Interview With a Spider Breeder
David Luntz
John had flown from London to Manaus in Brazil under a false passport. The
evening after he arrived, he took a water taxi to the Spider Breeder’s home.
An iron portcullis blocked the entrance. A small courtyard stood between it
and the wooden door of the house. Bats cried from shadowed vines. A brass bell
hung off a spiked bar on the portcullis. John struck the clapper. A tall
adolescent–whom John thought of as a ‘man-boy’–opened the door and crossed the
courtyard. When he saw John, his eyes flared, matches struck against
anthracite. A blue lizard ran over John’s freshly polished shoes.
The man-boy raised the portcullis, grunting. It let out a groaning sound. The
bats stopped screeching. The man-boy led John through the dimly-lit house and
into the dining room.
“Bravo, bravo, Bem-vindo! The English gentleman has come for his
supper…but will he sing for it?”
The Spider Breeder sat at a mahogany table set with stained-glass chalices.
Candelabra flickered. He pointed to the chair across the table from his own.
“This heat is beastly. I tell you, Mr. James, this is no country for old
men—but it has its compensations.”
He batted his lashes at the youth behind John. In his right hand, a lacquered
fan–decorated with pictures of chrysanthemums and Mount Fuji–fluttered.
His English was flawless. Pre-War. Upper-class.
John complimented him on it.
“Did you do your schooling in England?”
“No,” the man laughed. “Learned it from my mentor, a Shakespeare scholar, in
British Honduras.” He arched an eyebrow at John, “Got into a spot of bother
with a pupil back at Eton. Had to flee to balmier climes.”
The Spider Breeder put his cigarette down. The man-boy came over and lit a
fresh one.
“I take an elevated, pharaonic attitude to these things,” the Spider Breeder
said. “A country’s mores are like the wind, variable. Religion’s a bore. Only
art is divine. You agree, no?”
John smiled.
“Ah, a quiet one. So, tell me Mr. James: are you a man in thrall to his
memories or a man who seeks to make them?”
“Don’t quite follow.”
“Don’t be coy, Mr. James.”
“Sorry, it’s an odd question.”
“Is it?”
John fidgeted.
“Is that what you want, Mr. James? To make me ask?”
“Mr. da Silva, I’m not sure…ask what?”
“Do you always seek the thrill from that first bite of the madeleine infused
with lime flower tisane, or do you chase new highs? Is your soul a
sentimentalist’s or a tinkerer’s? Do you inflict your self-loathing onto
others or onto yourself?”
John laughed, nervously. His shirt stuck to his back.
“I don’t know…those are…loaded questions.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” da Silva mocked. “I dislike equivocators.
Are you a Jesuit? They make the best spies.”
“You must have me confused. I should come back in the morning.”
“Enough with the drama, Mr. James. I’m just following my mentor Harrington’s
advice, ‘Best to know, da Silva, whom you’re dealing with from the get-go.’”
John shrugged.
“Declare yourself, Mr. James. The floor is yours.” Da Silva swept his arms
around the table. “We are all ears.”
John stayed silent.
Da Silva shook his head.
“Trust me, Mr. James, you wouldn’t have hesitated if you’d met Bernard
Percival Harrington: a veritable specimen, sui generis. Put on a
three-piece no matter the weather. Gin and tonic from eight to eight. Old
school. Dreamed of playing the Dane on the great stage. Resigned himself to
the classroom. Second-hand existence. I owe to him everything: the Bard,
antiques, orchids, spiders.”
The Spider Breeder’s cheeks blushed. He looked away. The youth refilled his
goblet.
“Horrible place British Honduras, especially in October. Rains. Brought them
out. Ants. Slept on stilted beds surrounded by pails of water. Vicious
creatures. Mandibles can pick up ten times their weight.”
John clenched his jaw, made all the expected facial gestures, played the good
guest. His fingertips tingled. There was danger in this place.
“You asking if I’m an ant?”
“No. I’m asking if you’re a spy.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You heard me.”
“Of course not.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Myself. I freelance.”
The Spider Breeder took out John’s card from his jacket pocket. “Mr. Peter
Mallard James it says.” He held it up to the candlelight. “Is that your real
name? I made some calls. No one’s heard of you.”
“Look. I told you. I consult for various companies.”
“Such as?”
“Confidential. I can say there’s been a lot of promise with some toxins
unique to spiders in this area. Life-saving cures, potentially.”
Da Silva smirked.
“What life-saving cures?”
“That’s proprietary information. I’m only looking to acquire a few samples.
Nothing you cannot spare. I thought we’d come to an agreement.”
“You really thought our little tete-a-tete this morning in my shop was
serious? That I invited you to dinner for your company? You cannot be that
stupid, Mr. James.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand...”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“What’s your real name?”
