by Evelyn Waugh
Two wild-eyed, shaggy Patamona Indians also arrived in a canoe from upstream, trying to trade a monkey for some gunpowder, for Wong’s ranch is at one extreme angle of the savannah, the nearest civilized spot to the Pakaraima district.
Two days later we reached St Ignatius, where I was to spend ten days as the guest of Father Mather, the kindest and most generous of all the hosts of the colony.
He was at work in his carpenter’s shop when we arrived and came out to greet us, dusting the shavings off his khaki shirt and trousers, and presenting a complete antithesis of the ‘wily Jesuit’ of popular tradition. Most of the simple furniture of the living-room was his work – firm, finely jointed and fitted, delicately finished, a marked contrast to the botched, makeshift stuff that prevailed even in Georgetown. He loves and studies all natural things, in particular woods and birds about which he has huge stores of first-hand knowledge. It is very rarely that he goes down to the coast; when he does the river-side scenery – to me unendurably monotonous – provides a luxurious orgy of observation; occasionally some call will take him into the hills, but for the most part his work keeps him in the desolate surroundings of St Ignatius, and his researches are confined to the insects that collect round his reading-lamp in the evenings.
I paid off Yetto, Sinclair and Price, for blacks are not encouraged to stay long among the Indians. Before they left they each asked to be photographed and in turn wore Yetto’s old cloth cap and Price’s spotted handkerchief for their portraits.
St Ignatius was very unlike the missions of Africa – the crowded compounds, big school houses with their rows of woolly black heads patiently absorbing ‘education’; the solid presbyteries and packed, devout congregations; the native priests and nuns, methodical in white linen and topees; the troops of black children veiled for their first Communion; the plain chant and the examination papers. It was as lonely an outpost of religion as you could find anywhere. If it had not been for the Calvary on the river-bank, it might have been one of the smaller ranches.
Near the house was a small church built of tin and thatch and furnished with a few benches six inches high from the mud floor; it was open at the west end for light and ventilation, and, in spite of every discouragement and a barrier of wire netting, a hen used regularly to lay her eggs behind the altar.
Here Father Mather lived quite alone for the greater part of the year. Another priest, Father Keary, used the home as his headquarters but except in the wet weather he was continually on circuit among the villages. Father Mather kept the home going and managed the ranch and stores.
I have often observed that the servants of the religious are, as a class, of abnormally low mentality. I do not know why this should be – whether it is that good people in their charity give jobs to those whom no one else will employ, or whether, being poor, they get them cheap, or whether they welcome inefficient service as a mortification, or whether unremitting association with people of superior virtue eventually drives sane servants off their heads. Whatever the explanation, that is usually the state of affairs. Father Mather’s establishment, however, was an exception. It is true that there was an idiot Macushi boy who constantly obtruded a moon face round the door at meal-times, asking for tobacco, but he was employed only on casual labour outside the house. The two Indian widows who cooked, wove hammocks, drove the guinea fowl out of the bedrooms and generally ‘did for us’ were exemplary people. So was David Max y Hung, the head vaqueiro. This pious and efficient young man spoke two Indian languages, English, and Portuguese, perfectly. He was half Chinese, half Arawak Indian and his wife was Brazilian. He was away at a round-up at the time of my arrival (every ranch sends a representative at every round-up to identify his own cattle and see that there is no tampering with the brands) and it was his absence that prolonged my stay so pleasantly, for on the first evening Father Mather explained to me that it was quite hopeless to think of reaching Boa Vista by canoe at that season. It was easy, however, to ride there, and on David’s return I could have horses and David himself for a guide. So I stayed on, glad of the rest and learning hourly from Father Mather more about the country.
The life of the Brazilian frontier must, I should think, be unique in the British Empire. In its whole length from Mount Roraima to the Courantyne – a distance of about five hundred miles – Bon Success is the only British government station, and that is under the admirable management of Mr Melville, who is half Indian by birth and married to a Brazilian. On the other side there is no representative of law nearer than Boa Vista. There are no flags, no military, no customs, no passport examinations, no immigration forms. The Indians have probably very little idea of whether they are on British or Brazilian territory; they wander to and fro across the border exactly as they did before the days of Raleigh.
