The Gene of Life

by Tetsuo Ted Takashima

  “Ich bin Davi,” he said.

  They were taken to a hut at the edge of the clearing. The walls and roof were made of palm leaves woven into wooden frames. It was dim and empty inside, the sun trickling in from the entrance the only source of light. They were hit by the heady aroma of herbs.

  “Why German?” Jake asked Max. “I mean, if they don’t speak Portuguese, you’d think they’d speak Spanish.”

  “Consider it proof we’re closer to your objective. Dona spoke German, too. Nazi war criminals fled to this village and taught them their language. Only then does this make any sense.”

  “And yet there’s no evidence of that whatsoever.” Jake scanned the inside of the hut. Small dried flowers hung on the walls and their scent wafted through the room. There were stakes for hanging hammocks and a few earthenware vessels. One of the assistants checked them, but they were empty.

  “The Indigenous people of the Amazon live in huts and spend their days more or less nude. The men are hunters, and the women gatherers. They’re simple and friendly. That’s what all the literature says about them. It never mentioned anything about them speaking German,” Katya said.

  Max put down his backpack and sat on it.

  “It’s not exactly a five-star guesthouse,” Jake said as he wiped his sweat, “but it’s comforting that they’ve accepted us.”

  “Feldman didn’t have something arranged?” Max asked.

  “He negotiated with the Brazilian government. That’s why we were able to get this far. But his influence didn’t reach this village. There are supervisors for preserves, but none in this area. It seems they want to leave the nature here untouched.”

  “If you ask me,” Katya said, “the government doesn’t think there’s a village here.”

  Jake had nothing to say to that.

  “It seems like they’re used to visitors from outside,” said Max, “white people included. They don’t seem to be scared or hostile.”

  “Maybe they have contact with poachers. I hear that pharmaceutical companies are sneaking in. Meaning that no Indigenous people are completely isolated, not even here.”

  “Did you notice the few mixed-blood people? I think around half of them have Caucasian ancestry. Their features and skin tones are different from other Indigenous Amazonians. Dona was obviously mixed race, too. The villagers here—”

  Bocaiúva beckoned to them, pointing to the base of the pillar. “I figure this has something to do with what you’re looking for.” There were knife marks there—in the shape of a swastika.

  “It could just be a scratch,” Jake said, frightened by the implications.

  “Is this a Nazi guesthouse?”

  The light coming through the entrance was blocked before Katya could finish that sentence; Davi appeared with a few other men. Jake’s face tensed up.

  “What did you come to this village to do?” Davi asked politely.

  “We are investigating the headwaters of the Amazon River. Geography, wildlife, and plants. We would appreciate it if you would let us stay here for a while,” Jake said, trying to put up a bold front, but his voice was high-pitched and trembling.

  Davi stood with his arms folded, but nodded slowly.

  “Do you know this woman?” Max showed him a picture. It was a magnification of Dona’s passport photo. “Her name is Dona. She was with a white man.”

  “She isn’t of this village,” Davi said without expression; he’d glanced at the photo for a second before looking away.

  “She told me where this village is.”

  “Villagers never leave the village,” said Davi, without looking at the picture again.

  “Does the word ‘Aska’ mean anything? Could it be the name of a place, or a person? Maybe a plant?”

  Davi shook his head, his expression unchanging. Meanwhile, villagers had gathered at the entrance and were peering inside. “You can use this hut while you’re here. Get out when you’re done. May your travels be safe.” As Davi went to the door, the peering faces disappeared all at once.

  “He’s lying,” whispered Katya. “Dona is definitely from this village. Some of the women look a lot like her.”

  “Note he didn’t say he doesn’t know her. All he said was she wasn’t ‘of this village.’ Maybe she’s not really a ‘villager’ anymore.”

  “That’s equivocation.”

  “But it’s still not a lie.”

  Katya looked at Max as if she wanted to say something, but she stopped herself.

  The hammocks were hung up according to Bocaiúva’s instructions.

