by Edward Docx
The man turned slowly – deliberately so. He introduced himself as if Felipe had not spoken and then shook my hand with a narrow-eyed expression by which he intended, I think, to convey some quality of far-sightedness or leadership. He was tall and bulky and he appraised me as though assessing my physical capabilities in relation to his own. His features seemed to occupy only the lower half of his face – on account of his high, bronzed forehead and his baldness, which extended from brow to crown. I detected some care in the black arch of his eyebrows and – taken in all – there was something fastidious about him that asked for admiration before engagement. He wore a tailored white cotton shirt tucked into a heavy belt with which he held up a pair of well-pressed combat-style trousers. I was immediately uncomfortable in my linen jacket. Why were we all dressing up?
Felipe poured me vodka and soda from the bottles I had newly donated. Cordero was sipping some sort of juice. I took a seat on an adjacent stool. We talked politely of the river, the lack of rain, the anxieties of the local villagers – though we avoided any subjects of wider concern. His men had bought their own supplies, he said; they would eat after us. They cooked for themselves. Meats. They were used to it. They were often forced to improvise on this mission. Which was why, as far as possible, he preferred to keep the numbers down. Some of the places they had stayed I would not believe. Filthy. But there were objectives. There were things that had to be done. There was progress.
‘You’re helping the Judge?’ I asked.
‘We have to keep order. You’re a scientist, they tell me?’
Who told him?
‘I am a naturalist – an entomologist. I study insects.’ There was something about his slow nod that made me loquacious. ‘Actually, I am a myrmecologist. I study ants – specifically ants.’
‘And how does this research benefit us?’
‘That’s a big question.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’ I hesitated. I had bought the vodka for Kim. I had never liked soda. And I preferred not to drink in dry company.
‘That depends on whether you mean benefit in an immediate way or more widely?’
‘Either?’
His manner was somehow both rude and courteous at the same time but I was a fool to be riled.
‘My work will – I hope – prove that in some areas of the forest the ants that I’m studying are killing every single species of plant except those in which they nest. We had thought that it was the inhibition of one plant’s growth by another. But I hope to show for the first time that it is the ants themselves who are . . . who are poisoning their own environment.’ It was my intention to rebuff him with so precise and forthright an answer. But he merely swilled his juice and I found that I must again go on. ‘My ants are very successful – because they cooperate. In one way, I suppose you might say we’re studying the biggest question of all: who – or what – wins in the end? What is the best strategy for survival? Competition or cooperation?’
He smiled. ‘You misunderstand me, Doctor. I mean how does your work benefit us, the country, how does it actually re—’
‘Good evening.’ A low, smoky voice surprised us both. ‘And you must be our great scientist.’
I turned on my stool. The Judge was spry, slight and a good six inches shorter than the Colonel. He was well dressed – outlandishly dressed, I realized – in a cream suit and tie. But what really lent him his distinction were his pale blue eyes and his wild white hair.
The Colonel said nothing. I stood and introduced myself.
The Judge offered his hand. ‘Raúl Ruíz Ramones,’ he said, but did not bother to look at me as we shook, preferring instead to address Felipe: ‘Can this man get me a drink?’
Nothing could have pleased Felipe more.
‘Good.’ Obscure amusement seemed to bedevil the Judge’s thin lips. ‘Something overwhelming and quick, please.’ He turned back to me and at last released his grip. ‘A shame,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you might turn out to be a woman worthy of the name, Doctor. Since I left the capital, my eyes have suffered greatly – a succession of slack-breasted monsters. But it matters less – it matters much less – now I have seen the face of our welcome.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Where did you find her, Doctor? Yes, that will do.’ Felipe was holding up one of my whiskeys. ‘Don’t worry,man. Pour.I’ll imagine the ice. I am required to imagine everything else.’ He looked around. ‘It is fortunate – is it not? – that I have so beautiful an imagination.’
The Colonel had remained facing the bar. I felt the need to speak: ‘Did you have a good journey?’
