The Devil's Garden (8 page)

‘While the Judge is here . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Could you ask Mr Rebaque – if he replies – to confirm that I’m still supposed to work alongside you, Dr Forle?
Or should I be guiding our other guests as well?’

‘He hasn’t replied to any of the emails I have sent, Felipe. Anyway, you should ask him yourself.’

I worked quickly and efficiently. I connected my camera and transferred the latest batch of pictures. I entered my data and my notes.

Our usual routine was to return to the Station in good time to do the lab work, write everything up and prepare for the next day long before nightfall. We had power for two hours every evening,
but we preferred not to consume the oil for the generators with unnecessary lighting. Each evening, we recharged the computer’s battery. Then, when the power went off, we ran it down halfway
again. This way we could use it for four hours rather than two.

We took turns in staying late to send email or do any personal work or correspondence and that night was mine. So I set about trying to read and then rewrite a draft of one of the early sections
of my book, struggling to make simple the complexity and implications of the ant’s reproductive system. But even my notes would not hold to their purpose. Pages wandered and my tone and
observations became tangled. The advances I had been making prior to the arrival seemed to have halted; it was as if the jungle had started colonizing the clearing of my own mind, confusing me,
distracting me, planting a hundred rogue seeds in what should have been the clean-kempt prose of scientific method.

Did I feel myself slipping into the old lassitude? Certainly, this lack of progress frustrated me. After all, this was supposed to be my side of the partnership with Quinn. He did most of the
practical work. I wrote up our findings and kept our studies in the front pages of the influential science journals. And the harsh truth was that I had never relished the field. I was a talented
collator – collegiate, collaborative – the communicator. But I was not really a scientist of any originality save on paper – and even then, it was seven years since I had written
anything of depth or value. Anything new.

Quinn, though . . . Quinn was forever fearless and unbound – in his imagination, in his work and in his relations with his fellow human beings. He carried with him some great affirmation
towards life. Ideas just poured out of him as though from a never-empty bottle; you pulled the cork and there they came – dancing and chattering and laughing and frothing; silly, mad,
serious, insightful, profound, primitive, emotional, glorious, foolish, generous ideas; about man and God, science and myths, creation and extinction, and always – always – his own
ideas.

I know that I’m painting a flattering picture of my friend. And I do myself down the more to do him up. (It is true: Quinn could not write or structure his thinking.) And yet the larger
part of the portrait is accurate. I have come to believe that the greatest divide in humanity is neither age nor race nor gender but between those few who possess self-belief and the rest who must
thrash about in uncertainty or communal delusion.

Most of all, I was conscious that Quinn would have dealt with the Judge and the Colonel differently and that he would not suddenly be finding our work . . . inconsequential, minor. Perhaps I was
annoyed with Felipe, too. I disliked the way he sought to hide behind me – or, rather, to confer jurisdiction on me when I had none. Nonetheless, having given up on my book, I wrote another
email to Rebaque – my third without a reply – and another to the head of administration in my department. Our satellite connection was slow, fragile and intermittent – we had long
ago abandoned trying to send our photographs and heavy data files – and, after the third attempt, I rose and went through the plastic rather than sit waiting for the confirmation that they
had gone through.

I stooped to look into one of the thin sealed glass tanks in which we kept a colony of my favourite ants:
Daceton armigerum
, a strange-looking species – voracious, omnivorous,
powerful – and yet with these sad and oddly beautiful heart-shaped heads.

‘Hello, Dr Forle. I am sorry to disturb you.’

Tord appeared unctuously around the door.

‘I’ve finished for the day,’ I said.

He had the trick of watching me closely and yet when I sought his eye he was looking away.

‘How is the project going?’ he asked.

‘Well. We are on the right path – but, of course, proof takes time.’

He nodded slowly. He affected to take an interest. But he addressed us like we were all well-meaning children – vague and deluded and a long way from what was important, but good-hearted
all the same and not necessarily exiled from hope for all eternity. Perhaps he was merely reflecting our opinion of him back at us.

