Senor Nice

  I was still sleeping ten hours later when the telephone rang. Manolo was downstairs. I joined him.

  ‘All right, Mr Nice. Raoul and I have your flights sorted to Ushuaia. You can pick up and pay for the tickets when you leave. The direct flights were all fully booked; you’ll have to change and stay overnight at Calafate.’

  ‘No worries, Manolo. Calafate? Isn’t that the name of those flowers that Olwen likes so much?’

  ‘That’s right. The place is full of them, but people usually go there to visit the glaciers. You’ll have plenty of time to do that. You arrive late tomorrow morning and leave the next evening. A good mate of mine, Carlos, lives near Calafate. I’ve spoken to him this morning, and he is going to meet you at the airport, take you to a hotel and make sure you are all right. His last name is Guevara, so as you can imagine everyone calls him Che. Not only that, he’s a doctor specialising in allergies and weird stuff like that, just like the real Che Guevara, and he even looks like him.’

  ‘Che Guevara was Argentinian, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Right again. Most people thought he was Cuban until Evita came out. You’ll like Che. He doesn’t say much, hardly anything, and he is a bit eccentric, but a great guy. I told him all about you. He’ll take good care of you. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Thanks, Manolo. You’ve done a lot for me this last week.’

  ‘My pleasure, Mr Nice. Raoul found out a bit more about your ancestor Patrick. While he was here learning Welsh he became close friends with another guy also learning Welsh, a Chilean called Juan Williams. The name probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but he was an admiral in the Chilean navy and fought in the war against Spain in 1865. For some reason he later resigned from the Chilean navy and came to live here. He and Patrick were inseparable, apparently, the best of mates. They left here together at the same time, probably for the same place, Ushuaia. That’s all Raoul was able to find out. Not much, but it’s something.’

  ‘That’s great, Manolo. I’m sure it will be a great help. Thanks, again.’

  ‘Raoul can’t take you to the airport tomorrow but someone from his company will pick you up here at eight o’clock in the morning. Raoul said to say goodbye and good luck. He would like to stay in touch. Me, too. I’ll see you either in Cardiff or back here.’

  I took a long stroll around Puerto Madryn, reliving the excitement I had felt on first seeing Welsh street names. Although just a week had passed, I felt nostalgic. I went shopping and armed myself with books, CDs and souvenirs in case I never had the good fortune to return. At the hotel I surfed the Net for any information on Chilean admirals called Williams, and to my surprise found some. During the middle of the nineteenth century Juan Williams Rebolledo, a captain in the Chilean navy, took possession of the Straits of Magellan, claiming them for Chile during a war against Spain. He fought again during the war between Chile, Peru and Bolivia but in 1880 fell out with the Chilean government. There was no mention of any connection with Welsh Patagonia or Ushuaia. Partly comforted and partly disappointed, I went to bed.

  Raoul’s friend turned up with his taxi the next morning and we headed off along the now-friendly road through the wilderness. About halfway to Trelew airport I asked him to stop the car and got out. I wanted to stand alone once more in those magnificent silent plains and deserts that aroused such strange feelings in me. Was Patagonia really the ancient habitation of giants, whose footprints on the seashore had amazed early European explorers? At the airport I collected my tickets and boarded the flight to Calafate. The landscape changed from desert to fertile mountains as we flew southwest.

  At Calafate airport I picked up my bags, walked into the arrivals hall and saw Che Guevara. Despite having been warned of the physical likeness Manolo’s friend bore to his namesake, I was not expecting such an impressive carbon copy. He wore shades, combats, army shoes with the laces open and a green Chinese Red Army cap. He was smoking a cigar, inhaling deeply.

  ‘You must be Che. I’m Howard, Manolo’s friend.’

  Without saying a word, Che shook my hand, quickly turned and walked towards the exit. I followed him to a black van with the engine running and climbed into the passenger seat. The inside of the van was a combination of pharmacy and pet shop. There were cages of birds, frogs and reptiles; bottles of preserved animal parts; jars of herbs, spices and crushed insects; boxes of bandages, antiseptic and antibiotics; and some new scientific equipment.

