by David Klass
His eyes settle for a moment on an old Indian man who was brought along on this mysterious expedition. The little man is sitting with his legs and arms folded, his body slumping in on itself, as if the weight of the world is very slowly crushing him.
But his glittering black eyes are alive, and as we fly over the rain forest in this airplane that must be so strange for him, I can see him watching the world he knows so well, drinking it in, as his gaze flits from treetop to treetop, from a flock of parrots to a winding silver river.
“Five centuries ago, when the Europeans first came knocking, more than ten million Indians lived in the rain forest,” Ernesto tells me. “Today there are fewer than two hundred thousand. Each time a tribe disappears, we lose all the knowledge they have accumulated about the plants and the animals.” He pauses as our plane turns sharply and begins to descend. “So the problem is not that the shadow of man is falling over the rain forest,” he whispers. “Men have lived there for centuries.” The dozing guard, sensing our descent, starts to shift and blink. Ernesto finishes quickly: “The problem is that the wrong men are coming now, for the wrong reasons. Soon it will be gone.”
Our plane is now almost at tree level. I look down and see a gleaming river, and two large trucks waiting by its muddy bank.
It seems like we will fly right into the tree canopy, but at the last minute it parts and the Cessna—with its engine hiccuping wildly—touches down on the river. It skids to a stop near the trucks.
Ten minutes later I find myself in the back of an old flatbed truck, rumbling along on a logging trail. This is not the swampy rain forest that Gisco and I found when we were shot down in our balloon. This is nearly impenetrable dry-floored jungle, exploding in all directions with an improbable amount of life, like a child’s kaleidoscope constantly turning to new and incredible patterns.
Towering trees piggyback over each other in a centuries-old wrestling match, straining toward the precious sunlight that is almost completely blocked out from our low vantage point. From the canopy, high above, vines dangle down hundreds of feet till their tendrils brush flowers with brilliant petals.
“It’s unbelievable,” I whisper to Ernesto as we cling to handholds. The truck bounces along over rocks and crashes through low branches that have grown across the path. “The variety of life here … and the intensity of it … is just …” I stop, at a loss for words. “Shocking.”
He nods and rewards me with a little smile. “Would you believe that this planet is four and a half billion years old and there are more different species right here in the Amazon than have ever existed anywhere else, at any time, in that whole time span? Or that there are more species of fish in one Amazon lake than in the Atlantic?”
“I believe it,” I whisper. “I see it all around me.”
“No you don’t,” he corrects me. He pauses and seems to be listening and smelling and almost drinking the forest in as we crash through it on our big truck. “Most of it you can’t see.” His tone changes and his words become almost poetic. “The sloths high above us that live their whole lives in the trees, hanging upside down, so that the organs of their bodies are in different places than the organs of other mammals.”
I look up. It’s hard to imagine that in that canopy so high above us mammals are hanging upside down. Suddenly the air is split by outrageously loud shrieks.
Ernesto smiles. “You won’t see howler monkeys either, but you can hear them. They’re the loudest land animals. Their screams can be heard three miles away—the only living things that can make a louder sound are blue whales.”
The monkey screams fade into the chirping, twittering mélange of jungle sounds. “And you won’t see the bats or the snakes or the birds—you might catch glimpses of them, but you could live here your whole life and not see most of them. But they’re all around us. Millions of them. Entire and unique species of them.” His face tightens as our truck grinds to a stop. “But they won’t be for much longer.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why have they brought us here?”
Ernesto looks like he’s about to answer, and then he just shrugs. I don’t think he can bring himself to tell me. I guess I’ll learn for myself soon enough.
The guards who took us from the prison appear with their guns held at the ready. My fellow captives and I are taken off the two trucks, released from our handcuffs, and handed large red metal cans. I can barely carry mine—it must weigh a hundred pounds.
“What’s in the can?” I whisper to Ernesto.
