A NOVEL BY CHRISTIAN REINER
A NOVEL BY CHRISTIAN REINER
A NOVEL BY CHRISTIAN REINER
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Donkey<br />
Tales<br />
A <strong>NOVEL</strong> <strong>BY</strong><br />
<strong>CHRISTIAN</strong> <strong>REINER</strong><br />
3
Foreword<br />
The shallow features of the Caribbean sea might indicate to some an<br />
unstable submerged land mass, due to the cataclysmic shift of the<br />
earth’s magnetic poles or possibly to the huge meteorite impact near<br />
Merida in distant history which did in fact bring about the<br />
extinction of the dinosaurs. It is a matter of contention as to what<br />
chain of islands can claim Gallaan as its own.<br />
Ionana, on some early maps appears as a bigger twin island, but is<br />
in reality nowhere to be seen. Claimed by the King of France in<br />
1642, it goes to reason that Gallaan was ceded to the French West<br />
India Company. Eventually, in the 1850s in a small board room in<br />
Amsterdam, this tiny spot on the world map was divided into a<br />
Dutch enclave and a Spanish eastern region. The palms don’t know<br />
it and neither does the sand as it dances in the surf.<br />
This historical novel deals with the first of the great upheaval<br />
periods. It covers the time from about 2050 through 2075. As we all<br />
7
can appreciate, the initial shock waves of catastrophe were a difficult<br />
thing for those pioneers. This novel is a testament to that human<br />
spirit. Why did so many have to perish? Why did so few survive? The<br />
great theme of the 21st and 22nd century. As of last year, the world<br />
population has risen again to one hundred and thirty two thousand.<br />
This book however satisfies a growing curiosity about the ‘old days’.<br />
A curiosity fuelled by the now popular notion, that we as humanity<br />
have encountered a fatigue factor in our ability to mutate/evolve<br />
further. We must pursue kinds of adaptations that we seem<br />
incapable of processing genetically. The search is on for a creature<br />
with an inbred kindness, a lack of greed and little ambition. These<br />
words are not scientific - yet in the new science these factless<br />
metaphors have become enshrined due to their resilience factors in<br />
four dimensional equations.<br />
It is now all of us who are looking. Of course, the question remains<br />
as to wether or not we are capable of seeing such a creature. Are we<br />
not blind to the abilities? Are we not fooled by the promises? Can<br />
the old envision the new, or are in fact changes materializing<br />
beyond our comprehension?<br />
The Author<br />
Sumatra, August 2306<br />
8
Chapter One<br />
It stood not far from the surf in the sand. A brown long coat, the dark<br />
cross on his shoulders, a burro, almost motionless. The tail moving in<br />
small swishes - the eyes mostly closed. One leg slightly lifted - dreaming.<br />
••••<br />
O.G.D. was conceived in an accidental fashion, but never aborted. In the<br />
rudimentary laboratories of the Dallas based conglomerate of Bush, Burns<br />
& Tenermann - there the umbilical cables were severed. It was a joke, so<br />
chairman Walter Banks, known for his great stories at the dinner table,<br />
would tell anyone with the right security clearance. He was a man drawn to<br />
rich caramel desserts and to women of the extravagant kind, who could<br />
deliver a similar sweetness in their character as Butterscotch sauce, whom<br />
he generally divorced before the second matrimonial year.<br />
An ignorant ass, yes, but it does explain his equal attraction to the darker<br />
south side of Houston suburbia, to the sweaty gambling shacks and porn<br />
shops of the poorer Dallas suburbs, where street lights have never shone -<br />
particularly when he was inbetween women. In fact he never<br />
comprehended in his own time the full scope of the demons he had<br />
released, those long horned hounds.<br />
It is late, very late at the Christmas party. Almost all of the three hundred<br />
odd employees and their wives and tired kids already on their way home,<br />
with the frozen turkeys and their thirteenth pay cheque - humming carols,<br />
arguing, drunk or whatever. Just a few of the big old boys and their<br />
entourage remain. They have now moved up to the private lounge, with the<br />
vaulted ceilings and the limitless view up in the penthouse suite.<br />
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The only person paying any attention to Walter was the beautiful brunette<br />
who was following him around like a handfed deer. But obviously not<br />
listening to a word he was saying or she would have run in disgust,<br />
assuming she had a survival instinct. She in turn had been followed by<br />
none other than Caesar Fabrice, five foot four assistant head of general<br />
research.<br />
It was Walter, who had mumbled in a drunken stupor that sometimes he<br />
wished he could zap his ex-wives. “Get them and be done with it.” Waving<br />
his arms - lost for words, making a complete circle, then “Yeah, zap ‘em!”<br />
Then he just stood there and a shudder of fatigue rushed through him. “All<br />
we need is their genetic profile. If we could see those little thingies from<br />
space. The genetic strings, helixes and all that stuff.... you know?” For a<br />
moment his eyes could not focus. “Guys!” Silence, then the awkward<br />
lighting of his cigar. Then “Guys!”<br />
He gazed up at the pot lights in the ceiling for effect, imagining it all. Then<br />
he rolled on to the couch by the super sized fire place, where some large<br />
logs pretended to blaze away amongst the gas flames, where two steer<br />
could have been roasted side by side. He took a swig from his tumbler. “We<br />
could hit them right then and there, laying on their white boats with their<br />
personal faggot trainers snorting coke! Can’t you see it? Man!”<br />
He raised his arms, just like Moses might have done, receiving the word of<br />
god. “Boom!” He cried out. “Boom! Boom! Bang!” A drule ran down his<br />
cheek and the cigar dropped to the carpet. With one last effort he stood up<br />
again and then he wrenched all that fine pate and Polish potato salad and<br />
the seven glasses of cognac and the butterscotch tarts onto the walnut<br />
parquet.<br />
Caesar had heard the last of what Walter had said, despite the fact that his<br />
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full attention was still locked onto the firm buttocks of Mrs. Bank. Even<br />
Walter’s theatrics could not divert his gaze. After a long pause in which<br />
three little men came and mopped up the mess and fumigated the lounge<br />
and in which Walter changed his clothing, he said: “Want me to look into<br />
it?” Forever the image of Zorro, Caesar was looking at Paul now, who was<br />
sitting opposite Walter. He had turned in surprise, but Caesar’s inner eyes<br />
were still mesmerized by the beautiful cutaways in Mrs. Banks’ dress. He<br />
found that if he drank just a little too much, that kind of urge was a bitch<br />
to control.<br />
Then there was a pause, the type of pause that happens when the night has<br />
gotten too long. “What are you looking into, Caesar?” Walter asked<br />
eventually, not particularly interested with two hands on his stomach.<br />
Caesar’s deeprooted anger surfaced like a flicker and then it was gone again<br />
- flash like. He would never be on the same level as these guys. He hated<br />
these idiots with such a passion as only latin blood can provide. They were<br />
old school, not mex-texanos. They were careless, smart, dull - could afford<br />
to be and did not give a damn, but for a rattler’s tail. It was bred into<br />
Caesar, to look up to these people, serve these people and this he resented<br />
the most - his own predilections to servitude. I am the peasant, he thought.<br />
“Did you not say you wanted to build something?” Now an air of<br />
confidence about Caesar, playing with his cufflinks. “You want to ‘zap’<br />
people, use their genetic code to hunt them down?” To him it was a late<br />
night joke. A stupid, dumb and typically Walter thing. He got drunk - he<br />
got ideas. He turned to Paul, but instead was mesmerized once again, this<br />
time by Mrs. Horsefoot - and in those deep velvet eyes he almost lost his<br />
train of thought. “Isn’t that what he said, Paul?” Caesar had regained his<br />
composure, settled on the old leather saddle that sat by the fire place. He<br />
needed Paul’s support here. He looked at Paul again. “Did I understand<br />
him right, Paul?” He was pointing at the Banks pair and laughed while<br />
doing so.<br />
13
Paul did not bother to react. His private eye buddy had confirmed over and<br />
over again, that Mrs. Horsefoot and Caesar Fabrice copulated at least<br />
several times a week in one of those cheap bachelor suits you can rent on<br />
the south side, but mostly in the back of his SUV. Sometimes Paul found<br />
the pretense a little bit much.<br />
“Yeah” he said getting up, swerving towards Caesar. He was in a mood to<br />
kick him in the head, but was making a semi-elegant curve instead and<br />
headed straight for Walter. His intention was to bend down slowly and<br />
whisper in Walter’s ear in a breathy voice, that he should get rid of this<br />
prick. But it so happened that he moved too far forward because the floor<br />
was still wet.<br />
The weight of his fat ass propelled him forward and his head suddenly sank<br />
past Walter and got trapped between the lovely thigh of the fifth Mrs. Banks<br />
and the big left leg of Walter’s. Paul’s gut landed on Walter’s pointy knees,<br />
which were braced solidly against the floor and this put such pressure on<br />
his chest cavity that a sound like wailing emanated from the dark space in<br />
which Paul’s head was stuck. Walter impulsively pushed him off hard.<br />
Paul rolled onto the floor and lay on his back. He sat up. Looking a little<br />
lopsided, but invigorated by Mrs. Banks’ splendid body odor. “Yes!” he<br />
shouted “Yes! Gentlemen, ladies! Let us here and now decide to build a<br />
