The Economy of Light by Jack Dann Page A

accord.” Mengele gazed at me as if I was a child again, his expression gentle, his eyes guileless and clear as the empty sky above; and once again I noticed the gap between his front teeth and the mole on his left cheek. “I’ve learned to live in harmony with nature,” Mengele said.
    As we walked under a canopy of evenly spaced trees, the temperature dropped, the world darkened; and then we were in the rainforest. Everything was quiet, hushed, as if we had entered a cathedral. The light was soft and weak; shadows danced across the columns of trees. Mengele slowed his pace and appeared to relax. I felt a sudden, cold apprehension that something palpable had changed, or would change. Light flickered through branches; little black uakaris monkeys leaped through the foliage high above, shaking the fronds; parrots screeched; and, distracted, I almost stepped on a small, crimson snake that corkscrewed into the thick leaf mulch. Everything seemed to be in sudden movement; and just as suddenly we stepped into a large clearing. I could feel the heat of the late-morning sun on my face. The ground was cracked; half-charred tree stumps were everywhere. I could see a large thatch-roofed hut on the other side of the clearing, the soil seemingly fertile around it, for there were plenty of fruit trees: orange, lemon, plum, and mango; and coconut and cashew nut and breadfruit. I could also hear water in the distance, a great roaring; perhaps a waterfall. As we neared the hut, I saw that the walls were constructed of closely placed palings. There were no windows—that would certainly keep out the mosquitoes—only a door covered with thatch. A woman in her fifties was roasting manioc in an open shelter a few yards from the hut. She was naked from the waist up like my nurse, her body chalked and dyed to resemble the markings of a jaguar, her nose and lips festooned with palm splinters, She shook a square pan and raked the grains back and forth with a stick. “Whoooo,” she shouted, alerting whoever was in the hut, and grinned happily at Mengele. Mengele said something to her in her own tongue, which she seemed to find hysterically funny; and then he gestured to me to follow him into the hut. Someone inside the hut screamed, a strangled scream that chilled me.
    The woman smiled at Mengele and shook her head sharply as we went inside.
    It was dark and close and fetid: the smells of illness, perspiration, kerosene, smoke, and something else, something sweet and cloying. Several lanterns hung from support posts and cast a reddish light. A fire was burning, the resinous smoke rising. Beside the fire a woman was lying upon a pallet. A man leaned over her, drew noisily upon a hand-rolled cigarette, and blew the smoke into the woman’s face. As my eyes adjusted to the murky darkness, I could make out more and more details. The woman was white, blond, in her thirties, perhaps; but emaciated, ravaged. Her cheeks were sunken, and she was wheezing with every breath; her eyes stared blindly ahead.
    The man looked at Mengele, questioning. His dark features were flattened, his thick black hair combed over his forehead. He could have been thirty or sixty; I couldn’t tell. He wore a red and blue-checked shirt and white rumpled trousers.
    “Bom dia, doutor.”
    “It is going well, Báquiro?” Mengele asked.
    “This woman is very sick. She has too many darts inside her. All over. In her liver. In her stomach. In her head. Her eyes are nearly dead, so it is very hard to see the darts. Where they are.”
    Mengele nodded, then sat down on a pallet. I followed suit. “Báquiro, this is Stephen.”
    Báquiro nodded to me. “ Aprendiz ?” he asked Mengele.
    Mengele laughed, and I felt hot anger constricting my chest. “I’m not anybody’s apprentice.” I started to stand up, but Mengele gently tapped my knee. “Báquiro is very special, very talented. He is a brujo , a doctor who helps me. And he is also a great herbalist. He believes that