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AT THE END OF HIS LONG NIGHT OF UPROAR AND HALLUCINATIONS, Lewis Moon had a dream. He dreamed that he walked homeward up the bed of an empty river and out onto a blasted land of rusted earth and bones and blackened stumps and stunted metal, a countryside of war. In the sky of a far distance he saw a bird appear and vanish; but no matter how far he walked, the world was one mighty industrial ruin, a maze of gutted factories and poisoned ground under the gray sky. He came finally to a signpost, and the signpost had caught a fragile ray of rising sun. He ran toward it, stumbled, fell and ran again. The signpost pointed eastward, back toward the sun, and it read:
NOWHERE
Very tired, he turned back along his road, crossing the dead prairie. Though he had not noticed them on his outward journey, he now passed a series of signs all pointing eastward. Each was illuminated by a ray of sun, and each bore the same inscription:
NOWHERE
The terrible silence of the world made him move faster, and soon he saw, on the eastern horizon, the dark blur of a forest. He ran and trotted weakly, bewildered by the crashing of his feet upon the cinders. Another sign, and then another, pointed toward the wood.
As he drew near, the wood became a jungle, a maelstrom of pale boles and thickened fleshy leaves, shining and rubbery, of high dark passages and hanging forms, of parasites and strangler figs and obscene fruited shapes. But even here there was no sound, no sign of movement, not even a wind to stir the heavy leaves, sway the lianas; there was only the mighty hush of a dead universe.
He started forward, stopped, started again. Too frightened to go on, he turned around and saw what lay behind him; then he sat down on the road, and this time he wept.
When at last he lifted his eyes, he saw a signpost at the jungle edge; it was obscured by weeds and leaves and the tentacle of a liana, and at first he thought that its inscription was identical to all the rest. But this sign did not point anywhere, and as he drew near and stared at it he saw that its inscription was quite different. It read:
NOW HERE
Astonished, he ventured on into the darkness of the jungle. Soon he came to a kind of clearing cut off from the sky by a canopy of trees, a soft round space like an amphitheater, diffused with sepia light. Everything was soft and brownish, and the ground itself quaked beneath his feet, giving off a smell of fungus and decay. In the center of the clearing he strayed into a quagmire; very quickly he sank, too tired to struggle. But as he passed into the earth and the warm smells of its darkness, he was still breathing without effort, and soon he dropped gently into a kind of earthen vault. Though closed off from the sky, this cave was suffused by the same soft brownish light as in the clearing far above. Here was a second sign, which read:
NOW HERE
The passage through the soil had cleaned him of his clothes, and he was naked; as he stood there, small black spots appeared in pairs upon his skin. He pressed at them and discovered to his horror that the black spots were the tips of snail horns; at each touch a naked snail slid out through his skin and dropped to the cave floor. His hands flew wildly about his body, and the snails slid out and fell, until finally the earth at his bare feet was strewn with slimy writhings. Now, from the darkness near the wall, numbers of salamanders crept forward; each salamander grasped a snail behind its head and writhed in silent struggle with it, the soft bodies twitching back and forth in rhythm.
He backed toward one side of the room and fell into a tunnel. He ran along the tunnel, no longer afraid, for there was light ahead. He ran like a boy.
The tunnel emerged like a swallow’s nest from the side of a high bank. Far below he saw a jungle clearing in a huge sunlight of the world’s first morning, and in the clearing the Indians awaited him. Naked, he leaped into the radiant air, and fell toward them.
MOON awoke. He lay in a half-world between the dream and his narcosis, growing gradually aware of where he was. Though the room was dark, he could see the moth’s white eyes above the door, and the glint of the bottle on the window sill. The man on the next bed was missing. In the background he heard singsong voices, a wailing and keening like a ringing in his ears.
The night air of Madre de Dios was fragmented by insect-singing and far barking, by the tocking of frogs in the puddles and ditches, the murmur of voices behind walls, by sounds of breaking. But the street below was rigid in its silence, and he wondered if he was not still in the dream. He rose slowly; though his head was light, he felt intensely strong and sure.
There was no question in his mind about what he was going to do. He would not wait until it was light; he would go now. He lifted his watch to his ear; its tick was murderous. The numerals of the watch face, reading five-fifteen, glowed with chinks of light, as if time burning had been forced into the casing; its metal swelled and shimmered with constraint. At this, his chest began to tighten, and his breathing hurt the cold wound in his heart; he removed the watch, and holding it by one end of the strap, rapped it sharply on the sink until it broke. Then he dropped it out of the window.
He moved quickly without turning on the light. From his knapsack he took the last of the river diamonds, holding them a moment in his hands. He had found these on the upper Paragua, in Venezuela, bright alluvial diamonds, burnished clean by mountain torrents, green and blue and yellow and red. In the darkness, he could feel them burning, like fire and water of the universe, distilled.
He put one diamond in his pocket and slid the rest under Wolfie’s pillow. His revolver, in its shoulder holster, he put on beneath his shirt. An instinct nagged at him to leave the gun behind, to go forth unarmed and clean; he slung it into a corner of the room. But after looking at it for a moment, his instinct weakened and he retrieved it.
