Hemispheres (20 page)

Look, he says again. Nothing extraordinary about me, and nothing extraordinary about your situation. Don’t take the fall for
the big guy. He is the one we want. Not insects like you. Help me out with some information and I can spare you a great deal
of torment. Otherwise, I will turn you over to Juan again. I understand he finds particular enjoyment in feeding people their
own genitals.

I begin to weep because everything is clear. I feel the burns on my chest and neck and face beginning to blister and suppurate.
Every inch of my body is livid with purple bruising. Fingers on my left hand are black and obscenely swollen. They must be
broken. I work my dry tongue into holes where the stumps of teeth have been wrenched out. The stench of my sweat and excrement
is terrible, lacerating. I begin to weep, copious and unashamed. I cannot even raise a hand to my face. The tears crawl down
my cheeks like slugs.

Bumfit
, the sheep. The flock has gone and I can’t get any further. There’s no more hope. I’ll just lie down on the ground and let
the sand settle over
me, grain by grain, until I’m buried and forgotten about. I will sleep. Yes, I will sleep.

But now comes a piping call in my head, that nobody else can hear. Brimming from numberless throats, high and fluty with that
husky quality, that sweet tang of seaweed like a bourbon whiskey. I open my eyes and see them flopping above the fields on
rounded wings, black and white wings, stroking the air like eiderdown. They begin to alight all around us, sunlight fizzing
from the bottle-green backs and white-furred bellies, bobbing crests expressing curiosity. Lapwings. Green plovers. As restless
as the sea, furrowing as they feed, like the dark earth turning under the plough. And every few seconds one will flip into
the air, owl wings jerking randomly, at once spastic and masterful, scrawling a fool’s parabola with that whiskey-bitter cry.
How many of them? I begin to count, Kate jerking beneath me.
Yan, tean, tether, mether, pip. Lezar, azar, catrah, borna, dick. Yan-a-dick, tean-a-dick, tether-dick, metherdick, bumfit.
Yan-a-bum, tean-a-bum, tethera-bum, methera-bum.
I feel my balls clench and know what’s coming.

Jiggit
. Kate springs a leak and the air rushes out of her as she shrivels up like a dying balloon and thick fluid roars from my
cock in pulse after pulse. And the lapwings take to the air as one, sherds of green glass in a thousand colours smeared across
the sky, the sun leaping from their throats. And I’m lifted up with them, above the green field where a naked girl lies, above
the brown river and the bright and tattered roofs, above the towers and the pylons and the ragged powerlines. There’s a cumulus
cloud like the belly of a great sheep. I have only one chance. I grab the white fleece as it passes and climb into the foetid
darkness.

The tears crawl down my face like slugs. I’m lying on the floor again. The furniture has gone. I wonder whether I imagined
the conversation with Barriga. Juan is above me, pissing into my face. His cock like a rubber truncheon.

Okay, I say, I’ll talk. Get Barriga.

*

I’ve been thinking. About your dream. The one where –

The one where I die.

Aye.

What have you been thinking?

You said the smallest thing can put you on a different track. Well, how would you know if your destiny switched tracks like
that? You could be alive one moment and dead the next.

Or vice versa.

Yeah, obviously.

You don’t know. When you are dead you have always been dead. When you are alive you have always been alive. The box opens.
Daylight floods in.

It’s a week since any of us have seen daylight. I blink at Joe Fish and Horse Boy, the rips in their faces, cigar burns weeping
liquid from the angry centres. Dave looks suspiciously unharmed. I scowl at him and he flinches. We’re in the yard of the
detention centre, high blank walls all around. Barriga cuffs our bruised wrists and opens the back of an unmarked van. There
are no windows. We pile into the stuffy darkness and the door slams and then we’re driving, the suspension tormenting our
bruised joints.

Yan, says Horse Boy.

He’s just a voice in the dark. Like a kid calling out for its dad.

Aye.

How did you get through? he says.

Counting.

Counting what?

Sheep, I say. Lapwings. How about you?

I thought about South Georgia. When I fell off the roof and stopped breathing and then Sarah brought me back. I was dead,
wasn’t I? Dead for two minutes. And then I opened my eyes and saw you all against the sky, looking down. Like I was born again.

Alleluia, drones Joe. The lad’s found God.

