Something Fishy in the State of Brazil
Early that afternoon, Alex perused a market square, which was filled with various stalls selling fruits and vegetables, as well as trinkets and other miscellaneous objects. Above his head hung a sign saying Praça Nossa Senhora da Paz, and there was a monument in the middle of the square, with a statue portraying a man with a moustache standing upright. He had nothing on Christ the Redeemer, decided Alex.
He wandered the square, asking the vendors whether they spoke English. So far, no-one did, although most of them said 'no' rather than 'não'. Or perhaps he was pronouncing the words given in the phrasebook wrongly.
A souvenir stall stood out. Maybe he would have luck there – if they sold to foreigners, they probably spoke English. The man at the stall was young, only about twenty-seven or so, with a welcoming smile. "Pois não? You buy something?" He swept a showman's arm across the football jerseys and Brazilian flag-adorned towels.
Alex returned the smile and lied through his teeth. "Probably."
"Take your time, don't worry! You looking for present for girlfriend? I have many choice."
Alex nodded thoughtfully. If he bought something, it might endear him to the stallholder, and give him more luck with finding answers. "So, er… I guess you know what girls like, right?"
The man nodded, flopping his hair all over the place. "Of course! My sister, she tells me what girls like, she tells me their secrets." He leaned forward conspiratorially, "She is not so much girl as other girls – she prefers to catch fish instead of cook, if you know what means – but she knows girls. She is one!"
Alex laughed along with the stallholder, trying to hide his bemusement. He pretended to study the towels. One had the words 'Don't Panic' inscribed in large friendly letters.
On and on, the man continued, "In fact, she like fish so much we call her 'Cabeça de Peix'... You know what that means? Cabeça means head, yes?" He smiled. "She don't like that too much, but she like us too much to punch too hard." His eyes lit up. "Here, she come now – Peix!"
A girl approached, carrying a large wicker basket full of fish on her head. She stopped and glared at the man, and then shouted a Portuguese word that sounded a lot like an insult to Alex's ears. Alex was shocked. It was the girl who had run away when he'd mentioned the name 'fishhead'. What luck!
The stallholder bore the insult with good grace. "Um beijo! Come and tell this guy what girls like!"
Her eyes drifted over to Alex, and widened. She dropped her basket of fish onto her brother's stall, and turned. Her skirt fluttered as she swept around the corner.
All of a sudden, the clues that had collected in Alex's subconscious connected, as if his mind had hidden a Belgian detective much smarter than he. The girl – cabeça de peix – head of the fish – she was fishhead! How very sexist of him to assume fishhead was male.
He muttered a quick farewell to the astonished stallholder, and rushed after her.
The stalls rushed past him in a blur of startled faces and rolling oranges. He jumped over watermelons and bananas, trying hard to avoid geese running between his legs, honking madly. It was lucky that she had such long hair; it helped him recognise her from behind, and slowed her down.
"Excuse me," he cried, as well as "sorry!" and "fishhead!"
From what little he noticed of the faces he passed, he must have looked crazy.
Eventually, the girl, fishhead, rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. Alex followed her around the corner, but found no trace of her: not under the stalls, not up any trees, not anywhere. Clearly, she knew the area much better than he.
The food Alex had eaten was protesting, squeezing his stomach hard and threatening to jump up and out his throat. Maybe he shouldn't have eaten so much. But it had tasted so good… He bent over, hands on knees, panting hard and trying not to collapse.
First the escape from his flat back in Britain, then the staircase to the pousada, and now this. His doctor wouldn't be pleased. Alex abandoned the chase (although, more truthfully, it was the chase that had abandoned him) in favour of a long walk on the beach as he attempted to figure out how to return to the pousada. If he never visited the beach while in Brazil, he'd never forgive himself and neither would Tom.
Digging his feet into the warm sand, Alex shoved his hands in his pockets, passing a group of youths standing in a huddle, staring at their feet. A closer look revealed that they were playing football. Alex's hands clenched in jealousy, thinking of the games he was missing back home, but he kept walking. He had things to do.
xxx
Dusk on Ipanema Beach was an ineffable sight, the setting sun casting golden rays across the blue water and grey sand. The air was cooler at this time, and Alex basked in the refreshing chill.
Even now, the beach held a lot of people, irritating Alex, who just wanted a quiet spot to relax after his strenuous chase. The rocks at the end of the beach were fairly devoid of life though, so he wandered over and sat down with a sigh, closing his eyes.
Before he knew it, he was blinking himself awake and wondering at the darkness that surrounded him. Checking his watch, he saw that it was almost two in the morning. A surge of annoyance ran through him.
What kind of a spy was he, that he fell asleep without meaning to? He wouldn't have fallen asleep before. If only he'd been able to catch fishhead. What kind of a spy was he, that he couldn't outrun someone? How could he have let her go so easily? She had a skirt on, and her hair was abnormally long. She should have been the one struggling, not him. He was supposed to be a spy, supposed to be trained, fit, fast.