  “Hey, no mosquitoes,” said Katya.

  “The smell of the herbs must be keeping them away.”

  “We’ve secured ourselves a place to sleep. But that is one strong smell.” Jake crinkled his nose.

  Max breathed it in. It was intense, but not unpleasant. If one got used to it, he could imagine it becoming relaxing.

  When the sun went down, the temperature plunged. The cries of countless creatures keened from the jungle.

  “The forest speaks,” muttered Bocaiúva, who was staring at the doorway.

  The moonlight shining through the entrance lit the hut’s interior. After finishing their meals, everyone got into their hammocks. Snoring began immediately all around. For the first time in days, no mosquitoes were torturing them. The peacefulness of the clearing surrounded by jungle, combined with the smell of the herbs, had a calming effect on them.

  Max was exhausted, but he couldn’t fall asleep. He could sense Katya turning over in her sleep. When he closed his eyes and listened to the voice of the forest, a wondrous peace wrapped over him. Eventually, he was lulled into a deep sleep.

  The next morning, Max was unpacking in front of the hut when Jake came up to him.

  “Professor, you’re free to begin your investigation whenever you like. Mr. Feldman asked us to accommodate you to the greatest extent possible.”

  “What will you three be doing?”

  “Looking for Nazi war criminals. It’s what we came here to do.” Jake pointed at the edge of the village, where Bocaiúva and the assistants were standing. “We spotted something suspicious in the satellite photos, so that’s where we’ll look first.”

  “Estancia, I take it?”

  “Traces of Nazis.” Jake replied.

  “Can I come?”

  “I don’t mind at all, Professor. In fact, it’d be reassuring if you did. Considering . . .”

  Jake watched the circle of villagers staring at them. Clearly, Jake was uncomfortable.

  They set out, with Bocaiúva at the head. As soon as they stepped out of the village, they were surrounded by trees and were disoriented. The damp rainforest air enveloped them as mosquitoes and horseflies swarmed them. The smell of the trees and mulch was enough to gag them. The deeper they ventured, the thicker the air became. Katya had her mosquito-net hat on, hiding her expression.

  After about twenty minutes, Bocaiúva stopped. He turned around and shouted.

  What looked like a building could be made out between hundred-foot-tall trees. They entered a wide open space and stood there, stunned. Giant buildings in the middle of nowhere! Three one-story wooden buildings had been built side by side. The whole site was around sixty-five feet wide and a hundred feet long. Surrounded by jutting branches, twisted vines, and tall trees, it had become a part of the jungle.

  The buildings were dilapidated. The walls were rotten and covered by vines; nature was reclaiming them. The place would be tough to spot even with incredibly high-resolution satellite photos.

  Max got closer to one of the buildings.

  “This must be Estancia,” Katya said, her eyes on the building.

  “This is one section of Estancia,” Jake said, comparing it against the photo. He had a grave look on his face. “Did you read about it in a book? Or did someone tell you about it? The Fourth Reich, I mean. Estancia, it’s the legacy of the Nazis. Nazi fugitives created German-style towns all over South America, and tried to
form a German ministate. They had schools, factories, even hospitals. They educated themselves and conducted research while looking for an opportunity to come back into power. Some even claim UFO sightings were actually new Nazi weapons, but those are just rumors or urban legends.”

  “This place is the Fourth Reich?” Katya asked. “Doesn’t seem all that glorious.”

  “No, but this is just a small section of it.”

  “This is more like a haunted house. Nobody’s lived here for decades.”

  “But the fact they’d build this way out here is something,” said Max. “And more than sixty years ago, too. They must’ve needed vast amounts of money, time, and labor.”

  Max walked around the building searching for a door, while Katya and Jake followed. Half of the windows were covered in vines, and most of the glass was shattered.

  “There must be an airfield somewhere around here. There’s no way they could’ve manually lugged all the equipment and materials they needed to construct these buildings.”

  Jake nodded, but they weren’t able to find it in the satellite photos.

