Read Galapagos Regained Online
Authors: James Morrow
Having resolved to get through the fight without harming anyone, Malcolm practiced the most innocuous arson imaginable. Thrice he nocked an arrow along the string of his Bawuni bow, ignited the pitch-coated head with the torchbearer's flame, and fired at the northeast blockhouse, knowing the place was empty (the guards having joined the mêlée in the courtyard). In the case of his fourth shot, however, he felt compelled to plant a flaming arrow in the abdomen of a mercenary who'd taken aim at Prince Gitika. The failed assassin died shrieking amidst the stench of his own immolation. An instant later Malcolm thwarted an attempt on Sargento Jiménez's lifeâanother screaming death, again the odor of charred flesh. The blood on his hands, he realized, was of the very worst sort, being both anonymous and easily absolved. These nameless burning mercenaries had taken milk from their mothers, caught fish in the Marañón, sported with their dogs, and kissed their children, but now none of that mattered, because they'd all chosen to become foot soldiers, a career that put a premium on being no one in particular.
The enemy infantry had formed three concentric circles between the barracks and the workers' compound. At the hub stood a towering figure with a scar running from his temple to his cheek like the hands of a clock at five minutes past sevenâGeneral Zumaeta himself, no doubt, employing the mercenaries as his personal citadel. To Malcolm the soldiers seemed a single organism, an evolutionary error possessing two thousand arms and as many eyes. The blowgunners attacked first, their darts peeling away the front line like a
caboclos
skinning an anaconda. Next the archers joined the fray, gutting the freakish creature. Finally a majestic officer appeared, his ribbon-bedecked uniform announcing him as Comandante Cuarón, and exhorted the militia to fire their carbinesâan order that, obeyed, shattered the heart of the beast.
And suddenly it was over, the still vertical remnant of Zumaeta's ruined army lifting their hands aloft and waving white kerchiefs, the general reaching highest of all, even as the northeast blockhouse collapsed in a fiery sphere as large as Léourier's balloon. Though less coordinated than their surrendering comrades, the horizontal mercenaries were almost as active, their damaged bodies twitching amidst the heaps of corpses, some casualties screaming, others moaning, still others simply waiting to die, having arrived at a place beyond pain.
Presently the heroes of the day marched forthâthe artillery squad and their stalwart leader, Alfonso Torresblanco, his parrot sitting triumphantly on his shoulderâfollowed by the incendiaries, including a dazed Dartworthy and an equally stupefied Miss Kirsop, gripping their Bawuni bows, and then came the medical unit, bearing stretchers, bandages, splints, and chloroform. Much as Padre Valverde sought to pursue a just war, so did Dr. Ruanova and his nurses now strive for an egalitarian peace, making few distinctions between allies and enemies as they extracted bullets, plucked out arrows, salved burns, and dressed wounds.
A scriptural tableau took form within the fortressâthe war-painted Prince Gitika as Moses, the decorated Comandante Cuarón as Aaron, together freeing the Huancabamba
seringueiros
from their hard bondage to white gold. On orders from Cuarón, a detachment of militia blasted the padlocks from the gaol-house doors. Scores of workers shuffled into the sunlight, rubbing their eyes and surveying the carrion-covered plaza. Despite the din of battle and the smell of gunpowder, these slaves had thus far enjoyed no inkling of emancipation, or so Malcolm surmised from their puzzled faces. Not until Gitika strode into the compound, proclaiming the fall of Castillo Bracamoros in the Quechua language, did the rubber tappers dare believe in their deliverance, subsequently laughing and weeping as they bowed before the prince.
Gitika next turned his attention to the forest of pillories, half of them holding either a recently flogged worker or a dead body. He told the
ribeirinhos
to scour the stockade for hammers, chisels, and axes. The required implements materialized promptly, and the militia set about their task, separating the living Indians from the torture racks. The Huancabamba nurses applied balm to the victims' lacerations, then encouraged them to drink from calabashes filled with an effervescent infusion of
uzao
bark, a medication that (as Jiménez explained to Malcolm) would exterminate the worms inhabiting their wounds.
