You're a witness.'
'If you must,' said the Englishman.
Deep in his body Cherrick felt the fish-bone he'd first choked on in the village twist itself about one final time, and extinguish him.
'Did he say yes, Dancy?' Tetelman asked.
Dancy felt the physical proximity of the brute kneeling beside him. He didn't know what the dead man had said, but what did it matter? Locke would have the land anyway, wouldn't he?
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'He said yes.'
Locke stood up, and went in search of a fresh cup of coffee.
Without thinking, Dancy put his fingers on Cherrick's lids to seal his empty gaze. Under that lightest of touches the lids broke open and blood tainted the tears that had swelled where Cherrick's sight had been.
They had buried him towards evening. The corpse, though it had lain through the noon-heat in the coolest part of the store, amongst the dried goods, had begun to putrefy by the time it was sewn up in canvas for the burial. The night following, Stumpf had come to Locke and offered him the last third of the territory to add to Cherrick's share, and Locke, ever the realist, had accepted. The terms, which were punitive, had been worked out the next day. In the evening of that day, as Stumpf had hoped, the supply plane came in. Locke, bored with Tetelman's contemptuous looks, had also elected to fly back to Santarem, there to drink the jungle out of his system for a few days, and return refreshed. He intended to buy up fresh supplies, and, if possible, hire a reliable driver and gunman.
The flight was noisy, cramped and tedious; the two men exchanged no words for its full duration. Stumpf just kept his eyes on the tracts of unfelled wilderness they passed over, though from one hour to the next the scene scarcely changed. A panorama of sable green, broken on occasion by a glint of water; perhaps a column of blue smoke rising here and there, where land was being cleared; little else.
At Santarem they parted with a single handshake which left every nerve in Stumpf s hand scourged, and an open cut in the tender flesh between index finger and thumb.
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Santarem wasn't Rio, Locke mused as he made his way down to a bar at the south end of the town, run by a veteran of Vietnam who had a taste for ad hoc animal shows. It was one of Locke's few certain pleasures, and one he never tired of, to watch a local woman, face dead as a cold manioc cake, submit to a dog or a donkey fora few grubby dollar bills. The women of Santarem were, on the whole, as unpalatable as the beer, but Locke had no eye for beauty in the opposite sex: it mattered only that their bodies be in reasonable working order, and not diseased. He found the bar, and settled down for an evening exchanging dirt with the American. When he tired of that - some time after midnight - he bought a bottle of whisky and went out looking for a face to press his heat upon.
The woman with the squint was about to accede to a particular peccadillo of Locke's - one which she had resolutely refused until drunkenness persuaded ner to abandon what little hope of dignity she had - when there came a rap on the door.
'Fuck,' said Locke.
'Si,' said the woman. 'Fook. Fook.' It seemed to be the only word she knew in anything resembling English. Locke ignored her and crawled drunkenly to the edge of the stained mattress. Again, the rap on the door.
'Who is it?' he said.
'Senhor Locke?' The voice from the hallway was that of a young boy.
'Yes?' said Locke. His trousers had become lost in the tangle of sheets. 'Yes? What do you want?'
'Mensagem,' the boy said. 'Urgente. Urgente.' 'For me?' He had found his trousers, and was pulling them on. The woman, not at all disgruntled by this desertion, watched him from the head of the bed,
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toying with an empty bottle. Buttoning up, Locke crossed from bed to door, a matter of three steps. He unlocked it. The boy in the darkened hallway was of Indian extraction to judge by the blackness of his eyes, and that peculiar lustre his skin owned. He was dressed in a T-shirt bearing the Coca-Cola motif.
'Mensagem, Senhor Locke,' he said again, '. . . do hospital.'
The boy was staring past Locke at the woman on the bed. He grinned from ear to ear at her cavortings. 'Hospital?' said Locke.
''Sim. Hospital "Sacrado Coraqa de Maria".' It could only be Stumpf, Locke thought. Who else did he know in this corner of Hell who'd call upon him? Nobody. He looked down at the leering child.
'Vem comigo,' the boy said, 'vem comigo. Urgente.' 'No,' said Locke. 'I'm not coming. Not now. You understand? Later. Later.'
The boy shrugged. '. . . Ta morrendo,' he said. 'Dying?' said Locke.
'Sim. Ta morrendo.'
'Well, let him. Understand me? You go back, and tell him, I won't come until I'm ready.'
Again, the boy shrugged. 'E meu dinheiro? he said, as Locke went to close the door.
'You go to Hell,' Locke replied, and slammed it in the child's face.
When, two hours and one ungainly act of passionless sex later, Locke unlocked the door, he discovered that the child, by way of revenge, had defecated on the threshold.
The hospital 'Sacrado Coraqa de Maria' was no place to fall ill; better, thought Locke, as he made his way down the dingy corridors, to die in your own bed with your
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own sweat for company than come here. The stench of disinfectant could not entirely mask the odour of human pain. The walls were ingrained with it; it formed a grease on the lamps, it slickened the unwashed floors. What had happened to Stumpf to bring him here? a bar-room brawl, an argument with a pimp about the price of a woman? The German was just damn fool enough to get himself stuck in the gut over something so petty. 'Senhor Stumpf?' he asked of a woman in white he accosted in the corridor. 'I'm looking for Senhor Stumpf.'
The woman shook her head, and pointed towards a harried-looking man further down the corridor, who was taking a moment to light a small cigar. He let go the nurse's arm and approached the fellow. He was enveloped in a stinking cloud of smoke.
