Then discard their fashion at will
Make togas of their bed sheets
The boys mimic schooling in a study
Papered with simple portraits
Of what they once called
The Vast Governess Parade
The old Portuguese cook soldiers on
For them with great affection
She raids the wall safes
Fills up the house larder
Feeds the young with stews
Porridges fragrant breads jams
These are left in white bowls
On the landings of the grand staircase
By the cook’s mute son
Whom the girls tease mercilessly
Before they use him roughly
To discover gambling or sex
He must also tend to Her Ladyship
Who is bed-ridden but lucid
In her demands and her sorrows
Sometimes a traveler materializes
Usually scared off by the burned ruin
Of much of the east wing
Those few that brave the front entrance
Are feted in the dining room
With teas and bright talk
Of the decline of the great families
Or the mutations outside their home
This is the one room kept tidy
And polished by everyone but the mute
Who keeps to his unending chores
And the whims of women
At night the young haunt
The garden pathways in games
That sport a savage jungle logic
Then feed the old wolfhound
From tins and laugh sweetly
As they toss him a stick
Cut from the Lord’s favorite cane
By morning they scatter
To their favorite dens or follies
Throughout the mapless grounds
Soon they will straighten their posture
Comb out their dreadlocks
Find respectable gear to wear
Pilfer the silver money box
Kiss Her Ladyship on the ring
Venture out to their scattered lives
Of course they will all return here
Busted by the travails of knowledge
They will bury each other’s bones
Until the mute stands alone
Silent in the night rains
As the rooms are cleared of debris
The long lost inheritors of the estate
Will find his yellowed journals
Feverishly scribed
In an indecipherable language
Illustrated with countless line drawings
And vibrant watercolors
Of ethereal grace
GHOSTS DEVILS DEEP IN THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST
Boston
Deep in the forest,
where the sun struggles
to pierce the canopy
of dank growth,
where the air is
dense and fetid,
eerie half-creatures
thrive and breed.
Amid bromeliads and molds,
angle hair mushrooms
and gnarled moss,
they rise up from
the rotting undergrowth,
flickering into and
out of existence.
One moment visible,
the next they vanish,
their molecules
stretched so thin
they are only wraiths,
ephemeral as illusions
of shadowed light
and the chemistry
of your eyes.
Our native guides
have dubbed them
diabo fantasmas,
whispering the words
beneath their breath
like a curse
or a benediction,
taking them
for lost souls
who have died here
without absolution.
HOLOS AT AN EXHIBITION OF THE MUTANT RAIN FOREST
Bruce Boston & Robert Frazier
The scene within the cube of the sculpted holograph is both dim and cryptic. Shadow is heightened to the point where color has bled away. Only a few earth tones and the dullest of greens remain. In the foreground three figures crouch about a piece of equipment, obscuring its nature. Whatever their task, they are dwarfed to insignificance by the forest backdrop. Even in this dimness, the gargantuan trunks that rise about them, the tubular vines and elephantine branches are what claim the viewer’s attention.
In one corner of the frame, a single patch of light has penetrated the dense canopy. As it breaks through the growth, the pattern it etches upon the leaves creates the illusion of a ghostly face, with wide-set eyes and lips compressed, silently watching the scene below.
***
With light migrating to shadow, and strands of dusk filtering like smoke through the nearly opaque canopy of the Mutant Rain Forest, a least-bird of paradise lit on a cobalt liana above holographer Genna Opall, causing a stir among the Indios in the camp. One man cursed beneath his breath. Another began to mumble a stuttering incantation.
The natives thought the bird ugly, its bizarre transparency a sign of ill fortune. To Genna it was a creature of rare beauty, even more beautiful than the sum of its parts: bright bead eyes, a froth of diaphanous feathers, glassy flesh shot through with fragile bones, visibly flowing veins and capillaries. She identified with the least-bird. Not because of its appearance, but because it survived in this transformed Amazonia by the same strategies she used to navigate the world beyond. They both moved swiftly, shifting from other’s sights. Both pursued a goal as elusive as themselves. The bird sought survival in a hostile and constantly changing environment. Genna sought a breakthrough in the cutthroat and constantly changing haut monde of modern art. Fusing holography with light sculpture on image-sensitive glass solids, she planned not only to create a revolutionary form but to establish her name and fortune.
Genna unzipped the case and eased out her camera. While she quickly thumbed in a new cartridge, Mingus Jahns, the heavyset leader of their party, calmed the Indio porters and raised his rifle. Seconds later the least-bird spooked when it heard the harsh trill of a siren eagle. Genna tried to track its sudden flight with her viewfinder. Mingus’ shot rang through the small clearing, shattering a branch near where the bird had perched.
Genna tossed back her dark and tangled hair. She pivoted to face Mingus, hands on her hips, the holocam swinging at her waist. Anger smoldered in her eyes, but when she spoke her voice was even.
“That was a rare bird,” she said. “You should have given me time for a photo.”
Mingus wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his khaki shirt and smiled condescendingly. With his balding head, his untrimmed gray mustache, and the thick folds of flesh about his neck, he made her think of an aging walrus.
