At Play in the Fields of the Lord

by Peter Matthiessen

  “I hate him too,” she said.

  “Do ya?” Wolfie grunted bitterly again. He nodded his head for a little while. “I known all along he wasn’t dead; not him. I seen guys like that before. I don’t mean them reckless guys—them ones don’t last. I mean the guys like Moon who really don’t care—you can’t kill them guys with a flame thrower, for Christ sake!” When Andy said nothing, he said, “How in hell was I to go anywhere? No money, no papers, nothin. Maybe if Lewis hadn’t split on me like that, he coulda figured somethin out. And Guzmán tellin me every other day if I didn’t like, you know, plight my troth to this Mercedes, I’d get shipped back across the border and get shot.” He sighed. “So I play along with him, like I tell him my intentions are honorable, you dig, and he give me drinkin money, waitin for the day. Meanwhile I done what he told me—kept that old car runnin, and maintenance at the hotel—I done everythin except clean spittoons. Considerin what he give me, he got his money’s worth. And now I done the big job for him, and tomorrow I’m goin out on the commercial plane, over the Andes. Like, the best years of my life! Imagine! And Lewis Moon can screw himself.”

  “What was the big job?” Andy said.

  Wolfie lifted his eyes. “You mean you really don’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, Andy, ol’ kid, I’m gonna level with you: I hopped in that old Mustang that’s out there at the field, and I bombed and strafed them Indians of yours. The bombs was all duds”—here he shook his head, laughing a shrill, brief laugh—“but the guns worked. The guns worked.”

  “You couldn’t help it,” she said after a while. “Oh! When you think of the conscience he must have!”

  “Don’t count on it, baby.” He was surprised that she had not left the table.

  Wolfie put his hand on hers. He did this without thinking, but once it was there he remembered that she was a missionary’s wife, and felt uneasy; he took his hand away. She said in a strange voice, “Are you afraid of me?” and he put his hand back, more uneasy still. Her hand was tight and cold, and his felt numb. He opened her hand to interlock their fingers, and the diamond dropped onto the table. They both looked at it; it gave off faint reflections. With her other hand she put the diamond back into her pocket.

  “So you thought maybe you could change him, too,” he said, to distract attention from their hands.

  “I don’t know what I thought,” Andy said. “It’s been a long time since I let myself think at all.”

  “That’s what keeps you out of sin,” he said, and laughed.

  “Maybe everybody has to sin once,” she said. “I don’t even know what a sin is any more.”

  “I’d be glad to show you,” Wolfie said. He laughed again, squeezing her hand. “I’m goin away tomorrow, kid, so you wouldn’t have no reminders. What you need is the love of a good Jewish boy.” He grinned at her, expecting her to bridle at his teasing, but she only gazed at him. He could not fathom her expression. His heart was pounding, and he removed his hand. “Well, I’m only kiddin,” he said. “You already sinned once when you drunk that drink. I mean, a girl like you don’t want to fool with nobody like me.”

  “Would it be a sin for you?” she said.

  “Whaddya mean? Look, it ain’t the same thing.” He stood up, unable to suffer her expression. “For you a sin is different. You’d only be sorry after. Look, kid,” he said, when she still gazed at him, “in a town like this, there’s no place we can go. We got no place to go.”

  He was going to ask her if he could walk her home, but he did not want to be with her a moment longer. “I’ll see ya, kid,” he said. He wanted her badly in the way that he supposed she wanted him: less to make love to than to be warm with. But he was afraid of the look in that open face, and because he was afraid, he repeated angrily, “There’s no place we can go.”

  Jesus, he told himself, these Christer broads are tougher’n any whores alive. She oughta be ashamed of herself—first she’s got hot pants for Lewis, and now me! And her a missionary—she oughta be ashamed!

  “So long, Andy,” he called out, but she did not answer. And he cursed her again for making him feel weak and guilty, just when he had been strong enough not to take advantage of her. He backed away from the table into the darkness of the street. The girl sat there in the yellow light, under the hostile eyes of the women along the porch, her hand on her empty glass. She was still gazing after him, her face sallow and without expression.

  “Como puedo decir—no, no, you must not be too—outraged?—about this thing our good Comandante has said to you. Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not. If it is true, I think he will punish you, for our Comandante is not merciful.”

