Even without the torture of waking nightmares and ravenous mosquitoes, it would be impossible to get a good sleep in Colonel Aranha’s prison. There are twenty-three of us wedged into a cell that could comfortably hold ten men. During the day, when we’re standing, and a few of the men are taken out for various chores, it’s tolerable. At night the situation becomes unbearable.

We have no mattresses, so we sleep on the hard stone floor, each of us seeking a little space and privacy. When one man turns over, it sets off a chain reaction as bodies flip like dominoes and arms and legs flail in the dark. When one of our sick cell mates vomits or has diarrhea, the cell reeks.

The boy from the Andes adapts to this wretchedness with surprising ease. Given his brutal childhood in the mountains, I guess this is not a total surprise. At night he sleeps near me, perhaps seeking comfort or protection, but during the day he seems happy and fearless.

He even gets a name. His new friends, who play soccer with him in a corner of the cell during the day, christen him “Mudinho,” which seems to be an affectionate way of saying “little mute” in Portuguese. He appears to like having a name—each time someone calls it out he flashes a quick smile.

I ask everyone again about P.J., but there is no new information. Some claim to have seen a girl matching her description, escorted quickly and under heavy guard. Others, who are taken out daily to clean the prison, say they occasionally manage to exchange gossip with prisoners in different cell blocks. They have heard rumors of a beautiful girl kept all alone in a special cell, whose desperate cries and sobbing prayers are in English.

I’m haunted by these stories, and by the suspicion that they’ve heard other, even grimmer, rumors about her that they’re keeping from me. I feel that she’s very close. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’m certain I can hear P.J.’s voice crying faintly for help. It always merges into the drone of a mosquito that one or another of my cell mates slaps with a curse.

The sad truth is I’ve come all the way to the Amazon to find her, and we may now be only a few hundred yards from each other, but P.J. doesn’t have a clue I’m here.

After the terrible adventure of setting fire to the forest, I am kept in the cell day after day. There is no exercise yard and I am never selected for chores. The tedium is, in its way, worse than any torture. Sleepless nights follow dreary days in a numbing chain that quickly drains all my strength and hope. And then, after five days of waiting, something truly shocking happens.