A river divided, p.25
A River Divided, page 25
His breath returned in a few seconds. He pushed himself up and started running again. A cloud wafting like remnants of fireworks reached him, bringing the smell of exploded powder.
He could now see the mahogany tree lying on the ground, having crushed adjacent vegetation. It had left a tear in the green dome in the shape of a keyhole, through which a flood of light reached the ground. He had a flashback of the light through the cupola of St. Peter’s. He lowered his gaze. The Árvore Velha had no branches for about twenty meters from its roots, but then issued a symmetric crown, now smashed on one side like a fallen umbrella.
He reached the tree. Banners in different languages were still clinging to fallen branches. On the other side, roots that had previously snaked through the earth were now pointing at the sky. Behind the roots he could see scattered trees, but beyond them there was nothing.
“José,” he called again and again as he ducked under the foliage and climbed onto the crown and over some banners. It was green everywhere—the foliage of the Árvore Velha, adjacent trees, and ruined ferns and climbers beneath.
He dialed José’s number and heard the phone ring at the other side of the crown. He rushed toward the sound. The legs of a man protruded from under the foliage. The brown trunk of a tree fern was on top of him, itself crushed by a branch of the Árvore Velha. “José, I am here!” he shouted. “It’s Christopher.”
There was no answer. The body lay motionless. He shifted the outer parts of the fern leaves to get at their base. He could see José’s black hair.
Pulling with all his strength, he managed to get the trunk off José’s body. It looked hopeless. The tree fern had crushed the man. His face was covered in blood and the red color was spreading over his blue shirt, presumably from wounds to the chest.
Christopher leaned over him. “I’ve got to stop the bleeding, José.” He applied pressure to the surface ballooning with blood, but most of the blood was actually coming from a neck wound.
He heard a phone ring.
José was trying to say something. There was blood frothing at the corners of his mouth. Christopher leaned over, his ear now close to José’s face.
The dying man murmured, “I … I failed.”
“Help is coming. You can pull through, José.”
“I failed. Tell … Tell them … I am content is only me. Tell my mother … Ask her to pardon me.”
“I’ll tell them, José. Just keep breathing.”
“Tell mi Lorena … Tell her today I met a small … a small marmoset … I talked … I talked to the marmoset and it talked to me …” His voice faltered.
Christopher lifted his head to look at the man’s face. He saw the lips tremble. As José struggled to speak, a dimple formed on his left cheek.
“It asked me to thank her … For its home she tried to save. Tell Lo … mi, mi Lo …”
As Christopher continued applying pressure to the neck wound, he remembered Evelyn’s words, “Make sure the blood circulates around the body.” He started cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but, with every compression he made with his united palms, more blood oozed out of the wound.
He checked for signs of breathing. There were none—the chest was not rising and there was no airflow from the nose or mouth. The sound of José’s breathing was now only in Christopher’s head, the echo of a sound now gone.
The bleeding seemed to ease off; he maintained the compressions, humming the rhyme his mother had taught him to stay in time, “Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream …” But even after many minutes there was still no breathing.
Suddenly, the smell of blood filled his nostrils. Frantically he kept pressing, panting with exertion and mumbling the childhood rhyme. Was he fast enough and strong enough, or maybe too fast or too strong. It was hopeless, but he kept trying. José’s motionless eyes were staring at the sky; the pupils were large. He checked for a pulse—there was none. He could not stop. José could come back.
Bleeding had nearly stopped. Could he have lost all his blood? I have blood, but how do I give it to him?
There had been no pulse in José’s body, no heartbeat, no breathing for over an hour. His pupils remained fully dilated.
Every time Christopher tried to close the eyelids, they opened again and dead, dilated eyes stared back at him. He could see the irises were black. How do I give him rest?
José’s face was covered in blood. Terrifying as it was, Christopher could not stop looking at it. He had to find a way to wash off the blood. In the smashed tent, along with sleeping bags and food, he found a crate with bottles of water. With one hand he poured the water over José’s face, and with the other he washed it.
He used voice command to call Oscar. “Why aren’t you here yet? De Olmos is dead.”
“We come and we bring—”
Christopher understood none of what Oscar kept saying. With José’s face largely free of blood, he could now see the deep-set eyes, the long eyelashes, the strong eyebrows, the straight nose and the black wavy hair that matched the beard. He recalled the dimple on José’s left cheek and touched his own cheek, forcing himself to smile. He could not feel his dimple, but he knew it was there, on the right cheek. It was as though his own face were reflected in José’s—a mirror-image reversal.
In Jerusalem people look like me. In Rome people stare at me. In South America people look like me. What is going on? It must be some kind of delusion.
Thick drops of rain started to fall. He looked at the sky through the tear in the canopy. Clouds had set in. His heart pounded against the wall of his chest; his mouth was dry. He knew he was confused, but didn’t know what to do. This had to be a nightmare—the murder, the vanishing pulse, the resemblance. Isn’t this what the poem his mother told him was all about? “You will not meet the Cyclopes unless you carry them in your soul. Unless your soul stands them in front of you.” If ever there were monsters … I am surrounded by Cyclopes and they must all be in my imagination, exactly as Evelyn said. This is all too bizarre.
