Children of Paradise: A Novel (29 page)

The congregation stamps feet and claps hands and shouts in unison:

—Yes, yes, yes, yes.

He waits for the chant to die down. The congregation settles for him.

—Imagine we have sounded the alarm all over the community. You have all been summoned to meet here. You know that the guards are doing their best to keep the enemy from overrunning this refuge. All you have to do to escape your enemies and reunite with your children in paradise is follow my instructions. Imagine this is the moment, people. Right here and now. What do you have to do? How can you escape imprisonment, separation from your children, and their imprisonment?

—Tell us, Father. Tell us.

The preacher sticks out his arm in the direction of a corner of the stage and asks the congregation for volunteers to be the first to come up and drink a fast-acting potion that will take them quickly and painlessly to the other side.

—Who will lead this community to the kingdom of heaven?

The people in the front row switch into emergency mode and rush to be the first on the stage, and the rows behind the front trample and push forward. This results in a crush at the front. The children cry and the guards push people back from the stage. The preacher shouts for order:

—Stop, stop, stop.

Not in anger does he tell them to stop; he seems satisfied with the serious response by the congregation. Rather, it is a cursory show of concern for the children.

—Form a line, children first. Come up and take your portion and be saved from tyranny. There is plenty for everyone.

Encouraged by their leader, the congregation slows, their collective demeanor changing from a show of emergency to a calm display of poise under duress. They cry and laugh at the same time, look at each other, unsure what to expect next in the hands of their savior. They form two queues and drink from two ladles dipped into the vat by two assistants and try hard not to spill a drop and they drain the portion fed to them and say thank you through tears and with a broad smile. The preacher takes a turn to dip a ladle and fill a cup, and he blesses each one who drinks from it.

—Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long.

After they drink dutifully, they turn and scurry to a seat as directed by the guards and pray and sing and wait for the effects of a transition from the body to begin and for the soul to surface in paradise. The members of the congregation look at one another for a sign of alteration, and seeing none, they exchange hugs and kisses. For this time they walked through the valley of death of their own making. They filed up to a vat at the invitation of their leader and drank what they took on trust to be the means that would carry them through a portal from this world to the next. They grew terrified and elated at once with the feeling that this time might be real rather than a rehearsal. They disperse from the meeting and drink deep from the night air that tastes like their first air of this life.

They forget about Adam. He senses that something important is happening. A kind of incessant crying replaces the usual commotion of singing and chants and some tears. The children cry loudest and sound afraid. Adam growls and rattles his cage. A couple of guards on night duty rap on the bars with their rifles and sticks for Adam to be quiet. He retreats to his corner, plants his hands over his ears, and rocks back and forth. He conjures his running dream, first on the forest floor, next with his feet off the ground and higher up on a lane cut through vines, until he reaches a sprint and collides into the open arms of his mother and the two tumble together before coming to a standstill and neither one releases their grip of the other.

T
he captain wakes battered and bruised in St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital. His first mate is by his bedside. The nurse tells the captain that some men in a jeep dropped him off at the main entrance without a word to the nursing staff.

—You were unconscious. Do you remember anything?

The captain barely manages a shake of his head. A detective steps into the room and asks if he could identify his attackers. The captain says he did not see or hear anything. That his attackers surprised him. He cannot remember anything. The detective places his card on the stand next to the hospital bed and says the captain should find safer avenues for his thrill seeking. The detective’s card has the same address as the port authority police.

—Use that number if you remember anything.

The detective wishes him a speedy recovery and leaves. The captain is too tired to say anything.

Alone with his first mate, he asks how their shared sweetheart, the
Coffee
, is doing. The first mate says she is moored and safe and waiting for her captain to come back to her. The captain says he misses her and he cannot wait to take up his station behind the wheel. His first mate sits with him for a while and works up the courage at last to break the news that an injunction has been placed on the
Coffee
, an injunction that revokes the license of the boat to operate in national waters until further notice. The captain grits his teeth as he tries to turn in the bed and face his first mate, who leans a little closer. The captain whispers that they need to move the
Coffee
right away to a less public place, and the first mate should do it under the cover of darkness but exercise the utmost caution and stay out of sight of the port authority police and anyone from the commune.

He tells his first mate that his encounter in the graveyard was with the commune guards and they need to move fast. He asks his cousin how his face is doing. The cousin says he is fine and rubs the protective bandage that covers fourteen stiches on his left cheek. He says his cheek aches and itches a lot and serves as a constant reminder of his scrape with the commune. He says if any other man on earth cut him like that, the matter would not be over but just the first round of a ballistic affair. The captain says he feels the same way, but fourteen stitches and a serious beating later, maybe the two of them should reconsider their position. The captain eases a bruised arm around his first mate’s shoulder and pulls himself into a seated position.

—Captain, we in some deep water here with these commune people.

—I’m more worried about Joyce and Trina.

—Maybe we should take that trip upriver that you been putting off.

—How’s your Portuguese?

—About the same as my Wai-Wai.

Ryan finds fruit in his path. He falls asleep in the crook of a branch and wakes with fruit planted in the branch next to him. He cannot believe his eyes: The trees have sprouted oranges and bananas and even vegetable peels conveniently near him, all of which he eats. He tries to stay awake all night to see how trees bear fruit just for him. He wonders if he should talk to the trees and tell them he could really use some warm bread, not butter, that would not be necessary, just the bread. He tells the trees:

—Trees, bring me some bread.

He sleeps and dreams of the bread he shared with Trina and Rose, and as if by magic, he wakes to a strong smell of bread and sees an actual loaf next to him and a column of ants marching toward the loaf, which he snatches up just in time and runs from the tree with his bounty to escape the ants. He thinks he might be going mad. That the bread in his hands is so real, surely his mind is playing tricks on his senses. Nevertheless he eats fast and looks around and hardly chews before he swallows and wonders if he really might be mad and in his madness somehow able to conjure the things he most needs. But how?

