“It is a selfish act! For his own demonic purposes! To lead those people into darkness and corruption!”
Moon said, “You’re saying it again: if these people don’t play it your way, you’d just as soon see them dead.”
Huben glared at Moon. “You’re with them, aren’t you? The men in black! The Opposition!”
Moon said to Quarrier, “What’s all that about?”
“Don’t try to slip around me,” Huben said, nodding his head. “I saw you plotting with that priest in Madre de Dios.”
“Listen,” Moon said to Huben, “you’re a very stupid man, believe me. Go in and lie down. Take a vacation, maybe.” He looked thin and tired; he was in a hurry. “Now look,” he said to Quarrier, “you people make up your minds.”
“He can’t have it!” Huben shouted. “I’m your superior, Martin Quarrier, and don’t you forget it!”
“Please be quiet,” Quarrier said. “This is my mission, Leslie. You said so yourself.” When Moon nodded at him in approval, he took a deep breath, saying harshly, “I am not on your side, Moon. I agree with everything that Leslie here has said about you. You are committing a terrible sin among these people. And you’re not going to get this medicine for nothing.”
“Oh, shit,” Moon said, losing his temper. “Your hypocrisy stinks worse than his, and you haven’t got the excuse of being stupid! At least he admits it’s not the Indians’ lives he cares about, only their souls.” He pointed at his Indian companion, who was urinating. “Do you love him?” He spat angrily on the ground. “The hell you do! Beneath all this phony love you people preach, you have no respect for Indian ways. You tell him his superstitions are ridiculous, and when he has nothing left, you ask him to believe instead that Jesus walked on water. You buy his dignity with beads. You—ah, Christ, just hand over that medicine!”
“You are going to send the sick ones here,” Quarrier said, “and we will treat them ourselves.”
Moon nodded his head, while Huben folded his arms upon his chest and cackled triumphantly, as if it were he, not Quarrier, who had dealt Moon the coup de grâce.
“Yes, you are,” Huben cried, “unless you’re willing to admit that it is you, not us, who don’t care about the Indians’ lives, who are more concerned with personal ambitions.” He laughed ferociously. “And when we tell the Niaruna that you are a white man, and how you have misled them, you’ll be very glad of our protection, Mr. Lewis Moon.”
“Very good,” Moon said, “very good.” He bowed abruptly to Quarrier. “I underestimated you.” He said something in Niaruna that Quarrier did not catch, and the Indian stepped forward. The savage had watched the whole performance without uttering a sound, or rather, had watched Moon, frowning; Moon must be desperate, Quarrier thought, to expose himself this way. Moon said to Quarrier, “Pindi is already dead. Boronai may die. He is too sick to come here to be treated.”
“The Indians can bring him in,” Huben said.
Moon swung his arm back, slamming Huben in the stomach; as the man sank, Moon grasped him by the shirt front and twisted the collar tight upon his throat. Quarrier started forward as Leslie fought for air, but the Niaruna stepped in front of him, drawing an arrow.
“Would you really go that far?” Quarrier said quietly. “Would you kill your own kind to get your way?”
“You’ll have the answer in a minute,” Moon remarked, as clinically as if he were taking Huben’s pulse.
Huben, the breath knocked out of him, was turning a bad color. When Quarrier ran off toward the shed, Moon dropped the man, and Leslie crouched there on hands and knees, his head down, coughing. The Niaruna turned his bow and aimed his arrow at the missionary’s neck. When Quarrier returned with the medicine box, Leslie got to his feet and pitched away across the yard, in tears. Andy, who had followed Quarrier, met her husband halfway across the yard and took him in her arms. Over his shoulder the girl looked at Moon so coldly that he could not face her, and turned away.
Quarrier did not want to look at Moon; he busied himself with the medicine chest. That open mouth, that mouth forced open by bewilderment and need—on this face, among all the faces he had ever known, he had never thought to see it. Both glad and saddened, he said quietly, “You didn’t have to hit him.”
“No.” Moon raised his head. “I hope you’ll get her out of here.”
“Otherwise you’ll be forced to kill her too?”
“If Aeore had his way,” Moon said, “you’d be dead long ago.” His voice was cold again, and he took the sulfa drugs from Quarrier without thanks, giving them to the Niaruna, who placed them in a fiber bag slung over his shoulder.
