Impractical Criticism

This is the first paragraph of a relatively recent, reasonably well-regarded novel. (This quote is already in the public domain, on Amazon.com, so I hope that I'm not breaching any copyright.)

"Five o'clock and freezing. Piledrivers and jackhammers were blasting into the wasteland by the side of West Cross Route in Shepherd's Bush. With a bare ten months to the scheduled opening of Europe's largest urban shopping centre, the sand-covered site was showing only skeletal girders and joists under red cranes, though a peppermint facade had already been tacked on to the eastward side. This was not a retail park with trees and benches, but a compression of trade in a city centre, in which migrant labour was paid by foreign capital to squeeze out layers of profit from any Londoner with credit. At their new "Emirates" Stadium, meanwhile, named for an Arab airline, Arsenal of North London were kicking off under floodlights against Chelsea from the West, while the goalkeepers - one Czech, one Spanish - jumped up and down and beat their ribs to keep warm. At nearby Upton Park, the supporters were leaving the ground after a home defeat; and only a few streets away from the Boleyn Ground, with its East End mixture of sentimentality and grievance, a solitary woman paid her respects to a grandfather - come from Lithuania some eighty years ago - as she stood by his grave in the overflowing cemetery of the East Ham Synagogue. Up the road in Victoria Park, the last of the dogwalkers dragged their mongrels back to flats in Hackney and Bow, grey high-rises marked with satellite dishes, like ears cupped to the outside world in the hope of gossip or escape; while in a minicab that nosed along Dalston Road on its way back to base, the dashboard thermometer touched minus two degrees."

What do you think? Engaging? Involving? Or do you have reservations? For me, what's missing (and what's missing to an alarming degree) is any sense, as Joyce once said, that this has been written. "Blasting" is a cliché and "wasteland", too, is so well-worn that it is almost meaningless. "To squeeze out layers of profit" is vague; how does this work, exactly, when applied to a human being? The mention of the arab airline is clumsy - a nod to the fact that this is a state-of-the-nation novel - and the business about the East End's sense of "sentimentality and grievance" is a laboured, pseudo-philosophical make-weight. "Dragged", too... Well, you get the picture. Each sentence pretends that it is giving us information but, really, it is just telling us what we already know. The prose, meanwhile, could have been written by just about anyone.

And this is a published novel. This extract isn't written in bad prose, exactly; it's mediocre, which is worse. We should all - all of us: writers and editors and agents and publishers - want books to be better than this. And, yes, you need all of the other things - a plot and pace and characters that linger in the mind - but, without decent prose, you might as well be at the seaside, watching a Punch and Judy show. A story on its own is not enough. Great novels sing; they seem to envelop us. And why? The prose. We need to pay attention to the prose.

Flash fiction #4 Chile

He stood, in the Plaza de la Constitución, fussing with the guidebook.

“So he’s ...Allende.”

He had taken to pronouncing the double “l” diligently, like a “y”. They stood beneath a statue that was in front of the Ministry of Justice. To their right was La Moneda, the governmental palace.

“And he was. Wait. He waaas.”

He hurried backwards through the pages.

“Yes. Here we are. President from 1970 to ‘73. And Pinochet did for him, didn’t he? Yes. Here it is: “On September 11, 1973, Pinochet unleashed a brutal coup d’etat which overthrew the UP government and resulted in Allende’s death ...and the death of thousands of his supporters.””

He squinted upwards for a moment then turned to look at La Moneda. It was stark white and topped with flags, like a memorial. He shook his head,

“So sad”, he said.

He was trying to squeeze the guidebook into the pocket of his coat. Briefly, he looked deformed, a struggling hunchback, and she had to look away.

In Ushuaia, the boat was stacked, layer on layer, like a cake. It was supposed to take them through the Beagle Channel.

“It’s very nice”, she said.

He nodded, not saying anything. They were “up top” as Ian called it. Some of the mountains were so large that the dimensions seemed incongruous. It was the same in Santiago, where the Andes stood above the city like a giant vampire’s wing. She squeezed his hand.

“Happy?”

He nodded again. He was paler than usual and the two lines beside his mouth had deepened, making him look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. What was it now? The motion of the boat? It seemed to shift its shoulders slightly, that was all; to shrug and then to settle.

Downstairs, white napkins were arranged in one of the three glasses beside your plate. They were with a party of Australians and one Chilean man, their tour guide, who was holding his hand out.

“Pablo”, he said.

He had thick spatulate fingers and a long camel’s neck. Ian was on her right. He had been speaking over her head but now the man on her left was including her.

“You know, it is a fascinating country, just like your husband says.”

He was pouring her some wine.

“It’s nominally a democracy, of course. My company – I’m Dougie, by the way; I run a software company, in Brisbane.”

“How do you do.”

He took her hand. His was broad, she noticed, and quite warm.

“My company are happily doing business there.”

He shrugged.

“But still.”

Pablo had finished chewing.

“Democracy”, he muttered.

He pointed his knife at Dougie.

“I los’ my farm. Stolen, by thugs. No compensation, nothing. They come one day – into my house; they stan’ there in the kitchen, like it’s theirs - and make me leave. The same day. Jus’ like that.”

“Christ, mate. Bad luck.”

“What can you do?”

Pablo’s shrug was more demonstrative than Dougie’s.

“Long time ago”, he said.

Dougie told her about his life; about Brisbane and the years he’d spent running a mining company in Peru. Throughout, his wife Pam barely spoke. Her face seemed younger than her hands. She had a feathery crop, dyed red, and manicured nails. The nails were weirdly perfect; finicky accessories. Later, in bed, Anne said,

“She hasn’t got a chin. Did you notice? I saw it when she turned her head. She looked just like a fish.”

“He’s handsome, I suppose.”

“What? Dougie? Don’t be silly. He’s a chimp. That stoop.”

Nevertheless, the next day, when Ian said that he felt queasy, she went out anyway. The bay was beautiful: you looked across the water, turned to tinsel by the sun, and saw a line of snowy peaks and crags. Nearer, there was the lavish devastation of a beaver dam. She was acutely aware of Dougie’s presence and watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was bulky and broad shouldered. His false teeth looked like a boxer’s gum shield and his nose seemed to have been broken and then badly reset. She didn’t know whether she wanted to stand nearer to or farther away from him. Back on the boat, Ian was waiting by the ladder, holding a mug of hot chocolate for her. He was wrapped in a fleece and scarf and had a hat pushed down over his forehead. She couldn’t look at him.

Dougie, meanwhile, was perfectly attentive and she found that she was looking out for this. He kept helping her up stairs and shielding her, humorously, from the wind. On the last night, she said,

“Romance. It disappears. We’re like. Ian and I, we’re like …acquaintances.”

Ian and Pam, both sick, had had to go to bed.

“He never touches me.”

How easy it was to say it, finally. She had allowed one leg to lightly press against him.

“Not for years”, she said. “You start to doubt yourself. You think, “My God, I must be old. And ugly. Ugly and old.””

He was demurring, muttering some awkward gallantry, and she saw at once that she had got it awfully wrong; this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go at all. She started to shake her head.

“Oh God”, she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean.”

He said,

“Listen: No worries.”

But, suddenly it seemed, his chair was empty - she couldn’t remember if he had said goodbye – and here was Pablo. How much time had elapsed? Pablo’s thick fingers were stretching down towards her.

“Shall we?”

What must she look like? Still, she allowed him to lead her, with a certain amount of exaggerated gusto, out onto the floor. There was a roaring in her ears – the sound of a shell’s interior - and she had to rest her forehead on Pablo’s shoulder. He was saying,

“You need fresh air?”

She shook her head.

“It is very beautiful here. Especially at night.”

"So many stars”, she said.

“At night”, he said. “My farm.”

He paused, then sighed.

“A picture.”

She tried to focus on his face.

“You poor man”, she said.

Dimly, she remembered the Plaza de la Constitución.

“You must miss Allende terribly.”

She had pronounced the double “l” like a “y”, like Ian did. Pablo stood backwards so swiftly that it felt as though he had leapt away from her. She staggered slightly.

“Allende?”, he said. “A crook!”

“I’m sorry. I thought.”

“This …rubbish he spoke. About the workers. Thugs. That’s all they were. Jus’ thugs.”

“I thought.”

“Of course. You thought. You know, don’t you. A fucking tourist. Your husban’ in bed and you like this.”

He made a rutting motion.

“With everyone.”

He wasn’t shouting, exactly, but his enunciation was horribly precise. Everybody seemed to have stopped what they were doing.

“Your husban’. I feel sorry for him.”

He stood further backwards, pointing at her as though this was an amateur production.

“Look at you”, he said.

He wheeled around and left her standing in the middle of the floor. Yes, she thought, look at me. She stood swaying from side to side but then, clutching her drink, she stumbled slowly off towards the door.

The Conquest of the Incas

A group of tourists are travelling around Peru. As the trip progresses, one member of the group is bullied with increasing severity...


Chapter One

Lima was dazzling. Or, rather, this stretch was, its low-rise casinos smothered in loops of neon. On first sight, I had expected a festive air - an atmosphere of jubilee or carnival – but, as we approached, I realised that the streets were empty and that the shadows seemed starkly overdefined. The clouds that were smeared across the sky heightened the sense of abandonment; of somewhere that had been left to its own devices in a sort of moral vacuum.

Of course, I was tired. We were meant to be waiting at the lights but had edged beyond them and were straining in the middle of the junction with the other cars edging towards us, nudging at our doors and bumper. Everyone was beeping continuously but it was so constant as to be inexpressive – a dissonant uproar. Our driver’s face, with its wide, flat cheekbones and broad forehead, looked impossibly remote. His name, the guide had told us, was Ernesto. He had leapt up into the driver’s seat, had patted the sign that said “Dios es mi copiloto”, had rubbed his hands together and shouted “Vamonos!” Now all one could make out was a slight tightening of his hands on the steering wheel. It was a form of machismo – a game of chicken that nobody was acknowledging.