He pinched himself to wake up. But this was not a dream.
He looked at the face before him once again, his mind racing through memories in search of an explanation. There was a resemblance between him and de Olmos. Maybe I am seeing things. After all, the dimple is on the opposite side.
De Olmos’ body was distorted because the land under it was not flat. Christopher dragged it to level ground. His white shirt was now sticking to his skin in places where blood had soaked the fabric, especially on the middle of his chest where José’s head had rested while straightening the body.
He sat next to the dead man and for a long time he stared at the roots of the Árvore Velha. They were massive, but broken and torn from the Earth that had harbored them.
The afterimage of dilated eyes was still with him and the smell of blood still in his nostrils when Christopher stood up and walked toward the emptiness beyond the trees.
Suddenly, he found himself at the edge of the logged area. Nothing was left standing in front of him—not in the valley, not on the slopes, not on the mountaintops. None of the satellite images had prepared him for this. For the first time, he saw what his company was doing to the forest.
It was relentless removal of all the trees, logging was not confined to the area to be inundated. There had been no thought spared for the forest. Feeling he was about to lose control, he sat down, cradling his head in his hands. Drops of rain were still hitting his head and shoulders. What have I done? The environmentalists were right. It was a gross error to—
A soft but sustained rustling sound interrupted his thoughts. It came from a bush near the body. He ran back, his mind on predators that might have smelled the blood. He knelt and put his hand on the forehead of the dead man. The body was still warm.
He again thought there was a resemblance. Could we be related? Could my own father be Argentinian? Could we even have the same father? It’s impossible to think straight.
If they could do this to José, what else are they capable of? What if all the evidence disappeared and himself along with it? He took photos of José, of the two of them, of the fallen tree, and the clearfelling of the forest, and uploaded them onto his blog, scheduling release in two days.
Christopher heard Oscar calling him. He shouted back, “Oscar, I told you, José is dead. We need to get the police here by helicopter.”
Oscar walked up, accompanied by two workers who took off their hats when they saw the body. “Is better not the police, boss.”
“This is a murder. We need the police now.”
“The police have no helicopter.”
“They can borrow a helicopter from the army. We’ll pay for that.”
Oscar looked at the two men. “We have guards.”
“This is a matter for the police, not the guards.”
Finally Oscar made the call.
“Tell them it’s urgent. A man has been killed. We’ll transmit them the coordinates. They can land at the camp.” Christopher stopped suddenly and looked at Oscar, trying to decipher his words. Was he calling the police? Or would a group of paramilitaries arrive to dispose of two bodies?
José’s phone rang again. Picking it up from the mud, Christopher said, “This is José’s phone.”
A male voice responded, “Que?”
“Are you from Resistência Pacifica? Is everyone there safe?”
“We are all here. Where is José?”
“I am from TerraDyname.”
“Where is José?”
“I am sorry … Just this moment I am—”
“Why you have the phone of José?”
“I am really sorry. José … José is dead. It was—”
“What you say?”
“José … José died in the explosion.”
“Asesino!”
“No, I tried to help. Please listen—”
His family would call me the same, he thought as he stared at the silent phone. His family … de Olmos asked me to tell them his last words.
Christopher refused to return with Oscar to the camp to wait for the police. He felt weak, but knew he had to guard the body against predators and more.
The phone rang again, this time displaying the name “Marmoset.” A vignette at the side showed a brunette with long hair. The call was canceled before he had a chance to answer. Perhaps it’s for the best I missed the call. Right now I can’t find the right words.
Lying down on the leaf-covered ground, he looked up. The clouds were shifting, revealing patches of blue sky. He recalled the logged valley. His company was committing crimes—the forest on the mountains was gone. And now this—a man who tried to protect it has been destroyed.
Soon the place began to feel eerie. He was alone next to the body of a man who had died in his arms and who looked like him. How could all this have happened?
Who was José?
Who is my father?
The rain had long stopped, but water was still dripping down from the canopy, trickling through his hair and down his cheeks. The forest would not recover. Erosion would carry the soil to the Atlantic Ocean.
An image of Evelyn came to Christopher’s mind—Evelyn the scientist this time, the geneticist in the white coat, as he had seen her countless times in her lab. He recalled the test-tube shakers; the ones on the benches tilted from one side to the other, and then back again like a seesaw. There was a shaker inside a refrigerator, visible through the glass door; it went around and around in the same direction. He remembered the high-pitched sound of the centrifuge spinning at over one hundred thousand revolutions per minute. Evelyn examined the DNA of everything, from drosophila to mice trying to find an answer to—
It struck him—DNA is the answer.
He emptied a water bottle and placed some of the coagulated blood from José’s neck into it. Tightening the cap, he went to the fallen tent, where he found a small sack to put the bottle in.
