Chapter 8
Jeb awoke to a wetly dripping dawn. A gauze curtain of rain blurred the drowned forest. The river was a desolate emptiness that reached everywhere into the greyness. Countless rain craters repeated themselves endlessly on the surface.
Monti still slept across Jeb’s lap. He lifted her gently to a sitting position. She opened her eyes, smiled at him with sleepy half-awareness.
Gettler shifted heavily, mumbled something in his sleep.
Jeb glanced around, and again wondered if he could grab the revolver jutting from Gettler’s belt.
But Gettler opened his eyes, muttered: “We’ve got to find a canoe.” He straightened. “Today.”
“Then go find one!” snapped Jeb.
“Watch your lip, fly-boy,” said Gettler. He turned to David. “Everything quiet in your watch?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jeb opened his door, slipped down to the float, breathed deeply to swallow his anger. Moisture saturated the air. It felt warm and damp in his nostrils and against the back of his throat. He freed the grapnel from the island, lifted it aboard with its trail of dripping reeds and grass. The current pulled the plane around until its tail pointed downstream. Jeb braced himself on the float, set his cane pole into the flooded underbrush, pushed. Bushes grated under the pontoons, and the river took them. Grey shapes of trees swam into view and passed through the misting rain. Everything beyond a hundred feet appeared ghostly, without real outlines.
Gettler lowered himself onto the opposite float, pushed his hat back from his forehead, trailed his pole in the water. The jacket hung more loosely on him. Deep stains of perspiration blotched the fabric under his arms.
He never takes that coat off, thought Jeb. No matter the heat. How many more emeralds is he carrying? And he felt the gem in his own pocket. Sure as hell! That’s what caused the break-up between Gettler and Bannon.
David leaned forward against the seat above Jeb. “Day number six,” he said. “Almost a week.”
“It seems more like a lifetime,” said Monti.
“It may be all the lifetime you’ll have,” said Gettler.
“Oh, go feed yourself to the fish,” said Monti.
Jeb stared ahead through the pall of rain. A half-submerged island loomed through the greyness. Jammed logs tangled across its top, mingled with the debris of another flood.
The two men grunted at the poles, forced the plane to the left around the island. A new current caught them, rushed them headlong down a torrent between lines of overhanging trees. Pieces of the river swirled away on both sides around flooded tree trunks and submerged roots.
Jeb called across to Gettler: “We’ve got to work our way farther to the left! Hug the bank!”
Gettler stared across the cowling with red-rimmed eyes. “What’s the difference? We’ll never get out of this maze as long as we stick with your pile of tin!”
Jeb choked down an angry reply, whirled away, found bottom with the pole, began thrusting the plane toward the left bank. There was a violent rocking motion to his actions.
Gettler hesitated, then began helping.
The current slowed. Trees and drowned banks receded into the moist greyness. The two men poled the plane across tugging eddies—keeping to the left. A sodden shoreline lifted out of the grey: a mist-washed landscape that seemed to take on motion while the plane hung suspended in muddy water.
“David, bait the fishhook with a piece of that fish skin, and see what you can catch,” said Jeb.
“If you hook a piranha don’t just jerk it into the cabin,” said Gettler.
“Mr. Logan did.”
“Yes, but he was ready to smash them with the machete. Those damn cannibals are as dangerous out of the water as they are in it.”
“What’ll I do?”
“Just haul it out of the water and hold it there until one of us can stun it,” said Gettler.
David baited the hook, dropped it over the right side. “Won’t I be liable to lose a fish if I just lift it up and let it hang in the air?”
“Well, you could lose a finger if you dropped it into the cabin without being ready.”
“Just do as you’re told, David,” said Monti.
“But I want to know why.”
“That’s a special carbon steel, long-shank hook on that fish line,” said Gettler. “Do you know why?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s made to catch anything in these waters, including piranha. And those fish can bite clean through an ordinary hook.”
“Gol-lee!” David swallowed. “Did that one take a big chunk out of your foot?”