I tried to close my eyes but couldn’t keep them shut. I saw that a man had appeared from around the corner of one of the buildings. Out there on the empty, stagelit streets it looked incongruously dramatic. He was hunched into a windcheater and was walking determinedly, and slightly unsteadily, past the “Backcow” steak restaurant, his feet, like a dancer’s, making little feints and adjustments. As he came level with our minibus, he was approached, suddenly, by two men. One had his arm out in a sideways salute that swiftly became a conspiratorial-looking hug – a gathering in, so that the other man’s arms were locked against his sides. The other stood slightly behind them and to the left, looking around them. You could tell that the man didn’t know them, there had been no greeting or acknowledgement, but he put up surprisingly little resistance, just gave a couple of muted shrugs as though he were working the stiffness out of his shoulders. Perhaps the first man had a knife – he had his back to us but you could see that his free arm was held across his chest, pointing roughly at the other man’s arm. He bent his head slightly, beginning to murmur or mutter something, and the two of them walked off together, the first man’s arm around the other man’s shoulders in a parody of affection. The man at the back looked briefly behind him and his face, entirely expressionless, seemed to be looking directly at me – to be daring me to say something; to do something other than stare in this abstracted fashion.

Almost nobody seemed to have noticed anything. Our guide, Carlos, had squeezed himself against the seat in front, his legs in a z-shape. He had a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and he was staring at a hand-held computer, studying it carefully then banging, in a sudden frenzy, at the keys. It was difficult to look at the rest of the group – I didn’t want to stare. I was aware of their most obvious characteristics: two tense and giggly girls; a middle-aged woman on her own; a man in a peaked cap, holding himself erect. There were two couples, one of which I had already noticed when I was waiting for my baggage. They had seemed almost wilfully conspicuous. She had on a fleece and jeans but the fleece was three-quarters undone, exposing a low-cut T-shirt and a prodigious bust, and the jeans were tight around her legs and buttocks. Her shoulder-length hair was a bright blonde. As I watched, she reapplied her makeup, smoothing the side of her mouth with her little finger as though her face, betraying signs of age and tiredness, needed to be moulded and remoulded. The man was squat and bullish. He had muscled his way into the crowd around the conveyor belt, taking his space as if by right. Forcing his way backwards with his suitcases, he had been cheerfully relentless, smiling at everyone but hauling his suitcase through them all the same. Now he seemed to be the only other person watching what was going on outside. Surely I should say something? They had led the man to a doorway in which the shadow was so thick that it acted like a curtain. The first man pushed him backwards – you could no longer see him - and the second man jumped suddenly into action; jumped literally, propelling himself forwards like a diver. Both men were punching and kicking him now but the bus was crawling forwards, we were over the junction, and I had to lean backwards over the seat to see what was going on. As they receded, they began to look strangely balletic and to seem to recede, somewhat, in importance. I should have said something earlier, I thought, even as I allowed them to get further and further away. You could only see the back of the attackers’ arms and legs now, flickering as if they were in firelight. I consoled myself with the thought that it was certainly only punching and kicking that I had seen and that there had been nothing to suggest the man was being stabbed. My last glimpse was of someone pulling something aloft – a windcheater, probably.

I looked at the man beside me. He was still staring at what had happened and, if it wasn’t for his face, I might have said something. It was a powerful face, brutal and babyish. His close-cropped hair went up into a peak, almost a quiff, and there was a hooped earring in his left ear, giving him a raffish, piratical air; a hint of swagger. Just now, amazingly, he seemed to be smiling. As I watched, he nodded, once, to himself, in what looked like satisfaction. It was an oddly private moment; one that I didn’t want him to know I’d seen. I glanced quickly at the driver. He was looking in his rear-view mirror. Noticing me, he shrugged, one man of the world to another. What could you do? I felt relieved. More: absolved. We shared a feeling of superiority. To what? The muggers? The victim? Their circumstances? I’m not sure that either of us could have told you.

Anyway, we were staying in Miraflores, an “affluent suburb” according to the guidebook. There were broad lawns and balconies and three-storey supermarkets but in the residential district there were also prominent, sturdy-looking intercoms. Our hostel had a courtyard with a fountain and a cage of colourful songbirds but there was a sign in my room that said that visitors weren’t allowed after ten o’clock in the evening, for reasons of safety. The room itself had a stone floor, a shower and a ceiling fan. There was even a little kitchenette. I did what I always did now that I holidayed on my own and placed the clothes in the drawers with exaggerated care, one on top of the other. Judy had always flung everything into a heap so that I’d find them clinging together in the morning. Of course, I slept, as usual, in the normal place, out on the further reaches of the left side of the bed.

I woke to the sound of car horns. Lima was grey, its buildings and cars drifting in fog, and the horns were muffled; lost and mournful-sounding. At the desk, the woman produced a map. She was long and angular, leaning over it with a stern, capable appearance of concern. She told me that I had to stay inside the square. She had drawn it on a map of Lima – four streets, surrounding the centre. She told me that I shouldn’t go to the Museum of Art because the children would steal my hat and glasses. She was scribbling over the map, effacing whole streets and districts. I told her that she had misunderstood; that we were being picked up later and that I had only wanted to stroll around Miraflores. She looked relieved. I saw myself as she must see me, a pasty 50-year-old man in long shorts and a pair of walking sandals. Smiling, she told me that I could go down to the arcade that overlooked the beach but that I must not go down to the beach itself. She shook her finger at me.

“Bad man”, she said.

“Men”, I said, pedantic as always, but she had giggled and now she was ruffling my hair. I was squaring my shoulders, I realised, and this is what she was referring to. Her sense that this was comic was accurate: outside, in the fog, I was as timid as she had expected me to be. People came suddenly into focus as if it were intentional. The men were as bewildering, as removed from context, as a line of masks in an abandoned hallway: the supermarkets, the cafés, the “Old Pub” and the “photoshop” counted for nothing. I couldn’t even see the sea. I was glad to get back inside and to ascend the curved stone staircase up to the dining room with its small wooden tables and beaded place mats. In the corner, a TV was playing CNN; a market square, all its attendant life, and then an explosion, something that seemed to punch a hole in the foreground so that debris could come hurtling through. A party of elderly tourists were reclining their heads towards it. This wasn’t so much a sign of seriousness as of not being able to hear. The man with the earring was moving the tables, dragging them together so that they seemed to be squealing. He arranged the chairs somewhat fussily, making sure that they were all facing in the right direction. In the end, we had nine places. He sat in the centre, facing me, with his wife beside him, and made an expansive gesture that took in the length of the table.

“Voila”, he said.

He made it sound like “wolla”; like the beginning of a football chant. He was wearing a T-shirt that showed Mickey Mouse quivering, without his clothes, at the end of a revolver. The gun was being held by another cartoon character, a meercat in sunglasses and a bandana. I nodded and smiled, aware that I was expected to be appreciative. He put his hand out.

“Stephen”, he said.

“Duncan.”

“Duncan: my wife. Sheilah.”

Sheilah smiled and waggled her fingers. Her nails were a sort of icy pink and she had on a charm bracelet, a tiny set of links from which were suspended what looked like Monopoly pieces, jack russels, an iron and a top hat. Her hair was teased over her shoulders. Stephen was studying me. He leaned forwards slightly, saying,

“See that last night?”

“Oh. Yes.”

I looked down at my plate, remembering the look that I’d seen on his face.

“The mugging”, I said.

“The mugging.”

He grinned.

“Is that what you think it was?”

“You don’t?”

He shrugged. He was a muscular man and the taut definition of his upper arms made the gesture seem slightly exaggerated.

“Don’t ask me, boss”, he said.

He leant over, stretching past his wife for a bread roll. Our breakfast had been waiting for us on the tables: rolls in a basket, two bananas on each plate and mango juice that seemed to have clotted in the glass. He tore the roll in half and stuffed half in his mouth. He raised a hand in apology but he continued to talk.

“Just got here”, he said. “But all I’m saying.”

He moved his head judiciously from side to side. To my right, I could see people running and screaming; a building bleeding smoke.

“All I’m saying is. Well, Christ. Broad daylight; fucking cars everywhere. I wouldn’t, would you?”

I wondered if I’d winced visibly when he swore. I said,

“I’m almost certain that I saw them take something.”

“Almost.”

“Yes.”

“What? What did they take?”

It was odd, this tone of pedantry. His was a different mode to mine. In his estuarine accent, full of elisions and glottal stops, it sounded aggressively insistent – a form of hectoring. Still, the expression on his face was pleasant enough. I shook my head.

“I can’t be sure”, I said. “A windcheater?”

“A windcheater. Come on. What, socks as well?”

I shrugged, weakly.

“Gangs”, Stephen said. “Boof. Brute justice.”

He had thwacked his left hand into his palm. The last phrase was odd, I thought, and mangled-sounding, a quote perhaps. He sat back, looking satisfied. It wasn’t only the satisfaction of having scored a point. I could see that the notion itself was pleasant to him; it had the neatness, the appropriateness, of television violence. Of course, last night, it had seemed as though we were watching television. I wasn’t convinced but saw that my assent was called for. Nodding, I looked around us. The table had filled up. The other couple were to my left, making a show of listening, hoping to be included. Stephen leaned across and took their hands, one after the other. He took everybody’s hand, showing himself to be something of a politician, albeit a rough and ready one. I wondered what he did at home. He had got everybody’s names and now he was making little jokes that emphasized the strangeness of the place, the clotted juice and dismal fog. The inference was that we were a club, or gang, now – that we were all English together. Already, the loudness and the liveliness of our conversation was dominating the room, in contrast to the reticence of the other diners. Stephen looked swiftly around him. Widening his eyes, he put his finger to his lips and went “Shhhhh!” He did this deliberately loudly, causing the people near the television to look over in his direction. Mia, the girl to my right, lowered her eyelids and displayed her teeth in appreciation. Minutes later, her friend, Jess, was still giggling, as though Stephen’s sally were itself a kind of delayed bomb. Mia had short, layered hair and a face whose determining characteristic seemed to be its fierce engagement; the way in which she appeared to be pushing it towards you even when she was smiling and sitting backwards in her chair. Jess was altogether softer. She had been smiling almost constantly and this, coupled with her slow, deliberate movements, gave her the air of someone of a gentle, empathetic disposition. As I watched, she buttered two rolls, placing one of them on Mia’s plate. Mia nodded, distracted. Jess was frumpy and uncomplaining but she was also, in some manner, acting out the role of someone who was frumpy and uncomplaining. There was a proudish tilt to her head; her self-abnegation was a form of self-assertion.

