Villa Pacifica (21 page)

She threw off the sheet and groped in the darkness for the nearest piece of clothing on the floor – shorts – and put it on. She already had a sleeveless top on. Her body was frozen. She couldn't find her flip-flops or any other shoes, so she walked out barefoot. She could hardly feel her feet anyway. Her face felt strangely calm and cool, as if the chill of the horrible vision had frozen her eczema together with her feet and her soul.

It was unnaturally black outside. The garden lights had gone off. The only hint of light came from the cloud-veiled moon, enough for her to see the vague shapes of giant plants all around as she crunched along the path towards the main house. A warm drizzle tickled the plants. Her heart was thumping hard. She almost expected the homunculus to jump out of a plant and bar her way. Because, clearly, Villa Pacifica was its home. It lived somewhere here, among the plants and cabins, the insects and baby iguanas.

On shaky legs, her feet suddenly hurting on the sharp pebbles, she made it to the main house. No light there either. Just the looming bulky outline of the two-storey building. She went in. Nobody inside, at least no shape she could make out in the darkness. It felt as if everyone had left while she slept. Everyone had left, and it was now just down to Ute and whatever dwelt in the garden.

She stood in the reception lounge for a moment, then suddenly remembered Héctor suggesting that Carlos had been out at the back. She walked carefully through the kitchen and out of the kitchen exit. She'd never been that way, because she didn't know there was anything here. But there was.

There was something that looked like a small cabin or shack. She approached, her heart in her throat, because she thought she heard something creaking. At first, she thought it was crickets in the plants. But there was another noise too, animal or human. It was like panting. She stood next to the cabin, her cheek glued to the wall, her heartbeat now choking her and making her sick.

Even though she couldn't hear distinct voices, just the panting, she knew exactly who they were. It was finally happening. She stood there for a while, paralysed with pain and curiosity. They were still going when she noiselessly padded away.

Back inside the lounge, she leant on a wicker chair, dazed. There was nowhere else for her to go. At first she thought of the couple, to keep thoughts of the creature at bay. But it was worse. She couldn't bear to contemplate any images of Carlos and Liz fucking. The creature was terrifying, but at least it hadn't hurt her – yet. Those two had.

She smelt the air: there was a whiff of something resembling pot. It wasn't
palo santo
, or any other incense. She got up, as if she could follow the smell. She walked around the lounge, bumping into chairs and tables, and the floorboards creaking underneath her. She went into the kitchen, but the smell wasn't coming from there. She headed towards the stairs to the music room, her heart in her mouth. She had an awful feeling the smell – or rather the smoke, it was definitely smoke – was wafting down from up there. Someone or something was lurking upstairs, waiting. She couldn't face it. But at the same time, now that she knew about it, she had no choice but to face it.

The music room was better lit because of the moonlight streaming through the panoramic windows. The smell was very strong here. It made her dizzy, but not for long because, next, she saw the creature. It was huddled in a corner, beside a large African drum. Ute's scream froze in her throat, just like in the dream, and for a moment she couldn't move.

But then she scrambled down the stairs, taking two at a time. It was a miracle she didn't fall or pass out from terror. She ran down the main path to their bungalow – or she hoped so: there was no time to think about directions, and she had to trust her instinct.

The door to the
Tortuga
was ajar. Jerry was back.

“Jerry,” she called out. Her voice rang hollow and desperate in the dark. There was no answer.

“Jerry!” The silence shocked her.

The key was inside the door, and she locked it with frantic hands.

She sat heavily on the bed, accidentally pulling the entire mosquito net down from the ceiling. She sat shaking in the mess of mosquito netting. Sleeping was out of the question. And so was leaving the cabin.

It felt very much as if everyone had left Villa Pacifica – except Carlos and Liz, and the creature, which was now wandering about freely. She sat in a frozen stupor and lost track of time. Perhaps she even fell asleep.

Someone pushed down on the door handle outside. Ute jumped up, then crouched instinctively on the floor, out of view. A loud knock followed. She stopped breathing. Then another knock.

“Ute?” It was Jerry. There was a beam of torchlight.

She got up and unlocked the door, shielding her eyes from the sudden harsh light.

“Sorry to wake you up,” he said, and stepped in, shining the torch away from her face.

“Where have you been?”

“The lights went out after you went to bed. I couldn't write and couldn't sleep. So I went out for a wander. To see what was happening.”

He turned the torch off and fumbled in the dark.

“What are you doing?” Ute asked.

“Taking off my trousers.”

“What happened to the lights?” she asked. “The lights went out.”

“It was the rain, I think. And the storm.”

She felt him creep into bed. They lay quietly for a while, not touching.

