Undergrowth

by Nancy Burke

  CVI

  “GOT SOMETHING THERE?” Silvio threw out his hand as though to yank away the letter, but Sara turned quickly, so all he grabbed was air. They were sitting at a table at the Boutu Vermelho instead of at Sara’s dinner table because, despite her protests, despite the fact that he had just arrived, Silvio was too restless to take a meal at her home. He had been flipping loudly through the pages in a clipboard, jabbing at them with the tiny, chiseling motions of his pencil point, snapping them forward and then batting them down into place again.

  “He was rock steady! I counted on him! Look at these runs! Look at these runs!” He slapped the page to make his point. “A person doesn’t just snap, just like that!” Silvio knew full well that agents often snapped like that; that such breaks constituted the most common threats to the safety of his men, and were far more menacing than the formidable and constant dangers they faced in the field. Agents made sudden, glaringly bad calls, were beset by odd infirmities, became possessed, developed strange phobias, nursed malarial delusions, evaporated without a trace; he also knew that the seamless ones were the ones most likely to crack. Even Victor the Fearless, who, as of a month ago, refused to leave his apartment or answer his phone and sat in the dark with the shades drawn, neck-deep in sweat and isolation; even the invincible Ricardo, dead by his own hand. Even, at one point not so long ago, before he assumed his current position, himself.

  Sara stared down at the letter in her hands, paying him no attention. She wasn’t reading, but it was impossible, nevertheless, for her to raise her eyes; for a moment, even she was confused as to whether her absorption was due to the letter’s intrinsic interest, the sense it gave of arriving from a past time (its date confirming as much), or to her desperation to find some reassurance regarding her son, even in distraction, and regardless of the source.

  “Do you know an Eduardo Catalpa?” she asked finally, knowing full well that she would never succeed in keeping a secret from Silvio. The only choice she had was in how and when to reveal it.

  “Catalpa? The worm at the end of Joaquim’s line? That one?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sara. “I mean the one from Paruqu.”

  “What of him?” said Silvio, craning now to see the piece of paper Sara still held out beyond his reach, still unaware that it was the letter itself that held her.

  “I think this might interest you,” she said, holding it up now between them, so that Silvio couldn’t see her face. He could, however, see her hands shake, and hear her voice waver had he been attentive to detail.

  “Dear Sara Moretti,” the letter began. “Let me introduce myself to you. I am Sr. Eduardo Catalpa, Prefect of Paruqu Region, Dist. 1452, of the Federal Bureau of the Interior. I have been privileged to number among my dearest and most respected friends one Mr. James Ardmore of the United States of America, as well as your late husband, Sr. Mario Moretti of Santarem. I am aware of your husband’s fate, and I send you my belated condolences, and now condolences are in order once again, to us both.”

  Silvio snorted, as though the bizarrely delayed nature of the Prefect’s message regarding Marietto confirmed his estimation of the bureaucrat’s ineffectuality. Silvio was always particularly condemning of bureaucrats, in an effort to reassure himself that he had not become one.

  “I remember with indubitable clarity,” Sara went on, “the details of your husband’s demise at the hands of the Lamurii, who, as you may or may not know, are located a mere one hundred kilometers to the northeast of me, on an inlet of the Jamanxim. His death was like a knife in my own heart, which was recently ripped open once more as I learned of the death of our mutual dear friend. I had always been given to understand from our dear, deceased Mr. James Ardmore that the Lamurii may have unfairly inflicted their justified wrath on your late husband, who no doubt was a dedicated servant of all Brazilians, as am I myself.”

  “I need to take a leak,” said Silvio, getting up and stretching his legs. “I’ll be back,” he said, heading into the restaurant. Sara kept on reading, either because she didn’t notice he was gone or to express in her typically indirect way her anger at him and all the others for leaving.

  “I have recently come across some information, however, from a secret but absolutely reliable source, that may shed new light upon the situation that preceded your husband’s demise, about which I felt you should, by rights, be informed. I have come to suspect that the natives of the Lamurii region may have been incited by other elements with a vested interest in ridding the area of SPI agents and other government servants whose presence might have led to the exposure of unauthorized activities unfolding in that same or adjacent areas. If this indeed proves to be the case, then these elements are not only guilty of violating the laws regarding the disposition of Indian Lands, as these have been laid out by the Ministry of the Interior, but in fact, of your late husband’s murder!”

  Silvio came up and sat down again, picking up his clipboard, half listening as Sara continued.

  “While not in a position to follow up on these allegations myself at this time, as I am in the midst of moving our offices from Regional to Central headquarters and will be gone within the month, I wanted to pass along the name of at least one of the individuals who may have been decisively involved in the tragic events that claimed the life of your dear, late husband. This man’s name is Kamar Sodeis, and I have reason to believe that he has recently taken up residence in the area once again. I pass along this information under the greatest strictures of confidentiality, and at great potential risk to myself. I know from personal experience that this man is armed and dangerous. I ask that you destroy this letter, and remove my humble name from your mind, retaining only that of the potential instigator, should you decide to pursue the matter further. In the meanwhile, I remain your servant, Sr. Eduardo Catalpa, Prefect, Paruqu Region, Dist. 1452.”

