The Devil's Garden (25 page)

‘Can you pilot one of the tribesmen’s canoes in the dark without an engine?’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘As soon as there is a chance, I want you to take Kim and get her out. Go down the river – do whatever you think is the safest. Avoid Laberinto. Pick up a passenger boat somewhere
further down.’

‘Nobody steals canoes. It is the only law here.’

‘There are no laws, Tord.’

‘There are commandments.’

‘Bring it back if you feel guilty.’

He looked at me. And for an instant, something in his eyes admitted the possibility that he doubted what he preached and I saw fear there; but then it was gone – replaced by the warm pity
that one man might have for his vanquished rival.

‘I will pray for you,’ he said.

‘Please do – there’s a lot that needs praying for.’ I took the soap from my wash bag and went back outside, six dozen devil flies following me as I went.

I held the Boy’s eye again as I passed. His associate was smoking and staring at Kim. I stood by the pails and stooped.

‘Let me help you,’ Kim said, gently.

‘It’s OK.’

‘I know it is OK but it will be easier if I help you. You can’t pour and use your soap at the same time. It’s too heavy.’ She raised the pail in both her hands.
‘Bend your head down a bit.’

The water streamed cold but only for a second before it became an intense bliss. I could feel mud running on my skin. I lathered myself – hair to toes until I was all but dry. Then Kim
poured the water and I began again. My emerging hands were strangers to me – scratched and torn, arcs of dirt beneath every nail, pale aliens.

‘Put your arms up.’ She rinsed where I had washed. We had emptied the first bucket and started on the second. ‘After this, we are going to the store room,’ she breathed.
‘We need to stop ourselves getting infected. Do you still have a key?’

‘Yes.’ A third time I lathered, filling my lungs with the smell of the soap. Again, she poured.

I used the small towel to dry myself. Then I began to put on my fresh clothes. The clean was beyond anything I had dreamt of – a sacrament, a new life.

‘What happened to you, Kim?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. I went looking for you.’

‘What happened to your neck?’

‘I tried to go jogging in the jungle.’

‘Away from the soldiers?’

‘Well, not towards them.’

‘Did they hurt you?’

‘No. But they restrained me with their hands – a lot.’

Kim stood uncertain, seemingly far more in need of bathing now that I was washed myself. There were lines on her brow where smears of the forest had clung. I looked around at the gathering
rag-tag of spectators.

‘You are not washing here,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it round the back of the hut. I’ll screen you.’ I picked up the full bucket and poured some of it into one of
the others so that they were evenly filled.

The Boy stiffened.

‘He won’t shoot us,’ I breathed.

‘Where are you going?’ The Boy’s tone was neither sharp nor angry and yet all the more menacing for that.

‘We’re going around the back of the hut. My friend doesn’t wish to wash in front of those animals.’ I gestured to the figures sat watching.

‘You are not going anywhere.’ This from his associate.

I indicated to Kim that she should pick up her fresh clothes and walk in front of me and then I raised the two pails and, slowly, turned my back. I felt like every cell in my skin was
excruciatingly aware – braced and tremoring.

But there was no gunfire.

Instead, they fell in close behind. Perhaps they preferred the idea of a private show.

We arranged the pails on either side. The Boy lit a cigarette. The associate stood beside him, stroking his moustache.

I turned my back to them again and held the towel wide, glancing over my shoulder as I did so. The associate moved round, not bothering to disguise his purpose. But where several onlookers would
have been too many, it was possible to shield Kim from him wherever he stood. She raised her eyes to the darkening sky but he did not move a third time. I looked over the other shoulder. The
Boy’s expression was hard to see beneath his cap. I knew neither his intention nor his capability.

‘Thank you,’ Kim said quietly.

‘Your turn,’ I replied.

Quickly, she crouched down and squirmed out of her shirt. The forest’s breath was more intimate here, warmer; the sound of the thumbed combs much closer. I held my eyes on the wall of the
hut above her head.

She rose up before me and stepped out of her combat trousers, folding them and leaning to place them out of the way. Then she picked up the half-full bucket, bent her head and poured water on
herself.