Throughout the whole district, too, there is only one shop and that is in two parts, half in Brazil and half in British Guiana. The proprietor is a Portuguese named Mr Figuiredo. On his own side of the river he sells things of Brazilian origin, hardware, ammunition, alcohol in various unpalatable forms, sugar and farine, a few decayed-looking tins of fruit and sweets, tobacco, horses, saddlery and second-hand odds and ends extorted from bankrupt ranchers; on the British side he sells things brought up from Georgetown, mostly male and female clothing, soaps and hair oils, for which the more sophisticated Indians have a quite unsophisticated relish, and brands of patent medicines with engraved, pictorial labels and unfamiliar names – ‘Radways Rapid Relief’, ‘Canadian Healing Oil’, ‘Lydia Pynkham’s Vegetable Product’. If a Brazilian wants anything from the British side he and Mr Figuiredo paddle across the river and he buys it there; and vice versa. Any guilt of smuggling attaches to the customer.
Father Mather and I went to breakfast with Mr Figuiredo one day. He gave us course after course of food – stewed tasso with rice, minced tasso with farine, fresh beef with sweet potatoes, fresh pork, fried eggs, bananas, tinned peaches and crème de cacao of local distillation. His women folk were made to stand outside while we ate, with the exception of one handsome daughter who waited. After breakfast we went into the shop and Mr Figuiredo made an effortless and unembarrassing transition from host to shopkeeper, climbing behind the counter and arguing genially about the price of coffee. He has no competition within two hundred miles and his prices are enormous; but he lives in a very simple fashion, dressing always in an old suit of pyjamas and employing his family to do the work of the house.
After a week David returned from the round-up – suave, spectacled, faultlessly efficient – and took over the arrangements for my journey to Boa Vista.
David’s Brazilian brother-in-law Francisco joined us; the luggage was divided – unequally, for I took only hammock, blanket and change of clothes – between our three horses. Then after breakfast on 1st February, we set off for the border. The sun was obscured and a light drizzle of rain was falling.
The ford was about three miles upstream from St Ignatius. Our horses waded through the shallow water, stretching forward to drink; half way over we were in Brazil. A lurch and scramble up the opposite bank; we forced our way through the fringe of bush, leaning low in the saddle to guard our faces from the thorn branches; then we were out into open country again, flat and desolate as the savannah we had left; more desolate, for here there was no vestige of life; no cattle track, no stray animals; simply the empty plain; sparse, colourless grass; ant-hills; sandpaper trees; an occasional clump of ragged palm; grey sky, gusts of wind, and a dull sweep of rain.
On the fourth day we reached the bank of the Rio Branco at an empty hut immediately opposite Boa Vista.
Since the evening at Kurupukari when Mr Bain had first mentioned its name, Boa Vista had come to assume greater and greater importance to me. Father Mather had been there only once, and then in the worst stage of malignant malaria, so that he had been able to tell me little about it except that some German nuns had proved deft and devoted nurses. Everybody else, however, and particularly David, had spoken of it as a
town of dazzling attraction. Whatever I had looked for in vain at Figuiredo’s store was, he told me, procurable at ‘Boa Vist’’; Mr Daguar had extolled its modernity and luxury – electric light, cafés, fine buildings, women, politics, murders. Mr Bain had told of the fast motor launches, plying constantly between there and Manaos. In the discomfort of the journey there, I had looked forward to the soft living of Boa Vista, feeling that these asperities were, in fact, a suitable contrast, preparing my sense for a fuller appreciation of the good things in store. So confident was I that when we first came in sight of the ramshackle huddle of buildings on the further bank, I was quite uncritical and conscious of no emotion except delight and expectation.
The river was enormously broad and very low; so low that as we gazed at the town across sand dunes and channels and a fair-sized island it seemed to be perched on a citadel, instead of being, as was actually the case, at the same dead level as the rest of the plain. Two vaqueiros were lying in hammocks by the bank, and from these David elicited the information that a boat was expected some time in the next few hours to ferry them across. The vaqueiros studied us with an air that I came to recognize as characteristic of Boa Vista; it was utterly unlike the open geniality of the ranches; conveying, as it did, in equal degrees, contempt, suspicion and the suggestion that only listlessness kept them from active insult.
With David’s assistance, I began some enquiries about accommodation. There was none, they said.
‘But I understood there were two excellent hotels.’
‘Ah, that was in the days of the Company. There was all kinds of foolishness in the days of the Company. There is nowhere now. There has not been an hotel for two years.’