When Quarrier had instructed him in the dosage, they stood a moment, regarding each other. Then Moon said, “So long, Preacher. Don’t hang around here after the new moon.” He started away.
Quarrier called, “What can you hope to gain by this? Do you imagine you’re helping these people?” He had followed Moon into the trees, and as they went, the eastward trail materialized. What had always seemed a hopeless tangle was now pierced by a vague but definite path leading away from the Espíritu. “The Niaruna are still considered animals—why, even if you signed some sort of treaty, it would be broken!” When Moon kept moving, Quarrier yelled, “As a Plains Indian, you should know that!” This time Moon stopped and turned to face him. Quarrier paused, taken aback by the ferocity of his expression; then he said, “You’re not a savage, Moon, and you never were, and you never will be.”
“Well, why are you here, you holy bastard? Do you really know?”
“I think I was searching for something more important than my own life. That’s what we’re all after, isn’t it?”
Moon contemplated him. “I don’t follow you,” he said. He went on into the forest. “Get her out of here,” his voice came back. “I’m warning you.”
“I’m not leaving!”
“You’re going to get killed then. Like Fuentes.”
“God’s will be done!”
As Quarrier retreated toward the mission, Moon’s voice trailed after him: “It will be. In four days.”
23
WHEN THE CANOE ROUNDED THE LAST BEND TOWARD DUSK, TWO silhouettes appeared in the western light. The man at the motor was the Indian Yoyo, and his passenger was Padre Xantes.
“Good evening,” the priest said when the canoe touched the bank. The missionaries on the bank said nothing. Quarrier went down the bank and helped the little man ashore, but Huben stood high above, arms folded on his chest, expression thunderous, a Jehovah in high sneakers. “You are not welcome here,” he called.
“Nevertheless,” the padre smiled, “here I am, and here I shall remain until I have said what I have come to say.” He took Quarrier’s hand and was hoisted up the slippery bank, at the top of which he shook his cassock out and lifted his straw hat long enough to mop his brow. Now he looked at Quarrier and nodded. “Good evening, my son,” he said. He gazed benignly at Huben’s long bare legs. “Am I in time for the sporting event?” He smiled broadly, glancing about the clearing. Seeing the barbed-wire rolls, he raised his eyebrows: “Ein’ feste Burg, eh? What a strange idea!”
“What is it you want here, Father?” Quarrier said. He flushed a little; could his use of the term “Father” be taken as recognition of the unrecognizable? He set his jaw. “You cannot start back tonight, as you must know.”
“I planned my journey in this way,” the priest confessed. “I wished to make certain of a hearing. But I am not here on a social visit. I have my own provisions, and I will sleep cheerfully in our friend’s canoe.” He nodded at Yoyo, who was fiddling uneasily with his motor.
“That won’t be necessary,” Quarrier said. “You will be our guest.”
“Yoyo!” Huben said. The Indian looked up, smiling indiscriminately at all and none; when Huben planted his fists on his hips, the Tiro slipped forward along the canoe and came up on the bank. As he did so, the crucifix around his neck slipped out of his red shirt and dangled for a m
oment; he snatched at it as at a gnat and stuffed it back in hiding.
Hands folded on his stomach, Padre Xantes smiled. He continued to smile as Huben berated the Indian for consorting with the priest, and for bringing him to the mission on the Espíritu. Yoyo jabbered frantically that he was hired, that his was the only boat available, that Padre Xantes had not attempted to corrupt his mind. When he was finished, Huben reached into the bright shirt and seized the crucifix; he held it in his hand contemptuously, then bounced it back on Yoyo’s chest.
The priest stopped smiling. “You are not respectful to the symbol of our Lord,” he said.
“Well, what do you want with us?” Huben said.
Yoyo, smiling once again, slid away from Huben and disappeared behind the shed.
The priest sighed. “I am here to join with you against a common enemy, to help you—or at least to warn you.”
“What is it you wish to say, Father?” Quarrier asked. He felt a quickening impatience with both Leslie and the Dominican. Huben was the aggressor, but the priest enjoyed confounding him, tasting his own words with relish as he might taste food, the pale hands folded primly on his belly, the little black shoes, incongruous in the mud, peeping innocently from beneath his cassock.
