The Tesseract Read Online Free PDF

seat, wasn’t saying a word. No sense diverting Don Pepe’s irritation onto himself when he could keep his head down and his mouth shut and let Jojo take all the abuse. Fair enough. Jojo would have been doing the same thing if their roles had been reversed.
    Clearing his throat, Don Pepe continued. “Aaaah, interesting, Jojo, that you should have chosen to come through Quiapo, when you know how the road works are holding everything up.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I suppose you thought that at this time of night the traffic would be light.”
    “I did, sir.”
    “But, eeeeh, now you can see that actually the traffic is quite heavy.”
    “Yes.”
    “Hired as a driver, and you don’t know where the traffic will be heavy in Manila.”
    “It was a bad decision, sir. Please accept my apologies. In future, I will remember to avoid Quiapo when the road works are still unfinished, even at this time of night.”
    In the rear view mirror, Jojo saw Don Pepe reach into his breast pocket for his silver matchstick dispenser. “I would hope you would remember. I wouldn’t want to have another evening like this.”
    “No, sir.”
    “Naturally, I shall have to telephone Mr. Sean to explain the situation, which will certainly be embarrassing. I don’t yet know him well, but I expect that Mr. Sean is the kind of manto be serious about punctuality. As a European, we can expect him to be serious about such things.”
    Jojo glanced sideways and thought he saw Teroy roll his eyes.
    “Perhaps I could call him for you, sir,” said a syrupy voice from the seat behind. Bubot had chosen his moment to speak up. “If it were more convenient for you…”
    “Convenient?” Don Pepe interrupted. The car held its breath while he sucked his toothpick. “Convenient to hide behind others, rather than accept responsibility for my mistakes?”
    Bubot shut his mouth with an audible snap.
    Jojo had been Don Pepe’s driver for eighteen months. He had taken over from Uping, who’d been killed in the same botched kidnap attempt that had killed Bing-Bong, Don Pepe’s overweight and psychopathic nephew.
    Eighteen months, and not once had a day gone by without Don Pepe’s making some kind of reference to Europe and Europeans. Usually the reference would be subtle or banal. A passing comment on a change of political office in France, or, noticing a tourist through the Mercedes’s tinted windows, a remark on the endless variety of Caucasian hair color. Nothing that, to a casual listener, would suggest anything close to an unnatural interest.
    Unnatural became clear only when he turned to one particular subject. When, after time spent in his company, you realized that this was a man on a constant hair-trigger. One glimpse of the Fort Santiago ruins, the Intramuros walls, and he’d be off. Betraying himself with too much knowledge, toomuch passion, and too much fluency. Out went the aahs and eehs and the long pauses.
    “Pizarro took Peru with one hundred and eighty men.
One hundred and eighty men
against the Inca civilization! So on whose side, I ask you, must God have been fighting?”
    “Naturally, you must understand that although Magellan was Portuguese, his service was to Spain.”
    “Legaspi’s only failure was Mindanao. And listen to me, calling Legaspi a failure. By 1571, Manila was in his hands.”
    “Imagine, now, what it must have been for the Aztecs to see a horse. And not just any horse. A
war
horse, armor-plated, with teeth like razors!”
    “There are no churches in the Philippines. No houses of God, only huts.
Iglesia Ni Christo?
It’s an insult! In Spain there are churches.
Real
churches. Here, you have only huts.”
    Here, you have only.
    Here,
you
have only.
    But neither Don Pepe’s father nor grandfather had ever been to Spain. Don Pepe himself had been just once. In December of the previous year. Five days in Madrid, and two days in San Sebastián, the hometown of his ancestors. The one thing Spanish about Don Pepe was his