“No. It just scraped me because I was pulling my foot out when it hit.”
David stared at the point where the fish line disappeared into the water.
“Maybe you’d better let one of the men fish,” said Monti.
“He can do it,” said Jeb. “Just as long as he’s careful.”
“I’ll be careful,” said David. He crouched by the door, waiting, listening. Every sound had come to have a special and familiar meaning: the hissing of the rain, the soggy dripping and scraping of the cane poles, grunts of effort from the two men, an occasional snapping creak from the metal of the plane.
And the ceaseless humming of insects.
They came whining through the rain as though it were not there—following charmed avenues through the curtain of water. They were a constant torture: biting, stinging, fluttering around every inch of exposed skin.
Monti buried her face against the seat, covered her neck with the scarf. Still they found her. When it became unbearable, she lighted a cigarette. The smoke gave a limited and temporary relief.
Jeb suffered the attacks in silence. His mind became lost in a circle of actions that had to be accomplished with minimum effort: lift the pole, drop it to the bottom ahead, wait for the current to overtake the new position—push.
And again … and again … and again …
“I think I’ve got a fish,” whispered David. He pulled on the line.
Instantly, everyone became alert following the boy’s movements with hunger-sharpened senses.
David brought in another foot of line.
“Have you or haven’t you?” demanded Gettler.
“There’s something on the line,” said David. He began hauling it in hand over hand. A brown shape about two feet long came up beside the float without a fight.
“Is it dangerous?” asked Monti.
“Hell, no!” barked Gettler. “Haul it in!”
David jerked the fish into the cabin. It gave several flaps of its tail.
“What is it?” asked David.
“A sucker of some kind,” said Jeb.
“Who cares?” said Gettler. “Start cooking it.”
“Get the little stove, David,” said Monti.
He moved to obey. “I knew I had something.”
They ate the fish in a kind of ravenous stupor, bolting chunks of half-cooked meat. One papaya remained. They finished this—as though eating, once started carried through with its own momentum until there was nothing else to be consumed.
David re-baited the hook with a fresh piece of fish, cast it into the current.
A kind of digestive lassitude came over them.
Gettler put down his cane pole, climbed into the rear beside David.
“Let her drift,” he said.
Jeb leaned against the strut, peered into the veiled mist.
“I think I hear something,” whispered David.
“What?” asked Monti.
“Listen!” hissed Gettler.
A rhythmic grunting gained volume above the muted constancy of rain and river. It came from beyond the shrouded trees on their left, passing left to right: downstream.
Gettler put a hand over David’s mouth, leaned forward to whisper in Monti’s ear: “Don’t make a sound!”
Jeb stood frozen in a half crouch on the left pontoon.
The grunting passed out of hearing.
Jeb made his way cautiously back to the open door, peered in at Gettler. “Jivaro?”
“That’s their paddling chant.”
“There must be another channel beyond those trees,” whispered Jeb.
“Yes. Now they’re ahead of us again.”
“Are they hunting for us?” sobbed Monti.
“They’re going down to set up another ambush,” said Jeb. “Sure as hell!” He looked downstream.
“Do they know where we are?” asked David.
“Probably not,” said Jeb. “Visibility’s too poor, and there’s too much river with this high water for them to search all of it.”
“They don’t need to search all of it!” snarled Gettler. “All they need’s a narrow place where we have to go through!” His voice climbed: “Christ! Did you hear them? All that noise! Like they owned the river!”
“They do,” said Jeb. “They own it.”
“What can we do?” moaned Monti.
“They own this river,” repeated Jeb. “And they’d know where the main channel is. That must be it beyond those trees!”
“We’d better go back to the right,” said Gettler.
“Why?” asked Jeb. “The weather’s on our side. You can’t see three hundred feet through that rain.”
“We could stumble right into the middle of them before we knew it!” barked Gettler.
“Or before they knew it,” said Jeb.
