The Devil's Garden (24 page)

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I did. To Quinn.’

Lugo’s boat sped off downriver.

‘Is that why he hired you?’

‘No. He hired me because I had a job in a zoo when I was a student and because –’ he half smiled – ‘I knew that the abdomen of an ant has seven sections.’

‘Why are you telling me all this now? What do you want me to do?’

The other boat was coming towards us. ‘I’m telling you because you should not act in ignorance. Because when they take us back to the Station, I want to be sure that you and Kim go
– straight away – without any more trouble.’

‘We leave together,’ I said.

They pulled up alongside. There were only four men in it now – the Boy and his associate were at the front, the other two at the back with their guns still pointing at us.

‘You should have stayed in the jungle,’ the associate said, a sneer hovering over his bucked teeth. ‘One of the Colonel’s favourites has just been shot dead. And
he’s blaming you two. Now it’s really starting.’

I

The sun had passed beyond the edge of the world, the sky was streaked in the colours of yolk and blood and the trees seemed almost sinister in the intensity of their
stillness. If the rains did not come soon, I thought, the broken jetty would be all that told there ever was a river.

The Boy was to be our guard. Perhaps they did not take us seriously, or perhaps there was no one among them more suited to the job. We were ordered to go up the makeshift wooden walkway that
they had laid across the mud. I closed my eyes at every pause and wished only to sleep. I imagined a cell in a holy place of redemption – a clean bed, bread, soup, bells that called out for
prayers.

Some other soldiers must have radioed in Tord’s position, because a third boat had evidently been despatched to arrest him. Halfway back to the Station, where two channels met, they had
been waiting for us. Tord had waved across. And ever since, he had seemed almost pleased to have been taken – the chance to work among the servants of the enemy; courage was only ever madness
anointed.

Now there were orders to climb the rope ladder up to the river path. I followed Lothar and Tord. We stood on what was left of the jetty, batting at the mosquitoes, waiting for the other men to
come up while the Boy watched us – zealous, proud. I had not seen him close in daylight before. Behind his metal brace, his lower teeth were misshapen and twisted, sharp.

Tord began to speak softly: ‘The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.’ His hands were clasped. ‘And he saveth those who are of a contrite spirit. Let the wicked
forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy on him.’

I thought the Boy might strike him. I feared nothing save exertion and I doubted my strength even in getting out of the way. But the Boy seemed oblivious and simply continued to watch us –
blank-faced but with an unnatural intensity in his eyes.

We were told to walk. Generators had been pushed into the undergrowth on either side of the path. They banged and throbbed, discharging heavy black fumes that were trapped in the understorey and
that caused me to cough and smart as we passed. We emerged to sagging cables and lights above our heads; the deranged fizz of electricity. The makeshift registration desks had been extended –
so that there was now a row of three or four structures built with corrugated iron and tarpaulin that flanked us as we walked in toward the
comedor
.

On our left, two soldiers guarded boxes of electrical goods, their rifles crisscrossed on the tables. On our right, another was selling beer to tribesmen who turned to watch us. More onlookers
gathered as we passed. We were a freak show prodded forward by a juvenile circus master. My skin had become encrusted so that even to move the muscles of my jaw felt as though I were cracking my
own face apart. Blood, sweat and the river had smeared themselves in dried rivulets on my arms where I had rolled my sleeves so that I seemed in part to be a striped creature. I was hobbling; half
from the pain in my hips where I allowed my body almost to die in the tree; and half from the pain in my boots where I was sure that I had cracked my nails from kicking the doors. But I sipped from
my bottle, amazed at the miracle of the water in my throat.

Ahead, where Jorge’s canteen had been sited in front of the
comedor
, there was now a line of ramshackle stalls that curved from the stairs up towards their huts. Jorge himself was
standing beside a fire in the middle, his uniform stained and his smooth head shiny with sweat. Half a dozen squirrel monkeys were hanging from rusted hooks that had been slipped over a portable
clothes rail; they dangled – heads down, stretched and sagging in their skins, filmy-eyed. Above the fire, two or three had been skewered – anus to throat – so that they seemed to
be crawling along the spit.

