The Jaguar Hunter

by The Jaguar Hunter (v5. 5) (epub)

  They went straight up to their room and lay without talking in the dark. But the room wasn’t dark for Lisa. Pointillistic fires bloomed and faded in midair, seams of molten light spread along the cracks in the wall, and once a vague human shape—she identified it as a ghostly man wearing robes—crossed from the door to the window and vanished. Every piece of furniture began to glow golden around the edges, brighter and brighter, until it seemed they each had a more ornate shape superimposed. There came to be so much light that it disconcerted her, and though she was unafraid, she wished she could have a moment’s normalcy just to get her bearings. And her wish was granted. In a wink the room had reverted to dim bulky shadows and a rectangle of streetlight slanting onto the floor from the window. She sat bolt upright, astonished that it could be controlled with such ease. Richard pulled her back down beside him and asked, “What is it?” She told him some of what she had seen, and he said, “It sounds like hallucinations.”

  “No, that’s not how it feels,” she said. “How about you?”

  “I’m not hallucinating, anyway. I feel restless, penned in, and I keep thinking that I’m going somewhere. I mean, I have this sense of motion, of speed, and I can almost tell where I am and who’s with me. I’m full of energy; it’s like I’m sixteen again or something.” He paused. “And I’m having these thoughts that ought to scare me but don’t.”

  “What, for instance?”

  “For instance”—he laughed—“and this really is the most important ‘for instance,’ I’ll be thinking about us and I’ll understand that what the old guy said about us parting is true, and I don’t want to accept it. But I can’t help accepting it. I know it’s true, for the best. All that. And then I’ll have that feeling of motion again. It’s like I’m sensing the shape of an event or…” He shook his head, befuddled. “Maybe they did drug us, Lisa. We sound like a couple of acidheads out of the sixties.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said; and then, after a silence, she asked, “Do you want to make love?”

  He trailed his fingers along the curve of her stomach. “No offense, but I’m not sure I could concentrate on it just now.”

  “All right. But…”

  He rolled onto his side and pressed against her, his breath warm on her cheeks. “You think we might not have another chance?”

  Embarrassed, she turned her face into his chest. “I’m just horny, is all.”

  “God, Lisa. You pick the weirdest times to get aroused.”

  “You’ve picked some pretty weird times yourself.”

  “I’ve always been absolutely correct in my behavior toward you, madam,” he said in an English accent.

  “Really? What about the time in Jim and Karen’s bathroom?”

  “I was drunk.”

  “Well? I’m nervous now. You know how that affects me.”

  “A common glandular condition, Fräulein.” German accent this time. “Correctable by simple surgery.” He laughed and dropped the accent. “I wonder what Karen and Jim would be doing in our shoes.”

  For a while they told stories about what their various friends might do, and afterward they lay quietly, arms around each other. Richard’s heart jolted against Lisa’s breast, and she thought back to the first time they had been together this way. How protected she had felt, yet how fragile the strength of his heartbeat had made him seem. She’d had the idea that she could reach into his chest and touch his heart. And she could have. You had that much power over your lover; his heart was in your care, and at moments like this it was easy to believe that you would always be caring. But the moments failed you. They were peaks, and from them you slid into a mire where caring dissolved into mistrust and selfishness, where you saw that your feeling of being protected was illusory, and the moments were few and far between. Marriage sought to institutionalize those moments, by law, to butter them over a ridiculous number of years; but all it did was lessen their intensity and open you up to a new potential for failure. Everyone talked about “good marriages,” ones that evolved into hallowed friendships, an emeritus passion of the spirit. Maybe they did exist. Maybe there were—as Murciélago had implied—true companions. But most of the old marrieds Lisa had known were simply exhausted, weary of struggling, and had reached an accommodation with their mates based upon mutual despair. If Murciélago was right, if the world was changing, possibly the condition of marriage would change. Lisa doubted it, though. Hearts would have to be changed as well, and not even magic could affect their basic nature. Like with seashells, you could put your ear to one and hear the sad truth of an ocean breaking on a deserted shore. They were always empty, always unfulfilled. Deeds fill them, said an almost-voice inside her head, and she almost knew whose voice it had been; she pushed the knowledge aside, wanting to hold on to the moment.

