Undergrowth

by Nancy Burke

  XL

  IT WASN’T UNTIL she began to sweep the floor that the old woman found the blue canvas bag wedged behind a column on the verandah. She called out to Sr. Catalpa who was just appearing at the head of the path from the river, back from seeing them off. He took the bag and ran with it under his arm, pushing aside his temptation to stop and look inside. When he reached the dock, he held it above his head, dangling it with both hands together by the handles, calling out to their retreating boat against the grind of the motor that fanned out behind them like a wake in the thick, moist air. “Joaquim! Jorge!” he cried, waving the bag above his head, barely able to make out Jorge’s reluctant wave as their boat disappeared behind the thick stand of walnut that marked the first riverbend.

  XLI

  THERE WAS A stirring in the scrub as a dozen people, mostly women, appeared at the edge of the forest, carrying babies, talking among themselves, and paying their visitors no attention whatsoever. When Martina emerged from the plane and tested the ground after their rough landing in Lamurii, she felt reassured by the odd juxtaposition the group presented of the foreign and the familiar, the mingling of clothed and naked bodies: An old man stood on one leg among a circle of women, wearing only a loincloth and a black, silver-studded belt. A young girl wearing only a T-shirt cradled a monkey in her arms. There was the flash of a watch on a dark, bare wrist, the snap of plastic rifles in the hands of naked children. This was still the world Martina knew, in which at least some of the pieces were familiar, but the questionable thing was their capacity to fit together.

  Jorge seemed oblivious to all of them; he went about his business, emotionlessly checking the tires and the wings, walking around, absurdly, as though to make sure his craft was solid, placing his hand here and there against its side. He opened the hold and began to unload the boxes, laying them at his feet and then stumbling on them as he pulled the next ones out. He caught his finger on the edge of one and swore quietly.

  Joaquim stepped out slowly, stretched and walked forward, leaving them behind, until he had joined one of the circles under the trees, seamlessly, without any sign of a greeting.

  “Should you go with him?” Martina asked Jorge, who squinted at her fiercely through his glasses as though he were having trouble remembering who she was.

  “Not yet,” he said, sounding not so much harsh, as she had expected, as weak, or confused. “We still don’t know if they’ll talk to me.” He looked at the ground and turned his back to her as though to walk away, but stayed. At last, she took a few steps forward and stood beside him.

  “You’ve never been here?” she asked.

  “No.” He pushed at the stubble of grass with his foot, sounding ashamed of the answer. “Joaquim has, of course.”

  Martina stood beside him silently for a while and then turned to look out from behind the plane’s wing. There were perhaps thirty people now, standing in closed circles. Clearly, the principals were going to take a while to get into position. This was a state that she knew well, in which time stopped just short of a precipice.

  A white man dressed in field pants and a blue shirt appeared and took his place among the others, like an actor who had not yet noticed that he had wandered onto the wrong set. Even from across the field, she could make out the flash of his eyes, which had more in common with the sky than with the slowly congealing human scene before them. At last, a man who was clearly the chief appeared at the opening, distinguished not by his stature or the nature of his adornment—he was wearing only a pair of faded navy swimming trunks—but by his capacity to perforate the invisible membrane that had confined his people to the far end of the clearing, allowing them to stream in after him as he walked with Joaquim towards the plane. As the chief approached, a silent ring formed around them; even the dogs seemed to sense the sudden solemnity of the gathering and took their places around the circle, looking out at nothing in particular as though they too, were using most of their energy to listen. The chief took Jorge by the elbow and started to pull him along. Then the whole group turned and began to flow behind them toward the gap in the trees. Joaquim hung back to walk beside Martina, speaking in a low voice.

  “So Jorge told you why we’re here?”

  “Who’s that guy?” said Martina, lowering her voice, gesturing behind them toward the blue-eyed figure at the end of the line.

  Joaquim turned back just enough to survey the heads behind him before he began, in English. That’s Kamar Sodeis. You might open a mental file on him.”

  “What should I put in it?”

  “You know the context?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “When Marietto brokered the deal between the Lamurii and the Clarante Mining Company, it included a commitment to allow the CMC limited mining rights in the area, in exchange for a school and a clinic and a number of other things, including a share in the profits and the right to demarcate their land.”

