Villa Pacifica (11 page)

“Do you want me to walk ahead of you?” Jerry said, pitiably.

“No, it's fine,” Ute said. How different it would be walking through here with someone like Carlos. Well, not someone
like
him, but him.

The secret of a happy marriage is to know how to adjust your expectations. One of their friends had said this once at a small dinner party at their place. Everyone had been drunk on some expensive red wine Jerry's parents had brought from France, and they were talking about relationships. All three couples took turns, smug in their established coupledom, listing their three rules of thumb for a successful relationship. Rule number one, Jerry had said: stay in love if at all possible. Rule number two: no matter what, don't fuck other people. Everyone had laughed – Ute too. This was his strength. This was his brilliance. Not malarial jungles at night-time. She had fallen for his mind. Not for his courage and love of adventure. Rule number three, Jerry had said: do not become the couple, remain yourself. You never know what might happen to the couple, but you're stuck with yourself.

Slap. “Something just bit me,” Jerry said. “Is there malaria here?”

“I don't think so,” Ute said. “It's too dry. There are no marshes. But it's the wet season now, so I don't know. Are you taking your malaria pills?”

“Yes I am.” Contracting malaria was beyond any doubt now, in his mind.

They walked a lifetime's worth of silent breathing and blackness. Ute blamed herself for this – her shitty watch, her blithe decision to go a different way, her being so cocksure about directions. It was even possible that she was showing off a bit in front of Jerry. The old South American hand. The travel professional. This way, follow me, I know where I'm going. Idiot.

“
Two shitty roads diverged in a shitty yellow wood
…” Jerry muttered at one point.

Then something – someone! – screeched ahead of them.

“Enrique!” Ute whispered.

“What's that?” Jerry croaked behind her.

“Enrique, the parrot. I think it's him.”

“Hallelujah!”

“Hold on, I'm not sure yet. Might not be.”

But it was. A faint light fell on the path and, a few minutes later, they were walking across a clearing towards the back gate of the animal shelter.

“My God, we're here,” Jerry said. The gates were shut.

“
Hola
!” Ute shouted. Her mouth was dry and scratchy, like the rest of her. “
Hola
!”

A few moments later, the gates creaked open, and the curious face of a night-guard – Pablo, or was it Jesus – looked at them, followed by a second one.

“Where have you come from?” The guards let them in. They were carrying a gas lamp.

“From the national park,” Ute said.

“Did you get lost?” the first guard said. The second one heavily sat down at the plastic table where they were playing cards and drinking.

“What do you think?” Ute said.

She wanted to lie down somewhere – anywhere would do, except next to the jaguar – and sleep. Now that they were safe again, she was ready to collapse.

“Come with me,” said the first guard. “I'll see if Carlos is here, and he can take you across in the boat.”

Carlos. She hadn't thought about him in the last few hundred years. No doubt she looked bedraggled and stank of sweat. They walked among various animal enclosures, and the gas-lamp was just strong enough to see shapes breathing, quietly growling, scratching and swinging gently on tyres and perches.

Carlos emerged from the guard's cabin. There was a bare light bulb swaying outside. He was barefoot, and had nothing on from the waist up. No hat this time, and strands of ash-coloured hair fell on each side of his face. His chest was surprisingly hairless. He was drinking
maté
again.

“What happened to you two?” His face was lit up by a gentle semi-smile. He leant in the doorway, crossing his arms. Inside his cabin it was bright, and again that strong smell of burning incense.

“We… we got a bit lost,” Ute said, trying not to look at his bare torso. “My watch stopped, and we got caught out in the dark.”

“Yeah, it happens easily here.”

He looked at her, at them, for a quiet moment, still leaning in the doorway. It was as if he was trying to work out whether they were a good match, and she wondered what he thought.

“Do you have water?” she said with a croaking voice.

Carlos went inside and brought out a large plastic bottle.

“Is it mineral?” Jerry asked.

“Not mineral,” Carlos said, in a slightly mocking way. “Filtered.”

Ute filled herself with its coolness. Amazing, every time, how delicious water tasted to the parched mouth. She passed it to Jerry.

“I take you across. OK?” Carlos said.

