Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men

--Hindu verse.

The naked parrot looked like a human fetus spliced onto a kosher chicken. It was so old it had lost every single one of its feathers, even its pinfeathers, and its bumpy, jaundiced skin was latticed by a network of rubbery blue veins.

"Pathological," muttered Switters, meaning not simply the parrot but the whole scene, including the shrunken old woman in whose footsteps the bird doggedly followed as she moved about the darkened villa. The parrot's scabrous claws made a dry, scraping noise as they fought for purchase on the terra-cotta floor tiles, and when, periodically, the creature lost its footing and skidded an inch or two, it issued a squawk so quavery and feeble that it sounded as if it were being petted by the Boston Strangler. Each time it squawked, the crone clucked, whether in sympathy or disapproval one could not tell, for she never turned to her devoted little companion but wandered aimlessly from one piece of ancient wooden furniture to another in her amorphous black dress.

Switters feigned appreciation, but he was secretly repulsed, all the more so because Juan Carlos, who stood beside him on the patio, also spying in the widow's windows, was beaming with pride and satisfaction. Switters slapped at the mosquitoes that perforated his torso and cursed every hair on that hand of Fate that had snatched him into South too-goddamn-vivid America.

by the lamplight that seeped through the louvers, a mammoth moth beat against the shutters like a storm. Switters watched it with some fascination as he waited for the boys to bring his luggage up from the river. That moth was no butterfly, that was certain. It was a night animal, and it had a night animal's mystery.

Butterflies were delicate and gossamer, but this moth possessed strength and weight. Its heavy wings were powdered like the face of an old actress. Butterflies were presumed to be carefree, moths were slaves to a fiery obsession. Butterflies seemed innocuous, moths somehow . . . erotic. The dust of the moth was a sexual dust. The twitch of the moth was a sexual twitch. Suddenly Switters touched his throat and moaned. He moaned because it occurred to him how much the moth resembled a clitoris with wings.

Vivid.

There were grunts on the path behind him, and Inti emerged from the forest bearing, somewhat apprehensively, Switters's crocodile-skin valise. In a moment the other two boys appeared with the rest of his gear. It was time to review accommodations in the Hotel Boquichicos. He dreaded what he might find behind its shuttered windows, its double-screened doors, but he motioned for the boys to follow him in. "Let's go. This insect--" He nodded at the great moth that, fan though it might, was unable to stir the steaming green broth that in the Amazon often substitutes for air. "This insect is making me feel--" Switters hesitated to utter the word, even though he knew Inti could understand no more than a dozen simple syllables of English. "This insect is making me feel libidinous."

Trekking toward Jebel al Qaz-az in a late spring rain, the nomads were soaked and nearly giddy. Behind them, at lower elevations, the grass was already yellowing and withering, fodder not for flocks but for wildfires; ahead, the mountain passes conceivably could still be obstructed by snow. Whatever anxieties the band maintained, however, were washed away by the downpour. In country such as this, hope's other name was moisture.

Even the sheep and goats seemed merry, lighter of hoof, although individual beasts paused from time to time to shake rainwater from their coats, vigorously, stiffly, causing them to look like self-conscious burlesque queens. Their leathery black muzzles, glistening with rain, were pointed -- not so much by their drivers as by a migratory instinct older than humanity -- toward distant pastures.

Switters was one of four men -- the khan, the khan's eldest son, an experienced pathfinder, and himself -- who traveled on horseback at the head of the procession. The rest were on foot. They had been on the move, dawn to dusk, for almost a week.

About two miles back, prior to beginning their gradual ascent, they had passed a large compound, an oasis, undoubtedly, completely surrounded by a high mud wall. The boughs of orchard trees rose above the wall, and the scent of orange blossoms boosted to a higher power the already intoxicating smell of the rain. From inside the compound, Switters thought he heard the wild sugary shriek of girlish laughter. Several of the young men must have heard it, too, for they turned their heads to stare wistfully at the remote estate.

The band pressed on. That is what nomads do. Forward the march. The burden and the bleating.

Switters, however, could not get the mini-oasis out of his mind. Something about it -- its mysterious walls, its lush vegetation, its auditory hint of young women splashing in the rain -- had gripped his imagination with such steady pressure that eventually he announced to his hosts his intention to return and investigate the place. One might say they were shocked, except that his very presence among them was in and of itself so extraordinary that they were partially immune to further bewilderment.

The khan shook his head, and his eldest son, who spoke passable English, objected, "Oh, sir, we must not turn back. The flocks--"

Switters, who spoke passable Arabic, interrupted to explain that he meant to go alone.

"But, sir," said the eldest son, wringing his hands and screwing up his forehead until it looked like the rolled-back lid of a sardine can, "the horse. We have only these four, you see, and we--"

"No, no, good buddy. Assure your papa I had no notion of galloping off with his fine nag. Now, he can let his next eldest son hop up and take a load off his tootsies."

"But, sir--"

"I'll just zip on back there in my starship. If you boys'll be so good as to ready it for me."

The khan waved the procession to a halt. At that exact moment the rain stopped as well. Two of the tribesmen unfastened Switters's chair from behind the saddle, unfolded it, placed it on a reasonably level patch, and set its brake. Then they helped him off the horse and lifted him gently into the seat. They strapped his croc-skin valise to the chair back and laid his computer, satellite telephone, and customized Beretta 9-mm pistol, each wrapped in a separate plastic garbage bag, on his lap.

Elaborate farewells were exchanged, after which the nomads watched for many minutes in nothing short of awe as Switters, laboriously, precariously -- but singing all the while -- maneuvered the rickety, hand-operated wheelchair over the brutal rocks and ensnaring sands of a landscape so harsh in its promise that a mere glimpse of it would propel a Romantic poet to therapy or a developer to gin.

Slowly, he dissolved into the wilderness.

He seemed to be singing "Send in the Clowns."

Copyright © 2000 by Tom Robbins