The Economy of Light (4 page)

“Don’t you like them?” he asked.

“Just get them out.”

“Okay,” he said. “I paid for them, I’ll take care of them. Your friend Genaro wouldn’t answer his door.”

“He probably knew what you were up to.”

“That’s such a crime?”

“I thought you were going back to your wife?”

“Not right away,” he said grinning, looking like a mortician in a black suit with shiny pants.

I closed the door after them and was left once more to the almost hypnotic movement of light in the room. A red haze seemed to be blinking on and off, but it was dim, almost one with the dark. The neon out the window seemed to be reflections of the colors of my nightmares, and in the shifting shadows of the room I could almost imagine that Mengele was here, lowering his hand, giving the signal to electrocute my brother. I shivered with the same fear I had always had of being alone in the dark. I couldn’t take a shower at night, for whenever I would close my eyes so as not to be stung by the soap, I would imagine that someone would be on the other side of the curtain, ready to grab me for another experiment. I switched on the lamp by the bed, carving out a dimly lit and isolated area of safety. I sat on the bed and listened to my past, the whisperings of boyhood thoughts; and I was afraid to close my eyes, lest I might see myself once more in the camp, lest I might see my brother screaming and then jerk bolt stiff at the shock of electricity; but there was more that I didn’t want to see, that I was afraid to see. I was afraid to remember, to visualize, the look on the old man as I struck him. The SS officer, the killer of Riga, looked as if he was being eaten away by cancer; he must have weighed a hundred pounds. And as I killed him, he whispered ‘mother.’

I didn’t hear it until years later.

I heard it in recurring dreams, and it was my voice.

I rose from the bed and hurried to the door. “Bob,” I shouted. “Bob....”

Genaro looked out from his room, and then he closed his door without a word.

Regretting my sudden change of mind, I went back into my room. Immediately there was a soft knock at the door. It was the woman with the scar. I let her into the room and turned off the lamp. She undressed in the neon, which was like firelight. She stared at me, taking off her blouse and her bra, and I felt frozen, an adolescent with his first whore. I undressed quickly, clumsily, while she watched, but I wouldn’t remove my underclothes until I was under the sheet, for I didn’t want her to see the marks of my pemphigus. Her touch was cool, her fingers surprising long, and I closed my eyes while she traced her nails over my chest and stomach, stopping short of my groin, a professional opening to her well-rehearsed act. Her face was tinged with red, softened somewhat by the outside light, and I held her face while she touched me, barely able to see her hairline scar that ran across her check. I kissed her, smelling cigarettes and perfume, and tasted the sugary residue of soda-pop, while she expertly took me inside her. This was going to be my last, I thought; and I was free, as if death was freeing me from disease and destination; but that too was illusion, for I was racing death as surely as I was pumping into this woman’s body; and destination was now destiny.

Mengele.

Even now, even here...especially now.

The woman was quiet, her breathing even, It was as if she were in another room entirely, removed from me. But I was using her, and my guilt was another incarnation of loneliness. I was a dying, middle-aged man taking a last communion. But in the instant of climax, when I felt transformed into the neon light all around me, wan and pulsing, straining for my ending, for it all to be done, I heard the old man I had killed whispering his last word.

And I opened my eyes and raised my head and saw my mother, ashes floating like dust, filling this room like a furnace with the red light of death and distance.

I closed my eyes tightly and saw a death’s head in the red-limned darkness.

CHAPTER SIX

BOGEY-MAN

We parted company with Bob early the next morning. Bob looked burned out, yet he offered to join us, if we would wait for him to conclude his deal. I thanked him, and then he offered to fly in and pick us up. “Sure,” I said, not believing that I would ever see him again; and we lost each other in the streets.

