by Nahum Megged
“You know as well as I do someone else warned him!” I angrily interrupted her.
“When he went to warn him, he found out the shaman already knew, as if the spirits had told him about it. But George didn’t know the shaman was already aware of the coming attack. He risked his life and snuck to the hut late at night, after he had managed, using various tricks and deceits, to postpone the vile act—”
“Nonsense,” I interrupted her again, “I don’t believe this. You know he’s in personal contact with the governor?”
Clara didn’t answer right away, and her silence burdened both of us. “Your friend, Francisco,” she eventually said, “is about to be fired from his job.”
“What do you have against Francisco?” I asked.
“George is a double agent, working on behalf of an organization in the governor’s office. He tried to prevent the army from coming here and starting a war, and now all his efforts might be in vain because of your friend’s foolishness—”
“But his efforts were successful!” I interrupted her again, “The army is not coming.”
“That’s what your friend told you, but you both fell into the same trap! The army isn’t coming on the regular ship, but on a warship that will escort the passenger ship.”
Clara got up from her seat and with slow steps, as if she found the act of walking difficult, left the house. Instead of going after her or flipping through the journal that served as my spiritual guide, I fell on my bed and slept. When I woke up, covered with sweat, I knew I must write down the dream I had:
I was in an industrial complex that had strange machines in it. I had no idea what they were used to manufacture. All the laborers were wearing masks, as if the factory was supposed to be sterile, or they all belonged to some secret organization, a terrorist organization maybe. I tried to get closer to one of the machines to see what they were producing, but something prevented me from getting any closer. One of the factory workers turned his face to me, and I saw that he was a robot. A hollow body showed through the clothes, and empty eyes peeked from the mask — deep holes through which the worker was looking at me. His face was expressionless, yet I still imagined a smile on his lips.
The wires coming out of the machine twisted and connected and were transformed into spirits, like those Yakura had created with her own hands in my distant village. And the spirits swirled and circled. I didn’t recognize their shape or color. Next, they became waves of light that struck the forest trees. Hair was blown in the wind as if an image was swimming in the depths of the stream with its eyes open, and this time I wasn’t wrong —
You were the swimming figure, although sometimes your hair looked like Yakura’s or Marina’s, and suddenly I realized, as if for the first time, how alike the three of you were…
I felt as hot as if a giant oven had been fired up beneath the waters of the river. I hoped I would be able to grow gills so I could swim and breathe in the water, but suffocation swallowed me like blessed tranquility… I woke up with sweat covering my entire body, as if I had already begun my transformation into water.
Something inside me whispered that the die had already been cast, and I decided to keep the windows of the house open. If Yankor would like to come up and talk, he could do that unhindered. The moment I thought of Yankor, I also remembered the boat of snakes docking next to the house. I went to the porch and saw the boat was still there. Men dressed as porters were loading the boat with sacks. The snakes may have been put to sleep or placed in cages. Or I had merely hallucinated them. A white man oversaw the porters’ work. I saw four people standing on the boat and receiving the sacks. Only one of them had the face of a forest man, but he was dressed like a converted man. There was no trace of Yankor. I kept looking for him. But it seemed my eyes had turned to holes — to eyes that look without seeing.
I heard someone knocking at the front door, and Tourki came to me a moment later.
“Let him in,” I said, and Francisco came inside. He sat on a chair and was silent.
At long last, he said, “Strange things are happening.” A few moments later, he opened his mouth and spoke again. “I was playing around with my radio. I heard the description of a battle…dozens of small boats attacked an army ship, possibly the one escorting the passenger ship here. We could be back to the days of piracy. I had picked up a military frequency, transmitted to someone here in town.”
“And what else do you know?” I asked after he had finished.
“The idea of Indian boats attacking a warship seems strange to me unless the attackers were desperate and decided to kill themselves. The information broadcast was possibly false. But I do not know who broadcast it, or who it was intended for.”
“And what are your plans, Francisco?” I asked following another silence.
He looked at me with surprise. “I’d better get out of town before it’s too late. There are those who think an essential position such as mine, especially during a time of war, should be filled by a loyal person. I understood from Chris that someone had already decided for me, and I’m about to be fired. In all honestly, I’ll be happy to get out of here. The problem is the large amount of cash in my possession. I haven’t thought of a way to get it out of here yet.”
Christina again. She had warned Yankor his hut was going to be burned, now it appeared she had let on to Francisco he was going to be fired and probably even driven out of town. She had special sources of information, I thought, and I must take that into account.
“What was written in the telegram to Christina?” I asked my friend.
He looked at me, deciding if he should answer, then he opened a bag he had brought with him and carefully took out a photocopy of the telegram. Same words, same letters: My dear, I’m coming back. Was it really him?
“And what do you intend to do?” I asked, hoping the real reason for his visit would surface.
“I must wait for the ship and hope I’m able to board it. And as for the cash, you will need to leave town as well, once the ship is here. I thought we might split the money and gold between us. Should one of us be attacked or robbed, at least half the property will be preserved.”
