Heart of the World (37 page)

“It is mainly from the aloe plant, but there is also coca in it.”

Great, I thought, I could get stoned through the soles of my feet.

“I brought you shoes,” he continued. “Men's shoes, but they should

fit.”

“I'd rather have information.”

The aftermath of the attack had practically precluded questions. After the terse call from the kidnappers, it seemed as if every living soul in the camp required Roldan's presence and undivided attention. Then the
mamas
had come, a strange and unearthly procession, summoned, it seemed, by pure thought, and ever since Roldan had emerged from his all-night confab with them, looking like a man cast out of Eden, he'd told me next to nothing. As an outsider, I'd been excluded from the meeting with the religious leaders. Afterwards, Roldan had shut himself up briefly with his lieutenants, left Flaco in charge of the camp, and led
me on a strenuous march to a camouflaged airstrip where I'd watched as men loaded bags onto the small plane, bags that looked heavy enough to be filled with gold. When I'd asked, Roldan had brushed off the question.

“What do you wish to know?” he said now.

There was no place to sit but the rumpled daybed. I moved to one end. He sat beside me, closer than necessary, and I was abruptly aware of the heat of the room, the color of his shirt, and my nakedness under the robe.

The combination made my voice husky. “What did your precious
mamas
do to that man?”

The night before, several white-clad men with pointed hats, among them, I thought, Mama Parello, had marched a bound man into a central hut.

“That was the traitor, Guillermo, the man they call Gee-mo. Do you wish to know what they did to him? Or what they learned from him?”

“They tortured him.” I'd seen him carried from the hut in the morning.

“They prayed for him, to heal him and return him to the tribe.”

“Prayer made his legs bleed?”

“It's an ancient ceremony, based on the principle of confession, like in the Catholic Church.”

Sure, I thought, the Catholic Church by way of the Inquisition.

“They
knelt
him,” Roldan said. “They put him to the shells. But first, he had the opportunity to speak. He resisted the wisdom offered by the
mamas
, so he had to suffer the ordeal.”

Forced to kneel on a bed of sharp broken shells, his arms outstretched like the wings of an eagle, his head bowed, Gee-mo had listened to the questions, but refused to admit his guilt. Stones, placed on his back, pressed him deeper into the shells. Not till his blood colored the white shells did he speak.

“It was a case of
plato o plomo,”
Roldan said.

“What?”

“Silver or lead. It's a catch phrase, what the drug dealers say to threaten the police and the judges. Take the bribe or take the bullet. Take the money or stand by while we kill your family.”

Six, seven months ago, a man had approached Gee-mo in a tavern.

The man knew his links to the Kogi, and wanted to hire him as an expedition guide. At first, Gee-mo thought they were photographers, perhaps archeologists. They hadn't seemed like thieves.

“Did he name names?”

Roldan paused. “He didn't know any.”

I was pretty sure Paolina's father wasn't telling the truth.

“Let me see your feet,” he said.

“We're not done talking.”

“What else is there to say? I'm prepared to go through with the deal.”

“The Kogi gold for Paolina?” I wanted to believe him. “I told you to lie to the kidnappers. Not to me.”

“I asked the
mamas
for permission.”

“Do the
mamas
expect to get it back?”

“You'll get
her
back.” His tone said I should stop asking questions. He was giving me a chance to rescue her; I should snatch it with both hands and be satisfied.

I wanted to. But he'd told me too much, intimated that the gold was everything to the Kogi, the holy gold. It governed the lives of the priests. Every ritual, every offering, was dedicated to the Mother, the golden image, of the crop. Without the gold, there would be no priests. Without the
mamas
, the world would end. And he was the caretaker.

“Let me see your feet,” he repeated.

I lifted the right one, bending my knee carefully; the robe was short and revealing.

He examined the sole gravely. “You're stubborn.”

“Most people read palms.”

“You were in pain, but you climbed quickly. The Kogi value a woman who knows how to walk.”

Better to be valued for walking, I thought, than for a lot of other things. I hadn't seen any women included among the
mamas
, and the
mamas
seemed to be the leaders of the tribe. So the question remained: How highly did the Kogi value women?

