On My Way to Paradise by David Farland Page A

the people of my village decided
for me," answered Perfecto.
    "I’d have thought you’d be alcalde of that
dirty little village by now," the heavy-set man said.
    "Ah, no. My wife gave birth to our eighth child three
months ago. And just last week we found that she was pregnant
again. When people heard of it, they became outraged and blamed me.
Even the dogs snap at me."
    Everyone laughed, but some of them gave him knowing
glances, begging him with their eyes to say more.
    "Unfortunately," Perfecto said, "I have not made love
with my wife since the last baby!"
    Among friends, such an admission would have brought
loud laughs. But only a few people chuckled, while Perfecto laughed
hard, painfully.
    Across the room, the man with the clean white shirt
and pencil moustache got up from his chair, stretched, and went
over to the customs officer’s computer. The hair rose on the back
of my neck, and I fidgeted. He inserted one of my ID cards, and
switched the computer on.
    "Eight children!" a woman exclaimed, "You’re lucky
they didn’t kill you!" Perfecto laughed again, almost maniacally. I
looked again at the cut above his eye and a bruise on his jaw, just
above the tattoo. Perhaps someone had tried to kill him, or
at least tried to hurt him badly.
    The man at the computer seemed to read my files with
interest. My stomach churned; I couldn’t decide what to do with my
hands. Then he began punching many buttons, accessing files that
had nothing to do with me. His actions caught the attention of the
men he’d been sitting with. I wondered what he found that so
interested him, and would have stopped him if I could have done so
without attracting attention.
    Jafari could have sent this man, I thought.
Then I realized he could be making calls over the computer,
notifying Jafari’s men that he’d found me. I became very frightened
but pretended to ignore him and reached up and wiped the sweat from
my brow.
    "Señor, are you all right?" Perfecto asked.
    I glanced over at him. "I’m fine, thank you."
    "You don’t look well," Perfecto said.
    "I don’t feel well," I answered truthfully.
    "Malaria?"
    "What?"
    "You have malaria," Perfecto said. "I have seen it
many times! People who have malaria turn pale and shake and sweat,
just as you are doing."
    "Yes, I have malaria," I said, glad that he did not
see my fear.
    "Shall I get you a doctor?" he asked.
    "No, thank you," I said, "I am a doctor." Across the
room, one of the singers chuckled, and I wondered if he chuckled
because he could read my body language and knew I was afraid. My
fear would give me away if I didn’t do something quick. I would
have reached for my medical bag and taken a tranquilizer, but I’d
left my bag in the trunk to be a pillow for Tamara, and couldn’t
risk opening it. My fear cramped my chest, and made my breathing
ragged. I remembered the "conquistador cocktails" I’d taken from
Arish. I didn’t know the strength of the prescription, but I was
close to Arish’s body weight, so I took a capsule and broke it
between my teeth. It tasted like garlic, so sweet, so strong and
heady. Like warm whiskey, it burned my lips and gums for a moment,
then as the cocktail began to take effect my face went numb.
    Perfecto nodded, apparently satisfied that I had
taken care of myself. He looked across the room to the computer
where the man with the pencil-bar moustache was smiling, enjoying
himself.
    I felt my head swing forward as if it were a weight
on a pendulum that travelled in a wide arc, and at the same moment
I felt as if I were pushed into another world where I experienced
heightened lucidity. Even though everything was blurred around the
edges, if I looked at something straight on I saw it’s every crisp
detail. I could read Perfecto’s entire life story in his
appearance: The veins in his neck throbbed, and the movement made
the little lion’s head on his tattoo lash back and forth, and I
suddenly understood what the tattoo represented, and what