Red Jungle (26 page)

“All we have to do is overthrow the military government,” Rudy said. “It’s child’s play . . . really!” They all laughed.

“Of course—because it’s Guatemala—they’ll try to kill us first,” Madrid said. “Because nobody in this fucking country can keep a secret!”

“We’re all like old ladies,” Rudy said, slapping Russell on the back, clearly excited by the idea of a coup.

“And what about Selva?” Madrid said. “He’s not just going to lie down and take this coup. He expects to win the election.”

“No. He’ll be a problem,” Russell said. “He’ll have to be arrested. . . . And I suppose sent out of the country. Or put in jail.” Russell looked at the old senator, who had sat back down. Valladolid was looking at Russell differently now.

“That would be very unfortunate for his wife and children,” Valladolid said cryptically, looking at Russell.

“Yes. It would, but these things happen in politics,” Russell said.

“You know if we decide to do this, we might all be killed,” Madrid said, looking at him. “You realize that, young man?”

“Yes. But we might also save the country from a civil war and financial collapse,” Russell said.

“Jesus. I love young people!” Rudy said. “They always are ready to die. Personally, I love life too much, I think. The older you are, the more you love it.”

Russell looked at Madrid.

“He’s right, Rudy,” Madrid said. “We have no choice now. Do we?”

“No, I suppose not. But I certainly hope we don’t have to
die
. I suppose we can’t do this from Miami, young man?”

“No,” Russell said, and smiled. “You can’t do it from Miami.”

“I didn’t think so. It was just an idea.”

“Well, welcome to the government,” Madrid said, looking at Russell. “I’m appointing you to the provisional central bank as of this evening. You’ll have to run the privatizations. . . . And help us plan this coup.”

“Me?”

“It was your idea,” Madrid said. “Anyway, we can trust you, I think. I don’t even trust Rudy.”

“Young man, if we manage to get ten billion dollars in the treasury, you won’t even be able to trust God himself,” the senator said.

•••

Russell cut the engine. The boat, a brand new Boston whaler, glided through the brackish water of the lagoon in Tilapa. Beatrice suddenly yelled his name with delight. She was wearing a sky blue bikini. She’d taken off her top, and her small breasts looked very white in the bright sunlight. Her cry startled a group of parrots. The birds exploded from a tree top on the far bank. The bright green birds, flying just over the water, headed down the lagoon.

“There! There they are!” she yelled. Russell had come down for the Selvas’ party in Tilapa. Beatrice sat in the bow, clutching the gunwales. Alone, they’d been hunting for crabs in the lagoon that ran behind the beach.

“Stop here!” she said. “Look. There. Do you see them?”

Russell looked down over the little boat’s gunwale.

“See. Blue crabs,” she said. She turned around. She’d never looked more beautiful. He held on to the gunwale and tried to look into the blue-green water of the lagoon. On the other side of the narrow spit of land behind him, he could hear waves hitting the unseen beach. “Can’t you see them?” she said.

It made him feel uncomfortable that she’d taken off her top; there were other families on the spit for the weekend, and they couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t be seen. He had asked her not to, but she’d ignored him. It was as if she wasn’t hearing him, or as if she were at times alone. Beatrice had spoken to herself twice as they went up the lagoon. At first he thought she was speaking to him, but when he realized that she was talking to herself, it was as if he’d caught her doing something unnatural, and she had turned away.

“Yes, I see them,” he said finally. He’d had to put on his other sunglasses, the very dark blue ones. With their dark tint, he could make out the strange exotic crabs on the floor of the lagoon. They were a species that lived only in central America, in the mangrove swamps along the Pacific. He saw a group of crabs scurrying over the submerged roots of the mangrove trees, ten feet under the water. The crabs, smallish, were dark blue, the color of steel when you heat it up.

“They’re beautiful,” he said, and looked at her. “Are you all right?” She’d pulled her hair out of a pony tail.

“Of course I am. Why?”

“You haven’t answered me about Carlos. I asked you twice when he was expected.”

“This afternoon,” she said vacantly. “I thought I told you. He’s flying in. . . . The helicopter.”

“Put your T-shirt on,” he said. “Please.”

“Why?” She turned back and looked down into the water. “I’m going in to get one.” She dove over the gunwale of the boat before he could stop her.

“Jesus.” The lagoon was dangerous; sharks came in from the ocean, and there were alligators. He quickly looked up into the mangroves, looking for splashes. He’d brought his shotgun and reached for it, slinging it over his naked shoulder, and then saw her as the water cleared. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, or from wanting her. The sight of her slender figure underwater, the blond hair trailing. “Jesus,” he said again. “Jesus, you’re so fucking beautiful.” He saw her grab at something, then swim towards the surface, her shoulders moving aggressively. She grabbed the gunwale and tossed a crab into the boat. It landed at his feet.

“Are you going to help me? We can have them for lunch. There’s hundreds down here,” she said excitedly. In the sunlight the crab’s color was darker, almost black. The crab struggled to climb the side of the boat and escape.

“Beatrice. There’re sharks, for God’s sake!”

“I know. Come on before they get here,” she said.

He knew he shouldn’t go into the water with her, that it was unsafe, that someone might come along and jump them, or tell someone the general’s wife was swimming topless with the American. He un-slung his Mossberg and laid it down next to the red gas tank. He glanced for a moment at the crab, at the way it struggled violently, its jewel-shaped claws desperately opening and closing. Already the creature was being affected by the sun, its shell already dry-looking. Russell dove into the warm, dangerous water.

Tilapa was really just a spit of land—a long island between the ocean and the lagoon—studded with the vacation houses of the very rich, tucked away on Guatemala’s untouched Pacific coast. Russell thought it was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever been. His mother had owned the Selva house, in fact. The general had bought it from his aunt after Russell’s mother died.