“Thanks very much, that would be great,” Jerry said cheerfully, relieved at this happy ending, “and sorry to be a nuisance.”

“No problem.” Carlos disappeared for a moment and then reappeared, this time with a dark T-shirt and flip-flops on, and a torch in his hand.

“Let's go,” he said and walked ahead of them down to the riverbank.

Inside the boat, he gave the torch to Ute to hold while he rowed. “Shine this way,” Carlos instructed her, and pointed towards the other side. Their side. His side was with the animals.

The only sound now was the gentle plopping of the oars. She was aware of his body moving, his arms, his shoulders turning in their sockets. Undemanding, uncomplaining, he was at ease with himself and his surroundings. Her foot touched his. It sent a shiver up her whole body. She withdrew it quickly.

“Do you always stay on that side?” Ute said. She swung the torch needlessly to indicate which side, and it shone into Carlos's face, blinding him for a moment. He turned his face away.

“Yes, almost always,” Carlos said. “I prefer. Sometime, when I feel too lonely, I go across and talk. Before, I lived on the other side when there weren't so many visitors. But then I have to move out every time in high season, and I decide it is just better to live in the cabin on the other side. I must feed the animals two times a day. And I don't like too much visitors.” He chuckled. “Sometime they are very nice, but sometime…” he drifted off.

“Sometimes they are Max,” Jerry offered.

“Max is OK,” Carlos said. “Too much energy and too much ego, but OK. Not dangerous.”

“He's a danger to himself more than anything,” Jerry said, and stretched his legs on the other side of Carlos.

“Maybe tomorrow he will make you so angry that you hit
him,” Carlos said to Jerry, and Ute wondered if he was mocking
him.

“Maybe,” Jerry said, almost amused. How quickly they had passed from a world of blackness, animal noises, and – so it had seemed – bare survival, to the civilized world of conversations and humour! Ute realized she'd been more worried about how Jerry felt than about herself.

“How long have you lived out here then?” Jerry asked. “You seem to know quite a bit about animals.”

“Three years and a half.”

“And what did you do before that, in Paraguay?”

“Different things.”

“And how do you know… our hosts?” Jerry pressed on, a vein of irritation snaking into his voice.

“My father and his father were friends. A long time ago, at university in Spain.”

Carlos moored the boat and walked with them up the sandy bank to the main house. It was dinner time, and they could hear Max's rowdy voice and Alejandro's high-pitched laughter.

“Uh-oh,” Jerry warned. “He's holding court, and the court jester's there too.”

“
Bueno
, good night,” Carlos waved at them casually and turned down the pebbled path towards the master bungalow.

“Good night and thank you,” Ute called, then added, “Carlos,” and wondered if Jerry could hear the regret in her voice – or was it longing, or alarm? Something that shouldn't be there anyway.

“Hey guys,” Max called out from his chair planted in the middle of the terrace. “Where you've been? We missed ya. Tom and Jerry,” he chuckled.

“Hiya,” Jerry said cheerily. “You'll have to excuse us, but we're bone-tired. We've walked all afternoon.”

Ute waved at the four diners with a smile. A figure stirred in the periphery of her vision. It was Carlos, walking back to the shore some hundred metres away.

“Hey gaucho, how's it goin'?” Max yelled. But Carlos didn't pause or even look back. He crunched on and sank out of view.

“Shifty dude, that one,” Max went on. “A dark horse. I bet you he's shagging the lioness. I wonder what
that's
like.” Alejandro sniggered.

“You're not having dinner tonight?” Héctor was taking a tray outside.

“Maybe later,” Ute said.

“
Bueno
.” Héctor had his butler face on.

“Hey guys.” It was Alejandro, out of breath from the effort, coming after them. “You don' wanna have dinner with us?” He had a beseeching look on his face. “Later, if you like? We'll be here for sure.”

“Yeah, we'll come out later, we're a bit knocked out at the moment,” Jerry said.

“All right, I understand. See you later, maybe.” Alejandro waved and returned to the table.

Ute stripped and dived into the shower, which was pleasantly lukewarm. She soaped up her sticky neck and armpits and closed her eyes while the shower jets hit her head.

