The Amnesia Clinic (23 page)

‘Sorry,’ she said with a look of mock-solemnity. ‘Tell me. Where were you exploring?’

He spoke distantly and mechanically. ‘We went to a cave round the side of the headland. We think there might be a way to get through the rocks and up to the dome on the hill.’

Sally turned to Ray. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask: what is that place?’

‘It’s a hide-out for a James Bond villain,’ said Ray, stripping flesh from a piece of fish carcass with his fingers. ‘He’s called Saratoga, and he’s got two belly buttons. A master criminal.’

A smile wriggled across Sol’s face in the firelight.

‘We have a different theory, don’t we, Fabián?’ I said, sitting up.

‘Do we? I’m not so sure we do.’ He looked at me darkly.

I have since tried to tell myself that I broke the agreement because I thought it might help him, that I thought he’d be pleased when I did it, that it would give his fantasies a chance to breathe in the open air. This is, of course, bullshit. I was showing off.

‘We reckon the dome is an Amnesia Clinic,’ I said. ‘A place for people who have lost their memory. It’s run by an eccentric billionaire named Victor Menosmal, and everyone up there has to go through the day not knowing who they really are. Tell them, Fabián.’

‘No.’

‘Go on, tell them.’

‘Don’t do this.’ He looked at me as if he were ready to kill me. I began to regret what I’d said, but it was too late. Sally’s interest was piqued.

‘That’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘A hospital full of people inventing their own lives. Maybe that’s why you can’t get up there. Maybe they don’t want to be discovered. Maybe,’
she said, gesturing with a fork, ‘maybe they don’t want their memories back at all. I’m not sure I would.’

‘It was a stupid idea,’ snarled Fabián. ‘Of Anti’s. A fucking stupid childish idea.’

‘Fabián—’

‘Shut up,’ he hissed. ‘How could you do this?’

He became conscious that Sol didn’t like the anger in his voice and was looking at him with a new, scared look. His tone softened immediately and he gave her a reassuring smile. It reminded me what a good actor he was. Whatever his real mood, he could always reach for a mask that concealed it if he so chose. Now his voice changed as well. He spoke grandly, expansively:

‘What I think is that the dome is home to the gathering of a secret society of ultra-powerful people. They meet regularly to direct world events in secret, trawl occasionally for sunken treasure and consume endangered species. The boat that nearly ran us down yesterday is theirs, and it’s called … Let’s say it’s called the Anti-Ark. It was responsible for the death – by harpoon – of Sally’s whale, and it travels the seas round the Galápagos, picking up animals two by two so they can be cooked and eaten at great big feasts.’

He grabbed hold of Sol and pretended to munch down on her arm. She let out one of her infectious giggles. Cristina, who had been observing the proceedings with a benevolent eye, remembered her daughter and said, ‘And now I think it’s time we put this particular little animal to bed.’

She got to her feet and held out a hand for Sol, who yawned automatically and disappeared with her to the house.

‘I like your theory very much,’ said Sally to Fabián. She was trying to patch things up with him, but under the circumstances she could only sound condescending. ‘You’ve got a powerful imagination.’

He glowered. ‘Just a question of making the best of the available information. Something my so-called friend over there knows fuck-all about.’

I said nothing.

‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? Can’t think of anything to say?’

Still I said nothing. I’d seen him like this before.

‘My God, you’re pathetic. Pathetic, wheezing little English boy.’

Ray stepped in. He said that he wouldn’t have this kind of conflict round his fire, and that he’d kick us both out for good if we didn’t change the subject.

‘Fine,’ said Fabián. ‘Let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about the dome. I want to get up there and take a look. I’m sick of all these gaps. I want to know once and for all what it is. Now how do we do it?’

‘I don’t know, man,’ said Ray. ‘You might be right about this cave, I suppose, but I seriously doubt it. Or we can try and get there by boat, just motoring round to their jetty. But why bother? It’s just some high-design holiday home, all plate-glass and concrete. Let it go. I’m sure the version in your head is better.’

