The Bone Clocks

Cheeseman’s room’s lit by the bedside lamp, and the destroyer of my comeback novel staggers over to his bed, trips over his suitcase, and belly-flops onto the mattress. “Notteverynight,” flobbers monsieur le critique, as he succumbs to an onslaught of giggles, “I get escorted home by the Wild Child of British Letters.”

I tell him, Yes, that’s hilarious, and sweet dreams, and if he’s not up by eleven, I’ll call up from Reception. “Ammabs’lutely fine,” he drawls, “I truly, madly, deeply, truly, really am. Really.”

Arms outspread, the critic Richard Cheeseman passes out.

March 12, 2016

I ORDER EGG-WHITE OMELETTE with spinach, sourdough toast, and organic turkey patties, freshly squeezed orange juice, chilled Evian water, and local coffee to wash down painkillers and entomb my hangover. Seven-thirty A.M., and the air in the roofed-over courtyard is still cool. The hotel’s mynah bird sits on its perch, making improbable noises. Its beak is an enameled scythe and its eye is all-seeing and all-knowing. Were this a work of fiction, dear reader, my protagonist would wonder if the mynah bird intuits what he’s pla

Can Literature Change the World?is the name of Cheeseman’s event. This urgent and timely commingling of the cultural elite’s finest minds is being held in a long, whitewashed hall on the top floor of the ducal palace, Ground Zero of Cartagena 2016. Things kick off when a trio of Colombian writers strolls onto the stage to a standing ovation. The three salute their audience like postwar resistance heroes. The moderator follows them—a twig-thin woman in a blood-red dress, whose fondness for chunky gold is visible even from my seat on the back row. Richard Cheeseman has opted for the English-consul look, with a three-piece cream suit and damson-purple tie, but just looks like a hairy twat off Brideshead Revisited. The Three Revolutionaries take their seats and we non-Hispanophones don our headphones for the English simultaneous translation. The female interpreter renders first the moderator’s greeting, then the potted biographies of the four guests. Richard Cheeseman’s biog is the scantiest: “A famous and respected English critic and novelist.” In fairness to whoever wrote it, Richard Cheeseman’s Wikipedia page is scanty too, though his “notorious demolition” of Crispin Hershey’s Echo Must Dieis there, and co

South American readings are audience-participative affairs, like stand-up comedy at home. My in-ear Babelfish provides synopses of the passages rather than a ru

Then the “round table” starts and the bollocks gets going.

“Literature should assassinate,” declares the first revolutionary. “ Iwrite with a pen in one hand and a knife in the other!” Grown men stand, cheer, and clap.

The second writer won’t be outdone: “Woody Guthrie, one of the few great American poets, painted the words This Guitar Kills Fascistson his guitar; on mylaptop, I have written This Machine Kills Neocapitalism!” Oh, the crowd goes wild!

A file of latecomers shuffles along the row in front of me. So perfect an opportunity, it might have been scripted. Behind this human shield, I slip out of the room and clip-clop down the whitewashed stairs. Across the open-air courtyard of the Claustro de Santo Domingo, Ke

Focus, Hershey. Serious shit. Focus.

STEP UP FROM the bright hot street into the cool marble-and-teak lobby of the Santa Clara Hotel. Pass the two doormen, who, one suspects, have been trained to kill. They assess clothes, gringocity quotient, credit rating. Remove sunglasses and blink a bit gormlessly— See, boys, I’m a hotel guest—but replace them as you skirt the courtyard, passing preprandial guests sipping cappuccinos and banging out emails where Benedictine nuns once imbibed deep drafts of Holy Spirit. Avoid the eye of the mynah bird and, beyond the sleepless fountain, take the stairs up to the fourth floor. Retrace last night’s midnight steps to the inevitable forking path. A su

“Now, Sirs,” quoth he, “if it be you so lief

To finde Death, turn up this crooked way,

For in that grove I left him, by my fay,

Under a tree, and there he will abide …”

But it’s justice, not death, that Ibe so lief to finde. Any eyewitnesses? None. The crooked way, then. A maid’s trolley is parked outside Room 403, but there’s no sign of the maid. Room 405 is around the corner, the last-but-one down a dead end. Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” sashays through my head, and via an arch in the hotel’s outer wall, four floors above street level, Hershey sees roofs, a blue stripe of Caribbean, and dirty cauliflower clouds … Far-off coastal skyscrapers, finished and unfinished. Room 405. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Your come-sodding-uppance, Dickie Cheeseman. Down in the street, a motorbike revs up the octaves. Here’s Cheeseman’s spare swipe-card, retained after my act of Good Samaritanship last night, and here is Fate’s chance to nix my best-laid plan: If Cheeseman noticed he was missing a swipe-card this morning and obtained a replacement with a new code, the little LED on the door will blink red, the door will stay shut, and Hershey must abort mission. But should Fate want me to press ahead, the LED will turn green. There’s a lizard on the door frame. Its tongue flickers.