

Pepito was waiting for him in the lobby. The owner waived the bill. They went to a restaurant that had the flags of the world strung from the ceiling. They sat in a booth. The waiter brought
perico
eggs and beer. Christmas clasped his bottle, filling his hand with cold relief. He downed it. He asked for another. He asked for a glass of rum.

While they chewed, coughed, bare scrapes of cutlery against plate, Christmas looked out through his ghost in the window and watched the night grow thick. Their meal was over. Pepito lit up a
cigarette. Christmas asked for another glass of rum.

“So you have problems about what happened in Sucre?”

“A girl was raped. It is my fault.”

“You raped a girl?”

“No! The man who was killed. He did it.”

“So it is good he was killed.”

“I watched a man
die
. I had his blood on my face.”

“You have never seen that before. It is troubling you.”

“Of course it’s fucking troubling me!”

“Whoever he was, whatever he did, he is in a better place now.”

“You’re a Christian. What a surprise.”

“No. I am just saying: this world is hell. It is better to be dead than alive.”

“If you believe that then why haven’t you killed yourself?”

“I like to be around people,” he said, exhaling through his nostrils. “Hey – you ever see that woman again? The fat one from the bar?”

“Lola.”

“I don’t know her name.”

“Her name is Lola Rosa.”

“OK,” he shrugged, “you see her again?”

“I’ve been living with her. She gave me that chain.”

“Then maybe she save your life.”

“She did save my life. She did, she did ...” Christmas put his elbows on the table and covered his face.

“This woman is still there. She is still alive. You are still alive. The other man is dead.” He extinguished his cigarette. “These are the facts.”

“Will you do one thing?”

“What?”

“If the chain is sold, will you keep a record of who buys it, where it goes?”

“You want to buy it back?”

“Yes.”

“Forget the chain. The chain is gone.”

“I have to see her again!” Christmas shifted suddenly to the edge of their booth. Pepito made the same movement.

“Don’t do any more stupid things,
Señor
,” he said.

Christmas looked out of the window. He looked at the rum and cursed it. He pushed it away. Then he downed it and cursed it again from the edge of his teeth. He could write Lola a letter. Surely
it would find its way, though he didn’t know her address, or if she had one, or even if there was a postal system – he had never seen any letters arrive. But the
infocentro
– some villagers must have email addresses. If he could just find one out – on the internet somewhere – that’s what it was for, wasn’t it? That kind of thing ...

Pepito said something to the waiter. There was no bill. The two men got up to leave. He would write some kind of letter and explain himself, apologise, hope that somehow it would get to her,
that she would read it and understand, that she would forgive him. Surely it was her that had cried out. Surely there was hope. They walked out of the restaurant into the warm night. His lies had
destroyed everything.

They climbed into Pepito’s taxi and set off towards the airport. The streets were full. How would he get back to San Cristóbal, to Venezuela? He must face Diana. He owed her that.
He owed her his version of her son’s last moments. And Judith? And Bridget? How could he ever make amends? That, at least, was simple. He could not.

A motorcycle carrying three people sped past his elbow. England. He was flying back to England. The smell of wet tarmac and chewed leaves. He was broke. He should try and face the scope and
detail of his debts, sit down with someone professional and unpick the web. He must find a job. He must take control of his drinking.
Oh God, give me a drink
.