A current twisted the plane around until it drifted backward.
Gettler slid down to the pontoon on his side, checked the rifle, placed it on the cabin floor ready at hand.
A line of flooded trees climbed out of the rain downstream. Fingers of brown current surged off around the trunks. Jeb and Gettler grunted at the poles, but the current was too strong. It swept the plane into the trees, and the wings caught. Water swirled around the pontoons.
Jeb worked his way to the rear, leaped onto an exposed root system, strained to push the plane out of the trap. It moved upstream by inches. Gettler helped from the opposite side, pushing with the pole, staying near the rifle.
There came a moment when Jeb faced the necessity of risking the river and the threat of piranha.
All the experts say they avoid fast water, he thought, and he stared at the muddy current rushing beneath the plane. Oh, hell! And he stepped off into it. The water came up to his waist, a surging brown pressure.
“Jeb!” shouted Monti. “Those fish!”
“He’s okay,” said Gettler. “Water’s too swift for them here.”
Jeb shoved at the pontoon, pushed himself against the current.
Slowly, with a tearing and rustling of vines, creaking and scraping of metal they worked the plane along the barrier and into a new channel. Jeb hauled himself onto the float as the current took them.
Monti slid down, helped him.
“Jeb, that’s too dangerous,” she whispered.
He stared at her, a strange exhilaration filling his senses. “I’m all right, Monti.”
“I thought my heart would stop,” she said.
“Everything’s okay. Go back inside.”
She shuddered, turned, climbed into the cabin.
The plane drifted past a high mud bank gnawed by the river and eroding rivulets of rain water. Two alligators slid off the mud and into the water at the approach of the plane.
A great whirling back eddy caught the plane below the mud bank, swept it in a wide circle to the left.
“Look!” said Gettler. He pointed with the cane pole at an island of flotsam caught in the upper turn of the eddy.
A long dark mound—perhaps eighteen feet in length and no more than three feet wide—protruded from the flotsam.
“Canoe,” said Gettler. “It’s overturned.”
He pushed his pole into the river bottom, checked the plane’s side drift, sent it toward the canoe.
Jeb stared at the overturned dugout. His exhilaration of a few minutes before drained away like water from a punctured skin. And all of the black terror that he had suffered on the morning of his nightmare premonition came rushing back.
Gettler hooked the canoe with the pole, brought it under the wing beside him.
“High water must’ve swept it away from its mooring,” he said.
“I’m sticking with the plane!” gritted Jeb.
Gettler ignored him knelt by the canoe, caught it on the far edge with one hand, swirled it over. Water sloshed from one end to the other.
“David, give me the extra canvas bucket,” said Gettler.
“What’re you going to do?” asked Monti.
“Bail this thing out.”
Monti looked down at the rifle on the floor beneath her feet, glanced up to see Gettler watching her. He shook his head once. She reddened, whirled away.
Gettler took the bucket from David, began bailing. A black-charred bottom came into view as he cleared out the muddy water.
Jeb spoke louder: “I’m sticking with the plane!”
Gettler swung the canoe around behind the pontoon, brought it under the fuselage.
“David, give me a length of that fish line,” he said.
David obeyed.
“What are you doing?” demanded Monti.
“Now we’ve got a lifeboat,” said Gettler. He tied it to the pontoon with two lengths of the fish line, stared across at Jeb. “Any objections, Logan?”
Angry words started to rise in Jeb’s throat. He fought them down. The bastard’s right. We could lose the plane anytime: a leak in that pontoon with no place to land for repairs. Another thought flooded Jeb’s mind: But that sonofabitch could force our hand now by wrecking the patch on that pontoon!
Jeb spoke tentatively: “The canoe’s just some more weight for us to push around with …”
“Look around you,” said Gettler.
Jeb raised his attention from the canoe. They had drifted out of the eddy on a slowly angling current to the right. Through the blurring rain he could just make out a sloping line of hills on the left, more rising ground on the opposite shore.
