The Codex

35

They spent the following day in camp. Don Alfonso cut a gigantic stack of palm fronds and sat cross-legged next to them for most of the day, pulling them into fibrous strips and weaving palm-leaf backpacks and more hammocks. Sally hunted and brought back a small antelope, which Tom dressed and smoked over the fire. Vernon collected fruits and manioc root. By the end of the day they had a small supply of food for their journey.

They inventoried their supplies. Between them they had several boxes of waterproof matches, a box of ammunition with thirty rounds, Tom’s daypack containing a tiny Svea backpacking stove set with an aluminum pots-and-pans set, two bottles of white gas, and a squeeze bottle of insect repellent. Vernon had escaped with a pair of binoculars around his neck. Don Alfonso had a pocketful of candy bars, three pipes, two packs of pipe tobacco, a small whetstone, and a roll of fishing line with hooks, all of which had been in his greasy leather bag, which he had snatched from the burning dugout. They all had their machetes, which they had been carrying tucked in their belts at the time of the attack.

The next morning they set off. Tom cleared the trail wielding a freshly sharpened machete, while Don Alfonso went behind, murmuring which way he was to go. After a few miles of bushwhacking they came out on what appeared to be an old animal trail running through a cool forest of smooth-barked trees. The light was dim, and there was almost no undergrowth. A hush lay over the forest. It was like walking through the columned interior of a vast green cathedral.

In the early afternoon the trail reached the base of a mountain range. The terrain pitched up from the forest floor, becoming a tangled slope of moss-covered boulders. The trail went almost straight up. Don Alfonso mounted it at astonishing speed, and Tom and the others struggled to follow, surprised at the old man’s vigor. As they gained altitude the air became fresher. The stately trees of the jungle gave way to their dwarfish, twisted cousins of the mountains, their branches hung with moss. In the late afternoon they came out on a flat ridge, which ended in an outcropping of leaf-shaped rocks. For the first time they had a view back across the jungle they had just traversed.

Tom wiped his brow. The mountain fell away from them in one fantastic emerald declivity, plunging three thousand feet down to the green ocean of life below. Massive cumulus clouds moved above their heads.

“I had no idea we were so high,” said Sally.

“Thanks to the Holy Mother we have journeyed far,” said Don Alfonso, his voice subdued, setting down his palm-leaf backpack. “This is a good place to camp.” He seated himself on a log, lit his pipe, and began to give orders.

“Sally, you and Tom go hunting. Vernon, first you will build the fire, and then you will build the hut. I will rest.”

He leaned back, puffing lazily, his eyes half closed.

Sally slung the gun over her shoulder, and they set off, following what appeared to be an animal trail. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for shooting at those soldiers,” he said. “You probably saved our lives. You’ve really got guts.”

“You’re like Don Alfonso — you seem surprised a woman might be handy with a rifle.”

“I was talking about your presence of mind, not your shooting — but yes, I have to admit, I am surprised.”

“Allow me to inform you that it’s now the twenty-first century, and women are doing surprising things.”

Tom shook his head. “Is everyone in New Haven so prickly?”

She turned a cool pair of green eyes on him. “Shall we get on with the hunting? Your chatter is scaring the game.”

Tom suppressed a further comment and instead watched her slim body moving through the jungle. No, she was nothing like Sarah. Blunt, prickly, outspoken. Sarah was smooth; she never said what she really thought, never told the truth, was pleasant even to people she couldn’t stand. For her, it was always so much more fun to deceive.

They went on, their footsteps silent in the wet, springy leaves. The forest was cool and deep. Through gaps in the trees, Tom could see the Macaturi River glinting in scimitarlike curves through the rainforest far below.

A cough sounded from the forested slopes above them. It sounded like a human cough, only deeper, throatier.

“That,” said Sally, “sounds feline.”

“Feline, as in jaguar?”

“Yes.”

They moved side by side through the foliage, palming the leaves and ferns out of the way. The mountain slopes were curiously silent. Even the birds had stopped chittering. A lizard skittered up a trunk.

“It feels strange up here,” said Tom. “Unreal.”

“It’s a cloudforest,” said Sally. “A high-altitude rainforest.” She moved ahead, the rifle at the ready. Tom fell behind her.

There was another cough: deep and booming. It was now the only sound in a forest that had become unnaturally silent.

“That sounded closer,” said Tom.

“Jaguars are a lot more frightened of us than we are of them,” said Sally.

They clambered across a slope covered with giant fallen boulders, squeezing through moss-covered faces of rock, and came out facing a thick stand of bamboo. Sally moved around it. Clouds were already pressing down on them, and tendrils of mist drifted through the trees. The air smelled like wet moss. The view below them had vanished into whiteness.

