Travellers May Still Return Read online

  Jesse peeped over from the back seat. “You look sick.”

  “I feel sick. Where’s Sucre?”

  She shrugged. “Setting something up. Some kind of business.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. But I’m about done. How far are we?”

  “You said eleven gates.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Half way. We could steal the car.”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “We could take off right here, right now.”

  “We’ve got no money, no papers.”

  “We’d have the car.”

  “Stolen car.” She yawned. “We have to finish now.”

  “What’s he up to?” I said.

  “Same as always. He’s going down.”

  I turned up the air, aimed all the vents, leaned back and closed my eyes.

  In the alley behind the next club, Jesse unfastened the belt and the trench dress fell open in trunk light and she pulled on a lavender T-shirt, stepped into a fringed amethyst jean mini-skirt, held up a linen jacket as if it weighed nothing.

  “What d’you call that colour?” Sucre asked me.

  “Kind of pink,” I said. “Fuchsia.”

  “Fuchsia?” he said.

  “Yes. Pale fuchsia. Definitely.”

  Sucre shook his head. Jesse hooked the jacket on her shoulders then pulled on lilac leather gloves and popped her feet into violet slip-ons.

  At the seventh gate we were nearly at the end of the night and a lot of kids Sucre had been showing off his car to were running behind, and when they began to anticipate our route and took short cuts Sucre laughed and tried to outfox them with speedy turns in low gear, swearing at them through his open window, urging them on, swerving left and right, and each time they fell behind, he’d turn a corner and they’d appear from an alley ahead, fewer in number, a smaller and smaller gang of girls and boys, maybe ten to fifteen years of age.

  We parked in front of an old building with a clock tower, and the kids gathered round us, breathless and grinning, and we opened the car doors, blasting them with a radio station playing calypso, and they started to dance round the car. An old woman sweeping the steps of the building leaned on her broom while Jesse danced with the kids, flinging the fuchsia jacket to the oldest boy and the shoes and the skirt to the girls, tossing the T-shirt to another boy. She put on satin tap pants, silver belt, snakeskin trench coat with wide sleeves and deep lapels, satin-bowed low-heeled suede boots, big pearl earrings and a bracelet, and I joined her and we threw bits of costume to the other kids, who calypsoed up and down the steps, and we were all yelling, crazy as shipwrecked slaves, while the sweeper stared and Sucre made a phone call.

  “I was diverted,” said Sucre. “The night is going well.”

  “Aren’t you tired?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It will be dawn before long. At the next club, I will get you something, both of you, to help you stay awake and have fun. The last place you danced not so good, Jesse.”

  “It doesn’t matter, right, as long as everyone sees me,” she said. “That’s the point, right? That’s what’s important?”

  “For people to see you?” he said. He laughed. “You think you’re your own little legend?”

  We came to a wide round tank surrounded by scaffolding. Across from the tank, at a lighted entrance, a group of men were smoking, and when we got out of the car and Jesse pulled her bag from the trunk, they began muttering.

  Jesse and I ducked under the scaffolding where water dripped from iron braces above our heads into a mess of dark weeds and there was a smell of rust and brackish water. It was cold in the shadows beneath the metal stairs that spiralled round the tower and Jesse was shivering as she stripped off jewellery, boots, trench coat then pinched the elastic waist of the tap pants. Over at the club entrance the men were peering toward us and Sucre went over to tell them the next bit of his story. Jesse left on the pants and just pulled on a see-through beaded dress with spaghetti straps, crimson shoes. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “How many gates now?” I said. “I thought you were counting.”

  “I’ve lost track.”

  In the bar there was no dancing at all, just a little stage and two men taking forever to remove their clothes, while other dopey men watched, heads nodding slower and slower, and even the musician seemed to doze, mouth open, over his beat-up guitar. Sucre nursed a drink, this time with no business to occupy him, and seemed dull and depressed. He took off his dark glasses, rubbed his eyes. The place was so sleepy and dark that it took a long time for anyone to notice us. When they did, Jesse took to the stage and there was sparse clapping and a guy put his lips to my ear and said, “You do it, boy.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t do it. I thought I couldn’t. But I could.