“For a
gringa
, you're tough,” he said. “You never complained. I admit I'm attracted to you.”

“I should have complained.” Face it; my silence was nothing but stupid pride.

He edged closer, and slid his hand up to my ankle. “You should, perhaps, have children of your own.”

“I've got Paolina.”

“That's not what I mean.”

It was clear what he meant, the two of us too close on the narrow bed in the overheated room after what we'd been through together. When you come close to the doorway of death, life and the physical sensations of life seem especially precious. While he'd worn his Kogi whites, he'd seemed set apart, removed from the sexual arena, some kind of mystical priest. Now I was aware that his build reminded me of Sam Gi-anelli's. Now his hand moved from my ankle to my calf, and his fingers stopped probing for pain.

Children of my own
.

It was close to what Sam had said the night before I left for Miami. I thought about children of my own, and Sam, and then—I don't know why—I was fourteen again, in a narrow white hospital bed, empty and alone. I felt the absence of that baby, the one I gave up for adoption without ever holding in my arms, like a recent and terrible loss. Boy or girl? I guess I always think of her as a girl. I think of her as Paolina, my secret Paolina, my missing child.

I couldn't lose her again. Couldn't lose Paolina, my real Paolina, my living, breathing Paolina. A shiver ran down my spine in spite of the heat, and I put my hand on Roldan's chest, to keep him at a distance.

“I have someone in Boston. My fiance.” And not till the word passed my lips did I realize what I'd said. Fiance, not lover. Slowly I withdrew my leg.

Roldan said, “He should have come with you.”

“He was busy.”

“He's a policeman?”

“He's a crook.”

“Congratulations. Are you sure you wouldn't care to use the bed to celebrate? One last fling before marriage is an old and honored tradition.”

“Just for the men, right?”

“Are you so traditional, then?”

He leaned over and kissed me, lightly at first. He smelled like cigar
smoke and tasted like mango juice. When I kissed him back, my stomach gave a lurch of dark longing and my back arched involuntarily. The urgency was almost like a drug. The walls of the room receded, the heat pulsed, the light shimmered. When I closed my eyes, I thought of Sam Gianelli in another woman's bed and came up gasping for air.

“Wait.” I wanted to ask for a cigarette even though I gave them up years ago. If I asked for a cigarette, took time to tuck it snugly between my third and index finger, to fire a match to light it, I'd be able to consider what I was doing, what I was about to do. The smallest thing can make a difference, Roldan told me on the mountaintop. Actions have consequences. I didn't know it when I was fourteen, but I sure as hell knew it now. The dark yearning was powerful; it smelled like musky sweat and cigar smoke. It tasted like mango juice.

I smiled and said, “Wait a minute. Hold on. Are you planning to get arrested soon?”

His fingertips burned along my cheekbone. “You're saying I'm coming on to you too quickly?”

I said, “If our host, Senor Cabrera, proved less than accommodating, if he called the cops, if you were about to be arrested and sent to jail, that might explain what's going on here.”

I concentrated on inhaling, exhaling, on not smelling the cigar scent of his skin, on not licking another taste of mango juice from his tongue. I'm not saying I didn't want to go to bed with him. I'm not saying there wasn't a time I'd have peeled off my robe in a flash. I'm not even saying I didn't resent Sam poking his shadowy image into what might otherwise have proved a delicious interlude. I felt dumb; there was no reward for chastity, no silver cup for keeping my legs crossed. It was as foolish as not complaining on the mountain.

He said, “You mean if I knew I was on my way to prison, where I'd be spending a long time without a woman, then I'd make a play for you? You're very cynical. You don't believe I find you attractive?”

It was extremely cynical of me to think that sex was a great way to pass the time when you didn't want to answer questions. But I thought it all the same.

He placed a mocking hand over his heart. “I tell you nothing but the truth.”

I grasped the opening like a drowning sailor grabbing a life ring. “As long as you're telling the truth, why did you ask me to describe Naylor? Did you ask your
mamas
about the limping man?”

