It is the moment between dusk and dark when the forest stops breathing in and prepares for its night-long exhalation. With the vanishing of sunset’s colour the water slides around the river bend like liquid slate, its surface scrawled faintly with poolings and involutions. The first fireflies blink over the mud among the rot and tangle at the jungle’s edge. At the last moment of visibility a shadow comes and goes on the water although the air above seems to hold nothing more substantial than moths and midges – certainly nothing which could draw beneath it the outline of jagged wings. This slow flap as of membranes supporting a most ancient thing crabs its way upstream at an angle and is lost almost as soon as the eye thinks to have seen its shadow. A strange cry comes from invisible mid-river and at once a thousand frogs burst into steady unison.
Anybody who has felt nightfall’s breeze off the river expire beneath damp heat rolling out of the jungle may also sense behind the rising whoops and screams and chitterings the combined tension of ciliary muscles as unnumbered pairs of eyes adjust their lenses to the dark on all sides. Only man becomes more blind. Yet there is a man here at this moment, watching this scene. It would be better to say he surveys it, for he is not standing on the shore but high above it. There is a small clearing from which the branchless trunk of a dead tree soars straight up. Its base is swathed in moss; above this the shaft rises, glimmering where bark has peeled in scrolls. At the top is a makeshift platform of branches lashed roughly together in a roc’s nest and on this he stands.
There is about this figure a great attentiveness. The very fact of its watching changes the scene in some way. In every direction for a thousand miles night hides the unrecorded, the inchoate. But this tiny patch of Brazil is different: it is being observed and experienced. It is even being loved. For the smells and sounds of the forest, as they rise from below and reach across from the adjacent jungle canopy, are fond to him. Even the stinging insects which cluster about exposed skin are familiar, a necessary part of the mysterious cycle in motion about his axle-tree. Years of this rigorous pursuit have sharpened his night vision and he easily identifies various animals which pass the foot of his tree. In fact there is a lamp in this eyrie but so content with the darkness is he that tonight, as often, he has delayed lighting it. Once he does so his night vision will be destroyed for the rest of his vigil and it is a faculty he is loth to lose. Meanwhile the sky flickers soundlessly to distant lightning. Sometimes he smiles when it crosses his mind to wonder what people would think if they could see him standing up here in the dark being eaten by insects. Those who didn’t know might suppose him mad – the victim, maybe, of some self-imposed penance. And those who did – well, they too might find something extreme in a mode of behaviour which so courted discomfort and even danger.
There is a sudden breath of air across one cheek. He is tremblingly alert but does not move his head. His ears strain for the sound of something he can sense approaching, for whose arrival he yearns. A heavy body moves through the undergrowth below, but it is not that. A night bird crossing the river cries chakk-chakk, chakk-chakk, in a crescendo as it passes overhead. Following the sound with his eyes the watcher glimpses a blunt head crossing a starfield. It is not that, either; its diminishing cry is swallowed up. But in this limp tropic air there is a new tautness. Out there is some creature for which he has affinity. His sensibility has honed itself and is seldom wrong. Again the breath of air although the night is still. He imagines a light furry weight settle on the back of one hand or on his neck. Despite himself his skin crawls. He feels for the lamp and strikes a match.
The flare of light alarms certain creatures. There is the sound of wingbeats as a dazzled bird rushes for darkness. From the foot of the tree comes a startled snapping of twigs. But other things home in on the light and circle it in ecstasy. Beetles batter the platform with a crack of shards, carom off the lamp glass. The watcher is being spun into a whirling cocoon of insects. He catches the sparks of eyes, flashes of plumage. They are a wonder to him, the extravagant colours, the tigerish markings. It is this prodigality he chiefly loves: this profusion of colour and design intended for neither the light of day nor the eyes of man. The revelation of this concealed world has made the days less pre-eminent, less shallow.
And then he feels again the close breeze at one cheek and this time makes out a darting at the light’s edge. Finally it comes completely out of the darkness to him: a moth the size of a pipistrelle clad in soft gold down. It settles on his shirt-front and he gazes down at it expectantly and with wonder. He notes the rapid tremble of its forewings, a stiff blur as it crawls an inch or two closer to his throat. Presently it stops and relaxes and he can see its hindwings are patterned like watered silk. Delicately its anus deposits an amber drop of liquid on his shirt. He stares into its eyes and thinks of his own hundred faces in those tiny gold seeds. The antennae are thick as beige feathers; the moth holds them high like the horns of an oryx making it look both quizzical and fierce. Slowly its abdomen pulses.
Seen from out on the river the light at the top of the tree is bright but scarcely illumines anything. It is there, high up in the air, for itself, on its stalk like a single dandelion opening short yellow petals. If a boat were to pass in midstream it would appear a lone bloom indeed, maybe the only light in an entire dark continent. Because it is unique it is a focus, a centre of activity, a contemplative node. To be carried past it out there on the dark current would be to have one’s attention monopolised, for as long as it remained visible, by nothing more complex than a light up a tree. But as the boat rounded the bend and a swathe of forest extinguished it the mind would be unable to let go the image it retained. From now on the journey would be different, the night itself changed by the fact of having seen this: a lone figure standing on its high wooden tower in the middle of Brazil, motionless and waiting in the mothy air.