Bordeaux

by Matthew Thayer

  Bolzano: “It started this morning. Faintly. I don’t know what it is. It is why I stopped to check the bottom of the boat. I thought perhaps I was dragging a stick.”

  Amacapane: “What do you think causes it? Is it something inside?”

  Bolzano: “Must be, however every time I stop, the noise stops. Nothing rolls around the hold.”

  Amacapane: “What are you going to do about it?”

  Bolzano: “Turn up my music and enjoy the views. We should reach Orleans by noon. Thank you for the story, I knew you weren’t such a bad guy.”

  Amacapane: “Don’t let it fool you. When you get right down to it, all I care about is me. That is how the world was then, and that’s how it is now.”

  From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  I regret never having the pleasure of visiting Orleans before the jump. I understand it was a lovely city. The place would need stilts to survive in this swampy environment. We emerged from a two-kilometer fight up a swift-flowing cataract to find the River Loire widening into a lake-sized swamp dominated by water fowl, frogs, snakes, otter and muskrat, turtles and red salamanders a half-meter long.

  We kept to the sides of a deep, flowing channel which slowly curved to the south as it bisected a wetlands of black water ponds and channels meandering through hillocks of swamp grass, cattail and stunted cedars laden with silvery moss. We spied no northern branch of the River Loire, though I must readily admit we did not spend much time looking for one. Nobody wanted to risk getting lost in the maze.

  “If we build a fire here, they’ll need to swim to the finish line,” Lorenzo said. “Let us paddle to the southern shore.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, you cheating bastardo,” Andre snapped. “We need a finishing spot which is fair for both clans.”

  I resisted the urge to add my opinion. Let them sort out for themselves what I guessed a week ago. I do love it so when a scam runs according to plan.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Martinelli: “It’s a lake, Baby Andre. What do you want them to do, swim to the finish line?”

  Amacapane: “Don’t call me that. We can’t go back and we can’t stay here, so we must continue south. I accept this, though it means my clan must travel the greater distance.”

  Martinelli: “Oh, boo hoo. They never had a chance and you know it.”

  Amacapane: “Fuck you, Lorenzo. When Sal and I saw them on the river, the Turtles were ahead.”

  Martinelli: “You didn’t see the clans.”

  Amacapane: “We did. Ask him.”

  Martinelli: “Salvatore, is it true?”

  Bolzano: “They found our fire the first morning. They must have traveled all night.”

  Martinelli: “And? Continue. Don’t be dense, who was in the lead?”

  Bolzano: “The Turtles.”

  Martinelli: “Lies.”

  Amacapane: “Whatever. My boys know to keep moving until they reach our fire, they’ll find us. Let’s go.”

  From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  Pushed by thoughts of another night having our blood sucked away in a mosquito-ridden swamp, we paddled hard southward, through a land which will someday be famous for its castles and chateaux, fields of wheat, strawberry and asparagus.

  Hard to picture such opulence now. Conversely, it does not take much imagination to envision the high-quality soil being formed layer upon layer below us. As we gained altitude and the river narrowed, I thought of how Father enjoyed pouring wines from the Sancerre region for guests, particularly a chilled Sauvignon Blanc with the seafood course. Personally, I found the sauvignon a bit dry. My fancy was tickled more by the Pinot Noir.

  We have paused to rest our weary arms before one final push upstream. Several hours of daylight remain, and the yonder hills of the Collines du Sancerrois beckon us forward. My three traveling companions fill their faces in a nearby field thick with ripe blackberries that have so far escaped the depredations of the birds and bears. They gorge while I pound out my thoughts on this computer.

  We will have nearly doubled the length of the race to about 200 kilometers, and still I wonder if it is too short. I am beginning to enjoy the peace and quiet. This trip has imbibed us with a newfound confidence. We find we can indeed survive without the clans’ protection.

