Homesickness (19 page)

The deep voice: ‘When I wake up each morning I have to remember myself, and all that has happened, before I can continue. Otherwise, I am no longer sure who I am. Understand? I would be lost.'

They nodded, respectful. For a while, no one spoke.

It was Borelli who asked, ‘What have you learnt, overall?'

‘There is no such thing as truth,' came the answer. ‘And things are not always as they appear. Catholics live longer than heathens. I can't live without tobacco. The geese fly in winter. Dying is harder than you think.'

A terrible coughing, deep down and fundamental, cut him short and an arm not seen before came out of his shirt and slapped his chest. The airline representative stared at him before allowing the next question. Obviously he was pleased at how things were progressing.

‘Sir?'

Louisa had a question.

‘Please ask him what is there about Europe that interests him.'

He caught the word ‘Europe'. Wiping his eyes he turned to his manager.

‘Where you are now,' the PR man explained. ‘Eur-ope.'

He looked around the room and nodded. He shrugged as he spoke.

‘Oh, he tells me the night sky is different here. There are fewer stars. He says the air is smaller. And here the moon is warmer than the sun.' He questioned in Spanish and returned to them. ‘By that he means, the nights are warm.'

They all smiled and nodded.

The old man who took no notice of them lit up another cigarette and went on. ‘And the bath water here, Where I come from it falls straight down the hole.'

Garry Atlas laughed.

‘He must live right on the Equator,' North murmured.

The PR man finished by asking a few questions about the flight: the food, the amount of leg-room, the quality of the hostesses. But José Ruiz had tired. As they watched a kind of vagueness drifted across his features. He became distracted. Smiling at them, the PR man kept talking. Suddenly, the old man leaned across the card table as if he had just noticed Gwen's neatly crossed legs. A confused or surprised expression over-ran his face. It ran all over. He tried to speak—while the other one still produced statistics—and his big tongue protruded. Sasha cried out and others pointed. His arms conducted distant orchestras, knocking over the carafe and glasses. His head hit the table.

The airlines representative bent down and lifted the 150-year-old eyelids. He then tested his pulse. ‘Damn!' he frowned, stubbing out his cigarette.

3

Dozing, flipping magazines and whispering, they traversed the ocean as the albatross or the crow, held aloft by the Third Law, action/reaction, Boyle's expansion of gases, Mach's wind-tunnel tests of Hargrave's surfaces, just the right degree of dihedral—the age of refinement!—radar noise, crackling wireless, screech and the known strengths of titanium and magnesium. Ancient navigators had creaked their way across here in wooden ships, across the expanse, their tracks erased by the next swell, or stopping dead. Ocean of plain great depth, of substance and extent, ruffled pewter, occasional crest and a tramp plowing on course, scratching the surface. Seated in comfort amid Latin pastels they could sense the despair of the enormity, became vague (so tiring), and turned to daydreaming. They looked away. Some took to drinks, cracking silly jokes. Visually their indicator of progress was the suprematist shadow below containing them, rollercoasting the troughs at 650mph (plus). Even so it offered little comparison. Those who woke after a doze and looked down found the same haliographic grey, scarcely any change; endless. They wondered and looked away.

Deep canyons beneath and weed, currents and contranatent migrations of fish underneath, invisible whales; and lying deep, wrecks split on their sides and the slippery streets of Atlantis. They passed over the Cape Verde Basin, so called—fracture zones, ridges. They crossed Cancer's dotted line. The colours lightened: green by mid-afternoon; a few distant white islands to the north-east. Then they took to the windows and pointed. Editions of
Time
, of
The Economist
, and the single
Stern
(monopolised by Hofmann, noticed by Louisa), in the airline hardcovers were shoved to one side; closing the thriller,
The Double Helix
, Phillip North placed it on the seat beside him. All along Garry and Violet Hopper had two air hostesses in the seats facing them, Garry shouting drinks and more than once ordered out of the stainless-steel kitchen. Now they shared windows, touching heads. At the sight of land Violet produced an ostentatious wolf whistle normally used by strong males. She'd had one too many. Mrs Cathcart nudged Doug. Looking down to where she pointed he immediately began grinning. Almost everyone—Sheila, Gwen Kaddok—began grinning.

A submarine from the navy of a small landlocked Latin American nation had surfaced after an exercise and lay long and lethal, matt-black in the water. White bodies dived off her conning tower and churned the surface. Others were draped over the bow, sunbaking. They were near the Equator. The water would have been warm.

The plane banked and descended and those at the windows turned to each other laughing. ‘Hubba hubba, ding ding!' Violet cried out. This was P——N——Airlines, Flight 2213. Alerted by Gwen, Kaddok switched to the starboard side and waited with his telephoto lens.

Borelli whispered to Louisa, ‘I don't think you should look. Quick, close your eyes.'