“We’re back in the main channel,” said Gettler.
The sight gave Jeb a brief emotional lift. He looked downstream. The swift current was sweeping them toward civilization, toward Ramona and mama-cocha: the great salt ocean that was only a legend here in the jungle.
Then he thought about the Jivaro war canoe that had passed with its grunting paddlers … and of the certain ambush that waited ahead.
Monti waved a fluttering cloud of insects away from her face with an absent-minded movement of her hand. She, too, stared into the rain mist downstream.
“Are you sure those were Jivaro who passed us?” she asked.
“Who else’d have guts enough to make that much noise in Jivaro country?” asked Gettler.
“Won’t they ever give up?” she demanded. “Why can’t they leave us alone?”
“Because we’re here,” said Gettler.
The plane turned, drifted sideways downstream, angling closer and closer to the right shore. The forest wall darkened from grey through mottled granite to the deep shadowy green, the tumultuous overpowering green of violent jungle growth. They swept close to the fluid meeting point of water and forest: a place full of swishing and sucking sounds. Trailing vines caught at the tail assembly. Gettler fended them off, and the current dragged the plane toward mid-channel.
Time dragged out in runnels of river current.
The rain slackened. Vagrant scratches of blue sky began to appear through the clouds. The river took on a smooth grey lacquered surface broken by parallel currents like grains in wood. Then the setting sun came under the clouds like a single bloodshot eye staring directly upriver at them. The hills devoured the sun, and in the sudden darkness the plane rode a ribbon of oily black velvet toward patches of glittering stars that shone like wet diamonds through the broken clouds.
A sedge island with its inevitable curtain of insects loomed dark on dark in the dank night.
“What do you say?” asked Jeb.
“Is it floating free or hung up?” asked Gettler.
“Current’s going around it,” said Jeb. “It seems to be caught in some shallows.”
“Let’s tie up,” said Gettler.
“Lots of insects,” said Jeb.
“And it’s getting darker,” said Gettler.
Jeb threw the grapnel, felt it bite into the sedge.
“You can’t get away from the bugs anyway,” said Gettler.
The plane twisted around against the anchor line, grated into the sedge. Thick swarms of insects buzzed upward at the disturbance.
Jeb and Gettler retreated into the cabin, closed the doors.
And now there was a new sound to the night: the scraping bump-bump-bump of the canoe against the float as the plane sawed back and forth at the end of the anchor line.
Monti leaned her head against Jeb’s shoulder.
Gettler saw the faint shadow of movement, interpreted it. A biting pang of jealousy dug into him. I should force her to come back here, he thought. These fools couldn’t resist me. It’d be nice to have a woman snuggled against me. Jesus! How long has it been?
“We’ve got to see that we stay in the main channel,” said Jeb.
And he realized that he was talking out of his fear that they would be forced to abandon the plane. The realization brought a sudden need to defend himself.
“We’ll make better time,” he said, and immediately realized how asinine the words sounded.
But Gettler had not focused on the words. He felt himself trembling with something deeper than rage.
“There’s going to be a change tonight,” he said.
“What’d you say?” asked Jeb.
“David’s going to trade places with his mother,” said Gettler.
Monti tensed, clutched Jeb’s arm.
“Thing’s are all right the way they are,” said Jeb.
“For you,” said Gettler. “David, go up front, and let your mother come back here.”
“I’m happy where I am,” said Monti.
“This is not a request,” said Gettler. “It’s an order.”
“I don’t take your orders!”
“Oh?”
“I prefer staying right where I am!”
“You think the fly-boy is a better man than I am?”
“For Christ’s sake, Gettler!” barked Jeb. “Leave her alone!”
Gettler felt that little pinwheels of light rotated in his mind directly behind his eyes. He spoke softly: “Stay out of this.”
“Jeb’s at least a gentleman!” snapped Monti.
“Why do women think they prefer gentlemen?” asked Gettler. He addressed the darkness where David crouched in terror.
