Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

admit that he could do with a bit of bodily maintenance. “I can’t . . . uh . . . End of Time said. . . . There’s this. . . . Listen, I’ve been thinking that I might ask the Nacanaca studs to carry me back. In the hammock. Like a hunting trophy. A roll-up. Sedan chair sort of thing.”

“Really, Switters! How imperial.” Smithe laughed, but he, too, suddenly looked troubled, as if he had a premonition that things were about to go bad in a dramatic manner. “Are you that short on stamina?”

“No, but . . .”

“Then buck up, old boy. Show us some of the heralded Yankee spunk.”

Switters propped himself up on one elbow but stirred no further. The hammock swung gently, to and fro. “This is absolutely silly, I’m aware of that, but . . .”

“Do go on.”

“I’m under, I guess, a kind of taboo.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Switters sighed, and for a second he looked less anxious than sheepish. “Well, End of Time told me, right before he left, that I had to pay a price for having been shown the secrets of the cosmos. At first I thought he wanted money, like almost everybody else on this pathological planet, and I objected because I’ve got barely enough cash to pay my hotel bill and my river crew, and am counting on Mr. Plastic to take care of me back in Lima. But that wasn’t the sort of price he had in mind.”

“No?”

“No. He said that henceforth I must never allow my feet to touch the ground. I can stand on top of things, as I understood it, but I can’t stand on the floor or the earth. And if I ever do, if my feet touch the ground, I will instantly fall over dead.”

“The bleeding bugger.”

“Yeah. So what do you make of it? He’s playing with my head, right? I mean, it’s silly, ridiculous.”

“Oh, without question. Quite silly. Load of bosh.”

“I was hoping you’d concur. As an experienced anthropologist, you must have come across this kind of thing before. I know, for example, that West Africa is crawling with curses and taboos—but there’re also a lot of credible witnesses who swear that they’re real, they’ve seen them work. That’s why I was inclined to err on the side of caution, to be perfectly honest.” He cloned the sheepish smile.

“Righto,” said Smithe. He paused, as if pondering. “Fascinating, though. There’s a quite similar prohibition in Irish folklore. Should a mortal ever stumble upon a fairy hill and be allowed to fraternize with the fairies, watch their dances and so forth, then the chap is warned that his feet may never thereafter touch the earth, under penalty of death. Evans-Wentz wrote of this, as I recall. Stories abound of pixilated Irishmen who, out of fear, spent the remainder of their lives on horseback.”

“Superstition, of course?”

“Of course. The Irish.”

“Flapdoodle?”

“Don’t rag me. I’ve been told more than once that my manner of speech is a trifle old-fashioned. Blame it on my school. Eleanor does. But you’re quite right. Flapdoodle. As a matter of fact, End of Time, that scalawag, placed a comparable taboo on me.”

“No kidding?” For the first time in that conversation, Switters looked relieved. “The same taboo as my own?”

“Uh, no, not precisely, though promising identical consequences.”

“And you’re alive and ambulating. That bodes well for me.” When Smithe didn’t respond, Switters asked, “Doesn’t it?”

“Um.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Oh, it should. It should. Yes.”

For reasons not entirely clear, Switters felt his heart sinking. He made an effort to nail Potney with his infamous glare. “Let’s have it, pal.”

“Sorry?”

“Your taboo, goddamn it! Let’s have it.”

Smithe’s wan smile was even more sheepish than Switters’s own. “A bit off the bean, I’m afraid.” He shuffled his flip-flops.

“Never mind the fucking bean!” Although still basically on his back, he managed to look menacing.

“If you must know,” said Smithe, clearing his throat, “and there’s little reason why you shouldn’t, End of Time warned me that as penalty for having journeyed with him to so-called secret places, I would face instant death—in much the mode you, yourself, described—were I ever to touch another man’s penis.”

Switters didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He lay there, mute, listening as the creak of the hammock twine blended with the rustling of jungle foliage on all sides of them.

“Rubbish, obviously,” said Smithe, trying to sound blase. “One must contend with a sometimes maddening lack of rational—”

“You’ve tested it?” Switters interrupted.

“When dealing with the primitive mind—”

“So, you’ve tested it?”

“Why, no, no,” Smithe almost sputtered. “Naturally, I haven’t actually put it to the test. That’s silly.”

“But you’re supposed to be a scientist. Were you afraid to test it?”

“Fear has had nothing to do with it. I might have tested it, probably would have, but, well, you know, the nature of the thing involved.”

“You mean the penis thing?”

“Of course, I do. I jolly well do mean that. What do you take me for? I’m a married man. Christ!”

“Easy, big fellow. No inference intended. But you’ll agree, will you not, that scientists must occasionally undertake experiments they find personally distasteful? You speak of rationality, yet how can you for a damn second rationally contend that this taboo is rubbish when you haven’t subjected it to experiment?”

Smithe snorted.

“You’ve got to test it, pal. For your sake as well as my own—and I can’t deny I have a stake in this. In the outcome, I mean.”

“You’re not suggesting? . . . Surely.”

“Hey, it’s not my cup of tee-hee, either. I’m as straight as you are. Probably straighter. From what I hear, your lads in the fancy schools of Merry Olde can get pretty chummy with one another when the lights are low.”

“Of all the biased—”

“Okay, forget I said that. It’s no big deal one way or the other. What’s the big deal? Women don’t have this problem. They’re more evolved.” He paused. “R. Potney Smithe. What’s the R for?”

“I fail to see . . .”

“What’s the R for?”

“Reginald.”

“Reginald. Okay. You very easily could have gone by Reggie. Couldn’t you have? Reggie Smithe. A moniker mundane by any standard. But, no, you elected to be called Potney. A fairly brave choice there, pal. I admire you for it. I’m serious. I mean it. Says something about your character. And here you are in this jungle juju joint when you could have been snapping petits fours with the vicar of Kidderminster or some damn such. You’ve got guts.” (Switters spoke in the abstract, of course, since the image of guts as an actual physical mass was seldom permitted to invade his consciousness.)

“I fail to see . . .”

“Come on, Pot. Let’s get it over with.”

Smithe glanced around him, as if looking for support, but the long, narrow, platformed room was empty except for the two of them.

“Just a touch. One brief touch, that’s it. You needn’t grab hold of anything. I’d object if you did. Strenuously.”

Smithe’s hide, at all times richly hued, looked now as if it had been rolled in paprika. He seemed on the verge of spontaneous combustion. “Down there,” he said, nodding his teddy bear head in the direction of the firepit and