He sank down and squatted by the fire. Fred watched from a corner of his eye, while the others grimly attempted to chew the twice-burnt bird. The explorer sat, his elbows on his knees, staring at nothing.
‘Do you think he’s all right?’ Fred whispered. ‘He looks – I don’t know – sad.’
Con looked over. ‘He kills snakes with rocks. That sort of person doesn’t get sad.’
As they spoke the explorer rose and crossed to a pile of coconuts at the foot of a tree. Each had been sliced open at the top and then had the lid replaced. The explorer drank deeply from one, threw away the shell and picked up another. After his third, he turned suddenly to the children.
‘Do you drink?’ he called across the square.
‘It depends on what sort of drinking,’ called back Con.
‘Cachaça, my own version. Try some.’
They crossed the square warily, keeping a close eye on the vulture. Lila slipped Baca down the front of her sweater and laid a protective hand on his head, and the other on Max’s shoulder.
They hovered, the four of them, on the edge of the light cast by the fire. Fred bent his knees to sit, but none of the others did, so he tried to make it look as if he were testing his joints.
‘Sit down, boy!’ said the explorer. ‘All of you. Do you not know what God gave you arses for? Here – drink this.’
‘What is it?’ said Fred.
‘Sugar cane. Coconut milk. And some other things. Herbs.’
‘What kind of herbs?’ asked Lila.
‘Have you ever drunk anything that tastes like it will either kill you or make you immortal? That’s this.’
Fred took a mouthful, then doubled over, coughing. It tasted of nothing, really, only hot and burning. It made his nose and eyes stream.
‘More?’ said the explorer.
‘No, thank you. It tastes too much like being electrocuted.’
The explorer laughed. The laugh had thorns in it. ‘You’ll like it better when you’re older.’
Con sniffed the liquid. ‘Is it alcohol?’
The explorer shrugged. ‘Technically, yes, but not the way you’re thinking. It doesn’t taste like wine, or have the same effect.’
Con shook her head. Lila, to Fred’s surprise, reached for the coconut. ‘Just so I know. If I want to be a scientist, I need to experiment.’
She drank. Baca tried to drink too, and had to have his upper body fished out of the coconut. Lila shook her head vehemently. ‘It tastes like puking, the wrong way round.’
The explorer grunted. ‘Ungrateful baggage.’
He took the fish from the spike, laid it on a stone, sliced it down the middle, and cut out four chunks from its flesh.
‘Eat this. Better than that horrendous nightmare of a bird you concocted.’
The fish was hot and rich; it was unexpectedly meaty in flavour, smoky and bold. Fred ate his in two bites, and looked hopefully at what was left.
‘Piranha,’ said the explorer. ‘The older they are when you catch them, the more they taste like chicken.’
The explorer seemed surprisingly disposed to talk. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, hit the vulture in the chest, and sloshed some of the coconut’s liquid over the bird.
‘Tell me – what do you think of this?’
‘The vulture?’ said Con doubtfully. Her voice took on the tone that voices take when asked to comment on a newborn baby, when that baby is self-evidently horrifyingly ugly. ‘It’s … nice. It smells very … original.’
‘Of the city! Of the jungle! They call it the green hell. Did you know that?’
Fred stared at the vast expanse of stone, at the green ceiling high, high overhead.
‘They call the jungle the green hell because it is lacking in grand pianos. Men – and when I say men, I mean idiots – used to come out here with pianos on the backs of elephants. And they used to be angry when their teacups broke in the storms.’
He grunted. ‘But if you’re willing to have a roughish, wildish kind of life – I find it closer to heaven than to hell.’
The explorer began to drink from another coconut shell. He sighed, and his eyes became misty. ‘There’s a lot written about love at first sight. And what is love at first sight but recognition? It’s instant knowledge: that this is a person who will make your heart larger – a lover, a child. The same applies to places. It’s why I wanted to seek them out. It’s why they need protecting.’
He stared, his eyelids a little uneven, at Fred.