  “So who’s that guy?”

  “The school was never built, and the stream was poisoned with mercury. There were six stillbirths in the village in the first two years alone. Marietto didn’t know any of that when he came down. He never bothered to follow up; he’d just relied on the CMC’s own internal reports. He never talked to us about coming here. I imagine he expected a hero’s welcome. I didn’t find out until two days after he left, and by then, it was too late.”

  “But what do I put in the file?” she said.

  “So old blue-eyes was the field administrator for the CMC,” he said, gesturing back over his shoulder. “I’ll be interested to know who he’s working for now.”

  “I hope Jorge resolves what he needs to resolve,” Martina said loudly in Portuguese, catching a patch of blue moving toward her out of the corner of her eye when she turned to look behind her. She focused her eyes straight ahead, straining to make out the outline of Jorge’s head among the dark heads that bobbed like floats on a rope in the water.

  “To make his peace with it all would be good for him,” said Joaquim, also loudly, in Portuguese. “He’s been stuck for years now.” They walked on in silence with Joaquim in front now that the path had narrowed, and, Martina assumed, Sodeis behind her. She looked at the folds of skin layering like poured batter on Joaquim’s neck and tried to push aside the sensation of eyes teasing the place on the back of her own neck where her hair met her collar.

  Within five minutes, the path broadened again. The sun streamed in towards them as though the clearing in front of them were a reservoir of light already swollen by the summer. Their chain wound around between two huts made of palm fronds and branches and out into the midst of the circular courtyard they had seen from the plane. The air was heavy with human smells—of skin, of tension, of manioc boiling in clay pots. What she hadn’t noticed looking down on Lamurii was that most of the houses were open to the courtyard, lacking a fourth wall in whole or in part. Only one small hut stood outside the circle, its formal doorway fitted with a door, which was padlocked. The group shifted toward a small oasis of trees on the other side of the men’s house, under which logs had been arranged like benches to take advantage of the shade.

  “How about if you stand over there?” Joaquim whispered to Martina, gesturing toward the space between the open huts and the shack. “This is the men’s area.” He left her before she could reply and walked toward the circle, motioning for Jorge to sit beside him.

  Both sides started speaking at once, in pointed, clipped bursts. She heard Jorge’s voice rise and crack and stop. His hands were shaking, and a red glow gathered at the tips of his ears. He stood and the chief stood, and for a minute she thought they were going to fight. They walked off together, leaving the others in the dense pool of tension they left behind.

  Joaquim stood up and came over to her.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Do you want to hear about it?” Joaquim said, looking away for a minute and nodding as some of the others who had been
milling around the logs came over in the chief’s absence and sat down.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s suffering,” said Joaquim, “as only Jorge can suffer. They’ve gone to find the man who killed Marietto, so that Jorge can lift the curse from him, and absolve him like the Pope.” He made a cross in the air and grimaced.

  As her eyes followed his hand, they caught the eye of the blue-eyed man, who had been standing at a distance from their circle. She took a few steps back, putting the shack between them. While the others milled around, whispering and spitting into the dirt, she stood on tiptoe to peer into the space between two haphazardly placed boards that were hammered on to form one of the shack’s walls. Inside, she could make out plank shelves in the hazy darkness, and a desk on which papers and books were strewn. She leaned in, pushing her forehead against the boards, straining to look at one shelf in particular, which was piled with clay pots of various sizes.

  “They’re back,” said Joaquim loudly. First Jorge’s head and then the chief’s, moved past the sun as the two men stepped into the tent of shadows underneath the tree. No sooner had Jorge settled himself on the bench than he got up again and walked out in the opposite direction, off into the trees behind the padlocked house. Instinctively, Martina followed, stopping when he stopped. The air was thick and still, muddying the birds’ cries. As she turned to look back, the colors of the trees and the sky and the clay deepened, taking on the garish intensity of velvet. The man’s blue eyes were shards of sky, and his blue shirt, as he stooped down next to the chief, was as penetrating as the blue at the center of a flame. On a perch in front of a house across the clearing, a parrot, preening under its wing, saturated the air with more varied color. From behind her, she heard the sound of retching. When Jorge came up, she reached for his arm and they turned back together toward the tent of trees, while the sky’s blue eyes watched them go.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Careful what you wish for,” said Jorge.

