“I just want to wash my face,” Sabra said. Then she walked a little way off, as though she might find a washbasin, towel, and soap dish, and after a few steps she screamed. “It’s a spider! Get it away!”
Wood hurried to help her—“Get back, Beetle!”—but when he raised his stick to beat the spider out of its hanging web, Steadman stepped behind him and deftly snatched the stick, whipping it out of his hand.
“Don’t kill it,” he said.
“What’s your fucking problem, man!”
“Just keep walking,” Steadman said, staring him down.
With a low chuckle of approval, Manfred said, “Yah. Is not necessary to kill.”
But the outburst soured the atmosphere further. The others were so humiliated they did not talk about their fear or their nausea from the ayahuasca. They blamed the village for being dirty and Nestor for not caring and said that they would be faxing the agency. That they wanted a refund. That they would ask for a meeting with the tourist board in Quito.
“I will make sure you get to Quito,” Nestor said, and they hated his insolence the more for its being enigmatic.
In all this Manfred Steiger, who might have been expected to complain, had only seemed more enthusiastic. Steadman admired the man’s animation and his pounce, the way he could fasten his attention on the minutest pedantic details of the plants and the ceremony. He was inexhaustibly nosy, as cheap people often are, and his parsimony made him impatient and a nagger; but when he did complain, his complaints were unconventional, and he never whined. He was boring, but in Manfred this was like a virtue, his dullness and his ponderous industry making him seem indestructible. He made notes, he consulted his plant book, he interrogated the Secoya boys — and was not deterred even when they smiled at him, not understanding a word he said.
He boasted that he never tipped anyone — didn’t believe in it, did not pay his way if he could avoid it. He always took second helpings of food, and sometimes thirds. Steadman had noticed that he had asked for a third helping of ayahuasca. Manfred often stuffed food in his pockets — an extra orange, the hard-boiled eggs, sugar cubes, bananas. After wolfing down noodles at Papallacta, he had snatched fritters and wrapped them and sneaked them into his pockets. When something was offered, Manfred’s empty hand was the first extended, and he always took more than his share, as though counting on the fact that everyone else would be too genteel to object. He was a successful predator, whose success depended on everyone else’s being unwary or hesitant or polite.
His eyes were always working; his fingers, too — always flexing. He had a scavenger’s restlessness. And now, while Steadman and Ava were listening to the objections of the others, who were shocked at the prospect of spending another night in the Secoya village, Manfred was making a circuit of the settlement, looking hungry and moving swiftly, his greedy eyes twitching busily in his jerking head.
On his return he nodded to Steadman. He gestured to him, indicating that he wanted to speak to him alone.
“You want to try something else?”
Ava said, “What did you find?”
But Manfred, who had shown no interest in Ava, did not turn to her. He kept his attention on Steadman, in the confiding and familiar way that unsettled him, as though Manfred assumed that Steadman was a friend, or if not an ally, then at least pliable. He walked a little distance, where a torn web dangled like a rag, and beckoned to Steadman.
“This is not yimsonweed,” he said when Steadman wandered over to him. Manfred was pinching a twig still bearing leaves and thin ragged flowers. He sniffed it and held it close to Steadman’s face. “Is a clone of Brugmansia. You see the leaves so shredded? The flowers — just strings? Its name is Methysticodendron. This is so rare, no one sees this but just a few lucky botanists. And maybe it did not exist before.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means datura — highly atrophied.”
“What happens with it?”
“I know a man, one German from Koblenz, who came through here. He was a chemist. He wanted to synthesize the alkaloids in this clone. They said, ‘Try it first.’ It was a scopolamine crystal. It blitzed him.”
“Ayahuasca blitzed me,” Steadman. “I’ve had all the visions I can handle.”
“No visions,” Manfred said. “I know a little about this one. They make tea from the leaves and stems. I read it in my book. Take the scrapings in an aqueous maceration.” Steadman suppressed the urge to smile at the way Manfred sucked at his saliva as he said this. “It is great. It change your head, it give you experiences. Only the question of money, but you have money.”
Steadman glanced at Nestor, who was implacable, picking his teeth. “So what’s the point?”
Manfred said to Nestor, “He wants to know,” but Nestor just shrugged — knowing yet noncommittal.
Steadman said, “Why are you telling me this, Manfred?”
“Don’t you see?” Ava said. She had walked over to listen with Nestor. “It’s something that costs money. He doesn’t want to pay.”
Even then, Manfred did not look at her. Instead, he shortened his neck and clenched his jaw, making it as compact as a clutch of mandibles. All his teeth bunched in his mouth, bulging against his lips.
Nestor smiled at Steadman, but his smile meant nothing except a challenge or a contradiction. He said, “In the Oriente you find out about these drinks after you drink them.”
“Experience,” Manfred said. “He knows.”
“Knowledge,” Nestor said. “Some people call that borrachero. Or toé. Ask Señor Perito. Mr. Hexpert.”
“What about the others?” Steadman asked.
He indicated the two couples, who, a little distance away, just out of earshot, were squatting on logs near the covered platform, looking disconsolate, wanting to leave, hating the smoke and the smells, dreading the night they would have to endure in the village.
“Rich tourists,” Manfred said.
The same casual belittling thought was in Steadman’s mind, and it so annoyed him to hear this irritating man put it in words, he told himself that the description might be wrong. One of them appeared to be enjoying his book. And, after all, these people were doing the same thing he was. Like them, hoping for an adventure, he had hooked up with Nestor for the ayahuasca. The truth was that they were all on the same drug tour.
“You are not like them. You are an intelligent man — a wise man. Also brave.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I know this. If you want to try it, we must do it now.”
Steadman said, “Nestor, who else has done this?”
“Not many people. No one lately. It doesn’t work on everyone, and it costs more. Five hundred each.”
Without saying yes, Steadman said, “Five is doable.”
“The Secoya don’t take credit cards,” Nestor said.
“Maybe you can loan me some money,” Manfred said.
Ava jarred him with a laugh. She said, “‘Loan’ never means loan.”
“I researched the information,” Manfred said, nagging again. “What about the time factor? I negotiated with the Indian. I am facilitating.”
Nestor said, “I’ll just let you guys argue it out.”
“See? I told you,” Ava said. “He doesn’t want to pay.”
As though to put an end to the argument, she walked away with Nestor, back to where the others were standing, looking futile.
“I know who you are,” Manfred said, putting his face into Steadman’s. “Ever since Lago Agrio.”
“You saw a passport at the hotel.”
“Yes, but even if I never see it, I know,” Manfred said. “You are different from those people. In the van I think, There is something about this man. And I see you writing notes.”