Children of Paradise: A Novel (14 page)

He says that the guards must answer why here and now for themselves, and he continues to speak as he exhales smoke. How is it that a group of almost one thousand foreign nationals could end up with permission to clear three thousand acres of prime jungle and build on it and do whatever they want? He leans on his jeep and waits for the guards to say something, but they shift their weight and glance away or stare at the ground and examine the toes of their boots. He keeps puffing and speaking through the fumes. He says they must know more about it all than a mere driver and army private. How can all this happen—he waves his cigarette to take in the compound—and not have anyone in government or the police bother them from one end of the month to the other except for this little house call. The guards nod. The private keeps his cigarette between his lips as he pulls and puffs and talks. Wisps snake up to his eyes and make him squint. The guards add nothing. They know it is better to remain silent. They nod and twitch.

Talk switches to the dangers presented by the compound’s juxtaposition with boa constrictors, vipers, caiman, wild boar, jaguars, red ants, and killer bees. Is there an antidote to be found anywhere on the compound for each of these mortal threats, the driver wants to know. The guards pat their rifles.

—You need a lot of bullets to get rid of killer bees.

—No, just shoot the queen and you kill the colony.

—You fellas must be marksmen.

They chuckle. The front door opens and the guards run up the steps of the porch to meet the departing retinue. One soldier carries the same large briefcase he arrived with, but it appears much heavier, since he lets it hang by his side. Another soldier follows, minus the sandwich in the brown paper bag. Others emerge, and each soldier carries in a rather casual way one of the three metal suitcases they struggled with earlier in pairs. The preacher emerges last of all in his brown slacks, white jacket, and open-toed slippers. He shakes hands with the soldiers, and they salute, hop down the steps, and leap into the jeeps, seemingly sprightlier than when they arrived. They drive off and wave to the guards and the preacher. They pass Adam’s cage and stare as they fix sunglasses in place. Adam stares right back at them. They do not wave, so neither does he. The preacher turns back to the front door the moment the jeeps disappear along the road that leads to the entrance of the commune. A guard crouches and retrieves a flattened cigarette stub from the soil, brushes it off, and tucks it under his cap.

Two guards at a barrier that is no more than a tree trunk on two upright forks lift it to one side for the four jeeps to drive through with a casual exchange of salutes. One of the guards says into his two-way radio that the rooster has flown. Kevin and Eric, the guards at the improvised gate, take up their cards from under cloth caps and place them on the table next to a small hut and resume their game of gin rummy. There is no need to keep a constant lookout. They can hear an engine’s approach a mile away. The straight road cleared of trees and bushes makes it possible to see someone coming from half a mile. They spend more time looking at the compound for someone who might be trying to leave.

Playing cards is illegal. If someone sees and reports them, the cardplayers will be beaten. The number of lashes depends on the preacher’s mood and how many people need to be punished and whether there are any witnesses to the deed. The careful calibration of crime and punishment depends on reasoning exclusive to the preacher. At the gates to the commune, on the fringes where its rules begin, seems just sufficiently far away to make it a lesser crime, not as much a broken rule as a way of passing the time. Every guard at the gate is sworn to secrecy, and each shift stores the pack of cards under a loose floorboard in the guards’ hut. Kevin and Eric play for matches and cigarettes. Smoking is a sin. So the guards take turns lighting one cigarette while the other guard keeps a close eye on the road. Swearing is a sin. The guards obey this rule because speech, especially words generated by excitement, is such a spontaneous thing that they worry they will say something bad within earshot of someone who has the power to get them into trouble. This makes the talk around their game of cards a somewhat restricted linguistic enterprise, no expletives, just the names of animals and people’s apparel substituted for the usual proscribed words. Women’s apparel for curses to do with women’s bodies and men’s apparel for men’s private body parts and rats for what adults do in private. Kevin slams a bad card on the table.

—Oh, panties.

Eric responds with a trump card, which he delivers as if threading a needle.

—Rats to you, my fine-feathered friend.

