HONKY IN THE WOODPILE Page 7

  “Magnificent. I shall call for you at the hotel at—let us say ten o’clock, hm? You may rely on me to be well informed about everything. But is there anything you especially want to see?”

  “Well, I guess one should cross the Ocean Bridge, and take some pictures from it, and anyway aren’t most of the current resort developments on Petty Madrugada?”

  “True. So our plan is clear. We would turn in that direction”—pointing past me—“to inspect Buenas Aguas where luxury villas can be rented, then continue on a circular route clear around Grand Madrugada, and cross the bridge as you say.”

  “And encircle Petty Madrugada too?”

  “I’m afraid that is not possible. There is—ah—a military training zone, you understand.”

  “Of course. I’d forgotten for the moment.”

  “But there is more to Madrugada, you know, than the two big islands. It would take weeks to visit them all; however, I will arrange for you to see at least one of the smaller ones which must be attained by boat. And if you like to sail, or water-ski, or go skin-diving, or catch fish, all that too can be proposed. Naturally not all in the one day, but one trusts you will remain long enough to acquire a well-rounded impression of our country.”

  His beam was now so brilliant I could scarcely look at it—like the sun.

  “Señor Moril,” I said warmly, “I couldn’t hope to be offered better co-operation anywhere.”

  “I am delighted that my suggestions appeal to you,” he said modestly. “Tell me, though, if you will…”

  “What?” My nape prickled. He had abruptly ceased to be a salesman and become all Sabatano again.

  “Were you looking for something in this store here?” He gestured at Praxas’s repository.

  “Oh!” I managed a convincing laugh. “That was a wild goose chase. I’d heard, you see, that your religion here had some—well, some individual characteristics, if you get me. But obviously if you’re looking for the kind of unique souvenirs tourists like, you don’t come here. I guess you hunt around where the—uh—the poorer people do their shopping.”

  The cathedral, lower than the high modern office-blocks in New Brascoso, seemed to glower at me with its façade of cracked off-pink stucco.

  “Then you will obviously have to attend a badoan ceremony too,” Moril said in an off-hand tone.

  “Can one? I’d have thought the—the believers would resent being made a mere spectacle.”

  He studied me for several seconds after that, as though wondering whether he ought to revise his assessment of me. But his response, when it came, was mild enough.

  “Oh, señor, you must not be misled into imagining that our people take badoan so seriously as they once did, you understand? For example, I am as you have doubtless deduced a Sabatano; can you picture me making sacrifices to the idol the word derives from?”

  “It comes from Don Sábado? I didn’t know that!” I lied.

  “Oh, it’s a well-known fact. But, you see, what survives of the old religion is a little superstition and a great deal of exciting music, frantic dancing, colorful costume… All having great appeal to visitors from abroad.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” I said. “So you’ll pick me up at ten tomorrow?”

  “At the Valencia,” he confirmed, and shook hands again. Then he climbed back in his Cadillac and drove off, leaving me to wonder why in the world he’d asked that question about my business in Praxas’s store.

  And also—more to the point—how the hell I was going to explain to the guy Fierro was putting in touch with me why I had spent my second day in Madrugada in the company of a top Sabatano.

  TEN

  There was a plaque in Spanish and English on the north wall of the Cinema Coloseo in Old Brascoso. It informed the world that—

  On this sight in Century XVIII was base the GRAND MARKET FOR SLAVS OF THE STROMY PORT. Incorporate in this very foyeur is stones of the aution bloc.

  It had taken someone a long time and a lot of patience to engrave those letters. They were about two inches high. I guess after that much trouble you couldn’t ask for proofreading as well.

  Funny, though… When I entered the building I couldn’t resist the impulse to step on and off the slave-auction block set into the tiled floor of the neon-and-chrome foyer—and it felt as though I’d trodden on a live wire.

  “Yes, of course, Señor Curfew, we do pander just a little to the tourists,” said Adelita Fal in a harassed voice. “But what’s the point of offering them what they can see at home? I mean, at least the Americans can, if not the people from Catholic countries. Besides, if what they’re after is the sight of a few bare tits, they can get that live and in three dimensions by going to one of these fake badoan rituals the tours take in.”