The vendors had been out for hours, and as it was a Saturday, there were so many of them that Genaro and I had to watch where we stepped, lest we walk upon the vari-colored blankets displaying goods and, perhaps, break something. We passed tanned Italian tourists wearing leisure suits, Americans wearing bush jackets and baggy pants, and Japanese as well as native Brazilian tourists, all of whom had come to the wild and dangerous jungle to vacation and shop. We passed stands of vegetables and fruits where Indian vendors shouted and haggled with prospective buyers. We passed people selling crocodile skulls, shells, snake skins, musical instruments, herbs and potions, and I almost gagged as we went through a fish-market where seventy pound
tambaquis
catfish lay on long slippery stands alongside eel and turtle and piranha and fish that had probably never been catalogued—ugly, ancient-looking, spiny creatures that looked reptilian. Young boys were running around and loud music seemed to be blasting out of every doorway.

I followed Genaro to the concrete wharfs where we might find a boat. There was a haze on the river, although it was late morning, and the
barcos
—the small boats and barges, which were in various states of disrepair—were packed into the quays, as if they were but a floating extension of shantytown. A speedboat passed slowly by with two uniformed men watching the shore: agency police patrolling the river for smugglers and poachers. I looked around at the nearby
barcos
: many of them were barges with a motor; some had two or three decks, all with the ubiquitous, colorful hammocks, upon which people were lying down and drinking and listening to portable radios. Even here music was a background. The sounds of canned easy-listening music mingled with samba, rock, and jazz-fusion. A beautiful
mameluco
woman breastfeeding a baby watched us from the deck of a small motor, which was covered with stacked boxes and grayish-white squares of sorva, a gum often used for calking and the basic stuff of
chicle
. A few fishing boats were anchored, but most were up river and long gone. In fact, although young boys were all about, shouting and catcalling each other as they packed and unpacked cases of soda, beer, supplies, and food from a large boat—this a passenger ship, with a high smokestack, several decks decorated with brass fittings and filigree, that plied the water between here and Santarem—there were few men in the area. There were many women working here, though: cooking, putting out wash, working on the boats, selling and trading fish and palm nuts and jute for sugar and salt and kerosene.

Genaro talked to a short, stocky man of about forty, who had no upper front teeth and was quite drunk. His missing teeth made his lower jaw appear to jut out. He looked like a
brancinho
, for his frizzy gray-flecked hair was red, his skin was ruddy and freckled, but his features were Negroid. He stood on the flat deck of a thirty foot motor, which had a cabin consisting of kitchen and toilet in the back and a wheelhouse in the front; the deck was covered with a torn canvass roof that ballooned in the wind and made cracking and whipping sounds. Genaro’s friend had left months ago for Santarem and had never returned, the man told us. “He found a girl,” he said, making a quick obscene gesture with both of his oddly delicate yet calloused hands, “and he left his wife and children alone.” Then he spat and shook his head.

“Do you know of a boat we can rent?” I asked, and Genaro gave me a quick but angry glance, for my impatience might queer the deal and certainly cost us more money. But I
was
impatient. There was something about being here at the edge of the city, watching the water, which made me slightly dizzy, as if the land were undulating, and I felt trapped and claustrophobic. I wanted to get away from the smell of chemicals and fish and people; I wanted to ply the dark water of the Amazon. I wanted this last journey...this last chase, if, indeed, that was what it was. And if these strange dreams of Onca’s, Genaro’s, and my own were true, I wanted to be justice for Mengele.

Then I could rest in peace.

The man looked at Genaro and shook his head. “
Onde vai
?” he asked.

“
Wakatauteri
,” Genaro said, and he nodded toward the river.

The man shook his head again. “
Perigoso
.” Then after a pause, he said, “
Quanto
custa
?”

Genaro looked at me and said, “1500 cruzeiros.”

The sailor laughed and lit a flattened cigarette; I had seen Turkish cigarettes rolled that way. “7,500,” he said. They argued. Genaro told him that we wanted to rent the boat, but didn’t want him as captain. The sailor threw down his cigarette and started walking toward the cabin. “What do you want to do?” Genaro asked me.

