The Amnesia Clinic (15 page)

After an hour, the train pulled into a small mountain stop. Those of us sitting on its roof were level with the upper-storey window of a mint-green, one-up-one-down house that overlooked the station. A mestiza with ruffled black hair, woken by the train, stood on the balcony wrapped in a cotton sheet decorated with orange flowers. Rubbing one eye, she watched with the other what must have been a familiar tableau. I envied her the habit of watching that madcap express rattle
through every day from the safety of her bedroom. I raised an arm to wave at her, then felt stupid. She wasn’t nearly far enough away to justify a wave. I could almost have reached out and touched her if I’d wanted to. Beneath her window, a sequence of long benches lined a table under an awning, which formed a makeshift cafeteria at which ranks of Indians sat breakfasting. Their identical hats and different coloured ponchos made it impossible to distinguish between the men and the women. Fabián jumped off the train to get food from the café. While he was gone, I watched as a live sheep was passed up to a man on the roof, who loosely tethered it to a railing on the top of the ladder but otherwise left it to roam about up there as he went off to sit downstairs for the remainder of his journey. The girl in the window saw me watching the sheep and smiled. Her face was creased with sleep. I wanted to wake up next to it.

Fabián reappeared with a bottle of water, a loaf of bread and a plastic bag full of hard-boiled eggs. I noticed he still had the knife from the café the previous evening. He ate his eggs by slicing the ends off and sucking at them in the shells. I had a different approach, painstakingly removing every piece of shell so as to have the entire egg at my disposal, then sinking my teeth in, enjoying the way the white resisted for a split second before yielding access to the smooth treasure of the yolk. I was so hungry, and so grateful for the food when it arrived, that I missed the girl leaving her window. When I looked back as the train started moving again, she had gone.

We passed a sign we as we moved off:
You are currently at an altitude of 2,347 metres. The journey you are about to undertake represents the largest drop in altitude of any railway line in the world: 66km across and 2km down. HOLD ON
.

* * *

The sun soared. We lay, comfortably fed, though I could feel the back of my neck beginning to itch with sunburn. I noticed that Fabián had taken a small plastic bottle and a packet of cotton wool from his bag. He was tipping the end of the bottle into the cotton wool and swabbing his face with it.

‘Alcohol,’ he explained, raising his voice over the wind. ‘A trick Eulalia showed me. It’s really good at removing grease and dirt from your skin, especially if you haven’t been able to wash. Look.’

He thrust the piece of cotton wool, smeary with grey grease and blackheads, towards my face.

‘Charming. So tell me, was Ethel’s everything you expected?’

‘I’m not sure you want to hear about it,’ said Fabián. ‘I got into a bit of trouble. That’s why I had to make a run for the train this morning.’

‘Tell me all.’

‘I think her name was Ana,’ he said, with a mock-dreamy look on his face. ‘Picture the scene if you will: a rusty bedstead and a naked light-bulb in a fly-blown attic room. Sitting in that squalid place, unaware of her own devastating charms, is a creature of the most wondrous beauty you could imagine. Cheap, too.’

‘I don’t think I need to hear any more,’ I said.

‘I don’t need to tell you any more. I can
show
you, and leave the rest to your imagination,’ said Fabián, giggling. ‘What a fantastic girl she was.’

He produced from within his pocket an enormous pair of blue knickers and opened them before me.

‘How about that?’ he said, with a suggestive smile. ‘She gave them to me as a souvenir.’

‘Well, I don’t know what to say,’ I began.

‘What’s this, guys?’ said Pif, who was picking his way along the roof towards us. ‘The spoils of conquest, I see.’

‘I stole the ten-gallon hat from her pimp,’ Fabián went on, more subdued now that his audience had expanded to two, though still having to keep his voice up over the noise of the train. ‘And I didn’t have enough money to pay. That’s why I got into trouble and had to run for it.’

‘That’s quite a story,’ said Pif, plucking the pants from Fabián’s hands. ‘But I’m surprised you were even able to get out of her. You could park this train in these.’

A couple of guys crouched near us who understood laughed. I couldn’t suppress a grin myself.

‘I’m not sure that’s a ten-gallon hat you’re wearing,’ Pif continued. ‘It looks more like a three-gallon to me. But the panties, on the other hand, now they gotta be ten gallons plus, easily.’

