Текст книги "Red Jungle"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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“If you see a snake, you let us know,” Russell told him. The rain and Carl’s behavior had put him in a foul mood.

Ten feet inside the bush, it was so hot they had to strip off their shirts despite the rain. Mahler had pinned his long hair up on his head so he looked like a Sikh. His skin was fish belly white, but he was wiry, and his muscles were visible under the skin. He seemed tireless.

Russell and he worked together side by side, cutting through the thick growth. They’d tried to get Carl to help pull the larger pieces away, but he was useless. Tiny mosquitoes rested on them as they worked, undisturbed by their violent motions.

Russell stopped, looking down at his chest that was, at times, covered with them. They’d made jokes about getting malaria and being bitten by a cuatro pasos at the same time. They figured one would cure the other.

They went through all the coffee and began to drink river water. It tasted like copper pennies and was very cold. Twenty feet in, they climbed up on solid ground, and the way got a little easier. When Russell looked behind him, he saw a green tunnel, and at the end the river.

Suddenly, they were free enough to see several feet in front of them. Mahler stopped. He was sweating like a pig. They fell on their knees.

“I told you it might not be so bad once we got inside further.”

Russell could hear the screaming of monkeys above them in the canopy. They could still hear the river behind them.

“Where’s Carl?”

“How the fuck should I know,” Russell said. “I thought he was behind us.”

He’d had to throw Carl over his horse despite his screaming. He would never forget the way he screamed on the way back. The way it seemed to take forever to do those ten kilometers. The river growing muddy from the rain. The light leaving them in the end. The horses jumpy, because Carl kept screaming and moaning. Even now, in the house, with Carl in the bedroom with the doctor, Russell couldn’t get that sound of the screaming out of his head.

He crumpled the beer can. The room smelled of weed smoke and beer. It was pitch black outside. He hadn’t taken a shower yet; his clothes were still damp. His palms burnt from the blisters he’d gotten from the hacking.

A jaguar had attacked Carl. It had clawed his face real good while he’d gone to shit.

“That was bad,” Russell said. “I never want to hear screaming like that again.”

“Jaguars up there are bi…big. …He’s lucky it didn’t break his neck,” Mahler said.

“I need something stronger,” Russell said. “Jesus.”

“I have tequila.”

“Get it,” Russell said. “God, this is a filthy country. Something like that . . . Jesus.”

“We warned him,” Mahler said.

“It’s just—Jesus. That shouldn’t happen to anyone.” He watched Mahler walk down the hallway. He could hear the steady drumming of the rain on the house’s metal roof. He heard the door open, and the doctor from Colomba came out of the last bedroom, where they’d taken Carl.

For the first five kilometers, he’d never heard any kind of screaming like that. Even now, sitting in the living room, he couldn’t bear thinking about that trip back, with Carl tied to his horse. Twice they’d stopped, because Carl was begging them to. Russell hadn’t even wanted to turn around and look at him.

“You shoot me, yeah. Please,” Carl had said, breathing funny from so much screaming and crying.

“We’ll be there soon,” Russell said, turning to look at him. The way his head hung over the side of the horse. His hair all bloody, his pants down, his face clawed and his ass too.

It was Mahler who had taken Carl’s reins, pulled his horse around and convinced him not to listen. Telling him that the only chance Carl had was them getting him back to Tres Rios and then calling a doctor.

“You shoot him and then what? We have no one to broker the Jaguar,” Mahler said. His jungle hat was wet.

The light was almost gone, so that they could see only the mist and the lighter rocks in the river now. Russell could make out Mahler’s face in the twilight. He didn’t really give a shit about Carl. He just wanted to sell that Jaguar when they found it. Carl started begging Mahler to shoot him, but Mahler just kicked his horse, and they started again downriver towards Tres Rios.

Doctor Calsado was a veterinarian, not an MD. But out here in the bush, Calsado was called a lot of the time in emergencies when people couldn’t find the regular doctor.

The doctor was the color of coffee and milk. He’d been born out in Livingston. He was a large man, with a large man’s rolling gait, and he carried an old fashioned black doctor’s bag, having accepted his status as an ersatz MD.

