their tens of thousands. Now those tribes were all but decimated. The forest in which they had prospered for generations was being levelled and burned; eight-lane highways were speeding through their hunting grounds. All they held sacred - the wilderness and their place in its system - was being trampled and trespassed: they were exiles in their own land. But still they declined to pay homage to their new masters, despite the rifles they brought. Only death would convince them of defeat, Locke mused.
Cherrick found Stumpf slumped in the front seat of the jeep, his pasty features more wretched than ever. 'Locke wants you,' he said, shaking the German out of his doze. 'The village is still occupied. You'll have to speak to them.'
Stumpf groaned. 'I can't move,' he said, Tm dying-' 'Locke wants you dead or alive,' Cherrick said. Their fear of Locke, which went unspoken, was perhaps one of the two things they had in common; that and greed. 'I feel awful,' Stumpf said.
'If I don't bring you, he'll only come himself,' Cherrick pointed out. This was indisputable. Stumpf threw the other man a despairing glance, then nodded his jowly head. 'All right,' he said, 'help me.' Cherrick had no wish to lay a hand on Stumpf. The man stank of his sickness; he seemed to be oozing the contents of his gut through his pores; his skin had the lustre of rank meat. He took the outstretched hand nevertheless. Without aid, Stumpf
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would never make the hundred yards from jeep to compound.
Ahead, Locke was shouting.
'Get moving,' said Cherrick, hauling Stumpf down from the front seat and towards the bawling voice. 'Let's get it over and done with.'
When the two men returned into the circle of huts the scene had scarcely changed. Locke glanced around at Stumpf.
'We got trespassers,' he said.
'So I see,' Stumpf returned wearily.
'Tell them to get the fuck off our land,' Locke said. 'Tell them this is our territory: we bought it. Without sitting tenants.'
Stumpf nodded, not meeting Locke's rabid eyes. Sometimes he hated the man almost as much as he hated himself.
'Go on . . .' Locke said, and gestured for Cherrick to relinquish his support of Stumpf. This he did. The German stumbled forward, head bowed. He took several seconds to work out his patter, then raised his head and spoke a few wilting words in bad Portuguese. The pronouncement was met with the same blank looks as Locke's performance. Stumpf tried again, re-arranging his inadequate vocabulary to try and awake a flicker of understanding amongst these savages.
The boy who had been so entertained by Locke's cavortings now stood staring up at this third demon, his face wiped of smiles. This one was nowhere near as comical as the first. He was sick and haggard; he smelt of death. The boy held his nose to keep from inhaling the badness off the man.
Stumpf peered through greasy eyes at his audience. If they did understand, and were faking their blank
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incomprehension, it was a flawless performance. His limited skills defeated, he turned giddily to Locke. They don't understand me,' he said.
Tell them again.'
'I don't think they speak Portuguese.'
Tell them anyway.'
Cherrick cocked his rifle. 'We don't have to talk with them,' he said under his breath. They're on our land. We're within our rights -'
'No,' said Locke. There's no need for shooting. Not if we can persuade them to go peacefully.'
They don't understand plain common sense,' Cher- rick said. 'Look at them. They're animals. Living in filth.'
Stumpf had begun to try and communicate again, this time accompanying his hesitant words with a pitiful mime.
Tell them we've got work to do here,' Locke prompted him.
'I'm trying my best,' Stumpf replied testily. 'We've got papers.'
'I don't think they'd be much impressed,' Stumpf returned, with a cautious sarcasm that was lost on the other man.
'Just tell them to move on. Find some other piece of land to squat on.'
Watching Stumpf put these sentiments into word and sign-language, Locke was already running through the alternative options available. Either the Indians - the Txukahamei or the Achual or whatever damn family it was - accepted their demands and moved on, or else they would have to enforce the edict. As Cherrick had said, they were within their rights. They had papers from the development authorities; they had maps marking the division between one territory and the next; they
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had every sanction from signature to bullet. He had no active desire to shed blood. The world was still too full of bleeding heart liberals and doe-eyed sentimentalists to make genocide the most convenient solution. But the gun had been used before, and would be used again, until every unwashed Indian had put on a pair of trousers and given up eating monkeys.
Indeed, the din of liberals notwithstanding, the gun had its appeal. It was swift, and absolute. Once it had had its short, sharp say there was no danger of further debate; no chance that in ten years' time some mercenary Indian who'd found a copy of Marx in the gutter could come back claiming his tribal lands - oil, minerals and all. Once gone, they were gone forever.
At the thought of these scarlet-faced savages laid low, Locke felt his trigger-finger itch; physically itch. Stumpf had finished his encore; it had met with no response. Now he groaned, and turned to Locke.
Tm going to be sick,' he said. His face was bright white; the glamour of his skin made his small teeth look dingy.
'Be my guest,' Locke replied.
'Please. I have to lie down. I don't want them watching me.'
Locke shook his head. 'You don't move 'til they listen. If we don't get any joy from them, you're going to see something to be sick about.' Locke toyed with the stock of his rifle as he spoke, running a broken thumb-nail along the nicks in it. There were perhaps a dozen; each one a human grave. The jungle concealed murder so easily; it almost seemed, in its cryptic fashion, to condone the crime.
