Free City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende Page A

you and I must go because we have been called, and that is because our souls are pure."
    "Who has called us?"
    "I don't know, but if Walimai says so, it's true."
    "Do you really believe those things, Nadia? You believe in witch men and cannibal-birds, and El Dorado, and invisible wives… and the Beast?"
    Without answering, the girl turned on her heel and began walking toward the village; Alex followed close behind to keep from getting lost.
     
CHAPTER SIX
The Plot
     
    THAT NIGHT ALEXANDER slept restlessly. He felt as if he were out in the open, as if the fragile walls that separated him from the jungle had dissolved and he was exposed to all the dangers of that unknown world. The hotel—wood planks, zinc roof, glassless windows—was barely enough shelter to keep out the rain. The outdoor sounds of toads and other creatures were added to the snores of his sleeping companions. His hammock turned over once or twice, throwing him onto the floor, before he remembered how to use it and stretched diagonally across it to keep from spilling out. It wasn't hot, but he was sweating. He lay awake in the dark for a long while beneath his insect repellent-soaked netting, thinking about the Beast and tarantulas and scorpions and snakes and other dangers lurking in the shadows. He went over the strange scene he had witnessed between Nadia and the Indian. The shaman had predicted that several members of the expedition would die.
    It seemed unbelievable to Alex that in a few days' time his life had taken such a spectacular turn that suddenly he found himself in a fantastic place where, just as his grandmother had announced, spirits walked among the living. Reality was twisted out of shape; he no longer knew what to believe. He felt very homesick; he missed his house and his family and his dog, Poncho. He was all alone, and light years from things he knew. If only he could find out how his mother was doing! But calling a hospital in Texas from this village would be like trying to communicate with Mars. Kate was not any company or comfort. As a grandmother, she left a lot to be desired; she didn't even make an effort to answer his questions, because it was her opinion that the only way you learned was to find out for yourself. She maintained that experience was what you learned just after you needed it.
    He was tossing and turning in his hammock, unable to sleep, when he thought he heard the murmur of voices. It might simply have been the hum of the jungle, but he decided to investigate. Barefoot, and in his underwear, he crept to the other side of the dormitory, to the hammock where Nadia was sleeping beside her father. He put his hand over the girl's mouth and whispered her name in her ear, trying not to wake anyone else. She opened her eyes, frightened, but when she recognized him, she calmed down and hopped from her hammock light as a cat, making a crisp gesture to Borobá to stay still. The little monkey immediately obeyed, rolling up in the hammock, and Alex compared Nadia's companion to his dog, Poncho, to whom he had never been able to teach even the simplest command. The two tiptoed outside and slipped along the wall of the hotel to the terrace, where Alex had heard the voices. They hid in the angle of the door, plastered against the wall, and from there they could see Captain Ariosto and Mauro Carías sitting at a small table, smoking, drinking, and quietly talking. Their faces were fully visible in the glow of their cigarettes and the spiral from the citronella candle burning on the table. Alex congratulated himself for having called Nadia, because the men were speaking in Spanish.
    "You know what you have to do, Ariosto," said Carías.
    "It won't be easy."
    "If it were easy I wouldn't need you, hombre, nor would I have to pay you," Mauro Carías remarked.
    "I don't like those photographers, they could land us in a mess. As for the writer woman, she seems pretty sharp to me," said the captain.
    "The anthropologist, the writer, and