“Maybe he likes you,” Roy said, still brooding over a tense conversation they’d had the night before. “Maybe you got too close. Like with De Souza?”
She released his arm. “But he was more beautiful than ever when he did that.” Fiona sighed with pleasure now.
“Really?” Roy frowned. The confines of the jaguar’s cage troubled him: it was cruelty, pure and simple. “How d’you suppose he’d look if he were a man?” Roy was a little taller than Fiona, but they were on an incline with Fiona upslope, so she was able to lower her head a bit, look Roy straight in the face, and ignore him. “Bet you’d want to interview him too,” Roy added.
“You are beginning to whine, dear,” she said in the playful voice she’d used earlier to deflate last night’s tension. “It’s time we visited the monkeys.”
Roy followed, feeling as if she were talking to a slightly troubled child. She half-spun to face him, giving her dazzling, genuine smile. He tried to resist, agitated that she could so easily change his mood. Fiona’s smile, as natural to her as brooding was to him, made a silent music in his head—the twirl and dip of Gaelic dances in spring, the merry, witty violins of Ireland, greenest landscape in the world, her childhood home.
Fiona laughed—an amused appraisal of the situation, perhaps, or maybe she was nervous. Roy glimpsed the inside of her mouth, her pink tongue, and was almost undone. “Come,” she said. “Come along, Jaguar Man.” She took his hand, and making deliberate eye contact, said, “Roy, I’d never compromise myself like that. De Souza is a creep. So forget it, all right?”
He wasn’t convinced. De Souza was a persuasive man. He wanted Fiona close by and had encouraged her to interview him. He had warned Roy that perhaps she was not only a journalist for the BBC. Possibly, based on recent scrutiny, Fiona was involved in surveillance work.
An elderly man, slim and shirtless with a scruffy beard, walked purposefully up from the alligator pond toward them. He wore a bright purple scarf, loose khaki shorts, and lace-less gray shoes. Halting a few feet from them he fingered his scarf, then crossed his long brown arms. His longish hair was matted, with dusty, sun-browned patches that would soon grow into clumps. He smelled of sweat and earth, but it was not unpleasant. His arms were decorated with silver watches strapped tightly from wrists to elbows. He addressed Fiona and Roy: “Good afternoon, Mr. Gentleman and Miss Lady. Dr. Edric Traboulay, at your service. This here cat you all was observing so intentionally is best referred to as Panthera onca, native to the shores of South and Central America. Very rarely do it harm humans, so please don’t be alarmed, Fair One.” The man was delighted with them, especially Fiona. He looked proud, licked his upper lip as if relishing the words he’d just spoken, and continued. “I taught zoology at the university—long ago.” He waved a hand past his head, as though dismissing a whole period of his life. “That was just after the colonial administration—the British, you recall?” He looked at Roy.
“Before my time,” Roy said, wary of the vagrant. “But of course I remember the queen’s visit.”
Dr. Traboulay kept his distance, as if sensing that stepping closer would defeat his purpose. In an impeccable Oxford accent, occasionally interspersed with island dialect, he began again. “Ah, the British! Of them I have such fond memories! Do you know it was through the good auspices of Dr. William Smith—the man who discover five, five of our island hummingbirds. Of the family Trochilidae. Count them.” Dr. Traboulay held up his right hand, fingers and thumb splayed, and began to count and name the hummingbirds, lowering each finger as he tapped it. “One, the Rufous-breasted Hermit, Glaucis hirsuta. Two, the Black-throated Mango, Anthracothorax nigricollis. Three, the Green Hermit, Phaethornis guy. Four, the Tufted Coquette, Lophornis ornatus. Five, the Blue-chinned Sapphire, Chlorestes notatus—yes!” He gasped, excited by the memory. “Smith was the boss-man of hummingbird, oui. It was because of that decent fellow that I had the good fortune to acquire a scholarship to pursue zoological studies at Oxford University. The British—” He stopped and scratched his head, overcome by a troublesome memory. “I was going to tell you about the expedition into the northern range of the island, but first . . .” He grimaced and rolled his eyes. “What was it, I wonder?” He looked at the clouds.
