You try and penetrate the veil to a higher form of existence, but at present you cannot. This reality appears to be the only one given to you. So it will have to serve.
Your skin is hanging from you and your hair is falling out, you are in rags caked with blood and filth. But you are a holy fool. Enthused. The Lord is in you. You are St. Anthony in the demon-filled desert. You are Diogenes mired in grime. You are the Buddha at Bodhgaya. You are a Jain priest, naked, with a broom before you to sweep away any living being that you might inadvertently step upon. You are holy because you are possessed by a vision of a future time. It is a bright vision and a tight one, compact. Simple. The truth of it has made you pure. It is you. You are healed and strong and patient. You have bided your time and you have slept alone in the city. No one knows you are there, you have been waiting. Watching. And now you are ready. You have acquired a firearm and you are taking the subway train. You are in a house and you have silenced bodyguards and opposition. You are in a study with a man explaining, pleading, he didn’t know there would be deaths. You don’t want explanations, you just want to pull the trigger and turn and leave. Which you do. You leave and that is all. What happens next, if anything, is irrelevant. The circle is complete, the future event comes back to the now. It is the clarity of this vision that makes your legs move and your lungs breathe. That drives every tendon and nerve within you. Yes, you are beyond pain and beyond hunger. Your mind is cast and your will is subservient to this pact with tomorrow.
What kind of an emotion is revenge? Oh, it is much derided. And observers to an execution will often say that they feel repulsed and unsatiated. That it made no difference. The Hebrew God knows this and reserves the right to vengeance for Himself. It’s an eejit’s game. The cycle of violence that spreads itself out from West Belfast and the Bogside and South Armagh. Tit for tat and eye for eye; didn’t someone say that these rules leave us all blind? And yet what if it’s all you have? There are other motivations for a narrative of your life. Love, ambition, greed. But you have erased them all and there is only one thing left. It’s either that or absorb yourself further into the wraith’s world, disappear completely. No. It isn’t noble, but it’ll do. It is good, good enough.
Not that your thoughts have coalesced into a plan, or even that they make sense at all. It’s rather more that in the cold and the unfeeling extremities of your mind there is one glowing coal that helps you to move, put one foot in front of another.
The vines trip you and the trees talk, but they let you pass. The jaguar sleeps and does not stir. The snake rests. You are a fellow being. You cannot see any of them, but they are there and they recognize you. You are part of this now. The forest. Deep into the bush. The swamp comes up to your knees and the hurricane pauses while the eye crosses. It is only a respite, but in fact, as you’ll see, the worst is done. The peninsula has broken it. The wind and the rain come again, but they are halfhearted. They have exhausted themselves. It’s a harsh autumn in Rathlin for a day and you sleep in a forest clearing that in County Antrim they would say had been enchanted by the wee people. And when you wake, the sky is gray and the rain is less and the dream within you is fast and clear.
The hurricane had moved northeast and died to a warm drizzle. I slept under a highway bridge, and as the river rose, tiny crabs came out of the water and sidled up the bank. I killed one with a rock and tried to eat the flesh, but it was rancid and not fit for human consumption. The river continued to flood, and it became dangerous under there. I saw that I could be swept away or trapped under the overhang and drowned; but even so, I needed a break from the downpour. The crabs were coming out of the little holes in the mud and soon the concrete slopes were full of them. They crawled over one another and came up to investigate if I was still alive or not. I wondered where we were and tasted the river water and saw that it was fresh. I hadn’t known then that there were such things as freshwater crabs, and for a while I’d assumed I was near the sea. I’d been walking directionless for a long time and, for all I knew, I might have circled back and been close to where I’d started, wherever that was.
I scooted the wee shites away, but they kept coming back and eventually the crabs were too much and I climbed up out of the overhang and went along the road. A road that in good times must be an impressive two-lane affair, cutting through the jungle and the plains, but now, quite frankly, was a fucking mess. Mud and branches and landslides had made it impassable. There was no hitching here, and it was actually easier to walk at a steadier pace going through the jungle.
