The lost city, p.22
The Lost City, page 22
He had just made contact with the limp tongue of one of them when the man was on him. He felt something warm just under his chin, his shoulder hurt where the man was forcing it back.
The man said nothing but breathed heavily, up against Jackson’s face. Jackson no longer smelled him at all.
You fucking gringo, he said in English, you fucking leeesten. I don’t tell you again. The man hissed, straining to keep his voice down. We don’t tell you again. We don’t like no fucking gringos coming down here. People say you OK, you just here for looking at the ruinas, you haven’t come to bother no one. But anyone who comes here he bothering us. You pack you toothbrush, you go away before you can’t go away.
The man talked softly again, and dabbed at the front of Jackson’s shirt, as if trying half-heartedly to brush something away. I just friend and help you.
Jackson opened his mouth to speak but his heart was thumping and the words wouldn’t come. He forced himself to say, I’ve got work to do here. It’ll take me a few days, then I’ll be gone. That’s all. Two or three days.
The man carefully and heavily turned himself around. The daylight glinted on his moist cheeks, his wet lips. As he positioned his chubby hefty body on the ladder Jackson noted how heavy the man had been on top of him. We got work to do too. Gringo, gringo, you can’t come in here where we do our work just like that. We don’t talk again.
Ponderously, like a comic corpulent gent, or like the overweight clumsy peasant he was, he let himself down the ladder, his shoes making dainty chips on the rungs. With his face turned down, Jackson could see that he was all but bald on top. He was reminded of a hi-fi salesman he had once attempted to buy a Walkman from in Miami, a slick hard guy quite different from the bumbling drunk this man had at first seemed.
He ducked out of sight. Halfway down he called up, Remember, gringo.
Jackson couldn’t help himself from saying, Remember what?
He moved to the edge and looked over. The man was standing at the bottom with one hand on the ladder, adjusting his gun strap with the other, panting. Without looking up, he said, Ts, ts. You shouldn’t ask that, gringo. I don’t explain again.
Then he walked out into the electric mountain sunshine, where he briefly became a figure radiant with dust.
Jackson laced up his boots and buttoned his shirt. He went down to the kitchen hut where he had eaten the night before, half expecting to see the man in there. But only two old women sat in the dark.
A strong smell of sweat, animals and stale milk hit his nostrils.
The two women began chatting to each other rapidly in Quechua. One of them got up with a bustle of her skirts and foraged among the pots and pans piled against the wall, until she found a piece of ragged home-made string. Cruz’s mother, still seated by the fire, tore up a rag. She came over to Jackson and shook her head and pressed the rag against his neck. Only then did he look down his front and see in the gloom the dark paint splashed down his front. Reflexively he sat down, feeling sick to his stomach.
Then both women were close, and he could smell the ancient stench of their clothes. Their hard sinewy fingers were on his arms, and the soft cooing notes of their Quechua were in his ears. One of them bit off a piece of the home-spun string, which was not string but a twist of dried fat, Jackson now saw, and Cruz’s mother lifted away the rag she had been holding to his neck. The cloth was dark all over. She folded it again, getting a clear patch ready, and ran the rind of fat over it, pushing his forehead back with a cool hand. She studied his throat then placed the rag under his chin and took one of his hands in hers and pressed it there. He understood that he was to hold the cloth in place.
While he sat back against the knobbly mud wall the women quietly tended the stove. He heard the shush as one of them shook a tray of coffee beans roasting over the fire pit. Then the crackle of a handmill turning. A wisp of dust rose into the air like the smoke of a gunshot. After a while Cruz’s mother brought him a hot tin mug and a brick of molasses. She carved at it with a knife, shaving off dark granular flakes that curled and plopped into the cup.
Muchas gracias.
The coffee was sweet and tangy like caramel, with a sweaty aroma. He sipped carefully.
