On the following day, Fabian was up at dawn, the sun still a hazy dazzle on the glassy surface of the sea.
He and the couple met for breakfast on one of the villa’s small terraces, the motionless air and limpid sky heralding a day of tropical heat. Elena de Tormes, in the sturdy twill and khaki the trip called for, was radiant with anticipation. Her husband, dressed, like Fabian, in heavy boots, double-padded cotton breeches worn under chaps, and the thick, soft shirt he would need for protection against jungle insects, might have been a prosperous Latin landowner setting out to inspect his cattle.
At breakfast, Fabian showed Francisco de Tormes a map of the terrain they would be covering, pointing out the route the helicopter would take to the outpost at which the horses awaited them, then the small Indian settlement deep in the jungle that was Fabian’s goal for their excursion.
A powerful clatter of sound from a military helicopter descending on an adjacent stretch of grass broke the morning calm. The standard it bore identified it as the helicopter reserved for Falsalfa’s private use. The pilot, an air force captain Fabian had not previously met, wore the special insignia of the palace brigade, the crack troops Falsalfa maintained solely to guard his person.
Fabian and the couple boarded quickly, and the helicopter rose in a sweeping arc, the guards at the gates waving it on cheerfully, the deep brick colors of Casa Bonita, its terraces and roofs, dropping away beneath them.
Soon the brilliant patchwork of villas and hotels of La Hispaniola yielded to endless stretches of thickly massed fields of sugar cane, slashed symmetrically by access routes and the single-line railroad that connected the fields with the sugar mill. On rude dirt paths leading to the railroad, they saw huge carts of sugar cane moving slowly behind six or eight oxen, but even these glimpses of life gradually ceased.
The helicopter tracked the jungle, dense with greenery, studded with explosions of rock erupting from the bristling green mat. It hovered low over a river, where alligators idled on a sandy bar, then it skimmed a clearing in the brush, tawny with sun, where a herd of wild goats scampered at the roar of the machine, and a startled boar staggered from its haunt in the bush, angry with menace, then vanished into the thicket. Soon the machine prepared to descend on a pad of red clay that jutted out from the end of a strip of dirt path slicing through the wilderness. Fabian saw horses and the shapes of the guides waiting below. The helicopter quivered to a halt. The pilot verified the exact location and the precise time at which the helicopter was to arrive at the Indian settlement to collect passengers for the trip back, then, touching his cap in salute, shook hands with Fabian. As Fabian led Elena and Francisco onto the patch of brick earth, the helicopter took off, a shower of clay and dust veiling it from their sight.
Fabian expected to find the two guides he had requested. Now he was startled to be faced by two men new to him, each squat, with thick, wiry hair, a sheathed machete at his waist, and a submachine gun over his shoulder.
One of the guides explained that they needed their guns for protection when, at the close of the excursion, after the helicopter collected Fabian and his guests from the Indian settlement to return them to Casa Bonita, the two of them would have to ride back through the jungle, with valuable horses in their keeping.
The guides moved about briskly, adjusting stirrup leathers and tightening girth straps, as Fabian inspected the horses and the tack, as well as the provisions in each saddlebag—the food that had been prepared for their picnic lunch and medical packs for an emergency.
Mounted on the waiting horses, the group started into the jungle, one guide at the head of the column, Elena behind, Fabian trailing Francisco, and the second guide bringing up the rear.
After two hours at a fast, steady pace, they veered onto a narrow path high along the banks of the Yuma. The trail had ended. The river here was at its widest, in full flood, swarms of wild birds nesting in the marshes, indifferent to the passing cavalcade.
With only the sinewy back of Francisco shielding him from a glimpse of Elena, Fabian was brought back to Falsalfa’s jovially insistent insinuations about the columnist’s wife. He was aware that, even though he did not intend to pursue her in any way, he was drawn to her nonetheless, and the source of that attraction was the visible force of the devotion she exhibited toward her husband.
