by Tom Epperson
“Jesus!” says Daniel.
They come to the end of the grass and reenter the forest. The trees are like a giant umbrella shielding them from the rain. Under the tree that was hit by lightning they find a large branch that was sheared off, along with the scorched, still-smoking bodies of half a dozen monkeys. They have soft brown fur; they’re chorongo monkeys, they all look like Chico. It’s a shocking sight to Roberto, and the others seem to feel the same as they stand there and stare down at them.
“It’s bad,” Roque says.
“What do you mean?” says Lina.
“Six monkeys. Six of us.”
* * *
They follow a dirt track through the forest. The trees are widely spaced and are shot through with sunlight. Lina takes Ernesto’s machete and whacks a tree. White sap trickles down the trunk, it’s like white blood.
“This is a rubber tree,” Lina says. “Before El Encanto was anything else, it was a rubber station.”
“We’ve reached El Encanto?” says Roberto.
Lina smiles. “Nearly.”
In a few minutes, they emerge from the forest, and Roberto looks out upon a green sea of sugarcane. They head down a narrow dirt road that runs as straight as a ruler across the field. The plants are much taller, greener, and more robust than the sickly-looking ones he saw on the way to Tarapacá. The sun is at its highest point and beats down on them. Roberto’s been rationing his water and now drinks the last of it. It’s quiet except for the indolent buzz of insects. A green grasshopper leaps onto the road then flies off in a blur of wings. A hawk circles overhead, keeping an eye out for lunch.
As they’re leaving the sugarcane, a breeze brings them a whiff of death. The rutty road goes across a pasture. Scattered across it are the carcasses of several dozen dairy cows. They’ve been pretty well picked over by vultures and other scavengers, so there’s not much left beyond bones and maggoty hides. The pasture, however, does contain one living creature: a blue roan horse, standing in the shade of a tree. As they walk toward it, it moves its head and seems to be looking their way, but as they get closer Roberto sees that couldn’t possibly be the case.
Quique gives a disgusted snort.
“The bastards put its eyes out,” he says.
There’s a crust of dried blood beneath its eyes. Flies crawl over its face, and its eye sockets are squirming with maggots.
The horse shuffles nervously as Lina walks up to it.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she says, and she gently rubs its neck. It pushes into her hand, and makes a noise deep in its throat.
“Poor thing. I’m sorry.”
Lina steps back and pulls her gun out from under her shirt, racks a round into the chamber, and shoots the horse between its blind eyes. It crumples to the ground. The flies zoom around erratically in the shade, then settle back down on the still body.
They go through a stand of trees, then come out on a little lake. Water lilies float upon it, tall birds walk in the shallows. On the far bank, a walkway with handrails extends into the lake and ends at a round, pavilion-like structure. Beyond the lake, rising above more trees, Roberto sees a stone tower.
They walk around the lake. Roberto watches a white egret gliding over it, perfectly mirrored in the water. He notices Quique and Ernesto and Lina have unslung their weapons. He doesn’t know what to expect. Bodies everywhere? Maybe the Black Jaguars have come back.
What they’re walking through is beautiful: lush grass and flowers, carefully sculpted bushes, all kinds of fruit trees, mango, papaya, lulo, guanabana, mangostino, dragon fruit. The trees are filled with capuchin monkeys, chattering excitedly among themselves and leaping from tree to tree as they follow Roberto and the rest.
“Juan Carlos loved the monkeys,” says Lina. “He’d bring them bananas, that’s their favorite food and they’d just go nuts,” and Lina smiles. They’d jump all over him, he’d be covered head to toe in monkeys. You could hardly see him anymore but you could hear him laughing.”
They’re approaching the house from the rear. Roberto can see it now: it’s two stories and made of reddish stone. As they move toward it, they come to another structure made of the same material. Lina says it’s the guesthouse. Roberto peers through a window, sees a bed with a blue bedspread and a blue mosquito net. They go by a playground with a swing and a slide and a seesaw and a jungle gym and then a tennis court with a forlorn yellow tennis ball lying on it and now Roberto gets a better view of the house. It’s not large but it’s utterly lovely. It does seem, as Javier said, a bit like a castle out of a fairy tale, though the satellite dish near the spired tower does ruin the effect somewhat.