  Will we need to? Will they complete the quest we have bestowed upon them? Or will they scarper off to the four winds? Though the questions remain unspoken, doubt occupies our minds. What Wallunda thinks in her petty pea brain, I have no idea. Nor do I care.

  Should the natives become swallowed by the swamps, or take runners, never to be seen again, my feelings would be mixed indeed. We have come to rely on them so. Certainly, life without them is possible, but it would be a hard and lonely existence indeed. Beyond protecting, feeding and clothing us, they are a people proficient in handy skills, like knowing how to coax a fire to life in a driving rain, or to stitch a gaping wound closed with dried gut. We interlopers are children in this place. Children who become frightened in the dark, and who fight amongst themselves.

  If Team leaders could see us, what would they think? Mamma mia! Is there a rule left unbroken? In our hearts, we know the correct thing is to separate from these people. Forever, without looking back. Turn this mission around and fly straight.

  All easier said than done.

  Acrimony between Lorenzo and Andre simmers just below the boiling point. “Why won’t you let me have my jumpsuit? Give me one of the pistols.” They have become Andre’s mantras. Incessantly, he pounds at the topics. Lorenzo has our suits locked in a backpack in his kayak, and one of these days, it wouldn’t surprise me if he confiscated our helmets as well.

  Now that Lorenzo is centered at the bull’s-eye of Andre’s vitriol, I am spared the bulk of his complaining, combative nature. You could almost call us “friends.” But not quite.

  Speaking of the devil, Andre approaches through the rushes that grow in abundance along the river’s edge. Dressed in native leather tunic and thigh-high moccasins, with a flensed wolf’s head fit snugly over his helmet and three spears propped across his left shoulder, he could pass easily for a native. An old skull of some sort hangs from his right hand. I do believe he has brought me a Neanderthal bone to examine. Maybe I judge him too harshly. Though I notice he saved me none of the berries.

  “Here.”

  “Thank you, Andre.”

  “I figured you could put some bear grease on it, fuck the eyeholes with your skinny prick.”

  You can take the boy out of Bologna, but you cannot take the Bologna out of the boy.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Amacapane: “How big of a fire do you plan to build?”

  Martinelli: “Big. One they can see for many miles.”

  Bolzano: “We should construct it on the eastern shore. Look at all the driftwood.”

  Amacapane: “There’s driftwood on the western shore as well. Why must we give the Tattoos every advantage?”

  Bolzano: “I was thinking of the wind.”

  Martinelli: “What about it?”

  Bolzano: “It quarters from east. If we lose control of our fire, the river will serve as a natural break.”

  Martinelli: “You worry too much, Rabbit.”

  From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  The day had an auspicious start.

  We were camped on a gravel beach on the inside elbow of a tight bend in the Loire, tucked at the base of limestone cliffs 10 meters high. Exhausted after paddling in excess of 75 kilometers the previous day, Andre and I were sleeping soundly when Lorenzo shook us awake before dawn. His visor was up. He was pouring sweat. His eyes were bugged wide.

  Sgt. Martinelli declared God had descended from Heaven to speak directly to him.

  “I was neither awake nor asleep,” he s
aid. “It was beautiful.”

  He said they took a long walk together along the river, and during this nocturnal stroll, God mapped out His plan for our futures.

  “I see those looks upon your faces. It was real, I tell you. He is a powerful being. Radiant.”

  Andre rolled over, studied the wild face of the man kneeling between us.

  “Lorenzo, did Wallunda feed you funny mushrooms or something? Bad oysters?”

  “It’s nothing like that. I’ve been touched by the Lord, Andre. It was wonderful. You can’t imagine His power. It’s like an electrical current charging through your body that doesn’t cause pain, only euphoria.”

  As there was no going back to sleep, I invited Lorenzo to share his waking dream. Andre and I lay there, heads propped on elbows, as he paced the beach.

  “He said Salvatore was right, we have been wasting our time and talents by concentrating on hunting and fornicating. The animals are not what we should be focused upon. Neither should we rut like them.