space contraption that blows away all the evildoers, including the thirty five<br />
previous wives of this here gentlemen!”<br />
He laughed and with the imprint of Mrs. Banks’s lovely thigh still on the<br />
right side of his face, he begged Walter. “Make it his priority, Walter.”<br />
Thumbing over at Caesar. Caesar had gotten up and was now walking<br />
casually over to an unguarded Mrs. Horsefoot. This was a risky move. She<br />
14
smiled at him in a forced way. “What the hell is he up to?” he whispered to<br />
her and shock his head. She kept smiling as if he had made an amusing<br />
remark, but under her breath she muttered “Get away from me! Now!<br />
Idiot!” He could tell she was in one of her moods, which he secretly<br />
adored.<br />
“Caesar!” That voice again. “Get over here, Zappato!” This was the<br />
definitive sign that his boss was drunk. Caesar turned. There was Walter<br />
and the only time he would call him Zappato was when he was plain losing<br />
it. Caesar walked over and actually put his arm on Paul’s shoulder. “Yes” he<br />
said with an apparently relaxed tone, as if all his life he had watched reruns<br />
of Fantasy Island. “How can I be of service, gentleman.” It was supposed to<br />
be a funny mockery, but it came out so straight that nobody got it.<br />
Walter did not like Caesar, he gave him the creeps. “Look” he said and then<br />
looked at Paul. “This V.P. finance here, our good buddy Paul, wants me to<br />
seconde you for a year, five years - whatever, to work on a space zapper.” He<br />
saw the look on Caesar’s face. “Well at least until it is done.” He was turning<br />
firm in his mind. “Okay?” This was not a question - it was an order and<br />
Caesar knew it by the tone in the voice.<br />
Walter let his head down a little and he looked at his drink. “You do this<br />
for me, you Mexican geek or god, depending on whether or not you are in<br />
bed with someone of your own sex.” A smile running across his chin, then<br />
he put a pause in just for effect - a long pause and nobody spoke. “You do<br />
this for me, well actually Paul, and I will give you the Public Safety<br />
portfolio.” He raised his hand. “You are all my witnesses. No complaints.<br />
You can look through all the project junk in Hall 40 through Hall 46.<br />
Whatever you find - it is yours to play with.”<br />
He stood up and looked around. “I will tell security. I will issue a special<br />
15
lue pass myself.” He wasn’t going anywhere, just stood there - not coming,<br />
not going, swaying a little. “That is wonderful!” Caesar proclaimed with a<br />
big grin on his face. “Thank you, Walter. I will start on it right away.<br />
Tomorrow. Yes. First thing!” He then moved forward towards Paul. He was<br />
going to give him a big hug, but then he could not do it. “Thank you so<br />
much, Paul.” “You are a great pal.” But it did not sound like pal, it had an<br />
air of pale, or pool, or puff.<br />
The large room still had that warm feeling, that shortbread, chocolate smell<br />
- mix in a little wine, the fresh cedar bows making it pungent. “You can start<br />
whenever you want. It is the last challenge I will ever place on your head,<br />
good man.” Caesar understood the game. Felice Navidad be damned, he<br />
would work right through the holidays - he had the run of the place. His<br />
wife was in the lovely Swiss resort of Davos for the holidays. His children<br />
hanging out with friends in Pittsburgh.<br />
Caesar went to the washroom. He was looking in the mirror - don’t be<br />
ashamed, don’t bother, he thought. He combed his hair, jet black it was -<br />
longish in the back. Walter came in and up behind him and before he<br />
could do anything about it, he had grabbed Caesar’s balls and squeezed as<br />
only rednecks can and then his head came close to his and he whispered<br />
in that dirty voice of his “And leave Paul’s wife alone - while you are at it.”<br />
He gave Caesar a vicious tug.<br />
Then he let go, but his elbow came up and caught Caesar under the nose<br />
and he fell forward onto the sink and the blood drained down the clean<br />
porcelain and then he rolled of the edge of the marble counter. He curled<br />
into a ball on the tiled floor and could not bring himself to scream. By the<br />
time Caesar went back to the big lounge, it was empty.<br />
He disappeared from the social circuit. Instead Hall 42 in particular was<br />
brightly lit day and night until the howlers, rockets and canon balls<br />
16
ushered in the new year. He called it Orbital Genetic Detection - O.G.D. for<br />
short. It was basically configured by the time the flash floods hit in<br />
February. Caesar had adopted the concept - borrowed it from the deep sea<br />
search and rescue devices, that had been commissioned as far back as the<br />
Reagan presidency for submarine espionage. Caesar had found them<br />
buried behind the extinct species rejuvenation machines and the tit-for-tat<br />
guidance systems developed after the Cuban missile crisis by President<br />
Kennedy’s eggheads. What he still needed was the genetic angle. Publicly<br />
this technology did not exist, but Caesar knew better.<br />
He had heard rumours - years back in the days of the Islamic paranoia -<br />
that a device had been used in Congress to verify the congress men’s<br />
identity with such a device, mounted high in the cupola. There had been a<br />
fear that Islamic impostors could infiltrate this hallowed house of law. He<br />
did some research and found both a prototype and the first assembly line<br />
model in hall 56. He told no one - but without calling in a few markers, he<br />
would not have been able to manage.<br />
What had started as a project to gain him control of the Public Safety<br />
department, now was becoming such a powerful instrument in it’s own<br />
right - to hell with Public Safety. This is what he lived for, this sense of a<br />
real hunt for discovery - something those executive morons would never<br />
understand. Again his resentment of all things American rose to the surface<br />
and a plan took shape in Caesar’s mind. He would pay Walter back. He<br />
would find revenge - if that is all he did. He could not just bolt and be done<br />
with it, settle in a little seaside village in the Yucatan and enjoy the simple<br />
life, dreaming of yester years.<br />
If he wanted this to work, he would need the support of this whole outfit<br />
and he needed the launch capacity of NASA, which wouldn’t be a problem<br />
as long as he stayed in the system. All because Walter wanted to erase his<br />
17
exwives. He needed to play it just right and only when all the gadgets were<br />
in space and the controls finally wired to the operations centre, would it<br />
become obvious - but only to people who searched deeply into the code,<br />
that he also had control over the satellites. He needed to be patient. Play it<br />
safe now, he told himself. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Use their greed,<br />
he thought. Subservience was such a wonderful guise.<br />
The boys in security had become his friends. They were resentful, having to<br />
work these extra shifts and he made it clear that he felt the same way about<br />
this project. He worked on the premise that none of them reported back to<br />
anyone, but he was not sure. Just to be certain, he kept things in such a<br />
random order, that it would be difficult to back track everything he had<br />
accomplished. He also had rigged the cameras in hall 42.<br />
The work in hall 56 took all but fifteen minutes and it would have taken<br />
less, had he not first moved a giant black box from shelving 14a to the top<br />
shelving 27g, which had nothing to do with anything - but blocked the<br />
camera view. Just a divergence. To the security guys it appeared, from<br />
everything he had to say in those days, that this was a special favour to the<br />
President of the United States.<br />
The real work started when he got home. The kids had come back, so had<br />
his wife. He had thought of contacting Mrs. Horsefoot, but could not bring<br />
himself to do it. It was not that important. He had removed the Unix code<br />
boxes from the devices and had created an elaborate scheme with emulated<br />
temp folders into which he had built a corrupted code language. Into those<br />
he had buried the actual operating system in Linux code which was<br />
emulating a System XXIII on the Mac side.<br />
He had learned some time ago that what actually confuses those that are<br />
looking the most is simplicity. So he had used the schematic of a garage<br />
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door opener and had built on those basic logical arms and created what<br />
seemed like the effect seen by looking through ten spider webs with an<br />
ultimate depth of field. This would delay them. The genius of it was that<br />
the system functioned adequately and elegantly. The hidden technology<br />
was the real deal and nobody could see it or control it without provocation.<br />
All his pass words were based on a Chinese substrata of keyboard<br />
functions, spelling out the five middle names of his grandmothers in<br />
various sequences. He had had them tattooed onto his left upper arm two<br />
years ago. His whole security protocol took three long nights, partly<br />
because he needed to incorporate a sufficient amount of sequences, not<br />
just build a hide and seek architecture. At the end of March he finally felt<br />
the first surges of satisfaction. It was like sneaking away from school to go<br />
surfing at the piers. These surges of gratitude grew. When he had completed<br />
the building of the system and set it up in such a way that all he had to do<br />
was walk anywhere without a computer terminal and the machine would<br />
find him and since he had coded the commands according to the Tai Chi<br />
principles, the machine would use his body language to do as it was told.<br />
He had bought an orange coverall and into it he had sown the sensors and<br />
transmitters that would let the eye in the sky know what he wanted. He had<br />
