Red Jungle (4 page)

She was alone. Not alone; really; there were 500 people living on the plantation—but she was alone. She felt it now for the first time. She was white, and the rest weren’t.

She played for a moment with her long brown hair, and looked out at the water-bombed patio. She could see the green of the coffee bushes at the end of the silent driveway. She’d ordered the gate locked. She wondered, if she prayed to God, whether her father would appear at the gate at the bottom of the garden and take them somewhere safe in his car.

She saw the pathetic little lock and chain hanging from the gate in the rain. No, praying would not be enough. The fact that God had let her father die seemed cruel and impossible. She had never forgiven God for that. God had sinned against her, she told a priest. He had not answered.

The plantation, one of the largest on the coast, was left to her and her brother and their older sister. It had been bought on a Sunday at a dinner party near Guatepecque, at the home of her grandfather’s mistress, sometime before the turn of the last century. The mistress had arranged the sale. There had always been questions about the propriety of the sale, and about her grandfather’s law practice, which had enriched itself during the flu epidemic of 1898. It was said that her great-grandfather, Ramon Cruz, had started life as a young bank clerk in Guatemala City, the son of poor Spaniards, and finished a very
, very
wealthy man who could and did shout at the President of the Republic. The story of his rise was, according to some family members, the story of swindles and the shameless abuse of widowed women left alone by the flu epidemic. But no one could be exactly sure, now, how the Cruzes had gotten to own so much. As Isabella’s aunt liked to say, only the dead know that story, and they aren’t in a position to tell it.

TWO

Russell had met Gustav Mahler—the archaeologist, not the musician—when Russell had been sent to interview the young German, who’d become famous after his startling find of a lost Mayan temple at Bakta Halik. Mahler and Russell had agreed to meet at the Circus Bar in Panajachel, on the shores of Lake Atitlan.

Mahler looked like Kid Rock, and had an IQ of one-hundred eighty-three. At times he stuttered. His teachers in Germany thought it was only because he had so many conflicting ideas that came to him all at once. His mind raced; he’d learnt to live with it.

He had been named after the famous German composer, who’d been a distant relative. Mahler’s father was a world-renowned Mesoamerica scholar and an expert on Mayan history. He had worked the
Tikal
site in Guatemala during the war years and brought his wife and child with him, despite the danger.

While his father worked, Gustav had played in Tikal’s famous grassy courtyard, between the stele
Roja
and the Temple of the
Jaguar Grande.
The local Indians had embraced the young boy, and taught him things about the jungle most white people never learn. He was happiest trekking in the bush alone, singing Rolling Stones songs at the top of his voice. He had wanted to be an archaeologist since he was six years old.

Mahler was only twenty-four when he made the discovery that made him famous. He’d gone out into the jungle and found it without any help or university backing. He told Russell that he’d come to Guatemala to write his Ph.D. thesis, but ran out of money. It was unheard of.

The temple had been full of priceless Mayan antiquities. Mahler had saved them from a group of colonels, who’d planned to clean the temple out as soon as they’d caught wind of his find. He’d gone to the world press, sounded the alarm, and stopped them. The Colonels had been arrested. Mahler’s picture was printed in all the German newspapers, who called him a hero. Stanford University had offered him a teaching job in California, but he’d turned it down.

Mahler had brought a Dutch girl to the interview. She was a brainy, thin, glasses-wearing, twenty-five year old from a small country town, who seemed to be a bona fide sex addict. “She just vants to suck my dick and smoke weed,” Mahler told Russell matter-of-factly. “You’ve heard of the Red Jaguar?” he asked.

“No,” Russell said over the music, watching the Dutch girl, braless and fetching, stop to talk to friends at another table.

“It’s out there. I’m sure of it. It’s not a myth, like some people say,” Mahler told him. “It’s worth a fortune. My father told me about it when I was just a kid. He looked for it, but never found it.”

Russell glanced at the bemused Dutch girl as she headed back to their table. Someone at the bar had bought her a brandy, and she was holding it in both hands. Her skin was golden from sunning herself at the hotel pool all day.

“You’d have to give it up to the government,” Russell said. “If you did find any kind of treasure.”

“Not, not …
if you find it on private property,” Mahler told him quickly. He looked Russell in the eye. Russell realized that Mahler stuttered, but controlled the affliction through force of sheer willpower. The German’s face contorted a little with the effort to control his tongue. There was a mean look in Mahler’s eye as he struggled to get the next word out of his mouth. Russell decided, looking at him, that Mahler was probably as arrogant as he was brilliant.

“Okay, I’m game. What is it then, this Red Jaguar?” Russell said.

“A… A…great bloody piece of red jade. I
mean
bloody big. Heroic. You know what that means? Right?” Mahler asked. He took a drink of his wine, the flamenco trio on the bar’s tiny stage playing louder now.

“Life size. Right?” Russell said, speaking up over the music.

“Might be bigger,” Mahler said, putting down his glass. “Might be like the stone jaguars at Bakta Halik. Remember? There at the entrance. You’ve been there, haven’t you? Those are eight feet high, man!”

“Yes. I’ve seen them,” Russell said.

The Dutch girl came back and sat on Mahler’s lap. In the lamplight, Russell could see her breasts clearly through her sheer cotton blouse.

“Big,” the German said, ignoring her. “Could be
very
big. And those are stone. The Red Jaguar, they say, is made of
jade
. That’s the story, anyway, what the Mayan texts say. Can you imagine what that would be worth to a collector? Or a museum?
Millions! Millions, my friend!”
The German reached over and hit Russell on the shoulder, managing to keep the girl on his knee.

