9 — On the Road to Quintana Roo

I couriered the old banknotes to Jorge and arranged to meet him a few days later at a truckers' stop outside Xalapa, Veracruz. When he pulled up, I chucked my rucksack onto the back seat of his jalopy and sat in the front. It was early, still cold and misty, and Jorge was dressed for adventure, with a big khaki coat of many pockets and heavy boots. For a moment I stared at the gap on the steering wheel where three of his fingers should have been. I hadn't seen Jorge since the incident on his roof, a few years since now.

"Still got the shoebox, I see," he said. "What's with the eye patch?"

"I had an accident," I said. "Hyper-sensitivity. It's getting better."

Jorge nodded slowly and pursed his lips. "Your money turned out to be quite valuable," he said. "I took it to a dealer in Mexico City. So what's the plan?"

"Breakfast," I said.

Maybe ten minutes later we were sitting at a roadside eatery in plastic chairs that were just a tad too small, shivering slightly and not saying much. The place was makeshift but at the same time looked like it had been there forever; they had a faded orange tarpaulin suspended on poles and held up with guy ropes, and pewter-grey gas cylinders fuelling simple burners. A young lad stood dishevelled in the steam of a drum of coffee, dropping cinnamon sticks into it like he was dropping stones into a sinkhole. He curled his toes in his flip-flops and shivered. A fat woman sat knees wide in front of a brazier and griddle close by, her skirt pushed deep between her legs; she was slapping unleavened blue corn dough from one palm to the other, forming a thick tortilla into which she would fold fried black corn smut before dropping it onto the hotplate. On the griddle, green tomatoes, garlic cloves and green chillies hopped and popped quietly for the salsa, and a saucepan bubbled thick with beans nearby.

The fat woman looked at me and we exchanged a smile. The mountains behind her were dark green and dripping; heavy trucks rumbled by and thickened the air with diesel fumes and dust.

When the coffee came, I relaxed a little and lit a cigarette. Jorge shook his head when I offered him one.

"I promised Gloria," he said. "I've been ratty since I gave up again 22 days ago… no, 23. Maybe that's why she wasn't too upset when I told her I was going on a trip."

"What else did you tell her?" I said.

"Nothing," he said.

I drew deeply on the cigarette, feeling the nicotine spread out from my lungs and bring the balance back. Jorge chewed a finger on his intact hand.

"Thanks for coming," I said. "I wanted to avoid going into the city."

"No problem," he said. "I figured you were staying away for a reason. Are you in trouble?"

"Not exactly," I said. We were quiet for a while; maybe he was waiting for more detail. None came and he shifted in his seat and brushed a speck from his knee.

"I had a visitor," he said. "A woman, looking for you."

I asked who it was, like I didn't know; I don't think he was convinced. In any case he ignored the question.

"So when you called, I figured there was something up," he said. "I didn't tell Gloria about this woman, or about meeting you. She would want to know everything; she would have wanted to come with me."

"So what happened?" I said.

"It was kind of weird," he said. "It was a hot afternoon and I was taking a siesta. I don't normally answer the doorbell, because it's usually just people selling dishcloths or pegs or something; you know the deal. But it rang so long I had to go down eventually. I opened the door and there was this woman, standing in the street, dressed like she should have been in a boardroom, or court or something."

"High heels," I said, "short black skirt, dark stockings and a white blouse?"

Jorge nodded. "Quite the looker, standing in the street wearing big dark glasses; like I said, it was a hot day, but she looked cool as you like. And she says to me 'I'm looking for Peter, the Englishman who lived on your roof'."

"I never told her that," I said. "At least I don't think so. When was this?"

"Couple of weeks ago," he said. "When I said I didn't know where you were, she asked to see your room."

Plates were placed in front of us and we spent a minute or two smearing salsa and chewing gritty blue corn. The beans tasted of iron, and the salsa was sharp and too salty, but the corn smut was delicious. I wanted water; I hadn't drunk any straight water since I'd left the Pacific coast several days before. The sugar in the fizzy drinks I'd had just made me more thirsty.

"When I say she asked to see your room, it was more of an order," said Jorge, picking a chilli flake from his teeth. "I don't know why, but for some reason I just stood aside, like she had a right to look, some kind of ownership."