Taking leave of his grateful subjects, Prince Gitika approached the prisoners of war, still huddled in the courtyard. He grabbed Zumaeta's arm, then pushed and shoved him along a much deserved
via dolorosa
. An instant later, the general stood chained to a bloodstained pillory.
“
Tráigame la balanza!
” cried Gitika, addressing a liberated
seringueiro
.
The rubber tapper disappeared into a bamboo shed, then returned pushing a cart on which rested a machine resembling a discus fixed horizontally atop a clock. Gitika smiled approvingly at the scales, then drew a machete from his belt, approached Zumaeta, and with a few deft strokes cut the beard from his chin. The prince set the whiskers on the weighing pan. The needle trembled, deviating from zero by barely a gram.
“For the past two years,” Gitika told Zumaeta in Spanish (whilst Jiménez translated for Malcolm), “you have required every plantation family to deliver eight kilos of rubber each week. Know that we Huancabambas are a fair-minded people. As compensation for our suffering, we shall subtract from your body a mere eight kilos of hair, muscle, flesh, and bone. Those whiskers are not an impressive start, but from small beginnings come great things.”
A queasiness spread through Malcolm like venom from one of Miss Bathurst's snakes.
“No es necessario!”
cried Dr. Ruanova.
“Gitika, no!” screamed Princess Akawo.
“Stop!” yelled Princess Ibanua.
“For God's sake, listen to your sisters!” shouted Malcolm.
“Let me thinkâwhat do we cut away next?” Whistling a discordant tune, Gitika touched the machete to the side of his prisoner's head. “The ears?” The blade hovered before Zumaeta's face. “The eyes? Nose? Lips?” The prince glanced towards the general's manhood. “
Cojones
?”
“
Tenga misericordia!
” wailed Zumaeta.
“Prince Gitika, enough!” cried Dartworthy.
“Eight kilos, General!” Gitika raised the machete high, slashing the air to ribbons, then brought the blade to within inches of Zumaeta's belly. “By the time you meet the quota, your arms and legs will be sitting on the weighing pan.”
The rubber tappers, blowgunners, archers, incendiaries, and
ribeirinhos
cheered in unison.
“
Para amor a Dios!
” shrieked Zumaeta.
“Extract the quota, but kill him first!” pleaded Miss Kirsop.
Gitika spun on his heel and, sliding the machete back into his belt, sauntered up to Malcolm. “Surely you know I would not have tortured him,” he said in English, unleashing a smile in which all thirty-two of his teeth participated fully. “Not the way the executioner spent four hours dismembering the failed assassin of Louis Quinze, or so Léourier tells us. We primitive Huancabambas could never behave in so civilized a fashion.”
Now Comandante Cuarón joined the conversation. “My opinion of civilization is no higher than yours, Gitika. That said, we are obliged to hand this monster over to the authorities in Iquitos.”
“If we spare Zumaeta, Don Rómolo will have him out of gaol in a day,” Gitika replied. “We must put him on trial now. I shall ask our good friend Capitán Torresblanco to act as judge, jury, and executioner.”
“As judge, I urge the jury to recall that Zumaeta has committed a thousand heinous crimes,” said Torresblanco, stepping away from the
ribeirinho
artillery squad, the parrot still riding on his shoulder. “As jury, I have reached with myself a unanimous verdict of guilty. As executioner, I shall now do my duty.”
“
Puta madre!
” squawked Miguel.
With an impressive economy of motion Torresblanco unholstered his pistol, strode up to Zumaeta, and with four closely spaced shots transferred a large quantity of his brain matter from his skull to the ground, where it lay in the dust like a spurt of sentient lava. Clearly no stranger to gunfire, the parrot remained perched on Torresblanco's shoulder, even as dozens of startled jungle birdsâred macaws, topaz parakeets, golden tanagers, and flaming cocks-of-the-rockâtook wing, so that for a fleeting instant the sky over the Marañón valley acquired a flying rainbow.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Never before had the Reverend Granville Heathway faced so vexing a dilemma. During the night a considerable spiderâfat, brown, and oblate, like a walnut with legsâhad built her web amidst his painting supplies, binding his palette knife to his best brush, so that he could remove neither implement without destroying the delicate construction. The idea for his next painting had already taken root in his imagination:
The Nativity of Gregor Mendel,
featuring the shades of Aristotle and Isaac Newton attending the monk's birth, laying gifts before his cradle. But he did not dare pick up his brush, lest he deprive the spider of her livelihood.