“There are things here,” Ute said. “Inside the Villa. I saw something. Someone.”

And immediately she had a ghastly feeling that she had betrayed something. That implicit in the creature's appearance on the edge of her reality was an absolute prohibition of sharing that knowledge with another. That the creature and its secrets should not be invoked in words. And she had done just that. Jerry snorted.

“Ute, of course you saw someone. There are lots of people staying here!”

No there aren't, everyone's gone, she wanted to say, but instead she just said: “Yeah, I know.” She wasn't going to insist. It was enough that she'd mentioned it. Perhaps there was still hope of retaining the secret that the creature was trying to convey to her, to her and nobody else. Because clearly no one else here could perceive it.

“You know, it's funny. I thought I was the fiction writer and you were the traveller, the facts-and-figures person.”

They were lying next to each other, still without touching. Not even their hands. So this was the fate of all marriages, eventually: to lie down in the dark with an invisible wall between, just breathing minimally, as if rehearsing for the grave.

“Maybe you've underestimated me,” Ute said. And overestimated yourself, she thought, but she didn't say it. “What are you writing about?”

“This place. Or some version of it.”

“How far along are you?”

“I still need an ending.”

Ute relished this normal conversation after the abnormal encounters earlier. But she knew that the longer she talked, the further away she was moving from the moment of truth that the creature was bringing. But she was only mortal. She could only deal with mortal things. She didn't want to handle the creature's secrets, she only wanted the secrets of her own life, her own future. And she wanted to regain control of things. She'd lost it these last few days. She was mapless and adrift and filled with dread.

Jerry was now snoring gently. The door was locked, she was safe again. Except she knew she wasn't. She found Jerry's warm, reassuring forearm and gripped it. She slept fitfully. She was woken up by the sound of heavy rain hitting the thatched roof. She was alone again.

B
reakfast wasn't served. There was still no power, no Conchita and no Héctor. And no one else either except Mikel, who was making coffee in the kitchen on a gas camping stove. Ute crouched by the dog, which was lying on the veranda, and stroked it.

“Morning,” Mikel said.

“Has everyone left? It's very quiet.”

Héctor had borrowed his car and gone to the village, Mikel said absent-mindedly. That's what bugged Ute about Mikel and Lucía: their obliviousness. Here they were, living in their self-made paradise, and yet they seemed permanently absent from it. It was as if they weren't here, only their shadows.

Ute sat down with a glass of mandarin juice that Mikel offered her. Mikel hovered around, looking like a dark cloud about to burst its lining. Lucía wasn't up. Jerry had gone for a walk earlier. Where, Mikel didn't know. On the table was a basket of stale buns and some jam. Ute smelt the air. The faint whiff of pot still hung in the air, but it was mixed with the sweet rot of humid plants.

“The baby iguanas, they're gone.” Ute pointed at the empty residential leaf. But Mikel wasn't listening. He was counting money in the reception till. She went up to him. He was snuffling, as if he had a cold.

“Did Max really write out a cheque for two thousand dollars?” she asked.

Mikel looked up at her. “Yes, he did, it's in here,” he tapped on a drawer Ute couldn't see, and continued counting the money.

“Use it,” Ute said. But something else was on her mind right now. “Mikel,” she said, “was the French guy really short?”

Mikel frowned in confusion.

“What French guy?”

“The French guy who drowned here last year.”

Mikel thought for a moment. “Was he short?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I can't remember his height. He was skinny, like all junkies.” He looked at her with amused curiosity, his eye twitching in that unnerving way he had. “What a funny question. All your questions are funny.”

“Mikel, can I ask you a personal question?”

He looked at her again in surprise and lit a cigarette. “Go on. Ask another funny question.”

“Why aren't you friends with Oswaldo and Consuelo any more?”

“Who told you that we aren't friends any more?” He frowned. “Consuelo? You've been to her café of course.”

“Yes,” Ute said. “She seems a very kind woman.”

“She is. And we are still friendly, but we don't spend time together any more. Oswaldo is dying of cancer in Agua Sagrada and doesn't want to see anyone. He's a fine artist, you know, some of the paintings here are by him.” Mikel swept a vague hand towards the lounge. But he was still preoccupied elsewhere.

“And you don't visit him?” Ute felt bad about insisting like this, but she had to.

“Even Consuelo doesn't visit him.”

There was something utterly shipwrecked about this man. Ute couldn't help but like him. She said:

“You know, I am buying that painting of Oswaldo's,
The Three Lives of Mikel
.”

Mikel stared at her and chased another fly. Smoke came out of his nostrils.

