The Devil's Garden (2 page)

I made a false floor to fireproof myself from what feelings burned below; and the greater the heat within me, the greater my effort to seal it off. Outwardly, I grew colder. Science, method
– I turned into one of those men who seem to others reserved. But I held back only because I believed that to let go would have meant to detonate everything. My work became my reason for
living. I escaped from life by intensifying my study of life’s secrets – biology. I wanted to make a contribution to human knowledge, a breakthrough. Of course, there were more
immediate and practical reasons for my finally coming here – my colleague, Dr Cameron Quinn, not least among them – but most of all I wanted to make one last effort to save my soul.
When a man is wounded in the river, he must swim as best he can upstream from his own blood if he is to have any chance.

Thus bound up in my leaving, I was shamefully ignorant about my surrounds when I arrived. I knew nothing of the endless land disputes, the trades (legal and illegal), nor the provenance of the
different peoples. But an accurate history of our Station would be near impossible to uncover in any case. During the height of the rubber boom, it was probably used as some sort of a collection
point – though we were situated a long way up the river. There had been slavery. Missionaries. An Indian settlement before that, perhaps. It was hard to know anything for sure. There is no
stone with which to build. Tribes vanish. Iniquity is forgotten. Everything is subsumed back into the forest.

In physical terms, the Station occupied a rectangle of cleared ground, roughly the area of two sports fields placed end to end. The path from the river led directly to our main building, the
comedor
– a big open-sided construction, the size of a large cricket pavilion, though fashioned, as all, in rough-hewn dark wood and raised some three feet off the ground. The
comedor
was the Station’s dining room, lounge and bar. At one end, there were two separate rooms closed off: the kitchen and the store. And at the other, the same: a tiny infirmary and
Rebaque’s office.

In addition, there were the accommodation huts in which we lived and those kept ready for visitors. They were unevenly spaced, unevenly built, of uneven sizes and at uneven distances to the
walls of the forest. But all shared the same basic box-on-legs structure, and all had the same small balcony facing inwards. Mine was the last hut downstream and thereafter this same path ran on
through the forest some fifty yards to a small secondary clearing for the washing stalls and laundry.

There was one other building – the lab. This stood alone adjacent to Sole’s hut and diagonally opposite my own. Roughly four times the area of our huts and a good deal taller, it had
been built, customized and equipped by Quinn. I had taken it for granted in the background of the footage we played to students and associates. But when at last I saw it for myself, the fact of its
existence struck me deeply – that it stood so square and so purposefully fitted to its creator’s ends. The sheer will: to have the thing constructed and supplied from nothing.

With Rebaque away, we were now seven. Myself and my assistants, Lothar and Kim; along with Felipe, Jorge, Sole and her mother, Estrela, who were all on the payroll of the state – albeit to
no great extent. We spoke for the most part in Spanish. Ostensibly, we were a scientific station, maintained for the purposes of research projects. But the real motivation for keeping the place
manned and inhabitable (while indirectly paid for by First World universities) was that it was the last Government outpost before the impassable interior. For this reason, Quinn had told me that
all kinds of officials and scientists dropped in. But in the last six weeks, aside from Tord, a missionary, and Tupki, our nearest neighbour, we had received no visitors at all. Until now.

V

By the time I set off for dinner myself, the croaking hour had begun and the frogs were already basking in the silvery glow of our little solar-charged lamps. I trod
carefully.

On the far side of our mighty kapok tree, which stood with its vast vaulted trunk across the path, the
comedor
cast its welcoming light. But as I crossed the coarse grass in front of the
steps, I was surprised to see Estrela hurrying toward the kitchen – Jorge’s domain. Relations between the two were more typically characterized by a steady and mutual detestation
– seasoned only by an oblique regard that each held for the other’s obstinacy. They never worked together and Estrela never rushed anywhere except to judgement.

Felipe greeted me from the other side of the dining area where he stood behind our makeshift little bar. He was sporting a battered burgundy-coloured dinner jacket and he had been serving one of
our visitors.

I crossed the wooden floor conscious that I was wearing shoes rather than boots for the first time since I had arrived.

‘Good evening, Dr Forle.’ Felipe’s smile was wide as a freshly strung hammock. ‘This is . . . Colonel Cordero.’ He poured so much deference into the introduction
that I was afraid we would all drown.