I nodded and waved to the boy for more coffee. Jorge leaned forward and wrapped his arms around himself.

"I'd hardly been in there since you left," said Jorge. "It was dusty and full of cobwebs. There were cockroach carcasses and dried out moths all over the floor, little ants weaving between them. But she went in, looked around, sat on the bed and ran her hand over the sheets. I remember thinking how tiny her fingers looked, how perfectly shaped her dark red fingernails were, how the colour matched her lips. Then she took a silver pistol out of her bag and held it on her lap like it was a prayer book. It was way too big for her hands, and she stroked it like she'd stroked the sheet, took off her sunglasses and looked at me with these cold dark eyes, and asked me again if I knew where you were. Somehow I felt a straight 'no' wouldn't do."

His glasses steamed up as he sipped at his coffee.

"So," I said. "What did you say?"

He put down his cup, took off his glasses and wiped them with a red bandana.

"I told her that my wife had fucked you, and that if I knew where you were I would hunt you down and kill you," he said.

If this was a novel, my jaw would have dropped; as it was I just stared at him. He popped another piece of tortilla into his mouth and shrugged.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said, "and it worked. She put her glasses back on, put the pistol back in her bag, and stood up."

He sat back and sighed, stretching his arms behind his neck.

"Then, Peter, she patted me on the cheek, said 'Peter is mine, Mr. Figuerola', and left. I followed her down the stairs, watching how she took each step carefully, like she was too high up on those heels, almost vulnerable, and I felt like I should be helping her somehow, and when she climbed up into in her car, she looked kind of vulnerable.

"It wasn't until half an hour later, when I went to the bathroom, that I noticed I had a cut on my cheek. It wasn't particularly bad, not much more than a scratch, but it wouldn't heal, and then it got infected and I got a fever. I was laid up for days."

The refresher coffee came and I sipped at it as quickly as its heat would allow. Jorge fiddled with his plate, spinning it around on the table between us, and we were quiet for a while.

"Why did you come to meet me?" I said. "You didn't have to."

Jorge shrugged again. "I was intrigued, what with this woman, and then you calling and sending this money. Life has been a little dull recently, anyway, and I thought it would be fun to have a road trip." He reached into his coat pocket, took out a fat envelope, and handed it to me.

"Talking of money."

He watched me count it; it wasn't a great deal, but nothing to be sneezed at either. I handed it back to him.

"It's yours," I said. "Back rent."

He shook his head. "I don't want it; I don't know where it's come from. Anyway, I think you might have more use for it, somehow. So where are we going?"

I hadn’t expected this. I stubbed my cigarette out and breathed the rest of the smoke from my lungs. "I'm heading south," I said. "I hope to get over the border into Belize."

"Man," he said. "What are you running from?"

I didn't answer. A big black car was pulling up at the roadside. Its plates were local but all the same it made me nervous. I watched the air shimmering on its bonnet for what seemed like an age before the driver door opened and a young guy got out, rubbed his eyes, and made his way to a table.

I put one of the notes from the envelope on our table and stood up.

"If you can drive me a little way, I'll tell you all about it," I said.

So as we drove south, Jorge leaning into the wheel and squinting at the traffic ahead, I told him my story since I'd left his place. It took a while, mainly because I had to keep going back and filling in the gaps, and there were a lot of gaps.

"I don't get it," he said eventually as we lost the traffic and started winding up into the hills on a narrow, potholed road. "What's the deal with you and this woman?"

I looked out the window at the green blur of the roadside, then fiddled with the radio, but couldn't get anything more than static.

"I mean I understand that she's some kind of psychopath," Jorge said. "But why would she bother chasing you?"

I shrugged and wound the window down, then wound it back up again.

"What did you do?" said Jorge.

I pulled down the visor and looked at myself in the tiny mirror there, lifted up my eye patch and felt a wave of bright light fill my brain until all I could see was white.

"Nothing," I said, replacing the patch.

"Come on!" said Jorge.

I took my cigarettes and lighter out.

"Not in the car," said Jorge.

I sighed and lay my head back, but there was no headrest, so I lurched forward again.