“Your type are all alike!” said Monti. “When something doesn’t come your way naturally … you take it by force!”
“Force is natural,” said Gettler.
“Drop it, Gettler!” said Jeb.
“I could kill you right now,” said Gettler, and the softness of his voice carried a more intense menace than if he had shouted.
Monti shuddered, pressed closer to Jeb.
“Every woman thinks she wants a gentleman until she’s tasted a little decadence,” said Gettler. “Logan, you will wait outside.”
“Wait!” cried Monti.
She felt terror overwhelming her, and yet beneath it there was a fascination, a feeling that Gettler could be right: that the touch of him might overpower her senses with an ecstasy that she could never again resist. She felt herself on the brink of an addiction … like a person about to take a lethean drug.
“We’ve waited long enough,” said Gettler.
It’s come to this, thought Jeb. I’m going to get myself killed over a woman. He pushed Monti away, tensed himself for the moment of struggle.
And David acted out of instinct.
“Don’t you like me anymore, Mr. Gettler?” asked David.
Gettler sensed himself dissolving in a frenzy of warring fragments. Why can’t the boy shut up?
“I thought you liked talking with me,” said David.
“Sure I do, son,” said Gettler. “It’s just that …”
“Then why can’t I stay back here with you?”
Something waited at the edge of Gettler’s consciousness. He weighed David’s question as though it were a crisis point for the entire world. The spinning pinwheels behind Gettler’s eyes almost blinded him.
Should the boy stay with me? Why shouldn’t he stay?
The answer came through the pinwheels whirling in his mind, spiraling up out of a far darkness, and Gettler spoke in a kind of trance-like voice: “You can’t stay because you aren’t real. They tortured you and killed you to make your mother obey them.” A sob caught in Gettler’s throat. “Poor little Peter. One day the world was so good … and the next day it was a horror—full of screams and …”
There rose up before Gettler’s eyes a picture of a child’s body, naked and spread-eagled on a table—the skin laced by the dark weals from a smoking poker. He glared at the memory image as though it had actual substance. And his mind reacted as to the reality—in the same pattern of the original event: it rebelled in revulsion, horror and denial. He put his hands up, pushed against the night.
“No!” The sound was torn out of him, filling his silent audience with a surge of panic.
“You killed him!” screamed Gettler. “What did he do? He was just a child! What could a child do? He was just a child … he was just a child … he was just a child … HE WAS JUST A CHILD!”
And Jeb suddenly felt that he was watching a soul unravel before him. Monti was almost overcome by an urge to whirl, and grab Gettler … to comfort him.
“Nobody’s killed me,” said David. “I’m right here.”
Something shattered the contact with the present, plunged backward in time to the moment of utter denial. He whirled, crushed David against him. A bit of the present filtered back followed by a moment of utter clarity. He spoke tenderly across David’s head, spoke down the pinwheel corridor of time to the distant dead: “I’m sorry, Peter. I should’ve taken you away. I knew they were monsters.” He lapsed into German: “I knew. I knew. I should’ve taken you and your mother to safety.”
Tears scalded Monti’s eyes. She shook her head. The picture of Gettler was becoming plainer in her mind. She spoke past a throat that ached with repressed sobs: “Who killed your son?”
But to Gettler her voice was Gerda’s voice, and it drove him back into hysteria. He raged in German: “It was my fault! We should’ve run away! But I didn’t know they’d suspect me so soon! Gerda! I didn’t know! GERDA! Please forgive me!”
And he repeated himself in English: “Please forgive me, Gerda.”
And again in Spanish, as though he were forced to explore every pattern of communication in his mind for a magic formula that lay the ghost of the past: “Por Dios, Gerda! Tu perdón!”
“Was Gerda your wife?” asked Monti.
Gettler’s hysteria melted. He realized that he had been raving. A painful clarity came over him. He pushed himself away from David, retreated into his corner.
“Did they kill your wife, too?” asked Monti.