I was feeling better. I hadn’t eaten and I was sick with fever and I was concerned that the gash on my foot from the razor wire was turning gangrenous, but for some reason I was feeling better.
As the rain eased, the jungle soundtrack picked up again and I began to see the creatures. The ants were the first out, clearing up the mess like the global janitors they are. Then there were flies and mosquitoes and lizards and then from nowhere came the birds. Blue ones and a crimson one and a parrot or two. It cheered me. I ate some fruit off the trees. By trial and error I’d found which ones didn’t make me throw up. The green prickly ones were ok and the red ones that looked like oranges weren’t bad either. I chewed bark, too, as I walked, and all this time I wasn’t really ever very hungry, which I took as a bit of a bad sign.
Night came, and I climbed a few feet off the ground onto a wide, splayed-out branch and tried to sleep a little. Songs were a great comfort; I didn’t sing but just played them in my head.
Girls. Bridget. Rachel. Cousin Leslie, whose brother-in-law was big-time in the building trade. A foreman. Yeah, don’t worry, Michael, Mr. White doesn’t need muscle. He’s looking for lads from the Old Country who’ll work hard and come on time and take minimum wage. Yeah. Sure. And that’s why I’m here. The jungle.
Noisy. My mind drifted and would not sleep.
What did you say? Revenge. Is that what you said? Is that enough to get you through, can that drive an engine like you? Shouldn’t it be hot, won’t it dampen? No. It’ll do. It isn’t much, but it’s enough and I promise you, it’ll do.
That’s what I was saying. Foolish maybe, but that was it. Thinking too much. Too much. My heart, a snare drum in my ears. And there was a dullness beneath my left knee.
I managed to get off to sleep and woke in the morning, stiff and shivering.
The rain was gone for now. I attempted to climb a tree and get a perspective, but I wasn’t made for climbing yet; walking was hard enough.
I licked dew off a leaf and ate some of the things that looked like pears. During the night, ants had come and made me part of their fraternity, cleaning bits of scabs and exploring unwholesome aspects of my skin. They hadn’t woken me, so I chose to see them as benign beings.
I walked along the springy forest floor, mulch and dead leaves making it an easy path for the weary. The vines were the enemy, though, getting everywhere and trying to trip you. It wasn’t hot, and this at least was a relief. I walked directionless all day and lay down in the afternoon. My leg was almost numb, and this concerned me more than anything else. I sat down and sniffed it, but I didn’t smell anything. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. I tried to get up but sitting had been a mistake and I was too knackered now. I found another likely-looking branch and curled into the fetal position and slept.
The next day I realized I was having hallucinations. I might have been having them all along, but it took me until then to see that my mind wasn’t completely clear. I woke with vultures tearing at my left leg, tearing huge chunks out of it. I sat up and tried to shoo them away, but they were massive, ugly, bold creatures that paused merely to look at me with contempt and continue their abominable activity. I screamed and thrashed wildly and still the birds hung on. I swung at them with my fists, and I overbalanced and fell off the low branch and onto the forest floor. I stared about and, of course, there were no vultures at all. I cracked up then, sobbed, and sat there for a long time. To have got out of the priso
n, clean away, and then to have made it through a hurricane only to die of fever in the jungle. It hardly seemed fair.
How was I going to get to America, to carry out my plan?
How indeed? I was lost. I was sick. My leg ached. And most important, my mind was not clear. I tried to think, but everything inside my head was sluggish. Christ, was I really going mad?
I drove away the panic and breathed and tried to get some thoughts together. I could either stay here and hope someone came by, or I could go on and try to find help. If it meant giving myself up to the authorities, so be it. Surely that would be better than dying insane out here in the tropical rain forest.
I tried to get up, but it was impossible.
