Red Jungle (32 page)

“Everyone takes that drug. I’ve taken it. Countless times,” he said.

“Well, some people get
this
,” she said. She touched her head.

“I don’t care. I love you.”

“You shouldn’t.” She dove into his arms. “You shouldn’t—” she said.

He kissed her. She smelled of perfume and coffee. They held each other. He could hear the afternoon traffic outside on La Reforma.

“It doesn’t matter. At all,” he said.

“I can get better,” she said.

“Of course.”

“I know I can. I’m young.” He didn’t answer. “I want to be with you.” She stood up. “I want to be with you. Everything you want, I want,” she said. He looked toward the kitchen. “I want to be with you now.”

“All right. But Olga…”

“I don’t care about Olga,” she said. “Please.”

“I have to say something, even if it’s for her not to bother us,” he said.

“Well then, tell her a crazy English girl wants to sleep with you. Where’s the bedroom?”

He nodded down the hall. “The second door.”

She went down the hall, turned at the door, and held her hand out. He got up and turned towards the window. He could see a tank crawling down the avenue, cars trying to pull around it. He heard the phone ring. It was Beatrice’s cell phone. She’d left it on the table by her coffee cup.

“Don’t
touch
it,” he heard her say from the hallway. “Just come here.”

He knew it didn’t matter; the fact that she might be sick, or whatever, didn’t matter. He loved her. It was a simple love, really.

When he got to the bedroom, she was standing next to a pile of her clothes on the floor. He closed the door quickly, afraid Olga might see.

It rained again that afternoon, and more tanks came out on the street as General Blanco was preparing himself. He’d been in politics a long time and knew someone out there wanted him dead, he said to an aide as he watched the central plaza from the palace office. Three tanks stood guard. The traffic outside was lighter than usual.

“The thing about this country is, when it feels quiet, like this, that’s when things happen to you,” Blanco said. He picked up the phone, acutely aware of what had happened to one of his predecessors in this very palace. He was too old for this intrigue; he called Carlos Selva.

“Carlos? It’s Manuel Blanco. I’m stepping down. I’ve just appointed you President of the glorious republic,
et cetera, et cetera
. I wish you all the best in the upcoming election.

“By the way, the currency just collapsed in New York. Completely gone. You couldn’t buy a bus ride from the Miami airport with a million quetzales. The IMF said they won’t lend any more. Can I help you get your dollars out of the country? No, mine are already gone. Yesterday. Yes I’ll see you at the club
Alemán
. Why not. Squash? Why not? And a good lunch afterwards!” he laughed.

Blanco called his contact at the American embassy and told them he was retiring. They had expected it.

Carlos called Beatrice immediately after getting the news, but she couldn’t be found.

•••

Mahler shot the two men who had found it. Really, he thought as he ejected the round from his shotgun, he’d had no choice. He heard the parrots noisily cawing as they escaped through the jungle canopy, frightened by the shooting. He looked up into the enormity of sunlight and tree limbs; it was a beautiful green lace, with just the tiniest bits of blue showing here and there. A howler monkey chased across the tree tops above him. Tree limbs sagged violently under its weight.

He looked down at the two dead men, and then stepped forward to look at the head of the Red Jaguar. Gloria, the girl from
Tres Rios
who had fallen in love with him, came running from the campsite. Mahler had bought her jeans and a new shirt. She’d tied her hair back.

He turned, and could see her coming up the hillock towards the temple. He could see the smoke from their cooking fire. He was pleased with how much they had cleared. It had taken weeks, but they’d cleared a lot of jungle. He’d always liked the feeling of uncovering things, ever since he was a child in his parents’ garden and they’d given him a toy shovel and beach bucket.

He watched the girl run toward him. He felt for a shell in his jacket pocket. She was a good girl, and he loved the way she looked naked. And he knew she loved him. He liked Indian women; they were quiet. He’d spent so much time in the bush these last five years, they were the only women he knew anymore. This one running towards him was the prettiest he’d ever had.

He knelt down and wiped his brow. He’d been hacking nearby with a fat machete, caught in a daydream. He was back in Germany, teaching. The students were listening, and he was telling them that he was probably the greatest living expert on Mayan culture anywhere in the world.

Gloria was getting closer. He turned to look at the dead men.

They had yelled something, and he’d dropped his machete and come around to this side of the hill, the temple only partly uncovered. The two Indians he’d hired were standing looking at the jaguar’s red jade face, inside the temple where the jungle had invaded.

For a moment, no one had said a word. The electric light they’d rigged off a portable generator shone on the Jaguar’s partially uncovered face. Even though he believed he’d find it, Mahler had had his moments of doubts. Everyone had. But when they’d found the temple, he was sure the Red Jaguar was close.

“That’s it,” he said in German. He’d run to the men, and all three of them began clawing at the thing with their fingers. He told them in Spanish to be careful, his voice echoing against the stone walls. They worked frantically. In a few minutes they’d uncovered the left ear, then the whole jaw, then the entire face started to show through the vines. It was then, after he was sure it was the Red Jaguar, that Mahler stepped away from the two men, picked up the shotgun, and killed them.

Mahler looked back at the girl, who was standing where he’d stood when he’d first seen it. She said something in her native language. He answered her in Quiché, saying that it was the Jaguar and that the head was much bigger than he’d expected. He said then, in German, that it was at least ten tons. It was twice the size he’d expected. He had no idea how he would move it alone.