“Mahler’s getting tequila,” Russell said.

“Good,” the doctor said in English. He’d trained in the States, in Texas. His specialty was large animals, horses and cows. He’d been working when Mahler had called him on his cell phone. They’d had to wait more than an hour for him to arrive.

“Is he going to be all right?” Russell asked.

“Yes. In a day or two, he can get out of bed. Twenty-five stitches in his face alone. I put forty or more in his ass. He’ll have to take only liquids for forty-eight hours. But he’ll be all right.”

“He’ll live, then?” Russell said.

“Yes. He just won’t look quite the same,” the doctor said. “Where’s Mahler? I need a drink. You two saved his life.”

“I would have brought mescal. I mean, to celebrate,” Mahler said, coming back inside. Russell heard the doctor start to laugh. It was the kind of joke they made in Guatemala; Russell understood they helped defeat the ugliness of the place, but he couldn’t laugh, not this time.

For just a moment back on the river, he’d thought of shooting Carl. For just a moment, when he saw him like that, suffering, begging Russell to do it. He had thought of doing it, just for a moment. Now he was glad he hadn’t. Mahler had been right.

Russell got up and got them glasses. He heard the doctor and Mahler laugh again while he was in the kitchen. Bloody, bloody country, he thought.

“And what were you doing up the Rio Amargo like that? It’s full of cuatros pasos,” the doctor said, when Russell handed them each a drink. He didn’t know what to answer. He looked at Mahler for help.

“My friend just bought the place, and he’s insisted on seeing all of it,” Mahler said, sitting down across from the doctor.

“Well then, you must be crazy,” the doctor said in his Texas accent. He looked at Russell and took a drink. “But you won’t last long acting crazy out here. I promise you that.”

“I keep telling him that, too,” Mahler said. “But he won’t listen to me. He’s an American. You know how they are.”

“Yeah. I do,” the doctor said.

TEN

He’d thought about Beatrice constantly during the ten days he and Mahler spent at Tres Rios looking for the Red Jaguar. When he got back to the capital, he tried to tell himself that his decision to cover the presidential election had nothing to do with having met her. But he knew it wasn’t true. He’d been jealous of General Selva, and was smitten with his wife. He couldn’t, in fact, get her out of his mind.

Despite himself, he wanted to understand how a beautiful young woman like Beatrice could have married a man of Selva’s type. Had she married him only for his money? The general’s family was one of the richest in the country. Had he swept her off her feet?

Katherine had told him on the way back from the general’s plantation that the two had met in England when Beatrice had descended from Oxford graduate to stripper. The general had been the military attaché at the embassy. He’d frequented the strip club where she worked. She may simply have fallen in love with him, without knowing much about him.

None of it made sense, because he was jealous but couldn’t admit it. He simply told himself he was appalled, without asking himself why he should care so much about a young woman he’d met only once.

Russell was looking out his office window at the view of the avenue La Reforma. Below him, streams of noon-time traffic poured around the huge roundabout crowned by a statue of a Spanish conquistador who’d captured Central America.

His cell phone lay on his cluttered desk, along with his notes on Antonio De La Madrid, the candidate opposing Selva in the election. De La Madrid’s party was called the PAN– Partido Accion Nacional. The PAN was a staunchly capitalist pro-business party at loggerheads with the World Bank and the IMF. Russell had just interviewed an old liberal senator who told him that Carlos Selva was going to be the next president of the country because Antonio De La Madrid scared everyone, including the American embassy.

The senator, Rudy Valladolid, had been slightly drunk when he showed up at eleven in the morning at the café at the Camino Real Hotel. The well known left-leaning senator ordered a drink immediately, despite the early hour. The senator smoked Marlboros incessantly, and looked as if he might keel over from a heart attack at any moment. He was sure that General Selva’s opponent would be assassinated, he told Russell matter-of-factly. “He’ll either be shot at his home, or killed with one of his mistresses in bed,” the senator said as he lit a cigarette. “But it won’t really matter how they do it.”