‘No. I did not. How is it possible to have a good journey? Has anyone ever had a good journey to this place?’
I smiled. ‘At least it didn’t rain,’ I said.
The Judge reached for the glass before Felipe could set it down. ‘Rain is a thing of the past, Doctor. We are on our way to becoming a desert. We are looking forward to it. Sand. Not insects but sand.’ He took the glass in one and then looked directly into my face as if he were only now registering my existence as a fellow human being. ‘But why are you trying to talk to me about the weather? Are you English?’
‘Yes.’
His expression said that he had thought as much. He motioned to Felipe for a second. ‘It must be difficult,’ he said.
Felipe obliged. The Colonel continued to face the bar.
‘I don’t follow you,’ I replied.
‘I mean it must be difficult flailing between greater powers where once you held sway – watching your great nation decline until it is little more than an elaborate theme park.’ He took his glass from Felipe but this time held it before his lips while looking at me over the top. ‘But also I mean being English for you – for you personally – appears to be difficult: the inability to stand easy.’
I was taken aback by his perception and his directness. But his own position seemed to be a source of private entertainment to him; and I warmed to this.
‘My nation struggles on,’ I said, ‘as do I.’
He smiled and said: ‘You think me judgemental, Doctor. But I am a judge.’ He despatched half the whiskey and continued with his index finger pointing from where he held his glass. ‘And neither am I alone by the way. We are a judgemental species. And it’s been like that since the dawn of time: these people chosen, those not; this man a saviour, that man a thief. We judge and we judge and we judge. Every minute – another judgement. I sometimes think that’s all we do.’ He finished what was left. ‘The relativist is an idiot telling himself lies while he stands in the corner with his hands over his eyes.’
‘I’m not a relativist,’ I said.
But he did not hear me for he was already looking over my shoulder.
Kim had appeared around the kapok and was coming across towards the comedor. Internally, I flinched. She was the best postgraduate we had so far found. Besides her intelligence, she had the emotional stamina for success in life and the proper fieldwork rigour for success in science. And yet the way she looked gave her the appearance of innocence and idealism and she seemed to attract cynicism and attack like nobody else I had ever worked with. She had shoulder-length loose-curled blonde and light-brown hair, even features and clear skin that told of good health and the more gentle sun of the northern hemisphere and she wore the student’s uniform – half scruffy, half considered. Her upper teeth were a little pronounced and it was (as now) in her nervous smile that you glimpsed the tomboy’s ghost.
‘This is Kim Van der Kisten,’ I said, smiling. ‘This is Señor Ramones.’ Against any likelihood, I hoped that they might like each other. ‘He will be staying with us for . . . how long?’
The Judge bowed to Kim. ‘Raúl, please – call me Raúl.’
‘We’ve heard all about the registration,’ she said. She offered him her hand to shake but instead he kissed it. Disconcerted, she turned to the Colonel, who had risen from his stool and now hooked his thumbs through his belt.
‘We’ve heard all about
the registration,’ she repeated. ‘We haven’t had too many visitors. We’ve been looking forward to some new people!’
The Colonel nodded, peremptory. ‘Let’s eat,’ he said.
VI
In normal circumstances, dinner was the principal ceremony of the day. Jorge carried out whatever he had burnt and served us with an aggressively fragile curmudgeon as if to dare complaint. I dispensed whatever we had to drink. Lothar managed the cigarettes and ashtrays. Felipe cleared the plates. Kim peeled the fruit and shuffled the cards for afterwards. Estrela disapproved. We sat at our round, uneven table. We talked of nothing and of everything. Every so often, the capybara would wander into the clearing and we would chase them off with our head torches. We inspected our cards hoping for the ace we might have missed. Above us, the fireflies glowed like tiny stars and the darkness around about seemed almost like an ocean; the comedor our little lighted ship. If it was not quite civilization, then we enjoyed at least . . . equilibrium. Tonight, not so. Lothar was on a rare trip away to the capital. So we were only five at the table: Kim, the Judge, myself, Felipe and Colonel Cordero. Jorge remained in the kitchen throughout, playing the great chef, sending us all manner of side dishes that we had never seen before, nor much wished to see again. The entente with Estrela must have ended because she soon settled heavily and defiantly opposite me. Felipe, meanwhile, fussed and fidgeted and dabbed at his lips in mimicry of what he imagined fine dining in the capital to be.
