Kamchatka Page 6

  Although at the time I didn’t notice anything missing, I should mention here that the book didn’t give any information about certain things that, as time went by, would come to obsess me: for example, the reason why the Weisz family decided to leave Budapest and cross the Atlantic. Or why little Erik was inspired to try his hand as an escapologist. Lastly, and most importantly, the thing I wanted to know more than anything in the world, the one thing I longed to know, the question that kept me awake at night, was how the hell did he do it?

  24

  FUGITIVES

  In deciding on a barbecue, papá made two mistakes. First, he had forgotten to buy charcoal, and second he went ahead anyway, figuring sticks and small pieces of wood would do. The fire burned out far too fast, which not only meant eating half-raw steak for dinner, it also meant having to sit through a lecture from mamá on the different combustible properties of wood and charcoal.

  In desperation, the Midget and I resorted to eating fruit. In general we only liked bananas and mandarin oranges, which could be peeled easily, or grapes – any kind of fruit we could prepare ourselves because unlike other mothers – Bertuccio’s mother, for example – our mother was incapable of so much as peeling an orange for us. But that night hunger got the better of us. We would have shelled a coconut with our bare teeth if necessary. We opted for apples. The Midget started massacring his fruit. Mamá lit a cigarette and cleared her throat.

  It was at this point that she told us about the new rules. We didn’t know how long we would be staying here, she explained; it might be a couple of days, maybe a week, maybe longer. She told us that we wouldn’t be returning to school for a while. On Monday, she said, she would have to go back to work at the laboratory, but papá would take a few days off and stay at the quinta with us.

  Given our new circumstances, there was a set of basic ground rules we had to observe. We were not to go into the pool without telling a grown-up first. We were not to open the fridge or turn on the TV if we were barefoot or wet from swimming. And since the only water in the quinta was from the water tank, we were not to drink from the tap, spend more than ten minutes in the shower or leave it running for no reason. This last instruction signified an additional responsibility for me as the older brother. (mamá promised to show me how to fill the tank if it was empty.)

  But there was another set of rules too, that related to our curious status as fugitives. For example, mamá explained that on no account were we to use the telephone. We were not to answer the phone and we were certainly not allowed to ring anyone. We weren’t allowed to call Ana or grandma Matilde or Dorrego, and under no circumstances (this proscription was emphasized by a serious tone and stern look) was I allowed to ring Bertuccio. The best thing we could do, she said, was to imagine we were on holiday on a desert island, that we were the only tourists and there was no post, no phones and we could not leave until the boat that had brought us here came back to pick us up.

  The Midget asked if there was a television on the island. Mamá said there was and the Midget threw up his arms in triumph, one hand brandishing the knife that still bore shreds of his sacrificial apple.

  I argued that nobody went on holiday without a suitcase, so the only way we could have ended up on this island was if we’d been shipwrecked. (The word ‘shipwreck’ made mamá and papá nervous, especially when they saw the Midget was getting upset.) I said, nobody can have fun on holidays when they have to wear the same clothes and the same shoes every day, when they have no books, no Risk, no trading cards and no Goofy (this, I admit, was a low blow), no friends and …

  At this point papá interrupted me and said that as soon as the mists surrounding the island had cleared a little, he planned to go back to our house and pick up some things, or send someone with a list and a set of keys. But in the uncertain atmosphere of this new island, I refused to be placated by this news. Who knew how long it would be before this fog that cut us off from civilization lifted?

  The grown-ups exchanged a quick glance and then papá got up from the table. For a moment I took this as an admission of defeat (and if papá was defeated, we were all doomed), but he reappeared from the bedroom carrying a bag and handed a shiny gift-wrapped package to the Midget and another to me.

  My present was a new game of Risk. I was saved! It was beautiful, perfect, brand spanking new, it had everything: the board, the dice, the instructions, everything.

  ‘Whenever you fancy losing again, just say the word,’ said papá.

  The Midget’s present was a toy Goofy. He ripped off the paper like a wild animal and gave a squeal of excitement when he saw what was inside. Papá and mamá heaved a sigh of relief, but I immediately realized that this new Goofy was about to cause more problems than it solved.

  The Midget started shaking Goofy with a worried look on his face. He looked at papá, then at mamá, but they didn’t understand. He asked them what had happened to Goofy. ‘This Goofy is sick,’ he said.

  The Midget’s original Goofy was a stuffed toy. The new Goofy was made of hard plastic.

  It was not just a matter of feelings (unlike games of Risk, which are interchangeable, Goofy was an anthropomorphic toy, and so the Midget’s relationship with it was personal and non-transferable), but also a matter of practicalities. The Midget always slept with Goofy in his arms, and while it was one thing to snuggle up with a soft, well-worn cuddly toy, trying to hug a piece of hard, bumpy plastic was a very different matter. All boys love toy trucks, but they don’t use them as pillows.

