The lost city, p.18
The Lost City, page 18
Afterward Jackson came to believe the man had been wearing a long white smock such as the Indians used to wear, and the figure became ever more of a puzzle and a preoccupation.
A big bird flew by, appearing out of nowhere above the roof, and swept away to the left on broad pale wings.
When Jackson turned back into the room Sarah was lying still with her eyes open. He reached up on tiptoes to the guttering candle and blew across the top of its glass jar. The candle went out in a cloud of smoke, releasing the scent of wax.
When he woke, grey light seeped under the eaves, turning the table, the chair, the bed itself with its thick white counterpane into ghosts.
4
Nellie had an indeterminate place in the household. She had been there from the start, yet she didn’t exactly fit in. She kept to herself. Her daughter Leña had grown up and left, and the sullen teenage Sol spent much of his time swinging in a hammock on the porch reading. Often Nellie would sit nearby in one of the crude wooden chairs that looked like rockers but didn’t rock. She looked after the other children too, even when Dolores was around. Dolores was more likely to do farm work—getting maize for the pigs and the two cows, bringing them hay, filling their water pails. She did the milking too, although it was Nellie who milked the goats. The goats were hers. She was the one who locked them up at night and let them out in the morning.
One day Jackson had been helping Alfredo plough up ground creepers. One more time, Alfredo said, and it would be good for planting. Jackson walked into the refreshing dark of the house and found Nellie kneeling on a plastic sheet with two of the younger children. There was a wooden box filled with gourds, bowls and pots of paint. She had a tub in which she was mixing small amounts of colour with a long brush.
Jackson watched from the end of the room. Nellie’s skirts spread wide, and she was leaning forward to give a brush to one of the little girls. Her long black and grey hair hung on either side of her face. Jackson turned and left. He felt suddenly sad, or difficult. He wasn’t sure what he felt. He walked round the building and went into the kitchen by the door at the other end, and dipped a cup in the bucket of sweet water, as they called it—the spring water for drinking—and drank two cupfuls straight down. Then, from the far end, he looked again at Nellie and her art class.
A girl was pulling a thick line of blue paint across a newspaper. In the daylight from the windows the wet paint glistened like blood. You could see the grains of it like wood grain. It seemed to Jackson a knife opening a broad wound, the blue blood welling up and shining stickily.
He couldn’t watch. He went out and helped Alfredo turn in the mule that had been pulling the plough. While he was unbuckling the halter he realised that what he was feeling was envy. He was envious of the child with its carer and its paints. He felt sick, and bent down behind the mule’s neck.
That evening he asked Nellie if he could have some paint.
Of course. She frowned. What for?
I’d like to do a picture of the family, he blurted without thinking. Of everybody, he added, just in case there was any confusion.
Over the next two days he did charcoal portraits of each of the children and adults from different angles, and a sketch of them all at the table together. Then he pasted several sheets of newspaper back to back, to make them thick and strong, then stuck together four of these thickened sheets to make one giant papier-mâché board which he nailed against the barn wall outside under the eaves.
Nellie’s paints were powders, oils and gluey pastes that she said she made from roots and onion skin, herbs and rocks. She had plenty of limewash, and he painted ten coats of white over his big sheet to get a good base. Then he sketched in the family at the table. He had never painted on such a scale before. He used the little portraits to get the faces right. Then he started with the colours, working in layers from paler to darker. He built it up like reverse archaeology, giving himself time to see what he had done, letting the picture tell him how it wanted to be. He grew to like it more and more as he worked. He let the colours, the paint itself, determine its own harmony and balance, so it became no longer a matter of simply rendering reality, but the reality of the paint became its own force too.
After lunch he and Sarah would make love then fall asleep. He’d wake from a deep oblivion to find only ten minutes had passed. He would creep out of bed and work through the heat of the afternoon while the compound slept.
