by Nancy Burke
The tall one looked to his fellows on the right and then left, and nodded a collective assent. “But we’re API,” he said. “They’ve got the plane, the generator, the whole kit.”
“And what if you went for a little freelance venture, if they didn’t have anything else for you for a while? What if you took a weekend, just on a lark, to make some extra money borrowing their kit?”
“That would depend on whether it was worth it,” said Tall, looking deep into his glass, straining to see the few drops in the pit of it. Sodeis responded on cue, with a round for the three of them. “We’d be risking our contract. They do track us, you know.”
“And as for pay, what are you getting now?” This was the part of the negotiation Sodeis strongly preferred to undertake with a pistol resting on his thigh, and suddenly felt exposed at the prospect of closing a deal without one.
“We’re getting two hundred cruzeros a week,” said the short one with the walleye, jumping a bit as he spoke. Clearly, Tall had kicked him under the table. “You’re only getting two hundred? Why I’m getting two fifty … no, now it’s three hundred! Findosino raised us last week, right? I think he has some other jobs for us, too!”
“Okay, then we’ll make it six hundred for you and five for each of your men,” said Sodeis. He had enough understanding of the economic outlook to see that inflation was accelerating like a boulder down a mountain, and that whatever deal he struck, it would be worth half again as much to him in no time. Anyone without at least a rudimentary mathematical aptitude was ripe to be played for a fool; he doubted that any of his companions could even count the zeros on the notes they passed back and forth between them, or could know whether they were making three hundred cruaieros or three hundred thousand. But in any case, the issue for him was never the money; in fact, there was quite a sum invested in gold overseas on his behalf through the Intercontinental Bank & Trust in Rio, of which he rarely skimmed the surface to fund even his more capital-intensive ventures. He would have been hard pressed to say what, exactly, the issue was. It had something to do with getting something away from somebody else, of winning at a game in which his gain was the loss of someone in particular, someone with a name and a face. It was a sense of vindication he sought, some capacity to prove himself capable of progress and even triumph despite those who would stand in his way, to prove his competence in the face of his obvious capacity to ruin things. It was the thing that made him willing to gamble on two numbers which, due to the very secrecy that veiled them, suddenly revealed themselves as the winning numbers in a lottery his gut commanded him to play.
Sodeis bought another round for all of them and drew out a map for Tall, scrawling the coordinates on one of his cards. He paid them each something up front, peeling the bills from the thinner of the rolls in his pocket, and repeated all their names, and shook hands indiscriminately, largely in commemoration of his fourth cachaca of the evening, and put his arm around a few, as though to take them into confidence and elicit their observations of the others. Then, without saying goodbye, he disappeared into the night.
CXXXIV
OF THE FOUR in their small party, only Joaquim appeared to bloom as the forest embraced them. Jorge seemed to grow more bitter with each step, clenching his face into a knot too tight to untie. Martina bore up stoically, the slight forward tilt of her body the only clue to her exertion. Sam, meanwhile, puffed behind them, stopping to set down his pack and his bags of specimen cups, jumping away when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, reapplying his mosquito repellent hourly, complaining loudly that if he knew what he was getting into, he never would have come. At the head of the line, Joaquim disregarded him, utterly involved as he was in pointing out aspects of the forest with the ardor of a lover: Here clusters of sac-winged bats lined the buttresses of Kapoks, there was the spoor of the capybara, or the sublime Epidendrum, miraculously growing from bare rock, or an endless array of anoles, with their invisible tails and garish dewlaps, betraying their whereabouts with thrashing bursts as they scampered over twigs and half-damp leaves.
When the group stopped for lunch, Martina pulled Joaquim aside when they went off to hunt for firewood.
“You need to stop talking about lizards,” she whispered to him while she kicked at a fallen branch. “You’re going to make him sick.”
“Didn’t the American president say, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the forest?’” said Joaquim, pointing to a tiny grey anole on the tree trunk beside him. “Didn’t another one say, ‘There’s nothing to fear but fear itself?’”
“Why are you throwing clichés at me? I’m trying to talk to you!”
Joaquim turned to face her.