The sick feeling subsided. He would have to get a real plaster or bandage on this cut. He wondered how bad it was, thought it couldn’t be too bad or it would surely have hurt more. He’d have to wash his shirt, or ask them to do it. He hoped they might do it without asking. He sat back, one hand pressed against his throat, the other holding the hot rim of the cup. He would have to be more careful.
He took the rag away, planning to take a look at it and judge how bad the bleeding was, but the women both shouted at him, No, no, gringo. He put it right back, gaining only an impression, in the murk, of glistening dark cloth.
It was unsettling that he hadn’t felt the cut being made.
In a while Cruz’s mother came over again with another cloth, applied a new smear of fat and pressed it in place. The two women had a concerned exchange of whispers by the fire. Then the other woman called out, in Spanish, You don’t have a belt?
Sí, señora. Jackson touched his belt buckle with his free hand.
The two women nodded eagerly.
Jackson frowned, thinking he knew what they meant. They urged him, and he pulled the belt off and looped it over his head and around his neck. But the pin went far beyond the holes, and although he doubled the free end round he couldn’t figure out, fumbling with it where he couldn’t see it, how to attach it.
Cruz’s mother came across once again, using her hand-pump method of walking, and fiddled with the belt, nudging his head this way and that.
When she had seated herself once again beside the stove, her friend asked, Gringo, where’s your wife? She should be here to take care of you.
Why do I need a wife when you two are here?
The two women exploded in soft giggles.
His neck ached badly. Must have been a razor-sharp knife. He had felt nothing at all. He had better keep quiet, then. He rested against the wall. Were they going to bring him something to eat? Surely they would. They always liked to feed a guest. Just then he heard a seething of bubbles as a lid was lifted off a pot, and the aroma of bean stew reached him.
2
Choctamal may have been a haphazard homestead of dwellings scattered around the hillside, but it was neatly kept. The houses themselves with their smooth walls of red mud and hats of golden thatch had the air of well-groomed schoolchildren. Fifty yards away a stream babbled, flanked by smooth rocks on which clothes were spread to dry. It was different from Don Alfredo’s compound, not only a lot larger but neater too.
Jackson looked around it and felt afraid. He didn’t know how long he could stay, if he should wait for Cruz to come back, or just leave, go back while he could. Was guinea-pig fat going to heal the cut? He didn’t think the man had meant to do serious harm, just scare him off. Maybe it would be a deeper cut next time.
The sun detached itself from the valleyhead. Dewy light streamed down the valley. The world looked newborn, damp in its caul.
Cruz returned in the early afternoon with a mule and two gringos called Stryker and Morris.
I had to leave, Cruz said. He smiled. Some people, I am not their friend and they are not mine, and they know it and I know it. But here I am. You ready? Tomorrow morning we go.
Some people are not my friend either. Look.
Jackson pulled the rag away from his neck, making it smart in the open air.
Hombre.
He told Cruz what had happened.
Cruz shook his head. It’s OK. I can talk to them. They are not the ones we need to be careful of. Was he drunk?
Stryker and Morris carried their bags to the loft where Jackson slept, then they settled in the warm sunlit dirt outside the kitchen hut and called for food.
They ate together, sitting out in the yard with their bowls on their knees.
I ever tell you about the most expensive flush in history? the man called Stryker was saying. He had a lined, worn face and burning eyes. Something preoccupied him, Jackson could see that. He had an accent too, maybe Dutch.
Morris, the younger one, snickered. What do you mean flush?
Flush. As in toilet. This guy I know he owns this little East Village bar down on Tompkins Square, a place the models hang out, doesn’t get going till one a.m. type of place. So one night he’s getting raided and he dumps this big bag straight into the cistern of the toilet. It’s part reflex, part thought. The idea being get rid of it, it dissolves, and then later he can siphon out the water, boil it and lose nothing. It comes to him in a flash. Sixty thousand dollars, a whole kilo, and you can make it invisible, then collect later. Brilliant, right? Wrong. This model, she needs to use the john. The cops are still around hoovering the sofas and chairs, whatever, and he doesn’t want to draw attention so he tries to signal her not to use the john but she doesn’t get it, she goes right on in, pees and flushes.