“Why kill him?” Russell asked. The senator smiled, put his cigarette in the ash tray, and took a swallow of his drink, studying him.

The old man’s eyes were jaundiced and the color of scotch whiskey. Russell couldn’t help feeling that Valladolid was a political dinosaur. Cuba and the rest of that socialist mess had already been thrown on the junk heap of history, as far as Russell was concerned. He was sorry that he’d made the appointment. He’d hoped that the Senator, who had a reputation for being the country’s most astute political observer despite his left wing leaning, could have helped him sort out the political players. But what could this old man possibly know about the new world that his generation represented? Russell suspected that he didn’t even have a computer. He asked him as much.

“I have a pen,” the senator said. “It’s worked fine for sixty years—no, longer. It’s was my great-grandfather’s fountain pen. He signed the constitution here. You know our constitution was patterned after yours. After America’s. Do you know why President Ubico had my father killed?” Ubico had been the military dictator during the 20’s—a little Napoleon, and really no more than the United Fruit Company’s representative in the country.

“No,” Russell said.

“My father had decided it was a good idea for the United Fruit company to pay some kind of tax here. They never did, you know. They never paid a dime of tax. They were here over a hundred years and never paid a cent. Now was that capitalism, or just old-fashioned imperialism? Don’t you see that Europe and America need us to be underdeveloped? Can’t you see that, young man? We buy their cars and their computers. That’s the way it’s always been. And they’ve made sure of it by hand-picking our leaders.”

Russell swallowed. He was tired of hearing about the “ugly Americans.” It may have been true in the past, but it seemed so beside the point now if you didn’t also admit that capitalism was the only way out for Latin America, or anywhere else. Most of the new industries in the country weren’t even American; they were Korean, he pointed out. The “United,” as she was known, had left the damn country before he’d been born. It was ridiculous to blame America for all Latin America’s problems.

“But surely you understand that there have been momentous changes in the world,” Russell said, trying to hide his disdain. He wanted to explain that he didn’t necessarily disagree about the way Americans had once abused their economic power, but that was then, during the cold war, and that was over. Capitalism had won. End of story.

“Capitalism is bigger even than the United States,” Russell said.

“Young man, you sound like a priest,” the senator said.

“Anyway, you haven’t answered me. Why would the military want to get rid of De La Madrid? He’s pro-business. He’s a capitalist.”

“The military is terrified of him. They’ve never faced a probusiness reformist party before. They’re used to left-wing types like me, but not neo-liberals. Christ, Madrid studied at the University of Chicago with Milton Friedman! He’s getting all kinds of good press in Europe. They’re afraid he might actually clean up all the corruption here. That’s the last thing the military wants.”

“So who are you supporting?” Russell asked him.

“Madrid,” he said. “Are you surprised?”

“Yes.”

“Carlos Selva, by the way, is my nephew. I’d say he’s too churlish to be president… And there’s his unfortunate reputation.”

“Human rights violations, you mean?” Russell said. Valladolid had a large swallow of his vodka and grapefruit juice.

“His mother, my sister, calls them ‘lapses of judgment.’ But yes… and his wife.”

“What about his wife?”

“Well . . . well . . . she isn’t perfect. She has a reputation,” the senator said. “Not that it will matter. Nothing matters here except that the Americans either like you, or they don’t. They love Selva, and that’s why I’m supporting Antonio.”

“She, you mean his wife, has a reputation?” Russell asked.

“Yes. But it has nothing to do with politics, and I wouldn’t mention it to anyone, or you might have an accident,” the senator said. “You understand here, the first rule is never, ever, write about a man’s wife. Especially my nephew’s.”

“Is there something that might come up in a campaign, then?” Russell asked.

“God, no. But she’s a bit of. . . .” The senator searched for the English word. He’d been speaking Spanish, and it was the first time Russell had heard him speak English. His English was perfect. Ironically, he sounded like an American. “She likes to enjoy herself,” the senator said. Russell doubted he would have said anything if he hadn’t been a little drunk. “She’s the same age as my granddaughter, and apparently they frequent the same nightclubs. I believe her favorite is the Q Bar. Zona 10,” he said. “You’ve met her then, I take it?”