  “Don’t smirk! The Lord is disappointed that we have surrendered to our base instincts. He laments that we behave no better than the beasts.”

  The notion that rutting might suddenly become verboten brought Cpl. Amacapane to his feet.

  “It’s pretty fucking hard to act human when the most sophisticated tool you have is a stick with a stone tied to the end. Lorenzo, you just ate some bad food, or you’re dehydrated. That’s what caused your dream. Hell, your pupils are dilated like black olives.”

  A look of blue hate crossed Lorenzo’s face, long enough for him to snatch up a stout piece of driftwood and advance a step toward Andre. The thunderstorm faded into a grim smile.

  “You test me, it is good. I need that. God said it would not be easy, but he was quite specific about this. It is preordained, the three of us will work together to spread His word. Heaven is ready to accept those who accept Jesus. It is our duty to provide these people with divine opportunity.”

  I lifted my palm. “Lorenzo, let us imagine we did want to help you. How do you teach the Bible to primitive minds like Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal?”

  “No Neanderthal. Those gorillas can rot in Hell.”

  “Even so, the stories of the Bible will have no context to people who wouldn’t know a prophesy from a Pharisee. Let us say you wanted to teach the Ten Commandments, maybe I could support something such as that. Do not kill, lie, cheat, steal, covet your neighbor’s wife. Maybe we could do some good there, you know, temper mankind’s violent, destructive ways.”

  “Sal, Sal, Sal, that is only part of it. God understands far more than you give Him credit for. He is all-knowing! The Lord shares your doubts that natives will understand the readings of His Bible. But it is no reason not to try. When His missionaries first visited South America, the Philippines, and such places hundreds of years before we were born, did the natives understand the words at first? No! Look at those countries when we made the jump. Full to the rafters with good Roman Catholics.”

  Andre was right about Lorenzo’s eyes, they bulged with intensity. I wondered if he did happen upon a stray spoor of psilocybin. We let him talk himself out. When he was finished, Andre and I excused ourselves to paddle upstream in search of a calm pool where we might spear trout for breakfast.

  This is a different Loire than the wide, muddy waterway we began our journey upon four days ago. The river runs green and deep here, narrowing as it winds into the foothills. The scenery is spectacular and, thankfully, far less besmirched by bugs. We pass through sweeping fields of waving, golden grasses, occasional limestone canyons, and along the base of countless rocky hills dotted with pine. Each kilometer, the current becomes more swift.

  Though fighting the river is quite difficult, one quite pleasing feature of paddling upstream in uncharted territory is the fact you reach waterfalls at their base and not their top. We heard the roar of the falls echoing through the canyon as the walls began to tighten and thrust upward into a tall gorge. Some male competitive urge drove us to battle our way as far into the teeth of the current as we could. We beached just short of the rapids, in a fog of mist borne upon the wind.

  “Let’s go see what’s up there,” Andre shouted over the din.

  Adrenalin pumping, feeling alive, happy to be free of Lorenzo and his zealous tales, we dragged the kayaks to a safe spot and followed an animal trail up the canyon’s eastern flank. Gaining the high ground, the seldom-trod path continued several hundred meters through blond, waist-high meadow to where an even less-used side spur jogged right, to dead end at a primitive scenic lookout spot. Pulling up seats on a flat rock warmed by the morning sun, we enjoyed an unobstructed view of the waterfall below.

  The river looked to drop about 100 meters in less than a half a kilometer. The main waterfall was a foaming cauldron where the whole of the river passed through a narrow neck of erosion-resistant strata. Granite perhaps.

  “Did you ever visit Rheinfall?” I asked. “It is in northern Switzerland.”

  “My club team passed through there, I think. Could you see it from the train?”

  “I don’t know. When I lived outside Zurich, I would occasionally fly my air car to the falls. Any time family visited from Italy, it was a must-see. We would rent the headsets to experience what the falls were like before the river was dammed. Rheinfall was near the ancient town of Schaffhausen. This waterfall reminds me of those holographic images. It was such a dry world we left.”