  The debate had grown louder while they were gone, and no one looked up as they approached.

  “Go and sit with them, and I’ll go back with the dogs,” Martina said.

  “The discussion is over,” said a voice in harsh, over-articulated Portuguese. Martina turned to face Sodeis, who was standing directly behind her.

  “Is that for you to decide?” she said.

  “Next time, find a better pretense,” he said to Jorge.

  “Sit down,” Jorge hissed to Martina.

  When the others registered that Martina was sitting in the men’s circle, a roar of squawking and clucking and pointing suddenly erupted, a wave of attention formidable enough to push Sodeis to the background. Jorge pretended to shoo Martina away. She got up and went back to her place.

  Joaquim stood up with his hand raised, and a silence fell.

  “Why are you here?” said Sodeis coldly to Joaquim. “You know that everything was settled. You’re ruining your own handiwork, is all.”

  “You haven’t met Jorge Moretti, have you?” said Joaquim.

  Jorge stood and extended his hand. “Moretti,” he said.

  “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Jorge, this is Kamar Sodeis. I didn’t realize that you hadn’t yet crossed paths.”

  “A pleasure,” said Jorge.

  “I wasn’t informed of your plan to visit,” said Sodeis.

  “I wasn’t informed that you were here to inform,” said Joaquim, repeating his statement in Tupi. Laughter broke out.

  “Why are you here?” Sodeis said again in Portuguese.

  Joaquim replied in Tupi, gesturing towards Jorge.

  “Should I repeat the question?”

  “There’s no need. We’ll be on our way in another half an hour,” said Joaquim, turning back to the chief. As an afterthought, he looked up and added, “This is a purely personal visit.”

  “To a restricted area in an agency plane, I assume without authorization?” said Sodeis. “In this place and at this time, there’s no such thing as a personal visit.”

  “He’s right,” said Jorge under his breath.

  “He’s not always as right as he thinks he is,” said the chief. Martina jerked forward at the sound of Portuguese coming from an Indian. The chief returned to his conversation with Joaquim in Tupi, and the others returned to shouting out their asides, and the blue shirt became smaller and smaller, but lost none of its intensity of color, as it moved off toward the padlocked hut and disappeared behind the door.

  All at once, the group stood as a single body. The parts dispersed, patting each other and talking as they went. Almost everyone seemed to share in a sense of relief, to move less stiffly, and to interact even with affection, as though a layer of denser air had been pushed aside, making it easier to move and breathe.

  “Let’s unload,” said Jorge, pulling Martina in after Joaquim, who had already started on up the path.

  It took eight men to carry in the boxes. This time, Joaquim walked next to Jorge, with Martina behind them.

  “Are you satisfied?” Joaquim asked Jorge.

  A bird was going “chit chit” in a tree.

  Jorge’s voice sounded oddly high-pitched and birdlike as he answered. “I’m not the sort, am I? But thanks.” As though to punctuate his statement, the bird gave one last, loud “chit” and was gone. “So is he going to report me?”

  “No chance,” said Joaquim over his shoulder now, as they fell into single file. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him, which, as you notice, he suspects.” As the path widened, the two walked side-by-side again, with Martina behind them. “I wasn’t expecting him and he wasn’t expecting me, so we surprised each other. If you don’t mind waiting for another quarter of an hour, I think I’ll make the most of it.”

  The chief’s house looked like all the others, but was cluttered with pots and children and toys and a few faded three-ring binders lined up on a makeshift table. In the corner, a pile of boxes bore the Coca Cola label, and turned out actually to contain bottles of Coke, one of which their host offered to his guests, presumably to share. He seemed relieved when they turned him down, and put the bottle back in the box, closing the lid emphatically. As they began to unpack, Joaquim excused himself and disappeared into the courtyard. Martina and Jorge pulled items from the boxes while the chief looked on, holding them up for his consideration. Each was carefully examined and evaluated, not only by the chief himself and by the surrounding chorus, but by a few of the women, two of whom the chief introduced as wives, who wandered in and out carrying children and baskets and rough wooden bowls. When they had finished, while they were repacking the boxes, the chief sat down and studied them.

