Michael Gruber: Night of the Jaguar

Another chuckle. “All right, then. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been twenty-two years and I don’t know how many days since my last confession. Do you remember the day I came here, Moie?”

“Yes. We were going to kill you like we always killwai’ichuranan, but you started to fish in a strange way and we wanted to see that.”

Both men looked up at the priest’s fly rod where it hung from the ceiling.

“Yes, I was using an old Greenwell’s Glory on an eight-pound long-belly line and I got a strike in two minutes. It was a peacock bass, atucunare.”

“I remember. We were amazed. And afterward you caught the biggestpacu we had ever seen. Then you cleaned and cooked them and invited everyone to eat, and we laughed when you ate the flesh hot.”

“Yes, I didn’t know that fish was a cold animal and had to be eaten cold. And that’s why you didn’t shoot me full of poisoned darts. I wondered about that at the time. A little disappointing, really.”

“You desired death?”

“Oh, yes. That’s how I ended up here.”

“I thought it was the fishing.”

“I lied about that and about wanting to save your souls. A complete fraud, really. A parody of a failed priest. No, really, I was seeking death and an end to shame. Now this is the truth. I was working in the countryside outside Cali, where the drug lords and the latifundistas were cheating people out of the land they were supposed to have under the agricultural reform and I spoke up for them, I organized meetings. Pathetic little Christian acts, and I was told to keep my mouth shut and say mass and comfort the widows and orphans when the thugs murdered the men. But I didn’t shut up. I suppose I had romantic ideas about martyrdom, and first they shot at me but missed, and then they shot at me again and missed, there was a boy on a motorbike who did it, but his tire hit a nail or something and blew out and he was killed, God rest his wretched soul, and then they tried to bomb my truck, but something went wrong with the bomb and so the assassin was killed instead. This gave me my little reputation and I think the men who were trying to kill me became frightened, because they’re all superstitious heathens just like you, my dear friend, but lucky for them they needn’t have bothered because I ruined myself with Judy. Do you know that expression Punch and Judy? No, of course you don’t. Punch and Judy is the name of a…a kind of dance for children, but Punch is also a kind of pisco and Judy is a woman’s name in my land, and these are the two main reasons for priests to fail-drinking and women. Boys, too, I suppose, but that’s not in the expression yet. And strangely enough she really was named Judy, Judy Ralston. She was a nurse, from Braintree, Massachusetts. She was a short person and she had a big bush of black hair and light green eyes and she was always angry, angry at the government, the police, the health officials in Cali, and the church. A lapsed Catholic, I should add. Tell me, do you know what lonely means, my friend?”

“I do. We have no word for this, as you know, but when I was down the river as a boy, I learned this word and I felt the feeling twisting in my heart.”

“Yes, well, it comes with the territory, but I never realized what it would mean. No one to talk to, no books, no sound of your native tongue in your ears. I didn’t realize how much I was suffering until she arrived with her jeep and her bags of medicines and her American voice.”

“You took her in your hammock.”

“No, she took me inher hammock: yes I know, it’s very siwix to do so, but we were depraved. She only had to ask me once, this was after the car bombing, and we were shaking in terror as we removed our clothes. She knew everything and I knew nothing and so we continued in love until she conceived a child. Tell me, if I say abortion, do you know what I’m saying?”

“No, what does it mean?”

“A child that is unwanted and the woman gets rid of it?”

Moie’s face lit with comprehension. “Ah, yes, you mean hninxa, a girl baby is given to Jaguar.” Moie knew that the priest did not approve of this practice, but he also knew that the dead are beyond anger.

“Yes, I suppose it is similar, but in our case the baby was given to the Cali Water and Sewer Authority. Ah, now I see that while the dead can’t lie, they can still feel shame. I told myself that this baby would be the ruin of important work, if this should be discovered, I was a famous figure in the region, a symbol of those who wished to defy the land thieves and drogeros, and this was more important than just one baby. So she came back, and we continued, but after that it wasn’t the same. Still we clung to it, hating and loving at the same time; and you have no idea what I am talking about. But later, of course, someone told the bishop, and there was an investigation, by the police, no less. A thousand murders a year in Cali and hardly one of them solved, but they had time for my abortion. So they sent me back to America, or they tried to, but when I was at the airport I could not bear the thought of going back and being thrown out, I feared the contempt and the pain I would cause more than I feared the prospect of damnation and so at the last moment I changed my ticket and took a different plane, not to Bogota and Los Angeles but the one to San Jose del Guaviare, and from there I walked south, into the forest. I meant to walk along the river and fish, until God took me, but instead I found you. It seems, however, that I was always meant to be shot by a thug, and so despite my wretchedness and dishonor I have been given the grace of being allowed to die for the people. Blessed are the ways of the Lord.”

“So this is what you wanted to tell me? About how you came here?”

“Not at all, that was nothing. What I had to tell you is that you and all your people are in great danger. The dead people plan to build a road and bridge your river and come into the Puxto and destroy it.”

“But how can they do this? The Puxto is ours forever. It is a native reserve. Or so you have always said.”

“Oh, yes, it is a reserve, the whole mesa is protected by law. But greed will find a way. There is a company that wants your trees. The Puxto has one of the last great stands of virgin tropical hardwoods in Colombia. Bribes have been paid. You don’t understand what I am saying, do you?”

Moie made the upward chin-tilt that the Runiya use to indicate bafflement.

“All right,” said the priest. “You know what money is, yes?”

“Of course! I have lived with the dead people and am not an ignorant man. It is leaves with the faces of people or animals on them. You work and they give them, and then you give them and get things. A dead man gives some money to another dead man and he gives him a machete, and another gives and he gets a bottle of pisco.”

“Very good, Moie, you’re practically an economist. So let’s say one of those leaves you saw is a thousand-peso note. Three of those leaves are the same as one of the leaves from my part of the land of the dead, which we call a dollar.”

“Yes, I have heard that word.”

“I’ll bet. There’s no escape from it. Now a one-thousand-peso note buys a bottle of pisco, and ten of them buys a machete. And a piece of ry’uulu wood, what they call big-leaf mahogany, just so big”-here the priest sketched a cubic meter in the air-“is worth fifteen hundred dollars.” The priest translated this sum into pisco and machetes, so many hands of each, hands of hands of hands of machetes and bottles of cane liquor, and the living man laughed. “That is insane,” he said. “No one could ever wear out that many machetes, and ten hands of people could not drink that much pisco in their whole lives.”

It was hard to stop giggling, although he knew it was impolite to laugh in the presence of the dead, but he couldn’t stop thinking of all those wai’ichuranan reeling drunk and waving clusters of machetes in both hands.