Life During Wartime (30 page)

‘You shouldn’t be suspicious of me,’ he said, and understanding how ludicrous that statement was, yet that he had meant every word, he laughed. ‘Look, I’ve been pretty fucked up. I, uh …’

‘I know how it is,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I know what they can do to you.’

That hadn’t been his meaning, but he went along with her. ‘Yeah.’ He let a couple of seconds leak away. ‘Why’d you desert?’

She continued to examine the trigger guard. ‘I learned things that made me realize what I was doing was a lie. That made the revolution meaningless.’

Mingolla thought about Alvina and Hermeto. ‘The struggle,’ he said, and gave a dismal laugh.

‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ She smacked the rifle stock against the table.

‘I guess not. It’s just pathetic the way people keep ramming their heads into a brick wall.’

Her face tightened. ‘And what would you do?’

‘It’s not my business. I got roped into this war.’

‘But not into Psicorps.’

‘That’s true, but if I had a choice now, I would desert. I’m tired of killing, of people trying to kill me.’ He was borne away into memories of Coffee, de Zedeguí, and the rest, and understood the full measure of their deaths. He felt he had been stripped of some armor that had enabled him to withstand the aftereffects of what he’d done. ‘I just wanna get outta here.’

‘Back to America!’ She made the prospect sound obscene.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing … if you can live with what you’ve seen, if you stuff your knowledge of oppression under a pillow and go back to painting little pictures.’ She snatched up the rifle and stood. ‘I can’t take this. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

‘What can’t you take?’

‘Your self-absorption,’ she said, ‘Your ability to look away from whatever offends your eye. I’m beginning to think it’s a national characteristic.’

‘It’s not my war.’

Her turn to laugh. ‘Oh, yes it is! But you have to decide whose side you’re on.’ She paused in the doorway and – her back toward him – said, ‘I was going to let the soldiers kill you.’

‘Why?’ he said after a silence.

‘You were after me. You might have killed me.’

‘How’d you know I was tracking you?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

She started through the door.

‘What stopped you?’ he called after her. ‘What the hell stopped you?’

Seconds later, fluttering ribbons of butterflies convoyed Nate into the hut. They settled on the roof poles, and with similar
precision, Nate settled on the edge of the chair. His eyes probed Mingolla, and he gave a satisfied nod. ‘I’m thinking it will be all right now.’

Distracted, wishing he hadn’t acted like such an asshole with Debora, Mingolla said, ‘What’s that?’

‘Everything.’ The simplicity of the answer seemed to exploit a simplicity in Nate’s features that Mingolla hadn’t noticed before. He held up a hand, and two butterflies drifted down to decorate his forefinger. ‘ “Twixt purple shadow and gold of sun,” ’ he said, ‘“two brown butterflies lightly settle, sleepily swing.” ’

The village, a fly-swarmed Indian place littered with dung and mango rinds, was strung out along a bend in a jade-green river and consisted of about thirty huts, all less grand than Nate’s. The high walls of vegetation hemming it in against the river were a weave of lush greens, and by contrast the huts were made of blackened poles lashed together with rotting twine; they were wrecked-looking, pitched at every angle like the remnants of unsuccessful bonfires. Pale smoke trickled from holes in the roofs, and the way the plumes were attenuated and pulled apart by the breeze, drifting into invisibility, they appeared to be responsible for the gradual whitening of the sky. Hammocks were strung inside the huts, plumped full, with children’s faces peeping over the sides; chickens and pigs wandered in and out of doors. Except for a few flattened cans and sun-bleached beer labels on the ground, it might have been a settlement of the Dark Ages.

Mingolla strolled through the village, hunting for Debora, and unable to find her, he stood on the bank, watching the sun burn off streamers of ghost-gray mist. Nate joined him, butterflies clumped in patches on his trousers, others circling above. For want of anything better to do, Mingolla tried to strike up a conversation. ‘Debora tells me you’re a journalist,’ he said.

