Homesickness (20 page)

Their hotel was the Atahuallpa, near the river, and the desk clerk stared first at the cigarette ash on Hofmann's lapels and then the dandruff on Kaddok's dark shoulders, and when they weren't looking glanced behind at Pichincha.

Mrs Cathcart wrote after tea:

Who would have thought. Your father and I are on the Equator
wearing cardigans
. This is because—I am told—our hotel is situated higher than Kosciusko—hard to believe. Wonderful views—The food is spicy. Cobbled streets.

It must have been the jet lag. Already Doug was in bed without cleaning his teeth…

Violet hadn't come down for tea, but first thing in the morning she was seated characteristically in the front of the bus in sunglasses and a kangaroo pelisse for their first outing. A few seats behind, Garry sat moodily and then moved further back to sit with Sheila. She had a Baedeker on her lap from a previous visit.

‘Aren't you cold?' Louisa cried out. ‘Look at him!'

Advancing down the aisle Borelli had on his cotton ex-air-force jacket.

‘But isn't this the tropics?'

‘Yes and no,' North replied. They were usually cheerful, setting out.

For some reason, North was seated alongside Doug Cathcart. As the bus began moving they both held onto the seat rail in front.

‘Did you get a good shut-eye?' Doug put in. He had the window seat.

‘I can't complain.'

Several times he had woken and looked at his watch. With the curtains wide open he could distinguish the dark shape of Pichincha against the lighter sky, and he thought about his lost wife.

The clapped-out Pegaso gathered speed down the cobbled street, its tall bulk and the powerful horn scattering pedestrians, women yanking their children or heavy baskets aside, for as in Africa these people preferred not walking on the footpaths.

Odd words flashed into view and swung back; words disconnected from images.
NIETO PINTORA
!
CALLE
de la
RHONDA PALACIO
de
ESPAÑA CANI
.

Fragments of. Amid impassive faces pausing from their tasks a few feet through the glass. Someone spat and brown juice ran unnoticed down the window at Sasha's shoulder. By then the bus broke into sudden white space, one of the plazas, and the hunched driver, elbows splayed, dropped the clutch, the cylinders fired, and the crowd at a bus stop all rose from a stone bench, then slowly sat down again, mistaking the turismo bus for the municipal one. Look, women washing by a river—that's straight out of
National Geographic
. The windows kept juddering down, which made them laugh, and two or three ashtrays fell off the back of the seats. Never mind.

On the edge of town squatters' shacks appeared as picturesque landslides of tin, cardboard and hessian; and Mrs Cathcart made that single clicking sound with her tongue. Lotta Indians there. Sasha turned and smiled broadly at the others: see the Indian woman wearing a bowler hat? And another.

Violet Hopper lit up a cigarette.

‘If you watch out,' Dr North announced, ‘you might see a monkey or two.'

They darted their heads, the way the iguana does, at the slightest movement.

Around the next corner was a light forest of balsa trees; a file of Indians wielded mattocks like helots. So this is where balsa comes from? What is it used for now? The bus kept turning. A silken camanchaca wreathed through gullies of straw grass and covered the road, fumes of dry ice or fog sculpture, and as the cursing driver changed down and sounded the horn, someone pointed above to the clear sunshine: Scottish pines and various crops of grain quilted the tops of mountains. Gorgeous, breathtaking, amazing were the words used.

‘He's taking us the long way round,' said Gerald. ‘The Equator is only fifteen miles from the city.'

‘This is like a museum of crops and trees,' said North. ‘We can sit back and enjoy ourselves.'

‘Yairs,' said Doug, the way he talked on the phone. ‘Yairs, it opens your eyes.'

Well, he'd been using his binoculars; and Kaddok had clambered down the back to photograph the receding view.

Pointing to a plantation Phillip North said to Cathcart, ‘I think you'll find that's where your tablets come from!'

‘What? Where?'

‘Those are cinchona trees.'

‘Ar, the old quinine tablets. Go on, eh?' They were used to each other but were essentially strangers, speaking in fragmentary bursts, comments mainly, thrown down like cards. Half-listening, the other person would respond by nodding and then going off on a tangent with some piece of knowledge, an anecdote just remembered, unrelated but taken from his own experience; a kind of ready balancing act. It was the talk of nomads.

Something had reminded Doug about
cloves
.

Yes on television the other day he'd seen a film documentary about cloves. Very interesting. These are grown in Zanzibar. Hang on—Tanzania? Anyway, Africa somewhere. Funny-looking tree. They pick them by hand and dry them on the footpaths… Apparently a multi-million-dollar industry.

North could hear other comments around the bus. Brief, broken observations. ‘That's a…'

‘Look at the…'

And Doug again, speaking in Ecuador, ‘Bloke in Melbourne, good friend of mine, has a…'

North nodded.

The bus slowed down and stopped at a boom gate painted like a goal post. A carabineer in an overcoat poked his head in, then spoke to the driver. He waited near the door and used a twig to clear something stuck in his teeth, pulling a variety of faces.

Without turning the driver yelled some Spanish back at them.

Gerald went down and asked with histrionic hand movements a series of questions. The driver merely shrugged.