Roy and Fiona were both uneasy now. Roy reached for his wallet and mumbled, “It’s okay,” offering Dr. Traboulay several reddish notes with frolicking scarlet ibises.
“Oh, sir! You are too kind—but this is entirely unacceptable!” He raised his hand in protest. “First, I must tell you my story.” He turned away, deep in thought. Roy replaced the money in his wallet.
“Poor man,” whispered Fiona. “We should go.”
Dr. Traboulay was muttering to himself. He went to the jaguar cage and addressed the cat in Latin. “Pulvis et umbra sumus,” he said. The jaguar, still pacing, watched him expectantly.
Fiona and Roy eased away.
“Have you seen him before?” Fiona asked Roy.
“Not that I remember. But there’re a few like him around. He probably moved up from South recently. I doubt he’s been in that condition very long. A few years ago a man used to ride around the Northwest on a bicycle in a suit of silver foil. You had to wear sunglasses just to look at him. Now he’s gone. Perhaps he’s elsewhere on the island. Or perhaps they go in and out of these phases.”
As Roy and Fiona wandered beneath the huge branches of the silk-cotton tree, they passed a man hosing an agouti cage. When he saw Fiona, he wagged the hose in front him stupidly, calling, “Sweetness. Come by me, nuh.”
“Oh fuck,” Fiona said, looking away.
Roy, hunching his shoulders then releasing them in exasperation, said, “Good afternoon, sir.”
The man ignored him. They walked by.
“When it comes to islands, I think I’m starting to prefer England, Ireland. Even in winter. It’s not just crime in general, and all the guns most people seem to have, but what men do to women here that is truly frightening. At the consulate I saw last year’s rape reports. You wouldn’t believe—”
“But you said you loved it here, you said—”
She held his arm. “I do, you know, but . . . maybe it helps with leaving. Come with me.” Fiona had asked before.
Roy lifted his free arm and let it fall helplessly. He tilted his head and saw the sky in gaps through the silk-cotton tree, blue distances, clouds drifting. “A whole island, a whole country,” he said, “its problems unassailable. I couldn’t listen to poor Dr.Traboulay’s story. Sounds like the British treated him better than we did.”
Fiona sighed, released his arm. “I imagine with independence, people began hating him for admiring the British.”
“No doubt. One of the things my father taught me was to see beyond the way anyone sounded or looked. And for a long time I was able to go anywhere on this island. I looked at people a certain way and they returned it—an unassuming manner. That was the secret. Then he told me it wouldn’t last. He was right. Thank God he didn’t live to see how we’ve wrecked things.”
“Why ‘we’?”
“I never did anything to stop it. I never spoke to people how my father did. Like many others, I suppose, I thought things would work out, that things had been set right. They didn’t. They weren’t. There was so much to do, and we never realized.” He paused. “Or maybe we knew what had to be done, but just didn’t get around to it, for reasons I don’t even want to consider now.”
“Is that why you won’t leave?” They walked past cages with sleeping macaws, their long blue red and yellow tails cast down, their heads and bodies hidden in the shadowed cool of their perches. He thought of the jaguar’s confined pacing, of the vagrant observing him with the devotion of the zoologist he had once been. As Roy passed the last cage, a macaw looked at him out of a wrinkled sleepy eye, then stretched and flapped its wings, moving nowhere. Had the bird been a few hundred miles southeast, say in Guyana, a natural habitat, it would soon be gliding for miles along a river before roosting hig
h in the forest canopy. And below, on the forest floor, moving through sun-dappled vegetation, would be the jaguar impatient for a night of no moon.
Roy shrugged. “Maybe, in a way, I’ve already left.” Once again, involuntarily, he thought of De Souza.
“Stop,” Fiona said. “Not now, with so few days left.”
“What does it matter?” he said. “We’ve had our time, our chance.”
“Oh . . . please.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have your restraint, my dear.”
Her eyes glistened, but her voice was calm. “Please stop.” Taking his arm, she ran her long fingers along its inside. Goose bumps raced the length of his arm, swept up onto his shoulder, tingled his neck, and ended below his left ear. It was like being caressed from beneath the skin, as though his blood were tickling him. Yet he resented this pleasure, resented even her voice sometimes. As their last days burned themselves out, thoughts of facing the island’s confines alone caused him to resist her. And he resented that, as did she. Their lovemaking had become infrequent, but more passionate. They gripped and bit each other, hard. Orgasms were dramas of minor brutalities.
