Hemispheres (15 page)

Joe thinks he’s a loony but we squat down by his fire anyway, warming our numbed fingers while the night thickens around us
in Tierra del Fuego.

You live down here all year round?

There are camps where I stay, says Matteo with a charming smile. Sometimes all winter, sometimes just two or three sleeps.
You see, I’m always on the move. The canoe knows the roads, roads defined by the wind. I eat shellfish and roots and fruits
and seabirds from the colonies.

You eat seabirds? says Joe, lugubrious.

Only what I need, says Matteo. I only take what I need. No more.

You didn’t seem surprised to see us, says Joe, matter-of-fact.

Matteo bursts into a peal of delighted laughter.

No. Never surprised at anythings, he says. Because anythings can happen in this world.

Joe seems bemused and Matteo lets the words hang. Besides, he says, I heard and smelled you coming some time ago. The senses
are sharp with no TV and no traffics.

Why do you live down here, I ask him, tentatively. Problems with the law? It must be lonely and hard.

He bubbles with laughter.

He-hey, yes my friend. Matteo is dangerous criminal. Worse than paedophile, worse than nincompoop.

Come on then, says Joe. Spill the beans.

I am a back-to-front man. A man who wears his arsehole on his chest and his dick in his backpockets.

Joe looks at me pointedly. I ignore him.

Most people, says Matteo, are happy in the city. It is the parliament of fools, like the penguins in their colonies. They
crowd together because it protects them from the predators. It gives each individual citizen penguin a smaller chance of being
eaten up. See?

He smiles and laughs, looks to us for affirmation.

Okay, I say.

And, says Matteo, most people would go crazy out here alone. The quietness would turn them into stark raving maniacs.

Aye, fair enough, says Joe.

Well, gentlemen, says Matteo, I am back-to-front because I defy the logics. In the city I am lonely. I have wife and children
there, but I am still lonely. Every one of us living in a bubble, all alone. I try to touch other people, even my family,
but the bubble is too strong. I would die alone, inside my bubble, and nobody would see. They would only see the bubble walking
and talking and never know that I was dead inside.

He spits succinctly onto the beach, then he gets to his feet and pulls the oilskins around himself. I stay squatting by the
fire, warming myself,
and the night begins to precipitate around us, a solid wall of blue darkness.

I heard the call, he says. Just very quiet, in my head. Get up and follow me, like our Lord said. So I walked out of the house
where my wife and children were asleep, I got on a train and I came to Tierra del Fuego and then I walked into these islands.
And I have never been lonely since. This is why I am back-to-front.

When was this?

Since ten years.

How do you square that, in your head? I ask him. Leaving them. Not being there.

Matteo is here, he says. Tussac grass here, and pigvine. Fish also here, and penguin. We are connected. Wife and babies are
not here.

You can’t tell me you don’t miss civilization sometimes, growls Joe.

Of course. Matteo laughs crisply, like a handbell. What is it like to have a woman? Or drink espresso or cold beer, take a
warm bath? You tell me my friend, because I cannot remember. Most people, they would go mad alone out here.

But not you?

He laughs again, more gently this time, fingering his beard.

You see, he says. Modern man, he thinks he is separate from the out side world. An individual, yeah? Like he has a wrapper
round the self. Like a chocolate bar. If he was out here and he tried to keep the wrapper safe, with the sea and the sky and
the beasts and the birds all pressing on, tearing at it, then he would go mad.

What about you?

I had a wrapper, once. But now it’s gone. It’s blown away. And when your wrapper goes the chocolate starts to melt. Where
does Matteo stop and where does the world begin? I become part of the world and the world becomes a part of me. Water and
rocks and animals and vegetations. When I kill a penguin for food I am killing myself but I am also sustaining myself. When
I eat shellfish I am eating my own flesh but I am becoming stronger. When I die I will melt into all of this, the tussac
grass and forests and the shellfish singing in the sea and the birds crying in the air. This
Signor
Yan,
Signor
Joe, this is why Matteo is never lonely.

He stops talking. The small waves flicker at the edge of the shingle beach and the fire laps at our feet.

Why did you follow me? asks Matteo.

I open my mouth to say something but Joe is already talking.

We lost somebody, down on South Georgia. A friend. More than that. Fuck it, you could say he was like family. A brother.