also bought a roller blade helmet onto which he mounted the locator<br />
beacon - that way the Satellite could find him. The geostationary satellite<br />
would have no problem finding him. Walter you stupid shit, you have it<br />
coming, he thought.<br />
So it was the middle of July, when a bewildered Walter leaned down in<br />
between the wires and the tubes to hear the last words Paul Horsefoot<br />
whispered after the massive heart attack, which he suffered when the<br />
elevator he was riding plummeted from the fifth floor after a local power<br />
outage. “He screwed us. Wwww.” He couldn’t get that part out “Who?!”<br />
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Walter said it as if his old buddy was having a drunken snooze - too lazy to<br />
wake up. “Hhh. Hhhh. Him” Paul whispered. Then his head turned<br />
sideways and he was gone. “Who?!” Walter asked again, ignoring that this<br />
man had just died. He pinched the corpse. This is so typically Paul, Walter<br />
thought. Walter being the type who can be either sober or drunk at the<br />
drop of a hat. He shook the corpse. Gets up and dies on me without telling.<br />
He was furious.<br />
He bounced the bed up and down. Stupid git. No wonder he was from<br />
Idaho. Losers and deadbeats live in Idaho. He was distracted, a little<br />
panicked. Abruptly he straightened out and turned sharply to get out of<br />
there. The nurse was coming towards him, her hands up - eyes big, trying<br />
to hold him back, which made him speed up and assume a forceful<br />
forward motion and then he felt the tugging of all those lines and tubes<br />
and then he heard the sickening thud behind him and he saw the horror<br />
on the nurses face and he bolted even more and then he shed all those lines<br />
and his last look back showed Paul spread eagle and twisted on the<br />
polished linoleum floor with both the nurse and his wife hanging on him,<br />
so that he could not be dragged down the corridor.<br />
Walter was used to messes being cleaned up in his wake. This was not a<br />
good day, Walter decided on the way to the parking lot. He had forgotten<br />
that the limousine was waiting by the front entrance. Paul was out of the<br />
loop and ‘Him’ was one big mystery. He did not care about Paul. When<br />
people were that close to him and watched his every move, they were a<br />
pain.<br />
The D.G.O. device was first implemented by vaporizing the old cedar hot<br />
tub in which the first Mrs. Banks was being entertained by an aging rock<br />
star of all people. This was not long after Paul Horsefoot’s elaborate<br />
funeral. Mrs. Horsefoot was spared the agony of an empty matrimonial bed<br />
20
y a longish line of old associates - of which Caesar was no longer one. He<br />
had became estranged, almost aloof.<br />
In late July of that year a peculiar incident made the local papers. A man<br />
named Walter Banks, driving a Cadillac convertible, caught fire while<br />
cruising on the highway outside Tucson, just past the air force graveyard. It<br />
was not that the engine had caused the fire, so eye witnesses proclaimed.<br />
Those testifying from oncoming traffic mentioned that they saw a shaft of<br />
light bolting from the sky. There was no build up of smoke, so the driver of<br />
the rig said. “That car flew by me and the driver was on fire - big time, like<br />
fireworks. Instantaneous combustion whatyamacallit.” The rig operator<br />
had no explanation. “He never made the curve to the left, but went straight<br />
into that big concrete tepee of the tourist info centre and exploded.” The<br />
story had no legs after that, except if you had connected the bombastic<br />
habituaries in the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News and the<br />
Wall Street Journal, in which the nature of his passing was mentioned as a<br />
car accident.<br />
••••<br />
A strong gail blew across the Caribbean sea in the early morning of<br />
December 17th, 2054. The sleek cruiser-class McKinnon was slicing her<br />
way through the whitecaps, barely rolling. The ship flew the flag of the<br />
Ignazio group of companies, a golden lion on a dark green square. It must<br />
have cost a good chunk of cash, to convert such a high powered ship to be<br />
the sole possession of a civil corporation, in fact she was owned by one<br />
wealthy man.<br />
More than six years ago, on a grey ghostly morning a bit like today, the<br />
powerful ship had left the Lexington shipyards, where she had been<br />
stripped of her cannons and all other defensive installations. They had<br />
sailed her south through Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic, proceeded to pass<br />
through the Panama canal and then she was refitted, away from searching<br />
21
American eyes, in a shipyard in the Gulf of Fonseca with twin armour<br />
piercing canons, a state of the art anti aircraft system, the latest in French<br />
sidewinder missiles, two Helicopters, a Sea Harrier GR3 and all the<br />
electronic gadgets that are a necessity to run a maritime operation in these<br />
days of chaos. Piracy had become a royal pain in the first decades of the<br />
new millennium. Ironically, the McKinnon was now more militarily<br />
capable then ever before.<br />
The course had taking them south through the Tropic of Cancer in a bright<br />
starry night, but the weather had shifted - clouds rolled in from the<br />
direction of Jamaica. The windward passage was the last uncertainty and<br />
now with the lights of Port-au-Prince fading behind them to the left, it was<br />
a straight run south/south-west. Captain Pierre Dagaz left the bridge after<br />
another quick glance at the radar. He was a short man of square built and<br />
only one eye - he wore a black patch. They would arrive about 15:00 hours<br />
Florida time. The Chinese born second officer Han, had standing<br />
instructions to wake him should there ever be even a sense of a situation<br />
and many a times that had proven a lifesaving tactic. Dagaz trusted this<br />
man with his life - which in turn was what old man Tom expected - loyalty.<br />
The warm water ran across his hands, wetting his razor for a quick shave.<br />
He did this before he rested. In case he was needed in a hurry he did not<br />
want to appear unprepared. It was important to him. He laid out a fresh<br />
uniform shirt, khaki with dark green and gold trim. Involuntarily in his<br />
mind he reran a scenario late in last year’s summer in the South China sea.<br />
Just off the coast of Mindoro. Very strong winds, the waves about eighteen<br />
feet, the currents strong from the Sulu Sea and the navigational electronics<br />
for some reason not being reliable.<br />
They were suddenly surrounded by Vietnamese. The McKinnon turned on<br />
all search lights. There were sharpshooters in the riggings of their junks, a<br />
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small flotilla. In the black of that tempest night, old man Tom standing on<br />
the bridge, legs spread to brace against the roll of the ship, he had raised<br />
his arm and just pointed into the darkness, south and that is the way they<br />
had run from the rabble. The engines roaring into full thrust. Then<br />
suddenly Tom had acted as few men would. He commanded the Sea<br />
Harrier raised. This was tricky business in high seas, but within three<br />
minutes she was airborne. They watched the assault from a distance.<br />
The moon had appeared from behind the clouds like a good omen.<br />
Without hesitation Tom had turned the ship around. The canons were<br />
lifted and the McKinnon set her sights on the remaining pirates, now dimly<br />
visible. Shearing through them with complete disregard for collisions - her<br />
bow being like a knife. The guns did the rest until the sea was flat around<br />
them. They had lost three men that night, several wounded, him loosing<br />
his eye to a piece of shattered glass, but the bullet had missed him. They<br />
had saved the ship and a cargo of silk worth two hundred and fifty million<br />
dollars. The McKinnon was rumour from that night forward - eventually<br />
legend.<br />
He picked up the phone and dialed the relay that would make the satellite<br />
call untraceable. From there his signal would be forwarded to a small<br />
Spanish fishing village north from Valencia along the coastal highway. His<br />
eldest son answered the phone in lazy Spanish. Pierre smiled. Carlos<br />
sounded distracted, probably watching cartoons, sick at home - skipping<br />
school. When Dagaz finally hung up, his picture of the world in order, he<br />
fell back onto the bed and closed his eyes. Now he relived the long day,<br />
experienced from memory the most meaningful moments.<br />
Sometimes he would play some of the scenes again. Somewhere in that<br />
replay he would fade and it was not an uncommon thing for the dream to<br />
pick up where the memory had left off and in that dream state he would<br />
23
fix agitation and poor morale. This is something Tom had taught him. If all<br />
you can do is react to a problem, then you are not genuinely in control.<br />
Anticipate, anticipate. If need be, sometimes create the problem so that you<br />
are the only one who can solve it, because you know the root, you are the<br />
root. “Makes you look good too” the old man had said with a dry smile.<br />
••••<br />
The head of Rocio, the night attendant, was bobbing up and down in the<br />
dim light of the main lounge. Catching herself in a half sleep and then<br />
rearranging herself, giving in once more to cozy comfort, delicious like a<br />
slow tango. The silver service platter on her lap, having teetered on her<br />
knees, finally slid downward and hit the mahogany floor with a crash,<br />
coinciding with the precise moment when in her dream she was shooting<br />
the left ear off her brutal drunken husband.<br />
She jerked and rolled her now wide eyes from left to right and listened fully<br />
alert. There was nobody in sight, yet she murmured an apology out of habit<br />
- after all god was watching. She got up from the wooden chair and swayed<br />
