Foreigners (7 page)

Mathieu helped me to carry the equipment from the Land Rover to my room on the upper floor of the hotel, then he joined me for dinner in the small bar off the lobby. We ate
paella and drank hibiscus tea, followed by several bottles of the local beer, which tasted faintly of formaldehyde. At one point, Mathieu leaned across the table and said to me, in a hushed voice: “Not before. They not let me in.
J'ai grigou.”
I reached out and took hold of his arm. “Not any more,” I said, then added in my best French: “
Tu est un homme de science.”
He liked that very much and we raised our glasses to one another. I had begun to regret my initial judgment of this man and thought if only we'd shared a common language we might have possibly become friends.

Mathieu left me after dinner to spend the evening with relatives. I retired, slightly drunk, to my room on the second floor. The hotel, rather ambitiously called La Majesté, was a world away from the Excelsior, even in the latter's present dishevelled state. The colonial facade of La Majesté concealed a rough-hewn interior of creaking floors and paper-thin walls. There was no bath in my room, and the toilets—dark, foul-smelling affairs—were at the far end of the corridor. A single light, suspended beneath a slow-moving ceiling fan, offered the only illumination to my otherwise murky apartment. When I switched it on, several bright green geckos scurried across the dingy papered walls. The bed, when I lay upon it, revealed a great rift running down its middle. And I was almost certain that I felt something moving beneath the sheets. Disconcerted, I pulled myself out of the hollow and set about preparing the equipment for the next day's trek.

The gear I was to take was minimal. Two canteens that I had filled with distilled water before leaving Cap Gloire. A survival kit that included such generic medical supplies as surgical gauze, filament, salt tablets, painkillers, insect repellant, plasters, tensor
bandages, peroxide and iodine. There was also a web belt from which hung a very dangerous-looking machete and an airtight, stainless-steel specimen container.

It was the machete that most impressed me. I carefully withdrew it from its long leather sheath and held it up to the light. The newly sharpened edge shone silver. I swung it about me like a sword, imagining that I could hear it cutting the air. I liked the feeling it gave me, and for a moment considered testing the blade on one of the geckos that clung to the wall behind the bed. I decided against this on account of the mess it would cause, though there were several stains on the mouldy wallpaper that hinted at many such eviscerations in the past. Instead, I returned the machete to its scabbard and lay down again on the sway-backed mattress.

Lying there, looking up at the lethargic fan blades, I had an almost desperate urge to speak to Marlowe, to thank him for my being in this place. Of course, there was no telephone in the room; I wasn't certain that there was one in the entire hotel. Besides, it had grown late, and as sick as he was, Marlowe was probably already asleep under his mosquito netting.

It had come as something of a surprise to me when he invited me along. At first, I thought it had been done out of simple politeness, a gesture in recognition of the years we had served together at the institute. During that time we had been amiable, but there was always a slight distance between us. Marlowe was insistent, though, saying that he wanted me to share in the event. I suspected that this persistence was in sympathy of my condition, and I rather admired the sentiment. I was only sorry that now his own illness, impermanent as it was, would keep him from participating in the final stage of our adventure.

Mathieu showed up at the hotel an hour late the following morning, his eyes still yellow with drink. I was waiting for him in the bar, wearing my khaki safari suit, machete-heavy web belt, backpack and Australian bush hat with corks dangling from its wide brim. I was concerned about insects. Needless to say, I received some strange looks from those around me. A few remarks were passed amongst the hotel staff, but as I didn't understand the language, I was not bothered. I think the presence of the machete strapped to my leg curtailed any overt comments.

When Mathieu did finally arrive, the expression on his face caused me some concern. He was drawn and nervous. I was certain, regardless of whatever threats Marlowe may have made, that he was going to back out, was going to manufacture some excuse and send me on my way alone. But he did not. He simply nodded in my direction and waited for me to join him in the lobby. He did not remark upon my attire.

I don't know which was more skittish, the mules or Mathieu. We collected them from an odd little livery on the edge of town. It was no more than a corrugated-iron lean-to with a small corral in front. The transaction was completed without the exchange of a single word. Mathieu strolled across the paddock to where the proprietor, an elderly man whose ebony complexion was deepened by a shock of white hair, sat waiting on an overturned fruit crate. Mathieu handed the man a small crumpled wad of bills, then returned trailing two mules behind him. They were both ragged, stinking beasts, with matted hides and flanks callused by whips. Mathieu
swung his leg over the back of one and motioned for me to do the same. Sitting atop the animal with my feet barely off the ground, I felt more than a little foolish as we started on our way.

