Undergrowth

by Nancy Burke

  “How many children do you think a woman can have?”

  “That’s not good to ask,” said Kakap, pushing at the leaves.

  “Um,” he said, peeling a few from his leg.

  There were more berries at the mogno logs, as Kakap had said, and the basket was mended later that afternoon by Tikuna, and by the time he reached his own kaawa, he had made the prospect of too many children to support on his ration into his only fear, and then into a distant unlikelihood, since Kakap had been provided with plenty for five. When he stood for a while outside his door and listened to Aran call Iri, he imagined the hut crowded with children, each of whom he barely knew. He could hear Aran move from one corner to another, coaxing Iri to follow, and her image seemed to thin and fade as though the layers of his sense of her, of the way she threw her hair back, of her defiance and her loyalty, of her elusiveness itself, were being worn away by the friction of so many small bodies against her skin. He moved into the doorway and mother and child came forward from opposite sides of the hut to embrace him, in gestures that seemed oddly incongruous with his sense of his imminent loss of them.

  “Iri’s walking,” Aran said, with excitement in her voice. The child had been so slow that she had come to doubt he’d ever start.

  “Let’s see that walk!” Larry said, forcing gaiety, lowering himself to the edge of the sleeping ledge. “Have you felt the baby much?” he said, reaching his hand to her stomach. She squatted beside him, and her belly forced her knees to the ground. He took Iri on his lap with one hand and moved his other to her arm. She caught his hand in mid-air and pressed it to his face, her sign for him to shave, which he did as best he could with his hand so unsteady, using boar fat and a blade he had tried, unsuccessfully, to sharpen on a rock. He was used to drawing blood. This time, he stanched it with one of Kakap’s leaves, which he peeled from his leg. Then they sat together on the kaawa and let Iri stumble back and forth between them. Larry knew Aran wanted those who passed by to see him walking. He tried, but couldn’t manage, to muster Iri’s triumph as a reassurance against his own fears.

  When Piri came to say that he had made a vat of nir, sweet peccary stew, his uneasiness intensified at Aran’s eagerness to go with him.

  “You go,” he said, waving Piri on. “We’ll be there soon, after Iri goes to sleep.”

  “I’m hungry now,” said Aran when Piri left. “And Iri’s hungry too. We were waiting for you.”

  “There’s something I need to ask you first,” said Larry, his voice wavering.

  “What is it?” she said, as Iri fussed in her arms.

  “How old are you?” he said. “How many rains?”

  “Why are you asking?” she said, laughing, nervous at his intensity.

  “Do you know?” he said. “How many were you when you found me?”

  “Hand-and-three? No. Hand-and-four,” she said, and let go of Iri. He ran into the house and she followed him, with Larry behind her.

  “So now you’re two-hands, or two-hands-one?” asked Larry, sounding dazed. It was starting to get dark, and the room was full of shadows that brushed across them as they moved. Iri let out little yelps of excitement as he ran, so that it was hard for Larry to think of what he wanted to say, or to remember that he had her attention. Finally, he grabbed Iri and carried him under his arm back out to the kaawa, calling for Aran to follow.

  “We could have many more children at this rate, eh?” he said, trying to sound disinterested.

  “Not so many,” she said, suddenly concerned. “Why all the questions?” She came up in front of him and looked into his face.

  “How do you know it won’t be many?”

  “I mean, because I’m so old.” She searched his face in fear. He wasn’t used to seeing her afraid. For a minute, her expression matched his, and then turned to something more like shame. “You’re disappointed,” she said, looking away.

  Despite, or because of, the hard fist in his own stomach, Larry spat a gasping laugh onto the ground. He held her to him with his free hand and gripped Iri more tightly with his other arm, shaking, his eyes brimming with tears.

  “No jibimi?” she asked him, still unsure. No second wife?

  He couldn’t answer, but just shook his head, pressing his forehead into her shoulder.

  “It’s not making sense,” he said at last in English, pushing his mind against it. He put Iri down and took him by the hand. Then, he wrapped his other arm around her back and allowed himself to feel the soothing sense that had always come to him when he had held her as a baby. “No jibimi,” he said, allowing the feeling to seep through his arm and his chest into his stomach, and to pool there.