Fred stared at the fire, avoiding his gaze. There was a quality in this place that worked like flint on his insides: it was the light, and the vastness of it, and the sun, and the green. He could see why other people might feel it was too green, too loud, too endless, too much; but for him, it felt like a trumpet call to a part of him he had not known existed.
Fred’s face must have shown something of what he was thinking. The explorer hammered his coconut on the ground. ‘I can tell! I can see that you are falling in love with this place! How do you not yet see why it must be a secret? How do you not see how mad it would be to gamble with such beauty?’
Fred hesitated. He could not keep it secret; it was impossible. The world deserved to know about this much beauty. The headmaster would call an assembly and call him a hero. But he’d never seen anyone as utterly sure of anything as the man in front of him.
‘You don’t understand,’ said the explorer under his breath. ‘Speech is dangerous. Some of the most interesting things I have said I realised later I did not have a right to.’
Then, abruptly, he changed tack. He became brisk. ‘You said you followed my map. Does that mean you encountered the bees?’
‘Yes,’ said Lila. ‘We borrowed some of their honey.’ She explained how Max had seen the monkeys and the ants.
The explorer nodded. ‘I used to do the same. Bees make good allies. I used to get the tobacco pouches made specially, by a man in the Burlington Arcade. I spent a lot of time in those parts of the jungle, but it doesn’t do to be without tobacco for too long, and you can’t carry too much on your person without attracting more attention from jaguars than is practical. I have tobacco pouches stationed across that whole sweep of the river. By the way, did you meet my dolphins?’
‘Yes!’ said Fred. ‘We didn’t know they were yours.’
The explorer hiccupped. ‘They’re good creatures, dolphins,’ he said, his voice tripping over itself. ‘I used to feed them sardines. I worry it was a mistake, though. They trust too easily. It’s a mistake, to trust too easily.’
‘And then there was the fire,’ said Lila. ‘A bad one. And so we came here. We thought it was the least-mad risk.’
‘That’s exactly it!’ The explorer was becoming emphatic; he emphasised some of the cachaça over Fred’s knees.
Fred tried not to laugh.
‘Take risks!’ said the explorer. ‘That’s the thing to do. Get to know what fear feels like. Get to know how to manoeuvre around it. But!’ He paused to drink again.
‘But?’ asked Lila.
‘But make sure the risks you take aren’t taken to impress someone else.’
Fred frowned. It sounded like the kind of thing the masters said at school.
‘That’s the way people end up with jaguars chewing at their collarbones, and nobody to love them for it.’ He wiped his eyes and stared at them.
‘Risks, jaguars,’ said Con. ‘Noted.’
‘I took a risk once. I loved someone. Two people. A woman. And we had a child. Did you know?’
‘We didn’t know, no,’ said Lila gently. She exchanged a glance with Fred.
‘I lost that gamble. I lost them.’ He set down the coconut, and closed his eyes in a long, exhausted blink. ‘But I am glad to have made the wager.’
‘Did you …’ began Lila.
‘I loved like I was unhinged,’ he said. His voice was rough. ‘I came at love like a child making “up” arms. I worked out how to blink her name in Morse code.’ He gav
e a drunken grunt of laughter. ‘I was very young,’ he said. ‘People do not tell you that love is so terrifying. It is less like rainbows and butterflies and more like jumping on to the back of a moving dragon.’
Fred hesitated, wordless, but wanting to say something that would be large enough to meet the taut pain in the man’s face.
Before he could say anything, the explorer drank again, finishing the coconut in two immense gulps. ‘Do you all do nothing but stare? I thought children gambolled. And frolicked. Do some golicking! Framble!’
Fred looked at the others. He had no idea how to gambol. He believed it involved running in circles with your arms in the air and lifting your knees as high as they would go, which was not, he thought, something that seemed sensible in the circumstances.
‘I don’t think we’re really the frolicking sort,’ said Fred.
‘Disappointing,’ said the explorer.
‘Are you … drunk?’ asked Con.