"Alright," I said. "There was something."

He waited, but he couldn't wait long.

"Go on then!"

I shifted in my seat once again.

"I didn't even think about it at the time," I said. "Not until I was in the tower in the mountains reading these letters between lovers, like I was telling you, and sometimes they would stop talking to each other, and that seemed worse than the arguments, turning over the long pages of silence, days into weeks and years, and I thought about Alice, and the things that really hurt when she left, and in a way, the worst was that she never said goodbye; after she lost the baby, she never told me she loved me again, even when I said it to her."

"Silence can be cruel," said Jorge.

"Yes," I said. "Well, she went into the longest silence ever."

Jorge wound down his window a little. I think he was giving me a moment. Then he said: "So what has this got to do with this Dolores woman?"

I could feel a familiar ache growing in the region of my groin, and my balls were contracting painfully; I wiped a few beads of sweat off my neck and forehead.

"Like I was telling you, she would normally tie my hands to the headboard, and sometimes tied my legs too and blindfolded me. But one day she did none of that; one day there was something different about her, something softer."

I shifted in my seat. I couldn't hold out much longer, but I concentrated on that day, remembering more, probably, than I had noticed at the time, remembering the light bouncing off the polished wooden floor, the smell of the baking floor wax, the pristine white curtain flapping in the breeze, the voice of a single bird through the window, the voice of Agustin Lara drifting in from the beaten up radio, as Dolores unzipped her dress, let it slip slowly from her body, reached back to undo her bra, her breasts silhouetted against the sharp-lit window, her hair resting thick and dark on her shoulders, her naked toes, vermillion nails, curling up as she came to me on the bed, the musty curve of her inner thigh dipping near the top of her legs, light licking at the edges of her, and the brilliant triangle shutting out as she slipped onto me with a sigh.

"That day she wasn't as rough as usual," I said.

That day was slow, and she came close to kissing me, so close I could smell the coffee and cigarettes on her breath, mingled with the scent of her lipstick and perfume, that day my hands were free, free enough to reach up and hold her hips as she rode me, though in reality they lay inert by my side, and I didn't reach up once to touch her, and when we came she stayed there, skin quivering, contractions holding me inside her, her breath stuttering softly, lips parted, thighs clamped about me.

"And afterwards, she stayed a while, rather than just going like usual, and she whispered something to me, but I wasn't ready, I hadn't expected anything."

I tensed up as a sharp pain jabbed into my lower belly.

"Jorge, pull over," I said.

A few minutes later Jorge was leaning against his car, chewing deeper into his finger, when I came out from behind the bushes.

"Must have been the salsa," I said.

Jorge nodded. "Probably."

He handed me a bottle of water that I wished I'd known he had earlier. I guzzled some down and it was delicious.

"So what did she say?"

"She whispered into my ear," I said. "I was drowsy; you know like you get at those times, just after, like you want to fall asleep and she wants to chat. Only Dolores never wanted to chat, usually. So I would fall asleep and she would leave. But this day she said something and I didn't notice, not right away, not until it was too late, I can see now."

"She said that she loved you," he said.

A pickup turned the corner and almost hit Jorge's car. The driver and passenger — farmer types wearing hats and thick moustaches — glared at us as they passed. In the back they had a pig trussed up, rope biting into its thighs, its eyes wild.

"Yes."

"And you didn't answer; you said nothing."

"What was I supposed to say?" I said. "I barely knew the woman."

Jorge shook his head slowly.

"Come on," he said. "I want to get settled before dark."

"Do you know where we're going?" I said.

He nodded. "Friend of mine lives not far from here," he said. "We just have to find the canyon. And I reckon we should follow that pickup that just passed us."

Sure enough, half an hour later we were snaking quickly down the side of a mountain, in hot pursuit of a pig on a pickup, and through the bushes I caught the odd glimpse of a vast dirt-yellow gorge with a river running along it, greenery clinging to its lip. We were still a long way off though, and as we descended our road fed into others and we started meeting traffic. The pace increased; trucks rumbled down or strained up, buses careered, brimming with passengers, their arms or heads hanging out the windows. Sometimes a four by four would nip in and out between the bigger vehicles, cutting corners, skimming the edges of ravines, horns blowing. The air was getting muggier by the minute, hotter and thicker, filling up with diesel fumes and dust.