Within the hour the situation was resolved (though not to the spider's advantage) when Guinevere fluttered into the cell and, perceiving in the arachnid a ready meal, devoured her on the spot. Tears collecting in his eyes, Granville muttered a prayer for his departed cellmate, then unfastened the capsule from the pigeon's leg and rummaged through his nightstand drawer in search of his quizzing-glass.
Dearest Father,
At long last I have news of the Diluvian League. Earlier this week the
Paragon
dropped anchor in Trebizond, from which port Mr. Dalrymple dispatched a semaphore message to the Grand Vizier. Captain Silahdar has hired two guides, expert climbers who will escort the expedition across the Coru River, then over the Do
Ä
u Karadeniz Range as far as Oltu, a mere 150 miles northwest of Mount Ararat.
I continue to pass my afternoons in the hookah-den. Most of my conversations with the habitués are too tedious to bear repeating (how sad that so sane a person as yourself gets locked away whilst deluded egoists remain at large), but yesterday Yusuf ibn Ziayüddin commended to my attention Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and I lost no time striking up a conversation with this brilliant Jesuit priest.
To reach the hookah-den, Père Teilhard informed me, he was obliged to journey all the way from the Lyon of 1937, which means he covered an even greater distance than did Gregor Mendel. True, Teilhard came here via railway and hired coach, whereas the monk traveled on foot, though I suspect the Jesuit could have walked if necessary, for at fifty-six he seems as vigorous as a man half his age. Like Mendel, Teilhard is pledged not only to chastity and obedience but also to poverty, and yet he had enough coins in his pocketâ“some detritus from our Rockefeller Foundation grant”âto purchase a bag of
Cannabis sativa
.
“Yusuf Effendi believes that, as a schoolman of scientific bent, I would appreciate your story,” I told him. “My personal faith is Anglican rather than Romanâmy father oversaw a village parish ere becoming illâbut I intend to be a sympathetic listener.”
Père Teilhard filtered a puff of hashish through his thin lips. He cuts a figure at once romantic and cerebral, like a privateer captain commissioned not to plunder enemy ships but to sink inferior ideas. “On the surface my life is enviable, Bertram,
un grand cirque
of loving friends and gratifying scientific investigations. And yet, when I return to my proper time-stream, I shall again find myself at odds with my precious bane, the Society of Jesus.”
“What science do you pursue?”
“Paleontology.”
“You're a disciple of Mr. Paley?
Natural Theology
is my father's favorite book!”
“A paleontologist studies fossils,” Père Teilhard noted, then placed a canvas sack on the table, drawing out five skulls, each markedly different from its fellows. He arrayed the death's-heads in a semicircle about the hookah. A passing stranger might have taken us for heathens celebrating a barbarous rite. “Behold the stations of the human ascent, from ape to man-ape to our own sapient kind. They're plaster casts, of courseâthe original fossils reside in laboratories and museums. These bones testify to the phenomenon of biological evolution, Bertram, a process whose mechanism will be revealed a decade from now, when the English scientist Charles Darwin publishes his theory of natural selection.”
“Which is the skull of Adam?” I inquired.
“In my time-stream only the most hidebound persons regard the narrative of Adam, Eve, and the serpent as an actual historical event.”
I scowled and said, “Now see here, Père Teilhard. On my view it's churlish to call a water-pipe companion hidebound.”
The priest glowered. “Were I desirous of reproach, I could have stayed in Lyon. My provincial is forever scolding me as you have done.”
Glowering back, I said, “If you will ignore my discourteous remark, then I shall ignore yours.”
Père Teilhard closed his eyes, savoring his
Cannabis
reverie. He blinked and gave my hand an affirming squeeze. “
Absolument.
”
“For purposes of this conversation, there was never an Adam,” I said. “Hereafter our motto shall be âLet him amongst you who can refute the fossil evidence cast the first bone.'”
My new friend laughed and said, “For the past thirteen years the Holy Office has forbidden me to publish a single word on human evolution, all because of my unfinished paper questioning the doctrine of original sin, which a Vatican minion stole from my drawer.”