Mr. Eternity (22 page)

She stared at me for a moment and I worried that she might walk away and pretend she’d never seen me before. Then she said, “I’ve taken a lot of pills myself. At other times. Not these days.”

“I was in the CVS with all the saddest people, but I was one of them.”

“Aha. A tough thing to figure out.”

“But I had this insight. Maybe all of this—” And here I gestured at the people, the CVS, the palm trees. “Maybe all of this is part of someone else’s story. Maybe I’m playing a bit part. Maybe I’m a minor character.”

She considered this. Then she said, “It would take the pressure off.”

“Wouldn’t it?”

“It would be nice to know that the main problem doesn’t involve you. Are you okay?”

“I was doing pretty good earlier but now I’m a little the worse for wear.”

“Do you want to go to the beach?” she said.

“How about some coffee?”

“I have to meet Bee at the beach. I also have a craving for a Moon Pie. Or any of those squishy chemical desserts. Gas station desserts.”

“We could have some Moon Pies. Why not? We’d just be two minor characters eating Moon Pies. One scene. Half a scene. The main characters would mention that we were off somewhere. They wouldn’t know where. They wouldn’t know we were eating Moon Pies.”

“That’s a good insight. For a minor character, I mean. But I guess we’re not allowed to have Moon Pies.”

We went inside again and I bought a towel and a bathing suit so I didn’t have to go back to the boat. She was right that we were not allowed to have Moon Pies. We were not allowed because of high-fructose corn syrup, disposable packaging, globalization, etc.

“This is good,” she said. “Now we’re two minor characters walking to the beach. Somewhere out there are more important characters having conflicts, and in the course of their dialogue maybe the two of us are said to be at the beach and that’s the end of it. Nothing more is said about us. We’re free.”

“We’re free. But I should admit that I didn’t come up with this myself. It was this guy I met on the street. A con man. He says he’s the main character.”

“Even better,” said Lena. “The main character delivers a bit of wisdom that sends us pinging off in all directions.” She paused. “I’m talking like you. Your ridiculous way of talking is contagious.”

Bee was already there when we arrived. Lena pulled out her sun hat and hunched up underneath it, as before, and Bee lay on her back like she’d been dropped out of the sky. I sat on my towel holding my CVS bag in both hands and squinting into the distance. I wasn’t wearing sunglasses because I thought they made me look like a creep. Everyone else on the beach had sunglasses. Even the little kids had sunglasses. The glare was unbearable.

“We took your advice and visited John Baxter,” I said. “Do you think it was him who doctored the photo?”

“Yes,” said Lena.

Bee said, “I don’t think so. That guy is an idiot.”

“Has Daniel Defoe told you about Anna Gloria?” said Lena.

“He mentioned her but he didn’t really go into it.”

“Anna Gloria is the woman he’s been after all this time. It’s unrequited love that keeps him alive. He meets her in different ages of the world. Fate drives them apart. You know how the story goes. She’s literally the woman of his dreams.”

They went swimming. I went swimming. We all lay in the sun for a while longer. There was nothing to say. I watched Lena walk down to the water. Hips, breasts, shoulders, red hair. I tried not to think indecent thoughts about her. Each moment I had a stronger and more joyful sense of my peripheral role, and I knew that if we were to fall in love, there could be nothing indecent about it. Nothing complex or troubling. It would have to be a charming subplot.

I must have slept, or else I succumbed to a sleeplike trance. When I came around I saw Azar squatting next to me, signaling obscurely and mouthing unintelligible phrases. Suddenly Bee opened her eyes and sat up. Azar was only a foot away. He grinned. She screamed.

“It’s just Azar,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry about Azar,” said Azar. “Why should you worry about Azar? Just wander away in a drug stupor and don’t even think about him. Just go to the beach, for instance.”

“Sorry I screamed,” Bee said.

“Sorry I wandered away,” I said. “It was a last-minute change of plans. Didn’t I send a text?”

“I just want to feel I’m part of the organization and planning process. It doesn’t matter. I filmed Quaco chanting and clapping for a while. The ancient mariner is still sleeping.”

I explained that Quaco had poisoned Daniel Defoe.

“Is he going to be okay?” said Lena.

“Quaco says so. They’re looking for buried treasure.”

“They’re always looking for buried treasure.”