“5,000,” I said. “
Estou com pressa
.”

“
Americano
,” he said. He looked at Genaro scornfully; Genaro did not meet his eyes. “6,000,” the sailor said. I nodded, and the deal was done, although for what I was paying he could buy a new boat.

An hour later we were on the river, chugging out of the harbor. The engine skipped and choked, and Genaro had to adjust the carburetor while I took the wheel. We were in Amazon waters, which were brown and muddy, the color of light chocolate; but the Rio Negro flowed beside us, and its surface was like a black mirror. And like oil and water poured into the same trough, the rivers remained separate because of their different temperatures and speeds. We passed warehouses, factories, oil refineries, sawmills, and as we put distance between ourselves and the city, we passed farms and the occasional white stucco house with red tiled roof, which reminded me of home. There were plenty of fishing boats and barges on the river; some families had tied two, three, and in some cases, four boats together, and they floated down the river like the ragtag retinue of an ancient king. We waved at the passers-by, who were lying in colored cotton hammocks; or drinking
caipirinhas
, concoctions made with rum, sugar, and lemon; or playing dominoes, which wouldn’t blow away in a stiff wind, like cards. I felt the distance from everything familiar as we went into deeper country. We passed isolated cottages with penned cattle and neatly planted trees and then crossed over to the Rio Negro side, for we were going to take a branch of the Negro, the Rio Branco, north. The shore consisted of a green swatch of vegetation and trees of different hues of green and different heights. We motored toward the Branco and as we went farther into the rain-forest, it became warmer with every mile, and the humidity was so high that my shirt clung to my skin like a transparent wrap. There was nothing to do but stay in one place and try not to move around too much. We kept as close as we dared to the clay river bank, slowly passing by and sometimes under cool, shady canopies of tree branches, roots, and vines. The trees beyond were so closely packed as to cut out the light, a wall of leaf and bole that seemed to rise into the cloudless eggshell blue heavens.

We passed a few Indians paddling dugouts; the canoes were made out of hollowed-out itauba wood, which was black and hard as stone. By dusk we met a river merchant, a
cabloclo
with his wife and three daughters, who sold us some gasoline; and then we were alone on the river, which became dark, the color of dried blood, for as the sun set, the sky turned from blue to orange to deep crimson. The color seemed to be visible as a fine mist in the air; it was as if we were passing into a different atmosphere, and ahead of us and far to the left, almost in the center of the river, we saw river dolphins playing, breaking the surface. They came closer to us, as if looking for company, and swam and jumped and splashed and made snorting noises. Then, almost impossibly fast, they left, disappearing into the glassy water.

Genaro smiled and said, “
Botos
. Black ones. You can tell by the way they stick their heads above the water; the pink boto they come to the surface differently. You see their back first. The pink ones, they are almost gone, but where we’re going, they may still live because it’s so far away from the fishermen. After a pause he said, “The black ones are almost gone, too.” He stuffed a loose wad of chewing tobacco into the side of his mouth, chewed for a bit, making sucking noises, and then spat into the dark water. The river seemed to change Genaro, animate him somehow, as if being close to its teeming life gave him life also. The deadness that sometimes clung to him had disappeared; his movements were less cautious and studied, and he was talking, almost to himself, as if for the joy of hearing his voice once again. If I had not known him at the facenda, I would take him to be gregarious, a man who enjoys company, but one who is not altogether giving, one who has been hurt and defeated...one whose defenses are like jaws that snap shut at the merest intimation of violation.

