Coming Home - Infinity and Beyond, Near Death on the Road, Monotony, Boredom and the End of the Magic Man

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Coming Home - Infinity and Beyond, Near Death on the Road, Monotony, Boredom and the End of the Magic Man

Thurs 12/06 - Present

Final Days

The coach moves over the bridge and into Varadero's main drag. Back once again with the ill behaviour, back to the beaches and the easy living lifestyle. I'm optimistic that the troubles are over. I've paid for everything up front and my hotel is all-inclusive. I've around 50cuc left, which I'm planning on spending on a few souvenirs and cigars. I'm confident I've covered all the bases. I'm just going spend my last few days relaxing, recuperating and reaping the benefits of another free bar.

The hotel Cuatro Palmas is located roughly half-way along the main road, in the town centre. I'm dropped off and met at reception by unenthusiastic staff. The place doesn't quite have the aesthetic of the Paradisus, but it considering it has two fewer stars and I'm paying less than half the price, the differences are negligible. My room is decent, with a balcony. Best of all, my bathroom has multiple mirrors, meaning once again I'm infinite in three dimensions.

I walk around the hotel, making plans for all-inclusiveness. There are three restaurants, one of which requires pre-booking, and a snack bar. The gym is pretty shit, full of broken equipment, but it has enough for me to work it and flex and press. The pool is a disappointment, being devoid of any actual water and undergoing repair, but the beach is only a few yards away at the back of hotel, and the water is warm and crystal clear.

Around 6pm, I take a seat in the bar. I start with a beer, but the gas is off, and I prefer mine with bubbles. I move onto Havana Especials (rum with pineapple juice and maraschino). I feel at odds with the rest of the clientèle. The majority are over forty - almost all the men are bulbous and rotund, burdened with pregnant bellies. Every face is moustached. Some have gone beyond the call of duty with their facial hair; pushing the boundaries, taking risks and bucking convention, like competitors in an extreme sports event. I feel my freshly-shaven face compunctiously. Oh, had I not been so hasty, these dogs might have accepted me yet. They eye-ball me with suspicion. I remain, resolute and determined. Hair or no hair, they'll not prevent me from getting drunk tonight. Disappointingly, the bar shuts at midnight, and that's when I retire to bed.

Friday morning, I'm up bright and early, and off to the buffet for breakfast. The food in the Cuatro Palmas is good, without any doubt tastier than the upmarket Paradisus, though with less choice. After I've eaten, I hit the beach. I sun bathe, swim and read. A feeling of warm contentedness washes over me. I haven't felt this way for a while. Everything has had an edge, a state of panic and emergency. I've felt like a first aider, applying band aid after band aid, fixing up, splinting, mopping blood, putting pressure on fresh wounds. Now, I'm lying in recovery, young nurse at my side, wiping my brow and holding my hand. She smiles; everything is gonna be alright.

Afternoon, around 2pm. I'm back in the bar, watching football. Holland are playing France, and beating them convincingly. I'm on my third or fourth Havana especial. A guy in a back-to-front baseball cap sits down next to me. He holds up a cigarette, and asks, initially in Spanish, if I mind if he smokes. I don't. We get talking. It turns out he's a teacher from Luxembourg. Like me, he's alone, having been granted permission by his fiancée to go away for some "time out".

We take it in turns to go to the bar. The football has long since finished, and David from Luxembourg is listening to my drunken tales of travelling. I'm holding court like a motherfucker, putting the world to rights, pointing out all the flaws, all the failings and trappings of a modern life that's rubbish and rotten to the core. At 8pm, after at least a dozen cocktails, we hit the buffet for dinner. Getting up out of my chair, I realise I'm drunk. I'll hide the fact to the best of my ability, at least until I've had the chance to soak up some of the booze with a plate full of meat.

We're drinking wine with the meal. I'm trying to work out David, and decide if he presents any significant danger. He could well be another Elvis; a lethal, implacable predator, with teeth built for stripping flesh and an untameable inner rage. If nothing else, David is a political monster. The conversation is relentlessly intense - politics, sociology, philosophy. We debate nature versus nurture, socialism versus capitalism, and Biggie versus Tupac (actually, not the latter).

After dinner, we go back to the bar, and go back onto the cocktails. At various points, the air seems to expand and compress, like pulsating bubbles or strange vibrations. My eyes struggle to focus and everything is tinted and hazed. I switch to beer, and pull myself around. By this time, I've come to the conclusion that David is harmless. He's too left wing to be a cannibalistic killer. Unless his social conscience is simply a cunning ruse to disguise his true nature, I think I'm unlikely to be dragged into any mayhem tonight. The bar shuts up shop. David says he's going across the road for one or two more. I'd happily continue, but I'm determined not to spend any money until I check out, so I head off to bed.