“What are you trying to do to him? You know all about him and lizards.”
“I suppose I do,” he said slowly. “I suppose I’m trying to keep him going. I suppose I want to get him over it. He’s like a woman, standing on a chair because of a mouse. He lives his life that way. How could I stand by and want that for him?”
“Like a woman?”
Joaquim laughed. “Like not a man.”
Martina searched his face for fault lines, for scars, but she already knew where they were. “That American president understood you just fine,” she said, still studying his expression. “There’s no one more afraid of fear than you.” The corner of his mouth betrayed a smile as camouflaged as an anole on a tree trunk. “You even sacrificed Larry to that fear, and now you’re doing everything you can so you don’t have to be afraid that he’s dead, and that it’s your fault.”
The smile tightened and widened, as an anole betrays itself through movement. “I was right about you,” he said, “but I also see why Jorge can’t face you.”
“Maybe we both pull our tricks from the same bag,” said Martina as she turned and headed back to the others. He came up beside her and drew her closer by the elbow.
“No firewood?” said Jorge bitterly as they approached him.
“None at all,” said Joaquim, smiling. “Since the menu for today’s lunch is just nuts and fine imported chocolate, we realized there was no need for it.” He drew from his pack a bag containing the foil-wrapped bars he’d found in tins in Catalpa’s pantry and handed one to each of them with a dramatic flourish. The chocolate in the foil had melted, which didn’t stop any of them from licking it off the wrappers. “I think we should press on a bit before we make any elaborate stops. We have a good two hours of hiking time ahead of us.” Sam groaned. Martina shouldered her pack and then reached for the specimen bags. “My turn,” she said.
Joaquim led the way, with Jorge behind him.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve been in the field, I know,” said Joaquim, hanging back, drawing closer to Jorge, who cringed as he came near. “This is of a much different order than our jog in Lamurii.” Jorge eyed him suspiciously and withdrew further into the isolation of those who cannot trust the ones they love. They walked on in silence, with Joaquim in the lead, but obliquely, so that Jorge could see his profile. In a soft voice, Joaquim pointed out orchids, and mountainous anthills, and the gossamer webs of spiders, but he made no mention of reptiles of any kind. “There’s more here than any of us will ever live to know about,” he said softly, “which is why I give my life to it.” Behind the echo of his words, there was an echo even softer and more distant—that of Marietto walking beside a pale, cautious, impossibly thin little boy who had to skip to keep up with him. Suddenly, they were no longer colleagues, older and younger, with decades of respect and resentment between them; rather, they were a father and son, the one reaching, as he had never been able to do with his own children, to love the other by offering to him the world, while the other took up the gift in both hands, entranced and oppressed by his having been entrusted with it. “It’s a matter of scale, Jorge,” his father had said. “In the forest, there are monkeys that are smaller than spiders!” His father held his hand, subtly guiding him with it through a continuous series of small pushes and pulls
. “Here, what’s big is small and what’s small is big!”
With the sound of his father’s voice in his head for the first time in twenty years, Jorge found himself suddenly, unwittingly gulping down sobs, and choking on the waves of shame that came up behind them. Joaquim held back further until they were walking side by side. Jorge lay his head on Joaquim’s shoulder and they bumped along like that, squeezing together through the forest’s thin doorways and over its uneven floor, for half an hour before Joaquim stopped as they came up together before a wide clearing, a basin that swirled with the glow of sunset, a wind-blown, limitless sea.
“We’ll park here for the night,” said Joaquim, lowering his pack. He pulled Jorge to him one last time, and then held him at arm’s length to address him. “Now we really do need firewood,” he said.