Peering around Francisco, Fabian continued to watch Elena, in splinters and shafts of movement, now swaying lightly in the saddle, her hair caught briefly by the occasional sun, one hand slack on the reins, the contour of a hip.
The heat lulling about them, in fantasy he saw Elena de Tormes as one of the models in the adult sex entertainment centers commonly found in any large city. There would be booths, a girl to each booth, a booth to a customer, a man and a woman isolated on either side of a transparent glass partition that was immovable, and over the glass, a curtain that automatically rose for a brief interval each time the customer dropped a coin into a slot on the wall of the booth. The coin also set in motion a system, a grille of sound, through which the customer could ask the girl, in the safety of their separation from each other, to perform a suggestive act, or he might ask that she initiate one. To keep the customer aroused, and the curtain up, and to sustain the current of coins, the girl would resort to various forms of provocative undress, posing, prompting him with language aimed at arousing him even more.
In the booth containing the man and the woman, separated by the impregnable glass—the sight of each other and the exchange of their voices, the sole language of their contract—the woman, perhaps naked, might press her breasts against the cold surface, her nipples flattening, her flesh leaving a steamy blot, her tongue trailing a thread of moisture. The man, inflamed by her, by her voice and words, at the mercy of his own need, would continue to drop the coins, his passion congealing, locked away from the flame that had ignited it and from the source of release that summoned it.
On this trackless path, the jungle their booth, Elena’s marriage and her husband the partition, the reverie flowed over Fabian. He imagined how it might have been had he met her in the city, in the anonymity of a booth, Elena on one side of the glass, he on the other, two strangers trapped in their silent contemplation of each other. What would he tell her to do or ask of her, what might he want her to say to him, ask him to do? What would he tell her about himself, about her? Would he be coarse and carnal with her to the brink of abasement, and would he enjoy the spectacle of a charming, sensitive woman incited, driven to language and action so lewd that they seemed to violate the mouth and body that offered them? Would the presence of that glass partition urge him to excess or restraint?
The trees, motionless about them, were no longer a shelter from the jungle heat. The narrow path rose, twisting through hills of rock and clay; the horses, hesitant and unsure, pawed the stones, shying at the tangle of weeds and vines, slipping, threatening to fall.
Fabian realized that the horses, though Casa Bonita’s choicest, unsurpassed on the flat and open planes of the polo field or the predictable vistas of the stable grounds, were baffled at the unusually precipitous terrain on which they found themselves. Yet he was anxious to reach the settlement at Cacata before the blaze of noon, and he had said as much to the forward guide, who was prodding his own horse to a swifter ascent. It soon became apparent that Elena, though uncomfortable on a horse and apprehensive at the hazards of the climb, was still in command of her mount, while Francisco was tiring rapidly, his legs dangling, his horse not properly mastered, bucking, fighting the bit in defiance. By now, the excursion had become an ordeal, the jungle closing about them like a tunnel, the staircase of rock they were ascending jagged and lacerating, shelves of stone notched and gouged by time like petrified lava.
Looking for a shelter where they could dismount and rest, Fabian was scanning the foliage when a loud tumult erupted at the head of the column. The guide’s horse had lost its footing, its hind legs foundering, veering to one side, as the man, reins still in hand, jumped clear, at
an angle, stumbling into the bush, his curses invading the heat.
The other horses panicked and dodged on the narrow precipice, rearing in desperation at the treacherous ground they could no longer trust. Fabian and Elena managed to remain in the saddle, hauling their mounts to steadiness, but Francisco, weakened by the punishing trail and the jungle heat, toppled out of his saddle, onto the sheer face of rock at their right, rolling onto the sharp knuckles of stone clawing at his shirt, gashing his arm. In fright, his horse heaved back into the brush, then, stung by the bristling foliage, charged forward, splaying out on the rocks. Fabian managed to catch its reins, noticing as he struggled to restrain the frantic animal that the fall had ripped a patch of skin from its hip.