Then one day, just before evening, Alfredo gathered everyone outside the barn. He had covered the picture with a canvas tarp. He seemed to have a genuinely humble attitude toward art, which touched Jackson. Ceremony was called for. He asked Jackson to unveil it.
The kids drank juice and the adults had home-made wine. People pointed and grinned and the kids went up close and Jackson had to tell them not to touch it. Some of the paint was still not completely dry. Sarah linked her arm in his and squeezed it tight.
Alfredo said they’d hang it in the big room as soon as it was dry.
A true artist, he declared.
5
One afternoon Jackson and Sarah were resting on the rocks after swimming in the river pool, and heard a rustle in the undergrowth. They looked at each other. Neither was wearing anything, and they instinctively sat up and hunched over. The sound came from just above the pool where the path turned uphill toward the compound.
The silence was thick. Jackson could see in Sarah’s eyes that she too thought there was someone there.
He had mostly dried off and pulled on his trousers. In the quiet as he buckled his belt there was a crackle above them. Again they glanced at each other. Sarah moved to her clothes and hurriedly put on a T-shirt.
Jackson climbed up the rocks out of the gully and paused behind a bush where he could see the path sloping up. It was empty except for a few twigs. He waited, and began to think maybe it had been nothing after all, perhaps just a bird, and walked a little way up to make sure.
The boy was squatting between two laurel bushes, staring at a length of bark in his hand, tapping it on the ground. Beside him his cat skipped and pounced on something, then looked about intently, having missed whatever it was, surprised to find nothing in its paws.
Jackson laughed, he couldn’t help himself. You! he cried.
Before he knew it, he’d grabbed the boy in his arms and lifted him off the ground. He weighed nothing, and smelled of straw, farm animals and faintly of cheese.
My God, he said. What the hell. How did you get here? What are you doing here?
Ignacio hung limp in his arms. When Jackson set him down he looked sheepishly at the ground but Jackson could see a smile on his face. The boy always seemed to be embarrassed by his own smiles.
No sé, señor, he said. I came.
Jackson shook his head then held Ignacio by his little shoulders. How did you find us? Who brought you?
No, he said, no es dificil. It’s not difficult. No one brought me, señor. I come with el gato. We find the way easily.
But how? It’s a long way. Does Padre Beltrán know you’re here?
The boy didn’t answer, but picked up his woven shoulder-bag, put it round his neck and stood waiting in silence.
Sarah was already dressed and had Jackson’s shirt and boots in her hands when they came back to the pond.
I swear, she said. I swear I thought it was him. I could hear you talking and I thought maybe it was Charro or one of the other kids, but then I just got this feeling.
She stepped up and ruffled Ignacio’s head then pulled him against her.
Who brought you? No, don’t tell me, you came by yourself. Right? She smiled at Jackson. I told you he was a resourceful kid.
As they walked up to the house Jackson kept questioning Ignacio.
I asked the women in the market where you went. One of them saw you getting on the truck and she knew the driver, he comes every week from Tingo.
But how did you know where we’d gone from Tingo?
I heard you talking about the man, the gringo, the señora’s uncle, who lives in the forest, la selva. I ask in Tingo and a woman tells me the way. It was easy. And I see your boots sometimes in the mud on the path.
It was true, Jackson’s boots did have a distinctive tread, he’d noticed it himself on the paths around Alfredo’s farm. But he was surprised to learn that Ignacio recognised it too.
As they walked slowly up the hill, the question in Jackson’s mind was why. Why had he come? But he felt he couldn’t ask. Even if Ignacio knew the reason, he wouldn’t like to say. Instead Jackson said, How is it at Padre Beltrán’s?
He is strange, señor. The church is big and cold and that smoke the other boy has to make in the silver bowl, it smells funny. And I have to wear a red dress. And he talks and talks, the padre, and people come to listen but most of the time they sleep. I see them sleeping, señor.
But you didn’t have to leave, did you? Jackson said.
Ignacio said nothing but pouted slightly as they climbed up the steep field below the farm. Then he said: Why stay? I don’t live there.
