The Indigo Notebook (18 page)

“Speak slowly and he might understand.”

He draws out his words, eyeing Wendell. “What did Silvio tell you?”

“He told us about Lilia.” I translate Wendell’s answer, trying not to look at the gun. “That she lived with you for a while.”

He sighs, props the gun against the house, then disappears through the doorway. There’s the faint sound of the TV—some elephant squeals and a man narrating in a deep voice. Maybe the Discovery Channel in Spanish, which Layla’s taken to watching lately.

More from curiosity than bravery, I peek my head inside the doorway. To the left is a bedroom, where I catch a glimpse of a bed, a big flat-screen TV, and a giant heap of teddy bears. Bizarre. Straight ahead is a hallway with a concrete floor and unpainted walls, and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, as though Faustino hasn’t quite finished the house. To the right is a doorway to the kitchen, where he’s rummaging through a box, his back to me. Quickly, I slip away, outside, past the rifle leaning against the wall. If he planned to hurt us, he wouldn’t leave the gun right there, would he?

Wendell, meanwhile, has walked around to the side of the house. “Hey, look at this!”

Behind the house is a high stone wall with a solid black
metal gate. Brilliant leaves and giant flowers cascade over it. I recognize the long, trumpet-shaped blossoms from the
floripondio
tree the girls told us about.

Wendell spots them too. “Aren’t those the zombie flowers?”

My mouth is suddenly dry. “Let’s leave soon, okay?”

As we sit back down, Faustino emerges from the house with three glasses and a bottle of clear liquid in a beat-up plastic Coke bottle. He pours us each a glass and clinks his against ours in a toast. “To my son.”

Wendell raises his glass. “To my father.”

Faustino drinks first, all in one gulp.

Wendell sniffs his. “Smells like rubbing alcohol.”

“Go ahead, drink,” Faustino urges.

Wendell gulps the liquor, then screws up his face. So much for his promise to his mom.

I hold up my glass, examine it. Perfectly clear. Probably just alcohol. No evidence of extra ingredients like poisonous flowers. And he’s poured ours from the same bottle. Still, drinking with a possible devil man seems like a terrible idea.

“Toma,”
Faustino says.

“Thanks, but I don’t drink,” I say, pasting a polite smile on my face.

“Just one.”

I taste a bit with my tongue. It burns. “Sugarcane liquor?” I ask, stalling.

He nods. “Drink up.”

I look at him hard. I’ve been told by people in other Latin
American countries that I have a strong gaze. A gaze with powers to cause good or harm. Of course, I don’t believe that, but it’s useful for freaking people out in certain situations.

He meets my gaze, looking only amused.

I raise my chin, try another tactic. “If you had one wish, Don Faustino, what would it be?”

He blinks. “Why? You’ll make it come true?”

“Just curious,” I say, keeping my gaze level.

He looks over the mountains, thinking, and in that moment I casually dump the liquor over my shoulder.

He doesn’t notice. “That this piece-of-crap house was a mansion with a hundred rooms. That those chickens were my servants. That the donkey was my private jet. That I could be the richest man alive. That’s what we all want, right?” He refills our glasses.

“Don’t drink any more,” I murmur to Wendell.

“Just one more glass,” he whispers.

“What about your promise?”

“I don’t want to be rude, Z.”

Faustino gulps his, Wendell sips his, and I toss mine discreetly over my shoulder.

“So,” Faustino says, leaning back. “Some gringos raised you?”

Wendell nods. “Sarah and Dan Connelly of Colorado.”

“Those gringos are all loaded, huh?”

Wendell stares, not getting Spanish slang, until Faustino says slowly, enunciating,
“Mucho dinero.”

“Not really,” Wendell says, looking woozy. “I mean, maybe by these standards, but in the U.S. we’re just a regular middle-class family.”

Reluctantly, I translate.

Faustino nods. “Why’d you come to this crap hole?”

I want to put my arm around Wendell. He looks so unstable wavering on the stool, as though he could fall at any moment.

“To find you,” he says in a raw voice.

Something in Faustino’s face cracks. A glimpse of emotion shines through, tenderness maybe. “You came all the way here for me?”

