by Tom Epperson
Amparo shyly hands Lina a folded-up piece of paper. “This is something I wrote. Last night.”
Lina smiles and slides the paper into a pocket.
“Thanks, Amparo. I look forward to reading it.”
They walk off across the hill, past the guesthouse and Princesa’s palace and a little graveyard with eight crosses in it.
“What did Amparo give you?” Roberto asks Lina.
“Probably a poem or a little story. She loves to write, and she’s actually quite good at it.”
“She told me about her father. How he was robbed and murdered.”
“I’m sure she didn’t tell you she was raped. They slashed her vagina with a knife so they could fit inside her. She nearly bled to death. It’s a miracle she got out of the jungle alive.”
Duque, as if it’s his duty, accompanies them down the hill then turns around and trots back up. They enter the jungle. They are six. Roque, as usual, takes the lead. Behind him, Lina, Ernesto, and Quique carry assault rifles along with their packs. Roberto and Daniel bring up the rear.
Daniel winces and rubs his temple under his French Foreign Legion-looking cap.
“Head hurt?” says Roberto.
“Yeah.”
“I have no sympathy for you.”
“What happened last night? Did I do anything stupid?”
“What do you think?”
“Stupider than usual?”
“No, not really. But I’d be careful around Quique.”
Daniel casts a worried glance up ahead at Quique.
“Shit. I don’t want to get on that guy’s bad side.”
They walk through the forest in the dim light of the dawn. The ground is swampy; leaden pools and puddles of water are gleaming everywhere. They follow Roque across narrow planks and slippery log bridges, provided perhaps by Diego for his tourists. The trees are taller than any Roberto’s ever seen, and their interwoven tops block out the sun. There’s very little undergrowth. Roberto slips off a log and goes knee-deep into black muck. He thinks about old jungle movies and people disappearing into quicksand. Soon after, Daniel slips and goes cursing into the swamp too. Roque and Ernesto take their machetes and swiftly chop down and strip two saplings for Daniel and Roberto to use as staffs.
In about half an hour the logs and planks come to an end and they’re on firm ground. The sun must be up now, because the humid twilight has brightened a bit. The ground is covered with dead leaves and the crumbling detritus of plants, and Roberto breaths in a rich organic smell of rot. It’s surprisingly quiet. No bird or insect sounds except for the occasional whine of a mosquito in his ear. The forest is a green inscrutable mass to him. They say the Eskimos have a thousand words for snow, but Roberto sees around him a thousand things and cannot muster up one word for any of them.
He knows there must be animals around, but they have chosen not to show themselves. He’d love to see a jaguar. He’s never seen one in the wild before. They definitely represent a danger—if you go walking alone in the jungle it’s quite possible a jaguar could decide to make you its next meal but it’s not going to attack you if you’re in a group. What makes Roberto really nervous are snakes. Lots of poisonous snakes in the jungle. If you put a hand or a foot in the wrong place, you might soon find yourself flopping about on the ground, eyes rolled up in your head, bleeding from every orifice.
A brilliantly blue gigantic butterfly floats past.
“Hey, look!” Roberto says. “A blue morpho!”
He’s seen them in other jungles. Its wings become brown with eye-spots like a peacock when it lands on a branch and folds them over its back. Daniel raises his camera and moves up close. Robert goes over to it too.
Lina has paused and is looking back.
“What’s up?” she says.
“A blue morpho!” says Roberto, happy to actually know the name of something.
She comes walking back to take a look.
“I have a friend who raises them,” she says. “She makes quite a bit of money at it.”
“Why do people want them?”
“They release them at weddings and parties and peace marches and so forth.”
The blue morpho’s wings become blue again as it launches itself into the air. Daniel keeps snapping pictures. Roberto watches Lina watching the butterfly dancing off through the trees.
He thinks about last night, when he and Lina nearly kissed. Meeting a girl like her was the last thing he expected on this trip.
They’re moving ahead again. A determined column of ants troop over a fallen tree trunk, and Robert steps over it too. Ernesto and Quique are talking about something, and they laugh. It sounds very loud in the hush of the forest, like laughter in an empty cathedral.
