Infinite Ground (16 page)

Maria, a very old woman, didn't seem to have heard. She wore thick glasses and was dressed in black.

‘My name is Carlos,' he said. ‘I was having a meal with my family, just like you said. I know you. I know your names.'

‘You've been watching us, listening to our conversations. I don't know who's put you up to this, what kind of strange joke you think you're playing, but it's got to stop.'

‘No, you don't understand: I'm your cousin, Carlos. I really am. I left for the bathroom five minutes ago, that's all. Look, here's my identification.'

He reached for his trouser pocket and remembered that his wallet was in his jacket. But his jacket was not on the seat where he had hung it. The seat was occupied by a woman he almost recognized – she had a name he couldn't quite place – and on the back of her chair was a grey cardigan.

He obviously gave the impression of being wounded, because the man, the one who looked like an older version of Bernal, but not quite Bernal's father, Andreas, said, ‘Okay, tell me about myself. Tell me things you would only know if you really were Carlos, and not things that just anyone could have found out by eavesdropping or by interviewing friends and colleagues, researching my history.'

‘I…' Carlos stumbled. ‘We never really knew each other very well. We were never particularly close. We only really saw each other at weddings. But you are my mother's brother's son, Andreas's son, Bernal!'

Bernal, or the one who looked like Bernal, waited a couple of seconds before turning around, fixing the position of his chair again, straightening his napkin and resuming his meal, clearly disappointed. Something in his actions suggested it was not the first time this had happened; many people, perhaps dozens, hundreds, over the years and decades now, had pretended at one time or another to be Carlos. Now that he was finally here, really here, Carlos, it was too late and none of them would believe him.

26. Carlos returned six weeks after the disappearance, dizzy, gaunt, confused, walking back to his table at La Cueva, where the staff recognized him at once. There were jubilant scenes as the police and then the family descended on the restaurant. The matter of what exactly had happened was temporarily brushed aside – Carlos, for the moment, remembered nothing – and the family, newly resident in the suspended operations of the restaurant, celebrated. Carlos was taken under guard to the hospital, where his health would be restored, the story emerging in tandem with his convalescence.

The following evening, at precisely the same hour, Carlos walked through the double doors of La Cueva. The staff alerted the authorities at once, the owner a little irritated. Nobody was blaming Carlos, he said, to his head waiter, it is the police who can't be relied on to do anything. They can't find him, the owner went on, they continually disrupt our business, and then, miraculously, when he offers himself back they go and lose him again. It was incredible, but then, he said, they should hardly be surprised.

The police clerk still had him on hold. Eventually an officer's voice came on the line. ‘There seems to be a misunderstanding,' she said. ‘Carlos remains under guard in the hospital. I've just had it confirmed.'

The second Carlos remained at the restaurant, and the following evening, on cue, Carlos returned through the double doors of La Cueva. The subsequent evening a space was reserved at the table for Carlos to inevitably come home to. The evening after that, the entire table was cleared, the word ‘Carlos' written in concise script on a folded piece of magnolia card.

Carlos returned, again and again, filling up the restaurant. There were too many, soon enough, to know what to do with. La Cueva closed for business. The restaurant became a temporary shelter for many Carloses, who lived alone, suspicious of each other, but reliant on cooperation to survive. Each of them appeared identical, wearing a torn, folded white shirt, their faces thin and cut and smeared. They prepared food and cooked together in La Cueva, emptying the larder and the fridges and moving on to the carcasses stored in the basement freezer. Every evening, at the same time, they had to accommodate the presence of a further Carlos. They were not unaware of the problem. Soon enough there would be no space. They would run out of food. And then there would be nothing left but Carlos.

27. On 14 April 1832 the party rode on from Socêgo to a further estate on the Rio Macâe. The following morning they left the cultivated ground for uncut, Atlantic forest. Don Carlos noted the curvature of the fronds on the tree ferns. In the evening it rained and, despite the evidence of the thermometer, he was very cold.

Their party picked at a meal of rice, fish and coffee, while the rain hammered on the fronds above them.

After the rains, Don Carlos watched the spectacle of the rising evaporation. From the valleys the vapour rose up to the hills. The forest became obscured. Patches of the land floated in the general mist cover. He saw the white clouds rolling at speed, coming in to them. Soon, neither he nor his companions would be visible at all.

28. An atomic detonation, on the evening, locally, of the 24th, removed the Earth of its larger species. A fifty-six-year-old, semi-retired inspector was eating a meal alone in a hill-top restaurant when the explosion occurred. His body mass, along with that of his fellow diners, the waiting and kitchen staff, the parking attendant doing his rounds outside, the local population and everybody beyond was vaporized.

