Villa Pacifica (4 page)

“How do you get across to the animals?” she asked.

“By boat,” Mikel said. “We have two rowing boats and a big barge for the animals. Didn't you see them?”

“No. Max came up and sort of distracted me.”

“Ah yes,” he nodded, “Max.” They all chewed for a moment. “See the baby iguanas?” Mikel pointed to a high plant right next to our table. She studied its leaves until she saw them: two tiny lizards the colour of the plant, resting in a perfect yin-yang shape on the widest part of a leaf, completely still.

“How did you find this place?” she asked.

The hostess smiled distantly, looking at her as if she herself didn't know and was waiting for Ute to enlighten her. Ute wondered if the woman was on drugs, or just weird.

“A long story.” Mikel waved a fork wrapped in spaghetti. “Lucía and I met on the Galápagos. I lived there for a couple of years, managing hotels, doing a bit of tour-guiding. We decided we'd had enough of the Galápagos, all the shit that goes down there, you know. The drugs, the horrible people, the politics.”

The name Lucía suited her. Lucía, as in Santa Lucía. There was definitely something otherworldly about her.

“It's an island,” Lucía said. “Islands are always… insular.”

“That's right,” Mikel picked up. “Sooner or later, you realize you're in a sort of prison. We had enough of it. We wanted to settle somewhere along the coast. We wanted to be somewhere green. But the coast is very dry here. It gets green when you start climbing above eight hundred metres, but by then you're not on the coast any more.”

Mikel was speaking and slurping his spaghetti simultaneously, spraying the table with specks of sauce, dabbing his stubble with the napkin, his face twitching with ticks the whole time. The most distracting tick was a sudden jerk of his head to one side, always to the right, like chasing a fly from his face. Lucía, on the other hand, was still and opaque like the river outside.

Ute's heart contracted with envy for this untroubled love, for the complete harmony of this couple's life in their gently rotting paradise. She glanced again at the baby iguanas on the giant leaf. She and Jerry had never had this. Sometimes Ute felt that they lived separate lives, but she quickly told herself that's how she liked it – travelling, compiling the world's opening hours, phone numbers and websites, alone.

“This place was a swamp when we first passed through here,” Mikel lit a cigarette and blew the first round of smoke in Ute's direction. He offered her the pack, and Ute reached for a cigarette, the first in many years. He lit it for her. Lucía sat long-necked and still like a sphinx with smoke coming out of its nostrils.

“A swamp along the riverbanks that nobody wanted. It was going to sit here until the end of time. We bought it from the local authorities for a song. We drained the swamp. We had the cabins built on this side of the estuary. Meanwhile, we started rescuing animals from the region. Word of mouth got about and people started bringing us animals. About five years ago, we started building cages. We're the only shelter along the coast…”

Jerry was coming up from the Villa's shore. Alongside him were a rugged stranger in khaki overalls over a bare chest, his face half-hidden by a leather gaucho hat, and a short, cosy-bodied woman with a silvery laugh that ran ahead of her like dropped coins. She had a Latina complexion, and her thighs, squeezed into denim shorts too small for her, were nicely tanned. She wore her bleached hair in a ponytail. Her dark roots were beginning to show. On her tiny ears sparkled precious stones. Jerry was evidently saying something funny. He had found a new comfort zone here, which should have pleased Ute – one less thing to worry about – but somehow it didn't.

“
Hola
,” Jerry beamed at the lunchers, creaking up the veranda stairs. The man in overalls disappeared into the back of the building, where the kitchen was, without greeting anyone. “Ute, you've
got
to see the animals. They're amazing.” He sat down at the table next to Ute and the hosts. The woman joined him. Despite the overcast day, she wore enormous sunglasses with a Gucci logo along the rims. “I've never seen an armadillo before, or the smallest monkey in the world, or… or any of them actually. They're all rather exotic.”

“The turtles are huge,” said the woman. “Shame the kids aren't here, they'd love it.”

“Eve, this is Ute,” Jerry said.

“Hi,” Ute said. Eve got up, stretching out a small, well-manicured hand and stared momentarily at Ute's inflamed face, then blinked away from it, embarrassed. There was something wrong with this introduction, but Ute couldn't say what.

“I'm starving. How's that pasta?” Eve said. Lucía had left most of her lunch untouched on the white plate before lighting a cigarette.

Their hosts were speaking together in hushed tones and sipping their wine. They hadn't offered Ute any, but she was happy with her guava juice. The waiter came and took the new orders.

“A hot chocolate, and ah… the spaghetti
puttanesca
.” Eve's loud voice rang.

“When can I see the animals?” Ute asked Mikel.

“You can go across with Carlos now, if you like. Carlos!” he shouted and got up, but only the waiter came out, carrying plates.

“Carlos is gone,” the waiter said.

