Red Jungle (10 page)

“Your back pocket,” Beatrice said, as if she was reading his mind. He’d forgotten that he’d taken the book with him. It had slipped out of his pocket somehow in the house. The maid handed him the book and a flashlight. Somehow it must have fallen out. He took the paperback book from the maid and looked up at Beatrice.

“I’ve read it. I had to at school. Oxford,” she said. He nodded a thank you. He had no idea how she knew it was his.

He spent that evening reading the Delacroix by the air conditioner, sometimes walking to the window of the little bungalow where he’d been put up and thinking about Beatrice. Katherine came to the door about nine; she’d been having a meeting with the general. She said she wanted to use the shower, as hers wasn’t working. They made love afterwards. She was very amorous. She was much more passionate than she appeared holding onto her telephone, or driving her jeep.

Afterwards he continued to think about Beatrice, what she was doing, even while he was lying naked on the small bed and Katherine was telling him all about the general and what he’d said about the upcoming elections. He was going to run for president. He’d told her that he was sure he was going to win.

After Katherine had left—when it was very late—Russell continued to think about the general’s wife, what she was doing. What, if anything, she might be saying to her husband about him. He wondered what kind of conversations that kind of man and a woman who’d been to Oxford could possibly have.

When he got back that Sunday night to his apartment in the capital, he emailed his senior editors in London and pitched the idea of a series of articles on the upcoming presidential election. He knew from speaking to his bosses in the past that they didn’t like General Selva on principle, and considered him an arch-example of the anti-democratic forces in the country that were bad for business. His editors, he’d guessed, would jump at the opportunity to push Antonio De La Madrid, the pro-business, neo-liberal candidate who was opposing Selva for president. He wasn’t surprised when he got the green light for the series. He wanted to see Beatrice Selva again.

EIGHT

He’d come back to
Tres Rios
to start searching for the Red Jaguar. The morning was viciously hot and clear, as if it hadn’t rained all night. When Russell walked outside with his cup of coffee, he could see the
Volcan de Agua
in the distance, part of a cruel-looking set of green mountains to the north. By four in the afternoon it would rain again, but the mornings were hot and humid and perfectly clear. The plantation’s rear garden was flat and had a fountain the French family had built, and a huge pond with fish. There was a swimming pool too, but it was empty, its white-painted bottom glistening now in the morning sun.

Russell walked to the edge of the pool. Sitting down, he let his legs dangle over its edge. He’d have it filled, he thought. He drank his coffee in silence and listened to the early morning sounds of the plantation: birds, horses being taken from their stalls, sounds of domesticity from the workers’ housing. There was a mixture of children’s voices and
ranchera
music, too.

He looked into the empty blue sky, cleaned of everything, for signs of rain.
Why shouldn’t I feel optimistic?
he thought. It was true he owed a great deal of money now, but he owned all this, and somewhere out there might be a great treasure. Maybe he would stay here after he found the Red Jaguar. He could be a man of leisure. Carl had assured him the Jaguar would fetch millions of dollars. His share would be enough to live on the rest of his life wherever he chose. Could he really be happy back in San Francisco? Or had this country gotten under his skin in some way, its Wild West quality perversely satisfying something in him?

“Don Russell?” He turned around. The girl who had opened the gate for him that first day was standing in front of him, barefoot like a goddess—a brown-skinned Diana.

“Yes,” he said. He had to shade his eyes to look at her. She was wearing the same yellow dress. Behind her, the white volcanic sand used to pave the garden was catching the sunlight. It made the sand sparkle under her feet like crushed diamonds.

“May I work in the kitchen? You will need a cook,
Patron?”
she asked in Spanish. “I worked sometimes in the kitchen— for Don Pinkie.” The girl was looking down at her bare feet. “I can clean, too . . . if you like?” The French family was going to take their own maid and cook with them to the capital. They’d been staying here, but were finally leaving that morning.

Russell suspected that Don Pinkie, who owned several other plantations, was going broke slowly and would finally be ruined. That morning at breakfast, he’d kept checking his pager, which gave him the current price of coffee at the Chicago Board of Trade. He’d come to have breakfast and to say goodbye to Russell and Mahler.

“Seventy dollars, that’s all we need, right!” Don Pinkie had said to him at breakfast, as if Russell were an experienced coffee plantation owner. The fact was he’d never grown a house plant, much less run a coffee plantation. He knew nothing about the practicalities of coffee production. What he did know about the business he’d learnt over three years of covering the commodity as a financial journalist. From what he could tell, the over production in the world’s coffee market was going to kill off most growers in Central America. They just didn’t stand a chance against the Vietnamese and the Brazilians, who paid their workers even less.

The Frenchman reminded him of himself when he’d been holding a losing position while trading stocks. Why is it we always believe things will get better, he wondered, looking at the Frenchman. Why do we believe that the stock will go up in an hour or tomorrow? That prices will turn around? That she will love me better tomorrow?

“Right,” was all Russell had said. “Seventy dollars would do it, all right. Things would be much better.”

“We’ll get it by next January, when the harvest comes in. You watch. The Brazilians can’t keep dumping coffee into the market. You’ll see that you made the right decision, young man. You’re at three thousand feet here. That’s quality coffee,” the Frenchman said. “Don’t forget that.” Don Pinkie turned to look out the window at his wife and children out in the garden, saying their goodbyes to some of the workers. “I left Europe without a penny thirty years ago. I was a Legionnaire in Africa. . . .”

