A Bright Moon for Fools Read online

  First published in Great Britain by Inside The Dog Press, 2013

  This paperback edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  Copyright © Jasper Gibson, 2013

  Jasper Gibson has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  ‘Sobremesa’ by Eugenio Montejo, original Spanish version reprinted by kind permission, appears in Fábula del escriba (Editorial Pre-Textos, 2006)

  ‘Sobremesa’ by Eugenio Montejo, the English translation reprinted by kind permission, appears in In The Trees (Salt Publishing, 2004)

  The author/editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of the copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

  British Library Catalogues-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  PB ISBN 978-1-47113-882-9

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-47113-883-6

  Typeset in Garamond by Laura Kincaid, tenthousand creative services

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For my mother, my father and my sisters

  Sobremesa

  Hesitantly, surrounded

  by the mist that falls from days long gone,

  we once more sit down to talk

  and can’t see each other.

  Hesitantly, cut off in the depths of the mist.

  On the table the breeze stirs slowly.

  As we dream those who are absent draw close.

  Loaves where bleak moss has passed long winters

  now waken on the table-cloth.

  Steam from the coffee cups drifts around us

  and in the aroma we see old faces,

  once more alive, float past

  clouding the mirrors.

  Empty chairs set straight

  wait for those who, from far off,

  will return later on.

  We start talking

  without seeing each other, without thought of time.

  Hesitantly, in the mist

  that grows and surrounds us,

  we talk for hours without knowing

  who is still alive and who is dead.

  Eugenio Montejo

  Muerte y Memoria (1972)

  Sobremesa

  A tientas, al fondo de la niebla

  que cae de los remotos días

  volvemos a sentarnos

  y hablamos ya sin vernos.

  A tientas, al fondo de la niebla

  Sobre la mesa vuelve el aire

  y el sueño atrae a los ausentes.

  Panes donde invernaron musgos fríos

  en el mantel ahora se despiertan.

  Yerran vapores de café

  y en el aroma, reavivados,

  vemos flotar antiguos rostros

  que empañan los espejos.

  Rectas sillas vacías

  aguardan a quienes, desde lejos,

  retornarán más tarde.

  Comenzamos a hablar

  sin vernos y sin tiempo.

  A tientas, en ha vaharada

  que crece y no se envuelve,

  charlamos horas sin saber

  quién vive todavía, quién está muerto.

  Eugenio Montejo

  Muerte y Memoria (1972)

  CONTENTS

  Caracas, Venezuela 2008

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  59

  Caracas, Venezuela

  2008

  1

  Harry Christmas strode out of Caracas airport with little more than a wallet full of stolen money and the dried-up brain of a long-haul drinker. Beyond the terminal building lay the sea. Beyond the car park there were mountains. The sunset was coronary.

  Christmas bowed to an imaginary welcoming party and then turned to examine himself in one of the building’s glass panels. Fifty-eight years old, fat, moustachioed, sporting a Panama hat, red trousers and a cream jacket, Harry Christmas flared his nostrils and sucked in his cheeks. He thought he looked terrijic.

  “Señor?” said the taxi driver, watching his fare with amazement. Christmas bared his teeth with a smile, then swept an arm forward, bidding him lead the way. It had been an eventful journey. Now Christmas was ready to gorge on the fatty pleasures of an international business hotel.

  The two men arrived at a white Toyota. The driver held open a rear door, but Christmas headed for the front seat. They drove off towards the city in silence. The taxi driver looked at Christmas. Christmas looked at the taxi driver. They both looked at the road.

  “Your trousers, Señor – they are on the wrong way round.” Christmas looked down.

  “Correct,” he said. A further silence ensued. Night fell.

  “So,” said the taxi driver, trying again, “for how many days will you be here in Venezuela?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “What will you do here?”

  “I’m on a mission.”

  “With no bags?”

  “It’s a pilgrimage.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m here to see the sights,” sighed Christmas. A truck rolled by, leaking smoke like a stricken Spitfire. “Breathe the air.”

  “My name is Pepito,” said the taxi driver, offering one hand from the wheel. He had large, alarmed eyes, freckles and gelled hair. “Pepito Rodriguez Silvas.”

  “Harry Christmas,” he replied with a shake, “mucho gusto.”

  “Are you a business man?”

  “I want a drink.”

  The road, cutting through mountains, suddenly opened out to reveal hills rippled with lights. “Oh, how charming,” said Christmas.

  “That is the barrio,” nodded Pepito. “You can go in there and they kill you.”