The mule leg of the journey took the better part of four hours, and followed a lazily slow ascent along a winding trail that repeatedly doubled back on itself. It was as if whoever had originally beaten the path sought to prolong his inevitable penetration of the jungle above. The grade of the climb was so slight that it seemed to me rather pointless that we'd bothered with the mules at all. The journey could have quite easily been made on foot, and probably at a quicker pace. I had to assume that the purpose of the animals was to conserve our energy for the trek through the forest. I thought to ask this of Mathieu, but he'd not spoken a word to me since we'd gathered the mules.

It did not take long before the heat became oppressive. The foothills were sparsely treed, and the sun beat down on us as if through a magnifying glass. It bore unmercifully upon my crown, and my hat, whose bobbles I now cursed, grew heavy with sweat. When the trail came to an end at last, in an abrupt halt in a narrow clearing, I took the hat from my head and tossed it into the grass. Mathieu dismounted his mule and walked over to where the hat lay. He picked it up and, with a quick swipe of his hand, tore free all the corks from its brim. Then he handed it back to me, turned and started toward the edge of the forest.

I slipped down from my mule and very nearly fell to the ground in pain. It was as if someone had taken a hammer to my tailbone. I waited, hands on my knees, for the discomfort
to pass. Only after I'd stretched out my back was I certain that the affliction was temporary. Ahead of me, Mathieu waited, his hands on his hips, his expression unsympathetic.

“What about the mules?” I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders. “They will die,” he said.

I glanced back at the stupid beasts, standing near to one another, oblivious to everything, even the flies that clustered about their rheumy eyes.

“But what about their owner?”

Mathieu looked at me.

“We own,” he said, then turned and disappeared into the jungle.

It was the smell that struck me first: putrescent, mordant, distinctly fecal. The air so thick with humidity that it felt as if it were leaving a residue in the lungs. And there was no refuge from the stink; the pungency seemed only to intensify as we climbed. The ground beneath our feet absorbed our steps as if we were walking on foam rubber. And from all around us came the sounds of alarmed movement—from the canopy above and the humus below. Birds, monkeys, reptiles, insects. But we saw nothing. We were surrounded by invisible life. Seen, but unable to see.

It was dim in the forest, and our headway was slow. It was not the straightforward incline I had expected. Time and again, after we'd been climbing through steep, unsteady terrain, the ground would fall away and we were forced to descend into a crevasse, only to be faced with an even steeper climb on the other side. My hands grew raw from clutching at
branches and roots, and the sharp, rocky outcroppings that speckled the hillside. My thighs burned from exertion, and my lower back went numb. My khaki shirt was soaked through with sweat, as was the waistband of my trousers. The backpack sat between my shoulders like a stone, but my hat, sodden as it was, kept the perspiration from stinging my eyes.

In time we came upon a dense, tangled wall of vines that halted our progress. I was glad at the chance to stop and catch my breath. I watched as Mathieu took his own machete, which he carried in a sling across his back, and began to hack away at the vines. Thinking I might help, I withdrew my own machete. But Mathieu turned quickly around, his long knife extended toward me.

“No,” he said, his voice flat and dry. Then he pointed his rusty blade at the canteen hooked on my belt. “Drink,” he said.

The water was warm and tasted of plastic, but I swallowed it greedily. I had not realized how thirsty I was until then, though with the amount I had perspired it only made sense that I was dehydrated. As I replaced the cap on the canteen I noticed that the palsy in my hand had grown worse. I'd left my medication back at the hotel. It was of little use to me now, since my symptoms had all but become immune to its effect. With the water settling in my belly, I was overcome by weariness. I wanted nothing more than to sit and rest.

Mathieu had already cut a tunnel a metre deep into the bank of vines and I had to call his name twice before he acknowledged me.

“We'll stop here a while,” I said, struggling to give my voice some authority. “Rest our legs.”

There was anger in Mathieu's eyes when he regarded me.

“No,” he said bitterly, then looked up into the trees. “Dark soon.”

I had not even noticed the lengthening of the shadows around us, and when I gazed up into the canopy, I could see through the gaps in the leaves that the sky had begun to deepen toward night.

“How much farther?” I asked.

“Close,” Mathieu answered in a hollow tone. “They watch.”

His words sent a chill coursing through my body. It was only then that I noticed how quiet the forest had become.

They appeared as if from the darkness itself. Four men standing side by side on a ridge above us. In their hands they carried blunt clubs, like those I'd seen on the Avenue-de-la-Mer. Mathieu saw the men first. We had cut our way through the wall of vines and were starting upward again. When he stopped, I nearly walked into the back of him in the failing light.

The men did not move, but waited for our approach. We climbed slowly, and with each step I fought the urge to flee. Where could I have gone but down, and how long would it have taken them to catch me up? Besides, who was to say that there weren't others waiting in the trees below. Mathieu, for his part, betrayed no sign of alarm. Rather, it seemed as if the tension that had gripped his body the whole day had dissipated. His arms swung loosely at his sides, his shoulders relaxed, his gait became casual.