“Be kind to your host,” he warned. “It was the eagle who scared the least-bird away. Not me.”
“But you tried.”
“According to the Indios, that bird brings bad luck.”
Genna laughed. “And you believe them?”
“They know more about the forest than we do.” Mingus’ small features narrowed further. “Remember, Miss Opall, your job is to stay out of the way and take the photos you were hired to take . . . not to put together your next show.”
Genna tugged at the gold loop in one ear and straightened the collar of her camouflage fatigues. She asked herself why she tolerated men like Mingus, and why so many were like him: self-centered, insensitive, lacking the ability to appreciate any needs other than their own. Just as they seemed lacking in any sense of wonder regarding the inexplicable changes taking place throughout the world . . . the strangest of all being the forest they now crossed. In this case she knew the answer. Since she lacked the funds to mount an expedition of her own, Mingus was her entree to this land she so desperately wanted to holograph.<
br />
“You’re jealous,” she said as the man turned his sweat-stained back on her and entered his tent.
“Jealous?” another voice asked. “Of what?”
It was their guide, Jorge, who knelt stirring the coals in a small circle of stones. Jorge dressed in black from head to foot and always carried himself with the rigid grace of a military man. More than once since their departure from the coast, Genna had caught his eyes upon her in a seemingly incurious stare. Yet he always glanced away as soon as his gaze was returned. She couldn’t be sure if he were attracted to her, or merely judging the wisdom of bringing a woman, this particular woman, on their expedition.
“He’s jealous of my career, of course.”
Jorge removed his short-brimmed cap and ran one hand across his forehead, smoothing back his already slicked-down hair. In the shadows filling the clearing, his brows and thin mustache were so sharply etched against his pale Castilian features they could have been painted on.
“But he pays for this expedition, señorita. He pays you to take photographs of him, not of the birds. Perhaps it is you who are jealous of him.”
“No!” Genna answered, venting her anger. “How could I be jealous of a man who relies on his wealth . . . and a gun . . . instead of his wits?”
“He is a successful man . . . a man of action. He acts on what the Indios tell him.”
“You defend him,” she said, “only because you allow him to treat you like dirt. That doesn’t mean I will.”
Jorge shrugged. “I have also been paid for a job. To guide us through a world where we do not belong. The jungle is our true enemy. We must learn not to fight among ourselves.”
He replaced his cap squarely and turned back to his brew pot on its tripod over the coals, flipping back the lid to examine the maté simmering within. Genna expected nothing further from him, so she wandered off to the perimeter of the camp, where Paulo—Jorge’s assistant—and two breech-clothed Indios were erecting a sonic projector that would offer protection against the lesser beasts of the night, and warn the sentries of the approach of anything larger.
***
Gamboge. Aquamarine. Vermilion. Colors so brilliant that at first guess one would suspect they have been computer enhanced. Acid violet. Chartreuse. Neon blue. Colors so intense and multiple that at first glance they obscure the figures beneath, and the initial impression is that of an abstract sculpture, reminiscent of Harding, or Weiss’ “Berlin Travesty.”
It is only on closer examination that one can delineate a flock of birds, caught by the holo lens in mid-flight and full sunlight as they rise in startled flight from the brush. Despite the fact that no two are plumed alike, their common form and flock would indicate they are of the same species. The frame that surrounds them has been cast as a tetrahedron rather than a cube. Their flight leads not to the open heavens as one might expect, but to a foreshortened sky that narrows in steeply inclined planes to a single vanishing point.
***
Next day, against Jorge’s advice, Mingus decided they should move away from the Para River. He insisted they return to a cracked strip of pavement they had crossed the previous afternoon and follow its path deeper into the forest proper. According to their maps, dating from an era when civilization claimed this land, the pavement had at one time been a road, a tributary of the great Pan American Highway that was said to have spanned the length of the continent. Now its eroded track disappeared into dense growth.
Mingus’ goal was to find the humani, a species so rare that Jorge and the Indios knew it by reputation only. He believed that this near-mythic creature—part cat, part man—had abducted his wife on a hunting trip more than a year before. Since then he had become obsessed. Rightly or wrongly, he was convinced that by finding the humani he would find his “beloved Therese,” or at least some clue to her fate. From the distant domed city of Dallas, he had already commissioned many a South American tracker to no avail. Now he returned to take up the search with manic intensity. Jorge and the Indios he hired to guide and protect him; Genna to record the highlights of an odyssey that, at least in Mingus’ mind, had taken on epic proportions.
Each night by their campfire, Mingus would unfold a plastic accordion of his wife’s photos he carried in his shirt pocket. While he reminisced at length, in maudlin and idealized terms, of their unfaltering love for one another, he would force the photos upon his hirelings. Genna already knew Therese’s face by heart, unexceptional but for its wide-set eyes, beautiful yet at the same time haunted, pale green eyes that reflected more than a fair share of suffering. No doubt the result, she concluded, of having to live with a man like Mingus Jahns.