drunken with sleep, stumbling the twenty paces to the soft sofa under the<br />
large Matisse canvas. She got out her heavy rosary and began her Ave<br />
Marias, which were sometimes the only antidote to falling into very deep<br />
sleep. Secretly she wished for that dream to replay one more time before<br />
breakfast. She had dreamt it a thousand times, it was like an addiction. If<br />
she strung all the dreams together, there would be nothing left, she had<br />
shot so many holes into this hideous butcher - night after night - that now<br />
there was only the air of him.<br />
The twins were the first up. Little naked feet - muted thuds - racing from the<br />
far doors, still in pajamas, then the tap tap of smacking skin when they hit<br />
the wooden floor. To tell them apart was difficult. You could figure it out<br />
only if you paid attention to their eyes or body language. Jack always came<br />
24
forward and was fearless while Jo tended to recede and attempted to draw<br />
people in. They were trouble just as chalk inevitably shrieks on the black<br />
board, as falling dishes break. They spotted the hulk of Rocio on the sofa<br />
in the dim light.<br />
Speaking fluent Spanish, they asked the blurry eyed woman for cabin<br />
numbers after they mercilessly had pocked her awake. Her rosary still<br />
sailing across the large majestic parquet dance floor in a large wobbly arc<br />
due to a defensive reflex in her right arm. They did not get anywhere with<br />
her. Gave up, moved on - up one level via the circular staircase that once<br />
adorned a plantation library - like a wolf pack made of two. They knew it<br />
might not lead to the other kids, but these two were bent on the chase. It<br />
was the hunt that mattered to them, while the prey was only a necessity.<br />
••••<br />
As the sun turned a deep orange red before it sank behind the glistening<br />
line of the ocean, the sky the colours of gold and magenta, as a small sturdy<br />
boat slowly entered the large bay and found its way without any sound to<br />
the mooring, like a liquid version of a romantic painting. The older man<br />
lifted his canvass bags from the flat bottom of the wooden skiff and<br />
jumped on to the stone steps that led to the top of the long sea wall, built<br />
crudely from random stones and concrete. He was dressed in an old blue<br />
coverall, a worn out green South African army jacket over top against the<br />
sea breezes and a red felt hat that now was the colour of mango. The face<br />
of Umberto Cadiz was older than his sixty years, lines deep in the face and<br />
a wide mouth surrounded by a ghost of a beard. He had a sea look, a good<br />
face.<br />
He walked slowly along darkening doorways and lamp lit windows. He<br />
delivered most of his catch to the cloister, then headed towards home.<br />
Umberto was still sure footed, strong and in no particular hurry. He looked<br />
25
ack over his shoulder at the vantage point between Ernesto Tecca’s house<br />
and the old bakery half way up the village on the way to his house, the<br />
outmost one.<br />
Much as every night, he looked over the bay, let his eyes wander randomly<br />
and when he felt that the winds would not come this night, he put down<br />
what was left of his catch and leaned against the stone wall between the<br />
two houses. He took his pipe from the jacket pocket and lit what little<br />
tobacco was left in it. This ritual of observing he had done since he was a<br />
young man. In fact everything he had done and did was a repetition of<br />
years and years of sameness. This made him comfortable.<br />
He was in between worlds now, on land yes, but not home and looking at<br />
the huge endless water beneath him, where still a faint hint of lila coloured<br />
streaks faded into the distance, he was well aware that this was his life, his<br />
nature. A mist pervaded the picture now, where the ghosts of his forefathers<br />
walked, blackening the shadows. Noba island, which sat in the middle of<br />
the bay like a big birthday cake, now appeared as a dark triangle. Uncertain<br />
rich grays turned slowly to become the deep impenetrable darkness that<br />
made the night, when only the stars and their cool bright indifference filled<br />
the sky with milky lace.<br />
He looked west towards the glow of White Oaks with its electric lights.<br />
Three years ago they had started building and now it was finished. The<br />
workers were gone. To Umberto none of these things honestly mattered.<br />
His mind could not encompass these changes - he had tried. His brain<br />
would not let him see a picture larger then the one he had painted of his<br />
world long ago. There was land and there was sea and there were the gods<br />
of his ancestors. Nothing else would fit into the small, but strong frame of<br />
his imagination. So he slept reasonably deep, ate good meals and fished<br />
the best he could while experiencing the down drift of age, even less able<br />
26
to change course now.<br />
He had finished his pipe some time ago, but had not yet settled into the<br />
quiet night the way he wished he could and often did - but not tonight. At<br />
sea he was alert, never relaxed. It was not a place for dreamers. As he stood<br />
there now, music drifted across from White Oaks and mingled with the<br />
sounds of the jungle that covered the rest of the bay shore and Noba island.<br />
He was a man far from anger. Agitated at times, yes. Now hungry, he picked<br />
up his sack and walked up to the house, wondering if his old mother had<br />
recovered.<br />
••••<br />
Juan Hernandez, in his dirty brown pants and a grey ruffled shirt that had<br />
seen prettier days, sat on the steps of the Cathedral. It was called that, four<br />
steps hewn from the blueish basalt rock that could be seen sticking out of<br />
the thin layer of dirty topsoil. On top of the steps to the left and right were<br />
the beginnings of two gigantic arches that once were intended to form a<br />
gothic portal, if they had ever reached that far.<br />
They would have met thirty seven feet above the bishops and cardinals,<br />
princes and dignitaries who would have come to celebrate the inauguration<br />
of what Father Piolo called the Magdalena Cathedral. The interior rich with<br />
rays from the enormous stained glass windows. A vestibule of gold and<br />
wrought iron, a sanctum sanctorum in marble and Hondurean hardwoods,<br />
pews fashioned from English oak under a vaulted cupola one hundred feet<br />
high, where angels of stone transferred the roofs massive weight into tall<br />
ribbed pillars in the fashion of the Cathedral of Salamanca.<br />
That is the way Father Piolo described it. Showing them all the large<br />
detailed drawings he had made, relying on god the great engineer. He had<br />
urged the natives to work for the sake of this greatness and eternal heaven.<br />
27
Eventually, getting frustrated, he had threatened them also with hell.<br />
All Juan now saw, while he was scribbling unrecognizable faces into his<br />
book, were eight goats tethered away from the hot afternoon sun at the<br />
edge of the jungle. It was this impossible torturous vision of glory that had<br />
finally broken the old monk from Toledo. With his god in the heavens and<br />
no Quetzalcoatl to be seen, he could not make the people work. If he<br />
pushed and threatened they would only turn their backs. It was simply not<br />
their way anymore.<br />
Why should one build a house of stone that keeps out the stars. It would<br />
bend a thousand men and more before their time only to please a man<br />
from Rome? A god of such wilfulness needs no disciples, they thought and<br />
least of all their labour. All these years of teaching and what did they give<br />
in return, he was angry. There he stood with his eyes towards the sky as if<br />
El Greco had stood him there for yet another elongated painting.<br />
The old monk lived on for another two years, becoming feeble and quiet<br />
until he withered into a helpless bundle, which they dutifully nursed until<br />
his death. The nuns of St. Agnes remembered the young and robust<br />
bearded man that had come to them. He gave them their new faith and a<br />
path on which they had wandered ever since. The black Spanish ship which<br />
had brought him, took on water and sailed away within days. Two years<br />
later, the hull rotted by ship worm, this black ship had been abandoned off<br />
Monserat.<br />
But the good oblate had brought his books and his charts, the maps of the<br />
world and a sextant. But that was not all. Few paid attention to the three<br />
apes he had brought with him. They were to him as evil as the creatures of<br />
Goya’s etchings. He called them sinners - ugly hideous vulgar beasts and he<br />
punished them whenever he saw them copulating, which they did on a<br />
28
egular basis, by withholding food and even water for days on end until<br />
they lay on the ground of their cage - weak and motionless.<br />
Eventually one of them died because of this stupid treatment, which is not<br />
surprising - given the disregard of this churchman for the animal kingdom.<br />
The remaining two female apes escaped from the cage, as the careless<br />
workers finally removed the putrid corpse of the male and promptly swam<br />
to the island in the bay. They were Bonobos, deep from the heart of Africa,<br />
and it did not take them long to bring to term their offsprings, which was<br />
in fact a miracle, since they normally only give birth once in a five to six<br />
year period.<br />
The black capped Capuchin, which had migrated from Ecuador or Guyana<br />
probably thousands of years ago, were native to Gallaan. Being smaller and<br />
less likely to swim, they did not represent a threat to these new arrivals.<br />
Father Piolo had called them Takas. Crazy things with no soul and it was<br />
obvious to everybody that he feared them. To him they were the portents<br />
of hell and since they lived on the island in the bay he called it Tecaro -<br />
island of the Taka devils. But eventually he was more occupied with the<br />
