Standing beside the hearth, Doctor Montsalvatje pointed to the distant highlands standing dark blue along the route the moon was traveling. “Nobody knows what lies behind those Forms,” he said in a tone that brought back to us an emotion forgotten since childhood.
We all felt an impulse to rise, set out, and arrive before the dawn at the gateway of enchantment. Again the waters of Lake Parima gleamed. Once more the towers of Manoa arose. The possibility that they might exist came alive anew, inasmuch as the myth persisted in the imagination of all those who lived in the vicinity of the jungle—that is to say, of The Unknown. And I could not help thinking that the Adelantado, the Greek miners, the two rubber-gatherers, and all those who each year made their way into the heart of its darkness after the rains, were, in fact, seeking El Dorado, like those who first followed the lure of its name. The doctor uncorked a glass bottle filled with dark stones that gleamed yellow in our hands by the light of the fire. We were touching gold. We raised them to our eyes, the better to see it. We weighed them in our hand with the gestures of an alchemist. Mouche touched one with her tongue to see if it had any taste. And when the ore was put back into the bottle, it seemed that some warmth had departed from the fire and that the night had turned colder. Bullfrogs were bellowing in the river. Suddenly, Fray Pedro smote the ground with his staff and it became Moses’ rod, as he raised on it the snake that he had just killed.
(Sunday, June 17)
XVII/ On my way back from the mine I chortled to myself as I thought of the shock in store for Mouche when she saw that the marvelous cave, aglitter with precious stones, the treasure-trove of Agamemnon which she undoubtedly expected it to be, was a riverbed, dug, furrowed, churned up, a mudhole in which shovels had probed, up and down, crosswise, returning twenty times to the spot of their first strike in the hope of having missed, by some deflection of the hand, by a margin of millimeters, the fabled Stone. The youngest of the diamond-diggers talked to me on the way of the hardships of the work, of the daily disappointments, and of the strange fatality that always makes the finder of one big stone return, poor and in debt, to the spot of his discovery. Hope revives each time a fine diamond emerges from the earth, and its water, which can be divined before cutting, blots out the view of jungle and mountains, firing the pulse of those who scrape the coating of mud from their bodies after a fruitless day.
I inquired about the women, and was told that they were bathing in a near-by stream whose pools concealed no venomous animals. Nevertheless, I heard shouts, shouts which, as they came nearer, brought me out of the cabin, startled by the violence of tone and the confusion of the cries.
My first thought was that someone had gone to spy out their nakedness from the bank or had made some insulting proposition. It was Mouche who appeared, her clothes dripping, calling for help, as though fleeing from some terror. Before I could take a step, I saw Rosario, partly covered by a coarse slip, rush over to my friend, throw her to the ground, and begin to beat her savagely with a stick. With her hair loose over her shoulders, vomiting insults, kicking her, beating her with the stick and her other hand, she was the image of such appalling ferocity that we all ran to hold her. She went on struggling and kicking with a fury that expressed itself in hoarse growls, unintelligible words. When I helped Mouche to her feet, she could hardly stand. Two of her teeth were broken, and blood was gushing from her nose. She was a mass of scratches and bruises.
Doctor Montsalvatje led her away to his hut to treat her. Meanwhile we surrounded Rosario, trying to find out what had happened. But now an obstinate silence had come over her, and she refused to say a word. Sitting on a stone, her head hanging, she repeated with exasperating stubbornness the gesture of refusal, which tossed her black hair from side to side over her face, still set in fury. I went to the hut. Mouche lay moaning in the Herbalist’s hammock. To my questions she replied that she knew no reason for the attack, that Rosario seemed to have gone crazy, and with this she burst into tears, saying she wanted to go back right away, that she could not stand any more, that the trip was killing her, that she felt as though she was losing her mind.
