by Nahum Megged
“And what did Yankor say about me?” I asked.
Christina hesitated a moment before answering. “He said you are a genuine human being, and your blood truly sings with pain, and that you have a role to play in what will unfold in the coming days. But he also warned me not to tie my fate with yours, because you are as old as my father, and your life’s path is a short one.”
“He is right, Christina,” I said, speaking not only to her, but to myself as well. “I could be your father. It’s a shame that I am not much younger. I would have taken care of you and adopted the wonderful Grisella, whom I met before ever seeing you, as my daughter. And indeed my path is a short one, extremely so, and that could be my greatest comfort. And on that short path, so many memories and so much yearning are crowded…” The tears leaked from my eyes on their own, and the eyes of the young woman were transformed into weeping springs as well.
She came to me and stroked my head. I placed my hands around her neck. “You’re so sensitive,” she said. “You love the whole world. You should be careful not to be confused by all your different loves.”
And while we hugged and cuddled, Yankor emerged from the pen and without preamble told me, “In seven days we will meet next to my old hut. Bring what’s important to you. You are coming back to the kingdom of Omauha.” He didn’t wait for my reply and disappeared between the trees. I could see the faces of the Yarmuki young warriors surrounding him. They carried large spears across their shoulders and accompanied their leader as they would probably accompany me as well, when I left the town for the forest.
“The path leading you back to the forest is indeed a short one,” Christina whispered, holding me tight. And once again, we sank into a common dream, a dream that is all body.
When we awoke from our dream, we headed down the road to town. We walked with our arms around each other as long as the forest concealed us from sight. When we neared the edge of town, we moved apart and walked like two strangers who had met during a stroll by the river.
A frantic mood seemed to have taken over the town. Boats that sailed far upriver saw the ship approaching and reported that it was escorted by two warships, one large, the other small and fast, circling the two other vessels as if guarding them from mines or possible attackers. Such a fleet had never been seen in Don Pedro, and everyone spoke about the intentions the government might have had when deciding to send such a significant force to escort a commercial ship. It was clear the two warships would not be able to navigate the narrow creeks and streams into the forest — where the main rebel forces were located. What was the point, then, of such a show of force? Every resident had suddenly become a political and military commentator. Now and then, one of them stopped to ask our opinion.
We continued on our way through town, to where Christina’s and the teacher’s huts were. We knocked on the door of the teacher’s hut. No one answered.
“Maybe he’s asleep and doesn’t hear us,” I suggested, and as if we had planned it, we broke through the door, which was secured only with a loose hook. The hook gave way easily, and the door opened. Christina screamed immediately. The teacher was lying in a puddle of blood in the middle of the room. I kneeled beside him and discovered he was beyond saving. The back window was open. We didn’t touch anything and rushed off to the police station.
The chief of police, two of his men, and the port officer were playing cards, as usual. We went in, and before they made their customary invitation to join them, I told them what we had seen at the teacher’s house. They all pushed back from the table immediately, and we set out together to the outskirts of town. We picked up the town doctor on our way. When we went inside, we discovered someone had touched the body in our absence. The puddle of blood was still on the floor, but the body had been moved to the hammock and was covered by a mosquito net. A knife was placed in one of the teacher’s hands, probably to create the impression it was a suicide. The doctor discovered a small dart in the body, probably poisoned, but the killers weren’t satisfied with that and had stabbed him as well.
I told Christina the killers might still be around and she had better not stay in her hut. Until this matter was cleared up, she must move in with me, and we must also pick up Grisella from the kindergarten. We went next door to gather some clothes and toiletries and found her home in a state of chaos, as if someone had gone through Christina’s things in search of something. Our next stop was the kindergarten, where we were greatly relieved to find Grisella safe and sound. The kindergarten teacher said that a stranger had come, introduced himself as the child’s uncle, and asked to take her to her mother’s house. But the man aroused her suspicion, and she locked the gate and said she could not release Grisella without her mother’s permission.
We commended her for her keen senses and her prudence and asked what the stranger looked like. The man she described sounded like the murdered teacher. Christina held her daughter’s hand, and together we walked straight to Marina’s house. I instructed the servants not to allow anyone in and to shut all the windows. Christina carefully examined the house.
“So this is where he lived?” she asked, as if speaking about a ghost.
I thought about the poor teacher and asked myself what were the secrets he had kept and for which he’d lost his life. He must have been pricked by one of the thorns a few days ago, before everyone else. By saving him from the poison, had I sealed his destiny? I kept seeing his face in the window again and again, or maybe they were ghosts wearing his image, but since Christina saw nothing, I decided my imagination was getting the better of me again.
We put Grisella to sleep in a small room that had once served as a library, and I led Christina to my room. I showed her the journal and asked if she recognized the handwriting.
“It’s not his handwriting,” she said decisively.