"I fucking hate driving on roads like this," said Jorge, pulling hard on the steering wheel to avoid a collision. "It's like everyone has a death wish."

We lurched around another hairpin, the car's engine complaining thinly; my body pressed up against the passenger door so hard that I thought it might give and let me tumble into the gutter, surely to be squashed by the truck behind us. In the rear view mirror I could see that truck pursuing us, seemingly inches from our bumper. I watched the driver's hand caress an icon on the dashboard, and reach up to stroke a swaying crucifix, and decided to put my seatbelt on, tightened it against my chest until I was pinned to the seat.

Jorge glanced over at me. "Not much longer," he said.

I rolled the window down and my vomit streamed into the wind.

 

The heat was brutal in the canyon, and clouds lay heavy and low above us, but I was glad to be out of the car, glad to be static, to be able to breathe deeply, touch the earth and feel the clammy cold sweat running down my back and making me shiver.

"Man, you look shit," said Jorge. "You're soaked through. Even your hair's wet."

"I'll be alright," I said. "I just need a few minutes."

We'd stopped outside a tyre shop, and a dark skinned, middle-aged man was leaning on a stack of tyres, watching me.

"You're not the toughest of guys, are you?" said Jorge.

I stood up; I wanted to feel indignant, but I was still too weak. The middle aged man was walking toward me with an ambling gait; I didn't see the cup of water in his hand until he got up close.

"Here, güero," he said. "This will make you feel better."

I thanked him and downed the water. He turned to Jorge and held out his hand.

"Manuel Gomez, at your service," he said.

Jorge shook the hand but said nothing.

"Where you headed?" said Manuel.

"Other side of town," said Jorge. "Going to see a friend."

Manuel nodded, then looked in the back of the car and kicked the back wheel.

"You need any tyres?"

"No," said Jorge. "No thanks."

Manuel walked round the car, kicking each of the tyres and shaking his head.

"A lot of folk come down that road with their tyres shot to pieces, brakes too," he said. "They don't know it until the next time they take a sharp corner, up along the other side of the canyon, maybe, and their tyres burst and their brakes fail and wham!…" He slapped and slid one palm against another to represent a small jalopy going over a barrier into a ravine. He resisted the kaboom noise at the end, but I heard it anyhow. "There's a heavy rain coming too," he said then. "You want good tyres in a heavy rain."

"No really, we're fine," said Jorge.

A little while later we were across the road eating a fixed lunch of rice, soup, fried chicken, beans and shredded lettuce, watching Jorge's jalopy being raised on a platform to have brakes and tyres replaced.

"I can't believe you," said Jorge.

"You'll thank me," I said, "when you don't crash and burn."

 

Jorge's friend had built a sizeable wall around his property, and Jorge stood for a while shouting through a small metal grid in this wall before the gates opened and a large expanse of scrubland was revealed, at its centre a squat one-storey building of unfinished breeze blocks, some windows covered with plastic sheeting, and a doorway against which a wooden door leaned unhinged, its corners still protected with cardboard. As Jorge rolled the car in slowly and parked up alongside his friend's pickup, he said:

"He'll pretend not to understand you; he does that with foreigners to start with. Ignore it. Don't take your shoes off, and whatever hooch he offers you, on your head be it if you accept."

As we stepped out a short squat man whose frame resembled his home grinned at us from the doorway.

"Jorge, you bastard! What a pleasant surprise!"

He had a voice like a foghorn on forty a day.

"Memo!" Jorge shouted back. "You look good! This is my friend Peter!"

Memo shook my hand vigorously. "You made it then?" he said.

I looked at Jorge but he said nothing.

"Through the town, I mean," said Memo. "Election days, you know. They don't let many pass through without a search, a little bribe."

