He closed the book to show her the cover, a sepia-toned watercolour of a barn with a fair-haired woman standing in the foreground looking to the horizon. In the top corner of the book was a gold seal, one of Oprah’s marks – Book Club, it exhorted. Miguel was watching her. She had no idea what to say. She was flabbergasted; the man at the tour agency had told them Miguel still had a bullet in his thigh from fighting in the border dispute with Peru. Finally she settled on, ‘Any good?’
Miguel nodded eagerly. ‘Very good, and it helps me to practise, to stay fluent, use new words.’ He opened the book to the page he was on. ‘What does this mean?’ He pointed to a word and underlined it with his finger.
Beth looked at the word. She did not know what it meant. She took the book from Miguel and read the blurb on the back. A multi-generational saga set in the American Midwest with a complicated, malevolent patriarch at its core. ‘Must be dialect,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said.
But she knew she had fallen in his estimation. She looked out the window again. There were black pipes running alongside the road that seemed to be made of the same plastic used to make heavy-duty sports-drink bottles. The pipes didn’t look very serious, especially next to the profusion of vine and leaf that surrounded them. They passed a length of pipe covered in white spray paint. Beth caught the word OXY repeated in messy, angry capital letters. ‘What is that?’
Miguel closed his book, placing a purple bookmark in its pages. ‘Oil pipelines,’ he said. ‘My people, the people of the river, the Siona, they want the oil companies out. They’re sabotaging our home. We have stopped them before,’ he said. ‘We are well-organized, and although it is not entirely in our nature, we protest peacefully.’
‘Is it true you have a bullet in your thigh?’ Beth blurted, somewhat fanatically.
Miguel nodded. ‘My partner was not so lucky,’ he said.
From across the aisle, Beth heard what sounded like a deliberate sniff from Paul. Perhaps it was warranted. But she was mesmerized by Miguel’s offhand manner, his apparent obliviousness to his own glaring, gaudy contradictions. Beth wondered where Miguel was now, six months later. She envisioned him paddling valiantly, hopelessly, through the unthinkable sludge his river had become. Or maybe not. Instead: in a hotel room in town, his head between the legs of one of the other ‘uninhibited’ citizens of El Oriente. The women of Lago Agrio had been as colourful and intent as the jungle birds; their tight green leggings, pink stilettos and bands of quivering exposed flesh spoke mostly of joy and heat.
Paul was speaking to her, saying something about the political situation in South America. ‘It was Occidental, Beth. You know, the one they’ve been protesting for years. Here, then, is irony. Finally, the natives get the company to admit their free trade has been anything but. The people manage to oust them from the land, to reclaim what is theirs. And then, this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the Man simply asserting his dominance. Oops, spilled some oil in your fresh, piranha-infested, life-giving waters. Sorry about that, but you shouldn’t have asked us to leave so rudely. We were, after all, your guests. And were we not gracious? Did we not give your people training and jobs? Oh, we know. The rule of law. But what about the rule of the jungle?’ Paul was clicking around the website as he spoke, searching madly for clues.
She still could not quite grasp what he had shown her. There were ramifications, she knew, houses made of cards, delicate ecosystems, butterflies on one side of the world flapping their diaphanous blue wings, while on the other side lucky humans sampled sushi from the newest hot spot – everything explained by a near-invisible knotted string you could follow back, if you chose, to a pot of money and a few greedy men with polished scalps and eyes like hunks of coal, dreaming of the ninth hole on a heavenly green and profit charts that explained their own lives to them in triplicate. Americans, she mused.
And then panic pushed like a spring shoot through the loam of her thoughts. She knew the earth did not belong to her but to her grandchildren, and perhaps not even to them. But what if there were no children, no grandchildren, and the generational link was lost? One day she would be old, bereft, perhaps still angry ... The image of that equatorial river she had begun also to call her own, lying like a dark, drugged serpent, flashed into her mind. She turned to Paul. ‘I’m going to the river.’
