The Devil's Garden by Edward Docx Page A

me about yours.’
    ‘I don’t dream.’
    ‘But sometimes . . . sometimes when you are here you are not with me.’
    ‘Everything before – it’s gone, Sole. With you, there is quiet. That’s the truth.’
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    ‘I am not dishonest.’
    ‘But you keep yourself hidden to me – to everyone.’
    ‘Ask me anything.’
    ‘Even when you answer, you do not answer.’ She looked at me, her eyes unmoving and so dark they seemed completely black. ‘You’re like the men who come out of the forest
– you sign your name to the register with a cross. Except that I know that you can write.’

FOUR
    I
    I found Felipe bustling about at the comedor as if but half an hour from opening the family restaurant.
    ‘The Colonel has gone,’ he said, stepping towards me and unable to contain his delight.
    ‘What – with the soldiers?’
    ‘Yes – all of them – the Colonel, the Judge and the soldiers – and this time they really have gone.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Their huts are completely empty. No equipment. Nothing. All that they’ve left us is some beer.’ He smiled his widest smile. ‘Twenty-four bottles. We are saving them for
when we go to Machaguar – for the party.’
    ‘Twelve bottles,’ Jorge murmured – he was standing by our dining table wearing his black and white oven gloves, holding a hot metal tray on which he was keeping half a dozen
fried eggs warm.
    With finger and eager thumb, Felipe began tugging first one shirt cuff then the other. ‘Two of the men were carrying the Judge’s red boxes,’ he said. ‘The registration
documents are in those boxes . . . I think they have finished here, Doctor, I really do.’
    I could not hide my excitement any more than Felipe. ‘All right, we should do something about the mess – especially where they had their fire.’
    Jorge slid the eggs ever so slightly one way then the other on his tray. ‘Where is Sole?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know. She’ll be here in a minute.’ I tempered my tone. ‘We’ll clean up together – it won’t take long. We’ll have a meeting here in
half an hour – everyone. Then we’ll get to work.’
    I had forgotten about Machaguar until Felipe and Jorge reminded me. Every party on the river believed itself the best but Machaguar, a remote and little-visited village, had a
particular reputation as ‘the enchanted carnival’. In the main, so Lothar had explained, its fame was to do with an accident of nature: there was a giant beach there – a rare,
relatively flat expanse of mud and sand on the inside of a great slow bend that allowed them to erect a stage and a huge sound-and-light system. This beach then became the biggest dance floor in
the jungle. They dressed up the surrounding trees and the village behind with thousands and thousands of torches – and it was these lights that were supposed to cast ‘enchantment’
over the two nights. People travelled hundreds of miles to come – down from the mountains, up the river, in from the jungle, out from the cities.
    We would need two full days to get there. We would first have to go down our tributary and back up the main river as far as Laberinto; from there, we would take one of the passenger boats.
Clearly, Jorge still intended to go with his stolen beer; Felipe, too, judging by his tone. The others would take their cue from me. I would have to decide.
    Eggs were one of the few things Jorge cooked well. I was considering a second when I was startled by a high-pitched squeal . . . A tiny boy was running full tilt down the path
from the river towards the comedor : it was Mubb, Tupki’s youngest son. He seemed to be in the grip of a maddened exuberance at his own mobility. His excitement doubled as he realized
that I had seen him and he appeared to lose all control of his toddler self, holding both his hands out in front of him and waving as though to stop a taxiing air force. I stepped down from the comedor and gathered him in