Click to play THAT WHICH WE LEAVE
Read by Grace Cookey-Gam
Jose-Luis brushed aside the thick palm fronds and indicated the plant. "Senor Lucas," he said, eyes glittering, "this may cheer you up. You wish to fly home, my friend? Without a plane?"
Lucas sighed, but leaned closer anyway. The jungle seemed to thrum with energy the closer he got to it; tiny things buzzed and struck out at his face, and the high stink of the vegetation fermented into something almost sweet.
"It looks like Batman's cape," Lucas said. "In the sixties. The purple one."
Jose-Luis nodded, oblivious to Lucas’ irony, as ever. "A good name. You would like to try?" He gripped the petals and, almost immodestly, raised the flower's skirts. A cloud of tiny flies danced around the delicate stem.
Lucas snorted. "Tripping on a boat? In the middle of the jungle? I don't know if that's the best idea, Jose-Luis. Maybe we’ll just have another Beatles singalong?"
Simone, the press officer, a tall woman from Kent who'd misread the brief somewhere and turned up each morning dressed like TE Lawrence, pushed her way through the foliage and joined them. Lucas gritted his teeth. PR; the worst thing about press trips. The junket to the Amazon had seemed such a good idea at the time. Time out of the newsroom at his down-market tabloid; expanded horizons, better class of photo clogging his hard drive. Ever since he’d landed in Iquitos the whole endeavour had borne down on him like a thundercloud.
“What have you found, then?” Simone cried. “Oh! What a lovely shade of purple!”
She snapped a picture, then insisted that Jose-Luis and Lucas pose side-by-side in front of the plant. Lucas made sure he didn't brush against the petals, but crossed his eyes at the instant the camera flashed.
"Don't worry, my friend," Jose-Luis said, patting Lucas on the back. "The flower is not the part which causes the dreams."
"What sort of dreams?"
"You will meet the Tree God. Everyone does."
“I'm tempted,” Lucas said. “Maybe he can do something for my geranium back home?”
“He can do many things.”
Lucas chuckled. “What do they call the plant? What's its disco name?"
"God's Flute."
Lucas snickered. Jose-Luis didn't.
Simone led the tour group through the village like a galumphing Girl Guide, to patronise the locals. Everyone was under thirty, it seemed, and most of the mothers were no more than fifteen. Wide-eyed children clung to them as the other gringos threw sweets and kicked footballs into their midst. Muttering darkly about bread and circuses, Lucas wandered over to the football pavilion, a death-defying structure made out of rope, branches and green wooden benches cracked into foot-long splinters, overlooking a threadbare football field with sagging goalposts.
“I'm going to send some cash for a new set of goals,” Lucas told Jose-Luis. “Imagine pinging one in from thirty yards and it gets disallowed because the crossbar is V-shaped? It's not on.”
Jose-Luis, seemingly oblivious to this comment, said: “You are still curious about God's Flute?”
"Very much so. But I don't think it's a good idea to do it on a boat, in the middle of nowhere. Too many crocodilios."
Later, Jose-Luis and the two other tour guides took them down the ancient river on smart little skiffs, pointing out the wildlife hanging from the trees as the spray from the water doused the passengers. The day was warm but overcast, and not as humid as Lucas had been led to believe. With the greenery all around fringing the brownish river, it could have been an English summer's day.
And then the special effects kicked in. Turkey vultures swooped in, big enough to bend the trees over wherever they landed; screaming monkeys with skull faces threaded through the branches; a bright pink river dolphin breached with a raspberry snort, close enough for Lucas to reach out and touch. Sloths dangled from trees with their racy leopardskin hides, prompting sincere questions as to how they managed to breed. In a reedy cove near the shore they fished for piranha with slivers of meat hooked onto sticks, the lines dancing in the water as the flesh was plucked off. Only Simone actually caught one; a small creature with a bright red belly which fought so hard for life they freed it. Strangest of all was the blue morpho butterfly - a frozen thunderbolt, an electric snowflake, as insouciant as it was spectacular.
As darkness fell the colours of the rainforest bled into the water, billowing over the slick tops of giant lilypads. Lucas, his world-weariness sundered, snapped dozens of photos, scarcely believing such a tableau could exist before his eyes, and not on a cinema screen. The insects and beasts shrieked as the sun slipped away, and where the sunlight left off, the fireflies took over. Green sparks crackled through the air at all points, blending into the perfect starfield above. Leaning back in the boat, head against the gunwale, Lucas had the vertiginous feeling that he was actually looking down into the depths of the water, rather than up into the sky.
When a shooting star arced across the scene in a pure, clear bolt of green, both skiffs whooped like it was Bonfire Night. "No-one in Sidcupwill believe we saw that," one of the older tourists spluttered. "No-one." Lucas rolled his eyes. What was wrong with people? Why couldn't they just shut up and appreciate things?
Shortly afterwards, Simone was stung in the face by a giant black wasp out of a Harryhausen movie. In very British style, she professed to being fine, even after her bottom lip became the size and shape of a generous sausage roll from Gregg's. Once it threatened to inflate to the dimensions of a DFS sofa, the skiffs were turned around and steered back to the pleasure boat while help was sought.
After Simone was sped away to a medical facility near Iquitos by one of the skiffs, the riverboat was berthed for the night close to the village. The low, flickering lights of the shacks were a disturbing counterpoint to the deep black and indigo bruising of the Amazonian night sky.
Jose-Luis came upon Lucas as the Englishman sat astern, smoking in the dark.
"We will be based here for an extra two days," Jose-Luis said, “to allow Simone to be treated. She will be brought back here. The others wish to move on to Iquitos as planned, in another boat. If you are still interested, we could head over to see the shaman tonight."
