Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (36 page)

 
          
“From
time to time,” Innocent said, “you remember that other place, and how nice it
was to visit, but you don’t make the mistake of thinking you can go back and
live
there. So that’s what’s happening
now, Kirby. I’m visiting some other me, a real nice me that I never knew
before.” That lazy smile softened Innocent’s features once more. “But don’t
worry about it,” he said. “I’ll go home to the real me when the time comes.”

 
          
“In
that case,” Kirby said, now completely sincere, “I’m glad I was here to meet
the other fella.”

 
          
Voices.
Murmuring voices.

 
          
Valerie
opened her right eye and followed the progress of an ant as it tottered along
the dark damp ground, carrying a big piece of chewed' off leaf above itself like
a green sail. Her left cheek was pressed against that ground, so her left eye
remained closed, while her right eye tracked the ant and her right ear received
the input of those murmuring voices without attempting to decipher.

 
          
Mouth:
dry. Body: extremely stiff. Head: painful. Knees: stinging. Hair: matted.
Brain: semiconscious.

 
          
Her
right arm was bent up at some little distance from her face, lying on the
ground, leaving a miniature arena in which that ant^sail bobbed as though on a
dark brown lake. Valerie watched the pale green triangle until it reached her
thumb, reversed, turned right, reached the knuckle at the base of her thumb,
reversed, turned left, and carried on out of sight, into the great large ocean
of the world.

 
          
Human
beings—much larger than ants—went by. Valerie’s working eye swiveled upward,
sighted over her hulking shoulder, and glimpsed the two men moving away,
talking. Camouflage uniforms. Curved knives in black leather sheaths at their
waists. Gurkhas.

 
          
It
was coming back, slowly and erratically. The eye swivel had been unexpectedly
painful, so Valerie shut the lid, retired into darkness, and permitted memory
to work its will upon her.

 
          
Indian
village. Airplane with Kirby Galway
and
Innocent St. Michael. Flight, with tortillas. Great confusion as darkness
settled, her mind adrift—what
had
that all been about? Had terror unhinged her? But she didn’t remember feeling
that frightened, certainly not after she’d gotten some distance from the
village. She’d even paused beside a stream, she remembered, sitting there a few
minutes to catch her breath and drink water to wash down her first tortilla.
After that . . .

 
          
After
that, wandering in darkness, much of it mere confused imagery in her mind.
Had
she been laughing uproariously,
pretending to be an automobile, talking out loud like Donald Duck? Surely
memory was wrong. Or had there been something in the stream? “Don’t drink the
water,” isn’t that what they say?

 
          
But
then— Rescue! A Gurkha patrol, bivouacked for the night, and she had literally
fallen among them. So now, after all the perils and dangers of the last weeks,
finally she was safe, amid her rescuers, whose murmuring voices were all around
her. Not speaking English, of course. What would it be? Something Asian.
Nepalese, was that right, for people from
Nepal
?

 
          
“.
. . kill . . .”

 
          
Weariness
spread through her body, a kind of outflowing unconsciousness, padding all
around her aches and sores, moving toward her brain.

 
          
“.
. . attack the village ...”

 
          
Awake
too early, wrong to be conscious before her body had knit up its wounds.
Soothing, soothing sleep. The darkness flowed.

 
          
“.
. . take no prisoners ...”

 
          
Strange.
Understanding their words, but not in English. She’d never understood Napalese
before.

 
          
“.
. . kill them all ...”

 
          
Valerie’s
right eye shot open.
Kekchi!
She
could understand them because they were speaking Kekchi! Not the dialect she’d
originally learned, nor the somewhat muddier version they spoke back in South Abilene,
but some other sharper version, more guttural and glottal, but comprehensible
nevertheless.

 
          
Why
would Gurkha soldiers speak Kekchi to one another? “When do we kill the woman?”

 
          
Valerie’s
entire body clenched. Her open eye stared at her wrist, her ear dilated.

 
          
“When
we get there.”

 
          
A
slight unclenching, but eye and ear both still wide.

 
          
“Why
not shoot her now? She’ll slow us down.”

 
          
“No
shooting. What if somebody hears and comes to look?”

 
          
“I
could cut her with this knife.”

 
          
“And
if she screams?”

 
          
(Oh,
I’d scream, yes, I would.)

 
          
“I
know you. You’re just in such a hurry to kill her because she scared you so
much last night.”

 
          
“Me?
Who had to change his pants? Was that me, or was that you?” “Yeah, I thought
you
were gonna drop dead, you were so
scared. You thought a real old-time devil came to get you.”

 
          
“I
didn’t go run and hide in the woods like some people.”

 
          
They
discussed this further, bristling a bit, each accusing the other of being more
superstitious, more prey to fears connected with the old Mayan gods and devils,
while Valerie lay silent and unmoving, taking little pleasure in the irony:
They
had been afraid of
her.

 
          
Then
at last they got back to it, one of them saying, “So what do we do about the
woman?”

 
          
“She
thinks we’re Gurkhas, taking her back to camp. So she’ll come along, no
trouble. When we get to the village, we gag her, wait till the people come out
from the city. When we shoot the villagers, we shoot her, too.”