The protesters could not be far. Oscar had said their camp was about two kilometers away. They probably called because they heard the explosion. Perhaps they feared for their own safety. Or, maybe, they would come to claim the body.
He crossed the dead man’s hands one over the other, keeping his own hand on them while trying again to close the eyes.
He looked at the banners on the fallen tree as they flapped in the breeze. “Let the River Run Free,” read one of them. He heard distant footsteps.
Finally, two policemen and the two guards arrived without Oscar. The police wore Ray-Ban sunglasses and carried assault rifles. They seemed unconcerned, almost jovial. The younger man was overweight and the walk had taken its toll. He was soaked in sweat and rain and, when he took off his cap, his hair remained stuck to his forehead.
“Christopher Camilleri,” he said, holding out his hand, his voice echoing in his left ear—it must have had air trapped in it. “I am the liaison officer. I was on the phone to the man when the crime was committed and came immediately to the scene.”
“We know the accident happen here this morning,” the younger man responded. “We talk to Oscar.”
“This was no accident.” Christopher turned away from the men and gazed at the fallen tree, trying to regain his composure.
“Yes, yes, we investigate now.”
“Vitor should be arrested. This is an assassination.”
The guards came closer when Vitor’s name was mentioned.
“No conclusions,” said the young policeman. “The polícia must to look at the big picture to find who is involved. We have our procedures.” He put on his hat again. “The dead man is Argentinian. The Argentinian consulate needs to learn this.”
The police consulted each other and then went to the body. The younger one pulled out his phone and took pictures. They were glancing at Christopher too. Are they also seeing the resemblance?
“A tree was killed,” said the younger policeman. “Kill a tree, you go to jail in Brazil. But they may have permission. A man died too. Yes, we will investigate Vitor and the others.”
The older policeman gave the nod to the two guards to load José’s body onto a stretcher. Walking behind them, Christopher kept looking at the track beneath his feet and at José’s arm that hung off the stretcher. It was rigid and slightly bent at the elbow, but at the shoulder it bent much more, as though the bones there had vanished.
This was what he was looking at all the way to the base camp, while the same words kept coming to his mind, “I talked to the marmoset and it talked to me … It asked me to thank her … for its home she tried to save.”
Chapter 19
NO ES JOSÉ
Are my steps leaving an accusing trail?
Christopher was pacing the departure lounge at Manaus Airport, his flight to São Paulo having been delayed. It was only twenty minutes, but he worried he might miss his connection to Buenos Aires.
At the camp earlier, as he was bundling his bloodstained clothes into a separate compartment of his suitcase, he had heard the helicopter engine start. There had been ice in Oscar’s eyes as they said goodbye. Christopher had not told him he was leaving Brazil and perhaps Oscar assumed he was going to stay in Manaus. It was hard to know who was guilty and who was innocent.
He had given his statement at the Manaus police station, reliving for them how he had come upon the ruined man under the uprooted tree. They confirmed Vitor would be taken into custody. He was given José’s address, possibly because he asked politely, possibly because they were used to doing favors for TerraDyname.
After meeting with the police, he had delivered the blood sample to the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia. He filled out a form with his details and a nurse took blood for the DNA comparison. As he left, the receptionist smiled and wished him “bom dia.” It reminded him of what his mother had noticed after her diagnosis—everyone going about their normal lives, while hers was falling apart. He had the same feeling now—ahead, for everyone else, was the prospect of a “good day.”
The taxi driver had understood his rush and delivered him in time for check-in, pointless now that there was a delay. He could not block the memory of the events of a few hours before. He saw the arm again hanging from the stretcher, the bones missing.
Until the moment he had seen the legs protruding from the canopy, he had hoped a furious José would appear, berating him for the loss of the tree. Then the final realization—his hands searching for a pulse no longer there.
In his nostrils was again the smell of blood and on his tongue the salty, metallic taste of gunpowder.
Any minute now, he expected accusing fingers pointing at him. He had not controlled the workers. His speech the day before must have infuriated Vitor. That was probably when he decided. Or was he paid to do it?
If I had left a bit earlier in the morning …
How long would it take for the news to break? He checked his phone for headlines, but there was no mention yet; possibly it would not rate as anything more than local news. At some point, his world would know. Michael would know, Swan, his friends, everyone. Nothing he did from now on could remove this shadow.
I must call Michael. But how do I tell him about the worst moment in my life? How do I explain why I feel this way?
Buildings, roads, trees and neon signs were quickly passing by.
Sitting at the back of the taxi, Christopher contemplated checking the news again. There were missed calls from Oscar and the Chief Financial Officer. He vacillated. As if on cue, the phone vibrated, displaying the name “Howard.” He did not want them to think he was hiding. He had nothing to hide.
“Christopher, I heard about the accident.”
“It was no accident, Mr. Howard; you know it. I don’t want to be part of this anymore.”
“You got it all wrong, Christopher. You need to stay in Manaus and handle things.”
“No. Not me. You need to realize what you’re doing. Your employee killed a man. Consider this my resignation. And I suggest—”
