Read Online Villa Pacifica by Kapka Kassabova - Free Book Online Page B

retired ETA terrorist?” Jerry sniggered. “South America cracks me up. It’s full of retired Nazis and weirdos.”
    No one responded. This was sharp language for Jerry. He seemed a bit drunk, though half a bottle of wine couldn’t possibly account for it.
    â€œAll right, you losers.” Max stretched lazily across his chair. “If you don’t wanna play, you don’t wanna play. I’m bored. What are we gonna do. Let’s go have a game of darts. They have games upstairs. Alex?”
    Alejandro seemed a bit lost. “All right,” he said, picking himself up. “Alma, you want to play?” She did. Eve didn’t. She yawned and announced she was off to bed. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, but Ute felt shattered too, as if she’d walked through the national park all day, all twenty hectares of it.
    Just then a feline roar ripped through the silence. Everyone froze and looked around. Night had fallen – a deep, equatorial night.
    â€œJesus,” Jerry said. “That sounded close. Must be the lion cub.”
    â€œShe’s lonely,” Max said. “She’s a girl. Girls need company. Ain’t that right, Alex?”
    â€œYeah,” Alejandro chuckled uneasily and took Alma’s bird-like hand in his and rubbed it.
    Jerry and Ute exchanged looks. It was time to retire. They got up and bid everyone goodnight. The lion’s sorrowful roar followed them down the ghostly white path all the way to la tortuga . The humid darkness seemed to magnify sound.
    â€œSounds a lot closer than it is,” Ute said.
    â€œIt’s not that far, really,” Jerry said. “But I’m surprised the sound isn’t muffled by all the vegetation.”
    â€œI’m exhausted,” Ute said. “I think it’s Max.”
    â€œHe’s unbearable. But he’s a certain kind of rare specimen. Almost a parody of himself. If you put him in a book, he would seem exaggerated.”
    â€œWell, I’d rather examine the specimens of the local flora and fauna. It’s more relaxing.”
    Jerry put an arm around her waist and kissed her eyelid. He was grateful that she’d agreed to stay longer. Everything else was peripheral. Under the mosquito canopy in their cabin, he passed a glad hand over the contours of her body, but she didn’t have the energy for it. She felt disconnected from herself as well as from everyone else.
    Again, she slept the sleep of the innocent. And again, her dreams were far from innocent. She dreamt of a woman statue who wasn’t a statue at all. She stood in a clearing in the middle of a jungle, white, perfect-faced and naked, her breasts bursting with jungle sap. Then, out of the bushes came a hairy, olive-skinned man who stood behind her, placed his hands on her breasts and started humping her. It was Max. No, oh my God, it was Jerry. No, that was impossible. She didn’t want to know. She looked away from it, and yet it was everywhere. And the statue was… It was either Alma or Eve, she couldn’t tell, because the statue’s identity was somehow beside the point. She was every woman, the female principle at its most basic. And as he humped her, the statue’s belly started swelling. Ute felt aroused and repelled at the same time, because she knew that this primeval spectacle was put on especially for her, that they knew she was watching. That they were provoking her, trying to tell her something. She ran back into the dark forest, but straight away came onto another clearing drenched with light, and there too was an identical copulating couple. And again she turned away and ran through dense vegetation, sorrow and anger clutching at her throat, and again – a clearing where… She was surrounded.
    She woke up drenched in sweat, shaken and annoyed with her dream. Jerry wasn’t there.
    In fact, she felt ill – not physically, just generally ill. Maybe it was the