The Amnesia Clinic (29 page)

‘There is a second article here in the clipping,’ he continued,
‘which is even more extraordinary. Imagine how flabbergasted I was to come across it. This article, if you can believe it, reports a version of events surrounding the deaths of my sister and brother-in-law that we know for a fact that Fabián
made up
.’

‘Okay, listen—’ I began.

‘I suppose it is possible that another couple were unfortunate enough to come off the same road only a few weeks after Fabián’s parents. It is
even
possible that Fabián saw this article and decided to extrapolate from it the version of events involving the bullfight.’

I sat mutely, staring into space. He couldn’t be stopped.

‘But those sound to me like some very remote possibilities. No. It’s almost as if someone – a very well-meaning person, no doubt – someone who knew Fabián, and the pain he was in, had taken it upon himself to create a reassuring piece of documentary evidence, to soothe Fabián … to make him believe his version of events was real and drive him not closer to consolation but further away from reality.’

Now everyone in the room was looking at me.

‘Don’t you think, Anti, that it’s time you told us
exactly
what happened?’ said Suarez.

‘Anti,’ said my mother. ‘You didn’t—’

‘He did. Didn’t you?’ Suarez held up a hand before I could speak. ‘I know, I know. You thought you were helping him.’

‘Blank newsprint,’ muttered my father. ‘I
thought
that was a weird school project.’

‘He didn’t really believe it!’ I shouted. ‘I know he didn’t.’

Suarez sat chewing another olive, watching me. Then he leant forward and pointed at me as he spoke.

‘We had an agreement. I trusted you. I asked you to tell me if you thought things were out of hand, and you promised to do so.’

I spoke without thinking. I said that what I had done had
been for the right reasons, that Fabián had known it was a joke, that Suarez of all people should know that. My protests were met with silence.

‘Let me prove it to you,’ I blustered. ‘Let me tell you what happened when we were in Pedrascada.’

‘That is a story that I am most anxious to hear,’ said Suarez. ‘The story of how my nephew came to be found lying face down, dead in the sea.’

I tried to collect my thoughts whilst maintaining an outwardly contrite expression. I reasoned that to appear suitably devastated at the exposure of my initial deception would make any further, more serious untruths seem impossible.

‘Can you all promise me something?’ I said. ‘Please promise not to say anything until I’ve told the whole story.’

The three of them nodded assent.

I cleared my throat to speak, glanced up above the jukebox and saw the shadow on the wall, feathered with beer-spray, that remained from where Fabián had thrown his Pilsener bottle in frustration only a fortnight previously. I heard his voice, mocking as ever:
What would the unimaginative person say had happened here
?

‘There was this dome,’ I said. ‘At the beach. This metal dome, on a hill.’

‘We were captivated by it from the moment we arrived, because it seemed so out of place. The town was nothing more than a muddy fishing port with a few surf bars and tourist hostels tacked on, but this place looked as if it had come from the future: all gleaming metal, hidden tantalisingly away from us behind the tower of rock on the hill. What’s more, Ray, the American hippy who owned the cabins where we were staying, told us there was no road going up to it, no access to it at all other than by boat or helicopter. Other stuff, too: how the builders who’d constructed it had broken his parrot’s wings, and how he’d been chucked out by security guards when he tried to go and discover what was up there. Then, on our way back from a visit to the Isla de Plata, Ray’s boat got swamped when this great big pleasure-cruiser that was moored at the dome sailed too close to us. From that point on, Fabián and I got obsessed with the idea of getting up there and taking our revenge. Eventually, we decided to go on an expedition to find out once and for all.

‘Ray’s daughter, Sol, had shown us a pathway round the base of the cliffs that you could only access at low tide. She’d told us there was a cave round there with steps carved into the rock that led up to the dome. A sort of secret entrance. She was only ten, so I wasn’t sure what to make of what she said, but Fabián believed her from the start, and on the second or third day, whenever it was that Fabián … that he had his accident, we climbed round the headland to try and get to the cave.

