Then back into the fray, the frustrated shriek of police sirens, the grunt and grind of bulldozers and power drills, all the mindless hooting, farting and protesting of a third world tropical city that can’t wait to choke itself to death, back to the beggars and cripples and the sellers of hand towels, flowers, drinking mugs and cookies, crowding you at every traffic light – Hannah, get your window down and where’s that tin of half-balboas? – today it’s the turn of the legless white-haired senator paddling himself in his dog cart, and after him the beauti-ful black mother with her happy baby on her hip, fifty cents for the mother and a wave for the baby and here comes the weeping boy on crutches again, one leg bent under him like an over-ripe banana, does he weep all day or only in the rush hour? Hannah gives him a half-balboa as well.
Then clear water for a moment as we race on up the hill at full speed to the María Inmaculada with its powdery-faced nuns fussing around the yellow school buses in the forecourt – Señor Pendel, buenos días! and Buenos días to you, Sister Piedad! And to you too, Sister Imelda! – and has Hannah remembered her collection money for whichever saint it is today? No, she’s goofy too, so here’s five bucks, darling, you’ve got plenty of time and have a great day. Hannah who is plump gives her father a pulpy kiss and wanders off in search of Sarah who is this week’s soulmate while a smiling very fat policeman with a gold wristwatch looks on like Father Christmas.
And nobody makes anything of it, Pendel thinks in near contentment as he watches her disappear into the crowd. Not the kids, not anyone. Not even me. One Jewish boy except he’s not, one Catholic girl except she’s not either, and for all of us it’s normal. And sorry I was rude about the peerless Ernesto Delgado, dear, but it’s not my day for being a good boy.
After which, in the sweetness of his own company, Pendel rejoins the highway and switches on his Mozart. And at once his awareness sharpens, as it tends to as soon as he is alone. Out of habit he makes sure his doors are locked and keeps half an eye for traffic muggers, cops and other dangerous characters. But he isn’t worried. For a few months after the US invasion gunmen ruled Panama in peace. Today if anybody pulled a gun in a traffic jam he would be met with a fusillade from every car but Pendel’s.
A scorching sun leaps at him from behind yet another half-built highrise, shadows blacken, the clatter of the city thickens. Rainbow washing appears amid the darkness of the rickety tenements of the narrow streets he must negotiate. The faces on the pavement are African, Indian, Chinese and every mixture in between. Panama boasts as many varieties of human being as birds, a thing that daily gladdens the hybrid Pendel’s heart. Some were descended from slaves, others might as well have been, for their forefathers had been shipped here in their tens of thousands to work and sometimes die for the Canal.
The road opens. Low tide and low lighting on the Pacific. The dark grey islands across the bay are like far-off Chinese mountains suspended in the dusky mist. Pendel has a great wish to go to them. Perhaps that’s Louisa’s fault because sometimes her strident insecurity wears him out. Or perhaps it’s because he can already see straight ahead of him the raw red tip of the bank’s skyscraper jostling for who’s-longest among its equally hideous fellows. A dozen ships float in ghostly line above the invisible horizon, burning up dead time while they wait to enter the Canal. In a leap of empathy Pendel endures the tedium of life on board. He is sweltering on the motionless deck, he is lying in a stinking cabin full of foreign bodies and oil fumes. No more dead time for me, thank you, he promises himself with a shudder. Never again. For the rest of his natural life, Harry Pendel will relish every hour of every day and that’s official. Ask Uncle Benny, alive or dead.