Children of Paradise: A Novel (15 page)

—There might be a birth soon, but it might end up as a cesarean.

—Ha, an impending death and an imminent birth; the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. What about our two dissidents?

Here the nurse seems to choose her words very carefully. She says they are still heavily sedated and catheterized and quite helpless, that they come around but do not know where they are and still go on about crossing the sea and getting back to the surf and beaches and home to burgers and fries and the people who are their blood. The two remain so far from their immediate surroundings that neither one has mentioned Ryan once. The preacher instructs her to keep them under the fog for a few more days, after which the drugs should be reduced and the reeducation program started in earnest.

—We are their family now, and I am their father, and that is all they need to know.

He pounds the arm of his chair. He takes a deep breath and straightens and presses his back into the chair, whose padding squeaks under the pressure. His agitation gives way to a broad smile, and he rubs his hands together and turns to the pharmacist.

—Right, how are the supplies doing?

—We have lots of cyanide and a shortage of penicillin.

—There are a lot of rats around, and the language of rats, the only language rats understand, is poison. This commune has a jewelry license, you know. Cyanide works wonders on gold and silver.

He reminds the pharmacist that too many drugs cause more damage than good and that the tetanus and other important vaccines may be ordered in sufficient quantities. Any disease in the camp would send the wrong signal to the mercenaries out there. He gestures at the window framed by the forest. Mercenaries, ready and eager to destroy our little experiment in paradise.

He instructs the pharmacist to stock up on cyanide before the prices increase and a shortage ensues and to keep it all under lock and key.

—Thank you, my trusted pharmacist. Keep up the fine work. Who else? Bring me some good news, someone.

He talks aloud to no one specifically and pounds the arm of his chair with a friendly fist. The prefect for the women in the kitchen says supplies remain good, and the various cooks and washers and cleaners jibe and fuss at one another, but none of them has any grumbles about him or about the place. He says that is good news.

—Something’s working in this community.

She wonders if there can be more meat for the evening meals. He knits his brows and makes a big effort to maintain an air of cordial impartiality. He says that while many among them may believe that he can turn bread and salted fish into loaves and shoals, he cannot produce mutton from mud and steak from sticks. He urges her to remind them that the animals on the compound are commercial undertakings, that meat is bad for the soul, and that the meals assigned to them are well balanced and exceed the recommendations of the World Health Organization.

—Ask them if they see any rickets in this camp or malnutrition, and then ask them why not? The more people have, the more people want. Why oh why can’t people be satisfied with what they have, compared with the poverty I plucked them from, the meaningless squandering of their days back in that land run by infidels.

He asks the prefect to tell all the other prefects to talk up the original reasons for coming here, remind the people where they came from compared to what they enjoy now. He says he feels worn out by just listening. He is tired. He dismisses the young guard recently promoted and assigned to listen in on the talk of the guards and report to the preacher personally. He tells the farmer he will hear from him another day but he should keep up his work of eavesdropping on other farmworkers. He shakes the hand of the carpenter, whose ears are as primed as the pumps on the well whose wood he repairs. He pats the head of the child prefect trained to ingratiate her way into every conversation to check that none of the talk denigrates the preacher. He waves them all away with a promise to hear from them another day. And to each of the commune reporters, his assistant gives a reward of a paper bag full of treats. He needs to sleep.

—Everyone out! Get out!

The house empties fast. He asks his personal assistant and nurse to give him something to help him get a little rest, for he is weary of his burden and his head will explode with it and his mind turn to porridge because of it, and he needs just a little respite. His assistant and nurse turns his left arm, palm up, teases a vein into prominence with a few flicks of her middle finger, and injects him. He looks at her and says she is beautiful and good to him and the only one he can trust. She says that is what he says to all the girls. Yes, he says, but he really means it when he says it to her. She is beautiful and good to him. She runs her fingers through his hair until he slumps into his armchair. She shakes out a folded blanket and drapes it over him and shuts the blinds to his living room and tiptoes away, signaling to the guards stationed at the front door with her index finger over her lips that the preacher sleeps. The guards nod and tiptoe off the front porch and set up a perimeter of silence. They shoo Rose away from the house without listening to her reason for being there, and as a tractor approaches, they make the driver describe a wide arc away from the house. They turn the volume of their radios to the lowest setting. They signal to everyone who walks nearby that they must be extra quiet, for the preacher who never sleeps is actually asleep and his rest is as precious as diamonds and gold. Rose fails to heed the warning fast enough, so they remove their belts and chase her and threaten to beat her, and when she cries out at their threats, they threaten to beat her for making that noise. They command her to be quiet and suffer her punishment in silence, for Father demands tranquillity. Quiet for the preacher who parted the sea and guaranteed them safe passage and brought them to an unspoiled promised land and delivered them from evil, just as he will guide them unscathed to the kingdom of heaven. But for now he needs and must catch forty winks.

