Drink the Sky

by Lesley Krueger

  As they stared at him, Celso sat down in Todd’s chair, one of Ignacio’s two chairs, finally seeming satisfied with their astonishment. “He lives outside Manaus,” he said. “I’m from Manaus. Remember the basket at the longhouse? I thought I’d seen one of those before, but I couldn’t find a photograph anywhere in the records. Finally I remembered: the old man showed me one when I was a kid.”

  Todd pictured the unusual dark brown fibre of the basket. The head strap, the black circles arranged in an ambiguous, beguiling pattern. You could fall into those circles if you weren’t careful.

  “After he moved to Manaus, the old guy rented his boats from my father. I took him out myself a couple of times when I was a kid. Afterwards, we’d go over his collections.”

  Cracking his knuckles masterfully, Celso took advantage of their speechlessness by talking. Expounding, digressing, mainly about himself. His family had been in the Amazon for generations, and had always had boats. Lately, with the second boom of Manaus, Celso’s father was adding taxis to the family business, not to mention the plane his brother flew. They must have been doing well to be able to send Celso to university, yet Todd knew that running any type of business in the Amazon was tough. Celso’s father would be tough. He might also be rich one day, if he lived.

  Leaning against the wall, Todd grappled with an odd feeling that he knew Celso’s father. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was his own grandfather he could almost feel standing beside him. And not old Henry either, but young Hank, years ago on his own frontier. He was as tough as Celso’s macho father, swaggering across town, spitting into open ditches, turning deals on a pyramid of credit, lying, double-dealing, paying off police. The thrill young Hank must have felt. The dirty, backhanded joy! Todd was just as much in love with the kick of brinkmanship, the exhilaration of pulling off a truly great bluff. Bamboozle. Old Henry’s favorite word. “We bamboozled ‘em, all right.”

  And Celso? Todd couldn’t get a feel for whether Celso was trying to bamboozle them or whether he’d been doing that to everyone else. The agent’s anxious explanation of himself was too transparent an attempt to guarantee his sincerity. Why was Celso doing this? What was in it for him?

  “Good job, Celso,” Todd said finally. “Very well done. I’d sure like to meet the old man who kept the papers.”

  Celso glanced at him quickly. “He won’t. Everybody else has forgotten about him, and at the moment he’s just as happy about that.”

  “He was an anthropologist with the bureau?”

  Celso stuttered for a moment, as if he was trying to phrase something subtly. Then he shrugged and said, “He calls himself a failure.”

  The man took shape in Todd’s imagination, and for the first time he believed Celso might be telling the truth.

  “If you can bring me some papers,” Todd said, “I can get them out.”

  “Presuming there are any people left to benefit,” Ignacio put in. But Celso was looking pleased.

  “I’ll also need the basket,” Todd told him. “I don’t know of anybody who’s seen anything like the one we saw, and I’ve been checking the literature too.”

  Was there a basket? One he could legitimately study, produce, reproduce? Holly might sketch such a basket. He could picture her sketching it. Turning towards him, smiling.

  “Sure, I’ll get it,” Celso said. He spoke so matter-of-factly that Todd finally believed him.

  “This has taken a lot of work on your part,” he said. “Did you find out if anyone knows where the people have gone?”

  “They haven’t been heard from. The local hires at the base camp feel they’re being watched. I doubt they are, but I always make sure to ask. A little mythology never hurts. And it really fucks with the American.” Celso smiled.

  “Jefferson?” Ignacio asked.

  “He’s probably dead.” Celso spoke with a surprising undertone of relish, and Todd remembered Ignacio’s story of the agent shaking Jefferson in the hospital. Who didn’t want his shame to die? Then Celso’s pleasure seemed to fade and he got up to walk restlessly around the room.

  “The problem is, the old man wants an absolute guarantee he won’t be brought into this.”

  “So I’ll say I can’t name him,” Todd replied. “Which in fact I can’t. I’ve had to protect sources before.”

