Despite the suicidal thoughts, these late jaunts almost always produced some animal delight: a little parade of raccoons, a night heron fishing under the canal bank, an opossum in a tree, a roosting macaw, a giant African toad; and often the trilling of a mockingbird overhead. At such moments he would occasionally exclaim and call out to his wife, to share the joy, and recall that she was dead. Sometimes he did not recall this quickly enough and heard her voice in his ear. On those evenings he would scuttle home and drink whiskey, courting oblivion.

No such event occurred on this particular evening, which was only memorable for the observation of a green monkey high up in a palm tree, an escapee from some domestic or commercial zoo. He entered his room in a lighter mood than was normal therefore and was not entirely surprised to find Moie waiting there, squatting in a corner, contemplating the skull of just such a monkey.

“Remarkable,” Cooksey said in Quechua, “I just saw one of those out on the street.”

“Only one?”

“Yes.”

“A lonely thing, then.”

“Yes. It must have escaped from its cage. Or from a large zoo full of monkeys that used to exist some small distance from here; a hurricane blew the place apart and many escaped. The city is full of them.”

Moie placed the skull carefully back in the case from which he had taken it.

“I went to such a place today.”

“So I understand. And how did you like it?”

“I didn’t like it. It was a dead place, even though the animals seemed to be alive. They moved and ate and drank, but they were not all there…it is hard to say what I mean, even in Quechua. It is acosmological difficulty. So Father Tim Perrin always called it.”

He had used the English word and Cooksey smiled. “Yes,cosmological difficulties are the worst.”

“Yes. There was a jaguar they had in a glass box. I spoke with her. She had been born in a box and had never killed, and she didn’t even know who she was. It was like a child who has been dropped on its head and afterward can’t speak or see. It was very sad. Then I felt Jaguar stirring in me, and he let me…the word in Runisi isjana’tsit. Do you know this word?”

“I do not.”

“No, I’ve seen that you don’t do this. It is a way of going to another place without going on the path that leads to it through this world. In this way I was led to this animal and I spoke to her and told her who she was. But as I was speaking to her, a holy person climbed into the Firehair Woman, and she fell down and shook and white waters flowed from her mouth.”

“You mean Jenny?”

“Yes, Jenny. I didn’t know thatwai’ichuranan could carry holy ones in this way, but I knew there was something about her that was not dead, and this shows it well.”

Cooksey thought for a moment. “Among us, we say that is a sickness.”

“Of course, but you think you are alive as you are, so that means nothing. But she didn’t know how to welcome the holy one, so she suffered. Or so it seemed. Did you know there is a plan to steal my spirit and place it with the others, and all the demons, in the spirit box?”

Cooksey suppressed a smile. “Yes, but this is another cosmological difficulty. I will explain. You wish to stop this company from logging your forest, and among thewai’ichuranan, who are very many and live in many villages and towns far from Miami, this is how it is done. We have a machine that is like a mirror, but where a mirror holds your reflection only while you are standing in front of it, this machine saves the reflection and can send it through the air to all the spirit boxes, which we call televisions. And it can also remember your speech and say it in your own words to all thewai’ichuranan. So you will appear in everyone’s television, and the people, or some people, will be angry at what is being done, and perhaps this will make the company stop what it’s doing. It has nothing to do with your spirit. The television is not a spirit box at all, but only a machine, like this lamp on my desk. There are no witches involved. What you call demons are pictures made by machines. The people you see behind the glass are real people in faraway places, and not stolen spirits.”

“I hear what you say, but it’s hard for me to believe it.”

“Why is it hard?”

“Because the faces of the people in the spirit box, thetelevision, are different from the faces of real people, and even different from the faces of manywai’ichuranan. They have no…I must use my own language…noaryu’t. Having a real spirit inside you. You have it and Jenny has it, and the Hairy Face Man, too, and even the others a little, but not these behind the glass. We say that when a spirit is torn from a human through sorcery it becomes separated from the world, and because of this it is very hungry all the time. It wishes to fill itself up and suck the spirit from living things. It thinks only of itself, how it can grow greater, until it fills the whole world. And when we see such a spirit in the forest, we know it is one and not a real person because this hunger shows on its face. They can’t disguise it, although they can talk in soothing ways. We are not often fooled. And I see the same kinds of faces on the people behind the glass of thetelevision, and therefore I say that they are all dead spirits, whatever you say about machines. Tell me, haven’t you ever observed this difference yourself?”

“I have,” Cooksey admitted. “But, with us it is a kind of mask. Don’t you put on masks and paint your faces when you talk to your gods?”

“We do, certainly. But now you say that the television dead people are worshipping gods, where before you said that they were speaking to people far away, as a deer might smear musk on a tree to give a message to other deer. What gods are worshipped in this way?”

“Wealth and fame,” said Cooksey. “Our chief gods, and also sometimes the god of fornication.”

“Of course; you are dead, so you worship the gods of death. I understand. Nevertheless, I can’t go into the spirit box. It would be death for me, and then I would be not Moie, and become happy to live in a zoo, like that poor animal I saw today. I will have to find another way to make the company stop, or, I should say, I will have to wait for Jaguar to find another way.”

“What would that be?”

“How should I know? Am I Jaguar? In any case, I might not be allowed to tell anyone. Jaguar doesn’t want everyone to know his business.”

“I thought you considered us your allies.”

“Yes, I do. I think you want to help, but often magical allies are stupid, especially when they are humans, and even more so when they are dead people. I will have to…there is no word in this language for it; we say,iwai’chinix, to make them live in a different way before they can help, and I’m not even sure I can do it, since I am very weak here. But for now, I believe I must leave this place.”

“Yes, I can see where you might wish to. But where will you go? And how will you live?”

“I will find a large tree to live in. I’ve noticed that thewai’ichuranan walk the paths without ever looking up, so no one will disturb me in my tree. As for living, there is water all around, and Jaguar will feed me. What more do I need? Now, if you would like to help me, you must show me a large tree.”

“I believe I know just the tree you require,” said Cooksey. They spoke for some minutes longer, Cooksey answering Moie’s questions, and asking a few of his own, and then they both slipped out into the night.