Sally paused, raised the gun, waited.

“What is it?” Tom whispered.

“Up ahead.”

They crept forward. In front of them was a second cluster of giant mossy boulders, rolled and piled together, forming a honeycomb of dark holes and crawlspaces.

Tom stood behind Sally, waiting. The mists were rolling in fast, reducing the trees to silhouettes. The fog sucked the fantastical green from the landscape, turning it a dull bluish gray.

“There’s something moving in those rocks.” she whispered.

They waited, crouching. Tom could feel the mists collecting around him, soaking into his clothes.

After ten long minutes, a head appeared at a rock opening with two bright black eyes, and an animal that looked like a giant guinea pig came sniffing out.

The shot rang out instantly, and the animal squiffed loudly and rolled belly up.

Sally rose, unable to suppress a grin.

“Nice shooting,” Tom said.

“Thanks.”

Tom unsheathed his machete and went to examine the animal.

“I’ll go on ahead.”

Tom nodded and turned over the animal with his shoe. It was some kind of large rodent, with yellow incisors, round and fat and heavily furred. He slid out his machete, not at all looking forward to his job. He sliced it open, scraped and pulled out the guts and internal organs, cut off the paws and head, and skinned it. There was a strong smell of blood. As hungry as he was he began to lose his appetite. He wasn’t squeamish — as a vet he’d seen plenty of blood — but he didn’t like being part of the killing as opposed to the healing.

He heard another sound, this time a very low growl. He paused, listening. It was followed by a dainty series of coughs. It was hard to tell where they were coming from — somewhere upslope, in the rocks above them. He sought out Sally with his eyes and located her about twenty yards away, below the rockslide, a slender silhouette moving silently in the mist. She faded from view.

He quartered the animal and wrapped it up in palm leaves. It was depressing how little meat there actually was. It seemed hardly worth it. Maybe, he thought, Sally would bring down something bigger, like a deer.

As he finished wrapping the meat he heard another sound, a soft and gentle purr, so close that he flinched. He waited, listening, his whole body tense. Suddenly a bloodcurdling scream split the forest, trailing off into a hungry growl. He jumped up, machete in his hand, trying to identify where it came from, but the tree branches and rocks were all bare. The jaguar was well hidden.

Tom looked downslope to where Sally had vanished into the mists. He didn’t like the fact that the jaguar hadn’t gone away after the rifle shot. Picking up his machete, he left the chopped-up rodent and headed toward where Sally had disappeared.

“Sally?”

The jaguar screamed again, and this time it seemed to be right above him. He instinctively dropped to his knees, machete drawn, but all he could see were moss-draped rocks and disembodied tree trunks.

“Sally!” he called out more loudly. “Are you all right?”

Silence.

He began to run down the slope, his heart in a panic. “Sally!”

A faint voice answered, “I’m down here.”

He continued downhill, slipping and sliding on the wet leaves, sending pebbles rolling down the steep slope. The mists were getting thicker by the minute. He heard another set of grunting coughs, behind him, very humanlike in sound. The animal was pursuing him.

“Sally!”

Sally emerged from the mists, carrying the gun, with a scowl on her face. “Your shouting caused me to miss a shot.”

He pulled up short, then slid the machete back into his belt, embarrassed. “I was worried, that’s all. I don’t like the sound of that jaguar. It’s hunting us.”

“Jaguars don’t hunt people.”

“You heard what my brother said about what happened to his guide.”

“Frankly, I don’t believe it.” She frowned. “We might as well go back. I’m not going to get anything more in this fog anyway.”

They climbed back to the spot where the body of the rodent had been. The pieces were gone, leaving a few torn and bloody palm leaves behind.

Sally laughed. “That’s all he was doing — chasing you away so he could eat our dinner.”

Tom colored with embarrassment. “I wasn’t chased away — I came looking for you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Sally, “I probably would have run, too.”

Tom noted with irritation the word probably but said nothing. But he suppressed a tart reply. He wasn’t going to let her bait him anymore. They started back toward camp, following the trail they had come in on. As they approached the first rockpile, the jaguar screamed again, the sound oddly clear and crisp in the foggy forest. Sally stopped, her gun raised. They waited. Water drops were collecting and falling off the leaves, filling the forest with a soft pattering sound.

“He wasn’t ahead of us before, Sally.”

“You still think he’s hunting us?”

“Yes.”

“Nonsense. He wouldn’t be making such a racket if he were. And besides, he just ate.” She smirked at him.

They walked cautiously toward the rocks. Empty, but with a lot of dark holes and crevasses.