  “But it would be much easier to say that Jefferson came to you after finding the people, and brought some of their papers. He’s probably dead anyway.” Celso was suddenly pleading. “Can’t I say you’d do that?”

  “Lying is a sin,” Ignacio said mildly. “And what’s more, you’re usually found out.”

  Todd smiled and repeated, “You’ve done a good job, Celso. But if you’re asking me to help, you’ve got to go with my experience. Old bones don’t like contortions. Believe me, your friend wouldn’t be reassured by a complicated story. Just tell him it would be better if he was prepared to come forward, but if he’s not, we can manage. The documents are either going to look genuine or they’re not. Beyond that, whoever knows about the other missing copies must be afraid another one will surface, and they’ve probably already thought of a dozen places it might come from. I doubt the old man’s identity will be a major issue, but in any case, I know how to protect my sources. Tell him that.”

  “So you’ll take this on yourself?” Celso said.

  “You don’t have to play a public part in this either, if you don’t want to.”

  Celso blushed and worried at his hands again. He might not want to end up like his old mentor, but that didn’t make him brave.

  “I’ll bring it,” he told them, and left.

  They still hadn’t seen any sign of Celso by the time Holly phoned. Sitting in his hotel room, staring at the receiver on the floor, Todd tried to convince himself he would have had to leave town soon anyway. People were going to start wondering why he was hanging around so persistently. The manager of the local acerola project was already worried by Todd’s repeated visits, asking if there was some problem, growing uneasy about his funding. It might be just as well if Celso made his delivery to Ignacio, and Todd arranged to get it later. It was possible that nothing would happen until Holly got back, but if it did, he could always bring the boys along to pick it up.

  He pictured the plane blown out of the sky. That wasn’t going to happen, but he knew he shouldn’t involve the boys, Holly would be furious. Better talk to people in Rio and arrange for a courier, keep Holly happy. Todd sighed: not that anything he did lately seemed to make her happy. What could he do? He kept asking himself the question, even though he didn’t think he could do anything. Things may have been difficult lately, but surely she could see she was leading a full life. What more could she want? Could anyone want?

  Holly had been so young when they’d married. Todd reminded himself that he’d always expected her to break out one day and decide what she wanted out of life. Well, she was doing that, wasn’t she? He’d known he’d have to sit back, let her make her own mistakes. He’d just never realized it would be this painful.

  Todd grunted as he bent to pick up the telephone and put it back on the table. Reaching for his agenda, he decided to make his plans over breakfast on the patio, and quickly left the room. Yellow-eyed oropendolas shrieked as he passed, fanning their wings as they strutted along the roof of the hotel. Later this morning he’d take his leave of the acerola project. Maybe he’d make the manager’s day by clapping him on the back and congratulating him heartily on his work, making it sound as if they’d passed some crucial inspection. In fact, the project was run efficiently enough, but the manager’s hopes for extracting vitamin C from the acerola berries on a scale large enough to be economic were heart-catchingly overblown. Acerola was not the future of the Amazon, although Todd was damned if could figure out what was. He ordered his eggs, jotted some notes. Actually, it wasn’t going to take long to extract himself from the Amazon. The proble
m was Celso. Todd would have preferred to see Celso before he left.

  And did, late in the afternoon, as he walked past the pharmacy on the main street of town. The immaculate store was open to the sidewalk, its metal grate pushed to one side. Under banks of fluorescent lights, plastic bottles of shampoo and mouthwash seemed to pulsate. In their midst stood Celso, feet planted wide apart, frowning at the viscous green bottle in his hand.

  Todd took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, sitting down on a wooden bench in front of the store. His heart was pounding. What should he do? When Celso struck out for the cash desk at the back of the pharmacy, Todd got up to buy a coconut ice from a sidewalk vendor. As the vendor prepared his ice, Todd watched the agent share a joke with his pharmacist. They were laughing. What next?

  Todd had to talk with Celso, however briefly. Counting the coins slowly, he paid the vendor and managed to be ambling forward, eating his ice, just as Celso left the pharmacy at his usual fast clip and walked straight into him.