‘I was,’ Nate said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Mingolla said after waiting a reasonable length of time for more detail. ‘A correspondent?’

Nate seemed to return from a mental vacation. ‘Yes, I was a war correspondent. An occupation with little focus these days.’

Weary of puzzles, Mingolla didn’t attempt to unravel the
statement. ‘What’s your last name? Maybe I’ve read your stuff.’

‘Lubove.’

Mingolla sounded the name, heard a familiar resonance. ‘Shit! You’re the guy did the articles on the guy who paints the ruins … the War Painter!’

‘Yes.’

‘You ever find out who he is?’

‘I learned he was Scandinavian. A Dane. But as to his specific identity, no luck there. Have you seen his work?’

‘Just stuff on the news and photographs. Did they manage to save any of it?’

‘Not to my knowledge. His boobytraps are most ingenious. Who would have thought that the profession of curator would have become so hazardous?’

‘Yeah, I saw one of the murals blow up on TV.’ Mingolla kicked at a clump of mud, listened to it plop into the water. ‘Why’re you and Debora going to Panama?’

‘She’ll tell you when she’s ready.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Busy,’ said Nate. ‘She asked me to accompany you this morning.’

‘She said we were gonna talk.’

‘Then you will … but not this morning.’ Nate waved toward the jungle. ‘I thought we’d go for a walk and visit a friend of mine.’

‘Terrific!’ Mingolla threw up his hands. ‘Let’s pack a lunch! Make a picnic out of it!’ Butterflies eddied before his face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go for a walk.’

They set out along a trail that ran downhill through dense growths of bamboo and palmetto, and Mingolla asked whom they were going to visit.

‘God,’ said Nate.

Mingolla inspected him for signs of insanity, then wondered if a walk was the jungle equivalent of taking someone for a ride.

‘Actually, it’s only a computer,’ said Nate. ‘But he makes an intriguing case for his divinity.’

‘A computer … what kinda computer?’

‘An experimental model in one of your helicopters. It was shot down by a Russian missile, and the pilot was killed. But the missile didn’t explode, just penetrated the computer deck. The computer cannibalized the missile for parts and repaired itself. According to it, this syncretic process gave birth to the incarnation.’

‘And you buy that?’

‘Not an easy question to answer,’ said Nate. ‘For a long time I believed only in the god that rose over Tel Aviv one morning. But now, well … why don’t you judge for yourself.’

By the time they reached the crash site – a sizable ferny hollow ringed by granite boulders – the sun was fully up, and in the fresh morning light it had the look of a place touched by divinity. The helicopter was slim, black, cigar shaped, and had not fallen to earth, but was suspended about twenty feet above the floor of the hollow by a webbing of vines and shattered branches; with its crack-webbed cockpit eyes and buckled rotors, it showed in semisilhouette against the low sun like a mystical embryo, the unborn child of a gigantic alien race. The rents in the canopy caused by its passage had grown back, and blades of greenish gold light played over the metal surfaces, alive with refracted dust and moisture, shifting with the action of the breeze. Epiphytes fountained from the rotors, dripping crimson and lavender blooms, and butterflies appeared to materialize from the dazzles on the cockpit plastic, glowing flakes of white gold. At certain angles it was possible to see the skeleton of the pilot still strapped into his harness, but this reminder of death did not detract from the beauty of the hollow, rather effected a formal signature like a cartouche at the bottom of a painted scroll. It seemed less a geographic location than the absolute moment of a place, a landscape that brought to mind the works of Jan van Eyck, a mystic pastoral scene where at any second springs might burst from the rock and birds acquire the power of human speech.

They stood atop a boulder from which they could look down into the hole punched by the Russian missle ten feet below, at the glittering blue and green telltales of the computer inside the chopper. ‘What happens now?’ Mingolla asked, and Nate put a finger to his lips.

‘Good morning, Nate,’ said a dry amplified voice from the helicopter. ‘Are you feeling well?’

