The Devil's Garden

by Edward Docx

  ‘I am going to prove what you both believed.’

  ‘He believed. I hoped.’

  ‘You’re right, though. It’s not just about competition. Nothing in the world wants to live alone with only its own success for company.’

  She crouched down again and emptied the pail above her head to rinse herself. The grasses felt wet between my toes where the water had run from her body and was pooling into the ground. Then she stood before me once more – vital, ready for anything. She was as close as a kiss. She poured the last of the water on her head and I watched it stream her curled hair flat.

  ‘Wrap me in the towel,’ she said. ‘I can dress inside it.’

  I enfolded her body. Then I stood back.

  III

  We drank bottles of water. We ate muesli bars. With inactivity came boredom and agitation. After a while, Kim rose and rattled at the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The Boy’s voice startled her, sounding close, like his lips were pressed to the gap in the frame.

  She crossed the creaking floor and lay back on the bed.

  ‘You can’t escape.’ The Boy continued, the strange immediacy worse than if he had been in the room. ‘Where would you go?’

  I sat sideways on at my desk looking out at the lab. I wondered if the Boy’s associate was watching this window. My wallet, my money and my passport had gone. All that was left were my notes, pages and pages of handwritten nothing.

  ‘Were you locked in here last night?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Kim replied from where she lay staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Did you see Sole?’

  ‘Yes. We were together.’

  ‘Was she all right?’

  ‘She was tired because she had been working at the comedor. But she was OK. Besides the fact she was panicking about you.’

  ‘Cordero was still here yesterday, wasn’t he?’ I asked. ‘Yes.’ Kim looked over. ‘Cordero was still here.’ We had no plan, except to ask to go outside to relieve ourselves and then, tomorrow, to try and get out by whatever means possible. Several times, we thought we heard the Boy breathing as though he, too, were in the hut with us.

  Later, there came the sound of plates and voices outside. I looked out. A soldier was eating on Sole’s porch.

  ‘Why haven’t they locked Lothar in here with us?’ I turned to face the room again. ‘When did he go?’

  Kim was still lying on the bed. ‘About an hour before you woke up,’ she said.

  ‘Who took him?’

  ‘The Boy came with a couple of the older soldiers. Lothar just got up and went with them. They came back and said that we could wash and I woke you up straight away.’ Kim cursed impatiently. ‘This is a joke. What are they doing? They can’t just keep us in here forever.’

  ‘Actually,’ Tord said, ‘I’m afraid Lugo does as it pleases him to do.’

  We had thought him asleep. He had been sitting in my easy chair with his hands clasped and eyes closed. Now they flicked towards me – quick and green in the lamplight. ‘They say that he is given licence to do the Devil’s work,’ he said.

  Kim sat forward on the edge of the bed. ‘What the hell does that mean? Who says?’

  Tord gave a shallow nod by way of absorbing her antagonism. But there was a reciprocal anger lurking in the composure of his response: ‘They allow Lugo to racketeer. They allow him to torture and fornicate and to commit all manner of abomination. In return, he creates such terror that the forest empties.’ He thumbed his fringe to one side. ‘And if ever he were caught or exposed by anyone, they would disown him. He knows this and serves Satan all the more while he can.’

  ‘Shut up about Satan,’ Kim said.

  ‘He works underneath Cordero,’ I said, quietly. ‘Cor-dero uses Lugo at his own discretion. So Lothar says. Sometimes they cleanse nice, sometimes they cleanse nasty.’

  ‘How does Lothar know this?’ Kim asked.

  ‘You should ask him that yourself.’

  From outside came the low repeated gurgling sound that I did not recognize for a moment.

  ‘Machine guns.’ Tord rose.

  Kim came over so that we were all three looking out of the desk window together. The rancour between us evaporated. Outside, the night sky was glowing red as if Satan’s armies were indeed surging forth from a crack in the Earth.

  ‘They’re using flares on the rivers,’ Tord said.

  ‘Kim, if there’s a chance for you to get out with Tord, you must go.’

  She turned to me. ‘What about you?’