She and Jerry had honeymooned in the south of France, a pleasant honeymoon of late breakfasts and swimming in the Mediterranean. They had got married two years ago. It was almost on a whim, after eight good, seamless years together. Ute had invited her parents to the wedding and hoped at least her father would come, but in the end he didn't – her mother was having “an episode”, and he couldn't be away even for two days. At the wedding, Jerry's family had seemed more numerous than ever. The men were well appointed and smug like country manors, the women dull and chirpy like a flock of geese in hats.

The main thing Ute retained from her wedding was a sense of complete and utter loneliness in the world. It had never struck her before with such devastating force. Christmases were usually spent with Jerry's family – his parents, two sisters and their bulging families. Occasionally, she went to Finland to spend a few days with her parents, but Jerry always found excuses not to go along, and she didn't blame him. Her mother wasn't easy to like, and her father was a man effaced by a lifetime of failure. A quiet, unremarkable tragedy, but since she had left home and country aged nineteen, Ute had convinced herself that it wasn't her tragedy any more. And it wasn't her country any more either. Seeing her off at Helsinki Airport all those years ago, her father had squeezed her hard against his big body and simply said, “Try and make your life over there, dearest girl.” And she had.

She'd made a good life – she had friends, she had Jerry, she had an exciting job. But at her wedding she realized that all this couldn't fix the fact that she was alone in the world. She felt the absence of brothers and sisters more acutely than ever. The two potential siblings hadn't made it past the embryo stage – her mother had told her about the abortions. Her mother also told her that she hadn't wanted any kids, that Ute herself had been an accident. At least she was honest, if nothing else.

And at the wedding there was no hiding it: Ute had no next of kin who cared enough to turn up. Decent and benign as they were, Jerry's people were not her people. Even after years of knowing her, they didn't quite understand where she came from. Finland to them was a land of snow and vodka, and the odd deer. Not of people with quiet tragedies. They couldn't comprehend the emptiness, the soundless damage of dark winters that chipped away at your soul until there was nothing left. They knew only the bare facts about her parents – German mother, mentally unstable, war orphan from the 1945 bombing in Hamburg, father a carpenter, looking after mother. And beyond these facts they sensed some gaping pit of Nordic melancholy, and knew not to go probing any further. They had welcomed her into their fold, no questions asked, and she was both grateful and resentful for their indifference.

After the ectopic pregnancy, they had stopped making enquiries into Ute and Jerry's reproductive plans. The incident had shut them up. Jerry's entire family were among those people who somehow knew how to protect themselves from unpleasantness, and they passed on this survival skill to their children.

“It's all yours,” Ute called to Jerry. She stepped out and towelled herself.

Jerry bounced out of the hammock, laptop in hand. A moment later, he called out from the bathroom, “Did you remember to care about the water?
There are not many left in the world's
!” He had perked up.

Still in her towel, she lay down in the hammock and closed her eyes.

Today felt like several days rolled up into one. Something still bugged her about the morning, that distant morning on the other side of the forest crossing. The abused animals. The disturbance of Carlos's musky physicality. The strange, informal Héctor, full of insinuations. Now it came to her.
In any case
, Héctor had said.
In any case, that's what the police concluded.
And left it at that.

A mosquito was feeding on her arm. She slapped it and stirred her legs with an effort. Inside the hammock, her body felt like a bag of wet concrete. Jerry was still splashing in the shower. She dressed lethargically. She didn't know why she was doing it, instead of crawling into the mosquito net. She scribbled a lazy note for Jerry letting him know that she'd be in the lounge. She closed the thin wooden door behind her quietly, like turning a page.

I
nsects and other invisible creatures screeched in the tropical plants. On a whim, Ute took a different path through the compound, the one that led to the master bungalow. The windows upstairs were lit up. Standing in the middle of the path, she felt furtive and ashamed for spying like this.

She quickly walked back to the main lounge, careful to stay out of view of the diners on the veranda, which was strangely quiet.

That's because nobody was there. In the kitchen, Conchita the cook was lazily stirring a pot. Ute poked her head in.

“Is Héctor here?”

“He's down at the shore, he went after them,” Conchita said grumpily, and returned her attention to the pot.

Ute went after them too. She could already hear Max's booming voice down by the water. Max had untied the spare moored boat and was pushing it into the water, helped by a hesitant Alejandro. The two women stood by. Héctor shone a torch onto the scene.