“Small bites”, she said, continuing to smile.

At the end of the table, the other man had turned his seat around so that he could see the television. He was still wearing the peaked cap that he had been wearing last night but this morning he was in a pair of combat trousers and a pink shirt. The shirt was too smart, a work shirt with a collar, and the effect was disconcerting, as though he had been forced to get up and made to put on the first clothes that had come to hand. Taken individually, most of his features were perfectly regular but there was a strangeness about them; a lack of focus. His eyebrows didn’t match, but that wasn’t it. His forehead was bulbous, true, but not strictly out of proportion. It was more that things were oddly, indefinably out of kilter. His face seemed blurred, his head too round. Stephen was leaning over in his direction, shouting,

“Oi!”

He was rolling something between his fingers. Then he threw it, a bread pellet, and it just missed the other man’s head.

“Dave”, he said.

David’s smile came and went in a sort of spasm. He was still sitting facing the television, his thin body weirdly erect, but had moved his head so that he was facing Stephen. Both hands were resting on his knees.

“David”, he said.

There was a pause. Stephen had raised his eyebrows.

“If you don’t mind”, David said.

Stephen seemed to rear slightly backwards in his chair. Diane, the other wife, tittered. Stephen sighed.

“David”, he said.

He pronounced it with an exaggerated patience and his face had hardened a little. His eyes looked slightly glazed.

“Did you think that you might want to join us?”

David blinked. He looked like a fish that had been dragged painfully out of its natural element. Then his mouth flickered again. I could see that it was meant to be ingratiating. However, he raised a finger.

“One moment”, he said.

He turned around and leaned towards the television. From where we were, you could hardly make out what was being said. Stephen was playing to the gallery now, his arms outflung in mock exasperation. I heard Sheilah say his name but it was too late: he had thrown another bread pellet. It bounced, backwards, from David’s cap on to the table. I wasn’t sure if David had felt it. It was another minute or two before he turned around and said, to the woman next to him,


“I’m a history teacher.”

The woman, Susan, was younger than me, forty-five or thereabouts, but was reserved in the same way, I thought, that I was – had, by now, abstracted herself from the hilarity that surrounded Stephen. She smiled at David.

“My husband was exactly the same”, she said.

I thought that that was wonderfully deft. The moment, if there had been a moment, passed. Stephen could not now make an example of David without insulting Susan’s husband; he had to satisfy himself by shaking David’s hand and saying,

“Welcome back.”

Carlos arrived before we had finished breakfast. He was bare-headed this morning and his hair looked as though he had buffed it into a glossy sheen. No more than 20, he lollopped eagerly up to Stephen, who was beckoning him over. He squatted down and Stephen put his arm around his shoulders. Carlos said,

“Your mini-bus.”

He was smiling broadly, gratified by Stephen’s gesture. He made a gesture of his own, a tiny cursive flourish, that made it look as though the bus had been his gift to us. Stephen patted him, a pet, and said,

“Come on. Chop chop.”

This was to us. We would have got up anyway, but it looked, now, as though he were in charge. Carlos, meanwhile, stood smilingly beside him, reduced to being his amenuensis. He had pushed both arms downwards, saying “Is OK”, when Martin, Diane’s husband, had tried to leave a tip and you could briefly see another Carlos, a solemn, capable Carlos, beneath this slap-happy amiability. I mumbled “camera” in Stephen’s direction. In my room, I put my camera in my bag, tightly affixed my money belt then checked my hair, something I hadn’t done for a long time. I attributed the gesture to the presence of people generally. In the mini-bus, Carlos was saying,

“Francisco Pizarro, our founder. He come on the feast of Epiphany, also called the Day of the Kings. Because of this, Lima’s first name was City of the Kings.”

This was all said more or less atonally, in the sing-song delivery of a child who is reciting something by rote.

“Today”, he said, “we will go to the Museu de Antropologia y Arqueologia. Also, the Cathedral, where our founder is buried.”

We were moving by now and I noticed that David was sitting stiffly to attention. He was staring at a point directly in front of him, unlike the others, who were all peering out of the windows. Outside, the mist had all but disappeared and, for the first time, the city seemed to be itself – prosaic and ugly; a crush of makeshift buildings. Washing lines were hung next to a road that was so polluted that I could taste the petrol. At the lights, children were trying to sell sweets. They came to the windows and pointed to them and, if this failed, made eyes at you and pointed to their mouths. All around them, cars and buses were coming slyly, inexorably together. Ernesto’s hand was on the horn and he was pressing it, as it were, absentmindedly. I saw that David’s chest was going rapidly up and down and that he kept feeling, pointlessly, for his hat. As I watched, he gagged then floundered upwards. He had knocked my day-pack over and now he was struggling with the door, saying,

“I can’t. I’m sorry. It’s just. I’m sorry: I can’t.”

Stephen had stretched out an arm, attempting to restrain him, but David smacked his hand away. His nostrils were dilated and his eyes were rolling in their sockets. I had got up – I was next to him and had unobstructed access – but it was too late, he had wrenched the door open and now he jumped out, holding onto his hat as he did so. We were barely moving but, even so, his legs gave a slight jolt and he stumbled forwards before he could right himself. He ran clumsily between the cars and disappeared around the corner. I stared after him. Somebody, Mia or Jess, said,

“Oh. My. God.”

The bus had begun to pick up speed and Stephen leant over and closed the door. I sat down. Susan said,

“Shouldn’t we go back for him?”

“Nah.”

Stephen shook his head.

“Leave him. No point.”

It was possible to detect a hint of amusement, but he was also stroking the hand that David had smacked. Everyone else was sharing a careful look of solemn, incredulous bewilderment. Carlos was standing up but he didn’t seem to know what to do or say. Stephen leant over and patted his arm.

“Don’t worry about it, mate.”

There was a brief exchange between Ernesto and Carlos but Ernesto was driving forwards even as they spoke. He shrugged, which seemed to settle it. Carlos talked to somebody on a mobile phone but then he smiled, graciously, and made another awkward gesture, meaning “onwards”. Nobody seemed to know what they should say, although I did see Stephen grin, once, at his wife. In the museum, we were peering at an arquebus, an unwieldy musket that had been brought over in the conquest, when Stephen said,

“He could do with that.”

He sketched an invisible hat then doddered a little, saying,

“I’m gonna get me a waaabbit.”

He made the “waaa” sound like a baby’s cry. Martin snorted, and, yes, it was funny – you saw, suddenly, that David had the same bulbous forehead and put-upon look as Elmer Fudd in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. The others were clustered around some chain-mail and Carlos was translating the inscription. Stephen looked over at them.

“That as well”, he said.

He thumbed his nose thoughtfully.

“He’s fucking meat.”

It was difficult to know how to respond to this. Still, I could see what he meant. If David had seemed out of place at breakfast what would it be like for him elsewhere? As if in illustration, a group of men were staring at us outside the museum. They looked sullen and dispirited, their hands deep in their trouser pockets. In the centre of Lima, there were police with riot shields and slums that were packed so tightly up a hill that they looked like rubbish that had been poured over it. The cathedral was on one of the few attractive squares, the Plaza de Armas. Outside the “Palacio de Gobierno”, the guards were ostentatiously uniformed and the cathedral itself was spruce and ornate, with lemon-coloured towers and a fussy central arch. Inside, it was starkly grandiose. There were colourful mock-gothic arches, carved wooden choirstalls and a representation of the Madonna, crowned by one of the popes and then presented with a gold rose. There was also the tomb in which they’d placed Pizarro’s coffin. Above you was an idealized Pizarro, handsome and slim, with a neat beard and a plumed hat. He was pointing, ambiguously, at what looked like a group of Indians. It was an image of righteous decisiveness, just as the image, elsewhere, of Bishop Valverde was of calm and poise. Atahahualpa, the Inca, was standing beside him. The pictures were crude and it was difficult to read their faces. It was more a matter of posture – of the relationship between one body and another. Carlos looked up and then away. He cleared his throat.

“This man”, he said. “The bishop. Very religious. And this man.”

He pointed, vaguely, in the direction of Atahualpa.

“He show disrespect. He spit on the bible, trample on it, I don’t know. Whatever he do is very bad. And so…”

There was a pause. He was evidently searching for the right word. Stephen was smiling.

“Boof”, he said.

He had slapped his hand into his palm again. Carlos had flinched, but now he grinned.

“Yes”, he said. “Boof. Is right word. Yes.”

He arranged his face into a look of ponderous solemnity.

“Pizarro very sad. But he sees that it is...”

“Necessary”, I said.

Carlos nodded, gratefully. I turned to the others.

“He had him strangled”, I said.

Mia said,

“Nice.”

“It’s true, he was troubled, but.”

But Carlos had brightened. He was leading us to the vestments, the chasuble and hat and shoes of an Archbishop who had helped the Indians. There was a contradiction, a kind of schizophrenia, here, but I could see that it was endemic to the culture. Outside, on the pedestrianised Jirón de la Unión, they offered you internet space and dollars and even drugs, baggies of marijuana that they attempted to palm into your hand. You could tell that they hated you. Their eyes flickered over our cameras and North Face fleeces; their faces were weirdly immobile even as their mouths were moving. Stephen was in his element. He had insisted that we do this, even while Carlos was attempting to dissuade us, and now he gleefully engaged with everybody that approached him. Just now, someone was showing him a watch. He peered down at it, a chunky, lurid fake, and said,

“Coo, fucking hell. You sheeny. Oi: Duncan. Look at this.”

