The Devil's Garden Read online

  ‘You had better tell Jorge,’ I said. ‘He prefers to take breakfast at noon.’

  ‘Surely we’re all going to dance now?’ The Judge started laughing to himself. ‘We eat, we discuss, we dance. Please tell me that you have music.’

  ‘I hope you will be able to help us in our efforts, Dr Forle.’ Cordero spoke to me like I were another man’s choice for promotion. ‘I am sure there are things that you and your colleagues know about this area that might be useful. I’m assuming we will be able to rely on you. Now, if you will excuse me, I must see my men. We have work to do. There are problems.’

  VII

  ‘The One Special Difficulty’

  The ants presented Darwin with ‘the one special difficulty, which at first appeared fatal to my whole theory.’ His problem was this: that the overwhelming majority of any colony consists of thousands on thousands of sterile females who have foregone their own reproductive potential for the service of a single queen. More than this, these sister ants often appear to make suicidal decisions for the good of the colony. (There is even a suicidal ant, Camponotus saundersi, that will kill itself by exploding its own glands to spray attackers in poison.) This extreme cooperative behaviour runs counter to everything we have come to accept about natural selection and the prevalent idea that the genes that get passed on most often over time are the ones whose consequences serve their own interests. The societies of the ants must therefore be reckoned with at the centre of all evolutionary questions. How can there be so many altruistic individuals and yet so many successful species?

  And they are very successful. More than any other creature, the ants saturate and dominate the terrestrial environment. There are something like thirteen thousand species with roughly that number again yet to be discovered. Their total population is probably underestimated at ten thousand trillion individuals.

  We call them ‘eusocial’ insects, meaning ‘truly social’. Some ants farm, some use tools, some fight terrible wars, others enslave and still others are inquilines – disguised interlopers who rely on their hosts for food and shelter. There are ants of every adaptation and form one can imagine: from a strangely motionless species to those with mandibles that shut like trap doors in less than a millisecond, the fastest animal movement on Earth.

  The combined dry weight of all the ants on the Earth is about the same as that of Homo sapiens.

  VIII

  I was awake. The air was stifling-close and the night full of sound. Yet distinctly, I heard the voices that must have woken me: unrestrained, then laughing.

  I cast back the sheet and climbed carefully out from under my net. I put on my boots unlaced. I did not light my lamp, but crossed the floor and stood to one side of my porch window in the darkness.

  There were two men sitting on Sole’s steps. Behind them, Sole’s light was burning. I shrank back. I could see shapes through the translucent calico of her curtains. The shadows came together in the window and I could not be sure if the one were laying hands on the other or the two merely crossing paths. I was afraid to make sense of what I saw. We did not force our way into one another’s huts in the night. We hung around the comedor, we drank, we smoked, we went to bed. We tried to sleep in the merciless heat. We did not lock our doors. We woke early to catch the only moments of cool that the jungle allows. We went to work.

  The shadows parted and closed again. Sweat seeped my sides. I resolved to turn on my light and march out but the door opposite was thrown open and Sole was framed a moment: she was bare-armed and bare-legged, her black hair untied; I recognized the long white cotton shirt that she liked to sleep in. A man appeared behind her. He was wearing a military cap and there was a gun in his belt. She moved aside and gestured him to get out. I stood deeper into my darkness.

  She was remonstrating. Her hair fell in her eyes. The man finally stepped outside and she closed the door behind him. As the other two rose, I saw that one was wearing what I took to be a pilot’s headset. In the semi-darkness, it made his head appear much larger, grotesquely square. There was low laughter. Cigarettes were lit. Sole’s shadow moved behind the calico. Perhaps they were arresting her, I thought. But for what?

  Abruptly, the man with the cap discarded his cigarette, took both the stairs in a stride, pushed open the door and went back inside. Sole’s voice was raised. I had never heard her shout before. More exchanges – louder now. Then Sole was coming out, leading the way. She was wearing her jeans. She passed the other two, ignored their flashlight, and walked hurriedly up the path towards the comedor.