‘Who is this guy?’ Fabián muttered.

‘Your friend says he got lucky last night,’ Pif said to me. ‘I say his only luck was not being trapped in there for ever. What shall we do with them? Shall we make a hot-air balloon?’

‘At least your jokes are amusing you,’ said Fabián. ‘Jealousy is a terrible thing.’

‘I’m not really jealous, pal,’ said Pif, throwing the pants back in Fabián’s direction with disdain. ‘For one thing, they’ve still got perfect creases in them from when they were folded up, and for another, you forgot to take out the price tag. You bought these from the market this morning, didn’t you?’

‘Fuck you,’ Fabián snapped. As he spoke, he fumbled inside the pants to check whether or not Pif was right about the price tag.

‘It’s all right, I get it,’ said Pif. ‘You were in a hurry, and you didn’t check the size first. But remember, in future: if you’re going to be a good bullshit artist, it’s better to take care of the little details.’

Fabián stuffed his spoils back into his bag, pulled the hat (which, I now realised, he must also have bought from the market) over his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Pif shook his head, settled down again and took out a camera.

We chugged on, through a scrubby landscape broken up only by cacti, grass and the odd adobe hut. Occasionally, an urchin or two sitting on a doorstep would wave at the passing train as their parents hung out washing or loaded up a mule in the background.

Presently, we stopped again.

‘Aha, the Devil’s Nose,’ said Pif.

Fabián pushed his hat back on to his head and sat up.

Like our bus the night before, the train was now covering such a steep drop that it would have to go down in stages, zigzagging forwards and backwards down the side of the mountain. The descent was treacherous, hence the name
Nariz del Diablo
. Below us, in a dusty cutting so far down it looked like part of a miniature train set, I could see a station and a set of points. The idea that we would be going down there seemed ridiculous. The engine shuddered to a stop. I heard birdsong over the silence. It was going to be a long wait. Going down the
Nariz
was a serious business, Pif explained. The driver had to phone ahead and make sure that all the points were set the right way so the train could slalom its way down without accident. He said he’d read about it in a guidebook.

‘Fucking tourists,’ said Fabián in response. Pif ignored him.

Our bottle of water was running low and there was no shade. The metal roof of the train felt like a hotplate.

‘Where are you two headed, anyway?’ said Pif.

‘We’re going to a town called Pedrascada,’ I said.

‘Oh, yeah. The surfing beach. Cool. I spent a couple of weeks there last year.’

‘You’ve been there?’ said Fabián, perking up.

‘Of course.’

‘Maybe you can help us. Did you ever hear of or visit an Amnesia Clinic while you were down there?’

‘A what?’

Fabián edged closer to Pif as he explained. ‘It’s a sort of hospital, especially for people who have lost their memory. It’s in Pedrascada. That’s where we’re headed.’

I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

‘Hey guys, I think we might be moving down the
Nariz
soon,’ I said.

‘An Amnesia Clinic?’ said Pif, trying out the expression. ‘Does anything like that exist
anywhere
?’

‘Of course it does. It’s where all the amnesiacs are put,’ explained Fabián impatiently. ‘Did you see it?’

‘I’ve never heard of anything like it, either in Pedrascada or anywhere else,’ he said. ‘Are you sure it exists? It’s not another one of your stories, hmm? Like the
puta
last night?’

‘Listen, you fucking asshole—’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, stepping in. ‘It could be there, and Pif just didn’t see it. Right? We don’t know yet.’

I was staring intently at Fabián as I said this, trying to make him see sense and back down. He couldn’t seriously be expecting Pif to play along with him and pretend that something existed when it didn’t. Pif didn’t know the rules of the game, and had in any case already proved himself to be a keen debunker of myths.

‘All I know,’ said Pif, ‘is that it’s a very small town, and there ain’t much there other than the odd beach bar, a few fishermen and some roosters. If you boys find a hospital in Pedrascada, I’ll eat your hat. And those big blue panties of yours, kiddo.’

‘Jesus, this guy!’ said Fabián. ‘
Me está mamando la vida
. Fuck off to somewhere else on the train, will you? Or, better still, get off it altogether.’

‘Listen, I’m sorry for spoiling your little macho lie about the whorehouse,’ said Pif. ‘I’m only trying to stop the two of you going on a wasted journey. But if you want me to leave you alone, that’s cool. I’ll see you later.’