“Ah. Quick as a panther, that Carlos. In that case, this afternoon. The animal carers change over in the late afternoon. You can go across with Pablo and come back with Jesus.”

“And Carlos?” Ute asked.

“Carlos lives on the other side. He's always there,” Mikel said.

“Jerry?” Ute glanced at her watch: well past one. “When you've had lunch, shall we go to Puerto Seco?”

“Not sure, actually. I don't know if I'll manage a long walk. I've been up since five thirty this morning. And I didn't have a good sleep. I must confess I was rather hoping to sneak into that hammock after lunch… Looks rather alluring.”

“Oh, yeah,” Eve said.

It felt strange discussing private things, like their afternoon plans and hammocks, in front of these strangers. And she didn't like the way Jerry and Eve were sitting together.

“I feel a bit out of it too,” Eve added. “It's the muggy weather or something… I'm feeling real sleepy. By the way, have you seen Maximilian?” She turned to Ute.

“Yeah,” Mikel said, “he was here not thirty minutes ago.”

“He must be up to something.” Eve's eyes narrowed. “Or sleeping.”

Ute suddenly had a vision of Eve and “Maximilian” rutting and grunting in the pungent tropical growth like two hippos, their flesh slapping rhythmically in the heavy grind of animal procreation.

“OK.” She got up abruptly. “I'm off to Puerto Seco to have a look around. I guess I'll see you later, Jerry.” She sounded cheerful, but didn't feel it.

“You will,” Jerry lifted his brows mock-emphatically, in that nerdy-cum-charming style of his which sometimes was wide of the mark. Like now. “Be careful out there.” He waved his fork at her.

To be fair, he knew she liked exploring alone, and she did have a guide to update. But it stung her how he didn't seem to mind seeing her go.

They had been apart for seven weeks. She would've liked it if he'd kissed her hand instead of waving his fork and pulling a funny face. Come to think of it, he'd never kissed her hand.

“See you later,” Eve trilled.

Lucía, Mikel and the collie – or were there two identical collies? – had disappeared. The iguanas hadn't moved from their yin-yang circle.

O
utside the tropical compound, the air felt dry and dusty, like the savannah. Now the name Puerto Seco made perfect sense.

The beach leading up to the village along the inlet was free of rubbish and cigarette butts. Small palm trees were planted alongside: little imprints of Mikel and Lucía's green thumbs. This strip of the beach had been claimed by Villa Pacifica.

There was no one in sight, despite the fine sand and the tempting water. Ute walked along the waterline, the submissive tide lapping at her feet. The land on the other side of the inlet seemed sparsely inhabited along the shore, and a pale, leafless forest scrambled uphill from the coast. Dark wooded hills rose higher further inland, misted and forbidding. It should have been a beautiful landscape. But there was something exhausted and despairing about the colour or the shape of the land. If it were a wild animal, it would be licking its wounds through torn tufts of fur.

Puerto Seco was about forty-five minutes' walk down the beach and a world away from Villa Pacifica. It was a wheezy dust bowl where homeless dogs rutted in the unpaved streets and rubbish lay about like confetti from some forgotten party. Inside darkened, bare huts on stilts, men lay in hammocks, scratching, their stained singlets peeled off to cool slack bellies on which flies alighted, disturbing their fitful coma.

The women had prematurely wilted faces. They dragged their flip-flops from corner to corner on some drawn-out neighbourhood mission, their legs gripped by snotty kids.

Bare-chested boys with ribs that pushed against their skin kicked a ball on a small football pitch, but even their movements seemed slow, as if they were moving inside a fog. Cumbia blasted out of loudspeakers affixed to the outside walls of a corner shop, to fool the people that something was happening.

Along the
malecón
, Ute crossed a patch of street with empty stalls, which had to be the morning fish market. This was all they had for sale here: fish. The fruit plantations were far away, the artisan workshops too, and so were the Panama hat-makers. All they had here was ocean and twigs.

Ute went into a corner shop to buy a bottle of water. The girl behind the counter was breast-feeding. She greeted the foreigner shyly and without disturbing the plump toddler, who looked at Ute, mouth avidly sucking at the battered young breast. It was like he was saying: “Yes, I too will grow up to be a hammock drone like all the men around here.” The girl reached out a hand with bitten-down, painted nails to take the coins. She had delicate features and a disconcerting squint.

Along the deserted
malecón
, the asphalt was eroded on the side of the sea. The steps that led down to the beach were broken. You had to jump. A driver slept in the covered back of his tricycle, baseball hat over his face. Ute couldn't tell if it was the driver from the previous night.

Again, she saw the rubbish-filled hole where a house had been before – unless this was another such house hole. It was obvious that no construction work was planned there. The bare walls of the houses on each side were sporting faded slogans – must be from the last elections, a few months ago, Ute thought. Despite being half washed-out by rain, they were the only cheerful spots that met the eye.