  I nodded, studying her covertly. She was much as Fierro had depicted her—a tough-mannered woman past her first youth, hair sticking up in badly-trimmed tufts as though she had taken to a natural long before it became fashionable simply because she couldn’t give a hoot about having it styled, and a very heavy smoker. The ashtray on her desk was overflowing.

  Also she had offered me a glass of straight whisky the moment I sat down, and articulated a trifle too precisely.

  I said, for want of any better subject, “Fake?”

  “Oh, shit yes!” She was talking English to me, with a first-rate vocabulary and a marked Texas accent. “Think a real badoan priest who took his faith seriously would let a gang of tourists walk into his geraba?”

  “His—?”

  “Geraba. Ceremonial hut. Church!” She stubbed her cigarette and immediately reached for another. “No, it’s pure con. Tart up a few pretty girls, hire a few drummers and someone to play the corpse—”

  “What?”

  “Corpse! The one that comes back to life at the climax. The zechazu in other words, a kind of zombi. That’s the most popular show they put on, especially since they hit on the idea of always having a girl to play the part, with nothing on but a G-string and sometimes not even that much. Hell, the only authentic thing about it is that they do take the tourists up the hill to see the performance in a suitably squalid setting.”

  I nodded again. As a matter of fact, I reflected, she was working in a fairly squalid setting herself; apart from the cinema, this district of Brascoso was shabby and rundown, with many SOLD signs on nearby buildings, some of which looked as though they might date back to colonial times. The tide of re-development was about due to wash through here, apparently.

  “So what does bring tourists into your cinemas, if anything?” I continued more or less at random.

  “Bad weather,” she said curtly. “No, we’re almost completely dependent for our trade on the local people, and what they prefer is things like the Bond movies, and of course westerns—wide-screen spectaculars with a nice simple plot and a villain they can hiss and boo. And musicals are popular, too, like the one we have playing at the moment. What’s more, if we did try and show the kind of movie you’re talking about, I doubt if we’d stay in business very long.”

  “Censorship is pretty fierce here, hm?”

  She gave a wan smile. “You could say so. Theoretically there’s none at all. In practice, you can count yourself lucky if you don’t find you’re being picketed by the strict Catholics because of some double meaning in a line of dialogue that a priest with a dirty mind has spotted when nobody else would have given it a second thought, or if it’s not the Catholics who are after you it’s the Sabatanos. In which case the first you know about it is when the screen goes blank and you run to the projection booth and you find the door locked and screams coming from the inside. It’s tough making a living out of movie theatres here.”

  “I believe that,” I said. Her office was cramped and untidy; her clothes were old and her shoes scuffed, she wore no watch and the cigarettes she was smoking were among the cheapest local brands. It certainly didn’t look as though Adelita Fal was being paid off by the garzos for anything. It didn’t look as though any
one was paying her much, especially not her employers.

  The lawyer would have to wait. Evening was drawing on, and since my tomorrow had been pre-empted—damn it—by Moril, this was my only chance to get a private sight of the bar-manager, Manuel García. After a light snack, because my belly disagreed with the clock and declined to be convinced that it was time for another full meal, I hailed one of the horse-drawn coxes, pronounced “coshies”, which plied around the tourist area. The publicity brochures were full of pictures of them, but I hadn’t seen any earlier in the day. That would be for the reason Fierro had mentioned to me: most of the drivers were moonlighting because their daytime work didn’t bring in enough to live on.

  The man knew the Tres Hojas, of course, and whipped his horse into a brisk trot. When I suggested he should take it easy and let me see the sights as we rolled along, he looked sullen. The fares went by distance, not by time, so no doubt I was cutting into his profit margin for the evening.

