It made perfect sense to me, I was sorry to discover. By no means was I a religious man. Years of Anglican education, going to church four times a week in the British school system, had instilled in me a deep boredom of and for Christian traditions. But it hadn’t totally erased in my mind the belief in a higher power, of a more glorious afterlife for example, and I could not shift this notion of post-mortem suffering before everlasting paradise.
Or damnation.
The kicker was that the dead person had no say in the matter. If I was stuck in purgatory, and I remained divided on whether or not that was the case, it was down to those I had left behind to determine my fate. Whether Buddhism, Catholicism or Judaism, they all held fast to the belief that praying or making offerings to the dead somehow assisted them in their journey to their final abode. More worryingly, the Greeks apprehended that purgatory consisted of ‘temporary punishments agreeable to every one’s behaviour and manners.’
One phrase struck a chord. According to Origen, some sort of early Christian scholar, “He who comes to be saved, comes to be saved through fire.” A fire that burns away sins and worldliness like lead, leaving behind only pure gold. I had experienced my share of fire on the island, from the perpetual and searing sun to the inferno that had destroyed the Hesperia hotel. Was this a baptism of fire?
I looked down at my arms. They had turned from a livid red in the first few days here to a deep nut brown now. I was tanned, I had lost what little weight I needed to before I came here… I was looking pretty good. Perhaps this was the cleansing process. Perhaps my soul was undergoing purification at that very moment?
There was a lot of literature about indulgencias, the most literal translation of which I assumed must be indulgences, or a sort of religious get out of jail card. From what I could ascertain, if you were granted indulgencias through the prayers of others your time in purgatory was shortened by a certain amount of time: cuarentenas, or quarantines. These could be increased by pious actions. Interestingly, quarantines were thought to be measured in periods, for example the 40 days of Lent. In reality it sounded like a money-making tool for the medieval church. But with some quick calculation I thought 40 days sounded right around the time my percentage would hit the big ZERO.
Whether I believed all this or not, the correlations between popular religious belief in this idea of purgatory, even in fiction, were laid out before my very eyes. In Comedia Divina Dante’s purgatory is a mountain somewhere in the southern hemisphere, and is the only land there. That sounded a heck of a lot like Lanzarote to me. All I could see was water and mountains…
Ultimately, I was no closer to determining whether I was existing in an indeterminate state between life and death, or was simply stuck on an island in the middle of the Atlantic at someone else’s behest.
I smoked as I emerged onto Avenue Papagayo, sipping from my water bottle and inhaling the scent of the man-free streets. The air was definitely thicker, like the way it cloys just before a rain storm. It got me thinking, how would the world smell if humans had never populated it? Without roads, buildings, or cars? I got a sense that this place was returning to how nature intended even at this early stage of its abandonment. The air hung heavy with that unmistakable scent of heat on road. It seemed purer than it should have with no car exhausts to pollute it.
As I approached the still smouldering Hesperia, the stench of burning humanity crept up my nose, and cleared again almost as quickly as I continued down the path to the sea and the incoming breeze carried it away.
Something occurred to me, and my pace sped up as I anticipated investigating it. I was looking for garbage, literally, as I didn’t think I had seen any and what the mind doesn’t see it doesn’t register. Indeed, what the nose doesn’t smell it forgets, yet something about the smell of the air as I rounded onto Avenue Papagayo caused me to double take.
What do all towns and cities have in common? Go to any city, and even in the most upmarket area, if it’s hot enough you’ll get that nasty, cloying stench of human refuse on the wind. Maybe not all the time, but try and walk a few blocks without it and you’ll be sure to pick it up. You might not even register its presence as it’s so common, but it will cause you to curl up your nose without even realising it.
Here, there was nothing like it. The air was clean, almost fragrant, with a floral whisper and overtones of ozone from the sea. I drew deeply into my lungs almost hoping to catch the spoiled tang of a back alley bin on the breeze, but got nothing.
And that was what disturbed me.
I ran behind the nearest restaurant, the Plaza Café, and sure enough there were two large green dumpers behind it. They were chained shut but I could prize them both open just enough to confirm my fears.
Both were empty. Not only empty, but clean. In fact, sticking my nose into the gap and inhaling I could smell nothing but hot plastic. No rancid cheese, no mouldy vegetables, no build-up of that repugnant bin juice that always made me gag every time I had to empty my own trash. It was as if these bins had never been used for the purpose of garbage disposal at all.
I felt numb. What was going on? Had there never been people here?
The one sure-fire way to determine human presence in a place is by what they leave behind. We can’t help it, we are consumers and wasters. What we waste gets left behind everywhere we go.
I sat on the pavement and tried to put the pieces together. I was surer now than ever that this was some kind of experiment and that I was the guinea pig. I saw a film once, I think it was German, about a group of volunteers put into a fake prison and split into guards and inmates. The inmates have to follow certain rules and the guards have to enforce them. It was a study in human psychology. I can’t remember exactly what happened but everyone ends up killing or raping each other. Maybe that’s what I was being put through, some sort of weird sick experiment to see how I’d react under extreme stress. But then how to explain the bees? Were they some sort of hallucination? Was I being drugged without my knowledge to increase the effects of the solitude?
Suddenly I felt a burst of epic anger welling up inside. I stood, threw my arms up and screamed so loudly I felt my throat tear.
“BASTARDS!!!”
I drew the word out for almost a full eight seconds. In the silence that followed the echo I felt purified. The outburst relieved me and I felt the anger withdraw and a serene calm take its place.
What was the point in panicking? Stressing myself out wasn’t going to help the situation. I resolved not to give them the satisfaction. Whoever was watching me, if anyone, would not gain the knowledge they sought. I refused to be their guinea pig. I scanned the street for hidden cameras, but saw only two standard CCTV jobs further down towards the end of the avenue. If this really was some kind of Truman Show rip-off they weren’t doing a great job of the coverage. Without thinking I slapped myself across the face, thinking the shock would wake me up and make me stop fantasising that I was the centre of some Orwellian assessment. The reality of my situation was still unchanged, regardless of whether or not I was being observed. I was still alone, and stranded in this place.
The slap did help. I lit another cigarette and gathered my thoughts. It was time for decisive action, no point in pondering it anymore. I needed to take matters into my own hands, and not leave myself at the mercy of fate. Why eek out an existence here for a further 20 days, waiting to hit 0% and thus acquiesce to the inevitable? As if denying my own determination I crushed the cigarette and went back into the Plaza Cafe to search for a drink.