  As the traffic clogged and unclogged they shifted into Caracas, stacks of matchbox houses stuffed up against the El Ávila mountain range. The air was warm, the moon strug
gling through cloud. The city greeted Christmas blindly, feeling his face through the windscreen while Pepito swore at other motorists. It began to rain. Beggars flowed between the moving cars and crowded around the bins. A pregnant woman selling packets of fried banana jumped to avoid a motorbike. Revolutionary murals covered every wall. Christmas noticed the driver was looking at his trousers again.

  “How far to the hotel?”

  “No sé,” he shrugged, “the traffic is a problem. But Gran Melía hotel is a very nice hotel. So what kind of business will you do here in Venezuela?”

  “Freelance diplomat.”

  On through the streets they choked, past unfinished construction projects jutting out from shadow, past people running for shelter with jackets and newspapers held over their heads. “You want to go to a nightclub, Señor?” said Pepito, as they pulled up outside the hotel. “I can pick you up later. Nice place. Good show, live girls ...” He was bouncing his eyebrows.

  “No, thank you. Here you go – keep the change.”

  “So I pick you up mañana?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “In the morning?”

  “I said ‘no’. Thank you.”

  “You want, maybe, nine o’clock?”

  “Oh well, in that case, perfect,” huffed Christmas, intending never to see this man again. He hauled himself out of the taxi and squared up to the hotel. Pepito drove off. Christmas adjusted his hat and flexed his moustache. He was still drunk.

  Like other hotels of its ilk, Gran Melía liked to punctuate its relentless shininess with hysterical flower arrangements and excessively polite staff. Staying here was an extravagance but, if Christmas hoped to make any progress in this town, impressions would be all-important. He identified and marched towards the reception desk, holding the receptionist’s gaze so that she might not notice his trousers.

  “Buenas noches, Señor.”

  “Harry Christmas,” he beamed, “checking in.” Christmas handed over a credit card and his passport. The receptionist busied herself at the computer. Everything was in order. His room key was in her hand.

  “It’s room 4422 – your luggage, Señor?” she queried, examining the empty space around his feet.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “No luggage?”

  “Do you have any luggage?” Christmas demanded.

  “Me, Señor?”

  “Well, now that we’ve found some common ground, perhaps you could send two large glasses of Laphroaig up to my room.” On the verge of replying, the receptionist hesitated. This guest had his trousers on the wrong way round.

  “Thank you so much,” he concluded, sliding the key from her fingers.

  “Señor, if you can please ask to the room service—” but Christmas was off, giving the lobby a cursory sweep for lonely women before marching into the lift.

  His room was large. Royal blue furnishings. Dark wood. He found the mini bar and inspected its contents. He checked the bathroom, acknowledging the shower with disdain. Showers symbolised everything that was wrong with the modern world: quick, loud, stupid. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and straightened up.

  Christmas had been handsome in his youth, and though the strong face remained, his many vices had left him corpulent, with disgruntled skin and mottled teeth. Even his nose had grown fat, but Christmas saw only beauty. His cheekbones were bold, his eyes a furious blue. He admired his own moustache. He admired his head in his Panama, making imperceptible adjustments to its angle. He sat down on the bed, took off his shoes and trousers, stood up, and admired himself again.

  A knock on the door. “What the devil is it now?” he barked. Outside was a man with two large glasses of single malt. “Bravo!” Christmas signed the bill with an indecipherable glyph. He took the drinks, kicked the door shut and downed one immediately. Gasping with satisfaction, he put the other on the bedside table and took off his hat and his socks. He examined his feet. He had always considered them to be rather fine – proportioned, elegant – and was pleased once again to confirm his own opinion. He took the remote control from its holder and turned on the television.

  President Chávez, dressed in the colours of state, was making a speech to the assembly about proposed reforms to the constitution. He spoke like a boxing ring announcer, great undulations of pitch and rollings of the ‘r’.

  “R-r-r-r-r-evolución!” practised Christmas, turning it off. He drained the second scotch, undressed fully, and flopped back into bed. He yawned at the ceiling and felt fatigue grind into a deeper gear. Air travel be damned! There would be several palm-fanned evenings of tropical enterprise before he subjected himself again to that kind of institutionalised maltreatment. Christmas smiled. Yet here he was. He had escaped.

  He reached over and turned off the light. His eyes adjusted to the dark.

  He stopped smiling.

  2

  William Slade finished his exercises and lay on the floor of his living room, breathing heavily. He closed his eyes for a moment then rolled to his feet as if from a judo mat. He went to the window. He looked up the street and out into East Grinstead, making eye contact with his elderly neighbour who was getting out of her car. She looked away. Slade closed his curtains. He checked his watch.

