A mosquito bites me. And another. And another. I ignore them, observing the incredibly attractive carpet of the plant called “Bleeding Heart,” leaves like green valentines bearing upon them as though press-printed a similar design in purple-red. “Well,” says F.Z., pointing. I see the well, an unwalled pit in the dirt, and, beyond, the close-lapping river. I ask, “Isn’t this rather low along the water?” He assures me it is not. “Even in flood, never come up past here,” he explains, his gesture including most of the visible environs. To him, floods are mere inevitabilities of no great matter, and mosquitoes obviously do not exist at all. How thick they are! Slap. Slap. Slapslapslap!
— The bubble bursts, the dream subsides into the Moho with a gentle plop. So perish all plans in the Toledo, put into practice or not. Gently, very gently. not necessarily with hurricanes. not even firmly: but invariably and inevitably and seemingly without exception, the Toledo defeats every plan larger than a plantain patch. How- long will it be before the bush takes over the rice-fields as it has taken over the old Confederate-planted sugar-fields? — tall trees now growing within the old stone walls the unreconstructable Rebels slowly built at Seven Hills, shouldering slowly aside the vasty flywheels, red with rust. Who knew this land first and best? The Mayans. And they abandoned it for a thousand years! Land which defeated even the humble and patient and toiling Mayas, how long before you would defeat me? — my rafts sunken, my dories stove, my crops washed away, my house blowm in, my women fled into Belize or the bush — Well, it wouldn’t take that long. One year of mosquitoes and no fresh books to read would do it.
“How sick and gaunt poor Llewelyn-Rhys looks,” I had commented in Punta Gorda. “Known him for years,” was the reply. “He looks much better now than he used to —!”
I lead the way down the crumbling bank to the boat. The day had been mostly overcast and cool, now' the sun came out and I donned my dark lenses. Mr. Faustino Zuniga dripped water on the dark dragon heads to cool them. Slowly the forest receded, the mangrove swamps resumed. “Is there no high land around here?” I enquired. He nodded. “Inland. or upstream. ” A gesture of a dark hand leftwards, where the mangroves parted to reveal another stretch of water. “That is called Amado Creek. it goes up to Crique Antonio: very high lands there.” And he told me of this tributary, and of that, and for further fading moment dream and dream-house glimmer faintly in the fading sun. Maybe I will return, I thought. some day. and trace each stream to its source and find Arcadia.
Only maybe not.
DRAGONS IN SAN FRANCISCO — A SEQUEL
“What shall I bring you back?” I’d asked.
“Bring me back an iguana,” she’d said.
Thus spoke Avram Davidson in “The Iguana Church”, an excerpt from his unpublished travel account Dragons in the Trees.
I have a confession to make. I am She who asked for the iguana. I didn’t really expect to get an iguana. Anyway I was thinking of the little green ones from the pet store, not big wild Tiger Iguanas.
It was the mid-1960s. Avram was traveling in British Honduras (now Belize), and young Ethan and I were living in a Victorian flat in Bernal Heights in San Francisco, where I was writing and teaching. One day we got a notice to pick up a package from an obscure location, I’ll spare you the details. The sender was Avram in B. H., so off we went to fetch the package. It was made of rough wood, about the shape of a big guitar case. It didn’t rattle. Something inside scrabbled. Something alive.
The paperwork said Iguanas. Nowadays we’d probably be cited for a wildlife violation, but back then I was still thinking maybe a nice little pet for Ethan. Fortunately we had the sense to open the box in the bathtub.
Out from a tangle of leaves leaped two angry wild beasts; the great black and yellow striped he-Tiger, who filled most of the bathtub, and the smaller grav-striped she-Tiger, who flicked her tongue, rose up on all her claw's, and bared her teeth at us like a miniature angry dinosaur.
An unexpected surprise. We threw some ripe bananas in the bathtub, prayed they wouldn’t scramble out, and tried to figure out what to do next. Next was that little Ethan was now afraid to use the bathroom, so we had to go to a neighbor’s.
Some fine fannish friends helped us get a very large mesh cage, the kind used to transport big dogs. We propped the cage over the bathtub with some fruit inside, and eventually lured the dragons in. Resourceful are us. We put the cage next to a heater, and plied the dragons with fruit. They huddled near the heat and glared at us. Clearly this relationship wasn’t going to work.
Another friend gave us the phone number of a herpetologist at the Aquarium in Golden Gate Park, which happens to have a well- designed iguana exhibit. We phoned. Yes, they would take the dragons! We took the cage to the Aquarium, and they all exclaimed that this was about the biggest and finest he-Tiger ever seen in these parts.
Avram Davidson, mighty hunter and protector of endangered wildlife.
We went to visit the dragons at the Aquarium sometimes, and they seemed quite relaxed, perched on big branches. At least they didn’t glare at us anymore. Eventually we lost track of which were our dragons, and which were other acquisitions. I don’t know the lifespan of Tiger Iguanas, but drop by the Aquarium next time you visit San Francisco. Maybe they are still there.
Later we traveled down to British Honduras, by train through Mexico and the Yucatan, so Ethan and Avram could be nearbv. I got to see the Moho River for myself.
Ethan and I lived in a tiny cottage, with no electricity or running water, on a long palm-fringed sandbar called Gales Point, surrounded by a large lagoon. We drank rainwater collected in barrels. In our front yard was a giant mango tree twined with white orchids. Our neighbors were a matriarchal Afro-Creole family; Miz Jane Garnet and her daughters, and their boyfriends and children. Jane’s consort was a silent one-legged man, who had amputated his own leg with a machete after a snakebite in the bush. Miz Jane adopted us. I brought her cloth and sugar and rum from Belize City, and she gave us fruit and fish and bush-food. Miz Jane was famous for her armadillo in Spanish sauce.
Nearby was the shabby hut of Brother John, the nearly blind old bushdoctor. Brother John made drums out of rusted tin cans and deer-hide (he gave me one that I still treasure). At night, Brother John played his drums hypnotically, and chanted Afro- Creole invocations to the healing saints and African spirits. Avram visited Gales Point to listen to Brother John's lore.
To reach the Moho River, we had to take the twice-weeklv mail- boat through the mangrove swamps to Belize City, an all-day trip. Then the big ramshackle packet-boat down the Caribbean coast, to the southern town of Punta Gorda, an overnight journey. The comforts on board were minimal. A roach filled “cabin” to stow your gear; bring your own bananas.