'I'm looking for Senhor Stumpf,' he said.
The man peered at him quizzically.
'You are Locke?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Ah.' He drew on the cigar. The pungency of the expelled smoke would surely have brought on a relapse in the hardiest patient. Tm Doctor Edson Costa,' the man said, offering his clammy hand to Locke. 'Your friend has been waiting for you to come all night.' 'What's wrong with him?'
'He's hurt his eye,' Edson Costa replied, clearly indif- ferent to Stumpf s condition. 'And he has some minor abrasions on his hands and face. But he won't have anyone go near him. He doctored himself.'
'Why?' Locke asked.
The doctor looked flummoxed. 'He pays to go in a clean room. Pays plenty. So I put him in. You want to see him? Maybe take him away?'
'Maybe,' said Locke, unenthusiastically.
'His head . . .' said the doctor. 'He has delusions.'
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Without offering further explanation, the man led off at a considerable rate, trailing tobacco-smoke as he went. The route, that wound out of the main building and across a small internal courtyard, ended at a room with a glass partition in the door.
'Here,' said the doctor. 'Your friend. You tell him,' he said as a parting snipe, 'he pay more, or tomorrow he leaves.'
Locke peered through the glass partition. The grubby- white room was empty, but for a bed and a small table, lit by the same dingy light that cursed every wretched inch of this establishment. Stumpf was not on the bed, but squatting on the floor in the corner of the room. His left eye was covered with a bulbous padding, held in place by a bandage ineptly wrapped around his head. Locke was looking at the man for a good time before Stumpf sensed that he was watched. He looked up slowly. His good eye, as if in compensation for the loss of its companion, seemed to have swelled to twice its natural size. It held enough fear for both it and its twin; indeed enough for a dozen eyes.
Cautiously, like a man whose bones are so brittle he fears an injudicious breath will shatter them, Stumpf edged up the wall, and crossed to the door. He did not open it, but addressed Locke through the glass.
'Why didn't you come?' he said.
Tm here.'
'But sooner,' said Stumpf. His face was raw, as if he'd been beaten. 'Sooner.'
'I had business,' Locke returned. 'What happened to you?'
'It's true, Locke,' the German said, 'everything is true.'
'What are you talking about?'
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'Tetelman told me. Cherrick's babblings. About being exiles. It's true. They mean to drive us out.' 'We're not in the jungle now,' Locke said. 'You've got nothing to be afraid of here.'
'Oh yes,' said Stumpf, that wide eye wider than ever. 'Oh yes! I saw him -'
'Who?'
'The elder. From the village. He was here.' 'Ridiculous.'
'He was here, damn you,' Stumpf replied. 'He was standing where you're standing. Looking at me through the glass.'
'You've been drinking too much.'
'It happened to Cherrick, and now it's happening to me. They're making it impossible to live -'
Locke snorted. Tm not having any problem,' he said.
'They won't let you escape,' Stumpf said. 'None of us'll escape. Not unless we make amends.'
'You've got to vacate the room,' Locke said, unwilling to countenance any more of this drivel. 'I've been told you've got to get out by morning.'
'No,' said Stumpf. 'I can't leave. I can't leave.' 'There's nothing to fear.'
'The dust,' said the German. The dust in the air. It'll cut me up. I got a speck in my eye - just a speck - and the next thing my eye's bleeding as though it'll never stop. I can't hardly lie down, the sheet's like a bed of nails. The soles of my feet feel as if they're going to split. You've got to help me.'
'How?' said Locke.
'Pay them for the room. Pay them so I can stay 'til you can get a specialist from Sao Luis. Then go back to the village, Locke. Go back and tell them. I don't want the land. Tell them I don't own it any longer.'
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Til go back,' said Locke, 'but in my good time.' 'You must go quickly,' said Stumpf. 'Tell them to let me be.'
Suddenly, the expression on the partially-masked face changed, and Stumpf looked past Locke at some spectacle down the corridor. From his mouth, slack with fear, came the small word, 'Please.'
Locke, mystified by the man's expression, turned. The corridor was empty, except for the fat moths that were besetting the bulb. 'There's nothing there -' he said, turning back to the door of Stumpf s room. The wire-mesh glass of the window bore the distinct imprint of two bloody palms.
'He's here,' the German was saying, staring fixedly at the miracle of the bleeding glass. Locke didn't need to ask who. He raised his hand to touch the marks. The handprints, still wet, were on his side of the glass, not on Stumpf s.
'My God,' he breathed. How could anyone have slipped between him and the door and laid the prints there, sliding away again in the brief moment it had taken him to glance behind him? It defied reason. Again he looked back down the corridor. It was still bereft of visitors. Just the bulb - swinging slightly, as if a breeze of passage had caught it - and the moth's wings, whispering. 'What's happening?' Locke breathed. Stumpf, entranced by the handprints, touched his fingertips lightly to the glass. On contact, his fingers blossomed blood, trails of which idled down the glass. He didn't remove his fingers, but stared through at Locke with despair in his eye.
'See?' he said, very quietly.
'What are you playing at?' Locke said, his voice similarly hushed. This is some kind of trick.' 'No.'
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'You haven't got Cherrick's disease. You can't have. You didn't touch them. We agreed, damn you,' he said, more heatedly. 'Cherrick touched them, we didn't.' Stumpf looked back at Locke with something close to pity
