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Authors: James Scudamore
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towards the safe. ‘I wouldn’t mind having another look at that. Do you believe all that stuff about the curse, and the lover’s finger?’
Okay , I thought. Okay, we’ll leave it for the moment. I can play this game .
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I know he builds things up sometimes to make his stories better. But do you think he’d lie to us?’
‘Of course he would. He probably just bought that tsantza himself from a junk shop. Stupid old bastard. He thinks we’re still kids. He thinks he can tell us anything he likes. I looked it up, you know – there’s a massive black-market trade in fake shrunken heads, just made out of pigskin and stuff, sold to tourists. The Shuar even make fake ones for themselves to perform their rituals, because they aren’t allowed to cut people’s heads off any more. There’s hardly any cocking chance it’s the real thing. The book I looked at even said how the real ones are made – they shrink the skin over a fire, then fill it up with pebbles so they can remould the face with their fingers. It’s got dick-all to do with shrinking it in the sun around a stone.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose you just have to ask yourself whether it felt real at the time; I mean—’
‘I asked him whether if I went travelling with my mother’s finger I would feel better about her not being here,’ said Fabián, perusing the bookshelves. ‘Unfair of me, probably, given that he’s her brother. He said it was up to me. He just came out with that same stupid line he always says: “Grief asks different questions of us all.” He’s an idiot.’
‘Hadn’t we better clean up that glass?’ I said.
‘No, leave it. Come over here. Look at the size of this encyclopaedia. Look at all the stuff there is out there. We have to go and see some of it. Otherwise we might as wellbe beaten to death up a mountain like poor fucking Juanita. I want to get away from Suarez and his fake shrunken head. I want to find my own shrunken heads.’
‘What about finding something else to drink?’ I suggested.
‘A noble suggestion!’ said Fabián, turning away from the encyclopaedia and pointing his finger at me. ‘First sensible thing you’ve said. You stay here and watch the driveway for Suarez. I think I know where he keeps a bottle of tequila. Otherwise, I’m going to break into Byron’s house and steal from him. Let him try and shoot me if he dares.’
Forgetting that Byron was driving Suarez, so wouldn’t be there to shoot Fabián even if he had wanted him to, Fabián left the library. I moved over to where he had been standing, near the bookshelves, from where I’d be able to see the lights of Byron’s car if he and Suarez came back.
Let’s get a few things clear here:
The set of encyclopaedias was not made of ancient cracked leather, or trimmed in gold leaf.
The binding of the volume did not billow out centuries-old dust as I opened it.
I did not find myself gazing in fascination at descriptions of a forgotten continent.
The twenty-two-volume family edition of the Encylopaedia Ecuatoriana was backed in leather-effect brown plastic, illustrated with faded 1970s colour photographs and printed on cheap, almost translucent, paper. It sat in Suarez’s library, between his imposing medical textbooks and a collection of old-style, red-spined Everyman Classics. You could have gone into any other middle-class home and found the same publication. In a belated effort to follow my mother’s suggestion, I pulled down the S–T volume and opened it at ‘Stonehenge’.
Just reading the name again was like throwing back thedustsheet on a stockpile of drab English memories: drizzle and anoraks, motorway cafés, a dismal visitors’ centre. But as I read the entry, I began to see the place in a different light. Why hadn’t I been told this stuff before? Here were druids and solstices, and great, hefty unknowns. I’d opened the encyclopaedia expecting it to be a boring, factual reference
Okay , I thought. Okay, we’ll leave it for the moment. I can play this game .
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I know he builds things up sometimes to make his stories better. But do you think he’d lie to us?’
‘Of course he would. He probably just bought that tsantza himself from a junk shop. Stupid old bastard. He thinks we’re still kids. He thinks he can tell us anything he likes. I looked it up, you know – there’s a massive black-market trade in fake shrunken heads, just made out of pigskin and stuff, sold to tourists. The Shuar even make fake ones for themselves to perform their rituals, because they aren’t allowed to cut people’s heads off any more. There’s hardly any cocking chance it’s the real thing. The book I looked at even said how the real ones are made – they shrink the skin over a fire, then fill it up with pebbles so they can remould the face with their fingers. It’s got dick-all to do with shrinking it in the sun around a stone.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose you just have to ask yourself whether it felt real at the time; I mean—’
‘I asked him whether if I went travelling with my mother’s finger I would feel better about her not being here,’ said Fabián, perusing the bookshelves. ‘Unfair of me, probably, given that he’s her brother. He said it was up to me. He just came out with that same stupid line he always says: “Grief asks different questions of us all.” He’s an idiot.’
‘Hadn’t we better clean up that glass?’ I said.
‘No, leave it. Come over here. Look at the size of this encyclopaedia. Look at all the stuff there is out there. We have to go and see some of it. Otherwise we might as wellbe beaten to death up a mountain like poor fucking Juanita. I want to get away from Suarez and his fake shrunken head. I want to find my own shrunken heads.’
‘What about finding something else to drink?’ I suggested.
‘A noble suggestion!’ said Fabián, turning away from the encyclopaedia and pointing his finger at me. ‘First sensible thing you’ve said. You stay here and watch the driveway for Suarez. I think I know where he keeps a bottle of tequila. Otherwise, I’m going to break into Byron’s house and steal from him. Let him try and shoot me if he dares.’
Forgetting that Byron was driving Suarez, so wouldn’t be there to shoot Fabián even if he had wanted him to, Fabián left the library. I moved over to where he had been standing, near the bookshelves, from where I’d be able to see the lights of Byron’s car if he and Suarez came back.
Let’s get a few things clear here:
The set of encyclopaedias was not made of ancient cracked leather, or trimmed in gold leaf.
The binding of the volume did not billow out centuries-old dust as I opened it.
I did not find myself gazing in fascination at descriptions of a forgotten continent.
The twenty-two-volume family edition of the Encylopaedia Ecuatoriana was backed in leather-effect brown plastic, illustrated with faded 1970s colour photographs and printed on cheap, almost translucent, paper. It sat in Suarez’s library, between his imposing medical textbooks and a collection of old-style, red-spined Everyman Classics. You could have gone into any other middle-class home and found the same publication. In a belated effort to follow my mother’s suggestion, I pulled down the S–T volume and opened it at ‘Stonehenge’.
Just reading the name again was like throwing back thedustsheet on a stockpile of drab English memories: drizzle and anoraks, motorway cafés, a dismal visitors’ centre. But as I read the entry, I began to see the place in a different light. Why hadn’t I been told this stuff before? Here were druids and solstices, and great, hefty unknowns. I’d opened the encyclopaedia expecting it to be a boring, factual reference
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