The mishap forced them to stop directly in the path, the horses sidling and bucking about them. Elena and Fabian bandaged Francisco’s wound, then, even though the journalist was shaken and tired, his clothes drenched with sweat, they were compelled to continue the climb. Without a place for them to bivouac, the laborious ascent continued for another two hours—an hour more than Fabian had thought it would take—before they broke out into the spaciousness of the plateau; they took the last stretch toward Cacata in a loping canter.
The region of Cacata was a wedge, a peninsula of level land carved out of the jungle, a wooded, dry shoal jutting thousands of feet above the river that snaked through the valley at its base. As the party approached one of the first settlements, the stir of the horses echoing in the silent lassitude of midday, hutches and shanties of clapboard opened on both sides of the road, and a pack of mangy dogs shot out to herald their arrival. The rutted, dusty strip widened before them as they made their way through the village, a swarm of children, naked and barefoot, abandoning the shelter of palm trees, joining the dogs in a squalling welcome. The village was routed from its siesta, as men and women of every age appeared in the shadow of the hutches, some naked or with only a knot of cloth around their bodies, a few crawling, a stray pig or goat nosing about the fringes of the commotion.
The riders pulled up and dismounted at a shabby wooden barracks, an old trading post, now disused, that seemed to be the center of the village, serving for infrequent and vaguely official government sanitary missions.
The guides hitched the horses, releasing the saddles, as Fabian and Elena settled Francisco on blankets outside the barracks. When the guides served the sandwiches and drinks they had brought, the huddle of villagers made a silent circle around the visitors, straining to see, intent on every flicker and move.
Some of the younger, bolder men gathered in a knot to one side, assessing Elena; she flushed at their open staring and moved closer to Francisco. Others, their interest riveted on weapons, surrounded the guides, posted warily against the wall of the barracks. Still others hovered about the horses, marveling at their sleekness, height and the intricacy of their tack.
To distract the attention of the crowd and to manifest a sense of ease and command in this strangeness, Fabian strolled leisurely around the village, a straggling cluster of watchful children in his wake.
Passing a shamble of huts, he startled a woman with a baby on her arm; before she retreated within, alarm for her own safety and that of her child broke through her impassive face. From behind a shutter, an emaciated old man smiled toothlessly. In the distance a group of young women closed in on a scampering pig, their naked breasts still shapely and firm, patches of bright cotton shielding their hips.
Fabian had reached the edge of the village, the highest point of the plateau. He felt dizzy from the sun and the altitude; the sheer drop of foliage and bush, the distant river, a muddy trough of yellow stirring, dissolving into the mossy green of land stretching as far as he could see. He checked his watch: the helicopter had been scheduled to come for them shortly. He found himself straining for the sound of its engine, but the dome of sky was silent.
He felt a twinge of anxiety. He began to realize how far inland they were, how remote from any town or village with police or a military outpost that could arrange their transportation to La Hispaniola. He returned to the barracks, where he found the crowd undiminished, still vigilant, still mute; Elena was sleeping on a blanket, Francisco’s head in her lap.
The afternoon was receding. The natives began slowly to drift away to their shanties; only a few stray children and three or four young men still prowled around. The guides dozed in a stupor, guns cradled in their laps.
Fabian sat down on a blanket and watched Elena. Her blouse, undone at the throat, revealed the whiteness of her neck and breast, a contrast with the black of her hair.
The sun began to glide toward the crest of the palm trees; the helicopter still had not come. Fabian became alarmed. He roused the others, pointing out to them that there were dozens of small settlements like the one they were in scattered throughout thousands of square miles of jungle in the Cacata region and that the pilot might have misunderstood the directions. The guides admitted that they had tracked their path to the village only by calculating the position of the sun in relation to the river.