It's true there had been a lot of cops around, not many people as we passed through the central square. The pig was being dragged squealing from the flatbed, ready to be strung up and stuck; soldiers sat on the backs of pickups nursing rifles, and broad-shouldered men in suits and dark glasses stood in nervous packs, two-way radios crackling in their hands, looking like extras in a bad movie. Apart from the farmers the only civilians appeared to be a young couple with stretched smiles attempting some ballet moves beneath a banner shouting "Viva la Republica!", while a third dancer moved awkwardly beside them, out of synch, looking for a way in, eyes fixed on the woman's legs.

At one point one of the guys with two way radios stepped out into the road in front of us, peered into the car, and then waved us through.

"We were fine," said Jorge, a little stiffly I thought.

"Probably because you're foreigners," Memo said then, grinning like it was an old joke. "Anyway, welcome to my home; your home. It's not much. I overdid it with the wall. No money left for the creature comforts. But it suits me."

He had a dog, a small spaniel-like creature whose corkscrew tail seemed perpetually in motion and whose tongue lolled from the side of his mouth. The dog yipped at us and then ran inside.

Memo's home consisted of two rooms, and was basic to say the least. Most of the furnishings — a table, a couple of chairs, a creaking bed on which I was gestured to sit — had been draped with blankets woven by the women in those parts. It was a riot of colours that comforted me, made me nostalgic for a warm room five thousand miles away.

"Let's smoke!" said Memo, slamming a carton of cigarettes on the table, then adding a massive glass ashtray, three shot glasses, and a five-litre plastic bottle half full of what turned out to be raspberry-flavoured firewater. Jorge immediately took and lit a cigarette and avoided my gaze once again as he breathed in deeply.

"Fuck, that's good," he said.

Memo smiled. "So Peter," he said. "What brings you to this part of the world?"

I had been watching the portable TV that flickered silently in the corner; armoured vehicles were tearing through the state capital, occasionally split as the screen failed, a fat guy lay dead in the street, and ticker-tape that was too small to read rolled along the bottom.

"I'm just looking around," I said. "You know, on a road trip."

Memo stared at me a while, then turned to Jorge. "Does he not speak Spanish? I didn't understand a fucking word he said."

"Yes he speaks Spanish." said Jorge. "And you know it, you stupid bastard."

Memo stared at him for a while, and then burst out laughing. He leaned over and slapped me on the back so hard that my teeth might have shot out if they weren't my own.

"What are you looking around at exactly?" he said then. "I could show you some sights round here. Plenty for a tourist to see. We should go get some trout."

"Trout?" I said.

"Yes," said Memo. "Trout. It's a fish. You know fish?" he wiggled his hand in a fishy motion, and turned to Jorge. "Are you sure he speaks Spanish? He seems to be an idiot."

Jorge said nothing; he looked a little pale and sweaty, a little distracted.

"I know what a trout is," I said. "It's just… what the fuck are you talking about?"

Memo laughed again, and I dodged the slapping hand.

"Good man," he said, pouring us each a glass of firewater. "There's a place nearby. They damned up the river and raise trout there. Chock full of fish it is. I reckon it's overstocked. You can see them trying to crawl out onto the banks on their little fins." He made some crawling gestures with his fingers and then raised his glass. "Cheers!"

"We're going south," I said. I showed him a leaflet I'd been keeping in my pocket. "I found this in a hotel drawer at the coast. I want to go there."

It was the first time this had occurred to me, to be honest, but it seemed like a useful distraction. I'd found the leaflet the night I packed. I liked the picture of the sinkhole on the front, the bright sun streaming in. I even liked the stick figures someone had added, hanging from the green lip of the hole.

Memo examined the leaflet front and back without actually reading it. He shrugged. "Quintana Roo's a long way off," he said. "We could get some trout on the way."

Jorge's head wobbled a little as though he were waking to a drunken realisation. "What do you mean we?" he said.

"Us," said Memo. "Me, you and the white boy... and Pepe of course."

Pepe's ears pricked a little at the mention of his name, and then he rested his muzzle on his front legs and watched the television.

"I don't know," said Jorge. "Gloria thinks you're a bad influence on me."

Memo laughed happily. "Nonsense," he said. "Gloria would never know anyway. What do you say, Peter? Shall we give this cuckold some balls?"

I drank my firewater and took in a sharp breath. "I just need to go south," I said. "I don't really care how. But Jorge might need to go back to Mexico City, Gloria will be expecting him."