I found a stick. I heaved myself up and started walking, going a third the speed of previous days and looking always at the ground to make my way easier. I went half a day like this and collapsed, exhausted, drenched with sweat and bleeding from scrapes on my arms and feet. It rained that night and woke me, and I lay with my mouth open trying to drink a little.
In the morning, I couldn’t get up and I decided I would have to crawl. Crawling was a bit easier than walking, and I actually made better progress. On my hands and knees I could negotiate better the fallen trees and vines. I went like this that day and into the next. To my surprise, the jungle began to thin a little and I could see huge patches of sky through the canopy.
That night I had terrible hallucinations about snakes biting at my ankles and trying to eat my leg whole. They were wrapped around me and suffocating me. I screamed the whole of the night and begged them to stop, but they only fled with the dawn.
In appalling fear, I crawled away from the place I’d slept. I moved blind now, for my eyes didn’t open. I crawled for hours, and I fell on my face and slept that way. During the night, I crawled again and I thought the end must be coming soon. I’m not overly defeatist, but I am a realist, and I could see that I was in trouble. I could see that I was in mortal shape. I crawled on, expecting, soon, paroxysm and death.
I was wrong, though. Old Atropos wasn’t hovering overhead that evening and wouldn’t be for some time to come. But it was night and the daughters of Nyx must have been guiding me, because if I’d turned a slightly different way to the left or right I would never have made it to the pig pen. I would have veered off into the jungle and died sometime in the next few days. But as I say, the Gods or the Fates or involved beings who’d heard about my story, about my narrative, about my plan, realized that to continue the show, they had to preserve me and so, out of the jungle, they made a pig pen with small, black, friendly pigs, and they allowed me to crawl up to it and stop and collapse and wait.
It wasn’t long. The pigs snuffed my face and licked it. There were children’s voices first, distracted, singing, and then silence for a while and whispers and then the sound of running. Not long after that, the voice of an older woman whispering at first too, and then barking instructions. And then arms, a dozen arms lifting me up. I was thinking that if this was another hallucination it was one I liked. Tiny arms lifting me, half-dragging me, not very far into darkness.
Water on my lips and questions in Spanish, many questions.
¿Quién es usted? ¿De dónde ha venido usted? ¿Qué sucedió a su pie?
More water, and then voices raised. A man arguing with two women, clearly about me. He was opposed to my presence, but I could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. Someone began washing me and taking off my clothes and tiny fingers were picking the lice out of my hair. At the same time, a soothing voice fed me water and in the water there was ground maize. They cleaned me and put a blanket over me, and I shivered still and slept.
During the night I cried, and first the man and then the two women sat up with me, holding my hand, dripping water onto my lips.
Estamos consiguiendo a un buen hombre, él es médico, the woman said. The word médico stuck in my head.
I need Bridget, I said, she’ll help me.
The woman talked to me in Spanish and sang to me a little, and I think I slept. In the morning there was another voice, stern and almost angry. He was talking to the women and the man. He asked me questions, but I could say nothing. Then suddenly, violently, he poked at my foot and I cried out. It seemed to confirm everything that he’d been saying, and he sighed and went outside.
Later, they fed me beans and water and milk and they bathed me again, wiping me down with wet rags and then wrapping me in a blanket. The woman spoke to me for hours, soothing me and comforting me, and then the angry man came back. He had brought other men with him. I was falling in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t see. The word médico came up again.
I want Bridget, she’s a good nurse, I want her. She’ll look after me. She looked after Andy. He’s in good shape. Get Bridget, please, please, I really want to see her. I want to see her.
The angry man came over, his voice mellow now, kind.
It is ok, he said in English.