Only one place bakes bread like this, and this bread can come only from that one place. The commune must be nearby. He must have help from someone in the commune able to come and go at will and move in the forest like the wind with only a whisper of leaves. He shouts at the trees that he wants his bed and his friends.

The commune office in the capital works through the night. Office staff acting on the preacher’s authority place calls to ministers regardless of the hour to ask about the progress of their efforts to curtail the hostile activities of the relatives of commune members. The preacher insists that his staff request verification from each minister that no foreign government official will be invited to visit the commune. He wants reassurance that they still agree with the mission of the commune: to worship and live a righteous life free from bureaucratic interference. Each minister agrees that the preacher and his followers are in complete compliance with the government’s policy for development of the area. Foreign interference will be resisted with all the might of the government on behalf of the commune. The office staff members thank the ministers on behalf of the preacher, and they promise the usual reward for their continued efforts on the commune’s behalf.

Commercial and private traffic strafes the city, from rugged jeeps to prancing Mercedeses, from battered buses to hand-decorated vans chock-full of paying passengers, from bicycles conveying two people and motorcycles with up to three people, to horse- or donkey-drawn carts stacked with tons of bags and men pushing or pulling smaller carts or standing next to them shouting for customers to slake thirsts or fill holes in stomachs and throngs of schoolchildren marching along the sides of roads with their eyes glued to and feasting on these carts. And no reason for the constant blaring of horns except to warn pedestrians of the impending approach of a vehicle or for one vehicle to tell another that it is right there behind or beside it and at jammed junctions to try and clear a path or tell others that another inch or two to left or right risks a collision, horns at the start of traffic from lights that change from red to green to say get out of my way, here I come, ready or not.

The convoy of three commune jeeps makes urgent deliveries of gifts to secure the cooperation of important persons. The vehicles succeed in cutting paths through all of this pulsating, epileptic activity with a combination of horns, flashing lights, shouting, and rude or imploring gestures. People stop and stare at the jeeps, and some wave, but most utter curses under their breaths. Far from hurrying people along, the horns, dense traffic, the sun, and the exhaust fumes seem to slow pedestrians to a leisurely, loping walk. They move sideways, as if to navigate a narrow passageway or to avoid colliding with oncoming shoulders. This way of moving in the open creates the effect of dodging or sidestepping the heat and saves them from sweating. The locals swear they can identify newcomers to the city by the way they rush under the overhead sun and always seem drenched in sweat and never stop mopping brows and necks.

Commune people rush everywhere, covered in sweat. People look at them and say hurry, hurry, make bad curry. In addition, commune people are notorious for moving about the city in packs. Not one jeep but two or three, no police or army escort but each one of them packing a pistol or rifle as permitted by their special VIP security status, besides their trademark long sticks. When commune people travel on foot or in vehicles, they have the same effect on a crowd as the president’s convoy. People stop and stare and curse silently.

On an errand for his captain, the first mate moves among the corridors of the city’s covered market, where it is said that anything that can be sold is on offer and someone with purchasing power can buy anything from guns to roses, from cocaine to kidneys. Stalls with imported clothes and woodcarvings from the interior showcase their wares on wire hangers and wood pegs sticking out of tall, flat boards. Someone browsing can touch and hold things up to the rays funneled into skylight windows. The more sophisticated stalls resemble arcades with ornate windows and glass shelves with finger-length soldiers from every army whose clothing a very patient and steady hand has painted while looking into magnifying glasses and whose details must be examined that way to confirm the originality of the artistry, soldiers from Thermopylae to Gallipoli.

Having a fresh scar on his face emboldens the first mate, who shows it as proof of his toughness to anyone he deems even remotely challenging by inclining his head to the right so that the bold worm under his skin catches the light and shady men in pairs, stationed at every twist and turn in the warren of corridors, take a step back from his path. At one of these military mini-shopfronts, the first mate notices a crossbow and a samurai sword and certificate of authenticity and a license granting permission to barter and trade. He opens the door and a bell rings. He waits at a counter no wider than the span of his arms. A metal stairway that may have been salvaged from a scrapped submarine twirls up into the ceiling, which is very low and undulating, as if it once were truly underwater.

A door behind the counter cracks open, and a shaved head peers around it. The woman’s giant earrings, two empty circles of bright gold, seem large enough to entertain a parrot on a perch. If she retained hair on her head, it would be gray, but she carries herself like a memory from her glory days. The first mate clamps his jaw to prevent it from hanging open and nods at her and searches for the right words to begin his inquiry. She raises her eyebrows and looks at him and waits for him to speak.

—I hear that a man can buy anything here, no questions asked.

—Heed a bit of advice from an old woman. Ears are open, and anything can pour into them.

—If I wanted something special, could you help me?

—I’m an old woman, you’re a young man. I’ll do my best.

—I need a commercial boating license. And enough of that old-woman crap. You’re fit and you know it.

The woman smiles and lifts a hatch in the counter and squeezes past the young man and bolts the shop door. She invites him to follow her up the submarine steps, and they crouch down inside a room full of locked metal drawers. She asks him for details about the boat. He begins to say that some people bothered him and his captain, but she raises her open hand in front of his face and says she does not want to hear why he needs the license, just what type of vessel he intends it for and the necessary details about the captain. He says the license is needed right away. She says she is a craftswoman, not a magician. He says lives are at stake. She says all her business is a matter of life and death. He says his life and his captain’s depend on how fast she can make the license. She says it is none of her business, but whatever grand scheme he and his captain are in it is not worth a red cent if it means throwing his young life away.