‘Then where do strangers stay?’
‘Strangers do not come to Boa Vist’. If they come on business, the people they have business with put them up.’
I explained that I was on the way to Manaos and had to wait for a boat. They showed complete indifference, only remarking that they did not know of any boat to Manaos. Then one of them added that possibly the foreign priests would do something for me – unless they had left; last time he was in Boa Vist’ the foreign priests were all sick; most people were sick in Boa Vist’. Then the two men started talking to each other.
My enthusiasm had already cooled considerably by the time we saw a boat put out from the opposite shore and make slowly towards us. We all got in, David, Francisco, I, the two surly vaqueiros, the saddles and the baggage, so that the gunwales were only an inch clear of the water. Then partly paddling, partly wading and pushing, we made our way across. There were women squatting on the further shore, pounding dirty linen on the rocks at the water’s edge. We hauled our possessions up the steep bank and found ourselves in the main street of the town. It was very broad, composed of hard, uneven mud, cracked into wide fissures in all directions and scored by several dry gulleys. On either side was a row of single-storeyed, whitewashed mud houses with tiled roofs; at each doorstep sat one or more of the citizens staring at us with eyes that were insolent, hostile and apathetic; a few naked children rolled about at their feet. The remains of an overhead electric cable hung loose from a row of crazy posts, or lay in coils and loops about the gutter.
The street rose to a slight hill and half-way up we came to the Benedictine Mission. This at any rate presented a more imposing aspect than anything I had seen since leaving Georgetown. It was built of concrete with a modestly ornamented façade, a row of unbroken glass windows, a carved front door with an electric bell, a balustraded verandah with concrete urns at either end; in front of it lay a strip of garden marked out into symmetrical beds with brick borders.
We approached rather diffidently, for we were shabby and stained with travelling and lately unaccustomed to carved front doors and electric bells. But the bell need have caused us no misgiving, for it was out of order. We pressed and waited and pressed again. Then a head appeared from a window and told us, in Portuguese, to knock. We knocked several times until the head reappeared; it was Teutonic in character, blond and slightly bald, wrinkled, with a prominent jaw and innocent eyes.
‘The gentleman is a stranger too. He speaks Portuguese in a way I do not understand,’ said David. ‘He says there is a priest but that he is probably out.’
I was used to waiting by now, so we sat on the doorstep among our luggage until presently an emaciated young monk in white habit appeared up the garden path. He seemed to accept our arrival with resignation, opened the door and led us into one of those rooms found only in religious houses, shuttered, stuffy and geometrically regular in arrangement; four stiff chairs ranged round four walls; devotional oleographs symmetrically balanced; a table in the exact centre with an embroidered cloth and a pot of artificial flowers; everything showing by its high polish of cleanliness that nuns had been at work there.
The monk was a German-Swiss. We spoke in halting French and I explained my situation. He nodded gloomily and said that it was impossible to predict when another boat would leave for Manaos; on the other hand a new Prior was expected some time soon and that boat must presumably return one day. Meanwhile I was at liberty to stay in the house if I chose.
‘Will it be a question of days or weeks?’
‘A question of weeks or months.’
David thought the Boundary Commission had a boat going down in a few days; he would go into the town and enquire. With rather lugubrious courtesy the monk, who was named Father Alcuin, showed me a room and a shower bath; explained that he and the other guest had already breakfasted; sent across to the convent for food for me. I ate the first palatable meal since I had left St Ignatius, changed and slept. Presently David returned with reassuring information. The Commission boat was passing through in four or five days; a week after that there would be a trade launch. He smiled proudly both at bringing good news and because he had bought a startling new belt out of his wages. Then he and Francisco bade me good-bye and went to rest with the horses on the other bank of the river.
Already, in the few hours of my sojourn there, the Boa Vista of my imagination had come to grief. Gone; engulfed in an earthquake, uprooted by a tornado and tossed sky-high like chaff in the wind, scorched up with brimstone like Gomorrah, toppled over with trumpets like Jericho, ploughed like Carthage, bought, demolished and transported brick by brick to another continent as though it had taken the fancy of Mr Hearst; tall Troy was down. When I set out on a stroll of exploration, I no longer expected the city I had had in mind during the thirsty days of approach; the shady boulevards; kiosks for flowers and cigars and illustrated papers; the hotel terrace and the cafés; the baroque church built by seventeenth-century missionaries; the bastions of the old fort; the bandstand in the square, standing amidst fountains and flowering shrubs; the soft, slightly swaggering citizens, some uniformed and spurred, others with Southern elegance twirling little canes, bowing from the waist and raising boater hats, flicking with white gloves indiscernible particles of dust from their white linen spats; dark beauties languorous on balconies, or glancing over fans at the café tables. All that extravagant and highly improbable expectation had been obliterated like a sand castle beneath the encroaching tide.