The man turned slowly – deliberately so. He introduced himself as if Felipe had not spoken and then shook my hand with a narrow-eyed expression by which he intended, I think, to convey
some quality of far-sightedness or leadership. He was tall and bulky and he appraised me as though assessing my physical capabilities in relation to his own. His features seemed to occupy only the
lower half of his face – on account of his high, bronzed forehead and his baldness, which extended from brow to crown. I detected some care in the black arch of his eyebrows and – taken
in all – there was something fastidious about him that asked for admiration before engagement. He wore a tailored white cotton shirt tucked into a heavy belt with which he held up a pair of
well-pressed combat-style trousers. I was immediately uncomfortable in my linen jacket. Why were we all dressing up?

Felipe poured me vodka and soda from the bottles I had newly donated. Cordero was sipping some sort of juice. I took a seat on an adjacent stool. We talked politely of the river, the lack of
rain, the anxieties of the local villagers – though we avoided any subjects of wider concern. His men had bought their own supplies, he said; they would eat after us. They cooked for
themselves. Meats. They were used to it. They were often forced to improvise on this mission. Which was why, as far as possible, he preferred to keep the numbers down. Some of the places they had
stayed I would not believe. Filthy. But there were objectives. There were things that had to be done. There was progress.

‘You’re helping the Judge?’ I asked.

‘We have to keep order. You’re a scientist, they tell me?’

Who told him?

‘I am a naturalist – an entomologist. I study insects.’ There was something about his slow nod that made me loquacious. ‘Actually, I am a myrmecologist. I study ants
– specifically ants.’

‘And how does this research benefit us?’

‘That’s a big question.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’ I hesitated. I had bought the vodka for Kim. I had never liked soda. And I preferred not to drink in dry company.

‘That depends on whether you mean benefit in an immediate way or more widely?’

‘Either?’

His manner was somehow both rude and courteous at the same time but I was a fool to be riled.

‘My work will – I hope – prove that in some areas of the forest the ants that I’m studying are killing every single species of plant except those in which they nest. We
had thought that it was the inhibition of one plant’s growth by another. But I hope to show for the first time that it is the ants themselves who are . . . who are poisoning their own
environment.’ It was my intention to rebuff him with so precise and forthright an answer. But he merely swilled his juice and I found that I must again go on. ‘My ants are very
successful – because they cooperate. In one way, I suppose you might say we’re studying the biggest question of all: who – or what – wins in the end? What is the best
strategy for survival? Competition or cooperation?’

He smiled. ‘You misunderstand me, Doctor. I mean how does your work benefit us, the country, how does it actually re—’

‘Good evening.’ A low, smoky voice surprised us both. ‘And you must be our great scientist.’

I turned on my stool. The Judge was spry, slight and a good six inches shorter than the Colonel. He was well dressed – outlandishly dressed, I realized – in a cream suit and tie. But
what really lent him his distinction were his pale blue eyes and his wild white hair.

The Colonel said nothing. I stood and introduced myself.

The Judge offered his hand. ‘Raúl Ruíz Ramones,’ he said, but did not bother to look at me as we shook, preferring instead to address Felipe: ‘Can this man get me
a drink?’

Nothing could have pleased Felipe more.

‘Good.’ Obscure amusement seemed to bedevil the Judge’s thin lips. ‘Something overwhelming and quick, please.’ He turned back to me and at last released his grip.
‘A shame,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you might turn out to be a woman worthy of the name, Doctor. Since I left the capital, my eyes have suffered greatly – a succession of
slack-breasted monsters. But it matters less – it matters much less – now I have seen the face of our welcome.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Where did you find her, Doctor? Yes,
that will do.’ Felipe was holding up one of my whiskeys. ‘Don’t worry,man. Pour.I’ll imagine the ice. I am required to imagine everything else.’ He looked around.
‘It is fortunate – is it not? – that I have so beautiful an imagination.’

The Colonel had remained facing the bar. I felt the need to speak: ‘Did you have a good journey?’

‘No. I did not. How is it possible to have a good journey? Has anyone ever had a good journey to this place?’

I smiled. ‘At least it didn’t rain,’ I said.