That got me through, says Horse Boy. The thought of being reborn.

Come forth Lazarus, says Joe. Crackles with bitter laughter.

We bounce around in the back of the van and the air gets hard and close and sour with petrol. It goes to your head.

Where are we going? says Horse Boy.

Somewhere quiet, says Joe. Where they can put us against a wall and then bury us in a lime pit.

No, I say. We’re going to the hotel.

When we get up to the room Barriga takes the key and locks the door behind us.

So, he says. We’ll wait for your contact. This is where we find out whether you’ve been a truthful boy or not.

What did you tell him Yan? hisses Joe, and I don’t reply.

We wait, and down below us the city crawls with life and cloud shadows move across the buildings. The room is panelled in
orange varnished pine boards, garish and tasteless. I’m breathing heavily and sweating and every part of my body is grumbling
with pain. It would be heaven to lie down, here and now, on this bed, and go to sleep. Let Barriga shoot the lot of us. Sleep.
Instead I look down at his patent leather shoes nestling into the electric blue shagpile like a pair of scarab beetles.

You’re running out of time, says Barriga. He glances at his watch and I see that he’s sweating too. Takes that little Mauser
machine pistol out of his jacket and cradles it in his arms, like a new baby. Time dribbles away down the plughole. When you’re
in the southern hemisphere, Decko said in the pub one night, water swirls down the plughole in the opposite direction. Been
here all this time and I never took the trouble to check it out.

Okay, says Barriga. No more time. He’s not coming, is he?

He brings the Mauser down and runs his fingers along the top of the barrel.

Look, I say. You want money? I sit on the bed and open the bedside
drawer, rummage for the screwdriver. Barriga levels the gun at me and clicks the safety off. I raise my palms to reassure
him. Then I insert the screwdriver between two pine panels above the bed and pop one of them out and reach behind it into
the hole we scraped into the wall plaster. Slowly I bring out Joe’s thermos flask. I look at Joe. His hand is flat and mine
is forked.

Scissors cut paper, I say. He shakes his head and laughs silently.

I slowly twist open the cap and place it on the bed, followed by the inner seal. Barriga looks bored. I reach inside and find
the bankroll of notes and toss it onto the floor by his feet. He looks down, then one of his shoes comes down on the roll
like he was crushing a snail.

You have no respect, he says. He bends and picks up the roll, holds it between thumb and forefinger. Pulls out his lighter
and sparks up the end of the bankroll like it was a Havana. Tosses it onto the bed. Then he levels the Mauser at me and swings
it round to cover the other three.

I’m afraid I am going to have to kill you now, he says. Be so kind as to move over there against the wall.

His voice is mocking, fleshy mouth twisting. I swallow, hard.

You didn’t think I was really going to let you go, did you?

He smiles, apologetically.

We’re herded together in the corner of the room, the four of us. The bankroll smoulders on the bed, black smoke frothing from
the counterpane. I can’t look into their faces. Instead I stare pointedly out of the window, at the sprawling town, the changeable
sky rolling towards the Pacific. Think of my unfinished bowl of
caldillo
, down at the Canta Luna. I would give anything to finish that bowl, those few mouthfuls of steaming food. Time moves like
a key turning quietly in a lock and a door breathing open. My attention is taken by a flock of birds, spiralling over the
streets. For a moment I could swear they are lapwings, shifting points of iridescence loping over the unfamiliar streets.
Are there lapwings in Chile? The cry comes, like the hand of a small child slipping into mine, tears springing to my eyes.

*

I wonder why we are not dead yet. Perhaps we’re dead and haven’t noticed, like Matteo said, simply wandered into the next
world like beggars. But no, Barriga hasn’t pulled the trigger. He is frozen. I glance at the others and their eyes are fixed
not on Barriga, but on a point behind him and just to the left, where the barrel of a Walther pistol is pressed into the back
of his skull like the wet snout of a dog. The pistol is held in a hand, which is connected to the body of Fabián Rodriguez.
He cocks the pistol, lazily tilts his face with its hooded eyes.

Put the gun down
pajero
, he says calmly.

Barriga appears to be thinking. A cloud passes over his pudgy face. The bankroll still guttering on the bed. Then Barriga
engages the safety catch and drops the Mauser to the floor where it nestles into the shagpile.