  “What the hell?” said Silvio, finally attentive, snatching the letter from Sara’s hands, looking it up and down. “Let’s go!” he said, jumping up and pushing in his chair with his foot.

  “Where are we going?” asked Sara in a voice tinged, uncharacteristically, with panic. She grabbed at the letter, finally snatching it back.

  “To Jorge’s. Kill two birds,” said Silvio, pulling Sara along by linking his arm in hers.

  CVII

  WHEN, AT HALF past six, Silvio and Sara approached Jorge’s apartment down the long hall, they were surprised to hear voices coming from inside. His mother was instantly relieved, her fears of her son’s disappearance, his isolation, disconfirmed fleetingly, in a flash, but the discovery seemed to make Silvio madder. He rapped hard on Jorge’s door, and when the voices ceased, still without offering an answer, he pounded louder, with both fists at once. Finally, they heard footsteps approaching, and the door swung open to reveal Joaquim.

  “You rat!” shouted Silvio, pounding now on Joaquim’s chest as he had on the door a moment before. “You bastard! What are you doing here? You’re always second-guessing me! Get out of here! Let me handle this! Go! Get out!”

  Sara moved backward into a corner of Jorge’s sitting room, directly opposite her son. Between them, the spectacle alternately blocked their views of each other and revealed bits of them, framed by a crook of an elbow or a knee. Punch swung at Judy, and then Judy at Punch, and the crowd in the square roared its approval. The expressions of the performers were outsized, exaggerated and therefore comical, and that reckless, slapstick aspect made their silence all the more imposing as they suddenly fell side by side into the center of the sofa. Sara and Jorge approached from the wings, taking their places at the arms.

  Joaquim rubbed his chest and then his jaw, where a welt was rising, while Silvio held a hand over his temple. Jorge whimpered quietly, still holding in his hand a book that he was making a show of trying, absurdly, to read.

  “Nice to know you can still swing a punch,” said Silvio.

  Joaquim tested the bones and sinews in his hand.

  “Why are you her
e?” asked Jorge as Sara reached across the two in the middle for his arm. A silence hovered, fixing them forever, and then, without warning, Silvio and Joaquim erupted at once, laughing until they cried, doubled over laughing, laughing as desperately as the crowd laughed in the square, mesmerized by the puppet antics of the loud, small creatures who threw themselves into the same intimate fight again and again, and whose embrace was equal parts violence and love. Sara got up and went into the kitchen, returning with two cold bottles of beer, which she pressed against the wounds of the combatants.

  Jorge buried his head in his book, allowing his tears to fall on the pages. “You need to leave. You’re not my boss any more,” he said in a choked voice. “I know I should have written a formal letter, but you already know I’m done with SPI.”

  “Not yet,” said Joaquim and Silvio in unison. They paused to look at each other for a minute and then added, “Listen to me.” They started again, paused, started, paused. Finally, Joaquim gestured with his free hand toward Silvio, who in turn gestured toward Sara. “Read it,” he said.

  Sara pulled the letter from her pocket and read as her son wept, keeping his eyes in his book. Joaquim leaned forward with his hand cupped around his ear straining to hear.

  “We need you,” Silvio said to Jorge when Sara was done. “We need to get ourselves back to Lamurii, and then on from there, and we need to go together.”

  “What do you mean back to Lamurii?” Silvio said, jumping to his feet. “Since when have you been to Lamurii?”

  “Just stay right there,” said Joaquim, slowly rising, putting his hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think I could survive another round.”

  “Go fight this one out on the street,” said Sara, who had slid behind them when they stood up, pulling herself up next to Jorge on the couch.

  Joaquim looked down at them for a minute and then up at Silvio. “And then there’s Larry,” he said, heading towards the door.

  CVIII

  THERE ARE AS many types of trees in the forest as there are types of people: There are the ones who thrive wherever they are planted and the ones who are thrown out of sorts by any inclement condition or event. There are the ones who draw the interest of the birds or insects and the ones who recede. There are the ones who pulse with sweet sap and the ones who harbor only bitterness; the ones who feed only their favorites and the expansive ones who shelter all comers with equal generosity; the ones who provide for others and the dependent ones, who cannot live except off the bounty of their hosts. There are the ones who germinate and thrive and fall within the span of a hand of rains and the ones who live forever. There are the soft ones, who bear on their flesh the scars of all the minute details of their histories, and the hard ones, who are impacted by only the most dire or persistent of circumstances. And of the hard ones, there are those who, once marked, shatter into splinters and the others, the chajans, rare though they might be, who can remember and yet still remain whole.