Jorge slapped the table suddenly, then threw his own drink at the back of his throat.

"I'm not going to be told what to do by Gloria," he said. "Not all the time, anyway. Fill me up Memo."

Memo chuckled and filled our glasses again. Jorge turned to me and lit another cigarette defiantly, despite the fact that the first one had obviously made him ill.

"Peter, my friend," he said. "You may not know it but I owe you a lot, and anyway I brought you to this country so I will look after you while you're in it. Clearly you haven't done too well on your own."

It was my turn to be indignant. "Excuse me," I said. "I have done pretty well I think. I've made friends, helped run a business, had some pretty good adventures. People will be amazed when I tell them..."

"If you survive to tell them," said Jorge.

"I can survive perfectly well without you," I said, at which point Memo held up his hands.

"Boys," he said. "Clearly you need me along to keep the peace. So it's settled. We're all heading south, and we'll stop off for some trout, and along the way we'll pay a little visit to someone I know."

"Who?" said Jorge. "Who will we pay a visit to?"

Memo waved dismissively. "I'll tell you later," he said. "First, let's drink a toast to our little band of adventurers."

 

I slept that night on the back of Memo's truck on a thick bed of sacking that had once contained cement, Jorge beside me and a blanket thrown over the two of us. My head was a little thick with firewater, nicotine and the tales of outrageous escapades Jorge and Memo had swapped until the early hours, including the story of how Memo had lost the love of his life to a "jumped up dirt farmer with a bad temper". It was this love of his life that he wanted to visit.

"Just to say no hard feelings," he said.

Despite the excesses of the night, I woke early as the air filled with cockerel crows and chirruping birds, flies zipping above me against a lead grey sky. Memo was up early too and had prepared us a large breakfast that we washed down with at least a gallon of coffee a piece. He was clean shaven and remarkably bright, while Jorge was pretty rough round the edges and Pepe just seemed thrilled to have company, and ran about the place as though looking for something to show us. We emptied our bowels in the outhouse and washed beneath a lean to, and Memo and Pepe climbed excitedly into the back of Jorge's car with my rucksack.

We drove for several hours in a silence broken only by the odd sneeze or cough. I stared out the window at the blurred brush, the lines of the road, the heavy skies above us, but as I half dozed all I could really see was a darkened street long ago, a figure edging through melting snow, green coat, red hair, stepping into her car, over and again, the image looped in my head, creating a pit of nostalgia in my chest.

Memo was snoring gently in the back, and I turned to Jorge. "I really need to get home," I said.

Jorge glanced at me with raised eyebrows. "Back to England?" he said.

"Yes," I said. "I need to get my life back on track, but first I need to get out of this country without getting killed."

"So your days of mourning on rooftops are over?"

I nodded, though he wasn't looking at me. "I think so. I need to find someone."

"That you do," said Jorge.

We were silent a while, and then I remembered what he'd said to me the night before.

"What did you mean about owing me a lot?" I said.

He shifted in his seat and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

"You saved my marriage," he said.

I hadn't expected anything like that. "What are you talking about," I said. "I did nothing."

He shrugged. "Maybe so, but you were there, doing nothing on my roof for quite a while. Gloria didn't say anything to me about it at first, but she was dreamy after you'd gone, kept walking over to the window and looking out. So I asked her, straight up, I accused her of being in love with you. Really I expected her to deny it, but instead she burst into tears. Just to be clear, Peter, she wasn't in love with you, but she missed you, she missed sitting with you up on the roof, making sandwiches and coffee, watching the sun set; she felt like she had a friend, had someone to be around. Simply put, she had a companion. But you'd gone, so it was up to me now, up to me to pay her some attention.

"That's how you saved my marriage; when it comes to the point that your wife is having more fun in the company of a man she can't even talk to, not much more than a pet, really, you know it's time to make some changes."

 I looked at him; he looked at me. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Fat drops of water were beginning to fall on the windscreen, and I could hear rumbling above the complaints of the engine, which was at full capacity as we struggled over the lip of a valley and looked down on a broad lake.