And Jeb sensed a feeling like embarrassment within himself. He wanted to shout at Monti: “Christ! Leave him alone!”
Gettler spoke in a low, tired voice: “They … made her … watch. She got the knife from one of them … fell on it.”
Monti shuddered uncontrollably.
“The Third Reich ate them,” said Gettler. “One gulp. Just like they’d never been.”
“You called me Peter,” said David.
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” whispered Gettler.
“Was Peter … was that your boy’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Were you really a professor?” asked Monti.
“Huh!” It was almost a coughing sound from Gettler. “What I was … I was a set of muscles in a labor battalion.”
“But why?” demanded Monti.
“I was an enemy … an enemy of the state.”
“But what did you do?” she asked.
“Monti, leave him alone,” said Jeb.
“No. I like to find out what makes people tick.”
A growl rumbled from Gettler. “You lie!”
“What?”
“You are a torturer,” said Gettler. “You create pain. You hope my pain will force me to betray the secret of life. All you want from me is an answer that will stop your fears. This is why there are sadists.”
“All I wanted to find out is why they killed your wife and child,” said Monti.
“Let the dead bury their dead,” said Gettler.
“Didn’t you even try to get revenge?” she asked.
“Ha-ha!” Gettler roared. “You use a pretty word there.”
“All I mean is …”
“You don’t know what you mean!”
And Jeb thought: She’s set him off again!
“Let’s change the subject,” said Jeb.
“No!” barked Gettler. “She asks about revenge. To her it’s a slap on the wrist. Not even that! His voice lowered. “Me, I understand this word. It goes down into my guts. Revenge! You hang your enemy by his toes. You skin him with hot pliers … with exquisite slowness, you …”
“In heaven’s name!” cried Monti. “What did they do to you?”
“Ahhhhhh … they taught me to appreciate the jungle. This lesson I learned: the philosophy of the jungle. You cannot take that from me!”
“How old was … Peter?” asked David.
How old? Gettler pushed his memory down the path that repelled it. Thirteen? Yes. Thirteen.
“He was thirteen.”
Gettler nodded to himself. Yes. It was Peter’s birthday. I had his present under my arm—the telescope. Yes. I had it under my arm when I came home to … to …
His mind recoiled in panic, bringing back only the image of a face: a man’s face, grinning, heavy-jowled and square beneath the black uniform cap. And the glittering eyes: the sadistically delighted eyes, the little pig eyes with their gleam of power and joy at his horror.
“They rubbed the blood on my hands,” whispered Gettler. “And when I screamed … they laughed.”
“God in heaven!” whispered Monti.
“There’s no God!” muttered Gettler. “In heaven or hell! I’ve seen the proof. There’s no room for our God in a jungle.”
A tortured silence invaded the tiny cabin.
Monti crept close to Jeb, pressed against him for comfort.
“All that kept me alive,” whispered Gettler, “… all that kept me alive was the planning in my mind. What I would do to Oberst Karl Freuchoff when … It is very funny what happened. All the lovely tortures I imagined. For nothing. He was killed in the war. At Stalingrad. Oh, I asked. I looked. And his family … the bombs. All gone. It was very funny …”
David breathed softly, silently: fearful that he would be heard.
Monti shuddered, pressed her face against Jeb’s arm.
“So I went away,” murmured Gettler. “Yes. That is what I did.”
Again, silence closed in upon them … with only the rain and wind outside—the bump-bump-bump of the canoe against the float like a frightened heartbeat.
There was a gradual descent to calmness. Monti drew away, and without thinking, began to hum: low, plaintive. Then she sang—so subdued that the sound almost lost itself in the gusts of wind and rain.
“None but the lonely heart can know my sadness …”
Presently, Gettler took it up, singing in German while hot tears scalded his cheeks.
“Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiss, was ich leide! Allein und abgetrennt von aller Freude! …”
Jeb’s eyes smarted. He rubbed them, thought: My God! No wonder the poor sonofabitch is crazy!