Guano (19 page)

Núñez went back to his tobacco, was sad, was nervous, sat down, stood up and dreamed. He ripped the chart from the wall. He fed his pipe little pieces of South America until late in the night. Nine wounds. Who could deny him a statue?

So they went back to the Chincha Islands. The few garrisons that had been left there were glad to be back on board. Their uniforms were covered with what looked like a layer of cracking grey stucco. Yet they had taken care of them, they swore, as well as they could. But even the water was dubiously clean, always greasy, always black and impenetrable, as if drawn from the bottom of a well.

Although the locals drank it – but then look at their fish eyes, pupils clouded, never clear, as murky as the bottom of a well – in fact, so dark they scare you, Captain, Admiral, Lieutenant, endlessly damning you; it's as if they're looking past you, as if you are a mere spectre, a mere vibration, and they're looking right through you.

Anything else?

The eyes of a bat, there.

They were stuck on the islands for a few days with nothing to do. They disembarked from the ships to stretch their legs and throw rocks at the terns. They awaited their departure, thinking of Madrid. They watched the people who, left with few masters, were doing nothing as well. They hid away in the houses, shutters closed, they went out to draw water from the fountain, disappeared into the countryside, alone, and came back in pairs or not at all.

As for Núñez, he hesitated, scratched and smoked. He asked that they get fresh supplies from what they could find; very well, they said, plants along the roadside, lichen, igneous rocks, a bit of greasy water?

There were rumblings that it would be impossible to go back without stopping, the lack of provisions, the closing of South American ports. Núñez would find a way, so have patience, everyone. As long as he smoked: patience.

As the fantasy of a woman to sequester and undress started to fade, Simón no longer appreciated the islands as much. He observed the ashy walls, the ashy skin; the sky seemed to be stained with ash, pale grey or grey-green, sometimes dark grey. He paced the village, noting a few morose, strange details in his notebook. A new grey here, a three-armed child there. Everyone was watching him. Dilated pupils shifted back and forth between the shutters; discussions were interrupted in the square, and resumed in whispers. He liked to go to the fountain, sit down and write, all day long, about the disquieting shifts in the silence.

Sometimes a local came to draw some greasy water and greeted him as if alerting him to danger. He would leave, looking back over his shoulder.

An entire secret society was percolating beneath the surface of this weariness, Simón scribbled, a sort of shameful cadaver was decomposing, fermenting, in the quiet, tomb-like houses. A village tragedy, the curse of ancestors, seemed to hover over the place, which, truth be told, took him a long way from the rationality of the war, and entertained him.

And then, one day, something bad indeed happened. A corpse was found lying at the foot of the fountain. Someone had taken the trouble to excise the eyelids so the eyes would find no rest. Black blood oozed from below the eyebrows. It pooled on the cheeks before trickling down to the rock, mixing with the shit to form a brownish paste. The eyes lost in death, Simón observed, went straight through him – dear spectre, mere vibration – continuing their dark contemplation through his body, as if he didn't exist. It was the three-armed child.

Now no one wanted to leave the ship, and it was becoming urgent that Núñez make a decision. Simón had noted everything about his misadventure; it could come in handy, a gothic South American story, a bestseller in Madrid, the climax of a travelogue. He may even have written the first line of a novel.

Then Montse returned, settled in, haunted him in any fanciful form: lunar, aviary, capillary and finally philosophical. It was the secret book lying on the work table: he had wanted to work, and he had seen it. He had read the first sentence, the next one, read up to the sentence that she liked so much, to understand its significance.

And he read, with the most beautiful letter ever written serving as a bookmark. He imagined himself reaching her thoughts and her words a little. He wondered whether she was slowly forgetting him, if their memories were tugging on each other and bringing each other back to life in a sort of invisible to and fro, or at some point made contact to form just one; or if instead they wandered through two lands that Simón and Montse visited all on their own.

He was interrupted by a seaman.

Lieutenant, he explained, Núñez has spoken. There was divinatory smoke and a solemn mouth. The return journey? Not Cape Horn, a wild idea, a radical solution. What, then? Green beaches, brown nipples. Don't be coarse, Simón interrupted. Blue hair, floral necklaces, honey-coloured hair, grass skirts, raven hair, silk dragons, chocolate-brown hair, flasks of spices, who knows, love in one of these hues. The Port of Hong Kong, it seems. Get a hold of yourself, Simón said firmly. Foreign lands, strange countries, the Port of Chittagong. Please, Simón finally took offence. End, full stop.

Then, all the same, out of curiosity:

Hair the colour of dead leaves?

And since he had been told that the return journey would take the Spanish fleet around the world, the sailor added, my lieutenant, imagine whatever you like.

Louis Carmain
is from Québec City.
Guano
is his first novel, and it received the prestigious Prix des Collégiens.
Bunyip
, his second novel, was published in 2014.

Rhonda Mullins
is a writer and translator living in Montréal.
And the Birds Rained Down
, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's
Il pleuvait des oiseaux
, was a cbc Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, as were her translations of Élise Turcotte's
Guyana
and Hervé Fischer's
The Decline of the Hollywood Empire
.

Typeset in Albertan

Albertan was designed by the late Jim Rimmer of New Westminster, B.C., in 1982. He drew and cut the type in metal at the 16pt size in roman only; it was intended for use only at his Pie Tree Press. He drew the italic in 1985, designing it with a narrow fit and a very slight incline, and created a digital version. The family was completed in 2005, when Rimmer redrew the bold weight and called it Albertan Black. The letterforms of this type family have an old-style character, with Rimmer's own calligraphic hand in evidence, especially in the italic.

Printed at the old Coach House on bpNichol Lane in Toronto, Ontario, on Rolland Natural paper, which was manufactured, acid-free, in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, from second-growth forests. This book was printed with vegetable-based ink on a 1965 Heidelberg kord offset litho press. Its pages were folded on a Baumfolder, gathered by hand, bound on a Sulby Auto-Minabinda and trimmed on a Polar single-knife cutter.

Edited and designed by Alana Wilcox

Cover by Ingrid Paulson

Coach House Books

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