“When I was small,” said Bee, “he would tell me stories about the island of Maldive.”

“Maldive,” Azar said. “Interesting. The thing for us is when is he telling the truth and when isn’t he? We want to believe whatever it’s possible to believe, if possible. We are done with cynicism and irony.”

“Irony,” said Bee.

“Irony,” said Azar. “Correct. You want to know what irony is?”

Bee said nothing. She seemed irritated.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” he said. “It’s when you wear a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, something you’d never wear, and then someone looks at you and thinks, What an idiot, but actually they’re the idiot because they don’t realize that you’d never wear something like that.”

“Even though you’re wearing it,” said Bee.

“Even though you’re wearing it, yeah. You’re wearing it but it’s not something you’d wear. That’s what makes the irony.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You can see why we’re done with it.”

“As for me,” I said, “I’m just trying not to be so gloomy.”

“You guys are nuts,” said Bee. She turned to Lena. “Aren’t they nuts?”

She’d had enough. She got up and went for a swim. I thought everything was going well, but now Lena was angry.

“I don’t like you guys making fun of Bee. You don’t know anything about her. So what if she doesn’t know where the Maldives are?”

Azar was instantly contrite. “Did it seem like we were making fun of her?”

“I don’t know. Never mind. Just don’t think she’s an idiot because she doesn’t know it’s Maldives plural.”

Azar looked down at his hands. “I had no idea,” he said. “I had no idea. I’ll make it good.”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. I overreacted.”

But Azar wouldn’t listen. He peeled off his shirt, took his wallet and phone out of his shorts, and ran down to the water. In a moment he and Bee were laughing.

“He really took that to heart,” said Lena.

“He did.”

“I overreacted. I feel bad.”

“You were looking out for your friend. As recovering cynics, we appreciate any kind of genuine sentiment.”

“Is that a joke?”

“It’s no joke. It’s just the way I talk. It’s ridiculous, like you say. Years from now I’ll look back and think, Oh Christ, what an idiot. But it doesn’t help to know that. It doesn’t make any difference.”

She pulled her dress over her knees and lifted the brim of her hat to look at me.

“Are you okay?” she said. “Your eyes are pretty red.”

“It’s the salt. And I need some sunglasses. I’m out of my zone here.”

She fished around in the Victoria’s Secret bag, but there were no extra pairs of sunglasses. She asked if I wanted a drink.

“It has a terrible effect on me,” I said.

“What’s the matter, anyway? What are you so worked up about?”

“It’s the Maldives, for instance. They’ll be underwater. And we won’t do so much better here at home. Goodbye Key West. And the Great Plains will turn to desert. Nebraskans will need to learn how to drink camel milk.”

“This is what, cynicism?”

“Gloom.”

“But don’t you see? You’re worried about the future. You’re not despairing of there
being
a future.”

“There’s this other thing too. It’s that I’m excited about it. I’m excited that we might live to see the end of the world.”

She thought about this. We heard Bee laughing. The sun was high and hot and even the seagulls were subdued. She said, “Who isn’t?”

When we got back, the ancient mariner was awake and partially coherent. He had drawn a treasure map on the wall with a piece of charcoal. Azar thought he could take a picture with his phone and then generate a small printout at the copy store around the corner.

“I’ve seen men in the East with one giant foot,” said the ancient mariner, “which they used to shade themselves from the sun. I’ve seen the great cities of the Orinoco, which vanished without a trace.”

“Okay,” said Azar, getting the video camera out of its case. “Just hang on.”

“I’ve seen the enormous mokèlé-mbèmbé in the jungles of the Congo, and I’ve seen the banana-toothed terror-bird of Madagascar, which science teaches us to call
Tyrannosaurus rex
. On a riverbank in the province of El Dorado I saw three women whose faces were set right into their torsos, below their shoulders and just above their breasts. I was a pirate in the Caribbean. I’ve been up every dark feverish river on earth. I crossed to the other side of death and came back again. In Tierra del Fuego, beneath the blue glaciers, Magellan had me whipped until the sky was green. I’ve been everywhere and it was all as hot and buggy and beautiful as you can imagine. It was cold like the dark side of the moon. The sea was like a pane of glass and the waves were as high as the cathedral at Ulm. The sun was hot enough to kill a man right where he stood on the deck at noon and the sun had no more heat in it than a paper plate. The sun never set and it never rose. The sea was never the same. It was always the same.”