  After ten minutes of driving in complete silence through colourful woods and fields we crossed a small river, and just before entering Calafate town parked outside the Hotel La Loma. Che spoke, for the first time, in precise impassive English: ‘It’s two star but comfortable. Please check in. You are expected. I have to go to a small village near here to attend to a patient. You are welcome to go with me. You will find it interesting, I am sure. I will wait here until you return.’

  I checked in, put my bags into a homely old-fashioned little room, and rejoined Che in his van.

  We drove for a few miles down a well-used country road and stopped at a ranch named Estancia Alicia. Trees stripped of their bark stood like great white skeletons. Flocks of birds flitted around searching for food and nest-building materials. Some were quietly feeding in the shadows of scarecrows; others were pulling the scarecrows to bits and carrying off the straw. Che grabbed a couple of cages and other bits and pieces, put them into a yellow holdall and got out of the van. We walked down a path to a wooden hut and in through its open doorway. Lying on a blanket, a naked young girl racked with fever sobbed continuously. A belt of fierce red blisters ran round her waist with a circular gap of unblemished skin at her navel. The girl’s father, his head in his hands and an open Bible on his lap, sat motionless on an upright chair next to a table. He looked up at us with pleading tear-soaked eyes.

  ‘If that gap closes,’ whispered Che in my ear, ‘she will die.’

  Che took off his shades, revealing one brown and one blue eye. He knelt on the floor beside the girl, grabbed his pen, drew a strange design on the clean patch of skin between the inflamed areas, opened his yellow holdall and pulled out a dome-shaped cage containing a brownish-yellow warty toad with heavy eyelids. Che held the toad and gently rubbed it against the blisters. The enraged toad swelled up to bursting point and exuded a viscous milky-white substance from its warts. Che held the toad away from the little girl and dabbed its warts with cotton wool. Closing his eyes and saying a prayer, he rubbed the cotton wool into the girl’s navel. Within twenty minutes the secretion had dried and acquired the colour and texture of cement. The lethal red belt began to recede, and the girl’s fever subsided. Che smiled for the first time since I had met him. The father was praying furiously, but now in thanks not desperation. He got out of his chair and lay next to his daughter. Che placed the toad on the table and put the cage next to it.

  I took the place of the young girl’s father and sat in the upright chair. I realised the toad might be one of the rare kind whose warts contained DMT. DMT stands for dimethyltriptamine, a powerful hallucinogen found also in some tropical plants and naturally produced in the brain by all animals, including us. Take DMT out of migrating birds, they lose the ability to orbit the world. Take it out of hibernating animals, they can’t sleep. DMT production increases when we dream. Every zoological death is accompanied by an overdose of DMT. It sends us on our way when we die, flooding the mind with a tunnel of afterlife light, a mixture of euphoria, fear, insanity, disorientation and insomnia.

  Throughout history the toad has been a bridge to the otherworld. They have always fascinated me. Able to spend their lives in water and on the land, toads are born in the springtime, a rainy season in most parts of the world, and frequent associations have been made between toads and sexuality, fertility and rain. Primitive charms relating to sexuality and fertility mention toads. Ancient cultures viewed the toad not only as a trickster and a master of escapes and spells, but also as a symbol of re-creation and a keeper of the secrets of transformation and immort
ality. Toads are born in mud, cannot breathe with their mouths open, have no teeth and swallow their own skin as they shed it. Toads thus consume themselves, in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. In many shamanistic traditions of Central and South America hallucinogenic compounds gathered from toads are used for rituals of communion with the spirit world. The Christian Devil’s coat-of-arms was believed to feature three toads. A true witch will have an image of a toad in her left eye.

  ‘Che, is this one of those DMT toads?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would love to try some DMT.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Che, who was now lying on the floor next to the girl and her father. Soon all three were asleep and snoring.

