Читать книгу The Economy of Light - Jack Dann - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

WILD FIRE

The pain in my stomach was not from bad food, but from bowel cancer. I checked myself into a hospital in São Paulo, where they gave me a private room overlooking a low, flat roof that seemed to exist solely to provide a surface for the television antennae that grew out of the tar like steel plants. In the distance were gray buildings, brick chimneys, and the miasma of pollution that seemed to soften everything in this city...a city I had always hated. I had a small ranch near the gigantic King Ranch, which is in Amazon country just outside of Belém, and I wanted nothing more than to return there and let Onca, a heavy Indian woman of Yąnomamö extraction whom I had hired to take care of the place, look after me. But afraid as I was—and I was terrified—I couldn’t bring myself to return to the States. It was as if I’d never had a life there, as if only the ranch felt like home; and I wanted to forget the university and my whole life in upstate New York. The ranch was the only place I’d ever felt completely comfortable, perhaps because it was so isolated, for even now, forty years later, I associated the steel and concrete of civilization with the camps. I could live and work and teach in cities, but the little boy that still lived inside me could only sleep in the red-tiled stucco house outside of Belém.

I endured the batteries of tests, the stool samples and barium enemas, the GI series and colonoscopies. As if to further complicate matters, I developed an ugly blister on my right cheek, just below where my glasses touch. Then another appeared on my mouth and scalp, and on my chest. The lesions wept a clear liquid; the one in my mouth left a constant bitter taste. My doctor, a no-nonsense woman who wore her long, beautiful black hair in a bun, explained that I had also developed a form of pemphigus, called wild fire, which was found only in certain areas of Brazil. Pemphigus was also a disease that middle-aged Jews were susceptible to. It was a virulent condition, and the usual cure was corticosteroids and antibiotic therapy. But the corticosteroids might increase the growth of the spreading cancer. She would try 75 mg of a drug called Methotrexate.

Still, the wild fire was minor in comparison with the cancer. If I would take chemotherapy and radiation treatments for the cancer, she could give me six months to a year longer to live.

But I would probably need a bowel operation.

And I would have to wear a colostomy bag around on my stomach.

No, I thought. I wasn’t going to live in hospital to gain a few months of pain. I wasn’t going to die to the smell of antisepsis and live in the white rooms near the laboratories. Laboratories.... I could see Mengele’s laboratory in my mind as if I had just left it.

Even as the doctor talked to me, I distanced myself from her and her words. I was numb, in shock, I supposed, and it was like being inside a cool, wet cloud high above the ground. I knew that I would be making a long fall any second now, yet it was as if fear and death and all the other emotions had become mere intellectual states. I considered my own death as if it was someone else’s. Perhaps because I couldn’t bring myself to believe any of it.

I suddenly began to tremble.

I stared out the window at the wild sculpture of rooftop antennae below and could think only of Mengele—Uncle Pepi, who had said that my twin brother and I wouldn’t be in hospital for long. I grimaced, for the sonovabitch had been telling the truth. He had intended on killing both of us. But I had had one up on him. He hadn’t gotten me. He had tried, but he had failed. Or had he...?

Irrational as it was, I found myself blaming Mengele for the cancer and the lesions. I couldn’t help but feel that they were a parting gift from him. As I had looked into the hollows of his skull—I, who was alive and he, who was dead—he had somehow magically transformed my lunch of tainted food into cancer; and like Job’s wife, who had taken that one last look back at Sodom, the place of her youth, I had looked into the dark shadows that had once been Mengele’s blue eyes, and he opened up my skin and made it bubble, as if his death’s-head’s stare was invisible fire scorching my flesh.

I knew then that I was going home...to Belém, back to the ranch. I would die properly. In my own home.

And I would still have one up on Mengele.

* * * *

My fazenda was small, barely four hundred hectares, while the other neighboring ranches were paced out at several hundreds of thousands of hectares. My manager Genaro, who had been a macheteiro, a drifter, drove me home from Belém in my ‘pickoppy’. He was in his sixties, of white and Indian extraction. I knew very little about him, except that he was born near Manaus on the Rio Negro; he was quiet and looked sullen, perhaps because his lower jaw jutted out, but his pale blue eyes revealed an intelligence that seemed to be belied by his habit of reclining wherever and whenever possible. He was tall, thin and wiry, extremely well-muscled for a man his age. He had high cheekbones and black hair greased back away from his high forehead. His left cheek was distended from a roll of tobacco; his front teeth were missing. Yet for all that he was a formidable-looking man. He reminded me of a condor, or some other great, ungainly bird.

