Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  ‘We must hang on to hope,’ she encouraged. ‘We must believe Charles is… Charles will come back. I will believe it for you if,’ her voice faltered, wavering, ‘if you cannot.’

  Laure nodded feebly then dropped her head, and Katharine saw fat, heavy tears fall to the sodden ground. She understood the woman’s pain, the awfulness of uncertainty, the feeling of inevitability. If all the others were dead, why would Charles have been spared? But despite all this, Laure still had the possibility of seeing her husband again, and Katharine envied her that.

  Anselmo, in contrast, was gone and although her numbness meant she couldn’t really take it in, Katharine knew it was true. The awful, terrible reality of that made her feel hollow inside. Without him she had nothing, was nothing, had neither heart nor soul nor hope for the future.

  Mac brought her and Laure whisky for the shock and, in a daze, Katharine drank the whole glass in one, even though she hated the taste. The lightheadedness that followed was a relief from the heavy, leaden feeling that loss had induced, but was quickly followed by overpowering nausea.

  She had been feeling queasy since realising she was pregnant. Running her hand over her belly, she thought of the baby in there, Anselmo’s baby, that he had only known about for a few brief hours before his death.

  Now a dilemma raged within her – between cursing her mosquito-ravaged face for being the thing that had stopped her accompanying Anselmo and dying alongside him, and relief that she had kept herself safe so that her unborn baby had a chance at life. She wanted to cry because that might relieve her sorrow but she couldn’t get the tears to come.

  She went to bed and lay in rigid contemplation of the future. Because how could she possibly carry on with this madcap venture that had only just made sense when Anselmo was alive and now made no sense at all? How could she do it, on her own?

  But then, when her father’s money was at stake, how could she not?

  Chapter Eight

  During the night following the retrieval of the bodies, as if in supernatural response to Katharine’s acknowledgement of her own condition, Clara went into labour. An Indian woman came to help, and Katharine and Laure joined her, at Clara’s request. Katharine was sure there was nothing she could usefully do. Aside from being dazed with grief and exhaustion, the five brothers and one sister born after her in her family had all arrived when she was out at school, or at work, or had come like this one in the dead of night, and Katharine had no idea of the process by which babies were born.

  The reality was horrifying.

  The Indian woman judged it an easy birth, but to Katharine it looked like torture itself. Clara roared and screamed and panted and thrashed around as if possessed by the devil. The baby’s entry into the world was accompanied by blood and excrement, causing Katharine to recoil in disgust. The Indian woman, completely unfazed by any of it, simply wrapped the newborn baby boy in a shawl and handed him to Clara.

  After the turmoil Katharine watched, wonderstruck, as a quietude deeper and more intense than any she had ever known fell upon the scene, like the calm after the storm, like the river that very morning once the tempest had ended. Clara’s face was adorned by a beatific smile such as Katharine imagined might have greeted the Wise Men at the nativity, when they found the baby Christ child sleeping in the arms of his loving mother.

  This was the Amazon. Life and death on all sides, slipping from one to the other in a heartbeat.

  The joy of the baby’s safe arrival was short-lived, quickly replaced by mourning as next day they buried the bodies of the drowned men. There was no time to wait for a priest; the heat meant the burials must be quick and it would take weeks for a minister to be summoned and to arrive. If, in fact, one could be persuaded to come at all.

  ‘We’re lucky the piranhas didn’t get them,’ stated Mac, as he presided over the burial. He sounded unbothered but Katharine knew she must be wrong. It must be that he had become inured to loss. During his time on this beautiful, majestic but lethal river he would have seen scores of deaths. It was nothing new to him.

  ‘When a boat ships water – it’s never going to stay afloat,’ he added, before solemnly reading a passage from the Bible.

  He had had his Indian carpenter fashion simple wooden crosses from an Amazonian hardwood that, he said, would last for centuries. Katharine had the fleeting thought that this man, not her, would preside over Anselmo’s eternal soul for all time. Then she dismissed the notion; she was not particularly religious and struggled with the idea of an afterlife – she was sure that, once you were gone, you were gone. Nevertheless, she still lingered by the grave long after the others had left so that she could tell Anselmo in private her hopes and dreams for the child he would never know.