The Boy overtook us.

‘Wait,’ he said.

We stood – Tord praying quietly on one side, Lothar like a stone on the other. The older soldiers closed up from behind and bunched around us. They paid us no attention. Either they knew
that any escape on our part was risible or they intended casually to shoot us if an attempt was made. Pleased to have returned to base, they talked among themselves, smoked and looked up at the
women who were sat in frayed denim skirts on our lounge chairs at the lip of the
comedor
. In response, the women crossed their legs with studied casualness. Two or three of the soldiers
pressed us forward so that they too might go closer. The women began smirking and giggling and turning away. A fat man with a chess clock on his knee sat beside them, drinking coffee through pursed
lips. And I saw that the women were wearing their make-up to look older, not younger.

My side stung and ached where I had gashed it beneath my ribs. I was afraid I would faint. The smell of the cooking flesh was loathsome. I shifted my weight. I sensed Lothar stand in closer
beside me. Jorge had stopped turning the monkeys on his spit and now stood staring – he must not have recognized me at first. He passed his hand across his head and flicked away the sweat.
There was an acrid taste in my mouth. I swilled some water and spat.

The Boy reappeared, coming down the stairs eagerly. ‘Captain Lugo is busy,’ he said.

Several of the soldiers laughed. Others gave mock cheers and balled their fists. And only then did I realize that Cordero had left and that the Judge had been right after his fashion: that it
was indeed the Colonel who had been sustaining what had passed for civilization.

We were under arrest for spying, the Boy explained, as if relaying news of a successful job application. We were to be held in one of the huts with the blonde bitch. There would be questions
later. He had no idea how long for. He did not know where the Colonel was. We could not speak to the Judge. We were thanked for our excellent whiskey and the generous supply of cigarettes. He said
this last in such a way that I could not tell whether he was being sarcastic or merely relaying sarcasm without understanding.

Tord spoke quietly: ‘For the spirit of harlotry has led them astray. And they have played the harlot. And they have gone into the darkness.’

‘Let’s go.’ The Boy raised his rifle like the bar of a gate that he must close to shepherd us into a pen. His associate set off ahead, looking over his shoulder every few
paces.

The shadows between the trees were deepening. Frogs were barking. We rounded the kapok. A woman with a long frizz of straw-dyed blonde hair was sat on Kim’s porch in red and yellow
underwear. The Boy’s associate called out. She blew him a kiss, which he made a show of catching and rubbing on his rump as he looked back over his shoulder at us again. Somewhere a radio was
playing country music. My eyes went to Sole’s hut. The door was open. I felt terror twitch inside me. Further down, towards the lab, vultures flapped the path like withered geese. My own hut
was to be our prison.

Lothar went inside. I hesitated on the stairs. A pair of shear-tails fell and swooped and rose and darted through the clearing – so close that they must surely be lovers or deadly
rivals.

‘I need to wash,’ I said.

‘Later.’ The Boy blinked.

Tord interposed. ‘Actually, you would be doing the Lord’s work if you accompanied him to the bathing hut.’

Still the Boy’s face was impassive. ‘Yes, later,’ he repeated. ‘Everybody will wash.’

He gestured for us to go inside.

A dog hovered below hoping for food or love or someone to throw a stick. The music had stopped. The radio announced the election of another president somewhere.

II

It was dark when I awoke. My body was stiff. And my mouth felt as though it were drying up like the forest. I rolled from the wall. My lamp burned on my desk. Kim was
kneeling beside me, offering me water from a bottle. Her face was smeared and drawn and her clothes were stained with mud. Something had snagged her and she had a deep dark cut on the side of her
neck.

‘They say we can wash now,’ she spoke gently. ‘I’m going to have to borrow some of your clothes. They won’t let us go anywhere.’

For the first time, I could smell myself. Shame rushed over me. I sat up, backing away.

Tord appeared and crouched down slowly, fingertips joined. ‘Can you get up?’ he asked.

I leaned against the wall. My skin was so itchy that I felt an overwhelming desire to tear it off and lay it down flat and work at it with a stiff-bristled brush.

‘Where’s Lothar?’ I began.