“Please,” Héctor was saying in Spanish, “I already explained. You can't go across at night.
Señor
Mikel doesn't allow it.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “The animals are sleeping.”

“Well” – Max was seating himself inside the boat now – “
Señor
Mikel isn't around tonight, and you ain't gonna do much about it, are ya? Come on, are you coming?”

“I don't think this is a good idea,” Alejandro protested.
“We're…”

“Come on, stop being a pussy and jump in,” said Max, switching to English. He was already getting hold of the oars.

Alejandro looked back at Alma, then stepped inside the boat heavily.

“Alex,” Alma called out. “Don't go.”

“I'll be back soon,
corazón
.” The reluctant adventurer waved. “Don't worry, we'll just take a quick trip down the river and back.”

Max pointed a victorious fist at them, and then trumpeted: “Don't cry for me, Argentina!” He had a surprisingly good baritone.

“Let's go back to the house.” Eve nudged Alma, who looked distressed.

They were now walking back to the house. Héctor stood shining the torch at the gliding boat for a moment, then caught up with them, panting.

“I'll let Lucía know,” he said, and turned off to the master bungalow.

“Maybe you could call Carlos on the other side?” Ute suggested.

“There's no phone on the other side,” Héctor muttered. Mikel would give him hell for letting the guests across unauthorized.

Back on the veranda, Eve was tucking into a large piece of moist syrupy cake, already served at their table and waiting. She offered some to Alma, who declined and sat fingering the golden crucifix at her neck. Ute sat with them and had a piece of cake too. The women waiting back at the house keeping the fire going, while the men went hunting, that was the idea. And to confirm their ascribed gender roles, Eve and Alma picked up a woman's conversation from earlier on.

“The first one is the hardest,” Eve was saying to Alma in between mouthfuls of cake, “but also the sweetest. After that, the birth gets easier. Your hips expand. Actually, it's almost kind of addictive. It's kinda sad to think that I'll only give birth and breastfeed one more time…”

Héctor was back. He was behind the reception, handling keys. Ute walked into the lounge.

“Everything OK?” she asked Héctor.

“Well” – he shrugged – “we'll see. Would you like some dinner?”

“Yes. I'd like the
arroz marinero
please, and a carrot juice.”

“Fine,” Héctor said. And just then, a gunshot ripped through the night. Everybody jumped in their chair.

“What was that?” Eve cried.

“Carlos. Greeting the visitors.” A smile brushed Héctor's face.

“What, has he just… shot at them?” Eve said.

“Carlos would do anything to protect his animals.” Héctor said, then turned around and hurried back inside. Eve rushed off down the path to the shore and, after casting an uncertain glance at Ute, Alma followed. Ute got up too and went after Héctor inside the house. He was talking to Conchita in the kitchen.

“Héctor,” Ute called, and he came out. She hushed her voice.
“You know how you were telling me about the gringo and all
that?”

“Yes,” Héctor said.

“Are you trying to tell me that he was murdered?” she whispered. Most people never get to say this sort of thing, and she was startled to hear herself utter it. “By Mikel, or Carlos?”

Héctor didn't seem shocked by the question.

“We can never be sure of anything that we don't see with our own eyes. I didn't see anything with my own eyes.”

“Do you want your
arroz marinero
or not?” The cook stood at the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips.

“Yes please,” Ute said.

“It's all right, Conchita,” Héctor said in a conciliatory tone. “
Señor
Mikel is back tomorrow and it'll be all right.”

“It better be. Cos this place is turning into a zoo. Like this whole country.”

And Conchita stomped back into the kitchen. Héctor set off down the pebbled path.

Ute's carrot juice was waiting for her on the veranda, at the table next to where Eve and Alma had sat. Ute sat down and drained her juice in long, slow gulps. Its coolness spread inside her.

Conchita brought her dinner and placed it in front of her with a muttered “
buen provecho
”. Ute tried to formulate a question, extract some insider information from her, but she was too hungry to think, and anyway Conchita's face didn't invite conversation. She surrendered to the fragrant mound of rice and seafood.

And now the hunting party was returning, Max's voice leading the way. He hadn't been shot.