“I’ll have to use the horses to pull it out,” he said in English. “That’s the way to do it now. I’ll be alone, and how else can I do it?”

The girl turned to look at him, not understanding what he just said. She read his intent in his eyes. It was suddenly very clear to her that he was going to kill her, too. She instinctively turned and ran down the hillock towards the camp.

Mahler watched her run. He noticed she was barefoot. It didn’t matter, he thought, watching her. She was running towards the river, and he would catch her easily, he told himself. He watched her run in a desperate, almost falling way. She did fall, and when she got up, Mahler calmly trotted out of the temple and down the hillock. The temple entrance loomed behind him, its dark gray stones hit by the rain. He carried the shotgun over his shoulder casually.

He called Russell on his cell phone with the good news on the way back to camp from the river, where he’d caught up with the girl.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Russell raised himself on one elbow and glanced out the tall windows, their glass thick and blurry. It was raining violently. Cars sped through the downpour, their yellow headlights signaling late afternoon.

He turned and took his wristwatch from the nightstand. It was almost six. They’d both fallen asleep. It was the first time, he realized, that they’d felt safe enough to fall asleep together.

He sank back into the pillow. Beatrice was facing him, her face angelic. She had a girl’s face, something about it precious and cherubic, like a nineteenth-century print of an idealized young girl.

He had an important appointment that evening with the IMF country team. Antonio was to accompany him. But he didn’t want to get up. Somehow he felt that this was the last calm that he and Beatrice would know until he took her away.

He pulled up the sheet and looked at the ceiling. Lines in the plaster made odd-shaped countries, turning the ceiling into a map of some lost world.
And if she was sick?
he wondered.
Disturbed
. The idea frightened him, but it didn’t change the way he felt about her. After all, wasn’t
he
mad? He was planning to assassinate the president of the country.

He rolled over and held Beatrice. Her body was warm and delicious. He had no desire to leave her, but knew he had to.

It was he who had suggested, out of the blue, that someone put a bullet in Blanco and get it over with. It was just like the Greek when he’d been a kid. It was the obvious choice. Blanco was a murderous thug who stood in the way of progress. It had just come to him.
Was it wrong?
Antonio, Rudy Valladolid, everyone had stopped speaking and just stared at him. They could see he wasn’t joking.

“You sound very sure of yourself, young man,” Senator Rudy said after a long silence.

“I am,” he said. “I’m certain it’s what should be done. If you let Blanco appoint Carlos Selva president, it will be a catastrophe. He plans on doing everything the IMF suggests, and you’ll have another Argentina here. Selva would like nothing better than a return to war with the communists. That’s all he knows.” Everyone was looking at him; Russell didn’t know whether it meant that they agreed, or that they were afraid. Then it dawned on him why they were still staring.

“I’ll do it myself, if that’s what you’re asking,” Russell said. “I’m not afraid. It’s what you want, isn’t it? A solution, for God’s sake.”

“You know what that means?” Antonio said.

“You probably wouldn’t survive, boy,” Rudy said. “You must be suicidal.”

He supposed he lay in this very bed as a child. He wondered what his mother would think of what he was going to do. He would assassinate a dictator, and perhaps die in the process. Would she approve? Would she try to stop him? Would she tell him he didn’t have to risk his life? Would his great-grandfather, the great risk taker himself, be proud of him?

“What are you thinking about?” Beatrice said, looking at him.

“Where we’ll live once we leave this miserable country,” he said, lying. She moved her body completely against his.

“I fell asleep; it’s late,” she said.

“So did I.”

She reached for him. Her hand felt warm on his chest. “Do you really want me?” she asked. “To marry me?”

“Very much,” he said.

“I’m afraid.”

“So am I,” he said. “But you haven’t told me yes or no.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll become a priest. Or maybe a circus performer in Poland. . . . You have to, because we love each other,” he said, holding her.

“All right,” she said. “I can’t have you dancing with bears, or whatever they do . . . the circus people.” She lifted herself out of the blankets and kissed him. He felt her breasts press against his chest. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” she said.

They made love again. It was different than before. He felt safe. He was no longer afraid of losing her. She was going to be his.

He walked into the kitchen. It was dark now. The lights were on, and the room seemed very bright to him after the twilight of the bedroom. Olga was doing the ironing. She seemed to love the work, or at least get some peace out of it. When she’d been with him, she’d been very deliberate about it. She was standing on an old wooden box and using the old marble counter as an ironing board. The iron was a huge mid-century thing.

“Olga?” He continued to tie his tie. She looked up at him, her face slightly wet from the heat of the iron. “Olga, I . . . could I ask you a favor?”

“Of course, sir,” she said, concentrating on her work.

“I don’t want you to mention to anyone that
Doña
Beatrice was here with me today. Or that she was
ever
here.”

Olga smiled like a pixie.

“Why,
señor
.” She was teasing him. He was grateful and felt connected to the woman in a way he hadn’t before. Seeing her now, as she must have been with his mother, somehow made his mother’s memory more real to him. “The
señora
is very, very beautiful,” Olga said.

“Yes she is, Olga.”

“I’ve seen her in the newspapers,” Olga said. She touched her index finger to her tongue, then touched the bottom of the iron quickly. It hissed. “Beautiful, like your mother.”

Olga served them sandwiches in the dining room. It was an elegant room, with the original furniture. His uncle hadn’t gotten around to changing it before he’d left for Paris.

They spoke very little as they ate. Already Russell could see the fear in Beatrice’s face. She’d promised him something that she might not be able to carry out, he realized.