‘Tell me about you and Cameron,’ I said.

Her voice was little above a whisper as she turned her back. ‘I loved the work first – before I fell in love with him. I met him three years ago. It started before I came to the
department.’

I stared ahead. ‘I am sorry – for your loss, I mean. I know what you must have felt. What you feel.’

Because I could not pour the water, she was using her underwear as a flannel. She spoke over her shoulder. ‘He talked of you often.’

‘We were friends.’

‘He said that he was always skidding across the surface but that you lived your life more deeply than any other man he had ever met.’

‘It’s not true – I never had his ambition. He wanted to change the way we think about ourselves – about life.’

She turned to face me. ‘What about you?’

I let my eyes slip down the fraction to where hers were waiting. ‘I don’t trust myself,’ I said.

‘I am going to prove what you both believed.’

‘He believed. I hoped.’

‘You’re right, though. It’s not just about competition. Nothing in the world wants to live alone with only its own success for company.’

She crouched down again and emptied the pail above her head to rinse herself. The grasses felt wet between my toes where the water had run from her body and was pooling into the ground. Then she
stood before me once more – vital, ready for anything. She was as close as a kiss. She poured the last of the water on her head and I watched it stream her curled hair flat.

‘Wrap me in the towel,’ she said. ‘I can dress inside it.’

I enfolded her body. Then I stood back.

III

We drank bottles of water. We ate muesli bars. With inactivity came boredom and agitation. After a while, Kim rose and rattled at the door.

‘What are you doing?’ The Boy’s voice startled her, sounding close, like his lips were pressed to the gap in the frame.

She crossed the creaking floor and lay back on the bed.

‘You can’t escape.’ The Boy continued, the strange immediacy worse than if he had been in the room. ‘Where would you go?’

I sat sideways on at my desk looking out at the lab. I wondered if the Boy’s associate was watching this window. My wallet, my money and my passport had gone. All that was left were my
notes, pages and pages of handwritten nothing.

‘Were you locked in here last night?’ I asked.

‘No.’ Kim replied from where she lay staring at the ceiling.

‘Did you see Sole?’

‘Yes. We were together.’

‘Was she all right?’

‘She was tired because she had been working at the
comedor
. But she was OK. Besides the fact she was panicking about you.’

‘Cordero was still here yesterday, wasn’t he?’ I asked. ‘Yes.’ Kim looked over. ‘Cordero was still here.’ We had no plan, except to ask to go outside to
relieve ourselves and then, tomorrow, to try and get out by whatever means possible. Several times, we thought we heard the Boy breathing as though he, too, were in the hut with us.

Later, there came the sound of plates and voices outside. I looked out. A soldier was eating on Sole’s porch.

‘Why haven’t they locked Lothar in here with us?’ I turned to face the room again. ‘When did he go?’

Kim was still lying on the bed. ‘About an hour before you woke up,’ she said.

‘Who took him?’

‘The Boy came with a couple of the older soldiers. Lothar just got up and went with them. They came back and said that we could wash and I woke you up straight away.’ Kim cursed
impatiently. ‘This is a joke. What are they
doing
? They can’t just keep us in here forever.’

‘Actually,’ Tord said, ‘I’m afraid Lugo does as it pleases him to do.’

We had thought him asleep. He had been sitting in my easy chair with his hands clasped and eyes closed. Now they flicked towards me – quick and green in the lamplight. ‘They say that
he is given licence to do the Devil’s work,’ he said.

Kim sat forward on the edge of the bed. ‘What the hell does that mean?
Who
says?’

Tord gave a shallow nod by way of absorbing her antagonism. But there was a reciprocal anger lurking in the composure of his response: ‘They allow Lugo to racketeer. They allow him to
torture and fornicate and to commit all manner of abomination. In return, he creates such terror that the forest empties.’ He thumbed his fringe to one side. ‘And if ever he were caught
or exposed by anyone, they would disown him. He knows this and serves Satan all the more while he can.’

‘Shut up about Satan,’ Kim said.

‘He works underneath Cordero,’ I said, quietly. ‘Cor-dero uses Lugo at his own discretion. So Lothar says. Sometimes they cleanse nice, sometimes they cleanse nasty.’