“VOTE FIVE,” said one wall, except that a graffiti artist had added his input. The pale letters now read: “VOTE FIVE THOUSAND MINISTERIAL THIEVES. VOTE FIVE YEARS WITHOUT WATER.”

“THIS TIME, EVERYTHING!” a man with oiled hair promised from the other wall. Ute had come to know the faces of the various presidential candidates from the remaining slogans around the country, and from newspapers. This one had been the economy minister of a previous government that had bankrupted the country. Someone had edited his catchphrase with spray paint, so it read: “THIS TIME, I'LL STEAL EVERYTHING!”

Ute passed a tiny hole in the wall that bore a chipped, painted sign: “
Salón de belleza
” “Always Happy”. It was “always happy” in English, and it was closed. She peaked inside the grimy windows. Chairs, mirrors, sprays. A price sheet half-taped on the glass door told her that for three dollars she could have her body hair bleached or epilated, or get a haircut. Failing that, she could have her nails done for fifty
centavos
. But what she really needed was a shot of caffeine. For some reason, the dog-tiredness of the previous night hadn't left her. Or perhaps she had overslept.

There were a couple of small cafés along the waterfront. One was closed, perhaps permanently, with a corrugated-iron roll-down shutter. The other one looked dark and cavernous inside, but there were two toxic-yellow plastic tables outside. Then she saw the bright sign above: “
Café Fin del Mundo
”. Ute smiled to herself. This sort of thing was a gift to the travel writer.

A petite woman with grey-black hair piled up on top of her head came out from the back of the cavern. She seemed startled by her customer's appearance, or perhaps she was just surprised to have a customer.

Ute sat down at an outside table and asked for a coffee. Her voice sounded oddly muffled, as if her head was filled with cotton wool.

When the woman brought out the pale, dirty-brown broth of unmistakable granulated Nescafé, Ute was stunned at her own forgetfulness. Half a day in the oasis of Villa Pacifica had removed her from the grim realities of the local economy: it was impossible to get real coffee in this coffee-producing country. All the good stuff was for export to the US and, in return, they got the cheap and nasty instant variety. She sipped the rank liquid, smiling at the woman who stood with her arms crossed in the doorway. The woman smiled back. She had a toothy grin that lit up the sad little café. Her ankles and wrists were like dry twigs. Tucked into her crossed arms, against her bird's chest, she had a notepad, and something about it – perhaps the hopeful carbon paper sticking out of it – stabbed Ute with a pang of sorrow.

“Not many people around at the moment,” Ute said.

“Yes, it's very quiet. It's this
El Niño
weather we're having. It puts off tourists.” Her voice, like her entire being, seemed too frail for her surroundings. She was like a shadow of what she had been in some previous, plumper life.

“Do you often get storms here?” Ute nodded towards the beach.

“Every now and then. These days it's either drought or floods. We've had
El Niño
twice in the last fifteen years. A year ago it wrecked the
malecón
. Wrecked our café too. We had very pretty furniture, handmade by my husband. But it was destroyed, everything was destroyed. I wanted to close down the café, but my husband is ill. He can't make furniture any more, and I have to get by somehow. So I painted the front again, got this ugly plastic furniture and reopened.” The woman said all this with a brave smile.

“And your husband… Is he better?”

“
Bueno
…” She looked out towards the beach. A ray of sunshine poked through the milky clouds just then. “Not really,” she said. “He's up in the hills, across the water.” She waved vaguely to the cloud forest in the south. “I think he's OK there, in his own way. The community of Agua Sagrada don't bother him. It's the way he wants it. He doesn't want to die in a hospital. He has his painting, his poetry…”

And she, what did she have? There was no bitterness in her voice. Ute tried to squeeze something cheerful from her sluggish mind. But the woman recovered.

“See these paintings? They're Oswaldo's. He has an unusual style of blending poetry with painting. He's had exhibitions in the capital. He's highly regarded in the art world. But in this country, it's impossible to make a living from art.”

Ute got up and peered at the dark walls of the café. They were covered in paintings of varying sizes. They were all for sale, at modest prices.

Bleeding, spidery words she couldn't decipher were woven into the distorted half-animal, half-human figures and landscapes in ochre, yellow, green and blue. The sea was always lurking behind, a pale, murky sea. Ute didn't know much about art, but she knew when she saw a restless soul, and here was one.

“I like them,” she said. It was a relief to be honest about something, anything.

“An American couple came by yesterday, they had fried calamari. They're staying at Villa Pacifica. The
señor
is Colombian. He knows a lot about business. He told me to put the prices up. Too cheap, he said. But I don't know who'll buy them. They don't sell much as it is… They're not for the locals anyway. People here are too poor and ignorant. And foreigners, when they come, they come for the beach, for the snorkelling…”

“Did the American couple buy a painting?”