Lucas tossed his cigarette end into the black water. "If I don't see the Tree God,” he said, “I’ll want to know why.”
The shaman wore a headdress, and also an Arsenal strip, with “MERSON” stencilled on the back. He had the look and build of one of the villagers, small but broad, with good cheekbones offsetting catastrophic teeth. He was happy to pose for pictures and even asked to take a look into Lucas’ eyes. Lucas acquiesced without betraying too much unease.
Lucas’ palms began to sweat while the drink was prepared, a response to the glazed eyes and crazed songs of the shaman and his assistants as the plant was chopped, mixed, tenderised, ground, blended and boiled.
“It's similar to the way we prepare atahuaca,” Jose-Luis told Lucas, soothingly. “You'll enjoy it. Mellow high.”
“You're not doing it?”
“No. I only do it once a year. It's not wise to trouble the Tree God more than that. You’d go crazy, man.”
“Now you tell me.”
The cup was warm when it was passed to Lucas; the brew cloudy like old dishwater. It stung the back of his throat as he sniffed it.
"Oh well... When in Rome. Here goes."
Lucas drank it all in one draught. The shaman applauded.
Wincing, Lucas upended the cup and placed it on top of his head. “We in the jungle, baby,” he said. “Let’s boogie.”
The next morning, or perhaps the one after that, Lucas sat on a tree stump and traced his fingers along a vine, giggling as it twitched and writhed under his fingertips. “All plants are ticklish,” he mused.
Every tone of green seemed so much sharper than before. Above the vine, two pink-toed tarantulas edged up the tree bark, and Lucas wondered (a) if they were real, (b) if they were poisonous, and (c) if they, too, liked to be tickled. Then a pair of bright red eyes opened up on the bark.
"Hello, Lucas," said the Tree God.
Its voice was not imperious. Lucas had expected it to sound like Charlton Heston, or Darth Vader. It was friendly, rich and pleasant, like the mid-morning Scottish DJ Lucas didn't like to admit listening to.
"Hey!” Lucas said, “I'd forgotten I was supposed to meet you.”
He stood up and peered at a face, and yet not a face; an aggregate of vegetation, light and shadow, a gnarled visage framed by leaves. Though the eyes were red, they had the warm tone of a Christmas jumper, not brutal like blood.
“I'm very pleased to meet you,” the Tree God said. “I rarely meet any white men.”
"You're not missing much."
"Please, sit down."
"Very kind."
The Tree God's face moved effortlessly from tree-to-tree, following the shape of the bark like a projection. "Is there anything you would like to ask me?"
"You know, I hadn't thought of anything. All the wonders of the universe to discover, and my mind’s a blank."
"You can ask me anything you like. Be selfish. What would you like to know?"
"I want to know how to get what I want," Lucas said. "I want to succeed. I’m thirty-three years old and I’m earning the same as I did ten years ago, while that PR gimp Simoneis probably on sixty grand a year. For what? Speaking bad Spanish and patting poor people on the head? Guys I went to school with are driving bloody Bentleys. One of them has a wife who's a tennis champion. Their kids are winning spelling bees, for God’s sake… Ah. Sorry, God. No blasphemy intended.”
“I’ll overlook it,” the Tree God said, amiably.
“I want all that. I want the Sunday-supplement restaurant column, the Groucho membership ... I want to be the guy I thought I was going to be.”
"It’s not as difficult as you might imagine,” the Tree God said, soberly. "From my perspective, anyway. It’s not that important, either."
"It is to me," said Lucas with feeling.
"I can give you what you want, such as it is."
"Much obliged. Hey, I really like your forest."
"Now you must give me something."
"Excuse me?"
"You must sacrifice something to me."
The forest static rose in pitch as the Tree God fell silent.
"Sacrifice? What do you mean, like ... blood? A finger?"
"Only you can decide what your sacrifice will be. If you wish to succeed, you must give me something. The two will entwine. I will wait until you decide what to give.”
The shriek of the jungle became unbearable.
Much later, Lucas sipped a cup of tea proffered by Jose-Luis – not without suspicion – and shivered beneath a blanket. His clothes were ragged, and even the villagers were horrified at his pallor. The pleasure boat was berthed, Simone had responded well to antihistamines, and the remaining party was ready to continue its journey downriver.
"You called out many things," Jose-Luis told him. "One of the words I heard was 'sacrifice'. Did the Tree God ask you to give him something?"
Lucas smiled. “You're very chatty about the Tree God, all of a sudden.”
"A request for a sacrifice is a great thing. It means the Tree God has bestowed a favour upon you. I will not ask what the favour was. But I will ask ... what did you sacrifice?"
"I'll tell you," Lucas said, draining the last of the tea. "I was thinking about giving him the little toe on my left foot. The nail went black after I did the marathon and it's never been the same. But then I had a better idea."
Simone appeared on the deck, waving frenziedly at Lucas, a sticking plaster pulsating across her lower lip.
Lucas waved back, smiling. "I gave him my anger, Jose-Luis. My bitterness. Every bit of poison in my heart. I laid it all down for him. And he was very, very pleased."
Jose-Luis laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Lucas fixed his silly hat to his head, and followed his guide to the jetty in the clear, bright Amazon morning.
(c) Pat Black, 2014
Pat Black is a Glasgow-born journalist and author living in Yorkshire. When he's not driving his missus to distraction with all the typing, he enjoys hillwalking, fresh air and the natural world, and can often be found being polite to livestock in the Lake District.
Grace Cookey-Gam graduated from the City Lit in 2013 after innocently signing up for "just one" radio drama course. Titania and Hippolyta, numerous short films, voiceovers and roleplay for UN recruiters have followed. She also holds a BMus from Birmingham University, is a classically trained soprano, teacher and choral animateur.
Comments