The Amnesia Clinic (30 page)

‘As he talked, I saw that Fabián was getting more and more agitated. He kept interjecting while the waiter was speaking, swearing and cursing. And eventually he said, “We
have to do something about this.” I said I didn’t know what we could do about it other than tell Ray when we got back to the beach. But Fabián was in a crazy mood. He said that this was our opportunity for doing something heroic. He said that we could salvage our trip, that it wouldn’t have been for nothing. He said … he said he was going to go down to the jetty and scuttle the Anti-Ark.

‘Before I knew what was happening, he’d run off down the garden. The waiter told me that Fabián would get into serious trouble if he tried to get on the boat, because it was heavily guarded, so I chased after him. From the garden, by the archway in the rock that led back down to the cave, I saw him leap on to the boat and get tackled by one of the security guards. He was huge, much bigger than Fabián, and he grabbed him and threw him … he threw him over the side of the boat. That must have been when he hit his head. That’s when he ended up in the water.

‘I tried to run down to the jetty to help him, but I should never have started running again. I hadn’t recovered from my last asthma attack. I stood in the archway, trying to get my breath back, but I think I must have blacked out for a second and fallen down the steps. That’s how I ended up back in the cave.

‘That’s how it happened. So you see it was nothing to do with the Amnesia Clinic. Fabián wasn’t deluded. He just died trying to do something right. Do you see?

‘Do you see?’

Any answer to my question that might have been forthcoming was cut off abruptly by a loud, flat crack as my mother slapped me across the face. She used her left hand, and her wedding ring struck hard against my cheekbone.

‘That’s for being stupid enough to think you could tell such an idiotic story,’ she said in a low voice, as if anybody around the table could fail to overhear. Then, to Suarez, ‘I am sorry. I had no idea that Anti would be so impudent.’

The precise details of the next few minutes are lost to me, but my mother dominated the conversation. I remember the expressions ‘breathtaking disrespect’, and ‘incredibly naive’. As she spoke, I fidgeted silently, looking towards Suarez for help, but none seemed forthcoming. He sucked on his cigarette slowly, deliberately – as if commenting on my mother’s ongoing harangue by behaving as calmly as he could. Finally I found my voice. But my chest was tight with nerves and asthma, and I spoke so quietly that it was almost a whisper.

‘Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to let people believe what they want to believe.’

‘What?’ said my mother. ‘What did you say?’

I looked imploringly at Suarez. ‘That’s what you said to me. Sitting here.’

This agitated my mother even more. ‘Anti, whatever conversation you may or may not have had, there is simply no excuse …’

I tuned out again as best I could. All my attention was focused on Suarez. As my mother worried at me like an agitated, pecking bird, a change seemed to come over him. The guttering flame of support that I sought in his eyes seemed to draw new strength from my pleading look and shortness of breath. Finally, he exhaled deeply and spoke while my mother was still in full flow.

‘Just a moment.’

My mother stopped in mid-sentence. Her head whirled round to face him.

‘Your embarrassment is endearing, Madam,’ he said, with a wan smile. ‘And it is considerate of you to give your son this public dressing-down for my benefit, however unnecessary. In fact, I found Anti’s story quite stimulating and interesting. As well as the reception it received.’

I’d seen the look on his face somewhere before. It took me a few seconds to realise where: it was an echo of that same expression of distaste I’d twice seen on Fabián’s face in Pedrascada, when he had seemed to want to shake my timid, imaginative shortcomings out of his head.

My mother paused. ‘I’m staggered,’ she said, ‘that you see fit to praise Anti’s outrageous flight of fancy like that. I thought we were here to get to the truth.’

‘We’ll get there one way or another. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy listening to what Anti gave us.’

‘What he said was ridiculous,’ my mother protested.
‘Banquets. Secret societies. Scuttling ships. Nobody could possibly believe it.’

‘My dear woman, even if I agreed with you about that, which I do not, I should tell you that I gave up long ago the unfortunate habit of believing the mere plausible.’

He allowed himself a brief smile – a distant flare of his old self, ignited by the negotiations – and then it was gone.