  Somebody shrieked in the courtyard. Not unusual. Groups of people frequently hung around the courtyard at night, smoking dope and exchanging bits of travel lore; the previous night two French girls and an American boy had been fighting with water pistols, and the girls had shrieked whenever they were hit. But this time the shriek was followed by shouts in Spanish and, in broken English, a scream of pure terror, then silence. Richard sprang to his feet and cracked the door. Lisa moved up behind him. Another shout in Spanish—she recognized the word doctor. Richard put a finger to his lips and slipped out into the hall. Together they edged along the wall and peeked down into the courtyard. About a dozen guests were standing against the rear wall, some with their hands in the air; facing them, carrying automatic rifles, were three young men and a girl. Teenagers. Wearing jeans and polo shirts. A fourth man lay on the ground, his hands and head swathed in bandages. The guests were very pale—at this distance their eyes looked like raisins in uncooked dough—and a couple of the women were sobbing. One of the gunmen was wounded, a patch of blood staining his side; he was having to lean on the girl’s shoulder, and his rifle barrel was wavering back and forth. With all the ferns sprouting around them, the pots of flowers hanging from the green stucco wall, the scene had an air of mythic significance—a chance meeting between good and evil in the Garden of Eden.

  “Sssst!” A hiss behind Lisa’s shoulder. It was the Guatemalan man who had watched her during dinner the night before; he had a machine pistol in one hand, and in the other he was flapping a leather card case. ID. He beckoned, and they moved after him down the hall. “Policía!” he whispered, displaying the ID; in the photograph he was younger, his mustache so black it appeared to have been painted on for a joke. His nervous eyes and baggy suit and five o’clock shadow reminded Lisa of 1940s movie heavies, the evil flunky out to kill George Sanders or Humphrey Bogart; but the way his breath whined through his nostrils, the oily smell of the gun, his radiation of callous stupidity, all that reduced her romantic impression. “Malos!” he said, pointing to the courtyard. “Comunistas! Guerrillas!” He patted the gun barrel.

  “Okay,” said Richard, holding up both hands to show his neutrality, his noninvolvement. But as the man crept toward the courtyard, toward the balcony railing, Richard locked his hands together and brought them down on the back of the man’s neck, then fell atop him, kneeing and pummeling him. Lisa was frozen by the attack, half-disbelieving that Richard was capable of such decisive action. He scrambled to his feet, breathing hard, and tossed the machine pistol down into the courtyard. “Amigos!” he shouted, and turned to Lisa, his mouth still open from the shout.

  Their eyes met, and that stare was a divorce, an acknowledgment that something was happening to separate them, happening right now, and though they weren’t exactly sure what, they were willing to accept the fact and allow it to happen. “I couldn’t let him shoot,” said Richard. “I didn’t have a choice.” He sounded amazed, as if he hadn’t known until this moment why he had acted.

  Lisa wanted to console him, to tell him he’d done the right thing, but her emotions were locked away, under restraint, and she sensed a gulf between them that nothing could bridge—all their intimate conne
ctions were withdrawing, receding. Hooks, Murciélago had called them.

  One of the guerrillas, the girl, was sneaking up the stairs, gun at the ready. She was pretty but on the chubby side, with shiny wings of black hair falling over her shoulders. She motioned for them to move back and nudged the unconscious man with her toe. He moaned, his hand twitched. “You?” she said, pointing at Richard and then to the man.

  “He was going to shoot,” said Richard hollowly.

