They call him the apostle. His arms are tattooed with symbols of war, and over a dozen plastic rosaries hang around his neck. His voice is hoarse, withdrawn. His speech is like a delusional monologue, a private and endless prayer to fill the empty hours. Gringo maldito, the natives call him behind his back: damned gringo. He refuses to say a word to them. Even so, five of them go everywhere with him. It’s rumored that he came in search of drugs and then found out he could never go back. It’s rumored that he comes from a moneyed family, and that when he was young, he showed promise in the theater. It’s rumored that enlightenment came to him decades ago in the midst of the jungle, beside the immense tree he claims to be guiding them toward. They call him the apostle because that’s what he calls himself. They call him the apostle, but sometimes, the pilgrims have the feeling he’s nothing but a tour guide, a drugged Virgil for credulous gringos. Still, you only have to look again, or listen to him in his endless prayer, to know that he, at least, believes in everything he has promised. Now, three stinking pigs meander around him in the mud, while farther on, the natives play cards to ride out their boredom. They all wear American brand names and the ironic expressions of unbelievers. They all—natives and pilgrims alike—call him the apostle, because he promises things. Ten days ago, for example, he promised them that in one month’s time they will come to an enormous archipelago in the middle of the jungle, and that there, at the foot of a great fallen tree, the seer will show them the way. In his eyes, somewhere between belief and madness, the gamble of a generation is made manifest.
Ten days have passed since they started their journey on foot, five since the little girl started to get sick. The whole time, the jungle has done nothing but contradict their expectations. The naked natives wear T-shirts with rock band logos; in the place of exuberant nature, there are garbage dumps; instead of lawlessness, the state is omnipresent. Everywhere they go they encounter police, solemn border agents who fight their own boredom by assiduously checking travel documents. Far from the paradise they’d dreamed of, the jungle reveals its most modern face—its ruinous, border-town face.
Nevertheless, they well know that nature is there, latent like a sleeping scorpion. They sense it at night, in the utter darkness that envelops them. They hear it, rather than see it, in the whisper of nighttime animals; the fluttering fowl; the croak of the frogs, like nocturnal birds; the murmur of the insects always poised to wage war against the mosquito net. He, however, has been tasked specifically with making nature visible: as a photographer, he is to document the trip. That’s his place: halfway between participation and observation, between belief and irony. Only five years earlier, he earned his living taking photos of the most coveted models of New York. Today, he is following a man who has made an impossible promise. He is chasing after a drugged man’s invisible dream.