Villa Pacifica (14 page)

“Cool! I'm gonna go help the gaucho. OK honey, we don't have to go to the Galápagos today. I'll have the cooked breakfast,
amigo
.”

“You do what you wanna do,” Eve said wearily and got up, propping her palms on the table. “I'm going with, hum… sorry, what's your name again?” she turned to Ute.

“Ute.”

“Right. Ute and I are going walking.”

“All right, fine with me,” Max approved. “Liz, maybe you can join the ladies, and your man can come and help with the animals.”

“He's not gonna let you across after what happened last night,” Eve said, and sat back down wearily.

“Who's not gonna let me? No one's gonna stop me from doing what I want to do round here. I'm a guest – I'm paying, remember? And anyway the gaucho over there hasn't got the last word. Max's got the last word. And you know why?”

“Cos you always have to have the last word?” Eve suggested.

“That too. And cos I know something the gaucho doesn't want me to know.” He allowed a dramatic pause, then leant over to the company in a hushed confidential manner. “He killed a guy. Oh yeah, he killed a gringo, and it was hushed up. Not that hard with the corrupt police round here – plus the gringo was a drifter, so it's like, who cares? But not if I get someone to look into it again. Then this place will shut down overnight, and
hasta la vista
baby. Oh yeah.” Max sat back in his chair and put his feet up. “He's gonna let me play with the animals today. Anyone wanna take a bet?”

Eve sighed and shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “Who cares. I'm here for a holiday.”

“I'd love to see the animals,” Liz said. “Where are they?”

“Across the estuary here. You go in a boat…” Ute started saying, but just then Mikel appeared on the main path, carrying plastic bags.

“
Hola
,” he yelled to his guests.

“
Hola
,” answered the guests, almost in unison. Ute was glad to see him. Mikel had sweat stains on his short-sleeved shirt and two-day-old stubble that gave him a more haggard look than usual. He looked like he'd been away for ages, and it felt like ages for Ute.

“What's in those bags?” Max asked.

“Rubbish,” Mikel said. “Those sons of bitches in the national park have left rubbish all over the mangroves.” And he was gone in the kitchen.

“Ute, when are we gonna go?” Eve said without moving.

“In ten minutes?” Ute said.

“All right, I'll go make myself ready, then. Liz, are you gonna come with us?”

“No thanks. I'll wait for Tim.”

As Ute walked down the pebble path, a man with a vaguely Asiatic face greeted her on the path. He must be Tim.

“It's
so
humid here,” he said. “Have you been here long?”

“Yes,” Ute said. “No,” she corrected herself. “I mean, a few days. I've lost track of time a bit. I think that happens to you here.”

Tim lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds exactly like the Galápagos.”

It's exactly not like the Galápagos, Ute wanted to say. It's much weirder here.

“Yep,” Ute said. “It is.”

J
erry was fast asleep, and could carry on sleeping for hours yet. Ute made up a small day-pack, put on her walking shoes and scribbled a note: “I'm off walking.” After a brief hesitation, she added: “Hope you had a productive night writing. U. xxx” and left it on the terracotta-tiled floor outside the bathroom. She glanced at her note sideways. It didn't really hope he'd had a productive night writing. It queried where the hell he'd been at three in the morning, when the music was blasting and the gunshot rang out.

At reception, she asked Héctor about the snorkelling trips. She figured, if she and Eve were underwater, that would cut down on the talking. Besides, she needed to check out all the local amenities for the guide.

“They do the boat trips most days, if there's enough people,” he said. “From midday, departing in a boat from the
malecón
, about three hundred metres from
Café Fin del Mundo
. But I don't think there'll be enough people. I think they need at least six. This is the low season, and we've had
El Niño
weather… Unless” – he nodded towards the veranda – “you want to talk the others into it.” She didn't.

On the veranda, there were four breakfasters – Alejandro and Alma, Tim and Liz – each pair at a different table, sipping their hot chocolates in blissful silence. Alejandro and Alma invited her for a ride with them later on. She declined politely.

“Where are Max and Eve?” Ute asked. “The American couple,” she added.

“He went down that way,” Liz pointed to the shore. “And she went to her cabin.”

Ute retraced her steps to the far-end cabins where the Whale was. She knocked on the door. Eve opened.

“Hey,” she said. “You know what, I think I'm gonna go for a drive with the Mexican guys. I'm just not much of a walker, and they were very sweet and invited me along.”

“That's cool,” Ute said, relieved. “Where are you going?”

“Oh,
I
don't know. Do you wanna come with us?”

“No, that's all right.”

“Do you wanna come in or something?”

“No thanks.” But Eve had already opened the door wide and Ute stared at the dark room. You'd think a bomb had gone off – clothes, shoes, bags, stuff everywhere.

“Oh sorry,” Eve chuckled. “It's really untidy in here. We make a terrible mess when we fight.” She shrugged her round shoulders and blinked at Ute.

