Villa Pacifica (10 page)

J
erry fell asleep as soon as they took off. His glasses slid onto his nose from the bumpy ride, and Ute adjusted them gently. This was totally unlike him, he wasn't a napper. But then he wasn't someone prone to insomnia either. The driver kept an eye on her in his side mirror.

Ute was under the impression that the park's entrance was just around the next bend of the road. But the next bend was miles away. Weird: the park began practically at the back gate of the animal shelter, and yet here they were, circling the official entrance from a distance. She felt lost and anxious again. She never travelled without a map. It was like being half blind. You could end up anywhere, and you wouldn't know it until it was too late.

For the entire journey, which lasted about ten minutes, she saw no other vehicle on the road. At the park's entrance, there was a small kiosk with a man inside it and a large carved sign with “WELCOME TO MANTEÑO NATIONAL PARK”, and a smaller sign next to it saying “Vehicles prohibited inside the park”. The small parking space was empty – there was probably nobody in the entire park. Ute paid up the silent driver and nudged Jerry. He came to with a start, looked around him and wiped his cheek.

“I've dribbled,” he said, and stepped off the tricycle on unsteady legs. The old man inside the kiosk looked bleary-eyed, as if he too had just woken up from a nap. They unfolded their tickets, and he nodded.

“We close at five,” he said. This seemed to exhaust his duties. There was no gate or anything else to close, just a vast expanse of twigs ahead of them.

“Is there a map of the park anywhere?” Ute peeked inside the kiosk.

“No, no map. Just follow the main path. And be out by five.”

“Is there another exit?”

“No, no other exit.” And the man settled into his corner again.

They started walking.

“How are we getting back?” Jerry said.

“We'll hitch or something,” she said, thinking of the long, empty road.

They walked along the narrow path, the only visible furrow through this soundless universe of gnarled trees, bramble and three-metre-tall cacti. The sun was an egg poached in clouds, but even so the heat rose from the parched landscape slowly, with a hiss, like some reptilian spirit. Ute crouched to pee by the side of the path, and watched the grey earth soak up her stream, leaving no trace of moisture.

Within two hours, nothing had changed, except that they had drunk most of their water. They were too dazed to speak, and anyway there was nothing to say out there. There was also nothing to see apart from the occasional darting lizard or snake. No doubt some of these species were protected, but apart from the cacti, everything blended into a beige blur. No birds either.

Ahead of them, hills began to appear. The nearest ones were covered in a sparse colourless fuzz, like the head of a vulture. Behind those hills were higher green hills and, further on, peaks lost in mist.

“That must be the beginning of the cloud forest up there,” she said. “Looks appealing.”

“It's three o'clock now,” Jerry looked at Ute's watch when they stopped to rip into the mandarins he had thoughtfully brought along. He'd left his own watch at home. He always did this on holiday. “The sun goes down at six, which tells me we should be heading back round about now. The old geezer said they close at five, for all that's worth. To be honest, it strikes me as a perversity to be here when we could be in our own private garden, swinging in a hammock listening to birds.”

“It can't be more than thirty minutes to that first green hill,” Ute said, “and then it's probably the cloud forest, but we can't see it from here. I get a feeling that place, Agua Sagrada, is up there. It would be a shame to come this far and not see it at least from a distance.”

“Yes, but you forget that I've already walked a few miles today,” Jerry said. “And I'm quite keen to get back before dark. We don't have a torch, and I don't know about you, but I don't fancy the company of snakes in the dark. Besides, we won't see much of it in the dark, right?”

Jerry's legs were scratched from the bramble, and he was in a scratchy mood.

“OK, I have an idea,” she said. “There must be a path that leads back to the sanctuary, a shortcut. I know for sure that there's a track that starts at the back gate of the animal shelter. It must come off this main track. Let's give ourselves another half-hour, and if we don't come across it, we'll turn back.” This, she hoped, would give them time to take a closer look at the alluring hills ahead.

“Why didn't we use that shortcut in the first place then?” Jerry said.