He had draped it over his fingers, like a market trader. Was he a market trader?

“He might as well mug me now and have done with it.”

He put his face into the other man’s face and spoke loudly and slowly.

“’Cos that’s exactly what you want to do.”

He bared his teeth.

“Innit?”

This was banter, but barely. In any case, the man refused to be drawn, walking backwards even as Stephen was talking to him. He had already dragged us to the Museo de la Inquisiciôn, whose vaulted basement was a sort of negative of the arches in the Cathedral. We had passed waxworks of men stretched on the rack or having their bare feet roasted at a fire. Stephen had hunched his back and lolled his tongue just as, now, he lowered his shoulders, lengthening his arms and swinging them back and forth. It was a comment on the men who lined the route – on the fact that their faces looked exactly like the pots and grimacing figurines in the earlier museum; that they didn’t seem to have evolved. What was curious was the way that Stephen didn’t mind Carlos seeing this. In fact, he seemed eager to co-opt him - to check that he was properly appreciative. Carlos laughed uneasily. As soon as he could, he ushered us into a café.

“Lunch”, he said. “Please.”

The “please” was meant to be polite, an extension of the way that he was holding the door open, but, in the context of what had occurred, it took on an urgency, even a sort of pathos. He was being careful not to look at Stephen, who was sauntering, arms swinging, up to a table next to the window. His wife, the girls and the other couple gathered around him. The tables were fixed to the floor and Carlos, Susan and I had to sit at a table next to them. There was a moment of readjustment. Out there were the scowling hawkers, exotic in their lineaments and in the way that they hampered the passers-by. In here, it was just like home, with a counter backed by pictures of chips and burgers, linoleum on the floor and something lumbering and lachrymose, somebody murdering “Mandy”, on the sound system. Stephen had drawn a smiley face on the misted-over glass. He said,

“So you a history teacher too?”

This, I belatedly realized, was addressed to me. I found myself sitting upright, eagerly, and saying,

“God, no. No, not at all. An amateur. I read history books, that’s all.”

I saw, even as I was saying it, that I was trying to disassociate myself from David. Feeling ashamed, I went to say something else but Stephen was saying,

“But this bloke. This...”

“Pizzarro.”

He nodded.

“A hero, right? Like wotsit. “Gladiator”. You know: tasty.”

He had lifted his fists. I bent my head a little to one side. I was about to give a measured, judicious response – I would have enjoyed that. But Stephen said,

“Fuck, if it was me.”

And we were off. There were snorts and giggles. He stuck his chest out but it wasn’t clear, at this stage, whether he was meant to be Pizzarro or the person that he was threatening.

“Heap big trouble”, he said. “You calm down, mister. Me sell you many wristwatch.”

His accent was a cross between Red Indian and Pakistani. Diane shrieked. Mia and Jess were leaning on each other’s shoulders. Susan, I noticed, was looking down at her coke. Outside, we both lagged behind a little. She turned to face me.

“What do you do?”

After Stephen’s raucous parody, her voice seemed pleasantly mild. There was a steadiness about her – a heightened sense of calm that seemed to extend to everything she did: the way she lifted up her drink, for example, or carefully tucked away a wisp of hair. You could tell that her face had declined from an initial beauty that was still faintly there, in ghost-form. It was like the phantom picture on an old television in that her features kept advancing and retreating. Her chin tightened satisfactorily when she lifted her head. Her mouth, in repose, still had a certain plumpness. I scratched my neck.

“Actually, it’s embarrassing. I’m, um, I’m a proofreader. I look over legal documents, for grammar.”

“And that’s embarrassing because?

“It’s embarrassing because it’s dull.”

She smiled. Ahead of us, Stephen was buying Mia and Jess something. He had his arm around the vendor and seemed to be crooning into his ear. She said,

“There’s nothing wrong with dull.”

I said, comically hopeful,

“You too?”

“Oh, yes. I’m a hausfrau. I spend a lot of time polishing ornaments. I look at old insurance policies and try to work out how much I’m worth.”

She chuckled.

““Dull”’s a tad inadequate for what I do. I’ve grown rather to love my insurance policies.”

“It’s all history”, I said. “Even insurance policies.”

She lowered her head to one side.

““History””, she said.

She was savouring the word, tilting her head so that it looked as though she were actually tasting it.

“I like it. It makes me sound imposing.”

“Well, we do seem to have scared everybody off.”

It was true: they were a long way ahead of us now. There had been a certain amount of calculation in that “we”. I was aware that we couldn’t scare Stephen if we tried but it had been an attempt at bravado – a way of creating a gang of our own. Susan said,

“My husband used to say that to me. He said that my good manners were merely part of my armoury.”

I found that I was scratching my neck again.

“And he’s…”

“He’s gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He didn’t die. He absconded.”

There was some humour to be gleaned from that last word. She had made it sound deliberately ridiculous; it mimicked her husband in some way. She said,

“With a hairdresser.”

She exhaled air, rapidly, out of her nostrils. This, I saw, was meant to represent a laugh. I wasn’t sure whether I should smile or laugh in return. She said,

“It’s been a while. This is my first holiday without him. This. All this.”

She made a sweeping motion with her right hand. It took in the Jirón de la Unión, its bland, pragmatic cafés and shoeshops, as well as the men lining the route and the clouds above us – the grey uniformity of the sky.

“Is my reward.”

She swept her arm around her now.

“Peru”, she said.

There was no sense of irony: her smile and the gusto of the gesture told you that she was determined to enjoy herself. Perhaps there was an element of conscious bravery but that was all. She smiled and took my arm. I felt that she was reluctant to catch up with the others; that part of the point of holding onto me was to regulate my speed. For all of her gusto, I imagined, she still felt removed from the gusto around her.

Nevertheless, they had stopped and were waiting for us to catch up with them. Stephen was holding something in his hands. He proffered it to us as we approached: a bundle that, on inspection, proved to be two scarves. They were a dull cream and there was a repeating pattern of llamas – anthropomorphic creatures with bulging, incredulous eyes and beards. I saw that he was wearing one and, then, looking around, that they were all wearing them. Somewhat in the manner of a Hawaiian host, he hung them on our necks. He straightened mine and I found that his grip was slightly frightening. He tugged down sharply, making sure that the ends were equal in length.

“Lima Two Thousand and Three”, he said.

I bowed, mock-solemnly. Carlos, I saw, had knotted his. He stood, part of the group, awaiting orders. Stephen said,

“The minibus?”

Carlos pointed. We were on the edge of the Plaza de Armas and saw that Ernesto had parked beside the central section. He was standing, smoking a cigarillo, beside the opened door of the bus. I followed the smoke down to his hands, huge fighters’ fists with knuckles that were both notched and scarred. His only acknowledgement was to swiftly discard the cigarillo and clamber up into the driver’s seat. Beyond him, I could see somebody begging at the lights. He was gaunt and bare-chested, a hopping, dancing figure in ragged trousers who seemed to be gulping and then vomiting flame, but the drivers were all ignoring him. He was unremarkable in this environment – one more preternaturally vivid vagrant in a city that was full of them.

In the bus, Stephen started a sing-song. There was a tiny house and a tiny stream, as well as a lovely dreaming girl. There was some difficulty in getting to grips with the chorus, which consisted of “Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katseneller bogen by the sea”, but, by the third repetition, we had all mastered it. Stephen, I realised, was the happiest that I had seen him. He had insulated himself from his environment – had, as far as he could, created his own environment. Outside, there was the crush, the noise and the stench, as well as the sense that you were an enemy, somehow, whether because of historical circumstance or of something inbred – something that meant that you were at odds with everything around you. We all felt this, I think. And, honestly, at that moment I felt a certain regard for Stephen. There was a sort of spirit of the Blitz among us. He conducted us through renditions of “Que Sera Sera” and “Consider Yourself”, as well as the theme from the Dam-busters. He was confident of his position now, safe from all other contenders, and he allowed himself to toy with us – to parody, and thereby make explicit, his own self-satisfaction. He grinned, waggling his head from side to side. He raised his hands above his head, fluttering his fingers, then brought them down swiftly, a cartoon movement that was accompanied by a conductor’s furious frown. Lima may just as well have been a sequence of painted flats. We passed a woman who waltzed, alone, around a rubbish bin. Her hair was crazed, a halo of greasy tendrils, and her face was grubby and without hope. There were more beggars, small children this time, and a continual growling and bleating from the cars around us. The point was, we were no longer experiencing any of this. It was barely even scenery; it was more like something that was on in your living room while you got on with the business of eating or sleeping or talking on the telephone. Martin slapped me on the back.

“This is wonderful”, he said.

I nodded: it was. But there was someone else, another figure toiling up the hill ahead of us. Even from here, you could see how distanced it was from its surroundings. It was self-protective – hunched over as though it were at bay. It was the cap I recognized. I shouted,

“David!”

I banged on the window.

“It’s David. Look.”

I wanted to usher him into the bus; to make him safe. Carlos leapt up into the centre of the aisle. I could tell that he wanted to thump Ernesto on the shoulder but that he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Instead, he spoke rapidly in Spanish, jabbering into his ear. We were all shouting, now, and banging on the windows. We were pulling across the traffic and the noise of the car horns had coalesced into one angry voice. David turned his face towards us and I was struck by the bleakness of his expression. He had his head pulled down into the collar of his fleece, less for warmth, it seemed, than for protection. His cap was pulled over his forehead, like a visor. Instinctively, as the noise increased, he lifted his arm up to protect his face. Stephen had wrestled the door half-open. Before we had even stopped he stuck his head out and shouted,

“Dave!”

He was holding on with one arm, swinging like a pirate on the rigging of a ship.

“David! Come here!”