‘Well I’m fucking sick of the version in my head,’ said Fabián, letting his temper fly now that Sol had gone. ‘I want a little more certainty. I’m going up there tomorrow to find out once and for all what it is. And then I’m going home.’

He stormed off into the darkness, leaving a loud silence in his wake.

His departure somehow freed me into conversation. After a pause, I turned to Sally and said, ‘Ray likes to reward good stories. Why don’t you tell him the story of your finger?’ Thinking I’d gone too far, I hastily added, ‘Not if you don’t want to, of course.’

‘Shouldn’t you go after Fabián?’ she said.

I explained that I thought it was better to leave him to cool off for the moment. Then I feared I’d broken a confidence with my request, and that her story had been meant just for me, so I reiterated that she should only tell it if she felt like it. Eventually, she told it anyway – a more detailed version this time, which included revelations about her marriage that made me properly guilty about having dragged it out of her. Apparently, her husband had not only hit her but threatened her on several occasions with a kitchen knife. I didn’t lie back on her leg, thinking it might be an imposition now, but reclined with a warm stone nearby so I could still get the same ‘chin’s eye’ view. During the telling of the story it made her seem vulnerable, exposed. While she was speaking, I noticed that Fabián had quietly crept back to the shadows on the opposite side of the bonfire.

Ray loved the story, particularly the stuff about the crab. ‘Far out,’ he said. ‘Sally, take this stone. You want some more goldfish?’

I wanted to know whether Fabián had heard it all, and what he thought. He respected a good story more than anything in the world and I imagined it would make him warm to her. Since his return, he had sat silently in the darkness, but now his voice came ringing across the fire like a sniper’s bullet.

‘Isn’t it lucky that species of crab was called Sally Lightfoot and not Dung Hopper, or Fist Fuck?’

He gave a coarse chuckle. ‘I call that a very nice coincidence. What a crock of shit.’ He got to his feet, kicking sand on to the fire in the process. I looked nervously to see how Sally was reacting but could tell nothing from the angle I had.

‘Okay, then,’ said Fabián. ‘Here’s another story. And listen hard to this one, because there’s something special about it.’
He picked up a stone from the ground and threw it into the centre of the fire, instantly demolishing the bright core as if it were a set of skittles.

‘This story, motherfuckers, is
true
.’

You might have heard an earlier version of this one (said Fabián). Let’s see now. What shall we call it? How about ‘The
Real
Story of the Boy Who Said Nothing’? Are you ready? Then we’ll begin.

One night, when the boy was almost nine years old – not that much younger than little Sol, who’s now all cosily tucked up in her bed – he woke up in the middle of the night. The air-conditioning had broken down and the apartment felt very humid. The boy didn’t feel well: his throat was parched and ragged, and the maid, whose name was Anita, not that it fucking matters, had cleared away the jug of water that the boy usually kept by the bed, so he decided to go to the kitchen and get himself a drink. He was afraid of getting ill. His parents had promised to take him walking in the highlands the following weekend and he really, really wanted to go.

Yawning, he padded along the main corridor of the apartment, past his parents’ room. He heard the tell-tale little
snuffling sounds his mother made when she was very deeply asleep, and smiled to himself, wondering how the hell his father put up with it every night.

As he walked into the kitchen, picturing a huge, cool glass of
naranjilla
or
maracuya
, he noticed that someone had left the light on in the maid’s long, narrow pantry area to the side. The temperature in the room seemed to be leaping up by a degree with every step he took and his back was running with sweat, but he thought he’d better turn the light off anyway, so he started walking towards the door. And then the pantry light turned itself off.

The boy was alone in the kitchen, with only the yellowy light from outdoors and the long shadows this cast on the cork-tiled floor to show him the way. His first thought was that a burglar must have got into the house, heard him approaching and turned off the light. He remembered what his father had always told him: ‘If you hear anything in the night, Fabi, you come to me first. We’ll get the gun and go get ’em together. Can’t take any chances!’ But the boy didn’t want to look stupid. He knew that light-bulbs sometimes just blew up when they were finished, and that was probably what had happened here.