“They say only that the future is clouded.” He patted the bed. “So perhaps we should take advantage of the present?”

Perhaps we should, I thought. But even though his eyes were Paolina's eyes, I didn't completely trust him. And then there was Sam.

“I don't think so.” My robe had come open. I snugged its rough fabric closely around me and his eyes, so very much like Paolina's, lost their liquid warmth and slowly hardened. In no time, he was the remote man of the mountain again, the aloof and stoic priest.

“You should get dressed, then.” He blew out a breath and made an effort to straighten his rumpled clothes. “Senor Cabrera would like to meet you.”

As soon as he closed the door, I wanted to call him back, hold him and kiss him, and smell the moist earthy scent of him. Pull his mouth down to my waiting breast.

Jesus, Carlyle, I told myself, take a shower.

When I found it, the small bathroom down the hall had only a sink and a toilet. I splashed water on my overheated face. I was toweling it dry when the dream came back—the urn, the fire, the mechanically altered voice.

In the States, where kidnapping is a federal offense, where the FBI is so successful at catching and prosecuting offenders that the crime is rare, kidnappers use a voice-alterer on the assumption that relevant phones will be quickly tapped by the Bureau. Because if the kidnappers are brought to trial, none of them wants to sit at the defense table listening to his own taped voice played back for the benefit of a jury. But here, where, according to Luisa Cabrera, kidnapping was commonplace, where it was illegal to pay a ransom, where the police didn't get involved, where kidnappers were seldom, if ever, caught, why go to the bother and expense of acquiring and using such a machine?

Could it be, I wondered, hanging the towel on the bar, because Roldan would know, would recognize the kidnapper's voice?

CHAPTER 34

My jeans had been mended and pressed; my
torn, bloodstained T-shirt replaced by a man's
guayabera
, too big through the shoulders, but whole and clean. I dressed, then sat on the bed and inspected the skin on my feet. Blisters had subsided. The skin felt tender, but was far from the ragged mess I'd feared. I used the cream, slipped on soft leather moccasins, and went in search of Roldan and Senor Cabrera, trying to recall the twists and turns that had led me to the small room with the daybed and the phone.

I found myself in an enormous tile-floored dining room dominated by a table that could seat twenty, with half that number of high-backed chairs surrounding it. One long wall was filled with light and windows. Peering out I saw a huge grassy courtyard, and the basic design of the house was revealed: a main building, two long low wings. I headed toward the main building and the distant rumble of voices.

In the big front room the gilded chandelier and the patterned carpet spoke of better days. A grand piano hunkered in an alcove. The furniture was plump and faded, beige with a rose-colored print. Roldan sat on the edge of a worn armchair, deep in conversation with an elderly gentleman in a cane rocker. As he rocked the chair gave the familiar half-sigh, half-squeak I still associate with my late aunt Bea, a woman who endlessly rocked as she knitted. A comforting sound in a strange place.

The old man was as elegant and worn as the room in a beige linen
suit, white shirt, and striped tie, with a magnificent mane of ash-colored hair. He stood as soon as he saw me; his head dipped in half a formal bow. His jowls quivered. He held an unlit pipe in his left hand. Roldan made introductions: Senor Gilberto Cabrera Fortas met Senorita Car-lotta Carlyle.

“You were a friend of my niece?” The old man's voice was shaky.

“I barely knew her.”

“Just as well. It was her friends who got her killed.”

I'd had a hand in it, too, but no one was making me kneel on broken shells so I decided against confession.

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

He sank into his rocking chair, turning his attention to a leather album on a round piecrust table. Next to the album sat a pile of newspapers, a long thin scissors, and a jar of paste. I inhaled the scent of schoolroom collages.

“She was a fine writer,” he said. “When my brother, her father, died, the senior editor himself insisted she have his job. Rivals at the paper were jealous, but she proved herself worthy. You read her work?”

I nodded; if I hadn't, maybe she'd still be alive.

“Luisa and I agreed on nothing.” He raised the pipe to his lips, noticed that it was unlit, but made no effort to light it. “I work within the system; I believe in the system. I believe in democracy, not endless, senseless war.”