  From the girl’s blank expression Lisa could tell that she hadn’t understood. She rummaged in the man’s jacket, pulled out the ID case, and shouted in rapid-fire Spanish. “Vámonos!” she said to them, indicating that they should precede her down the stairs. As Lisa started down, there was a short burst of automatic fire from the hall; startled, she turned to see the girl lifting the barrel of her rifle from the man’s head, a stippling of red droplets on the green stucco. The girl frowned and trained the rifle on her, and Lisa hurried after Richard, horrified. But before her emotional reaction could mature into fear, her vision began to erode.

  Glowing white flickers were edging every figure in the room, with the exception of the bandaged man, and as they grew clearer, she realized that they were phantom human shapes; they were like the afterimages of movement you see on Benzedrine, yet sharper and slower to fade, and the movements were different from those of their originals—an arm flailing, a half-formed figure falling or running off. Each time one vanished another would take its place. She tried to banish them, to will them away, but was unsuccessful, and she found that watching them distracted her from thinking about the body upstairs.

  The tallest of the guerrillas—a gangly kid with a skull face and huge dark eyes and a skimpy mustache—entered into conversation with the girl, and Richard dropped to his knees beside the bandaged man. Blood had seeped through the layers of wrapping, producing a grotesque striping around the man’s head. The gangly kid scowled and prodded Richard with his rifle.

  “I’m a medic,” Richard told him. “Como un doctor.” Gingerly he peeled back some layers of bandage and looked away, his face twisted in disgust. “Jesus Christ!”

  “The soldiers torture him.” The kid spat into the ferns. “They think he is guerrillero because he’s my cousin.”

  “And is he?” Richard was probing for a pulse under the bandaged man’s jaw.

  “No.” The kid leaned over Richard’s shoulder. “He studies at San Carlos University. But because we have killed the soldiers, now he will have to fight.” Richard sighed, and the kid faltered. “It is good you are here. We think a friend is here, a doctor. But he’s gone.” He made a gesture toward the street. “Pasado.”

  Richard stood and cleaned his fingers on his jeans. “He’s dead.”

  One of the women who had been sobbing let out a wail, and the kid snapped his rifle into firing position and shouted, “Cáyete, gringa!” His face was stony, the vein in his temple throbbed. A balding, bearded man wearing an embroidered native shirt embraced the woman, muting her sobs, and glared fiercely at the kid; one of his afterimages raised a fist. The rest of the imprisoned guests were terrified, their Adam’s apples working, eyes darting about; and the girl was arguing with the kid, pushing his rifle down. He kept shaking her off. Lisa felt detached from the tension, out of phase with existence, as if she were gazing down from a higher plane.

  With what seemed foolhardy bravado, the bearded guy called out to Richard. “Hey, you! The American! You with these people or somethin’?”

  Richard had squatted beside the wounded guerrilla—a boy barely old enough to shave—and was probing his side. “Or something,” he said without glancing up. The boy winced and gritted his teeth and leaned on his friend, a boy not much older.

  “You gonna let ’em kill us?” said the bearded guy. “That’s what’s happenin’, y’know. The girl’s sayin’ to let us go, but the dude’s tellin’ her he wants to make a statement.” Panic seeped into his voice. “Y’understand that, man? The dude’s lookin’ to waste us so he can make a statement.”

  “Take it easy,” Richard got to his feet. “The bullet needs to come out,” he said to the gangly kid. “I…”

  The kid swiped at Richard’s head with the rifle barrel, and Richard staggered back, clutching his brow; when he straightened up, Lisa saw blood welling from his hairline. “Your friend’s going to die,” he said stubbornly. “The bullet needs to come out.” The kid jammed the muzzle of the rifle into Richard’s throat, forcing him to tip back his head.

  With a tremendous effort of will Lisa shook off the fog that had enveloped her. The afterimages vanished. “He’s trying to help you,” she said, going toward the kid. “Don’t you understand?” The girl pushed her back and aimed her rifle at Lisa’s stomach. Looking into her eyes, Lisa had an intimation of the depth of her seriousness, the ferocity of her commitment. “He’s trying to help,” Lisa repeated. The girl studied her, and after a moment she called over her shoulder to the kid. Some of the hostility drained from the kid’s face and was replaced by suspicion.