And Garry gave a harsh laugh.

Look at that! Down there!

From the water men waved—one doing the backstroke. A large number there were mulattos. On the cigar deck they rolled over or stood up, shielding their eyes, and as the airliner passed low overhead, engulfing them in shade, one able seaman began dancing and pointing his cock up at the plane. The jet must have screeched: for then the crew all put their hands to their ears and the red-haired bosun poised on the conning tower dived off, belly-flopping. Bodies, heh heh, diving in all directions.

‘Christ, that was funny,' Garry yelled, wiping his eyes. He turned to the others, ‘Jesus, we were close!'

They'd seen a wristlet watch, identification discs and rows of teeth flashing, the pale divided buttocks and big balls swinging. (P——N——Airlines, Flight No. 2213.)

They were still talking about it, already embroidering it, when they sighted land, and slowly passed over what clearly was impenetrable jungle, as Amazonian as languages and cancer, the substance myths, and anacondas down there, occasional lonely smoke. At late afternoon they touched down at Quito, behind time.

‘Quito,' Louisa repeated, ‘what a lovely name.'

‘Oh, yairs,' said Violet swaying and rolling her eyes. ‘Quito.' And trying to light a Benson & Hedges she dropped Garry's lighter.

The Indian sweeping the terminal floor bent to pick it up. He had small eyes and wide cheekbones.

‘Give it back!' Violet cried out. ‘Here! Thank you.'

The Indian watched as she lit the cigarette. Drawing in she spoke the words of one of her television commercials. ‘The right taste…the right length…yes, sir-ree!' And with her actress tongue she made a sound like a horse galloping.

She looked around the airport lounge.

‘So this is what they call Quito?'

North cleared his throat.

‘Violet,' Sasha said in a low voice.

The customs officers had stopped and were watching her.

Garry grabbed her elbow. ‘Come off it. Come on.'

She shook free. ‘You piss off!'

‘What's eating her, for chrissake?'

‘All this is your bloody fault,' Sasha hissed. She took Violet's arm. ‘You don't know her. You know
nothing
. Excuse,' she raised her chin at the customs officer. ‘Do you have a washroom?'

He shrugged. The customs officers were eating bananas.

‘
Donde están los retretes
?' Gerald asked.

A captain pointed at a door, and tipped everything out of Borelli's bag.

Red-eyed and vague Garry stood around muttering. He turned to Phillip North; but North was talking to Hofmann and Gerald Whitehead.

At the counter, Louisa remarked to Borelli, ‘It's quite cool for the Equator…'

‘We're at nine thousand feet,' came Kaddok's explanation from behind. ‘The second-highest capital in the world.'

She looked at Borelli.

A kind of casualness as always smoothed his face, as if he had only just woken up or had recently been ill. Taking no notice of his belongings scattered over the counter, he nodded: ‘You were right before. Quito is a nice-sounding name. It must be the Q. I've always thought it has the most beckoning shape in the alphabet. It has essentially a feminine quality. What do you think? We say “Q” or “Queen” and have to make a kissing shape with our lips. I imagine Q would make any word beautiful, visually and orally.'

Beside them Doug added, ‘Qantas, Circular Quay.'

‘What about
quim
?' Hofmann enquired; and Louisa went quiet. She had wanted to talk to Borelli alone.

Her husband and Borelli remained gazing at each other; Hofmann smiling.

‘If you like,' said Borelli. ‘I wouldn't quibble.'

‘What do you say?' Hofmann asked. ‘We're discussing
quim
.'

But Louisa remained watching Borelli's mouth. Whenever he experimented, usually aloud, he pursed his lips. Sometimes he closed an eye. It was as if he forever dwelt on the letter Q.

‘Oh
quim
,' Louisa answered, ‘is not a word I normally use. But I think it's nice. It's not derogatory. Anyway,' she glared at him, ‘you should know.'

Borelli now closed one eye. ‘Q is conception, a pierced womb. It reminds me of that. I probably connect it with Queen.'

‘Oh, isn't he nice!' Louisa cried, turning to her husband. ‘Why can't you be like that?'

Borelli quickly turned back to the counter. They were shovelling his clothes back in.

More placenames begin with Q-U in Latin America than anywhere else in the world. Arab countries follow next—include Moslem Afghanistan. But the Arab placenames do not always employ the U. So you find Qishn, Qom, Qasr Amij, Qafor on the map: those shrouded names. Many are quadrilateral words. And of course,
Qu'ran
itself. There are also a surprising number of Q-names in the Isle of Man telephone directory.

‘It's all very interesting,' Borelli turned from the counter. ‘Perhaps it is why in Latin America earthquakes are so prevalent. What comes first: the word or the event?'

‘Ha, ha, yes. The chicken or the egg theory,' Kaddok nodded from behind.