Before the windows had been closed, the wind must have played with the pages of the journal. I looked at the open page and read from it aloud.
I think I now know more than I should. The writings in the cave opened a window for me into a place even the local shamans had never seen. They know I know and often whisper and steal glances at me. I keep my daily routine and pretend not to notice, but I am very frightened. A great sadness is reflected in Yakura’s eyes. I do not know if I can publish what I have discovered after my return to the world outside the forest. It might endanger this place and its inhabitants. My discoveries will cause many people to come to the forest, and I have no doubt this place holds things whose importance cannot be measured, things that if they fell into the wrong hands might bring about great ruin and devastation…
While considering what I read, I heard Christina’s voice, and for an instant imagined I had heard Yakura’s voice. “I’ve always thought it’s better not to know,” said the voice, which sounded like a chorus of many voices.
I closed my eyes and suddenly saw sights from my days in the jungle, as if a pencil had sketched them on the inside of my eyelids. I heard the voices of monkeys and saw Xnen walking about with Yakura beside him. Marina waved at me from the deck of a ship, and my children were beside her, waving at me as well. I closed my eyes tightly to make the visions disappear, but then the hollow eyes appeared, the ghosts…
I opened my eyes, and the images seemed to dissipate beyond the windowpanes. I touched Christina, and the touch of her skin was warm and real. I hugged her bare shoulders, and while we kissed we heard a scream from the front door.
A weak voice called, “Open up! Open up!” and was immediately silent.
We ran to the door, and I carefully opened it. The chief of police was lying on the doorstep. I bent down and tried to help him get up but quickly realized he was already dead. He had something in his hand; I leaned over and extracted it from his clenched fist. It was a playing card with a drawing of a doll on it. The circle was closing.
23
The Maze
We immediately cal
led the doctor and the police. The doctor examined the body and discovered a poisoned dart in the shoulder and a chest wound caused by a sharp instrument.
“The attackers are white people familiar with the secrets of the forest,” I said to myself but discovered that I had spoken out loud.
The port officer, who had come with the policemen, examined the card the police chief held and said that to the best of his knowledge, no such card existed in the card decks he and the policemen used in their games.
We brought the body to the police station. According to state law, the chief of police is the highest civilian authority in town. Who would take his place? Francisco, who joined us when we arrived at the police station, immediately told George, and they both called the district governor’s office. No one answered. It was reasonable to assume no one was there that late at night. Clara and the hotel manager came as well, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. The town was clearly under some kind of attack. In less than twenty-four hours, two people had been murdered, both of whom held key positions: the chief of police and the sole teacher. And all this happened on the eve of the warships’ arrival.
One after the other, the lights in the houses came on. The rumor seemed to spread by itself. A short time later, many of the townspeople gathered at the police station, each with his own version of the events. Everyone saw, heard, or knew something. The chorus of voices was unified by the belief the troubles were coming from outside the town, and the killers were strangers who had invaded the town from the jungle or the beach. I was afraid the townspeople would accuse me, Clara, or George. We were foreigners, after all. But pretty soon I discovered I had nothing to fear. I guess the residents considered us to be part of the scenery. While some of them still blamed George for the fire on the border of the forest, it seemed that he had managed to gain the locals’ confidence. They treated him with respect because they knew he was connected to the government and believed that his overall intentions were good.
I held the police chief’s card in my hand. Examining it again, I thought what had seemed like a puppet to me was actually a drawing of a recognizable person, but I found it hard to make out the details. I asked Francisco if he had a magnifying glass, and he smiled at me and fetched it. I looked at the drawing on the card again. It wasn’t a person, but a rock with a human face, the kind of rock you could find on the plain at the edge of the forest. But some other lines in the drawing reminded me of something from my past. Suddenly, the rock painted on the card looked like a mesa. Was it the outcropping called the Devil’s Tepoi? Or was it the large mesa I had seen where the forest and the plain met, the one I thought was Omauha’s mountain?
I left the police station, and Christina followed me. I kept looking around, to check if any more shadows decided to follow us. I knew that murderers were in town and that it was best to be careful. We walked silently, so we could hear even the slightest sound that would indicate danger.
The lights in Marina’s house were on, and Tourki was awake and waiting for us.
“They brought a letter from the girl,” she said as soon as we went inside. I knew she was speaking about the letter Marina sent, but that seemed improbable. If such a letter had arrived, Francisco would have given it to me instead of Tourki.