‘My worry was that it wasn’t safe. It was getting late in the afternoon when we set off, and water was already starting to wash over the rocks of the pathway. We might easily get trapped if the tide came back in before we returned. But Fabián insisted. He’d … we’d both been drinking, and he was adamant. We argued a bit on the beach and he said he would go alone, even if I didn’t go with him, and stormed off. You know what he was like when he got cross. I followed him.

‘After chasing him for some time, clambering from rock to rock, I looked ahead and saw that he’d disappeared from view. Sure enough, when I got round the next crag, I saw him waving from the mouth of a cave just above me, his blue shirt ballooning behind him in the wind. I asked him to wait and then hauled myself up there, losing my breath, slipping and scraping my chest on the wet stone, but by the time I got to the spot he’d been standing on, he’d already charged off into the darkness.

‘When I got to my feet, I looked down and saw a half-eaten blue and red crab, dried-out and overturned on a piece of sandstone. It proved to me that the tide came up that high, and that what we were doing wasn’t safe. I shouted ahead into the darkness, calling Fabián an idiot, telling him he’d get us both killed. But he just shouted back at me: “Don’t be so unimaginative.” The sound of his voice seemed
to be getting further and further away. Either the cave acoustics were playing tricks on me, or somehow he was advancing very quickly.

‘I shouted that I couldn’t see a thing and asked how he was getting so far so quickly. He told me to use the steps. I said I couldn’t see any. He said, “Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.” My silence must have told him all he needed to know, because then I remember him shouting, “I
told
you there were steps. Why does nobody ever believe me?”

‘I hated admitting it, but he was right. As natural light began to seep in from above, it because obvious that we were climbing a set of man-made steps: they were roughly, unevenly cut into the stone, but quite definitely real. The light glistened off the moisture on the carved-out cave walls more and more as I climbed.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said my mother.

‘What?’ I said, furious with her for breaking my concentration.

‘This story is getting too poetic for my liking. Get to the point.’

I sighed. ‘I’m telling you what happened. You promised not to interrupt.’

Suarez cut in. ‘Let’s hear him out. We promised him that.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, not daring to look at my mother for fear that I’d lose my nerve.

‘By the time I reached the top of the steps I was short of breath and starting to wheeze. But the state of my lungs became irrelevant when I saw what was waiting for us at the top of the cliff. Fabián must have been gob-smacked as well, because he was just standing there taking in the view: a formal garden of rose beds and box hedges that was a
million miles away from the shambolic cluster of sheds where we’d been staying, and had been hidden from view by the looming rock formation we’d just emerged from. It felt like I was smelling cut grass and water sprinklers for the first time in my life, especially after the dank, fishy smell of the cave.

‘An avenue to our left led down to the jetty where the pleasure-cruiser lurked – the one that had nearly run us over before. It was sharp, and tapered. It didn’t sit right in the water. It seemed … too man-made. Like an upside-down steam iron or something. I hadn’t liked it when it nearly drowned us, and I liked it even less now. Fabián was all for going down there right away to examine it, but I held him back, pointing to our right, up the hill – towards the dome.

‘It was the first time we’d seen it up close. I’d never seen a building like it: a circle of concrete pillars with sheets of curved, tinted plate-glass in between; on top, the shining silver roof, reflecting evening sunbeams. As we slowly advanced towards it, I saw that in spite of its clean, uniform appearance from the beach, the roof was made of a mish-mash of hammered sheets of metal, riveted together. And although Ray had told us it was only six years old, the building had aged badly: water from overflowing drainpipes had stained the concrete walls in brown and green; an angular modern statue was rusting in a corner; the fishponds were clogged with weeds and algae. In one of them I saw a fat, golden fish floating dead under a lily.’

‘This is getting stupid.’ My mother had been suppressing another interjection for some time. I’d noticed this, and as a result had been addressing myself mainly to Suarez and my father, which had only fired her up even more. ‘Enough scene-setting. When are you going to get to the point?’

‘You said you’d let me speak.’

‘This is very serious, Anti. We’re here to find out how someone
died
.’

To my relief, Suarez interjected again. ‘As I said before, we agreed to hear him out. Please – no more interruptions.’

‘He’s
my
son.’

