The monkeys chatter and the birds are eaten by boa constrictors in some parts of the world. People live without television and cook their own meals in some parts of the world.
The German explorer has nice shiny red boots. He travels in a steamboat with a gun and a crocodile skin bag. Trees are past on the banks, covered with vines laden with fruit and berries plucked by beaks. Sometimes a coconut can be seen dropping into the water and the fish scatter with swirls and ripples. As the boat floats on, the coconuts disappear and are replaced by mango, teak and large and beautiful trees that he doesn’t know the name of. Villages with grass-thatched houses sporadically emerge and people feed their scraps to pigs and chickens.
The chickens are easily shocked and the pig carries its weight clumsily.
Old men sit shaded, their skin tired and sagging, eating sugarcane, seeing the world. Women of all ages let their breasts touch the water as they beat clothes against rocks and watch the German’s boat go by.
The German squashes a mosquito, the blood matches his boot. The carcass can hardly be seen. There are many books on board and the German has read them all. The bible is the biggest, full of devil’s tails and Armageddon. The sky is blue and dotted with clouds, parrots fly by flashing red, green, yellow. The German’s on the bough in a white knotted hammock reading a book. It’s by a great thinker. The shape of some creature darts into the water plants. It leaves without a sound. The motor has stopped. The craft is drifting. The German looks up and the natives are staring. He lowers his glasses, lays down his heavy book and steps from the hammock. The natives are chewing cacao and are saying, "well Boss, she has gone and finished for the day."
"Fix it," says the German.
"Can’t be today," the natives reply and walk away.
The sun is setting. The forest’s green canopy darkens, tipped with dissipating blue, changing lilac, purple, black. The night mosquitos carry malaria and love the soft European skin. The birds go quietly and the cacophony of multitudes of multi-legged invertebrates come to the for. Scratching their legs, scratching their heads, noise from the bark and the rotting leaves. Wings twist and fall as heads are snapped off, littering the floor, millions die, eaten by others, then eaten by others, then eaten by others.
"I am worth ein million Deutche marks," thinks the German, as people often do.
Worth marks, worth nothing in this pig-shit exchange.
"Knowledge," thinks the German, "I know many things about all the four corners of the earth. The politics and places and all the important faces. Ignorance disgusts me," and he shakes his head and lights a thin cigar.
The new moon is setting and the day’s air rising, leaving the forest, a wave of mist rolling, touching arms and frogs as they sit on leaves. A world within a world, waiting to feed new ones. A bud emerges from a branch, hair from a chin as croaks muffle in the belly of a snake. The German is bitten before he knows it, some crazy bug with hair on its leg, stung on the cusp of his shiny red boot, it travels up until his head is full of stars.
"millions, millions, millions," he says and steps on a seedpod once home to a spider. He picks up a stick and finds that it’s moving, he throws it away and picks up another, drawing ledgers and truth and assets all separated into columns. He cannot see them. The demons the marks, the words of wisdom,
"You are here German, " he kicks at the boots that were once shiny. "You are here."
*No Germans were harmed during the making of this story
copyright J.R. Atwood 2007