“It concerns our gallant Comandante,” the priest said. “The Comandante has convinced himself through radio contact with Señor Huben that the missing American, Señor Moon, is alive—is, in fact, with the Niaruna at this very moment. Señor Moon, it seems, is leading the Niaruna on raids against the Tiro, in which Tiro have been killed.”
“He’s lying! I never said that on the radio!”
Disregarding this, Padre Xantes said, “Is it true that Moon is still alive? Amazing! Do you know, I was certain that this man must die even before he disappeared”—he puckered his thin mouth, musing—“because he makes bold to fly into the sun, into the face of God, one might almost say! What a fellow!” He laughed with admiration. “His friend, the magnificent Wolf, assures me that this Moon is indestructible, eh? We shall see!”
Quarrier said impatiently, “Mr. Huben is telling the truth.”
“I didn’t even speak to Guzmán!” Huben cried. “I sent him a message through the airline agent at the radio shack!”
“I am sure you are quite innocent,” Padre Xantes remarked, not without contempt. “But the Comandante has a way of hearing things as he wishes to hear them—the mark of the good politician, would you not say, even in your own progressive land?” He shrugged his shoulders. “It does not matter. What matters is this: Guzmán has reported to the Minister of the Interior that the Niaruna have been in—infected?—by criminal elements, apparently from across the border; that they have made not one but a series of murderous raids on the peace-loving Tiro; and that they threaten not only the mission of the Americans upon the Espíritu but the settlement at Remate de Males. As you know,” he said, “our government treasures the lives of you Americans. All that splendid money …” When the missionaries only stared at him, he added, “Alas, our Comandante has received permission to subdue the Niaruna by any means at his disposal. And he is a man who takes great satisfaction in his work.”
Night had come as the priest spoke, and the air thickened with mosquitoes. Huben made no objection when Quarrier said, “Please come inside, Father, and share our supper with us.”
Andy joined them, and treated Padre Xantes with civility, but much to Quarrier’s relief, Hazel could not be prevailed upon to break her bread with him. Huben praised the Lord for sending them nice corned beef hash, at which the priest said disingenuously, “How kind of Him! We too believe in the universal causality of God.” When Quarrier gave the blessing, the simplest one he knew, Padre Xantes crossed himself as if in defense against prayers so barbarous, then murmured his own. When he raised his head again, he smiled thinly at the company and said, “This is perhaps the first time that a Dominican has supped in a Protestant mission. In my small way I have made history.”
Quarrier said, “I am still not certain about why you have come.”
“Have I not told you, Señor Quarrier? The Comandante wishes to exterminate the Niaruna.”
“Wouldn’t that be a defeat for the Protestants?” Huben demanded. “Isn’t that exactly what you want?”
“The defeat of the Protestants would be very gratifying, Mr. Huben,” the priest said, “but not at the expense of an entire tribe.”
“Well, I for one don’t trust you,” Huben exclaimed, pounding his fist upon the table. “You are still angry because I took the Niaruna away from you, and you think that somehow you are going to steal them back, isn’t that right?”
“It is true,” the priest said, “that you evangélicos will fail here; you have failed already. And when you abandon your efforts, it is true that I will renew my own on behalf of the true Church. But I cannot hope to do this if there is no tribe to teach. Therefore I am proposing that Protestant and Catholic join forces to save the Indians; this is the most important thing, wouldn’t you say so, Señor Huben?” He regarded the missionary coldly.
When Huben only jammed his fork into his food, the priest said quietly, “As to the anger you attribute to me, there is little to be angry about. I am aware, Señor Huben, that you have received much credit for having contacted the fierce Niaruna. But the truth is that you only contacted the estimable Uyuyu, who, despite what he has told you, is not a Niaruna but a Tiro, and whose relatives-by-marriage are no more than a weak band of Niaruna outcasts who have loitered about my mission house at Remate de Males for more than a year. In other words, neither Catholic nor Protestant has made real contact with the Niaruna; you imagine that you have taken from me something which, in fact, I have never had.”
“You’re lying! We are in contact with wild Niaruna! We had four of them right here for months! And Yoyo was the key to the whole tribe! You know very well how much he meant to you, so just never mind pretending that you weren’t angry when you lost him!”