Roberto’s always been faithful to his girlfriends, except for one time with Teresa (she found out about it and was so distraught he can hardly bear to think about it). But last night, he came very close to being unfaithful to Caroline. Much closer than with Clara. Infidelity with Clara had an alarming crime-against-nature quality to it, but there’s none of that with Lina. The world he’s in is so intense as to render other worlds unreal. Can there actually be a beautiful island in a peaceful sea where a girl named Caroline awaits him? What is she doing right now? Petting one of her plump cats? No, it’s hard to believe in the existence of Caroline and her cats. The one true world is the jungle, and these people, and a place called El Encanto.
He looks at Lina ahead of him, in her green army shirt and her jungle boots, with her backpack and her assault rifle. The very picture of a girl guerrilla. And if the girl guerrilla and the young journalist were to fall at some point into each other’s arms, it would seem in this place like a natural thing, like a leaf dropping from a tree or a hawk flying over the river. Roberto doubts he’d ever feel much guilt about it, because from the perspective of the future him, it is this world that will be unreal, these days in the jungle will seem like a feverish fantasy, a wild green dream.
But why didn’t it happen last night? It was Lina who made it not happen. It was as if she wanted it to but changed her mind, removing his hand from her face and walking away. She strikes him as the kind of girl who doesn’t give herself easily to another, but once she decides to do so, her giving knows no bounds. She knew that in a few days he’d be flying off in a plane never to return, and she probably did not want to be left in the jungle with a heart full of love for him.
* * *
Roberto walks up front with Roque for a while; he wants Roque to show and tell him things.
“You smell that?” says Roque.
Roberto sniffs the air and wrinkles his nose.
“Yeah, what is that?”
“A howler monkey has taken a big shit. He does it to mark his territory.”
He points out to Roberto a little toad the color of the dead leaves it hops across. A giant red cricket. A rainbow-colored caterpillar.
“You hear that?” says Roque.
Roberto nods. It’s coming from up in the forest canopy.
“It sounds kind of like dripping water.”
“It’s a bird. An oropendola,” and now Roque makes the exact same sound. In a moment, the oropendola seems to answer.
“What’s he saying?” asks Roberto.
“He says he’s lonely. He’s looking for a girlfriend.”
Roque shows him the wedge-shaped hoof prints of a wild pig, and then he points at something else.
“See, Roberto? A jaguar’s following him.”
Hands on knees, Roberto gazes in awe upon the paw print of the jaguar.
“Wow. So are these fresh tracks?”
“Very fresh.”
Lina and the others are moving past.
“Come on, guys, let’s go,” says Lina. “This isn’t a nature hike.”
They start walking again.
“So you think we’ll see him?” says Roberto. “The jaguar?”
Roque shrugs. “You only see a jaguar when he wants you to see him.”
“Have you seen many?”
“Yes,” he says, and then he smiles a little.
“What?”
“When you see a jaguar, it’s not always a jaguar.”
“What is it?”
“Sometimes it’s a shaman.”
“So if I see a jaguar that’s really a shaman, should I be scared? Is it going to eat me?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Both live shamans and dead shamans can turn themselves into jaguars, but dead shamans are always evil. Live shamans can be either good or evil.”
“How can you tell a regular jaguar from a shaman that’s turned himself into a jaguar?”
“If a jaguar is a shaman, they say it has the balls of a man. But you have to get pretty close to see that.”
Roberto laughs.
“So how does a shaman learn to turn himself into a jaguar?”
“He takes ayahuasca, and then he travels to the place of the dead. He learns many things there. All about plants and how to heal people, and he can also learn bad things.”
“Like what?”
“My cousin liked a girl, and a very bad man liked her too. He paid a shaman to put the soil of the dead in my cousin’s coffee, and it killed him.”
“What’s the soil of the dead?”
“Soil from a cemetery.”
“Have you ever taken ayahuasca?”
“Many times.”
“How old were you when you first took it?”
“Fourteen. See that tree?”
