She stood there, looking at me calmly for a long, long moment, then moved to where her handbag lay on a bamboo table, opened it, found herself a cigarette and a small mother-of-pearl lighter.
She blew out in a long column of smoke and said calmly, "Look, Mallory, I don't owe you a thing. All right?"
Even then I couldn't see it and in any case, after that, all I wanted to do was hurt her. I moved to the door and said, 'Just one thing. How much do I owe you?'
She laughed in my face and I turned, utterly defeated, stumbled down the veranda steps and hurried away towards the river.
All right, so I didn't know much about women, but I hadn't deserved this. I wandered along the riverbank, a cigarette smouldering between my lips and finally found myself at the jetty.
There were several boats there, mainly canoes, but Figueiredo's official launch was tied up and another belonging to one of the big land company agents. The mission launch was at the far end, Sister Maria Teresa in the rear cockpit I started to turn away, but it was already too late for she called to me by name and I had no choice, but to turn and walk down to the boat.
She smiled as I reached the rail "A beautiful morning, Mr Mallory."
"For the moment."
She nodded and said calmly, "Would you have such a thing as a cigarette to spare?"
I was surprised and showed it I suppose as I produced a packet and offered her one. "They're only local, I'm afraid. Black tobacco."
She blew out smoke expertly and smiled. "Don't you approve? Nuns are only human, you know, flesh and blood like anyone else."
"I'm sure you are. Sister." I started to turn away.
She said, "I get the distinct impression that you do not approve of me, Mr Mallory. If I hadn't called out to you, you wouldn't have stopped to talk. Isn't that so?"
"All right," I said. "I think you're a silly, impractical woman who doesn't know what in the hell she's getting mixed up in."
"I've spent seven years in South America as a medical mis-sionary, Mr Mallory. Three of them in other parts of Northern Briazil. This kind of country is not entirely unfamiliar to me."
"Which only makes it worse. Your own experience ought to tell you that by coming here at all, you've only made a tricky situation even more difficult for everyone who comes into con-tact with you."
Well, it's certainly a point of view,' she said good-humouredly. "I've been told that you have a great deal of experience with Indians. That you worked with Karl Buber on the Xingu."
"I knew him."
"A great and good man."
"Who stopped being a missionary when he discovered you were doing the Indians as much harm as anyone else."
She sighed. "Yes, I would agree that the record has been far from perfect, even amongst the various religious organisations involved."
"Far from perfect?" I was well into my stride now, my general anger and frustration at the morning's events finding a convenient channel. "They don't need us, Sister, any of us. The best service we could offer them would be to go away and leave them alone and they certainly don't need your religion. They wear nothing worth speaking about, own nothing, wash themselves twice a day and help each other. Can your Christianity offer them more than that?"
"And kill each other," she said. "You forgot to mention that."
"All right, so they look upon all outsiders as natural enemies.God alone knows, they're usually right."
"They also kill the old," she said. "The disfigured, the men-tally deficient. They kill for the sake of killing."
I shook my head. "No, you don't understand, do you? That's the really terrible tiling. Death and life are one, part of exist-ence itself in their terms. Waking, sleeping - ifs all the same. How can it be bad to die, especially for a warrior? War is the purpose for which he lives."
"I would take them love, Mr Mallory, is that such a bad tiling?"
"What was it one of your greatest Jesuits said? The sword and the iron rod are the best kind of preaching."
"A long, long time ago. As the times change so men change with them." She stood up and straightened her belt. "You accuse me of not really understanding and you may well have a point. Perhaps you could help me on the road to rehabilitation by showing me the sights of Landro."
Defeated for the second time that morning, I resigned my-self to my fate and took her hand to help her over the rail.
As we walked along the jetty, she took my arm and said, "Colonel Alberto seems a very capable officer."
"Oh, he's that, all right."
"What is your opinion of this meeting he has arranged to-morrow with one of the Huna chieftains? Is it likely to accom-plish much?"
"It all depends what they want to see him for," I said. "Indians are like small children - completely irrational. They can smile with you one minute and mean it - dash out your brains the next on the merest whim."
"So this meeting could prove to be a dangerous under-taking?"
"You could say that. He's asked me to go with him."
"Do you intend to?"
"I can't think of the slightest reason why I should at the moment, can you?"
She didn't get a chance to reply for at that moment her name was called and we looked up and found Joanna Martin approaching. She was dressed in the white chiffon dress again, wore the same straw hat and carried the parasol over one shoulder. She might have stepped straight off a page in Vogue and I don't think I've ever seen anything more incongruous.
Sister Maria Teresa said, "Mr Mallory is taking me on a sight-seeing trip, my dear."
"Well, that should take all of ten minutes." Joanna Martin took her other arm, ignoring me completely.