  “We’re hungry,” she said, laughing with relief.

  “Ready,” he said.

  The smell of the nir poured down the path towards them, ahead of the sound of voices.

  “I know—you brought Iri with you,” said Piri, coming towards them, “so we can see how strong his step is.”

  Aran didn’t seem embarrassed by the comment, even though it was true. She ate two gourds of nir in the time it took Larry to share one with Iri, and laughed while everyone watched Iri waddle to her across Piri’s kaawa. To Larry, the vision of her bending down over her belly, extending her hands to Iri, was an image from a movie, or a dream. It played in slow motion, upon a rippling, diaphanous screen. When it was time to leave, he walked beside her with an unsteady gait, the three of them sharing, comically, the same uncertain waddle. He watched Aran tuck Iri into his basket, which she did with special tenderness, and then sat beside her, rubbing Iri’s arm in the dark while he slept.

  “He’s snoring,” he said, trying to distract himself from his reeling thoughts.

  But the sound was Aran clutching her stomach, gasping as she rolled on her side with her back towards him.

  LXXXIX

  KAMAR SODEIS SLIT the top fold of the elegantly embossed envelop (the soft onion skin of which bore the letters Q. P. C. L., for Q. P. Comercio Ltda., in a rich burnt-ochre) with a snap, as though it were a man’s throat. He was the sort who shouldn’t have had to contract himself to any outside entity, individual, or creed, and yet the missives that arrived monthly, each of which contained the instructions for some additional project, some set of directives, some demand for submission on his part, only served to intensify his rage at the realization that he had not become what he had wished to be. Specifically, he had not turned out after all to be the infamous bandit, the lone prospector, the sort of Robin Hood who achieved such a profound justice by robbing the undeserving world of its riches that he need not even take the final step of sharing his fortune with the poor to be a hero. He shook out the letter, contemplating all the while the enticing thought of ripping it to shreds. He read:

  Dear Mr. Sodeis: This letter is to inform you that your tenure as a contract employee of Q. P. Comercio Ltda. has hereby been terminated. The enclosed Incident Reports are included to substantiate our claim that your unprofessional conduct stands against the policies and interests of a 73-R Corporation such as ours. We will pursue no further charges against you, and all claims of misconduct have instead, (here Sodeis let out a soft, snort-like laugh), been turned over to the proper authorities for prosecution. Please note that the final installment of your contracted remuneration was deposited into Intercontinental Bank account #23814 on 17 July, and no further monies are due you at this time. Your replacement, Mr. Joao Menenda, will arrive in Lamurii on 25 August. You are expected to familiarize him with all relevant protocols and to act as liaison until he gives you leave to depart, upon which you will vacate Lamurii province for a period of no less than five years from the date of this letter. Sincerely yours, Alejandro S. Jiminez, Corporation Council, Q. P. Comercio Ltda.

  Sodeis leafed through the half-sheets on which the supposed incidents of his misconduct were detailed, curious suddenly to see which of the highlights of his career had come to his employer’s notice. But he found only a description of a barroom brawl involving himsel
f and the Mayor of Karoyo, a dusty village of no account an hour upriver from Lamurii, in the course of which injuries were sustained; a report on an unfortunate fatal encounter with a lone Mururi Indian over a small patch of land on which he and a crew of a dozen men were prospecting (this was proof that someone had it out for him, as crimes against Indians never merited censure otherwise); and an observation report filed by one of the sniveling, rodent-like clerks in the Q. P. C. L. office in Rio that addressed his pilfering of six boxes of office supplies. No doubt the chief had received the same letter, but Sodeis knew that didn’t matter; without his help, he couldn’t read it. He folded and pocketed the letter, rubbed his face vigorously a few times, as though to shake himself awake, and made a beeline for the chief’s hut, hurling himself with a vengeance toward the clearing, into the clutches of the mid-afternoon sun.