  “He already punished me,” Wolfie said. “He said that shootin down that missionary is going to cause him a lot of embarrassment, so he’s holdin out on me. He’s gonna let me get on the plane, but he ain’t gonna give me the bread.” Too restless to go to bed, he had offered the priest a drink; Padre Xantes, awaiting his supper in the salon, had accepted cheerfully.

  “The bread? Dinero, yes?” The padre sighed. “Claro. No payment for poor Lobo. But permit me to remind you that the Comandante is somewhat emotional about money; if he did not have this reason, he would find another. Besides, he has told me that poor Quarrier was killed by the Niaruna. You see, señor, if you had killed Quarrier with your airplane, or if Señor Moon had killed him, as Guzmán claimed when he came back, the Comandante would not have such a good excuse to attack these Indians. So whether you killed him or not is of no importance; in the official report, the unfortunate evangelist was killed by bloodthirsty savages.” The priest drank off his glass in one neat gulp.

  “Maybe it’s important to me,” Wolfie said resentfully. “All I’m sayin is, I never saw no white man, not a sign of one. All I saw was one miserable Indian.” He stood up, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I do his dirty work for him, and he screws me.”

  “So,” the padre murmured diplomatically. “You leave us tomorrow, on the way out to the west. And we will not see you back here in the jungle with us soon again, is this correct?”

  “This is correct. I ain’t never comin back!”

  Padre Xantes smiled. Though he might have wished another drink, he had detected the long-familiar sounds which signaled the approach of his evening egg, and he was already shifting his attention to his dinner. He extended his hand, and Wolfie got to his feet and took it.

  “I’m surprised you holy people talk to me,” Wolfie said suddenly, “after what I done.” He swayed there a moment, frowning.

  “As a Catholic priest, I must accept men’s frailty. And as a European I am too old and tired to expend emotion upon matters I can do nothing about.” Xantes smiled again, anxious to bring the conversation to an end.

  “Yeah,” Wolfie said, “I guess so. Well, so long, Padre. Maybe”—he stood shyly in the doorway—“maybe you’d like to come and see me off?”

  “Encantado,” said Padre Xantes. When one has been in a place for a long time, he thought sympathetically, and nobody sees one off, the feeling comes that one has never been there. He smiled briefly at the American, then turned his head away and placed his folded hands upon the table. Wolfie swayed in the doorway for a minute more until, finding no way to express himself, he flexed both hands in a sudden spasm of frustration, banged one palm against the wall, and disappeared.

  Fausto came in with the soft-boiled egg and toast, and the priest thanked the boy politely. Fausto avoided the padre’s gaze, sliding quickly back into the kitchen. Xantes smiled ever so slightly; at his last confession Fausto had finally brought himself to seek forgiveness from the Lord for his several years of remorseless self-abuse.

  Very carefully, using a small sharp spoon that he carried with him, Padre Xantes cracked the egg and slid its contents into a small bowl. Using the sharp spoon and a knife, he separated the albumen from the yolk, taking great pains, for the egg was so little cooked that its white was scarcely clouded. During the perfo
rmance of this operation, he thought vaguely of the day’s events. It was sad, of course, but the poor savages would now be persecuted until such time, the Comandante said, as they submitted, or turned the outlaw over to the soldiers, preferably dead. It could have been worse, of course—that is, Guzmán could have been angrier than he had been about Xantes’ voyage to the evangelists—but all the same, his own chance of contacting the Niaruna when the Americans were defeated was now gone. This relieved him very much, although he would have liked to test a theory that if one broke up the village structure, changed the shape and juxtaposition of the buildings, the Indians would be totally disoriented, and thus laid open to the first strong faith they were exposed to.

  He had coaxed the intact yolk into the spoon, holding his breath at the last moment lest he cut its tender sac; carefully he placed the utensil to one side while he addressed himself with spirit to the albumen, sponging it up with bits of toast and popping it into his mouth.

  Smiling, he recalled Guzmán’s cheerful mien; Rufino was nothing if not transparent, like a child. Of course, in the great rubber days of a half-century before, not to speak of the long colonial period, the Indians had fared much worse; it was certainly a sign of progress that a present-day prefect such as Guzmán would be held accountable by the government for massacring Indians—unless, of course, the government had sponsored the massacre in the first place. On the other hand, the government need never have become so progressive as to admit Protestant missionaries into a Catholic land; had not the country’s Indians belonged to Rome for nearly three hundred years? One trouble with social progress was that it was so impractical.