Alex closed his eyes. If only fishhead was a little slower. If Alex had realised sooner and stopped her from running off. He was always so slow after being in hospital. If only he hadn't been shot. If only – he flicked a stone.
His eyes snapped open as he felt the ground give way beneath him.
With a WHUMP, Alex landed in an empty room with concrete walls and floor. Well, that was a surprise. He stood gingerly, brushing off the cobwebs that clung to his clothing. With careful steps he slunk over to a hole in the wall emitting some light, and peeked through.
It was fishhead! She sat at a wooden desk, typing into a laptop. What luck, again! Perhaps the gods were smiling on him after all. For now, she hadn't noticed him. He crept closer. Restrain the target first, obtain the info later. He stood just where her blind spot would have been, were she a car.
Unfortunately, Alex realised too late, people weren't cars. She turned towards him and gasped, withdrawing a gun from somewhere within the folds of her skirt before he could take another step.
"Do not move!" she shouted, pulling the safety back.
"fishhead," he pleaded to her better nature, raising his hands obediently.
His plea was ignored in favour of waving the gun threateningly. "Do not call me fishhead! You think I am fishhead?"
Alex scowled. Was this girl really going to deny it? "I don't think; I know."
"You do not think you know?" she laughed scornfully.
"No, I know I know!"
fishhead scoffed triumphantly. "You sound like a parrot."
He blinked. What a strange retort. "But… you are fishhead, aren't you?"
Her reply was a mixture between a shrug and a nod that ended up as an odd twitch. "Come sit," she beckoned, gesturing with the gun to the chair.
Alex looked from the girl to the gun and back again. "I'd rather stand."
fishhead rolled her eyes and repeated her command. He sat. Reluctantly.
"Now," she began, "you wanted to talk to me?"
Nonplussed, Alex could only nod mutely.
"You are 'McBeth'?" she prompted.
Alex nodded once more. "You've been trying to kill me," he accused.
"Not killing," she admonished, lightly tapping him on the head with the gun and ignoring his flinch. "Only scaring."
"Scaring?" Alex yelped indignantly. "You call that scaring?"
"Oh, please," she sneered, "so fragil. In Brazil, no man is weak as you."
Alex decided to change the subject. "Why are you scaring me? Couldn't you have waited until after the football season?"
fishhead twitched again, this time a shrug and a shake of the head. "What football? No questions from you, little menino."
"I'd like it very much if you stopped scaring me, then. And brought me home to finish my matches."
"You want to finish matches? Oh, ho!" howled the girl, holding her stomach to emphasise how ridiculously hilarious she found him. "Now the prisioneiro demands!"
She seemed to be waiting for a response, even going so far as to raise her eyebrows pointedly. Alex mumbled, "Er, yes."
"Yes," she whispered, suddenly inches away from his ear, the gun still pointed at his temple. "But, little menino, demands must have the way to enforce, no?"
Bereft of a better response, Alex mumbled, "Er, yes," again.
fishhead pouted at him, disappointed. "Does the little idiota not understand?"
"…Er, no."
The girl eyed him critically, the same way he imagined she'd eye one of the fish she caught. With an exaggerated sigh, she brought one of her hands in front of Alex's face and slowly, palm up, rubbed the tips of her fingers with her thumb. Leaning in even closer to Alex's ear, she breathed, "Money, estúpido."
Ah. "How much?"
The girl leaned back, smiling. "Now the little menino, he understands!" She studied her nails. "The amount, it should be great, yes?"
Alex performed his approximation of her second twitch, the shrug and shake of the head, and did not speak.
"What about…" She looked into the air, squinting her eyes at some now not so faraway treasure trove. "Ten thousand?"
With a little thought, Alex calculated that ten thousand Brazilian Real was around three thousand pounds. Maybe MI6 would pay the expenses. Three thousand was nothing to them.
Then again, the girl probably wanted the money from him as soon as possible. It was unlikely he'd be able to get even three thousand pounds without having to jump through all kinds of tedious red-taped hoops.
Well, it was lucky he had around fifteen thousand Brazilian Real back at the pousada. He had been so overjoyed when the money-changers had told him that he had around fifteen thousand in cash. Even if it worked out as different as pounds, it was still nice to be able to carry around fifteen thousand units of money. Now he just had to convince fishhead to lower the cost, and then to let him go and fetch it.
The girl's gaze snapped back to him as if sensing his thoughts. "Dólares americanos, of course. So actually twenty thousand Brazilian Real, yes? I give to you a discount."
There was no way he could pay that kind of money. "No," he protested, "do you want to bleed me dry? I only have ten thousand Brazilian Real." There was no harm a little white lying. Especially in this kind of situation.