We drove down the Belém-Brasilia highway, which was like driving through hell, for much of the land to either side was on fire, and in some places the flames reached toward the cracked red ground along the highway. The sky was dark with smoke. The acrid smell was overwhelming, and the heat came in waves that seemed to suck away every bit of moisture. What wasn’t burning was as scorched and dry as a desert; the burned stumps of trees reached out like props in a Grade B horror movie. All the jungle hereabouts would soon be converted into grassland, which the soil could support for five years at best. Most jungle soil is less than three inches deep. Burn down the trees and the microorganisms that feed minerals back into the soil die. Then the rain erodes the soil. The soil becomes sand. And what’s left is red hardpan: laterite. Then more jungle has to be burned to produce more farm and pasture land.

But the worst of the conflagration was over; the land had been burning for some time. I had seen firestorms in this part of the country where clouds would form over the trees and rain would fall in sheets. Lightning would snake into the trees and as one looked into the isolate darkness, it seemed as if the last days promised in the bible had finally come. I felt a pang of guilt, for my little ranch had also been burned out of the jungle, but I had used the land wisely, had not extended myself, and was determined not to cut into any more of the jungle. The jungle was like a womb for me. I could afford to sell the cattle and just live on the fazenda.

It was a moot point. I would be long gone before the soil lost its nutrients and died.

We stopped in the town of Paragominas for gas. A small, dusty town square, dirty pastel buildings, sand demons boiling into life with every gust of wind, a few bars with pickups parked in front, the sounds of loud carimbo music and laughter, a young man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson hat leading a donkey loaded with leather bags down the main street. I had taken a pill for the pain in my stomach, and although I knew the ache was still there, I felt removed from it. The nausea remained, however. I could not yet believe it was real, that I was going to die. For as much death as I had seen during my life, now, when it was once again upon me, I refused it. I was more mature, more willing to accept life’s grim realities, when I was ten years old and part of Mengele’s zoo. I ground my teeth, a habit that my ex-wife had always complained about, and once again I began to tremble. It was already dark and rather than stay in what looked more like a ghost-town in the American northwest than a village in the jungle, I insisted that we drive on. Genaro would have probably liked to stay at least long enough to play some pool in the bars and drink a few fingers of cachaça—Brazilian white rum.

Even in the darkness, I could feel when we were once again deep into jungle. The air was stifling, wet as a warm bath; my eyes stung and sweat rolled under my shirt, down my armpits, chilly in evaporation. A Culex mosquito flew into the cab of the pickup and its high-pitched whine almost drove me crazy until I finally managed to swat it.

“We are almost home, Meester,” Genaro said at dawn, as the shadows that were hundred feet tall trees on either side of the road turned glaucous green and then finally came to life as a universe of viridescence, all the possibilities of green—celdadon, bice, emerald, beryl, aquamarine, olive green, evergreen, blue green, leek green, yew green, serpentine green, variscite green, turquoise green, mignonette, milori, chromium, terra verde, reseda—towering walls of trees and vines and air plants and ferns. I took another pill, which I had difficulty swallowing without water, and nodded. We had not talked for the entire trip; it was unusual that he would say anything at all without prompting.

“Is everything okay at the fazenda?” I asked, feeling the need for company in the wet grayness of morning. I felt lost, swallowed.

But Genaro didn’t answer, which meant that indeed everything was okay or he would have told me what was wrong. Finally, after what seemed like a long time of concentration for him, Genaro said in a slow, tight voice, as if it was very difficult for him to speak, “I know you are dying.”

“What?” I asked, shocked.

But Genaro didn’t answer.

“You must speak now,” I said, sitting forward, leaning toward him, as if he were going to whisper to me how he had found out.

His face tightened. “I knew you were dying before you left. Onca told me this. She also told me to tell you not to be afraid.”