  Later that day, a stream of curses and insults woke her from an exhaustion-induced doze; she had not slept since Anselmo’s death and had been starting to hallucinate with tiredness. She got out of the hammock that was strung between two lemon trees, her eyes picking out some distance away a couple of Indians, hunched and pitiful, being dragged by Mac’s Spanish office manager and his clerk to a series of posts set into the hardened ground well above the water level. She watched in increasing horror as the Indians were tied up and a flogging began, both the manager and the clerk wielding a flailing whip similar to a cat o’ nine tails.

  The Indians’ cries of pain and anguish seared through Katharine’s heart. What had these men done to deserve this? Where was Mac? Why was he allowing this?

  Rushing towards the scene, Esperanza hot on her heels, she suddenly pulled up short. Mac was there, leaning against an ironwood tree, smoking a cigar and watching what was going on. His eyes were expressionless but there was the faintest smile of satisfaction flickering on his lips. Katharine wanted to scream and shout at him to get the men to cease the flogging. But she stopped herself. Perhaps the men had committed some heinous crime. Perhaps, though it seemed unlikely, they deserved what was being meted out to them.

  Swallowing her disgust and fixing her face into a neutral expression, she proceeded towards Mac.

  ‘What did they do?’ she asked, as inoffensively as she could while her insides were churning, sickened by the sight of blood pouring from the men’s backs. She turned away, unable to stomach it.

  Mac did not look at her as he replied. ‘Left their estradas. Took rubber they harvested for me with the intent to exchange it for some tawdry tat that these ignoramuses value above money. Stole food.’

  He dropped his cigar to the floor even though it was far from finished and ground it to shreds with his heel.

  ‘One punishment for three crimes. I call that more than fair.’ He patted his pockets as if seeking another cigar. ‘The whip is the only thing these savages understand, the only thing that keeps them under control. You’ll find that out, soon enough.’

  Katharine grimaced. ‘But surely they cannot endure more,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice from trembling with suppressed anger. ‘Surely it’s enough now.’

  Mac shook his head. ‘I should tell you not to interfere,’ he murmured, and then sighed deeply. ‘But perhaps you have a point.’ He held her with his gaze, considering. ‘Perhaps it’s good to have a fresh pair of eyes scrutinising how things are done here,’ he added at last.

  He turned towards the men.

  ‘Stop now,’ he ordered. ‘Take them away.’

  Katharine watched as Mac disappeared off to his office and the manager led the Indians to a row of buildings on the far side of the compound. Mr Phee had said that no one got as rich as Mac without the capacity to be ruthless, and this was no doubt true. Plus, Mac was only treating the Indians as everyone did – harshly, often brutally, believing that the only thing they feared was the whip. The prevailing attitude was that they not only needed it, but thrived on it, that they could not be made to work any other way. People who in every other aspect seemed good completely ascribed to this way of thinking.

  But despite the body of opinion against her, Katharin
e could not convince herself that outright and deliberate cruelty could ever be right, that corporal punishment should ever be meted out to anyone, whatever the misdemeanour. She plodded back to the house, arms folded across her body, drenched in a cold sweat.

  Already, before they’d even begun, her father had handed over his life savings, Anselmo had lost his life and Katharine was quickly learning that the moral and ethical codes that existed elsewhere did not prevail on the Amazon. Right there and then she determined that she would never follow the crowd on this, that she would not, under any circumstances, compromise her own standards of right and wrong. She would more than likely be as alone in taking this stance as she was now in her life, but that could not be helped. It was non-negotiable.

  Nevertheless, despite the strength of her convictions, deep inside Katharine had a feeling of utter hopelessness, of everything being insurmountable. She and Anselmo had come to the Amazon to make their fortunes from rubber – but no one had told them of the costs.

  Chapter Nine

  Teams of Indians were still searching for the rest of the party who had gone on the steamer. Like a miracle, at four o’clock on the second day, they emerged from their canoes accompanied by a limping figure.

  It was Charles.

  Against all the odds he had survived and was able to reveal to them what had happened. Katharine could tell that he was sparing her the full truth of the accident, comforting her by saying that the end came quickly, that Anselmo had been hit by the stern of the boat and had not had a long-drawn-out, agonising death by drowning. She didn’t – couldn’t – fully believe him, but even in her dazed state, she appreciated his tact and concern. Laure was beside herself with joy and relief, weeping and laughing simultaneously; Katharine was glad that this tragedy had had a happy ending for her, at least.