Kneel down, says Fabián, levelling the pistol at Barriga’s head. The colonel drops to his knees in front of us. Fabián retrieves
the keys from his pockets and tosses them over to us and we wrestle out of the cuffs. Fabián snaps a pair onto Barriga, locking
him to the foot of the bed.

You fucking took your time, I say to Fabián.

He laughs. I nearly stayed for an extra beer, he says. Then you would have been fucked,
chabón
.

That was your plan? snarls Joe, incredulous. Bring him back here and hope Fabián turns up? We were nearly dead men.

Aye, I say. But I knew something would turn up.

A torrent of flame belches from the bed as the foam mattress ignites, acrid black smoke bubbling up to the ceiling and hanging
there in sheets. Fire seethes up the panelling, pine boards weeping great tears of sap and lacquer.

Let’s make like a tree, says Joe. We can take this bugger’s van.

Aye, I say. North to Bolivia. I always fancied seeing the Andes.

Barriga is kneeling there, chained to the bed with the room burning behind him. He looks at me.
Yan
, the pylon.

Well, I say. You didn’t think I was really going to let you go, did you?

I tell you what, says Horse Boy, his face a mass of scabs, I want one of them cigars.

Let’s go, says Dave. Before we’re toast.

Fire howls across the ceiling tiles, molten plastic dripping onto the carpet. But Horse Boy reaches into the colonel’s top
pocket and pulls out a slim box of panatellas, a cigar knife and a lighter. He cuts and lights a slender dark cigar and sucks
contentedly for a second, right back into his lungs without gagging. Then he grips the back of Barriga’s skull and forces
the burning tip into his right eye. He holds it there while Barriga bucks and squeals like a rabbit with a broken back, holds
it there until it sizzles through the eyelid and into the eyeball with a hideous stench of burning seaweed, holds it there
until it burns through to the vitreous humour and is extinguished with a sound like a hot saucepan going into the sink. Horse
Boy releases Barriga and lets him slump unconscious to the carpet, the dead cigar still protruding from his eye socket.

Enjoy your cigar Colonel, says Horse Boy. Then we walk from the burning room, stiffly, limping, dragging our broken wings.
Down the stairs to the lobby and out into the sunshine, measuring our steps in the bright world.

It isn’t difficult to find Paul. His old woman still lives at the same house, behind Port Clarence Social Club. I ring the
doorbell and a large dog batters itself against the frosted glass. She’s frail when she opens the door, the sweet smell of
overflowing bins behind her.

I don’t want double glazing like, she says. Windows are already done.

I’m not selling anything Mrs O’Rourke. I don’t know if you remember me. It’s Danny Thomas. I used to live up at the Cape.

She eyes me up and down before replying. Her face is narrow and pointed, bobbing in the doorway. Tucks a lifeless strand of
grey hair away behind an ear.

They knocked it down, she says. Druggies kept getting in, setting it ablaze.

Aye, I know.

The wind is cold, a steely rain lashing in from the west.

I can’t let you in son. The dog’ll have your bollocks. He doesn’t like men.

I was looking for your Paul. We used to be mates.

She sighs, shifts her feet in the slippers. I try not to stare at the swollen ankles, varicose veins bulging under the tights.

That waster, she says. He’s nigh on fucked hisself with drink and drugs. You want to stay away. Well away.

Inside the house the dog pounds at a closed door.

Do you know where he lives?

Aye, he’s sponging off the social. It’s some kind of hostel for junkies and loonies. When they can’t look after themselves
no more. Hang on and I’ll write it down for you.

I pull the van up outside and sit for a moment, idling the engine, watching cold clear raindrops collect on the windscreen,
crawl across the glass, coalesce. And then I sweep them away with the wipers. Across the road there’s a young girl, back arched
precociously against the car park railings, short skirt and high boots, her long hair strong and sodden. She’s wondering whether
I have the look of a punter.

Paul lives in a halfway house in St Hilda’s. The original town of Middlesbrough was here, but now it’s cut off from the modern
town centre by the railway line and the flyover. Over the border, they call it. Bleak blocks of new houses with tiny windows
and razor wire, in among the old buildings falling apart and the open stretches of brownfield nobody wants to build on.