“Oh no, no. I didn't expect them to. To tell you the truth, I keep these paintings up because they make me feel like Oswaldo is here…” She trailed off again. “Such is life, sometimes.”

“Yes,” Ute said and glanced towards those misty hills across the ditch.

“I'll buy a painting, later,” she said, and knew she wouldn't. Even the smallest one wouldn't fit into her backpack. Guilt, that's what it was. She had learnt to manage and suppress guilt when travelling – you had to, you'd crucify yourself trying to save everyone. It was best to give up all thought of helping and distance yourself. But the woman's brave smile and these paintings caught her unawares.

“You're always welcome,” the woman said, as if reading her flaky thoughts of a well-meaning gringa. “If the café is closed, just ask around for Consuelo. I live at the other end of the village.”

“OK,” Ute said. “My name is Ute.”

“Ute,” the woman repeated. “Nice name.”

Perhaps she could buy the smallest one and give it to Jerry to take back with him as hand luggage. Ute got up. The coffee was undrinkable.

“Are you staying at Villa Pacifica?” Consuelo asked.

“Yes.”

“There are many paintings by Oswaldo there. I don't know if they're still up, but they're there. He was a very good friend of Mikel and Lucía. We were all good friends once…” She composed herself. “The furniture there is his work too.”

All small places have their secrets, Ute thought. She promised she'd look out for the paintings, paid up, left an unreasonably large tip and walked away. Consuelo retreated back into the dark interior.

Some black kids were kicking a half-deflated ball on the beach. The village was slowly coming round from its siesta. Ute sat on a bench not far from the café and sketched in her notepad an outline of the area as she saw it: Puerto Seco, the inlet, the two sides, the sanctuary of Villa Pacifica straddling it. She wasn't too sure about the dry forest – how far it stretched, what was up in those shrouded hills. Ten kilometres that way, Mikel had said. But which way was that? She felt lost without a map, and she didn't like feeling lost.

The kids had spotted her. There were four of them, a girl and two boys of around thirteen, and a tiny girl with something smeared around her mouth who was running behind them across the sand.

“What are you doing?” the older girl stepped forward, the official envoy of the group. She had a chubby face, and her belly protruded over her trousers. She wore a baseball hat, like the two boys.

“I'm drawing.” Ute smiled. “It's a picture of the
malecón
and Puerto Seco.”

The girl came closer and looked at the pad.

“It doesn't look like Puerto Seco,” she declared.

“That's true,” Ute agreed, “I'm not a very good artist.”

The girl giggled, her hand on her mouth, where a few teeth were missing. The boys smiled shyly, avoiding Ute's eyes.

“Why do you have red all over your face?” the girl asked, rubbing her fingers around her own mouth, to show where she meant. “Are you sick?”

“No, I'm not sick,” Ute smiled. “That's just the way I am. You have crinkly hair, and I have red around my mouth. What're your names?”

“Evelyn,” the girl said.

“Ricardo,” said one of the boys. The other boy mumbled a name Ute couldn't make out.

“And I'm Ute. Can you write your names down for me?” Ute handed over the pad and the pencil to Ricardo. The boys suddenly grew sombre. Ricardo shook his head vigorously. She handed it to Evelyn, who put her hands behind her back and looked the other way.

“Come on.”

“We can't,” Evelyn said.

“Why not?”

“We can't write our names.”

They had dropped out of school for reasons they couldn't explain. Evelyn was ten, and the boys were ten and twelve. The tiny tot was their baby sister. Evelyn lifted her up to show her to Ute, like a toy, and the girl's face soured, ready to cry.

“Where do you live?” Evelyn enquired.

“Over there, in Villa Pacifica,” Ute pointed behind her.

“
El Vasco y la Bruja
,” she mumbled and looked at Ricardo, and they giggled. The little one laughed too, happily, kicking sand. The other boy remained glum.

“What?” Ute was intrigued. “Who is
la Bruja
?”

“
La Bruja, la Bruja… el Vasco y la Bruja… el Vasco y la Bruja
,” Evelyn chanted by way of an explanation. So Mikel and Lucía were the Basque and the Witch. Ute got up. These kids depressed her.

“Are you going to come again?” Ricardo said.

“Of course,” Ute said.

“When?” he insisted.

“Tomorrow.”

“We'll be over there,” Evelyn said, and pointed to the patch of beach where their deflated ball sat.

“OK, see you then,” Ute said. But they followed after her, Evelyn carrying the little one. The glum brother tagged behind. Consuelo was leaning in the café entrance, looking their way. From here, Ute couldn't tell if she was smiling or crying. Either way, she cut a disconsolate figure for someone called Consuelo. Eventually, Ute managed to lose the kids and went looking for the tourist agency that sold tickets for the dry forest. It was a newly anointed national park. She had to see if it was worth adding it into her guide update, and she also needed a map of the area.