In the rush to clear the space in front of the house, the guards chase Rose around the corner to the back and leave their rifles on the ground by the front porch. They catch Rose and stop the chase and beat her, even though she is too far from the white house for the drugged preacher to heed her noise. They grow tired of the sport of Rose’s dancing feet trying to avoid their belts and race back to the house, holding up their trousers and threading the belts back around their waists. They search for their rifles and cannot find them. They scratch their heads and look around but cannot see anyone in the vicinity. They swear to each other to say nothing about the loss to anyone. The punishment for losing a rifle would result in a demotion, at minimum. They grab two sticks, usually the preserve of prefects, and wait at the front door for the end of their shift.

—If anyone asks about our weapons, say we left them inside the armory.

The reinforced basement room in the preacher’s house holds many weapons and ammunition, and since the preacher sleeps and no one except God Himself should disturb him before he is good and ready to wake, those guns can wait to be retrieved.

—Sleep and the preacher are strangers who need to get acquainted.

The guards shake on it. Not a word. Demotion minimum and likely some hurt, some public humiliation. They keep looking around in disbelief that two rifles can grow legs and walk off. They whisper that someone in the community must be up to something. Is the child whom they chased and whipped involved in some way? No. The rifles must turn up. They cannot disappear into thin air. Other guards must be playing a practical joke on them. That must be it. The change of shift should solve everything. Their replacements will turn up and admit they hid the rifles to see the guards’ reaction. The guards wonder, if they do not say anything and it really is a practical joke, whether they might look bad or devious. No. If their rifles do not turn up, something big and bad happens for sure, because a rifle thief lives among them.

I
f the commune located beyond the reach of history sought to give history the slip and start from scratch, there could be no better setting than a realm where myth rules the order of night and day. In a place where trees big and plentiful create their own rain cloud and downpour and it is possible to walk in a stride through a wall of rain into a bright room of sunlight. Where mists hang with nothing to hold them up. And those mists graze in fields and nuzzle and scratch an itch against the trunks of trees. Cloud percolates between a handful of trees and disperses an aroma of humidity that makes it difficult to swing an ax without feeling breathless in an instant and persuades the native tribes in the forest—the Macushi, Waiwai, Arawak, Patamona, and Waurá—to drop their tools and hunting weapons and retreat to their huts and hammocks and carve out new faces buried in the fallen trunks of trees, new faces for their gods or old gods with new faces, and wait out the weather, surely a god for cleansing, for enveloping, for conjuring life, and wait out the trees inhaling until their lungs fill and exhaling to quench the thirst of their roots buried in the soil, shake out cloud from the green and flower-threaded plaits of canopies and placate the gods of the soil and air for granting space to tribes, haul up the rivers and streams with ropes invisible to the human eye until the water reveals itself in mountain ranges, in clouds too heavy for their moorings in air and so sent back down to earth by gusts, drumrolls, rods, and staves of flint-made light and other inducements.

A delegation picked from eight of the local indigenous tribes and loaded into two jeeps approaches the entrance of the compound. On guard duty, Kevin and Eric hide their cards, aim their rifles, and ask the occupants of the two jeeps to step out and keep their hands in clear sight. The indigenous people, dressed in a mixture of traditional and Western-style clothes, comply. None bears any arms but all wear some form of decoration, from earrings to nose rings to paint and elaborate facial tattoos. All smile at the guards. The guards open a channel on their radio for the preacher to hear what business the delegation wants with the commune. The speaker for the delegation says he has farming matters to discuss, and these matters are of the utmost importance to the health of the community and everyone who lives around it. The preacher’s assistant asks how many make up this delegation and says the preacher will grant them one hour of his time. They are to wait at the gate for fifteen minutes before proceeding to the white house at the middle of the community.

