Rodrigo Rey Rosa - The African Shore

I told your uncle. He’s not happy, you know him — always so distrustful. He says he’s going to dock your pay for every day you miss. If you weren’t one of his favorite nephews, he’d have fired you already — that’s what he says.

I called last night at Solano’s house, but Victor hadn’t come back yet. Apparently the plane was delayed in Madrid.

Be good.

My love,

Thanks a million for the slippers and the caftan, which Victor brought over on Saturday, soon after he got back. They fit me perfectly.

On Monday we went with the Solanos on an impromptu visit — in Victor’s father’s small plane — to the Chocó park, since it was Victor’s birthday, as you know. The first hour we were there, it was as though all the animals decided to come out to greet Victor. We saw everything: two little foxes, tobacco- and orange-colored, some spider monkeys, two toucans, a coatimundi, a lizard that had the bad luck to be eaten before our eyes by a snake. And thousands, literally thousands of sulphur-colored butterflies — drifting through the jungle, moving south. They kept on going for hours — in fact, the whole time we were there. Victor said this could be a harbinger of bad weather.

I phoned the first secretary this morning, but he was in a meeting. He hasn’t returned my call.

My darling,

Your uncle phoned today, he was worried about your news. Victor’s going to fill in for you — just until you’re back, he assures me. I told him I talked to the embassy people, and he says he’s going to put some pressure on the secretary, but I think it could be a mistake. The secretary, don Sebastián Vichiria, is a nasty old creep, as your friend Blanca would say, and has some incredible prejudices. He seems to disapprove of your deciding to lose your passport in a place like Tangier. He says everyone knows it’s one of the sin capitals of the world. He refuses to deal with the honorary consul, whom you’ve visited, saying he’s a North American with the worst kind of reputation, and wants us to take care of everything through the embassy, which is in Rabat. He had the nerve to ask me if it wasn’t possible that you had sold (or given) your passport to a Moroccan; according to him, there are lots of cases like that. Is it true that many Moroccans die every day trying to cross the strait?

Well, my sweet. Take care of yourself, don’t get too bored, and think of me.

Hello precious!

Where are you? I called the Hotel Atlas — I can dial direct, contrary to what you told me — and they said you’d moved out.

Your uncle spoke with Vichiria, but things have gotten complicated.

Now he has suggested, in all seriousness, that you might be involved in running drugs. I don’t know what I’m going to do. You feel so far away. Your last fax seemed to me very cold. I hope our next meeting will bring back some wild passion with it.

Of course, I deposited more money in your account as you asked me to. But remember I’m not swimming in cash, and it’s worse now with the telephone rate gone up and my sending you all these faxes.

My beloved,

The bit about moving out of the Atlas because of an owl is original. But it’s not funny that you write only to ask for money. What are you doing all day? I repeat: you don’t need to be jealous of Victor or anyone else.

You can’t imagine the damage the hurricane has caused. People say it was almost as bad as Mitch. Three days ago they declared a national emergency. Nobody, at least here in Cali, has gone to work. The Solanos and I decided to travel to the Chocó this weekend (strange as it seems, the weather there is superb, according to Victor’s friends, who have a boarding house right in the park, on the edge of the Atrato) instead of staying here to watch it rain in Cali. Hundreds of people died on the coast, thousands lost their houses, and the streets are really bad.

I feel so worried, not knowing what to do and wondering when I’m going to see you.

Hello!

Last night I got back late from the trip and found only a few lines from your last fax. The paper had run out and I’d forgotten to change the roll — I’ve been so adrift. Can you send it again?

A Mr. Lavarría called you. It seems he has lost his house and needs help. Your uncle is beside himself, extremely upset with you. His warehouses are flooded more than a meter deep in mud, which now appears to be hardening. To clean it up will take months of work and a great deal of money. He says that, if you had wanted to, you could have gotten a safe-conduct to return immediately, and that you requested the passport in order to prolong your vacation.

I’ve got to go.

Hi my love,

Doctor Vichiria just phoned to ask me for money to send your passport by special courier to Tangier, to the house of one Mme. Choiseul. It’s a hundred dollars, which I don’t know where I’m going to find.

I have to tell you there have been changes here, some of them drastic.

The one that will affect you most, I think, is that your uncle has hired Victor to fill the position that you’ve left vacant for almost a month. I phoned him to tell him it doesn’t seem fair, but he hasn’t called back. I guess he doesn’t want to talk to me.

Begonia and Victor are separating — rather, they have already split up: she left him.

And (it literally breaks my heart to write it) I am leaving this apartment tonight, I think for good.

It was clear that whoever was following him had slipped through Spanish customs. The smugglers did it all the time; everyone knew it. It had been a mistake to accept Rashid’s proposition. Even if he had been offered ten percent of the money, it would have been a mistake.

He was almost sure it was one of the Moroccans he had seen filling out the betting cards with Rashid. Now, while the Spanish recruits were getting noisily drunk on beer and homesickness, the Moroccan was playing pinball at the other end of the Bodegas Melilla.

He picked up his beer from the bar and turned to look at a Moroccan girl. She was truly beautiful. She had fair hair and gray eyes. She was talking to a Spaniard with thick skin and deep wrinkles and the hoarse, almost metallic voice of an inveterate smoker. The girl was either a smuggler or a prostitute — or both, he thought.

He turned toward the large mirror behind the bar. Rashid had trusted him; now he distrusted Rashid. But that wouldn’t justify his disappearing after collecting the money instead of returning to Tangier. If they were following him, it was to prevent that. He slipped two fingers in the hidden pocket of his pants and felt the edge of the ticket. Fifty million pesetas was too much money.

Where did he catch up with me? he wondered. Foreseeing just such a ploy, he had changed his plans at the last minute. Instead of catching the ferry from Tangier to Algeciras, as he had told Rashid he would do, he took a bus to Melilla. He had left the pension at dawn, three hours earlier than planned, and he was sure no one had followed him to the station. But Attup could have alerted them.

After ordering another beer, and touching his chest pocket where he kept his new passport, he looked again at the beautiful Moroccan girl. She became aware of him and gave him a furtive smile. The Spaniard was explaining something to her, eyes fixed on the floor covered with sawdust and cigarette butts.

It would be absurd to die in Melilla, he thought.

He didn’t want to get drunk, and it was too early to sleep. He left the Bodegas Melilla and turned the corner at Juan Carlos I, instead of returning toward Primo de Rivera and his hotel.