by James Morrow
“They appear to be taking snuff,” Malcolm observed.
“A resinous euphoriant from the virola tree,” said Jiménez, nodding. “The campfires keep the mosquitoes away, and epená keeps the rest of the world away.”
It had been a night of vague and sinister shapes, of bizarre tableaux caught by flickering torches and guttering lanterns, but now Malcolm beheld the strangest scene of all. In the center of the courtyard sat a closed wicker carriage the size of a railway coach, its shafts harnessed not to horses but to an oblong pool of silk spread across the ground like a vast bicho da seda canopy. Painted on the surface of the deflated bladder was a grinning face embedded in a lunar sphere—the legendary Man in the Moon—accompanied by the words Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: a good French name for a Montgolfier hot-air balloon, Malcolm decided, for that was surely the species to which the contraption belonged.
“Do I correctly infer you plan to attack Zumaeta from the sky as well as the ground?” asked Dartworthy, pointing towards the balloon.
Jiménez nodded and said, “By means of his extraordinary flying-machine, Capitaine Léourier will assault the enemy with Cuzco death-eggs.”
The sargento guided his party along a columned arcade to a sacristy that now functioned as a barracks, its dirt floor checked with mattresses set on wood frames. Probed by the light of Jiménez’s lantern, the niches disclosed stores of thuribles, chalices, ciboria, and vestments. Tonight, mused Malcolm, he and his companions would sleep under circumstances befitting Miss Bathurst’s arguably sacred ambition—her campaign to rescue a precious sector of Creation from the ravages of theology.
“Cuzco death-eggs,” said Miss Bathurst to the sargento. “Are they a kind of weapon?”
“Sí,” replied Jiménez, entrusting the lantern to Dartworthy. “Between our aeronaut’s bombs and Torresblanco’s cannonballs, we are certain of victory.”
Having spent the past thirty-eight nights in a damp and filthy hammock aboard a vibrating engine-boat, Malcolm was pleased to find himself staring at a grid of dry and stable mattresses. If the others wished to stay awake and chatter, so be it, but he would discard his consciousness without delay. Stretching his grateful bones across the nearest pallet, he soon found himself aloft, dream-borne, navigating a scarlet sky aboard Capitaine Léourier’s fabulous flying-machine. At length he landed back home in Wroxton, a man without a parsonage, a flock, a faith, or an income, yet deliriously happy to be so far away from the bedeviling ambiguities of the Great Rubber War.
* * *
Shortly after daybreak, a ribeirinho corporal with a walrus mustache and skin the ochre of the lower Amazon strode into the sacristy and informed the Pulga’s company that at 7:00 p.m. they should betake themselves to the refectory, where Hernando de Valverde would serve them a meal and offer his gratitude. One hour later, the same soldier appeared and announced that their audience with Padre Valverde had been postponed by forty-eight hours. This change of schedule hardly surprised Chloe. Obviously the warrior-priest must attend to matters more pressing than thanking a disheveled band of English explorers for inadvertently supplying his army with a cannon.
On the morning of her fellowship’s scheduled dinner with the priest, Chloe donned her Pirate Anne regalia and explored the mission grounds, observing Prince Gitika and the polyglot Indian army preparing to bring down the fortress. The prince divided his energies amongst three Marañón valley tribes, offering advice and encouragement as, minimally dressed in tree-bark vests and painted tangas aprons, they readied their weapons. Decorated head to toe with spirals of red and purple dye, the Bawuni incendiaries applied pitch to the barbs of their arrows and spears. Proudly flaunting their elongated ears, an enhancement they’d accomplished by implanting cassava discs in the lobes, the Ucharu blowgunners cleaned their preferred implements of war—hollow palm-wood tubes outfitted with conical mouthpieces—and anointed the darts with curare. Distinguished by the braided queues running down their backs, the Yamuna archers methodically strung their six-foot bows, then filled their wicker quivers with arrows, each tipped with the serrated spine of a ray-fish.