We walked through the mean little streets with the hopeless faces peering out of the windows at us, the ragged half-starved children playing beneath the houses. An oxen had died in a side alley, obviously of some disease or other so that the flesh was not fit for human consumption. It had been left exactly where it had fallen and had swollen to twice its normal size. The smell was so terrible that it even managed to kill the stink from the cesspool a few yards farther on which had over-flowed and ran hi a steady stream down the centre of the street.
She didn't like any of it, nor for that matter did Joanna Martin. I pointed out the steam house, one of those peculiarities of up-river villages where Indians went through regular purifi-cation for religious reasons with the help of red-hot stones and lots of cold water, but it didn't help.
We moved out through a couple of streets of shanties, con-structed of iron and pieces of packing cases and inhabited mainly by forest Indians who had made the mistake of trying to come to terms with the white man's world.
"Strange," I said, "but in the forest, naked as the day they were born, most of these women look beautiful. Put them in a dress and something inexplicable happens. Beauty goes, pride goes...."
Joanna Martin put a,hand out to stay me. "What was that, for God's sake?"
We were past the final line of huts, close to the river and the edge of the jungle. The sound came again, a sharp bitter cry. I led the way forward, then paused.
On the edge of the trees by the river, an Indian woman knelt in front of a tree, arms raised above her head, a tattered calico dress pulled up above her thighs. The man with her was also Indian in spite of his cotton trousers and shirt. He was tying her wrists above her head by lianas to a convenient branch.
The woman cried out again, Sister Maria Teresa took a quick step forward and I pulled her back. "Whatever happens, you mustn't interfere."
She turned to me and said, "This is one custom with which I am entirely familiar, Mr Mallory. I will stay here for a while if you don't mind. I may be able to help afterwards, if she'll let me." She smiled. "Amongst other things, I'm a quali-fied doctor, you see. If you could bring me my bag along from the house at some timeI'd be most grateful."
She went towards the woman and her husband and sat down on the ground a yard or two away. They completely ignored her.
Joanna Martin gri
pped my arm fiercely. "What is it?"
"She's going to have a child," I said. "She's tied by her wrists with lianas so that the child is born while she is upright. That way he will be stronger and braver than a child born to a woman lying down."
The woman gave another low moan of pain, her husband squatted on the ground beside her.
Joanna Martin said,"But this is ridiculous. They could be here all night."
"Exactly," I said. "And if Sister Maria Teresa insists on behaving like Florence Nightingale, the least we can do is go back to the house and get that bag for her."
On the way back through Landrosa rather unusual incident took place which gave me a glimpse of another side of her character.
As we came abreast of a dilapidated house on the comer of a narrow street, a young Indian girl of perhaps sixteen or seven-teen rushed out of the entrance on to the veranda. She wore an old calico dress and was barefoot, obviously frightened to death. She glanced around her hurriedly as if debating which way to run, started down the steps, missed her footing and went sprawling. A moment later Avila rushed out of the house, a whip in one hand. He came down the steps on the run and started to belabour her.
I didn't care for Avila and certainly didn't like what he was doing to the girl, but I'd learned to move cautiously in such cases for this was still a country where most women took the occasional beating as a matter of course.
Joanna Martin was not so prudent, however. She went in like a battleship under full sail and lashed out at him with her handbag. He backed away, a look of bewilderment on his face. I got there as quickly as I could and grabbed her arm as she was about to strike him again.
"What's she done?" I asked Avila and pulled the girl up from the ground.
"She's been selling herself round the town while I've been away," he said. "God knows what she might have picked up."
"She's yours?"
He nodded. "A Huna girl. I bought her just over a year ago."
We'd spoken in Portuguese and I turned to give Joanna a translation. "There's nothing to be done. The girl belongs to him."
"What do you mean, belongs to him?"
"He bought her, probably when her parents died. It's com-mon enough up-river and legal."
Bought her?' First there was incredulity in her eyes, then a kind of white-hot rage. 'Well, I'm damn well buying her back,' she said. 'How much will this big ape take?"
"Actually he speaks excellent English," I said. "Why not ask him yourself."
She was really angry by then, scrabbled in her handbag and produced a hundredcruzeiro note which she thrust at Avila. "Will this do?"
He accepted it with alacrity and bowed politely. "A pleasure to do business with you, senhorita," he said and made off rapidly up the street in the direction of the hotel.
The girl waited quietly for whatever new blow fate had in store for her, that impassive Indian face giving nothing away. I questioned her in Portuguese which she seemed to under-stand reasonably well.
I said to Joanna. "She's a Huna all right. Her name is Christina and she's sixteen. Her father was a wild rubber tapper. He and the mother died from small-pox three years ago. Some woman took her in then sold her to Avila last year. What do you intend to do with her?"