  XC

  THE SECOND BIRTH was nothing like the first. Between Aran’s contractions, Larry ran to find Anok, who brought in Panar and Amara and two small girls from Panar’s village whom he had never met, different than the ones who had cared for him. Iri was fretful and kicked at him when he tried to stop him from running off, and the girls, when they weren’t needed by Panar, made the child harder to quiet by teasing him. He sat in the far corner of the hut as people came and went, feeling desolate and useless, while the distance grew between him and Aran. He imagined leaving, taking Iri under his arm and walking off into the trees, but Anok came and carried Iri away to sleep with her in her hut. Panar lit the fire on the kaawa and then unrolled a sleeping mat beside it for each of the girls, and they finally settled, tentative as flecks of dust, while their uncle crouched beside them, grating keli nuts into powder against a stone. Amara went home, and Piri placed a gourd of nir inside the door of the hut and left, and at last the hut grew quiet, and the chasm between Larry and Aran began to fill up with the forest’s noisy silence. He moved his mat over to the ledge and slept without intending to, with one hand wedged beneath her thigh. He awoke once and found his arm tingling and his fingers stiff. Aran was gasping on the ledge, and he sat up with her and brushed the hair from her forehead until she stopped. Then he fell asleep again despite himself. The next time he awoke, the hut was streaked with daylight and Panar and the two girls were hovering above him, holding Aran as she pushed.

  “You almost missed it,” said Panar, laughing in a way that Larry resented. He could hear Anok pacing back and forth with Iri on the kaawa. Aran was sitting on the edge of the sleeping ledge doubled over, dripping sweat into the dirt. Larry jumped up and sat beside her, holding his arm around her shoulders. A bloody fluid was dripping out from between her legs into a wooden bowl. Suddenly, the voices around him rang tinny, and the bodies blurred together, shadowy and tilting, and he vomited into the bowl that held the blood. The baby came out at that moment in a rush, and one thin strand of the vomit wrapped around its arm. Panar brushed it into the bowl and held up the cord for him to bite. Larry started to get up to get the knife from his pack, but found he was too dizzy to stand, and bit down through another wave of vomit as he fell back onto the platform, and felt the gristle lodge between his teeth.

  “I see you don’t crave the taste like some men,” said a familiar voice, laughing. Larry opened his eyes to see Anok leaning over him, wiping his face with her hand. One of the girls was rolling up his sleeping mat, which had red blotches on it from the blood, and carrying it out. His head was pounding, and the light hurt his eyes. He squinted and tried to look around for Aran, but a pain gripped his skull and immobilized it. Anok brought another mat and helped him lie down. Without opening his eyes, he reached up to the ledge for Aran, but, not finding her, his hand waved wildly in the air until Anok took it and placed it on her daughter’s arm. Aran made a noise, but didn’t move. People were walking in and out around him, talking in low voices. He tried to remember whether, in the blur of sound, he had heard a baby cry, and suddenly panicked that it had been stillborn or sick, or had never existed at all. He pulled himself up and called out to Anok.

  “The child?” he said, forcing out the words.

  “It’s big,” said Anok, coming to kneel beside him, resting her hand on his forehead.

  He wondered whether she was telling him the truth. He wanted to ask whether it was a boy or a girl, but knew enough not to curse it by giving it a sex before it even had a name.

  “Can I see it?” he said.

  He heard a groan from behind him as Anok slid the basket out from under Aran’s arm. He sat up and Anok placed the basket in his lap. The child looked like Iri, but larger, its huge head covered in thick black down. It was sleeping. Its mouth was twitching, and it rested its chin on its fist. He didn’t feel an impulse to pick it up, but just sat silently, looking down at it. Somewhere in the room, the two girls whispered to each other, and Anok led them out, sending Iri off with them to play. Larry sat alone in the hut with the basket on his legs and Aran behind him on the ledge and an enormous sadness that suddenly poured out of him like a second birth, like rain over the sleeping child, like all fluids everywhere, runoff of loss.

  XCI

  SODEIS WALKED THE short path to the chief’s house deep in thought. As he arrived, the chief, in the company of assorted wives and children, had just begun to address his afternoon meal, and was clearly displeased to be interrupted.