“It’s all right,” he said, circling an arm around her waist. They stopped and he held her close. “There’s still time.” Her head was bowed, hair falling on his shoulder and chest. She was sniffling, wiping her eyes. “I can’t stand it when you cry, Fiona. Please.” He kissed her shoulder. The soft, thin cotton of her blouse met his lips. It tasted of the sea, the hidden beach where they had swum nude yesterday then sipped cold white wine in the shade of an almond tree. As the blue of the ocean deepened, and the sand became the color of old lions, they’d left, the green mountains darkening in the last light. In the air, in the sky, there was a sweet sadness, the old story of islands: People you loved, or felt you could love, went away. Matters of the heart were interrupted.
“Yes.” She lifted her head. “There’s still time, isn’t there, Roy?” She searched his eyes, but he turned away.
Taking her hand, he squinted at the sky and led her to the green waterfowl pond. Tall clusters of bamboo, many of their leaves burned orange-brown, arched over their heads, rustling in a late-afternoon breeze. The golden sunlight flickered down. He remembered the colors of the jaguar and its small cage. The cat thrived on movement—swimming hundreds of yards, fishing in streams, climbing trees after monkeys, roaming savannahs, mountains.
“You can’t come away with me anywhere, can you, Roy?”
They crossed a gray wooden bridge, a structure he’d known since he was a child, and two swans, one black, one white, glided from beneath, silent as sunlight.
“Look at them,” Fiona murmured. “They have no room to run, to become airborne.” She stared at Roy.
Their long, elegant necks, their grace, even here, captivated him.
Fiona needed to say goodbye to people, attend dinners, drop off videos, pack, and arrange shipping. Still, she and Roy spent a few afternoons on the coast, avoiding discussion about her inevitable departure. But the sea’s distances, its green coast extending for miles into towering veils of haze, drew it from them. They bickered, attempting to gauge each other’s feelings. Then, late at night, after one or two bottles of wine, they made their love.
Roy had hoped the zoo would be a distraction as well as settle their debate about the jaguar’s range. Fiona thought the early colonists had killed them off, but Roy was uncertain. Years ago, the zoo manager told him that jaguars had never inhabited Trinidad. Yet the island was only a few miles from South America, and jaguars were excellent swimmers. Roy’s father used to tell a story of a jaguar crossing near the mouth of Guyana’s Demerara River, a distance of over two miles. And surely jaguars had roamed in pre-Columbian times, before the land connection to South America sank. Roy thought by now more information would be available. The current zoo manager—a young, worried-looking East Indian in sneakers, khaki trousers, and a blue open-necked shirt—didn’t know.
“Man, like you is the first person I ever hear ask such a question, yes. You all from foreign?” Roy was about to answer when the manager turned to Fiona, and no response was required. Fiona winked at Roy as the manager spoke freely. “I think it might have had one or two that was here. I hear a story that one drift across from Venezuela on a clump of trees, but some fellers in South shoot it fast. If that was happening regular before Columbus reach, maybe the Carib Indians kill them out. And what they didn’t kill, the Spanish would have kill, while killing the Caribs. As for jaguar bones, maybe no one ever really look.” He laughed regretfully. “It had all kind of madness in this place, yes. People who didn’t want to kill people they was living with here wanted to make money off them. Was that come first.”
Roy thanked the manager as someone yelled, “Boss! The bush doc reach again!”
“Oh God, man. Not Daniel in the Den of Lions.” The manager, looking back at Roy and Fiona, started in the direction of the big cats. A dark, barebacked figure was hastening away, silver glinting along his brown arms.
“Excuse,” the manager said. “Poor old fella, his mind not too good. Last week he enter the lion den and start telling them about Africa. Good thing we had feed them already.” He tapped his head, smiled at Fiona, and jogged off, shirt collar rising around his ears like little wings, his buttocks undulating in their tight trousers.
