The Devil's Garden (11 page)

‘I’ll come straight back now.’ I addressed Tupki, then his wife. ‘I’ll bring medicine. We’ll work out what to do.’

Tupki grimaced. ‘Yolanda cannot go to the capital.’

Kim’s voice was soft but not yielding. ‘Why not?’

‘Don’t worry about the money,’ I said.

Tupki showed no sign of having heard but he stood upright and said something in Matsigenka. One by one, the family began to back away whispering among themselves.

Kanari, however, waited by the door. ‘Don’t worry about the money,’ he said, grinning and rolling one shoulder then the other. ‘Don’t worry about the money.’
He waited for Kim to pass, jejune and aggressive as he watched her body. ‘Soon we have plenty of money. Nice woman. Party every day.’

V

Once, late one night, when we had taken our lamps down to the bathing hut and we were washing together, Sole told me the story of how the Matsigenka believed the
virakochas, the white people, came into the world. Some people were digging for shiny metals, she said, when the virakochas suddenly poked their heads up out of the mud. The astonished diggers
desperately shovelled the earth back on the emerging creatures but it was futile: the virakochas came pouring out too fast for their efforts. Hastily summoned, Tasorintsi, the blowing spirit, rose
up and rained down many arrows on the heads of the virakochas – killing a great number. It seemed the flow had been staunched and Tasorintsi left, warning the Matsigenka never to dig any more
holes. Thereafter, things looked like they might be OK . . . But then, one day when Tasorintsi was far away in the forest, the virakochas unexpectedly started to pour out of that hole again. And
this time, they came so quickly that there was nothing that could be done – even when Tasorintsi returned. The virakochas, it turned out, had been created underground by Tasorintsi’s
great rival: the evil trickster, Kentivakori.

I

We were surprised to enjoy a sweet pancake breakfast prepared not by Jorge but by Estrela, who was staying behind with Lothar and was delighted to see us go. There was
then half an hour of dispersal before we assembled on the jetty and climbed into the canoes. We were excited – glad to be leaving the Station, glad to be together again, and glad, too, for a
purpose besides our own pleasure. We would be travelling all together as far as Laberinto. And from there, Sole would accompany Yolanda with Virima down to the river city while the rest of us would
travel upstream on one of the specially chartered overnight boats to Machaguar.

Sole had spent the morning constructing Yolanda a bed in the bottom of Tord’s canoe – pulling out seating planks, securing a simple frame so that it would not slide, and then laying
down bedding, sheets, pillows. Tucked away somewhere, she had a thick cylinder of my banknotes and she had slipped one of my cards into her tatty old hiking boots. I was paying for their passage
and whatever hotels and medical treatment were necessary. There was some additional business that Sole had in the river city – though she would not tell me what exactly and behaved instead as
though she were buying me some big secret of a birthday present. Her mood had improved with each day following the soldiers’ departure. And for my part, I had not realized how dependent on
her happiness my own had become until it now returned.

We would lose working hours, of course: all of that Friday, the Saturday morning lab-time and much of the Monday for the return. But since one trip was absolutely necessary and the other was
likely to do us good, my decisions had been easily made. As we set off, I heard a Paradise tanager calling somewhere close by – a high-pitched whistling sound – earnest, childlike. An
augury, I thought, though of course I did not believe in auguries.

They were waiting on the shallow muddy headland above the reeds. Kanari and his brothers carried Yolanda down to the boats on an improvised stretcher. Nothing was said but hope
now hovered in the air and there was a certain operational fortitude in the faces of the boys as they lifted their sister gently into the boat.

Jorge left Tord’s canoe for ours to make room, bringing his precious case of beer with him. Tord, meanwhile, stood upright by his tiller, doing nothing, and yet performing this ministry
with such a sedulous and determined attitude of pastoral care that he would have us all believe that the afflicted of the world had ever been his personal charge and that their best chance on
Earth, as in Heaven, lay solely with him. (Who can blame the Achuar for shrinking the missionaries’ heads?) There was no point in my offering yet more hands to get in the way – so I
remained in our boat and watched Virima and Sole ease a near motionless Yolanda off the stretcher and into the bed that Sole had made. Somewhere, Sole had also found a great umbrella to protect
Yolanda’s face.