His last external sight caught an anonymous male, mid-­twenties, he thought, in the process of getting up from his seat, excusing himself as he left his party. His back was arched and he was pushing his chair in, tucked beneath the table to aid others walking by, when everything stopped. But the inspector did not see it that way. He found himself at home, in his apartment, with no recall of the restaurant, the meal, the other diners. He received a call from his immediate superior urging him to take a case, a current investigation that required his help. A male, twenty-nine, working in the corporate sector, had disappeared suddenly from a restaurant during a family meal.

The inspector struggled in his work. There was something, he believed, not quite right. He felt a growing sound and pain inside him. The city was warmer than he had ever remembered it, with periods of extravagantly dense light, especially in early evenings. He had the suspicion something was going to burst. Although his wife had died some years previously, he had never felt alone like this. He came up, in the course of his investigation, against a series of dead ends, false leads, apparently pertinent discoveries that led nowhere, to nothing.

Nothing had ever been so enticing, so delicious, and yet so maddening and frightening, as the certainty that something momentous was pressing in on him and he was bound to discover it. In the meantime he was cautious, wary. He thought he heard voices and suspected that neither the people nor the fluid sets around him were real.

At a table directly across from the inspector, at 18.45 on the evening of the 24th, a thirty-four-year-old pharmacologist browsed the wine list, turning around an inch or two to converse with her partner, when the bomb detonated. She found herself at home, in her apartment, with no recall of the restaur­ant, the meal, the other diners…

29. Carlos isn't here. Carlos isn't gone. This isn't everything. This is a brief light.

He lay in the dark a while longer, the sounds louder than he remembered. He didn't move and couldn't make out a thing. For the moment he didn't seem specifically located, just general in the sounds of the birds calling, water dropping, twigs breaking and the branches falling.

He was absorbed in his room, in a dark forest nest. The walls were thin, the exterior boards beginning to rot. Beyond that, circling the Terminación, covering it, was untouched forest.

The smell, he had learned, was fish. The farm had rotted and had not been cleared. Thousands of fish had bled into the mud. A tremendous waste. The stench drifted to the nearside of the Terminación, and, despite his acclimatizing, he remained conscious every morning of waking up inside it.

Miguel, reluctant as ever, almost seeming pained, had claimed it wasn't a simple matter. He sat on his stool, in the hut, drew on his cigarette again, said there had been a dispute about rent, tenancy and commission. The farmers in the end, in protest, had drained the pools dry and the fish writhed. It was unfortunate, he agreed.

‘But this smell,' the inspector said. ‘Don't you mind this smell?'

He hoisted himself up and felt for the lamp, then watched the room assemble. He walked to the toilet, came back, lit the canister and heated some water. He had risen early, had some time still before the flight out. While the water boiled, he cleared the small desk by the bed and positioned the upturned bucket as a chair. He poured the water into a tin mug and mixed in powdered soup, then prepared some tea. He unwrapped his half-packet of dried biscuits, preserved by newspaper tied with an elastic band. Sitting down in the dim room and facing the wall, low against the desk, he ate slowly, every crunch of the bis­cuit amplified, every slurp of his tea and soup louder.

He brushed crumbs off his thighs, grey in the lamp. His ­singlet was slack on his chest. His arms were as thin as a child's. He tensed and felt the discs protruding from his back. He imagined a warmth expanding into heat and agony as the head and the neck were bent, the back pressed too far, the spine snapped.

He wiped the desk clean and rinsed the containers. He remembered enjoying simple, basic actions such as this on the first days of convalescence after fever as a child. Those were the longed-for days when he didn't want anything else, just this, his health. In all the days before the convalescence, he'd gazed, stunned, at the prospect of a blank morning. Just the ability to move, see, listen. He was light from lack of food, uncertain, curious. His thinking was slow, wide and lavish, every word a new colour, and he was grateful, a kind of happiness.

The reception was vacant. Miguel was rarely at his desk, but you could normally count on one or more of the children playing, sitting momentarily, leaping from place to place, and, after enough prompting, one of them would eventually fetch the man. He wanted to reconfirm arrangements, just one more time. It was imperative that sufficient accommodation and provisions be arranged.

He waited.