Behind the house is a flagstone patio surrounded by a stone balustrade. A bronze statue of a praying angel rises out of a small fishpond. In one corner is a wrought-iron table with wrought-iron chairs and a green umbrella over it; taking advantage of the shade are three vultures, two sitting on the table and one in a chair. They couldn’t seem more at home, they hardly bother to glance at them as they walk onto the patio.
“Hello!” shouts Quique toward the house. “Is anyone here?”
It’s quiet except for the sounds of birds. A few of the monkeys have followed them to the patio and are looking around as if they’re wondering whatever became of the man with the bananas. Daniel walks over toward the vultures and starts taking pictures.
Roberto’s worried about his story. He needs the witnesses: the cook’s helper and the kid who climbed the tree and the mother and daughter who hid in the forest.
“Where do you think they are?” he says.
“The workers’ houses aren’t far from here,” says Lina. “Hopefully they’re there.”
“Hey!” says Ernesto. “Come here!”
He’s standing by the fishpond, staring down into it. Everyone goes over and takes a look. Several dead fish and a rotting human head are floating in the water. You can tell the head belongs to an adult male because it has a moustache.
Nobody says a word. They leave the patio and walk around the house toward the front. A glorious efflorescence of bougainvillea climbs up the wall and nearly reaches the roof; Roberto hears the murmurous hum of hundreds of bees sucking up the nectar. He sees the hedge maze Javier talked of. The thought of wandering in it and of what horrible thing he might find at this or that turning gives him a shiver. Suddenly a series of screeches split the air, they’re like: “Eeeee! Eeeee! Eeeee! Eeeee!”
They’re heart-stoppingly close. Ernesto points his Galil at something that’s stepping out from behind a bush. He laughs and lowers the rifle when he sees it’s a peacock.
“Hello,” says Lina. “Where are all your friends?”
The peacock responds by unfurling his magnificent, many-eyed, blue and green tail. They move on to the front of the house and there discover his friends, sadly all dead, shot to pieces, their beautiful feathers scattered across the lawn. The house is set on a rise, with the Otavalo River in the distance gleaming through the trees. In the middle of the wide lawn, a smiling, life-size bronze elephant stands on its hind legs; it’s supposed to be spouting water out of its trunk, but the fountain is bone-dry. A cluster of vultures sits under a shade tree, killing time until something else dies. The heavy oak door of the house is standing open. They go up some steps and pass through the door.
They’re in the great hall. They take off their packs and drop them on the floor and look around. Despite the looting and the smashing and the broken windows and the overturned furniture, you can still make out what the house used to be. Lina tells Roberto it took Juan Carlos years to build it. It was constructed from red sandstone quarried in Arran, an island off the coast of Scotland. Juan Carlos made trips to Italy and France and personally picked out each chair and table and sofa and bed and bathroom fixture and chandelier. He went to the Middle East and got rugs in Iran and ancient statues of cats in Cairo and he journeyed to Japan to find the perfect wallpaper for his bedroom. Everything had to be taken by boat down the river into the jungle.
He hired only the most skilled workers and craftsmen to help him create El Encanto. He paid them well and tried to make them happy. On Sundays they would compete in tennis, badminton, and croquet tournaments. A famous American pop singer was helicoptered in for a concert under the stars. A sculptress from Mexico City and a carpenter from Caracas fell in love, and Juan Carlos paid for their lavish wedding and gave the bride away. The province of Tulcán had never seen such a party as was thrown when the house was completed, and many workers wept when they had to board the boat that would take them back to “civilization.”
Roberto steps over a toppled grandfather’s clock as Lina tells him about the artwork. Many famous painters (including Pombo!) had their work hung in the radiant rooms of El Encanto, and a Swedish painter lay on his back like Michelangelo for two years painting scenes from Greek, Norse, and Chinese mythology on all the ceilings. And there were sculptures, vases, music boxes, primitive masks, plates of beaten gold, crystal figurines of mermaids, unicorns, centaurs, and dragons, antique toys, and old movie posters that Juan Carlos had collected from every corner of the earth.