great tasks of heaven - the setting of stone upon stone, so he paid them no<br />
further attention. However, it is my own good sense that tells me to rename<br />
them to what they were. Bonobos. And their island I will call Noba. And<br />
despite all the respect I have for Piolo the pioneer, I find his so called<br />
knowledge and his treatment of these animals - his apparent kindness that<br />
carried such a brutal edge - genuinely demonic. I am the author and I can<br />
say these things - this is my book.<br />
These creatures were shy, agile and often displayed a soundless quality - a<br />
stillness all about them - which only adds to their mystery. Having no<br />
predators to contend with, they flourished. Often you can see them<br />
29
swimming across the bay to feed in the deep jungles of Gallaan for the day<br />
- before returning just before dusk to Noba island.<br />
Timekeepers Log<br />
“El Tiempo no es una medida hecha por el hombre, sino por los<br />
brillantes diamantes repartidos en el cielo de la noche. En donde<br />
vive la luz de los dioses. Los que crean la lluvia, los que traen a los<br />
niños y el mas maravilloso de todos que mantienen el sol en el<br />
cielo. Asi me han dicho las gaviotas y los lagartos de pecho azul.”<br />
Time is a measure not made by man - but by the twinkling<br />
diamonds that are scattered about the night sky. Within their light<br />
dwell the gods. The ones that make rain, the ones that bring<br />
children and the great one who keeps the sun in the sky. So the sea<br />
gulls tell me and the blue geckos.<br />
Pablo<br />
It could be the size or the flatness of its contours that made my island so<br />
obscure. Maybe it was the tempestuous winds from the east that guard it<br />
like a dragon encircles a secret treasure. Columbus shows it as a small spot<br />
on the early maps. The explorer Diaz makes mention of it in his log in<br />
1548. Don Francisco de Montej, an officer of Cortez’ named it Gallaan. It<br />
reminded him of the hilly surround of his family’s estate in Galicia, not far<br />
from Vigo. He did not have time to stop, explore and chart it further.<br />
Having seen the tell tale signs of a hurricane in the late light of day he<br />
quickly set full sails and luckily outran the storm. On early charts it was<br />
visible as a small zeppelin shape without name.<br />
Eventually that small shape was changed to the actual sickle shape it is with<br />
30
a perfectly circular smaller island in the centre of the harbour, known as<br />
Noba island, because the silent apes live there, and the main island itself<br />
was finally confirmed as Gallaan by Father Piolo, who proudly proclaimed<br />
that Don Francisco de Montej was in fact his great great uncle.<br />
This speck on the map became to him - a young missionary searching for<br />
a foothold in the new world - a place of peace. Of course he would teach<br />
the natives - but there was no hurry. Because of his calmness and initial<br />
inner strength, something a fugitive might feel once safe in exile, he was<br />
accepted. ‘Our heavenly Lady, Mary Mother of God, has granted me a place<br />
in paradise even though I am amongst the living. I shall work under her<br />
blessed smile all the days of my life’ he wrote. He died on Christmas day in<br />
the year 1624 at the age of 82. I saw his book of thoughts in the cloister<br />
and young Sister Clara let me secretly read in it.<br />
I, Pablo, was born here on our island in the house that my great great grand<br />
uncle Padico had built many years ago before my time. A simple, sturdy<br />
adobe in the middle of the small village of San Agusto, with two tiny<br />
windows facing the sea and overlooking the harbour, that reminds one of<br />
the open claw of a crab with a large perl in the centre of it. I was known to<br />
wander from an early age, climbing the short but steep cliffs and spending<br />
the days in the company of the wind that blows from the Atlantic and the<br />
jungle that covers more densely the western part of the island. It was not<br />
considered strange to be this way.<br />
The nuns at the cloister of St. Agnes are the keepers of records and they<br />
regarded my behaviour as a somewhat rare but recognizable trait. For<br />
centuries the men have gone out alone, in small seaworthy crafts - fishing<br />
for Tagish, a good sized tropical herring which is abundant here. It is said<br />
that the native tribes of the far north are cousins to our race and that long<br />
ago these ancestors of ours had come here by good fortune.<br />
31
We are neither Arawak or Carrib. Our skins are similar, but our bodies are<br />
generally taller and our eyes are often a shade of greenish blue. Our oral<br />
history goes back to a time when the legends talk about large plains and<br />
animals big enough to feed the tribe for a month at a time. We eventually<br />
wandered south and somehow through the power of circumstance and the<br />
vigilance of the timekeepers, we found our way through hostile territory to<br />
the ocean.<br />
We learned to fish and to respect the power of the sea and some time later<br />
we ventured on a journey. A fact is that only half of us left the safety of the<br />
coast. The young children and the elders stayed behind. We built crafts<br />
large enough to carry twenty of us, ten men and ten women in each vessel.<br />
There were twelve craft and we dragged large bladders filled with fresh<br />
water behind us and our sails were the colour of azur and a small flag of<br />
red tied to the masts. Through storms and heavy seas we sailed. Five boats<br />
arrived together and out of that seed of people, the tribe was born and our<br />
way of life continued on Gallaan.<br />
Cruise ships don’t ever come here. There is a shipping route to the Panama<br />
canal a good distance past the horizon. We have always controlled<br />
ourselves, bury the dead and raise the children and in between pursue what<br />
is good for us all. Our young men must build a boat for their own rite of<br />
passage. It has a small mast and a triangular sail, dyed green - our colour of<br />
hope. It is large enough to go across the Caribbean sea to the west. Since<br />
the winds come from the east more often than not and the currents are<br />
favourable, they find a new home on the many islands that dot the sea. If<br />
they find a bride somewhere then they may return or go to her native place<br />
and stay away forever.<br />
Our young women equally have a ritual by which they must vow to go<br />
away to be the mothers of a wayfarers’ children. These young men arrive<br />
32
out of nowhere and they take a bride away with them. Equally, if a young<br />
woman has no interest in a man she may stay and become a nun, but that<br />
is a more recent development. It is always the decision of the abbess of St.<br />
Agnes. “The blood must be clean” she says. Naturally these rules lead to a<br />
lot of heart break amongst the young, many a soul mates are wrenched<br />
apart this way. But these ancient rules can not be broken - ever.<br />
From an early age, besides being quirky, I showed an aptitude for numbers<br />
and an ability to learn complex matters. My interest has always been in<br />
peculiar things, so my reputations, both as a misfit and as a gifted person<br />
were firmly established. This must have influenced the decision the abbess<br />
eventually made. I became the timekeeper’s apprentice.<br />
Approximately two years after I started my studies with Mario Muni, he fell<br />
in a winter storm from the high cliff he had visited so many times to<br />
measure the rise of Hercuile, generally known to the world as the morning<br />
star; the journey of Tacao, the star often called Jupiter and many other<br />
calculations. The ancient brass sextant with which he worked had been<br />
anchored permanently up there high on the edge. Spikes had been driven<br />
into the brittle rock that held the platform. I can only presume that it gave<br />
way that night and he fell straight into the sea far below and was not found.<br />
It gave me nightmares for a long time, always reaching to hold him - pull<br />
him to safety. A wise man yet a difficult man, full of the knowledge of the<br />
stars from which he built his time tables. Besides being a gifted timekeeper<br />
he was also a blessed womanizer. I know of at least six of them that he used<br />
to visit regularly, two nuns amongst them. He never neglected his<br />
timekeeping duties as far as I know and I did always greatly admire him.<br />
When he did not wake me on that morning, which he never failed to do, I<br />
ran along the jungle trail to the cliff to find him. There was no sign of him,<br />
33
the platform hung along the cliff face swinging in the wind, held only by<br />
two leather straps. The sextant had jammed into a crevasse far below, all<br />
bent to pieces. I was breathing heavily from the run up the mountain and<br />
Mario’s disappearance made my heart beat even faster, but I ran all the way<br />
down to San Agusto, headed straight for the house of Donna Iginotez, his<br />
latest favourite, and banged against the wood with my shoe until she came<br />
to the door.<br />
I was still hoping to find Mario. Sometimes he would go to the village to<br />
spend the night with her and not tell me, but he was always back in time<br />
to wake me in the hut not far from the lookout. He was not there, so a<br />
sleepy eyed Donna told me, showing no sign of worry and walking to the<br />
gully to empty the night pot she held in her hands. After she called me a<br />
dumb fool for waking her she told me to never knock on her door again,<br />
night or day.<br />
My apprenticeship with Mario had not been a strict affair. He tolerated me<br />
and I did my shores. Mostly shores and little learning. I carried supplies up<br />
the mountain, I kept the hut clean and cooked the meals - one of which I<br />
would deliver each day to him in the early evenings, before he spent the<br />
night keeping time. There was no rush. This suited me fine, it gave me time<br />
to do my own searching and while he reprimanded me every time I could<br />