“…And I say to him: come on, gaucho, shoot me, come on. And the sonofabitch shoots at us.”

“Not at us,” Alejandro piped breathlessly, “but shootin' in the air.”

“I didn't see which way he was shootin', the point is he was shootin'…”

They emerged into the light of the veranda: Max striding ahead, Alma and Alejandro walking hand in hand and, last, Eve and Héctor with his torch.

“You know what? I'm gonna call the police… Hey buddy” – he turned to Héctor – “what's the number of the local police?”

Héctor didn't understand, or pretended not to.

“Don't be an ass,” Eve snapped at Max. “You know that firearms are legal here. What're you gonna say? I was trespassing in the middle of the night?”

“Shut up,” Max snapped back. “Women, huh” – he turned to Alejandro – “they always know better.” But Alejandro was still clasping Alma's hand.

They went up the veranda stairs to where Ute was sitting.

“Hey Uddar,” Max said, and plonked himself onto a nearby chair. “Hey buddy” – Max turned to Héctor – “bring me a bottle of your finest wine. The most expensive.”

“We don't have—”

“I don't wanna hear what you don't have. Just do it.”

Héctor stood for a moment, then went inside. Everyone else sat down.

“All I wanted to do was to play with the animals. Say hello to the lion cub. Is that a crime?” He shook his head. “This place is fucked up, man. It's a loony bin. The gaucho over there is a maniac. Mikel's got a screw loose somewhere, that's for sure. The kitchen boy here's a bit dense. And the lady of the house… What the hell's she good for?”

Nobody answered him except the creaking insects in the invisible giant plants.

“I tell you, I'm going off my fucking head here.” He shook his head.

“Max, let's leave tomorrow,” Eve said in a placatory tone.

Max shook his head again. “We came here for you, honey,” he said. Cos you wanted a baby, remember?

Alejandro cleared his throat. “We're gonna go to bed,” he said and got up. Alma followed him. Ute saw that his knee was grazed.

“What, you're going already?” Max protested. “What about a game of darts upstairs?”

“Not tonight, no.” Alejandro stood his ground this time. “We're very tired.”

“All right, all right,” Max dismissed them with a flick of his hand. Alejandro made way courteously for his bride and, his hand on her shoulder, they walked across the veranda towards their bungalow.

Max sighed heavily, frowning with sudden introspection. He was a man alone, in a world of disappointing alliances.

“Hey
amigo
,” he shouted, “where's the wine?”

Héctor emerged with a bottle in a cooling bucket, his expression inscrutable. But Ute could read him better now, and she saw the stiff neck, the clenched jaw.

“Here it is,” Héctor said, and produced the chilled bottle. “
Moët et Chandon
.”

“What, did I say champagne? No, I said wine,
vino
,
vino
. This is fizzy wine,
estúpido
.”

The bottle dripped in Héctor's raised hand. For a moment, Ute thought he was going to smash it onto Max's head. But he just said:

“You say most expensive…”

Max leant back in his chair heavily. “All right, whatever, come on, we'll drink it. Uddar, you want some champagne?”

Héctor had brought glasses for everyone.

“Um,” Ute cleared her throat. She felt like she hadn't spoken for ages. She loved champagne, and she didn't often drink
Moët et Chandon
. Even Max's presence couldn't turn her away from this. “Yes, thanks, I'll have a drop.” She looked at Héctor whose eyes had gone vacant.

“A drop. A drop in the ocean,” Max said, as Héctor filled their glasses.

Eve clinked glasses with him. “To the kids,” she said, not making eye contact with him. “I really miss them. Let's call them now.”

“I wanna speak to them first!”

Max was dialling a number on his mobile. Ute imagined a bevy of small children in a large mansion, all golden and fluffy like freshly baked pastry, with big, empty eyes. Ute drained the last bit of champagne in her glass and got up.

“Thanks for the drink,” she said.

“You're welcome,” Eve said absently. “Hey, Mama?” Max was saying now. “How's it goin'? Listen, Mama…”

Ute went the alternative way, via the “master” cabin. She just had to. Not that she expected to see anything, but she needed to reassure herself that someone was home. Someone who hadn't come out when the gunshot was fired. The lights were out. Ute could smell cigarette smoke.