‘I like her a lot, but you know I want to keep going to Brazil. Not right now or tomorrow, but one day, maybe soon, I can feel it. But I wanted to tell you what the beautiful thing was that she showed me. She came to my hut in the evening and took me by the hand and led me to a little hill. The sun was very low in the sky, and it was almost dark, and the light and the shadows of the setting sun fell on the steps of the Kukulcán Pyramid and made the shape of a giant snake winding down the steps.
‘There’s nothing to see there usually, only the stone steps, but now this giant snake seemed to be creeping towards us. Then I saw all the tourists standing around the pyramid, but we were all alone on our hill. Maria Pilar only speaks a tiny bit of English and I only have a few words of Spanish, but later someone told me it happens exactly twice every year, every twenty-first of March and twenty-third of September. And as I was standing there on the little hill with Maria Pilar …’ He closed the atlas shut. He looked at the date on his watch, even though he knew very well it was the twenty-eighth of September today. How did the letter get to him from the jungle in such a short time? ‘Mr Eisner, room thirty-two please!’ He put the atlas with the letter in it in his bag. Maybe there was a little airfield there somewhere. Wolfgang had money … Or he’d been standing up at the top of the pyramid, the night was very bright, and he wrote the letter up there. Weren’t the nights always very bright in the tropics? Five days to Germany, of course, why not? Maybe Wolfgang had gone up again on his own the next morning. Maria Pilar was waiting for him in his hut, she’d made strong Mexican coffee. He gazed at the vast jungle, green all the way to the horizon, thought of home and his old friend and took out pen and paper. ‘Mr Eisner, room thirty-two please!’ He said, ‘Yes,’ took his bag and saw the letter between the pages of the atlas and stood up.
He had got three letters now and he’d been waiting for the fourth one for months. In his last letter, Wolfgang had written about leaving Mexico, about leaving Maria Pilar, the beautiful Red Indian woman. ‘Do you know what I called her? Mi clara estrella, that means “my bright star”. And the stars up above us at night were really so bright, not like anything I’ve ever seen in Germany. They seemed to be incredibly close too, right above the trees. She’s all alone in Chichén Itzá now but I promised to go back to her, maybe then I’ll take her with me to Brazil. You know I’ve always been a dreamer, but I swear on our friendship that I’ll marry that wonderful woman one day, but first I have to travel. South America, you know.’ The letter was from Honduras, from the capital city Tegucigalpa, there was an airport there, and Wolfgang wanted to fly to Brazil from there.
He was in the bar that had once belonged to Wolfgang’s Uncle Rudi. Everything had been stripped down and converted; he hadn’t even recognised the building. Back then it had been a real German corner bar with wooden tables and wood-panelled walls. Now it was one of those modern places, neon lights and brightly coloured cocktails served by young girls.
He’d been to see his mother; he’d saved a bit of money and put it secretly in her little savings box. He’d taken a twenty-euro note out again, and now he was sitting at the black bar, which was made of cool metal, and drinking. He was drinking tequila like Wolfgang had suggested. He’d been here a couple of times now and drunk tequila. He moistened the little dip between his thumb and forefinger with his tongue, then sprinkled a little salt on the wet spot, took the glass in one hand and the slice of lemon in the other, licked the salt from his hand, knocked back the alcohol and then bit into the slice of lemon until tears pricked his eyes. ‘To you,’ he said, ‘to you and Maria Pilar and Brazil.’
The year was almost over, the nights were getting frosty but there was no snow. It was summer in Brazil right now, and soon Wolfgang would be celebrating New Year in summer, if he was in Brazil by now. ‘Another tequila please,’ he said, ‘and a beer.’ The young woman behind the bar nodded. It was nearly ten and he wanted to go home soon. He had to get up early; he had a place on a job creation scheme now, working at a tourist information stall in town. An old man sat down on one of the bar stools next to him, knocked on the bar and nodded at him. Frank knocked back at him and smiled. The old greeting in a bar. The barmaid put the beer and the tequila down in front of him. ‘I’ll have a large one as well,’ said the old man. The young woman took a glass and went to the pump. The old man turned around to him. ‘They drink cocktails here now,’ he said, ‘but back in the old days …’ He leant on the counter and looked Frank right in the face.
‘You live round here, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Always have done.’
‘I’m from round this way myself.’ The old man pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and put them down in front of him, searching through his pockets again and putting a lighter on top of his cigarettes. Frank looked at his thin, wrinkled fingers.
‘Thanks,’ said the old man, and took the beer from the barmaid’s hand and drank. He tipped his head back, then he put the glass on the bar and wiped the foam from his chin. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. He raised his glass again, and Frank picked up his beer as well, and they clinked glasses. ‘To the old beer-drinkers.’ Frank took a drink and laughed and said, ‘To us old beer-drinkers,’ then he knocked back his tequila, without the salt and lemon.
‘You know this place from the old days, do you?’
‘You can say that again,’ said the old man. ‘It was pretty much my second home.’ He took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it up. ‘One for yourself?’
‘No thanks. I never started smoking. Just a good cigar every now and then.’
‘Oh aye,’ said the old man, ‘a good cigar’s a good cigar. Can’t hardly beat that.’ He tipped his head back and blew the smoke up to the brightly coloured lamps on the ceiling.
‘You used to come here quite often in the old days, am I right?’
‘Yes,’ said Frank, ‘quite often. But that’s about thirty years ago now.’
‘Thirty years.’ The old man breathed out loudly. He leant against the bar again, and again he looked him right in the face. ‘You were a friend of Rudi’s nephew, weren’t you?’
Frank drank a swig of beer and nodded. He tried to remember — who could this old man be? He must have been about the same age then as Frank was now. Round about. But there’d been so many regulars at Rudi’s, spending their evenings and their days at the bar or one of the round wooden tables.
‘I knew it right away.’ The old man pressed out his cigarette. ‘I used to know them well, Rudi and his nephew. Often saw you two here. Rudi was risking his licence serving you two alcohol.’
‘Yes,’ said Frank. ‘But we never went over the top.’
The old man gave him a wink. ‘I remember differently.’ He drank his glass dry and pushed it across the bar. The barmaid had turned the music up — something electronic with a lot of bass, and Frank heard voices behind him but didn’t turn around. Then there were a couple of young lads next to him, ordering something, and he saw the barmaid juggling bottles and chopping up a couple of limes. ‘I always got him the best stamps back then.’