Flying firebrands, poison darts, deadly arrows: to Chloe’s untutored eye this exotic arsenal seemed fully capable of creating whatever quota of dead mercenaries Comandante Cuarón’s strategy demanded. No less industrious than Prince Gitika was Sargento Jiménez, presently drilling the ribeirinho militia and its attached Huancabamba irregulars, the soldiers and refugees taking up the recently arrived carbines and practicing their aim on life-size figures sculpted from straw and mud. Torresblanco, meanwhile, having seconded himself to the artillery squad, taught his soldiers how to load, prime, aim, and fire the cannon. As the mission walls shook with the percussive thunder of discharging ordnance, Chloe realized she was witnessing a kind of theatrical rehearsal, a run-through for what would surely be the bloodiest melodrama ever staged in Peru.
Eventually her wanderings brought her to the Man in the Moon airship, the Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, as fabulous in its own way as Mr. Darwin’s steam-heated zoological dome. Two Frenchmen presided over the deflated silk bladder, one dressed in the black-and-white striped shirt of a Breton sailor, the other wearing the gold-braided blue jacket of an aeronautical commander, both balloonists scanning the fabric whilst talking at breakneck Gallic speed. Finding a tear in the silk, the sky-sailor dropped to his knees and sutured the gap with needle and thread, whereupon his superior, an elegant man sporting a mustache suggesting an accent grave and its accent aigu complement, approached Chloe and introduced himself as Philippe Léourier, master of the flying-machine, and his assistant as André Hervouet, helmsman.
“I am Miss Chloe Bathurst, a well-traveled British naturalist who found it expedient to join the crew of the Pulga Feliz.”
“You are a long way from England, mademoiselle,” noted Capitaine Léourier.
“As are you from France,” Chloe replied. “By this time next month I hope to have placed another thousand miles between myself and London, landing in the Galápagos archipelago.”
“Why do you seek the Encantadas?” asked Léourier.
“Originally I’d intended to collect specimens of scientific import, but now I wish only to protect these same reptiles and birds from a fanatical gang of poachers.”
“My own quest has likewise been a journey from the sublime to the political,” said the capitaine. “André and I have lived in Amazonia for two years now, seeking the fabulous lost city of El Dorado. Day after day, week upon week, we have peered down into the jungle, hoping to glimpse golden spires piercing the mist. Hélas, despite excellent resources—the maps I commissioned, the rumors I purchased—we have found nothing, so I decided to lend the Lamarck to the cause of defeating Zumaeta.”
“I’ve been watching the Indians prepare their weapons,” said Chloe. “They make a formidable army.”
“The attack, I am told, will occur tomorrow morning,” said Léourier. “Our Marañón valley warriors are indeed stalwart and brave”—his tone turned mordant—“but they are not quite the noble savages of Monsieur Rousseau’s philosophy. Did you know that, as a puberty rite for their young women, the Bawunis whip them ferociously? If an Ucharu female accidentally sees her tribe’s sacred flutes, she is put to death. When a pregnant Yamuna wife is caught eating meat, her husband beats her, for by this transgression she has rendered his dogs incapable of hunting.” The capitaine closed his eyes and winced. “That said, for the moment I am pleased to call these inscrutable aborigines my allies.”
“Is this airship of your own design?” asked Chloe.
Léourier nodded and indicated two little windmills secured to opposite sides of the wicker carriage. Rubber drive belts connected both devices to a common power source: a steam engine mounted on the roof, its boiler rigged to supply the pistons with water vapor whilst delivering heated air to the envelope. “I’m especially proud of this innovation,” said the capitaine. “The earliest hot-air balloons were at the mercy of Heaven’s fickle winds. Owing to my propel
lers and the accompanying rudder, I can chart and follow a course as precisely as any sea captain.”
“These bombs called Cuzco death-eggs—whence their peculiar name?” asked Chloe.
“Believe me, mademoiselle, I doubt you are a spy for Zumaeta—and yet I cannot answer your question until we are better acquainted. Triste de dire, at the moment our strategy is in jeopardy, for my navigator, the estimable Monsieur Grenier, who was to have been our bombardier, languishes in the infirmary, stricken with yellow fever.”
“Une petite question,” said Chloe, her thoughts running only slightly ahead of her words. “Does the post of bombardier require any rarefied skills?”
“Only steady nerves and a willingness to follow orders.”
“And must this person be of the male sex?”