  I cursed myself for not going immediately. I was sure that the man had snatched open the door deliberately to catch her as she dressed. I stumbled on my laces and lit my lamp. I tried to yank my trousers on over my boots. But I had to sit, take the boots off, pull the trousers on, and then put on my boots again.

  Outside, the night sounded like the teeth of a thousand combs thumbed over and over and the walls of the jungle loomed tall and black. I hurried towards the comedor. The other huts were dark. The solar lamps were running down. I should have gone back to fetch my torch. On our familiar path, I was suddenly an impostor. And it struck me then that these last weeks had been false and this . . . this was merely a righting. I passed around the kapok tree.

  There was a shriek. Inhuman. High-pitched. Some night bird very close. Yet such a screeching cry that surely I must have heard it before? I told myself that the Station was known-of, long-established, an outpost of science.

  Lights. Not at the comedor, but beyond. I stole forward silently. Around the back of the building, they had started a fire. The jungle beyond was no longer a dark wall but branches, leaves, vines, fronds, all balking and shrinking in the updraught. They were too close.

  I stood at the corner of the comedor and looked on. The capped man and the other two had their backs to me. They were standing around a fourth who was tied to one of our dining chairs with a sack on his head. He was naked. Sole was leaning in towards the ragged hole in the bag where his mouth must have been. She had to shield herself from the heat. The bag turned from side to side. The fire whispered and muttered. She straightened.

  The capped man hooked his thumbs through his gun belt as he spoke to one of his subordinates who now approached the fire, crouching and picked something up . . . a stick, a thin metal rod? I could not be sure.

  Sole was bending in to the prisoner again.

  The subordinate stayed down on his haunches. In the firelight, I saw his face as he turned. He was a boy, fourteen, fifteen perhaps – no more. And he was not wearing a pilot’s headset but some kind of heavy-duty old-fashioned dental brace. Two thick wire tubes emerged from the corners of his mouth, looped back along his jawline and then fixed into heavy leather straps that were fastened tight around his head.

  I saw now that the soldiers had taken out the seat so that the prisoner was tied only to the frame and his lower body sagged through the hole where the base of the chair should have been. The Boy brandished the pole. The end glowed a bluish white-hot in the darkness. He came in behind and underneath the prisoner. I understood his intention at the same moment as Sole.

  She turned and screamed in fury at the capped man. And this time I heard her clearly – a boiling stream of curses. She pointed sharply at the Boy. He hesitated, staying low. She extended her hands high into the air, halting him and driving him back. Reluctant, he withdrew and placed his pole back into the heart of the fire. Sole leaned into the chair again. And at last I grasped what was happening . . . she was translating. She did not know these men. This was nothing to do with her.

  I dropped away from my corner. My plan – ludicrous, infantile – was to fetch my torch and then to walk casually around the comedor and up to the fire as though I was out on some innocent night stroll.

  Another shriek in the trees then a gruff grunt-growling sound. Not a bird, I realized, but a red-necked owl monkey – swollen-eyed and yellow-toothed, a claw on the fourth digit of both feet.

  Inside my h
ut, where before I had seen order, I now saw only contingency. I found my torch. I extracted my key from the inside of the door and turned the lock behind me.

  I ran. In the darkness, there were yet darker black fists that swooped and darted. Bats.

  She was coming down the path.

  ‘Sole.’

  She did not stop.

  ‘I woke up,’ I said. ‘I came over. You weren’t there. What’s happening?’

  She did not speak.

  ‘Sole, where have you been? What’s happening?’

  She shut her eyes as she pushed past me. I walked beside her, lighting her way as if she needed me to do so.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She was silent.

  ‘Sole?’

  ‘I’m going to bed.’

  I could not say what I had witnessed at the fire.

  ‘Sole, stop. Talk to me.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with you.’