He went out of his room and down the hall to where the missionaries slept; he opened the first door he came to, quietly but without hesitation. In the bed, his back to him, lay Leslie Huben. Beside Huben was the girl. He crossed the room and looked at her, the long hair on the pillow and soft mouth; he could smell the warmth of her. When he reached down and ran his fingertips from the corner of her eye along her temple, her eyes opened, widened. Slowly her hands reached for the sheet and drew it to her chin.
“Come with me,” he told her, neither softly nor loudly.
She cried out faintly, like a child, which made him smile. She turned her head toward her husband, turned it back again.
“No,” she whispered, “no, no, no.”
He went out the door again and closed it. The next room was Martin Quarrier’s, and he found what he was looking for in the hip pocket of the missionary’s pants. Quarrier awoke and followed him out into the hall. The man talked on and on, and at the end he heard his own voice say, “No, not now.”
He glanced back once as he turned down the stairs; the girl was watching through the door crack. When she closed the door, he kept on going.
He walked down the center of the empty street. On its last corner leaned a solitary man, a drunkard, attended by a dog. The drunkard was singing a sad slow mountain song, gasping for breath, lungs cracking. When Moon crossed his line of vision, he croaked, “Dónde vas, amigo?”
He kept on singing while Moon stopped, swaying, and regarded him. The drunkard’s face waxed and waned, in caricature of idiocy, of rage and misery and innocence, of sensibility and soul. He sang softly out of his great mouth, his staring eyes and tear-eroded cheeks, his skull:
“Qué buen de bailar
Qué buen de cantar.”
Was this man the solitary figure coming at him down the street? Moon said, “Yo voy a otro mundo.”
“Sí.” The man paused again, contemplating Moon. “Sí,
“Quieres venir?”
“No, gracias.” And then the man said gently, “Una copita, sí—ayahuasca, no. Buen viaje.”
Moon emptied his pockets of his change and gave it to the singer. The man demurred: it was not Moon but the ayahuasca that made the gift. Moon said, “No, I no longer have need of it.” The man took it. “God
will repay you,” he said; he looked uncertain.
Sí, sí. Dios le pagará.
Moon walked on, his enlarged pupils drawing in the faintest light; every sound and every smell enlivened him. In the nostrils of a lunatic, he thought, the night air is just as strong … In this moment he could scent, hunt out, run down and kill the swiftest creature on earth. Stalking the plane, he knew every sinew and muscle in his body, how each coiled and moved; in the darkness of the jungle night, he played cat, nerves taut, listening. He heard a small night animal and sprang for it, and was astonished when he missed it. An instant later he stopped breathing; something was hunting him in turn. He drew the revolver and ducked under the plane, rising silently behind the intruder.
The girl stood beside the wing. “Where are you going?” her voice said. “Are you going to bomb the Niaruna?”
“No.”
“You must not.”
“No.” He laughed. He had not felt so happy since—since when?
“Are you sick? You look so strange! I suppose you’re very drunk.”
“No.”
“What is it then? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? Why did you break into our room?”
“To say good-bye.”
“But we haven’t even said hello yet!”
“Let’s say it then: hello.”
Look, look, she’s smiling!
She said, “Your name is Lewis Moon.”
“Yes. Your name is Andy. What were you christened?”
“Agnes. Agnes Carr.”
“That’s much better than Andy Huben.”
“I tried for days to place your name; then I remembered.” She had been running, and she paused for breath; gazing at him, her eyes filled with tears. “Your people, and the mission—they were all so proud of you!”
“Yes, they were.”
“Yet you disgraced them!”
“That’s what they said.”
“May God forgive you!”
“Why should He, when I haven’t forgiven Him?” He laughed.
She looked disgusted. “You’re not the least repentant, are you?”
“No. Suppose I told you that I didn’t steal that money, that it was given to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell the truth, then?”
“Because the truth looked worse than what was being said. A thief is one thing, but a betrayer—do you always talk like this?”
“Like what, Mr. Moon?”
“Like a missionary’s wife.”
“I am a missionary’s wife!”
“Then why did you follow me out here, with your hair still wild? Agnes Carr! Maybe you were never meant to be a missionary’s wife.”
“Mr. Moon, I came to beg you not to attack the Niaruna.”
“All right.”
“All right what?”
“All right, beg me.”
“Oh please! You mustn’t attack them—”
“I won’t attack them; I’m just heading eastward.” And he told her eagerly about his dream, about how all the signs had pointed eastward; that Indians said the Source of Life, the Sun, lay in the East, and that in the West, where the Sun touched the Darkness, was the Land of the Dead.
She nodded: The Tiros believed that because the white man came to them from the far side of the Andes, he was the Spirit of the Dead. As she spoke she gazed at him, and her face changed. This made him happy; he awaited her, saying nothing. “How strange you look—your eyes, I mean! And your voice, when you talk about these things, it’s so quiet, so gentle. I don’t understand you! Why do you do … And just now, coming here, I saw you crouched on all fours, like an animal! You looked like a cat! Really, you frightened me! What were you doing?”