Roberto and Roque walk over to a stupendously large tree. Roberto leans his head back and gazes at a trunk that goes up and up and only when it’s soared past the other trees does it spread itself out majestically into limbs, branches, and leaves. He rubs one of the twisted roots that rise to the level of his head. It’s a tree he recognizes.
“This is a ceiba tree, right?”
“Yes, but we call it the mother tree. Because the spirit of the mother of the jungle lives inside it. It makes a very loud noise when you hit it, so if you’re ever lost and you want someone to find you?”
“Yes?”
“Hit it like this,” and Roque begins striking the tree with the blunt side of his machete. The sound resonates through the forest.
* * *
The invisible sun begins to make it very hot under the green canopy. Sweat pours off Roberto. His glasses are steaming up, and he takes his bandana out and cleans them. He looks at his watch. It’s nearly ten. Lina said they should reach El Encanto by midday. A black bee lights on his arm next to the watch, and then he’s set upon by dozens of bees, a black swirling swarm of them. He flails his arms and cries out.
He hears laughter and sees Quique and his grinning jaguar whiskers.
“What are you hollering about? They can’t hurt you, they don’t have any stingers!”
“They like sweat,” says Lina. “They’re drinking your sweat.”
“Go drink somebody else’s sweat!” Roberto yells at the bees. Even if they don’t have stingers, he doesn’t like having them crawling all over him. Trying not to be too frantic about it, he brushes them off his face and arms, and now they regroup and fly away.
Daniel is holding his camera and checking out the LCD screen.
“I got some great pictures, Roberto. You’re going to have to pay me a lot of money to keep them off the Internet.”
The trek resumes.
“You got any water?” says Daniel. “I’m out.”
“In my pack.”
He pulls a bottle of water out of Roberto’s pack and takes a drink. His face is red, he’s sweating twice as much as Roberto.
“You don’t look too good,” says Roberto. “You doing okay?”
“Sure. Just sweating out the booze.”
They walk in silence for a bit, and then Daniel shakes his head.
“You know, I’m really worried about the boyfriend.”
“What boyfriend?”
“The crazy boyfriend of the girl that’s taking care of my fish.”
“There is no crazy boyfriend. He’s a figment of your imagination.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe this whole thing’s a figment of my imagination. I hope so.”
Roberto hasn’t been able to get out of his mind what Lina said last night about Daniel. He doesn’t think Daniel’s been a spy for the Army of course, that’s ridiculous, but her belief that he must have cooperated in some way with his interrogators is almost certainly true. It would explain a lot if he blames himself for the arrests and torture and perhaps deaths of others. Roberto wishes he would just level with him, tell him what happened.
“Hey, Daniel. Whatever happened to Monica?”
“The Communist cunt?”
“Yeah.”
“I still see her around sometimes. She’s not a Communist anymore. She designs jewelry and purses.” He takes a drink of his water. “Why’d you ask?”
“I don’t know. I was just thinking about what you told me the other night.”
“Well, stop thinking about it. It’s a waste of time.”
“I don’t think it’s a waste of time.”
“Why are you so interested in it after all these years?”
“Maybe because it’s been all these years. You know, you can really tell me anything, and I’ll understand.”
“I doubt it.”
“It’s true. Listen. There’s something I’d like to do.”
“What?”
“I’d like to talk to my father about it. He knows everybody. There are experts who deal with victims of trauma; I’m sure he can set you up with the best person in the country.”
“First of all, I’m not a fucking victim. Second of all, are you seriously suggesting I go see a shrink?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just trying to get out of this fucking jungle alive,” Daniel says, his voice rising, “and you’re making me listen to this bullshit?”
His red face is getting even redder. Both Lina and Ernesto glance back to see what’s going on.
“Okay,” says Roberto, “don’t get so mad, I’ll shut up.”