Onca, who took care of the house for me, was his wife. Once when I had asked her why someone who was so happy and talkative and full of life would choose someone as serious and quiet as Genaro for a husband, she laughed and said, “I’m a bruxa, you know what that is? Surely you have heard of macumba and espiritisme. Yes?” I had; they were indigenous religions that worshiped and, if one believed, used spirits. They used good spirits to protect themselves from bad spirits and were not above calling on foreign spirits for help, spirits such as Yara, which was supposed to be an American Indian, or white spirits such as Maria Lunga or Pai Jacobi, which could sometimes be used to harm people or accomplish evil ends. “Well,” she continued, “I can see things. And Genaro helps me to do that. Sometimes I think he’s a spirit.” She laughed, as if she thought I would believe that bruxas were just part of the natural weave of things. And in some way I suppose I did, for I still couldn’t separate the nightmare of my time in the camps from the reality. As I remembered Mengele, seeing him that first time, I could believe he was a spirit, a demon brought into the world; and even now, I remembered him as the man who was father, god, and tormentor. I remembered the feel of his clean-shaven face as he lifted me up once when he was in a good mood; and yet he had somehow merged with his death, and that fleshy monster had become skeletal in my mind; his face became that hollow-socketed skull the coroner had held high in Embu. And in my mind he was alive and dead, a grisly memory of the reality of sweet Onca’s spirit world.

Genaro wouldn’t talk at all for the rest of the trip. He kept his eyes straight ahead, and we finally came to the open gate of the Fazenda, then down my road to the driveway. The red tile roof of the arcaded porches glowed wetly in the sun and I felt better just seeing the gardens and the white stucco walls stained with rust and dirt. I felt suddenly sleepy.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in my room.

* * * *

The sun poured through my bedroom window and I could hear the familiar screams of the pia, a small gray bird that the Indians called dai-a-pior, which meant ‘worse to come.’ The bird would softly whistle and then would break out in staccato-like shrieks. I couldn’t stand the screeing, but like the terrible and unearthly screams of the howler monkeys, it was comforting if only because it was familiar.

“Well, Meester finally wakes up,” Onca said, bringing me breakfast of milk, juice, a starchy gruel, and ice cream. Not her usual breakfast fare, nor mine. I discovered another lesion on my neck, which I would not allow myself to touch, lest it spread. I had to take my medication, I told myself, aware of the irony that here I was dying and yet I was concerned with a skin disease. But the taste of the sore in my mouth, and the constant awareness that there were others all over my body repulsed me, as if the pemphigus was an external sign of what was happening inside of me. But Onca only laughed and said, “You look like a young boy who hasn’t yet found a woman.”

“What?” I asked.

“You know, you’re getting pimples. They’ll go away once you start using your thing again like a man.” She giggled and her wide face that in repose could appear as sullen as Genaro’s seemed to partake completely of her smile. She tilted her head back as she looked at me, a habit of hers. Her mouth curled downward, which gave her an expression that was almost French. Her dark complexion was flawless, smooth as pond water, but her face seemed flattened. She wore a very faded dress that was cut much to short for her; it revealed her heavy legs and thighs and the outlines of her large breasts, which had nurtured seven children. Four of them died, she had said; the others grew up.

“Do you talk to Genaro like that?” I asked.

“Much worse, Meester. Much worse.” She put the tray on my lap and said, “Eat, you’ll feel better.”

“What the hell is it?” I asked. The last thing I wanted was food; the very thought of eating made me queasy.

“Do you want me to feed you?” she asked.

“Don’t talk to me that way,” I snapped. “I can’t eat...but you can tell me what it is.”

“It’s made from the manioc, which I mashed up and add some things.”

“What other things?”

“Some carapanauba bark, a little paxuri seeds, and cachaça, and maybe something else, I maybe forget. You know what they are?”

“Cachaça I know, but the rest...I’m not eating—”

Try it, you’ll see. I promise it won’t hurt you. Would I be stupid enough to kill the golden fleece?”

I couldn’t help but smile. Over the years I had always read to her once or twice a week, for she didn’t know how to read, nor would she learn. But she loved fairy tales, and I tried to bring back new books to read her. Those stories would turn her into a child, an odd and wonderful thing to watch, for to me at least she seemed like the embodiment of the earth mother. She even looked like the prehistoric statues archaeologists had found all over the world; they were small, but had overdeveloped breasts and large stomachs. She was somehow natural, idiosyncratic, and universal.