As he crept towards the door there was an explosion outside and, for a split second, white light flooded the kitchen. The boy stood, transfixed. It felt like his heart was trying to punch its way though his ribs. Then he realised some kid had just let off a firecracker in the street outside, and the boy told himself to grow up and stop being so afraid of everything. He opened the pantry door and put his head inside.

Three seconds later he closed it again. He left the kitchen in silence and made his way back along the corridor, once again hearing the muted snorts and stops in his mother’s breathing as he went. He had gone back into his room, lain
down and pulled the covers back over himself before he realised that he had forgotten even to get himself the drink.

He lay, thinking over what he had seen in the pantry. He told himself that with the afterglow of the firecracker still dancing on his retina he couldn’t be sure of the identity of the eyes he’d seen in the corner. But though they had been half-closed in fear and surprise, he knew they could only have belonged to Anita the maid. Who else could it have been? He recognised the frilly sleeve of her blouse where her hand clutched the back of the man she hid behind.

And the back itself? Who could that have been? Whose trousers were they, tugged clumsily down that hairy pair of legs? It could have been anyone, theoretically – one bare arse is much the same as any other, and this one might have belonged to any boyfriend Anita had sneaked back into the apartment after her evening off. On the other hand, the boy knew only one person in the world who wore such a fucking stupid red and white neckerchief.

All the boy’s worries about not getting ill were in vain. The next morning, he felt as if his throat had been slashed at by razors and he had a high fever. His mother told him he wouldn’t be going to school and kissed him on the forehead. The kiss was the most refreshing thing the boy could remember feeling, and he lay as still as he could after his mother left the room, on sheets greasy with sweat, in the hope that the cooling imprint of her lips would stay on his forehead for ever.

No I do not want a fucking hot stone.

He didn’t go to school that week but stayed home, where his mother fed him soups and juices. He particularly asked
her
to bring him these things, instead of Anita. On the one occasion Anita did have the nerve to show her face in the boy’s room, he spat at her as she laid down the bowl of soup. She did not return. He expected a visit from his father
at any time, but she obviously hadn’t had the nerve to tell his father about having seen the boy in the pantry.

The boy couldn’t decide what the best thing for him to do would be. For the moment, he resolved to keep the information back, thinking vaguely to himself that it might one day come in useful. By the weekend, he felt better and had begun to forget about what he had seen, though he knew well enough that it had happened. He told his mother that he was fine to go on the hiking trip as planned. ‘Let’s ask your Papi,’ she said.

His father walked in, red and white neckerchief at his throat as if he wanted to taunt the boy. The boy could feel sweat forming on his forehead; his fever had broken out again in the short time it took for his father to get across the room.

‘I don’t think he’s quite ready to take on the sierra, do you?’ said his father, feeling the boy’s forehead. ‘Come next time, Fabi. You must be tough to attack a whole mountain. Why not go and stay with your Uncle Suarez this weekend, and we’ll pick you up on Sunday.’

When they had gone, the boy writhed in his bed, clutching and ripping at the sheet beneath him. It wasn’t the matter of Anita and his father that made him so angry. Rather, it was that his father had denied him a trip to the mountains and taken his mother away from him for a whole weekend. He decided there and then that when they returned on Sunday, he would tell his mother what he had seen in the pantry. The boy and his mother would leave Papi to his whore of a maid and go and live somewhere else. Although his mother would be upset, it was better that she should know.

They left the boy at his uncle’s house and drove off into the foothills. And they never came back.

Never came back.

Car flew off the road, and pheeeeeeuuuuuuw … poof.

All gone.

No chance to tell anyone anything now. What use was the knowledge if nobody cared to hear it? What would the information be now but a story? What
value
did the truth have?

And later on, throughout one certain funeral and one uncertain, but very likely, memorial service, in an empty church coated with plundered Inca gold, the nine-year-old boy gazed upwards through clouds of incense at the multicoloured, crying statue of the Virgin, trying desperately to hold back his own tears, and he realised that if he had spoken out and told the story he would have stopped his parents going recklessly off into the mountains without him. If he hadn’t kept quiet, his mother – and his father for that matter – would still be there with him now.