The beer presses itself to his tongue, then his throat, then his stomach; veins, soul. Just as the setting sun presses against his skin and the looming dusk presses itself against the broad curve of the river, mirroring its amber shine back to a darkening sky. All around, the incessant click of the jungle; a thousand squawks, gibbers, rattles, chips and howls. Even the slow rush of the water, heavy enough to gorge out canyons and wide valleys, cannot be heard over this teeming chorus. He supposes he has heard it long enough, and will hear it until the end of his days, so what’s the use in griping? It is there, as immovable as the sun and the river. Better get used to it.
He sighs and places the bottle on the desk before him. His office has no walls, just some log struts and a thatch roof. Open enough to give him a good view of his charge; this river, that jungle, these people. A whole village full and more besides, flung out across the seething mass of green life. Little pockets of habitation, cut out from the wild and ancient land. To reach them took days by river, weeks by foot. Even to think of such a journey makes his chest tight. In the jungle, all is muted. Colours, be there many, are nonetheless dulled. Sound is muffled. The senses are closed in upon and stifled by a suffocating saturation of wet and heat. Parasites crawl in the mud and blood. Venom sits impatiently in a thousand fangs, ready to be unleashed into passing bodies. No, it is not a task he relishes, yet it must be done. They, he, are all that is left.
Far beyond this steaming basin, at the borders of the titanic mountains that surround it, the frost has laid waste to all that humankind could muster. All their preparation, their scheming, bickering, lying, all their graft and caution, all their war and politics, all their grandstanding and humility, all their dreams and vision, hopes and ambitions, all they had built, conquered, discovered, stole, repurposed, exploited, inhabited, brokered, all that they had wondered and seen and felt, all of it came to nothing. It was straw in a hurricane. It was infantile, in the face of the universe. A passing flicker, before the long inferno of nature. It cannot all be remembered, indeed only a small fraction of it remains with the survivors to this day because in the face of day-to-day oblivion, the distant achievements of old seem less appetising than the prospect of fresh bread each morning. That’s why they till the fields, work the furnaces; for bread and tomorrow.
Funny, he thinks, that the innumerable probabilities of time should grant us this small slither of land on which to survive. We could have been wiped from memory with all the others. Yet here we sit, living today, looking at tomorrow, never thinking of yesterday. Very little has changed.
Paddy Dobson
27th September 2020