The next few days in the Cuatro Palmas pass without incident. Each morning, I get up and meet David for breakfast, after which we head to the beach. At lunch time, I eat lunch. In the afternoon, I go to the gym and spend more time on the beach. We go snorkelling, taking a catamaran out to sea and swimming amongst crowded schools of yellow and blue fish, which swarm and frenzy as they're thrown bait. The evenings are spent in the bar. David's a nice guy, but determinedly intellectually minded, and the topics of conversation rarely stray from politics or similarly serious subjects. I have no problem putting my brain to some use, but the discussions of Brown and Blair are relentless, and I'd be happy to take a break and just talk about the Aqua gym girls getting 'em out.

On my last night, after the bar closes, I sit outside on my balcony, smoking a Monte Cristo. The wind is up, and a storm is brewing out over the ocean. I sip a beer, and let out a sigh. Everything is coming to an end. Tomorrow, I'll make the journey back to Havana and the airport, and in less than 24 hours, I will be home. Will anything have changed? Will life go on as normal? Will my old clothes still fit or will I want to throw it all away and slip into something more comfortable?

Tuesday the 17th of June. The weather has turned. I spend a couple of hours on the beach and have a last swim, and then the rain comes down. As I pack up all my things, I look out of the window, and see everything cloaked in heavy black clouds. There is something hanging in the air, hovering with ominous intent. I've had five quiet days of peaceful inactivity. Nobody has done me harm, and no harm has come to any that have crossed my path. Five days is a long time. I can't remember five consecutive days passing without some kind of problem rearing up. Five days of calm. And we all know what calm comes before.


Coming Home

I'm picked up by coach at 2pm. I take a seat on the back row. The driver does the rounds, stopping off at two or three other hotels. I'm joined on the coach by a mother and her twenty-something daughter, both of whom sound like they're British, or maybe Irish. Then, a party of five or six French get aboard, and finally a young couple, also French.

We leave Varadero behind, and begin the journey back to Havana. Passing through Matanza, the weather is fine, but as the day grows older, the skies darken and rain lashes down. Lightening flashes on the horizon, and my thoughts turn to the flight home. Do I really need to be taking off in the middle of a thunder storm? Is that the kind of drama I'll have to sit through in before I finally make it back? I'm reasonably confident I'll get through whatever gets thrown at me, having made it this far, but I'd happily settle for an easy ride. If I have to sit through an in-flight movie, better a light hearted comedy than any roller-coaster thrill rides. I'm all done with adrenaline.

I'm looking out the window, and around the coach, at the people alongside me. Opposite, a young French girl, maybe eight or nine, bounces up and down in the seat next to her mother, whilst her grandparents turn around and watch her, smiling. The father sits two rows in front of me, and behind him, an older teenage daughter. What kind of life have these people been living? What kind of person will this girl grow up to be? It all looks like happy families from where I'm sitting. A holiday in the sun, far away from home. Something to tell the school friends about. A memory to look back on in years to come.

Nobody pays me any attention, and I wouldn't expect them to. They've no idea who I am or what foul shit I've been mixed up in. They don't know about India, about the liquor-trips in 'Nam or the jungle fever. To them, I'm just another holiday maker; a single guy, along for the ride and some fun in the sun.

It's raining hard now. Every thirty seconds or so, the sky lights up with flashes of electricity. The road is heavy with traffic, still all moving at speed, whilst outside, pedestrians line the highway, huddling together under shelters or taking the soaking where there is none. The coach moves across the road to the left, overtaking a car. The French grandmother, overweight and leathery brown, lets out a gentle, disapproving murmur. The coach continues to move left, edging towards the other side of the road, into oncoming traffic, and murmurs turn to cries of alarm. From my vantage point at the back of the bus, I can't really see too much, but it seems to me that the driver is pushing his luck manoeuvring like this considering the conditions.

The coach carries on veering left, and it's now clear that something is wrong. The driver swings the wheel right, and we slide back across the road, now almost horizontal across the lane. People are out of their seats, the volume of cries increasing. We're out of control now, slipping and sliding, narrowly missing passing cars, and suddenly heading at speed towards the side of the road, and a steep, grassy verge. Cries turn to screams. The fat French grandmother has her hands held in the air, a sharp, high-pitched noise bursting from her lips. As we head over the edge, she screams and screams, drowning out all other sounds. I can see exactly where we're heading. The coach is tipped up, pointing down into a steep ravine, at the bottom of which lies a dried up, stony river bed It's not a vertical drop, but it's not far off. I'm on my feet, bracing myself against the seats in front of me. A strange, butterfly-like feeling rises in my stomach. My head tightens and adrenaline washes away the reality of the situation and I almost feel as though I'm standing outside of my body, watching it all happen. This is a pivotal moment. Any second now, the slope will become too steep and the bus will roll, maybe even tip. When that happens, any clarity will disappear. There will be chaos, panic, bloodshed and pain. Our destiny is out of our hands. Live or die, there is little any of us can do to swing the vote.