There was nothing, at this stage, to suggest that his intention was anything but protective. Surely all he wanted was to welcome him into the fold. He stepped lightly onto the pavement. Even this lightness had an element of ostentation: if he was still a pirate then he was one out of an early silent film, someone who seemed to tap dance around a castle’s battlements. He was big and blowsy, eating up all of the available air, and I wasn’t surprised when David winced at his approach. He put his arm around David’s shoulder. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but David was shaking his head rapidly from side to side. There was something about Stephen’s face, something implacable, that made me anxious to hear him. I followed Carlos, lowering myself slowly onto the pavement and then standing beside him. He looked, in his anxiety, as though he were washing his hands. Stephen said,

“You have to get back on the horse, old son.”

You could just hear him in the surrounding cacophony. David looked ready to run away. Stephen’s face belied his words – it had a tightness, a reserve, that put him at a remove from what he was saying. He was holding firmly onto David’s shoulder, refusing to let him go. He said.

“Come on. They’re waiting.”

But still David refused to move. He said,

“I can’t. I’m sorry. Just leave me here, please. I’m not trying to be awkward. I just…”

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“You can.”

“It isn’t possible.”

Stephen’s grip tightened.

“Look, mate. See that? It’s just a bus. They’re just cars. Really: no biggie.”

But David was pulling away from him. He had both hands up, it looked as though he was surrendering, but he wasn’t. His body was insistent – it wouldn’t allow itself to be commandeered. Stephen had a choice: he could either hold on harder, forcing David to stay where he was, or he could let him go. His knuckles, I noticed, were whitening. But what could he do if he managed to restrain him? Pick him up and throw him in the bus? It was already beginning to look like a struggle. He lifted his arms in exasperation.

“Fuck it”, he said. “Forget it.”

David shook his head.

“I’m sorry”, he said. “It’s the noise. The…”

He slapped the palm of one hand against the back of the other. The proximity, he meant – the other cars circling, like sharks, around the minibus. He started to say something but thought better of it. He turned around and walked away. Carlos went to go after him but Stephen placed a hand on his stomach, restraining him.

“Leave him”, he said.

Carlos looked rapidly from one to the other. David had reached a junction and now he stood stoically at the kerb.

“He’s never going to get across”, I said.

But no-one acknowledged me. Stephen was already climbing up into the bus. He turned to us and said,

“You coming?”

Carlos and I looked at each other. There was a moment of indecision and then we scrambled, eagerly, after him.


Chapter Two


Carlos was being disingenuous. Pizzarro may have felt sad for Atahualpa, but he felt no remorse about what happened because of Bishop Valverde’s bible.

He was born in Trujillo de Extremadura, 140 miles south-west of Madrid. This was a harsh, empty landscape, a kind of crucible in which Pizarro’s character, as well as that of most of the leading conquistadores, was formed. It’s true, he was handsome, but he was also taciturn and battle-hardened - a thug, in other words. You can see it in his eyes. His face was long, which lends it, in pictures, an odd sort of serenity, but his eyes are both guarded and surly. Life, his life, had made him indifferent to cruelty.

He was the illegitimate son of a professional officer and a serving girl. He had fought in many campaigns, had helped to exterminate the Taiano Indians of Hispaniola, and now he was one of the richest men in Panama. He didn’t have to go, but he did go, hankering after glory, or conquest, in the same way that some of us hanker after love. He drew a line in the sand of the Isla del Gallo, in the Tumaco estuary, and promised “death, hardship, hunger, nakedness, rains and abandonment”. He was a tough, unremitting commander and had discovered that his men had smuggled out a message in a bale of hay, asking for help. Only twelve men crossed the line but, in the end, they took an armed force into the uncharted territory of Peru.

Atahualpa was the Inca, the ruler of an empire that stretched for almost three thousand miles from central Chile to the south of modern Colombia. He was thirty, “of good appearance and manner” and considered to be divine. He could, and often did, spit into the hand of his attendants rather than on the floor. Women would remove the hairs that fell onto his clothing and eat them. He was exotic, in other words. When meeting Pizarro’s envoy, he wore a series of cords with a corded tassel that forced him to look downwards. He didn’t seem quite human or, at least, that’s what they must have told themselves.

They met in the square of the provincial capital of Cajamarca. Beyond it was a huge plain, flat in a way that was unusual for Peru. Atahualpa walked, in pomp, towards the Spaniards with an army that covered the whole expanse. They walked slowly, a processional, with a squadron of attendants removing the straws from the ground in front of them. The Spaniards were in the square. They were terrified, many of them had wet their trousers, and they had hidden their cavalry in the long, low buildings that surrounded them. The Indians came on foot. They were dressed in ceremonial clothes, all wearing gold and silver head-dresses and singing a song that, even then, the Spaniards thought “by no means lacking grace”. The road-sweepers were wearing a chequered livery, “like a chessboard”. Most of them stayed on the plain, leaving Atahualpa to advance into the square with five or six thousand men, unarmed except for small battle axes, slings and pouches of stones. He himself was in a litter that was lined with colourful parrot feathers, embellished with gold and silver plate. They halted, and a captain came out holding the royal standard - a banner on a lance.

Valverde invited Atahualpa to dine with Pizarro in one of the buildings. Atahualpa said no, that he would not enter until the Spaniards had returned every object that they had stolen or consumed since their arrival in the kingdom. Valverde began to explain who he was – that he had been sent by the Emperor to reveal the Christian religion to the Inca. He gave him a closed bible but Atahualpa struggled to open it. Valverde attempted to help but Atahualpa struck him on the arm. At last, he leafed through the book, “admiring its form and layout” but, in the end, he threw it down among his men. He was clearly angry and may or may not have risen on his litter, telling them to get ready. It’s also unclear how the Bishop responded to this. He may have said, “Come out Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who reject the things of God” or “Did you not see what happened? Why remain polite and servile toward this overproud dog?” or “Atahualpa has become a Lucifer!” He may merely have wept. Whatever, Atahualpa was now an animal or a devil and the aftermath was unequivocal. Pizarro launched the ambush with a raised cloth. Two cannons were fired and then the cavalry charged into the Indians on the square. Trumpets were sounded. Rattles had been placed on the horses and it must have sounded like a plague of angry snakes. In any case, the Indians were unused to horses and were so terrified that they climbed on top of one another, suffocating as they did so. Pizarro, meanwhile, had grabbed Atahualpa’s arm. Many Indians had their hands cut off but continued to support the Inca’s litter with their shoulders. A group of mounted Spaniards overturned it and Atahualpa was led away. In the square and out on the plain, the cavalry and foot soldiers were killing men at the rate of fourteen or fifteen each an hour. So many commanders died that, according to one contemporary chronicler, “they [must] go unrecorded”.

Stephen was thrilled. I had described all this to him over dinner and it was true that there had been several interruptions, burps and jokes and self-regarding interjections, but it was also true that he had disclosed impressive, unsuspected powers of concentration. Cutting vigorously into his steak, he said,

“Go on.”

“Well, that was it. They’d won. There were battles afterwards, of course, but the Incas lost that day and I suspect, deep down, they knew it.”

“Just like that.”

“Well…yes. The Spanish had horses. They had swords made out of steel. The Incas had wooden clubs and dinky little axes made of bronze.”

“A primitive tribe.”

“No, no. No, not at all.”

“They didn’t have writing”, said Martin. “I was reading about this: they didn’t have writing or the wheel.”

“They didn’t need the wheel, not up and down those mountains. They didn’t glue their stones together, either, when they were building things. There’s nothing - no cement; no wattle and daub - in any of their houses. But they’re like this.”

I bound my fingers together.

“They had a sophisticated form of government; terraced agriculture; cloth.”

I was ticking them off on my fingers, then I shrugged.

“It was superior weaponry, that was all.”

“And bravery”, Stephen said. “Pissing themselves, you said, but holding firm.”

I hadn’t said “pissing themselves”. Again, I shrugged.

“Perhaps. I don’t know.”

“I do. Fuck. You wouldn’t catch me there, boy”

He was still cutting his steak. His plate was a shambles of soggy chips and meat and blood. I said,

“Romance.”

I was looking down at his shirt. The meercat was in a bandillero now. He had on a ten gallon hat and there was a moustache, like a large spider, dangling above his lower lip. A female meercat, identical but for blonde tresses and a smear of lipstick, held up her skirt with one hand and held on to his arm with the other.

“You know: adventure stories. Tales of derring do. The Spanish loved them and I expect Peru was a little like that: a place where you could defeat dozens of enemies just by swinging your sword around. And once you were there. Well, you were there, weren’t you? You couldn’t run away.”

Sheilah smiled at Stephen, saying,

“One for Monty.”

But Stephen was shaking his head. I looked at Sheilah, who was pointing at Stephen’s T-shirt.

“You know: Monty?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. I looked at David. This was automatic – surely, he, too, would be bewildered. He smiled and pushed his palms upwards. He was pleased to be included and I felt a complicated mix of pity and anxiety that I would be associated with him. Mia was saying, “Ooooh. I love Monty” and Jess was singing what sounded like a theme tune – a martial air that had her making pistons of her arms. Sheilah said, proudly,

“We always say that, don’t we Stevie? Something’ll happen and we say “that’s one for Monty”.”

She patted him on the back.

“He’s his”, she said.

More amplification was needed.

“He draws him. Well, not any more. He makes them now, don’t you? The Monty films.”

Monty, it turned out, was a cowardly meercat. He tended to turn up in a historical or geographical context where there had been a known conflict: the Second World War, say, or the Alamo. There were also Monty video games – violent adventures in which he cowered in a corner, firing indiscriminately. The Mickey Mouse shirt had been uncharacteristic – Monty was more likely to quake inside his foxhole, gibbering, or cling to a flagpole, where he was safe above the swords and bullets. He was hugely popular and I could sense that there had been a palpable increase in goodwill. David was saying,

“A bit like Disney?”

“Disney.”

Stephen snarled.

“Romping and singing. It’s cobblers”

Jess said,

“It’s true. Monty’s got attitude.”

She took a careful sip of wine. She had already made sure that Mia’s glass was full. Now she leaned across the table, filling up people’s glasses.

“I mean, we know he’s scared. But he doesn’t take any nonsense, does he? It’s only when the fighting starts.”