  I reached for her.

  She turned but kept on. ‘Why don’t you go and ask the soldiers what’s happening?’

  ‘I will.’ I stopped and softened my voice. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  ‘Be careful.’ She spoke tersely over her shoulder: ‘People are killed here all the time.’

  The prisoner had gone. The Boy and the other remained. They had replaced the seat in the frame and fetched out a second dining chair from the comedor; they seemed incongruous – absurd – sat thus in the crimson light with the jungle wall, lit and shadowed, a thousand gaping throats behind them. I noticed the smell for the first time. A metal grill lay in the ashes. They must have been cooking. Meats. Before the questioning began? After?

  The second man was wiry and wore his hair short in the military style though with a long rat’s tail hanging down at the back as though he could convince himself of neither his brawn nor his wits. He must have been ten years older than the Boy. He was still eating, leaning forward on the edge of his chair.

  The Boy looked up.

  ‘I heard a noise,’ I said.

  He licked at the metal where it emerged from the corner of his mouth so that it glistened.

  ‘I don’t sleep.’ I added this as a fact, but perhaps I intended it as an obscure warning. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Who are you?’ the Boy said.

  Somehow, though there was no wind, I was standing in the smoke.

  ‘I’m a scientist. I work here. Why have you lit this fire?’

  ‘We’ve been keeping warm,’ the other said.

  I saw that the order of things between the two was inverted: the older man looked to the Boy; and the Boy considered him in some way his associate.

  ‘We’ve got a prisoner,’ the Boy said, his voice still toneless.

  ‘We’ve been keeping him warm, too.’ The associate sniggered.

  ‘The woman you took from the hut – she works with me. She told me what happened.’

  The associate grinned. ‘She is working with us now,’ he said. ‘And she likes it.’

  ‘Where is the Colonel? Who told you to light this fire?’

  ‘Captain Lugo gives us our orders,’ the Boy said.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s right here.’

  The Boy was looking around me. I glanced over my shoulder. The capped man was coming towards us from the comedor. I turned to face him.

  Lugo was a short squat man – gaucho-legged and densely muscled from training. He stood with the attitude of someone for whom every encounter was a confrontation.

  ‘You’re the doctor?’ he asked. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m a scientist.’

  ‘But you’re a doctor?’

  ‘I’m not a medical doctor.’

  I realized with a shock that he was younger than me. He said nothing. Either he did not understand or he was not interested in the distinction.

  ‘What do you need?’ I asked.

  ‘I need disinfectant. Maybe a breathing tube. Do you have supplies?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what happened. Let’s go.’

  I held the ground a moment and then turned back to address the others. ‘You should build your fire away from the edge of the forest . . . and away from the buildings. This is the end of the dry season. Everything is tinder.’ My trepidation had disappeared and now I included the captain as I spoke: ‘And if you want to cook, you can use our kitchen. We’ve already got the biggest rats in the world here. We don’t want to encourage them.’ I did not allow him to respond. ‘The medical store is round the other side. I’ll see what we’ve got. What happened?’

  ‘We have a prisoner.’

  ‘I know. What happened?’

  ‘That does not concern you.’

  ‘Everything concerns me.’

  ‘Ask the Colonel.’

  ‘I will.’

  TWO

  I

  My dreams were murderous and full of lust. I woke hot and dank in the close-wrapped darkness. But I did not wish to disturb her so I eased myself beneath the net and slipped on my boots.

  Outside, the light had not yet cracked the sky, for there are no horizons in the forest. Instead, the dawn was being born in the trees a wan and smoky blue. The clamour of the canopy had hushed and I stood a moment on her steps. It seemed that all the beauty of the world had come and lain down in the clearing. Thin fingers of mist curled through the trunks in search of something lost. If ever I were going to see a jaguar, then it would be a moment such as this: the great cat stepping silent from the half-dark wall of the jungle, head low, quartz-eyed and lazy-tailed.