This left a bit of a vacuum. It wasn't what Borelli had meant.

‘Leon knows a great deal,' said Gwen anxiously, looking first at the Hofmanns and then Borelli.

He sure did; but it had been a long flight. Now he was explaining how Ecuador got its name from the Equator, which was a local landmark, and his listeners gazed around the terminal. These buildings are all the same, an Esperanto of lines, as if composed by the one cost-efficient architect (nice contract), though Quito's possessed the odour of roasted coffee and sulphur. Standing among their luggage they soon tired of the posters on the wall proclaiming the jaguar, the tapir, the tree-dwelling kinkajou (with prehensile tail), the various macaws, and the montage of cooking pots. Gringos, come to Ecuador! But can their infrastructure handle the influx, especially the touchy blue-hairs from the North, those Brahmins with the hearing aids and the astonishingly shaped spectacle frames? It's a poor country. Population: only 6,000,000. More than a liberal sprinkling of
zambos
and quadroons there. Soccer, bullfights and horseraces.

‘I say, what's the hold-up?' Gerald called out.

It's an agricultural economy: bananas, coffee. The large estates owned by city-dwellers, the mestizos, operate in a time zone of slowness, of decay, few mechanical shapes and sounds. The stillness or stealth had infected the capital. They grow the carludovica tree, its fibres used for Panama hats—forests of hats, of shadows and shade. The Indian leaning on his broom had accumulated half a dozen banana skins in his sweepings.

What is a comparison?

‘After London, I thought we'd seen the last of queues.'

Garry put his elbows on the counter, looking anxious, glancing at the door for Violet, while one of the officers tested his aftershave with his finger, staring at him. They wore pistols. The one with the stained collar and mournful eyes picked up a pair of lace panties with a ruler. Shoving his sunglasses onto his forehead Garry tried grinning, man-to-man. The officer cut him short. ‘We're a decent people,' he said in a husky voice. ‘Understand?' Sure! But to show indignation—because you had to—Garry stared down at the floor and slowly shook his head. Born to a different order the customs officers took this as repentance. They beamed.

The rest of the group had noticed the large clock on the wall. It had broken down. To avoid confusing travellers who had already crossed several time zones its hands had been obliterated by tape and bandages, so that Time looked impoverished, or as Borelli declared, sick and disabled, Time with time on its hands.

It reminded Sheila: ‘I don't know what day it is.' And the others smiled, similarly vague.

‘God, this is a dump,' Garry said, joining them with Violet. His hands trembled which made him more unsettled. He put them in his pockets but then immediately scratched his neck. The customs officers in their flashy uniforms had looked more like army generals.

The capital of Ecuador lay in the hollow of a hand, one side climbing a slope, adobe houses in layers mercifully all prevented from slipping by churches, dammed by churches or walls of churches and sudden plazas—horizontal breathing spaces. It is the size of Adelaide, the size Adelaide was, and like that religious town its streets are laid out in graph-paper pattern. Order, order! In Quito they persisted over a terrain of gullies and jagged
quebradas
. It was as if the Spanish were determined to exert their will on the unstable elements, regardless, like the Jesuits drumming Revelations into the ears of stoned Indians. The slope with the houses, with the ravines, was the volcano Mount Pichincha. It erupted in the year 1666, year of the Great Fire of London and Newton's theory of colours. But there were other volcanoes. They are the tourist attraction. Quito is encircled. Volcanic amphitheatre! The white towers of the churches were outlined against their dark cones and thunderclouds: a reminder of fire and boiling water, constantly pointed to with the surpliced arm from Quito's pulpits. Even in the plazas, palms with the pineapple trunks erupted jagged fronds, which then drooped in suspended semicircles, like sparking dark metal from a distance: eruptions of a decorative sort.

And they noticed the architecture of Catholics was volcanic in essence (known elsewhere as feast or Baroque). It gushed almost in desperation here, what with the swarming doors and porticos carved in wood, the multi-layered plinths for the many (so many!) optimistic winged statues and seven-sided fountains, Plaza Independencia, and the quadrant-shaped lawns, quadrangles of lapilla, Good Lord, green cupolas and belfries capped with intricate weathervanes, so many palaces, so many cloisters, walls set with hypnotic bricks, quoining and famous bells, all commissioned and urged on by mad Jesuits, one eye on the weather (i.e. the volcanoes). While the buildings and columns swarmed and flickered the citizens were peaceful.

To sleep and copulate at the foot of volcanoes, to be surrounded: in Ecuador they cheer themselves with sad music.

Old Yank tanks—Hudsons, de Sotos—left behind by expatriates who'd long ago fled, hissed and sometimes shot out steam. Such saloons suggested the nineteen-forties and the
Saturday Evening Post
, as if the recent past still lay ahead. The houses in the Spanish style had iron-grilled doorways and secluded gardens.