Tom was content to sit like this, getting gently soused on the Consul’s Daquiris and talking of this and that. As long as he didn’t require anything from Adams, the man was a decent companion. Besides, he had something he wanted to give his host: a revelation he kept to himself, as a child does a guilty yet treasured secret.
The rains started up outside, as sudden as a twisted faucet, and the Consul raised his voice to combat the pounding on the wooden roof. He was telling Tom, at considerable length — and with certain embellishments suggesting either that he was extrapolating from something that he had written down or that this wasn’t the first time he had recounted the tale — about his trip up to Vance in the town car.
From time to time one of the Handrey women came into the room, her bare feet sucking on the floorboards, and bent over Adams to whisper in his ear. On each occasion this happened, he’d report to Tom: ‘Nearly there, binturang’s damn tricky to cook — it’s the timing that’s crucial.’
Once, Tom thought he saw Adams cup the heavy breast of one of the women and give it a squeeze, but he couldn’t be sure. He took it as read that Adams’s involvement with these native women was exploitative — probably on both sides.
Adams was describing how the car broke down and he became trapped in the Tontine Townships of the bauxite belt. ‘Parts were impossible to get hold of locally, and it took several weeks for them to be freighted in. The situation at that time was. . well, to be frank I was frightened. But there was no question of my abandoning the car. It had become’ — he smiled in a self-deprecating way — ‘well, become part of my, ah, quest to discover this country. To truly be part of it.’
Tom couldn’t have cared less about Adams’s quest, nor was he eagerly awaiting the binturang. He’d seen the animals in the wild, when the Brodzinskis toured a nature reserve in the Highlands. Binturang was the native name for these large arboreal mammals, which were anthropoid in their form and bulk, yet feline in their movements and manner of reclining, usually full-length on the horizontal limbs of the high jungle canopy.
While Tom had been keen to sample the local cuisine when his family had been with him — the thick creamy stews of the hill tribes, the fruity curries of the Tugganarong — now that he was alone he yearned for down-home junk food. He went into fast-food joints and sat there uptaking hydrolysed fat and corn syrup, his hands wrenching at the bolted-down tables. Sipping on his waxed-paper bucket of soda, Tom hearkened to the familiar gravelly sounds of the ice chips inside and, narrowing his eyes, attempted to screen out anything in his visual field — a spike of alien greenery against the plate-glass window, the oiled pompadour of a dining Tugganarong — that jibed with this homeyness.
A spindly gateleg table had been set for the two men in the Honorary Consul’s bedroom. In the corner of the austere room, with its white walls and polished wooden floor, stood a narrow army cot, made up with a brown blanket and a neatly folded sheet. On top of a chest of drawers, in front of an oval mirror, were arranged silver hairbrushes and crystal scent atomizers.
Tom would have commented on the oddness of all this, were it not for the presence of the cooked binturang. The long pink glistening skinned corpse lay on an enormous chopping board that had been placed on the table, which hardly seemed strong enough to support it.
The Handrey women had removed the binturang’s head before they spit-roasted it. It rested to one side in a heap of arugula, its eye sockets black and crispy, its needle-sharp teeth bared. Tom thought the animal looked like a faked photograph of an alien’s corpse lying in a secret military installation. He steeled himself with a slug of Daquiri before sitting, then set his glass down with a clonk, hoping one of the women would get him a refill.
Adams registered this and said irritatedly, ‘I think I’ll ask for that excellent vino you brought to be poured, Brodzinski. Liquor doesn’t sit well with binturang.’
He began to sharpen a long carving knife with slow, deliberate strokes on a cylindrical whetstone. Then Tom watched, repulsed, as Adams began sawing through one of the fully extended back legs. The table moved back and forth under the impetus, the claws of the leg Adams was severing flicking droplets of grease across the front of his tan cotton pants. He stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then bent back to his task.
‘Wayne?’ said a Handrey woman, passing Tom a brimming goblet. He took it gratefully.
The Binturang turned out to be very tasty. The flesh was so tender it could be forked apart into long filaments as twirlable as spaghetti. The flavour was between that of partridge and of pork. With the assistance of half a bottle of Côte du Rhone, and the Handrey women who ladled taro paste and vegetable curry on to his plate, Tom ate most of a leg, together with a little of the belly meat, which Adams told him was the most prized part of the beast.
The woman who served them stayed in the bedroom, squatting against the baseboard. She slowly exposed the knuckle bones of the paw Adams had carved for her. Occasionally, Tom glanced across and observed the way she gently held the paw, as if it were the hand of a small child.
They were silent while they ate. Adams bent low over his plate, his jaw knotting with steady effort. The fan thrummed, the rain drummed. After a few false starts the Handrey women’s chanting got going underneath the house. The volume rose until the beat of their ‘bahn-bahn-bahn-bahn-boosh’ competed with the overhead percussion.
Tom was half-cut when the chopping board, bearing most of the binturang still intact, was borne off below to feed the chanters. Because of this, he considered his conversational gambit fairly astute. Wiping his mouth with a starched napkin, he asked his host: ‘D’you know this guy, Brian Prentice, that Swai-Phillips is representing?’
Adams seemed not to have heard. ‘I think we may as well have our coffee next door,’ he said, fastidiously wiping his own downturned mouth. ‘I didn’t ask them to trouble with dessert; I hope you don’t mind?’
Tom grunted that he didn’t and stumbled back into the other room, where he collapsed into one of the creaking rattan chairs. After fiddling with a music deck on one of the shelving units, the Consul slumped down opposite him. A trickle of New Age music — wind chimes, flutes and a theramin — percolated through the heavy rhythmic soundscape of the house. Tom thought the choice a modest revelation, not what he expected from the tightly buttoned Adams. His host absent-mindedly fluttered his fingers as if conducting the puny tune, then said: ‘Prentice? Well, he’s not one of ours, so he’s no direct concern of mine. Obviously, I take a closer interest than I would with other foreign nationals, and, as it happens, I have spoken to their attaché here in Vance, Sir Colm, ah, Mulgrene. Without in any way being loose-mouthed, we were able to ascertain that your situations had certain, ah, similarities.’
‘They have an attaché right here in Vance?’ Tom was surprised; this hardly tallied with the respective global reaches of the two nations.
‘It’s a hangover, of course,’ Adams said. ‘Not that they were the colonial power here, but they had extensive interests over many years. Incidentally’ — his horse lips puckered — ‘I’m aware you harbour doubts concerning my own, ah, capabilities—’
Tom tried to issue a denial, but Adams wouldn’t permit it. ‘I may no longer be a salaried official of the State Department, but, believe me, this is a fully functioning consulate, and I am empowered to do anything that’s necessary to assist you. Anything.’
He regarded Tom icily, before adding, ‘The same does not apply to, ah, Prentice.’
‘What’s he accused of?’ Tom asked bluntly.