  In the middle of the room a rowing machine faced an enormous plasma screen television. On the opposite wall there was a set of barbells next to an IKEA bookshelf rigid with military history, biographies of war leaders, weapons manuals and books about the Dark Ages. On the floor, a kitbag lay beside neat piles of clothes. A large black leather armchair sat beneath the window and behind it, in the corner, a yucca plant was slowly dying.

  The walls were white and bare except for two framed photographs. One was of fifty men dressed as thegns – Anglo-Saxon knights – wearing decorated woollen tunics, leg bindings, leather turnshoes and cloaks pinned to the shoulder with circular broaches. Some had broadswords, others battle-axes or maces. Slade stood in the middle next to the society’s leader, the eorlderman, a retired West Sussex police chief. Under the photograph the caption read ‘Battle of Hastings 2007 – sle cowere feondas’, Old English for ‘smite your enemies’. The second was of his father, Andrew Slade, and his stepmother Diana, taken at their old house in Crawley. His father sat behind his desk while Diana leant against it. Slade always thought she looked elegant in this photograph – her hair pulled back tight, her head high, the way she was standing with her arms folded, the long fingers of one hand not quite touching the elbow. His father was smiling and stroking his cat, The General. Beneath the desk, a young William sat cross-legged, hiding something behind him.

  Kneeling on the floor beside his packing, Slade carefully pushed his clothes into his kitbag, followed by a travel wallet that could be strapped to his waist, a wash bag, his passport, a photograph in an envelope, one thousand pounds in cash, a credit card, sleeping pills, an iPod, leads, a charger, a plug adaptor and travel speakers all neatly wound together.

  He was a bulky, cumbrous man with sacks of flesh saddled to his frame and a belly from all the pints, takeaways and Tesco meals for one. Thick black hair mossed his scalp above small eyes that withdrew into the permanent squint he’d been affecting since he was a teenager. He checked his watch again, straightened his back and rotated his shoulders.

  Slade inspected the rest of the house, turning off light switches and plugs. Whenever he left a room he said, “Clear”. Finally he came to the broom cupboard under the stairs and opened the door. Hanging from brackets on the wall there was a crossbow, a baseball bat, a double-headed war axe, a broadsword and twenty-three different knives. He took down an Austrian hunting knife with a seven-inch folding blade and a hilt made of antler. He selected this one because he had inherited it from his father. Slade shut the cupboard door, locked it and hid the key under the carpet. He went back into the living room and tucked the knife deep inside the kitbag.

  3

  Christmas lay in the dark trying to get comfortable. He felt too hot and stuck a
leg out. Then he felt too cold and wrapped himself with the duvet. He rolled over and tried to ignore the steady disappearance of feeling in his right arm while reliving his escape: his arrival at Gatwick airport like a man in need of the toilet; his panicked purchase of a return ticket to Venezuela; the sensation of being hunted. There was a school sports team idling in front of the check-in desks. “Out of the way, you little shitters,” he muttered, picking his way through the haircuts. Their extremely tall teacher said something to him in French – one of Christmas’ favourite reasons to ignore someone – and he proffered his passport to the easyJet representative. With his mouth hung open in a smile and his mind fixed on a drink, he watched with satisfaction as she looked several times between photograph and subject. Yes, the new moustache made all the difference.

  “Anything to check in, sir?”

  “No, young lady, I have only my—”

  “Did you pack these bags yourself, sir?”

  “I don’t have any luggage.”

  “Oh yeah!” she giggled, “Sorry. Mind’s gone to pieces. Has anyone given you anything to carry?”

  “No.”

  “Could anyone have interfered with your luggage?”

  “I’ve told you I don’t have any luggage.”

  “Oh yeah! Oi, Lisa, you’ll never guess what I’ve just done ...” Christmas looked behind him. No one was in pursuit. There was, however, the lofty Frenchman with his arms folded, staring straight at him, trying to make some sort of physical point. Christmas pulled a face as if he’d just opened a fridge full of rotting food and then turned back to the desk. The girl and her colleague were weeping with laughter. An elderly couple looked on blankly. Christmas felt as if he were queuing for execution.

  “Dear me, sorry, sir,” the check-in girl said, bringing herself under control, “now then, here’s your boarding pass. Seating code B, watch the departure board for times, gate number twelve. Have a good flight.” Christmas tried to take the pass, but she held onto the end of it. “Aren’t we going to say ‘thank you’?”

  “What?”

  “That’s it,” she said, letting go. “And cheer up – it might never happen!” Had he not been so eager to get to the other side of customs, Christmas would have visited a swingeing verbal punishment on this brassy servant of The Rot. “Nice ’tache,” she added, waving at him like a schoolgirl until the giant Frenchman stepped up to her counter. “Hello, sir. Right – security question: is it raining up there?”