“Because we would've had to go across the river again, and you know how they only have two crossings a day.” Or three, when Mikel wasn't around. “Plus I don't think that shortcut is supposed to be used at all.”

Jerry sighed and looked at Ute's watch again. “All right, if you're sure we won't get caught out by the dark…”

He was making out as if he was doing her a big favour, humouring her. Ute walked on, resentful. With most couples, it was the woman who was high-maintenance, surely. Maybe Ute was too low-maintenance for her own good. She didn't make scenes, she didn't throw tantrums, she didn't complain when she was thirsty or tired, or felt crap. She did nothing when other women fawned around Jerry. He was delicately handsome, in a long-lashed, sinewy, boyish sort of way. His intellect was sharp, and his personality, at its best, was attractive. And at its worst he was a neurotic and a wimp who passively gazed at the world from his ivory tower. A man of action he wasn't. It was symptomatic that his favourite poem of all time was ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. Did he dare to eat a peach? Not often.

Half an hour later, they were entering a greenish, hilly forest. The air was suddenly cool. They could hear birdsong. Just then, they came to a fork. A second track led up north in the direction of civilization.

“This has got to be it,” Ute said. “It's got to lead back to the Villa.”

“Or to that Agua-something place if we're really unlucky. That's right, what if the main track leads all the way to the coast, and this one to the cloud forest? Didn't the guy at the entrance say there was no other exit?”

“Yeah he did, but I don't know whether to believe him. Or anyone else around here,” Ute said.

“Anyway, this path leads
away
from the cloud forest, so it can't also lead
to
it.”

“
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
…” Jerry reciting was always a good sign of rising morale, or some attempt at struggle with adversity anyway. “And this is the one we'll take.”

“Yep.” She would come back tomorrow, with or without him. Most likely without.

The sun had gone down with alarming speed, though it was only mid-afternoon. It was at least a few miles to the sanctuary, if that's in fact where the path was taking them. They had drained the last bit of the water, and though they were thirsty, the heat had mercifully abated. Besides, they weren't under a harsh open sky any more. This wood was shady. It was almost pleasant. They no longer walked in a column like a commando unit of two, but next to each other.

“You know, Héctor told me about some gringo who died here a couple of years ago.”

“Really? How?”

“Drug overdose. He drowned.”

“What, he overdosed
and
drowned?” Jerry snorted.

“Yeah, he sounded like a psycho. He fed drugs to the animals, can you imagine?”

“Wow. Maybe just as well he did drown then.”

“Mm,” Ute said. They walked in silence for a while. “Mikel has gone into the park, till tomorrow night.”

“Who's Mikel?”

“Our host.”

“All right. So that means Max will terrorize the Villa tonight. Mikel is the one who keeps him in check.”

“There's someone who does it even better than Mikel,” Ute said defiantly.

“Who?”

“Carlos, the guy with the animals.”

“That's right, the gaucho from Paraguay. He thinks he's pretty hot, doesn't he?”

“Well,” she said. “He is who he is.”

“A man of few words, you'd say,” Jerry sneered. “And probably few brains. Anyway, does anyone actually know where Paraguay is?”

“I do,” Ute said bluntly.

“Good for you. I think Eve was a bit taken with him. Primitive men attract primitive women, it's been that way since the dawn of time. She couldn't stop giggling when we went across yesterday, poor dumb potato. But he didn't give her the time of day.”

“You did though, didn't you?”

“What's that?”

“You lied to me about walking back with Eve. You walked into the village with her too.”

Jerry stopped and looked at her.

“For God's sake, what's got into you?” he said.

“I just don't like being taken for an idiot,” Ute said, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. But she kept walking fast, she didn't want him to see her upset.

Jerry caught up with her.

“Ute, why would I lie to you about such a thing?” he said.

“I don't know, that's what I'm wondering.” Her tears were under control now.

“You're tense, and you're over-interpreting things, and…”

“Forget it. Just… let's forget it. You're right. You know” – Ute was talking fast now – “I feel like I've been here for a week.”