The character of the jungle begins to change. The trees are closer together and not as tall. The undergrowth thickens. Roque and Ernesto and Quique slash away with their machetes at bushes and saplings and creepers and vines. Spanish moss brushes Roberto’s face, spider webs with fat spiders in them stretch across their path. It seems to be getting hotter by the minute. He’s starting to feel a little dizzy and nauseous. The ground is cut with gullies that he stumbles into and out of, they wade through streams made as dark as coffee by decaying vegetable matter. Monkeys hoot and jabber at them from the treetops. Daniel lets out a yell as he bumps into a tree with sharp spines sticking out of it. Roberto feels the fecundity of the forest, the buzz and hum and heat and throb of it, the flourishings and the perishings as tens of thousands of species play the great game of life. Roque stops and points into a tree. A bright-green snake about a meter long is lying on a low branch.
“Be careful,” says Roque. “It’s very poisonous. It likes to jump down on people and bite them in the neck.”
“Great,” Daniel says, gasping for air. “That’s just fucking great.”
Quique chops it in two with his machete. The pieces of the snake drop to the ground. Everybody takes a wide berth as they walk past it. The two halves of the snake are wriggling in the rotting leaves, not quite ready to give up the ghost. Roberto sees the first ant running up to it. Maybe the last thing it will ever see is Roberto bending over it and studying it. It’s a beautiful shade of green, it seems to glow with its own light.
They reach a clearing. It’s planted with corn and manioc. Roque says it belongs to Indians. He says they were here recently, maybe two or three hours ago. Roberto asks him how he knows, and he points at the ground.
“Because of the tracks. See?”
Roberto does see, sort of. Or maybe not. They take their packs off and sit down in the shade a
t the edge of the clearing. Lina brings out some arepas stuffed with spicy chicken that Alquimedes sent along. Roberto’s not hungry, but he forces himself to take a few bites of one. He asks Roque if he thinks these Indians are the same ones that found Amparo and took her to Diego’s.
He nods. “They’re the same.”
“Do you know them?”
“Yes. Their language is different from O’wa, but I can understand them.”
“Are these some of the Indians that Javier lived with?” Roberto asks Lina.
“No, when Javier tried to contact them, they shot arrows at him, and he had to run for his life. They hate white people, for obvious reasons. They kill them whenever they get the chance.”
“How come they didn’t kill Amparo?”
“Because she was pretty and they felt sorry for her.”
Roberto takes out his notebook. Sweat drips on the page and makes it hard to write. He wonders if the Indians are out there watching them. Waiting for their chance. After a few minutes, they all pick up their packs and press on. They come to a stream with a fallen tree athwart it. It would make a perfect bridge except an anaconda twice the size of Princesa has gotten there first. It seems to be taking a nap. Midway down its glistening, mottled body is a big bulge.
“What do you think that is, Roque?” says Roberto.
“Probably a pig,” he says, and then proceeds to tell him an anaconda story. When he was a kid, he was playing with some other kids at the edge of the river at dusk, and a little girl named Penhana went wading into the water. Her mother called to her to come back, and she turned around and looked back at her mother and laughed, and then an anaconda as big as the one on the tree leapt out of the water and wrapped itself around Penhana and dragged her under and she was never seen again.
The water’s to Roberto’s waist as they wade across the stream. The anaconda ignores them. He hopes its brother or cousin’s not lurking about. Daniel takes some pictures. Roberto steps in a hole and goes in up to his chest and then flounders his way out onto the other bank. He’s worried about the contents of his backpack but everything’s still dry. He squishes along in his boots and soaking clothes. The wetness doesn’t make things any cooler. He feels just a little bit like he might faint. Surely El Encanto can’t be far. He hears a rumble of thunder, and a breeze cuts through the trees. Rain rattles above them on the leaves. They come to an open area covered in elephant grass higher than their heads. Roiling black clouds fill up the sky. A lightning bolt cleaves the clouds and thunder crashes. The tall grass tosses in a hard wind. Ernesto’s cap is blown off like when he was on the boat and he scrambles to pick it up. Now he and Roque and Quique begin to hack a path through the grass. Lina and Roberto and Daniel follow, drenched by the rain. It’s coming down with such intensity it seems like a weight on his shoulders that is pushing him toward the ground. About halfway across the elephant grass there’s a blinding white flash and a deafening crack of thunder as lightning strikes the top of a tree seventy or eighty meters away.