  “So, this is your wife?” he asked Jorge in Portuguese, nodding his head toward Martina.

  “Nao!” she said quickly.

  “So what’s she doing here?” the chief turned to Jorge.

  “I’m a potter,” said Martina. “Can I look at those bowls over there?” she said, gesturing toward a jute bag hanging from a hook over the desk. She got up without waiting for an answer.

  “Joaquim said he would speak to Barbosa in Brasilia for me,” the chief continued. “Do you believe he will?”

  “If he said so, he will.”

  “I think so too,” said the chief. “He’s a good man.”

  He got up and started to walk out. Then he turned around and addressed Jorge again.

  “Are you in business? Who do you work for?”

  “I’m SPI. I want you to give us another chance.”

  The chief turned and walked out, and Jorge followed. As they stepped out into the sun, Joaquim came up from around the other side of the men’s house. The chief walked around to Joaquim’s other side. He pulled him down by the shoulder for a minute and whispered. Then Joaquim straightened again.

  “All set!” he said, clapping the chief on the back. “Off we go!”

  At the mouth of the forest, the chief left them, clasping Joaquim and then standing b
ack to survey Martina and Jorge.

  “You should get married,” he said. He laughed a loud belly-laugh. “I’ve done it plenty of times. It’s not so bad.” He reached for Jorge’s hand as though to shake it, but instead put something into it, and then turned and disappeared into the midst of a small group of men who were milling around watching them. As they walked toward the plane, Martina saw Jorge wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. Jorge saw that she saw, and a steel door slammed shut inside of him. A feeling far deeper than sadness washed over him: humiliation. He saw in an instant that all his talk of closure had been just that—a fantasy, an illusion that made it possible to feel that he was something other than a child. He waited until she had walked on to take off his watch, put it in his pocket, and replace it with the one in his hand.

  At the plane, Jorge tried to lead Joaquim into the seat beside him, but Joaquim pulled Martina in front of him and pushed her in instead. While they were belting themselves into place, Jorge sat frozen with his hand on the throttle as though he had forgotten what to do next. Martina reached for his arm, but he pulled sharply away, snapping his head to the side. They sat in silence, each looking straight ahead into their private visions of the future. The vibrations of the plane rendered the tremor of Jorge’s hands invisible, but the tears that streamed down his cheeks made strangely loud spattering sounds as they fell onto the clipboard on his lap. He moved the clipboard away, but it slipped from his grasp, and clattered as it fell onto the floor under his feet.

  “What?” Martina said quietly, turning to face his nearly eclipsed profile.

  He averted his eyes as he turned slowly and choked out the words. “In this time and place, there’s no room for anything personal.”

  XLII

  BETWEEN FOREST AND forest lay a wide expanse of grass and scrub, like prairie, but rockier; an old lake bed, filled up with granite and sand. It was tempting for Larry to read his journey so far as a succession of chapters in a book: The first set the stage along a well-worn path peopled by nut-trappers calling to each other, heading home to the village with their overflowing bags on their backs. There was a chapter in which his route diverged from the established paths and he followed the needle of his compass as though he were a dog following its twitching nose; another that unfolded against a backdrop of fallen tree limbs thick with vines; and then, at last, the one that contained this denouement, in which the sun streamed in through the thick cover of leaves to announce his arrival in a dazzling, gleaming city of wind and empty space. Larry stood at the gate of this Oz, blinking in the sunlight, filled with a sense of dread at its vastness and limitless height. He knew in his head that this expanse, no matter how great it seemed, was merely an island in an endless sea of forest; as he remembered it, they had traversed its width the last time in less than a day, or at least he had no recollection of sleeping on the open ground, or under one of the solitary stunted trees no taller than himself. He knew the goal: to get across it before the water ran out. He pulled up his hat by its string, retrieved his sunglasses from his pocket, and launched himself with a determined push, vowing to reach shore again by sundown.