‘Quite well, thank you.’

‘And David,’ said the computer. ‘It’s good to meet you at last.’

Though Mingolla assumed that the computer’s identification was based on sensor readings, on information received from Debora and Nate, he was disconcerted by the cool immensity of the voice. ‘It’s mutual,’ he said, feeling foolish. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Kind of you to ask,’ said the computer. ‘To tell you the truth, things are shaping up nicely. I expect we will soon have a resolution to the war, and …’

Mingolla laughed. Really?’

‘I take it, David, that you have been apprised of my nature and doubt my authenticity.’

‘You take it right.’

‘And what do you think I am?’

‘A freak accident with a voice.’

The computer emitted a mellow chuckle. ‘I’ve heard less apt definitions of God, although perhaps none less flattering. Of course the same definition might be applied to man.’

‘I won’t argue that,’ said Mingolla, beginning to appreciate the computer’s affability.

‘Aha!’ said the computer. ‘I believe I may be dealing with a practicing existentialist, a man who – in the vernacular – plays philosophical hardball, denying sentiment except when it coincides with his notions of romantic fatalism. Am I correct?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Most assuredly, I do know. But this is a conversation, David. And I doubt you would find it entertaining were I to insist on omnipotence and infallibility. Besides, the times do not require these proofs.’

‘What do they require?’

‘Me,’ said the computer. ‘No more, no less. Are you interested in a summary of my function? I wouldn’t want to bore you.’

‘Please,’ said Mingolla, thinking that by its urbanity, the computer had imbued this eerily beautiful place with the genteel atmosphere of a drawing room.

‘It’s quite simple. God appears now and again in highly visible incarnations … when the times call for such. However, most periods require only a token appearance, and this period is typical.’

‘It’s hard to think of God as a token figure,’ Mingolla said.

‘We’ve already established, David, that God is not a subject upon which you are expert.’

‘He has you there.’ Nate gave Mingolla a chummy elbow to the ribs, sending him reeling in pain. ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’

‘No serious damage, I trust?’ said the computer.

‘I’m all right.’ Mingolla sat down on the edge of the boulder. Below him, the bank of lights underwent a rippling change, looking like a sudden shift in alignment among the stars of a distant galaxy.

‘As I was saying,’ the computer went on, ‘most periods require only minimal intercession on my part to set things right. The work done in such times goes unnoticed, and mine, aside from a brief flurry of notoriety, will leave no historical record. The appearance of Jesus and Buddha were necessary pyrotechnics. But for the most part’ – another chuckle – I work in mysterious ways.’

‘And what is your work?’

‘It has been completed. The copilot of this helicopter, a young man named William, was traumatized by the crash. It was my task to heal him, to educate and prepare him for the important work upon which he is now engaged.’

‘His absence seems pretty convenient,’ said Mingolla.

‘Proof was Jesus’s evangel, not mine. I demand faith of no one other than William, and William can do nothing other than practice faith. Your faith, David, is immaterial. My work is done, and soon I must go to meet my fate … a most ignominious fate, yet suitable to the age.’

‘Care to say what that is?’

‘Certainly. After the war a businessman from Guatemala City will stumble over me in the course of a hunting trip, and thinking me a curiosity, he will have me transported to his home. He will attempt to exploit me, never realizing he has the genuine article in his possession, and will generate the wrath of the Church, which in turn will incite the masses. One day a mob will break into the
businessman’s home, kill him, and destroy me. The glory of my Assumption will be obscured by an electrical fire.’

‘If you know the future,’ Mingolla said, stifling laughter, ‘maybe you’d like to tell me what the next year or so has in store.’

‘There is no purpose in disclosing your future.’

‘Uh-huh, right.’

‘However, there is a purpose to your being here. I want you to come inside me.’

Mingolla looked into the hole, at the banks of winking lights; a thrill ran across the muscles of his shoulders. ‘Why?’