Poking his glasses back on his nose, Gerald translated. ‘He's after baksheesh. Not the driver, but his charming friend out there, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any authority.'

‘Of course he hasn't!'

‘It doesn't matter. We can afford it,' said Borelli towards the back.

Irritation swept through the bus. It was like tiredness on an empty stomach.

‘That's not the point. It's the principle!'

‘Yes, it's people like you,' Gwen turned with surprising venom, ‘who keep the beggars and that on the streets. You encourage them.'

‘I hate being fleeced.'

‘Right, I don't think we should.'

‘Tell him, no!'

‘Well I doubt whether we'll get in,' said Borelli simply. ‘Isn't it a fact of life here, a custom?'

The driver had his elbows on the steering wheel taking no notice of the debate. Gerald asked him something else.

‘He says twenty sucres. What's that? Two each. All right?'

‘We don't seem to have much choice.'

‘This happened last time I came here,' Sheila smiled at Garry. ‘I can get yours.'

Garry wasn't happy. ‘They're rotten crooks. No wonder the whole show's falling apart.'

A few yards in, the bus stopped.

Doug rubbed his hands and looked around. ‘It's good to stretch the legs.'

There were stone benches and kiosks. Families had spread cotton rugs on the ground. It was a favourite picnic spot.

‘Why the barbed-wire fence and everything?' asked Sasha.

‘Because it is our most important asset,' an Ecuadorian answered. He'd been standing nearby, watching. He had dark combed hair; good English.

They ignored him and strolled over to the Equator.

It was a metal rail a foot or so off the ground. It wandered in a fairly straight line over the bare ground of the valley and up the other hill, as far as the eye could see, clearly indicating the divisions of the hemispheres. It appeared to be of stainless steel. Either that, or it shone from people constantly touching.

Resting one foot on it Garry said, ‘Two beers, please.'

It made a few laugh. But they were more conscious of the shape of the earth. It seemed to begin here, spreading in a massive curve of great weight on either side. Neatly illustrating the point, concrete chairs had been set up several inches apart, and a man and his wife were sharing a thermos of cocoa, the man naturally in the Northern Hemisphere, a Panama hat on his knees, his spouse to one side seated in the Southern Hemisphere.

Slippery dips had been set up. Children and even adults could slide from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere in a matter of seconds.

Kaddok tripped over the Equator.

He'd been manoeuvring to take some colour slides, and now visualising his own position, legs tangled in the Equator rail, he called out for someone to quickly photograph him. Irrefutable proof, this would be, that he had seen the Equator.

‘Notice. There are no shadows here at noon.' That Ecuadorian remained at their elbow. ‘No one can bear living without his shadow. People come here for the picnic, sure, but all attempts to populate the region have failed.'

A little mirror had been nailed to a post, and Louisa Hofmann automatically touched the back of her head. She smiled when Borelli observed she had her face in each hemisphere.

‘If only that could last!' Standing behind her, Violet gave a harsh yet understanding laugh.

A special mailbox stood on the other side. If people had letters they could post them here for fun. (A circular postmark divided by a horizontal dotted line: EQUATOR, ECUADOR.)

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this way,' Borelli called out.

The local man agreed. ‘We have scientists coming every day from all over the world. To observe. It proves the hypothesis.'

Louisa joined Borelli. ‘Is this what you wanted us to see?'

He nodded but turned. ‘Phillip, now have a good look at this.'

A tall plastic curtain formed a kind of opaque ‘box' across the Equator. Borelli pulled it aside. There stood a standard white bath on cast-iron paws. It had the wire tray for soap and a brick-coloured plug on a chain. Out in the open, positioned longways to the Equator, it looked out of place, ridiculous even. On closer inspection they noticed the heavy bath was mounted on two short pieces of tram line. These intersected the Equator at right angles. The bath could be pushed with an easy movement of the hand into the Northern Hemisphere, or the Southern (where it rested now), or smack on the Equator itself.

‘Excuse, excuse.'

The local man pushed his way to the front, enveloping them in the dense perfume of his hair oil.

‘These shouldn't be here,' he clicked his tongue.

He held up a snorkel and mask. A square hand-lettered card on string fell down.

‘
Niños
,' he muttered, looking around.

He must have had poor eyesight, squinting at the card, holding it at arm's length. Even those standing behind could read:

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

Gwen whispered it to her husband.

‘What does it mean?' the busybody from Ecuador asked. From the beginning his fastidious frown irritated them.

‘It's the longest coral reef in the world,' Kaddok told him. ‘One thousand two hundred and fifty miles long, one of nature's miracles.'

‘But I don't understand.'

He threw the rubbery gear to one side.

‘Excuse me, continue with the demonstration.
Por aquí. Por allá
.'

‘Right. Now let's see,' said Borelli.

This was an outdoor laboratory. Doubting Thomases, empiricists, the last remaining vorticists evidently came here in droves. Bathwater let out in the Southern Hemisphere spins out clockwise, like Time. See?

‘Just like home,' Sasha agreed.

Filling the bath up again, Borelli pushed it across into the Northern Hemisphere. Here it ran out…anticlockwise.

They cheered. The old man in London had been dead right.

‘Very good.'

‘Do it again!' Sasha laughed.