35

MIKE GOES CRAZY

Throughout all this, the parties with the tourists continued. We partied a lot. Sometimes, I even got sick of partying. I developed major problems with my sinuses. My nose was permanently running and often it bled when I blew it. I had great difficulty getting to sleep. I got severe headaches that lasted for days on end. Apart from these symptoms, I thought that sniffing cocaine was relatively harmless until I watched Mike the chef completely lose it.

He was drunk and high that night, but since he had a perfect memory, he remembered our conversation word for word. We laughed about it afterwards, but at the time it was scary. It happened shortly after Ana, Mike’s Bolivian girlfriend, had broken up with him. They had been together before he was sent to prison, but had separated over some small incident. When Ana began to visit him in San Pedro, the relationship started up again. They had only been back together for two months, however, before Mike got himself so twisted up with jealousy, imagining what she did on the outside, that he destroyed the relationship. Every time she came to visit him, he would abuse her in public: ‘You’re late, you fucking prostituta. Who have you been with this time?’

On one occasion, Jack and I pulled Mike aside after Ana had left in tears. ‘Hey Mike, chill down,’ we told him. ‘You can’t treat her like that, man. She’ll leave you.’

‘I don’t care. She’s a puta.’

But Jack stood up to him. ‘You’re a prisoner, Mike,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful. What she is doing in here with you, I will never know.’

Mike glared at him. I think Jack wanted Ana for himself, because whenever she was around he took his sunglasses off and moved his head around to different angles so that the light would catch his green contacts.

‘That girl loves you. You’re just paranoid, Mike,’ I told him, but he insisted he wasn’t.

‘She’s fucking with someone else. I know she is. I can smell it on her.’

It turned out I was right – he was paranoid, but I didn’t find out the full extent of his paranoia until the night he actually went crazy.

Eventually, Ana got sick of the way Mike treated her and said she would never come back to see him. She left her answering machine on and didn’t return his calls. Mike’s relatives had given him some money to buy a better room. Instead of upgrading, he sold his existing room in San Martín and then went on a three-day binge with the proceeds.

At four in the morning on the third night, he came knocking at my door. I didn’t want to let him in because having visitors after one in the morning was against the section rules and could cause big trouble with the delegate. However, Mike said that he needed to talk to me urgently. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder how he’d got from San Martín into Alamos when the section gates were locked.

‘What’s wrong? What happened to you?’ I asked as soon as I opened the door. His clothes were covered in dirt, especially his knees, and his hands were cut.

‘That roof needs cleaning. Fucking lazy Bolivian police never clean it,’ he snarled, striding into my room. ‘Too busy stealing our money and snorting our drugs. Now, where is she?’ he demanded, his eyes darting everywhere.

‘Where’s who?’ I laughed, knowing exactly who he meant, but thinking he was joking.

‘You’ve taken her. I know you’ve got her in here. I heard her voice when I was standing outside.’ Mike pointed at me threateningly between the eyes. His finger was shaking. ‘What have you done with her, McFadden?’

When I saw the look on Mike’s face, I stopped playing games. Every muscle in his neck was tensed and the veins in his forehead were throbbing. His eyes were big and wild, and he was sweating heavily.

‘She’s not here, Mike. Why would she be in here, Mike?’ I said quietly so as not to agitate him. I also kept repeating his name softly, which usually calms people down.

Reasoning with him only made him angrier. He started searching everywhere for his girlfriend. There were only two small rooms in my apartment – nowhere you could hide a person – but Mike ran from the kitchen back into my bedroom, then back again, thinking I was changing her hiding spot. He looked under the bed, behind the curtains and even between the mattresses. It was the first time I’d seen Mike so confused and it scared me. He was delusional.

‘Calm down, Mike … Mike, you’re being silly. How could she be under the carpet, Mike?’ But even when he was crazy, Mike was still totally switched on. On the next trip back from the kitchen, he was clutching my new kitchen knife.

‘Fuck you, McFadden. And stop saying my name, will you? I’ve studied psychology too and this is not a hijack situation. It’s kidnapping and you’re the fucking kidnapper,’ he held the knife up under my chin. ‘Now, what have you done with her?’

I stopped arguing and helped him search for Ana. All the time, Mike kept the knife pointing at me in case I tried to escape. Eventually, I got him to leave by playing along with the delusion: ‘Maybe she’s back in your room. Maybe she wanted to surprise you.’

Mike looked at me and then left in a hurry, taking my knife with him. I locked the door behind him and leaned against it.

It wasn’t long before Mike realised that he no longer had a room to go back to, because he had sold it. He came straight back across the roof, thinking that I’d tricked him because I really had stolen his girlfriend. This time, the delegate heard him coming and was already outside when Mike landed on the Alamos roof.

‘Get down,’ hissed the delegate, trying to keep his voice low so as not to wake anyone. There was a strange rule in our section that prohibited anyone except the delegate from climbing on the roof after 9 pm. ‘Now,’ he insisted. ‘Or I’ll call the police.’ But Mike refused to obey and the delegate was forced to send for the major.

Mike was lucky that the major who was on duty that night was reasonable. Otherwise, the police might have shot him for attempting to escape. The major also tried to persuade Mike to climb down, but he wouldn’t come. So, the major decided to go up after him.

The chase that followed was like a stunt scene in an action movie. The major went around to San Martín with his men to intercept Mike, but then Mike jumped across the roof to Alamos. Then, when the major came back around to our side, Mike leapt back again. Every time he cleared the two-metre gap between the sections, he would make a loud yelping sound, like a wounded animal. He made so much noise, what with his yelling and crashing about on the metal roof, that the inmates from both sections woke up and came out to see what was the matter. Jack appeared by my side in his pink pyjamas and fluffy rabbit slippers.

‘Look at that piece of mierda. He’s overdosed,’ he said, blowing his nose and rubbing his eyes under his sunglasses. ‘What time is it, anyway?’

None of the police was brave enough to get up there and bring Mike down. Some parts of the roof were rusted and if you slipped and fell, the drop was three storeys. But Mike was so high that the danger didn’t worry him. He made the jump successfully every time, screaming out something crazy that no one could understand. And once he realised there was an audience, he even started to jump back and forth just to show off, bowing dramatically after each successful leap. A few of the inmates applauded until the major started getting mad. The policeman tried everything to get Mike off the roof, but Mike wouldn’t listen. He said that if anyone came up, they would have to fight him man to man. I didn’t tell the major that Mike also had my knife in his back pocket, in case I got into trouble too.

Eventually, the major posted two guards in San Martín and two in Alamos to prevent Mike from crossing any other roofs and escaping. The guards had to wait there all night and all the following morning until Mike climbed down on his own. They locked him in La Muralla for four days. When he got out, he wanted to come and stay with me, but I said he couldn’t. I didn’t tell him that I was afraid he might go crazy again. He went back to the punishment section for somewhere to sleep until his relatives sent him more money to buy a room. After that incident, he shaved his head, told everyone he was ten years younger and decided to quit using cocaine.