by James Morrow
Three of the men were missing their left arms, the fearsome amputations having occurred midway between shoulder and elbow. Their chests and backs were engraved with scars variously wrought by whips, knives, and firebrands. The fourth man had a wooden post attached to his right knee instead of a lower leg.
Valverde said, “Behold the balance sheet of the Pacopampa Rubber Plantation, a reckoning etched in defenseless flesh.”
Zumaeta’s henchmen had attacked the women with equal ferocity. A machete-wielding fiend had deprived one victim of her left breast. The second female lacked for a right hand and the corresponding foot. A smaller tool, a jackknife perhaps, or a corkscrew, had been used to remove the third woman’s eyes.
“It all comes down to quotas,” said Valverde. “Throughout each and every week a plantation family must tap and cure enough latex to make an eight-kilo bola. On Saturday the husband will bear it to the fortress by canoe or donkey cart. If he is infirm, his wife delivers the rubber. God help any Indian who shows up with an insufficiently fat offering.”
“Outrageous,” sputtered Mr. Chadwick.
“If ever an army boasted jus ad bellum,” Ralph told the priest, “then such a force is bivouacked within your mission.”
Solange turned to Chloe and said, “I wonder why your favorite deity allows such things.”
As infuriated by Solange’s remark as she was sickened by Zumaeta’s cruelty, Chloe sat silently and wept.
Again Valverde nodded. The fugitives reclothed themselves. From a Huancabamba’s perspective, the priest explained, the most important object in the fortress was a large weighing machine of Swiss manufacture. Should his bola fall even one gram below expectations, the offending seringueiro was consigned to a pillory. In most instances he was whipped until tassels of flesh hung from his body, then left on the rack for days as his wounds became infested with maggots. But if the overseer were in a particularly malicious mood, he would flay the victim to death, or turn him into a human torch, or remove his eyes, or hack off some member with a machete.
Valverde rose and embraced the Indians one by one, kissing each on the cheek, and then, pivoting towards his dinner guests, he implored Ralph, Solange, and Mr. Chadwick to consider that making war on Zumaeta was “manifestly the lesser of two evils.” He next bid his English visitors adios, explaining that he must confer with Comandante Cuarón. Defying his illness, the priest turned briskly, his white robe billowing like the foresail of the lost Equinox, and vanished through the rear doorway.
Still weeping, Chloe contemplated the ceiling fresco, the crowd gasping as five loaves and two fish became sustenance enough for an entire congregation. Her tears blurred the panorama, but its meaning shone through the mist. She believed that had she been in the audience that day, she would have stayed to hear the rabbi’s sermon even if no lunch was served and everyone else went home to eat. It was better to receive wisdom on an empty stomach than sophistry at a banquet.
* * *
As a bloated moon rose over the mission, Chloe led her friends back across the plaza, even as she pondered a possible—and distressing—connection between the maimed Huancabambas and Mr. Darwin’s species theory. If an eternal “struggle for existence” was the sine qua non of biological and political events on planet Earth, did it not follow that Don Rómolo and General Zumaeta were simply enacting foreordained roles in a predetermined drama of savagery and violence?
When she shared this thought with Mr. Chadwick, he proved entirely unsympathetic. “Though lacking your familiarity with The Voyage of the Beagle, I remember its denunciations of chattel slavery. Your Mr. Darwin would be horrified by what occurs at Castillo Bracamoros.”
“I don’t demean the man,” Chloe insisted. “I love the man. But his theory now repels me, for I apprehend it will authorize the masters of the world to further exploit the downtrodden. ‘Don’t feed the starving multitudes,’ the Darwinists will say, ‘for such misguided charity encourages them to produce descendants doomed to compete for increasingly scarce resources.’”
“You have taken the words out of the Reverend Thomas Malthus’s mouth—a man who, as far as we know, never broke into Charles Darwin’s study and stole his transmutation essay.”
“And yet I now believe we must trace our origins not to antiquity’s apes but to eternity’s intentions. Surely you grasp my reasoning.”
“I grasp only that, back in Manáos, you experienced a fever dream of the divine,” said Mr. Chadwick, “and I’m not convinced it was for the best.”
