Free Roosevelt's Beast: A Novel by Louis Bayard Page B

old man before. The world had always done that.
    “He is a great warrior. He has won wars and fought injustice. He has … built canals. ”
    “Canals,” she echoed. “What is he called?”
    But the name produced only a faint sadness.
    “I don’t know it,” she said.
    “Many people know it. They will pay large sums, great treasures for his return. Gold and silver.”
    “Oh, gold,” she said.
    How strange her Portuguese was. Stiff and brittle, as though every word were tottering on stilts.
    A fine mist of sweat had formed along Kermit’s temples.
    “Luz, listen to me. I think you are made of finer stuff than the men who took us. I think … I think there is great kindness in you.”
    “Do you have a wife?”
    For several seconds, he was incapable of answering.
    “I am engaged. To be married.”
    “You are marrying someone.”
    “Yes.”
    “What is her name?”
    “Her name is Belle.”
    Once more, his hand, without any prompting from him, flew to his chest. The packet of letters, still pressed against his sternum.
    May He keep you safe for me!… I love you, Kermit, I love you.
    In a flash, it was Belle standing in this dark enclosure. Belle’s naked shoulders, burning in the darkness. Belle’s breasts …
    He clenched his eyes shut.
    “I spoke something wrong,” said Luz.
    “No, it’s … Being a gentleman, I am not used to conversing—at length, I mean—with women in a … a state of undress.”
    “Undress.” She stared down at herself, then crooked an arm loosely across her breasts. “Are you engaged to anyone else, Senhor Kermit?”
    “No one else.”
    “Ah.”
    She turned away. In the flickering light, he could make out the braid of her spinal cord.
    “You’re not one of them,” he said.
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “I believe you must have a home somewhere else. Somewhere you’d like to return to. We might find it for you, we might take you back there.”
    She said nothing.
    “The men in our party,” he went on. “Our friends, they come from all over. From Brazil, from America. ”
    “America.”
    The lightest glimmer to her voice.
    “Would you like to go there?” he asked. “We can arrange that. We can arrange anything. All we ask is that you lead us back to the river. And then we will all be free, do you see? In America, everyone is free.”
    “Free,” she echoed. With such a dying fall that it laid waste to his hope.
    All this time he had wasted on rhetoric, on persuasion. When what was truly needed—he could hear the Colonel barking it—was action. They weren’t bound, for God’s sake; they weren’t manacled. They could easily overpower this young woman. They could leave whenever they wished.
    But already he grasped the limits of this freedom. For even if he managed to drag the old man to his feet and get him walking again on that rummy leg, how would they find their way back—in the very blackest night? They were every bit as helpless as if they had been bound.
    “We are forbearing men,” he heard himself say. “We wish ill on no one. We came here only to map a river.”
    “Map?”
    “Yes, to … to make a map. Latitude and longitude.”
    She gazed at him in mild astonishment. “Why ever should you do that?”
    “So that others might know. So that…”
    So that they might come.
    The first note of protest crept into her voice. “What if we don’t wish to be known?”
    “You can only remain hidden for so long. Civilization will find you.”
    “Oh,” she said, shrugging. “Civilization.”
    His head was an agony, his eyes like stones. But he forced himself to move in slow, ever-broadening circles.
    “Very well, Senhorita. Since you refuse to be our guide, I would ask you to be our messenger. Tell the men who brought us here that we wish to speak with them.”
    “They will,” she answered. “They will speak with you.”
    His hand brushed against more thatching. They were indoors.
    “How many are there?” he asked, slowly sketching out