Free The Amnesia Clinic by James Scudamore

book – the sort of thing you were supposed to consult – but in frank, unashamed prose, this one explained the cosmic felicities in the location of the site, detailed the mystery of how the stone had been transported there from Wales, and referred me to an entry in another of its volumes relating how Joseph of Arimathea had visited Glastonbury and planted a spear there that became a rose-bush.
    Something began to make thrilling sense to me. When I had first met Byron two years previously, he had asked me where I was from, and I had said England.
    ‘Ah, Londres,’ he said. ‘City of the kings.’
    ‘What?’ I said.
    ‘London is the city where you still have kings and queens,’ he said, wistfully.
    At the time, the remark had merely struck me as naive, but now, faced with this encyclopaedia and all its entries, his words seemed defining, iconic – a lesson in how removal could enable re-imagination, how looking at things in the right way could breathe warmth into the palest of truths. If such a simple re-expression of the facts could do that for grey old England, then what could it do for Ecuador, where princesses frozen in mountains made the headlines on a day-to-day basis?
    I took down an earlier volume, and turned to the entry for Inca:
    Lots of dates; lots of facts; a terrible photograph of Machu Picchu; a woodblock print of the great feuding brothers, Huáscar and Atahualpa. Some juicy details aboutbrain banquets and the massacres of Spanish Catholics, which were promising.
    Further down, another entry, ‘Isla de Plata’:
    Known as the ‘poor man’s Galápagos’; profusion of endemic species; humpback whales migrating from Antarctica to Colombia; named Island of Silver (or Money) on account of being site of (as yet undiscovered) treasure of Francis Drake; seventy-two tons of silver thrown overboard; nesting ground for albatross and blue-footed boobies.
    As yet undiscovered .
    ‘Okay then,’ said Fabián, charging in with a tray. ‘Here it is: tequila, limes, salt. I sense a quest coming on.’
    ‘Have a look at this,’ I said, bringing the encyclopaedia over to the table.
    ‘Are you mad? Look at this , man! Whatever it is, it can wait. Sit down.’
    ‘But this—’
    ‘I thought you wanted to hear about my parents. Take the chance now before I change my mind.’
    Fabián unplugged the jukebox, turned off the overhead lighting and switched on the set of antique disco lights that Suarez had installed in the library. This story was to be told not by firelight, but by roaming spotlights of phased red and blue.
    Before putting the book back on the shelf, I committed a place name from the map to memory: a small town, on the coast, not far from the Isla de Plata, with a reputation for surfing. There were other, bigger-looking places, some of which I’d heard much more about, but this name leapt out at me and stayed in a negative image on my retina after I had closed the covers – even after the room had been thrown into a silent dogfight of scrolling primary colours.
    The name was Pedrascada.
    Fabián positioned himself in front of the tequila tray andpoured two pairs of shots. Solemnly, we each threw back one, then another. Our winces turned into nervous smirks after the second, but Fabián said, ‘No laughing. These ones we can sip.’
    He poured out two more, and we sat staring at each other across the table as if an accusation of cardsharping hung in the air. The only sound in the room was the gentle creak of rusting disco hinges.
    ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ said Fabián.

FIVE
    Something you don’t know about me is that my dad was a mestizo (said Fabián). He would never have admitted it, but he was. His grandmother was an Indian, from Peguche. He used to claim that even she was technically a mestiza, and that his Indian blood was so diluted as a result that it didn’t exist.
    ‘ Mestizaje is relative,’ he would say. ‘In Europe, maybe I would be considered a mestizo. I have enough