“You have me there, Mr. da Silva…look…I find it’s best to operate with
aliases, pseudonyms. Until trust is established.”
“You’re not very good at this, are you, Mr. James?”
The Spider Breeder snapped his fingers. The youth struck a gong. A withered
servant shuffled out from the kitchen with a tray. He passed a plate of fish
to John. The youth poured aguardiente.
“To your health,” da Silva said, raising his goblet. “Let’s not ruin a good
meal with tedious inquiries. This fish before you, a rare cousin of
Arapaima gigas, is a local delicacy. Bon appétit.”
John put the goblet to his lips. The aguardiente smelled like a cocktail of
bad grappa and aviation petrol. It tasted worse.
The Spider Breeder shoved a forkful of fish into his mouth. His pearl necklace
shimmered in the candlelight as he chewed. He noticed John staring at the
fish.
“Please, please start,” he said. “It will get cold, just mind the bones.”
The fish was raw. John wasn’t sure how much colder it could get. He picked
some mud out of the congealed head—it made a sucking sound—and put a glob from
the belly onto his tongue. He began to feel sick. He looked up, fighting his
nausea, and saw finely meshed cages of spiders hanging from the roof beams,
like twisting Chinese lanterns. Tiny eyes glowed inside: feasting away on him.
John threw up all over the table.
Da Silva squealed.
“I knew it. I knew it. The moment I saw you, I knew it was true. Bemú sent
you. So, who are you? Are you a spy? What’s your real business with me?”
Da Silva ran around the table. He pressed the tip of a dagger against John’s
neck, then pulled it away. He wiped a bead of blood off the blade with his
finger and licked it.
“Tell me, tell me, what did Bemú say?”
The man-boy slammed the bolt on the dining-room door. The withered servant
approached the table. John shied away from him, holding his bleeding neck.
He gasped , “Stop, stop, please, help, help me.”
“It’s no use, Mr. James,” the Spider Breeder said, “they won’t help.”
The servant pulled an apricot-colored chamois out from his apron pocket and
wiped up the vomit.
“I don’t know who Bemú is," John said. “I don’t know who you are talking
about.”
Da Silva slapped each of John’s cheeks in turn with his left hand.
“Aroint thee, ye two-faced rump-fed ronyon bitch!” he shrieked. “Of course,
Bemú sent you. Who else could it be? Madame Castafiore read my palm the other
day. Bemú was sending a stranger, a forester, an exiled Englishman with a
beaked nose and dark aspect. That’s you. To be sure Madame Castafiore turned
the cards. Madame Castafiore does not make mistakes. The pyre flamed. The
waterwheel gyred. Those are Bemú’s sacred signs.”
The Spider Breeder took a deep breath.
“Antonico,” he said, gesturing to the man-boy by the door, “watched you peel
an orange before you came into my shop. It burned like a comet’s tail. A
circumstantial detail, but no less damning. You arrived by water. The signs
align. They do not lie. Nor does the fish. No one rejects such a delicacy
unless possessed by Bemú. Tell me what he said.”
John knew it didn’t matter who Bemú was. Whatever he told the Spider Breeder,
he would twist to make sense of his fears. Da Silva wasn’t the real danger. He
was a bit player in a game John had no idea he was playing until that knife
got pressed against his throat. The danger was Antonico. John hadn’t been
eating an orange. The man-boy had lied. Why?
John thrust his chest out. Straightened his shoulders.
“Bemú rose up from the river. He shook violently on the shore. The sun crowned
a burning rainbow on his head.”
“Rubbish. Liar,” da Silva said. He pushed the tip of the dagger against John’s
neck again. John swallowed. Told himself not to worry. He needed the man to
tell him more about Bemú.
“Why would Bemú forsake his jeweled skin and molt in water?” the Spider
Breeder asked. “What has become of him?”
Da Silva wiped his face with a serviette.
“I don’t trust you, Mr. James,” he said, stroking the tip of the knife under
John’s chin. “I smell your desperation. But do you smell your smallness, you
insufferable pissant? That’s the question.”
The Spider Breeder brought his face down to John’s left ear, sniffed it a few
times, and then licked the lobe.
“What’s that? Is that leek? Oh, as Christ is my savior, you’re no Englishman.
You’re Welsh. The leek has leaked you. Tell me Taffy, do you wear leek in your
cap on Saint David’s Day? Only a true Welshman does that.”
John smiled. Keep talking, fool.
“Oh, it won’t answer. It won’t sue for peace. Come, come, let’s settle the
matter. Show me your fingernails.”
He grabbed John’s hand and twisted his fingers up toward his face.
“Knew it. Coal miner? Tosher? Chimney sweep? You think I’m stupid? You think
you can dig a tunnel below my defenses? Blast your way into my citadel?”