An hour before dawn they broke camp and plunged into shadow. Paulo and two natives worked the front with long machetes, cutting back the barbed growth that overflowed the old highway. Although Jorge hovered close behind the trio, he seemed to command from a sullen distance. He stood tall in his black boots, a heavy machine pistol gripped in one hand and resting against his hip. Genna followed a few paces back, scanning the passing growth, alert for photo opportunities. Mingus and two more Indios, all carrying heavy packs and armed with automatic rifles and gas grenades, brought up the rear.
At this hour the forest remained immersed in sleep; neither the birds, nor monkey frogs, nor any of the other mutated animals in the overhanging canopy, intruded on the gloomy solitude. Except for the swish and hack of the machetes, and Jorge’s low monosyllabic commands, an unnatural silence reigned about them. Yet within that silence, Genna sensed something more. A presence, grave and watchful, as if some invisible denizen were observing them from the brush. She shrugged off the feeling. Neither a veteran of the Mutant Rain Forest nor a stranger to it, she had already learned that this was a realm where imagination took flight. She knew there were dangers real enough without inventing more.
Trees of incredible girth rose about them and loomed over their heads. Deadwood stumps canted like quaint tombstones in an abandoned graveyard. Lianas hung everywhere in great tatters of lacework, some of them glowing faintly in the half light. In more open areas, where the canopy had been rent by fallen giants and sunlight had penetrated, the forest erected a lush vegetable fortress. Gnarled bamboo canes barricaded these wildlife rookeries, along with twenty-foot Spanish bayonets and multitudinous strains of rainbow-hued cacti. Here their machetes proved useless. They were forced to abandon the track of the old highway several times and circle back. Genna slapped and cursed aloud at the clouds of biting flies that paced their slow progress.
Suddenly, where only a ghostly pall had hung in the sky, the sun broke through. Morning light flooded the foliage and the forest came to life. Blue-bearded marmosets chattered as they leaped from branch to branch. The growth on every side looked faceted, as if it were made of jewels, and the dew, where it glittered on fallen leaves, shone like a sea of miniature stars beneath their feet. Genna snapped pictures furiously as a flock of iridescent ibises lifted from a clump of orange palmetto, their wings beating with increasing speed as they gained momentum.
***
The man stands at cube center, not so much smiling for the camera as grimacing. A short and stocky man, dressed in khaki, beads of sweat glistening along the length of his receding brow, his features small and screwed tightly to his face. In one raised hand he grips a large machete, its curved blade catching the light and reflecting a single ray that lengthens and hangs suspended like an imperfection in the glass. He stands poised as if to strike the brush before him, but the stance is obviously posed, no blow about to be delivered.
The varied play of sun and shadow in the leaves at his back suggests a hundred and more incipient organic forms . . . a panther . . . a dragon . . . a man with arms akimbo, an uncoiling serpent rising up and about to strike . . . a pale green face, its darkened mouth stretched cave-like in the midst of a scream or exclamation.
***
The air grew thick with heat and humidity, and Jorge slowed their pace. From far ahead, the low basso
roar of a large animal sounded.
“Have we heard that before?” Genna asked.
Mingus stood by her side, thick hairy arms taut and his knuckles whitening upon the stock of his rifle.
“It’s the humani,” he said. “We’ve found it at last!”
Jorge shook his head.
“I wish we could see it,” Genna mused. “I’d like to get something big on film.”
Mingus grunted, pushing his way past Jorge on the narrow trail to order the men to chop faster. Paulo and the Indios looked to the Castilian, who nodded his assent.
“Señor, just so you understand . . . I give the orders.”
Mingus bristled and straightened. “I’m paying a bloody fortune for this. If I want to move faster, then we’ll damn well move!”
Genna sensed an electric silence settling about the two men as Jorge called their progress to a halt. More than ever his expression was etched in granite. It occurred to Genna that his distaste for Mingus might more than match her own.
Jorge gestured to the jungle before them. “If we follow you, Señor Jahns, then you can be the first one to die.”
“Is that a threat?” Mingus began to lift his rifle, but Jorge blocked it with his arm and shoved it aside. He stepped in close, leaning down into the shorter man’s reddening face.
“It’s not a threat, señor. Only a fool would allow an inexperienced man to lead the way in this forest. And since you would follow yourself, you are a fool twice over. Out here, the reckless are the first to die. You step into arrow root and pfftt!”—he snapped his fingers next to Mingus’ ear—“you are dead.”
“All right, all right,” Mingus said, though still standing his ground. “Just tell them to chop faster. We’re losing our chance at the goddamn humani!”
Jorge stepped back and mockingly doffed his cap. The tension between the two men abated. “As you request, señor.”
As they again pushed forward, with Mingus now trying to help the natives clear brush, Genna leaned toward Jorge. He tipped his head to let her close enough to whisper.
“I don’t see what that accomplished,” she said. “You’re still taking his orders.”
Jorge laughed silently, his teeth flashing in a rare grin. “It all depends on your point of view. You must learn to appreciate fine differences.”
Visions of the Mutant Rain Forest Page 6