Patrick Samphire

Finisterre

She's sitting there on the underground, head nodding to whatever industrial grind she's got playing through her headphones, and suddenly for the first time in years I'm reminded of Jorge, and I miss him like God just tore out a chunk of my heart.

She's not much like Jorge really. She looks like she'd be a vampire if she had the imagination for it. All black makeup and pale skin. Jorge's skin was so rich I could have planted a seed in it and it would have grown. I think it is her eyes, the colour of raw sugar, that remind me of him, although Jorge never had that blank, hopeless expression. Not even when they hung him.

Even so, for a moment I'm tempted to get up and go over to her, just to talk, to remember his voice. Hey, but how would that look? Forty-eight year old man, not shaved for a week, not changed his clothes for as long, smelling of old beer goes up to a teenage girl on the subway. What would you think if you saw it? So I don't. I just close my eyes and remember Jorge.

Jorge with his guitar, singing revolutionary songs under the banana trees by the river.

Jorge with a rifle, in the jungle, waiting for the troops to pass.

Jorge drinking and laughing in the town square while Somoza's National Guard were gathering in the hills with their CIA friends.

Jorge in my arms.

Jorge between my thighs.

Ah, God.

Jorge hanging from a rope in the town square.

It was just a little town, about thirty miles east and ten miles north of Matagalpa. Maybe you wouldn't even call it a town. But to Jorge and his friends it was like heaven. Corazón de la Revolución they called it, Heart of the Revolution. They put up signs all around town with that on, Corazón de la Revolución. Then they sang and laughed. It was 1976, and the National Guard were moving towards us with their American weapons. And there were Jorge and twenty of his friends with rifles that only worked two times out of three, and me, straight out of college, writing articles that would never be published for newspapers that didn't care.

Jorge didn't die when the National Guard took the town, but the Heart of the Revolution did. When we saw we had lost, we hid. They tore down the signs around the town and put up their own. They called the town San Lorenzo. Their captain's name was Lorenzo. Perhaps he thought he was a saint.

American money bought Jorge from the people who had hidden him. The National Guard hung him in the town square as a lesson. And I watched. I watched, that's all. I didn't help him. I didn't even have the courage to take a photograph. And then he was dead. Jorge. God, I miss him. I should have saved him.

I open my eyes.

I've missed my stop and the girl's gone. In her place is a man. He looks a bit like me. Dirty, unshaven. But he looks happy. He's smiling.

"Finisterre," he says.

"What?"

"The end of the Earth."

I shake my head and look out the window at the darkness, hoping he'll go away.

"He died, didn't he? You lost him."

My head jerks around. "What did you say?"

"You lost him. I know. I can see. You're like me. I recognise you. I lost someone, but I found them again."

He's got that unhealthy glow of enthusiasm in his eyes. For a moment, I think he's going to offer me a copy of Watchtower or something. But he doesn't. Instead he pushes his hand through his thinning hair. "Her name was Jennifer. I loved her, but I lost her."

My neck reddens. "But you found her again," I say, almost shouting it. "Jorge is dead. He's been dead for twenty-six years. I'll never find him again."

I subside back in my seat. The train is pulling in to Kings Cross. I wonder if I should just get out and change trains.

"Tell me," he says, his voice soft, persuasive.

And, to my surprise, I do. The hole in my heart demands no less than this drawing out of quarter of a century of pus.

"What do you think happened to Corazón de la Revolución?" he says when I stop.

"They burnt it down a month later," I tell him. "Somoza depopulated Matagalpa province. That was his lesson to the peasants."

The man shakes his head. "No they didn't. They burnt down San Lorenzo," he says. "There is a difference."

"Some difference."

He smiles again. I want to punch his smug face, but I don't have the strength. Remembering Jorge has left me weak.

"Do you think Corazón de la Revolución just disappeared when they changed its name to San Lorenzo?" he asks.

I sigh. I should have got off at Kings Cross. "No. It became San Lorenzo. To the National Guard, anyway. Not to me."

He nods, as though somehow I've proved his point. "Corazón de la Revolución didn't go away because they changed its name. It is still alive." His voice drops, and I have to strain to hear it. "In Finisterre, at the end of the Earth."