He stops, passes a hand over the greasy mane. Blinks a couple of times as a gust of woodsmoke splashes over him.

When I saw you in the canoe, he carries on. I don’t know, I didn’t think you were him, that’s too simplistic. But I was somehow
reminded of him. I smelled him. You know that cheap spray deodorant he used to wear Yan, that fucking stuff that used to make
your eyes water like a flamethrower the amount of it he put on? Well, I smelled that, when I saw you. I smell it now.

You were following the smell of a dead man, says Matteo.

Yeah, says Joe. Stupid, isn’t it. I realize that now. He’s gone and we have to accept it.

No, says Matteo. Not stupid. The dead are here, and they outnumber the living. Yagán people, animals and birds, countless
generations. Here at the end of the world. I don’t know why. Perhaps the entrance to the underworld is close by.

But death is final, says Joe. Anything else is delusion.

Ha ha, says Matteo. Religion is the opiate of the masses, okay. But Matteo sees the dead. They walk and run and fly and swim
around him. We have many worlds to pass through and perhaps there is only a heartbeat between one world and the next and perhaps
we do not notice when we pass from one place into another. Who knows, you may be dead already. Perhaps we are all dead.

There is a strong and thick silence. The forest behind us is bubbling with darkness.

*

Matteo moves over to his canoe, which is pulled up beyond the tide line alongside our inflatable. He pulls out two bundles,
and carries them over to us.

See, he says. Food for three dangerous nincompoops. I get them from the colony today. Immature adults, not the chicks or the
breeding adults. Nice and fat.

He puts the bundles down on the shingle, and the firelight washes over them. Small black-and-white penguins, trussed motionless
with cord. A single eye looks up at me. I watch the eye, and it watches me. It seems quite calm.

Magellanic penguins, I say. You can tell by the markings.

Uh-huh, says Matteo. You write the name on the wrapper,
Signor
Yan. They are ourselves. They are your friend.

There’s a shallow pit scooped into the shingle, some way beyond the fire, and he carries the bundles there and lies them gently
down. He smoothes the feathers of the first penguin and whispers to it so quietly that we cannot hear the words. A knife appears
from inside his oil-skins and he draws it across the bird’s throat. A small hiss as air escapes from the lungs through the
severed windpipe. Thick blood bubbles onto the pebbles, black in the dying light.

Now the dead will come, says Matteo. They are drawn to the blood. Your friend will come back. Their blood for his life.

And then the smell of it is in my throat, dark blue, smoky and wistful like semen. The smell of Mount Longdon.

Matteo dispatches the second penguin the same way, black blood draining into the pebbles.

They are curious, but shy, he says. They will gather at the edges of the forest, for they do not know what we are. Later when
you sleep, you will see them.

He sets to plucking the birds, throwing clouds of feathers into the air.

I’m lying on the shingle, close to the embers of the fire. Woodsmoke tickles my nostrils, wood ash tinkling as it gradually
subsides. The
uncomfortable shape of Joe is humped close against me, Matteo asleep on the other side of the fire. My stomach shifts alarmingly.
It’s the penguin meat, greasy and with a pungent aroma of fish. Swallow hard and turn onto my back, trying to get comfortable
on the uneven shingle. The sky is largely clear with shreds of cloud ripping across on the wind. And behind them, unmoving
and unmoved, are the stars of a strange hemisphere. They don’t offer me the comfort of picking out the familiar patterns I’ve
seen on a thousand other nights, when I’ve looked up and been glad to see them like old friends. They remind me that I’m in
another place altogether. A windscreen has shattered into a million sherds of glass and they’ve been smeared across the glacial
sky. They drip, here and there, from the edges. I am astigmatic. I am old.

Turn again onto my side, questing for sleep. Movement in the heavy darkness at the edges of the forest. Perhaps the dead are
indeed gathered there, scenting the black blood in the pit, bubbling between the stones.

Perhaps he is there.

I hover on the edges of sleep. Men and women and children, silent among the trees. Pale faces turn, hands rest on the shoulders
of impatient children. Thousands of them, rippling like a wheatfield in the wind. I strain towards them, looking for a boy
with a rabbit-fur scalp and a paperback in his hands. But they shift and the faces change, mocking me. Animals and invertebrates
crawl beneath their feet and the trees are encrusted with birds like overripe fruit, and the sea is crammed with fish, fat
silver bodies seething at the shore.