  He would have to write that down, the priest thought. Or better, perhaps: “The flaw of social progress lies in its impracticality.” He smiled.

  Now Padre Xantes put his knife aside. He cleared his throat, gazing at the soft yolk with intent pleasure. As usual, he began salivating, and he was obliged to swallow several times before daring to pick up the elegant spoon. He wiped his lips with his napkin, then wiped his palms, which had begun to sweat again in the humidity of the evening.

  With ceremony, he took up the spoon and lifted it with utmost care into his mouth. First placing the bowl of the spoon upon his tongue, he managed to slide the yolk into his mouth undamaged; holding his breath, he replaced the faithful spoon upon the table. He then sat back gently in his chair and folded his hands upon his stomach. After a moment, satisfied that he was alone in the room and that no invasion was imminent from either street or kitchen, he tested the yolk with a slight, thrilling pressure which, fluttering slightly, it withstood.

  Thus Padre Xantes dealt with his brave egg, breathing ever more rapidly in and out until, unable to restrain himself a moment longer, he clamped it savagely twixt tongue and palate, uttering as he did so a tiny squeak of pleasure; the yolk exploded in abandon, mounting deliriously toward his sinuses, then sliding down past the roots of his tongue into his throat. Just at this moment Fausto kicked the door open, banging it hard against the wall.

  Fausto cried out, “Does the padre require nothing more?”

  And he shook his head. “No, gracias,” he answered thickly. “Nothing more.”

  27

  AT TWO-BENDS-IN-THE-RIVER, HE CAME TO THE FIRST RAPIDS. THE canoe met the rapids broadside, slopping in so much water that when it came again into an open stretch it spun in a slow circle, like a derelict tree. An eddy carried it across a submerged sand bar, and here he found footing and hauled the prow onto the bank, so that the water sloshed into the stern. The malaria was gaining on him, sending advance parties into his brain and body; to warm himself, he tore a large rubbery leaf from a wild fig and with this bailed the canoe, hoisting the water out with both arms. He found hard sap to caulk a split near the canoe’s water line; one bullet had lodged itself in the dead body. The matting had unwound, exposing the face with its open eyes in sun-flecked shadow; Boronai retained a dignity which ants and flies and two days’ tropic heat had not been able to undo.

  Well, he thought, seeing the wound, your bleeding days are over.

  When he went ashore, his plan had been to jettison the body, the smell of which was strong on the soft airs. But now the canoe was bailed and caulked, he had taken the dead man’s paddle from the mat and was ready to set off, and still the body lay there. He did not want to touch it. He took the canoe by the gunwale to tip it over, then stopped and let it down again.

  He was hungry and cold, and felt afraid. When strong and well, with most at stake, he had often risked death as a part of life; how strange it was that the less alive he felt, the more he was afraid to die. Dismayed by his loss of nerve, he took hold of the canoe again and dumped Boronai into the water. He forced himself to meet the flat gaze of the corpse, which revolved once and sank away into the current.

  The malaria was draining him of strength; he felt poisoned. The ache in his arms had spread throughout his limbs, and now it seeped into his lungs. He reviled his superstitions, tried to gag, but the bad feeling filled his chest like a huge stone and would not pass.

  Below the next rapids, on his left hand, was the creek mouth known as Pariu; up those shadowy streams lay the high ground where Tukanu had led the remnants of his people. This stretch of river, walled with flowering lianas, was sewn in quiet harmonies by the bright arcs of barbets bounding across the bends and eddies and the gold bronze of the open water; small fish dozed in sunny pools under the banks, and a green jesuchristo lizard on a low branch caught the sun on its bright eye and signaled him. As he neared, the basilisk dropped from its limb, legs flying, and ran miraculously across the water surface into the undergrowth.

  He found no peace in the still river; he had the sense of light and death. In the country of the Ocelot he was not safe; he crouched low as an animal in the canoe. He was scarcely below the Pariu when canoes appeared along the bank. It was too late to slip ashore. He forced himself to slide under Boronai’s mat and lie there wide-eyed like the body of the dead man.

