The Orchids
Thomas H. Cook
— Goethe
Part I
YOU CANNOT LEARN the nature of man from the sunrise at El Caliz. It begins with the merest suggestion of light, then a shimmering incision slices along the ridges of the far mountains, outlining them in a thin, silver band. From this band, a wave of Prussian blue rises slowly, brightening the upper sky and yet allowing it to retain the muted impenetrability of porcelain. The urns of antiquity had this contradictory delicacy, an opaque flatness that was at the same time vivid, almost diaphanous, and as elusive as romance.
When the first wave of heat strikes the earth, it sears the moisture still clinging to the palmetto leaves, and the river receives its cue to run. Throughout the night it has appeared motionless, a mute, dark pool, turbid as spilled blood. Now it seems to awaken, inhaling the first warm air, drawing in its sides, then releasing them, the waters lapping against the mud bank in small waves, rhythmic as a pulse. Mist rises from the water, leaching the darkness from its body and leaving the surface a cool, impenetrable green, smooth as polished marble. For a moment a curious stillness pervades as the mountain, river, and jungle harmonize in the primeval quiet. But this comforting natural camaraderie is all illusion, for by noon the sun will have turned the mountains a smoldering pumice and bleached the sky to the color of living bone.
Gazing to the left from my verandah, I note that my companion, Dr. Ludtz, is again making his way down to the little sepulcher he has built for himself over the years. From the beginning, he has been continually altering its shape. Unsatisfied with the original, solidly medieval structure of gray stone and dark mortar, he has obsessively beautified and adorned it, hacking at the encroaching liana vine or adding some crude architectural refinement. The result of all his labor has been to transform its earlier modesty into a grotesque rococo hideousness, a monument made in the image of its maker. Perhaps Dr. Ludtz would have been better served to dedicate the whole of his life to this monotonous reshaping of inert matter. But as he did not do so, he can now relate with some detail the look of drowsy, childlike vacancy that rises in a man’s face after chloroform has been injected directly into his heart.
The heat is building now, smothering El Caliz under a broadloom of sun. Dr. Ludtz moves slowly, ponderously, as though the very air were gelatin. The trees press against the sky, burnished to its surface. Even the river seems tamped down into its bed, and only the little family of capuchin monkeys cavorting mindlessly in the trees across the river appears to be unburdened. Though they live in the limbs, they do not choose to die in them. Instead, as death approaches, they climb down to earth and squat upon their haunches, bony knees hugged under their drooping chins, until they fall forward like toppled statues. We could have used monkeys, but we didn’t. There was no need; we had many creatures of our own design.
Dr. Ludtz has reached his altar, where he kneels, his ankles half-buried in the grasses he periodically shovels under. His shirt billows out in a sudden breeze and he looks around fearfully, as if touched on the arm by a stranger. He still believes that someday they will come for him, that the indefatigable Arnstein will finally locate him and dispatch his commandos to take him back for trial.
“They’ve gotten most of the leaders now,” he said to me frantically one night when he had mistaken the chattering of crickets for the sound of boots creeping through the undergrowth. “They’ll get down to people like us soon. They’ll never give up.” A few days later, he told me that if the commandos did come to El Caliz, he did not intend to use a gun on himself, like the Minister of Light, but cyanide, like the Minister of Air.
My servant, Juan, passes Dr. Ludtz without looking at him. He has come from the mud-floored hovel he calls his home. Many years ago I offered to allow him and his family to take up residence in the main house, particularly during the rainy season. He refused, claiming that the incessant breeze of the ceiling fans inflamed his joints. That was a lie. Juan fears this house as an abode of devils. There is too much strangeness in it, too many eerie odors comprised of the reality of medical potions and the memory of edelweiss.
Juan tips his ragged straw hat as he passes me. He has pulled most of the buttons from his shirt, and it parts loosely over his brown chest. His pants, rolled at the cuff, hang just above his ankles. His shoes are heavy with dried mud.
I rise and grasp the railing of the verandah. “Buenos dias, Juan.”
Juan stops and turns slowly to face me. “Buenos dias, Don Pedro.”
Casually, so as not to frighten him, I ask Juan what he intends to do today. He takes his hat from his head and holds it at his side. Flowing behind him, the river seems to pierce Juan’s body like an enormous shaft. In Spanish, he tells me that he is going down to the greenhouse to tend my orchids. Some must be trimmed. Some must be repotted. He fears that some evil force has fallen upon them. A dream has warned him of it during the night.
The blight. Juan’s evil force. The fungal spores that consume the orchids, choking them in yellow powders. I tell Juan that if any flower has been attacked, then it must be cut and burned. If only the sheaths have been harmed, then they must be treated with sulfur or mercuric chloride.
Juan nods, then says that the the orchids cannot breathe, that they need more air.
I shake my head. “No.” Orchids may die of too much ventilation.
Juan looks at me curiously and asks if perhaps they are thirsty.
I tell him that the orchids should not go into the night with moisture on the petals or the sheaths.
Juan stares at me evenly, and though he does not respond, I can hear the tumblers in his mind. He believes that it is all a plot, that I am lying to him, that my intention is to destroy the orchids. He suspects me of being a manifestation of the evil force. His wife has told him so.
I dismiss Juan with a wave of the hand and watch him trudge down the small embankment toward the greenhouse. The orchids have become his passion, his religion. He sees angels in the Bow Bells and Miltonias and finds faith in transfiguration with the regal Dowiana. They are everything to him; and to me, nothing.
When I first came to El Caliz, I tried to find beauty in the jungle’s splendor, hoping to discover in its natural majesty something that would whisper of its creator. I looked into the shimmering streams and the damp caverns. I sat on cliffs and dove to river bottoms. But in the end, all I found was mute existence, and one thing became for me no more beautiful than another. And so I decided to become a creator myself. I had Juan build the greenhouse, and for years I nurtured the orchids, massaged and syringed them, trimmed and repotted them, diagnosed their maladies and sat with them through the night, trying to lose myself in the luxury of their perfume. Now I have passed their care to Juan, who prays for their recovery and guards them against my malediction.
In the distance I see Juan enter the greenhouse, glancing suspiciously in my direction. Amid the unquestioning silence and beauty of the orchids, amid the steamy, comforting clouds that enfold them, he is at home in paradise.
I ease myself back into my chair. There is no dew left on the leaves now. I can see the rippling heat rise from the ground, then curl toward the river, sucking at it like a thirsty mouth. I shift slightly and feel the old pain in my
