by Edward Docx
‘It’s not enough,’ he shouted, pointing both index fingers to the sky. ‘A flash squall – over as quickly as it has begun – it’s not enough. You’ll know when the real storms come.’
The normal sounds of the forest had been deluged and there was only the racing wet swish of the rain. Barely twenty paces apart and we had to bellow at one another to be heard.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s good news, Doctor. Good news.’ The pointed fingers became two open palms. ‘They’re pouring in from everywhere. They’re coming out of the forest to register. I give them knives. I give them televisions – those that bring more than a dozen. And now we are no longer looking for them. They are looking for us.’
‘The jetty has collapsed.’ I took a few steps closer to the bottom of his stairs. ‘There’s chaos down there. People could have been killed. Children. Where’s the Colonel?’
‘If they are already registered, Dr Forle, then we will be able to attest to their deaths.’ His voice seemed to resonate up from inside the sound of the rain. ‘If not, then the question arises: have they truly died? Indeed, have they truly lived?’
There was a bottle on the table. Felipe started forward, then stopped, stranded between us.
Again, I shouted: ‘Where’s the Colonel?’
‘He’s gone out – ethnic cleansing. I would have gone with him but for my work. I didn’t realize he was such a great friend of yours.’ The Judge leant forward, reaching lazily at the papers – some floating away on a mini-stream, some draped forlornly on the stairs. ‘Why are you so angry, Dr Forle? I thought you were a great democrat – a democrat-izer. And look at the face of our beautiful Miss Van der Kisten. Oh, the confusion. Did you ever see such confusion? But surely we are all in agreement – even science must make way for our wonderful democracy. This is what is supposed to happen all over the world – no? Isn’t democracy the great hope of all mankind? Or have I misunderstood everything? Have a drink.’
Already the rain was easing.
‘Tell these people to go.’
‘Go where? Go where? We are here. Where they go – is here. We are here – where they go. This is it. This is where they go.’ He sat back and stretched out his arms. ‘We must register. We need more opinion. More voices. More votes. We are all going to decide everything together for the good of everyone. All nine billion of us.’
His laughter sounded like a bird.
The Judge raised his voice again, a little louder for each step we took away from him. ‘This love affair with the individual is a disaster, Doctor. Yes. Yes. Look at us. We’re all obsessed with ourselves. We can’t think about anything else for more than a minute. And your tribe is the worst. You have created this – the age of hypocrisy. This will be your legacy: hypocrisy in everything.’
Kim and I held on to one another’s arms. It was difficult to pull our boots up from the mud. Behind us, I heard Felipe fall. I turned back to help him up. And I saw that the Judge had risen and was standing behind the table.
II
The forest was the loudest I had ever known it, thronged and teeming with newly emergent life after the rain; and even inside my hut, the air smelt of the wet earth.
‘We’re not stopping,’ Kim said. ‘And we are not going home.’
‘We’re not,’ I nodded.
She cursed violently. ‘We shouldn’t have gone to the party. We’ve wasted five days. Every day here is a day we should be working.’
I lit my desk lamp.
‘We’ve been behaving like tourists,’ she continued. ‘Like students on some rancid gap year.’
For different reasons, anger had consumed us both. We had washed together: Kim first while I kept station outside. Then Felipe. Then me. But time had not so far tempered the mood. Now, we were avoiding the comedor.
I sat at the desk and reached for my cigarettes. She was right. But I could not concentrate or deal with anything. The residual cocaine rushes were still coming and going; and with them a paranoia that I knew and discounted, knew again, and again discounted. My own emotions were intolerable to me again. And I had begun to suspect something in Kim’s attitude to Quinn. Apart from her ill-masked fury at being ‘abandoned’ at the party, her reaction to my conversation with Wilson had surprised me with its vehemence. I should have found her, she said. I should have come back and got her straight away. What had this man seen? Who was he? The last leg of the journey back from Laberinto in our little boat with her and Felipe had been hell.
I offered her a cigarette. ‘Did you see the Colonel or any of the soldiers?’ I asked.
‘No. Why?’
‘Me neither. I think that’s good.’
‘Is it? I wish the Colonel would come back and clear up this mess.’
‘On his own, I can deal with the Judge.’
She looked up. ‘Can you?’
‘Yes.’
The matches were damp. I threw her my lighter.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because we will finish the work whatever it takes. We’ve been messing about—’
‘Kim, I know. I know I know I know.’ My voice rose and I forced myself to calmness. ‘Believe me, I feel as bad as you do. Worse. I knew Cameron for fifteen years. Longer. We spent most of our working lives together. He more or less kept me alive. So don’t think—’
I was interrupted by a knock on the door. I stood. There was the unfamiliar chink of crockery. Then Felipe came in backwards carrying a heavy tray, his smile like a ceremonial mask.
‘I thought you would want to eat here tonight,’ he began. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Almost everybody seems to have gone. But there are still a few people about. And, my goodness, the comedor is covered in mud. Tomorrow is going to be one big clean-up.’
‘Thanks, Felipe,’ I said. ‘We were going to come over.’
