The Devil's Garden (14 page)

‘Oh, they call me lots of things, Mr Forle. But Wilson. Wilson, I like.’

It was not clear whether this was his Christian name or otherwise. ‘What brings you here – Wilson?’

‘Work. I am always working. Or rather, I am never working and I am always working.’

‘You’re something to do with the carnival?’

‘Wilson supplies the generators and all these torches you see. Your eyes doubt me. But I am the bringer of light. Yes, I do all the festivals and the parties – among other things
– on the river.’ He looked across to see how I liked this information. ‘Among other things that I do and that I
can
do. Don’t concern yourself. And you? You
are?’

‘I am a scientist.’

‘Climate, animals or pharmacology?’

He was quick.

‘Insects,’ I said. ‘Ants.’

‘Which shall inherit the Earth.’

‘Yes, though they will not see it that way.’

‘On account of?’

‘There’s no before and after in the world of the ants. As far they are concerned, the Earth is already theirs.’

‘Do they not have souls, Mr Forle?’

‘Consciousness is notoriously difficult to test for.’ I sipped the last of my can. ‘Even among humans.’

‘It begins in dreams – does it not?’

‘What? What begins in dreams?’

‘The soul. Everything thereafter.’ He threw his cigarette so that the glow arced before it fell below us. ‘Let us say that there was nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No civilization, no religion, no science.’ He inclined his head sideways again and held it there as if his eyes were indeed in the side of his face and he need not turn to look at
me. ‘Nothing but a man. A man sheltering in a cave long ago as he waits for the winter to pass.’

‘A man.’

‘When he falls asleep, he dreams. And in his dreams, he leaves his body behind, he sits down with distant friends, he meets his ancestors. In his dreams, the dead live. He discovers that
neither time nor space binds him, that he is a wandering spirit, that he is more than the flesh and blood of his daily struggle. In other words, Mr Forle . . . in his dreams, his soul is
born.’

I pressed out my cigarette on the rail.

‘In time,’ he continued, ‘is our man not certain to conceive of another world beyond that which he can see, touch, taste, smell and hear? Inaccessible by day, perhaps, but
there – always there – just around the corner of his mind?’

From the fires below, I could smell oil burning and the thick heady scent of green leaves smoking. I dropped the dead cigarette.

‘And when the interpreters of dreams, those who claim they can speak with the dead and the gods and monsters that he has met in his sleep . . . When these interpreters make themselves
known to him, is he not certain to follow them? Is our man not on his knees with desperation for an explanation? If only someone would tell him
why
, Mr Forle.’ The low laugh returned
– sardonic or genial, I still couldn’t be sure. ‘You see how it is . . . Man needs no more than a single dream to fashion for himself two thousand years of delusion.’

‘I’m not an evangelical,’ I said. ‘I’m a scientist. I try to proceed by reason and proof.’

The laugh again. ‘Here. Might as well.’ He lit another cigarette and passed it across. ‘So . . . ants ants ants: in a way, it’s interesting, isn’t it? The inner
workings. Perhaps you knew Dr Quinn?’

‘Cameron Quinn? Yes. Yes, I do. I do.’ Now I straightened and turned and regarded him with a cordiality that I could not even pretend to suppress. ‘Cameron Quinn was my
colleague. We work on the same thing! You knew him?’

‘I did and I did not.’ He continued to lean, waving his cigarette. ‘He came here last year. He was very nearly shot. I became involved. He appeared to have made a number of
enemies.’

‘He could be difficult but he—’

‘Not difficult – I would say instead that he believed himself immune . . . from death. Which is not something that will make you popular in this part of the world. Death is such a
common currency here, Mr Forle –
tender
.’ He was watching me again. ‘In my opinion, he was insane. He was on that plane that came down – yes?’

My expression must have betrayed my incredulity because he added: ‘It’s my work – to know. My business. The river.’

‘It was terrible,’ I said. ‘So sudden. Just gone. He was my closest friend. I can’t . . . . do you know, were there any survivors?’

‘Come.’ He peered at me. ‘There is a place where you can get a proper drink. We can talk as we go.’

I was eager now. I flicked away my second cigarette and followed him. He walked quickly. The few people we encountered stepped aside.

‘What do you mean – he was insane?’ I asked, struggling to keep up.