not be found or stayed away for the night, I had the feeling that he did not<br />
care too much.<br />
Now I wished that I had pressed him harder to convey to me the old<br />
wisdoms. I thought I had a long time to absorb everything he had to teach<br />
me - until it would become like second nature, not suddenly death making<br />
short thrift of it all. I confess that my attention was on the girls. I was a<br />
young boy. I loved girls, their friendship, their teasing, their different ways<br />
of thinking, their beauty. They had a power over me and nothing I did<br />
34
could get me out of the traps they consistently set for me. I suspected the<br />
nuns to be the same way, only bigger.<br />
When I arrived at the cloister, they told young Sister Clara and when she<br />
finally came I told her everything I had seen that morning. I was tired and<br />
shaking. I was made to eat a thick porridge. The nuns sent three men up to<br />
the lookout. They searched for two days and found no Mario. The day after<br />
the men returned, there was a beautiful solemn service at the chapel by the<br />
sea, which was a huge circle of boulders to the right of San Agusto, in the<br />
centre of which stood an enormous stone slab ten feet tall into which a<br />
large cross had been carved. Into the fissures of that large rock the nuns had<br />
wedged candles. The abbess placed her holy water and incense on a small<br />
table beside that rock. First there was praying and then some words from<br />
the abbess, before a wooden bundle, symbolizing the disappeared man,<br />
was burned. They sang a very old song.<br />
So there I was, the one given the responsibility to keep the time. The old<br />
piles of charts would be difficult to interpret. The men had retrieved the<br />
sextant and built a new platform, but now away from the edge. They<br />
brought the sextant to the village and Hidalgo, the blacksmith amongst<br />
other things, fixed it as best he could. Mario had showed me the variety of<br />
notches in the various circles of the heavy brass instrument to give a precise<br />
correlation of numbers, which then all summed up to the common<br />
symbolic indicator by which all other readings were factored. These<br />
numbers were then charted against the 365 days of the sun years as well as<br />
the 260 day years of the old people.<br />
Sister Clara in her kindness listened to me, when my doubts rose to the<br />
surface. She was young, maybe four years older than me - no more. I<br />
confessed as to how little I knew, how Mario had been too busy to pay<br />
attention to my education. She reassured me and put me in a spare little<br />
room in the cloister that had an old rickety bed and a side table. This is<br />
35
where I slept. She came to my bed in the evening, woke me and comforted<br />
me again, smiled at all the matters I considered so grave. She lay beside me<br />
and rocked me to sleep as if I was her little child. It made me feel good.<br />
In the morning she took me to the abbess, who in turn gave me firm<br />
instructions to find new ways of keeping time while maintaining the old<br />
traditions. She spoke at length, looking at me with hard eyes. The abbess is<br />
not easy to describe. She is at least seven feet tall, probably more. She has<br />
long red curly hair. She has a white complexion with reddish edges and<br />
deep charcoal eyes. She is very emaciated, like a fishing rod. Her neck is so<br />
thin but her head stays upright. Her lips look like a wound. She is different<br />
from all of us.<br />
Whatever I needed would be given to me and it was my right to ask her<br />
personally for any tools I required to find a way to make the timekeeping<br />
as accurate as I possibly could. She offered me some liquorice which she<br />
herself chewed constantly. She gave me a long list of stars to watch and<br />
many constellations. She was particularly interested in Dandao, the blue<br />
star. She gave me precise intervals of measurings - every third day. She<br />
promised to send Sister Clara to my lonely hut twice for every moon, to<br />
spend the night and to listen to my discoveries, which I had to write down<br />
in great detail in a new empty book she gave me right then and there. It was<br />
a black book with enough pages to last until I became an adult - which was<br />
in four years time.<br />
She blessed twenty sharpened pencils, letting the smoke from her incense<br />
wash over them and then handed them to me. She also made me a gift of<br />
a pocket knife. That way I could keep the pencil points sharp and the<br />
writing clean and clear in the new book. She added an eraser in the shape<br />
of Mickey Mouse. I had never been so close to this woman, the most<br />
powerful person on the island and I found myself wondering if she might<br />
sometimes be a ghost.<br />
36
She was attended by several older sisters. Placid looking women with firm,<br />
rigid faces, observing as if to keep a record of their own of the proceedings.<br />
The abbess, speaking to me in a benevolent calm tone, holding me with her<br />
strong gaze and radiant face, drew me closer to her. Her body did not move<br />
while she talked, but there was one time when she shifted in her large<br />
ornate wooden chair and an elegant white foot came out from under the<br />
long black robe, all white and clean, with a thick gold ring slipped over the<br />
big toe in the shape of a serpent and the nails painted a pearly blue.<br />
I stayed at the cloister for another two weeks. Sister Peneo instructed me in<br />
the astronomical charts. My head hurt, so much was forced into it and my<br />
nights were full of dreams with numbers, little white or blue orbits, flashes<br />
of almost indivisible objects across a great darkness. She had copied all the<br />
volumes for me and on each one she had written the dates of observation<br />
and the behaviour of the planets. This was a project she had started years<br />
earlier as a personal devotion. The Pleiades and their movements were of<br />
paramount importance, so she told me. She referred to them as the cloister<br />
in the sky - the sisters. In the last days of my stay, Sister Peneo questioned<br />
me for solutions and probed for uncertainties and judging by her face I did<br />
good.<br />
I awoke deep in the night, somebody touching me. The room was black.<br />
The soft swishing sound of a robe was all I could hear and then hands<br />
touching my face. She whispered haunting words, softly and hummed an<br />
unfamiliar song, the smell of liquorice in the air. She lit a candle and stood<br />
it on my little bedside table. I could see the sharp lines of her face,<br />
dramatically lit from below and the long red curls falling freely around her<br />
face, her having taken out the silver combs. She had brought me sweet tea,<br />
which I drank gratefully.<br />
She sat on my bed. She told me the story of Lazarus and then the story of<br />
37
St. Francis, which made me sleepy. But then it was the story of John the<br />
baptist and a fire seemed to light up the room. She moved her arms in big<br />
arches as she described his charismatic life. So animated was she that sweat<br />
perled on her forehead - little reflections of candlelight - and eventually she<br />
stood up and when her voice jumped an octave as she came to the<br />
beheading, she twirled about and then she threw off her robe and then she<br />
stood there - naked - except for a pair of white tattered long johns - shaking.<br />
Suddenly she began dancing even more erratically, as the good man’s head<br />
was on a platter made of silver. She grabbed the crucifix that hung from her<br />
neck, screamed - wailed - so loud that I thought the whole cloister would<br />
come running. She pulled me from the bed and she danced with me in<br />
circles for a long time, until my feet ached something fierce.<br />
She eventually collapsed onto my bed with a final outburst of<br />
uncontrollable tears. The wobbly bed in turn fell off its legs and knocked<br />
over the side table and the candle and then she sobbed even more deeply<br />
- howling in fact. So I reached into the dark, found her and stroked her hair<br />
and patted her shoulders with my little hands. Oh, how can you comfort<br />
Salome? With this thought I my mind, she came closer.<br />
When exactly she left - I do not know. I had dreams of a monstrous red fish<br />
rising from the ocean floor and his colour changed to red and he got bigger<br />
and filled the sky - so enormous in fact, that it blocked the sun. Its mouth<br />
a deep massive black void with no stars and then all the waters drained<br />
from the sea into the mouth of the fish. I remember crying out in the heat<br />
of the maelstrom - so troubled was I.<br />
The nuns woke me early next morning and after feeding me a simple<br />
breakfast, they sent me on my way. All was prepared - we had discussed it<br />
the night before. Nothing was spoken. Morning silence. Before the sun was<br />
38
near rising, I was travelling up to Mario Munis’ house. Burdened with<br />
charts and maps, the repaired sextant and the little burro, whom I named<br />
Chariot, to help me carry my sacks of food and supplies. I did not want to<br />
look back. May those who read my journal remember me kindly.<br />
Pablo, Timekeeper<br />
November 22nd, 2048 - San Agusto<br />
••••<br />
The White Oaks compound was fashioned in steel, glass and those thick<br />
adobe walls with their comforting curves, structures with all the charms of<br />
a great spanish hacienda; made of particle board and two by fours, covered<br />
with fibre glass stucco in textures that gave it that look of genuine adobe.<br />
Wrought iron gates with ornate black grape leafs. Staff in black bermuda<br />
shorts and vivid blue tops. Now that Phase One and Two were complete,<br />
Phase Three being a glass dome to eventually span the entire compound,<br />
the project looked like a great achievement. The investors would have never<br />
committed to all this if they could see it now, because the project had such<br />
a sense of opulence that surely hinted at cost overruns in the millions.<br />