‘They took him.’ Kim was unable to disguise the anxiety in her voice. ‘They said to ask questions.’

Tord affected calm by way of contrast. ‘He said he would answer them only if they would allow us all to wash. We should move now though – if you feel you can – before they
change their mind.’

Someone had rigged up electric lights in the other porches. The cable snaked away onto the path. I could hear the sound of bamboo rats – cor, cor, cor. Opposite, the hulk
of the lab seemed to loom in the darkness, dense and square. I had assumed we were going to the bathing huts, but the Boy’s associate stopped at the bottom of my stairs and turned with a
leer. There were three wooden pails.

‘What are these for?’ Kim asked. ‘Why can’t we go to the washhouse?’

‘This is an army camp – the showers are for soldiers and for whores only,’ the associate said with his twitching grin. ‘Maybe we should go together.’

The Boy spoke as though relaying facts. ‘We are not permitted to allow you into the forest after what happened with the prisoners. You are to wash here.’

His associate gestured at the pails with mock invitation: ‘And the Captain doesn’t like to work on prisoners who he can’t stand to smell.’

Tord addressed us all: ‘Who is a God like unto thee that passeth over transgression?’ At the jetty, I had thought that either he was about some devious psychological ploy, or that he
was proclaiming his piety with renewed vigour out of a desire to match every raise the Devil might make. But now I saw that he was afraid. As others might rehearse the law, or become terse, or
underhand, these citations were how he met the strain of iniquity; and I saw, too, that he had thus far found their power equal to anything he had encountered in the world. Now he turned to us and
said: ‘I will wait. Your need is greater than mine, Doctor. Use my bucket.’

‘Good. So you go back in now, Jesus.’ The associate levelled his gun at Tord. ‘We didn’t want to see your shrivelled little dick anyway.’

Tord did not move. Without warning or changing his expression, the Boy, who was beside him on the porch, jabbed the butt of his rifle sideways, hard into Tord’s stomach. The shock of the
pain contorted the missionary’s habitually tight features and he doubled, groaning, breathless. He struggled for a moment, almost on his knees, incoherent and gasping; then, with a great
exercise of his will, he straightened up and mastered his expression. The Boy did not look down or even move his head.

‘My friend, before we strike one another, let us talk among ourselves and find what brotherhood there is between us. You are a young man. You have the luxury of years. Your life may yet be
worth a great deal to yourself, sir, and to our God. Because Jesus saves.’

‘Go in,’ said the Boy, his voice again without emotion.

Tord hesitated.

Abruptly, I peeled my shirt from my skin. I bent to untie my laces. I took off my boots and my socks.

Tord stepped inside the door and the Boy shut it behind him.

Kim hung the towel and the clean clothes over the rail of the porch.

I became aware of three people sat on Sole’s stairs opposite. Others were on the path. The radio was playing a marching song. I unbuckled my belt and tried to remove my underwear at the
same time as my grime-coated trousers so that I could discard them both without Kim seeing the filth and the mess. My feet were eerily white save for the dark u-shape of dried blood around my
toenail.

‘We need soap,’ Kim said.

The Boy shrugged.

‘We need soap,’ she repeated.

‘There is soap in my hut,’ I said. Naked, I turned and walked up my stairs. My face and arms were black, my legs smeared where my trousers had been stained, my stomach scarred with
bites and stings. I did not allow the Boy to look away. But neither did he attempt to do so.

Tord was kneeling inside – whether in pain or in prayer I could not tell.

In a hushed voice, I asked: ‘Can you walk out of here?’

He looked at me a moment, then fixed his eyes somewhere above my head.

‘No.’ He shook his head, his voice hoarse. ‘No, it is impossible. There is only the river – at least for three miles. After that, there is a path and you can go inland
through the Matsigenka territories . . . but it would take days to walk anywhere – if you did not get lost.’

‘What about upriver?’

‘No. It’s too dangerous. The Yora have left their villages and the killing is indiscriminate. Even the Matsigenka are fighting now. The loggers are armed. There are rumours of more
soldiers in the borderlands. And nobody really knows the interior. Only Lothar . . . Only Lothar could go upstream.’