They felt awkward climbing into the same bed, clinging briefly though not kissing. And then they were asleep.
They were woken at seven — the jangling phone, Nestor summoning them to the café at the front of the hotel, where coffee, fruit, and bread were being set out on a table by Hernán. The others yawned and muttered, sounding irritated and weary. The morning was already hot enough to melt the butter in its sticky dish, and the humidity glowed on the faces of the travelers. The low hideous town was loud with traffic and scurrying people and hawkers, with new and sharper stinks and monotonous music.
“Anyone get kidnapped last night?” Hack said, peeling a banana.
“Hack, you are awful,” Janey said, smiling in encouragement.
Nestor said, “Something stranger than that, my friends. Near here is the San Miguel Bridge to Colombia, at La Punta, the frontier. They call it Farafan. Early this morning, some people going across the bridge in their cars were stopped by the FARC soldiers at gunpoint. The soldiers gave them a choice. ‘Set your car on fire or we will shoot you.’ Twenty-two cars were burned on the bridge. Just here.”
“That was this morning?” Sabra said, sounding terrified.
“It’s okay, Beetle,” Wood said, and hugged his wife. With angry emphasis, he said to Nestor, “What is the point of that?”
Nestor said, “Maybe they don’t want people using the bridge, or maybe it’s a protest against the hit squads here. Or maybe you should ask Tiro Fijo.”
“Who’s that?”
Hernán said, “‘Sure Shot,’ the big man of the FARC.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Sabra said. She was squeezing her copy of Trespassing in anxious fingers.
“I think he’s just winding us up,” Janey said. “All I see in this grotty little town are nig-nogs in market stalls trying to sell us wickerwork.”
Wood said, “Are we going to be leaving here in a timely fashion?” “After we go shopping. We need food for the jungle,” Nestor said. “There’s not much gringo food down the river. Ah, here is the estranjero.”
Manfred appeared, walking into the café from the direction of the Hotel Colombiana passageway.
The others, expecting someone new, looked up with disappointment. Manfred was in jungle gear, which made him seem darker and more predatory, his shirt tucked in and sweat-stained, his thick thighs tight in his trousers. He looked hot and uncomfortable, bug-eyed and blinking, his mouth open, breathing hard as he smiled and muttered at the rest of the people. He then seemed to take possession of the table, snatching at fruit, twisting bread in his fingers.
“You hear about the kidnappings?” Wood asked.
Manfred said, “Of course. Everybody knows. They enjoy kidnapping the oil people. This was all rain forest until the oil companies came. Texaco and Occidental cleared it. Now it’s drugs, putas, gun sellers, and oil pipelines. High toxicity. Criminals. You blame the people here for hating gringos?”
“So what are you doing here then?”
Manfred became serious and said, “I am on a quest, like you.”
“We’re not on a fucking quest,” Hack said.
“No need for effing and blinding,” Janey said.
As a way of indicating that she was not interested in this abrasive back-and-forth, and loud enough for everyone to hear, in the manner of an announcement, Ava said to Steadman, “Let’s look around town, shall we?” She glanced at Janey and added, “I want to see those nig-nogs and the wickerwork.”
“Meet back here at noon,” Nestor said. “Hernán will go with you. If you get lost, ask for the Colombiana.”
“I’m staying right here,” Sabra said. She opened Trespassing and lifted it to her face, as though to keep the world away.
Hernán led Ava and Steadman down a side street, explaining the stalls, some selling tapes and CDs — the music blaring — and others selling sneakers and sports jerseys and cheap clothes. Beyond the stalls were small shops, bars, and garages. The curio shops were stocked with blowguns of various lengths and darts, bows and iron-tipped arrows, crude knives, beaded belts, and woven baskets. Lining the walls were medicinal herbs in fat dusty burlap sacks.
“You want something special?” Hernán asked Steadman, and winked at a man in a curio shop.
The man took a long soot-blackened blowgun and inserted a dart into its tube and with bulging cheeks ostentatiously blew the dart into the ceiling of the shop. Then he led them past the sacks and more blowguns, behind a partition, saying “ Tigre, tigre” and showed them a jaguar pelt and a jaguar skull with sharp gleaming teeth. The man spoke eagerly to Hernán.
“He will give you a good price.”
Tigre!
Steadman looked at the empty eye sockets of the jaguar skull. The thing had long fangs among its sharp teeth, but the hollows where its eyes had been made it the pathetic parched shell of a small blind monster. On the table were dishes of animal teeth, feathers, quills, and patches of fur. He picked up an even smaller skull, the size of a baseball.
“Look, a little baby,” Steadman said.
“Baby monkey,” Ava said.
Seeing Steadman’s interest, the man pressed the small skull into Steadman’s hand and said, “Mono. Ees mankee. En peligro de extinción!” He flashed his fingers at him, saying “Cinco”
“Who kills these animals?” Steadman asked.
“Hungry people,” Hernán said. “Them too. En peligro de extinción también
In a glossy box, propped on hatpins, was a large, hairy-legged, popeyed spider.
“Tarántula!” the man said. He handed the box to Steadman.
Holding it up, Steadman looked hard at it. The creature that had seemed a horror in its box was, up close, a figure of sorrow. He marveled at its symmetry, its long jointed legs, its shiny bristles. But for all its complexity it was just another empty shell, like the animal skulls, a black thing crucified on the pins.
“Take. Cómprala/”
“I want a live one,” Steadman said.
“A live one will kill you,” Hernán said.
Now the shop owner was holding a dead bat, and he shook it in Steadman’s face, calling out prices as Steadman backed away toward the door.
Outside, at the sidewalk table of a café, a teenage girl in a tight skirt and frilly blouse sipped a drink. When Steadman glanced at her, she stared at him and smiled, following him with her eyes. Steadman smiled back and greeted her.
“I think you’ve just made a friend,” Ava said. “Chingada”
“So funny to hear a woman say this word,” Hernán said.
“What word do you say?”
“We say chingada. We say puta. We say”—he giggled— “tiradora. Culeadora. We say araña. We say many things.”
“Lots of words for them.”
“Because lots of them in Lago Agrio,” Hernán said. “Personas aprovechadas”
“I heard some clicking up and down the street last night,” Ava said.
“Day and night,” Hernán said. “The ones on the street are old and — how you say— muy fea? Agli. Most are at the burdeles"
“What time do the burdeles open?” Steadman asked.