"God knows," she said. "A shower wouldn't be a bad idea to start with, but if s more Sister Maria Teresa's department than mine. How much did I pay for her, by the way?"
"About fifty dollars - a hundredcruzeiros. Avila can take his pick of girls like her for ten which leaves him ninety for booze."
"My God, what a country," she said, and taking Christina by the hand, started down the street towards the airstrip.
I spent the afternoon helping Mannie do an engine check on the Bristol Hannah arrived back just after six and was in excellent spirits. I lay in my hammock and watched him shave while Mannie prepared the evening meal.
Hannah was humming gaily to himself and looked years younger. When Mannie asked him if he wanted anything to eat he shook hishead and pulled on a clean shirt.
I said, "You're wasting your time, Mannie. His appetite runs to other things tonight"
Hannah grinned. "Why don't you give in, kid? I mean that's a real woman. She's been there and back and that kind need a man."
He turned his back and went off whistling as I swung my legs to the floor. Mannie grabbed me by the arm. "Let it gosNeil."
I stood up, walked to the edge of the hangar and leaned against a post looking out over the river, taking time to calm down. Funny how easily I got worked up over Hannah these days.
Mannie appeared and pushed a cigarette at me. "You know, Neil, women are funny creatures. Not at all as we imagine them. The biggest mistake we make is to see them as we think they should be. Sometimes the reality is quite different..."
"All right, Mannie, point taken." Great heavy spots of rain darkened the dry earth and I took down an oilskin coat and pulled it on. "I'll go and check on Sister Maria Teresa. I'll see you later."
I'd taken up her bag of tricks, an oilskin coat and a pressure lamp, earlier in case the vigil proved to be a prolonged one. Just as I reached the outer edge of Landro, I met her on the way in with the mother walking beside her carrying her newly-born infant in a blanket, the father following behind.
"A little girl," Sister Maria Teresa announced, "but they don't seem to mind. I'm going to stay the night with them. Will you let Joanna know for me?"
I accompanied them through the gathering darkness to the shack the couple called home, then I went back along the street to the hotel.
The rain was really coming down now in great solid waves and I sat at the bar with Figueiredo for a while, playing draughts and drinking' some of that gin I'd brought in for him, wailing for it to stop.
After an hour, I gave up, lit my lamp and plunged down the steps into the rain. The force was really tremendous. It was like being in a small enclosed world, completely alone and for some reason, I felt exhilarated.
Light streamed through the closed shutters when I went up the steps to the veranda of the house and a gramophone was playing. I stood there for a moment listening to the murmur of voices, the laughter, then knocked on the door.
Hannah opened it. He was in his shirtsleeves and held a glass of Scotch in one hand. I didn't give him a chance to say any-thing.
I said, "Sister Maria Teresa's spending the night in Landro with a woman who's just had a baby. She wanted Joanna to know."
He said, "Okay, I'll tell her."
As I turned away Joanna appeared behind him, obviously to see what was going on. It was enough. I said, "Oh, by the way, I'll be flying up to Santa Helena with you in the morn-ing. The mail run will have to wait."
His face altered, became instantly wary. "Who says so?"
"Colonel Alberto. Wants me to take a little walk with him tomorrow to meet some Huna. I'll be seeing you."
I went down into the rain. I think she called my name, though I could not be sure, but when I glanced back over my shoulder, Hannah had moved out on to the veranda and was looking after me.
Some kind of small triumph, I suppose, but one that I sus-pected I would have to pay dearly for.
NINE
Drumbeat
I did not sleep particularly well and the fact that it was three a.m. before Hannah appeared didn't help. I slept only fitfully after that and finally got up at six and went outside.
It was warm and oppressive, unusually so considering the hour and the heavy grey clouds promised rain of the sort that would last for most of the day. Not my kind of morning at all and the prospect of what was to follow had little to commend it.
I wandered along the front of die open hangar and paused beside the Bristol which stood there with its usual air of expectancy as if waiting for something to happen. It carne to me suddenly that other men must have stood beside her like this, coughing over the first cigarette of the day as they waited to go out on a dawn patrol, sizing up the weather, waiting to see what the day would bring. It gave me a curious
feeling of kinship which didn't really make any sense.
I turned and found Hannah watching me. That first time we'd met after I'd crash-landed in the Vega, I'd been struck by the ageless quality in his face, but not now. Perhaps it was the morning or more probably, the drink from the previous night, but he looked about a hundred years old. As if he had ex-perienced everything there ever was and no longer had much faith in what was to come.
The tension between us was almost tangible. He said harshly, "Do you intend to go through with this crazy business?"
"I said so, didn't I?"
He exploded angrily. "God damn it, there's no knowing how the Huna might react. If they turn sour, you won't have a prayer."
Jack Higgins - Last Place God Made Page 11