For what feels like eternity, but is probably about a half hour, we talk. The conversation stops and starts in fits. Right when I think Faustino might be a decent guy after all—just a little out of touch with his emotions, maybe—something slimy pops out, like his asking how much Wendell’s watch costs or how much money his parents make. With every question he asks about Wendell’s life in Colorado—even the apparently innocent ones like how he likes school and what sports he plays—I can’t help questioning his motives, wondering if he’s hatching a devious plan.

But I also wonder how much of my suspicion has been sparked by what we’ve heard about Faustino. I want to give him a fair shot. I do.

It’s not easy. He’s as good at evading our questions as
Silvio. He brushes off questions about Lilia, saying it was too long ago. “Some things are best left alone,” he says, waving the questions away with his hand.

Wendell seems more patient than me. By now, he has an obvious buzz from the liquor. It’s made him relaxed. Too relaxed. His words are slurred, his head wobbly.

I take out my indigo notebook. “Don Faustino, what’s your earliest memory?”

“Hiding in a crystal cave.”

I jot it down. “Hiding from what?”

“My father, that
hijo de puta.”
Grinning, he pours another round of drinks.

When he doesn’t elaborate, I open my mouth to ask why.

“Don’t ask me why.”

Instead I ask, “What matters most to you?”

He shakes his head, laughing. At me or with me? I can’t tell with this man. He tilts his head back. “Besides getting rich? Two things.” Abruptly, he stands up, stretches, and disappears inside.

I ditch my drink. “Ready to go, Wendell?”

“Just a little more time, Z.”

“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Faustino comes out with two cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other. One is the size of a shoebox, the other is as big as a fruit crate. Tiny holes have been poked in the sides. “Here, look.” He unwinds the twine wrapped around them and opens the larger box a crack.

Wendell and I move our faces close, peer inside. There’s a pile of sticks, leaves, and stones, shadowy hues of brown and gray and olive. Now they’re moving. No, wait, it’s a thick, smooth rope that’s moving, and it’s huge. Now its head appears, pointed with two beady black eyes.

A snake.

A pit viper of some kind.

Something about the slow undulations and the arrow shape of its head touches a deep, instinctual fear inside me. It’s curled up on itself, but it must be a few feet long stretched out. It’s staring at me, as if deciding whether to leap from the flimsy cardboard box and sink its fangs into my neck.

My heart freezes.

“Jergón,”
Faustino announces, closing the box again, securing it with the twine. “Also known as the X snake. See the X pattern? Got three of these fellows from the jungle east of here. A single bite swells the entire arm, turns it blue and black, forms giant blood blisters.” He shakes his head, grinning. “Monstrously ugly.”

I find words. “This is the part where we leave, Wendell.” I stand up, backing away slowly.

But Wendell’s captivated. Maybe the alcohol’s impaired his judgment. Or maybe he wants so badly to connect with this man that he can overlook the extreme creepiness of the situation.

Faustino lifts up the smaller box, unties the twine slowly.

I can’t resist. I peek inside. Some wood chips and sticks and
leaves. Faustino pokes at the pile with a stick. Then, a scurrying set of brown legs, fuzzy and spindly, the span of my hand. As fast as the legs appear, they’re hidden again.

“Phoneutria,”
he says proudly. “Armed spider. Got him from the Amazon too. One of the most excruciatingly painful venoms in the world.”

“We should be going now,” I say. “Thanks for the drinks and everything.” I tug on Wendell’s arm.

“But I didn’t show you the second thing,” Faustino says.

“What second thing?”

“The second thing that matters most to me.”

For a moment, indignance eclipses my fear. “One, the poisonous snake. Two, the poisonous spider.”

“No, that was one thing. My venomous-creature collection. There’s a lot more of them inside.”

I translate for Wendell. Unbelievably, he says, “Let’s see the second thing.”

“Wendell, this is really, really messed up.”

“Please? After this we can leave.”

“What’s the second thing?” I ask Faustino flatly.

“Follow me.” He heads around the side of the house, toward the wall and the zombie trees.

W
ithout a moment’s hesitation, Wendell follows. And against my better judgment, I follow too. I can’t believe I’m doing something so incredibly stupid. At least the girls know we’re here. They’ll get help if we don’t return. “Just for a minute,” I say, deliberately adding, “We have friends expecting us at the base of the hill.”

Faustino puts his hand on Wendell’s shoulder and leads us behind the house and along the stone wall to a thick wooden door with an old metal lock. “Not a word to anyone about this. You swear? I’m only showing you because you’re my son.” He takes a dull silver key from around his neck and opens the door. “Come in, amigos.”