Shrugging, the girl shot back, "Ten thousand? You compare that to twenty thousand? Hah! It is too little. Selling fish, it is good pay, but it is not enough. At least eighteen thousand, or you will continue to be scared."
Alex sighed dramatically. "My financial situation will be scarier than losing my life. You must accept eleven thousand."
The girl exhaled noisily, louder than Alex. "I will never eat again!" she proclaimed. "I will not accept anything below sixteen thousand. That is my last offer, inglês."
Briefly considering heaving an even more obnoxiously pronounced sigh, Alex instead opted to shake his head wildly as if confronted by his worst fear. "No, no, no," he whined, "that is impossible! I will die before you receive it. No, this is my last offer: thirteen thousand."
Pursing her lips, the girl removed the gun from his temple and stalked around the room, muttering. Alex attempted to discern what she was saying, but stopped after he heard her growl, "Estúpido! Little menino é tão estúpido! Idiota!" He had a feeling she was calling him stupid.
Eventually, she returning to the chair she had placed him in and replaced the gun against his temple. "Okay, menino, I accept fourteen thousand Brazilian Real. Although, the sleep, it will never happen again. You will bring me this money before the sun, it rises tomorrow, yes?"
"Er, yes." At least he still had some money. And access to MI6's endless supply of funds, though he couldn't withdraw it into hard cash.
For a second, she paused, before kicking the chair with him over and brandishing her gun, still with the safety off. "Go, go go!"
He stumbled to his feet and ran into the other room. He had to get all the way to the pousada, count the money and get back in about – he checked his watch – two hours. Definitely not the stairs. He'd had enough exercise today. But, his brain cried out, not nearly enough sleep.
Alex scaled the ladder to the surface, chased by the sound of the girl – he still only knew her as fishhead – yelling after him in her fishwife's voice, "Apresse-se, seu imbecil!" Whatever that meant.
xxx
The tramcar couldn't move fast enough for Alex, who watched the hands of his watch desperately. He watched as the tramcar slowly rounded the corner into sight, unhurriedly approaching the stop. Alex contemplated leaping on before it properly stopped, and threatening the driver as he had at the airport taxi rank, but dismissed the idea. It wouldn't do to create a scene, and two hours was surely long enough. Surely. He leapt on as soon as the doors began to open.
Five minutes passed and the shadows grew longer. The chatter of the people around Alex would normally have been soothing, creating an atmosphere for him to just disappear into, but not now. Now, their inane conversations emphasised the meaningless of their lives in contrast to what he was going through. None of them had been forced into a life of danger and irregularity, forced to give their lives for the sake of huge populations.
Another five minutes passed. What was the tramcar doing? It was waiting at the stop as if some other passengers would turn up out of the sand before it was forced to move on. Finally it lurched into a ponderous crawl that made Alex want to howl. The woman beside him was rabbiting on about her son who was such a disappointment, gone to sell Western trinkets – here she gave Alex the evil eye – while her daughter was off acting like a boy, a fisherman. Alex tuned her voice out, turning his attention instead to the sluggishly passing landscape outside.
The sun was setting over the coastline, painted streaks of gold over the water and tingeing the edges of the trees on the side of the mountain pink, while the sky was stained with a mix of ultramarine and indigo. As Alex watched, the moon appeared, and the first few stars started to twinkle.
He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had passed altogether, and he was only just over halfway back. He took a deep breath, clenched his jaw, and stared solidly out the window.
A grizzled old man sitting opposite Alex was humming a low, sombre tune that mingled with the echoes of wind threading through the trees along the mountainside under his breath. The traffic could still be heard even so far away, but now they faded to the background, overcome with rustling leaves and the creak-creak-creaking of the tram wheels.
He looked at his watch again. Twenty-five minutes. Breathe.
The petrol smell had also faded, in lieu of the musk smell of freshly rained-on earth, and flourishing greenness. Here, nature ruled supreme, the rainforests encroaching upon the blocks of flats and shops, like a creeping spider reaching out with its green tendrils to seep into the cracks on the footpath.
Sturdy and modern though the buildings were, the rainforest would be there at the end of the earth, consuming abandoned buildings and taking back what was built by humans for only a small blip in the life of this ancient place.
Finally, the tram arrived, shaking Alex out of his despondent musings. Before it had completely stopped, he was standing and as soon as it did stop, he jumped off and hurried to the pousada, checking his watch as he trotted as quickly as he dared. The whole trip had taken half an hour. That left an hour and a half; an hour if he set aside the half-hour he needed for the trip back to fishhead.
Distractions and serenity of the tram gone, Alex's stomach was taking the opportunity to announce its hunger to him, and his brain was joining in with sleepiness – couldn't he have rested some more on those comfortable rocks? Against these combined forces, his legs bravely carried him with their remaining strength over to the stairs to his room. Thank the Lord he hadn't had to climb the stairs outside the pousada.