  “Watch,” Celso cried, dropping his plastic bottle. He and Todd stooped at the same time. Acne medication. Todd got it first.

  “Here,” he said, though it was really a question.

  “With the padre,” Celso answered, grabbing the bottle and continuing on his way.

  Anyone seeing the encounter would have assumed Celso disliked Todd, and they would have been right. No one said international cooperation was going to be easy, although for once it seemed to be working. Straightening painfully, the sticky ice already melting on his fist, Todd couldn’t have been happier. He decided to go straight to Ignacio’s church, picturing the basket waiting for him there, the documents, the trip home, the satisfying scandal that would follow.

  Except that something was happening down the street. Celso was ducking into an assay office just as Doutor Eduardo came around the corner. Todd wasn’t surprised to see the doutor, who seemed to be spending a good deal of time at his nearby ranch, maybe monitoring Mankiewicz’s progress in the serra. Celso was being needlessly cautious in avoiding the doutor. If anything, he risked drawing attention to his wish to pass unnoticed. But Doutor Eduardo was talking to a younger man and didn’t seemed to have noticed anything.

  “Doutor,” Todd said politely, as they passed.

  “The inevitable Mr. Austen,” the old man replied. Close up, Todd recognized his companion as Tânia’s son Eric, although Eric didn’t seem to recognize him. He wasn’t surprised to find them together. They were related, after all. Still, something about the sight of them walking side by side jarred Todd, and he watched them turn a corner before continuing on his way.

  “Have they gone?” Celso hissed from the assay office.

  “What’s your problem?” Todd asked, finishing his ice as he leaned against the outside wall of the office, watching the cars cruise back and forth along the town’s one paved stretch of street.

  Celso whispered back, “He can see right through you.”

  “Well, in any case, he’s gone.”

  Celso emerged from the assay office to stand beside Todd, although he wouldn’t look at him, and seemed to be muttering to himself. “I don’t like the son, either.”

  “The nephew,” Todd said. “His niece’s son. Great-nephew, I suppose.”

  Celso puckered his lips. “Son, too,” he answered, and slipped off down the street.

  Part Five

  21

  Holly lay on her back, not far off the trail in the national park on the Beagle Channel. The cropped green turf was so soft underneath she might have been the fairy-tale princess lying on her bed of twenty mattresses. Or maybe the grass was like an animal’s pelt. As she stroked it, she was stroking the emerald pelt of the world.

  Out of the wind, she was warm in her sweater, her face shaded from the strong, cool sun by one of the white-flowering bushes spaced beautifully throughout the meadow. Rabbits crouched under some of the bushes. When she lifted her hand, the nearest few bounded away.

  Receding white daubs of tails. Tails like clouds in the blue sky above. Like the snow on the mountains moving in and out of shadow. The meadow in which she lay was low on a mountainside and surrounded by deciduous forest stretching up and down the generous slope. These southern mountains were as huge and broad as the ones around Vancouver, rumbling wide-shouldered out of the sea to scratch their snowy crests on the sky. Tierra del Fuego was much like home; the air so clean that when the sun shone through the rolling clouds, the world lit up abundantly. But the stunted southern beeches glowed with a yellow-green that was new to her, and the white-flowered bushes were like nothing she had ever seen, their prickly leaves like juniper needles, looking almost glacial.

  Home and not-home. Certainly not Rio. Everything was swept here, brushed by the southern wind. It was mid-summer, yet she’d been wearing a jacket on top of her sweater. When had she last worn socks? Or slept as well as she was sleeping under homespun woollen blankets? Making love until she felt as deep as sleep herself.

  Jay sat on the grass beside her. She’d intended to do this alone, but he’d shown up in the transit lounge in the Buenos Aires airport. He hadn’t guessed which flight she’d take from Rio to Buenos Aires, but there weren’t many connecting flights south to Tierra del Fuego, and near the gate for the afternoon departure, he’d sat down in the next seat, wearing headphones and making a point of ignoring her.