“Mon Dieu!” Léourier placed two fingers against his lower lip, then attracted Monsieur Hervouet’s attention with a sharp toot. “Mademoiselle Bathurst has volunteered to be our bombardier. What is your opinion, André?”
“If you ask whether I would prefer to cast my lot with a beautiful adventuress who dresses like a pirate,” said the helmsman, “as opposed to a drunken ribeirinho who smells like a dead eel, I shall reply as follows. Pourquoi me posez-vous une telle question?”
“I sense you are a courageous woman,” the capitaine told Chloe.
“Not so much courageous as calculating. My scheme for reaching Galápagos turns on the Huancabambas incurring an obligation to me.”
“Beyond her comeliness and her élan, my new bombardier is also conniving—a trait I find très charmante,” said Léourier. “And yet I must ask you to excuse me, so that André and I might inflate the balloon for tomorrow’s battle. These days a single speech by Louis Bonaparte creates enough hot air to accomplish the job in two minutes, but he is currently in Paris, and so we must use kerosene.”
* * *
Assuming the aeronaut was correct about the imminence of the attack on Zumaeta’s stronghold, then Padre Valverde’s forces, Chloe reasoned, would already be on the move. Curious about the army’s present location, she made her way south through the ever-darkening forest until she reached the river. Stepping onto the torchlit wharf, she observed several detachments of incendiaries, blowgunners, and archers climb into their tolda canoes and paddle away, apparently headed for whatever island Comandante Cuarón had selected for a staging area. As darkness consumed the flotilla, the artillery squad loaded the cannon back onto the Pulga Feliz, then started upstream, Capitán Torresblanco in command, his plainspoken macaw balanced on his shoulder.
Upon her return to the mission, Chloe observed the Huancabamba female fugitives, including the regal Princess Akawo and her equally imposing sister, as they collaborated with a haggard Peruvian physician, Dr. Ruanova, in converting the nave of the church into a hospital. Beholding the bandages meant for stanching wounds, the buckets deployed to catch the gush of severed arteries, and the unequivocal bone saw, its teeth grinning in the lantern light, Chloe began to suspect that in becoming Léourier’s bombardier she’d made a dreadful mistake. She shut her eyes, silently inquiring of the Presence whether she would leave the battlefield unharmed. But the God of her epiphany was mute just then. The air held no celestial voices, only the jagged fumes released by Dr. Ruanova as he unstoppered his chloroform bottles one by one, determining the potency of each with a quick sniff.
She fled the hospital and, collecting her fellowship, led them to the refectory, an adobe hacienda whose portals admitted and released streams of priests, novitiates, militia, and aboriginal volunteers. Importuning a sullen ribeirinho private, Chloe asked him to lead her to Padre Valverde. The soldier guided the English adventurers into the east dining hall, its frescoed walls featuring biblical episodes of food consumption, including the Manna from Heaven, the Wedding at Cana, and a curious interpretation of the Last Supper (everyone seated outdoors amongst olive trees like Mr. Darwin and his colleagues eating lunch in the zoological dome). A burble of voices drew Chloe’s attention to the far corner, where Prince Gitika conversed earnestly with a young man dressed in a white robe cinched by a frayed liana rope.
Rangy, gaunt, and bearded, Padre Valverde so strikingly resembled Chloe’s mental picture of Jesus Christ that she briefly imagined the Second Coming had occurred—and perhaps a second resurrection as well, for the priest exuded the sickly air of a man recently returned from the tomb. Gitika acknowledged the adventurers with a quiet smile, then slipped out of the room. Shuffling uncertainly towards his guests, Padre Valverde pointed to Chloe, Ralph, Solange, and Mr. Chadwick in turn, saying, “The actress, the mariner, the courtesan, and the vicar—am I correct? Torresblanco assembled a motley crew indeed.”
As the adventurers took their places at the mahogany table, the priest told them the cause of his debilitation. For ten days now he’d been in the throes of malaria, “a case so severe it will preclude my participation in tomorrow’s battle.” Silently Chloe prayed that Valverde’s recovery would be as complete as her own, though by the evidence of his tremulous flesh he’d contracted the disease in its virulent form.