A train passes us, going the other way in the darkness of the tunnel. I see strobes of light from the windows, and faces flashing past too quick for me to distinguish.

"So what if it is? Jorge is still dead. I don't care about Corazón de la Revolución. I only care about Jorge. He's dead."

The man frowns, like I'm some remedial student struggling over an algebra problem.

"Your Jorge wasn't killed in Corazón de la Revolución. He was killed in San Lorenzo. In Corazón de la Revolución he may still be alive."

I'm shaking my head, but my throat is tight because I want to believe him. "How do you know this?"

"Because," he says, "Jennifer was killed in Avon just after its name was changed from Somerset. I went to Finisterre, and I found her there. Alive."

My scalp is aching like every hair in my body is trying to pull itself out of my head. A pulse is throbbing somewhere behind my eyes. I'm cold and sweating at the same time. Jorge. I can see him laughing, see that gap between his front teeth.

This man is mad. But I don't think I care. Not anymore. Better to be mad than lost like this. His madness is a sea. I plunge in, let the waves wash over me.

"Where," I say though a sticky mouth, "Where is this Finisterre? How do I get there?"

"I told you," he says. "It is at the end of the Earth. It is where places go when their names are changed. In Finisterre are Constantinople and Rhodesia, Petrograd and Somerset, Babylon and Thebes. And there is Corazón de la Revolución. It's easy to get there." He leans towards me, eyes flicking from side to side, as though he thinks someone might be listening. Then he whispers, "Just change your name."

#

I'm feeling stupid and angry and hollow. I'm sitting in front of the desk, my paperwork all filled in, my money order lying there. Forty pounds doesn't come easily to someone like me. Maybe I won't eat next week. All because I wanted to believe the story of some madman.

The lawyer glances up. "It all appears to be in order, Mr Carlyle," he says. His smile is weak, like he used to practice it but doesn't bother any more. After the revolution, we used to say, there would be no more lawyers, no more bureaucrats. After the revolution. Today I don't think I even remember what the revolution was about.

He picks his stamp up, inks it on the pad so slowly that my muscles are burning with lactic acid from the tension. So this is all it takes. A few bits of paper, some money, and Thomas Carlyle is gone, replaced by Evan Harris.

The stamp lifts, descends towards the paper....

And I'm on my knees in mud. Cold water seeps over my hands, through my threadbare jeans. I push myself to my feet and stumble away from the stream.

Where the hell is this?

Well, I know one place it isn't. It isn't Corazón de la Revolución. The trees around me look like British woodland. There are oaks and chestnuts and some others I can't name, and tangled brambles and ground ivy. The trees are that dark, heavy green of late summer, and I hear birds hidden in the foliage. I can smell smoke from somewhere not far ahead.

I push through the undergrowth, and the trees end. Up ahead is a steep, artificial hill topped by an earth and wood wall. I recognise the construction from my history lessons as a kid. It's a motte and bailey fort. The smoke is coming from the top, not the gentle smoke from a cooking fire, but a roiling, rising, uncontrolled black mass.

There's a wall at the bottom too, stretching out to surround a cluster of low buildings, but it's been shattered in several places leaving craters in the soil. I hear voices shouting from the top of the hill. There's a standard up there too but even when I squint it's just black shapes against the bright blue sky.

If I were sensible, I would go around, head back into the trees and avoid this place. But I need to know where I am and where Corazón de la Revolución is.

I ease myself through one of the gaps in the lower wall. There's a body lying in the mud nearby. I try not to look.

I'm about half way up the mound when I hear a sound in the sky above me, a sound that tears the sky, that rises to a shriek. I look up and see a jet banking, a streak of light detaching itself, falling.

The explosion shudders the mound. The earth beneath me slips then bucks, and I find myself face down. Earth hammers down around me, on me, thumping in clods like fist blows. Something more solid smacks the ground by me. It's the standard: a series of metal discs, crescents, half-discs, and wreaths along a pole, topped by a cracked eagle clutching crossed bolts of lightning. It looks Roman. I didn't think the Romans built forts like this. They certainly didn't use jets.