“Francisco,” I said, “I don’t intend to board the ship. Something big is happening in the forest, and I don’t want to distance myself from its people. If I can’t slip into the forest and am forced to board the ship, we could both think of way to help you.”
He was surprised by my candor. Why should I relate my plan to set out for the forest to someone who wants me to leave with him on the ship? After all, he could interfere with my plans and prevent my escape. Was that his secret intention? Perhaps I was subconsciously afraid of the forest and was looking for ways to avoid the road the spirits were encouraging me to take.
“I saw old Yankor next to the river,” Francisco suddenly whispered, changing the subject. “He was walking about on the shore. He even went into the port. I thought he was coming from somewhere close to your house and wasn’t afraid of being discovered. If he’d indeed visited you, then he must have come to tell you something. With his help, you could learn if the naval battle had actually happened, and how it is connected to a few of the townspeople, like Christina, Clara and George as well…”
The cat was out of the bag. Francisco suspected that I knew something he didn’t and had come to quench his insatiable thirst for information. I explained to my good friend that even if Yankor had indeed arrived on the boat docking at the house jetty, he hadn’t spoken with me or entrusted me with any secrets. Therefore, I had no news to offer and, like him, I was surrounded by a mist of doubt and uncertainty.
I suggested to Francisco that we go to the hotel together, maybe we would be able to get some new information from Clara or George. And so we did.
The hotel was strangely quiet. We tried to go in, but the door was locked. We knocked on the door and got no answer. We could hear a muffled voic
e from one of the rooms. I fished out my pocketknife and began to fiddle with the lock. The door quickly opened. We went inside and found the lobby deserted. We heard the muffled voice again; it was coming from one of the bathrooms. When we broke open the door, we found the hotel manager tied to a sink, half-naked, her mouth gagged with a bandage. We freed her as quickly as we could, and she fainted into my arms.
We covered her with a blanket and began to search the rooms. In one of them, tied to a bed, gagged with bandages, we found Clara and George. There was a chemical odor in the air. I crossed the room to open the window so that the soporific, whatever it was, wouldn’t affect us. They were both deep in a narcotic sleep. I opened their eyes, but only the whites were revealed. I asked Francisco to guard the sleepers and ran to Marina’s house.
I came back with two small vials of liquid and dripped a few drops into the nostrils of the three sleepers. A few minutes later, the color returned to their faces. The hotel manager found her shirt, put it back on, and with a hesitant movement began to fix her hair. Clara and George shook their heads repeatedly, as if they were trying to chase unpleasant sights from their memories. Clara rubbed her eyes and George leaned on the edge of the bed and slowly began to get up. The three went into the bathroom one after the other, and each of them vomited and washed his sweat-covered body. When the hotel manager emerged last, she still seemed very weak, trying to feel her way like a blind woman, until falling on one of the beds. Clara and George each lay in a separate bed and closed their eyes. Even though they were awake, it was apparent they were struggling to recover. A terrible fatigue pinned them to the beds and seemed to glue their eyelids shut.
I found it hard to determine what material the attackers had used. It couldn’t have been chloroform, and I had no knowledge of a natural substance originating in the rainforest whose influence was so powerful and prolonged. I suddenly noticed that Francisco’s eyes were shut as well, and his face was as pale as a dead man’s. I quickly placed the two vials I had brought beneath his nose. He sat on the floor, and his unfocused gaze matched the look the others had had a moment after I had managed to wake them.
I looked at Francisco again and discovered a thorn in the toe of his right foot. I carefully removed the thorn and wrapped it in a piece of paper. The same mysterious thorns were stuck in the soles of Clara’s, George’s, and the hotel manager’s feet. I pulled them out one after the other and looked around me. Only then did I notice more thorns were scattered on the floor of the room. I carefully picked them up. Then I went to the rest of the rooms and cleared the thorns from them as well. Lastly, I rolled up the rugs and splashed water on the floor.
The thick soles of my shoes had rescued me from a similar fate. The rest were wearing sandals. It appeared that the bandages soaked in a caustic-smelling liquid were intended to divert attention from the poisonous thorns scattered on the floor. I carefully examined the sofa before sitting on it and waited.
The hotel manager was the first to recover and came to sit next to me. We weren’t friends, yet still she wrapped her arms around my neck, leaned her head on my shoulder and fondled me like a lover. I supposed the poison in her blood, whatever it was, was still affecting her behavior. A few moments later, she stretched and looked up at me.
“It was terrible,” she whispered. “They didn’t seem like living men, but like spirits.”
I told her that ghosts weren’t in the habit of using narcotics, or of spreading poisonous thorns on the floor, but she shook her head, refusing to be persuaded.
“You couldn’t possible understand,” she said after a few minutes. “There were three of them. They looked white and looked very much alike, as if they were brothers. They had mustaches and their hair was dark. They asked if the hotel had any vacancies. I told them all the rooms had been reserved for the people about to arrive on the ship and that until then I’d be able to rent them a room only if George would agree to give up one of his.