Only a short time before, such an entreaty, so unusual in her, would have made me do anything she wanted. But now the sight of her body shaken by sobs of despair that seemed real left me completely unmoved, armored by an inflexibility that surprised and satisfied me, as though I were admiring somebody else’s strength of will. I would never have believed that, after such long association, I could become completely indifferent to Mouche. When the love I may have felt for her had died down—and I now had doubts about the genuineness of this feeling—the bond of a kindly friendship, at least, might have lived on. But the shifts, the changes, the recapture of buried emotions that had been taking place in me during these two weeks, added to what I had discovered the evening before, made me impervious to her appeals.
Leaving her bewailing her plight, I returned to the house of the Greeks, where Rosario, calmer now, lay curled up in a hammock, her arms over her face. A kind of uneasiness furrowed the brows of the men, though their thoughts seemed elsewhere. The Greeks were too nervous about the seasoning of a fish stew that bubbled in a big clay pot, arguing over the amount of oil, garlic, pepper, all of which sounded off key. The rubber-gatherers were silently mending their sandals. The Adelantado was bathing Gavilán, who had been playing with a rotting carcass, and the dog, infuriated by the jars of water being poured over him, bared his teeth to all who came near. Fray Pedro was telling the beads of his seed rosary. I felt in all of them a tacit solidarity with Rosario. Here the disturbing element, which all of them instinctively rejected, was Mouche. They all sensed that the violent reaction of the other woman had its origin in something that gave her the right to attack with such fury, something the rubber-gatherers, for example, might attribute to jealousy on the part of Rosario, perhaps in love with Yannes, and enraged by my friend’s insinuating behavior.
Several hours of suffocating heat went by, with everybody shut up within himself. The nearer we came to the jungle, the more I noticed in the men a growing capacity for silence. This might explain, perhaps, the sententious, almost Biblical tone of certain concepts expressed in a minimum of words. The rhythm of speech was slow, everybody listening and waiting for the other to finish before answering. When the shadow of the rocks began to thicken, Doctor Montsalvatje came from his hut with a most unexpected piece of news: Mouche was shivering with fever. She had awakened from a deep sleep and had sat up, but she had been delirious, and now was unconscious and shaken by violent chills.
Fray Pedro, wise with long experience, diagnosed the attack as malaria, an ailment not taken too seriously in these areas. Quinine capsules were slipped into her mouth, and I sat beside her in helpless rage. Here we were, two days from the goal of my mission, on the threshold of the unknown, in the proximity of possible wonders, and Mouche had to succumb like this, the victim of an insect that had picked her of all people, the person least able to cope with sickness. It had taken only a few days for a powerful, heartless nature to disarm her, wear her out, make her ugly, break her spirit, and, now, deal her the coup de grâce. I marveled at how swift the defeat had been, like a perfect revenge of the authentic on the synthetic.
Mouche in this environment was an absurd being, torn from a future where the forest had been replaced by the avenue. She belonged to another age, another epoch. For our present companions, faithfulness to one’s man, respect for parents, upright behavior, the pledged word, honor that obliged, and obligations that honored were constant, eternal, inescapable values that admitted of no discussion. The infringement of certain laws meant forfeiting one’s neighbor’s esteem, though killing when a man had to was not a major crime. As in the most classic of theaters, the personages on this real and visible stage were of a single piece, the Good Man and the Bad Man, the Exemplary Spouse and the Faithful Lover, the Villain and the Loyal Friend, the admirable or the contemptible Mother. The river songs told the story, in ballad form, of
the outraged wife who killed herself from shame, of the faithful mulatto who for ten years had awaited the return of the husband whom all had given up for devoured by ants in the depths of the jungle. It was evident that Mouche was out of place in this setting, as I should have realized, if I had wanted to keep my dignity, from the moment she mentioned her visit to St. Prisca island in the company of the Greek.