It occurred to Chloe that epená might prove a remedy for her exasperation, and so she guided the vicar, the mariner, and the courtesan towards a solitary campfire burning near the base of the bell tower. Seated in a circle, a detachment of Indians enjoyed a final interlude with their euphoriant snuff before embarking on the midnight ferry to the staging area. Catching sight of the English adventurers, Prince Gitika rose, the flickering flames enveloping him in an angelic aura. He gestured Chloe and her friends into his vicinity, then invited them to share his epená with himself and his companions: a dozen Bawuni incendiaries, plus the caboclos frontiersman from whose torch they would ignite their arrows and spears during the attack, as well as an elderly Dominican priest so reminiscent of Phineas Bathurst that for a moment Chloe imagined Papa had been mysteriously transported to Peru.
When her turn came, she cautiously inserted the syringe in her nostril and squeezed the bulb. A burning sensation filled her nasal cavity, as though her sinuses had been colonized by fire ants. Soon the pain passed, and she found herself walking through a luminous orchard, each fruit and flower aglow with the light of eternity, the collateral shadows obscuring her dread of dying in battle.
To the prince she said, “I have enlisted as a bombardier in Capitaine Léourier’s aerial corps.”
“For generations to come, the Huancabambas will sing the praises of Señorita Bathurst,” said Gitika.
Solange inhaled a full measure of resin, endured the shock, and brushed her fingertips along Chloe’s jaw. “Having seen the evidence of Zumaeta’s depravity”—she handed the syringe to Ralph—“I have resolved to spend tomorrow morning setting fire to blockhouses.”
“The incendiaries are pleased to welcome the intrepid Señorita Kirsop to their ranks,” said the caboclos frontiersman.
“I have always regarded soldiers as the dupes of unscrupulous men.” Ralph applied some epená to his brain, then passed the syringe to Mr. Chadwick. “And yet if I do nothing, Zumaeta’s victims will haunt me forever—so I, too, am eager to raze the fortress.”
“The stalwart Señor Dartworthy has placed all Marañón valley peoples in his debt,” said the old priest.
“Though opposed to violence on general principles,” said Mr. Chadwick, “I believe that by joining the Bawuni bowmen”—he absorbed a blast of resin—“I shall be serving a provisionally noble cause.”
“I cannot imagine how to repay the dauntless Señor Chadwick and his fellows,” said Gitika.
“I can,” said Chloe, “but we’ll go into that another day.”
During the next half-hour everyone consumed additional jolts of epená whilst sustaining, by unspoken consensus, a pointed silence regarding the impending fight. Not surprisingly, it was Solange who violated the tacit agreement. “There’s something I must tell you, darling,” she said, addressing Chloe from whichever precinct of El Dorado the resin had made the courtesan’s destination. “Should any harm befall you tomorrow, it would tear my soul in two.”
“Glorious goddess,” said Ralph, kissing Chloe’s hand, “surely you know that my affection for you is deeper than the sea wherein the Equinox lies.”
Mr. Chadwick availed himself of some virola snuff, then joined the chorus. “Despite your impulsive ways, Miss Bathurst, I have come to admire you above all others of your sex.”
“My dear friends,” said Chloe. “My beloved—my very beloved—my infinitely beloved…”
“Numberless are the virtues of epená,” said Giti
ka. “It permits a person to speak his most secret thoughts.”
“And should the day arrive when the lovely sentiments you feel towards one another wither and die, epená will serve you then as well,” the old priest declared. “Padre Valverde will tell you otherwise”—he inserted the syringe in his nostril and squeezed the bulb—“but Christ’s wounds stopped flowing long ago. His blood no longer irrigates the world. Today we must mend ourselves with resin, or we shan’t be healed at all.”
9
Venomous Snakes Fall from the Sky, Fortress Walls Come Tumbling Down, and a New Plan Hatches in Chloe’s Brain
On maps the region was called Tierra del Fuego, but after an eternity of captivity by the violent weather the Reverend Simon Hallowborn thought of it as Terror del Fuego instead. The howling winds, frigid vistas, and subzero temperatures recalled for Simon an indelible tableau from Dante: Lucifer embedded up to his chest in the solid River Cocytus, his wings sending forth blasts so cold they kept the waters forever frozen. With his ship engulfed by icebergs and mountainous waves, Captain Garrity was now measuring her progress not in leagues but in yards, not in days but in weeks. After a full month of applying his nautical skills to the problem, the master of the Antares had failed to move her more than halfway along the Strait of Magellan. Ahead lay only more treacherous floes, more quixotic currents, and the point of no return.