Mubb and José were waving. Tupki’s wife appeared beside them on the bank, looking on as we pulled away. I never knew her name.

It was a beautiful day: a clear sky and – midstream at least – drier air and the breeze of motion. I was deeply cheered to be in our company. Sole and Tord were up
ahead in the missionary’s boat with Yolanda and Virima; Felipe, Kim, Jorge and I were now in the second. We dropped the engines to their downriver chug. We rearranged whatever padding we had
bought to make the plank seats more comfortable. We settled back – Tord and Felipe piloting, Jorge sipping his beer, Kim taking pictures, me with my notebook and the jungle sounding like a
pair of maracas shaking out its rhythm on either bank.

Time on the river is like time at sea. It is not measured in minutes but in the way the light changes the colour of the water. And I felt a deep and unusual contentment that day as I watched the
current and the passing frieze of the banks. I had imagined something like this before – I had seen myself drifting along with mankind’s Latinate checklist of creation to hand, ticking
the boxes as I went, all five kingdoms intimately described. One of the thoughts that I have always liked in Tord’s Bible is the idea of humanity as steward – caretakers of a paradise
entrusted. Of course this leads on to questions as to who has done the entrusting . . . But is there not some secret back channel – muddy and shallow – that links even the most avid
atheist’s urge to classify with the preacher’s teaching of stewardship?

Children stopped their play to watch us go by. We waved and they waved back. Many of the riverside houses were little more than raised platforms, haphazardly roofed. The number of other canoes
and skiffs increased as we went. Men were fishing here and there – with nets and spears and trailed hooks. I watched women laughing as they washed clothes at the water’s edge.

On the near bank, we passed the oyster-backed heron birds whose name I still did not know, standing in the cracked mud of the holms. The way they swapped from one foot to the other was
mystifying: the free leg gradually offered to the earth in one long slow-motion bend until – abruptly – the decision was made and both feet were firmly planted for a glorious second
before – just as quickly – the other leg was snatched up an inch or two and then retracted the rest of the way with that same measured movement. What possible reason could there be for
this? Must there always
be
reasons?

I watched a pair of turquoise butterflies dance about a heliconia flower;
Lasaia agesilas
, the rarest of the rare. And as I fell asleep, the forward sky was full of swallows. Through
half-closed eyes, I saw them wheel and swoop. Fast and keen. So many beating hearts in those chasing breasts; alive alive alive.

II

I see, too, that my own ants and these hollow trees in which they nest need not even be two species but one. When the world was young there were one-celled organisms that did not have
chlorophyll, that could not turn light into energy, and there were others that did. These combined to make single species of plants. Why not, then, another word for this amalgam creature in the
Devil’s Garden – part ant, part plant?

Indeed, my ants are very like trees already. The colony releases thousands of seed queens. These queens must scatter and fall to the ground. Almost all will die. Those too close to the parent
colony, like saplings too close to the parent tree, cannot thrive. But the few colonies that make it are stable and unmoving; and they set about the exploitation of local resources, guarding them
jealously.

In this cast of mind, I come to consider
Homo sapiens
. And in the self-delight of two hundred thousand years – almost nothing – I see that he has lost all humility and
blinded his own eyes to the true nature of his circumstances. That, despite his intelligence, he alone of all creation looks to the gods to save him. But I see, too, the ants who track him, settle
where he settles, thrive where he fouls; I see them swarm across the world, destroying, colonizing, voracious –
Solenopsis invicta
, the red fire ant, that he can neither control nor
repel.