‘I’ll follow,’ he said, with a knowing, almost servant-like condescension.
She shrugged, thought for a moment about what she might need, then shrugged again. She reached the park running, had to stop and crouch in the parking lot, hands braced on knees, to catch her breath. The day was overcast and humid; she could feel the threat of rain in her sinuses. The scattered copses of trees and fertile patches beneath the bridges had the look of hiding places for humans or their detritus. It was the sort of day bad men chose to bury body parts.
Paul had caught up with her. She turned for a moment to look into his familiar, fretful face. He was stuttering out facts like a telegraph machine: ‘You know, it’s Petroecuador now, but it hasn’t always been this way. The Ecuadoreans managed to wrest back control, but only after a long and underhanded battle. It was the Americans first. Occidental. They were the ones who invaded what was essentially forbidden territory, protected and precious territory. And then they did sneaky things like sell part of their shares to Encana, a Canadian company, Beth, who then sold to the Chinese. If you think we are blameless in all of this, you are wrong. We Canadians drift in on the Americans’ wake. Oil or diamonds – it doesn’t matter, we’ll take their sloppy seconds with our shadowy lesser dollar.’
She scrambled her way down the concrete wall that had been built to counter flooding, found a log designed for sitting and looked towards the old stone bridge, the site of the Old Mill, its ruins replaced by a spa and stacked-up condos. A fisherman was standing under the bridge, his hip waders making him appear large and mournful. He prepared his bait, cast into the deeper waters downstream and hooked a salmon while Beth watched. In the fall, the salmon would be running thick through these waters, leaping with a ferocious joy, using every ounce of their life force to clear the man-made steps that had been installed to control the flow of the river. Their connection to their home, to their little patch of earth and rock and water, was that compelling, that terrifying and true.
The water was higher than it had been for weeks; in June there had been fierce, unseasonal rains, then in late July the sun had come out and the river had receded, but the most recent downpour had made the trees thrive and weep again. The river was murky. Above them, to the west, a subway train went rumbling by. Out of the corner of her eye, Beth caught sight of a small black airborne shape, a scrap of red. And there it was: everything familiar, everything home, dogged by its Ecuadorean shadow, its strange tropical double. Here: a red-winged blackbird darting out from the shelter of a shrub. And there: a toucan decimating a small, hard fruit with its unlikely beak. Here: a pair of squirrels trapezing through the low branches of a maple. There: a monkey grooming his mate, bold and fastidious, perched on his very own Amazonian awning.
Paul tapped her shoulder. ‘Let’s not stay here, Beth.’ He did not appreciate the river the way Beth did. Six months ago four boys had mugged him on a Saturday night as he strolled with two friends, reminiscing and taking turns toking like teenagers. The boys held a long serrated knife to Paul’s throat; they fancied themselves gangsters. Later, close to dawn, the police found three of the four hiding in a gully. They were peppered with red-ant bites, their pockets clanking with change. ‘Beth, I’m taking you home. You’re in no condition to be traipsing around down here like some goddamned explorer of yore.’ He grabbed her arm.
Beth shook free, but could not remain sitting. She got up and swatted at the seat of her pants, but nothing was clinging there. The damp had simply seeped in down to the skin, it would not be brushed away. She had to cut back u
p to the main path before she could make it down to the beaten sandy trail next to the water again. Paul zigzagged behind her, panting and riven by loyalty. On the far shore, a night heron was picking through pebbles and bits of trash. The bird stepped carefully over a pop can. Beth stopped to trail her hand in the water. At the edges, the river was lukewarm, but in the centre, in the depths, it would be cold. A man had drowned here, having jumped in after his dog. The dog survived. This was a fable of sorts.
That first night in the jungle, she and Paul had huddled close on their mattress, flicking the flashlight on and off like schoolchildren, peering out through the mosquito netting at the matte surface of the night and the six other gauzy, tented sleeping areas that surrounded them under their wooden shelter.