It was as though she were trying to compliment one of Stephen’s friends. The restaurant that Carlos had recommended was in an alley, almost a grotto, in Miraflores. The food was Cuban and there was a picture of Fidel above our table; young and handsome, he was another vision of beneficent certitude. Somewhere, music was playing. It had a lazy, sensuous grace and Mia was swaying gently backwards and forwards in her chair. Like Jess’ empathy, it was a performance, although the impression that she was trying to give was that she was lost, somehow, in the dip and shuffle of the song. She had made up her face and her bare shoulders, in the light, had a top layer of glistening dew. Jess’ shirt was more like a sweatshirt, both bulky and unrevealing, and she kept pulling it down, attempting to cover whatever it was that she thought she was exposing. Stephen was telling her that he was tiring of Monty – that he was thinking of killing him off. She smiled and shook her head.

“Please, no. I couldn’t bear it.”

There was a chorus of “no”s. Stephen smiled graciously. He looked as though he had relaxed; as though this acclamation had freed him from something. He passed me the salt and pepper with a certain regal condescension.

“I’ll think about it”, he said.

Sheilah was leaning backwards in her chair. She was smiling, relishing the role of consort, but there was also something motherly in the way that she kept checking Stephen’s face. She had a tattoo of Winnie the Pooh on her shoulder. It was meant to be vivid, a bit of fun, but it had grown faint and, along with her brittle blonde hair and the ruched fold of skin beneath her nose, seemed to emphasize her age. Mia was leaning forward and saying,

“How do you get your ideas?”

She had been trying to look languorous but her intensity kept breaking through. She’d told us that she worked in an employment agency and had described the cold calls that she had to make, calls where you had to, in Mia’s words, bombard potential clients with questions to which they weren’t allowed to answer yes or no. It was like a parlour game. Mia gave us some examples: “What type of waitress do you need?; “Why don’t you need a waitress?”; “How can we help you in the future?” This last was said with a sort of supercilious lilt. Each time she emphasized a word, she thrust her index finger into the table. It was unclear whether her intensity – the way, for example, that she seemed to take a bead on you when you were only a couple of feet away – was willed, a response to her environment or just part of her personality. In the same way, I couldn’t tell if Jess’ ponderous tenderness was natural, a response to Mia or a response to being a teacher at a primary school. She had begun to fuss around us all now, filling our glasses and passing the vegetables as though she were hosting things but had also, paradoxically, been asked to wait on us.

Stephen had shrugged off Mia’s question and was pressing upon her a pisco sour, a white-grape brandy mixed with egg white, lemon juice, sugar, syrup and bitters. It was milky, like medicine, and Mia took it gingerly, holding her other hand underneath it and squeezing her eyes tight shut. She had on a brownish nail varnish that was already, I noticed, starting to chip.

“Oh”, she said. “Yuk.”

She stuck her tongue out.

“Euurgh. Good God.”

Satisfied, Stephen nodded.

“Innit”, he said.

He passed it to Jess and then to Martin, both of whom had stuck their hands out eagerly. I can’t remember what Martin did. It was something generic, something archetypically middle English, like insurance or accountancy. Diane didn’t work, but she didn’t work in a different way to the way that Susan didn’t work. There was no hint of irony or that her horizons might have dwindled. She was eager to make her mark on the conversation. Her “claim to fame”, she was telling Stephen, was that her niece had got through to the final 50 for a reality show. Greased like a channel swimmer, she had had to push a balloon down her male partner’s chest and through his legs, using her nose and chin. Diane said,

“Terrible.”

She shook her head but she was smiling. Martin grinned and rubbed his hands swiftly together. I hadn’t seen the show but it, too, seemed generic – a series of ritual humiliations that led, if you were lucky, to the humiliation of being briefly in the public eye. Mia knew someone, she said, who had taken part in a dating show. They had been chained together, had slept and eaten and gone to the toilet together, and her friend had had to wipe himself while a girl stood next to him, pretending to avert her eyes.

“Hilarious”, she said. “He’s like…”

She retracted her arms and pushed her head down into her neck, staring directly in front of her. For a moment, she looked comically terrified and everybody laughed. Not everybody: David was mopping the juices on his plate with a big hunk of bread. He did this with a disconcerting thoroughness, working his way into the edges of the plate. Mia flicked her eyes towards him, drawing him to our attention, and then returned to staring straight ahead. It was clear that it had become an impression of him. It was funny, just like the Elmer Fudd impression had been funny, but Susan didn’t laugh, and I found that I no longer wanted to. David didn’t seem to notice. He had arrived just as we were gathering in the lobby to go for dinner. He had, as he approached, a look of disproportionate determination, as though he had been wading through a swamp. With an evident effort, he had composed his face. We should have allowed him to change, but Stephen had taken his elbow, had made a show of jovial solicitude, and steered him outside. Partly, I thought, it was to prove a point; to erase the memory of David’s resistance this afternoon. Once they were outside, he left him and walked off, waving us onwards. He had pulled his arm away rapidly, with evident distaste. At dinner, he barely talked to him, his face, when it was turned towards him, both rigid and unexpressive. No-one referred to what had happened. Now Stephen was drawing on the paper napkins. His caricature made Mia look prettier, a purring cat, but he had exaggerated her stare so that it looked as though she had been hypnotized. Jess had a dreamy, lost look – a whimsical introspection that had her walking, all unawares, into a wall. Her shirt billowed around her like a voluminous sail. You were expected to react in much the same way that you would to the television show. The cruelty was matter-of-fact; it was an aspect of the entertainment, and, as such, no ambivalence was needed. You were simply expected to be amused. I was in a gown and mortar-board – a professor – and I have to admit that I was pleased: I had a role already defined for me. As David continued to use his bread just like a sponge, dragging it around his plate, Stephen flashed another napkin up and down, so rapidly that he had to do it again, slowing a little so that we could all see what he had done. Still, the effect was of something that was nearly subliminal – an image of David out of a nightmare, with a bulging forehead and eyebrows that were radically out of true. He looked like an insect. Like an alien: like a B-movie predator. Each time Stephen lifted it he glanced at David, stretching his mouth into a manic leer and lolling his tongue. I was, I felt, lucky to be on the same side of the table – I was under no obligation to react. I got up to go to the toilet. There was a back room, larger than I had expected, and on a rostrum a band was performing the music we were listening to. I hadn’t realised this - I had assumed that it was being piped through from a CD player somewhere. Already slightly drunk, I experienced a moment of disorientation – almost of disaffection. Live music must inevitably add something, I felt, that I could do without. Things would become much less contained.

Sure enough, one of the cooks came out to dance. He had on normal trousers and the top half of his whites, along with a red bandana. He jived and shook and waltzed, alone, his body a wavy line. He struck a cowbell then put his hands into his pockets, moving his hips from side to side. We had pulled a couple of tables together in the back room and now Mia stood up. She tried to partner him but couldn’t do much more than hold onto his hands and look back at us, smirking in embarrassment. Stephen took the mike, of course. This, too, was matter-of-fact; one felt that he was exercising a certain droit se seigneur. He put his head down into the microphone, seemed almost to be butting it, then carefully lowed the melody. There was a guitarist, a bass-player, someone on maracas and a drummer on big floor toms. Stephen took the cowbell and bashed at it with a drumstick. He was shouting now; he seemed to know the song and was coming at it headlong, roaring the chorus and leaning to one side as though a strong wind were buffeting him. He hadn’t doubted that they would want him to sing along with them. The band all watched him warily but followed him nonetheless, mirroring his body language. It might have looked like satire if they had not been doing it so slowly and carefully. When they had finished, he bowed then swept his hand backwards, encompassing them all. We applauded and cheered, of course – we had to. David, too, although there was a visible distance between the intention and the act: he tapped his fingers into his palm as gently as a dowager.

Sheilah, meanwhile, had settled downwards in her chair. She had become flirtatious; on the way back from the toilet she had run her hand along the back of one of the dancer’s legs. This wasn’t like Mia’s dancing. It was nothing, a mere flicker, but I saw that Stephen had his head down and that he had begun to draw the dancer as a mule, his nose and jaw transmuted into the muzzle of a creature who was being tugged, its nostrils painfully flared, by a triumphant-looking musical note. David was reaching for the bottle of wine but Stephen got there first. He filled his glass then slid the little that was left across the table, just within reach of David’s hand. His face had the sullen, powerless look of a child that had just been slapped.

In the morning, we headed for Pisco. It was south of Lima and we drove with the coast on our right and the desert on our left. There were slum dwellings everywhere – half-built, one-storey hovels – but then, all of a sudden, there’d be an advert: a billboard flaunting the gold of Inca Kola, like the gold rose in the cathedral, or a jar of Nivea or a can of Coke. Where would you buy them? There didn’t seem to be any shops. There were political slogans that had been marked out with rocks but down the road there’d be an Absolut logo in the same style. It was incongruous; insulting. We drove through it all in a big air-conditioned coach, in “Inca Class”. There were foot-rests and drinks holders and, above our heads, “The Matrix” dubbed in Spanish. Outside, thin, sickly-looking cows roamed slowly among the dust and rubble. The few people that you saw seemed rooted to the spot; discarded and left to rust.

When we arrived, there was a swarm of touts. The road to our hotel had run out, dwindling into mud and dust, and they ran along beside us, banging the driver’s door. Carlos said,

“Poor people”.

He shook his head. It wasn’t clear if he was being sympathetic or disapproving. They let us through only reluctantly, some trying to sell us trips or offer a better hotel or simply claim that they were guiding us the few yards to the door, smiling and talking constantly and grabbing at our bags. We followed Stephen. Inside, the lobby was all cool stone and potted plants. There were dim corridors and wooden stairs and a display case showing ancient coins, like teeth. The rest of the day was ours, Carlos had told us, but there wasn’t much to do. Once again, you could only walk within a certain area. It was a small town, with a well-tended but dusty square, but there were the same distrustful stares and there were armed guards next to the cash machine. Up a side-street, I could hear the sound of panpipes. I had been looking forward to this - had, indeed, expected to be moved by it - but they were playing a Beatles medley and, in a way, it was doubly disorientating: you couldn’t get to grips with the culture but were forced, instead, to account for the way that they were trying to get to grips with yours.