“Let’s play it safe and skirt that rockfall,” Tom said.

“All right.”

They began climbing uphill, to go around it from above. The mists were getting thicker. Tom felt the wetness creeping through his only set of clothes. He stopped. There was a soft rustling sound.

Sally paused.

“Sally, get behind me,” Tom said.

“I’ve got the gun. I should be in front.”

“Get behind me.”

“For heaven’s sake.” But she got behind him.

He drew his machete and moved forward. There were trees all around them, crooked trees with low branches hung with moss. The mists were so thick he could not see their upper reaches. Tom realized that they were now upwind of the jaguar. It had moved around them so that it could scent them, even if it could not see them.

“Sally, I can feel it hunting us.”

“It’s just curious.”

Tom froze. There, about ten yards ahead, was the jaguar, suddenly exposing itself fully to their view. It was standing on a branch above their path, calmly looking at them, twitching its tail. Its magnificence took Tom’s breath away.

Sally did not raise her gun to shoot, and Tom understood why. It was impossible to contemplate destroying such a beautiful animal.

After a moment’s hesitation the jaguar leapt effortlessly to another tree branch and walked along it, eyeing them the whole time, its muscles rippling under its golden pelt, moving like flowing honey.

“Look at how beautiful it is,” Sally breathed.

It was beautiful. With a movement of incredible lightness, the animal leapt to another branch, this one closer to them. There it stopped, slowly sinking down onto its haunches. It looked at them boldly, utterly unafraid, making no effort to hide, motionless except for the faintest twitching of the tip of its tail. There was blood on its muzzle. The look in its eye, Tom thought, was contemptuous.

“It’s not afraid,” said Sally.

“That’s because it’s never seen a human being before.”

Tom backed up slowly, and Sally followed suit. The jaguar remained in its perch watching them, forever watching them, until it disappeared in the shifting mists.

When they got back to camp, Don Alfonso listened to their story about the jaguar, his brown face crinkling with concern. “We must be very careful,” he said. “We must not talk about this animal anymore. Otherwise, he will follow us to hear what we say. He is proud and does not like to be spoken ill of.”

“I thought that jaguars don’t attack humans,” Sally said.

Don Alfonso laughed and whacked Sally’s knee. “That is a good joke. When he looks at us, what do you think he sees?”

“I don’t know.”

“He sees a weak, stupid, slow, perpendicular piece of meat without horns, teeth, or claws.”

“Why didn’t he attack?”

“Like all cats, he likes to play with his food.”

Sally shuddered.

“Curandera, it is not pleasant to be eaten by a jaguar. They eat the tongue first, and not always before you are dead. Next time you have the opportunity to kill it, do it.”

That night the forest was so quiet that Tom had trouble sleeping. Sometime after midnight, hoping a little air would help, he crept out of his hammock and ducked out the door of the hut. He was astonished at the sight that greeted him. The forest all around him was aglow with phosphorescence, as if glowing powder had been dusted over everything, outlining rotting logs and stumps, dead leaves and mushrooms, a luminescent landscape that stretched off into the forest, merging into one misty glow. It was as if the heavens had fallen to earth.

After five minutes he crept back into the makeshift hut and gave Sally a little shake. She rolled over, her hair a tangle of heavy gold. Like all of them, she was sleeping in her clothes. “What is it?” she said in a sleepy voice.

“There’s something you have to see.”

“I’m sleeping.”

“You’ve got to see this.”

“I don’t have to do anything. Go away.”

“Sally, just this once please trust me.”

Grumbling, she got out of her hammock and stepped outside. She halted and stood there in silence, staring. Minutes passed. “My God,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. It’s like staring down at L.A. from thirty thousand feet.”

The glow cast a faint illumination on Sally’s face, barely outlining it against the darkness. Her long hair hung down her back like a cascade of light, silver instead of gold.

On an impulse, he took her hand. She didn’t withdraw it. There was something amazingly erotic in just holding her hand.

“Tom?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you want me to see this?”

“Well,” he said, “because I—” He hesitated. “I wanted to share it with you, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes seemed unusually luminescent — or maybe it was just a trick of the light. Finally she said, “Thank you, Tom.”

All at once, the jaguar’s scream split the night. A black shape slowly moved against the glowing background, like an absence of light itself. As it turned its great head toward them, they saw the faint gleam of its eyes reflecting the millions of points in two orbs, like two tiny galaxies.

Tom slowly pulled Sally back by her hand, toward the dull heap of coals that had been their fire. He reached down and heaped some brush on. As the yellow flames licked upward, the jaguar disappeared.

A moment later Don Alfonso joined them at the fire.

“He is still playing with his food,” the old man muttered.