  CIX

  “ENOUGH!” SAID SILVIO, turning and heading back down Av. Altamira. Joaquim reached out a hand to pull him back, as he had at five-minute intervals all evening long. It was like walking an ill-trained dog, with the pain it gave in the shoulder.

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “No, now. I’ve had enough.”

  “They need time. Sara needs time with him.”

  “I don’t need Sara to talk to him. He answers to me,” said Silvio, stabbing the air with his index finger.

  “Not any more.”

  “Oh? He hasn’t resigned. I don’t have a letter from him.”

  “You don’t have mine either,” said Joaquim, reaching for his arm. “On paper, you’re still answering to me!” Silvio shook him off, gaining half a block on him, interspersing running steps between the steps of his surprisingly long stride. By the time Joaquim caught up, they were nearly at Jorge’s.

  “There’s something you don’t know,” Joaquim called after him, slowing his pace.

  As soon as Silvio realized that Joaquim was no longer pursuing him, he turned around to face him. The two of them stood for half a minute, eyeing each other at twenty paces, hands hanging shoot-out style at their sides. Slowly, Silvio took one step forward, and another. Joaquim looked down, but waited.

  Silvio drew near, raising his hands and spreading them out empty, as though to ask a question, or to show he was unarmed.

  “Sit down,” said Joaquim, gesturing toward the curb.

  Silvio hesitated and sat. When someone else was talking, he preferred to feign disinterest, all the more so when the conversation was important to him, but with Joaquim, he couldn’t. He took this as a mark of shame, and hung his head while he listened to the man whose yellowed picture, torn from a newspaper, had sat in a frame beside his bedside table for twenty years.

  “I think I know why James died,” Joaquim began.

  Silvio turned away.

  “And I think I know his secret.”

  “You’re just figuring that out now?” If Silvio couldn’t pretend to ignore Joaquim, at least he could act like he had the jump on him.

  “Okay. You tell me.”

  “You mean his sexual problem?”

  “No, that’s not the one I meant,” said Joaquim. Silvio refused to unclench.

  “Then just tell me!” said Silvio.

  “I’m talking his genetics problem.”

  “You’re talking up my ass,” said Silvio.

  “Or maybe I’m talking about a different person. The one I’m referring to is the one Joao Oliveira knew as Peter Harding, his mysterious second author. The one who gave him the data to write all those papers on the evolutionary effects of environmental toxins.” Joaquim waited for a glimmer of a reaction, at least to the sound of his old mentor’s name, but Silvio was determined not to gratify.

  “Something happened to that tribe of his, and he was desperate to find out what, and when, and who, and the sad part is that he never even thought about himself at all, but I think whatever it was killed him too.”

  “If it did, there’s no way to trace it now,” said Silvio, hanging his head again and addressing the gravel at the curb. “I’m not a scientist any more, never was, and I’m not God either. I haven’t read any medicine in twenty years, and we’re already in the midst of one witch hunt, and I don’t have a single medical man on my staff at this point,” Silvio said, finding his old aggression and looking straight at Joaquim as though revived by the possibility of punching him again. “Hell if I’m going to let you pull me into this one.”

  “And that’s where Larry is now,” said Joaquim.

  “You have no idea where he is,” said Silvio. “You don’t know if he’s alive, which he most likely isn’t. You just let him walk.”

  “He’s there.”

  Silvio sat in silence, regarding the gravel again. “Okay, so say he’s there,” he said at last, looking up. “So we’ve got to go and get the kid before whatever it is kills him too.”

  “And hope he’s still a kid when we find him.”

  “Right!” said Silvio, rolling his eyes.

  “I’m serious,” said Joaquim, above the chimes from the church. “But enough. It’s eight now. So go.”

  By the time Joaquim stood and stretched his knees, Silvio had cleared the door of Jorge’s building, having made no effort to prevent it from slamming behind him.

  CX

  AS JOAQUIM REACHED the entrance to Jorge’s apartment, Sara came up beside him with a shopping bag in each hand.

  “You didn’t talk to him?” said Joaquim as they climbed the stairs.

  “I did,” said Sara. “But we also need to eat.”

  They opened the door to find Silvio in the living room alone, pacing between the bookshelf in the corner and the divan.

  Each of them had made up their mind in an instant, without consulting the others, each in regard to a different question, so that the prospect of collating their individual pieces of four potentially unrelated puzzles was colored by their i
ncommensurate anxieties. The fact that Joaquim and Sara had encountered Mrs. Tomoio on the stairs as they approached (who, like those around her had no interest whatever in the Indian Question, in the obligations of state, or in Comte’s vision of a new social order, and only a passing and superficial regard for the love life of her one-time neighbor, or for the outdated story of a murder not even fit for the tabloids, though she did bring said former neighbor a vat of her stew on a semi-regular basis) did nothing to distract them from the tensions that each of them carried. As the two approached, they could smell the aroma of the stew emanating from Jorge’s apartment, and indeed, from Mrs. Tomoio herself as she greeted Sarah and then moved on.