While Huben spoke, Padre Xantes gave attention to his food. He provided himself with a large mouthful, which he chewed slowly; when he had finished, he wiped his mouth, turning to Quarrier. “I never had him,” he said. “Do you people sincerely imagine that you have him now?”
Quarrier said nothing.
“Mr. Quarrier, at least, has doubts. The Indian is not equipped—or not as yet—to make the fine distinctions in his manner of worship that our two faiths permit themselves. In this fearful world of jungle, of darkness and flood and dangerous beasts, he cannot be expected to grasp the eternal significance of the apostolic succession, much less our dispute over the relative significance of the Virgin Mary. Eh? While Uyuyu may actually believe in Jesus Christ, he cannot imagine that the difference between the Protestant and the Catholic Jesu is as real as we pretend. Also, one must keep in mind that Christianity has been good business for him; quite naturally he will lean toward that faith which pays him best.” The priest closed his eyes for a moment, smiling, and Quarrier smiled also. “Uyuyu, of course, would cheerfully support both churches, but we are too petty to permit this, and so he does it anyway, but furtively, which is to say that he actually supports neither.”
The priest paused, grinning toothily. “You gentlemen may know that the Inca and Maya, the Chibcha and Nahua, and many other groups, had the concept of a humanlike god. This god, called variously Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, and so forth, is characterized by facial hair, a large white body and a brief stay on earth. While these were also attributes of Jesus Christ, I fear that El Comandante comes much closer to Uyuyu’s conception of the Godhead than anything the poor fellow has learned from us.”
“Now listen here—”
The padre, enjoying himself, lifted his palm in interruption. “Permit me”—and he inclined politely toward Leslie—“permit me to recite a hymn of the heathen Inca:
“Creator of the World
Maker of all men
Lord of all Lords
I am blind with the longing to see Thee
Might I behold Thee
Might I know thee
Might I ponder Thee and understand Thee
Oh gaze down upon me, Lord
For Thou perceivest me
The sun and moon
The day and night
The spring and winter
Cannot have been created without sight
By Thee, O Viracocha!
“Eh?” Padre Xantes basked in their surprise. “Does it not sound oddly like St. Augustine? Once I instructed my flock that our Creator was not to be confused with their own. But one man said, ‘How do you know?’ and I could not answer.”
Leslie jumped to his feet. “These are words of Satan! This man is cynical and corrupted, and yet we let him sit there, eating the food of the Lord and laughing at us!”
“Well, I must say it’s very good, whosever food it is,” the priest remarked; he passed his plate to Andy for a second helping. “Thank you so much, señora.” They watched him fill his mouth again—he ate methodically, moving from one item to another, like a man packing a bag—and after a time, when no one spoke, he said, “As to the matter of cynicism, Señor Huben, would you not agree that it is cynical to bribe a simple Indian from a rival faith?”
“I did not—”
“To suggest to him that his fidelity would be rewarded by permission to … sell slaves, for example?” The priest set down his knife and fork. “If I recall my history correctly, one reason behind the Protestant revolt and the Reformation was the practice among the clergy of selling indulgences.”
“You are making a very serious charge,” Quarrier said, raising his hand to forestall Huben’s outburst.
“I make it in all seriousness,” the priest said.
“I’m sure Mr. Huben would deny it just as seriously,” Quarrier said coldly. “And needless to say, I would believe him.”
He spoke with more conviction than he felt. He had the unhappy feeling that he agreed with every point the little man had made; at the same time he was ever more irritated by Xantes’ smug urbanity, by his smiling assumption that his serenity in the face of Huben’s boorishness had won the latter’s companions to his side. It annoyed him that in his accented, elaborate way the Spaniard used their own language more skillfully than they did; he was even annoyed by the priest’s ability to eat so heartily and calmly on the enemy’s own ground, whereas the enemy itself was so upset that it could scarcely eat at all. And while he did not question Padre Xantes’ motive in coming here, he wondered if this opportunity to debate, to subtly deride their efforts, was not more important to him than his concern for the Niaruna. So now he said, “And anyway, it seems a strange matter to bring up when you have come here to co-operate with us in trying to spare the Niaruna.”
At Play in the Fields of the Lord Page 32
