The Rest Is Jungle

Abstract

Amigos. Nadie mas. El resto es selva. - Jorge Guillen 1. From a top floor, something that might have been hot coals or feces fell on his head. He didn't want to know. He just cleaned himself the best he could with a page from the Herald Tribune and at that moment decided to delay his baptismal meeting with the white night of Times Square. It was now imperative that he rerum to his hotel and have his third shower of the day. The day after arriving in New York, Orlando Farias had been engulfed by damp and grimy heat. His nylon shirt had mined into a robber cylinder, permanently soaked and barely allowing him to breathe. On Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, the only reason people slowed their frantic pace was if the traffic light mined red. Farias also experienced this contagion and restrained his Montevidean tendency to do the contrary. While he waited, he became aware of a drop that was forming a slippery area of sweat on his left nipple. He cursed in a loud voice, and a blond, freckled woman who was standing next to him loaded down with packages smiled pleasantly at him, as if he had merely made a comment about the weather. He was about to feel embarrassed when suddenly the crowd surged forward and overtook him. The traffic light had turned green. Farias thought that such momentum was out of place, or at least unseasonal. A surge like that was consistent with a temperature of fifteen degrees below zero, not with this oven. Solely out of resentment, he walked slowly, much slower than he would in any other city in the world. On two occasions he stopped in front of store windows that had miniature gray metallic radios shaped like missiles for sale on display. It was the first facet of the city he had recently inaugurated. When he arrived at his hotel there was a message waiting for him. It said that Mr. Clayton had called; actually, Mr. T. H. Clayton. Farias had known Clayton since 1956. That year, the critic had spent fifteen hours in Montevideo and two days in Punta del Este in a worthy attempt to educate himself in the local folklore and literature. Farias remembered Clayton's obsessive interest in the merengue (he called it miringo). Someone had led him to believe that it was the most popular dance in the Southern Cone. Afterwards, he had placed three chairs in a row and had laid down across them, all the while looking up at the ceiling and asking about girls. Until now, Farias had done quite well with the English he read. Sometimes he realized that he spoke in the style of The New Yorker, but he was understood just the same. But talking on the telephone was another matter. Mr. Clayton spoke in a deep and monotonous voice, and Farias was able to understand a few loose words like American Council, very glad, and dinner. Was Clayton inviting him to dinner? Just in case, he said he would be delighted, and with amazing smoothness, wrote down an already familiar address. He didn't have much time. He went up to room 407 and enjoyed the air-conditioning for five minutes. He then turned on the television set and started to undress, suddenly noticing there was something wrong with the screen. A man wearing glasses, who spoke with his mouth practically closed and the edges of his lips in perfect conjunction, started to descend incessantly down the screen. there was no vertical hold button that could stop the picture from descending, either. Later, while he was in the middle of enjoying his shower, he managed to determine that the pitiful man in perpetual descent was repeating some kind of refrain: And this is our reality. 2. Please, call me Ted, said Clayton, in a pleasant tone. His face, on the other hand, had the monolithic seriousness of a man who gets bored, but is proud of his boredom. In comparing his present appearance with how he had looked years ago, Farias found him to be less thin and essentially more near-sighted. …