  “Why?” the kid asked Richard. “Why you help us?”

  Richard seemed confused, and then he started to laugh; he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, smearing the blood and sweat, and laughed some more. The kid was puzzled at first, but a few seconds later he smiled and nodded as if he and Richard were sharing a secret male joke. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. You help him. But here is danger. We go now.”

  “Yeah,” said Richard, absorbing this. “Yeah, okay.” He stepped over to Lisa and drew her into a smothering hug. She gripped his shoulders hard, and she thought her emotions were going to break free; but when he stepped back, appearing stunned, she sensed again that distance between them…He put his arm around the wounded boy and helped him through the entrance; the others were already peering out the door. Lisa followed. The rows of tourist shops and restaurants looked unreal—a deserted stage set—and the colors seemed streaky and too bright. Parked under a streetlight near the entrance, gleaming toylike in the yellow glare, was a Suzuki minitruck, the kind with a canvas-draped frame over the rear. Beyond it the road wound away into darkened hills. The girl vaulted the tailgate and hauled the wounded boy after her; the other two climbed into the cab and fired the engine. Only Richard was left standing on the cobblestones.

  “Dése prisa!” The girl banged on the tailgate.

  As Richard hesitated, there was a volley of shots. The noise sent Lisa scuttling away from the entrance toward the lake. Three policemen were behind a parked car on the opposite side of the street. More shots. The girl returned the fire, blowing out the windshield of the car, and they ducked out of sight. Another shot. Sparks and stone chips were kicked up near Richard’s feet. Still he hesitated.

  “Richard!” Lisa had intended the shout as a caution, but the name floated out of her, not desperate-sounding at all—it had the ring of an assurance. He dove for the tailgate. The girl helped him scramble inside, and the truck sped off over the first rise. The policemen ran after it, firing; then, like Keystone Cops, they put on the brakes and ran in the opposite direction.

  Lisa had a flash feeling of anguish that almost instantly began to subside, as if it had been the freakish firing of a nerve. Dazedly, she moved farther away from the hotel entrance. A jeep stuffed with policemen came swerving past, but she hardly noticed. The world was dissolving in golden light, every source of light intensifying and crumbling the outlines of things. Streetlights burned like novas, sunbursts shone from windows, and even the cracks in the sidewalk glowed; misty shapes were fading into view, overlaying the familiar with tall peak-roofed houses and carved wagons and people dressed in robes. All rippling, illusory. It was as if a fantastic illustration were coming to life, and she was the only real-life character left in the story, a contemporary Alice with designer jeans and turquoise earrings, who had been set to wander through a golden fairy tale. She was entranced, and yet at the same time she resented the fact that the display was cheating her of the right to s
adness. She needed to sort herself out, and she continued toward the lake, toward the pier where she and Richard had kissed. By the time she reached it, the lake itself had been transformed into a scintillating body of light, and out on the water the ghost of a sleek sailboat, its canvas belling, glided past for an instant and was gone.

  She sat at the end of the pier, dangling her feet over the edge. The cool roughness of the planks was a comfort, a proof against the strangeness of the world…or was it worlds? The forms of the new age. Was that what she saw? Weary of seeing it, she willed the light away and before she could register whether or not she had been successful, she shut her eyes and tried to think about Richard. And, as if thought were a vehicle for sight, she saw him. A ragged-edged patch of vision appeared against the darkness of her closed eyes, like a hole punched through black boards. He was sitting on the oil-smeared floor of the truck, cradling the wounded boy’s head in his lap; the girl was bending over the boy, mopping his forehead, holding on to Richard’s shoulder so the bouncing of the truck wouldn’t throw her off-balance. Lisa felt a pang of jealousy, but she kept watching for a very long time. She didn’t wonder how she saw them. It all meant something, and she knew that meaning would come clear.