CXXXV
KAKAP DIDN’T DIE either on that night or the next. Instead, he took the draught Panar had blended from the Saptir and the Laratir and sat up two days later on his sleeping ledge during the height of an afternoon storm. At first, Pitar, whose back was turned, didn’t hear him stirring, and went on puttering with the bowls and the maawas, halfheartedly sorting them out into the baskets, but then Kakap called his name and he jumped as though he’d been struck. He seemed at first not to know where the voice had come from, but suddenly he realized and twisted around so quickly that his neck cracked. He ran to the ledge and squatted at his father’s side, pushing his face into the skins that had been spread over him against the damp and the old-man’s chill. Kakap dug in the skins and dredged up his son’s head in his web of fingers, drawing it above the surface slowly as though it were a fish in a net, but without the strength to pull it from the water. Pitar straightened on his own and looked into his father’s eyes, and his father looked back at him, seeming to see him, even in the semi-darkness, for the first time in a hand of moons. Larry watched the scene from the back corner of the hut, not daring to breathe or move. He pushed the fingers of his right hand into his left wrist and a current of fear he couldn’t afford to be aware of moved around and around the loop of his arms and shoulders and chest.
“So when is your ritaX?” Kakap asked suddenly, in a voice of mock reproach.
“I couldn’t think about that now,” said Pitar, sounding confused, knowing he was being tested, but not what the right answer was.
“It’s time. You need to arrange it,” said Kakap, as though finishing a sentence he had started at that moment instead of moons before. “Bring Dabimi here, if he’s even in the village, and we’ll do it now.” He made a motion to push Pitar away and Pitar stood up and hesitantly took a step towards the door.
“Pitar,” called Kakap, and Pitar froze in place. “We didn’t talk about Liroko,” he said. Pitar turned and took a step towards him, glancing quickly in Larry’s direction. In his corner, Larry stifled a gasp by digging his fingernails into his skin. “Do you think he’ll gather well? Did he learn? Can he manage it alone?”
“He can manage father,” said Pitar, although still with uncertainty in his voice.
“Good,” said Kakap, shifting himself on the ledge. “Go and get Dabimi.” He turned his head away, but then turned it back. “Pitar,” he called out again when his son was nearly at the door. “Pitar, do you remember where Liroko came from?”
There was a slight rustling from the direction of the corner as Larry sank into a squat and lowered his locked arms around his knees. Kakap struggled to sit upright and rest his back against the wall. Pitar ran to help him. “Do you remember?” asked Kakap again, looking up and grasping his son’s arm.
“Of course I know he’s not from our line. He’s from Dabimi’s.”
“That’s right,” said Kakap, in a voice that sounded almost amused. “And of course you know who held him back?”
“I don’t remember,” said Pitar, hesitating, ashamed and yet impatient at being questioned. He turned his head slightly as though expecting Larry to whisper him the answer.
“Of course you don’t,” said Kakap, pleased with himself at having tricked him. “I’m the only one anymore who knows that,” he said, with no sign in his voice as to whether he intended to reveal the secret to his son. Pitar stood in the doorway, shifting the weight back and forth between his legs, uncertain as to whether to stay or go.
“It was Saptir,” Kakap said at last in a low voice. He lay back on the skins and closed his eyes. Pitar hesitated for a minute in the doorway and then went out, leaving the hut in silence. Larry waited for a while and then let his hands fall to the ground. He pushed himself up slowly, terrified that Kakap would hear him brush against himself as he stood up.
“You can come out now,” said Kakap with a weak laugh. Larry jumped as high as Pitar had, but started to laugh too, even as he stepped back and gasped out a muffled “No!” in English. He caught himself and came forward, still giggling, hanging his head down. He stood before Kakap, nearly doubled over, trembling with laughter until the tears ran down his face, growing more and more ashamed of his inability to stop. Kakap waited for a while and then cleared his throat, shattering him, so that only his tears were left behind. Larry wiped his eyes and moved a step closer in.
“Do you understand that it was Saptir who held you back?” said Kakap, his voice simultaneously more feeble and more firm.
“I’m not sure,” said Larry, struggling to collect himself.
“I know where you came from, “ said Kakap, “but what I need to know now is whether you’ll go back.”
Larry stood frozen, unable to speak. His tears began to fall again, along tracks that had already been laid. A minute passed and then there was a rustle in the doorway as Pitar came in with Dabimi.
“Dabimi!” said Kakap, weakly raising his hand to wave him over. Dabimi slid between Larry and Kakap, barely nodding at Larry. “What brings you to our village? We’re honored you’re here!”
