Marshlands Read Online Free PDF

intimidating. There might be anything inside.
    The sounds were what finally drew him in: the bellow of water buffalo; the staccato snap of a merganser trying to distract a predator from her ducklings; the dissonance of wind in the reeds.
    Somewhere in the distance, a merchant called out his wares: sugar, coffee, steel sewing needles.
    He could hear the faint plash of paddles, the gurgle of surface-feeding fish, even the whine of mosquitoes.
    There was something else familiar, a quality of light and sound that was very precise: the feeling of a morning after a great windstorm. He remembered those fragile mornings. There was a rawness in the air, a wounded quiet. Earth and sky seemed childishly reluctant to heal.
    The verisimilitude was uncanny. He wondered about the curator who’d perhaps said about the lighting, “I like how the shadows purple in the recesses of the buffalo stall, but the sunlight is too sharp for rainy season.”
    The center of the exhibit was a floating island, the kind heaped up by succeeding generations of marshmen, a hillock of floating grass linked to shore by a swaying rope bridge; and on the island, a proper marsh village, each hut built of painstakingly baled reeds.
    The encircling water was artificial, obviously. One couldn’t have museum-goers falling into water. But somehow they’d managed to make it just as shimmering and elusive as any waterway in the marshes, its surface bulging, from time to time, with the lips of simulated catfish.
    He wanted to kneel down and touch the artificial water, to study its astonishing craftsmanship, but the construction of the grass mound was so authentic that the closer to the shining black shoreline he came, the swampier and less stable was the ground under his feet, until he couldn’t move forward for fear of being pitched against the nearly invisible glass guardrail.
    He drew back from the edge and moved to higher ground, then crossed the rope bridge and wandered among the huts. In the distance, real or painted, was the distinctive cone of a village kiln, which towered over a yard stacked high with empty brick molds.
    Between the reed island and the brickyard, there was a broad wetland, rutted with natural and man-made channels. A camouflaged walkway overhung it.
    A meeting was taking place on the walkway. He recognized his friend by the long plaid skirt, so incongruous among the reeds. There were two others: a tall man in a business suit whose yellow hard hat was stenciled with the word DIRECTOR ; and a carefully coiffed woman in a brilliant blue dress who knew how to use her body when arguing a point in front of a man.
    The director’s hands were spread aggressively on his hips. The matter, whatever it was, seemed to have been long settled, but he was working hard to maintain the appearance of fairness.
    The discussion reached a high pitch. The director signaled that he’d heard enough, then issued his verdict.
    The woman in the blue dress had trouble containing her glee. This was clearly the culmination of a long campaign. The one with brighter plumage had been victorious. The loser stormed off.
    The thought of being alone in the exhibit frightened him, so he went to find her. Somehow he knew the lay of the land. Every cut in the red clay, every berm, was oddly familiar.
    He followed the river. They’d captured the peculiar sigh the sandy soil made as the river water ran along it, a very distinct sound like the tearing of kraft paper.
    He came to a clearing with beached canoes. The canoes seemed authentic, with their curved prows and the bitter aura of bitumen. He got a splinter verifying that the wood was the right species, the pitch the same thick concoction one could smell bubbling in the vats by the water in the dry season, when boats were repaired.
    There was a guesthouse nearby, a tiny cathedral executed in bundled reeds. How he’d wanted a guesthouse of his own! It took many years for him to understand that the