I tried to open my eyes, and I did for a second or two, but everything was out of focus. I felt strong arms hold me down on the cot and then the blanket was removed. I was naked under the blanket and I was self-conscious. I tried to cover myself, but the arms held me by my side. Someone was pouring brandy into my mouth. I recognized it. How in the name of God had they gotten brandy? They forced a stick between my teeth and then I realized what it was they were about. I yelled and thrashed my arms, but they held me fast. I struggled for only about a minute and then I calmed my mind and resigned myself. The man holding my shoulders was the very first man. He kissed me on the forehead and whispered things in my ear in Spanish: it would be ok, it would be ok. I would be brave and it would be ok. The angry man, too, soothed me in broken English.
Please not worry, it is fast.
Then in a soft voice the older woman explained in slow and simple Spanish how everything would go. I got none of it, but her demeanor helped quiet me further.
Sí, sí, I said and nodded to show that I understood now. There were murmurs of approval. I was in a small hut and their breaths were close to mine. I bit down on the stick, and I was ready.
It was a hacksaw, but it had been sharpened. I felt it go in above my ankle and I was relieved, because I thought they might do it below my knee. The whole thing must have taken less than twenty minutes. The actual sawing under two. What he did down there, I don’t know, but he stopped the flow of blood and mended the wounds and halted the screaming of the nerve endings. They gave me a sweet drink and told me to sleep, and after a while I did.
The next day I could open my eyes, and I saw that I was in a hut with a thatched roof and a hard dirt floor. It was swept and clean but hardly hygienic and not the place I would have chosen to recover from major surgery. I had the will to survive but will can’t do everything, will can’t do the job of antibiotics; just ask any of those prematurely dead Christian Scientists.
Still, if kindness counted for anything, I was way ahead.
The old woman was very ugly and the young woman was her daughter and the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. They were so caring that I loved them both and the man too. They told me things about themselves and the place I was in and they asked me questions, so many questions, but I couldn’t understand. I told them my name and they told me theirs, Pedro and María and then the old woman’s name, which was Jacinta.
When the children came to see me, they taught me to count, first to twenty and then to a hundred. We played a game in which I taught them the English word for things and they taught me the Spanish and we argued over which was right. Every day, when the pain started to get bad, the woman knocked me out with a milky white juice that first numbed me and then drifted me off to sleep.
I had been a week in the hut when out of the blue one morning, Pedro helped me dress and got me out of bed. He was explaining something very important and serious. I nodded and tried to get it, but I couldn’t follow him. María wrapped my stump in cotton bandages and then pinned my trouser leg up ove
r it. Both María and her mother had skillfully repaired my jeans. They had patched them with heavy cotton that they had dyed light blue. When I arrived, they had been cut to shreds and more hole than fabric. I told them that now some hippie chick from NYU would have coughed up a hundred bucks for them. Pedro had made me a beautifully worked crutch that fitted well under my arm. It was carved with leaves and simple patterns and there were three little figures at the top, which were obviously him and his family. I choked up when I saw it. He helped me walk out of the hut into the village square: half a dozen huts, children, women, goats, and little brown dogs with long tails. The jungle on three sides and a clearing and a dirt path on the other.
Pedro had watched me walk and wasn’t happy with his crutch and took it off me to shorten. He ran back inside while I leaned on María and her mother. It was to be a departure, as waiting out there in the clearing for me was a Volkswagen Beetle, a red one in reasonable condition. The driver came and tried to help me over to the car, but I shook my head. I wanted to say something first. I turned to the little assembled crowd and cleared my throat.
I just want to say thank you very much for looking after me. You have been so kind, muchas gracias, muchas gracias.
There was a smattering of quiet, sincere talk and some applause and María kissed me on the cheek. Pedro came back with the crutch and it worked even better now. Before I got in the car, I saw a man jogging through the jungle towards us, a huge, fat man with a beard, blue shirt, white cotton slacks. He didn’t look at all as Indian as the people in the clearing. He was puffing, and his face was red. I knew he was the angry man who had been my surgeon.
He came over to me.
I want to see you before you go, he said.
Yes, I said, I remember you.
My English, I cannot talk.
No, your English is good, I said.
No, very badly, he said, and his eyes met mine.
Dead I Well May Be Page 20