Bloke, page 8
‘Yeah, well, that’s what I mean, do you mind sharing La Paz?’
‘I said I didn’t mind.’
‘Because it’s the best time of my life, being with you.’
She said nothing but I thought her shoulder pressed closer.
‘The sardines and cheese thing, where’d you learn that?’
‘Just travelling, not knowing where I’d end up.’
‘It’s a good idea.’
‘So’s the ticket thing, being sure —’
‘No it’s not, it’s paranoia. Fear of losing everything, again. But I’m thirty-five and it’s not going away. Timetables and stuff – I can’t help it.’
‘Vanna, stick them under your pillow if you like, hide them in your jocks, it doesn’t matter, I just get —’
‘Twitchy.’
‘I wouldn’t have said twitchy, I would have said casual, laidback, a world-weary traveller calmly meeting whatever the journey brings, almost —’
‘Why were you in gaol?’
El Alto is an almost vertical bluff, rising to the plateau where the airport is located. A tramway operates down its sheer face and the little cable cars judder like matchboxes up and down the face every fifteen minutes, according to my calculations, based on the making of corn rolls and their consumption. It was a habit, calculating the passage of time. I could wake in the night and guess the time to within a few minutes. The transit of stars, the quality of light, the feel of the night.
‘It doesn’t matter to me, I think I know what kind of man you are. I’m just asking, that’s all.’
And I really wasn’t avoiding answering, but I’d turned the key on all that, had to – it was too upsetting otherwise, too destabilising, shattered the calm I’d tried to replace it with.
‘I’ll tell you one day. I’m not trying to be rude, or selfish. I just avoid it. And this,’ I indicated El Alto, the park bench, her knee, perky in woollen tights beneath a bright red skirt, ‘this is the best it’s been for me. I don’t want to think of anything else.’
She leant over and kissed my cheek, her nose was cold but her breath was warm. It clenched my stomach that she would choose to breathe against my face. ‘You’re all right, James, I know who you are and you’re all right. No one has ever been so … aware of me. I can see it in you, what you notice, when you notice it. Don’t worry, mate, we’ll eat a few bloody stinky fish and cheese sandwiches together.’
‘They make good wine here, you know. Lonely Planet reckons —’
‘Lonely Planet bullshit, James, I think I’d like to go to bed with you.’
‘We haven’t got one.’
‘Well, we’d better look.’
I stood and hailed a taxi and it jagged into the curb. We loaded our gear in the boot and I climbed in beside the driver. ‘Casa, senor? Pensione per favore. Casa di piccolo.’
‘Sir, would you like a small hotel for yourself and señorita, or do you need an Italian toilet?’
‘Small hotel would be fine, thanks.’
‘International man of mystery,’ she muttered from the back seat.
The driver proceeded to suggest a dozen boarding houses and hotels. He had a cousin in Perth, but surprisingly we’d never made his acquaintance. We promised we’d remember our driver to him if we did.
The woman who ran Casa Linares offered us a glass of wine, a rusty fluid that moved in the glass as if disturbed by internal currents. Held to the light, it reminded me most of the lubricant Penetrene, or even the tail light of an FX Holden – not the FJ, the FX, a very particular colour – but it turned out to be a robust rosé with a touch of larrikin and barely disguised criminality. The tucker was beans and tortillas and treacly coffee. We weren’t going to get fat in La Paz.
The bed was an old iron monster, and any movement caused it to creak and groan like a wagon labouring uphill.
‘She’ll think we’re playing cards,’ I said to Giovanna.
‘Or stamp-collecting.’
I woke before dawn to find her looking at me. ‘Jacques, it’s very nice watching you sleep,’ she said. ‘You look like a scruffy little boy.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It’s a compliment. I’m very comfortable in your arms.’
We were surrounded by darkness and the rich warm scent of each other. It was easy murmuring there in the dark like old friends.
‘It’s a funny life.’ I stroked her hair away from her brow and tucked it behind one ear. ‘How it works out. The flukes of chance.’ I kissed her on the temple, where blood and brain are closest.