I opened the letter. Undoubtedly, it bore Marina’s handwriting. Darling, on the boat we met a man who knows you, or at least has heard about you. He thinks you are the only one who knows certain things relating to this expanse of the forest. He presented himself as a scientist, and it is his opinion that the mineral wealth in this region is enormous, much larger than we know so far. He showed me a card he had bought from an Indian art merchant. It is an ordinary playing card, a Western one, but it had something drawn on it, and the researcher thought it was part of a map. He spoke with one of the boat owners and asked him to take it to Don Pedro before the ship gets there. He asked me to send a letter of recommendation with him so he could speak with you. He thinks a lot depends on that meeting between the two of you, and you had better prepare before the others arrive. The military force accompanying us has decided, for reasons unclear to me, to slow down our pace, but we will still see you in two, three days at the most. The man with whom I am sending this letter looks about forty, he has an Italian or Mediterranean look about him, and he is wearing glasses. One of his left-hand fingers is missing. We’ll talk about him when we meet. Miss you, Marina.
I asked Tourki who had brought the letter. She said the man who had brought it wasn’t white, but a converted man. I asked her why she had opened my door despite my explicit instructions, but she could offer no explanation. She merely shrugged and looked a bit embarrassed. Whatever the case, it appeared the man Marina spoke about in her letter had changed his plans and decided to hide for a while and postpone his meeting with me. He sent a messenger, and the latter chose a time when I wasn’t home. Could it be that he was the killer? I read Marina’s letter over and over, but I couldn’t find any further clue that would lead me to the unknown man. I left Christina at the house and went back to the police station.
“It’s a good thing you’re here,” the port officer addressed me the moment I arrived at the station. “We found this paper in the police chief’s office, and Francisco says it belongs to you.”
It was the map from Herbert, Sr.’s journal. I wondered when it had been torn out. The similarity between the drawing on the card and a few of the drawings on the map was obvious, and I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it before. I asked where they had found the map, and the port officer opened a large drawer. It contained many envelopes as well as a small cardboard box. I opened the box and to my dread discovered it was full of the poisonous thorns.
“He was in the habit of collecting strange things,” said the port officer when he saw what I had found.
I said I hoped no one had touched the thorns and explained to everyone present that they contained a deadly poison. The policemen got scared and asked if touching the thorns was enough for the body to absorb the poison. They looked relieved when I told them the thorns had to break the skin. And all that time George watched us silently. His face remained expressionless even when we discussed the possibility the chief of police was somehow involved in the theft of the map from my room and possibly even to other, more severe crimes that had happened in the town during the past few days.
In the middle of that discussion, Christina showed up at the door.
“I couldn’t stay in the house by myself, so I came here,” she said. “On my way, I felt someone was following me and walked faster, but no one bothered me.”
I looked outside and saw a dark image disappearing around the corner. Was it a real image, or a hallucination?
I asked Christina, Clara, and George to accompany me to the teacher’s house, and we immediately set out. One of the policemen joined us. The door of the teacher’s house was locked, and various signs indicated that someone had already claimed it for his own. A strange logic I couldn’t entirely understand made me suggest that we go see what was happening in the nearby school.
The school gate was closed. I lit up the schoolyard with my flashlight. Boot prints could clearly be seen on the muddy trail leading from the gate to the school door, and I thought I heard noises inside. I suggested that we go around the building and look for an opening in the fence. We walked until reaching a small, wide-open gate. The voices from inside the building became clearer.
I turned off the flashlight so we wouldn’t be seen, and we went through the gate carefully. Rain began to fall, immediately followed by a crashing of thunder that overwhelmed all other sounds. Once again, waterfalls came down from the sky. Wet to the bone, we approached the school door. George went first, approached the door, and opened it. As soon as he did, something landed on his head, and he dropped to the floor. Before we could understand what was going on, armed men pushed through the door, all wearing the hollow-eyed masks. They picked George up, and one of th
em pressed the barrel of a gun against his temple. Despite the fact he was wearing a mask, the man looked familiar. Something in his movements reminded me of someone in my recent or distant past. I was overcome by a terrible panic. Why had I allowed the death wish hidden in my heart to lead us into the trap? The armed men went to the main gate and opened it. They threw George on the ground next to the gate and ran off, concealed by veils of rain. I guessed they headed for the river.
We were safe for the time being. I ran to George, lying in the mud. There were no signs of a serious injury. We helped him to the school and laid him on the floor. While Clara and Christina took care of him, I wandered through the rooms of the building that had until recently served as the town school. Food remains were everywhere, and the classrooms and offices were a mess. It appeared as if we had arrived just as the invaders were about to leave. Now I understood the teacher had been killed so they could transform the school into their hideout and temporary headquarters.
A small box under one of the tables drew my attention. I picked it up and saw that it was full of lapel pins from a well-known ecological organization. I took out a few pins to look more closely and to see what else was hiding in the box, when I suddenly felt the barrel of a gun pressed against my neck. The revived George was standing above me and demanded that I hand him the box. The policeman guarded the door with his weapon drawn; Clara and Christina stood next to him. I handed George the box, and he placed it in a bag he was carrying, then he immediately dropped the gun in it as well.