“I really like it. And you don't seem to want it…” Ute added. Mikel stared at her again and inhaled from his cigarette butt. Rainwater was dripping from the roof and onto Ute's head where she was sitting. She didn't feel like moving. The collie was sitting up now, looking imploringly at Ute, as if waiting for her to remember something.

“Can I have a cigarette?” she asked. He handed her the packet and gave her a light.

“I thought your husband was the writer,” Mikel said.

“He is,” Ute smiled. “I'm just a travel-guide writer: facts and attractions.”

“Ah, but people's lives are an attraction to you, right?” Mikel said.

“Not at all,” Ute said, “I'm just… I was bored. And I liked talking to Consuelo.”

“Consuelo is a good woman. We miss her.”

“And Oswaldo, you must miss him too?”

Mikel looked at her under a frown, stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his flip-flop and shrugged his shoulders. “Oswaldo was a good friend for many years. But what good are friends who betray your trust? Who can you trust in this fucked-up world where nothing beautiful lasts and you lose the people you love one by one, and everything has a price? Who can you trust, if not your friends? Tell me.”

“The person closest to you. The one you love,” she tried. She trusted Jerry more than she trusted herself. He wasn't like other men – he had chosen her.

“Sure, the one you love,” Mikel said, and she wasn't sure if he said it in earnest or mockingly. “You have to trust the one you love even against your better judgement. You better trust them, or you may as well shoot yourself in the head.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Though that too might be a solution.” Mikel broke into a cracked laugh. Ute wanted to console him, say it'll be all right, you don't have to shoot yourself in the head, but she sensed that whatever had caused Mikel to be like this could never be put right.

“So,” Mikel said with sudden brightness. “What are your plans for today? Are you staying on?”

“Is Max leaving?”

“I hope so. Haven't seen them yet, but I'll make sure he leaves. I've got enough on my hands without him.”

“Morning, guys!” Liz said. “Forecasts of doom and gloom were wrong after all. We're all still here, no storms in the night…”

She sat down in a chair, then realized something wasn't quite right: no Héctor, no breakfast, no lights inside. But Ute wasn't going to explain the situation. She finished nibbling on a dry bun and scraped her chair as she got up. Mikel had vanished. Even with all the doors open, the place looked shut, almost abandoned. Ute and Liz were like the last laggards in an expired paradise.

“Where's everyone else?” Liz asked.

“Gone. It's just us and the resident malevolent spirits,” Ute
said.

“You make it sound creepy,” Liz chuckled. “Are you and Jerry gonna leave today, do you think?”

“Don't know. Don't think so. You?” Ute went down the veranda steps.

“Well, Tim and I don't mind. We're kind of tired of travelling. There's not much to do here, but we don't mind the place really. But we'll go in a couple of days, for sure.”

Ute was already walking towards the riverbank. The estuary had risen more overnight, and was now lapping up almost all the way up the bank. The monkeys called despondently from the other side. There was something odd and muted about the day: it didn't feel like day at all. It felt more like dusk. Instead of light, there was rain.

A boat had just turned the sharp bend in the river, and was gliding towards her. It was Carlos. As he approached, his bare arms and neck glistened with rain. She stood motionless for a while, in surprise. He should have been on this side, in the cabin at the back of the main house. It was logical. Why was he on the other side? It was hard to follow logic in this place, increasingly hard.

She waded into the swollen water, which quickly came up to her waist. She shook her hair and had a sharp, dizzying sense of unreality. As if anything was possible now. Anything at all could happen now, and it wouldn't matter very much.

“I wouldn't go for a swim right now,” Carlos shouted. He was pulling up near the mooring place.

“Why not?” Ute said breezily, and felt like laughing. Perhaps she did laugh. Then she peeled off her T-shirt and left it to float or sink in the water. She was naked underneath.

“What are you doing?” Carlos shouted. The water was deep, and she was swimming – not towards the steep shore across, but out towards the open ocean.

“Come and get me,” Ute gurgled, choking on some water. It was quite funny. Why did she have to take things so seriously? She'd taken all of life too seriously up until now. In fact, it was all a laugh. It was all a gamble. Nothing was terribly important, she saw that now. The water was lifeless as the rain hit it, as if the rain itself was gurgling: “After me, the deluge.” Ute wondered if she could swim all the way to the
malecón
in Puerto Seco. She wasn't a great swimmer, but there were no waves and no currents there.

“There's an undertow, come back!” Carlos was shouting. There was no undertow, the water was dead. It even smelt of decay.

Carlos had caught up with her in the boat. He was leaning over into the water and saying:

“Are you mad? Where are you going?”

“I'm swimming.”