‘They’re like bridal beds, aren’t they?’ Beth said.
‘Or ghost ships,’ Paul replied, and Beth turned to him, surprised. They kissed then, softly shocked kisses that helped them both to sleep, despite the rustlings, the constant exchange of information and emotion under the canopy, along the riverbank, despite the scurrying geckos and dazed spiders Miguel had warned them might come tumbling from the rafters. Despite their recent history and despite themselves, they kissed like chaste children and slept like gentle dragons, side by side, through the night, until the clear commands of the camp cook woke them.
And then there was the issue of moving formally from sleep to waking, selecting the appropriate attire without parading around naked. Paul managed to pull on a pair of shorts and wiggle a T-shirt over his head before emerging to introduce himself to the pair of Germans, who had farted unselfconsciously – loud chains of farts – as the morning light crept in, and the group of cheery Spaniards sitting on the steps smoking cigarettes as if sucking in the dawn’s nectar. Beth put on her quick-dry pants in a supine position but had to stand to do up the zipper. As she reached to fasten the button, she ran her hands over her abdomen, as had become habit.
Filaments of a dream returned to her.
She had been walking past a schoolyard, and she saw them, the children, in clusters and singles, trading insults, passing around secrets like coins. What did they know? What leavings and keepings were rattling at the bottoms of their bright, oversized knapsacks? It began to rain, and a teacher who looked far too young for the job began herding the children up the stairs and into the building. And it was then that Beth saw them – the children’s dreams. They were floating above their heads, untethered, but somehow bound. Paul! she cried. Look! The dreams were hovering, they were dancing through the air, less like speech bubbles than interwoven threads of light. And the children seemed so cavalier with their dreams; they seemed not to notice they had them. They dawdled on the steps. They shoved and hugged each other roughly. Look! she shouted at Paul again, and he turned towards her, as did the children, whose eyes looked suddenly pale and intent, as if they had themselves been woken violently from sleep. And then the dream ended, or Beth’s memory of it did, and she found herself in the Amazonian rainforest.
Before zipping up her pants, she caressed the pouch of flesh above her belly button. She looked up because she thought she could feel Miguel watching her across the expanse of swamp that separated the sleeping shelter and the dining area, peering out towards her, silhouetted against the mosquito netting like a shadow puppet. Perhaps they all appeared this way, funny outlines backlit by their particular cultures and accents, trampling and maundering their way through the jungle, laughing and drinking around the slab of a wooden table, starting comically at all the same sights – the tarantulas waving their chubby arms at the atmosphere, the sloths hanging like overstuffed handbags from the branches of ancient trees. Watching Miguel watch her, she was overcome by modesty; she had not yet thought to put on a shirt, and she could feel sweat beginning to accrue underneath her breasts. She reached for a bra and stroked her tummy one last time.
It had been concluded that there was nothing technically wrong with either of them. At first Paul had scoffed, said something about natural selection, overpopulation, all for the best, and she had felt an odd pull in her gut, as if one of her arteries had gone spelunking in the region of her uterus. They had walked for two hours in High Park after the third specialist gave his verdict. It was February, the temperature was sub-zero and they had to dodge Canada geese strutting and tsping like cops along the path. They did not speak; although the words were there, their footsteps over the snow and ice told a more complete, forlorn story. They wore parkas and Thinsulate accessories, but the wind blew straight through them. After they had circled the park four times, Paul said, ‘Chicken breasts for dinner?’ and Beth nodded, veering towards Bloor Street and home.
In retrospect, Beth was surprised and encouraged by their daring in taking the trip, or perhaps their faith that the daringness would pay off. Yes! It was intrepid to be so far from the creature comforts they were used to, and it should have brought them closer together, the risk they were taking, the shared adversary, which was the weather, or the atmosphere really – so thick, so talented at insinuating itself into your lungs, your very pores. No real civilization anywhere close by; eight hours by motorized canoe to the nearest hospital – and piranhas surrounding them! It was easy to act blasé about these things, but the fact remained that she and Paul, both Britons from way back, were not constitutionally designed for the rainforest. They did not exactly fit in.