As the battle against Cape Horn entered its second month, Simon decided the time had come for him to minister to the wretches in the hold. Buffeted by the turbulent seas, chafed by their manacles and fetters, the convicts would need their spirits lifted—and in fact he was prepared to offer them bracing news: a radically reduced prison sentence awaited anyone who participated in the Great Winnowing!
Heart in hand, Bible at the ready, he broached the Stygian depths of the ship, where ninety-two unbathed and probably unbaptized men lay shackled in their hammocks. Setting down his musket, Mr. Moffet deferentially doffed his cap (doubtless recalling how Simon had saved the Antares by rescuing the snared albatross). “Good afternoon, Reverend,” said the midshipman, his words turning to spectral vapor. “What brings you to our icy dungeon?”
Simon explained that he wished to address the prisoners, and so Mr. Moffet ordered his charges to fall in before their visitor. As the men climbed free of their hammocks, arranging themselves in irregular ranks and files, their chains clanking discordantly, Simon assayed the atmosphere, which evidently comprised equal parts vomitus, urine, rotten cabbages, and dead fish. “Future inmates of Mephistropolis, may the blessings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be upon you,” he said, sinuses aflame with the ambient stench. “As you’ve doubtless inferred, the Antares is trapped in heavy seas—but know that God means to preserve you, for you’ve been selected to perform a holy task.”
A rheumy-eyed prisoner raised his hand as far as the manacle would allow. “The name’s Ben Colby, the worst kind of horse thief—the sort what gets caught.” Cackles and guffaws reverberated through the hold. “Here’s my question, Reverend. If God needs the lot of us, does that mean He’ll be raisin’ up poor Billy Windham, who expired of the flux on Sunday? Will He be restorin’ old Tom Tattle, dead last month of a fever?”
“I come to you not as a prophet, revealing God’s mind, but as a simple priest, extolling His mercy,” Simon replied. “Devote yourselves to Heaven’s agenda when we reach Galápagos, and our Divine Creator—acting through Governor Stopsack and the Oxford Diocese—will diminish your sentences by one-quarter.”
“I’d say that calls for a hurrah,” said Mr. Moffat.
No one cheered. Instead a dusky prisoner stumbled forward, tripped in consequence of his fetters, and fell across the keelson. “Jake Peach ’ere,” he said, regaining his feet, “convicted comforter of wives whose ’usbands can no longer perform the marriage act. ’Eve’s what I’m thinkin’. I’m thinkin’ that, before we get unduly grateful for shorter sojourns in ’Ell, we should ’ear what’s expected of us.”
“Travel with me back through time,” said Simon, “to Sunday, the twenty-eighth of October, 4004 B.C.—the seventh day of Creation by Bishop Ussher’s calculation. All is in stasis. God is resting. But then comes the fateful eighth day, and with it a terrible event. No, not the Fall of Man, which lies a full week in the future. On Monday the Devil goes wandering to and fro in the newly made world, reaching Galápagos at dusk. As darkness steals across the equator, he plants Perdition’s flag on Indefatigable Isle, then seeds the archipelago with hundreds of scaled and clawed monstrosities, much like himself in aspect and temperament.”
“Maybe that’s what ’appened,” said Jake Peach, “but I can tell you this: we don’t read of it in Scripture.”
“The Bible necessarily omits supplemental narratives and ancillary doctrines,” Simon explained. “That’s why God gave us the Church of England, that we might enjoy its guidance in reading between the lines of Holy Writ.”
A squat convict shuffled forward, his face so dotted with freckles it suggested a cowbird egg. “Harry Trimble ’ere, former flesh merchant. You want us to destroy these spawn of Satan, is that your meanin’, Reverend?”
“Upon our arrival in the Encantadas, you will be issued … implements,” said Simon, nodding, his imagination conjuring up the Antares’s armory. After presenting themselves to the Governor on Indefatigable, the ship’s company would sail to the largest island, Albemarle, and begin the procedure. Sweeping north from the Sierra Negra, the garroters would strangle the giant tortoises, even as the machete brigade decapitated the lizards, whilst the brig’s crew took up the fowling pieces and cleansed the skies of the island’s infernal mockingbirds, flycatchers, and finches. “Perform an efficient slaughter, and your freedom will come sooner rather than later.”