A hole has been torn in the top of the hill. The jet turns in a wide arc, coming around again. I struggle to my feet, my heart drumming. Sweat mingles with dirt on my face.

I can hear the jet again now.

Something streaks from the trees, racing towards it. Fire blooms in the sky, followed a second later by a shockwave of sound. Fragments, like black confetti, scatter from the sky.

I half walk, half fall down the slope, away from the shattered summit. There are no voices up there now.

As I reach the gap in the lower wall, I see the body in the mud twitch, and hear a low, ragged moan. Reluctance weights my legs with lead, but I force myself over to the man.

A wet, almost black stain shows through a rip in his khaki fatigues. It bubbles when he breathes.

His face is hidden by tumbled black hair. A rifle is trapped beneath him. I kneel beside him.

He twitches again, his arms convulsing as though he is attempting to push himself up, and as he does so, I see the armband. It is a double band, red above black, with white letters on it. An FSLN armband. Jorge used to wear one of those. For a moment I can't breathe. It's like someone's grabbed me by the throat with stone fingers. Jorge's hair was black like this.

Not caring about his wound, I turn the man onto his back. His head lolls back, the hair slipping free of his face, and I gaze down at him. He doesn't look Central or South American. I would guess Slavic if I had to, but even that isn't quite right. His eyes are open, but unfocused and glistening feverishly. He whispers disjointedly in a language I don't recognise.

There's nothing I can do for him. Even if I had medical training it's obvious he needs a hospital. But maybe he knows about Jorge, or where I can find the FSLN.

I bring him water in my cupped hands from the nearby stream, a trickle at a time. I see no one else in that time.

Late in the afternoon, his eyes clear a bit to focus on my face. I kneel down over him.

"Who are you? Where am I?" I repeat it in my rusty Spanish.

Eventually he replies, his English heavily accented. "You're new." Then he laughs, but it is more of a cough, and his face lines with pain.

"Where am I?"

"Finisterre," he whispers. "Took the fort for two days. Captured their standard. Great victory. Until that damned jet."

His eyes close again, and I shake his shoulders. He winces, but his eyes open again.

"What's happening?" I say. "Where did you come from?"

He runs a dry tongue across his lips. I should bring him more water, but I dare not lose this chance.

"Attacking us for ten years. Trying to crush the revolution." He pushes himself painfully up on one elbow. "Never."

"Where is the revolution?" I say.

"In our hearts," he says, and tries to smile, then, "Inwards. West."

He doesn't speak again. He dies sometime in the night. His consciousness runs away from him like water through fingers, and I don't know when he dies.

In the morning, I walk away from the rising sun, towards the west.

I don't know how long I walk in this woodland before I reach the river, but the joints in my legs are aching. The river is slow and a thick brown-green, and there is a rich, sickly smell of rotting vegetation.

I dip my hand into the water. It is warm, not like a British river. It reminds me of the Rio Tuma that ran near Corazón de la Revolución. If I threw myself in, would I find myself there? But this river is wider. Some tropical beast of a river whose name has been changed and which has found itself here, like me, in Finisterre. How many hundreds or thousands of such rivers are there in Finisterre? How many name changes? How many cities and towns and villages? How many countries? I finally realise the enormity of this place. It must be many times the size of the world I know, and Corazón de la Revolución is no more than a hundred small buildings. But I will not despair, not again. Inward. West. I will find the revolution and I will find Jorge.

I follow the current, and soon the river curves to the west. Beyond the curve, I see a city.

It is such an incongruous sight that for a moment I forget my exhaustion and the hunger burrowing in my stomach. The bridge on the edge of town could be from Renaissance Italy. It dead-ends in the wall of a pagoda, and behind that looms a medieval cathedral that I could swear I've seen somewhere before. On the other side of the river, a Victorian terrace forks into a line of Dutch colonial wooden houses on stilts and a concrete high-rise. Eras, architectural styles, nationalities are thrown together with no thought or planning, glass offices against mud huts, country bungalows shadowed by an oriental temple.

I am so astonished that at first I don't notice the bullet holes that pockmark the pagoda, nor the way the bay window of one of the Victorian houses has slumped into a crater in the road, nor the silence that smothers the city.