“Me too,” Jerry said, and took her hand with an affectionate squeeze. She squeezed his hand back and walked ahead, fast.

The green hills and misty clouds were now far behind them, almost out of view. The sun was gone, and it felt a lot later than it was. Soon the daylight was almost completely gone and they were moving in a wooded dusk. Sounds became amplified as the shapes of the forest blurred. The creatures of the forest were beginning to make their nocturnal noises: scratching, calling, coughing, rustling.

“This is really weird,” Jerry said. They were both walking much faster now, sensing there was a lot of road to cover before they could stop. “Are the days shrinking or what? You said on the Equator they're always the same length throughout the year.”

“Ah,” she said, looking at her watch. It showed four-fifteen. “I know what's happening, it's my watch. It's falling behind. It did the same trick yesterday. It's probably more like six. The battery must be dying.”

“And we don't have a torch.”

The darkness was thickening by the minute. Forests were staggeringly black places at night. They walked some more, and it was now dark.

“God, it's like walking through Dante's Inferno,” Jerry gasped behind her. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” Ute said. She strode on, crunching over now invisible twigs. “It's much safer to be in a place like this at night than in a place of ten million like, say, Rio – or even London. You don't get attacked by psychos in a forest.”

“No, just by jaguars,” Jerry snorted. He was out of breath.

“Don't worry, there aren't any large mammals in this forest. They're all up in the hills.”

“Just poisonous snakes,” Jerry said.

How were they going to endure all the walking ahead of them? Well, by just enduring – that was always Ute's way. Endure the fourteen-hour bus ride, and it'll be over. Endure traveller's diarrhoea, and you'll come through it a bit thinner, a bit less dignified, but fine. Endure the cold room and the thin blanket, and you'll be snuffly but alive in the morning. Endure a lonely childhood like a prison sentence in the Finnish countryside, and it will end one day. You will walk free. Very few things actually kill us, she thought.

“Fear of the dark is more a state of mind, you know,” she offered.

“Every fear is a state of mind. You could argue that everything we experience is a state of mind. That doesn't make it any less real. Shit.”

He was only a metre behind her, but she couldn't see him.

“Something got caught on my…” He wrestled with something that sounded like a large branch or shrub.

“Shit, shit, shit.” A tearing sound and he was free again. “Some thorny shrub-thing caught my shirt. And I dropped my glasses. God I hate this. We don't even know where we're going, for fuck's sake.”

“Sorry,” Ute said, and crouched down beside him to feel around the thorny embankment for his glasses. It was somehow her responsibility, and therefore her fault.

“We'll get there,” she said. “We'll be at the animal shelter before we know it.”

“What if it's a dead end? That old git in the kiosk said there was no other way out.”

Ute could hear him panting in the blackness, feeling around for his glasses. She was looking for them too.

“If it's a dead end, we'll die, I guess,” she said through gritted teeth.

“For fuck's sake,” Jerry said. “Whose idea was it to come here?”

“Mine, it was all
my
stupid idea, and you are just suffering the consequences, you poor thing.”

“Your sarcasm is inappropriate right now,” Jerry said. “Oh, found them. Thank God for that.”

He exhaled, and they didn't move for a moment. Then they got back to their feet and stumbled on in bitter silence for a while.

“Why do they charge people twenty dollars to get scratched by bramble?” Jerry said in the end. “I don't get it. There are no signs, fuck all to see, and these God-awful tracks leading nowhere.”

“Yeah, it's a bit strange. But then we haven't seen the whole park. There's twenty-thousand square metres of it. Or something like that.”

“Oh good. That cheers me up no end. I can't wait to explore more of it.”

Ute was clammy with old and new sweat. She was walking with her hands feeling in front of her, because it really was like moving through tar. Anything could be in front of you – a sheer drop into the ocean or a dead body – and you would just walk into it blindly. Except she knew – logically – that there was no such thing. It was a dull path through a dull forest.