What they had been shown were feasible, frugal arrangements.<br />
The origins of the project lay a good ten years back, when a two year<br />
wrangling with the French/Dutch authorities had been completed. Once<br />
the appropriate bribes had found there way to Utrecht and Paris, the actual<br />
recruitment began and the money to finance this venture flowed from the<br />
corridors of private industry, the country clubs on the American mainland,<br />
the banks of Upper Canada and the bullet proof adult enclaves in southern<br />
California.<br />
39
A pension fund here, a diversification strategy there allowed the project to<br />
gain momentum. It was a health care investment. Sunset Holdings Inc. out<br />
of Minnesota was the conglomerate that drove the project. A question of<br />
good dry air favourable to the asthmatics, that now come here from all over<br />
the world, if they could afford it. Carved out of the jungle were drugstores,<br />
tennis courts, a little white chapel in the style of a quaint castle á la mad<br />
King Ludwig; a fully functional clinic with catscan and cancer research<br />
department; swimming pools and shuffle boards; a magnificent atrium of<br />
orchids and medicinal herbs; a little outdoor movie theatre with old Ford<br />
Farlane benches and a discreet funeral parlour with a tasteful crematorium.<br />
A state-of-the-art Japanese solaria generating plant producing 28000<br />
kilowatts a month. The white duplex villas were laid out like two wings of<br />
a bird, sprawling from 90 feet up from the beach behind the golf course, all<br />
the way to the steeper mountain slope from where one could look over the<br />
wide harbour to San Agusto and the island of Noba, where the apes live.<br />
White Oaks was a reality. The almost two thousand permanent residents<br />
were on average sixty two years old.<br />
A large part of the sheer jungle had been stripped of vegetation in such a<br />
subtle way as to avoid both problems with erosion and to give the illusion<br />
of an undisturbed paradise. This pristine quality was the foundation that<br />
allowed White Oaks to charge at least 50-80% more than any similar<br />
retirement community. It exuded a sense of stability, a tranquil place.<br />
All building supplies had been flown in by seaplanes or had arrived on<br />
large barges from the Venezuelan mainland and the steel mills in Jamaica.<br />
There had been problems, but none that money and a good project<br />
manager could not fix. The workers were housed in a large compound of<br />
old military tents. The cantina able to service about six hundred workers<br />
during the peak construction period.<br />
40
Groups of Capuchins came to the edge of the jungle. Chatted and watched,<br />
then would disappear again. The natives meanwhile, also had kept to<br />
themselves and any contact from either side had been politely and firmly<br />
declined, not that there was any drastic tension. “They are a simple friendly<br />
people numbering less than two hundred and fifty.” That is what it said in<br />
the lavish colourful prospectus for White Oaks, featuring a white oak on<br />
the cover which is native to a region two thousand miles north.<br />
“They live on the east side of the island in an idyllic little sea port called<br />
San Agusto.” So it said in the promo video. They have been very<br />
enthusiastic and inviting. The truth was that they never expected this to<br />
happen at all; never conceived of this scenario and therefor did not have in<br />
their grasp a way to see the permanence of it all.<br />
••••<br />
Mabel Truska, living in unit 412, liked to explore after lunch. She would cut<br />
apparently aimlessly through the groomed grounds and then find a small<br />
gate at the end of the upland section. There she would linger long enough<br />
to ensure nobody was paying any attention to her and then she would slip<br />
through and to her great joy, the jungle was still there, untouched by<br />
machines. Sometimes a donkey would graze in the little meadow, where a<br />
small brook no larger than a culvert was feeding a pond. The pungent<br />
aroma rushing towards her, bringing again the memories of a childhood<br />
spent in the gullies of the Nebraska farm land, where creeks created their<br />
own abundance of perfectly cluttered growth, weeds mostly, poplars and<br />
old hazelnut bushes.<br />
Massive trunks rose around her to the majestic height of the canopy. She<br />
liked the musky aroma of the air. This strange world full of sounds and<br />
shapes to which she would never relate as something normal. This was the<br />
41
perfect place for memories, she thought, a play ground of sorts. Wilma, her<br />
twin sister; made of some other cloth than her’s - the fragile one, not ready<br />
to spend a lifetime in the kitchen, raising children - she could come here<br />
and visit.<br />
Their separate lives had always been awkward. Parts of their characters<br />
overlapped, came to life and entwined only when they were together, and<br />
they were seldom apart in those days. When for some reason they were<br />
separated, this lack of the other showed. Wilma became forgetful and<br />
flooded bathrooms, later ignored the centre lines of highways and was<br />
found once after midnight, sitting in the old Toyota in the super market<br />
parking lot. She said she had been listening to music, but Mabel knew she<br />
had been lost - just could not find home.<br />
Mabel would be quiet but reliable when she was alone and it was clear to<br />
everybody that she could cope on her own - in a different setting away from<br />
Wilma. So it was an ominous occasion when Wilma passed away in her<br />
sleep at age twenty, to the bewilderment of the family doctor and the<br />
genuine sorrow of the rural community. Wilma had been betrothed to<br />
Hank. At the funeral, after accepting condolences from everybody, Hank<br />
had hugged Mabel and somehow he could not let go. At first she had<br />
pushed against him, then frantically until she realized that this is how it<br />
would be.<br />
Mabel felt many a times the peculiar conditions imposed on her life by<br />
Wilma’s passing. She felt the loss of her sister more than she recognized the<br />
path she had shaped for her by her absence. She was convinced that she<br />
would never be whole as others were - one soul in two bodies, as a greek<br />
man had said. In Wilma’s eyes she had seen a similar light to that which<br />
shone from the eyes of the buffalo she had seen in the nature park on a<br />
high school trip North on Route 83. That crazed dull glitter that once had<br />
probably made the huge herds spook and run, run towards yet another<br />
42
distant horizon, looking for the great Manitou - to find shelter in the folds<br />
of his cloudy skin.<br />
Mabel had raised the children beside a man preoccupied with animals and<br />
farm machinery, while she tended to fevers, sowing badges on Brownie<br />
uniforms and helping with the fundamentals of algebra. Last year her<br />
husband had died from pancreas complications that radiation and surgery<br />
could not fix. Her husband had been a good man, strong in his youth. But<br />
little by little the land had bent him and the wind takes the mind of those<br />
predisposed to blame. It could be that he would have become the same old<br />
miserable character, if he had been the rich son of a rich man and not made<br />
one damn meaningful effort all his days. He had never noticed the glory of<br />
the land, had never attempted to form a rhythm that was him and it. So he<br />
had fought and lost all the while.<br />
We use the world to shape us, she thought. One of the last things he did,<br />
while he still had the strength and stubbornness, was to make her buy him<br />
a box of dynamite sticks from the Government Depot in Lincoln. He was<br />
feverish when she came back from town, took the large box without saying<br />
a word and walked out to where the old combine sat in the middle of the<br />
big field. It had sat there, rusting away in the spring rains, an ice sculpture<br />
in the winter’s driving snow, year after year. Ever since he had walked away<br />
from it - unable to fix it, he had switched to range cattle and bought his<br />
feed for the winter months.<br />
Once, years ago, he had painted that combine bright blue, but now it stood<br />
there - again rusty brown and grease black. He came back a short while<br />
later, walking the fuse roll, having laid the line and then he had sat down<br />
in the rocking chair with the detonator. He had called her out on to the<br />
veranda, his voice high and grating, had held her hand and smiled. Then<br />
he had pushed the plunger, squeezed her hand and the old combine flew<br />
up into the air and separated into pieces as the sound and then a short little<br />
43
wind finally hit them.<br />
Sailing weightlessly for a moment, mingling in a large cloud with the dirt<br />
and dust and then thudding to the ground, broke in half and the earth<br />
shock just a little. It was still there. It had moved maybe ten feet but it was<br />
still recognizable - even upside down. He was trembling. It gave him a<br />
sense of relief, maybe even happiness that it looked crippled, just like him,<br />
Mabel had thought. His face now had a vacant sheen. Having vanquished<br />
his demon for at least one brief moment as it twirled through the air, he<br />
was now free in his own heart and died not long after.<br />
She had sold the place and she had been in such a hurry to get away that<br />
she neglected to say good-bye to the church club in Maxwell, Nebraska,<br />
where she had spent more than thirty years of Sunday brunches and<br />
Christmas bazaars. Left it to the real estate agent to make all the<br />
arrangements. She did not have to fear for her future. She was safe - the last<br />
thing she particularly cared about.<br />
Mabel had thought of her life as a monotone, not a life of colours. So how<br />
could she make a quilt with any meaningful pattern if all her squares had<br />
the same kind of hue?<br />