Still earlier that afternoon, in hills overlooking the western coast, Roy headed from his mother’s secluded home to Fiona’s apartment. He considered his mother. Two years into widowhood, abandoned by her husband’s friends, ostracized by island women who guarded their too-contented husbands with a furtive wickedness, she had emigrated to Miami where two of her sisters lived. She had sold half of her husband’s business interests and signed the rest over to Roy with the stipulation that he consult her before selling. Roy wanted to sell for a fair price to Norman De Souza, Minister of National Security, but the minister preferred the current arrangement he had with Roy, whose direct participation had been deemed “necessary for continued success.” It was a matter of security, he had said, until Roy would agree to sell at a significantly lower price. They are the ones you say no to, Roy’s father had written in his diary, which Roy discovered only after De Souza had intimidated him into laundering money through his businesses. Learn to see. Watch closely. Then learn to “play no,” not say it. Or better, misunderstand them. Act the fool. It’s your only chance.
Roy mulled over Fiona’s imminent departure, steeling himself for its inevitability, and pondered why she had come to the island. Six months earlier, the BBC had sent Fiona to Trinidad to research a documentary on the impact of drug trafficking on the island’s economy. She liaised with the British Consulate where she met Roy at a symposium on money laundering. De Souza had introduced them. Later, when De Souza realized he couldn’t sleep with Fiona, he became uneasy with her questions. He couldn’t understand her lack of fear. Don’t you read the newspapers, darling? One doesn’t pry into the drug trade. Do you know where you are? This isn’t jolly old England, you know. And even there now . . .
But at the symposium, an elegant sense of class and decorum had prevailed, an awareness of everyone’s importance, and especially of one’s own importance. New information was presented: thirty to forty percent of the island’s dollar was drug-based; some five to ten metric tons of cocaine were shipped through each month, with fifteen to twenty-five percent distributed on the island; drug-shipment interdiction hadn’t increased in five years; money laundering was now so lucrative that it had become impossible to arrest anyone notable; major crime connected with the drug trade, prostitution, and arms-trafficking had risen significantly in the last five years. Suggestions for solutions followed: combine police and army patrols; allow American/British armed forces to enter sovereign waters and airspace; secure hotlines for reporting suspicious activity—at this, Roy noticed some men in the audience smile.
Roy watched De Souza—two rows ahead in a pale gray Armani suit, jowls appropriately puffed over h
is collar, gold signet ring glinting—as he scribbled away in a notebook. His profile registered the concern of the powerful under the public gaze. A national television report following the symposium featured ten seconds of footage of politicians, businessmen, and De Souza and Fiona shaking hands. Fiona was to “produce a tourism documentary with a keen interest in safety.”
At the reception, Fiona meandered toward Roy and De Souza. Have you met Miss Hamilton, Roy? De Souza had asked softly, then grinned.
Not yet, Roy said, wanting to be far away from everyone there.
She’s with the BBC. He chuckled. I’m going to be showing her around, of course. Ah, Miss Hamilton.
Roy turned. She was tall and wore green slacks and a black blouse, low-cut. Her eyebrows were long, shapely. Eye contact was instant. Her hand reached toward him, so he had to look at her eyes immediately. She stared with intense, brief passion, like someone who’d fleetingly glimpsed horror—the expression concentrated in her gray-blue eyes, moist and unblinking. She might have been on cocaine, Roy mused. Then, with unmistakable poise, she glanced at De Souza, who had been staring at her prominent and flushed breasts. Delighted to meet you, Fiona said to Roy. The tight grip of her handshake made him curious.
And you, Roy managed to say.
The minister has told me all about you. Fiona lifted a glass of wine from a silver tray as an indifferent waiter strolled by. De Souza was not liked.
And have I been good? Roy asked, playing along.
That depends, De Souza said, on your plans. The minister winked at Fiona, his eyes unable to convey their boyish charm so overused of late.
And what are your plans? Fiona asked Roy.
Roy shrugged, trying to smile like a good-natured fool. Up to my partner here. Is there anything we can help you with?
Matters of safety, Fiona said.
The minister was scanning the room. I can’t seem to get a drink, he complained. He snapped his fingers at a waiter who appeared to be deliberately avoiding him.
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