“Oh well,” Ute said. She looked around and found nothing to say. “Well, I'll see you later.” She turned to go. “Maybe tomorrow we can go on the snorkelling boat trip?”

“Oh, I love snorkelling. I mean, I've never done it, but I'd love to try it.”

“Sure.”

Next, she was standing outside
la tortuga
, peering noiselessly through the netted window into the darkness inside. Jerry was still asleep, and she was glad that she didn't have to talk to him. So glad that it made her sad.

Ute walked along the empty beach. She strode purposefully out of habit, as if rushing to catch the last bus out of town. But there was nothing to catch here, not even fish. She was simply running away from Villa Pacifica.

The wet heat came straight off the ocean in huge, invisible waves that slapped into you. Ute was sure the heat had got denser since they arrived. Something tropical and unfriendly had been moving across the Pacific, from west to east. It had now reached this shore, and was invading the land and its creatures. All along the coast, the last few weeks had been unusually sultry. This humming, sulphurous heat was wilting plants and people. Everything was damp and mouldy – clothes, skin, the breath in her body.

When she reached the end of the estuary beach and the beginning of the
malecón
, Ute sat on the wet sand. She was already drenched in sweat and too lethargic to take off her trainers, so she let the warm water lap at her feet and observed them with a vacant stare: someone's soggy feet. Not unlike her brain in fact. Her tidy brain was succumbing to fungal growth. She didn't think with it any more, she felt with it. It was scarily unlike her. She cast her gaze over the milky water, as if to cast a net for the glittery fish of thoughts. But there was nothing there, just haze.

If someone asked her what she really wanted from life, right now and for the foreseeable future, and if she could be completely honest… No, it was better not to be completely honest. Because what she wanted was to find herself in near darkness, on a hard bed with Carlos. That was all she wanted at the moment. In his dingy cabin, to be more precise, though she wasn't fussy about the setting. To feel him, his calluses, silence and sweat, fall like a hammer on the anvil of her body. To collide with him in the feral heat, among the breathing, screeching animals, until sparks flew. To be released from herself, from her fears, from her desires.

She got up and squelched on in her wet trainers.

The football pitch was empty this time. There were no people at all along the beach or the
malecón
as far as the eye could see. The murky tide was swollen. The fish market stalls were empty. It felt like the last Sunday before the Apocalypse.

Ute tried to calculate what day it was. They arrived on Tuesday the fifteenth of December, but was it two, three or four days since then? It was hard trying to keep up with the clock. She could pretend to follow the trajectory of the sun across the sky, but the sun was invisible. Its heat filtered through cotton-wool cloud.

Café Fin del Mundo
was open – and just as well, because it was where she was headed all along. There were two plastic tables outside, and a strange trio was sitting at one of them.

There was a tiny indigenous woman with a face the colour of baked earth, in a sky-blue polyester dress. She wore her hair in a long grey braid. Beside her was a young man with a ponytail, who looked like her son, and a large northern-European woman of a hippie appearance, with dreadlocks and big floral skirts. The exposed full moon of her veiny breast was plugged into a startlingly downy baby. For a second Ute thought she was going mad, because at first glance, with its tufted black hair and scrunched face, the baby looked exactly like a howler monkey.

She greeted them, and the only return greeting came from the man, who said “
Hola
” and smiled keenly with small, sharp teeth. The old woman seemed lost in thought, and the young woman in the baby. Ute almost walked on, past the café and its customers. But there was nowhere to go past the café, except further down the empty
malecón
, so she sat down at the other table and looked blankly at the menu. She already knew its contents from her previous visit, which felt like weeks ago.

“You're back.” Consuelo stood in the doorway, smiling her warm shadow of a smile, notepad in hand.

“
Hola
,” Ute said brightly. “How are things?”

“Fine. The weather's getting hotter, isn't it. I think there's a tropical storm on the way. I've been watching the ocean from morning to sunset every day. I can see the changes. I can feel it coming. Just like last time.”

“You mean
El Niño
again?”

“
El Niño
again,” Consuelo said sadly.

“I thought
El Niño
only strikes once every ten years or so?” Ute said. This was all she remembered about the
El Niño
phenomenon from her reading on the subject years ago.
El Niño
alternated with
La Niña
, whatever that was.

“I thought so too,” Consuelo said. “But things are not always the way we think. A
cafecito
, like the other day? OK, guava juice it is. One
momentito
.”

Consuelo went back inside. Ute must really offer to buy a painting. But she only had twenty-five dollars with her. The trio had sat silently throughout this exchange. She looked at the man, who smiled and looked at the sky as if it was a movie screen, and she followed his gaze. The sky was white and unpleasantly curved, like a blank eyeball. Only the gentle splashing of the ocean and the sucking of the bristly creature could be heard in the eerie silence. The breastfeeding woman said something in a low, thick voice. The man mumbled something and took the bundle from her.

“Are you staying here in Puerto Seco?” the man asked Ute amiably, now cradling the baby, which pursed its face as if they were feeding it lemons.