Closer investigation did nothing to restore it. There was the broad main street up which we had come; two parallel, less important streets and four or five more laid at right angles to them. At a quarter of a mile in every direction they petered out into straggling footpaths. They were all called Avenidas and labelled with names of politicians of local significance. The town had been planned on an ambitious scale, spacious, rectangular, but most of the building lots were still unoccupied. There was one fair-sized store, a little larger and a little better stocked than Figuiredo’s, half a dozen seedy little shops; an open booth advertising the services of a barber-surgeon who claimed to wave women’s hair, extract teeth and cure venereal disease; a tumbledown house inhabited by the nuns, an open schoolhouse where a fever-stricken teacher could be observed monotonously haranguing a huge class of listl
ess little boys; a wireless office, and a cottage where they accepted letters for the post; there were two cafés; one on the main street was a little shed, selling farine, bananas and fish, there were three tables in front of it, under a tree, where a few people collected in the evening to drink coffee in the light of a single lantern; the second, in a side street, was more attractive. It had a concrete floor and a counter where one could buy cigarettes and nuts, there were dominoes for the use of habitués and, besides coffee, one could drink warm and expensive beer.
The only place, besides the Benedictine Priory, which had any pretensions to magnificence was the church, a modern building painted in yellow and orange horizontal stripes, with ornate concrete mouldings; there were old bells outside, and inside three sumptuous altars, with embroidered frontals and veils, carved reredoses, large, highly coloured statues, artificial flowers and polished candlesticks, decorated wooden pews, a marble font bearing in enormous letters the name of the chief merchant of the town, a harmonium; everything very new, and clean as a hospital – not a hen or a pig in the building. I was curious to know by what benefaction this expensive church had come into being and was told that, like most things, it had started ‘in the days of the Company’.
I discovered one English-speaking person in the town; a singularly charmless youth, the illegitimate son of a prominent Georgetown citizen whom I had met there at Christmas time. This served as a fragile link between us, for the young man told me that he hated his father and had thought of shooting him on more than one occasion. ‘Now I have been married and have written five times for money and had no answer.’
He was completely fleshless like all the inhabitants of Boa Vista, with dank, black hair hanging over his eyes, which were of slightly lighter yellow than the rest of his face. He spoke in a melancholy drawl. He was almost the only person I saw doing any work in the whole town. He owned a small blacksmith’s shop where he made branding irons and mended guns. Most of the other inhabitants seemed to have no occupation of any kind, being caught up in the vicious circle of semi-starvation. Perhaps they picked up a few casual wages during the flood season when boats ran from Manaos fairly frequently and the ranchers came in for stores and needed labour for shipping their cattle. All the time that I was there I scarcely saw anyone except the school teacher earn anything – or spend anything. Even in the café the majority of customers came to gossip and play dominoes and went away without ordering a cup of coffee. At some miles distance was a settlement of soldiers who brought a few shillings into the town; they were reservists bedded out with wives on small allotments. An aged town clerk presumably received some sort of wages; so no doubt did the itinerant government vet. Who appeared from time to time; so did the wireless operator and an official of villainous aspect called the ‘Collector’. But the other thousand odd inhabitants spent the day lying indoors in their hammocks and the evenings squatting on their doorsteps gossiping. Land was free, and, as the nuns proved, could produce excellent vegetables, but the diet of the town was farine, tasso and a little fish, all of which were of negligible cost. But it was far from being a care-free, idyllic improvidence. Everyone looked ill and discontented. There was not a fat man or woman anywhere. The women, in fact, led an even drearier life than the men. They had no household possessions to care for, no cooking to do, they left their children to sprawl about the streets naked or in rags. They were pretty – very small and thin, small-boned and with delicate features; a few of them took trouble with their appearance and put in an appearance at Mass on Sundays in light dresses, stockings and shoes, and cheap, gay combs in their hair.