Morris laughed hard, rocking back and forth on his seat. The most expensive flush in the world, he repeated. Love it.
Stryker didn’t even smile. He looked at the youth with no expression at all. Jackson wondered why he had bothered to tell the story, if not to raise a laugh.
Stryker glanced at Jackson. Don’t mind him. He’s just a rich kid from Massachusetts. Isn’t that right, rich boy?
Morris was still giggling. He must be high, Jackson thought. Probably grass.
You know how he got down here? Stole a cheque from the back of his daddy’s chequebook and bought himself a one-way to Bogotá. Looking for adventure. Isn’t that right? And fuck me if he didn’t find it. Isn’t that right, Yankee boy? I found him making necklaces for gringos on the beach at Bocagrande. You look young and foolish, how about you earn two thousand dollars in ten days? But he was cooler than he looked. Could keep his head. Not everyone can do that. Maybe he’s just young enough not to have a fucking clue. Where are you from anyway?
England.
Stryker’s pale blue eyes rested on him a moment. He inhaled, but said nothing. Then he asked, What brings you here?
Jackson hesitated. Ruins. I’m looking for a ruined city.
He swallowed the last of his soup, draining it straight out of the bowl. It turned out to be a larger mouthful than he had expected, and hotter, burning his throat. It was like swallowing a hot golf ball, and seemed to stick in his gullet. He put his bowl down on the packed mud with a clink of the spoon.
He was aware of Stryker’s eyes on him. He was not an ugly man yet there was something ugly in his face. Blond hair, blue eyes, a straggle of beard, a goatee gone to seed. While the boy had a glint in his eye; he was high not only on grass but on something else, maybe adventure. Yet looking at the two men now, Jackson felt that to have grown careless about one’s appearance could be a sign of having kept the inner fires stoked, of having fuelled some dream or conviction.
It was obvious how much the younger man gained from the elder, and the sight unnerved him. It wasn’t so much a matter of whether the mentor was false, whether the younger man was being led astray, as of the intensity the elder fostered. There was something wrong with that. Or was it right for a man to throw himself into whatever made him feel good? Or could gentleness compensate for the deadening of the spirit? It was as if there were only two philosophies on earth, adventure or kindness, and you lived by one or the other.
Stryker looked at Jackson. You think you’re safe here?
Jackson shrugged.
Damn right. Here you’re either in with someone, or you’re out. And if you’re out you better not be here. I’m telling you like it is. Take it or leave it, it’s good advice.
What about you?
We’re on business. We’re OK.
You think that’s OK?
OK? As in ethical? We’re traders, man. If they want to make us rich by declaring our merchandise illegal, I don’t complain. I don’t stop either. Who are they to tell me what I should and should not inhale? It’s none of their business. People do what they want. Somebody has to take a stand against these arms dealers.
Morris giggled.
Arms dealers? Jackson asked.
I’m talking about governments, man. They’re arms dealers, that’s what governments are, you don’t know that? Big daddy the rocket salesman. They used to be drug dealers, like the opium in the East, and now it’s arms. That’s fine, that’s all right, they can sell their weapons of destruction all over the world but God forbid anybody else should sell a good time. It’s their own fault this business is a mess. Of course you get the negative elements once you call it illegal. They have nowhere else to go. But at least it gives big daddy a chance to sell a few more bang-bangs. Anyway, so you’re an archaeologist.
Of sorts.
Stryker looked back over either shoulder then got up and came and sat beside Jackson on the doorstep. He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, leaning forward, and spoke quietly.
You know Mr. Brown?
Yes.
