Page 109 - Exile-ebook

108 AN EXILE OF THE MIND THE RIVER OF LANTERNS 109

The cave we slept in at Los Cuevos, British Honduras. The bogged Landrover on the way to Belize. The Premier is on the right.

stir up hostilities over the Anglo- in search of the ruins I was unable when the hermit, an American, left dentist intent on telling us about
Guatemala boundary dispute. to find. We carried a message for his riverbank shelter of 14 years to aliens he had seen in his garden. It
David approved of my choice of a village ahead telling them of the give speeches in the village square was the Premier, George Cadle Price
Sunshine accommodation and treat- Governor’s visit. Carrier pigeons about ‘watchful eyes’ and all the himself. He was later to become
ed himself to a Christmas present in were unreliable lest they be eaten or time banging a tin drum. A diet of Prime Minister when the country
the shape of a beautiful mestizo girl end up in the pot for a new cure at solitude and bananas must have became independent. Driving
for $12. My Christmas present was the shaman’s house. contributed to his derangement. through the villages, Premier Price
the arrival of funds and the relief of A rainy night in a cave and a hike A mad-looking Austrian dentist waved regally to his people lining
settling of my debt with ‘Madam’. of 30 kilometres the next day took peering from beneath an oversized the road as David and I threw up
We met the inventor of ‘Magical us to the track leading to the buried pith helmet, and his equally mad- our lunch out the back.
Realism’, science fiction’s most site of Caracol, dug out of the jungle looking wife, stopped to chat as we The Landrover slid sideways into
explicitly literary author, Avram years later to become the largest site ate tortillas and beans. The only a bogged patch of road and there it
Davidson. We didn’t realise how in the Mayan world. dentist I have seen with front teeth stayed until help arrived from the
explicitly literary Avram was until We didn’t find it. missing. Not the best advertisement nearest village.
years later. But we did find Brother Leon, a for a confident smile. The Premier merely shrugged his
With bottles of cheap rum religious hermit with matted ginger A Landrover approached and shoulders and sat on the bank with
stashed in our backpacks we set off hair and beard. Locals were shocked we ran to flag it down to escape the a thermos of tea.