  25

  WE ASSUME NEW IDENTITIES

  Papá had another trick up his sleeve. He made a number of concessions (promising to play a game of Risk with me as soon as the table was cleared; reassuring the Midget that the new Goofy was a distant cousin of his old Goofy and that it would get softer over time the same way people get softer when they become friends), and managed to appease us sufficiently so that we were prepared to listen to his explanation, one which, in the weeks that followed, we would come to understand.

  For papá, it was not enough that we wouldn’t be at home, at the office, at school. Holing up in this villa on the outskirts of Buenos Aires (the ‘island’ mamá claimed we had been washed up on) was a necessary precaution, but not the only one. However much we might want to be, we were not invisible. There were probably people living in the neighbouring houses, a travelling salesman might knock at the door at any minute, people who regularly walked past the house were bound to notice – from the rubbish bags, the smells, the noise – that new tenants had moved in.

  Given all this, we had to be prepared in case we should run into someone. We had to be discreet and try not to attract attention, but if we were noticed, it was important that nobody would know who we really were. And what better defence could there be than pretending to be someone else?

  We had to assume new identities. Like spies who pretend not to be spies so they don’t fall into enemy clutches. Like Batman, hiding his secret identity beneath his mild-mannered alter ego. Like Odysseus tricking the Cyclops by telling him his name was ‘Noman’. Odysseus was a born escape artist. To escape Polyphemus, the Cyclops who had vowed to eat his men, Odysseus first got him drunk on wine and then plunged a spear into his one eye, blinding him. When the other Cyclops heard Polyphemus scream in pain, they asked who had hurt him. ‘No-man,’ replied Polyphemus, so the other Cyclops, thinking his pain must be a plague sent by Zeus, told him to accept his fate.

  Papá was counting on the fact that this part of the plan would get me excited. Becoming other people was the key element in all of our games. Cowboys or monsters, superheroes or dinosaurs, even when we played sports we pretended to be other people.

  But what papá had not counted on was the fact that my mind worked faster than any set of rules, and faster than common sense. In a matter of seconds the whole universe of possibilities offered by this opportunity to become someone else lay before me, and I found myself standing before a shining, tantalizing doorway papá had not thought
of, and one which clearly took him by surprise.

  Suddenly hopeful, I said that if I became a different person, that meant I’d be able to phone Bertuccio. I was convinced that if he listened carefully, Bertuccio would work out it was me even if I told him my name was Otto von Bismarck, and obviously he’d work out that there was some kind of emergency, so he’d play along with these new rules. We could even invent a secret language!

  At this point, mamá immediately became the Rock and dashed my hopes. The embargo, she said, still applied. ‘You are not to call Bertuccio under any circumstances, even if you tell him your name is Mandrake the magician, full stop, end of story. Saints alive!’ (Over time, this was to become the Midget’s favourite saint; he fully expected to see St Salive riding with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.)

  I was beaten. I pushed away the plate with the apple on it and folded my arms angrily. The only reason I didn’t get up and storm out was because there was nowhere to go.

  ‘From now on, our name is Vicente,’ said papá, still hopeful.

  I didn’t react. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know.

  ‘My name is David Vicente and I’m an architect,’ said papá.

  Vicente was a horrible name, but as a surname it was even worse.

  ‘David Vicente!’ papá repeated, shaking my shoulder.

  Then the penny dropped. David Vicente, the architect. Papá was David Vincent!

  I burst out laughing. The Midget looked at me like I was crazy and mamá looked at papá in search of an explanation.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ I said to the Midget, still laughing. ‘David Vicente is like the Spanish version of David Vincent. Papá is the guy in The Invaders!’

  ‘Aaaaah,’ said the Midget, clapping his hands.

  Mamá glared at papá, not knowing whether to kill him or hug him.

  ‘If anyone asks, we are the Vicentes,’ said papá, pleased with himself. ‘If the phone rings and someone asks for the people we used to be, just tell them no one by that name lives here, tell them we’re …

  ‘You won’t need to tell them anything at all because you won’t be answering the phone,’ mamá interrupted. ‘How many times do I have to say it?’

  ‘Sorry. I meant if I answer the phone, I’ll just say, sorry, wrong number. Is that clear?’

  Me and the Midget nodded.

  I asked papá if we would be getting false papers to match our false identities. I expected him to dismiss the idea out of hand but he looked to mamá for approval and then said yes, it was possible that we would all need new papers.

  I asked if I could pick my own name.

  The Midget asked if he could pick his name.

  ‘It depends,’ said mama. ‘It has to be an ordinary name, you can’t call yourself Fofó or Goofy or Scrooge McDuck.’

  ‘Simón!’ yelled the Midget. Like I said before, he was a big fan of The Saint. ‘Like Simon Templar!’

  Mamá and papá happily agreed, Simón Vicente sounded normal enough.

  ‘I could call myself Flavia,’ said mamá.

  ‘Flavia Vicente. OK, but only if you tell me where you came up with the name,’ said papá.

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll just call you Dora, or maybe Matilde, like your mother.’

  ‘Just try it,’ said mamá, ‘and you can kiss your conjugal rights goodbye.’