“It’s all gone now,” Lina says, indicating an empty wall. “They took everything.”
Roberto realizes Javier was wrong in thinking some kind of perverse cruelty had played a role in the Black Jaguars making an awful example out of the gentle soul that Juan Carlos was. Obviously it was greed, pure greed, that had sent their muddy boots clomping across the polished stone floors of this magic house.
In the billiard room, a blue lizard with a yellow streak down its back is enjoying the sun on a windowsill. Somebody took a dump on the billiard table. The seven ball sits atop the dried-up mound of shit like a cherry on a sundae.
The paramilitaries seem to have spent a lot of time in an entertainment room, where there are video games, a ping-pong table, and a wide-screen TV. Roberto sees empty wine and liquor bottles and beer cans and cigarette butts and food covered with flies and ants. But they don’t seem to have been interested in reading, because the library with its thousands of volumes is undisturbed.
“They were idiots,” Lina says. “Juan Carlos collected rare books. The contents of this room are worth a fortune.”
Roberto goes in the kitchen, where Juan Carlos Mejía met his horrific end. A sturdy wooden worktable is stained with dried blood, and there are black pools of it on the floor. He looks around the room, and then goes to the sink. He calls Daniel over. Daniel stares down into the sink, looking sick.
“The famous cheese grater,” he says, and then takes a picture.
They mount a marble staircase to the second story. That’s where all the bedrooms are. Roberto goes in Juan Carlos’s, looks at the Japanese wallpaper. Water lilies and dragonflies. In the high ceiling among the Swedish painter’s satyrs and nymphs is a skylight made of stained glass. Lina walks beneath it. The sun’s directly overhead, and a column of colored light envelops her. She stands there gazing up, her rifle slung over her shoulder, her mouth open a little. Roberto catches Daniel’s eye and nods at Lina, and he raises his camera and captures the moment. Then he walks over to a door and peers in.
“Thank god,” he says. “A toilet!”
He goes in the bathroom and shuts the door. Lina moves out of the polychromatic light.
“Would you like to see the tower?” she asks.
A pair of capuchin monkeys scamper ahead of Roberto and Lina as they walk down the hallway. Now Lina opens a heavy metal door, and Roberto sees a spiral staircase. Lina leads the way up. It’s dark and he stumbles on a step, but it gets brighter as they near the top. They emerge into the tower. It’s not very big; it’s bare of furnishings except for a small round table and two chairs. There are two diamond-paned windows, one looking out on the jungle and one on the river.
“Juan Carlos would play chess up here,” says Lina.
“Yeah, Javier said he used to play with him. He said he had an antique chess set and the pieces were made of gold and silver.”
Lina sighs. “God knows where those pieces are now.”
She moves to the window that gives on the river, and Roberto joins her. The Otavalo’s sluggish, broad, and brown. A small boat heads up the river—a guy in the back with the motor and a woman sitting in front of him under a purple parasol.
“Don’t you wonder where they’re going?” Lina says, a bit wistfully. “Who they are?”
“Their names are Juan and Anita. They’ve been married for twelve years. They’ve been visiting friends, and now they’re on their way home.”
“Very impressive. And how do you know this?”
“I’m a reporter. It’s my job to know.”
“You like being a reporter, don’t you?”
“Very much. It’s like having a seat on the front row of life.”
“I’m sorry you have to leave, Roberto. I know you don’t want to.”
They’re quiet for a moment, watching the boat on the river. Now it passes out of sight behind some trees.
“We’re in opposite situations,” Lina says. “You don’t want to leave, but you have to. And I don’t want to stay, but I have to.”
“But you’re free, Lina. You’re not a prisoner. You can do anything you want.”
She shrugs. “You’ve seen what’s going on here. My people need me.”
“When you do leave . . . what do you want to do?”
“I’d like to just be a regular girl again. Go back to school.”
“In Lima?”