“It’s goose, not fleece,” I said, and, giving in, I took a spoonful of the glassy-looking gruel; it had no taste at all, but then my mouth became numb, as if the mush had been spiked with Novocain. I could feel it numb my throat and more as the stuff worked its way down my esophagus to my stomach. There was a dish popular in Belém called pato no tucupi, which was famous for numbing the mouth. She must have used some of the same ingredients.

“Try some more,” she insisted. “It will help your stomach. It will make the pain go away for a while.”

But I couldn’t keep the food from trickling out of the side of my mouth. “What’s the ice cream for?” I asked.

“It makes the herbs work better.”

That was true. As the ice-cream went down, I felt as if my insides were being air-conditioned, as if there were great cold places where my throat and chest and stomach had been, and I felt muzzy and light-headed, as if everything was slowly floating around me. “Genaro told me you knew I was dying,” I said.

“I told him that.”

“How did you know?”

“I had a dream about it when Genaro was making love to me. Sometimes I dream then. Often I do.”

I felt myself blushing as she told me that, although I’ve never been a prude. Yet I felt embarrassed and chilled that she should see my death as she made love to her silent husband. I stared out the window at the neatly tended garden of jungle flowers and the evergreen trees that were in lavender bloom, but the white sash window-bars wavered and went out of focus. I did not feel pain in my stomach, only coolness. Now I imagined that dry breezes were passing though me. Onca must have used more than herbs in the gruel; I hoped it wasn’t anything hallucinogenic. Probably not, I could trust her.

But she had put something in there....

I didn’t want to ask her any more questions, yet I couldn’t help myself; and she was standing before me, waiting, knowing that I would ask, and prepared to answer, as if she had dreamed this, too. Perhaps she had.

“What about your dream?” I asked. “Tell me about it.”

“I dreamed about you and Genaro. Maybe because I was trying to make babies with Genaro. Sometimes dreams and truth get mixed up for me and I can’t pull out one part from another. Do you understand?”

I didn’t, but I nodded.

“And your dream?”

She turned toward the window and looked out. She seemed to be looking past the trees and gardens and yard and miles of pastureland that was as level as Iowa grassland. Deep in the distance was the rainforest, the real ruler of this land. “It was a good dream, but it wasn’t good to dream it. You were with my Genaro in a boat. He was driving this boat. You sat in the front, but you were your own dream and it was a terrible dream. You were bones without flesh, yet you weren’t dead; and your bones were the color as the water. Brown as mud, just like the Amazonas. And Genaro was taking you to meet death so you could get yourself back.” She shivered and made a gesture in the air. “He told me he would do that for you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my words slurred from the Novocain-like herb she had put in the food. “Do what for me?”

“I feel close to you, Meester, but I told him not to do this, but he believes it is a matter of honor.”

“You’re not making sense,” I said, frustrated with all this mumbo-jumbo.

“He will take you to meet your death so you may live. That is what your dream told me when I had my dream. Dreams come from people, but they can be alive on their own, to talk to each other, just like people.”

“Onca, how you found out about my disease, I don’t know. I’ll give you that. But you—”

“We know someone who can help you,” Onca said.

“If I wouldn’t go to hospital to have them radiate me and do everything else, I certainly wouldn’t go to a witch doctor. But I thank you, I appreciate your concern.”

“This person isn’t a witch doctor, Meester.”

“Than what is he?”

“He’s a white man. A doctor. You know him, I think.”

“Who?”

“That’s all I have from the dream,” she said. “Maybe later I will have more. Then maybe you will be ready.” With that she took the tray, leaving me only the milk on my bed stand, and left the room.

“Onca,” I shouted, but she didn’t—and I knew she wouldn’t—come back. The image that had formed in my mind was, of course, that of Mengele. Death. But that was impossible, and yet I still felt the hackles raise on my back, cold as the scales of a fish.

* * * *

That night I was awakened by a sharp scream. My first thought was of howler monkeys, but the shriek was of too short a duration, and sounded too human.

It was Onca.