Unusually, Sole did not sit with us. Despite her dress, she preferred to hover and carry though there was no need for her to do so. She was quiet – sullen almost and short with Estrela. (As so often, I noticed that mother and daughter had in common most of all the knowledge of how precisely to persecute one another.) But I was alone in detecting anxiety as the governing emotion behind this irritation.
Cordero spoke only to ask questions. I could not gauge his intelligence, nor the nature of his relationship with the Judge, but I was forming the opinion that he was the sort of a man who took a steady satisfaction in rooting down for the worst of things – perhaps to prove to himself that nobody else was free from the fears and the weaknesses he harboured in his own mind; perhaps because he found that he could not be sure of anything but the lowest motives. He listened – but only as though he was at some obscure extension of his business. And he had a way of desiccating personality so that everything we said about ourselves and our work felt immoderate and self-indulgent. When Sole appeared with coffee, I took the opportunity of the interruption to ask more about the Judge’s work and turn the conversation back on them.
‘Everyone. We are registering everyone.’ He was annoyed to have been distracted from looking at Sole’s legs. ‘Outlaws, smugglers, gun-runners, rat-eaters, monkey-fiddlers. If it shows up alive . . . we register it.’
‘Surely they need some kind of proof of identity?’ I was not so naive as to believe this, but because of my continued irritation with Cordero, I was determined to be affable with the Judge. ‘Otherwise anyone could turn up and there would be no record for next time and the whole electoral register would become—’
‘A farce.’ The Judge interrupted me. ‘A protracted farce. Like so much.’ He paused to upend his remaining wine directly into his throat before setting down the stem of the glass with exaggerated care. ‘Look, most of the people we register are barely human. So how can they have an address? An address . . . An address requires a sense of time and place, a sense of the world beyond. These creatures crawl out of the forest and stand there smelling of sweat and faeces until the soldiers frighten them away. First they come for the knives, then for the free drink, then for the televisions.’
‘I think what you are doing is worthwhile.’ Kim spoke to him directly for the first time since we had sat down. ‘Those that want to have a say are getting that chance. We should let them know about their rights and what those rights mean. It’s all about giving them an understanding of their situation, their choices.’
I tightened. This earnestness was not her true nature and evinced itself when she felt shy.
She sat forward. ‘We should be helping them understand the processes of land registration and the reservations and everything. We owe . . . we owe the indigenous peoples that much.’
‘They, the indigenous peoples’ – the Judge returned the word as though throwing back an undersized fish – ‘are not the slightest bit interested in registration, or voting, or the sham of their so-called rights.’ He fingered a cigarette from his case, his pale eyes unreadable and unwavering. ‘This entire question is an embarrassment to all who concern themselves with it. The map claims the Indians live on a reservation and yet they have not the slightest idea that any such place is reserved for them. They don’t know what reservation means. Who decided this? Not them. They were simply existing. Now their men beg for alcohol and pornography while the women sell themselves for mirrors and cosmetics. What does that tell us about Homo sapiens?’
Kim’s brow needled. ‘Well, I’m not an anthropologist or a campaigner but I believe that people have the right to choose their own . . . destiny.’