  The bar—well, in fact it turned out to be much more than a bar. It boasted a huge green neon sign in the shape of the three leaves it was named after, above a broad open terrace running the length of a vast barn-like building of rough native stone in a light-brown mortar bond, the whole thing, terrace and all, being roofed with palm-leaf thatch about a foot thick. It was obviously doing splendid business. The waiters were in spotless white jackets, the waitresses, all of whom were beautiful, in traditional Madrugadan blouses, extremely low-cut and without bras, like the one the girl had been wearing in Praxas’s shop… although I guess in her case the presence or absence of a bra wouldn’t make much difference.

  Adjacent to the long bar-counter inside a small band—guitar, accordion, flute, bongos, the leader on maraccas—was playing a medley of Caribbean tunes. There was a tiny dance-floor in front of their dais, not yet patronized, but people were dancing outside where the music was relayed by a loudspeaker. Signs with big glossy photographs promised a badoan-styled floor-show with fire-eating and striptease at ten o’clock and midnight.

  The inside was dense with foreign visitors, most of them white, who had come to eat dinner and watch the show. The terrace, by contrast, was full of local people, some of whom had brought their children with them. One group was celebrating something; I caught a ribald joke about an impotent bridegroom and guessed it must be a wedding.

  If I’d realized I could eat here, I would have done. Since I only wanted a drink—and moreover since García was more likely to be found inside than out—I headed automatically for the left end of the bar, where there were eight or ten stools and only one was occupied.

  Suddenly, as I passed the second table from the door, a voice stage-whispered in Castilian Spanish, “Look, here comes a Sabatano!”

  I almost stopped dead in my tracks. The idea, however, took off like a fire in a filling-station, and before I reached the stool I was aiming for practically every head in the room had turned to look at me.

  This was a hell of a country to try and be inconspicuous in!

  Waiters reacted, looking puzzled, and the barman nearest me hurried to collect my order. The confusion even spread to the bandleader, a small man in horn-rimmed glasses and a red satin jacket trimmed with gold ruffles, who brought the current number to a rapid conclusion and blinked anxiously at me as though I really were a Sabatano whose taste in music he ought to know so that he could immediately play my favorite tune.

  “A cocodrilo,” I said to the barman. That’s a green coconut with the top and husk chopped off, refilled with a mix of half caxa and half its own milk, spiced and served with a straw. I was very tired, and very annoyed with the way this country was treating me, so I went on a trifle louder, addressing the bandleader, “Play La Calabaza, will you?”

  The musicians looked startled in comical unison. That figured. Regardless of the fact that Lorreo had managed to prevent his records of Rafé’s songs from being withdrawn, it probably wasn’t politic for lesser personalities to try and keep them in the repertoire. However, they obediently launched into the tune, and on the terrace outside several people—after an astonished pause—responded with a cheer. Some of them started to sing along, while twice as many as before jumped up to dance, and a tourist couple here indoors also rose to see if European so-called “Latin” steps could be fitted to this rhythm.

  Meantime the barman who was not serving me had retired quietly through a dangling bead curtain leading, I presumed, to the offices. Shortly he came back, and with him was a man who matched Fierro’s description of Manuel García—fifty, getting fat, slightly bald, grey at the temples—except for one thing. He didn’t look at all affable. He looked worried.

  He looked even more worried when I was pointed out to him. But after a moment he whispered something to the barmen and made to disappear again.

  I called, “Señor García?”

  He checked with a sigh, then put on his professional face and approached me with a polite eyebrowed inquiry.

  “I’m a journalist,” I said. “Here from London to write up the tourist scene.”

  He, the suspicious barman, the other one mixing my drink, all reacted in the same way, exhaling sharply: as it were, “That accounts for it, then!” García became genuinely cordial.

  “Welcome to the Tres Hojas, señor! How did you find your way here—was the place recommended to you, perhaps?”

  “Yes. By Jesús Lorreo.” I wasn’t lying; Lorreo had mentioned over lunch the fact that he’d got his start here.

  My cocodrilo arrived on a chrome tray, with the cash-register slip poking out underneath, and García deftly palmed it. “On the house, señor,” he purred. “A reporter from England is a rare sight to us—indeed I don’t remember another before you.”