He looks too miserable to answer. But then, taking pity on me, he gives me one last piece of advice. “After it starts, run behind the trucks to the plane. That’s your only chance.”
42
The guards direct us to start walking and pouring.
I tip the red metal can and immediately have my answer. Gasoline. The thick and noxious stench of refined crude seems out of place here—it conjures up fleeting images of gas pumps and car engines, and contrasts oddly with the green jungle all around us, and the intense natural aromas of the trees and flowers.
The guards direct us to empty our cans in designated areas, almost as if we’re following some sort of pattern or master plan. When my can is finally empty, I’m handed another one, and then a third. My arms ache with the work, and the smell makes me queasy. But I’m even sicker with a dreadful premonition of what is about to happen.
I douse the trunks of great old trees and the outer layers of impenetrable thickets and I swish gasoline on verdant flower beds and tangles of vines. Finally, the gasoline is all gone.
We hurry back to the trucks, which have been turned around in our absence so that they now face down the path we rode up on, toward the river and the plane.
The guards climb quickly into the trucks. They still hold their guns at the ready, aimed out the windows at us to keep us away.
One guard remains outside just long enough to light a cigar. He takes two puffs, and then touches the glowing ash to a bottle-like container with a long fuse.
He draws back his arm and steps forward, hurling the bottle high and far, like a centerfielder making a long throw to home plate. He doesn’t wait for the projectile to land, but rather dives into the nearest truck. Immediately, both flatbeds head back out of the forest along the logging trail.
Ernesto and the other prisoners don’t hesitate either. They take off after the trucks at as close to a sprint as they can manage. Most are weak from confinement and malnutrition, and some can only manage a stumbling shuffle. Still, they flee with wild desperation, dodging overhanging branches and even pushing each other off the path when necessary. It’s a mad, pathetic scramble.
I lag behind for a second, fascinated by this odd race. And then I suddenly understand why they’re running for their lives. The homemade bomb that the guard threw lands and ignites. And the rain forest seems to explode around me.
It’s not a single circumscribed boom, it’s more of a dull roar—I recall the jaguar’s cry that scared Gisco out of the gondola. But that was a natural sound, with a beginning and an end. This roar is unnatural and endless.
I find myself running. Sprinting. Fleeing in a wild panic. Now I realize that when they directed us to pour the gasoline, they were laying down a pattern and creating their own way out. The bumpy logging road to the river is the only bridge through the flames—the sole possible escape from this inferno. The trucks are already almost out of danger, rumbling along a half mile ahead of us, nearly to the river and the plane.
For the rest of us, it will be a much closer call. I’ve always been a swift runner. Fastest in my school, in my town, in my whole county. I got a late start in this race, but now I’m making up for it, flying along at full sprint with my arms pumping and my legs churning.
The heat is all around me. It’s like racing through the center of an oven. The rain forest is not green anymore—black smoke is billowing in all directions and has obscured everything. Red flames shoot out of that black cloud and singe my skin and sear m
y eyes and throat.
Earsplitting explosions go off all around me. Even though I’m terrified of being roasted alive, my mind remains clear and my senses keen. Perhaps this is my body’s way of anticipating new dangers. I realize the explosions are giant old trees popping apart from the heat. And then the forest leviathans start to fall.
Till now, the jungle canopy has been its own mysterious world, hundreds of feet up, glimmering in shadow. I crashed through it in the balloon, and I’ve glided over it from above, so I know it’s up there. I also understand it’s connected to the forest floor by the massive tree trunks that stretch skyward and the vines that dangle down. But the treetop realm seemed to exist in its own separate and magical space, with its own birds, animals, and insects.
Suddenly the canopy is rent as a giant tree comes crashing down. The ground literally trembles. As the old Methuselah of the forest falls, its leaves and branches crackle yellow and red in the ground flames. A family of parrots fly out of a nest and ignite in midair. Some are flash-fried. Others manage to fly on for a few seconds while burning, and then suddenly veer off and down at odd angles, screeching pitifully till they slam beak-first into the rocky ground.