  The toad, still outside its cage, also seemed to be knackered. It was six inches long and heavily built with bony ridges over its eyes meeting above the nose. Its hind feet had leathery webbing between the toes, but its front feet were unwebbed. It had large swollen glands on its shoulder behind each eardrum. Suddenly, the toad sat upright, opened an eyelid and fixed on a large fly walking on the tabletop. The fly disappeared as the toad swallowed, its tongue too quick to follow with the human eye.

  It made a few short rapid hops towards me. I grabbed it and pressed my tongue against its warty lower back. The toad struggled to get free, its powerful back legs trying to prise open my grip. I could already feel the moisture sinking into my tongue – a sticky, viscous mixture, warm at first, then as it penetrated cold as metal. I ran my tongue across the toad’s back. It tasted of pear drops, chemically enhanced fruit-flavoured confectionery. How much should I take? How strong was this toad? I licked again, then one for luck, then another for more luck. The toad hopped away back into its cage and shot back an angry and frightened look, as if accusing me of rape.

  Che woke up with a start. ‘Stop at once. That is not the way to do it.’

  ‘Sorry, I thought you said there was no problem in my having some.’

  ‘Not like that.’

  ‘But I’ve read you have to lick the toad to get the DMT.’

  ‘Californian hippy nonsense, dangerous and disrespectful to the toad. Smoke the DMT, don’t swallow it.’

  Che got up, went to his yellow holdall, pulled out a flat sheet of spotless glass about twelve inches square attached to a stand that held it vertical, and a small glass pipe. He lovingly picked up the toad with his left hand and held it in front of the sheet of glass. Holding it firmly, with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he squeezed near the base of one of the swollen glands until a viscous liquid squirted out onto the glass. He did the same with the other gland. Che scraped the substance from the glass and put it into the glass pipe, which he gave to me. I lit it and inhaled.

  As with any hallucinogen, once taken there is no turning back. No regrets or you are doomed from the start. Within seconds something was building in my toes – warm flushing sensations, a tingling of sparking nerve ends exploding underneath my flesh. My face felt as if it was being stung by nettles. I saw fluorescent red, green and yellow dots weaving in and out of white lines, moving like blood cells through capillaries. Diamond patterns undulated across my visual field. I heard a sound like chirping crickets running across my mind. Although I was indoors, I sensed the feel of the earth, the dry desert soil passing through my fingers, the scent of cactus. I experienced a feeling of wonder and well-being and relaxed into a deep, peaceful interior awareness.

  But my mind felt crowded. When I started on a thought, another one came along and clashed with it. I tried to speak to Che, but the words wouldn’t come. I felt cold, as if I was being slowly submerged in icy water. The water started rising, faster with every inch. My waist, hands, arms, chest and neck took it in turns to freeze. My vision slipped. I saw sparks, exploding pockets of thick ozone. I could no longer feel my legs. It felt like my bowels were about to give way, then they simply disappeared altogether – bowels, intestines and stomach – all gone. Panic overtook me.

  My eyes poured water like taps. No, it wasn’t my eyes; I was seeing water. Everything was made of water and was now returning gracefully to its original liquid form. The wide open plains that had dominated my perceptions and thoughts for the last few days slipped away, running off across the barren land. Small bushes bubbled and vaporised into hanging projections of twisting pale blue and rose-coloured masses that swapped places with the sky. Satellites passed overhead, hooting like owls. Dark mountains moved, grew and shrank, swelled and breathed.

  Feelings intensified and had a race, made a final mad dash for my brain, trying to get me. My skull shook as if in the centre of a violent thunderstorm. Thick plates of prominently carved bone rattled underneath my skin and blood vessels. I saw the hideous owl from Jamaica picking away at a duppy’s eyes. A giant crab wearing a pirate’s hat showed me its pointed teeth. Then the panic receded. My lungs took a breather; they stopped. Why not? There was no need to breathe. A wave of membrane washed up and towered above me. It had me. I was engulfed. This is my last breath of air, I thought. From now on, I’ll breathe water. I can’t drown. I’ve got a baby’s caul.