OK. So Mr. Brown—don’t look at me, just listen. You don’t know anything, you don’t know where this comes from. Tomorrow morning, you go to the top of the chacra. You know what that is? There’s a black old tree up there, totally burnt. Right at the edge by the forest, you can’t miss it. Struck by lightning. Under the root you’ll find it. Somewhere round here they think there’s an airstrip. You find it, you hide that package, you turn it on, you leave. That’s it. And if you don’t find the airstrip find something else. An HQ or something. That’s what they want. If you do it and it’s all hunky dory Brown says you’ll get five times what it was before. You understand? Don’t look at me. You understand?
What do you mean, turn it on?
There’s a switch on it I guess. He said you’d know the thing when you saw it.
Jackson guessed already that he would. It would be a standard military beacon with a one-hundred-mile range. They had used them in Belize.
One last thing. Once you flip that switch get the fuck out. That’s what he said to tell you.
Stryker offered Jackson a cigarette, lit it and returned to where he had been sitting. I had to hide it, I couldn’t just give it to you. Something like that, you keep it to yourself here. You ever been up here before?
No.
There was another Limey a couple of years back.
There was a friend of mine who came down here.
What was he called?
Connolly.
That’s the one.
You knew him?
Sure I knew him. He must have come two or three times. We came up together once from Tingo. He was cool. In spite of everything.
You knew him? Amazing. Did you ever go to any ruins with him? He was trying to find La Joya. You know there’s a huge lost city in the cloud forest near here? I can’t believe you knew him.
Stryker didn’t reply but drew deeply on his cigarette.
Then Jackson said: What do you mean, in spite of everything?
What he was up to. Stryker blew out a stream of smoke and inhaled again.
You mean looking for ruins?
Stryker sniggered, letting out small clouds of smoke.
Sure. He had the wool pulled so low over everyone’s eyes all they were seeing was sheep.
Jackson said nothing.
But that is what he was doing, Jackson said. Exploring the ruins.
Stryker shrugged. Sure he was, he said again. And maybe that wasn’t all he was doing. A military guy down here? You think he’s just an archaeologist? Just like you?
It had never before occurred to Jackson that Connolly might not have been doing what he said; that there might have been more to him, other agendas. Whatever truth you thought you’d pulled something aside to reveal, beneath it might lie a further truth, and beneath that yet another. It was a dismal thought. He preferred not to think about it. But he couldn’t help it.
So what do you mean? What else was he doing? He felt dizzy and slightly sick as he asked, and realised that it must be true, Connolly must have had some other agenda, most probably with military intelligence. That would be exactly why they had asked Jackson to work for them too. That was why back in London Major Buckley had called him.
Stryker drew on the end of his cigarette noisily, then threw away the butt.
Some deal the Brits got going with the Americans. I don’t know. All I know is, some people got hurt. Bad shit happened.
Jackson felt himself frowning. What do you mean? Who got hurt? How?
Stryker shook his head. We don’t speak ill of the dead, man. It’ll be us soon.
He did something bad? What did he do?
Forget it, man, it’s history.
Jackson started to feel angry. What do you mean? Did he betray someone? Kill someone? What?
Stryker looked away and brushed a knee, then stood up. Shit happens, he said. Especially down here. You be careful.
He walked away.
Jackson found a roll of tape in his bag and rigged up a bandage for his neck from a piece of cloth cut from one of his T-shirts. The bleeding had settled down, but the cut smarted if he turned his head. He took an aspirin.
Later, another Andean dusk laid itself out over the green and gold slopes. The hills settled down like blue dogs for a rest. You looked out and saw the hills could go on forever. The blood-red throat of the Marañón canyon disappeared into smoke.
He went and found Cruz and asked him if he thought they were safe to go on. Cruz reassured him. He smiled. Muchas ruinas, he said. You’ll see.
He was worried too about that beacon. What would happen if he switched it on? Maybe they’d come in and strafe the whole area. People could get killed. Old women and kids. Even if they didn’t, it would change things here, people could lose their livelihoods or worse. What did it have to do with him? This wasn’t his war. He had no war.