‘I’m afraid that only confirms my suspicions about you, and your elastic view of the truth. I’ve been wondering for some time, given the bizarre things my son says after staying at this house for the weekend, whether it was wise to allow him to continue. Now I see that my fears were entirely justified.’ She slammed her wineglass down, but it glanced off the edge of the table, splashing wine on the top of her hand. She patted it off swiftly with a napkin.

Suarez turned his full attention on her slowly, dangerously. ‘As I trust my opening remarks made clear, I had hoped to avoid apportioning blame during the course of this discussion. It would be terrible if we were to make an occasion of great personal tragedy – specifically to me, if you don’t mind my saying – any more painful by getting into an unpleasant cycle of recrimination. Let us not forget that these events were precipitated principally by your son. Please – let me finish. I see now that I bear some of the responsibility for what has happened. It’s true that I encouraged Anti, up to a point, to indulge Fabián’s delusions, so long as they remained harmless. And I stand by my advice,’ he added, before my mother had a chance to interject. ‘In spite of the way Anti chose to interpret it.’

‘You’re as mad as each other,’ said my mother. ‘What about the
facts
?’

Suarez gave her what must have been an infuriatingly dismissive shrug of the shoulders and reached again for the olives.

In her desperation, she turned to my father and said, ‘
You’re
very quiet.’

‘I’m thinking,’ he replied.

Suarez seemed to enjoy this minute exchange more than anything he’d heard all evening. I could have sworn he tried to suppress a grin.

‘Sure you won’t have a glass of wine, Anti?’ He seemed perkier than ever.

I shook my head sorrowfully, but inside I felt triumphant. Somehow, he was back on my side. The relief was astounding. My breathing had never been clearer. I could feel my chest relaxing and filling with oxygen in spite of the nauseating, adult atmosphere in the room, of wine, and tobacco, and olives. But it wasn’t over.

Suarez’s face slackened again into seriousness. ‘Unfortunately, Anti, your mother is right. We haven’t quite finished. Much as I enjoyed your story, we both know that a story is all it is.’

I swallowed.

‘Perhaps you don’t realise, but I went to Pedrascada myself while you were in hospital. You look surprised. Do you think I wouldn’t want to see the place where my nephew died? And, as it happens, I know exactly what your mysterious dome is. Do you want me to tell you? It’s a holiday home, owned by a man who led this country two or three presidents ago. In his retirement, he is cultivating a long-held passion for astronomy. There’s no more mystery to it than that. Now, while he wasn’t the most incorruptible politician we’ve ever had, I seriously doubt that endangered-species banquets such as the one you describe are his cup of tea. As I recall, his environmental track-record was one of the few laudable aspects of his tenure. Nor, before you suggest it, do I think he has gone into the business of curing memory loss in his retirement. As far as I can remember
from his days in office, having a selective memory served him rather well.’

He allowed himself a chuckle at his own joke, then met my eye again. ‘I am touched by your story, Anti. I applaud it. But now we need the mundane version, if you don’t mind.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s nothing but a formality. A boring one, I know, but quite necessary. Whatever it is you have to tell me, however banal, I need to hear it. From tonight, you may remember what happened in Pedrascada however you please. With my blessing. Add to it all you like. That is your prerogative. But first, if you please, the facts.’

His voice suddenly hardened. ‘Now.’

This time, I spoke very quietly, very quickly, looking at nobody. I was not interrupted.

‘We’d always told each other stuff that wasn’t true. It was our thing. I thought we both knew when things had gone too far, and when to stop. But down at Pedrascada things went over the top. Fabián was telling more and more stories that couldn’t possibly be true. And I … I suppose I got a bit competitive.

‘It started on the journey. The night before we picked up the mountain train. He disappeared for the whole night and left me on my own in this weird little town in the middle of nowhere. All mist and mountains. In this hostel, run by some crazy old woman who kept these screeching, scratching, shitting birds everywhere. It scared the
hell
out of me. I barely slept all night. I was ready to turn around and come home on my own.

‘And when he finally turned up the next morning, he didn’t even apologise. He just told me this bullshit story about a brothel, about how he’d got laid then got into
trouble with the pimp for not paying his bill. I was furious with him. And determined to get him back.