In front of the city is a strip of fields, carved from the woodland. When I reach the fields, I see the furrows ripped into the earth by tank treads that approach the city.

The damage is worse close up. Walls are blackened, windows smashed, houses no more than shells. Everywhere are bullet holes.

In a square a couple of hundred yards beyond the cathedral, where the signs of battle are scarred deep into the stone, I find the bodies. They have been crucified, in rows three deep, around the entire square. Each of them wears the black and red FSLN armband. The last of my strength fails, and I fall to the flagstones.

I wake to the buzz of flies. It is evening, and the crosses cast long, emaciated shadows across the square. Shaking, I lever myself to my knees, then my feet. I leave the way I came in, circle the dead, patchwork city, and follow the river again, west.

Two defeats, I tell myself. Two defeats for the FSLN, for Jorge's revolution. It means nothing. Finisterre is enormous. There is no reason to think that the FSLN are losing where Jorge is, nor that there is even fighting. But as I stumble on my imagination plagues me with the image of Jorge nailed to one those crosses, or hanging as he did before in the town square.

The river ends in a lake that stretches almost to the horizon. It takes me two days to reach this lake, two days scavenging berries and sometimes fruit from the woodlands until my stomach never loses that bitter pain of indigestion. Clustered around the shore, as far as I can see, are tents and lean-tos, and huddled figures. Even from where the woodlands end, a couple of miles from the lake, I can smell it. Raw sewage, dirty water, sweat. I have seen refugee camps before, in Palestine, but nothing like this. There must be hundreds of thousands of people here.

Roads lead from the lake, splaying out to every horizon, and on the roads, streams of people are making their way towards the lake. On one road, I see a convoy of trucks trailing trains of dust like stretched, dirty cotton wool behind them.

The shelters are clustered into blocks, separated by muddy thoroughfares. At intervals are spaced medical posts and feeding stations. Through it all are the crowds, washing tides of thin, wounded, and despairing humanity, dozens of races, hundreds of languages.

I would have recognised the woman sitting on the upturned crate at the back of the medical post anywhere. The braided cord of her hair that almost reaches her knees is more grey than black now, and someone has broken her nose, but the eyebrows like wings and the wide, solid shoulders are the same, and the lopsided smile that widens when she is angry. Inés Rivera. She was one of Jorge's closest friends.

I hurry across to her.

She looks shocked, afraid, but then understanding smoothes her features. She stands, knocking back the crate, and I feel the fire, the passion, from her that I had forgotten. She clasps my hand.

"Thomas, my friend. You have come to the wrong place."

My forehead creases like old paper in water. "What?"

"Women. This is place is full of women." She laughs, throwing back her head, a rolling, deep sound that stirs even the despondent crowds around us. I had forgotten that laugh. "These women. They marry. They change their names and they are suddenly here, without their husbands, with their old names, all alone and lonely. Paradise for most men, eh? But not you. How long have you been in Finisterre?"

"Three days, maybe four." My heart is thumping like a steam engine.

"Then it is a miracle that we have found each other. You could walk a hundred years in this place and never see a face you know." Her smile widens slightly, and I know Finisterre angers her somehow. "Or perhaps it is not a miracle. People can be drawn to places in Finisterre. Perhaps there is a purpose, perhaps a sympathy, a resonance between the person and the place. Sometimes it is weak, sometimes strong. Sometimes it does not appear to happen at all. I do not understand it." Inés has never liked things she cannot understand.

She shakes her head sending waves along her long hair. "But you were never interested in thoughts like that," she says. "You cared only for the revolution. I remember. I admired you."

"You?"

Things have changed, I want to say. I no longer know what I believe in. I haven't for a long time. For a while, after Corazón de la Revolución, I travelled the world, looking for other revolutions. But I could never regain the fire.

"And so did Jorge."

"Tell me about Corazón de la Revolución," I say. "What happened when you found yourselves here? Did..." I have to talk around the stone that's in my throat. I hear the pathetic desperation in my tone. "...did they still hang Jorge?"