“I called him and he showed up with Clara. I explained the situation, and George said he was unwilling for the strangers to rent a hotel room and promised to compensate me for any money I might lose. Suddenly, one of the three strangers pulled on his hair, and his entire face peeled off like a rubber mask. George reached into his pocket, but one of the men struck him and prevented him from taking out the gun.
“Then we saw the face of the man who peeled off his face. You won’t believe it, because you haven’t seen it with your own eyes…his face was white and empty, expressionless, because the eyes were hollow. The other two peeled off their masks as well and exposed the hollow sockets of their eyes. We were faced with three weapon-wielding ghosts.
“Clara screamed, ‘Don’t be afraid! They are still wearing masks!’ But a blow to the head silenced her and she fell. They had rubber sticks, the type that do not leave any marks. Then four other ghosts came inside, all looking the same, their faces white and expressionless, their eyes hollow. One sprayed something on me, and that is all I can remember. I must have lost consciousness.”
It was hard to decide which part of her story was a real memory and which was part of her drug-induced hallucination. Was she still affected by the thorns? Maybe they had been scattered on the floor so they would be stuck in their victim’s feet when they were released from their bonds. I remembered with dread the dream I’d had, about the expressionless robots looking at me with hollow eyes. Could it be that I was dreaming the future? Had the hollow-eyed men broken out of my dream, received both body and life force and even gained the ability to harm others?
George recovered as well and opened his eyes. He rose, trudged with heavy steps to one of his rooms, and came back to us a few minutes later. He dragged in a chair and sat next to me. Soon after, Clara got up from her bed and sat beside George. Only Francisco was still lying down, his eyes closed, I guessed because he had been the last to step on the poisoned thorns.
“The story is true,” said George, who had listened to the manager while lying on his bed with his eyes closed. “But surprisingly enough, nothing important was taken, and the computer memory wasn’t harmed either, at least as far as I was able to tell. They left me a message on the screen: Leave immediately, or we’ll come back! There was no other note, nothing that would indicate who they were, who had sent them, or how they had reached the town. The only possibility that comes to mind is that these are Indian hunters. But who paid them? People like them do not commit crimes unless they are paid in advance and in cash.”
Francisco, who had meanwhile recovered as well, came over to us. “We have to leave, as soon as possible,” he said in a terrified voice.
“How will you get out of town?” I asked, but I didn’t get an answer.
Clara raised her head and said the goal of the attackers had been to intimidate us, and to achieve that they had used the mystical way of thinking the locals have. I knew that she was right, but the figures that seemed to have surfaced from my dream gave me no rest.
“I’m worried,” I said, “and I think I’d better go to my house to see if everyone there is safe.”
They all opened their mouths at once, but the manager spoke first. “We’ll go with you,” she said, and everyone nodded in agreement.
I looked at her, and remembered the sight of her semi-naked body when I had broken into the hotel. The memory conjured up the image of Marina when we had found her, ages ago, close to the stream. Could it be that the two women had fallen victim to a similar fate?
I suggested everyone wear shoes, and we left the hotel. Steamy air struck our faces. A line of thorns had been placed on the walkway. I carefully gathered them, one by one. The trail of thorns continued all the way to the house. The heavy heat had transformed the place into a ghost town. The thorns might have played a part too.
What we found in Marina’s house did not surprise me: Tourki, the bitten boy, and three more servants were bound and unconscious, bandages covering their mouths. The po
isonous thorns were scattered on the floor. First, I gathered all the thorns so we could operate safely, and only then I untied and woke everybody. They had no thorns stuck in their feet, so their recovery was much quicker.
Tourki opened her mouth first. She said that a few Nave had come, but they were only dressed as Nave and were actually Noneshi. The shades poured water from the worlds of death on them, and she remembered no more. I went to my room. The journal had been moved, and it was obvious someone had tried to read it, but no pages were torn. I saw a handwritten note added on the last page: If you are still alive, we’ll find you. The rest of my things remained in place. I looked at the jetty through the window. The boat was gone. Were the attackers gone with it?
21
The Dam Is Breached
I invited everyone to rest in Marina’s house until they felt better and set out to get the town doctor. The clinic looked deserted. The doctor wasn’t tied up like the other victims, but it was obvious he had been hurt by one of the thorns, maybe when he had gone to visit a patient. After I took out the thorn and while the doctor recovered, I told him about the thorns scattered in the town and about their harmful influence. I waited for him to recover completely, and we went together from house to house, collecting the thorns on our way and seeing who had been harmed. Due to the heat, almost all the townspeople had stayed in their houses, so the number of casualties was low. It’s a good thing we were able to remove the threat before the sun set and the townspeople emerged from their homes.
We reached the far reaches of town together, to a hut made of wood with a leaf roof. I didn’t know who lived there, and no one answered when we knocked on the door. When we went inside, we found Christina and Grisella, both tied up and unconscious. Christina was stripped to the waist. When she recovered, she told me that when she had reached her house, she felt a pair of hands grab her and push her inside. Then something was rubbed against her nose, and that was that, she remembered nothing more.