Don Pinkie’s wife, a tiny, attractive Frenchwoman, was much younger. Russell watched her walk to their old Willys Jeep with a box. She’d thanked him for allowing them to stay in the guest house while they made arrangements to move to one of their other plantations. Don Pinkie talked on nervously about the coffee market while his children played for the last time near the fountain the family had built in happier times. Russell listened respectfully while he watched the wife and one of her maids pack the car.

“Could you take our picture?” Don Pinkie said, finally standing up. “By the fountain. We liked this place the best. It was our home.” He seemed upset, but was trying to hide it.

“Of course,” Russell said, standing too. Russell and Don Pinkie went out on the veranda. Don Pinkie’s wife was crying. She was a pretty woman with red hair cut very short, in her early forties, Russell guessed, and her eyes were blue. She looked at them and said, laughing, that she’d been crying all morning. She’d kissed several of the workers goodbye one more time. The workers, mostly old men, had come to the big house and paid their respects, and she’d kissed the old men and embraced them. They had been embarrassed but moved by her gesture. They all embraced her and shook the Frenchman’s hand, and wished him luck there by the fountain.

Russell took the family’s picture. The Frenchman looked done in, he thought. He’d gotten older, it seemed. Mahler came out and stood on the veranda watching them.

“My wife says that you have a kind face and people like you always have good luck in business,” Don Pinkie said, taking the camera from him. They all walked back towards the family’s cramped jeep. The two children, boys, in short pants and white, well-pressed shirts like French schoolchildren, were gathered around their parents, looking sad. Their father took their picture again standing by the jeep. Years later, the boys would look at the photo and say that they’d been very happy there.

“I’ve let go of the administrator, so you’ll have to get someone if you’re going to be living in the capital. And there are only about ten families left working here. It was all I could afford. We didn’t bother to clean this year, or fertilize. I hope you can keep them on? Of course you have the right, according to the new employment laws, to. . . .”

“Yes… I’ll keep them on,” Russell said, and they’d shaken hands the way men sometimes do, earnestly, from the shoulder. The wife shook his hand too.

“And the ex-guerillas. They have the plantation next door,” Don Pinkie said as he opened the door to his jeep.

“I didn’t know that,” Russell said, surprised.

“I should have told you. I’m sorry. But they’re harmless. The government gave them the plantation as part of the peace settlement. I’ve been over to help them with technical advice.

They were very good neighbors, but they don’t know much about coffee. They won’t bother you, but I thought you should know. Goodbye then,” Don Pinkie said.

He and his family got in their jeep and drove away, the children very quiet in the end. Russell realized, after they left, that he had forgotten even to ask to see the office or the books.

He stood up now and looked at the girl. The fountain had brought it all back. He’d wanted to confess to the Frenchman that he had bought the place only to find the Red Jaguar and that he had no interest in the coffee, or the coffee business, but that had seemed cruel. He told himself he was taking an incredible gamble and that he shouldn’t feel guilty about paying good money for the place.

“Yes, of course,” he told the girl. “If you like. I need someone in the kitchen. What’s your name?”

“Gloria Cruz.
Gracias Patron,”
she said. The girl turned around and walked toward the house. He called to her and she stopped, her hair silken and so black on the yellow of her tattered dress, her breasts heavy against the fabric. She reminded him at that moment of a great painting.

“Gloria…? What do you want? Your salary?” he asked her. She looked at him a moment, nonplussed.

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling, and turned around. He let her go. He tossed out the rest of his now cold coffee on the ground. It made a dark spot on the sand, and he followed the girl to the house. She was born here, he thought. She was afraid he would send her away from the only thing she’d ever known. She just wanted to stay there. The idea of the city probably scared her to death.

“I’ve ordered two horses,” Mahler said. “I take you to where I want to start digging.”

“Fine,” he said. Gloria cleared away the breakfast dishes. They’d come back to the dining room, with its view of the fountain and gardens. Mahler flirted with the girl as she cleared up, asking her where she was born, about her mother and father, if she was married. Each question drew a girlish smile. Russell stayed out of it. Rather than be sexually attracted to the girl, he felt protective of her. He doubted Mahler felt the same way.

Mahler, shirtless, lit a cigarette. The wife of the Frenchman had put up new wallpaper in the breakfast room. It was bright yellow with white roses, very elegant.

“What are you looking for? I mean, it’s daunting isn’t it? So much jungle,” Russell asked. He watched his partner inhale and settle back.

“Hills, that’s what we look for,” Mahler said. “That’s what we look for. Clearings and then small hil… hills that don’t look right. Geo…logi…cally out of character.”

“Look, I’m no expert, God knows that, but I’ve been out here in the bush and I know you can’t see shit—much less clearings. There are no fucking clearings… How could there be?”

“You’re nervous. Since you came here. Re…Relax… I find the jaguar,” Mahler said, letting the smoke pour out of his nose.

“There’s a hundred and ten acres. Half of that Don Pinkie said was jungle. Never been planted with coffee and no roads into it. It’s virgin jungle,” Russell said.

“I said
relax,
old boy.”

“I’ll need more than that,
old boy,”
Russell said quickly.

“Water,” Mahler said, and winked at him.

“Water
. And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“The Mayans worshipped water. They needed water to irrigate their crops and they didn’t build if there was no good source of water nearby. They were very smart people,” he said.

“And?”

“There are three rivers on this plantation, one is very small. What you call a. . . .”

“Creek,” Russell said.

“Yes. Creek.”

“That leaves two. One runs through the
cafetales
and is used for hydro power here. They would most probably ha…have found any ancient building site of size when they were putting in the coffee years ago. The workers would have been all over that river.

“Okay.”