Yellow-brown sauce or gravy covered a long, curved strip of foreign matter. Exhausted vegetables that looked a little like okra and string beans but were other things altogether lay strewn in limp surrender beneath the gravy.
“All of a sudden I’m really hungry,” said Sandrine. “You can’t tell what it is, either?”
Ballard moved the strip of unknown meat back and forth with his knife. Then he jabbed his fork into it. A watery yellow fluid oozed from the punctures.
“God knows what this is.”
He pictured some big reptilian creature sliding down the riverbank into the meshes of a native net, then being hauled back up to be pierced with poison-tipped wooden spears. Chirping like birds, the diminutive men rioted in celebration around the corpse, which was now that of a hideous insect the size of a pony, its shell a poisonous green.
“I’m not even sure it’s a mammal,” he said. “Might even be some organ. Anaconda liver. Crocodile lung. Tarantula heart.”
“You first.”
Ballard sliced a tiny section from the curved meat before him. He half-expected to see valves and tubes, but the slice was a dense light brown all the way through. Ballard inserted the morsel into his mouth, and his taste buds began to sing.
“My god. Amazing.”
“It’s good?”
“Oh, this is way beyond ‘good.’”
Ballard cut a larger piece off the whole and quickly bit into it. Yes, there it was again, but more sumptuous, almost floral in its delicacy and grounded in some profoundly satisfactory flavor, like that of a great single-barrel bourbon laced with a dark, subversive French chocolate. Subtlety, strength, sweetness. He watched Sandrine lift a section of the substance on her fork and slip it into her mouth. Her face went utterly still, and her eyes narrowed. With luxuriant slowness, she began to chew. After perhaps a second, Sandrine closed her eyes. Eventually, she swallowed.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “My, my. Yes. Why can’t we eat like this at home?”
“Whatever kind of animal this is, it’s probably unknown everywhere but here. People like J. Paul Getty might get to eat it once a year, at some secret location.”
“I don’t care what it is, I’m just extraordinarily happy that we get to have it today. It’s even a little bit sweet, isn’t it?”
A short time later, Sandrine said, “Amazing. Even these horrible-looking vegetables spill out amazing flavors. If I could eat like this every day, I’d be perfectly happy to live in a hut, walk around barefoot, bathe in the Amazon, and wash my rags on the rocks.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Ballard. “It’s like a drug. Maybe it is a drug.”
“Do the natives really eat this way? Whatever this animal was, before they serve it to us, they have to hunt it down and kill it. Wouldn’t they keep half of it for themselves?”
“Be a temptation,” Ballard said. “Maybe they lick our plates, too.”
“Tell me the truth now, Ballard. If you know it. Okay?”
Chewing, he looked up into her eyes. Some of the bliss faded from his face. “Sure. Ask away.”
“Did we ever eat this stuff before?”
Ballard did not answer. He sliced a quarter sized piece off the meat and began to chew, his eyes on his plate.
“I know I’m not supposed to ask.”
He kept chewing and chewing until he swallowed. He sipped his wine. “No. Isn’t that strange? How we know we’re not supposed to do certain things?”
“Like see the waiters. Or the maids, or the Captain.”
“Especially the Captain, I think.”
“Let’s not talk anymore, let’s just eat for a little while.”
Sandrine and Ballard returned to their plates and glasses, and for a time made no noise other than soft moans of satisfaction.
When they had nearly finished, Sandrine said, “There are so many books on this boat! It’s like a big library. Do you think you’ve ever read one?”
“Do you?”
“I have the feeling… well, of course that’s the reason I’m asking. In a way, I mean in a real way, we’ve never been here before. On the Amazon? Absolutely not. My husband, besides being continuously unfaithful, is a total asshole who never pays me any attention at all unless he’s angry with me, but he’s also tremendously jealous and possessive. For me to get here to be with you required an amazing amount of secret organization. D-Day didn’t take any more planning than this trip. On the other hand, I have the feeling I once read at least one of these books.”
“I have the same feeling.”
“Tell me about it. I want to read it again and see if I remember anything.”
“I can’t. But… well, I think I might have once seen you holding a copy of Little Dorrit. The Dickens novel.”
“I went to Princeton and Cambridge, I know who wrote Little Dorrit,” she said, irritated. “Wait. Did I ever throw a copy of that book overboard?”
“Might’ve.”
“Why would I do that?”
Ballard shrugged. “To see what would happen?”
“Do you remember that?”
“It’s tough to say what I remember. Everything’s always different, but it’s different now. I sort of remember a book, though — a book from this library. Tono-Bungay. H. G. Wells. Didn’t like it much.”
“Did you throw it overboard?”
“I might’ve. Yes, I actually might have.” He laughed. “I think I did. I mean, I think I’m throwing it overboard right now, if that makes sense.”
“Because you didn’t — don’t — like it?”
Ballard laughed and put down his knife and fork. Only a few bits of the vegetables and a piece of meat the size of a knuckle sliced in half remained on his plate. “Stop eating and give me your plate.” It was almost exactly as empty as his, though Sandrine’s plate still had two swirls of the yellow sauce.
“Really?”
“I want to show you something.”
Reluctantly, she lowered her utensils and handed him her plate. Ballard scraped the contents of his plate onto hers. He got to his feet and picked up a knife and the plate that had been Sandrine’s. “Come out on deck with me.”
When she stood up, Sandrine glanced at what she had only briefly and partially perceived as a hint of motion at the top of the room, where for the first time she took in a dun-colored curtain hung two or three feet before the end of the oval. What looked to be a brown or suntanned foot, smaller than a normal adult’s and perhaps a bit grubby, was just now vanishing behind the curtain. Before Sandrine had deciphered what she thought she had seen, it was gone.
“Just see a rat?” asked Ballard.
Without intending to assent, Sandrine nodded.
“One was out on deck this morning. Disappeared as soon as I spotted it. Don’t worry about it, though. The crew, whoever they are, will get rid of them. At the start of the cruise, I think there are always a few rats around. By the time we really get in gear, they’re gone.”
“Good,” she said, wondering: If the waiters are these really, really short Indian guys, would they hate us enough to make us eat rats?
She followed him through the door between the two portholes into pitiless sunlight and crushing heat made even less comfortable by the dense, invasive humidity. The invisible water saturating the air pressed against her face like a steaming washcloth, and moisture instantly coated her entire body. Leaning against the rail, Ballard looked cool and completely at ease.
“I forgot we had air conditioning,” she said.
“We don’t. Vents move the air around somehow. Works like magic, even when there’s no breeze at all. Come over here.”
She joined him at the rail. Fifty yards away, what might have been human faces peered at them through a dense screen of jungle — weeds with thick, vegetal leaves of a green so dark it was nearly black. The half-seen faces resembled masks, empty of feeling.