‘How come you know so much, Jacques?’
‘I know bugger all.’
‘No, the way you speak.’
‘The private-school accent?’
‘You’ve never been inside a private school.’ She stared at me. ‘In fact I don’t know where you’ve been.’
‘I was in a home. An orphan.’
‘I’ve wondered.’
‘That’s where I learnt to talk flash.’
‘Flash? You’ve got an accent like a roof-tiler, James. No, I meant the things you talk about. The way you think. Learn that in the home?’
‘Well, I did. That’s exactly where I learnt it.’
‘Orphan makes good?’
‘They didn’t care one way or the other. They just liked you to be quiet and out of their hair.’
‘And reading’s quiet.’
‘Yes, and it came easy to me. A way of keeping them off my back. Same in the gym. Stick your nose in a book and you could just avoid talking to anyone. Pick up bits of stuff like a mad magpie. It passes the time and soon it’s a habit. You read sauce bottles and the fine print on razorblade packets.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘It was efficient. You could strangle the hours.’
‘Survive.’
‘Plenty didn’t.’
She put a hand on my face and kissed me. Nothing much else to say.
A curtain divided off the bathing corner of the room, and she had a Bolivian shower – a sluice in a steel bucket. The early-morning sun exposed her silhouette like an early Kodak. I watched her guiltily, shaken by the intimacy. One minute you’re a solitary little whale shark and next you’re watching a woman wash your semen from herself. I was transfixed. Shocked. Almost afraid.
I wasn’t a stranger to women but I’d never seen this. I watched, wondering if I’d deliberately avoided it, made a point of not being there, a flight not possible in a Bolivian B&B where privacy was a transparent curtain.
Women. How I’d always craved their touch, how their touch scared the living daylights out of me. No mummy, poor little Jimmy. Shut up, I told myself, remembering the nights that stretched forever when I was a boy of seven or eight, wondering what had happened to me, why I was on my own, who had abandoned me, why I couldn’t look at a woman without wondering what they thought. I stared at women on trains cuddling their children. It freaked them out.
I wondered whether Giovanna would get the cold shivers too. Most other women had. My awkwardness in their embrace – not the sexual one, you didn’t need a lot of instruction to manage that, but the gentle one, the casual embrace of everyday love.
I stared at the wonderful curve of Giovanna’s back and wondered if she had sensed that part of me. The cold fear of abandonment, the shrinking from …
‘You’re bloody quiet, Jacques.’
‘I can see you through the curtain. I’m admiring your back.’
‘And my front?’
‘Of course.’
‘But you’re thinking too, James, I can feel it. Your mind buzzes like a dentist’s drill.’
‘I … I …’
‘Exactly. Can you handle it, James, married life?’
‘Married, are we?’
‘Oh, I’d say you’re married when you watch the bride bathe.’
‘Pretty hard not to. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise, Jacques, I can understand how captivating it must be. But what were you thinking?’
‘Same old.’
‘Theory of relativity?’
‘You know, one minute you won’t tell me your name, and the next —’
‘Next minute I’m washing your undies. Life’s complicated, isn’t it?’
‘In my experience.’
‘And what is your experience?’
‘Loneliness.’
She finished washing and came out from behind the curtain. I turned from her gaze. What a sook of a thing to have said. When I looked back at her, intending to harden my answer, add something stoic and devil-may-care, her eyes glued my lips to my tongue.
‘You’ll tell me all this stuff one day, Jim. Because if you can’t say it, then we’ll be like … just friends, not even close friends. And I don’t live with my friends. My idea is you share everything. Bathroom, fridge, flannel, the lot.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘No, please don’t try, Jacques, be.’
We got used to the Vino Penetreno and learned to look for salsa to make the cornbread taste like, well, anything but corn. We wandered along crooked lanes, looking into tiny shops selling jewellery, tinned food, clothes, slabs of lamb and goat. We paused in front of one window and a woman stared back in defiance, until we realised the bench covered in fruit and flowers was her kitchen. We hurried on embarrassed at being thought nosy tourists. I checked the Lonely Planet guide again and was relieved to find Museo Nacional del Oro was not far along the lane.