‘And he’s telling us of what became of
my
nephew, so if you respect my wishes at all, Madam, then let him speak. You’re welcome to leave the room if you don’t want to listen to what he has to say.’

I could tell that she was tempted to take up this suggestion, to show her contempt for the credulity I was enjoying, but she couldn’t bear to miss out on any part of the proceedings either.

‘As you wish,’ she said, through tight lips.

This show of support from Suarez gave me strength, and I carried on, resolved to continue my story with as much loitering as I could. I wanted to test myself – and everyone else in the room.

‘As we got nearer the dome, we could hear music playing – jazz, over a tinny PA system. Also, the buzz of people talking. As if there were a large drinks party going on somewhere. We walked through a set of automatic glass doors into an air-conditioned lobby that might have been part of a hotel, except that it was deserted and there were no signs, apart from one of those black plastic boards you stick white letters on to advertise conferences and things. The letters in this one had been arranged to read:
NOT TO TRY IS NOT TO KNOW
. There was no one sitting behind the desk, so we decided to head for the sound of the party.

‘The noise came from behind a large set of wooden doors at the end of the lobby. Our shoes squeaked on the slate floor as we approached them. We stood outside the room for a moment, trying to listen in, but we couldn’t make out
anything except for the incoherent babble of the party. I was about to suggest that we retreat, maybe go back down to the boat and snoop around there, when, with no warning at all, Fabián threw open the doors and walked in.

‘It was a spectacular room, painted in white. Crescent-shaped picture windows gave on to lush gardens and the Pacific sunset outside. About thirty people stood around, talking excitedly. All sorts of weird-looking people. All different. From the doors I glimpsed a few of them: a woman in an indigo dress who had the longest hair I’d ever seen; a guy in a dark suit with a red and white neckerchief knotted at his throat; a younger girl, about our age, with three earrings in one ear and tinted blonde hair. One old woman was happily standing around chatting in a pair of pink slippers, while others were really dressed up for the occasion, with ceremonial swords on their belts and spurs at their ankles. Curved tables laid with blue cloths lined the walls of the room, and these were heaving with food of every description: dishes, tureens, platters, trays, all piled high and steaming. The room was full of weird, exotic cooking smells, none of which I could quite place.

‘I expected Fabián’s dramatic entrance to cause people to stop speaking and look round, like in films when you enter the Wild West saloon and everything goes quiet, but everybody just carried on talking, so we went in, letting the doors close behind us.

‘We got about halfway across the room before we were noticed. A red-faced man with a moustache, who must have been in charge, had a word with one of the waiters, who then came over and asked if he could help us in that way that means “you shouldn’t be here”. The waiter escorted us outside again, into the lobby, and asked us again whether he could help us.

‘Fabián went into this whole explanation about how we’d
been shipwrecked off the coast and had washed up nearby. It was a good try, but I could see the waiter wasn’t convinced. He was smirking throughout and eventually he interrupted. He thanked Fabián for his story and said that we needn’t worry, we weren’t going to get into trouble, because he only worked there. So we told the waiter the truth and made friends with him. Soon the three of us were having a cigarette together in the garden outside.

‘The waiter’s name was Epifanio. He was originally from Guayaquil, but had been to university in the States. He was working as a waiter to make money to pay for his fees. He said that the job paid very well but was quite unusual.

‘I … I don’t know if what he said was true, or whether it was just some story he made up. But this is what he told us. He said not to breathe a word of it to anyone, but that the group of people we’d seen in the room was a kind of club who went around having these … banquets. They travelled around in the boat, all over the world, eating endangered species. He said that they even had a name for the boat: the Anti-Ark. Because it went around collecting the animals two by two, then cooking them. Taking them
out
of existence instead of saving them.

‘He talked and talked about the club, telling us every last detail: how they had a special harpoon device on their boat that they used for whaling; how they fed up blue-footed boobies with dog meat before killing them so they didn’t taste fishy; how they made soup to an old recipe from giant Galápagos turtles; how they ate everything from dove’s hearts to iguana brains to badger ham; how today’s special menu featured scarlet macaw and a rare crab called a Sally Lightfoot.