He thought about the telephone call he’d been waiting for all day. There in the cabin, in the thick of night, surrounded by the whistling wind, all of that seemed a million miles away. And then, as he watched the fire, he realized with absolute certainty that the call was never going to come, that he would never supply air conditioning to that hotel. To his surprise, it didn’t bother him in the slightest. He told himself that his business would survive. And if that wasn’t the case, well, that didn’t matter, either, because he’d find a way to keep going.
As soon as he’d warmed himself up a bit, he moved away from the professor and his wife. With the intention of catching a few winks, he sat down on the floor with his back against one wall, stretched his legs, and closed his eyes.
He imagined himself adrift in the waters of the Caribbean, lying on a piece of driftwood, a fragment of some vessel or another. He was exhausted, on the brink of passing out. He’d spent hours at the mercy of the waves and currents. He could hardly keep his head above the surface.
Then an island appeared. It was very close, but until that moment he hadn’t been able to see it. The current gently drove him toward it. He was escorted by a flock of shrill seagulls flying above him.
The waves left him on a deserted beach. His legs could barely support the weight of his body when he set foot on the sand. He stumbled a few steps forward, just enough to reach the shade of a jungle of coconut trees, where at last he could collapse to the ground and give in to his tiredness. Coconuts thumping against the sand as they fell from the trees were the heartbeats of his sleep. Red crabs scurried around with pincers raised, like frightened Lilliputians, not daring to touch him.
“Did you two hear that?” asked the professor’s wife.
Her husband, who was sitting on the floor next to her, looked at her wearily. Joanes opened his eyes. They couldn’t hear anything other than the wind and the rustle of the vegetation outside.
“It was probably a branch snapping,” said the professor.
“It wasn’t a branch. It sounded like something metallic. Like jangling.”
They listened again, but couldn’t hear anything like jangling.
“It could have been anything. The wind dragging along some—” began Joanes.
But he was interrupted by a noise coming from outside. Sure enough, it was a metallic jangling. It sounded close. Next thing they knew, they heard a deep, masculine voice ordering someone to keep walking and then reassuring him, saying, “We’re here now.”
A moment later, the door rattled. Someone had pushed it from the outside.
“What the fuck!”
More blows came and almost brought down the door.
“Manco! Beluga! Are you in there?”
Inside, nobody said a word. They watched the door, their hearts beating hard in their chests.
“Open the door, you sons of bitches! Can’t you see it’s us? We’re going to drown out here!”
“Don’t open it,” the woman whispered to her husband. “If we keep quiet, they’ll go away.”
The professor tutted.
“They’re not going to go. They’ll see the fire.”
The shouting stopped suddenly, and the jangling sound came back, moving around the cabin. It paused in front of a window. Whoever was outside peered through a crack in the boards.
“I can see the light! What’s up with you guys? Are you going to just leave me to drown out here?”
The jangling retraced its path back to the door, and the banging started up again, this time even louder. The door shook, as if about to come off its hinges. Whoever was pushing was putting his whole weight behind him. With each bang came a whimper of pain. And still, the jangling.
Joanes got to his feet.
“What are you doing?” asked the professor.
“If he knocks it down, we’re fucked.”
“You’re going to let him in?” asked the professor’s wife.
Joanes didn’t have time to answer. An even louder bang made the board bolstering the door fall to the ground. The rope still held the door closed, but now there was a crack wide enough for the man to poke his head in and furiously ask, “Manco! Beluga! What the hell is up with you?”
The crack opened on the opposite side of where the group was, which meant they were in the intruder’s blind spot.
Since nobody answered, the man who had been pounding on the door decided to finish the job. Through the crack, a foot-and-a-half-long machete blade poked in. The man proceeded to begin cutting the rope.
“Wait a second!” shouted Joanes, “Wait!”
He ran toward the door to rescue the rudimentary lock system that was keeping the wind and water from flooding in.
Later, he’d ask himself over and again why he’d done it, why he hadn’t stopped the stranger from getting in. He could have asked the professor to help him keep the door closed. They could have shouted that there were too many people inside and that there was no room for any more. They could have buttressed the door with more boards. They could have dragged the bed over to block it. They could have done a lot of things.
He unhooked the rope. The wind swept open the door with a bang, knocking Joanes on his back. Eddies of air filled the cabin, and within a second the interior wall facing the door was splattered with leaves.
The professor was on his feet, and his wife had sat up in the bed. They watched as the soaking figure, well over six feet tall, stepped inside, looked at them one by one, and grunted, “You’re not Manco and Beluga. That’s for sure.”
He was protected by a waterproof poncho that had been mended with strips of tape. His feet were wrapped in trash bags attached with elastic bands, and he had protected his legs with more bags, also strapped on with bands. The man was covered, shoddily but from head to toe, in plastic. He was wearing a backpack, also wrapped in trash bags, with makeshift padding on the straps made out of rubber foam. From the backpack hung a frying pan, a pot, and other odds and ends. And yet this wasn’t the source of the jangling sound that followed him. In one hand he was holding the machete, and in the other a wooden cane. He placed the machete inside a leather sheath he wore on his waist and threw back the hood of his poncho.
He was a black man, his face covered with deep lines and his hair and beard woolly and gray. A chain poked out from beneath his poncho — this was the source of the jangling. It was attached to his waist. The other end of the chain was attached to the collar of a chimpanzee, which came trotting into the cabin. The monkey moved as far away from the door as the chain would allow, looking for a dry patch of ground. Once he’d found one, he crouched down and, imitating his master, looked at Joanes, the professor, and the professor’s wife.
“Good evening,” said the black man.
An ambiguous accent from the American South obscured his words.
Before Joanes or either of the others could react, he closed the door, pressed it shut with his shoulder, and secured it with the rope. He guessed the function of the board now lying on the floor and placed it back against the door. Then he looked around, his beard dripping wet.
“Is the lady all right?”
“She’s fine,” answered her husband.
“Yes, she’s fine. But she can’t walk,” added Joanes.
The stranger chewed over this information, then simply nodded as if he understood everything now, and carried on as if he’d forgotten they were there. He left his cane leaning against the wall and, taking his time, proceeded to take off his backpack and the poncho. He removed the sheath of plastic bags from the backpack. He also took off the bags wrapped around his legs and feet. Dragging the monkey’s chain behind him, he took the poncho and bags into the bathroom. When he came back, he grabbed his backpack and the cane and, with the chimpanzee trotting along behind him, walked around the cabin looking for a corner that was more or less clean and dry.