The museum faced a large piazza too far from the tourist precinct for the restaurants to make much of an effort. Three dogs lay under tables outside a small cantina. A red check cloth on each table, a bottle of chilli sauce, a jug of water. Two of the dogs refused to respond to Giovanna’s compliments. Anyone who called them a good dog obviously had no taste. The third whumped his tail a bit in acknowledgement, he wanted to be a good dog, admired for his flea-bitten self, but he caught the eye of one of his conspirators and dropped his jaw to the dust and would have no further correspondence. A few seconds of flattery from a tourist were not worth the disdain of mutts whose opinion mattered.
The museum portico was imposing, in an aged and flaky fashion, and inside it was so gloomy it took a moment for our eyes to adjust. It was quite empty but for a single case in the centre of the room, so faintly lit it could have been the dull gleam from the silver artefacts it displayed.
Goblets, pitchers, medallions and coins, cutlery, bracelets and rings casually arranged on black velvet. They were modest, unassuming, everyday items, but the centrality of its exhibition and the modest radiance of the objects entranced.
‘Four escudo, señor.’ We started like thieves.
‘Scuse?’ Giovanna asked. Ah, of course, the dago comes out. Despite the fact this was a Spanish colony.
‘Four escudo, to get in madam, to the museo,’ demanded the man who had appeared from nowhere.
‘Oh, of course,’ she replied and tipped coins into her hand and scanned them trying to work out the tender.
The man stepped forward and took what we assumed was the correct amount. He was tall and very fair but when he turned abruptly on his heel we could see the hesitation in the step of an older man. An older man who was trying to maintain a military bearing. I looked at his face again and noticed the moustache, and the way his hair was combed. German, yes, that was the accent.
He led us through a door which had a frame and lintel so ponderous and ostentatiously carved, so deeply set in the wall, that at first you felt like you were entering a mine. The brilliance of the light took us by surprise after the gloom we’d just left. The light slanted from a cupola glazed in clear panes and shone onto highly glazed tiles of red and blue and yellow, arranged in the geometric style we’d become accustomed to in most of the public buildings in La Paz.
Our gaze was caught by the ornate gold cornice at the base of the dome. The rich primary colours of the tiles seemed to bleed across the surface of the gold, a lush romance of opulent colour. It stopped your heart. Made the jaw drop.
We stared for a long moment. Our guide said nothing but I was very aware of his presence. There was something disdainful in the way he rocked on his heels, almost in contempt of our captivation. I didn’t like him at all, even though it was rarely my entitlement or inclination to make such swift judgements, but there was something of the gaoler in his stance.
Giovanna walked over to a display of gold jewellery and ornaments.
‘Incan,’ the guide said with barely concealed contempt. ‘The Spanish religious art is over here.’ I saw Giovanna look at him and knew she would have bridled at his inference that she had been transfixed by dross. He directed us to a display of ostentatious artefacts that were big on gold content and low on grace. Baroque curlicues and wreathes ensnared every item and weighted them with florid pomp. They emphasised the heft rather than the beauty.
They were interesting, well, they were gold, and so impressively heavy that it was hard to dismiss, but the sight of it seemed to burden the eyes. I made an attempt at admiration and went to move on but caught the scornful, malicious glance of the guide and went to return my gaze to his favourite cabinet before I thought, fuck it, they’re my eyes.
I looked at a mirror which stood about three metres tall, lugubrious with golden eagles, wolves and daunting bunches of grapes and vines; ugly as sin. I saw Giovanna’s reflection as she negotiated her leave from the Christian section. That’s what it is, I thought. I couldn’t wait to talk to her about this room, the man, the gold, didn’t want to form a firm opinion until I’d discussed it with her. I stood, staring at the mirror long after her reflection had moved beyond it. Mr Independent International Man of Mystery had a friend. And surprised to realise this increasing dependence.
