scared up some binturang for us.’
He leaned into Tom, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘You’re not a, ah, vegetarian, are you, Brodzinski?’
By night Adams’s house achieved a certain elegance. The dark floors reflected the fan blades, and the splashes of colour which were the Consul’s native daubs glowed in the lamplight. Seated in a rattan chair, Tom accepted a Daquiri and resolved to make it last. As if by unspoken agreement, the two men didn’t discuss the business of the butt at all. Instead, Tom told Adams how struck he’d been by the bladder-clam victims who clonked through downtown.
‘Yes, distressing, isn’t it?’ Adams took a sip of his drink, his tone suggesting that he found it anything but.
‘The research centre here is doing some first-rate work on the problem. They already have an effective palliative; however, it’s expensive, well beyond the means of any but the, ah, elites – and they don’t tend to be the ones foolish, or desperate, enough to swim in the sea.’ He smiled insidiously. ‘They have pools.’
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
He leaned into Tom, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘You’re not a, ah, vegetarian, are you, Brodzinski?’
By night Adams’s house achieved a certain elegance. The dark floors reflected the fan blades, and the splashes of colour which were the Consul’s native daubs glowed in the lamplight. Seated in a rattan chair, Tom accepted a Daquiri and resolved to make it last. As if by unspoken agreement, the two men didn’t discuss the business of the butt at all. Instead, Tom told Adams how struck he’d been by the bladder-clam victims who clonked through downtown.
‘Yes, distressing, isn’t it?’ Adams took a sip of his drink, his tone suggesting that he found it anything but.
‘The research centre here is doing some first-rate work on the problem. They already have an effective palliative; however, it’s expensive, well beyond the means of any but the, ah, elites – and they don’t tend to be the ones foolish, or desperate, enough to swim in the sea.’ He smiled insidiously. ‘They have pools.’
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
Similar Books