  I got up there beside Jesse and the applause got louder and we took off our clothes and grabbed each other and held on for a long time. We were anonymous, androgynous. When the catcalls started, I snatched up our clothes and took her hand and we ran from the bar. Under the water tower I put on my white suit again. Under the water tower Jesse flicked off her spaghetti straps, zipped down and peeled off her dress and panties. Her beads clattered on the scarred boards.

  “Go get him,” she whispered. “Tell him we’re ready to go.” Everyone had fallen asleep. Sucre was nodding at the table. Maybe his mouth was a little sadder. Maybe the guitarist had actually passed out — the strings he held with his left hand were as still as his right hand. As I crossed the room, a guy said, “You better leave. Look what you have done.”

  There was hardly a person on the street now, just the shuffling homeless, no kids, no other cars, and this time Jesse wore flesh-coloured panties, French-cut, tight thigh-high boots with wide tops, pale leather, an infrared lycra mini-dress, and the next club was rich and there was no sign of other girls or women. Two old men in floral shirts came right over to Jesse and put their fingers down the wide tops of her boots.

  Sucre was very pleased. “These guys are members of our government,” he said. “They are very powerful. You should lose yourself completely.”

  They peeled bills from large rolls, flapped the money in Sucre’s face, pushed their moustaches against Jesse’s face and their fingers on the infrared dress, calling pals over to feel the puss-in-boots, this hot chikita was an oven, feel, feel, man, feel, till I couldn’t see her, just a flash of red muscle, her voice telling them where to go, getting them worked up and letting them in where they wanted as long as clothes stayed in place, calf-skin boots, yes, slick as a fish, don’t worry, baby, lycra stretches, it stretches easy, see, see? Sucre over in a corner of the room arguing with a man wearing a huge diamond ring.

  There was no one on the street now, and all the clubs were closed. Sucre said we should quit, but Jesse said one more, there must be one more, and he said he knew a place that stayed open forever. She wiped off her body with the red dress under the flashing arrows of a movie marquee across from a taxi stand where the driver of the only cab was smiling in his sleep, his head on a fringed cushion propped against the open window, bare feet sticking out the opposite window. An old poster behind the cashier’s chair in the ticket booth showed a rich woman sitting on a bed across from a mirror in a room full of antiques. Last Year with Delphine. In the booth glass my face looked stunned and green and Jesse’s movements were unnaturally snappy.

  Sucre’s smile, as she stepped out wearing a transparent bodysuit, ultraviolet silk gym shorts, three chain-and-leather belts, a handful of pearl ropes, and purple running shoes, looked guilty, pained.

  “I feel like an old man who has seen and done everything, good and bad,” Sucre said. We were driving along the coast, out of the town. The sky showed just a little light. “I feel like I am going to my execution. I liked everything. I liked my life, even the difficult things, but all my plans come to an end now.”

  “Stop here,” said Jesse. “I need to pee.”

  She leapt from the car and I
was right behind her through the archway entrance into a park and as soon as we were inside the land felt spacious, nothing forever but a faint path in dead grass to a statue of a man holding a rifle by a dead fountain from which no water flowed, and a stone bench in front of weedy flower gardens and little bare hedges. Jesse tossed me her last costume, a pure white dress that, crushed, fit into my fist. It felt good to walk in a garden, however dead. Small birds were waking up. The sky was brightening. Jesse ditched the belts and jewellery, tore off the shorts and bodysuit, and left them on the bench. She pulled on a white cap and sauntered out onto the dry lawn. The stars up there were pale. I draped the white dress over the back of the bench and lay down, just for a second, and immediately saw a shooting star. Then a satellite. Another satellite. Another shooting star. When I opened my eyes a bright veil covered the sky and treetops and delicious cool air was rising from the ground. I rolled onto my side and there was Jesse barefoot in the middle of the brown grass in shimmering white.

