Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online

Alex . . . I mean, Jaguar?”
    “That we could ask Angie to take us to Ngoubé.”
    “And who’s going to pay for it?” Kate queried.
    “The magazine, Kate. Just imagine the cool article you can write if we find the missing missionaries.”
    “And if we don’t?”
    “It’s still news. Don’t you see? You won’t get another opportunity like this,” her grandson pleaded.
    “I’ll have to check with Joel,” replied Kate, in whose eyes Alex immediately recognized the first glint of awakened curiosity.
    It didn’t seem like a bad idea to Joel, who couldn’t go back home to London anyway because Timothy was still in the hospital.
    “Are there snakes there, Kate?”
    “More than anywhere in the world, Joel.”
    “But there are gorillas, too,” Alex said to tempt him. “Maybe you can photograph one up close. It would make a great cover for International Geographic .”
    “Well, in that case, I’ll go along,” Joel decided.
    Angie was finally convinced by the roll of bills Kate thrust in her face and the idea of a very difficult flight, a challenge she could not resist. The pilot snagged the money with one fist, lighted the first cigarette of the day, and gave the order to toss some of the baggage into the cabin while she checked the plane’s weight distribution and made sure Super Hawk was in top operating form.
    “This machine is safe, right?” asked Joel, for whom the worst part of his job was snakes and the second-worst part was flying in small planes.
    As her only answer, Angie spat some tobacco shreds at his feet. Alex nudged Joel with his elbow. He shared the photographer’s feeling that this conveyance did not seem altogether safe, especially considering that it was piloted by an eccentric woman with a case of beer at her feet, who also kept alighted cigarette clamped between her teeth only a few feet away from the drums of gasoline carried for refueling.
    Twenty minutes later the Cessna was loaded and the passengers were in place. There weren’t enough seats for everyone, so Alex and Nadia wiggled into a niche among the bundles in the tail; no one used a seat belt because Angie thought it an unnecessary precaution.
    “In case there’s an accident, the belts wouldn’t do anything but keep the bodies from spilling out of the plane,” she said.
    She started the motors; the sound evoked the smile it always did—one of immeasurable tenderness. The plane shook like a wet dog, coughed a little, and began to bump along the improvised landing strip. Angie shouted a triumphal Comanche yell as the wheels lifted from the ground and her beloved Hawk rose toward the skies.
    “May God protect us,” the missionary murmured, crossing himself, and Joel followed suit.
    The view from the air offered a small sample of the variety and beauty of the African landscape. They left behind the nature preserve where they had spent the past week: vast hot, red dirt plains dotted with trees and wild animals. They passed over parched deserts, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and villages separated by great distances. The farther they flew toward the horizon, the farther they stepped back in time.
    The noise of the motors was a serious obstacle to conversation, but Alexander and Nadia insisted on talking, shouting above the racket. Brother Fernando replied to their endless questions at the same volume. They were heading toward the forests of an area near the equator, he said. Audacious nineteenth-century explorers, and French and Belgian colonizers in the twentieth century, had penetrated that green hell for a brief time, but the mortality rate was so high—eight of every ten men perished of tropical diseases, crimes, or accidents—that they were forced to retreat. After the country’s independence, when the foreign colonials withdrew, successive governments had reached out their tentacles toward the most remote villages. They built roads and sent soldiers, teachers, doctors, and bureaucrats, but the jungle and