Memo stirred and pulled himself up on the back of my seat. "Hey, that's the trout farm," he said. "Let's eat."

Tarpaulins had been stretched out along the edge of the manmade lake so that punters could gaze over the waters as they ate, and we parked up and sat down at a trestle table where plates of griddled fish, lemons and tortillas were placed unceremoniously in front of us. The rain was coming down heavily now, and our patrons seemed more interested in the weather than us.

"They say the dam is weakening," said Memo, spitting a few bits of trout skin at me as he spoke. "We've had so much rain down here, and the cement they used wasn't a proper dam kind of grade, whatever that is."

"How far are we from the love of your life?" said Jorge.

"In the next valley," said Memo. "Big house in the woods. Kind of tough to get in to." He looked back at Jorge's car. "How's that thing in the wet?"

Jorge eyed him suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that to get where we're going, we have to follow this road down the valley, and cross someway down. I mean normally it's just a bit of a ford, just a few inches of water, but you know, with all this rain."

"Is there another way?" I said.

Memo shook his head vigorously. "Not to get where we're going."

"Maybe we should go somewhere else then," said Jorge.

Memo looked about to protest, but Jorge put his hand up to stop him. "We're leaving, now. Peter pay the bill."

The trout was delicious, so I was reluctant to leave it, but I did as I was bid and soon we were all clambering back into the car.

"What's the drama?" said Memo. "I was enjoying that."

Jorge ignored him, but turned to me. "Remember that guy that did our tyres, how he looked in the back of the car? Someone just did the same, and seemed a bit too interested in you. After everything you've told me, it made me a bit nervous."

I couldn't have been followed, not this far, but then I'd not been very good at being inconspicuous, with the same rucksack, the same shoebox, the eye patch and cane.

"Hey," said Memo. "Are you on the run? I knew there was something dodgy about you."

"Just a misunderstanding," said Jorge. "Over a card game."

"That's cool," said Memo. "Just as long as it's not the same guys that are after me. Sons of bitches."

The conversation ended there as we sped recklessly down the side of the valley, and Memo and I grabbed whatever we could, and Pepe tumbled and righted himself over and again. Away from the farm the road quickly became a dirt track, pitted and slippery with rain that was coming down so heavily that it was deafening. I wanted to point out the wisdom of the new tyres and brakes I'd bought, especially at this speed and in these conditions, but Jorge was intent on glaring angrily ahead and keeping us on track, so I held my peace.

Before long we lost sight of the river and were edging through dark woodland thick with evil looking thorn bushes and with torrents cascading from stone ledges either side.

"It doesn't normally look like this," Memo shouted from the back, straight into my ear as he was gripping onto my seat. "Are you sure this is the right way?"

"It's the only fucking way," Jorge shouted back. "Have you seen any other way?"

"I'm just saying," said Memo.

The car slammed into a pothole and Jorge let out a visceral shout. "This is fucking stupid!"

I pointed ahead. "It's about to get stupider," I said.

The river had appeared again, now lying larger and livelier than life in front of us, and on the other side was our road, about twenty broiling metres away. Jorge slammed on the brakes.

We watched the brown mess for a while in silence through a streaming windscreen whose wipers weren't fit for purpose.

"Maybe we should go back," said Memo.

Jorge shook his head with surprising new-found calm, his jaw clamped with determination. "We can't go back," he said. "But you guys are going to have to get out and push."

And so it was; we got out in the driving, though thankfully warm rain, and Jorge picked a low gear and kept the revs up high as he inched the car into the water.

We made slow progress, the car edging across the bed, Memo and me labouring behind it, and somehow the further across we got the more sinister our situation seemed. On the far side the river spun quickly to the south and had carved a deep pool in the rock surrounded by thick silt; on all sides the banks rose steeply, mostly impenetrable rock dripping with moss, while downstream a fall gave way to empty grey green forest, and upstream there seemed to be nothing but rising water and more rock and forest. To compound our suffering the rain turned quickly cold and it began to hail, ice stinging our bare arms and heads and clattering off the roof of the car.

"I hope this woman is worth it!" I shouted at Memo.

He nodded back. "Finest you ever saw," he said.