  The door handle was rusted and broken. Max jumped back as the door fell open when he pulled it; the hinge had corroded. The interior was surprisingly well-lit, the stench of rotten wood and mold notwithstanding.

  “Watch your step. The floor’s rotten,” Max said, as he stood in the entrance.

  When he shifted his weight onto the wood floor, it bent and creaked. The beams of the ceiling were exposed, and shafts of light shone down through big gaps in the roof. There was a hallway running through the center of the building, with rooms lining both sides of it. The doors to half of those rooms were off, and the walls had holes in them. Max entered the first room.

  “It’s a laboratory.” Katya came up behind him.

  Katya squeezed Max’s arm. Her body was stiff, and the blood had drained from her face. Max followed her line of sight, and saw a long striped creature about six inches in diameter on the floor.

  “It’s an anaconda!” she gasped. The giant snake slithered toward them. “Professor!”

  “We shouldn’t move.”

  The snake stopped a few yards away from them and raised its head. Then it slowly slithered across the floor and left through a gap in the floorboards. Jake let out the breath he’d been holding. Max gingerly stepped forward. He looked into the hole where the snake had gone, but all he could see was the black soil beneath the floor. Jake and the other men followed him with nervous looks on their faces.

  The sun shone through the broken windows and holes in the ceiling. The room was covered in white dust. Old bottles lined the shelves on one wall. Test tubes and drug bottles were scattered on a row of wooden desks. Max picked up a piece of paper buried in dust. He blew the dust off, and though the ink on the discolored page was faded, it was still partially legible.

  “It’s in German,” Katya said. They could make out words like Zelle (cell), Experiment (experiment), Wiederholung (repetition), Menschen (people). “There’s even a microscope.” She went to the desk by the window, where there was a large optical microscope. She tried to work it, but it was too rusty. It would have been a cutting-edge microscope sixty years ago.

  “We’re going to inspect the building over there,” Jake said. “You stay here and take a good look around, Professor, and try to figure out what they were doing here.”

  “There are a lot of test tubes and petri dishes.” Katya walked around the room. “Conical flasks, pipettes, and a constant-temperature incubator. There’s even what looks like a shaker, an extremely old-school shaker. If this is a Nazi laboratory, then they were definitely researching bacteriological weapons.”

  “With this much equipment they could do a lot more, too. But you’re right; bacterial cultivation and cell division were at the core of their research.”

  “All the equipment is pretty old. Which makes sense if it were the Nazis who brought this stuff here.”

  “But not everything here is sixty years old.”

  Katya looked at him.

  “One is still in use at smaller colleges.” Max squatted in front of a spectroscope, a device used to identify a substance’s composition. It was, at most, twenty years old, yet it was rusted, and there were no signs it had been used for very long.

  “Which must mean that research was conducted here for at least that long,” Katya said.

  Max stepped in front of the constant-temperature incubator, which allowed cells to proliferate in a controlled environment. He opened its door; several petri dishes with brown masses lined the bottom of the device. “The Nazis were researching biochemistry here.”

  “No way!” Katya said.

  “Does this look like a brewery or bread factory to you? Biochemistry first came to light twenty or thirty years prior. Before then, they examined cells by means of biology. Yet they clearly had been working with biochemistry in this laboratory.” Max explained. “They weren’t necessarily doing biochemistry as far back as sixty or so years ago. But they were doing it up to when they abandoned this place. We’re talking fifteen to twenty years ago. This equipment was probably still working. But the humidity made it rust faster than normal.”

  They moved on to the next room, which was clearly an operating room. There were four operating tables. One had stirrups attached for obstetrics and gynecology. Next to it were several rusted surgical lights. There were clumps of rust on the tables—surgical knives. Metal petri dishes, forceps, tweezers, Gosset abdominal wall retractors . . . Max picked up a bent wire to examine it. It was a suturing needle.

  Max looked away; remnants of leather belts were attached to the surgical tables. That must be what they’d used to strap their “patients” down. The Nazis had experimented on living people in the concentration camps in Europe. Had they picked up where they left off in this operating room?