  From the forest edge a moan went up, like wind: “Wai-Boronai! Wai-Boronai!” The savages had crowded forward; he could see them as he passed, without raising his head. They were a war party, in macaw-and-monkey headdresses and paint, with white clay drawn like snakes on their brown legs; there were more than twenty warriors, with three canoes like a flotilla in the shadows. Aeore was there and so was the Ocelot, and the Ocelot was wearing Tukanu’s red shirt.

  With Tukanu one bright river morning he had watched a huge pirarucu in the copper water. Kisu-Mu? Kin-wee? Kin-wee?—he tried to blot out that heavy face of brutal innocence. Tukanu was squatting on the sun-warmed sand, his broad feet strong as roots. Ho, Kisu-Mu?

  Where was New Person? He longed to rear up in the death canoe and threaten them, longed to charge the bank and rip that cheap shirt from the Indian’s back and tear it into bits.

  Behind him a fresh jabbering arose. Fear and malaria together shook him; he struggled to hold still. The voices faded; he listened for the soft stroke of a paddle. But there was only the whisper of the river, a lone raucous note of some disgruntled bird. Then, as the current turned him in slow circles, he saw behind him, through the branches of the river bend, a kneeling Indian in a black canoe.

  He grabbed Boronai’s paddle and dug viciously at the water. But he could not hope to outdistance his pursuer, and a moment later he put down the paddle and took out his revolver. The bad feeling filled his chest again, and he shook his head; he gave a great shudder, and the trembling stopped. Screw him, he thought.

  Screw it all.

  Aeore made no attempt to hide himself; as the river widened and its stretches lengthened, he was constantly in view, in upright silhouette against the western sun. He closed the distance quickly, without haste. Moon yelled at him across the silence to come no closer; the kneeling figure placed his bow in readiness across the thwarts, and then came on again.

  One moment Aeore’s black silhouette loomed enormous, like the spirit of the Great Ancestor Witu’m
ai, and in the next it was shadowy and indistinct. Fighting his dizziness, Moon pointed the revolver and blinked to clear his sight. “O Riri’an!” he roared. But he knew that the Indian was steadfast, and did not call out to him again. Leaning back into the stern and steadying both wrists on the gunwale, he braced his gun hand with the other and sighted the weapon on the green stone cylinder that now hung on Aeore’s breast. The Indian’s outline blurred and broke apart; when it reassembled, it was taking up the bow and arrows. Moon took a deep breath, held it, and squeezed slowly on the trigger.

  The crash of gunfire in the wild trees awakened him. Aeore’s bow arm had relaxed and the arrow fell into the flood, and Aeore sprawled sideways in the first clumsiness of his life.

  The lean canoe, still moving on the impetus of the Indian’s final stroke, coasted alongside.

  “Ai Kisu,” the Indian’s voice said vaguely. “Ai Kisu hai miniti u.”

  The painted boy was shot through the chest, below the heart. Head on the gunwale, eyes staring out across the water, he was breathing steadily, his mouth parted like the mouth of a child about to witness something marvelous. “Ai Kisu, nepa miniti u. Ai Kisu hai miniti u. Ai Kisu hai u perai’na Riri’an.”

  O Kisu, I did not believe. O Kisu, hear me; I believe. O Kisu, hear the Child-Star calling.

  He climbed into Aeore’s canoe, letting his own drift alongside. He touched the revolver to Aeore’s temple, but could not bring himself to pull the trigger. What was happening? Something of himself was dying; his mind zigzagged like a fly, alighting everywhere and zipping away in the same instant; his ears were ringing, and his heart shriveled with an intense cold.

  He stared up at the sky as he pulled the trigger, and the light pierced his own skull in a burst of crystal. He screamed, hurling the revolver from him; it wobbled clumsily through the air and struck a gash in the soft, silent current.

  HE lifted the head of the dead warrior, and taking achote and genipa from the net of fetishes and decorations at Aeore’s feet, renewed on the warm face the streaks of red and black. Already a glaze had come to the hungry eyes. He left them unclosed, as Boronai’s eyes had been, so that the spirit might guide the canoe on the journey eastward to the sun. He rolled the body and belongings into Aeore’s reed mat, pausing each moment to conserve his strength. Then he propped the whole bundle, face up, in the stern of the canoe.