Stumpf turned away from Locke and scanned the mute assembly. There were so many Indians here, he thought, and though he carried a pistol he was an inept
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marksman. Suppose they rushed Locke, Cherrick and himself? He would not survive. And yet, looking at the Indians, he could see no sign of aggression amongst them. Once they had been warriors; now? Like beaten children, sullen and wilfully stupid. There was some trace of beauty in one or two of the younger women; their skins, though grimy, were fine, their eyes black. Had he felt more healthy he might have been aroused by their nakedness, tempted to press his hands upon their shiny bodies. As it was their feigned incomprehension merely irritated him. They seemed, in their silence, like another species, as mysterious and unfathomable as mules or birds. Hadn't somebody in Uxituba told him that many of these people didn't even give their children proper names? That each was like a limb of the tribe, anonymous and therefore unfixable? He could believe that now, meeting the same dark stare in each pair of eyes; could believe that what they faced here was not three dozen individuals but a fluid system of hatred made flesh. It made him shudder to think of it. Now, for the first time since their appearance, one of the assembly moved. He was an ancient; fully thirty years older than most of the tribe. He, like the rest, was all but naked. The sagging flesh of his limbs and breasts resembled tanned hide; his step, though the pale eyes suggested blindness, was perfectly confident. Once standing in front of the interlopers he opened his mouth - there were no teeth set in his rotted gums - and spoke. What emerged from his scraggy throat was not a language made of words, but only of sound; a pot-pourri of jungle noises. There was no discernible pattern to the outpouring, it was simply a display - awesome in its way - of impersonations. The man could murmur like a jaguar, screech like a parrot; he could find in
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his throat the splash of rain on orchids; the howl of monkeys.
The sounds made Stumpf s gorge rise. The jungle had diseased him, dehydrated him and left him wrung out. Now this rheumy-eyed stick-man was vomiting the whole odious place up at him. The raw heat in the circle of huts made Stumpf s head beat, and he was sure, as he stood listening to the sage's din, that the old man was measuring the rhythm of his nonsense to the thud at his temples and wrists.
'What's he saying?' Locke demanded.
'What does it sound like?' Stumpf replied, irritated by Locke's idiot questions. 'It's all noises.'
'The fucker's cursing us,' Cherrick said.
Stumpf looked round at the third man. Cherrick's eyes were starting from his head.
'It's a curse,' he said to Stumpf.
Locke laughed, unmoved by Cherrick's apprehen- sion. He pushed Stumpf out of the way so as to face the old man, whose song-speech had now lowered in pitch; it was almost lilting. He was singing twilight, Stumpf thought: that brief ambiguity between the fierce day and the suffocating night. Yes, that was it. He could hear in the song the purr and the coo of a drowsy kingdom. It was so persuasive he wanted to lie down on the spot where he stood, and sleep.
Locke broke the spell. 'What are you saying?' he spat in the tribesman's rnazy face. 'Talk sense!'
But the night-noises only whispered on, an unbroken stream.
'This is our village,' another voice now broke in; the man spoke as if translating the elder's words. Locke snapped round to locate the speaker. He was a thin
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youth, whose skin might once have been golden. 'Our village. Our land.'
'You speak English,' Locke said.
'Some,' the youth replied.
'Why didn't you answer me earlier?' Locke demanded, his fury exacerbated by the disinterest on the Indian's face.
'Not my place to speak,' the man replied. 'He is the elder.'
The Chief, you mean?'
'The Chief is dead. All his family is dead. This is the wisest of us -'
'Then you tell him -'
'No need to tell,' the young man broke in. 'He under- stands you.'
'He speaks English too?'
'No,' the other replied, 'but he understands you. You are ... transparent.'
Locke half-grasped that the youth was implying an insult here, but wasn't quite certain. He gave Stumpf a puzzled look. The German shook his head. Locke returned his attention to the youth. 'Tell him anyway,' he said, 'tell all of them. This is our land. We bought it.'
'The tribe has always lived here,' the reply came. 'Not any longer,' Cherrick said.
'We've got papers -' Stumpf said mildly, still hoping that the confrontation might end peacefully,'- from the government.'
'We were here before the government,' the tribesman replied.
The old man had stopped talking the forest. Perhaps, Stumpf thought, he's coming to the beginning of another day, and stopped. He was turning away now, indifferent to the presence of these unwelcome guests.
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'Call him back,' Locke demanded, stabbing his rifle towards the young tribesman. The gesture was unam- biguous. 'Make him tell the rest of them they've got to go-'
The young man seemed unimpressed by the threat of Locke's rifle, however, and clearly unwilling to give orders to his elder, whatever the imperative. He simply watched the old man walk back towards the hut from which he had emerged. Around the compound, others were also turning away. The old man's withdrawal apparently signalled that the show was over.
'No\' said Cherrick, 'you're not listening.' The colour in his cheeks had risen a tone; his voice, an octave. He pushed forward, rifle raised. 'You fucking scum!' Despite his hysteria, he was rapidly losing his audience. The old man had reached the doorway of his hut, and now bent his back and disappeared into its recesses; the few members of the tribe who were still showing some interest in proceedings were viewing the Europeans with a hint of pity for their lunacy. It only enraged Cherrick further.
'Listen to me!' he shrieked, sweat flicking off his brow as he jerked his head at one retreating figure and then at another. 'Listen, you bastards.'
'Easy . . .' said Stumpf.