Almost as suddenly as it all began, the coach comes to a halt. Everybody can see our predicament. We're tilted at a dangerous angle, staring down at the drop below us. The young French girl is in floods of tears. The grandmother is still screaming. The Irish girl cries out for nobody to move. It's all very Italian job. None of us have any idea what has stopped us, or how secure we now are. The driver, who speaks no English, is silent and little use. He presses the door release button but nothing happens. One of the French guys near the front gets up and tries to force the door. The driver shouts at him, telling him to push harder. I look over my shoulder, back at the road. A stream of people are dashing towards the bus. The first wave reaches us, and helps the French guy force open the door. We shout from the back for them to let the young girl out first, and she is passed down and helped through the door to safety. People get up and follow slowly, but I can see the fear in the driver's eyes, and I'm guessing he's not too confident that our position will hold. I hurry people along, envisaging the bus rolling away with just me remaining aboard. Finally, I'm out, leaving the driver alone. A human chain has formed, people holding hands, edging down alongside the cab. The driver reaches down, and jumps. He's caught and dragged away back up the slope.

The rain is still pouring down, and in seconds we're all soaked through. The French huddle in a group, the women all in tears and the men trying to comfort them. I wander away from the bus. The middle-aged Irish lady appears in front of me, and wraps her arms around me in an embrace. She asks if I'm alright, and shakes her head in disbelief at what just happened. I'm smiling. "That was too fucking close." I can see she's shaking, cold from the rain, and I offer her my jumper. There's activity all around us. People are unloading our bags from the back of the bus. A police car has turned up, and the roadside is lined with cars and buses that have pulled over. I'm amazed how many people have stopped to help, and at how quickly they all acted, in total unison.

The Irish lady asks me if I'll speak to her daughter. I look over, and I can she the girl's lips quivering, as she takes a moment to digest what just occurred. I walk over and ask if she's okay. She composes herself, telling me with a faint smile that she's alright. We're told to load our bags onto another coach. I help carry them over, and we get everyone on board. One of the French men takes his bags onto the bus and hands out dry clothes to those that need it. Our new driver pulls away, and we leave the scene behind, the bus still jutting out over the edge of the verge.

A few muted conversations go on for a few minutes, but soon the talk dries up. Everybody is lost in their own thoughts. I just can't stop smiling. Somewhere, out there, another motherfucker took a pop at me and came up short. That feeling in my guts that something bad was gonna happen was not ill-founded. Still, the Jackal was not far off his mark. The bullet whistled past my ear, and I'm shaved a little closer. I feel kinda guilty. I feel like I'm to blame for what just happened, like my luck rubbed off and almost took us all down. There's something a little sick about the whole thing. If fate wants to fuck with me, fine, but nobody else needed to get hurt. I look at the young French girl. She's sitting still now, silent. Those happy holiday memories have been replaced by fear and deep shock. I want to reach out and tell her everything's alright now, but these people are strangers again; we briefly bonded in shared near-death relief, but now things are back to the way they were.

I'm searching inside myself to work out how I feel about things. Banks give me palpitations but when a danger with real teeth lashes out, I tend to be unmoved. Without exaggeration, we all came very close to serious injury or even death, but the fact that I'm still here, without a scratch, makes me feel almost untouchable. It's like it's just one big rollercoaster ride - just another story for the folks back home. The only thing that keeps my nonchalance in check and plays over and over in my head is the screaming. I can't remember hearing a sound quite like that; horrible and chilling. That big ol' French mama opened up her lungs and she let rip. She just let go and lost the lot, drenched in her own terror, convinced death was seconds away. I'll get over the rest of it quick, but the screams will linger long.

We roll up at the airport, and are met at the front entrance by airline staff. They check that everyone is alright and offer counselling or medical attention. Everybody else is on a flight to Paris. I say my goodbyes, and then I'm alone once again. I wander around the airport, and find my check in desk. I'm told I need to pay a departure tax of 25cucs. I shake my head. These motherfuckers. I mentioned in a previous blog my hatred for these so called taxes. It's bullshit. I've got exactly 25cuc left in my wallet. I've been counting pennies for weeks, and my mentality has long been that every bit of change counts. The idea of giving away money for nothing goes against all of my instincts. It sickens me. I've been planning so carefully. I earmarked the cash for food, drink and maybe a few cigars. Hell, I almost died an hour ago, and I'm not leaving without at least one beer. Now these fucks wanna reach into my pockets and rob me.