‘How does Lothar know this?’ Kim asked.

‘You should ask him that yourself.’

From outside came the low repeated gurgling sound that I did not recognize for a moment.

‘Machine guns.’ Tord rose.

Kim came over so that we were all three looking out of the desk window together. The rancour between us evaporated. Outside, the night sky was glowing red as if Satan’s armies were indeed
surging forth from a crack in the Earth.

‘They’re using flares on the rivers,’ Tord said.

‘Kim, if there’s a chance for you to get out with Tord, you must go.’

She turned to me. ‘What about you?’

‘They may keep me here.’

‘We should go together.’

‘No. You must go – if you can, you must. I have to get Lothar . . . and Sole. You still have the disk?’ I attempted a smile. ‘You should—’

‘I have the disk. I’m not going to lose the damn disk.’

‘Good. Because you’re right – it’s important – you should carry on – you should prove what Cameron believed.’ I held her eyes but perhaps she had heard
something hollow in my voice because she looked away out of the window again.

‘What is happening out there?’ she asked.

IV

Deep in sleep, I did not hear the key in the lock. Flashlights woke me, excoriating my eyelids, shining around the walls of the hut. Kim jolted and then kicked beside me,
bad dreams broken by a worse awakening. I sat up, blocking their lights from finding her for a moment.

‘We are going to see the Captain,’ Tord said. He was standing by the chair, head bowed, in an attitude of pre-forgiveness. For the first time I thought that perhaps he was losing his
self-control – that some particular kind of hysteria had him in its grip. He lowered his voice: ‘Where the Devil sits enthroned in darkness, there shall the soldiers of Jesus venture
without fear and bring all men back to the light.’

‘Shut up.’ The Boy’s associate threw down my boots. ‘Don’t speak. Put on your shoes.’ His light had found Kim behind me. ‘And you.’

I bent to put on my boots. They flashed their light on my laces a moment; then, deliberately, they played the beams over Kim as she sat up beside me.

I stood. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

Though I could not see his eyes for their lights, I could tell that the Boy was looking at me. Again, I felt the strange sensation – a wordless recognition of something and yet a feeling
that I could not fathom him, that I could guess neither his motives nor his inclinations. I detected a slight sway in his posture as he fixed on me and it occurred to me then that he was
experiencing the same and that this was the reason for his persistent gaze.

He licked his metal. ‘The Captain is ready now,’ he said.

His associate laughed then leaned in towards Kim. ‘Lucky for you – he has drowned his thirst in whores.’

I thought at first that we were going towards the
comedor
but instead we were taken along the back of the huts. The wall of the jungle pressed in again – the
sounds of the night somehow solicitous beneath the din of the tinny music and the raucousness of men charged with drink and lust. I hobbled but only because with a certain way of walking, there was
no pain. My mind returned again and again to Sole. How long had she and Felipe continued working after they realized that Cordero was gone? She must know that I had been found. Would she have
already left? I hoped so. I did not doubt her ability to go through the forest if necessary. After I had seen the Captain, I would know better what actions were required. The next hour would decide
everything.

I walked closer to the tendrils and the leaves. I drank in the perfumes of the hidden flowers. I wished to silence every other noise, every other person, so that I could truly hear the forest. I
listened to the insects. Had Tord and I been reversed in our labours, I was sure that he would have had more things by heart – class, genera, species.

A pistol shot was fired. The retort ricocheted through the trees, where it was deadened and smothered. The Boy paused. We were behind the
comedor
– at the place where the fire had
been that first night. The clamour had stopped. The music played clearly a moment. Then gradually the voices began again, but more softly now, hushed.

The associate came forward. ‘Give me a second,’ he said to the Boy.

We stood in line, waiting, listening. The Boy watched me. I looked up. All kinds of stars were massed and smeared across the heavens – bright, twinkling, shadowy, nebulous, twinned,
clustered – their number so great that the sky could not be called dark and only an ignorant fool could imagine himself of consequence.

The associate returned, cigarette stub burning in his lips. ‘Just that fat cook,’ he said.