“Yes,” Russell said. “I’ve met her.”

“God did a bad thing there, young man. He made someone who was too beautiful.”

Russell smiled. It was true, and he suddenly liked the old man. They were different in so many ways, too many years between them to really understand each other. But he liked his humanity, and his being drunk at eleven in the morning, and his clean blue shirt and his Yale ring and his manners and his having Fidel Castro’s cell phone number. Russell asked him if it was true what he’d heard, that Fidel Castro called him for advice on occasion.

“Only about women,” the senator said, joking. “You look familiar, young man,” he said as he stood up to leave. “Something about you is very very familiar.”

“All Americans look alike,” Russell said, trying to make a joke out of it, afraid Valladolid saw something of his mother in his face.

“Do you believe in God, young man?” Valladolid asked, not laughing at Russell’s joke.

“No. Of course not. Why? Is it important?”

“Here you have to understand God, to really understand– I mean, the notion of God. The Catholic God, and the Catholic church. If you understand that, you can understand Latin America.” The old man leaned forward, putting his big hands on the table. “You see, we aren’t really interested in money, not in the end. That’s what makes us Latins. We’re feudal, really, it’s all feudal here, the family structures, the business structures. It’s never been just about money,” he said. “You should explain that in your newspaper. We’re medieval.”

ELEVEN

It is very late,” Katherine said. “Yes, but it’s Thursday,” Russell said. “Thursday night you’re supposed to start the weekend in Guatemala; it says so on your visa. Haven’t you checked?”

“You’re awful,” she said.

They’d been having an affair. It amounted to afternoon screw sessions and political discussions. Katherine was trying to convince him that his neo-liberal agenda for the world was wrong, and he hadn’t been convinced. They disagreed about everything, but both of them were lonely and happy to have each other, even if it was called casual sex in the women’s magazines. They’d made a joke about it, saying that sex, if it was casual, had to be good for you.

He suspected she was falling in love with him, because she was earnest and loving when she really didn’t have to be. They would find each other for coffee at the “Cafecito,” leave her UN Jeep there, and go off for a tryst. He wasn’t in love with her, he was sure of that. They were, strangely enough, too much alike, he thought.

“Anyway, I want to go to the Q Bar and I can’t go without a girl—a cute girl, besides, or the doorman won’t let me in; I’m too fucking old,” he said.

“Get yourself put on the list,” Katherine said. “I used to know the owner; he was a Spaniard, and he’d put you on the list. Anyway, you aren’t forty yet,” she joked. “Unless you’ve been lying to me.”

It was that kind of club. Even at his age, he was too old for the Q Bar. It belonged to kids in their mid-twenties. And the doormen kept it that way, he’d been told—unless, of course, you brought a very pretty girl along.

They met at eleven, had a drink across the street from the club. As everywhere in Latin America, you could hear the dance club from a block away. He’d asked Katherine to wear something sexy, afraid the doorman wouldn’t let them in unless she looked very “hot.” He normally associated the word with frat boys and businessmen, and it surprised him. She’d surprised him because she’d paid attention, and met him in a Spanish bar in a small black dress that he didn’t think her kind of girl owned. He ordered tequila and listened to the trance music coming from across the street.

Katherine thought his calling her on the spur of the moment had something to do with their affair getting more serious. She looked animated and happy to have been thrown a curve by his request.

“I thought you’d be working on Thursday night,” she said. “I didn’t expect an invitation.”

“Spur of the moment. I had to let go. It’s been a killer week,” he said, and smiled. Katherine gave him a sweet smile back.

They ordered a second round of drinks. He was thinking about Beatrice, so he found himself speaking in easy prefabricated sentences. He couldn’t help it. He was lost. The feeling of being lost struck him with tremendous power, and he was excited by it. He was doing something he knew to be crazy, even absurd, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.

Katherine leaned forward and gave him a kiss. She flicked his tongue and rubbed his leg. He looked at her, shocked. She was falling in love with him; he was sure of it now. She wouldn’t have come on the spur of the moment if she wasn’t serious about him.