“It might be a myth. You know, like El Dorado,” Russell said, trying not to stare at the girl’s tits, not taking him seriously. “Or the Lost Dutchman’s mine.”

The band stopped.

“I don’t think so,” Mahler said quickly. He touched the girl’s cheek with the back of his hand and smiled at her, as if he already had sold the thing and had the bank book in his pocket. She got off his knee, but not before grinding a little.

“Jaguars are frightening,” she said, getting up and moving to her own chair. “I bought a mask in Chi Chi, but I had to give it away. So dark!” She looked around to see if she had any more friends in the bar. She growled, a little drunk. She produced a joint, and they went out onto the street to smoke it.

“What are you suggesting?” Russell said. Holding the last of the joint, he offered the last hit to Mahler, who shook his head. Russell threw the roach in the gutter. The Dutch girl was window-shopping further up the street. Russell could see her outline in the moonlight. He felt very high from the joint and the wine he’d been drinking. It seemed to hit him all at once.

“I’m suggesting you throw in with me,” Mahler said. His eyes glowed behind the roach’s ember as it raced past his face and fell in the gutter.

Mahler told him he thought the Red Jaguar might be on a plantation that bordered the site at Bakta Halik. He said the plantation was up for sale because of the coffee crisis. “That’s my suggestion. I have no money to buy the place.” Mahler said.

A week later, for no good reason, Russell had decided to do it, to throw in with Mahler and search for the Red Jaguar. Sometimes, he thought, you do things and you don’t even know why. He was just stumbling through life, and couldn’t stop himself.

In the late afternoon, Russell pulled up in front of a formidable steel gate. Wind whipped at the ragged banana trees along the road to the plantation’s main house, their broad green leaves writhing wildly. His windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the torrents of rain.

After eighteen miles of horrible dirt roads and a filthy rain, he’d found
Tres Rios
. He’d made only one mistake, and it had cost an extra hour. An ancient faded sign read,
Finca Tres Rios Familia O’Reilly.

The plantation house stood a football field or more away, behind the locked gate. He could see that the house was big and very old. If not grand, it was still impressive-looking. It had been built with a very deep veranda on the main floor, and had a stick Victorian façade that belonged to another century.

He honked his horn, giving it a long blast as the Frenchman had instructed. He had been told to wait; someone would let him in.

A young girl in a bright yellow dress, maybe eighteen, darted out of one of the shacks on the road above. Her hair was rain-wet, very long, and very black. She ran towards him like a deer in the forest, beautiful in the rain. Russell got out of the jeep and met her at the gate.

He glanced at an abandoned guard shack to the right. The rain was pouring through a hole in its roof. The girl smiled at him, her beautiful face wet. She had big eyes, the whites startling like snow in the jungle. Thin and tall, her waist was flat against her dress. He offered to help her and reached for the key, the rain pelting him hard in the face, but she didn’t give it to him.

“No, yo lo abro, Señor,”
she said, and bent down to unlock the gate, her yellow dress soaked. It clung to her back and shoulders like a skin. She unlocked the gate, then stood up, managing a smile. The gate, she told him, was too heavy for one person to move. He helped her pick up the steel pole, and they walked it back across the driveway. The entrance to the plantation clear, they set the pole on the ground and ran back to his jeep. Russell picked the shot gun shells off the seat so she could sit down.

“Thank you,” he said, looking at the girl once the doors were closed. He was struck by her beauty. He couldn’t help but notice the way the water pearled on her face.

They heard a thunderclap. It rolled the way it does there on the coast, forever, and then broke hard in parts, as if the sky were cracking apart. She was a stunner, the kind of girl you see on magazine covers in America.

He leaned back in the seat, wiped his face, and put the jeep in gear. They passed through the gate and went up the dirt road towards the big house.

“Aquí, por favor,
” she said suddenly. He stopped the car. “I’ll leave it open,” she said in Spanish, nodding towards the gate. She glanced quickly at him once, their eyes meeting, then opened the door and jumped out. He watched her disappear into one of the wood shacks, its low corrugated metal roof a deep orange-red. The doorway of the shack was black, like her hair. He looked down at the wet empty seat where she’d sat, then drove on toward the big house.

The road turned and moved up the hill as it passed other shacks, some abandoned. Mahler had told him that the plantation was barely being worked, since the collapse of coffee prices.

Another long peal of thunder rolled over him. He saw Mahler’s old blue Toyota Land Cruiser, with its ladder and steel baggage-rack welded to the top, parked in front of the big house. The top of the old Land Cruiser was covered with netting and blue plastic. Russell parked alongside it.

A maid appeared on the veranda, came down the steps with a large golf-style umbrella, and ran to his side of the jeep. Russell saw a tall white man, the Frenchman called Don Pinkie, come out onto the veranda. The Frenchman stood on the porch, a solid curtain of rain between them. Russell stepped out of his car, the thunder breaking again, and ducked under the maid’s umbrella.

“Buenos tardes, Patron,
” the maid said to him. She must have heard that he was there to buy the place. He had the first payment in his wallet, a cashier’s check for thirty-thousand dollars drawn on his account in the States. He’d sold everything he’d had left back in the Bay Area: a few landscape paintings he’d collected when he’d been a stock trader, a ski boat he’d kept in storage. He’d maxed out his credit cards too, but he’d gotten the first payment together.

The word
patron
slapped him in the face. Always before when he’d heard
“patron,”
it was addressed to some rich Guatemalan. The expression had always embarrassed him a little.

“Thank you,” he said. He and the maid moved quickly toward Don Pinkie standing on the porch. As Russell went up the stairs, still under the umbrella, he saw Mahler come out of the house. The two men spoke in French and then Mahler turned toward Russell and smiled, his narrow face white and cold-looking.