‘Then, on the train down to the coast, we got talking to this guy – a traveller – and for some reason he gave us all his weed.’

Hesitantly, I looked at my mother. She shifted in her seat at this revelation, and one eyebrow shot up, but she retained what composure she had left and didn’t interrupt.

‘I suppose he was just being generous. Anyway, Fabián was delighted, and he threw himself into smoking it for the rest of the journey. I guess it was some sort of release for him. But he wasn’t being himself at all.

‘In Pedrascada, Fabián had a sort of … regression to childhood, I guess is how I’d describe it. He took to playing games all day with Sol, Ray’s daughter. He called her his little sister. It was quite odd, but on the other hand, he was the happiest I’d seen him for ages so I didn’t worry about it too much.

‘Then, on our second day, this woman, a Danish marine biologist, turned up in Pedrascada and took a cabin at the same place as us. We both liked the look of her immediately. Plus, she seemed … mysterious. Enigmatic.

‘She was following a dead whale down the coast. It washed up every night, then went out to sea again, and she was cutting out its skeleton for a museum. It had become a sort of quest for her.

‘Fabián and I tried really hard to make friends with her, but she was cold and standoffish. She got cagey when we asked her anything about her life, and didn’t seem to want to get to know us at all. So while she was kneeling in the water, cutting up this whale all day, Fabián and I sat around watching her, and just for fun, we sort of …
made up
her past. We even gave her a new name. We called her Sally Lightfoot, after those crabs you get in the Galápagos.

‘Finally, on her second night, she relaxed a bit and told us some genuine facts about her past. She’d had a rough time. Somehow, she had managed to marry this horrible guy who beat her up all the time. And when she filed for divorce, he got so mad that he cut off her wedding finger with a carving knife. He said if she wasn’t going to stay married to him then he’d see to it that she could never put on a wedding ring ever again.

‘I know. Awful. She was obviously very messed up by it, and I felt guilty that we’d been so nosey as to get the truth out of her. But Fabián reacted in a strange way. I guess he saw her story as some sort of challenge – like she was in danger of putting him in the shade or something. In response, he told everyone round the fire the true story about the weekend his parents died. I think it was the first time he’d ever spoken about it properly.’

‘And what was this truth?’ said Suarez, quietly.

I paused. ‘He said that he felt responsible for his parents’ deaths. That he knew his father was having an affair with their maid, that he’d seen them together in the maid’s pantry, and that if he’d told his mother the truth about it then his parents might not have gone off hiking together that weekend. He believed he’d killed her. Or made her disappear.’

I looked up. My father was uncomfortably transferring an olive stone from one hand to the other. My mother looked concerned, no longer angry in the slightest. And – something I never thought I would see – Suarez was crying.

‘Anti, please continue,’ he said, blinking and shedding a half-tear that had been left behind. It plopped on to the table with no equivocation.

I hesitated.

‘I’m fine. Please carry on.’

‘Fabián thought that I was somehow taking Sally’s side
against him. He got so furious with me he wouldn’t even let me sleep in our cabin, so I spent the night on the beach. When I woke up the next morning, Sally had already left. Without even saying goodbye. But Fabián was too busy playing his stupid treasure-hunting games with Sol to have even noticed. I decided to disappear for a while, so I went for a walk in the town. It was a peculiar place – the street was knee-deep in mud because it had been raining a lot, and there was nobody around but fishermen and roosters – but eventually I found a bar and went in for a beer. I met a surfer there who was staying in the town, and he offered me something to smoke. I don’t know what was in it, but it made me feel hideously ill, so I decided to get away from the town, but I didn’t want to go back to the cabins.

‘Then I remembered something Ray had told me about an underground stream that ran under his cabins and away to a waterfall, so, looking for something new to do, I thought I’d go and find it. I was determined to show Fabián that I was capable of finding a good time on my own.

‘It was disgusting. The place where the water landed was nothing more than a cesspool, all bugs and shit and algae. The “waterfall” was nothing but a trickle of water coming out of a concrete pipe. From the smell, I thought that either it was a sewage outflow from the town or that an animal had died in it and was decomposing into the water. In my stoned state, I tried to go for a swim anyway, but the stench made me vomit.