III

We arrived in the late afternoon and even from a distance we could see that Laberinto was in chaos. Mindful of Yolanda, we cut the engines and hung back while we assessed
our best course. Everything centred on the crowded pier, which teetered over the mud and vegetation, reaching out desperately for the water. Two big riverboats had drawn up perpendicular to the end
but no care was being taken to load the outer vessel first and so commotion massed on both decks while more goods and boxes and carts and cages continued to arrive from the town. There were smaller
boats all around. I called across to Sole: ‘Is there somewhere else we can tie up?’

‘No,’ she yelled back. ‘We’ll have to pull up on to the mud and walk.’ She indicated where the riverbed was dry beneath the pier. Filth and refuse choked even the
weeds. A cadre of vultures kept desultory station on an upturned canoe.

‘Is there a path?’

Tord raised his voice from behind his tiller as if he had not heard us. ‘We cannot climb up with Yolanda.’

Sole ignored him. ‘Yes, there’s a way to the main track. They use it as a dump.’

Two hundred yards downstream, we stepped into the mire. A fouler-smelling place could not have been imagined and yet there was no choice but to cross it. Jorge volunteered to stay behind with
his beer until Tord and Felipe could get back and secure the boats somewhere. Sole went ahead to requisition a room at the town’s only hotel, the San Mateo. The rest of us set off after her,
carrying the stretcher as best we could – Tord, Felipe, Kim and myself with Virima beside us – sometimes tiptoeing, sometimes slipping calf-deep, sweating through the slime, parting the
tangle and weeds where they rose up, passing by the rusting fridges, the bed frames, the stain-soaked mattresses, the oil drums, the cans, the bottles and endless plastic bags. The worst was a
rotting dog – the bristled yellow skin of its bloated stomach suppurating beneath a fume-brown cloud of flesh flies; this horror doubled by the vultures; and then tripled by the realization
that, if ever it began properly to rain, this tip would soon be the river
bed
again and was deliberately sited in order that all of this detritus would be washed into the system. In every
blessing – a curse.

We were filthy, thirsty and slick-faced when we emerged onto the pot-holed track. I had never known such heat. Water left my body across the entire surface of my skin – even my knees were
sweating, my wrists, my knuckles. We rested and swung our aching arms about. I had given Yolanda some more paracetamol. She was still conscious. We swapped sides to alleviate the strain and hoisted
the stretcher and walked on, Virima beside us leaning in to her sister whenever we jolted or paused.

Inland a little, the track joined a second – muddier and wide. Dead ahead and away to our right lay the Laberinto favelas. The trees had been cut back and the ground bared, creating these
terrible fields of mud. Great holes had been dug without pattern or obvious purpose – some filled with standing water, others with refuse. There were no cross-streets, but instead ill-defined
footpaths wound and narrowed between the hundred corrugated-iron huts, the lean-tos, the plastic sheeting and the tents.

A motorbike bounced past. Boys ran alongside. Matted heads emerged from beneath tarpaulin. A woman with a bucket of water was washing a child that would not stand still. Capuchin monkeys
followed along behind us, too close.

We struggled on in the direction of the centre. The stretcher drew eyes from all sides. Perhaps it saved us from the worst of the leers and drunken shouts that I knew from my last visit attended
the arrival of the unfamiliar. I had not been down this far before but I had come through Laberinto on my way in – eager, clean – and was pleased to leave as fast as Felipe and Sole
could find Vinton the following morning. Felipe had then explained to me that there were no serious prospectors left in the town – that the thousands encamped here were the mad and the
desperate: men who slept guard at the entrance to their tunnels day and night; women who claimed to have discovered a new gold-yielding stream so secret that they walked three days in circles to
throw imagined thieves off their trail. For everybody else, Laberinto had become merely another frontier town, a last stopping-off place before the various river tributaries went deeper into the
interior. Apart from the supply stores and the depots, the only people who stayed here worked for the only people who could provide employment – those in charge of the trades that paid;
drugs, guns, timber and sex.