She was free, no one’s wife, no one’s fiancee, no one’s girlfriend; just his friend — she could do as she wished. Being with Steadman was her choice. She wished for the time when she would be certain that he would be safe. Then she would be finished with him.
The Indian had been accurate; it wasn’t far. Beyond the bushes and split-bamboo stockade fence of the compound, another lashed-together pavilion stood a bit back from the riverbank and out of sight of the village.
“I guess we’re on our own now,” Steadman said.
Nestor had wanted to join them, but the Hacklers and the Wilmutts had demanded that he stay close to them, with Hernán, in case there was a problem. Nestor had mumbled “Niños" and stalked toward them, as though wishing them ill. Then he stood and ignored them and smoked, because they hated smokers and had not allowed it in the van.
Welcoming them to this different pavilion was the small smoothfaced shaman, Don Esteban, who had assisted Don Pablo in administering the ayahuasca. He had been the cook; he had stoked the fire, chopped and peeled the vine stems, stirred the pot; he had brewed the mixture.
Ava said, “He looks like he has a stocking over his face.”
Hearing her speak, Don Pablo clapped Don Esteban on the shoulder and said, “Vegetalista. Toéro.”
And there were others: three Secoya men watching blank-eyed, or perhaps not expressionless but with faces so expressive, so peculiar, they could not be read — riddle-faced Indians squatting on their haunches and being obscurely busy, like scullions in a primitive kitchen. A frown might be a smile; their sniffing was like inquisitiveness; when they pressed their lips together it might have meant anything — pique, frustration, impatience.
Nor was language any good. In German-accented Spanish, Manfred said, “We start. I am first.”
They ignored him and went on stirring the pot, stewing the peelings of the dry slender stems, crushing them into it and reducing the liquid until it was darker and thicker. Steadman saw that it was the simplest boiling and simmering. He thought, I could do that. They were making tea, but strong stewed tea. Don Esteban, the shaman they called the toéro, was working over another fire, ladling liquid into another pot and reducing it, mixing it with more plant fragments, stirring it until it grew soupy.
Manfred announced himself again with a question, but the Secoya were so preoccupied in their cookery they did not notice his standing over them, nor did they acknowledge him until, in frustration, he squatted, rocking on his haunches, and then called out to Steadman.
“This one is Datura Candida’,’ he said. “It contains alkaloids, such as tropane and scopolamine. Not like maikua, but strong still.”
Using nannying gestures, the Secoya men directed him to sit. When he was seated, leaning forward, the shaman brought him a cup — a cracked porcelain cup — of the dark liquid. In drabness and consistency the liquid was no different from ayahuasca, a cup of muddy tea with a leaf of wrinkled scum on its surface. Manfred sipped, drank a little, then tilted the cup, emptied it, and blinked hard.
“Nossing,” he said, and beckoned with his fingers. “Más. Más!’
The toéro, Don Esteban, considered this, let some moments pass, and refilled the cup. Manfred drank the second cup more slowly while the Secoya watched him.
Don Pablo, the calmest of the squatting Secoya, simply gazed and growled tunelessly, chanting through his sinuses, as if he knew what was coming next. Seeing Don Esteban, Steadman was reminded of that moment when a dentist administers a jab of Novocain and then turns his back and squints again at the x-rays hanging from clips over his tools, knowing that in a moment or so the jaw will be numb enough for the tooth to be drilled or yanked. Don Esteban had that dentist’s confidence, which is also a look of indifference, part of the routine.
“Why it is not working?” Manfred said, his teeth against his lips. “Esta medizina no fale nada”
But he was looking away from them, interrogating the carved wooden protrusion on the worm-eaten finial of a corner post of the pavilion.
“Más, más” he said.
Don Esteban did not react. He was hunkered down, looking directly at Manfred, who was still preoccupied with the carvings on the corner post, grunting at them, perhaps finding a meaning.
Ava said, “He’s toasted.”
Manfred got up and stumbled a little, looked away, and then walked straight into the side of the pavilion, cracking his head on a beam. He staggered and sank to his knees, holding his ears, then slowly fell onto his side, his hands clutching his head, his elbows up. He was out cold.
Don Esteban shrugged and said, “El resultado no depende de mí”
Before Steadman had been able to help him, as he struggled to his feet and reached, the shaman waved him away in a negligent gesture that seemed to mean, Leave him — he will be all right.
“I think they’ve seen this sort of thing before,” Ava said. She gave Manfred’s head wound a swift appraisal, as she would any drunken stranger lying comatose in the gutter. The Secoya were fascinated by the way she lifted his eyelid and looked at his dilated pupil. They seemed to gather from this procedure that she was peering through this opening, through his body, into his soul.
“You’re next, darling.”
Now Steadman was glad she was there with him. He needed her experience, her skepticism, her strength. Only since their breakup had he realized how tough she was. Perhaps that was why their sex was better, even if so much else they did together was worse.
“Please, stay right here until I come down,” Steadman said.
He sat with his back flat against a corner post and accepted the cup from the toéro, then drank, sipping, and waited, and swallowed, then sipped again. He heard a mutter: “Está bebiéndolo”
He knew that he had drunk the entire cupful of dark liquid when he lowered the cup and looked in and saw a large spider, flexing its legs against spots of rust-stained enamel on the bottom. The thing was not just alive but visibly growing larger, hairier, its eye bulbs swelling with sympathy as Steadman’s own eyesight dimmed. From the spider’s posture and gaze Steadman saw a friend, in an attitude of patient welcome.
Turning the cup toward Ava so that she too could see the spider, he smiled, and she smiled back. But he did not see her. He was looking through her, and from far off came the small dull clatter of a metal cup striking the ground.
Too much was happening within him for Steadman to speak. He was plunged into an episode in progress, twilit, people busy in the foreground. The dusty liquid in his throat was like warm stale tea, but the taste had nothing to do with the effect, for it had the smack of ayahuasca, the mud-puddle tang of dust, rain, smashed stalks, pounded roots, dead leaves — any weed would taste like this. It was a swallow of the earth. So with this muddy ordinary taste of a dull drink he was unprepared for what followed.
What he took to be twilight, a summer dusk, the looming shadow of night falling, was in fact dawn, a slant of light rising like the first sword blade of sunrise and lifting upward, slashing open the darkness so the whole sky was pierced with day. The difference was that the moon was still sharply visible, and so were the stars, as he remembered them on some of the clearest mornings of his life. This morning was full of bright stars in a pale sky, with the same important patterns of constellations — readable to him now, the complex skein of stars making perfect sense.