‘Of course not.’ He belched, reproachfully. ‘I’m just … just … perhaps the world itself is drunk. The jungle is a little more blurred than usual.’
‘I think that stuff must be strong,’ said Fred.
‘That is impolite. I resent the implication.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Good,’ the explorer slurred. ‘I like people best when they’re silent or sorry.’
‘Do you need –’ began Lila, but he closed his eyes and turned away from them.
‘My head aches. I can’t look you in the voice. I shall sleep now.’ He lay down on the stone ground and closed his eyes. A noise like a motor car began to come from somewhere deep within his chest. Moving on the tips of their toes, the children returned to their own fire.
As the dark spread over the city a swarm of mosquitos appeared. One of them got caught inside Fred’s nose and bit his nostril.
‘Is there a way to get rid of the mosquitos?’ said Con.
‘I think smoking keeps them away,’ said Lila. ‘Some of the men my parents work with do it.’
‘I heard that smoking makes you less hungry,’ said Con.
‘We could try,’ said Fred, scratching his nose.
He rolled up leaves, and Lila filled them with shredded grass and lichen, and Con lit them.
‘Is this like real smoking?’ gasped Lila.
Hot acrid smoke billowed into Fred’s eyes. ‘I’ve never tried. Does smoking taste a bit like a garden died in your face?’ he said.
‘I think so,’ said Con. ‘From the smell.’
‘Then I suppose, yes,’ said Fred. He discreetly put his cigarette out inside a big, empty snail shell. It didn’t seem worth the feeling that his tongue was about to drop out of his mouth.
Fred looked at the two girls, who were both spitting disgustedly into the fire. He’d never really known any girls his own age, but both Lila and Con could spit as far as any boy at school. Their spit had commitment, and impact. He saw them grin at each other in the firelight.
It was a peculiar night, that night. Fred’s thoughts kept returning to the man lying asleep by the fire at the other side of the ruined city square, and to his lost son and wife. The explorer was so alone; living with only the green and the birds and the endless jungle. But, Fred thought, it wasn’t as if he was so much less alone himself. The thought made him shiver.
He felt something touch his ankle. He jerked away, thinking of tarantulas, but it was a hand – Con’s hand, gripping his ankle in her sleep. He hesitated. Then he reached down and pressed his thumb on hers. He hoped the touch said, ‘We’ll be all right. It will all be right.’ It was hard to be specific with thumbs.
But it must have worked a little, because she grew still, and her breathing became heavy and regular. Lila muttered in her sleep. Baca lay entangled in her long dark hair. Fred looked up at the vine roof above him, scanning it for snakes, and then, his flint tight in his palm, he allowed himself to close his eyes.
The explorer hadn’t moved by the time the sun rose. He lay, snoring, where they’d left him, a beetle perched on his chin.
Max woke up first, and kicked Fred in the crotch as he scrambled to his feet. Max scratched himself all over and then went running across the stone square, shook the explorer’s shoulder and sat down on top of him.
The explorer startled awake. Fred flinched, remembering what the man had said about his startle reflex, but he merely looked mildly, politely appalled.
‘Can I eat this?’ Max asked. He thrust a handful of grass into the explorer’s face.
The explorer shifted Max gently on to the floor, sat up and began to blow on the fire. ‘No, you can’t,’ he said.
‘You didn’t even look!’
‘The chances that the answer is yes are so slim.’ He looked up. ‘That’s poisonous. No.’
‘Definitely poisonous or only maybe?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Oh. And this?’ He held up the explorer’s chin-beetle, which had fallen on the ground.
‘You could eat that,’ said the explorer. He gently took the beetle from him. ‘But the Max of two hours from now would not thank you. As a rule of thumb, it’s best not to eat things that are still moving.’
‘But I’m hungry. It’s only moving a tiny bit.’
‘I would still emphatically discourage it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means no.’
‘Oh.’
Max lay down on his back. He didn’t cry, but his face looked blank, and older than it should be. Quietly, under his breath, he began to sing to himself in Portuguese.