“Hip hip!” shouted Mr. Moffet.
“Hoorah!” chorused the prisoners.
“Hip hip!” yelled Mr. Moffet.
“Hoorah!”
“Cursed be the giant tortoises, for they are the Devil’s children!” shouted Simon.
“Death to the tortoises!” screamed the prisoners.
“Cursed be the land lizards, for their every breath brings a plague!” cried Simon.
“Death to the lizards!” shrieked the prisoners.
“Cursed be the marine iguanas, for they are odious in Heaven’s eyes!”
“Death to the iguanas!”
Unable to endure the reek of the floating penal colony another minute, Simon rushed towards the companionway and began his ascent. With every step the angels of mercy pulled him closer to their collective bosom, telling him to be of good cheer, for the Antares would not founder off Tierra del Fuego but rather bear to Galápagos ninety, formerly ninety-two, of God’s most eager servants. And so it was that, when he settled into his berth that night, Simon pictured himself as newly born, his nativity attended by a retinue of sheep, cattle, swine, and goats, with not a single satanic tortoise or demonic iguana in the lot.
* * *
Although perhaps tracing more to epená than to honesty, the impassioned sentiments expressed by Ralph on the eve of battle lifted Chloe’s spirits, even as those same sentiments stirred within her yearnings not easily reconciled to her newfound appetite for eternity. Returning to the sacristy, alone, her friends having left on the midnight ferry to the staging area, she burned with longing for an embrace from her former paramour. She wanted to feel the press of his arms and savor the scent of his neck. Did it all come down to Mr. Chadwick’s curious word, “concupiscence”? Was carnal desire in fact the engine that set the world to spinning, a force more powerful even than the Presence?
Distressed by these profane musings, she shed her clothes and pitched a mosquito tent above her pallet. As she reached towards the turtle-oil lantern, intending to douse the flame, her fingers chanced to brush Ralph’s Omar Khayyám manuscript. The text beckoned. For the next half-hour she lay on her mattress, reading by the primal reptilian light. A particular quatrain commended itself to her attention.<
br />
What the pen writes for you, it can never
Unwrite, so there’s no use being clever,
Don’t weep overmuch; let your heart not rage,
Your fate is your fate, now and forever.
Whether one believed in Allah, Jehovah, Brahma, the Buddha, the Presence, or mere brute circumstance, the sage was telling her, the past was irredeemable. By this time tomorrow, the Battle of Castillo Bracamoros would be a fixed point in history, recorded in impervious ink on a sheet of immortal parchment, each pen stroke immune to human will. An unnerving thought, and yet she soon drifted off to sleep.
The Earth kept turning, the pen kept writing, and a wan light seeped into the sacristy. Chloe awoke and, gaining her feet, slipped into her pirate costume, pleased to note that her brain now seemed free of epená. Presently André Hervouet appeared, bearing a steaming mug of coffee and two ripe bananas. She consumed her breakfast standing upright, then followed the helmsman across the plaza through the chilly predawn mist towards the Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, where a one-armed Huancabamba refugee stood ready to assist in the launch.
The flying-machine rocked in the wind, its mooring line held fast by an anchor hooked about a sandstone statue of Santo Domingo. The kerosene burner snorted and growled, filling the sausage-shaped balloon with heated air and giving the decorative Man in the Moon the broadest of smiles. Just then the Lamarck seemed to Chloe almost a living thing: a belligerent Spanish bull, anxious and expectant, waiting in his chute for the matador to enter the ring.
André guided her onto a stepping stool and thence through the larboard hatch into the wicker carriage. The rear compartment, surprisingly commodious, housed the anchor windlass, a compass binnacle, and a table at which Philippe Léourier sat inspecting a map of the valley, whilst the forward section served as the bridge, complete with helm, throttle, and a circular glass observation port. Glancing up from his chart, the capitaine welcomed Chloe aboard, then pointed to a loosely woven sack slung beneath the open aft window. At least twenty ceramic globes, peppered with tiny holes, lay snared in the webbing like sea urchins caught in a fishnet. Upon closer inspection she saw that each ball consisted of two hemispheres glued together with yet another miraculous Amazonian resin.