Not without a fight. At the payment desk, I plead my case. I tell them I've no money left (a lie). They tell me to visit an ATM. I tell them by bank has fucked me and I've no way of getting any more money out (the truth). They shrug. They tell me to go back to the Air Europa desk and ask them to help. I try a slightly different tactic with the airline. It's pretty clear I won't get on for free. I tell them I'm five pestos short. I explain my financial situation, and plead for a bit of fucking compassion. There's no way I'm letting you empty my wallet - just let me on the fucking plane. The lady behind the counter tells me to ask someone to give me the money. You want me to beg? You want me to beg from perfect strangers? I shake my head, and move one lane over, to the supervisors desk. I'm determined to get my way. If I just keep asking, surely they'll let me off five measly pestos? Just as I'm about to reach the front of the queue, the first lady starts talking to another passenger, a young, affluent-looking Spanish guy. She explains my situation and he tells me he'll give me the money. Shit. Now I feel really bad. I'm lying about being five short on a matter of principle - if I hadn't got my way, I'd have gone away and pretended that I'd raised the extra. I didn't actually want to take money from a stranger.

And yet, here I am, doing just that. I pretend to find a few extra coins, saying I only need three more, but the guy gives me a five and tells me to keep my change for a drink. He takes me over to the payment counter, briefly explaining to his wife and mother, who give me pitying looks. I smile weakly. I'm such a pathetic son of a bitch.

When I get through into the departure lounge, I'm paranoid about spending my remaining cash, in case my charitable Spanish friend should see me. I can get away with a drink but a full plate of food would look suspicious. I end up having three cans of Crystal. I deserve that much.

And so I board the plane, and make the journey, arriving in Madrid nine hours later. I'm supposed to collect my bag and then catch a KLM flight to Amsterdam. However, there's another problem. It seems that, although my flights were changed and I was given tickets, I wasn't actually booked a seat on either of my final two flights, which are now full. I exhale wearily. I look the Air Europa man in the eye. Just put me on a plane home. Just get me the fuck home. He types away on his keyboard, and makes a phone call. "Sir, I've booked you onto another flight, leaving in an hour. It's direct to London, so you'll be home four hours earlier. Oh, and they didn't have any seats in economy, so I've put you in business class." I want to kiss his chubby cheeks. Finally, bad luck turns good.

I fly home in comfort, a dishevelled misfit in amongst the suits, who fiddle with their blackberries and their laptops. I arrive in London Heathrow, 148 days after leaving. The feeling is relief mixed with regret. I'm glad to be home, and away from all the drama, but I also know that it won't be long before the normality eats away at me and breeds contempt. If only this was a pit stop. If only I could jet off again in a few weeks, recharged and rehabilitated.



The End of the Magic Man

So the Magic Man is dead. I took his corpse outside and buried him in the yard. His brains were bashed in, his heart pierced and bloody, his body was bent and broken and cracked like the dry earth. I buried him deep and filled in the hole. Nobody's gonna find him down there. Nobody would even think to look. I say a few words, and spare a few thoughts, and then turn and walk away. A few crows circle. Dust settles. Then - nothing.


Aftermath

We walk inside the house. We turn on the TV. We make a cup of tea and we sit and we stare for a while. We go back outside. We search for the sun. We never find it. We go upstairs and we come back down. We cook food. We eat. We get into bed. We sleep. When we get up, we don't bother to check the time. We put on clothes and we brush our teeth. We shower. We shit. Sometimes, we shave. We walk outside into the world, and we see if it's changed since the last time. The roads are still tarmac. The houses are still brick. The concrete stays set and the steel never falters. We look for things we can't find and we find things we never knew we had. Some days, we search for meaning. Most of the time, we know better. We watch our money trickle away, like stale piss down a long, long drain. We put the camera away. We place the bag in the corner. We don't unpack - there's nothing in there we need now.

Somewhere, in another universe, we live another life. We still wake up drunk, and we still wake up in the sunshine. We look around and the trees smile back at us. We can walk for miles and never get tired. Somewhere, at the edge of the earth, the two worlds meet. We can look across the void and see our other self standing there, surrounded by happy faces, bathed in warm light. He walks towards us, over land and over sea; through tall dark temples, over bridges, under tunnels, ducking beneath the canopies, hustling through the bars, winding through crowded streets, flashing lights, bright colours, swirling winds, over deserts, jungle, snow capped mountains and angry rivers, staggering, drunken, eyes red, ears bleeding, smile cracked like a shell. When he reaches the intersection between the two worlds he stands and stares back at us. He holds out a hand. We strain and we struggle but our arm won't stretch that far. He stands, puzzled. He reaches out again. Our finger tips are inches away, then centimetres, millimetres, fractions, but still, we never touch. He shakes his head. He turns and he strides away, and the creatures fold in around him and lead him back into the world, which moves and vibrates, changing into new forms every second. We stand at World's End and we call for him to come back, but he can't hear us, and the image blurs and fades, like smoke and mirrors, and then it's gone.

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