‘The recklessness. The rashness. He did not care about himself.’ Wilson spoke over his shoulder. ‘And yet he cared for many things a great deal. He liked to take matters into
his own hands.’

‘Did you speak to him? About what?’

‘We spoke about the same things as we have been speaking about, Mr Forle. I can see why you are – why you
were
– colleagues.’

Though they were the words of a stranger, I felt pride stir. I attempted to walk beside him. He seemed unaffected by the heat. A noise I had never heard came up from below – a bird that
sounded like a frightened calf lowing.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked again. ‘You talked about dreams?’

‘We talked of explanations.’

‘Did he say about his work? Was he in good spirits?’

‘Oh, he was well. Very well.’ He half turned. ‘He told me a story about how one of the Matsigenka huts fell down and killed a child just before he visited. The mother and
father called the death witchcraft but he pointed out that the beams had been eaten away by termites. They said that they knew this but asked him why did their son have to be sleeping beneath the
beam at just the moment when it collapsed?
That
, they said, was the witchcraft. I remember the story well because Dr Quinn said that previously he would have ascribed the disaster to
“coincidence” or “chance”, which, now that he had thought about it, was no explanation at all. He thought this
very
interesting. Explanations, you see, Mr Forle. Here
we are. After you.’

He indicated a small path off the walkway to the left. There was music again. We were far from the water now. The hut was the largest I had seen and the noise from within rose as we came to the
door.

‘This is where I first met Dr Quinn. He was with a woman. Had brought his own. Which is
unusual
.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Ashaninka. Please go ahead. It’s all in here.’

It was a bar of sorts – some kind of meeting hut, I guessed, when the village was functioning normally. There were rough wooden chairs and tables with hurricane lamps on each –
though somewhere there must have been a generator because strings of amber bulbs ran like fat fairy lights all around the walls. In the middle was a dance area where nobody was dancing save for two
semi-naked girls. The music was softer than elsewhere. Men sat in clusters while the women moved among them. On one side, a dozen or so were gathered around a bigger table where money was changing
hands. These were
mestizos
– wiry loggers, rheumy miners, coca-pool gangs; red-eyed and raw-skinned men, unshaven and with the affected bravura of cowboys. But there were wealthier
people here, too, proud of their boots, their machismo protocols and the spirits that they sipped.

Wilson stopped at one end of the bar, close by the wall. I must have been watching the dancers because next he said: ‘If you want a girl, then ask for a girl. The young ones are better . .
. but worse . . . if you know what I mean. It’s an old problem.’ The murmured laugh. ‘If you want two girls – might as well – it’s best to ask the first to
recommend the second so that they’ll be good together. Usually, they will do everything but not each other. This is a difficult area, I’m afraid. Nobody knows what is expected –
not the house, not the girls, not even God. Perhaps, with three girls, these issues begin to diminish. Please, allow me to buy you a proper drink. This can you are carrying is rather . . .
childish.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I like to maintain good relations with whoever is on the Station – with the ant people. You never know. Whiskey, I presume. He has something you will like.
Vincenzo?’

The bar man left off the group he was serving and came straight over with a nod. Wilson must have given some sort of a signal for now Vincenzo pulled up a bottle emblazoned in blue and gold. He
held up an ice-tong. I nodded. He pushed the drink across and I turned to thank my guide but he had moved away and I had to look around until I found him. He was sat at a nearby table, talking
quietly. Long-fingered, he beckoned me over. I turned back to the bar wondering if I should offer to pay – or leave a tip at least. But Vincenzo was already about his work elsewhere.

The man with Wilson rose and I saw that he was a giant – six and a half foot at least and broad with that. He had a buzz cut and he wore a white vest in the manner of an off-duty
combatant. His face was sombre – but sombre in the way of a young boy who is aware that sombreness is expected of him.

‘This is Abideus,’ Wilson motioned his introduction from where he sat. ‘He was sent. By various parties. Most of which came through me. He is ex-army. It doesn’t matter
which one. I think it would be helpful for you to talk to him.’

I extended my hand. He must have been thirty-five though his manner suggested no more than fourteen.

‘Please sit down.’ Wilson winced at his own cigarette then offered me another. ‘Abideus, kindly tell Mr Forle what you saw.’