“Kakap Ak,” said Dabimi, extending his arm for Kakap to hold, brushing off the insult. “May the ancient ones hold your other arm,” he said, and squatted beside the ledge.
“There are things to be arranged,” said Kakap, pulling Dabimi even nearer, excluding Larry and Pitar.
“I’m not going to leave,” Larry called to Kakap from outside the circle, trying to throw his voice over Dabimi’s head.
Kakap didn’t acknowledge him, and Larry began to wonder whether he had spoken at all. He looked to Pitar for confirmation, but Pitar’s eyes were riveted on Dabimi and his father. Only Dabimi waved him off with annoyance, without bothering to turn around, and leaned in even closer to Kakap. After an interminable blur of time, in which Kakap and Dabimi whispered to each other, and Larry became more and more fearful that he had answered wrong, Dabimi stood abruptly and turned around to leave. He grunted towards Larry and Pitar and walked quickly past them. In an instant, he had stepped out through the chajan and was lost to the swirling sunlight that had followed the ebbing of the rain.
“Father?” Pitar said at last in a tentative voice, after they had stood motionless for some time. Kakap moved on the ledge and made a halfhearted attempt to push aside the skins. Larry and Pitar jumped forward at once and nearly knocked each other over trying to help him. Kakap reached down and grabbed each of them by an arm.
“You will ritaX Ak on the first day of the moon,” he said, squeezing his son’s arm, “and you,” he went on, squeezing Larry’s, “will go to Panar tomorrow and tell him you are Ak.” He released them and they fell, made unsteady by the weight of their confusion. No doubt their pain at that moment was greater than Kakap’s. In keeping with the law that a drop of white paint in a vat of pure black makes it blacker still and a drop of black gives white a fiercer glow, Larry and Pitar had no choice but to suffer their drops of fulfillment, gifts from Kakap to them and to Pahquel, as though they were the harshest of blows. They squatted with their backs against the ledge while the sun passed across them, so that Panar had to step around them that evening as he brought Kakap the draught. Only when Kakap’s daughter
s arrived from the far village to sleep on their mats beside him did Larry stand and brush Pitar’s arm with his hand. On his way out, he stood at the door weeping silently, bowing deeply to Kakap as he slept.
CXXXVI
ON THE EVENING of the seventh day, as they dropped their packs and sat on them, rubbing their shoulders and their aching feet, Jorge and Martina and Sam watched as the light from Joaquim’s lantern intensified and spread as it came toward them in the darkness, a sun prematurely rising by increments.
“Let’s break camp!” Joaquim shouted as he approached.
“What? Now?” Sam groaned, looking helplessly at the others.
“We’re not moving,” said Jorge.
“I found us a nice hotel. Luxury accommodations, plenty of running water, all rooms with a view.”
Martina staggered to her feet and shouldered her pack. “Lead on,” she said.
The others groaned behind her, but did the same. She had begun to notice that her actions held a sort of persuasive power of their own, second only to Joaquim’s. They trudged on in the dark, none of them bothering to re-light their lanterns, following Joaquim’s beacon through the blinding, shimmering dark. They could feel their faces brushed by webs, physical and other, by currents of air that held tinges of algae and the smell of dead fish, and by the slow crescendo of an approaching river.
When the forest gave way to a clearing, a crescent of sand that glowed like a mystical oasis in the moonlight, they dropped their bags and fell to their knees, already under the sway of its unreal allure. They tied their hammocks to the trees that surrounded it, and lit a fire in its midst, and ate their rice and beans as they watched the smooth movement of its inexhaustible resources of water and calm pour off into a distant, unfillable sea. As the four travellers readied themselves for sleep, their drifting off resembled this drifting of water, a smooth, silent movement toward an infinite oblivion. And since oblivions have no history, nor particulars of identity or shape, they were unburdened by the need to suspect footprints in the sand that the winds had long erased, or to notice the exposed sore, just under the rope by which Joaquim’s hammock was tied, where the bark of a tree had been worn away, or to recognize an empty tin of beans, nearly buried under dirt and undergrowth, that lay like a shipwrecked vessel just outside the circle of sand.