  When I woke again there were people in the park, gardeners, children, young couples with infants. The dress lay dead under the bench. I couldn’t remember what had happened, where Jesse had gone. I got to my feet and down on the grass was the white velvet cap embroidered with rose vine. An ugly laugh made me look round. One of the gardeners, bent nearly double, was squinting at me and cackling. Near the fountain a grey-haired man in a spotless white suit was feeding pigeons grain from a paper bag. The earth began to shake at that moment and water stuttered from the fountain, dribbled out, then jetted upward. Terror and elation. Pigeons tore away with a ripping sound to join crows circling the park. When I looked again, the fountain was sending up spray, its stone basin was brimming, and the old man had gone.

  That was the last time I saw Jesse, Jesse Green in a white dress with only one sleeve, silver-threaded lace inserts at each hip, skin behind, the thinnest blue vein. I think it was her, but really it might have been any girl.

  9.

  A fresh breeze blew against my face. There was the deafening noise of big machines working somewhere ahead, toward the estate. A white man in army fatigues was sitting in the back of a parked land cruiser yelling into a satellite phone; his driver, Jesus, was not pleased to see me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Yes I have seen her. Up at the convent. You know, man,” he said. “You should leave. Look at all the damage you’ve caused.” He leaned out of the land cruiser. “They caught Sucre. The police are looking for you. You can’t stay here.”

  Beyond a little rise the entire road was red and at intervals along its edges were many broken burial urns, some red but most in black-on-white panels. Thousands of shards. I followed a shore of shell fragments and shards arranged into red waves and kneeled down to tug an urn from the heap. The urn, broken in two equal parts, came together in my hands. Smooth as skin. Perfectly together, yet broken. No lugs or handles. I stopped at a pile of bones and there, right in the middle of the new road, in a soft bed of crushed shells, two skeletons lay parallel to each other about six feet apart.

  I felt dizzy with the sun on my back and head and crouched and picked at the layers at the edge of the shell bed. The next urn was complete, and decorated with a raised red double-snake design. Inside was a circle of small crumbling bones.

  PEDRARIAS ESTATE SITE - Results of four test pits

  Simple flake points

  Polished stone celts

  Spindle whorls

  Incised spindle whorls

  Proof of the presence of the following has been absolutely ascertained:

  Painted urns

  Painted ware

  Red ware vessels

  Polychrome red ware

  Panelled red ware

  Cocle-type red line ware

  Incised relief brown ware

  Brown ware whistles

  The quantity of sherds present indicates that further excavation is of paramount importance. Evidence suggests that the following artefacts already restored from sherds found in proximate sites might be restored from sherds recovered from the Pedrarias site:

  Incised monkey urn

  Votive ware double turtle-monkey effigy

  Votive ware double bird effigy

  Lizard effigy vessel

  Humpback effigy jar

  Serpent burial urn

  An entire double serpent burial urn has been recovered containing the skeleton of a female child. Two parallel skeletons have been found in a shell lens. Both had the wide-open mouth, and the head in hypertension, with the occiput in contact with the cervical spine, that indicates sacrifice burial. One was a young male, the other female. At the feet of the female was the double serpent urn containing the skeleton of the child.

  This Pedrarias Estate double serpent urn has yielded a radiocarbon date of AD 198 plus/minus 80.

  Life would have been quiet and nondescript with little conflict, and with almost no contact with other tribes, though occasional dangerous journeys might have been made along the coast. Clay skills were highly developed, but full classic polychromes have not been proved. Weaving was practised. Human sacrifice was practised suggesting a stratified class system. Burial was ritualistic, and the dead were placed in urns, or laid in the ground, open extended. Some mutilation occurred.

  10.

  Out of the mangroves, uphill, away from the rutted tree-strewn road, past the estate, past the village, to the convent ruins. First night at the jungle’s edge, at the base of a huge tree (not ash, not birch, not cedar, not elm, not fir, not maple, not oak, not poplar, not spruce), among polished wood knees and elbows, to dream of Jesse Green. Half awake in the big roots, the stars buzzing, it’s too late for me to pick up the trail where we left off. It is all about us, after all, isn’t it? Me and Jesse and the land bridge. Dawn brings Magda. I have taken a wrong turn and lost Jesse and found Magda. Her face made of clay shards.