Night came almost at once, and I imagined I could see after-images of the red sunset on the surface of the river. A full moon bathed river and jungle in a wan, pearly light. We were near the Rio Alatau, which was a tributary of the Branco, and there we anchored. We could hear the jungle all around us, the constant sawing and chirruping of insects and frogs and every so often the heart-stopping cries of howler monkeys. I felt as if we were a thousand miles from any civilization, as if the world I had just left was an ancient dream, a fogged memory. We tucked down the canvass as best we could to keep out mosquitoes—they did not seem to be out in force here, which was also one of our reasons for staying here the night. I had doused myself several times during the day with insect repellant, and I did so again, just to be safe. Genaro made dinner, a delicious catfish called
jandia
, which he had caught earlier. He fried it and surrounded our plates with slices of fruit, but he warned me not to bite into the husk of the cashwe fruit, for “it would burn like fire.” But I couldn’t finish my meal, as good as it was, for my stomach began aching; and I spent an hour aft. The pain was followed by waves of nausea, and when I finally felt strong enough to return, I was chilled and sweating. I was going to take a pill for pain, but Genaro had made a bowl of Onca’s manioc gruel and said, “Eat a little if you can. “Onca mixed up this for you; better than the pills.” I forced down a little, although it gagged me, yet within a few minutes I felt relief. “I’m sorry, but no ice cream here,” Genaro said. I smiled and lay down in my hammock; I could still feel pain, but it seemed isolated, controlled.

“Onca’s a fine woman,” I said rather lamely, but I wanted to talk about her with Genaro, pull him a bit about her.

Genaro nodded and said, “She likes you, or she wouldn’t have stayed with you for so long. She had an offer to go to Belém to work for a factory owner. You see, she worked for very rich people before. She never told you that, no? But she thinks of you as if...as if you need to be
preocupar-se com
, how do you say, ah, mothered. That’s what. Like you’re the child, even though you’re a man and have killed other men.”

I looked sharply up at him.

“Onca told me this from her dream, but I would know anyway.”

“And how’s that,” I asked, edgy.

“The way you are. I can see it sometimes, just as you can see me. What do you see from me?”

He had caught me off-guard. But, yes, I did see something. There was a connection between us. I had felt it when we had talked in my dining room. I sensed his psychic heaviness then, his burden, which was somehow like my own. And I felt that connection now once again, although the burden seemed lighter; perhaps because we felt free. An illusion, most likely, but I sensed it nevertheless.

“Well?” he asked in earnest. It certainly seemed that the river had dissolved some of his sullenness. “I see us both carrying something terrible with us,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. “As if we share this...thing in common. A darkness, perhaps.”

Genaro nodded, seemingly satisfied. “You see,” he said. “You can see. But where we’re going, that is where I found the darkness, the burden.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He didn’t answer that; he just leaned back against the bulkhead and looked up at the stars, which were as bright and cold-looking as bits of ice reflecting some strong, focused light. He was silent.

“Why are you going back then?” I asked, persisting.

After a long pause he said, “To take back the burden.” Then he moved away from me and drank his rum from the bottle by himself. Suddenly I had a sense of déja vu, and I realized that right now, I was living the dream I had had of being on the river. The smells and sounds of the river and jungle were exactly right. They disoriented me, for in that instant of realization I couldn’t discern whether I was dreaming or awake. And as I lay in my damp hammock, I remembered my other recurring dreams, I remembered my brother David being electrocuted by Mengele in a house that was by appearances my own, and I broke into cold sweat. I could
feel
Mengele’s presence here, suffocating me, and I shivered, once again a child in the camp. Yet I could not hate him then, for I was too frightened, anxious, as if he were my father, as everything here—the insects, the lapping water, the splashing fish and screeing monkeys—were all simply manifestation of Mengele. As if I were but a manifestation of Uncle Pepe, of Mengele, the jungle itself.

Suddenly a great crashing noise startled me. At first I thought some animal was smashing through brush. That noise was followed by an almost human wail that was so unearthly that I found myself standing on the deck, the sweat sending chills down my spine. I had never heard a sound like it, and I wanted to leave this place immediately.

Genaro was up and walking forward to the wheelhouse. He started the motor, and we glided out to the center of the river, which reflected the stars; it seemed we were drifting in space among them.