Eric casts a baleful eye toward the road leading from the compound and slaps a mosquito on his neck and collects the cigarette and three matches that accrued as the stakes grew and grew. They play again and the fortunes reverse; Kevin wins back his coveted cigarette and two of three matches from Eric.

In the school building, the older students position screens to carve out classrooms; they wheel in chalkboards and distribute exercise books. At every turn, some teacher or prefect congratulates Trina on her display of loyalty to the commune over personal friendship. Trina smiles and feels numb and cold. She cannot speak. A teacher asks if she is all right, and she nods and smiles. The teacher tells her she is a brave girl and will go far. That her courage means she is destined to climb the ranks of the commune and command new heights next to the preacher. Trina wants to swing her flute at the teacher’s face. She smiles and nods. The younger children repeat instructions and information; the older children write answers to quizzes and copy dictation into their books. The children in the school band—Trina included, with her flute—walk out of the building and shelter under a tree and practice their scales. To the jaguar or panther prowling in the forest, they sound like every species of bird gathered in one area, all singing at the same time. The children’s instruments empty the trees of parrots, woodpeckers, and crows. Even the sloth inches farther away from the compound. The music teacher calls out the hymn for the class to begin, and the instruments chime in synchrony. The entire forest of wildlife draws nearer and grows quite still. Some of the birds join in with their own musical improvisations. Trina takes the lead with a flute solo. Images of Ryan fill Trina’s head. Her arm raises a stick and brings it down on his talk, his walk, his smile, and his arms holding her. Her eyes water as she plays. The teacher assumes she is moved by the music. Joyce hears the flute and knows as long as her daughter plays, she will not feel alone without her mother. Adam pulls on the bars of his cage, raises himself to his full height, stretches his neck, aims at the sky, and howls.

T
he preacher in his painted house puts up his feet and accepts two clinks of ice into his glass of fifteen-year-old red rum. He knows what the evening sermon will be about. Temptation, the vagaries of it, the certain ruin that it brings to the unwary spirit, the need to police temptation with priestly rigor. Who among them is not tempted? he thinks as he sips on the rum and tastes the cane in it, the molasses and the syrup that slow the flow of the over-proof spirit. He rolls it on his tongue and swills fire and ice into every nook and cranny of his mouth to produce a gentle burn that saliva eases and repeated sips reduce, and he swallows for the same pleasant burn down his throat and for the feel of a gentle furnace in the pit of his gut. He holds his glass over his head, and his three assistants and two bodyguards set aside their two pistols and a rifle and toast to his health and touch glasses and throw their heads back. He says the country they are in surely must be a wicked place, with rum of this high a caliber. What he could do with a big country like this if he held the reins. The vast forest overflowing with minerals, precious metals, diamonds, and timber. He says that, were he El Presidente, he would build a road through the jungle to connect every country on the continent, from the top to the bottom of the continent and from east to west, linking all the nations and uniting them under one flag, the flag of worship of the Most High, for a heaven on earth, for the equal rights of all regardless of sex or standing in life. He would minister to every tribe in the rain forest, every conquistador, every missionary, every gold digger, diamond prospector, and gaucho, until the whole lot united under him as one family and paid homage to God and to His number one agent under the sun, yours truly. His followers applaud. He nods for a refill and complains how shallow these rum bottles are and what robbery to put something so good in a receptacle so parsimonious.

He asks his assistants, Dee, Pat, and Nora, if they are happy. They reply in unison:

—Yes, Reverend.

He asks them if he did the right thing to drag them across the sea and deep into the jungle, just for a little respite from the devils out to get him. Yes, they say, again in unison. They take turns cementing their assent. Dee first, followed by Pat and then Nora:

—No doubt about it.

—The best thing we can do with our lives.

—Prior to meeting you, Father, we lived life without meaning.

He drinks to that.

—Amen.

They toast to that. He asks for two more pieces of ice and holds his glass with both hands next to his right ear for the music of the cubes dropped one at a time from silver tongs. A queue forms at his front door as the various scouts from every corner of the compound appear with some important news.

—What’s the fuss?

—Ryan’s gone, Father.

—The bread stealer?

—Yes, Father.

—How dare he run away from me!