  “I’m going away for a few days,” said Sodeis in Tupi, waving away the chief’s half-hearted gesture toward the bowl in front of him.

  “That so?” said the chief with his mouth full. “Something happen?”

  “No. I’m just going to meet a few former business partners who are staying at the mission at Xitipa. Good friends of mine. A few days and I’ll be back. I’ll talk to Roberto, give him instructions, do all the monitoring before I go. I think things should be fine for a couple of days.”

  “Your boss know you’re stepping away? You send a letter out with the mail?”

  “All taken care of.”

  “Roberto better keep a close watch on his men. That’s your job, you know. Whatever happens.”

  “I do my job, you do yours,” said Sodeis. It didn’t take a genius to conclude that since the visit of Joaquim Rocha and his group, the chief’s suspicion of him had evolved into a restrained but unmistakable hostility. “So three, four days,” said Sodeis, bowing and turning to go. As an afterthought, he turned back. “Can I bring you anything from Xitipa?” There was a flash of eagerness in the chief’s eyes, quickly extinguished. Sodeis bowed again and headed back up the path towards his shack. While he was walking, he half considered the idea of actually hiking the four miles to the mining camp to speak to Roberto, the foreman. He was supposed to have done so daily, but in truth it was rarely even once a week, a fact he considered a key element of his smooth relationship with Roberto. “I do my job, you do yours,” was a more general creed, which had proven itself many times over.

  If he did talk to the foreman, he could either smooth the way for Mr. Joao Menenda, a total stranger, which would have been a generous and honorable action that might lend him credibility in his efforts to defend himself against the charges against him. On the other hand, he could also offer guidance to Roberto on how to make life as difficult as possible for his successor, as a form of revenge. The second possibility pleased him more than the first, but he opted instead to return to his hut to pack his bags, careful to take with him anything he, or the employees of Q. P. Comercio Ltda. might find of future value.

  XCII

  AT FIRST, LARRY assumed that it was only Iri he missed, and all of his longing trained on the image of him being led away crying, looking back over his shoulder as he clung to Anok’s hand. He would take a few steps and then turn back toward Larry, eyeing him with uncertainty until Anok pulled him on again. His small form thus dissolved only very slowly into the gray-green evening light, leaving a blurred silhouette against the fading backdrop of the wall of Jikra’s hut. In Larry’s mind, he saw a hole in the wall the size of Iri’s shadow, like a cart
oon character would make. When the dark erased the image of the hole, he got up and went inside. Aran was sleeping on the ledge.

  Larry was used to the sound of her breath, used to feeling its rhythm on the back of his neck as he sat up and leaned against the ledge, and finding comfort in it. That night, he knew that there was something missing even from it, some timbre of intimacy that, in his sudden loneliness, he craved. He thought of trying to climb onto the ledge beside her as he sometimes did, but knew that the baby’s basket was resting in his place, and remembered too, his anger at having been betrayed the baby in some way, though he wasn’t sure exactly how. It might have been by Aran’s rushing the pregnancy or allowing intruders at the birth, or forgetting him among so many others. He knelt beside her and she stirred and reached out for his arm.

  “Are you happy?” he whispered after some time had passed. “Akara eta tuara?” “Is your house beautiful from the living?”

  “Beautiful,” she said, holding onto his shoulder as he lay down. Leaning back with her hand on his arm, and later, helping her out to urinate, holding her in the dark by the armpits, standing with his legs wide while she squatted down, he felt suddenly that they were as close as they had ever been, and couldn’t remember why he had convinced himself that she was lost to him. They held the basket on their laps with their legs touching, and she nuzzled his neck with her face, and teased him gently about having thrown up again into the tira. Larry forgot completely the despair that had gripped him so shortly before with its eight black tentacle-arms, and lay back on his new, strange-smelling mat beneath his jacket and skins, and felt the warm, black waters of sleep lap at his right side. It wasn’t until a howler announced the distant light from his treetop perch like a man in a crow’s nest calling out land that he felt a chill grip him, and imagined a dark shore looming, and knew which one it was.