She looked into his eyes. They were excited shining girl’s eyes, sexual, feminine, and happy. She kissed him on the cheek. He tried to conjure up some appropriate look, but didn’t know what it might be. He kissed her back. People at the bar tried not to stare at the American couple making out.

“I have to go to Chicago for that wedding,” Katherine said. “My friend. Remember?” she cooed in his ear. “I could get you a ticket.” He didn’t answer; he touched her thigh and stopped, as people were staring. He pulled back.

“I can’t. Busy,” he said. He shouldn’t have said it. The moment passed, but he noticed something else in her eyes, just for a moment: a profound disappointment.

“Only for a few days. It would be fun. I promise you. You haven’t left the country for—?”

“Years, it seems like,” he said.

“Well—come on then,” she said.

“When?” He didn’t want to disappoint her; he liked her. He glanced across the street and saw the queue of kids trying to get into the club. He saw the doorman pointing at young girls, lifting a blue satin rope to let them pass. He looked at Katherine. She was pretty. She had a nice figure, buxom. She wasn’t stunning, though. He wondered if the doorman would let them in. “All right… I’ll ask my boss,” he said, lying. He just didn’t want to disappoint her, as he was grateful for her coming. Perhaps he would even go to Chicago. What difference did it make, a few days, he told himself. “Could you do me a favor?” he said.

“What?” She picked up her drink

“Could you take off your bra?” She looked at him a moment, then smiled. “Why, are we going to have sex ?”

He didn’t answer. He was just afraid the doorman might not let them in unless she did. She finished her drink and went to the bathroom. When she came back, she was spilling out of the dress.

He waited for a sign from the doorman, pushing Katherine forward towards the front of the queue. Bodyguards lined the sidewalk, as they weren’t allowed inside. Rich kids, some already drunk, waited, holding up their hands trying to get the doorman’s attention.

He put his arms around Katherine’s waist and moved them forward in the crowd. He heard a Pink track start. He glanced at the bodyguards on the street. They were from another class, and looked at the mob of kids with a certain disdain. The men tried not to let it show on their faces. It was just another stop. Pistols bulged under vests. Indian faces with day-old beards lit by night lights. He felt the bottom of Katherine’s breasts against his arm; a sexual blast ran through him. He remembered her on the floor of his apartment, the look in her face as she straddled him in complete abandon.

He held his arm tight around her and pushed forward. He wondered if he would ever see Beatrice the way he had seen Katherine exposed sexually. He felt the sense of pursuit and the need to pursue. It seemed uncontrollable for a moment. He had to clear a path through this jungle of his desire. He had no idea how he would react if the doorman didn’t let them in.

Over the music, he told Katherine to raise her hand. She turned to look at him. Maybe she caught something in his voice, or perhaps it was the pressing of their bodies together —the crowd around the door was turned into one body—but he could tell she wanted to do whatever he asked of her. That fact only put his desire to see Beatrice into relief. He realized he was doing something wrong, something stupid and something he would regret, even be ashamed of. He had this woman in his arms who would do anything he asked. She’d proven that. She was sexy. She was in love with him, even. Why was he chasing a woman he’d barely met, who was married, and had children? Because he wanted her, he told himself. He wanted to hear her voice speaking to him.

Katherine shot her hand up. The doorman looked at her. Russell put his hand around her waist. The doorman looked at him, smiled, and pointed to them. They were suddenly past the ropes and moving inside the club. Russell was stopped for a moment while a guard frisked him quickly. He noticed the guard managed to pat Katherine’s ass as they walked by.

Inside the club the crowd was packed tight. The room wasn’t very large and held only about two hundred people, but seemed like a lot more. The deejay was on a stage, flanked by dancers. He was startled to see Beatrice on the stage dancing, flanked by one other girl. They were both in gold lame retro outfits. He looked at Katherine, but she hadn’t seen Beatrice yet. He yelled over the music that he was going to move them towards the bar. For some reason, he didn’t want Katherine to see Beatrice. He was shocked—he hadn’t expected to see her performing—but tried to keep the shock out of his voice.