A serving staff of Indians wearing coffee-colored shifts appeared, bearing platters of grilled fish, fried manioc, and roasted plantains, the enchanting fragrances mingling in a culinary rebuke to the stinking rubber depots polluting the valley. Chloe and her companions loaded their plates to the point of avalanche, their wine goblets to the brink of deluge. Valverde assumed his place at the head of the table, serving himself no food but only a splash of Madeira.
“A question naturally arises,” he said. “How do I reconcile my vocation with my prosecution of the Great Rubber War? I can address this problem only in reference to the Catholic principle of jus ad bellum, the ‘just war’ theory. But even if our struggle is less virtuous than I imagine, please know that by delivering the cannon you have earned my eternal gratitude.”
“My contribution to your just war continues,” said Chloe. “I am now Capitaine Léourier’s bombardier, Monsieur Grenier being laid up with yellow fever.”
“His bombardier?” said Mr. Chadwick in a tone of alarm.
“Terrible idea,” said Ralph.
“Don’t do it, darling,” said Solange.
“Señorita Bathurst, I welcome you to this good fight,” said Valverde. “The Lamarck will prove crucial to our victory. Capitaine Léourier and I do not see eye-to-eye on all matters, he the French Huguenot, myself the Spanish Catholic, but we are both determined to strike a blow against Don Rómolo’s criminal enterprise.”
“It’s always inspiring when Christians refuse to let theological differences interfere with killing people,” said Solange.
Valverde downed his wine and poured himself a second measure. “I believe a certain militancy may be in my blood. My great-great-great-uncle, Fray Vincente de Valverde, was Dominican chaplain to the army of Francisco Pizarro. When the Spanish soldiers conquered this land and murdered the supreme Inca—the god-man Atahuallpa—Fray Vincente fought on the wrong side. His distant relation is fighting on the right side.”
Reaching into his frock, the priest produced a tattered pamphlet and displayed it to his guests: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei—a ghost that seemed to be haunting not only Europe per se, Chloe mused, but also one British subject, herself, in particular.
“The authors are atheist materialists,” said Valverde, “but for me their manifesto exudes a Christian ethos—unless my German is so feeble that I’ve misunderstood their argument. Just as the Jewish evangelist Saint Paul revealed the meaning of our Savior’s ministry, so have the Jewish thinkers Marx and Engels exposed the mechanism of economic exploitation.” Licking his finger, he leafed through the pamphlet until he found a desired passage. “‘The modern worker has become an appendage of the machine,’” he read, translating aloud, “‘and only the simplest, most monotonous, and most easily obtained skill is required of him.’ A perfect description of a rubber tapper’s lot in life, do you not agree?”
“As
the Pulga Feliz steamed through the plantation, my heart went out to the seringueiros,” said Mr. Chadwick.
Valverde’s hollow eyes traveled from the vicar to Ralph to Solange and back again. “How pleased I would be to receive you three into our Bawuni incendiary force, charged with burning down the fortress blockhouses.”
Mr. Chadwick said, “Although I am in sympathy with your aims—”
“Torresblanco counted thirteen gunboats,” interrupted Valverde, “the entire Peruvian river-navy, so we can safely surmise the marina de guerra will not reinforce the enemy. Assuming we retain the advantage of surprise and the sponsorship of Heaven, the battle will be over in an hour.” He offered Chloe an oblique smile. “The last steam launch for the staging area, Isla del Jaguar, leaves at midnight. Your friends will be amongst the passengers, no es así?”
Mr. Chadwick said, “As a man of God—well, an erstwhile man of God, but that’s another story—I cannot go to war, even on behalf of the enslaved Huancabambas.”
“Nor can I, as a rapscallion with fewer ideals than an oyster has ribs,” said Ralph.
“Nor can I, yours being a Christian cause and myself a she-devil’s disciple,” said Solange.
Padre Valverde sighed and, as if hoping God might provide him with a riposte, glanced heavenwards. The ceiling fresco depicted the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.
He lowered his gaze, seized a spoon, and tapped his wine goblet, producing a series of glassy reports. Seven crimson-robed Huancabamba fugitives entered the dining hall, arraying themselves before the English adventurers. At a nod from Valverde, the Indians stripped down to their underclothes, whereupon a pounding nausea took possession of Chloe, her worst such episode since the malaria attack.