‘No need.’ He busied himself unnecessarily with plates. ‘In any case, Estrela has locked herself in the store room so there’s nothing to eat except this, which I had to beg off her. Would you believe it? She has made a bed on the floor. I had to speak to her through a crack in the door!’
I felt a surge of affection for Felipe. He was behaving like a head waiter following an atrocious accident with the soup – and it was contrived and ridiculous and silly. But it was working.
‘She wanted me to say which person slept in which hut to prove that it was me!’
I glanced at Kim. The ire was softening.
Felipe opened the beers with a flourish. ‘Even then she would not unlock the door. She would only pass all of this through the window.’ He handed me a bottle. ‘Please, I have already eaten.’
‘Thanks, Felipe,’ I said, again. ‘You’re a good man.’
I ate at my desk in silence. Kim balanced her plate on her knees. Bats were squeaking. My appetite was returning. I was glad to be clean at least.
Felipe sat on the bed, sipped at his water and talked while we sawed the meat into edible strips. The Station would be empty by morning, he reckoned. All the families had vanished with the rain. A few men were still sitting on the steps of the comedor. He believed they were Matsigenka. Everyone was friendly. They were talking among themselves. He wished Sole or Lothar or Tord were here so that he could have spoken with them. There was no sign of Cordero, Lugo or any of the soldiers – just the Judge. He had not been down to the river since the storm. What a mess. The Judge seemed not to care in the slightest. He was playing chess with a woman.
‘What’s left of the bar?’ I asked, swigging deeply at my beer.
‘I checked that, Doctor.’ He smiled. ‘It seemed OK, it seemed OK.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘I think the Judge may have taken a bottle or two but we will still have a few good ones left.’
I realized that Felipe’s attitude was merely a different expression of what Kim and I were both starting to think: that the Judge’s return was a colossal inconvenience, but that alone. Chaos, not disaster; the real apprehension had always been the soldiers.
‘W
ill you let me know when the Judge goes to bed?’ I addressed Felipe. ‘I don’t think there is much point speaking to him tonight. He was drunk four hours ago.’
‘Or pretending to be,’ Kim murmured.
‘I will come and have a look and talk with Estrela. We can see what needs to be done.’
Felipe stood, seemingly glad of his charge. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will start now with the comedor. And tomorrow – tomorrow hopefully Sole and Jorge will be back to help us and we can make everything spick and span.’
‘Thank you, Felipe.’
He left and I sipped from my bottle.
Kim put down her knife and fork with mock solemnity. ‘Do you know what kind of meat this was?’ she asked.
‘Monkey,’ I said. ‘Or some kind of rodent, maybe.’
She made the face of the delighted gourmet then rose and placed her plate on top of mine and sat back down with the tinned pears Felipe had bought.
After a while, she said: ‘Dr Quinn would love all this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he would have wanted to know which of these people was from which tribe. For all we know,there could be Mashco Piro making first contact. Smoke. I don’t mind.’
I lit a cigarette and said: ‘Cameron used to tell me that of all the amazing things in nature, the thing that amazed him the most was how such a staggeringly intelligent species could make such a mess of running the world which gave rise to its existence. One time he went on a television panel just to expose how little the other guests – politicians, senior journalists, the usual crowd – how little they knew about the human story. He said that not teaching anthropology in schools was like locking people in the basement of their own lives and making them think the abuse was normal.’ I watched a moth fret the netting where the window was ajar. The light asked it in, the smoke warded it away. ‘Is there anything you want to say to me, Kim?’
She looked up from her pear-spooning hunch. ‘Such as?’
‘Anything.’
She returned my look with a level gaze. ‘Nothing. Except . . . can I use the computer tonight? I could do with an hour or two. I feel the need to connect.’ She blew her hair.
‘Sure. Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No. I’m fine.’ She put down her bowl by the chair and indicated that she wanted a second cigarette of her own.
‘Can you hear the bats?’
She smiled. ‘I was just thinking – thank God we’re not studying them: all of this again – but at night and airborne.’
‘There are plenty of nocturnal ants,’ I said.
She stood and lit her cigarette, her tomboy’s grin returning.
‘Do you want Felipe to sleep on your floor?’ I asked.
‘No thanks. Do you?’
I smiled. ‘OK. Here, take another.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. You seem to have imported all the vices.’
‘It’s my pleasure.’
She picked up her bottle. Perhaps it was just that I was beginning to see her as she truly was, or perhaps she was becoming even stronger and more self-reliant before my eyes – a woman with purpose and the surety that purpose brings. But our relationship was changing and I saw clearly that she would surpass me in science – and that this work would be hers to push into other disciplines and on as far as she wanted to go. A woman once told me that she believed confidence to be the greatest aphrodisiac, and she was not far wrong, but confidence comes and confidence goes, and in the end it is purpose that surpasses all; purpose in a purposeless world.
She hesitated at the door. ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I am going to sort things out.’
III
However brief and insufficient the rain, when I rose the dawn felt cooler. I dressed and stepped out into the clearing. Clouds had slept in the forest. The rivers would be wreathed in mist.