  All day in the ruins I’ve been thinking about my mother, missing her. Then at dusk Magda shows herself again at the edge of the forest under a flock of birds crossing the sun far to the west. I lean forward till the top of my head touches red earth, then carefully kick my feet into the air. Balanced, a pillar between heaven and earth. Along the ground cows hang in the sky. A new moon rises up the hill, and down below, tangled in the mangrove, is the yellow excavator stuck in the swamp since yesterday. The air is extremely clear. The nuns’ old stones transmit warmth to my scalp and palms. Cicadas chirp and a small plane flies over the lighthouse rock. Sweat runs from the small of my back to my neck. Miles beyond the rock little islands are visible. Among them, the tiny smudge of an approaching storm turns the water grey.

  My sister has a broken back and brain damage. She seems to know our mother, but no one else. They spend weeks on end inside the house travelling room to room. Jesse wanted us free of family, drawbridge politics, us and them, wanted us unjealous and detached, so we could be intimate with the unmade world and with the animals. She wanted to disorient herself. This trip, our entanglement, she called it, our leap, was a preparation for something we wanted or somewhere we wanted, but weren’t able to see yet. She told me that water was the essential and original element and Panama was the gate between the two great oceans, and we would open it. We only needed time. And then and then. And now and now and now I’m upside down at the centre of a cosmogony, and will do well to begin my part of the task. Magda dances at the edge of the jungle. She is attempting to delay the excavation. Jesse will find me. She made a promise. She said opening the land bridge would open us, and maybe that’s what is happening. But there are so many levels, so many tiny separate existences. On my lips — is it water or oil? I don’t know. What’s swimming and what’s been drowned? Jesse will find me. Flamingos are coming. Listen. That’s the whiplash of pinions. We’ll see them in a minute. The storm is bigger and closer and faster.

  There they are. A pink mist.

  Countless bright rose-coloured birds trailing long skinny
legs.

  They fly directly over my extended feet, toward the sinking sun and the canal, ahead of the storm from the east, which has advanced and grown. My legs topple and I sit upright, dizzy, while the flamingos sail over, a clatter of messages and warnings. Now a third of the sky is covered by cloud. I love Jesse Green and when she comes back she will find me with the Sisters in the Convent or with Magda in the forest. Life will be made of prayers, worship, listening hard for something we’ve never heard before, working our whole life in silence trying to figure out whether beauty comes from outside or inside. It isn’t about power. It isn’t about cruelty. The storm bears down on the sea, wind kicking up waves. More flamingos rise from the shore beyond the mangrove and let the wind lift them up and up till they fall sideways and drop landward. When I drop my feet, I’m two years old, shirt pressing against my back, billowing in front, pants ballooning. God grabs me hard by the neck and ankles and I flap like a flag before the hissing rain.

  Water is everywhere, my lips taste of salt.

  I grasp the whistle like a referee and lie on my back in the slight shelter of a stone wall and cross my hands over my chest, and rain falls, wind keens through cracks in the stones. It will be dark soon. I’m staying here to pray for every person I can remember. The whole hillside whines. Lightning strikes ten feet to my right. Pebbles roll across packed dirt. Water might be everything, but fire will be the end. I love Jesse Green. She is still a child. Rain splashes my face and chest till I pull off my clothes and wash my dusty feet then lie down again to pray for every animal I can remember and all those I can’t name and all the ancestors of all those I can and can’t name. Ghosts make sudden rushes this way and that, as though armies are passing, regiments passing. My dad’s face among the millions, then gone, faster than light. Clouds directly overhead like boulders and water gushes down and the ground turns to mud and the light is nearly gone over the sea faintly blue sun a yellow notch on the horizon boiling clouds the tilting sea my body like ice get up get away come back stagger down the slope against the wind this ground is a vessel for the wind this ground is a vessel for the wind I am an organ for the wind kneeling in the mud not safe and not lost sounding the snake whistle and the lighthouse flashes a figure by the house is waving she runs straight toward me up the hill to tell me something about the nuns what they have done slips in the mud rises goes down again I have been struck there’s too much pressure in my head from sudden darkness and rain look won’t you look at my white knuckles blow the whistle again sun vanishes stars arrive stars and the black east ocean sickle moon again beside my empty hand higher than nuns remember everyone with love they think only of God the task at hand and one another.