Fabian underscored the urgency of their situation while trying not to alarm Elena and Francisco. He pointed out that, in the casual atmosphere of Casa Bonita, their absence could easily go unnoticed for a day or two. And they had neither the stamina nor the resources to ride all the way back to La Hispaniola, a venture which would take days. He proposed that the guide who knew best the perilous way down to the river should go there, taking the horses with him so that, alternating his mounts, he could reach in a day the military post that had dispatched the truck with their horses to the place of rendezvous. Then he would notify the authorities to summon a helicopter. Surly with reluctance but afraid to disobey Fabian, the man left the village for the descent to the river.
The remaining guide began to prepare for the night. He selected the largest hut in the village and, without explanation, ordered the natives to evacuate it.
They left, a procession of men, women and children, as well as a scrambling array of dogs, cats and pigs, driven to find other shelter for the night. While the guide started a fire outside to cook a meal, Fabian removed soiled mattresses and blankets from the bunks, leaving them in the yard for the night.
In the evening stillness outside the hut, Fabian joined Elena and Francisco, watching the guide roast a small pig. From the bushes around the hut, the sudden rustle of a branch, a sneeze, a cough, laughter betrayed the presence of natives huddling and squatting, alert in their scrutiny of the visitors.
During the meal, each time Francisco reached for a piece of meat, a spasm of pain from his fall contorted his face. The guide took a share of food but kept his distance, the submachine gun always at his shoulder. Occasionally he would glance with undisguised hostility at Francisco, but toward Fabian, whom he knew to be a friend of El Benefactor, he maintained his usual servile manner.
After the meal, the guide prepared a pungent fruit punch. He passed it around in pineapple husks. The punch was exhilarating, and Francisco, Elena and Fabian returned to it three or four times.
It was not long before Fabian, exuberant with the punch and the intimacy of the night, told the guide to distribute what remained of the roast pig to the watching natives. The man called out, and soon a swarm of figures emerged from the darkness, stopping on the other side of the fire, hands burnished by the flame as they reached greedily for the food.
Some of the natives were already boisterous with liquor; others moved into the circle of firelight, chanting and starting to dance, first as if in exhibition for their visitors, then with mounting intensity for themselves. At first the guide kept them at a distance, but when a few of the men approached him with a jug and gestured toward the visitors, indicating they wanted to return the gift of the meat with a fruit drink of their own making, he brought them over and whispered to Fabian that it would be unwise to refuse. Reluctantly, but caught up in the sensual flush, Fabian took a swig of the searing juice, then passed it on to Elena and Francisco; they dra
nk it under the watchful eye of the villagers.
The dancing was now a rite, the fire a beacon against the sky. There were moments when Fabian felt vehemently alert to color and shape; at other moments he lapsed into a stupor of sliding sensation. Once, he looked up into the mob and thought he saw Elena de Tormes swaying in front of him, her hands at her blouse, twisting it toward her hips, taunting him to tear it off; then he felt his body weightless, empty of feeling, cut loose, floating up from the ground toward her. Still later, he saw Francisco rushing at him with a machete, one that Fabian remembered the guide had used to split the roast pig. The machete gleamed as it split the table between them, Francisco’s voice a distant scream. Fabian’s head streamed with terror and exaltation. He reeled headlong toward de Tormes, but was snared suddenly by a figure he could not make out. He felt himself being carried inside the hut and placed there next to Elena.
He dreamed that although she seemed to be sprawled on the dirt floor next to him, her blouse open, boots discarded, her riding breeches pulled down, she was really behind a glass partition, lying next to another man; Fabian, from his exile in this hut, was linked to her by thought only, his longing as translucent as the spill of a jungle cataract.
He felt himself being lifted, a tree uprooted, borne by an undertow, a spume of greedy mouth, a spindrift of venomous white froth, without respite. Elena was no longer far away, but moving beneath him, the stream that bore his vagrant tree, her mouth on his, their tongues folding, her hands prompting him to take her. He rose, leaning over her, taking her; then with her astride him, he took her again.
What he remembered at the last was a multitude of heads, nests and hives of faces he did not know, hovering over him, over Elena, intent on the two of them at love, as if witnessing the combat of insects locked in deadly embrace on the mud floor of the hut.
Passion Play Page 12
