Far South by David Enrique Spellman

Author:David Enrique Spellman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2011-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

I met Ana in the Temenos parking lot. I was still shaken by the meeting with Matas and Maria. I bent down to exchange a simple cheek kiss. The ropes of Ana’s dreadlocks scraped against my face.

‘Come on,’ Ana said, ‘we don’t want to be late.’

‘What’s with the meeting?’

‘We have to decide what we do about the performance in Buenos Aires next week,’ Ana said.

‘The performance?’

‘Yes, the one we were rehearsing before Gerardo disappeared.’

I nodded. I guess Temenos was a kind of commune. Maybe they had meetings all the time. I guess all of the people up here were dedicated to some kind of ideal: writing or painting or music; or – like Ana – for the theater group. Gerardo Fischer had been a charismatic focus for her dedication to that ideal. Why hadn’t they just stuck to theater and kept out of politics or crime? I guess that’s unfair. Crime had come to them in the form of Arenas, and politics had always been an integral part of Arenas’s criminal career. Maybe Fischer’s, too.

Ana and I followed the path from the parking lot down through the pines towards the meeting hall. She didn’t hold my arm, or my hand, and we might have been two strangers, or a client and an investigations consultant on our way to a meeting, which we were.

On the hillside paths from the cabins, other residents of the colony were headed toward the same place. Down near a small wooden bridge over the tree-shaded creek, cigarette smoke rose above the heads of two women and a man. Out of politeness I guess, they were keeping away from the main gathering of people in front of the hall. I raised a hand in greeting.

‘Hi,’ I called.

One of the women, about forty years old, had a halo of thick black hair, a thick waist, clothes stained with paint.

‘You’re the investigator,’ she said.

Ana kept on walking as if she hardly knew me.

‘That’s right,’ I said.

I lit another cigarette to calm myself down some more. All these images in my head: flat-faced Matas, bruises on Maria’s face, Ana’s face framed by dreadlocks that fanned in ropes across her pillow.

‘Thanks for coming,’ the dark woman said.

‘What? Oh, yes.’ I dragged some smoke into my lungs.

The male was wearing a brown sports coat that had seen better days. He was unshaven, a bit jowly. Either he ate badly or too much. The other woman had her hair cropped short and dyed a bright red, big eyes and cheekbones, a slash of bright red lipstick.

‘We should go inside,’ the redhead said.

‘Sure.’ I stubbed out my cigarette in a sand bucket with other butts.

Ana was with Sara, framed by the doorway of the meeting hall. Everyone started to drift into the meeting. When I got to the door, Ana took me by the arm.

‘You sit next to me,’ she said. I was glad of that.

Inside the meeting hall, the shutters had been folded back from the windows so that the theater space was flooded with light.

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