But where do you live? Jackson found himself retorting.
Again Ignacio was silent. Then he said, Not there.
Another pause.
I know you señores are in the hills, in the forest, and I think maybe the señor needs my help. I know the mountains, but he is from far away. And I never get lost in the mountains, but maybe he will, and he won’t know what to eat in the forest.
Jackson listened and didn’t know what to say or think. For a moment once again he couldn’t imagine how he had fallen into the company of this Andean orphan, or what responsibilities he had toward him. The boy not only baffled Jackson, but also shook his own ideas about who he himself was. Whatever he thought his life might encompass, this boy was outside it. Yet a warm feeling started up in his chest when he was with him, he couldn’t help it. Right now he was very happy to see Ignacio again, and that was the thing that surprised him most.
How did you eat? Sarah asked as they crossed the last yards of meadow, partially shorn to bare dirt from when the goats had last been penned here.
Ignacio nimbly picked his way among the clods and the remaining tussocks. It is easy. Some plants you have to cook and some you can eat cold. And el gato, she is good at hunting.
The cat hunts? And lets you eat what she catches? And don’t you mean la gata, if it’s a she?
He stared open-mouthed at Sarah a moment. Then he said: She catches birds and manicou and mice.
And you cook them? Sarah let out a laugh of incredulity. You know how to make a fire?
Of course. I cut them and smoke them. Here.
He pulled a twist of dried brown flesh a few inches long from his pocket. It looked stiff and unsavoury. He offered it to them both, and they politely refused.
A woman on a farm gave me eggs. She tell me the way to Don Alfredo’s, the gringo.
At the sight of the farmhouse up above Ignacio stopped. Jackson took his hand and led him on.
Later, standing in the kitchen at the end of the big room, with Alfredo quietly washing crockery in the sink, Sarah asked: What are we going to do?
I’ll have to take him back to Beltrán’s.
Jackson was aware that Alfredo was listening.
They had given Ignacio a cot in a long low attic room where six of the children slept, including the older Sol, who was supposed to act as a kind of dormitory prefect, although his adolescent sluggishness kept him from exercising any authority.
At the other end of the big room Nellie was playing a cassette about the Inca empire on a tape machine. The speaker was talking about the mighty fortress of Sacsayhuaman in a deep, dramatic voice. The children were sitting cross-legged on the floor, dutiful and quiet. Nellie, slumped in an armchair, had a toddler in her lap, a girl who was holding a toy car to her thick lips. Ignacio stood with his back to the French windows.
At any rate, said Sarah, we better let Beltrán know he’s here.
Alfredo shook the excess water off a baking tray and held it a moment to dribble into the sink. He glanced over his shoulder and said softly, You think he’ll be worried? I’m not so sure. He knows the kids in this country. They grow up young. He doesn’t take them in so much to shelter them, you know, but mostly to give them an education. He doesn’t want them if they don’t want to be there. That’s what he once told me, anyway.
Sarah was standing with her hands behind her, rocking herself gently, thoughtfully against the counter. She said, So what do you think?
Alfredo inverted the pan on the drying rack. Let’s wait and see. I want to get a sense of who he is. My view would be, education aside, the boy would be better off with a home at least for a few years. If he’s not going to stay at the padre’s—well, bad things can happen to a kid on his own here.
Beyond Alfredo, outside the kitchen window, Jackson could see a blurry three-quarters moon above the trees. Late mist had spread across the sky, and the moon was a pale smudge. For some reason it reminded him of the desert, and just for a moment he could feel again how the desert felt, and realised he had assumed the desert hills and canyons were some kind of natural home to Ignacio, even though he’d worn the dress of a mountain campesino. It still baffled him that Ignacio should have managed to travel through the forest by himself, with no money, food or help.
Ignacio had his hands clasped together in front of him, staring across the room, his big eyes looking glossy in the lamp light.
At supper he sat between Sarah and Jackson.