But now that she had come down with this attack of malaria, if she went back I had to go too, and that meant giving up the task I had undertaken, returning empty-handed, owing money, and shamed in the eyes of the one person whose opinion was precious to me—and all this to play the stupid role of escort to a being I now loathed. Perhaps the torture I was feeling was written on my face; at any rate, Montsalvatje came to my rescue, saying that he would not mind in the least taking Mouche with him the next day. He would find a place for her where she could wait for my return in comfort; to make her go on in the state of debility the attack would induce was out of the question. She was not made for such adventures. “Anima, vagula, blandula,” he added ironically. By way of reply I threw my arms around him.
The moon had risen again. There at the foot of a big stone the fire around which the men had gathered in the early evening hours was dying out. Mouche’s breathing was more like sighing, and the words she uttered in her fever-tossed sleep were more like rattles and choking. I felt a hand on my shoulder: Rosario sat down beside me on the mat without a word. But I understood that an explanation was on the way, and I waited in silence. The cawing of a bird flying toward the river, setting off the crickets in the thatch, finally decided her.
Beginning in a voice so low that I could hardly hear her, she told me what I already suspected. The bath by the river bank. Mouche, with that vanity of her body which she never missed an opportunity to display, urging her, under the pretense of doubts about the firmness of her flesh, to take off the slip that in her rustic modesty she had kept on. Then the insinuations, the subtle provocation, the display of nakedness, the praise of the firmness of her breasts, the smoothness of her belly, the gesture of affection, and the last step, which suddenly made clear to Rosario an intention that outraged her deepest instincts. Mouche, without dreaming it, had been guilty of an offense which, for the women of these parts, is worse than the worst epithet, worse than insulting the mother, worse than being driven from home, worse than spitting in the face of the nearest and dearest, worse than questioning their marital fidelity, worse than calling them bitches, whores.
Rosario’s eyes began to glitter so in the darkness as she recalled the quarrel that I feared another outburst of violence. I caught her by the wrists to keep her quiet, and with the sudden movement knocked over one of the baskets in which the Herbalist kept his dried plants between layers of caladium leaves. The thick, rustling pile fell on us, enveloping us in perfumes like a mixture of camphor, sandalwood, and saffron. A sudden emotion left me breathless: this was almost exactly the smell of the basket of the magic journeys, the one in which I held María del Carmen in my arms when we were children, close to the plant beds where her father sowed sweet basil and mint. My face was very close to Rosario’s, and I could feel the veins throbbing in her hands. Suddenly I saw such longing, such yielding, such impatience in her smile—not so much smile as a frozen laugh, a grimace—that desire hurled me upon her, lost to everything but the act of possession.
It was a rapid and brutal embrace, without caresses, more a struggle to crush, to overpower, than a pleasure-giving union. But when we came to ourselves, limb to limb, still panting, and realized what had happened, a great sense of well-being came over us, as though our bodies had signed a pact that marked a new way of life. We lay upon the scattered plants, aware of nothing but our delight. The moonlight coming through the open cabin door crept slowly up our legs. It was on our ankles, and then it reached the back of Rosario’s knees, who caressed me with impatient hand. This time it was she who flung herself upon me, her waist curved in breathless eagerness. But even as we sought a better position, a faint, hoarse voice was spitting insults in our ears, startling us apart.
We had rolled under the hammock, oblivious of the presence of the owner of the voice. And Mouche’s head was hanging over us, her mouth twisted, sneering, slavering, her tangled hair, falling over her forehead, giving her a Medusa look. “Swine,” she screamed, “swine!’’ From the floor Rosario kicked at the hammock to quiet her. Soon the voice above us wandered off in the ravings of delirium. The disjoined bodies found each other once more, and between my face and the death-mask face of Mouche, hanging from the hammock, with one arm trailing limp, Rosario’s heavy hair fell like a curtain. She rested her elbows on the floor to impose her rhythm upon me. When we once more had ears for what was going on around us, we were completely indifferent to the woman wheezing in the darkness. If she had died that very minute, howling with pain, her agony would not have touched us. We were two, in another world. I had sown myself beneath the down I stroked with the hand of the master, and my gesture closed the cycle of a joyful commingling of bloods that have met.