Crash, a second giant tree falls, and then a third. The green jungle sky is literally collapsing down on us. Suddenly the race for survival includes all sorts of strange denizens of the high branches, most of them ill equipped for flight on land. I see them dying all around me in horrific, fleeting images as I run for my own life.
A family of monkeys leap off a branch of a fallen tree and try to stay ahead of the flames. They look terribly human as they scamper along. The youngest monkey hitches a ride on his mother’s back, but she can’t carry him at this pace. He shakes off and tries to scramble forward on his own, but the fire overtakes him.
He opens his mouth and gives a scream that is lost in the hiss and pop of wood splitting and sap steaming. And then he is incinerated in an instant as his family members run on ahead.
I see what I think must be a sloth. It’s brown and nearly two feet long, and I bet it’s graceful enough moving through the tree canopy upside down. Here on land, it’s a three-toed slowpoke—it doesn’t have a chance in this frantic footrace. As a wave of flame breaks over it and its fur catches fire, the sloth rolls on its side and screams.
I see the river up ahead. The trees around me are crashing and popping and hissing in a deafening cacophony. I overtake the old Indian man who I saw gazing out of the Cessna. He can’t run anymore. As I pass him, he sits down on the road, facing away from the fire. He opens his mouth … Perhaps singing a prayer or calling to a God. I glance back and see the flames consume him.
Ten of us were chosen from the prison. Seven make it back to the river. We splash and run and swim to the plane. The Cessna’s engine is already on. They weren’t planning to wait for us.
Seconds later we’re airborne, flying over the burning forest. From the air the cloud of smoke looks like a hungry monster as the fire chews its way through pristine jungle with sudden, savage bites. I watch it for a few more seconds and then turn away.
Ernesto is sitting near me, also watching, his face black with cinders and soot. He meets my eyes and says softly, “Colonel Aranha knows exactly what he’s doing. To break a man’s spirit, force him to kill what he loves most.”
43
Gisco was right about the mosquitoes. They come out before sundown, and drone around us all night long.
I hear their hungry whine, slap at them when they bite, and try to forget everything I ever learned in school about malaria and other tropical diseases. We have other unwelcome night visitors, too. Tiny black flies seem to seep right through the prison walls in soupy clouds, landing on our faces and nipping at us. Centipedes slither their way up drains. Spiders like hairy helicopters spin down from the ceiling and tiny reddish brown worms tunnel in sideways through cracks in the walls.
I lie awake night after night, wondering what will be the next loathsome variety of exotic jungle vermin to take a bite from the Jack Danielson buffet. As the long hours drag by, I can’t stop myself from reliving the burning rain forest in a vivid waking nightmare.
I smell the stench of the gasoline. Hear the roar of the explosion. Feel the blast-furnace heat. And then trees are popping and crashing around me, and on the walls of the cell I see the desperate face of the young monkey as he slips off his mother’s back, and of the Indian man praying on the logging road as the flames consume him.
I ask Ernesto why they burned the forest. “In four months, it will be seeded with rice or soy,” he explains. “The grains will go to feed cattle who will end up as hamburger meat in Western fast-food restaurant chains. So, acre by acre, our beautiful rain forest becomes millions of double cheeseburgers.”
Even without the torture of waking nightmares and ravenous mosquitoes, it would be impossible to get a good sleep in Colonel Aranha’s prison. There are twenty-three of us wedged into a cell that could comfortably hold ten men. During the day, when we’re standing, and a few of the men are taken out for various chores, it’s tolerable. At night the situation becomes unbearable.
We have no mattresses, so we sleep on the hard stone floor, each of us seeking a little space and privacy. When one man turns over, it sets off a chain reaction as bodies flip like dominoes and arms and legs flail in the dark. When one of our sick cell mates vomits or has diarrhea, the cell reeks.