“Mm-hm. I liked it there. I made a lot of friends,” and now she smiles a little. “I had a dog when I lived there. Cruz, he was an Irish setter. I was taking Cruz for a walk one day in the park. Two people were lying on their stomachs on a blanket. There was nothing special about them, they weren’t well-dressed, he wasn’t handsome, she wasn’t pretty. Just two people. She was reading a book, and he was eating something with a spoon out of a container. He held the spoon to her mouth, and she took a bite of whatever it was, and I saw how perfectly happy they were, how at ease with each other, and I realized something about life and love: it’s the small moments that are important. I know that sounds trite, but . . .”
“No, I understand. It’s true.”
He wants to grab her up in his arms, to carry her out of this tower, to take her away from this benighted, brutal land. But take her to where? Saint Lucia?
“We need to find the witnesses,” he says.
* * *
They walk through the trees along a path that parallels the river for five minutes or so, then they come to the workers’ houses. There are fourteen of them, built on stilts, with wooden sides and tin roofs. They’re well constructed, with sturdy steps instead of the usual ladders, and painted in bright shades of green, purple, yellow, and blue. The only signs of life are some black chickens, pecking in the dirt, and two barking dogs.
“Fercho!” Lina shouts. “Jota! Manuela! We’re friends! Come out! Everything’s all right!”
Three people drift out of the forest: Fercho, a skinny, shoeless, shirtless man in his thirties, Manuela, a worn-looking woman who could be anywhere from thirty to fifty, and a little girl who seems to have been in a fire and bears the most hideous scars Roberto has ever seen.
“Where’s Jota?” asks Lina.
“He went down to the river to catch some fish,” says Fercho.
“Roque, go find Jota,” says Lina. Roque heads toward the river, as Lina explains to the three who Roberto and Daniel are and why they’ve come. Then it’s up to Roberto to say something. Though he can hardly bear to look into their eyes at the anguish there.
“I’m so sorry for what’s happened to your family and your friends. I can’t imagine the pain you must be feeling. But I do hope you’ll talk to me and tell me what happened. I want to tell your story so that others will know.”
Fercho rubs his hand over the top of his head, scrunches up his face and looks toward the sky.
“Okay,” he says finally. “Sure.”
“Manuela?” Lina
says softly. “What about you? Will you talk to Roberto?”
Manuela nods. They walk up the steps of Fercho’s lime-green house. Fercho goes inside and brings some plastic chairs out on the porch, then goes back in and returns with warm bottles of Coke for everyone. Quique and Ernesto take their Cokes and amble off on their own, while Roberto and Lina sit down with Fercho and Manuela. The little girl, whose name is Yineth, sits on the steps. Daniel takes some pictures.
Roberto turns his digital voice recorder on. He looks at Yineth. She has a doll with blonde hair and a missing leg, and is fussing with its clothes. It’s like the lower half of Yineth’s face has melted onto her shoulders. She has no neck, just a thick trunk of scar tissue. Her mouth’s pulled permanently open, showing her tongue and teeth. Roberto asks her mother what happened to her.
She says Yineth was with her grandmother in the house when the kerosene cook stove exploded. Her grandmother was killed and Yineth was expected to die too but Mr. Mejía got her to a hospital and Manuela prayed on her knees for days and Yineth survived. Mr. Mejía was planning to send her to a hospital in San Miguel for a series of operations, but of course now that will never happen. It is only herself and Yineth now, because her husband and her five other children were killed by the para-militaries. She said when she found out they were all dead she took Yineth down to the river and held her hand and walked out into the water, she was going to drown herself and Yineth but instead she just stood there, she doesn’t know for how long. She wanted to go to heaven with Yineth and be with her husband and children, but killing yourself is a sin, and she was afraid God might not let her into heaven, so she and Yineth left the river and came back here. She knows it’s not safe here anymore, that the bad men might come back, but she can’t bring herself to leave the graves of her husband and children. Also, the people here were kind to Yineth and accepted her, and she’s afraid if they went somewhere else, Yineth would be laughed at and made fun of.