Ford said, 'You're the one who spoke of his intelligence. You think he'd try such a thing if he felt he would fail? When he comes, he'll be prepared. Maybe his friends, the Soviets, will provide him with planes and helicopters. The mountains aren't going to help you much if Zacul has enough helicopters.'
Rivera sat silently for a time contemplating his beer. He had plainly already considered the possibility, and it troubled him. Ford said, 'Zacul knows you're a patient man. He knows you'll wait. But every day you wait, you give Zacul more time to prepare for a successful assault on your camp. '
Rivera looked at him. 'It is possible.'
'It's probable.'
'Yes, probable. So what do you propose as an alternative?'
Ford took out the map of Masagua, the one with Zacul's probable camp location marked, and spent fifteen minutes outlining two specific strategies. When he was done, Rivera remained hunched over the map. Tomlinson stirred uncomfortably when Rivera said, 'You are not talking about a battle, here.' He looked at Ford, and spoke in Spanish. 'This is an assassination.'
Ford could not sleep that night; could not sleep, probably, because he was anxious to be gone. He was anxious to find out if Rafe's son was still alive, anxious to be done with this business in Masagua so he could get back to Sanibel, his stilt house, his work, and the life that he had once hoped would be simple and without encumbrances. That simple life, the one recommended by Thoreau, was an unrealistic goal, though—not that he had ever wanted it; not really. He had wanted a simpler life, not a simple life, but now even that was proving impossible. In a modern world, only a person who was absolutely selfish could live an absolutely simple life, and only a hermit could live free of the personal and moral obligations inherent in taking one's own existence and the existence of others seriously.
Tomlinson would have something to say about that; yeah, Tomlinson could spend an hour talking about the obligations of existence.
Ford stood in the darkness beneath a huge guanacaste tree. He wore khaki fishing shorts and the blue chambray shirt. It was cool after the evening rain. The moon was up, and there was the smell of burning wood: the cooking fires of the soldiers. He had a small flashlight, and he walked from the line of tents toward the dense foliage bordering the cloud forest. There was a copse of wild plantain trees, with their large bananalike leaves and bizarre, colorful inflorescences, growing above a pool that was the confluence of several mountain rivulets. Touched by the flashlight's beam, each big leaf became a separate and living entity, each leaf the possible host or habitat of a variety of insects and animals, and Ford studied the leaves, trying to relax. The best way to see the jungle, he knew, was from above; the best way to learn about it, though, was from below, one leaf at a time, because each plant was a microcosm of the great green whole.
By crouching he could see up and inside one of the plantain leaves, and there was a colony of small bats roosting: disk-winged bats, their leathery wings pulsing with the regularity of lungs. The sudden light stunned them for a long instant and then they were gone in a panic, their eerie shapes silhouetting against the moon. The leaf that had held the bats leaned out over the water, and Ford placed his foot at the edge of the pool so he could get a closer look. There were beetles feeding on striations of the leaf, some kind of heliconia-feeder, but Ford didn't know which kind. Nearby, frogs began to trill again, and Ford used the flashlight to find them: red-eyed and brown tree frogs. It was the mating season, and several of the females had smaller males clinging to their backsides. That made Ford search for something else, and it didn't take him long to find the glutinous deposits of frog's eggs stuck to the undersides of the leaves. Some of the eggs had already matured into tadpoles, and the viscid masses hung in the light like icicles, dripping life into the water below . . . where two—no, four—cat-eyed snakes waited, feeding on the globs of tadpoles in a frenzy.
Ford watched the snakes feeding, taking an odd pleasure in knowing that this same drama was going on all around him; the same cycle of copulation, birth, and death; the same earnest theater being played out by jaguars, dung flies, tapirs, leaf-cutter ants, crocodiles, boas, and men throughout the millions of acres of jungle darkness.
A twig snapped behind him and Ford turned to see Juan Rivera standing in the shadows. He was bare chested and smelled of soap, as if he had just finished showering. Behind him, the face of a teenage Mayan girl peered out through the flap of Rivera's tent. She called the general's name softly, but her voice had the flavor of a command.
Rivera held up one finger as if asking her for a little more time, then looked at Ford.
Ford switched off the light; switching from one world to another. 'A new wife, General?' He stepped away from the water and walked until he was beside Rivera.
'Ah, Marion, you should not make sport of me. I have only one true wife, the mother of my children, the woman I love. But out here in the jungle one must find comfort where one can. This girl who waits for me in the tent—' He nudged Ford, whispering like a confession. '—she makes demands of me. Unrealistic demands. Then has a way of smiling when I cannot fulfill her every whim that makes me furious. I have threatened to send her back to her parents in Masagua City. Many times I have threatened this, and I am not a man who makes threats lightly.' He lowered his voice even more. 'But in some strange way her smile makes me even more determined to please her. Is that not odd? She makes demands of me and sometimes even presumes to tell me how to run my army. There is a demon in that little girl, I tell you. A demon, and she is bossy, too. So many times I have had to remind her who is the general and who is the simple village girl. Even then she just smiles. Yet I let her stay.'
Ford said
'What man of the world does not know it?' Rivera looked at Ford, shaking his head as if the burden of this unknowable thing was understood now that they had shared it. 'But you, you are still not married, Marion?'
'No, not yet. Perhaps one day. I would like to have a child.'
'Do you know why I think you have never married? I think it is because your heart belongs to one you cannot have.' A statement that would have sounded sappy in English, but which came off as fatherly in Spanish.
'My heart belongs to one I cannot have?' As if the whole idea were too dramatic to be taken seriously.
'It would not be so surprising if you had listened closely to the gossip when you lived here. There was much talk about Pilar Balserio, my friend. No, do not give me that evil look. It was not that kind of talk. It was the talk people make when they admire a person. It was well known that she ran the government for a time. People loved her for the good things she did; for her kindness and her wisdom. Even though her husband forced her into seclusion, the talk continued. It was said she went to live in the convent across from the Presidential Palace. It was said she went there not because of her husband, but because she had fallen in love with a foreigner, a gringo, a man with hair the color of Quetzalcoatl's.'
Ford said, 'You never seemed like the superstitious type to me, Juan. Nor a man who gives credence to Mayan legends.'
'I am not superstitious. Nor have I ever believed someone from outside our country will come to save us—but I am a Maya. I am a student of our culture, as is Pilar Balserio. The old stories are important even if they are not true. I remember that she spent many months doing research at a Mayan site by a lake in the mountains.' Rivera was smiling. 'You only recently mentioned the name of that lake; the lake near which you feel Zacul has his camp. Yes, Eye of God, that is the lake's name. She lived on the lake at about the same time you and I first met. Remember? It was before your government sent you to work in Masagua City, and you lived on the shore of the lake in that thatched cabana, the one with the stone cooking place and the dock where we drank beer. You said you were there to study the sharks.'
'I was studying the sharks.'
'You also fell in love with Pilar Balserio. No, do not deny it. I felt very dense when I heard the rumors later. When you two were together those few times, I saw no sign of love in your faces. Usually a man can tell. Even when the woman is married.'
'That was a long time ago, Juan.'
'Yes. But with a woman such as that, the heart scars but it does not heal. It makes me sad, thinking of your predicament. For you, of course, there has been no other woman.'
Ford was chuckling. 'You are a romantic, Juan. All of you Latins are romantics. Even you Maya Latins. There have been plenty of other women. '