The boy from the Andes adapts to this wretchedness with surprising ease. Given his brutal childhood in the mountains, I guess this is not a total surprise. At night he sleeps near me, perhaps seeking comfort or protection, but during the day he seems happy and fearless.
He even gets a name. His new friends, who play soccer with him in a corner of the cell during the day, christen him “Mudinho,” which seems to be an affectionate way of saying “little mute” in Portuguese. He appears to like having a name—each time someone calls it out he flashes a quick smile.
I ask everyone again about P.J., but there is no new information. Some claim to have seen a girl matching her description, escorted quickly and under heavy guard. Others, who are taken out daily to clean the prison, say they occasionally manage to exchange gossip with prisoners in different cell blocks. They have heard rumors of a beautiful girl kept all alone in a special cell, whose desperate cries and sobbing prayers are in English.
I’m haunted by these stories, and by the suspicion that they’ve heard other, even grimmer, rumors about her that they’re keeping from me. I feel that she’s very close. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’m certain I can hear P.J.’s voice crying faintly for help. It always merges into the drone of a mosquito that one or another of my cell mates slaps with a curse.
The sad truth is I’ve come all the way to the Amazon to find her, and we may now be only a few hundred yards from each other, but P.J. doesn’t have a clue I’m here.
After the terrible adventure of setting fire to the forest, I am kept in the cell day after day. There is no exercise yard and I am never selected for chores. The tedium is, in its way, worse than any torture. Sleepless nights follow dreary days in a numbing chain that quickly drains all my strength and hope. And then, after five days of waiting, something truly shocking happens.
In the late morning of our sixth day of captivity, guards’ footsteps approach. We all back away to the far wall and wait.
Our cell’s door is unlocked. And Gisco is pushed inside.
But it’s not Gisco anymore.
44
The big dog is not leashed or chained, but he doesn’t growl at the retreating guards. Nor does he look around the cell with the keen intelligence and paranoid curiosity about his surroundings that Gisco always displayed. Instead he plods into the cell, finds an empty corner, and lies down on his great belly.
I hurry over to him. “Gisco, what happened?”
He looks at me blankly, with friendly but glassy dog eyes.
I address him telepathically. Old friend, are you playing possum?
Are they watching us? Did they plant some kind of a bug? Did you meet the colonel? Any news about P.J.?
No response. The line has gone dead. Gisco opens his mouth and lets out a yawn. His jowls shake and a sliver of drool spills out and trails down to the cell floor. Now I know something is very wrong. Gisco always had impeccable manners.
I pick up the great head and look directly into those enormous dog eyes. Gisco, I know you’ve been through something. I won’t press you for details. But do you at least recognize me? Give me a sign, old fellow.
Gisco looks back at me and drools again.
To my horror, I realize that he’s become a dog. A normal dog. All the humor and intellect is gone. I reach out and pat his shaggy head. His great paintbrush of a tail wags slowly, and he licks my hand. Then he lowers his snout to the ground and goes to sleep.
I try to break through to Gisco several more times, without success. He doesn’t seem to know me, or even to recognize my smell. There are no outward signs that he’s been harmed—no burn marks or fresh wounds on his body. But his brain has been scrambled. Finally I leave him alone. The truth is I can’t bear to see him this way.
Mudinho takes care of him. Brings him his soup and sits by him while he laps it up. Cleans up after him. Strokes his ears and back. Gisco returns the affection, sleeping next to the boy that night, and sitting near him in the cell the next morning, watching him play soccer, displaying that special bond that has existed between boys and dogs for thousands of years.
I can’t help remembering that Gisco wanted to leave him in the Andes, and then feed him to the caimans. I guess it’s not surprising that a boy who had his tongue cut out should forge a special bond with a dog who has been cruelly stripped of his remarkable communicative powers.
I don’t have long to ponder my comrade’s condition. The day after Gisco is brought to our cell in such sad shape, the guards return. This time they come for me.