Pif picked up his pack and his stereo and edged off up the train to where a group of young Ecuadorians sat in a circle, getting drunk. Before long, he had introduced both himself and his ghetto blaster to the group, and hip-hop began pumping out across the roof. Fabián sat, staring thunderously after Pif. Casting around in search of something to divert his attention, I found myself looking into the eyes of an Indian boy of about nine years old. He wore a faded orange T-shirt and blue shorts and stood on a bank beside the train hawking cigarettes and fried banana chips to the passengers from a painted wooden tray slung round his neck. A small but vicious-looking crossbow was strapped across his back.

‘Here, this kid’s selling cigarettes,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you just buy a packet of Lark and calm down?’

Fabián noticed the boy and called him over. He scampered up the ladder from the embankment and was soon on top of the carriage with us. Fabián spoke to him quickly.

‘I didn’t know you spoke any Quechua,’ I said.

‘Not much, but enough,’ said Fabián over his shoulder. ‘You get a better deal from these kids if you do.’

He and the boy carried on talking, even though the cigarette transaction was apparently over. A brief discussion took place. Fabián seemed to be trying to persuade the boy of something. I saw another note change hands.

‘What else are you buying?’ I said.

‘A favour,’ he smirked.

The engines restarted, and the train edged its way down the slope. The drop now seemed even more vertiginous, as if the train were more likely to tip sideways off the tracks
than make it down. Progress was slow, and the train had to keep stopping as points were switched and the direction was reversed.

‘Now for the good bit,’ said Fabián under his breath when we had got about halfway down.

I thought he was referring to some part of the descent. Too late, I saw what he really meant: the cigarette boy knelt on a small hill, waiting for the chugging train, his crossbow ready at his shoulder. Pif was looking in the opposite direction when the boy fired. The bolt shot out of the crossbow and struck him near the top of his left thigh. I just had time to see the boy give a Pepsi punch of satisfaction in Fabián’s direction, and Fabián’s unobtrusive wave of thanks, before the boy was gone, disappearing over the brow of his grassy knoll.

‘I never thought that kid would actually do it,’ said Fabián to me, when things had calmed down and it had been established that Pif’s injury wasn’t too bad. With periodic delays and reverses, we had almost reached the end of the descent.

‘You hired that kid to shoot at Pif with his crossbow?’ I said.

‘Not so much hired. I just bet him ten dollars he couldn’t shoot the stupid
yanquí
in the cap and paid him in advance. Teach that idiot not to believe me. Fucking asshole. I was sick of him questioning everything I said.’

I stared at him long and hard.

‘Fabián,’ I said, eventually. ‘You aren’t going to freak out if we get to Pedrascada and the clinic isn’t there, are you? Remember what we said: this is mainly about the journey, isn’t it?’

‘Of course.’ He exhaled comfortably as he lay back down on the roof. ‘That Epifanio guy just pissed me off, that’s all. It won’t happen again.’

‘So, where did you really stay last night, then?’ I said, trying to change the subject.

‘Don’t you fucking start as well,’ he said.

The drop in altitude gave me a savage pressure headache; clearly my head had been happy in the clouds. I kept opening and closing my jaw like a dog eating a toffee in an effort to release the pressure. Eventually I held my nose and blew: a whine, then a pop. I felt moisture on the inside of my ear.

Four hours into our journey, the Andes were behind us. Sweeping plantations of banana and sugar cane had replaced the grassy plains of the sierra and the wool and woodsmoke that scented the mountains had faded away behind the ripe, intoxicating reek of the tropics. The air grew more and more humid. It was as if someone were steadily turning up a dial to see when we might begin to crack, or singe. An early-morning start and a long journey are a disorienting combination, and suddenly, in this unfamiliar terrain, it felt like we were very far from home indeed – as if we had dropped from such a height that it would be impossible to get back up to where we had been without doing ourselves harm.

Pif had been subdued since his mysterious assault at the hands of the crossbow-wielding cigarette boy, and now he sat not far from us, smoking a joint. Fabián was alternately holding his plaster cast against his forehead for the coolness and swabbing his face again with his bottle of alcohol. I noticed him stealing the occasional glance at Pif and smiling inwardly at his own handiwork.