The Devil's Garden by Edward Docx Page A

twists as if the night’s inhabitants had been required to kick their way free. There was no
wind and some mighty tree outside shadowed the window. The room smelled of must and sickness. We crowded in and the heat seemed to close about our shoulders and press forward with us. In the
corner, turned away, a motionless figure was lying.
    Tupki knelt. I did the same but hung back. Kim dropped beside me. The light was dim but I could see that Tupki’s expression was too hard – as though he wished his daughter would make
more of an effort. I shuffled forward quickly and motioned with my hand to still him.
    I realized with surprise that the girl was not asleep. Rather, as I was about to lay my hand on her arm, her head moved a slow quarter-turn and two deep green eyes gradually came round to hold
my own. I clasped her hand. The room behind me seemed to retreat and her shallow breathing became the only count of time. Her lips parted but she made no effort to talk. Instead, with neither anger
nor sorrow, something I can only call her spirit began to well up in her eyes and speak to me of one thing and one thing only: the terrifying certainty of its own death.
    In the very corner of the hut above her head, I saw threads of light, cracks in the wooden slats where ants were moving – appearing, disappearing. I turned to face her family.
    ‘I don’t know what is wrong. But we must take Yolanda to a doctor.’
    Their eyes were all on me. Mubb’s face was buried against his sister and now he shifted his head deeper into her chest. José was holding his mother’s hand and was on a level
with me where I knelt; his expression contained enough intensity for the entire family over again. Tupki stood leaning against the wall, holding his empty bottle of beer.
    I stood. ‘It’s serious. We need to get help.’
    ‘Before she said where it hurts,’ the older sister who was holding Mubb spoke. ‘Now, she does not know. Everything hurts and she does not speak.’
    ‘I am not a medical doctor,’ I repeated. ‘But I may have something. It will not make her well but it will ease her pain.’ I could feel the tension in Kim’s stance.
‘Then we must take her to the capital.’
    Tupki cleared his throat like he was about to spit. ‘This is a white man’s sickness,’ he said.
    Kanari came noisily in through the door and pushed forward past his brothers and sisters. He was strong and taller than the rest and still in the first rage of his masculinity.
    ‘Do you work for the Colonel?’ he asked, his shoulders thrown back and his Spanish more fluent than his siblings.
    The older sister turned on him sharply and said something I could not understand.
    ‘Then he’s with the Colonel and Lugo,’ Kanari said to her in Spanish. He put his fist to his chest. ‘Any friend of the Colonel is a friend of mine.’
    Tupki’s wife shifted.
    ‘I am a scientist,’ I said, caught out, my eyes moving between them. ‘I don’t work for anyone. We need to help your sister.’
    Virima moved next to her older sister to block Kanari, then glared up at me: ‘When you come here again?’
    ‘I’ll come straight back now.’ I addressed Tupki, then his wife. ‘I’ll bring medicine. We’ll work out what to do.’
    Tupki grimaced. ‘Yolanda cannot go to the capital.’
    Kim’s voice was soft but not yielding. ‘Why not?’
    ‘Don’t worry about the money,’ I said.
    Tupki showed no sign of having heard but he stood upright and said something in Matsigenka. One by one, the family began to back away whispering among themselves.
    Kanari, however, waited by the door. ‘Don’t worry about the money,’ he said, grinning and rolling one shoulder then the other. ‘Don’t worry about the money.’
He waited for Kim to pass, jejune and aggressive as he watched her body. ‘Soon we have plenty of money. Nice woman. Party every day.’
    V
    Once, late one night, when we had taken our lamps down to the bathing hut and we were washing together,