He felt removed again and did not answer her.
She said, “You must listen to me. There’s nothing east of here but jungle. For two thousand miles! You can’t just go there!”
“That’s the only way to do it—go. When there’s a jungle waiting, you go through it and come out clean on the far side. Because if you struggle to back out, you get all snarled, and afterwards the jungle is still there, still waiting.
“I don’t understand you.” She looked annoyed; he was trying to see her body through her bathrobe. “You promise then?”
“I’ll promise if you like.”
She got down on her knees. “O Praise the Lord!” she said, and began to pray.
He too got down upon his knees, to see her face better. “What are you doing?” he inquired.
“Saying a prayer for you.”
He took her hands and raised her to her feet. “Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t do that. I knew yesterday that I would not attack them. Listen—I know something, Andy …” But he had forgotten what he wanted to say. He reached out to her and touched her face; her face implored him. “Agnes Carr,” he murmured. He took from his pocket the wild diamond, the clear drop of river fire and mountain rain, and squeezed it hard into her hand. She ran. “Good-bye,” he called.
Good-bye, good-bye.
It was still dark, dark and starless, when he turned the plane at the far end of the runway; he could scarcely make out the wall of trees at the far end or where earth merged with sky. His hands on the controls moved swiftly and precisely but he was breathing urgently, and he did not wait for break of day as he had planned. He roared away into the darkness, veering wildly from side to side; when he thought he was running out of ground he sighed, hauling back on the wheel, and the plane bounded aloft. The black wall was much too close, and jumped at him; he rolled his wing to miss a treetop, hooting, and then he was high and clear. Already, off to the east, the horizon was fire-black against the glow of the morning sun rolling toward him across Amazonas. A lone black palm, bent sadly on the sky of dawn, sank away into the darkness as he rose.
He flew boldly, straight into the sun. He was sailing eastward into all the mornings of the world, as the cloud forest and dark mountain range, the night and the dank river mists fell far behind. There had never been a day so brilliant. The dawn light caused the swamps to glitter, and pierced the muddy floods with life. It sparkled on the canopy, and illumined from within the wings of birds; a flight of parakeets shimmered downriver like a windburst of bright petals, and an alabaster egret burned his eye. He laughed with joy and sang.
The cabin of the plane confined him; he would burst the plane apart. He was oriented to the sun, as if he had soared into its field of gravitation. He was the sun in the sun-flecked wings of a golden insect, crawling across the dome of sky inside his windshield; he was the sun in the white wings below, the sun in the huge voice of the bird morning. All air and light and sound poured through him, swelling the universe.
To meet the sun he had wandered from his course, and now he whirled off northward; today, without effort, he could feel his bearings like a bird. Remate was in the distance; he was headed straight for it, though he had not checked his compass. He knew. He could trust his eyes and hands to take him by dead reckoning.
At Remate the inhabitants rushed like chickens to the center of the clearing; he passed overhead, up the Espíritu. It was not until he crossed a Tiro village that he felt a first somber dread. Realizing where he was, not sure why he had come, his hands grew cold.
He checked his gauges. His journey to the sun had consumed much too much fuel; he must turn back now if he was to reach Madre de Dios. But Madre de Dios was the past, he had come across into the present, and in the next moment the dread left him and his mind soared once again. He switched on his radio set, wishing to sing something to the world; he sang “Shenandoah” and “Columbus Stockade” and “All My Trials,” and the Portuguese words of “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam”:
“Brilhan-do, brilhan-do …”
He flew onward. Because he did not know as yet how he would do what he must do, he swung wide of the Niaruna village, circling at a distance, and all the while he talked and sang.
Another voice crackled thinly over the radio; it had been c
rackling for some time. He put the earphones on and listened.
“This is Les Huben at Madre de Dios. How do you read me? Over.”
Moon pressed the button on his transmitter. “This is Jesus, up in Heaven,” he said affably. “How do you read me? Over.”
But Huben ranted on. Offers of help and prayers for Moon’s safety were interspersed with flight talk: “By my estimate,” Huben’s voice said, “fuel-range ratio of your aircraft is very critical. Can I assist you? Over.”
“How about some last rites?” Moon responded. “Over.” But he realized with annoyance that he had neglected to press his transmitter button.
Huben came back again: “You are under the effects of a powerful drug; repeat, you are under the effects of a powerful drug. You must try to concentrate, you are in emergency; repeat, you are in emergency. May the Lord forgive you and keep you, Amen. Over.”
“Thus spake the Lord to Leslie Hubens, His false witness: I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.” In the silence that followed he bellowed, “Deuteronomy, 30:16.”
Huben’s voice said, “30:19. For the last time, fella, you are in emergency; repeat, you are in emergency. Where are you proceeding; repeat, where are you proceeding? Over.”
Moon looked a last time at his gauges.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord Page 13