“Prithee, sire,” John said, lilting his cadence, rolling his Rs, “I know my
Henry V, too, but you must heed Bemú’s command to give me the poi…”
“It’s true,” he howled. “Bemú adored King Hal. Of course, he would choose a
half-breed Welsh miner for such an odious task.”
John almost made the error of interrupting him.
“It grieves me to hear this about Bemú,” da Silva continued. “He was so
beautiful, a creature of land and water, scaled with polygonal runes. Golden
quincunxes. A colossus, four stout legs. Liked to laze in the sun. And I, it
seems so long ago but it might have been yesterday, was a creature of land and
wind.”
“Stop with the sentimental nonsense, the evasions,” John said. “You accuse me
of defiling your home. You insult my countrymen. You’re just envious Bemú
chose me.”
The Spider Breeder took the knife off of John’s chin. His shoulders drooped.
“You should have seen me, Welshman. My feathers burned: purple, red, orange.
My mouth was a stiletto. Bemú swam. I flew—dauphin of the skies. Those runes
on his spine—maps, languages. I read the parts of him his eyes couldn’t see. I
liked knowing what he could not know.”
A tear fell down his cheek.
“When I tired, I perched on the rock near where he bathed. I pretended his
reflection in the water was my own. I sang to him. Opera. Mozart: “Queen of
the Night.” Sometimes he let me clean his teeth with the tip of my beak.
Allowed me to gaze into the jeweled corridors of his belly. It would have been
so easy, but I never, never ever, stole a thing from there…I could never
convince him otherwise.”
He walked over to the table. Drank from his goblet.
“I tell you, Welshman, there’s no nobility and honor left in this world—only
rags, bones, tin, brass.”
He stuck his dagger into the side of the table. Above his head, the spider
cages twisted in the air. Antonico stood still against the door, inscrutable.
“I suppose you know all that. But do you know this? Do you know
he owes me his life? I’ll wager Bemú left that little convenient detail out.
Nothing about how some grotesque rat was brought to our irenic shores on a
diseased caravel from a nightmare age? Not a word about how this malignant
thing snuck into Bemú’s sleeping jaws and would have eaten its way right
through him…?
He made a gnawing motion with his front teeth. They gleamed in the yellow
light.
“I saw it all. What that horrid creature–with its spindly back–would do: how
it would crawl out of Bemú’s nether parts with Bemú’s entrails in his mouth. I
never hesitated; my sangfroid was exquisite; I gored the rat.”
John took a sip of aguardiente. A misstep could cost him the toxin. Maybe his
life. The man might be dangerously mad—or a lonely fool playing a very
dangerous prank. It didn’t matter. John wasn’t leaving without the poison.
He’d come too far. He needed the money. His fingers closed over the glass. He
wanted to dig them into da Silva’s jowls. Crush his larynx. Watch the
capillaries in his eyes burst.
A sudden stiffening in his groin surprised him.
“Bemú said it was impossible that such a gentle creature could have killed
him,” da Silva said. “If it had tried, Lola–his personal guardian, an obese
tarantula–would have protected him. But I told him, ‘No, no, Lola was also
sleeping, snoring quite loudly’…Welshman, can you believe it? That Lola was
sleeping… such negligence?”
John swatted a fly.
“Such criminal negligence is inconceivable,” John said.
“I told Bemú I loved him. He said I was being manipulative. That I envied
Lola. ‘Do you have no shame?’ he asked, then banished me. Now look, look what
has become of me.”
“You’re losing focus,” John said. “Bemú needs the venom. Lola is dead. Smashed
by a boulder.”
Da Silva’s face brightened.
John took another sip. Ran a hand slowly through his hair, then patted it down
into place. He pointed to the cages of spiders.
“I see what you’re doing here. No need to worry…your secret’s safe with me.”
Da Silva froze.
“What do you mean, ‘Your secret’s safe with me?’ What are you saying, Mr.
James?”
“No need for alarm, da Silva.”
John got out of his chair and sat down in the one next to da Silva’s. He
cupped the Spider Breeder’s knees with his palms, brushed his fingers inside
his thighs. He was so close to the prize.
Antonico glared.
“You’re building an army. For Bemú. You want to get back in his favor. You
want him to regain his rightful place.”
John lifted his index finger and pointed again to the cages.
“There are your shock troops, mechanized cavalry, priestesses, comfort women…”
“Bravo, bravo, Mr. James. But tell me, if you know so much: why does Bemú need
the venom when he can have this army?”
John wavered. Saw the prize slipping through his fingers. All that work for
nothing. The answer came to him. He didn’t have to invent. It was what he’d
been doing.
“Inoculation. Bemú’s in danger of being poisoned. He has many enemies.”
“True,” da Silva cried. “Many enemies. Bemú is cunning. Bemú knows his
history. Mithridates.”