  ‘They may keep me here.’

  ‘We should go together.’

  ‘No. You must go – if you can, you must. I have to get Lothar . . . and Sole. You still have the disk?’ I attempted a smile. ‘You should—’

  ‘I have the disk. I’m not going to lose the damn disk.’

  ‘Good. Because you’re right – it’s important – you should carry on – you should prove what Cameron believed.’ I held her eyes but perhaps she had heard something hollow in my voice because she looked away out of the window again.

  ‘What is happening out there?’ she asked.

  IV

  Deep in sleep, I did not hear the key in the lock. Flashlights woke me, excoriating my eyelids, shining around the walls of the hut. Kim jolted and then kicked beside me, bad dreams broken by a worse awakening. I sat up, blocking their lights from finding her for a moment.

  ‘We are going to see the Captain,’ Tord said. He was standing by the chair, head bowed, in an attitude of pre-forgiveness. For the first time I thought that perhaps he was losing his self-control – that some particular kind of hysteria had him in its grip. He lowered his voice: ‘Where the Devil sits enthroned in darkness, there shall the soldiers of Jesus venture without fear and bring all men back to the light.’

  ‘Shut up.’ The Boy’s associate threw down my boots. ‘Don’t speak. Put on your shoes.’ His light had found Kim behind me. ‘And you.’

  I bent to put on my boots. They flashed their light on my laces a moment; then, deliberately, they played the beams over Kim as she sat up beside me.

  I stood. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  Though I could not see his eyes for their lights, I could tell that the Boy was looking at me. Again, I felt the strange sensation – a wordless recognition of something and yet a feeling that I could not fathom him, that I could guess neither his motives nor his inclinations. I detected a slight sway in his posture as he fixed on me and it occurred to me then that he was experiencing the same and that this was the reason for his persistent gaze.

  He licked his metal. ‘The Captain is ready now,’ he said.

  His associate laughed then leaned in towards Kim. ‘Lucky for you – he has drowned his thirst in whores.’

  I thought at first that we were going towards the comedor but instead we were taken along the back of the huts. The wall of the jungle pressed in again – the sounds of the night somehow solicitous beneath the din of the tinny music and the raucousness of men charged with drink and lust. I hobbled but only because with a certain way of walking, there was no pain. My mind returned again and again to Sole. How long had she and Felipe continued working after they realized that Cordero was gone? She must know that I had been found. Would she have already left? I hoped so. I did not doubt her ability to go through the forest if necessary. After I had seen the Captain, I would know better what actions were required. The next hour would decide everything.

  I walked closer to the tendrils and the leaves. I drank in the perfumes of the hidden flowers. I wished to silence every other noise, every other person, so that I could truly hear the forest. I listened to the insects. Had Tord and I been reversed in our labours, I was sure that he would have had more things by heart – class, genera, species.

  A pistol shot was fired. The retort ricocheted through the trees, where it was deadened and smothered. The Boy paused. We were behind the comedor – at the place where the fire had been that first night. The clamo
ur had stopped. The music played clearly a moment. Then gradually the voices began again, but more softly now, hushed.

  The associate came forward. ‘Give me a second,’ he said to the Boy.

  We stood in line, waiting, listening. The Boy watched me. I looked up. All kinds of stars were massed and smeared across the heavens – bright, twinkling, shadowy, nebulous, twinned, clustered – their number so great that the sky could not be called dark and only an ignorant fool could imagine himself of consequence.

  The associate returned, cigarette stub burning in his lips. ‘Just that fat cook,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’ the Boy asked.

  ‘Carlos shot him in the ass.’

  The Boy nodded, indifferent. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  We passed behind the first hut and circled around the second. The path beyond was quieter. Up towards the generator, there were lights. I realized with a start that the Judge was still here – or else someone was using his hut.

  Tord’s voice was sticky with unctuousness. ‘Thank you for guiding us,’ he said to the Boy.

  Kim coughed.

  The Boy said nothing but instead pointed with his gun for us to mount the stairs.

