Outside, he could hear the steady throb of Horeb beating his drum. And then he heard something else: a faint beep. An unfamiliar chime. He searched through his belongings and found the source: the cell phone. A battery icon was blinking in the top left corner. The phone was dying. He realized that Lars had not given him the charger. The phone had subsisted this whole time on a single charge and was now signaling its inglorious death.
The phone beeped again.
“What is it?” he said.
He examined the pixelated screen and saw another icon blinking. An envelope. The number 4. Hands trembling, he thumbed at the buttons. The messages must have arrived in the middle of the night, in the middle of his dream.
The first two were from Ana Cristina:
• • •
609-292-4087: Radar! I thought u died or something! When i got your text i literally jumped up n down:) javi laughed at me: O how is congo???? Can’t wait 4 u to get back! My mama and her empanadas will b waiting:) xo ac
609-292-4087: Also lights came back on!!! All of a sudden like they were never off! 4 real so weird! PS what are u writing???? — ><-
He read and reread and re-reread the messages. He wanted to swallow this collection of pixelated words and live off their nutrients forever. If his life stopped here and now, he would have no complaints.
He finally flipped down to the third message. It was from a strange number.
• • •
387-33-275-312: MY SON IS BORN. RADAR RADMANOVIC. MOTHER IS FINE. BABY IS FINE. I AM FINE. KAKAV OTAC TAKAV SIN. 73, K2W9
“Tata?” he said. What the hell?
Frantically, he pressed the call button, waiting, praying that somewhere in this jungle there was a cell tower that could propel the call into the stratosphere. The long-distance connection sputtered, clicked, engaged, the heavens parting. A single ring. His cell phone went dead.
“No!” he yelled. “No!”
He cradled the device. He had not even gotten to the fourth message! The words somewhere inside this plastic shell. His father had texted him? From where? And what could this text mean? “My son is born”?
“Lars!” he shouted. He kicked open the mosquito net, tumbled out of bed, and tripped over a bucket of electronics before emerging from the container. “Lars!”
As soon as he stepped outside, however, he sensed a difference in the air. A heaviness. The river was cocooned in a haze, the banks on either side barely visible.
He found Lars drinking coffee by the fire pit. His eyes were puffy. He didn’t look well.
“Do you have the charger for this phone?” he asked, holding up the mobile.
Lars gave him a weary look. He shook his head. “I think I left it in the van,” he said. “I’m sorry. We could probably cook something up.”
“Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
“I feel a little off. Something I ate, I think. I’m sure it’ll pass.”
Radar drifted up to the side of the ship, where Horeb was drumming. He looked out at the hazy sky.
“It’s foggy,” he said to Horeb.
“That isn’t fog,” said Horeb.
Professor Funes, whom Radar had not seen again since his speech several evenings ago, emerged from the pousser in the shadow of his giant parasol, his driver in tow. They made their way out onto the deck of the barge. The professor did not acknowledge Radar or Horeb as he and his driver spoke rapidly in Lingala, gesturing at the horizon. Radar realized this was the first time Funes had been outside in the daylight since their departure.
The birds flew overhead. Of the thirteen hundred or so that had once made up the original flock, there were only a couple of dozen left. It seemed this last night in particular had taken a toll. The few that remained appeared especially restless, flitting this way and that.
Funes walked to the head of the barge. A few birds dived and tried landing on his parasol, bouncing awkwardly off its dome. He lightly jiggled the umbrella as if shaking off a layer of rain, but otherwise he ignored the creatures.
“What is it?” said Radar, approaching them.
Funes continued speaking with the driver for some time before breaking into a wet, hacking cough. It was a cough that came from deep inside the lungs, a cough that instantly revealed the extent of the decay within. The parasol trembled as Funes doubled over, scattering a few lingering birds into the air. Finally, when he had regained his composure, Funes turned to Radar. His face was blotched in an irregular pattern, like the map of a coastline.
“Smoke,” he whispered hoarsely. “That is smoke.”
By the afternoon the smoke had enveloped them. The air was thick with ash; it smelled as if the sky had been expelled from the inside of the earth. No one on the barge spoke. Otik retreated to the theater wagon and the malaise of his vircator. Perhaps he was trying to beckon the few remaining birds, who now seemed to have little or no connection with the performance and only hung around the barge out of reluctant familiarity. Lars, complaining that he felt unwell, stayed inside the container all day, making little notations into a black book that he kept by his cot.
Radar tried listening to his radio for some news of the smoke, but he heard only the usual hodgepodge of sermons, rumba, and indecipherable mutterings. He made an attempt at jerry-rigging a power cord for the cell phone, but the voltage was not right, and when he connected it to the power source he smelled the telltale scent of burning circuitry. He quickly unplugged the phone, but it was already too late. He would now have to dismantle the chassis and examine the motherboard. This would take hours. He halfheartedly started in, but he found his momentum had been sapped. He couldn’t concentrate. He went up to the bow again and tried joining Horeb’s drumbeat with his radios, but Horeb waved him away.
“I need to speak alone,” he said. As he said this, a distant drumming rose from the northern bank. Horeb’s head shot up like a rabbit. He listened, then answered on the drum:
“What’re you saying?” asked Radar.
“I’m saying: ‘He is near, he is coming, get ready. .’”
“Who is near?”
But Horeb had gone back to banging out the same pattern on his drums. Again and again, the mantra was repeated, dismantled, copied, and dispersed into the haze.
At some point, they entered the magical hour when the tropical sun began to tumble from the sky, the story of the day draining away into nothing, light becoming shadow and shadow becoming light. Standing at the stern, Radar reached out and caught a piece of skin floating through the air. It was a page, charred, still warm to the touch. For a brief instant, Radar could almost read the text on its face, but then the paper dissolved in his hands. He looked and saw that the river was full of these ashen pages, floating like lily pads. Pages drifting through the sky. It was snowing in the jungle.
“Ay yeah! Mayee! Ah yeah! Mayee!” called out the sounder.
They came around a bend in the river, and then there it was. The source of all things. The fire. The world was on fire.
He could hear the flames. He could hear them because the pousser had cut its motor and the sounder had gone quiet. They glided toward the fire, which arced up forty, fifty feet into the air, the smoke so thick and black it looked as if it were made of hair. The current began to slow their progress, pushing them away, the river urging them not to come any closer. They reached a standstill, an equilibrium, and for a second it felt as if they were turning back, but then the pousser fired its engines and pressed them forward, toward what Radar now knew could only be the library.