"Hang Jorge?" She sounds shocked. Then she laughs again, and the crowds draw away, as though the sound scares them. "No, they did not hang him. They were confused. Most of their men were outside the town when it happened. We fought our way out. Jorge led us."

Us. It has not occurred to me until now. If Jorge and Inés and all the others are in this place while also being in the world I knew, then so should everyone who was in Corazón de la Revolución when its name changed. Captain Lorenzo, the soldiers, and the peasants. And me. Me. A version of me should be here. Is that me with Jorge even now?

"And me?" I croak. "What happened to me? What did I do?"

Inés turns away.

"Tell me."

She sighs, and places a strong hand on my shoulder. "You would not come, my friend. You were afraid. You stayed behind. When we retook the town, later, you...." Her eyes slide away from mine. "You were dead. The soldiers had killed you."

Dead. What does that mean? All it means to me is twice. I let Jorge down twice. Once in each world. Despair pulls down on my throat, my stomach. My limbs are too heavy, my head unsupportable rock. I fall.

#

"Is Jorge in Corazón de la Revolución?" I ask. It is later. Night has fallen and we are sitting by a fire, eating a bowl of stew Inés has found for us.

She shrugs. "Twenty-six years ago, Jorge was there. Today? Who can say? We left, to spread the revolution, each of us apart. I came this way. Jorge went north, I think. I have not seen him since, although I've heard tales of him, as we all have."

He will be there. I am sure. Corazón de la Revolución was Jorge's town, his dream. If the troops are heading towards it, Jorge will be there.

"Who is fighting against the revolution?" I ask. "Is Somoza here?"

She shakes her head. "No. They call themselves Romans, although I don't know if they are." She rests her chin on the palm of her hand. "This place is not like the world we came from, Thomas. Most civilisations collapse when they arrive here, particularly advanced ones. Imagine that you are suddenly in this place, your power, your water, your source of food, and your trade routes, all gone. And it is not easy to re-establish them. One day you may be drawing water from a river or trading with a neighbour, the next there is a hundred miles of forest or a new city between you and them. In many ways, primitive civilisations survive best. The Romans have been here a long time.

"They say they are the descendents of Roman legions who were campaigning in Africa when they found themselves here. They were ideally set to take power from the chaos of tribes that existed here before. They have dominated newcomers to this part of Finisterre ever since." Her eyes flick up to mine. "Until the revolution. The revolution is within us. It has no leaders, no capitals. This place was made for the revolution." She sighs. "Perhaps we were lucky. Corazón de la Revolución did not arrive in Roman lands. It appeared surrounded by towns and cities that paid tribute to the Romans, but which were not ruled by them. We helped them free themselves from their local oppressors, because oppression lives everywhere. We brought freedom to millions."

"But what happened to the revolution?" I ask. "I've seen so many FSLN bodies here."

"And you'll see more. I don't know what happened. The Romans usually care little who rules outside their borders, as long as the tributes continue. But even before we approached the borders of the Roman lands, they attacked us and the newly freed lands. They are worse than Somoza ever was. They will kill a thousand peasants to kill a single revolutionary."

I point at the crowds around us. "But how about this camp?"

"They let these people be fed. They want grateful subjects, not just bodies. But if they knew we were here, they would destroy this place."

I started to push myself to my feet. "Then we should leave. We can't risk that."

The look on her face stops me dead.

"We will not run from oppression," she says. "You believed that once. You wrote it down. Have you forgotten?"

"I...."

Her smile could crack her face in two, could swallow me.

"You look like shit," she says. "You look old. I never thought you would look old."

She doesn't look old. Despite the grey hair and the wrinkles she looks young. Her fire has sustained her. Mine died with Jorge. No, I realise, as I think it. That is wrong. My fire died when I failed Jorge.

"Come with me to Corazón de la Revolución," I say. "Let us find Jorge, save him, and start again."

She shakes her head, pity in her deep eyes. "Corazón de la Revolución does not matter. Jorge does not matter. The revolution is wherever the people's hearts yearn to be free. You believed that once too. I will be where the revolution is. Where will you be?"

I do not know. All I know is that twice I let Jorge down. Twice is enough.