The desk drawers were ajar, the calendars and accounts laid out for anyone to see. Someone was in trouble – the place had been left quite insecure. The door was propped open, all the shutters too. Light flooded in. Miguel would angrily chase the children when he found them. He was always having to sweep the floor of leaves, sticks, extract the moths from the walls and sluice a bucket of water through the ant columns. The children, several days ago, had told him what the ants would do. With typical exaggeration, Miguel's son informed him they would spread throughout the building and go under all the doors. They would go through his things: his boots, his rucksack, but they would not stop at the floor. They would climb the legs of the furniture, a live stream of several hundred thousand animals. Moving in lines, the ants looked like autonomous stitching, only they were working backwards, taking things apart. The girl added that he should check under his bedsheets before he lay down at night. They had run off, Miguel appearing, cursing them, and the inspector had laughed.

It was quite unlike Miguel to leave everything open like this. Still no sign of the children. He trailed back up the stairs, into the corridor. He knocked on the filmmakers' doors. ‘Alberto? Luis?' No matter how much they drank, the filmmakers were always up and working early. Must have gone especially early this morning. They would be out recording one last time, filming final footage, gathering establishing shots, continuity.

The reason, he thought, he could hear the birds particularly clearly this morning was because of an absence of the thoughtless sounds typically made by the other guests rising: chairs loudly dragging on the old wooden floors, gumboots clomping back and forth, insistent voices calling to one another with no regard for those who might still be asleep. He had always cursed them, muttered to himself in his own room as he tried to doze. But it was strange, now, without them. He would have liked to have known what was going on.

He walked back to his room and opened the door. His case stood up on the floor, where he had left it, his coat – a stupid idea, of course – carefully folded across the handle. His folders, his change of footwear, the underwear and spare shirts that he had washed with suds in a bucket in his bathroom and hung out the front on a hammock, it was all there, in his single leather case, neatly packed. He was surprised suddenly by how little he carried.

As he always did the day of a departure, he wondered whether he'd forgotten anything. He patted his trouser pockets, felt the jangle of his keys, his wallet. Everything was there, it was all in order. Travelling, and especially by air, always unsettled him. It didn't matter how excited he was or the extent of the planning that had gone into it, how sure he was of his actions, he felt a kind of nervous dread. It was illogical. Once he was up in the air everything would be fine. He could enjoy the view of the forest one last time, making notes, directing the order of all the tasks he had to attend to back home. It was good. He had reason to be excited.

He sighed loudly in the hall, as if expecting it to draw comment. He looked about him as he turned the key a final time, his coat over his shoulder, the light case in his left hand. He headed back downstairs, certain that the children would materialize to tease him one last time before he left.

The inspector passed through the front door of the Terminación, propped open with a brick, and walked out into unusual sunlight. It was never clear, in Santa Lucía, where the sun was, but he could even believe it was the middle of the day. That noise. A loud serenity. The river still. And the settlement completely deserted.

He was being dramatic. The place wasn't deserted. Of course not. He had simply come out of the hotel at a time when most of the residents were indoors, eating breakfast or otherwise at work just out of view. On the other side of upturned boats, standing, smoking, concealed in doorways, swimming, even, and momentarily submerged. But the river was unclean, oil-filled. He could see no smoke, hear no motors, no hammering. The labourers' camp was still. He waited just outside the hotel. There was a worrying absence of smell. Coffee, gasoline, baked bread. Nothing.

He walked directly to Miguel's hut. The one person, he thought, that he could count on to be there. He knocked, paced outside, then knocked louder. Miguel had no window on his hut. ‘Miguel!' he called out. Was he being ridiculous? There was no answer, so he pushed open the door.

Dust motes circled the air, lit from the doorway. The hut was warm and seemingly unchanged. The worktops, the wooden chairs and boards were still stained by oil and burned by battery acid. The severed connections, the brush copper of broken wire ends and exposed parts, remained laid out, waiting to be put together into a functioning whole. But Miguel was absent. Where, then, was he, if not here or the hotel?

He strode to Maria's, his head down, muttering curses; he had no time for any of this. As he swung past the dust-covered windows, he glimpsed tables laid and filled. The depth of his relief surprised him. He really had been getting worked up.

He walked in and the café was empty. It had been carefully set up that morning, he was sure of it, not long ago at all, but there were no people there. Instead there were half-eaten breakfasts, mugs with coffee lining the bar. Should he, he thought, check under the stained, long white cloths hanging from the tables – impossible to clean, Maria had said, although he hadn't noticed until then – even walk behind the service counter, where people could be crouching?

He paused before entering the kitchen, sure he would find at least Maria and that he would then have to apologize, really, for trespassing, going behind the service line.

Where was she? He came here every day, same time. She brought him his order, didn't even have to ask.

He'd wait a little longer, just a few minutes, for her to come.

He stood by the counter, tapping the wood, blood pounding in his ears.