“Yes, Mithridates, king of Pontus, the ultimate survivor. Come, come, we must
be quick. Bemú needs help urgently.”
Da Silva nodded. He walked over to a cage and unclasped the top. With wooden
tongs, he pulled out a round, hairy mass the size of a child’s fist with
glittering eyes.
“Isn’t she beautiful? I hate to kill her, but for Bemú…No! It’s not right, it
shouldn’t be so easy. For you.”
He waved the spider in front of John’s eyes. Its mouth shone, green and red.
The fangs were wet. John shivered.
“Look hard, Mr. James, look at what’s to be destroyed. How can you stand it?
Here, hold her, but not too tight.”
He passed the tongs to John and waddled over to a cupboard—removed a glass
bowl, a syringe encased in a small steel drum, and three tiny vials. He set
them down on a wood workstation. A nipple stuck out on the side of the bowl.
He screwed a steel cylinder to it.
“Carbon dioxide.”
He took the tongs back and put the spider under the bowl.
“Turn away, Mr. James. Some privacy, please.”
There was a hiss of gas. Da Silva let out a croak. John turned around. The
Spider Breeder withdrew the syringe from the spider’s mouth. Its tip
glistened: a tiny rainbow. He squeezed an opaque liquid into the vials—left
the syringe on the counter.
Antonico stared at it.
“Only give one vial to Bemú—otherwise he might hurt himself. You will give it
to him, won’t you? You can keep the rest,” he winked. “For your company.”
Da Silva placed the vials carefully into an ice bucket and wrote down the
details of some paper shuffler John needed to contact before departing Brazil.
As John left, he said, “Remember me to Bemú. Remind him of the service I have
done. Tell him his army is ready.”
*** THE SOUTHERN CROSS MESSENGER ***
June 12, 1988
Antiques Dealer Found Dead: Police Seek Suspect
A much-loved and eccentric character in Manaus, Orestes da Silva, was
found deceased by the Rio Negro. A specialist in nineteenth century
Brazilian woodwork, Senhor da Silva led tours of the renowned Manaus opera
house. Apart from Portuguese, he had a formidable command of English,
German, and French. He acted as treasurer of the local Shakespeare Society
and played Falstaff in amateur productions. An avid collector of local
flora and arachnid species, he was well known to other specialists and
pharmaceutical companies.
His neighbor, Senhora Costa, reported da Silva often walked by the river
alone, crying out “Bemú, Bemú,” chanting a strange tongue.
“It was part of his charm,” Senhora Costa said. “I thought this thing or
person he sang to was perhaps some friend he’d lost. There was a sadness
in his eyes. He was a wonderful neighbor. I will miss him.”
His young steward, Antonico Braga, discovered the corpse. At first it was
thought Senhor da Silva had accidentally drowned. However, an autopsy
showed the absence of water in his lungs and a tiny puncture in his neck.
Braga informed the police his master had dined with an English gentleman
the night before and had seemed very agitated, at one point drawing a
dagger on his guest. The police wish to interview this individual. Anyone
with knowledge of the person in the sketch below is urged to contact
Captain Samuel Pereira immediately at 0023 3674
Byline: Menard Quine
Mystery Of ‘Opera Parrot’ Solved By Tourist
The longstanding mystery surrounding a Mozart-aria singing parrot might be
solved. Locals often reported hearing selections from “Così fan tutte,”
“Die Zauberflöte” and “Don Giovanni” sung near the river banks. A West
German tourist, Hermann Greiner, who recently heard ‘Queen of the Night’
while hiking through the forest, said, “My hairs went stiff. I felt like a
boy again. It was the exact same voice I’d heard in the Berlin Zoo as a
child.”
Greiner claimed there was a famous Brazilian parrot there named “Morris”
who sang popular arias in German, Italian, French, English, and Russian.
According to Greiner, “Morris disappeared in the ‘Great Berlin Zoo Break’
of 1930 when the gates to the animal cages were mysteriously opened. All
the creatures were recaptured except for Morris.”
Greiner, a basso profondo with the Munich Opera House, claimed, “The ear
does not lie. The body knows before the mind. It’s the same bird. It was
the queerest thing,” he said, chuckling, “there I was in the middle of the
Amazon but back fifty years before in Berlin. I couldn’t tell which was
more real.”
Professor Mauser, head of the faculty of Animal Studies at the Instituto
das Ciências, and a world authority on psittacines, said by telephone,
“Parrots never forget where they come from, so perhaps it’s the same bird,
but unlikely, because of the timespan.
More likely, Morris island hopped across the Atlantic or found passage on
a vessel after escaping the Zoo. When he got to the rainforest, he mated
with another parrot. What Herr Greiner heard was one of Morris’s offspring
singing the Mozart arias. An amazing instance of intergenerational
transfer.”
Byline: Pierre Herbert