Stealing a truck is easy. No one is guarding them now that they're empty of food. Refugees drain into this place, fleeing from the relentless march of the Roman troops. There's nowhere else for them to go, and no reason for them to take a truck. But I can't flee from the battles. I know the troops are heading inwards, towards the heart of the revolution, towards Jorge. I won't let him down a third time.

Crowds form a wake behind the truck, hands stretched out, faces upturned, pleading. I have nothing for them.

#

The diesel in the truck takes me close on three hundred miles. All the way I pass the ruins of towns and cities and villages, and camps or columns of troops. But there is no fighting. The war here is over. Even so this is not a land at peace. Victorious Roman troops stand ominous guard over the ruins. Several times, my truck is stopped and searched, but I am carrying no weapons or fighters and they let me pass.

The truck finally fails on the edge of a bombed-out fifties housing estate that skulks before a range of sharp hills. There is a mass grave just outside the estate. It's an old grave, maybe months old. As I stand before it, wondering whose bodies it contains, I realise that I am going to be too late. I will not be able to reach Corazón de la Revolución before the Roman troops do. They are probably there already.

But even so, I cannot stop. I cannot turn away and abandon Jorge again. I set out into the hills.

For two weeks I hike, avoiding habitations and people, following the sun west. Once I see an almost brown ocean, and hear seagulls. Another time I skirt the edge of a burning desert. At the beginning of the third week I find a bicycle, and follow a rutted track through a humid rainforest. Through the trees I glimpse a line of temples carved from a golden cliff of sandstone. An enormous roman eagle has been painted crudely on the stone above them.

Sometimes now I hear gunfire and explosions, or see a speck of a jet or bomber overhead. I cycle faster. There is a smell in the air now, of the river, of banana trees. I know I should stop more for food or rest, but I cannot. The spinning of my feet is all that keeps the Roman soldiers from Jorge.

The track ends abruptly in hills five days later, as evening falls. I reach the first ridge in full darkness, and see flashes of light, tracers, hear rumbles of sound, the rustle of gunfire.

By the time I reach the second ridge, my clothes coated in mud, my hands scraped and bloody, I can only hear the odd, weak pop of a rifle. Silence accompanies me after that.

Panting, I struggle up one last ridge. Far below, I see Corazón de la Revolución, the buildings silhouetted by scattered fires.

There are bodies here in the trees. I kneel by one and pull off the red and black FSLN armband, and pick up the rifle by the body.

I see the men before they see me. They are limping towards me, supporting each other. They stop when they see me, but they don't raise their weapons.

"It is too late," one of them says. "They have taken Corazón de la Revolución. The resistance is over. We have lost."

It is too dark to see their faces.

"You cannot fight them," the man says. "You must go, take the revolution elsewhere."

I no longer care about the revolution. I care for nothing except Jorge.

I walk past them. I knew one of them once, I realise as I pass. I don't remember his name.

"If you go down there you will die," he calls after me.

Die? I have been dead for twenty-six years.

I raise my rifle, and walk down the slope towards Corazón de la Revolución.

#

They don't shoot me. My rifle jams when I try to fire it, and they laugh when they disarm me. I am grabbed, pulled, punched, kicked to the town jail. I don't feel pain.

There is only one cell. I know. I stood outside this place once, while Jorge sat inside, waiting to die. I stood, and then turned away.

Not this time.

I am flung into the cell, landing on my face on the flagstone floor.

Strong hands help me to my feet.

"Thomas," he says. There is no surprise in his voice. Jorge. I stare at his silty eyes, made dark by the shadows, his earth-rich skin, the gap between his teeth. Age has hardened him, cut away the softness from his flesh. But he is still Jorge. We embrace.

Later, he says, "I think the revolution might have been won. If not for our friend, Captain Lorenzo."

"Is he here?" I say, the familiar fear squeezing my stomach.

Jorge smiles. "He is. He could no more stay away than you or I could. But this is still Corazón de la Revolución, not San Lorenzo. It isn't safe to change the names of places here. Names define Finisterre. So perhaps we have won after all."

I cannot take my eyes off the way his lips move. "But what went wrong?" I say.