I had gone out alone. I am solitary by nature and, in recent times, had become more so. Since Judy left, I had traveled alone, mooning through Rouen cathedral and among the Giottos in Italy. I don’t know what I had expected from this trip. Company, I suppose, but not like this. Not this …affinity. Already I was being gathered in. It was both heady and disturbing. I needed to be free of company; of the assumption that we all felt the same way. I could imagine Stephen’s reaction to the armed guards and to the menus outside the restaurants: “Jumped noodles with meat”; “Hot suck of chicken”; a cocktail called “He/she came”. He would be scandalously delighted.

I picked up a key-ring that had been stamped with the image of a seal. The photograph was bleary and the body had been inadvertently doubled so that it seemed almost, but not quite, three-dimensional. The shop was tiny but it looked as though there had been an explosion, a starburst, of tat all over the tables and walls. It was as though someone had flung things everywhere, in a fit of rage or of misplaced enthusiasm, and I stood for a while, just looking, trying, albeit self-consciously, to sort through my own responses. I was trying to find an appropriate reaction, one that accorded more appropriately with being a “historian”, but it was difficult. I was, in my own way, just as delighted as Stephen would have been: this stuff was terrible. But then, of course, what I was actually saying was that our tat was better – that we were a culture for whom producing tat was its own reward. This led, in turn, to a feeling, equally untrustworthy, that Peru was, in essence, prelapsarian – a culture whose continued otherness was proved by the cumbersome way with which it sold itself to the tourists. Of course, all one was really seeing was poverty – the drawn-out consequences of the conquest and the bungled liberation.

My reactions were further complicated by the presence of Susan. She was outside, stroking a jumper that appeared to be unraveling as she touched it. I watched her for a moment and then said,

“It’s molting.”

I leaned out of the doorway and lifted a ball of what looked like fur. I was aware of her hand, up at the neckline, as though it were glowing.

“You’ll barely get it home”, I said. “There’ll be a couple of strands of string and a pile of fluff. You’ll have to knit your own.”

I had wanted to disassociate myself from the jumper’s shabbiness – to let her know that I was too shrewd to buy it. She said,

“I like it. I don’t think I would want to wear it, necessarily.”

“Just hang it up.”

She smiled.

“Or give it a bowl of milk”, she said.

Her mouth, once she had finished speaking, was pertly plump. Her smile transformed her face; it was as though someone had coloured it in.

“There’s an old woman by the square”, I said. “The jumpers are the same.”

I was going to say “but cheaper” but changed it to,

“She looks as though she could do with a sale.”

We walked back to the square. The woman muttered to herself, her fingers banging out a kind of morse, even as Susan was handing over the money. Her fingers were thick and knotty, like carrots, and one of her front teeth had fallen out. Behind her, there was a merry-go-round, a dream of pursuit, with predators chasing grubby pelicans who, in turn, were snapping at startled-looking fish. The predators, pumas and snarling panthers, looked comically malevolent. One in particular displayed a sort of italicised aggression; a relish that was hilariously self aware. I smiled, pointing, and said,

“Stephen.”

She didn’t react. Embarrassed, I shrugged and said,

“Forget it. He’s harmless.”

For a moment, she looked off into the middle distance. Then she grinned.

“And you?”

“Oh God”, I said. “It’s my distinguishing characteristic. My wife…”

She glanced at me.

“My ex-wife. She said that I was passive to a fault.”

“Yes, but that isn’t the same thing, is it?”

We were crossing the road. Our hotel was down a side-street and I thought of suggesting a drink but we were half-way there before I had framed the question properly in my head. She said,

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

“No, but I am. I’m still…”

She gestured, vaguely, in front of her – it was as though she was attempting to erase something.

“Me too”, I said.

We were almost there and now we could hear Stephen’s voice reverberating around the lobby. The ensuing laughter was so predictable that it seemed canned.

But it was different in the morning. Stephen lifted his glass of juice and said “more soup” and all of us, even David, laughed. We had gathered in the garden. Our fleeces were done up to our chins and we all held mugs of tea, two-handed, to warm ourselves. We had gone out together, again, the night before but only for an hour or so. Flies tried to settle on your dinner and, in any case, the meat was both lukewarm and tough. There was a certain atmosphere in the streets and bars but it seemed febrile; liable to break into hysteria. Even Stephen was subdued. This morning, there were rolls and meat, a sort of ham, and, of course, the same viscous juice that seemed to have clotted thickly in the glass. We sat two to a table and listened to Carlos as he gave us our itinerary. He had been leaving us to eat alone but, in the mornings, his routine was to bounce over to Stephen and squat beside him, showing him the paperwork, before he stood up and told the rest of us. This morning, there was another minibus. There was also a different driver, a squat, tough-looking adolescent who smoked roll-ups and who, when he’d finished, flicked them out of the window using his thumb and forefinger. His hair kept falling over his eyes and he was forced to blow it upwards, a gesture that only served to accentuate how young he was. As we pulled into the car-park by the harbour, he swerved needlessly into a space. Outside, he hoicked his trousers up then, sprawling upright on the door, spat into the dust. Carlos leaned over and muttered into his ear. The driver looked downwards, sheepishly, and dragged his toe across the mess, forming muddy little spit-bombs as he did so.Carlos turned to us.

“Paracas”, he said.

We were beside a line of low buildings. Ahead of us was the harbour, a simple horizontal that was intersected by the perpendicular of the jetty. Speedboats were tilting precariously from side to side as people were being helped on to them. The sky was cloudless, the waves so slow that they looked like the wake of a slow boat.

“We go”, Carlos said. “Out to the islands.”

Instinctively, I looked over at David. He had evidently decided to try harder – had laughed, this morning, at Stephen’s joke and had tried, on the minibus, to engage Mia in conversation. This had not been a success. She had stared directly at him, all her intensity frozen into a tight rictus of politeness. Now he was trying to be a sport. He looked at the boats and then at me. He rubbed his hands together, conveying a decorous enthusiasm.

“Nice day for it”, he said.

But a pulse had started on his forehead, just above his right eyebrow. The tendons on his neck were overly prominent. I said,

“It’ll be a breeze.”

I gestured out towards the empty ocean.

“Look”, I said. “No traffic.”

He grinned and nodded rapidly but his thumb was moving up and down the fingers of his left hand. He had on the same pair of combat trousers and another smart shirt. Seemingly of its own accord, his right hand had gone up to loosen the collar.

“Yes”, he said. “Perfect.”

He was making me uncomfortable and I made a show of looking around me. There were pelicans everywhere. The length of their beaks forced them to arch their necks backwards, giving them a slightly martial air – an aggressiveness that had been well represented by the merry-go-round in Pisco. One was muscling its way along the path and Susan was trying to take its picture. A man stepped out of shot then waved at it, waiting for Susan to snap it before he pushed his opened palm towards her. He was wearing a Harvard T-shirt that was ripped under the arms. You could see his upper arms and chest – sunk inwards, like quicksand. It was difficult to know what he was claiming – was he saying that he had distracted it or that he had directed it? I could see that Susan was wavering but Stephen stepped between them, pushing the man’s hand upwards with his own.

“Fuck’s sake”, he said. “Go on. ‘op it.”

He shook his head.

“Muppet.”

David nodded, at nothing in particular. I think the intention was to be seen to approve of what Stephen had done. But Stephen had already turned his back on him. He was marching to the boats, taking the lead to such an extent that Carlos had to jump up onto the jetty and hurry to keep up with him.

I was sitting opposite David when we set off. I could see his hands tighten on the seat; could see him straining slightly forwards as we accelerated. Mia retracted her head again. She boggled her eyes at Jess and then at David then back again, and Jess stifled a giggle. Stephen was staring at him. He said,

“How are you doing?”

“Oh, fine. Fine, thank you.”

But the way that he was projecting, sending his voice up and outwards, told you of the strain that he was feeling. Stephen’s enquiry hadn’t been remotely solicitous. He looked wary and exasperated, as though he was prepared to throw David out of the boat if he did anything stupid. Carlos was pointing at something.

“The Candelabra”, he said.

This was an ambiguous shape, something between a plant and a candlestick, that had been scratched into the surrounding rock. The local landscape was ruddy and bare and this symbol had been here for hundreds of years. The trouble was that no-one knew what it was supposed to symbolize. A cactus? Something hallucinogenic? A Masonic candelabra? At the mention of the masons, Stephen did a little secret handshake, sinuously dipping his arm so that it looked like a reversed swan’s neck and dabbling his fingers in Jess’ palm.

“Pass it on”, he said.

She did, but it ended at David. Diane wouldn’t do it. She tried to cover it up, to mimic a sneeze, and David showed no sign of noticing. Ahead of us were the Islas Ballestras, the islands that we had come out to see. There were two of them, in close proximity, and as you approached them you realised that they were covered in sea-lions, big glistening animals, barking and diving and splashing around you. Rearing upwards on the rocks they seemed to be almost headless – the sun glistened on their skin so that they seemed to be made, partly, of the water that surrounded them; to have coagulated into something like the spit-bombs that our driver had created earlier. Their heads, when you saw them, were oddly expressionless, with bulbous foreheads and bewildered little eyes. Stephen nudged me, nodding towards David, who was staring intently at them over the side of the boat.

“Separated at birth”, he said.

Even as he was joking, he was staring at him intently, like a marksman.

“Look at him: he’s home. He’s going to swim out to them in a minute.”

I couldn’t resist a small complicitous smirk. Ashamed, I looked for Susan. She was looking away from me, up at the cormorants who were flying in close formation overhead. They were like a display team – even if two of them broke off from the main group they would bank and wheel together in perfect unison. As we got closer, we could see that the rocks were white, covered in bird droppings. This was guano, Carlos said.