He guided them towards the bar. At one point, they couldn’t get any closer to the bar. What had he expected? he wondered. I’d expected to be disappointed, but he wasn’t. She was there.

From where they stopped, he could see the catwalk above, and the deejay. He left Katherine’s side, pushed his way to the bar, and ordered two tequilas. The bar was a moving throng. Girls with rave bars were wiggling in the confined spaces. Young men in well-ironed shirts stood staring at the girls: some had taken off their shirts because of the heat. Their young bodies reflected the multi-colored lights. The bartender was rushing to fill orders.

A break came in the music. The room felt as if the air had been sucked out of it. A girl bumped into him, obviously high on something. She ran her hand over her boyfriend’s naked chest. Still dancing, she held the light stick against his stomach. Suddenly the music started again.

He felt someone grab him from behind. He thought it was Katherine; he turned, and it was Beatrice. She was holding another dancer’s hand and she didn’t really look at him as she shimmied to the bar, her hands raised in a kind of dance move. She broke free from her friend and she began to dance to the music. Wherever she’d been, she knew how to move in a way that only dancers, trained dancers, have. It was a feeling that she controlled her body perfectly, yet was out of control slightly, so that the energy moved across her and then back again in a wild let-it-all-go step that was meant to go with the trance music.

There was a break with just the beat. He tried to catch her eye, but she was completely absorbed. People made room for her and her partner.

He looked around as best he could to see if her husband was in the place, but he couldn’t see him. So much older than the kids here, he knew the general would stand out easily. But Russell didn’t see him.

The music picked up speed. Beatrice was sweating. He could see the sheen on her face; her blond hair had been braided, the braids flew.

The barman tapped him on the shoulder. Russell turned, paid for the drinks, and left with them. He saw Katherine nearby. She’d seen Beatrice and clearly recognized her. He moved through the crowd and handed Katherine a drink. She turned to look at him. He tried not to register shock. Or was it something else on his face? Excitement? Lust? All of them?

“That’s what’s-her-name. The general’s wife. Look at her!” Katherine said. She leaned into him and yelled over the music, obviously surprised to see her here.

He turned and looked at Beatrice again. He thought she noticed them. He wasn’t sure. “Jesus, she can dance,” he heard Katherine say. He felt her put her arm around him. Another powerful break came in the music; all the turntables were playing now. A James Brown tune dominated the mix; it was propped up by sitar music.

Beatrice spun. Her midriff flattened. She started a new series of moves, more controlled, shaking her hips to the sitar music then undulating. All the young men at the bar were transfixed now by her dancing and her beauty. It seemed as if she were getting bigger, but it was just the lights that had moved. Someone on the catwalk had turned a spotlight down on them; a purple light hit Beatrice and her companion.

There was a complete stop to the music. You could feel the silent beats building as everyone expected the music to come back. It didn’t on the first beat, or the third. The lights started to come on as if the night were ending, five beats… He watched Beatrice slow, then slow again. She was looking at him on the seventh beat. On the ninth, the house lights went dark. Only one single spotlight was left on. Then suddenly, the music came back on, thundering. The famous break in “I Feel Good” came up. So good . . . so good, that I gotta yoouuu.” The crowd went wild. The breaks worked their magic. Everyone in the place yelled excitedly.

Beatrice had looked directly at him then, as if she’d been dancing all along for him. They played “Make it Funky.” He took a drink and for a moment he thought they would move away from the bar, because Katherine was pulling him to a place where they could dance. He turned to look at Beatrice; she was coming through the crowd toward them, as James Brown sang “Like a Boom-er-ang.”

Beatrice stopped in front of him and draped her arms over his neck, and they started to dance. It happened like that. He didn’t think he stopped dancing for the next hour. By the time he remembered Katherine, she’d left.

Later he checked his cell phone messages; she had left him several. “You’re a shit,” she’d said angrily. Of course she was right. But there were others, too. She said she was sorry. She said she didn’t mean it. She said he should call her.

He did, a week later, but she’d gone to Chicago. He left a message at her office, telling her he was very sorry. He felt guilty for using her. He was truly sorry about that. His affair with Beatrice Selva started that night at the Q Bar.