These are not the usual indigenous traders who bring along medicines and artwork for the preacher to preview and purchase. The preacher calls his various heads—of security, farming, education, community relations, and Joyce in accounting, among others—to gather at his house right away to meet the delegation. His assistants put out a call over the radio for all the guards to look sharp around the place and for everyone else to look purposeful. The assistant calls for eight schoolgirls to dress in their Sunday best right away and come to the preacher’s house. The assistant summons Trina and reminds her to bring her flute.

At the main entrance, the delegation stands around their jeeps and chat. Kevin and Eric watch them. One of the Indians detaches himself and walks over to the guard’s hut where Kevin and Eric planted themselves and asks if the mosquitoes still treat them like they are newcomers with sweet blood or if the pests ignore them. The guards laugh and say they still burn mosquito coils and rub mentholated spirits on their hands and necks and even their clothes and boots and put up with the stink just to keep away the mosquitoes, whose proboscises are as long as knitting needles.

—What’s a knitting needle?

Just as Kevin and Eric are about to explain by holding hands a foot apart, the Indian says he is joking.

—My wife has lots of them, and at night I sit with her and we knit together.

He winks heavily. The guards warm to him right away. The Indian says pee is just as effective against mosquitoes as mentholated spirits, and cheaper. And it stinks just as much, the guards add. They introduce themselves and shake hands. Sid, the Indian, recommends that Kevin and Eric try a local weed and points to some in among the grass only a few feet from the guard hut. Sid strolls over, plucks a handful, spits into his hands, and squashes and rubs and works up a bright green paste. After some reassurance and coaxing, he applies the concoction to the hands of Kevin and Eric. Both say if this voodoo really works, it will be a miracle. Sid says it’s medicine, not magic. Kevin and Eric cannot believe they sat day in and day out at their post with the plant growing wild right under their noses all this time and suffered without knowing anything about it while the high-pitched whine and itchy bites tormented them night and day. Sid offers Kevin and Eric cigarettes, and they thank him and take the offering and say to Sid that he did not see them accept those cigarettes. What cigarettes, says Sid. They all laugh and light up and puff for a minute and examine the sky for rain, which one of the visitors says is far off, and Kevin asks exactly how far off, and Sid is about to take a guess when Kevin says he is only joking and again they laugh. The laughing dies down and Sid says two hours. And they laugh again. The delegation points out the direction of the location of each of the eight tribes. You got us surrounded, Eric says. The delegation trades words for “welcome” and “goodbye” with Kevin and Eric and climb into the two jeeps and drive through the lifted barrier and into the heart of the compound.

At the white house, eight girls dressed in matching white frocks give a jar of honey and a single rose to each of the eight visitors, curtsy, and accept carved wood statues, masks, and dyed clothing from each member of the delegation. The assistants collect the gifts from the girls, who retreat. The preacher emerges from the white house and speaks:

—Honey from hives right here at the commune. Welcome, gentlemen.

He stretches out a hand to greet each of the delegates. The girls in white return to dormitories to change back into their everyday clothes and run back into their classes, careful to keep out of sight of the visitors. Sid points to the cage with Adam in it and Trina beside it, playing her flute. The preacher leads the delegation to the cage. He tells Trina to keep playing and explains to the visitors that Adam is the commune’s little attempt at a zoo. Sid spreads his arms and indicates that the whole rain forest is a zoo and all of the people, the commune included, are in it. The preacher nods and says true, true. Sid asks Trina if the tune is Bach’s B-minor sonata. Trina nods and keeps playing. Sid tells her she has a good feel for the instrument. He leans in close to Trina and lifts the middle finger of her left hand and instructs her to drop it a little more quickly behind the leading index finger. Trina pauses and regroups and tries the trill as advised, and Sid nods, and Trina stops and thanks him for the helpful tip. He promises her a Macusi flute the next time he sees her, a flute so fine it almost plays itself.