Afterward, Jackson walked him over to the cabin where he and Sarah were staying, to show him the room, then over to the sheds where the goats spent the night.
There are mountain lions here. They have to lock up the animals at night.
Of course, Ignacio said. Then he added: The Incas ate the hearts of lions.
They did?
Without cooking them. And they built all the roads and the big buildings.
Jackson put his hand on his shoulder. You were listening to that tape?
Ignacio hesitated. The man you couldn’t see was talking about it.
They walked back to the main house. So you’re not going to run off in the night?
Ignacio shook his head seriously. No, no, señor.
6
Dawn draped the hills in dust sheets like old furniture in a vacant house. Out in the fields a column of smoke was rising dreamily upward. There was no sky yet, just a pervasive grey. Jackson stood in the stillness listening to the rustle of his urine falling on dry ground between old maize stalks.
It was good to be up at this hour. The pre-morning was mauve, latent with possibility. A few days before he had been reading a book plucked off the sitting-room shelves, a fantastic story of an Englishwoman’s induction into a Zen temple in Japan, her nights without sleep in the silent dark of the meditation hall. Now he felt he could understand the desire to do something like that.
The farm stood at the bottom of a long slope of harvested corn, and beyond it another field tumbled down to the trees below.
Jackson heard a footstep behind him. It was Alfredo.
Don’t mind me. He drew up beside Jackson and nodded. Me, I’ve gotten used to this view. Don’t get me wrong. Would I rather have this outside my door or some city? Though now and then, you know. We went to New York once years ago, Nellie and I. What a place. I loved it in some ways, but how do people live there? He shook his head. What say some breakfast?
They moved into the house.
Jackson blew on his tea. A hen appeared in the doorway, took a curious step into the house. Alfredo waved an arm and shouted. The hen grumbled and lifted a foot, then withdrew.
Through the door Jackson could see unblemished hillside, first the near one falling away dry and yellow, then the far side rising blue, stippled with early light. The air was already bright and dry. Light made palpable. Happiness, almost, made palpable.
Alfredo’s radio was hissing out a salsa tune, in which the only clear sounds were the fast notes played by a pair of trumpets, and the sonorous clack of a cowbell. The spirit of the tune communicated itself to the chest and acted like a key, opening up the ribs. The dawn sun, the cheerful music, the high farm with its orchestrations of clucking chickens, bleating kids and lowing cows—life was too short not to see the joy in it.
Soon he would have to leave. He knew that. It was already the sixteenth. Jorge, the man at the hotel pool, had said to be in Choctamal on the twentieth, when someone would contact him and tell him what to do. The thought of it weighed on him more and more.
Some people have part of their souls missing, Alfredo was musing.
It seemed incredible how tirelessly the man thought about big questions. Perhaps it was because he had two young foreigners for company; or perhaps it was an aspect of his hospitality, as if he thought it was rude to waste one’s breath on small talk.
That’s what I think, he went on. Some people are missing a piece of their soul and can’t function without God. But give them God, or spirit, whatever you want to call it, and they’re OK. The trick is to know if you’re that kind of person.
Jackson wondered if he was referring to him. He swigged his tea.
I have to go to a village called Choctamal, he said after a pause.
Alfredo was at the sideboard looking big in his loose shirt. Jackson thought he could see his broad shoulders rise. He paused a moment in his preparing of sandwiches, but said nothing.
Jackson took another swig. The drink was hot and tasted good, rich with sweet molasses. He looked up at the man’s back. Is it far?
The big man flinched. What do you want to go there for? he said to the window. It’s not much of a village.
Well, these ruins I’m trying to find are beyond there. That’s what I’m here for. I’ve got everything ready, my maps, my compass and sketchbook and so on, a new camera.
Alfredo turned round, holding two slices of home-baked yellowish bread with a thick slice of white goat cheese on each.
A couple of days maybe. Makes a good breakfast, huh? Cheese sandwich and a cup of tea.