  “It was. At first, I found the presence of so much water hard to accept. Too many trees and swamps. This elevation is better. The hills remind me of home, hiking in the Appennino.”

  “Yes, this is a different climate. Drier, not so swarming with bugs and snakes. Should we hike to the top?”

  Returning to the trail, we followed it into the pines. Ducking under red ferns twice as tall as a man, we crested onto a plateau to behold a tree-lined, sea-green lake. The idyllic glen was unquestionably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  The body of water was fed by a trio of rivers. In Italy they would call them rivers. In America they would be streams. They tumbled down mountain folds in an uncountable series of waterfalls. The shimmering oval swelled to more than a kilometer wide before it funneled to a magical spillway. As the infinity pool at the Four Seasons Milano will do someday, the lake drains off into space, folding off into the canyon like water over the edge of a flooding tub.

  Flocks of wood duck, coot and cormorant plied the waters while herds of deer, antelope, bison, and other animals grazed in the surrounding grasslands. A few beasts were reflected in the water, taking tentative drinks between scans for predators. There was a tiger about. One which was sleeping or not actively on the hunt. Tomon had taught me the signs.

  We speared several fat trout and vowed a dozen times to return as we traced our steps back to the kayaks. The thrill of discovery tempered our misgivings about Lorenzo’s morning revelations. After discussing the matter at length, we concluded we could talk the situation to death and still not sway Lorenzo one way or the other. Why try?

  My kayak had developed an annoying, intermittent knocking and vibrating on our long journey up the Loire. Each time I stopped to investigate, the noise stopped. I found nothing rolling around inside my boat. At the start, we were content to switch boats daily. Nobody claimed ownership, not until the one I happened to be paddling began to thump. Then it became “mine.”

  Inside the holds there are several partitions screwed down tight. With our tool sets dissolved to dust, there is no way to open them. As a fool does, I hoped if I ignored the problem it would go away.

  In the current on the way back to camp, the knocking became so loud I was forced to turn up the volume in my ear peas. Having listened to a Guatemalan nose flute concerto on the fight upstream, I switched to Shostakovich for the race back. The reluctant communist’s Symphony No. 5, a 1959 recording of Leonard Bernstein directing the New York Philharmonic, matched the kayak’s knocking to a tee. The vibrations made it fee
l as if I was seated near the timpani section. I let the beat inspire the timing of my strokes, and soon pulled far ahead of Andre.

  Suddenly, with a boom like a cannon going off, the kayak flipped. One instant I was paddling, and the next I was tossed headfirst into the river. The boat spun crazily, like a speared snake. I surfaced at the perfect moment to receive a crack on the head from the wildly rotating boat. The blow disoriented me, I must have breathed in a mouthful of river water. Sputtering, native leather clothes weighing me down, I knew the end had arrived.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Amacapane: “Sal, you dummy, hold on to the boat. Come on, take my hand.”

  From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  Andre hauled me across the bow of his kayak. “Hold on,” he said as he angled to the narrow shore. His training took over. Andre used cardiopulmonary resuscitation to help restore my breathing and then positioned me so the water would drain from my lungs before it killed me. It took more than a half hour before I was able to speak.

  “You saved my life,” I said as I pushed myself up into a sitting position.

  “It’s no big deal. Don’t you go telling Lorenzo about the CPR crap. He’ll be all over it, say we were kissing. I don’t need that shit. You don’t either.”

  “How can I ever repay you?”

  “I’ll think of something. The boat was pounding very hard before it flipped. Didn’t you hear it?”

  He later described how the color drained from my face. He joked I looked like a kabuki dancer in a Japanese farce. Actually, he said I looked like a “Nippon turd dipped in flour,” but I knew what he meant. The realization hit me like a hammer. My ear peas were gone. I asked the frantic question, already dreading the answer.