The Judge reached for the glass before Felipe could set it down. ‘Rain is a thing of the past, Doctor. We are on our way to becoming a desert. We are looking forward to it. Sand. Not
insects but
sand
.’ He took the glass in one and then looked directly into my face as if he were only now registering my existence as a fellow human being. ‘But why are you trying
to talk to me about the weather? Are you English?’

‘Yes.’

His expression said that he had thought as much. He motioned to Felipe for a second. ‘It must be difficult,’ he said.

Felipe obliged. The Colonel continued to face the bar.

‘I don’t follow you,’ I replied.

‘I mean it must be difficult flailing between greater powers where once you held sway – watching your great nation decline until it is little more than an elaborate theme
park.’ He took his glass from Felipe but this time held it before his lips while looking at me over the top. ‘But also I mean being English for you – for you personally –
appears to be difficult: the inability to stand easy.’

I was taken aback by his perception and his directness. But his own position seemed to be a source of private entertainment to him; and I warmed to this.

‘My nation struggles on,’ I said, ‘as do I.’

He smiled and said: ‘You think me judgemental, Doctor. But I am a judge.’ He despatched half the whiskey and continued with his index finger pointing from where he held his glass.
‘And neither am I alone by the way. We are a judgemental species. And it’s been like that since the dawn of time: these people chosen, those not; this man a saviour, that man a thief.
We judge and we judge and we judge. Every minute – another judgement. I sometimes think that’s
all
we do.’ He finished what was left. ‘The relativist is an idiot
telling himself lies while he stands in the corner with his hands over his eyes.’

‘I’m not a relativist,’ I said.

But he did not hear me for he was already looking over my shoulder.

Kim had appeared around the kapok and was coming across towards the
comedor
. Internally, I flinched. She was the best postgraduate we had so far found. Besides her intelligence, she had
the emotional stamina for success in life and the proper fieldwork rigour for success in science. And yet the way she looked gave her the appearance of innocence and idealism and she seemed to
attract cynicism and attack like nobody else I had ever worked with. She had shoulder-length loose-curled blonde and light-brown hair, even features and clear skin that told of good health and the
more gentle sun of the northern hemisphere and she wore the student’s uniform – half scruffy, half considered. Her upper teeth were a little pronounced and it was (as now) in her
nervous smile that you glimpsed the tomboy’s ghost.

‘This is Kim Van der Kisten,’ I said, smiling. ‘This is Señor Ramones.’ Against any likelihood, I hoped that they might like each other. ‘He will be staying
with us for . . . how long?’

The Judge bowed to Kim. ‘Raúl, please – call me Raúl.’

‘We’ve heard all about the registration,’ she said. She offered him her hand to shake but instead he kissed it. Disconcerted, she turned to the Colonel, who had risen from his
stool and now hooked his thumbs through his belt.

‘We’ve heard all about the registration,’ she repeated. ‘We haven’t had too many visitors. We’ve been looking forward to some new people!’

The Colonel nodded, peremptory. ‘Let’s eat,’ he said.

VI

In normal circumstances, dinner was the principal ceremony of the day. Jorge carried out whatever he had burnt and served us with an aggressively fragile curmudgeon as if
to dare complaint. I dispensed whatever we had to drink. Lothar managed the cigarettes and ashtrays. Felipe cleared the plates. Kim peeled the fruit and shuffled the cards for afterwards. Estrela
disapproved. We sat at our round, uneven table. We talked of nothing and of everything. Every so often, the capybara would wander into the clearing and we would chase them off with our head
torches. We inspected our cards hoping for the ace we might have missed. Above us, the fireflies glowed like tiny stars and the darkness around about seemed almost like an ocean; the
comedor
our little lighted ship. If it was not quite civilization, then we enjoyed at least . . . equilibrium. Tonight, not so. Lothar was on a rare trip away to the capital. So we were only five at the
table: Kim, the Judge, myself, Felipe and Colonel Cordero. Jorge remained in the kitchen throughout, playing the great chef, sending us all manner of side dishes that we had never seen before, nor
much wished to see again. The entente with Estrela must have ended because she soon settled heavily and defiantly opposite me. Felipe, meanwhile, fussed and fidgeted and dabbed at his lips in
mimicry of what he imagined fine dining in the capital to be.