“Yes,” Ute replied. “Actually, we're just outside the village, in a sort of retreat. It's called Villa Pacifica.”

“I didn't know there was another hotel,” the man said. “We're staying here, two hundred metres down the
malecón
. A small hotel, very cheap. How much is a room at Villa Pacifica?”

“Twenty-five dollars for a cabin,” Ute said.

“For two people? A rip-off,” the man shook his head disapprovingly.

The gringa was methodically eating an omelette. Black tarantulas of hair nestled in her armpits. In her boho skirts, she looked like a Bavarian farm maid. The older woman was gazing at the sea with an absent expression. Her dress front had a crumpled appliqué, and a beaded necklace was wound several times around her stubby neck.

And here, suddenly, was the fruit van again. Loud Cumbia and a puff of petrol smoke floated their way.

“
Dos dolaritos las mandarinas
!” the megaphone voice shouted over the music. “
Un dolarito las bananas
!” The van slowed down as it passed the café, but since nobody gave a sign of wanting mandarinas, bananas or anything else, it rolled on. The man with the megaphone gave Ute and the trio a funny, inert look, as if he was remembering them, rather than seeing them in flesh and blood. Was this the same van from last night? Boredom could drive you bananas here. Bananas and mandarinas.

“Well, we're off now,” the man said. His name was Luis. “Helga and the baby need to rest. We'll see you around, I hope. Oh, by the way, I want to go snorkelling tomorrow, but they need at least six people. There's no one else at our hotel, and Helga can't go because she's breastfeeding. Maybe you and your friends could come along to make up numbers?”

“I'm here with my husband,” Ute said. “They're not my friends.”

Then she added, “I'll ask them.”

“Great. Tomorrow at eleven then. The ticket kiosk is down this way” – he pointed – “it has a yellow front with some fish painted on it, you can't miss it.”

Ute sat a while longer, sipping the crimson juice. Something gripped her throat the way Carlos's ropey hand must have gripped the throat of the grey-faced junkie. Perhaps she was just very tired after weeks in lumpy hotel beds and bumpy buses. Maybe she was getting a bit jaded (she didn't want to think “old”) for this job. Maybe she could do less content-writing and more editing. Because those were really her only options. If she didn't want to travel any more, and she didn't want to read other people's travel compendiums, she'd be out of work and out of livelihood. What would her life amount to then? Not very much.

Even Consuelo and Lucía, two admirable women with seemingly charmed lives here by the beach, had hit on an unpalatable truth: there comes a point in your life when the choices you've made are not retractable. It's not a rehearsal any more, it's the real thing. You are so stuck with the consequences of the choices you have made that you
are
those choices. You are the relationship you're in. You are the work you do, or don't do. You are the children you have created – or haven't. You are the place where you live. Your future is not as flexible as it used to be ten years ago, or even five years ago. Your future is already invaded by large swathes of the past.

And having established this, all you can do is have a pathetic midlife crisis. A midlife crisis is exactly what was going to happen if Ute kept sitting here at the End of the World Café.

That's enough,
basta ya
! Ute scraped the plastic chair against the tiled patio and went inside the shop.

Consuelo was in a semi-dark, semi-empty room at the back of the café, uncovering canvases of various sizes stacked along the walls, presumably for Ute's sake. She flicked a switch on, and a dingy light flooded the bare room.

“I keep some of Oswaldo's work here in case someone wants to look at it. I have more at home. I don't know which ones you want to see.” She started browsing through the canvases. “I don't know what sort of size you're after…”

“Maybe I could just look through them,” Ute said. There was no turning back now, she had to buy something. “Actually, I haven't brought enough money with me. But I wanted to look at them and see if there's anything…”

“Yes, of course, I understand. Take your time.” Consuelo withdrew and leant against a small table with her arms crossed. Feeling Consuelo's eyes on her, Ute crouched to examine the paintings.

“Oswaldo has this unique style of weaving words into images,” Consuelo was saying. “Sometimes it's difficult to tell them apart. Even for me.” Did she mean tell the text from the image, or tell the paintings apart from one another? Because Ute had a problem with both. Her ignorance in matters of art was to blame, no doubt.

“His triptychs are among his best works,” Consuelo went on. “But all his triptychs are at home, except this one.”

She pulled out a long canvas, unwrapped the brown paper from it and propped it up against the wall. It was in three parts and, unlike the others, Ute found it arresting. It stood out.

“You know,” Consuelo said, “this weak light doesn't do it justice. Let's take it outside, so you can see it in the natural light.”

Outside, she placed it on top of a plastic table and stood behind it, holding it up for Ute to see. Each part of the triptych was in a different range of hues, and each was larger than the previous. The first, smallest one, was metallic greys. The second was a kind of hyper-real, saturated blue. On closer inspection, there was a squiggly black hairline fracture running across, like a tear in the fabric of a dream. The third and largest was a chlorophyll green, like a rainforest.