  “Professor,” Katya was crouching in front of a refrigerator-like box.

  Max went to see. There were injection solutions inside ampoules.

  “Some are labeled morphine,” Katya said, carefully taking out the case of ampoules. “The unlabeled ones, they’re broken. At least the patients weren’t conscious.” She put the case back.

  Max opened a door in the corner of the room that led into a narrow passage, lined on each side by two rooms closed off by iron bars. Inside each cramped ten-square-foot cell were crude wooden bunk beds. “It’s a prison.”

  Katya stifled a scream. There were weighted shackles on the floor. Inside those shackles were lower-leg and ankle bones. The rest must have been taken by jungle beasts or mice over the years.

  Max took her by the arm and left the room. “Do you want to wait outside?”

  “Don’t leave me alone.” Katya gripped his arm tightly.

  Together, they moved to the next room. One step inside, and their breaths caught. A hundred or so jars lined the shelves built into the walls. A specimen room. The jars were about a foot tall, and just as wide. A dried-up black clump was stuck to the bottom of each.

  “Professor . . .” She gripped his arm harder still. She was looking at a jar full of yellowish alcohol. Something whitish was floating inside. “That looks like a section of some animal’s internal organs.”

  “And humans are animals, too.” Max thought of the operating room, and judging by the way Katya’s hands were shaking, she had come to the same conclusion.

  Max felt pressure in his chest, and his heart was pounding. What was floating in that jar was a four- or five-month-old fetus. It had discernible limbs, and it was curled up with its eyes closed, as though deep in thought. Katya was staring at it too. Neither said a word.

  Suddenly, Max felt something hot come up his throat. He ran to a corner of the room. His stomach contracted, and his mouth filled with a sour-tasting liquid. He doubled over and vomited. After his stomach was empty he calmed down. Katya was stroking his back.

  “Time to revoke my doctor card, huh.”

  Katya wiped his mouth with her handkerch
ief. “It means you’re only human.”

  They left the building. Stepping outside felt like crossing into a separate dimension. Max kept taking deep breaths. His heart rate was reverting to normal. He looked up at the sky; he felt like he was looking at it from the bottom of a pit. The sun’s rays bore down on them from a hole in the canopy.

  The door to the next building was open. After a moment’s hesitation, they entered. Just like the lab building, it reeked of mold. Close to a dozen doors lined a narrow corridor. One of the doors in front of them swung open; Katya clung to Max—it was Jake.

  “What are you doing?” Jake asked.

  “There could still be snakes around.”

  “This building was probably for the commissioned officers. There’s a mess hall and a shower room on the other side. The third building appears to have been for the soldiers and the Indigenous people.”

  Max entered a small room furnished with a bed and a desk. A chair without legs lay on the floor, and the window contained no glass, allowing vines to creep along the walls. The room was full of dust and cobwebs, hinting at how much time had passed.

  “Professor Knight!” Jake shouted.

  They stepped outside. He was calling them from behind the building, and they walked toward his voice. Jake and the others were looking at the satellite photos and pointing beyond the tangle of trees and vines. Jake showed them a photo. It was grayscale, and all it showed was the forest—no village, no buildings. The trees that concealed the ground were too tall for the satellites to see past.

  “A specialist determined that there were signs a space had been cleared. And sure enough, you can see it’s a different color here,” he said, pointing. Max hadn’t noticed before, but now he saw that spot had a slightly different tone.

  “Is that the remaining bit of Estancia ?”

  “It’s around two hundred yards south of here. We’ll check it out shortly.”

  Max nodded.

  Behind the buildings was an overgrown road about seven feet wide. It was covered in weeds that reached their waists. They walked through it with Bocaiúva at the head, slashing at the branches and vines stretching from both sides. Eventually they arrived at an open area. Just like the trio of buildings, it was concealed by trees. From the air, it would look like nothing more than a rift in the forest.