 
          
“What
about the people from the city?”

 
          
“We
kill the driver. We wound one white man, it doesn’t matter which one.”

 
          
“Why
don’t we kill them all?”

 
          
“Because
they’re the people who write the stories.” (There is no word for
reporter
in Kekchi.) “When they go home,
they’ll write all about how the Gurkhas killed all the people in the village.”
“Then we go back across the border?”

 
          
“And
the Colonel gives us our money.”

           
Valerie continued to lie there,
feigning sleep, while the false Gurkhas continued to talk. They discussed for
some time whether to rape her, finally deciding not to do so yet but wait till
they got to the village and then play it by ear. (The idioms are somewhat
different in Kekchi.) Then one of them said something about how they should get
started soon, the village was a good hour’s hike north of here, and Valerie
decided it was time to wake up. She made a moaning sound, stretched, rolled
over, sat up, looked around wide-eyed at the group of men seated and standing
all about her, and said, “Oh, my gosh!”

 
          
They
looked at her. One of them said, in Kekchi, “Smile at her. Show her we’re
friendly.”

 
          
A
cluster of ghastly smiles were beamed her way. Valerie smiled back and said,
“You rescued me!” Her performance was based on Judy Garland in “The Wizard of
Oz”.

 
          
They
nodded and smiled. Apparently, none of them spoke English.

 
          
With
some difficulty, Valerie struggled to her feet. The dozen men watched her,
smiles still pasted on their faces. Looking around, she said, “Where can I wash
up?”

 
          
“What
does she want?”

 
          
“Food,
maybe.”

 
          
Valerie
made hand-washing gestures and face-washing gestures.

 
          
“She
wants the stream.”

 
          
“She
wants to piss and wash her face.”

 
          
Three
or four of them pointed past some trees at the edge of the clearing.

 
          
“Oh,
thanks,” Valerie said, her own ghastly smile still firmly in place, and turned
away.

 
          
“I
say we definitely rape her.”

 
          
“Not
before we get to the village.”

 
          
Valerie
paused at the first trees to look back, smiling and wagging her finger. “Don’t
peek now,” she said.

 
          
Vernon
couldn’t eat. He pushed the fruit around in
the bowl and looked gloomily at the coffee, while over at another table the
seven journalists wolfed down everything in sight, Scottie going so far as to
pretend to bite the waitress’s arm. She offered him a professional smile,
refilled his coffee cup, and came over to ask
Vernon
if everything was all right.

 
          
“Fine,”
Vernon
said.

 
          
Vernon
was at a small table to one side of the
large dining room at the
Fort
George
, with the ravenous correspondents in front
of him and the view of the timeless sea beneath a timeless sun off to his right.
(The black freighter still stood at anchor in the offing, the paperwork on its
eventual auction suffering the usual timeless bureaucratic delay.)

 
          
What
is going to happen in the village?

 
          
I
didn’t ask that question,
Vernon
told himself. I don’t want to know the answer. I only want to survive
to the other end of the tightrope. I don’t want to know what links together the
Colonel’s various demands of me.

 
          
Refugee
settlements.

 
          
Photos
of Gurkhas.

 
          
The
refugees flee
Guatemala
, flee the Colonel and the government he
serves. They become lost to the Colonel, protected by borders, by international
law, by the British, by the wandering Gurkha patrols. The refugees come to
trust the Gurkhas, short dark men who come from so far away but who look so
like themselves. British intelligence in this part of the world is excellent,
mostly because the refugees and the other Indians will tell things to the
Gurkhas that they won’t tell any normal Brit. (When, in 1979, Guatemala started
a secret road westward through the jungle into southern Belize, it was the
Indians who told the Gurkhas, and the Gurkhas who advanced through the jungle
and stopped the road.) Faith and trust in the Gurkhas emboldens the refugees,
protects the refugees, swells the tide of refugees, and at the same time
increases the embarrassment and frustration of the government the Colonel
serves.

 
          
The
journalists at last had finished their breakfasts, were rising.
Vernon
put a piece of papaya in his mouth, but
couldn’t chew it. The fruit was cool at first, but warmed slowly in his mouth.

 
          
The
correspondents streamed by, talking at one another. The American photojoumalist
named Tom stopped to say, “Give us ten minutes and we’ll be ready.”

 
          
“Mm,”
Vernon
said, nodding his head with the papaya in
it.

 
          
“Your
vehicle’s out front?”

 
          
“Mm.”
More nodding.

 
          
“See
you there.”

 
          
“Mm.”

 
          
Scottie
went by with the extra man, the editor from
Trend
named Hiram Farley. Scottie was saying, “Tell me now, Hiram, old son, we’ve
known each other all these many hours, what do you think of me, eh? Eh?”

 
          
Farley,
with a judicious expression, said, “I would describe you as tiresomely witty.”

 
          
“By
God, that’s succinct! Don’t pay by the word over on Trend, I’ll bet!” Scottie
said, and clapped Farley on the back with a sound like a gunshot.
Vernon
blinked, and swallowed his papaya.