the Last Place God Made (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  I think it was the one and only time I ever felt angry with him and it showed for his smile faded slightly and there was concern in his eyes.

  I turned away and Hannah came running across the airstrip rather fast considering the heat and the fact that he was dressed for flying. When he was about ten yards away, he slowed down as if suddenly realising he was making a fool of himself and came on at a walk.

  He ignored me and said to Joanna Martin, 'Satisfied now?'

  'Oh, I think you could say that,' she said coolly. 'Where's Sister Maria Teresa?'

  'When I last saw her she was down at the jetty having a look at the mission launch. Had some sort of crazy idea that you and she might sleep on board.'

  'What's wrong with the local hotel?'

  'Just about everything so I've arranged for you both to move into my place. I'll take you up there now and show you round, then I've got to run Alberto up to Santa Helena.'

  He picked up her suitcase and I said, 'What are the rest of us supposed to do?'

  He barely glanced at me. 'We can manage in hammocks down here in the hangar for a few nights. Mannie's moved your gear out.'

  He took her arm and they started to walk away. He paused after a few yards and called over his shoulder, 'I'd get that mail up to Figueiredo fast if I were you, kid. He's had the district runners standing by for an hour.'

  'And that puts you in your place,' Mannie said and started to laugh.

  For a moment, the anger flared up in me again and then, for some unaccountable reason, I found myself laughing with him. 'Women,' I said.

  'Exactly. We have all the trees in the world and an abundance of fruit. All we needed was Eve.' He shook his head and picked up the mail sack. 'I'll take this up to Figueiredo for you. You go and have a cup of coffee and relax. I can see you've had a hard morning.'

  He walked away towards town and I got my grip out of the Bristol and went into the hangar. He'd fixed three hammocks on the other side of the radio installation with a wall of packing cases five or six feet high to give some sort of privacy. There was a table and three chairs and a pot of coffee simmered gently on a double-ring oil stove.

  I poured some into a tin mug, lit a cigarette and eased myself into one of the hammocks. I couldn't get Joanna Martin out of my mind - the change in her. It didn't seem to make any kind of sense at all, especially in view of the fact that she'd deliberately chosen to travel with me in the Bristol instead of in the Hayley.

  My chain of thought was interrupted by Alberto who appeared in the gap in the end wall of packing cases. 'Camping out, I see, Mr Mallory.'

  'Hannah isn't here. He took the Martin girl up to the house.'

  'I am aware of that. It's you I want to see.' He found another tin mug and helped himself to coffee. 'I've spent most of the morning arguing with Sister Maria Teresa who insists on her right to proceed to Santa Helena.' He shook his head sadly. 'God protect me from the good and the innocent.'

  'A formidable combination,' I said. 'Are you going to let her go?'

  'I don't see how I can prevent it. You've seen the authorisation she and the Martin woman have? Counter-signed by the president himself.' He shrugged. 'If she decided to start up-river in the mission launch now, this very morning, how could I stop her, except by force and there would be the very devil to pay if I did that.'

  'So what are you going to do?'

  'You've heard my man managed to make contact with the Huna? Well, he's arranged a meeting for me tomorrow at noon in a patch of campo near the river about a mile upstream from the mission.'

  'How many will be there?'

  'One chief and five elders. It's a start, no more. A preliminary skirmish. I'm supposed to go on my own except for Pedro, of course, the half-breed who's made the contact for me. What do you think?'

  'It should be quite an experience.'

  'Yes, stimulating to put it mildly. I was wondering whether you might consider coming with me?'

  The impudence of the request was breathtaking. I sat up and swung my legs to the floor. 'Why me?'

  'You know more about Indians than anyone else I know. You could be of considerable assistance in the negotiations.'

  'How far is it to the river if we have to start running?'

  He smiled. 'See how you feel about it tomorrow. Hannah will be flying the women in first thing in the morning. You could come with them. I've agreed to let them look over the mission.'

  'Not that you had any choice in the matter.'

  'Exactly.'

  He moved out into the sunlight and Hannah came round the tail of the Hayley, buttoning the strap of his flying helmet, Mannie at his side.

  'Okay, Colonel, let's go!' he called. 'The sooner I get you there, the sooner I'm back.'

  'Can't you wait?' I asked.

  He hesitated, the cabin door of the Hayley half-open, then turned very slowly. His face had a look on it I'd seen before that first night at The Little Boat, when he'd got rough with Lola.

  He moved towards me and paused, no more than a foot in it. 'Just watch it, kid, that's all,' he said softly.

  I told him what to do in good and concise Anglo-Saxon. I think for a moment there he was within an ace of having a go at me and then Mannie got between us, his face white. It wasn't really necessary for Hannah turned abruptly, climbed up into the cabin where Alberto was already waiting and shut the door. A moment later the engine burst into life and he taxied away.

  He took off too fast, banking steeply across the river, barely making it over the trees, all good showy stuff and strictly for my benefit, just to make it clear who was boss.

  Mannie said softly, 'This isn't good, Neil. Not good at all. You know what Sam can be like. How unpredictable he is.'

  'You make all the allowances for him you want,' I said. 'But I'm damned if I will. Not any more.'

  I left him there and walked along the edge of the airstrip towards the house. There was no sign of life when I got there, but the front door was open so I simply walked into the living-room.

  I could hear the shower running so I lit a cigarette, sat on the window ledge and waited. After a while, the shower stopped. I could hear her singing and a little later, she entered the room dressed in an old robe, a towel tied around her head like a turban.

  She stopped singing abruptly, eyebrows raised in surprise. 'And what can I do for you? Did you forget something?'

  'You can tell me what I've done,' I said.

  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 missionary, Mr Mallory. Three of them in other parts of Northern brazil. 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 contact 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 mentally deficient. They kill for the sake of killing.'

  I shook my head. 'No, you don't understand, do you? That's the really terrible thing. Death and life are one, part of existence itself in their terms. Waking, sleeping - it's 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 thing?'

  '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 myself 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 tomorrow with one of the Huna chieftains? Is it likely to accomplish 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 undertaking?'

  '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 in 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 purification 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, constructed 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 qualified doctor, you see. If you could bring me my bag along from the house at some time, I'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 gripped 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 Landro, a 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 corner of a narrow street, a young Indian girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen 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 common 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 hundred cruzeiro 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 understand 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 it's more Sister Maria Teresa's department than mine. How much did I pay for her, by the way?'

  'About fifty dollars - a hundred cruzeiros. 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.