The lab padlock was undone and for a moment I was ready to blame Kim. But I had forgotten that Lothar had his own keys; and there he was – sat in the dry room, his weathered face bathed in the pale blue light of the screen.
He half turned in the chair. ‘Good morning, Herr Doktor,’ he said. His smoker’s cough rattled him a moment. ‘How was the party?’
I hesitated.
‘But you’re still alive anyway – and this is a good thing. After Machaguar.’
‘I am. I’m still alive.’ For a moment I thought I might tell him everything. Some part of me called out for his shriving.
‘You have to see these things.’ His lips curled but for the first time the rubbery grin was not wholly natural.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked. ‘What time did you come in last night?’
‘I came in this morning. I have been in the gardens.’
‘What? All weekend?’
‘Yes.’ He glanced at the screen and clicked with the mouse. ‘Friday and Saturday – they were good days. And then yesterday – after the rain – I worked with torches until late. I have been sleeping in the storage hut to save time coming backwards and forwards.’
He meant no reproof but I felt guilt leaking into my bloodstream like quicklime into the river.
‘The good news is that I have been round half of the sites.’ He pulled at both ear lobes simultaneously. ‘I think so – we should keep going, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everything is entered on the computer. And I have labelled the pictures, of course. Ruhig fließt der Rhein.’ He clicked again then wheeled the chair all the way around childishly with his heels so that he could face me properly. ‘So. What happened here? It looks like the circus came? Or was it the famous swine?’
‘The Judge is back. He is using the Station as a registration post.’
He drew heavy breath. ‘Why must it be that whenever I think the worst I think the truth?’
‘You should have been here yesterday: anarchy.’
‘I saw the jetty, my friend.’
‘He is mad,’ I said.
‘No, he’s not mad. You do not survive in the way he survives if you are mad. He survives in the capital. He survives here. He works by himself. He considers himself separate from everything that happens in the world. And yet people of every kind do his bidding. Not mad – much worse than that.’ Lothar scooted himself forward and backwards a little. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘I am going to talk to him now. He has to get a grip of it. Even if he is treating the whole registration as a joke – he can’t let it be dangerous.’ I stood upright. ‘Have you heard anything more?’
He coughed again. ‘No. Nothing since you left. I have been in the forest.’
I hesitated. ‘Thanks, Lothar.’
‘For what?’
‘Thanks for your work.’
I had never seen him blushing. And I took it then as embarrassment – embarrassment at me thanking him.
‘I love this place,’ he said.
IV
Only twenty yards beyond the comedor and the Station felt different. The walls of the jungle were closer on the upriver side – a slight tapering of the clearing. I realized with a start that I had not come this way since the Judge and Cordero had arrived. Somehow, this side had become . . . theirs. Before, when Rebaque was here, I would walk up blithely and often and sip bourbon on his porch.
The heat was growing heavier. Soon, the rain would seem like a dream. Leaf-cutters were streaming across the path, Atta cephalotes. A foraging raid, six deep, but separating into several thinner lines that fanned out in radial arms away to my left, like a great river flowing backwards, unnatural, in urgent search of its every source.
‘The fungus-growing ants are wise,’ Quinn would say in his lectures, ‘not because the Bible says so – “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” – but because they are the only creatures on Earth properly to heed that great atheist Voltaire.’ And then he would describe the manner in which they cultivated their mighty fungus gardens.
She was motionless in the hammock and so I only noticed her belatedly – the same woman who had arrived that afternoon on the jetty. I nodded. She was wrapped in a sheet, which was drawn up beneath her arms and tight across her chest like a strapless evening gown – stark white against her skin and the black tangle of her hair. She must have been watching me all the while. She was a mestizo and the capital’s jealousies and calculations animated her appraisal.
‘Is the Judge here?’ I asked.
Her hazel eyes did not leave mine. ‘Raúl?’ She said his name without raising her voice much above a murmur and still without taking her eyes off me. I had never seen provocation and indifference blended so exactly.
‘Raúl,’ she called again, ‘there is a man here.’
I heard a clattering and then a second sound that I did not recognize – a steady low-pitched roar. The door was pulled open awkwardly and the Judge appeared. He was stripped to his slim waist, grizzled hair on his chest and his face half-concealed by an Old Testament beard of shaving foam. In one hand he was carrying a blue-flamed gas burner and in the other an overfilled pan of water.
He stopped and regarded me as though astounded at his own patience with the world.
‘Were it not for Rafaela’s morning ministrations, then today I would be minded to cut my own throat,’ he said. ‘I do not sleep any more, Doctor. I do not sleep well and fully. All night, my mind teems. Imagined voices, imagined conversations.’ He set down the little camp stove on the table. ‘It is an unendurable agony. Sleep comes only briefly and as frugal as the rain. Do you suffer? The harrowed mind?’ Foam slid slowly off his jaw like snowmelt – against the continued roar of the flame, it created the impression that his entire face was liquefying. ‘How are the ants this morning? Do we have long to go before we can finally hand over? Or are they dragging the damn thing out like sadists?’