Away from the city I could see the stars and the glow of a moon on the rise behind hills to the east, but once we entered the jungle it was pitch-dark. Yara shined a flashlight ahead and held my hand, warning me against obstructions. Insects chirred; frogs bleeped and tweedled. Rustlings issued from every quarter. Smells of sweet rot and rank decay. Mosquitoes whined in my hair. It felt hotter than it had in the city and I broke a sweat. Shuffling along in the dark, passing among unseen things, twigs and leaves poking, brushing my skin – I imagined vines forming into nooses over my head, spiders scurrying up my trouser legs, vipers uncoiling from branches above, pointing their shovel-shaped heads and darting their tongues. Yara may have sensed my apprehension because she told me we’d be there soon, but I didn’t buy it, I knew she was leading me into a trap. I gave thought to taking her hostage in order to forestall an attack by whoever was lying in wait, but I glimpsed a ruddy glow through the leaves and caught a strong fecal odor and shortly thereafter we emerged into a clearing the approximate length of a soccer pitch, though narrower, overspread by a dense canopy and bounded by walls of vegetation – you could have fit the upside-down hull of a mighty ark into the space described by those walls and that canopy. Among tree stumps and patchy underbrush lay a jungle squat that spread out across the clearing, a settlement combining the harsh realities of Stone Age life with those of brutal urban poverty. Lean-tos, tents, thatched huts, and a handful of shacks with rusting tin roofs. Campfires generated a smoky haze and as we passed through the settlement I saw shadowy people stirring, all moving about with what struck me as an excess of caution. Some acknowledged Yara with a wave, but no one called out her name. I estimated that several hundred souls lived in the squat and would have expected to hear a conversational murmur, the odd laugh or shout, music and such, yet the place was as hushed as a church and there was a corresponding air of pious oppression, one comprehensible when you considered the enormous reptilian skull, yellowed with age, illuminated by torches, that occupied the entire far end of the clearing, looming high into the canopy.
I had left the States five years previously, discouraged by the quality of my life, bored by the drabness of the American tragedy, with the consumerist mentality and the market forces that bred it, with celebrity scandals orchestrated to distract from more significant trouble, with every element of that carnival of lies – I had hoped a more vivid landscape would serve to pare away the rind that had accumulated over my brain, yet everywhere I went it seemed I brought drabness and boredom with me, and my life remained tedious and uninvolved. The skull was the first thing I had seen to put a crack in my worldview. Its size and uncanny aspect, the barbarous embellishments added by man and nature over the centuries, scribblings of moss and fungus, inlays of milky jade and black onyx, the fangs coated in verdigris, the snout covered by painted designs, much faded, that had been applied by some long-vanished tribe, all of it visible in the erratic light . . . at one second it seemed a clownish, grotesque fake, a gigantic papier mâché Mardi Gras mask, and the next I grew terrified that it would return to life and roar. Vegetation hid the greater part of the sloping brow and a thick matte of vines obscured one of its eye sockets, but apart from a few clusters of epiphytes the snout was unencumbered, reaching a height of forty feet above the jungle floor. Propped against the side of the jaw, its topmost section resting against a portion of bone adjacent to a fang, was a telescoping aluminum ladder. When I realized we were heading toward the ladder my anxiety peaked – I was insecure with the idea of climbing into the mouth, but Yara displayed no sign of trepidation and I kept my worries to myself. A disquieting atmosphere of the sort that gathers about ancient ruins enveloped the skull, an absence of vibration that causes you to listen closely, to attune yourself to the possibility of vibration, so that you may feel something where, perhaps, there is nothing to feel . . . except this particular vacancy had an inimical quality, as if it retained a residue of its former contents, like a glass that once held poison.
