Foreign Land Read Online Free Page A
Author: Jonathan Raban
him.
“Sorry, Teddy,” George said. “Am I late?”
Eduardo Duarte, who had lived in the United States and made even the President of the Republic call him Teddy, after Mr Kennedy, made a show of inspecting his wristwatch-cum-electronic calculator. “Eleven minutes,” he said. As Minister of Communications, he was a stickler for timetables. “You have time for one drink. What do you want? A Chivas Regal?”
“No thanks,” George said. “I’ll go and change.” Teddy himself drank nothing but a Vitamin C cocktail called Sun Top which he puritanically sucked through a straw; he always tried to make George start the evening with a slug of Scotch in the hope of slowing up his game.
“I got a confession to make, George. I feel real good tonight. And I am going to hit the hot shit out of you, baby.”
“Oh, yes?” said George. “You and whose sister?” Cheered, he went off to the changing room. In singlet and shorts, he replaced his Holsum cap and took a secret nip from the bottlein his shopping bag.
After Independence, there were very few yachtsmen left in Montedor, and the Club Nautico was well on its way to becoming a draughty ruin. The club notice board still had the 1974 regatta results pinned to it. They were illegible. Red dust blew around the floors of the high vaulted rooms. Red dust had settled on the imitation Louis Quinze furniture and worked its way deep into the leaky leather armchairs. At weekends, the staff of the foreign consulates used the club as a base for their dinghy cruises to the islands; but on most weekdays it was left to the cockroaches and the house skinks, and to the Armenian barman who himself resembled a large domestic reptile in his greasy tailcoat.
Now the Armenian was stirring the dust on the cement floor of the squash court with a broom made of palm fronds.
“Is good now?” he said to George.
“Fine,” said George, raising a tiny desert storm round his ankles.
“Okay, George,” Teddy said, “ready for your lumps?”
His game was fast and flashy. Twenty years younger and a full foot shorter than George, he had been toughened by five years of athletic stuff in the mountains, where he’d been a PAIM guerrilla. On the squash court, though, it was George who was the guerrilla. He knew the jagged cracks in the wall where the spiders lived, the bulges of dry rot, the useful fist-sized crater caused by a stray bullet in ’75. He aimed at every deformity he could reach; and when his luck was in, he could bring the ball back off the front wall at a variety of perverse tangents.
The two men grunted and spat. Their plimsolls squeaked on the cement. The ball made noises generally confined to the balloons in comics:
wham! thwack! pow! blatt!
“Sonofabitch!” said Teddy.
Pee-oung! splat! whang! fupp!
“Oh, kiss my ass, George—”
Teddy pranced, sprang, dived, stretched, jack-knifed, like a hooked tuna, while George husbanded his wind. Sweat wasdripping into his eyes, and the back of his singlet was soaked through.
What kind of a fool goes in for this young man’s game at sixty?
He heard Ferraz gloating somewhere out in the suburban outskirts of his brain. He smashed a winner specially for the doctor.
If you don’t think about it, it won’t happen
.
“Oh, motherfucker!”
George, probing for the crater in the front wall, was a late, refined specimen of West Coast Man. The region had created its own system of natural selection, and George had the right genes. Eighty years ago, when malaria and haematuric fevers had made quick work of putting Europeans through their African entrance exam, it had been the fat men who died first. Their ships put in to Lagos, Dakar and Bom Porto, and the fat men went out on the town. They had just enough time to write their first letter home before the shivers started. Then they passed blood in their urine. In a fortnight, maybe three weeks, they were dead. The mattresses they left behind were so sopping with perspiration that they
“Sorry, Teddy,” George said. “Am I late?”
Eduardo Duarte, who had lived in the United States and made even the President of the Republic call him Teddy, after Mr Kennedy, made a show of inspecting his wristwatch-cum-electronic calculator. “Eleven minutes,” he said. As Minister of Communications, he was a stickler for timetables. “You have time for one drink. What do you want? A Chivas Regal?”
“No thanks,” George said. “I’ll go and change.” Teddy himself drank nothing but a Vitamin C cocktail called Sun Top which he puritanically sucked through a straw; he always tried to make George start the evening with a slug of Scotch in the hope of slowing up his game.
“I got a confession to make, George. I feel real good tonight. And I am going to hit the hot shit out of you, baby.”
“Oh, yes?” said George. “You and whose sister?” Cheered, he went off to the changing room. In singlet and shorts, he replaced his Holsum cap and took a secret nip from the bottlein his shopping bag.
After Independence, there were very few yachtsmen left in Montedor, and the Club Nautico was well on its way to becoming a draughty ruin. The club notice board still had the 1974 regatta results pinned to it. They were illegible. Red dust blew around the floors of the high vaulted rooms. Red dust had settled on the imitation Louis Quinze furniture and worked its way deep into the leaky leather armchairs. At weekends, the staff of the foreign consulates used the club as a base for their dinghy cruises to the islands; but on most weekdays it was left to the cockroaches and the house skinks, and to the Armenian barman who himself resembled a large domestic reptile in his greasy tailcoat.
Now the Armenian was stirring the dust on the cement floor of the squash court with a broom made of palm fronds.
“Is good now?” he said to George.
“Fine,” said George, raising a tiny desert storm round his ankles.
“Okay, George,” Teddy said, “ready for your lumps?”
His game was fast and flashy. Twenty years younger and a full foot shorter than George, he had been toughened by five years of athletic stuff in the mountains, where he’d been a PAIM guerrilla. On the squash court, though, it was George who was the guerrilla. He knew the jagged cracks in the wall where the spiders lived, the bulges of dry rot, the useful fist-sized crater caused by a stray bullet in ’75. He aimed at every deformity he could reach; and when his luck was in, he could bring the ball back off the front wall at a variety of perverse tangents.
The two men grunted and spat. Their plimsolls squeaked on the cement. The ball made noises generally confined to the balloons in comics:
wham! thwack! pow! blatt!
“Sonofabitch!” said Teddy.
Pee-oung! splat! whang! fupp!
“Oh, kiss my ass, George—”
Teddy pranced, sprang, dived, stretched, jack-knifed, like a hooked tuna, while George husbanded his wind. Sweat wasdripping into his eyes, and the back of his singlet was soaked through.
What kind of a fool goes in for this young man’s game at sixty?
He heard Ferraz gloating somewhere out in the suburban outskirts of his brain. He smashed a winner specially for the doctor.
If you don’t think about it, it won’t happen
.
“Oh, motherfucker!”
George, probing for the crater in the front wall, was a late, refined specimen of West Coast Man. The region had created its own system of natural selection, and George had the right genes. Eighty years ago, when malaria and haematuric fevers had made quick work of putting Europeans through their African entrance exam, it had been the fat men who died first. Their ships put in to Lagos, Dakar and Bom Porto, and the fat men went out on the town. They had just enough time to write their first letter home before the shivers started. Then they passed blood in their urine. In a fortnight, maybe three weeks, they were dead. The mattresses they left behind were so sopping with perspiration that they
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