I know that I’m dreaming, and in the dream I’m sitting at that kitchen table, rough-hewn and rounded by time and use, and
there are cards in my hand. But I get a strange feeling, sitting there. A bubble of darkness, of blind horror, somewhere down
deep inside of me. Every so often I feel it start to rise to the surface, draggled with weed.

I’ve been here before, I think inside the dream. Four jacks in my hand. I look at Dave’s heart flush, already turned up on
the table, and feel the glow of triumph.

I drain my glass of beer. It is astringent, medicine for the heart. Their
eyes are on me, shining. The deep mahogany sheen of the tabletop. I begin to lay my cards down, one by one, looking at the
pillar of ash teet ering at the tip of Dave’s cigarette, notched into the edge of the ashtray.

A pair of jacks, Matthew and Mark. And then nothing. Three, seven, ten. No Luke, and no John.

Softly and soundlessly the pillar of ash drops into the ashtray and the cigarette dies. A moth still presses at the window,
patiently and persistently, looking for the moon.

This is the poker game you’re dreaming about, right? Back on East Falkland?

Correct.

But you’re dreaming it the other way – you lost that hand. Like you were saying to Joe, perhaps there’s another world where
things turned out different.

No flies on you Dan.

It was on your mind, though. It’s natural that you’d dream about it.

I’ve dreamed this dream almost every night for the last twenty-five years. I’ve come to thinking this is how things were meant
to be.

Meant to be?

Dave guffaws, wipes sweat from his brow on a grubby shirtsleeve. Begins scooping up the money from the table.

Now that, he crows, is magic.

He flashes a little wanker sign at me, grinning from ear to ear.

Joe is standing behind me and I feel his hand on my shoulder.

We’ll leave it till first light, he says. Then we’ll head out. A couple of hours to get your head together.

When I was here before, after I won that hand, I went for a wander around upstairs. Remembering it, the bubble gives a little
lurch and my heart jumps. I hear the others talking, but their voices in the dream are thick and impenetrable like moss. I
stand up and walk, shine my torch up the wooden tunnel of the stairwell, start to climb. On the stairs the bubble rises and
the reflexes of fear work on my body. Heartbeat
audible, sweat leaking out, a tightness in the stomach.

I stop here, in the dream, and remind myself what happens. There’s nothing to worry about. You go upstairs and poke around
in those empty rooms. You find that old lighter, lying on the floor among the debris. It’s one of them old-school Heath Robinson
things where a little cap on a lever comes down and snuffs the flame. You pick it up and dust it off and decide to clean it
up later and make it work again. And then you come back downstairs to the others.

This thought steadies my heart and I carry on up to the landing. It’s a long corridor with a single window looking out to
the east, glass long gone from the panes and a green wind loping through straight from the South Atlantic, charged with salt
and moisture. Strips of wallpaper have slumped from the walls, and the torch beam moves over their tortured bodies on the
floor, raddled with damp and mould. I step carefully over them and try a door. The bubble lurches and I feel sick to the stomach.
I’m looking at a bathroom, the bath and toilet a grim shade of avocado, offcuts of faded green carpet on the floor. A mirror
above the sink. Look at my face for the first time in weeks and I don’t recognize myself. I know it’s me, that the grey eyes,
receding hairline, thick stubble and broad nose belong to Yan Thomas. But there’s no sense of recognition. It reminds me of
looking at the stars and seeing no constellations, only chaos.

Later, when you sleep, you will see them, I hear Matteo say, as I stare at my own strange face in the mirror.

Back on the landing, footfall dampened by the thick pile carpet. Open another door, the bubble still rising, in my chest now
like pleurisy. I’m in what used to be a bedroom. I feel relieved. I have been here before. Everything just as I remember it.
Collapsed rafters lying across the bed, clothes strewn across the floor, crumbs of ceiling plaster across everything like
icing sugar. It’s important now for the dream to follow what I remember. So I sweep the torch beam carefully across the floor,
and there it is, glittering with reassurance. I bend and fold it into my hand like a metal egg, let my body heat leach into
it, incubate it. The bubble
rises and I taste bile. The penguin meat, my dreaming brain says. You’re going to be sick.