ONE: CAPE FALCON

1.

I was born on—no, that’s not it. I died—no, I am still alive. Someday I will die. Perhaps soon. I am preparing for death. Perhaps my life has been a preparation for death. If I review my life this preparation will perhaps be evident. In any case as an exercise such a review may be amusing. It seems to me my life has been a search. A search for what? I cannot claim to have discovered anything. Is there anything to discover? If I review my life will I at last find what I have been searching for? Have I been searching for death? If I have been searching for death why have I taken this circuitous route? I could have died many times over. It would have been easy. Three fortune tellers predicted my death. No, that is not quite exact. One was a Parsi woman in India. My future flustered and embarrassed her. She refused to tell me what she saw. “You are stubborn,” she murmured. She took my hand. “I will tell you nothing else.” I left shortly afterwards, on a boat to Africa. I survived Africa. I survived pirates in the Sulu Sea, storms on the Pacific, jungle rivers in Guatamala. I even survived years in America. I drift south—I seem always to be drifting south—and each obstacle at last falls aside. A door opens. Something appears. I continue. How long can this go on? I am no longer young. It is a lined and drawn face that appears in my mirror. How shall I continue? What shall I continue towards? I awaken in the mornings in strange cities and towns. I see new faces—strange faces—every day. Shall I stop here? I scarcely know where I am. This city is named after its hot springs, once famous, which no longer flow. Old people, sick people, unhappy people came to its spas. The ill were cured, the lame walked, women were restored to beauty, vigor returned to men, eyes shone, fancy gowns appeared in the evenings, men slapped each other on their shoulders. But the old balnearios are fallen into ruin. In the few that are open water is pumped in from elsewhere and heated over fires. The ill go to hospitals to die. The lame invest in wheelchairs. Tired men seek ever younger women, ever more potent pills. Yesterday I saw men shouting at each other in the street. They nearly came to blows. In the plaza an orchestra played, but the thin strains of music, the reeds, the woodwinds, the tarnished brass, could hardly be heard over the shouts, the roaring cars, the dread shuffling of heavy feet.
“You are a foreigner?” a man asked me as I stood there.
“Si, soy un extranjero.”
“Where are you from?”
“Elsewhere,” I said. “Un lugar differente—muy lejos—”
“Ah!” he said. “Muy lejos! Very far!”
He was a small, Indian-looking man with round cheeks.
“One day,” he said, “un dia—I visit—I go to visit—”
I stared at him. He looked like a cherub. His suit coat was too tight. Little shoes, polished black, were on his feet. Cars raced past us. Overhead the jacaranda trees dripped purple blossoms. Goodbye, I said curtly. I turned on my heels and hurried back to my hotel room.