“Oh, Moie!” she said. “God, I wonder what happened to him. Do you think he’s okay?”
“Perfectly fine, I should think. Aren’t you, Moie?” As he said this, he looked over his shoulder into the shadows in the corner of the room by the door. She followed his glance and saw the Indian squatting there. The sight startled her, and she spilled some of her champagne.
“Jesus! Where did he come from? I didn’t even hear the door open.”
“No. Moie is only seen when he wants to be. One example of his particular mode of intelligence, perhaps.” In Quechua, Cooksey said, “I’m happy to see you. How are you getting on in your tree?”
“Well. It’s a good tree, although no one has spoken to it in a long time. And are you well, and her?”
“We are both exceedingly fine. Would you care for some champagne?” He dangled the bottle, and Moie stood and came closer. “What is this?” he asked, sniffing it.
“It’s similar to pisco, but with water added to it, and also air.”
“Then thank you, but I must not. Jaguar is back in the sky tonight.”
“And can you not take pisco when the moon is full?”
“No. He doesn’t like it, and he may need me tonight or the next day or the next. After that I will be happy to drink your pisco with you.”
“What will he do with you? If he comes.”
“Anything he wishes to do, of course. You shouldn’t ask foolish questions, for you are not entirely a fool.” He turned his attention to Jenny, who smiled at him and said, “Hey, Moie, what’s up?”
He ignored this and said to Cooksey, “The Firehair Girl seems happier than she was before. I see she has drunk a lot of your pisco-with-air, but also there is something else. She’s found something she lost, I think.”
“Yes, that’s a way to say it.”
“Yes, and I can see the shadow of her death, almost as if she were a live person. She wishes to do puwis with you, Cooksey.”
“Surely not!”
“Yes, because I have seen it in her dreams. And also in your dreams. Will you take her into your hammock?”
“It’s not our custom, Moie.”
“I believe you, for I see the women come to take their children from under my tree, and they all have only one child, or sometimes two. Yet you have so much food. Each should have ten, and all fat ones, too. the wai’ichuranan have forgotten how to do it, I think.”
“No, it’s all they think about. A great deal of puwis is done among the wai’ichuranan, I can assure you.”
“No, I meant they have forgotten how to draw the spirits of children from the sun into the bodies of their women. Anyway, you will pull her into your hammock, or perhaps she will pull you into hers, as I have heard is also done among you. She has broad hips and heavy breasts and will bear many healthy sons for the clan of Cooksey. But I came to ask you if you have heard anything about the Puxto, if they have stopped the cutting and the road.”
“They have not stopped, Moie. They will not, I fear.”
Moie was silent for a while, then made a peculiar gesture that was like a shrug and also like a despairing slump. “That’s too bad,” he said in Quechua and then added something in his own language that Cooksey didn’t understand. Without another word he went out the door. Cooksey and Jennifer followed him into the garden. Moie had his head back, staring at the full moon, now tangled in the upper boughs of one of the tall casuarinas that edged the property.
“What will you do now, Moie?” Cooksey asked.
“I will go back to my tree and wait,” said the Indian, and he turned away to go. But then he paused and addressed Cooksey again. “There is one thing I have discovered. There are wai’ichuranan who can call tichiri. Did you know that?”
“I don’t know whattichiri is, Moie.”
“I will explain. There is the world below the moon and the world above the moon. Below the moon we men have our lives, and above the moon are the dead ones and the spirits and demons, and so on. We jampirinan can travel between these worlds, and also the aysiri, the sorcerers, and when you sleep the paths are open, too, and from that comes dreaming. Everyone knows this. But what only a few know is that a guardian can be called, and tied into a t’naicu ”-here he touched the little bundle that hung from his neck-“so that the dreams of the one who wears it can’t be entered, or not entered easily. This guardian is called the tichiri. ”
“And you found one of these guarding one of us?”
“I did. A little girl. We would think it was a waste to guard a little girl so strongly. Who cares what a girl dreams? But this is an unusual girl, I think. Jaguar has her in his mind for some reason. So, tell me, can you call a tichiri and make a t’naicu in this way?”
“I can’t,” said Cooksey. “But many parents pray that their children will have sweet dreams. Perhaps that’s what you found.”
“Pray? You mean to Jan’ichupitaolik? No, this was something else. I will have to think about this more.” With that he trotted silently into the shadows.
“What was all that about?” Jenny asked.
“Oh, you know, just a chat,” said Cooksey lightly.
“It didn’t sound like a chat,” said Jennifer. The champagne had made her bold. “It sounded serious. Where’s he been living since he ran off?”
“In a tree. He seems very content. And yes, it was serious. I think he’s going to kill someone tonight.”
“Oh, God! Who is he going to?”
“I imagine one of the men he thinks is responsible for cutting down his forest.”
“Can’t you stop him?”
“Not I. In any case, he doesn’t think he’s doing it himself. He thinks the man in the moon does it, or Jaguar, as he calls his god.” Cooksey looked up at the sky. “I suppose it does look rather like a jaguar, depending on what you bring to it. Some people say it’s an old woman with a sack on her back. In some parts of Europe it’s a loaded wagon, Charles’s Wain, the treasure of Charlemagne.”
“But that’s just, you know, imaginary. Isn’t it?”
“That would depend on what you meant by imaginary. Or imagination, for that matter. You and I were just speaking of intelligence, and there you have a good example. Our imagination works with our particular kind of intelligence to produce televisions and nuclear bombs. His works to allow visits to other people’s dreams and the manipulation of mass and energy in entirely different ways to how we do it. You remember his footprint? My mother always swore she’d seen a shaman walk flat-footed up the side of a vertical tree as if he were walking on a street, and she was not, I can assure you, an easy person to fool. Moie imagines, so to speak, that he can turn himself into a jaguar, and perhaps in some strange way he can.”
Jennifer felt a sickish laugh bubble out of her throat. “That’s wack,” she said, and then recalled what had happened at the jaguar cage in the zoo and was silent.
He drained his glass and said, “I think there’s a bit more left in the bottle. Would you like some?”
“No, thanks. I’m pretty dizzy as it is.”
He nodded. “Well, then, I’ll say good night. I’m a bit unsteady myself, and I want to get some reading done before I pass out. I’ll leave the workroom light on for you.”
When he had gone, Jennifer went down the path to the pool and sat on the low stone bench placed at the foot of the pond. The moon had topped the tree, she saw. It wobbled brightly on the surface of the dark water and turned the little waterfall into a stream of silver. She stared at the moonlit ripples, feeling strange, and it wasn’t just the wine. She reached for an explanation and found that she hadn’t the words, but…it was just that she couldn’t simply let go and sink into the thoughtless depths as she had her whole life, there was stuff in her head now: that wasp and the business of naming it after her, and Cooksey’s whole story and his wife and the idea of a mode of life she had not imagined existed. No, that was wrong: she knew it existed, had seen it all on the TV, but now she had been invited into it in Real Life, and she found herself quaking in the doorway. Flowers and fish were not going to be enough after today, and she found herself racked with longing for what she had been and at the same time with yearning for another and still terrifying life. But I’m too dumb, she thought vainly: her hidey-hole