As she thought about it some more, she realized that that was not quite<br />
true. There were the early years - they would be dove blue. Her marriage -<br />
that could be pale orange or whitish yellow. The children - they would be<br />
red and green. So she wanted a blanket and on it interwoven circles in blue,<br />
yellow and red. Two curvy bands underlaying in lavender. The base beige<br />
and brown, like the fields in the spring and fall. As she imagined the<br />
making of it, it took shape and was more real than threads and fibre and<br />
she was able to wrap herself in its warmth, have a peaceful long sleep with<br />
dreams of barn dances, galleries of school pictures and Wilma’s laughter.<br />
44
••••<br />
He had become aware of the facts - finally realizing that about half of<br />
everything he had done and then half again probably, half of everything he<br />
had seen had gone straight over his head, had not sunk in and the losses<br />
finally banged into his memory like flies before winter. What was due him<br />
never materialized. Why would these things surface now - this late in the<br />
game? These flashes - remorse, regret, repulsion - all part of the same soup<br />
and he the stock of it.<br />
Whereas before his sense of his own history was as deficient as was his view<br />
of the future, suddenly he was prone to spasms of deep insight. In the past<br />
he had sometimes risen to the level of agitation about what was happening<br />
to him. This had been generally a matter of plain stupidity. The distribution<br />
of talent, his upbringing dealing him the seven of diamonds or losing the<br />
car keys. With these new depths of insight into his own character however,<br />
he slowly convinced himself of his own uniqueness and also his own<br />
magnetic personality, which he kept well hidden on the grounds that such<br />
a display of genuine charisma might intimidate people. He was still<br />
orbiting about himself. The knowledge he gained mostly fuelled his<br />
ignorance. These daily patterns of pursuing trains of thought without<br />
passengers, without stations and no schedules carried an ominous sense of<br />
certain derailment lurking along the tracks in his mind. He was prone to<br />
heart burn.<br />
Born as MacAlley the third, it was a fluke to be landed here. This was not<br />
him. He did not plan this cul-de-sac. This would be a life of waiting, of<br />
check-ups and pre-emptive strikes against diseases. Discussing vitamin<br />
deficiencies over Gin Rommie with perfectly pleasant strangers who had<br />
developed a similar forced congeniality as those surviving in a lifeboat<br />
together within sight of land.<br />
45
He became known for his dark sarcasm and vulgar touching. Then,<br />
suddenly, he would close the hatches to his peanut brittle heart by simply<br />
becoming incommunicado. He would spend days pacing his den in a<br />
chronic state of bewilderment, except for those flashes of awareness, which<br />
led him at times to crumble down on the carpet in fits of tears. His<br />
Norwegian neighbour’s Austrian wife, who liked to slip over to his pad<br />
when her husband went for physio, would find the door unanswered.<br />
••••<br />
Arthur carefully arranged his desk with his short round fingers. He took his<br />
time. Everything that was in his immediate reach without raising himself<br />
from the comfortable chair, he straightened. The things to do, those to<br />
contemplate and the urgent matters all in their line of priority. He rubbed<br />
his hands - one flat palm against another - forwards and backwards until<br />
he felt the simple tingle that went so well with a sense of satisfaction, like<br />
gin and tonic. He just needed to calm himself. Having a smile on his face<br />
was not unusual. It was the precursor to a darker state - a weather system in<br />
his mind, where red sunsets are followed by rain. Today he would have to<br />
give answers to questions, knowing he would hesitate, loose his<br />
composure.<br />
Shirley McDougall would come by seaplane. The lagoon below was calm.<br />
He had checked that already. Miss McDougall would show up and stay and<br />
ask the questions which might drastically change his life. If he didn’t<br />
deliver the goods, and he knew he could not, he would be most likely fired<br />
despite his 2% interest in the development.<br />
He had inklings that this might be what would go down today. He would<br />
have to take responsibility for the work of three missing persons. The<br />
accountant, the purchasing manager and the controller. They had<br />
disappeared three weeks ago and had been hastily replaced by a temp<br />
46
service out of Honduras. Three young well trained people, whom it had<br />
taken a week to figure out that at least twenty million dollars could not be<br />
accounted for.<br />
Rumour had it that the disappeared had in fact hitched a ride on the<br />
Spanish patrol boat to Martinique and from there had caught a flight to<br />
Mexico city. For the last two weeks his suggestions to head quarters in<br />
Minnesota had fallen on deaf ears. There was a lack of response and a<br />
casual disregard towards his final warnings about overruns and building<br />
code violations. He could afford to remain here, retire to his personal<br />
house and keep a low profile.<br />
Nobody could take that from him. Just in case, this had occurred to him<br />
some time ago, he had built himself somewhat of a cottage in the jungle<br />
higher up on the slope of the ridge. He had sworn the five workers to<br />
secrecy with the help of bribe money. A small, comfortable place with a<br />
bed and a stash of supplies that could keep him going for a good long time.<br />
A hideaway from a hideaway. He chuckled, he was a man of details.<br />
Arthur looked at his orderly desk and decided that the matters before him<br />
could wait. He walked across his office to the large window and let his eyes<br />
wander over the elegantly arranged terracotta roofs. From here he had<br />
overseen the construction work, had dealt with a thousand problems. His<br />
eyes followed the flight of the sea gulls until suddenly it occurred to him<br />
that this was probably the last time he would look from this vantage point<br />
as the man in control. Three Bonobo apes sat at the edge of manicured golf<br />
lawn two hundred yards away. Still as stone. His sense of self comfort<br />
expanded and it is fair to say that he was the kind of man who sees no<br />
greater goal than to be strong in the face of defeat. It goes with accepting<br />
challenges.<br />
••••<br />
47
Bertie Wasniak was used to musing the finer nuances of situations. He<br />
shifted his huge bulk slightly. It took foresight to negotiate through the<br />
living room and now that he had settled in the large recliner he gave<br />
himself a luxury moment to reflect. Inertia had become a major hurdle in<br />
his life. As a young boy he was sprite, bony and springy. Time had taught<br />
him the harsh arithmetic of snacks, plus booze and a passion for long,<br />
leisurely luncheons. Bert had made it a habit to hide from the world.<br />
He left his family in the midst of a busy life, in mid career and without<br />
warning. To his friends it had appeared like a perfectly fine family<br />
situation. Of course, the usual ups and downs. Him too fat and she eying<br />
the gardener’s son. The children with degrees, the wife otherwise a stout<br />
pillar of the Kalamazoo society and him always busy, always mending<br />
fences for that pharmaceutical giant, where he had spent all his working<br />
life, grown through the ranks and finally become the advisor that<br />
everybody remembered.<br />
‘There are things I have to do. Wishing you a good life.’ That was all his<br />
message had said. This was a planned move. He had directed funds to a<br />
small bank in St. Louis. The more his life had become structured the more<br />
the demons had filled his mind. And while he slowly underwent the<br />
metamorphosis, he also made the final arrangements for his<br />
disappearance. In dreams he would sometimes see the view of his house in<br />
the suburbs, with the nice lawn in the perfect backyard. It wasn’t that he left<br />
all that, instead he left himself behind.<br />
He played the channels as he sat eating a large bowl of dry cereal. The<br />
morning was cool. He had phoned a few times in the beginning, either let<br />
it ring and listen to the voice of the answering machine which oddly always<br />
sounded different each time he listened, or listen to her talk about the dog,<br />
the new curtains in the master bedroom while he never spoke and she<br />
would always know who the silence was at the other end.<br />
48
She would live comfortably unless she had ambitions and wasted the<br />
savings. It did not really matter to him anymore. The reason he had<br />
stopped calling was not that he missed her any less. His attention had<br />
shifted away from all that. He had started to paint.<br />
First he experimented with little canvasses, just small sketches of beach<br />
scenes and stillifes. He liked to put light into them. The same he had seen<br />
in Monet. Van Gogh was the master, he loved Van Gogh. There was a<br />
different light about those pictures. He liked their honesty and the strength<br />
of the short brush strokes, that read like a diary and the way he had used<br />
the yellows. In the last two month Bertie had started to work on larger<br />
canvases.<br />
He had converted the guest bedroom into a comfortable small studio. He<br />
had bribed a handyman to add a large skylight. This he kept partially<br />
covered with an external shade from split bamboo. It gave the studio a soft<br />
light. There was no hurry in his work. It was slow and methodical. Not<br />
overly detailed and yet clean and pleasing. The whole suite smelled of oil<br />
paint. He liked this air. He was on to something good, finally. He slept very<br />
little. Eventually he would ask Sofia Esquabar to sit for him. He did not yet<br />
have the courage to work in the style of Renoir, where the flesh vibrates in<br />
such luminous pink hues.<br />
49