I pause. The walls are high, about seven feet, the tops rimmed with shards of broken glass poking out of concrete.
I’ve seen this glass-shard technique in cities all over Latin America used to keep out thieves. But now I wonder: what if this wall is meant to keep people
inside?

“I’ll wait outside,” I say firmly.

“Whatever.” Faustino ushers Wendell inside, leaving the door cracked behind them.

“Wow!” I hear Wendell’s muffled voice. “Wow!” It’s the same kind of
wow
as the waterfall
wow
.

“Wow,” he says a third time. The breeze has blown the mist away, and now the sweet scent of nectar floats out from behind the wall. Leaves make dappled shadows on my side of the wall. My curiosity wins. I take a deep breath and go inside, leaving the door slightly ajar.

It’s amazing, the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen, even in pictures, even in my imagination. What the Garden of Eden might have been like. Trees dripping with flowers and fruit, giant bushes of blossoms of all colors, all shapes, an explosion of petals and stamens and pistils. It’s magical. Bees and insects and hummingbirds buzz through the honeyed air. The smell is intoxicating, jasmine and lily and a symphony of scents I’ve never smelled before. In places, the foliage is so thick it forms a tunnel of petals and leaves around the path.

I walk farther, hypnotized.

Up ahead, Wendell’s just behind Faustino. I follow them at a distance, in case I have to run back out. At least I have a few remnants of common sense left.

Now the trail branches into more paths, a maze, narrow
pathways through the flowers and leaves and branches.
Floripondio
trees abound, their blossoms hanging like stretched-out, upside-down horns, some pure white, some blushing peach, some bloodred seeping into yellow, some strawberry cream-pink melting into vanilla.

Clouds of violet-blue blossoms spill from jacaranda, and magnolias drip white flowers. Brilliant red and orange poppies blanket the sunny spots of ground, their delicate petals dancing in the breeze. Lilies rise in a cluster of smooth, alabaster sculptures. Tall, sunny daisies and candy pink cosmos skim our hips, and orchids peek from damp leaf shadows, clinging to tree branches. Carpets of fruit spread out under lime and grapefruit and orange trees, and still more fruit hangs heavy from the branches. Bougainvillea and honeysuckle crawl up the stone wall. Hummingbirds hover and buzz at the petals, darting here and there.

And then there are hundreds of flowers I have no names for, but their stamens stick out from the petals like long, thin tongues, and their petals burst out like dizzying fireworks. The foliage is so thick it’s impossible to tell where one plant ends and another begins, so many leaves tumbling together, shades of silvery sage and vibrant jade and deep forest pools.

Wendell turns to me, his eyelids half-closed in drunken reverie. “Translate for me, Z,” he murmurs.

“What is all this?” I ask Faustino.

“My children,” he says proudly. “Son, meet your brothers and sisters.”

Wendell’s gaping. “Did you plant all these?”

“A long time ago, with my father and brother. Some, my father planted before we were born. On his good days, after the work in the fields was done, we’d tend to this garden. Only it felt more like play.”

“Why doesn’t Silvio come here anymore?” I ask.

He picks a whitish purple flower, tucks it behind my ear. “Beautiful,” he murmurs. This man can be charming. In a slightly disturbing way.

But I refuse to let him mesmerize me the way he’s mesmerizing Wendell. I fix Faustino with my hardest, most piercing gaze. “You owe it to Wendell to tell him about Lilia.”

He takes a long, deep breath and pauses every few seconds as I translate. He doesn’t meet our eyes, just looks around at the plants, brushing his fingers along the trunks and leaves and petals, stopping here and there to pull out a weed. “I didn’t treat her well. When she was pregnant with you, son. I treated her—I treated her the only way I knew how: the way my father treated my mother.”

He pauses to brush a few bugs off some petals. His movements are gentle. “One day she had a black eye. My brother saw. He took her to his house. He and Luz wouldn’t let me see her. I wanted to say I was sorry, but he wouldn’t let me. I drank half a bottle of
trago
and came after him and threw rocks through his window.” Faustino tosses us a meaningful glance. Defensive? Ashamed? Daring? Hard to tell. “I never claimed to be a good person.” He pulls another weed from
the base of a flowered bush. “Silvio’s the one who told Lilia to give you to the gringos, son.”