(Monday , June 18)
XVIII/ We got rid of Mouche with the determined ferocity of lovers who have just found one another, still unsure of the wonder, still thirsting for each other, who would crush anything that stood in the way of their next coming together. We put her in Montsalvatje’s canoe, wrapped in a blanket, weeping, almost unconscious, making her believe that I was following in another boat. I gave the Herbalist much more money than would be needed to look after her, pay the expenses of moving her, get her settled, and arrange for all the treatment she might need, leaving myself with only a few dirty bills and a handful of coins—which were worthless anyway in the jungle, where all commerce is reduced to the barter of simple, useful articles such as needles, knives, awls. In my generosity, moreover, there was a secret rite of propitiating the last scruple of conscience: Mouche would not have been able to come with us anyway, and so, from the material point of view, I was discharging my last duty. Moreover, it may be that Montsalvatje’s solicitude for his patient was based on the secret hope of making up for months of abstinence with a woman who was not at all bad-looking. Not only did this thought leave me completely indifferent, but inwardly I deplored the fact that the botanist’s lack of physical appeal might spoil his plans.
The boat now disappeared around a bend, and its departure brought to a close one phase of my life. I had never felt so light, so well installed in my body, as that morning. The ironic slap on the back that I gave a somewhat crestfallen Yannes made him turn to me with a questioning, remorseful expression, which was further justification for my hardheartedness. Besides, everyone was aware of the fact that Rosario was—as the saying goes—”bespoken” to me. She swaddled me in attentions, bringing me my food, milking the goats for me, wiping the sweat off my forehead with cool cloths. She hung on my words, my thirst, my silence, or my rest, with a solicitude that filled me with pride at being a man. There the woman “serves” the man in the noblest sense of the word, creating the home with every gesture. For although Rosario and I had no roof of our own, her hands were now my table and the jug of water she raised to my lips, after lifting out a leaf that had fallen into it, was stamped with my initials as master.
“When are you going to settle down with just one woman?” muttered Fray Pedro in my ear, making it plain that he was not being taken in by childish subterfuges. I changed the conversation not to have to confess that I was already married, and by heretical rites, and went over to the Greek, who was collecting his things to follow us up the river. Now that he was convinced that the vein was worked out, and that once more fortune had turned her back on him, he planned another prospecting trip, beyond Caño Pintado, in a mountainous region about which very little was known. He reserved the best place in his bundle for the one book he took with him wherever he went: a cheap bilingual edition of The Odyssey bound in black oilcloth, its pages blotched with mildew.
Before being separated agai
n from the volume, his brothers, who knew long passages of the text by heart, checked the Spanish version on the facing page, reading out fragments in a harsh, angular accent, in which the u often becomes v. In a little school at Kalamata they had learned the names of the great masters of tragedy and the meaning of the myths, but some obscure affinity of character drew them to the adventurer Ulysses, voyager to enchanted lands, himself no enemy of gold, with the strength of will to ignore the sirens so as not to jeopardize his possessions in Ithaca. When their dog lost an eye in an encounter with a wild pig, they named him Polyphemus in memory of the Cyclops whose lamentable fate they had read a hundred times around their campfire.
I asked Yannes why he had left a land to which he was linked by ties of blood whose remote sources he knew. The miner sighed, and the Mediterranean world became a landscape of ruins. He spoke of what he left behind as though speaking of the walls of Mycenae, the rifled tombs, the peristyles where the goats drowse. The sea without fish, the neglected Tyrian purple, the decay of the myths, and a great lost hope. Then the sea, the age-old remedy of his people, a vaster sea, on which one could sail farther. He told me that when he saw the first mountain on this side of the ocean, he burst into tears, for it was a harsh, red mountain resembling his own harsh mountains of thistles and nettles. But then he was seized by the lust for precious metals, the taste for trade and distance, which had made his forebears bend so many oars. The day he found the gem he dreamed of, he would build, by the seaside where mountains raise their sharp flanks, a house with a columned porch like a temple to Poseidon.
The Lost Steps Page 15