On their third day out, Miguel rigged up fishing rods using long sticks they had selected from the edge of the trail, a length of strong twine, a rudimentary hook and a bucket of bait – pieces of raw meat that shone like rubies in the humidity. The moisture in the air made a sound like impatient insects and the reflection of the trees in the water made it seem they were gliding through an absurd upside-down land where anything could happen. They hung their lines over the side of the boat and waited, then exclaimed at the cleverness of the creatures when they felt a tug, or several tugs, and pulled up their lines to see the decimated bits of beef. They were about to return to camp when Beth felt another tug at her line and began exclaiming excitedly, ‘A bite, a bite, Miguel! Miguel, a bite!’
‘Pull it up,’ he urged, standing in the canoe, hands on hips like a squat human teapot.
So she hoisted up the line, and there it was – small and prehistoric, scales seemingly pasted on over bone. The piranha thrashed weakly on the line, then stopped and appeared to be musing, with some malevolence, on its own fate. Miguel caught the fish up in his hand, then plucked a large leaf from a nearby overhang. He extended the leaf to the piranha and watched it chatter tiny, nonchalant puncture holes through the plant matter. Miguel held the fish up to his face and bared his own teeth for the cameras. As if he and the piranha were kin. Then he called Beth up to stand beside him, and Paul took shot after shot of her holding the piranha aloft, smiling next to Miguel.
When she had taken her place on the bench next to him again, Paul put his arm around her. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ he whispered. She understood his breath against her cheek as a kind of communion and felt herself smiling again. They both sensed Miguel looking in their direction, taking no pains to disguise his glare.
‘Oh, Paul, he’s a bit of a sad figure, really, isn’t he?’ Beth said.
‘Yes, but he likes you, and maybe you like that he likes you, no?’
‘Maybe,’ Beth replied. She kissed Paul on the mouth. ‘Maybe.’ And it was true, there was an anger in Miguel whose shape she recognized.
Then the driver of the boat, a stooped man in his seventies with saggy knees and a round drunkard’s nose, stood up quickly, as did Miguel. They peered at the sky for a second, then exclaimed, ‘Ponchos!’ to each other and to the group.
The two men sprang into action, pitching balled-up rain gear to each passenger. The sky opened like a giant trap door and water fell from it. Beth, Paul and their fellow tourists scrambled to pull the ponchos on over their heads, laughing at their own ineptit
ude, at the silliness. It was Mother Nature herself directing this slapstick, and it made them all giddy, although the canoe was quickly filling with water and the boat’s gunnels had sunk to mere millimetres from the surface of the river.
Beth and Paul huddled together, watching the water rise around them. When Miguel threw them two sawed-off bottoms of bleach bottles, they gamely began to bail, although nothing seemed that serious, not really. They scooped and poured like toddlers, side by side, laughing. Beth knew that they had truly loved each other in that moment. It was as if they had just met, or had never exactly met.
But then on the second Wednesday of the trip, the group had travelled in tiny, tippy, handmade canoes to the opposite shore, 300 metres downstream. On the way they spotted pink river wraiths – freshwater dolphins cresting in the calm waters.
‘We will visit one of my friends,’ Miguel announced cryptically.
They disembarked on a small beach where sandbugs began immediately to chomp at their exposed flesh. Through it all, Miguel remained serene in his orange flip-flops, smiling as they flailed and slapped at their skin, scrambling in their packs for repellent. When they looked up, sweating, he was already waving a walking stick up ahead, soldiering farther into the thick woods and unknown.
‘Isn’t it exciting,’ Beth said to Paul. ‘I wonder where his friend lives. I wonder what he does in here.’
Mad Hope Page 6