Fred scraped some dew from the leaves above him and used it to clean his face. He looked over at Max – properly looked – for the first time in days. The boy was growing thin, and his cheekbones stuck out under his eyes. Lila had worked hard to make him look cared for and clean, but he had a snail trail of snot across his face and green dust in his eyebrows.
The explorer was also looking down at Max. His face was shaping itself into peculiar expressions; his eyes were bright and his mouth tight.
Abruptly, he rose to his feet. His voice was brisk – artificially, unconvincingly brisk.
‘What are you all sitting about for? Time is precious! Shouldn’t you be preparing for your journey?’
‘But how, exactly? We don’t know what to do!’ said Con. Her voice was almost a whine. Lila shot her a look.
The explorer’s expression was very dry. ‘If you have a preference for surviving, you’ll need to know how to spear fish. There have been expeditions when the men and I survived on fish for half a year.’
Max’s face lit up. ‘Fish? Right now?’
‘Tonight. There’s a small lake not far from here.’
‘But I’m hungry now!’ said Max.
‘It needs to be dark. You can spend the day making spears.’
‘I tried that,’ said Fred. He slapped away a mosquito. ‘But the vines I used to tie the flints on kept breaking off.’
‘Vines?’ The man looked shocked. ‘You don’t use vines to secure a spear! That would be like using packing tape to build a steam train. Idiot boy! You use intestines. Where are the guts from your bird?’
Con pointed to the jungle, where they’d buried the intestines and other rejected bits at a safe distance.
‘Dig them up, and heat them over the fire, and use them as string.’ He made a winding gesture, as if tying a knot. ‘And don’t bother me until then.’
He turned abruptly – they were getting used to it now – and strode away, towards the far end of the courtyard, towards the tangle of vines that cut off the corner of the square from sight.
They undug the intestines. They were not a pretty sight, and being buried hadn’t improved them. Con washed them in a half-coconut and Lila and Fred began laying them out on the stones, trying not to look too hard at the semi-translucent tubes.
Max tugged at Lila’s ankle. ‘Lila! Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
The air was silent, bar the
constant whir of the insects in the trees above them. Then Fred jerked his head round: it was that same roar he’d heard before, choking through the air.
‘It’s coming from there – from behind the vines,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go and see.’
‘No!’ said Con. ‘He said, “don’t bother me” – and I happen to think if a person wears claws for cufflinks, you should do what he says.’
‘But what if he’s being eaten?’ said Fred. ‘Surely then it doesn’t count?’
Lila shook her head. ‘I agree with Con.’
Con looked round in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Whatever it is, he doesn’t want us to know, and we can’t afford to make him any more angry.’ Lila turned with unexpected firmness towards the fire. ‘Let’s make those spears.’
Reluctantly, Fred sat down. The morning was a sticky one, and nobody smelt better by the end of it. The intestines weren’t easy to empty, and the process of heating them over the fire to harden them felt unexpectedly medieval.
‘This is not how I pictured fishing,’ said Con. ‘I thought it was all old men sitting around on riverbanks telling people to be quiet. Like river-librarians.’
Fred opened his mouth to reply, but the guts dripped and spat hot fat at his teeth, so he shut it again.
He wondered if his fingers would ever lose the faint scent of dead bird. But by the time the sun began to set he had a long-handled spear, with a flint glinting in the light. Lila’s spear was strong and straight, but the wrapping around the flint had gone awry where Baca had tried to get involved in the process and covered himself in grease. Con’s spear was the neatest. Her hands were competent and controlled, even with bird gut.
Fred went in search of water to wash the grease off his arms. Some of the stones had hollows that collected enough rainwater to wash a small patch; he moved from stone to stone across the citadel, gradually shedding the worst of the burnt-grease smell. As he came back he heard voices.
The explorer was kneeling on the ground, bent over his pith helmet. Lila crouched next to him.
‘You have to be gentle with his knees and elbow joints.’ The explorer was speaking, his voice low. ‘They’re still very fragile at this age.’
The Explorer Page 14