  The water in the bathing hut was tepid and smelled of cold tea and clay; but I was pleased to wash the night from my skin. My intention was to confront them as soon as they appeared. My intention was fury. And yet, even as I stood towelling myself dry in our crude cubicle, I was aware that fury could not really be intended and that anger in primates is only ever fear by another name. I dressed in my boots and my field clothes – a uniform of sorts. As I passed the lab on the way back, I realized that I was taking conscious comfort in the satellite link of our computer. Civilization was my authority. Already, I could smell the heat gathering energy; rich and close and foetid.

  I was confounded: the Judge was at the comedor ahead of me. He was sitting on one of the lounge chairs, wearing striped pyjamas, with his feet propped up in expensive shoes on our low table. He was peeling fruit with a knife too big for the task and he regarded me with neither geniality nor hostility.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Forle. You seem in something of a hurry. Are the ants on the march? Have some fruit.’ He indicated the pile of tucumã. ‘I found them myself. They’re delicious.’

  ‘I want to speak to you.’

  And I want to speak to that disgracefully obese cook of yours. I was hoping for eggs. Various teas.’

  ‘Last night, your men – your captain – broke into the hut of one of our staff and attacked her.’

  A parrot squawked – ridiculous, ridiculing.

  ‘I’m not at all surprised. That man is an embarrassment to evolution.’

  ‘I’m being serious.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘They forced her to help them interrogate one of the tribesmen.’

  The Judge looked up at me from his fruit. I found his eyes disconcerting. Glacier-blue, they did not belong here. Terra del fuego.

  ‘Your staff ?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I was further annoyed at myself for using that word. ‘Her name is Soledad.’

  He continued to peel. ‘I know her name.’ He blinked slowly as if he were negotiating some narrow mental pass. ‘I have always liked women who do not like me. I admire their good taste. Have you noticed how in the beginning we are aggressive and awkward with the people to whom we are attracted? But she’s old for a childless Ashaninka. What is she – twenty-five, would you say? What do you think she is waiting for, I wonder, Dr Forle? A decent man?’

  ‘Your captain went t
o her hut. He pushed his way in – threatened her – then dragged her out. If I hadn’t got up to—’

  ‘Threatened her or attacked her?’

  ‘They were torturing him.’ The word should have resonated but it drowned in the sticky air and I had to speak again almost immediately – against the insect hum and the chirping of the birds and the Judge’s silence: ‘I want the captain reported.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘If you won’t do it, I will.’

  ‘You may well have more effect than I would.’

  It was impossible to sustain any kind of conversation with the man.

  ‘I find that hard to believe. You are a judge. You are—’

  ‘Everything is hard to believe, Dr Forle.’ He looked up again with a disturbing fixity. ‘I am from the Ministry of Justice. They are from the Ministry of the Interior. An entirely different thing. They are not my men any more than Sole is your staff.’ He softened his expression – and I realized that he was smiling sympathetically as one might smile at a simple patient. ‘But you are in luck.’ He gestured with a flourish. ‘For here comes the Colonel – to whom I suggest you make your concerns known.’

  Cordero’s step was dense on the wooden floor. The timber shifted, creaked, shifted back. He was dressed in fatigues. To my surprise, Jorge was following him – already wearing his apron. I would not be deflected.

  ‘Good morning, Colonel. I need to talk to you.’ I glanced in the Judge’s direction. ‘We were deciding what to do about what took place last night.’

  ‘What about last night?’ He passed his tongue from one cheek to the other.

  ‘Your captain attacked Sole – the woman who works here. She’s an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture.’

  A twitch or a fleeting smile. ‘Captain Lugo?’

  ‘Yes.’ The fact of having dealt with Lugo as a captain seemed to elevate Cordero as Colonel and now I felt as though I was petitioning rather than requiring. ‘The woman is frightened and upset. Your captain forced his way into her hut and then dragged her out against her will.’

  ‘At what time did this occur?’