The receptionist – how many hours did she work anyway? – showing the same persistence as any of Alex's teammates, stalked up to him with a great smile not unlike that seen on a crocodile. Her white teeth gleamed in the dim light.
"I'm sorry, but I have to go," he stammered, but she laid a hand on his arm, restricting all movement.
"Is the young man hungry? I can feed him well."
Alex's traitorous stomach made its complaints loudly, and as he flushed, the woman gave what must have been a tinkling laugh, once, long ago, but was now comparable to the sound of shattered glass thrown at a squawking parrot. He felt sick. She took a long drag of her cigarette, blatantly ignoring the 'No Smoking' rule on a poster beside the door.
Shaking his head violently seemed to have no effect on the receptionist: she tightened her grip and said, "I can show you good food, satisfy you."
"No, thank you; I really must be going." And with that, Alex wrenched his arm out of the woman's grip and stumbled up the stairs and into his room. He shut the door behind him and leant against it with a sigh of relief, not daring to close his eyes for more than a second.
He checked his watch: less than an hour to go before he had to leave; a while yet, but he wanted his sleep and some food, dammit! With large strides and a determined glow in his eyes, Alex went to the safe in the wardrobe, and opened it, withdrawing a large wad of notes.
Alex counted out the money demanded by fishhead and recounted it, just to be sure. He then looked around for a safe way to carry it. He couldn't tie it around himself; he'd have to take it off for fishhead and there was no way he was undressing more than he had to in front of her. The only bags he had were the Samsonite and his manbag. The Samsonite would mark him out as a tourist, easy pickings for thieves.
That left the manbag. Steeling himself against inevitable mocking that would follow him should he carry this bag around at this hour, he shoved the bundles of money inside the bag and picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy, so he removed some of the other items he had placed inside it. Damn the attackers for forcing him out his flat with no chance for thought.
Alex tried not to imagine laughter surrounding him as he left the pousada once more, scurrying round the bottom of the stairs and out the door before the receptionist, who was painting her toenails, could even move towards him. Once again, Alex was forced to wait for the tram, constantly looking his shoulder for the receptionist. Just when he was considering taking the stairs, the tram appeared.
Patiently, Alex waited for it to stop, people to step off, and finally to board. The driver had taken up the old man's tune and looked the very picture of a man grown weak and complacent with life. Alex shuddered to imagine ever becoming like that. He estimated that he had about twenty-five minutes left before sunrise. Counting the money had taken longer than he'd expected.
Soon, it seemed as though the court in the heavens had heard the driver and old man's song, and wept for their loss of youth, pouring a cascade of water onto the canopy of the mountain. Alex's hair grew damp very quickly from a small hole in the roof. With a deafening crraaack, a branch broke off a nearby tree and thudded over the top of the tram. The passengers seemed not to notice, though Alex instinctively clutched the manbag and its contents closer.
He had estimated that he had fifteen minutes left before sunrise, but he could just see – although perhaps it was his imagination – the first tendrils of sunlight stretching awake in the distance. His stomach lurched, but he reasoned that it was better late than never and maybe he could bargain with fishhead.
Protecting his manbag by holding it to his body, Alex swiftly navigated the streets to the beach, and finally into fishhead's lair. It was a few minutes past four o'clock. She was sitting at her desk with her gun, as composed as ever. It even looked as though she had brushed her hair.
"Are you having the money?" she demanded, without looking up.
Alex responded in the affirmative, panting a little. She was down here, so she couldn't have seen the first light outside. And he was only a couple of minutes late if she'd also estimated four o'clock as sunrise.
Her face broke into a large smile, much prettier than that of the lady at the pousada.
"And you won't… 'scare' me anymore?" he persisted.
She frowned. "What you take me for, dishonest? I am reliable pra caramba!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not one to take chances. Could I at least have your word, a promise? Perhaps in writing? A witness, perhaps a counter-signature?"
fishhead contemplated his request for only a second, then also shrugged. "Okay. I will not be scaring you or any of your friends, and my workers will not either. No writing. Okay?"
"Yep." He held out his hand.
"Imagina," she said, and took it.
And that was that. Everything he had gone through… over. He could return to England and play for the rest of the season. Life was excellent.
Alex left the lair feeling exultant, but once more plagued by stomach and brain. Despite his stomach's vocal assertions, though, his head won the battle and he decided he was much too sleepy to eat. Just a quick nap in the pousada, or maybe those surprisingly comfortable rocks… He decided on the pousada, since the rain was still thundering down.
AN: This wasn't too crazy, was it? I find myself awfully disheartened when it doesn't appear if anyone's reading this... Even if it's just a quick 'haha' or 'this was very bad', could some of you find it within yourselves to leave a small comment on how this story is faring?
You could even try to predict what's going to happen next :D (and don't forget the competition...)