Free Blinding Light by Paul Theroux Page B

breathing hard as he smiled and muttered at the rest of the people. He then seemed to take possession of the table, snatching at fruit, twisting bread in his fingers.
    â€œYou hear about the kidnappings?” Wood asked.
    Manfred said, “Of course. Everybody knows. They enjoy kidnapping the oil people. This was all rain forest until the oil companies came. Texaco and Occidental cleared it. Now it’s drugs,
putas,
gun sellers, and oil pipelines. High toxicity. Criminals. You blame the people here for hating gringos?”
    â€œSo what are you doing here then?”
    Manfred became serious and said, “I am on a quest, like you.”
    â€œWe’re not on a fucking quest,” Hack said.
    â€œNo need for effing and blinding,” Janey said.
    As a way of indicating that she was not interested in this abrasive back-and-forth, and loud enough for everyone to hear, in the manner of an announcement, Ava said to Steadman, “Let’s look around town, shall we?” She glanced at Janey and added, “I want to see those nig-nogs and the wickerwork.”
    â€œMeet back here at noon,” Nestor said. “Hernán will go with you. If you get lost, ask for the Colombiana.”
    â€œI’m staying right here,” Sabra said. She opened
Trespassing
and lifted it to her face, as though to keep the world away.
    Hernán led Ava and Steadman down a side street, explaining the stalls, some selling tapes and CDs—the music blaring—and others selling sneakers and sports jerseys and cheap clothes. Beyond the stalls were small shops, bars, and garages. The curio shops were stocked with blowguns of various lengths and darts, bows and iron-tipped arrows, crude knives, beaded belts, and woven baskets. Lining the walls were medicinal herbs in fat dusty burlap sacks.
    â€œYou want something special?” Hernán asked Steadman, and winked at a man in a curio shop.
    The man took a long soot-blackened blowgun and inserted a dart into its tube and with bulging cheeks ostentatiously blew the dart into the ceiling of the shop. Then he led them past the sacks and more blowguns, behind a partition, saying “
Tigre, tigre”
and showed them a jaguar pelt and a jaguar skull with sharp gleaming teeth. The man spoke eagerly to Hernán.
    â€œHe will give you a good price.”
    Tigre!
    Steadman looked at the empty eye sockets of the jaguar skull. The thing had long fangs among its sharp teeth, but the hollows where its eyes had been made it the pathetic parched shell of a small blind monster. On the table were dishes of animal teeth, feathers, quills, and patches of fur. He picked up an even smaller skull, the size of a baseball.
    â€œLook, a little baby,” Steadman said.
    â€œBaby monkey,” Ava said.
    Seeing Steadman’s interest, the man pressed the small skull into Steadman’s hand and said,
“Mono.
Ees mankee.
En peligro de extinción
!” He flashed his fingers at him, saying
“Cinco”
    â€œWho kills these animals?” Steadman asked.
    â€œHungry people,” Hernán said. “Them too.
En peligro de extinción también
    In a glossy box, propped on hatpins, was a large, hairy-legged, popeyed spider.
    â€œTarántula!”
the man said. He handed the box to Steadman.
    Holding it up, Steadman looked hard at it. The creature that had seemed a horror in its box was, up close, a figure of sorrow. He marveled at its symmetry, its long jointed legs, its shiny bristles. But for all its complexity it was just another empty shell, like the animal skulls, a black thing crucified on the pins.
    â€œTake.
Cómprala
/”
    â€œI want a live one,” Steadman said.
    â€œA live one will kill you,” Hernán said.
    Now the shop owner was holding a dead bat, and he shook it in Steadman’s face, calling out prices as Steadman backed away toward the door.
    Outside, at the sidewalk table of a café, a teenage girl in a tight