  Cold tentacles stabbed in with frightening speed and penetrated my brain to its core. A bright blue caterpillar flashed inside that central point in my brain, primeval jelly inherited from my caveman ancestors. Another burst of blue light, and the cold tentacles turned instantly hot. A white dot swelled, pulsed and turned into little wet tentacles with segments, then into silver microchips. They morphed into larger and more intricate machines, coming alive with lightning and bursts of electricity. From the edges came helices, spiralling and changing as they rolled towards the centre, turning from sphere to cube to pyramid. Flickering-static TV screens bleated out semi-seconds of news, squawks of sitcom laughter and jolts of programmes on war, ice cream, corruption, drugs, drug wars, tobacco, industry, mobile phone ringtones, pornography, hair dye, gossip magazines, murder and holidays to tropical destinations.

  I could hear a bass drum banging, deep and low. The movement of everything around melded into the drumbeat, jumping as one. The ground and air were shuddering. The bass drum became a snare, then a cymbal, then a crunching clatter overhead. I felt myself ducking, taking cover. Some-thing big and heavy was coming down on top of me. I collapsed inwards. Arms moulded with chests legs and arses into an armour-plated bubble. Something hit hard, vibrating every nerve ending in my body, rattling them like the inside of a church bell. Black mountains shuddered, crumbled and retreated in fear, while the ground turned into a thick green brittle rock with razor-sharp edges that glinted in the stark white light. The ground grew, filling gaps with thick purple-grey cracked earth and rocky outcrops. Mountains glowed in the distance. Above them was an atmosphere in which night, day, stars and clouds coexisted. A purple mist gathered overhead like a thick simmering soup. It sank, headed towards me, booms of crackling thunder bursting my eardrums. The mist engulfed me. I lit up with a purple aura, white and violet sparks bursting from the pores in my skin. I could feel no weight, only existence. The purple force field was holding me there. I existed, held there in my purple bubble. The mist held everything together, powering all of us, expanding and threatening. Purple was the colour of eternity. Without it we were surely doomed.

  Suddenly, Che was standing in front of me. He walked towards me holding the toad. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘you have found the answer. What colour is it?’

  Che’s eyes were the eyes of two men, two souls, two natures.

  ‘Purple,’ I replied. My head emptied. Nothing functioned; there was just an empty hole where scientists believed intelligence once existed.

  ‘You are right,’ said Che. ‘It’s purple.’ Che flickered and blurred and changed into a giant in animal skins and a thick cowboy hat, holding a pistol. ‘Damn right,’ he said in a Welsh accent, grinning with a face that had been around a long time. He vanished in a blink.

  I held my hand up in front of my face. It aged and died in less than a minute. When I blinked it was back – reborn, solid a
nd swelling, purple and blue, pulsing with life. It was every-where – in the ground, in the mountains, in the sky. We were all connected in one way or another. No amount of television could destroy that. The purple rope of life held us all together.

  The TV sets switched off. The synchronised power-down echoed around the universe, sending shock waves far beyond my understanding. Twisting fornicating snakes of DNA built up a picture in seconds – fractal mosaics, leaded windows, and Mayan and Egyptian carvings.

  The TV sets collapsed into microchips that turned into toads, all clambering over one another, half immersed in thick blue muddy toad juice. On the ground ten yards in front of me toads hopped and crawled from a large round pool. Giant neon-blue skulls with eye patches hovered in the distance. Deep-sea angler fish with bulbous eyes, long bony bodies, evil fins and large vicious self-illuminating teeth flashed vivid sunshine-yellow smiles. The toads were everywhere now. I was surrounded. Their croaks, bleats and squirts occasionally joined in unison. There were billions of them. They all turned and looked straight at me. A deadly silence fell.

  Then the croaks started again, a random mass pulling back to unison, a pulse that increased in pitch. I could feel it hitting my body in jolts. The toads jumped, danced, frolicked with no control and flipped in the air like broken-boned kids frantic on sugar drinks.

  ‘That’s him,’ said a voice, high-pitched and rough like an old record.