‘Who told you the Judge was at Tupki’s?’ I asked.

‘I gave one of the villagers a lift on my boat. Everyone is talking about it.’ He said this to emphasize that he alone could speak the Indian languages well enough to know what they
were discussing among themselves.

‘What do you think is going on, Tord?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Nor can I be sure whether it is for good or for evil.’

‘That must be awkward for you.’

‘I’m not saying that I cannot be guided by the Light once I have learned the true nature of events. Just that I have yet to learn that nature.’ He closed his eyes a moment as
if to make inward enquiry of whichever Evangelist might recently have begun to whisper within his breast. ‘Kim says that the Judge is rude, that the Colonel barely talks and that the soldiers
are disgusting.’

‘Judge not, lest ye be judged, Tord.’

‘Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more then the things of this life?’

I admired his quickness. ‘Maybe you should ask one of them to deliver the homily at the next get-together of your mission, Tord, how about the Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are the pure in
heart.’

He joined his hands. ‘You seem even more subversive than usual tonight, if I might say so, Dr Forle.’

‘I’m sorry. Maybe it’s just that I never really understood the Sermon on the Mount.’

‘If I thought that there was anything other than your usual mischief behind that statement I would offer to sit down and have a right and proper conversation with you about it.’

‘Sorry, Tord. Not tonight. I have to check my emails have gone through.’ I crossed back to the dry room. I was, I realized, obscurely pleased by Tord’s visit. The screen told
me they had been sent. I sat down and logged out.

Tord had followed me. ‘It must be very disruptive,’ he said, gentle almost.

I looked up. ‘Kim is right – about the Judge and the Colonel. And yes – I’m anxious about the work and I don’t like the idea of the Station turning into some sort
of cod-military base while we are here. But there’s nothing we can do and there’s no reason why it should affect us.’ I was suddenly desperate for soap and our lukewarm water. I
sat waiting a moment but still his eyes were fixed above my head. ‘What can I do for you, Tord? I’m guessing you didn’t come here to hear all about my progress on the questions of
multi-level evolutionary selection?’

‘Oh, I wondered if you would mind if I borrowed the computer again. Just for fifteen minutes or so.’

‘Be my guest.’ I stood and gestured toward the chair. ‘Shut it down when you have finished.’

‘Thank you kindly.’

I stepped through the plastic but could not resist adding over my shoulder: ‘Keep it clean, though, Tord, keep it clean.’

I realized that I had covertly been looking forward to my single malt all day. I did not stint. I collected fresh clothes. I regretted not putting a password on the new
sections of my book since they included some more diary-like side observations about the Station and how the others were getting on – nothing that I needed to hide but still Tord was
inquisitive to the point of deviousness and he intuited things astonishingly well. Many of the missionaries did. Their work required a great deal of non-verbal perception. They spread their lethal
cult-lore (and their lethal viruses) among the tribes with patience and great perspicacity. Our region, because of its remoteness, was host to the best of them. And Tord’s sect was among the
most steadfast and sophisticated. They operated under the burnished fig leaves of health, education and an improvement in living standards. They founded schools and hospitals. Most of all, they
studied the languages. They affected that the linguistic emphasis was coincidental or academic, but the simple truth was that they sought keenly to translate the Bible. Indeed, this was why Tord
was great amongst them – he was already at work on rendering the Gospels into the hitherto unbreached language of the Yora. In the tribe of the missionaries, these were the feathers of
highest distinction

I stepped out of my hut into the trill of the forest night. Why was I so pleased to see him? The answer further dismayed me: it was because I was hoping for moral support in the event of any
further brutality. I was hoping that Tord’s indignation – partaking, as it must, in the wider indignation of the Son of God – would be righteous and forceful and that I would be
able to ally myself with him and splint up my own conviction. For one thing I was sure of: if Tord was here, he would not let evil pass. And though I knew that his convictions were based on
enduring falsehoods, I was – it seemed – profoundly grateful for the cover those same falsehoods provided for me.