  Inside, maps covered the walls, the rivers like blue capillaries. A dim flickering bulb hung bare from the ceiling. There was a small table against the wall on which were arranged a few smeared tumblers, a bottle of my whiskey and an absurd lava lamp. A large field desk stood athwart the entire width of the hut; beside it crouched a surreal life-sized black puma – mid-snarl, stuffed or fake I could not tell; and behind it sat Captain Lugo cutting up what remained of a steak with an ostentatious knife.

  ‘Captain, where is the Colonel?’ I spoke immediately. ‘And where’s my colleague? Why have you arrested us?’

  He forked himself a piece, keeping watch on me as he chewed, his eyes empty but somehow avid – the eyes of an addict, I thought, about to begin his ritual.

  I pressed him. ‘Captain, where is the Colonel?’

  He swigged from his bottle of beer. There were boxes stacked under and all around the bed behind him – the firearms and ammunition with which he slept.

  ‘We are leaving tomorrow,’ I said. ‘All of us. Including my colleague.’

  With slow deliberation, he continued to eat. Beneath his toreador machismo, he was enjoying the theatre of this performance before the others, subconsciously seeking to enlist me in the role of an adversary against whom he could further burnish his authority.

  I turned away.

  ‘I want this to be easy, Doctor.’ He spoke up though his mouth was full of meat. ‘I’ve got plenty of difficult.’

  The Boy held his rifle crossways to block my path.

  This time I did not speak.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lugo said, swallowing, ‘where were you yesterday and the day before?’

  I swung back round and stepped forward to face him. Either he had placed a pistol on the desk as a paper weight or I had not seen it before.

  ‘Yesterday, I was dying. But you know that. Your men arranged it.’

  ‘No. Not us. You’d be dead.’ He ran his tongue around his teeth. ‘You were with your friend – the German?’

  ‘Tell me what you want, Captain. Otherwise I am going to walk out of here and you will have to shoot me to stop me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t shoot you, Doctor. I would amuse my men first – take their minds off our own losses.’ He toyed with his steak using the tip of his knife. There was a little pile of gristle that he had spat out on his plate. I felt a wave of nausea. ‘The Colonel wanted you to sign these statements.’ He indicated the papers with his knife. ‘And now I want you to sign them. That’s all. Then, tomorrow, you will be escorted to Laberinto.’

  ‘I’m not signing anything. And we do not need an escort to Laberinto. Where is my colleague?’

  ‘You do. You need an escort with big fat bullet-proof balls. For some reason the people we are fighting think we care about you. We keep telling them we don’t but – who knows? – they might resort to kidnap. It happens.’ He grinned. ‘Plus the savages can’t be trusted one way or the other.’ He lifted his gun and pushed forward the pieces of paper. His shirt was open and sweat slicked the dark hairs on his chest. ‘Really, it would be easier for you and for me for you just to sign. You can guess what they say.’

  ‘Sign what?’ Kim’s voice came from behind me. ‘Sign what? What is this about?’

  He sat up, displaying the fake chivalry of a man who believes women to find him attractive. ‘Hello. Welcome to my office – and my bedroom.’

  Kim stepped forward beside me. ‘What do you want us to sign?’ she asked.

  Lugo kept his eyes on her. ‘A declaration that the German has been spying. And that he acted alone.’ With his free hand he swigged his beer. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem for you – it’s the truth. Which we all love. Sign.’

  Kim was looking at me.

  He put down his bottle. ‘Once we have your signatures, we’ll let you go.’

  ‘We do not know anything about this,’ I said.

  ‘I believe you. But I don’t have to. All the evidence we need is on your computer and I’m told by my government that you’re responsible for your equipment.’

  ‘We’re leaving.’ I dragged his eyes back to mine with the aggression in my tone. ‘We’re leaving – all together – first thing tomorrow – and you will not stop us unless you plan to shoot us. For the last time, where is my colleague?’

  He returned to carving his meat.

  ‘You don’t think any of this matters,’ I said. ‘But it will.’

  I began to turn again.

  The jab in my back was vicious. I stumbled forward, crying out. The pain was as shocking as the precision – an expert’s strike targeted at a particular vertebra. I twisted my arm behind me, clutching at my spine, breathing through my teeth.