His eyes were bright. He was waving his arms. We followed him out into the yard. Another Key West sunset, smooth and pink and soft.

“The thought you have today at noon is the same thought you had in a dugout on the Pirahao River in the year 1558. You can have the same identical life-changing revelation year after year.”

“I believe it,” said Azar.

I did too, but I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Drugs and sunshine and soft tropic air. I was thinking about Lena.

“Every time, you think life will never be same,” said the ancient mariner, “and you’re right. It never is.”

Supporters of Miguel Oreja murder Domingos Alvarado in the night, and the next morning the vicar general denounces Castellana. Then Castellana gets him pinned over a moldering tree trunk and cuts his arm off, screaming that whoever excommunicates him also excommunicates God.

But the men respect the vicar general. They feel a superstitious regard for him. When he speaks out against Castellana he is not only confirming their own suspicions about their commander, he is also absolving them. He is setting Castellana apart. And when Castellana cuts his arm off, Miguel Oreja orders the men to place the captain general in irons. A number of them wrestle him to the ground and bind his arms. Maybe they intend to take him prisoner, but in the confusion a poniard finds its way into Castellana’s belly. More than one poniard. He lies bleeding in the dust and the smell of his distress attracts small black ants, which begin to devour him.

“I know it’s not a pleasant spectacle,” says Daniel de Fo, speaking loudly so I can hear him over Castellana’s screams, “but you have to have a strong stomach if you’re going to be a mutineer.” He is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I’m a little surprised that my plan worked so well.”

So now Castellana is gone. We waste no time thinking about it. We have shed a great burden and even I feel better, although by now I have ceased to exist, and I feel nothing.

We descend through the clouds and into the forest, where there are mushrooms as big as houses, more monkeys than leaves, no up and no down and no heaven or hell. Instead of trees there is only one tree, as large as the world, with innumerable trunks, with leaves and fruits of every possible variety. The forest does not exist in Spanish, language of
cows and wheat and war. It does not exist in Pirahao, language of city streets. Only the Muro can see the forest because only the Muro have words for it, and suddenly these five men are much more considerable than they were in the mountains. They walk one in front of the other, making no sound, their hands crossed on their chests. They show us what roots to eat. They hunt and fish. Their reasons for helping us are their own. They could escape very easily. They burn their hair into a rounded fringe.

Daniel de Fo speaks to the Muro and together they decide our route. The rest of us are lost. In this state of helplessness a surprising thing happens. Miguel Oreja, who has taken charge of the expedition by universal acclamation and by the bloody suppression of alternative claimants, grows mild and cheerful. He claims to perceive in all of this the hand of a benevolent God. He makes speeches in which he says that in El Dorado we will found a new church, free of the corruptions of the apostle Paul. He says that God will be served and honored there more than in any other place on earth. He rejoices to think that we are the agents by whom God is pleased to bring the Indians to an understanding of the Faith.

“Truly they must be a godly people,” he says, “if they are anything like our beautiful Maria.”

We will not conquer the city at all, he says, shaking his fists in the underwater gloom of the forest. Instead we will simply reduce it to civility by introducing private property, wages, horses, industry, the use of money, and Spanish goods. We will teach the people to wear shoes, to speak as we speak, to cook meat in the right way, to walk properly, to cut their hair.

“Indians in a state of nature are just like children,” he says, “easy to persuade, and under the influence of a hot and humid temperament that inhibits them from making rational choices and exercising free will.”

Everything he says is wrong, and everything he says is the truth, and I can’t tell the difference in any language, but now I understand something about the distinction between the Christians and the Pirahao. It is true that none of us can see the forest, but for me it is a void and for the
Christians it is populated by the familiar ghosts and devils they carry with them wherever they go. This is why the Christians can cross the ocean so easily. This is why they can live in cities and in the forest and in the mountains. This is why they never flicker in and out of existence, as I do. Christianity is the world of things that don’t exist, and nothing can harm it, and nothing can intrude upon it, and it is everywhere all the time, and they are always at home in it. That is how I come to understand that I am not a Christian, and never have been. After I realize this, I begin to exist again, if only a small amount.