“Get in the boat.” He didn't seem in a mood for jokes. “The water is contaminated, you'll get sick.”

“I won't drown, don't worry,” Ute said, and swallowed some water again.

The rain started hitting the water harder, like thousands of pebbles to her head and face. Carlos was now reaching down from the boat to get her. She gripped his arm, and he started lifting her out of the water. He was phenomenally strong. It was hurting her arm, but she didn't mind. She stepped over the boat's rim and sat next to him, shaking the water from her hair and smiling. Carlos let the oars dangle for a moment and looked at her. She stared at him hard. He took in her bare breasts, but didn't linger on them before he started rowing without a word. Curtains of rain fell over them. Ute kept quiet.

“
El Niño
drives people a bit mad,” Carlos said while he moored the boat.

“Like last time?” Ute said. She had to shout to be heard over the clamour of rain.

“Yes, people went mad.”

“Which people?”

“Everyone, the whole village.”

“And here as well?”

He gave her that slightly condescending look which she found so intriguing and so exasperating at the same time. Actually, she found everything about him both intriguing and exasperating. Intriguing because she couldn't get close to him, and exasperating because he seemed to have an answer for her – if only she could get close enough to him.

“Where's your T-shirt?” Carlos shouted, scanning the water. His hair was plastered to his head and his face looked blurry in the violent rain. Everything looked blurry. The T-shirt was nowhere in sight.

“Don't worry,” Ute shouted back, and stepped over the boat rim and waded waist-deep into the water.

“Another day of rain and the water will cover up the shore,” Carlos said.

“How long before it reaches the cabins?”

“Not long. And you don't want to be here for it.”

“You don't want to be here for it either,” she said flippantly.

“You can go home any time you want. We have nowhere else to go.”

“And Paraguay?”

“Paraguay's Paraguay. Screwed up for all eternity.”

They reached dry land. He took off his black singlet, wrung it out and handed it to her. She put it on. This took a moment, and standing like this, blurred and muffled by rain, with nothing but water on their naked skin, was delicious. She wanted to prolong it.

“If something happened to this place,” she shouted, “where would Lucía and Mikel go?”

“Nowhere,” Mikel said. She walked behind him. It was like the day before all over again: moving slowly in the heavy, slippery soil, your body crushed by rain. His singlet clung to her. She would follow him anywhere now, anywhere. To any dingy cabin, any ends of the earth. Except they already were at the ends of the earth. On the porch of the main house, a clump of people huddled together, nibbling dry buns and sipping yesterday's juices. Neither Jerry nor Max were there. But Luis and his family were. Ute could swear the baby was shrinking from day to day inside its bundle, as if time was going backwards for it.

Nobody was in the mood for greetings – not even Luis. They all just sat there with dull complexions and listened to the waterfall thundering around them. Except Liz, who openly ogled Carlos as soon as he turned up. But he quickly disappeared from view as usual. Then Ute heard unhappy male voices inside the main house – something about phone lines being down and about getting help. Ute sat down at Luis and Helga's table. Luis looked at her. His usual friendliness was gone, and he looked preoccupied.

“How were your dreams?” Ute tried. Luis smiled faintly.

“I didn't have any. A good thing too. My mother said if you have dreams here, they will be bad ones, and you will be doomed to fulfil them. She refused to sleep in her cabin. She spent the night upstairs in the music room. She's convinced there are bad spirits here and wants us to leave immediately.”

Ute felt herself blush, but no one seemed to take notice, except Luis's mother, who was looking at her with kind, mustard-yellow eyes. She'd seen her upstairs – seen her bolt like a lunatic, running for her life in the black night, running from a kind old woman who was quietly smoking a joint, minding her own business.

Suddenly, she felt the same as in the water just moments ago, and she saw that this whole thing was unreal. The place, the people gathered here, even the stupid weather was a joke. And life itself, all their lives were a joke, a divine practical joke. Ute laughed a nervous little laugh and drew a few surprised eyes, but she didn't care.

“So what are we gonna do today, guys?” Liz asked.

“Drown, by the looks of it,” Tim said.

“Leave,” Eve said. “I wanna leave. I can't take it any longer. I wanna see my kids.”

“Yes, we must leave.” Helga said, and looked at Luis.

But somehow leaving didn't seem possible any more. Leaving was a topic of conversation, nothing else.

“Liz, I know what
you
can do today,” Ute heard herself say.

Liz looked at her, surprised, friendly.

“You can continue your little shag parties with Carlos, no one will hear you in this rain. Don't let us stop you.”

There was a stunned silence. Liz blinked at Ute a few times, then she suddenly looked at Eve. Eve's eyes widened.