Russell remembered the house very well, from his childhood. He sat in one of the compound’s several guest cabanas. The worn red-tile floor was sprinkled with white sand. He and Beatrice had tracked it in from the beach. The sun, fierce at mid-day, shone through two small windows high on the wall. A new fan with wooden blades turned swiftly through the warm air, making a pleasant noise that mixed with the sound of the ocean.

“I want to make love,” Beatrice said. He’d let her come into the cabana only because she said she wanted to talk. He’d left the door open so that the maids could see what was going on.

He glanced out into the yard. One of Beatrice’s children was playing in the large enclosed backyard behind the main house.

They’d made love in the bottom of the boat. He’d taken the crabs they’d caught and wrapped them in their towels. It had been a crude and unsuccessful trap. At the end, when he’d been rocking her, there had been the sound of the water as they drifted, and the sound of sea birds and the heat of the morning sun on his legs and chest. It hadn’t made any difference when he felt one of the creatures bite his leg. He’d simply stopped for a moment, reached down and batted the crab to the back of the boat, noticing when he did that all the crabs had managed to push their way out of the towels.

Laughing, he told her their lunch was getting loose. She said she didn’t care, her face tense with the sex. They were sitting so that she was astride him, his hands exposed to the crabs. She must have seen them as they worked their way free, but she wanted to keep riding him, making the small boat move in the calm water. He watched the sweat run down from under her arms, the red strap marks clear where she’d been sunning herself the day before, when she’d been alone with the kids. He noticed the lovely smallness of her breasts. He could feel the nudging of the crabs as they moved along his legs.

He’d come like the shimmering of the eleven o’clock swampy sunlight on the lagoon, fast and electric, In small boat-rubbing spasms, her lips on his neck, the crabs on his hands, their cold dying creature-touch odd and pleasurable, like the lovemaking. He heard her laughing and saw small puddles of sweat on his stomach as she came. He could smell gasoline, see the black rubber hose that led to the outboard motor from the gas can, hear the silence of her lifting herself. She was so, so deliberate and sexual in the way she got off him, loving him even while she was finally leaving. She touched him there, with her hand, her wet hair lying on her shoulders, thick-looking. He would never have another time like that with any other woman. Nothing would ever be like that again. It was as if the whole world had shrunk down to just the inside of this little boat, and it had been making love with them, the lagoon going breathless and contracting and then releasing with them. He told her he loved her, that he couldn’t live without her.

He’d said it while he’d gathered up the crabs and tossed them into the center of the expensive pink beach towels she’d brought for them. She’d listened quietly. He told her he wanted her to leave Carlos, that he wanted to take her and the children away, maybe to Europe, that he could afford to take care of them, that he was doing something that would make it possible.

She’d sat there naked on the bench as the ocean’s current pushed them into the shade of the mangroves, where huge roots, big ones like claws, hooked into the water.

He told her he would do anything to have her, that he had to have her forever, and he promised to take good care of her. There was nothing else he wanted in the world but her, he said, both of them in shadows now. He spoke at the end standing up, looking at the crabs as they silently struggled inside the knotted towel. He looked into the mangroves, their black trunk-shapes a delicate and seemingly endless abstraction.

“Will you come with me? When I’m ready?” he asked. “That’s all I want to know.”

“I’m scared, Russell. I’m not brave,” she said. “I’m scared for the children. You know what he will be like if I leave him. You haven’t seen him when he’s angry.”

“I don’t give a fuck what he’s like,” he said. “This isn’t about Carlos.”

“He’s murdered people, Russell,” she said. “Near here. He’s taken people out and shot them. On the road to Tilapa.” She looked away into the swamp, where they said big jaguars lived and hunted at night. The people here said that they were the biggest jaguars in all Central America. Sometimes, people said, they would swim out to canoes and drag fishermen into the swamp.

“All right, he’s killed people,” Russell said. “Do you want your children living with a murderer?”

“I don’t know what I want. I want you, but I don’t know, Russell. I don’t know about taking the children from him; it seems so unfair, doesn’t it? He loves them. He’s a good father. And they have a place here. What will their place be with us?”

“I promise you, I’ll have plenty of money,” he said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.” He knew it was. He knew she didn’t want to live her life the way she had lived it before. She’d been poor, the child of a single working mother.

“It’s not the money, it’s their country. They’re Guatemalans. They speak Spanish. They don’t speak English that well, Russell. Do you understand? They’re not English children, not at all. I’m English, but they aren’t.”

“Then leave them,” he said, pulling at the motor. “We’ll have our own.” And he meant it.

He had let her come into his cabana only because she said she wanted to talk. But she’d gone into the bathroom, shut the door, and showered. He had sat on the bed waiting for her to finish, his sunglasses still on, nervous that she was again doing something she shouldn’t be.
She shouldn’t be in here using his shower.
The maids had looked at one another when they’d stopped to talk in the courtyard, handing off the crabs they’d caught to the cook. He heard the shower running and wondered what the hell he’d say if anyone came to the door looking for her.

“You’ve got to go,” he said when she came out. She had wrapped herself in a fresh white towel. “Now,” he said. “Please. I’m serious.”

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t leave the children. Don’t ask me to do that. But you can’t ever leave me, either.”

“He’ll find out, Beatrice. Look at you, you’re in my room showering. The maids are talking. We made love today and could have been seen by anyone out there. He’ll kill me when he finds out. It’s only a matter of time.”

She walked to the cabana door and kicked it shut with her foot. It slammed shut. He went immediately to open it again, but she stopped him. She dropped the towel. Even then, afraid and angry, she still took his breath away.

“Stop it, Beatrice. They’re just
outside,”
he whispered.