  Meantime the other barman had whispered to the bandleader, and the latter did the same to La Calabaza as to the preceding number—cut it off at the end of the next chorus and switched to something entirely different. Somewhat to the annoyance of the people out of doors, I noticed.

  “As a matter of fact Lorreo sang that song for me earlier today,” I said, watching García as narrowly as I could without seeming to stare at him. “It’s one of Rafé Ponza’s, isn’t it?”

  “Ah—yes.” At the mention of Rafé’s name García had become uncomfortable all over again. “But the tune of course is traditional. He only added new words.”

  “Oh, I see.” Sampling my drink, which proved to be pretty good, though maybe a bit heavy on the nutmeg. “He left Madrugada, didn’t he? Ponza, that is. A shame! Just about your only artist with an international reputation.”

  “Well, señor,” García said, eyes flicking left and right in the manner of a man well used to being eavesdropped on, “it would be more exact to say he was driven out, you know.”

  At least he was frank about that. I marked up a point in his favor on my mental evaluation-list, and switched to a different tack. “By the way, when I came in just now, didn’t I hear someone mistake me for a Sabatano?”

  “Apparently.” With a thin smile. “And to have a Sabatano walk into one’s bar… Well, it is not quite as it was in the old days, when if a Sabatano decided to patronize your establishment you had to serve free drinks to as many friends as he cared to bring with him, and if you argued you’d suffer a return visit at dawn and perhaps a fire or a rash of expensive breakages. But the memory lingers. And—excuse me—you do look like a Sabatano. You have the majiz’.”

  Well, I never have liked being leaned on. I guess it’s bound to show on the surface now and then.

  “Señor, it’s a great pleasure to have you here,” García said after a pause. “I trust you’ll stay for our floor-show? It’s a great favorite with tourists, and even if the badoan is far from authentic I can assure you the musicians are entirely genuine. Perhaps you’d like some pictures of the show for your article? If so you need only ask.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll probably take you up on that.”

  “Now, though, I should attend a little to my
other clients. If you’ll excuse me…?” And he moved off to tour the tables, pausing at each to inquire how the occupants were enjoying themselves, giving a perfect black-skinned rendition of Mine Host.

  I didn’t want to seem to be watching the guy too closely, so I kept my back to the room and went on thinking and occasionally sipping my drink. People were going and coming all the time, and the car-park outside hadn’t been quiet since I arrived. That was why I didn’t notice Dolly Quentin until she climbed up on the stool next to mine.

  ELEVEN

  “Hello, Max,” she said in a subdued tone. “What’s that you’re drinking? Looks interesting—I think I’ll have one too. Barman! Another of those things, please.”

  And then, continuing even more softly, “Don’t worry. Gilbert’s been at the naval base all day, and I haven’t seen him since I saw you. And even if I had I wouldn’t have told him you’re here.”

  Now I finally looked at her properly. She was certainly worth looking at. She was wearing a flimsy red and green chiffon dress, long, but slit up the front so that when she crossed her lovely legs on the bar-stool they were bare almost to the crotch. The neckline was low, sketchily filled in with a heavy mock-gold collar matching a ring on her right hand.

  I said eventually, “Explain.”

  “Yes, I guess you must be puzzled,” she said with a wan smile. And then caught herself, turning to face me.

  “You—ah—you know about Gilbert now, don’t you? You obviously didn’t when we first met, but he was sure Fierro Ponza recognized him when we bumped into you and him at Mike and Sonia’s, and somebody blew his London cover that same evening.”

  “That was me.”

  “So you do know.”

  “Yes. But to be honest I’ve been wondering whether you did.”

  “Oh, shit, I’ve known about it all along. I’m cleared up to here”—patting the top of her high-piled hair, too long and soft for a natural—“by the State Department. Had to be. You see… Well, I guess I ought to start by telling you about Gilbert and me. You know he was an athlete in college, mile, fifteen hundred meters, pentathlon, all like that? Nearly made the Olympic team. Did make that all-black propaganda team that toured Africa in ‘62.”