‘I saw bits of the plane. The seats. Somethings like suitcases maybe. A lot of metal. Everything burned.’

‘The bodies,’ Wilson breathed.

‘I saw everything burned. Some whole bodies. Some just heads.’ He made the shape of a skull with two huge hands. ‘Most was nothing but black bits – twisted like rubber
after fire.’ He looked upwards as though he were still seeing what he spoke of. ‘There were more bodies up there – in the trees. One thing big and white – from the wings.
And the tail of the plane was up there, too. There were rags and shoes in the branches. Then everything else everywhere – all around – pieces of plastic and clothes – I
don’t know – cans of spray and toothpaste tubes. After the planes collided, I think this pilot came down slow – and he try to land on the top of the trees. Maybe one or two
survive the crash but then the fire kill them.’

‘Could you identify anyone?’ My question sounded hoarse even to my own ears. ‘Would someone be able to recognize a face?’

‘No. Not everything burned completely – but – but the bodies – they were all filled with maggots.’ His giant fists uncurled. ‘This is what happens here. The
flies lay eggs and the maggots eat the bodies from the inside and everything is rotting in three days.’

I did not speak.

‘When I got there, the brains were already gone.’ He raised two index fingers and pointed out from beneath his brow. ‘The flies were being born from inside the eyes.’

Wilson spoke softly and leaned forward. ‘Nobody survived, Mr Forle. I am certain. Nobody is alive in the jungle somewhere. There is nothing lost here. There is nobody to find.’

My cheeks were wet though I did not know I had been weeping. ‘Quinn would have liked to have died in the forest,’ I said.

The cocaine was astringent but there was no cheap detergent sharpness, no sear; instead, a purity, smoother, sweeter, a single line, and then – powerful, muscular and
shocking in its speed and potency – it reared up inside me, swelling out to seize and fill my shape, taut against the borders of my skin. And suddenly my heart was screaming, and my blood was
beating in my temples, my teeth tight atop of one another. I felt the shudder and then the certainty, and the rise become a soar, and then, just as fast, I felt the world shrinking to nothing more
than the narrow circle of my skull, and everything beyond that fortification seen anew by two lidless eyes that looked out from deep inside my own hollow sockets.

I

We should never have come back from Machaguar. We rounded the last bend and I saw in a single moment that everything had changed at the Station. There were fifty or more
canoes – some tethered, others beached, a few idling in the river, more arriving. Indistinguishable figures clambered our frail ladder. Our jetty was visibly lurching under the weight of
people. There were bare-chested tribeswomen gathered in groups and naked children playing in the mud on the bank. Men formed a queue that disappeared up our path towards the clearing. Above, a bird
of prey turned in slow circles watching something I could not see.

‘Beach us,’ I ordered.

Something was happening with the weather: the air was like warmed glue. I jumped, Kim followed. Together, we hauled the boat up. I threw in the rope and did not wait to gather my pack. Ignoring
the alarmed glances of the women and the children racing beside me, I ran along the bank. Mud reached up my legs. I climbed the steep rise – slipping, cursing – until I was standing
where the jetty’s stem met the forest.

‘You’ve got to get off,’ I shouted. ‘Everybody – the jetty is collapsing.’

There was laughter as well as alarm in the eyes of the men around me.

‘Please. Get off.’

Nobody moved. I reached for the shoulders of the man closest and clasped him forcibly towards me – past me. I did the same to the second but he stiffened. He was younger and wore paint. I
met his eye and held it for a moment before I felt the resistance leave his body and he too was shuffling up, pressing those on the path back into the jungle behind. I edged out onto the jetty,
signing collapse and shouting.

‘Climb down. Climb down.’

The structure sagged further to the right. I looked to the left – eight feet down – I’d have to land like a parachutist. The others had felt it, too, and now two or three ahead
turned and began shouting with me. Some were laughing, others pushing. One jumped into the water at the end of the peer. Then another and another. People began scrambling down the ladder. Boats
attempted to manoeuvre away, swimmers held up their hands and called. The water became dark with the disturbance. I felt the sway again beneath my boots. I had made things worse. The wood could not
take all this rapid movement. I turned. There was a great splintering and tearing behind me and I was running at an angle, each step more of a leap.