IV

I was awoken by the violence of her kick. I said her name but she was deaf to me. Her anger had dissipated but we had not been the same together since the night of the
fire.

There were unfamiliar noises coming from the direction of the
comedor
– the intermittent sound of men and alcohol, cries, raucousness, the repetitive grunt of music just audible
beneath. The soldiers must have returned. Where had they been so late? I had slept for no more than two hours – less. With all my being, I longed for the Station to be returned to us.

Something was rustling in the dry leaves below the hut. We were drowning in the lack of rain and it was impossible to breathe. Sole shuddered; dreams were passing through her, whispering their
solicitudes one to the next. I sat up. The darkness was close in the room, but here and there a faint pearl light pooled. The moon must have risen above the forest. She stirred. I was still. I
waited. Her murmuring became words I neither understood nor recognized. A frown passed across her brow. Then she curled deeper into her sleep. I thumbed her hair from her face; it was unwaveringly
straight and so black that in the sunlight it seemed almost blue. Aside from a year in the capital, she had lived mostly in the physical world of the river and the trees and her body was dense with
such a life; sure, strong and well-proportioned. Sometimes, when everyone else was asleep, we went to the bathing huts to wash one another by the dim light of a hanging lamp and I found that my
fingers rose and fell across the muscled contour of her shoulders and that her calves were full to my palm. She slept without a pillow.

She stirred again. I soothed. She settled. I lay still. Whenever we slept together, these wordless duets of ours played on through the night; though we were barely conscious, it was as if our
bodies were about some quiet communion that they wished to protect from the searchlight of the mind.

Now, without warning, she turned herself onto her front, raised herself on her elbows and hung her head. I reached for the kerosene lamp behind me. The room flared into view; the shadows
stretched and shrank back. The animal moved again beneath the hut. Her cheekbones were fiercely broad and high, so that she seemed both defiant and shy whenever she looked up.

‘I hate this,’ she murmured. ‘What’s happening?’

‘They got back about half an hour ago. They’re having some kind of a party. Here – have some water.’

She remained on her front and swigged awkwardly from the bottle. The white sheet fell from her shoulders.

‘My husband came here,’ she said.

I made myself hold her eyes.

‘I saw him,’ she said.

‘It was a dream, Sole. You woke in the middle of a dream.’

‘Why does he come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He wants to speak to me.’

She passed the water and lay down on her side, facing me. As a younger man, I would have recoiled. Now I was drawn further in – I wanted to show solidarity with her experience. I wanted to
tell her that I knew some of what the human heart is required to endure.

Her body tensed: people were coming up the path. It was too late to extinguish the lamp.

‘I’m going to buy a gun,’ she whispered.

Her husband had been a miner but he was poisoned by the mercury and then shot for his gold.

‘No,’ I said softly.

‘If you were me, you would have already got one.’

There were two voices. And an eerie rhythmic squeaking sound that I both did and did not recognize. They stopped directly outside. We breathed the wet air. Our door was locked but I was afraid
that they were about to demand Sole out again. They were arguing. I could not make out what they were saying. Where had they been? I did not believe that they would bother with the bathing hut to
urinate. They had not done so thus far. The squeaking began again.

Sole rose and soundlessly crossed to the window. She motioned me to douse the light.

‘Who was it?’ I asked. ‘Lugo?’

‘No. The youngest one with the metal mouth and his rat friend.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘I can’t see. They’re using our cart.’

The cart, of course: the wheels squeaked.

‘What for? What are they moving?’

‘I can’t see. It looks empty.’

‘I’m going to go out.’

She turned from the window. ‘Stay there.’

‘They won’t do anything to me, Sole.’ I threw back the sheet. ‘It would cause them too much trouble.’

But I hesitated. The cart was moving away. I twisted again to light the lamp at its lowest burn. She stood looking towards me in the flickering light, fingering the hem of her T-shirt. My heart
was filled with feeling for her.