“We farm”, he said. “Since Inca time.”

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

“Very valuable.”

He had given the word four syllables. He pointed at the island’s summit.

“Security guards. You try to steal...”

He slapped one palm into the other. Slyly, he looked at Stephen.

“Boof”, he said.

We all laughed. David’s laugh was an odd sort of muted shout. He was still clutching the seat, I noticed. Stephen turned to look at him. He paused, allowing the pause to lengthen, then clapped his hands. He did it again.

“Keep going”, he said. “Go on: I’ll throw you a fish.”

David laughed again. He had made himself do it in much the same way that someone would force himself to vomit. He sounded as though he was in pain. His teeth were bared and his eyes went swivelling from Stephen to the rest of us then out, as though escaping, to where the sea was slapping at the rocks. His cap had been pushed backwards, exposing a patch of scaly skin. His top button was still done up and his hands were both pressed tightly between his knees. I thought: how odd he is.

We were idling in sunshine now. The iridescence on the sea-lions’ flanks was dazzling. There were orange sea crabs clustered on the outside of the rocks and they mixed with the white of the guano to form a sort of impasto. Stephen’s mood had darkened. He was asserting himself, insisting on directing our attention to a group of penguins. Ahead of us was a beach that was covered in sea-lions. The noise was tremendous, a confusion of barking and braying that sounded oddly affecting, as though they were pleading with us to be saved. The boatman looked at Carlos, who looked at Stephen: did we want to go further in?

“No”, Stephen said. “Bollocks to it. You’ve heard one fucking sea-lion you’ve heard ‘em all.”

Nobody argued with him. By now he was up at the front of the boat; he looked like he was leading some sort of expedition but it was obvious that he wanted to get back as soon as possible. At the jetty, he leapt out of the boat and helped the women ashore. We were unwilling to question him. We struggled after him, waiting to see what he would do. He was conferring with Carlos and now he was gesturing us onwards, throwing his arm over his head as though we were going to run through enemy territory. The minibus took us, through red hills and rock and sand, out to a nature reserve but this, too, seemed to exercise Stephen’s contempt. There was a wooden watchtower and, far away in the distance, a group of flamingoes that were little more than a smear of pink. There was a line of stones that he insisted we all cross. You weren’t supposed to step over them – they were the limit of the flamingoes’ boundaries. He sneered.

“Fuck sake”, he said. “Just stones.”

But even he could see that there was nothing to be gained from trudging down to where the flamingoes were. Even now, they were distinctly edgy. As we watched, they rose upwards together, a coherent group.

“Come on”, said Stephen.

It was as though something was rubbing against him, causing needless electricity. Back at the harbour, he bought us all a drink. I sat back, trying to bask, or, at least, to give the impression of basking, in the sunlight. But Stephen’s mood was catching. Mia’s thumb was twitching slightly. Martin was rubbing, rapidly, at his neck. Beside us were a trio of fishermen, broad, muscley men whose catch was glittering in a bucket. Sarah and David had gone to the toilet and now he was edging his way back between the tables. He had tried to make conversation but it had been like trying to make a difficult ascent in which you couldn’t get a handhold. Now, the set of his shoulders was similar to when I had watched him trying to cross the road. As I was registering this Stephen was standing up – was stepping over to the fishermen. He threw a note on the table and, with the other hand, he lifted out a fish. It flashed briefly in the sun – a limp dream-scimitar. He wielded it with a certain amount of confidence, slapping it into his palm, before he shouted “Dave!” and David turned his head towards him. He tried to smile but it was nothing more, really, than a brief exposure of his teeth. Stephen threw the fish. He hurled it, giving it everything he had, and, for a moment, you could register the incongruity of it – the weird beauty as it passed overhead. David reared backwards, kicking uselessly. We were all watching him now. He bumped into a table and attempted to catch the fish, one-handed. It went up into his face, as though it was attacking him. Someone’s coffee had gone over and there was the crash of falling cutlery. He looked like he was fending off a wasp, he was grimacing madly, and Mia started to laugh – staccato bursts that enabled us to label what we were seeing as entertainment; as would-be funny. Stephen sat down. He was flushed and grinning. Shrewdly, he looked at me.

“Damn it”, he said.

He clicked his fingers.

“I was going for the face.”

I smiled.

“Bad luck”, I said.

Flash fiction #3 Moscow

Magda is telling me a joke about pre-Putin Russia. She says,

"A woman wants to buy a car. She is given a voucher and told, "It will be delivered in 10 years"."

Her voice is intoxicating; a throaty gauze.

"She says, "Morning or afternoon?" The man says, "Why?" "Because the plumber is coming in the morning.""

I laugh. I am already three-quarters drunk. We are in a restaurant that is decked out as a sort of souk. They have pipes, here, that you can suck through vodka. It is like the bar in A Clockwork Orange: people are closing their eyes and falling backwards. I say,

"Yes. Funny."

She nods; she doesn't smile. The only time, so far, that I have seen her smile is when she saw me at the bar. Her friend seems to have disappeared. It's like a dream: the tented walls; the way the vodka seems to smother you. And Magda, too: her beauty. It is forbidding; angular and terribly symmetrical. She is languid and elegant. She looks, when she leans over me, as though she is dancing slowly towards me.

I pay for her. The next day, she shows me the sites. There are boulders of snow in Gorky Park. We see St Basil's, of course, and Lenin's tomb, which is a ziggurat; a modernist pyramid. Most of the buildings are too dispirited to be called brutalist but there are billboards, too: big, vivid dreams, which loom above the city.

"This", Magda says, "is where I would like to shop."

It is superbly tasteless: there are armchairs with ivory arms and gold and silver pool tables. She hangs onto my arm. I pay for lunch but I am happy too: I feel as though we are getting on. She tells me about her mother, a factory worker, and her overbearing father. She kisses me then brushes lipstick from my cheek. I am a litle drunk again. I think: I could get used to this. She likes me, I think.

We walk into the park. Someone is leading his dog across the lake. An old man is barking, repeatedly, but there are children, too, playing on swings, and couples holding hands. The snow is like geological strata: you can see the coloured paper, like confetti, that has been left over from New Year's Eve. I see that Magda's face is layered, too. There is her make-up and then her actual face, its thinness and its watchfulness. We, Magda and I, are holding hands. I think: this is romantic. No, I think, it really is. But then she bolts away from me. She pushes me out of the way. She races over to the snow and snatches something up. It is, I see, a 50 rouble note. She turns and tries to smile. She is no longer elegant; her elegance, I see, is something that has been, at it were, painted on. She shrugs.

"Moscow", she says.

Flash fiction #2 Rock Climbing

Katey, her arms outstretched, looked like she was nuzzling the air. She said,

"I'm at one with nature!"

Daniel snorted. Still, if he had planned a beach - if he could, himself, have arranged the sand and the rocks and the bright hut at the top - he couldn't have done a better job himself. The weather was a compendium: bright light and spots of rain and everywhere the wind. This wind - its constant bullying - insisted on the primacy of its environment; it told you that you counted, in the scheme of things, for almost nothing.

He said,

"Come on. There's no point sitting on the beach."

He led them up into the rocks. Susan, his teenage daughter, lagged behind. She had a gimmicky hand-held device on which she was rearing an electronic animal. She had to nurture it, she said; to pamper it. Her hair had been pushed outwards - she had done this herself - so that it looked like something you might see at Halloween. Her nails seemed to be slathered in neon light.

"Susan", he said.

He was going to tell her to hurry up; to watch her feet. They were on a plateau of rock but there were also egg-shaped stones, big boulders and jagged detritus; gravel, almost. But, he thought, what was the point? It was the same with Tom, his 9-year-old. He felt, sometimes, as though he was dreaming it, his family; as though he was the only one who heard his voice. His wife, meanwhile, had found a spot in the lee of a rock. She looked, from here, bulky and indeterminate but she was like that anyway. She had become generic: a wife and mother. In bed, he concentrated on different areas, as though he was trying, and failing, to dig for treasure. She said,

"Dan! Over here! The blanket: quick."

He spread the blanket. He helped to distribute the food. He watched the sea, its stateliness and grandeur. Here, in the chaos of his family - amongst spilled food and Susan's ipod, tssking everyone, and Tom's loud hatred of the wind - the sea seemed an ideal. Like poetry: line after rhythmic line. His wife had blobs of ketchup on her chin. He said,

"I'll just..."

He didn't want to complete the thought. If he put it into words then Katey might complain; Tom might ask if he could come. He picked his way away from them, over the rocks. He felt as though (this was ridiculous, but let it stand)he felt as though he was fending for himself. If one concentrated on one's own body - if one really concentrated on it; if one lived in one's feet and upper thigh and in the disposition of one's arms and legs - then family all-but-disappeared. It was delightful. Like meditation, or being drunk, you felt as though you were both inhabiting your self and watching it. More: watching over it. Behind him, the noise of his family became just that: noise. It was like a stain, a smudge, that was being erased by the wind. They looked like litter that he had, recklessly, left behind. He felt free.

By the cliff face, the rocks increased in size. Insects, too small to be identified, ran off the surface, in rivulets. He started to climb properly; to use handholds. He could hear the depth of his own breathing. He began to feel a little frightened but he also felt as though he had committed himself to something. It was as though the success or failure of the climb would say something definitive about him. He turned and, there, before him, was the sweep of the whole bay, defined more by the sky than by the sea and shore. He was a good way up. The wind was slapping at him, trying to tug him off.

And there, too, were his family. They were waving at him, now, and everything - his wife and children and the sea and shore and sky and the brilliant light, like water poured into a bowl - seemed to make perfect sense. He saw the way his son and daughter fitted beside his wife. He saw them as a pattern but, more than that, he saw them all as triumphantly human; colourful and vibrant in the grey and ragged rocks. He saw a space, too: his.

And then he fell. There was a moment of panic; no more: his head hit a large rock. He would never be able to tell them what he knew. Even as they began to run towards him, his body was cooling down. He was - his body was - becoming one with the larger, colder landscape of the beach.