  Lugo drew his gun towards himself, away from where I was holding on to the edge of his desk. His eyes were alight. The ritual had begun. I must end it now or there would be no chance of diverting him before blood was shed. I bowed my head and cursed and let the pain register so that the room would be absorbed by my hurt and the Boy would not strike again. I was certain it was he.

  I straightened, pressing my fingers into my back, clenching my jaw as I spoke. ‘If you let me read these pages overnight, then tomorrow I will sign whatever is true among the accusations.’

  Lugo leaned forward, his thin nose the more delicate for the rest of his muscled frame. ‘I can make you sign it in five minutes if I want.’ He spoke softly but so that the whole room could hear. ‘Or if I like it better,I can take my time. I can cut off your balls and leave you needle and thread to sew up the bleeding yourself. Five days later, I can make you eat them because you are so hungry you’ll swallow anything I put in front of you.’ He sat back again, picked up the gristle on the point of his knife. ‘So: you do it. You sign this. We are happy. You go.’ He became matter of fact and, as he did so, flicked the gristle so that it hit my face and I felt it wet on the corner of my mouth. ‘Or you don’t sign it. And you stay. And maybe you die here or maybe you don’t. Or maybe I’ll cut off your dick and feed it slice by slice to the dolphins myself. We like to enjoy ourselves in our work. Plenty of people don’t get that chance.’ He pushed the papers towards me for what I knew would be the last time.

  But suddenly Tord was between us, slamming down on Lugo’s desk with his right hand, half shouting, half incanting.

  ‘The Lord strikes down those who strike against him and in his wrath there is great vengeance,’ he said. ‘Do you believe in the saviour Jesus Christ who comes and takes away the sins of the world?’

  Again, he slammed. ‘Do you believe in Jesus Christ? For I tell you outside are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and those who loveth and maketh lies.’ Spittle flew and his voice became high-pitched and raging as he leaned in past me. ‘Oh yes and I tell you this. The fearful, and unbeliev
ing, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all the liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. Which is a second death.’

  But Lugo had now recovered from the shock. He seemed to look past us and wink at the Boy as he stood up. Then he thrust forward with such force that the entire desk began to tip over. The plate slid and the bottle clattered, spraying beer in a dying arc. Somehow Tord managed to stand to one side, shouting all the while – ‘which is a second death, which is a second death’ – but I took the full weight of the desk as it fell. Struggling backward, trapped, I saw the puma’s teeth snarling and then, vivid as in a vision, I saw the calm in the Boy’s brown eyes as he rose up in slow-motion certainty behind a still-bellowing Tord. And in his right hand I saw a strange half-moon shape that shone beneath the length of his extended thumb. And I saw him seize Tord’s nose in his left hand with great violence, dragging the slighter man backwards, head up, shirt buttoned, straw hair neatly fringed, still incanting loudly, ‘Which is the second death, which is the second death.’ And I saw Tord’s face turn puce as he struggled to breathe and wrestle the Devil that had at last been made manifest, clinging to his back as his Bible had always said that Satan would. And I saw the Boy thrust finger and thumb of his right hand, deft and swift, into Tord’s mouth and with a strong and sudden upward twist I saw him cut out the missionary’s tongue and in one movement hold it up still twitching to the light. And behind his metal I saw the childlike smile of one who has added to his count.

  V

  Chaos came. Tord howled and gurgled and cried out thickly for his God through the blood that gushed from his mouth and down his chin like some dark liquid goatee, spattering right and left as they dragged him outside and threw him in the cart.

  They made us walk ahead. Twice I tried to turn. Twice I received a blow to my shoulder that made me stumble forward. Beside me, Kim cursed and then begged and then threatened and then pleaded until she too was hit and fell silent. All we could do was listen to the squeaking of the wheels and the terrifying unnatural sounds that Tord made and the screaming of the howler monkeys that should have been asleep in the forest above us and the music that beat out from the comedor ahead boasting of murder and tribe and wealth and bitches.