Jorge shifts, grimacing at some old wound. "Captain Lorenzo fled from Corazón de la Revolución when we broke out. He left his men here and ran, like the coward he is, to the Romans. He convinced them that the revolution would come to them, and when it approached, they were ready. They let him join the forces of oppression against us."

I look around the little cell. If there were a way out, Jorge would have found it last time.

"Then it was all for nothing," I whisper. I wanted to save Jorge, to get him back. But instead we will both die at Lorenzo's hand, like Jorge did twenty-six years ago.

"No," he says. He crosses his hands behind his head, and smiles. "I have learnt something about Finisterre, my friend. Every day new places arrive here. The Romans can subjugate some of them but not all. Corazón de la Revolución is lost, but one day there will be a new heart." He looks straight at me. "The revolution will come again."

Fuck the revolution, I want to say. But I can't. Not to him. Instead I stare through the tiny high window, waiting for the morning light. And Jorge sings soft songs of revolution, until dawn.

The sun has not yet risen when the soldiers arrive at the cell. I see the Roman eagle embroidered on their breasts. Jorge touches the FSLN armband on my biceps, and smiles.

As the guards lead us out to the town square, I take Jorge's hand. There are hundreds of soldiers in ranks around the square, and two scaffolds, side by side. Jorge leans close to me, his lips brushing against my ear.

"I knew you would come," he says. "I knew you would not leave me to hang alone."

I meet his eyes. "Never," I say.

The rope is softer than I expect around my neck.

#

The lawyer lifts his stamp, inks it too slowly, and then brings it down on the paper. He looks up at me and smiles his weak smile.

"Congratulations, Mr Harris," he says. "You are a new man."

He stands, pushing out a hand. I rise and take it. Nothing has changed. The office is the same. I am still here.

What did I expect? I was so desperate to believe the story of a madman. But there is no forgiveness in fantasies. I bite down on my lip.

The madman from the underground is waiting outside. Fury surges in me like a beast beneath my skin. I grab him by the throat and slam him against the wall.

"Where the hell is this Finisterre? Where is Corazón de la Revolución? Where is Jorge?"

He swallows beneath my tight fingers. "Did you change your name?"

I don't loosen my grip. "Yes."

"To what?"

"Evan Harris," I say.

"And what happened to Thomas Carlyle?"

I let him fall. He is mad. I should blame myself for my stupidity, not him. "I am Thomas Carlyle. I am here."

He looks up at me. "No. Evan Harris is here. Thomas Carlyle is in Finisterre. Just as when your Corazón de la Revolución had its name changed to San Lorenzo, San Lorenzo stayed in this world and Corazón de la Revolución went to Finisterre. It's the way it works."

My anger fades as he speaks. Softly, I say, "You said you lost your Jennifer but you got her back. So where is she?"

He smiles. "In Finisterre, with me."

"And," I say, almost too quiet for even me to hear, "what use is that?"

"Tell me," he says. "How do you feel?"

His words are soft, but they stop me. I have been so engrossed with my anger that I have not looked at the wound inside me. Now I do.

The hole is filled, the wound healed. I feel good. I feel happy. He is right. I no longer miss Jorge. I smile.

Somewhere, I know, I am out there, with Jorge. We are singing songs by the river. Our skin is brushing, touching, pressing....

On the way home on the underground, I see a man slumped in his seat, eyes pressed closed, the familiar misery of loss as strong as a fluorescent light around him. I sit opposite him, leaning forward, and wait for his eyes to open.

-End-

Publication Details

First published in The Third Alternative, Issue 34, Spring 2003.

Reviews

"Patrick Samphire's 'Finisterre' is one of the finer examples of how to turn a conceit into a story: what if something lost still exists, somewhere else?"
- Alan Lattimore, Tangent Online.
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"...the style is strong. Samphire builds his intriguing premise without a hitch, easing into it, and coming full circle to a very satisfying conclusion. The only serious complaint I have is that Finisterre is too good an idea to leave off with this one story."
- Bluejack.

"An intriguing tale."
- David Schwartz.
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Credits

The cover illustration is by Richard Marchand.