The Judge’s match flared as he spoke. ‘Miss Van der Kisten, we hear a lot of this kind of talk in our country. And so we ask ourselves, why do you people come to the jungle?’ He raised his jaw and exhaled towards the sky. His voice had an incantatory quality so that his words seemed to range out into the blackness of the night beyond and to echo on into the silence. ‘Let me tell you. Always, always, it is for one of two reasons: either to find the green hell and to see some kind of a freak show; or to find a green heaven and so rediscover some ancient truth that you pretend to yourself humanity has lost but that in reality has everything to do with your own feelings of emptiness and worthlessness and nothing whatsoever to do with the Indians or their lives. And what happens the moment your own way of life is threatened? You retreat – you retreat the better to commune with your narcissistic little sense of entitlement, which simply will not go away however much you recycle your packaging.’
‘I come for the ants,’ I said, softly. ‘And the food.’
‘We’re scientists,’ Kim said.
‘So you say,’ he smiled. ‘But I have met many of your tribe, Miss Van der Kisten, and they seem to believe because they wear certain clothes and affect an innocent demeanour that this changes everything. And yet to me – and to most of my countrymen – they remain exactly as they are: the children of a thousand unseen privileges flown in from their own continents, where their every whim has always been met at the direct and continual expense of the rest of the world, to lecture us . . . to lecture us about rights and restraint. Thank you but no. We much prefer businessmen – the honest pigs of profit and war.’
In part, he was toying with us and Kim knew it. But she would not be so treated and there was anger entering her voice. ‘You are wrong,’ she said. ‘There are lots of examples of honest science. And there are loads of aid organizations that achieve real things for the people they’re trying to help. We know for a fact that educated tribes make good decisions about their circumstances and what they—’
‘What you consider good decisions.’ The Judge drew a backhanded curtain of smoke. ‘What you consider reasonable and fair and thoughtful. Everything by your standard, by your laws, by your decree. There is a covert we-know-best in the dark heart of everything you do and everything you say.’
‘That’s just not true.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. Not always.’
I intervened. ‘The majority of the non-governmental organizations do have good intentions.’
The Judge smiled his scabrous smile again. ‘Doctor,as you will soon discover,this place is the death-mire of good intentions. Ah, yes, you mean well. You mean well . . . until you discover that you do not know what exactly it is that you mean.’
This time Kim was silent.
The Judge extinguished his cigarette. ‘I myself am a keen anthropologist,’ he said, suddenly genia
l. ‘An amateur, no doubt, but I have read my Durkheim and what fascinates me . . . what fascinates me is that it is always the same with young women: the good-looking ones, they secretly want you to admire them for their minds; and the intelligent ones, they want you to admire them for their bodies. Now why would that be? But I see by your face you are offended.’
Felipe’s eyes were watering.
‘I am not offended.’ Kim blew her hair from her forehead. ‘We are all entitled to our opinions.’
‘I’m afraid to have an opinion, you must know something of which you speak. But please . . .’ Kim had risen and the Judge’s face lit up in a disarming expression of conciliation. ‘I am a contrary man and I make no claim for superiority. I, too, am looking for a big house on a pretty hill wherein I can indulge myself and pretend great spirituality while I forget about the rest of the world. Consider me an idiot.’
I stood noisily and began to collect plates. I had been aware that the Colonel was watching us throughout. He had not spoken – almost so as tacitly to encourage us, I thought. Such conversations with strangers – officials – were at best uncertain and at worst dangerous. And everything bled into everything else: land rights into land reserves, the un-contacted tribes, the recent killings; the reserves into questions of agriculture, science, conservation, development, energy, resources; these, in turn, into narcotics, policing, the guerrillas, arms and the government, the president.
‘Kim, it’s our turn to wash up,’ I said.
Cordero rose and addressed Felipe abruptly: ‘Do you speak the language of the local tribe?’
‘No.’ Felipe nodded and then shook his head.
‘They are called the Matsigenka,’ Kim said. ‘Or perhaps you mean the Yora or the Ashaninka or the Ese Eja or the Harkmbut?’
‘Sole speaks Ashaninka and a little of some of the other languages,’ I said. ‘Or there is a neighbour of ours who is Matsigenka – his name is Tupki.’
Cordero nodded curtly. ‘The men will make their own provisions. But we take breakfast at seven.’