  ‘Flavia Vicente,’ papá said quickly. ‘Going once, going twice, sold to the lady …’

  ‘What’s conjugal rights?’ asked the Midget.

  ‘There’s still someone here who hasn’t got a name,’ said mamá, changing the subject.

  But I already had a name. It was clear as day. All the signs pointed to it and I congratulated myself on being able to read them.

  My name would be Harry. Yes, Harry. Pleased to meet you.

  26

  STRATEGY AND TACTICS

  Herodotus recounts that during the reign of Atys, the son of Manes, the kingdom of Lydia suffered a terrible famine. The Lydians endured these privations for a time and then realized that they needed to find something to distract them from their suffering. This is how games were invented, the sort of games that are played with dice, jacks and balls. Herodotus credits the Lydians with inventing all games apart from backgammon, which is the name English pirates gave to the Arab tawla, still played by old men throughout the Middle East, sitting at low tables in the streets, drinking sweet mint tea.

  I always loved that story. Herodotus doesn’t tell it as though it were actually true, simply as something the Lydians said about themselves, but he nevertheless recounts it with eloquence and grace. The paragraph is one of the most effective in the Histories. Herodotus knew that the stories people tell are important because they convey their sense of themselves in a way that documents and the (inevitably) tragic toll of battles cannot.

  There was something else that appealed to me in the story of the Lydians. I liked the fact that they did not attribute the invention of games to boredom or to philosophical idleness, but to suffering. The Lydians did not play games because they had nothing better to do. They played so that they would not perish.

  In a sense, Risk is a direct descendant of tawla. In both there is a board, a pair of dice, there is a goal (conquest), there are rules and a logic to the game (strategy) and the more cunning the player, the closer he comes to victory. The chance element of the dice is crucial, but in this battle strategy has to make chance an ally.

  The West’s contribution, what we add to the strategy and tactics, is the art of war. The board is no longer divided into geometric, purely abstract shapes, it is now a planisphere. The world map, more figurative than realistic, imitates the style of ancient cartographers. And the political boundaries add to the anachronistic feel of the game. The United States does not exist as a nation; instead there are a number of independent states: New York, Oregon, California. Russia refers to a large European state while its Asian territories are divided into states: Siberia, Ural, Yakutsk and, of course, Kamchatka.

  Every player is represented by pieces of a single colour – I liked to play with the blue pieces – and is given control of X countries, depending on how many players there are. Up to six people can play, and every player is given a secret goal, for example: Occupy North America, two territories in Oceania and four in Asia, or, Destroy the red army, or, if that proves impossible, the army of the player on your right.

  Wars between the armies are settled using dice. If I’m attacking, I have to roll a number higher than the defending army. If I win, then the defender has to withdraw his armies and I get to occupy the country he has left empty.

  My favourite variation was the simplest. Me against papa: papá against me. The whole world divided in two: papá was the black army, I was the yellow army. Our goal was not remotely secret: we were trying to destroy each other, to wipe each other off the face of the Earth (the Earth as it appears in Risk).

  I don’t remember how it started, whether I brought the game home or whether papá bought it. (I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about Kamchatka.) What I do remember is that papá always beat me. Every single game. It happened every time. He would beat me hollow, or – when it was obvious there was no way I could win – we would call the game off.

  That first night in the quinta was no exception. After a promising start, papá set about undermining the morale of my armies and began routing them one by one. From time to time, mamá would wander past and look at the board. At one point she clapped papá on the shoulder and said, ‘Why don’t you let the kid win for once?’ And papá gave the same answer he always gave – it was one of the scenes from our family drama which was played out every time we sat down to a game – ‘Are you crazy? He can win when he’s able to beat me,’ and his inexorable victory march went on.

  Over time, the idea that I might beat papá grew from a vague desire to a need, until finally it became a categorical imperative. The law of probability was in my favour, I figure
d. Sooner or later it would impose its implacable mathematical laws, raise me up and make me victorious. Now that I was Harry, luck had to turn in my favour. Harry was a name that had never known defeat!

  Herodotus continues the story of the Lydians: according to his account, the famine continued and King Atys finally realized that games were not in themselves a solution but simply an endless deferral of the moment of truth. So he made a decision. He divided the Lydian people into two groups by drawing lots. (Games of chance had become an addiction.) One group was to leave the kingdom and the other to remain with him. Atys was to be king of those chosen to stay in Lydia, and placed his son Tyrrhenus at the head of those who were to leave.

  Tyrrhenus and his people travelled to Smyrna where they built ships and put out to sea. In time, they were to find new homes where they would prosper. Those who stayed behind in Lydia were conquered by the Persians and enslaved.

  27

  WE FIND A DEAD BODY

  The next day, when me and the Midget were finally allowed to go down to the swimming pool, we found someone had got there before us. Floating among the leaves, stiff as a board, was a huge toad.

  ‘I’m not going in there anymore,’ said the Midget.

  I used the net to fish out the toad. It was dead, its feet splayed, ready to be put on the barbecue.