The preacher jumps out of his chair and knocks it over and flings his glass at the fireplace. He curses the child in a long string of obscenities akin to a spell, the worst words imaginable from the mouth of a preacher. An assistant touches his arm and leads him back to his chair, set upright by another assistant. A fresh glass finds his open hand.

—Should we send some guards to find him?

—No. Forget it. He won’t get far. Where will he find food and water? He can barely button his pants, much less survive in this jungle.

He takes out his handkerchief and mops his face and neck, both corded with veins. He shakes his head and takes a long drink from the glass and exhales loudly with the rum burn that reddens his neck as if staining it.

—Should we notify the army in case they come across him?

—No, absolutely not. Not a soul outside this compound must know about him. He’ll come back with his tail between his legs. And upon his return, whatever his condition, he must be taught a lesson for running away.

—His mother and father are at the infirmary. Should we notify them?

—No. They have lost their privileges. I’m his father. I’m his mother, too, come to think of it, and I say we do nothing.

—Sorry, Father.

—No one is to do a thing, you hear me? The gauntlet was apparently too easy for him. Not sure a spell in the well would have any effect on a child of his temperament. My sermons had no effect. A visit with Adam should straighten him out.

—Yes, Father.

—Let me know the second he crawls back here.

—Yes, Reverend.

He dismisses the others with their daily reports of commune behavior. They file out of the house. A minute later he asks his assistant to call them back. The communications manager heads the line; he looks directly into the dark eyes of the preacher and says the local tribes keep calling to tell the commune to stop polluting the river. The preacher interrupts the report. He waves at an unseen irritant in front of his face and says he does not wish to hear another syllable about the local tribes and that he did not come all the way out into the wilderness of the Amazon to be dictated to by primitives, and will the communications manager please stop taking calls from the tribes, and will he please do his job and just hang the hell up on them.

The infirmary nurse is second in the queue. She waits for a minute as the preacher’s assistants clear away broken glass and return rum bottles to the drinks cabinet. The nurse launches into her report to the preacher, but the glint from pieces of glass on the wood floor catches her gaze, which wanders from the preacher’s face and scrambles across the floor. He stops the nurse’s report and asks what she finds so interesting about his house to make her take her eyes off him and pry into things that are of no concern to her. Before she can say anything, he raises his voice. Did she wish to live in his house and do his work and take on his worry while he lives in her lodgings, free of the pressure of steering one thousand souls to salvation? Of course not, he answers before she can say anything. He waves his hands in her face.

—Keep those beady eyes of yours on me.

The nurse apologizes profusely. Tears spring to her eyes.

—Don’t! Don’t you dare cry!

She blinks rapidly and inhales deeply and picks a spot to look at on the man’s forehead, just above his eyes, since she finds that his dark stare undresses her. She says last night’s emergency patient, the woman injured by Adam, had only superficial scratches and a couple of metacarpal fractures, nothing a painkiller and bandage could not rectify. He interrupts the nurse to let her know that “rectify” is a good word to use to a rector in his rectory. He laughs. Everyone in the room laughs as well. The nurse laughs longest of all. She continues, telling him that one child has colic and a second diarrhea, after eating two sticks of green corn.

—Serves him right.

—Not him, Father. Her.

—Serves her right. Greedy guts.

He laughs and everyone follows suit. The nurse resumes. Yet another child needed a tetanus injection for a rusty nail she stepped on that pierced her shoe and went into her foot. Miss Taylor, the old lady responsible for putting makeup on the dead, is sick. She says she has no feeling in her left leg and left arm. The doctor thinks she may have had a stroke in her sleep without even realizing it. She complains of stomach cramps and asks to see you, Father. She says she wants to see you before she faces her Maker. The preacher asks the nurse if he really needs to see the old lady; if today for certain will be her last day of taxing the miserable air with her miserable litany of complaints. The nurse says no, the old lady is sure to live another forty-eight to seventy-two hours but might not be compos mentis, since confusion is a symptom of a stroke. Okay, he agrees to see the old lady soon. He looks at the nurse and chews his cud and furrows his brow.