  Holly couldn’t believe his impertinence. Why wouldn’t everybody just leave her alone? Could she have said more bluntly that she needed to be alone? Shey turned back to her novel, deciding to ignore him too, and taking a while to realize she was reading one paragraph over and over. Her life had turned surreal. Here they were in an unknown country: her ignoring him, him ignoring her, while above them a digitized female voice made suggestive announcements about airline schedules. It was so absurd that Holly finally smiled, and Jay smiled back, taking off his headphones. A sense of humour was a sad impediment to getting rid of a man.

  Yet Holly was glad now that Jay had surprised her. It was a relief to travel with an easy-going man: tidy in hotel rooms, polite to clerks, persuasive instead of demanding. He even spoke half-decent Spanish. Holly felt she’d been rewarded with Jay, although she also found herself growing afraid she would lose him. It was a fresh, sweetly-wounded feeling, unlike anything she’d known before. Todd would never leave her — even now, if he knew. She cringed to think of it, but it made little difference. The moment Jay sat down beside her in the airport, Holly knew she would probably move with him to New York. An equal partner for her, an affable father for the boys. He made her feel so desirable, a slim pretty figure slight against him, always conscious now of his height, his masculinity, his pleasant male usefulness.

  Especially the usefulness. Holly’s idea of the trip had been to fly into Ushuaia, on the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego, and simply see what would happen. All she’d brought by way of guides were a Spanish phrase book and her copy of the Voyage of the Beagle, which at least had helped her pack the proper clothes. She’d expected a sleepy little place: Ushuaia on the Beagle Channel, the southernmost town on earth. She was flying almost to Cape Horn, within thought of Antarctica itself.

  Ushuaia turned out to be a duty-free port serving thousands of tourists, many of them Argentines, most brought in by cruise ships en route to Antarctica. Holly wasn’t sure what she would have done if Jay hadn’t reserved a room in one of the overbooked hotels, or how they would have been able to do any travelling without the car he’d had waiting. It also helped that he liked maps. How had he put it? Maps were geographical scores, he said; the transcribed rhythms of the earth.

  Holly would have been just fine without him. She would have come up with a room and a car, and she was a good driver perfectly capable of getting around on her own. Yet Jay was such an agreeable companion. Literally agreeable. He didn’t care where they went — it was all new to him — and he seemed to have an infinit
e capacity for losing himself in thought, scribbling in his notebook or listening to tapes; entirely unlike the restless Todd, with his constant push toward what came next.

  She knew she shouldn’t compare them; it wasn’t fair. Nor would Jay necessarily come out the winner, and she wasn’t sure what that said about her. Would she really move to New York? Jay sighed with contentment and lay down beside her, throwing one arm across his face like a sleepy child. Holly wanted to pillow her head on his shoulder, although she knew what would come of that, or what she would want to. They’d been spending the long austral dusk exploring each other. Jay was a happy lover, laughing and energetic. Holly couldn’t keep off him, and was burning by the time he entered her. Bruised when he withdrew. All this in opaline light coming through the languorous curtains.

  But there was still this edge of fear getting her out of bed every morning, refusing to let her luxuriate there, to wallow all day. She was increasingly afraid of boring him by being too available, and slipped from under his arm to order breakfast, waking him to a set table and excursions intricately planned. This was their fourth day, and every morning so far she’d managed to be businesslike. Maps spread, routes noted. She talked as if she was glad she had a long day to paint in. The sun set at 11 o’clock, although their subtle, longed-for dusk lingered much later.

  Jay, who didn’t sleep well, told her their first morning that it only stayed dark for two or three hours. But he’d been ready to drive out after breakfast, heading east along the channel on a road that sometimes ran high on the side of a mountain and sometimes dipped down to a pebbly beach. The day was clear and calm, and at one small cove, far enough from town that there were no other tourists, they parked the car to picnic on the beach. Near the lapping water, Holly found golden lichen growing on the black volcanic rocks, and sat down on the crackling surface to watch big ducks paddling off-shore. Someone had once built a shack at the back of the cove, and amid the wrecked and rotting wood, daisies were growing wild.