I doubted it, but I had to admire his strength as he grinned at me and then bowed his head to push harder as Jorge steered to avoid the swirling pool and became mired in the silt, the thin tyres quickly losing grip. What little sky there was in this pass had grown so dark by this point that little could be seen, and the noise of the hail and rising river meant that I could make out little except Jorge shouting from the driver's seat, urging us to push harder as he spun the wheels in the dirt. But when I slipped, fell to my hands and knees, looked back beneath my body, I could see the dark, hard shape of a large car, perched on the lip of the ravine seeking a path down. I couldn't make out the plates; I didn't need to.

That car was much better suited to this terrain than Jorge's, whose engine was whining now, as we all, for our own reasons, began to panic. Thunder rumbled over us and Memo helped me up.

"Come on, man!" he shouted, spitting rain now, his dog yelping silently in the back seat of the car. "This river is rising, and I don't intend to drown or be crushed by rocks. There's a lot more sex to be had."

I took my shoes off and threw them away; they were useless now anyway. The mud was soft and cold, but at least now I could feel where my feet were, could get some purchase when they reached the bedrock. My shoulder pushing hard at the rear of the car, I could see Memo straining beside me, and could look back at that hard black shape that was inching down the ravine behind us, its wipers flipping side to side.

The wheels of Jorge's car finally found something to bite into and its body lurched forward, leaving me and Memo to fall headlong into the mud. Memo cheered, slapped me on the back, but I wasn't ready to celebrate as the car juddered and bumped onto harder ground, nearing the road into the forest, then suddenly stopped.

As its engine fell silent I could make out a second roar, above the general sound of rain on ground and leaf and body, the roar of a sudden torrent, clunking with boulders and, as I found out later, slithering with fish.

"We've got to get out of here now!" Memo shouted, pulling himself and me up.

Jorge turned the ignition over time and again without success. I looked over the ravine at the nearing car, up the ravine at the brown, bubbling mass that was also throwing itself toward us.

A dam had burst; a dam holding back millions of gallons of water in which enterprising locals raised trout, thousands upon thousands of trout which just as suddenly as the walls of their home had collapsed found themselves being flung in confusion down a ravine, many of them able only to wonder for moments before they were dashed against some rock, stunned, drowned.

The engine, seizing the moment of drama, coughed back into life and inched a little further up the bank. Gripping the gear stick with one hand, Jorge urged the car just a few yards forward before it stuttered once again to a halt; it was out of the river now, but not out of danger yet.

Lightning flashed above and for a moment I could see her face, implacable, her eyes fixed on mine, hands twisting on the wheel. She was edging the car forward, rocking heavily side to side as it groaned over rocks, water thundering at its side, cracking the occasional stone or fish on the driver's door. I knew she wouldn't stop, that it was up to me to stop her if the river didn't. I found a tyre jack in the boot of Jorge's car and made my way back toward the river as Jorge and Memo struggled to get the car further away from it. I could hear them shouting after me, but I wasn't going to run again.

I couldn't say how the encounter might have ended, whether I would have smashed her window in, smashed her face, whether she would have given me one last cut, clean across the throat, run me down and drowned me, but as it was, I wasn't given the chance to find out. The full weight of the once-dammed river suddenly slammed at the side of the car, much like a small bull once had, and with an almighty roar carried the now pathetic looking vehicle tumbling down the steep ravine, and over the fall, leaving behind only the relative quiet of the river.

I felt Jorge's hands pulling me back from danger. "She's gone, my friend," he said.

I was shaking, let the tyre jack fall to the ground as though, exhausted, I'd come to the end of a long fight.

"Did you see?" I said.

Jorge put his arm tight around me. "Yes," he said.

"No, but did you see," I said. "She wasn't alone."

"Yes," he said. "Someone you know?"

I nodded slowly.

"God help them," said Jorge.

We sat in the car for a while, smoking with trembling hands and saying nothing. Even Pepe seemed shocked, and stared fixedly out of the window. Finally, after what seemed an age but lasted just long enough for us to throw our spent cigarettes out the window, Jorge turned the ignition and the car, sensing the drama was over, started first time.

Within minutes we turned calmly onto the safety of a tarmac road, and started back up the valley.