We didn’t exactly scuttle out of the museum, but one glance and our plan was confirmed. Out. We would have ordered coffee at the cantina but it was far too close to the museum and the scrutiny of the dogs. We crossed the piazza and took a lane that looked as if it might head back to Casa Linares. A few blocks away we passed a tapas bar, and the smell of the coffee and the flowers on the tables and the tango music caused us to draw back chairs as if the decision had been voiced. I stared at the back of her head as she peered at the menu chalked on a little board. Her Italian was taking a while to translate the Spanish.
We ordered more in hope than conviction and the waiter brought us little squares of bread with sardines, fried squid, and mackerel drenched in olive oil. I ordered a Portuguese rosé. It wasn’t an act of linguistic genius but the wine was light, so sharp and refreshing it was hardly like alcohol at all. The complement to the fish was extraordinary. Or is that what love tasted like, the buds alert and bursting with expectation?
‘That guide was a cheerful soul,’ I said. ‘Nazi exile by the look of him.’
‘Do you think so? It’s exactly what I thought. There’s a lot of them in these countries. Lost and bitter, still fighting the war in their heads.’
‘He didn’t think much of the Indian art, did he? Seemed to want us to praise the European stuff.’
‘Gold is such a funny thing. That cornice in the skylight seemed to … I don’t know …’
‘Took on the colour of the tiles.’
‘They swam with colour – like liquid.’
‘You’d never want to drink from one of those goblets, you’d choke. Gold and silver are poisonous to humans.’ I’d read my Marx.
‘Still, it’s beautiful, the way it reflects the light.’ She twisted a glass, staring into the depths of rose.
‘But it’s useless. Its only purpose is to enslave.’ Maybe I’d read too much Marx.
‘Beauty doesn’t enslave,’ she objected.
‘We enslave people to get it for us.’
‘But it can be used in a beautiful way, in items of real and lasting beauty, don’t you think? That cupola, for instance. Whoever designed that had in mind the swirl of colour in the cornice, not the slavery of vassals.’
‘Vassals? Is that Italian?’
‘Don’t patronise me, Jacques, fishermen and women are allowed to use words well. Slaves is what I meant. That there can be beauty, even if it causes hardship to others.’
‘I would’ve thought that one would cancel the other.’
‘Then you’d have to eliminate all the great works of art in any civilisation.’
‘Perhaps we should.’
‘You can’t be serious. All the art?’
‘Well, not everything.’ I was getting beyond the limits of my own thoughts. ‘But those bloody great mirrors, the gold plates and the goblets – they’re a parody. It’s like they were made to intimidate. To mock.’
‘Mock?’
‘Yes, sort of like, you can’t have it, peasant, but I can afford a plate I’ll never use.’
‘You don’t think the artist had beauty in his mind?’
‘Those artists had opulence in mind. Excess. They were doing it to please a master.’
‘So did Chopin.’
‘Did he make gold plates?’
‘Don’t play the Broady boy with me, Jacques. You know what I mean.’
‘But it’s not beautiful.’
‘What about the Indian art? I thought their things were magnificent.’
‘But they used slaves in their mines too. Sacrificed virgins on golden thrones.’
‘I’m talking about the beauty.’
‘Someone … the artist must have had it in his mind that girls would have their throats cut on his beautiful table.’
‘But the beauty remains.’
‘Of the girls?’
‘You’re avoiding the issue.’
‘No I’m not. I just don’t think there’s any beauty when one group of people … when rich people enslave … when rich people make beautiful things at the expense of the poor.’
‘Sounds a bit bolshie, Jacques. Surely some artists just sit down to make something beautiful. Like the beauty is sort of out of their control, they can’t help themselves.’
‘Look at the pharaohs and their gold and jewels, the sarcophagi, pyramids, even the Taj Mahal, all those things were built on the backs of the poor.’
‘The Taj Mahal was built for love.’
‘For one man’s wife. Most Indians can’t afford decent shoes.’