He picked up a mug, still warm. The coffee couldn't have been prepared more than twenty minutes earlier. Definitive proof that they were all still there, around him. He was beginning to suspect that Maria had organized this trick, this prank. She enjoyed acting, after all. Perhaps it was some game, a kind of present before he left. It would have been a good sign, really, proof of how well he had integrated into the community. They were doing it all to mark his leaving. A lot of thought had gone into it. But he shouldn't assume just yet that it was all for his benefit. There were plenty of other explanations. Very rarely, he had heard, animals approached the settlement. There may have been a sighting, something spectacular, something to draw them out. He didn't understand why no one had thought to alert him. It didn't seem fair. He would have the point clarified with Maria or Miguel on their return. They were both quite aware of his interest in the natural world; surely they knew how much he would have enjoyed the sighting, how much he missed it now he wasn't there?

The coffee went cold; from lukewarm to cold in the brief time that he had spent waiting. They had to be there, just out of view, even around the settlement's edges.

As he approached the double doors he realized he'd delayed. The longer he spent in the café, the more likely the settlement was to be repopulated. He felt through the soles of his feet and the thin rubber of his boots the impression of dozens of them making their way back in, resuming their familiar places and carrying on with their daily work. There was an all but palpable pressure on the ground, the faintest suggestion of a sway, a gentle tip in the incline as the people landed. He tried not to smile. A momentary appearance of erasure, that was all. People indoors at their desks, bent at work, or standing, heads bowed, arms to the sides, in colours particularly suited to the surrounding vege­tation. With their skin concealed, there was nothing to offset them from the forest, there was no reason he should necessarily have seen them, really. He pushed open the doors, smiling.

Santa Lucía remained deserted.

He traced every single building and he knocked on every door. The windows were open, the doors unlocked, and he was surprised to see how unclean the rooms were, how much evidence there was that the outside was encroaching. He was really beginning to worry. Where were the filmmakers? He couldn't miss his flight out. Everything had been arranged, all the plans had been put into place, and they were on the cusp, now, of recovering Carlos. It couldn't fall down now, it couldn't.

He was still reluctant to call out. When he did he felt young, foolish. He was meek and unconvincing, the voice insufficiently urgent. He was suppressing alarm. The area no longer had phone coverage; messages were brought in by traders. And if he did have access to communication, what would he say? He shouldn't risk greater embarrassment – he had detected, already, a creaking in his calling voice. It was too early to panic. Whatever was going on – and there would be a simple, natural explanation – it would be revealed soon enough.

Should he take a boat? Had they moved upstream en masse? Perhaps something innocent had been organized and they had simply forgotten to let him know. He had retired early the previous evening, determined to sleep well before the journey out. He could have missed something. Equally, it was possible the date was significant, a point marked annually or even once a decade. A festival, a celebration or a mourning, something that couldn't be casually explained to an outsider. The community was participating in the festival. Something with costumes, repe­titions, a suspension of disbelief.

He still doubted it. But whatever had happened – and he would find out eventually, he had to, and it would almost have been worth it, worth this distress, to know – they had to have gone somewhere.

He had a distinct feeling, over his shoulder, that he was being watched. The only thing stopping him turning around was fear of humiliation. It may yet have been a game. He couldn't give them what they wanted, couldn't have them doubled-over with laughter at him. He should do his utmost to remain composed. It was conceivable that, as he entered one building, moved from one zone to another, they coordinated their own movements to remain hidden. They would be pulled, tied by thread, so that his movement produced an opposite force in them. He would never see them. The discipline was remarkable, especially in the children.

He made his progress irregular in an attempt to catch them out. Knowing the area so much better, they were at an advantage. They were around him, he could sense it. Although they kept quiet, they still had to open and close their mouths to breathe, move their limbs to keep out of sight. He felt the cloud of their breath and the swish of their procession. He would wait them out. Nobody was better at it. Eventually, they'd lose discipline and the theatre would fall.

How much food had they brought? Had they planted water and meat stores in pits in preparation? How big was this?

It escalated. He couldn't help himself. He took everything back further, all the way to the beginning. He had been guided here. It had all been set up, right from the start. He was naive in believing he had discovered the route himself, linking Carlos, the corporation and the forest. It had all been planted, mapped out in advance. There had been so many clues – how could he not have noticed it? The laughter, now, at his expense. None of it had been real, none of it authentic. The events were coordinated to bring him here, to this. The interviews inside the corporation, the actors portraying the family. Even the reports. The doctored microbiology, Isabella acting under instruction, reading out confabulated data relating to non-existent flora in a body, Carlos, she had never in reality studied. He had sensed something strange, once or twice, in her manner. The sound of her voice on the telephone. Unusual pauses as she expressed herself. She had wavered. She had almost given in.