  But however big-hearted she was, watching Laure rejoicing in Charles’ presence only made Katharine feel her own loss more keenly. Needing to clear her head from the sensory overload of all the problems assailing it – death, debt, joy, fear, brutality, trepidation, necessity – she went outside. Lagona boasted verdant grounds but they did not have quite the placid benevolence of an English garden, where green thoughts could be had in the green shade offered by drifts of rain-dusted roses and clematis, and where hedgerows buzzed with benign British insects that did not have as their central purpose in life the destruction, by bites or stings or scratches, of somebody else’s.

  Nevertheless, space to wander and to think was what Katharine needed and so, sternly instructing Esperanza not to accompany her, she set off. As she walked, she heard the sweet notes of a boy singing in perfect pitch, his song rising above the jungle’s endless uproarious noise. Wondering who it was, she followed the sound; the melody rose and fell, leading her ever deeper into the forest where eventually it faded away.

  At which point, Katharine looked around and found that she had no idea where she was. She was sure she had been on a path but now she could not make it out. The dense vegetation seemed to close in on her, the foliage and creepers and vines too tangled to penetrate, the palms and ferns and ramblers too thick to pass through. There was nothing like this forest in England, in London. The greatest number of trees Katharine had ever seen in one place before was in Highgate Wood, but there the oak, ash and sycamore left clear space between them and a soft, gentle light always dappled through the branches.

  Here, beneath the canopy, darkness reigned, an obscurity which only accentuated the noise, the deafening humming and thrumming, hooting and howling, chattering and buzzing of the cicadas and frogs and birds and monkeys. You were never alone in the forest: life abounded, though much of it stayed always invisible, and much you didn’t want to lay eyes on – bird-eating spiders, giant centipedes, pit vipers. Katharine was aware of the overpowering smell of decaying vegetation, damp earth and moisture that assailed her nostrils. But the boy she had been seeking was gone. Not a trace of either him or his lilting song remained.

  And it was stiflingly hot – furnace hot, boiling fires of hell hot.

  In the grip of panic, Katharine tried to force her way out through the tangle of undergrowth, desperate for the open, for fresh air and the sight of the sky. As she grappled with thick, tough branches and clinging vines, her foot became stuck, grabbed by a thick liana. Try as she might she could not release it and a judder of pure fear seared through her body, a terror that she might never escape, spending the rest of her life a captive, withering away and dying amongst these trees, no one able to find her. Or that she might be eaten alive by the army ants, battalions of them stripping her flesh to the bare bone, her skeleton the only thing remaining.

  Dread gave her hidden strength and Katharine struck out with one last gargantuan effort, pulling with such might that suddenly her foot came free and she flew forwards, landing with a thump on the soft leaf mould of the forest floor. She sat for a moment, catching her breath and feeling her stomach as if she could tell from the outside whether anything had happened to the baby on the inside. She thought of the letter she needed to write, telling her family of Anselmo’s death – but also of the new life she was harbouring.

  Half walking, half limping, she dragged herself towards the relatively tame and familiar environs of the compound. Her nerves frayed and her heart pounding, she emerged into the sunlight and headed towards the house, feeling like a solider returning from a long and vicious war, but nevertheless triumphant, able to rise again.

  Esperanza greeted her with her habitual blank-eyed expression. The only time the little girl had ever shown emotion was when she’d seen Katharine’s bites. Like most of the Indians, she was generally impassive, unmoved by anything. Katharine had at first assumed that it was just the way they were. But more and more she reflected on whether it was the way the white man, over centuries of subjugation, had made them.

  ‘Been for a walk?’ Mac appeared beside her, smiling, his blue eyes as grateful a sight to Katharine as the cloud-studded sky had been.

  ‘Just a little stroll,’ she replied casually, surreptitiously brushing a few remaining leaves from her dress. She didn’t want to confess to the blind panic she had so easily succumbed to. It hardly augured well for coping without a husband. ‘I-I heard a little boy singing. He sounded so young – I haven’t seen any boys that age at Lagona so I wondered if he were lost.’

  Mac’s eyes scrunched up, half laughing, half commiserating.

  ‘That wasn’t a child you heard, Mrs Ferrandis. It was a bird.’

  ‘A bird?’ Katharine couldn’t believe it. The song had been so pure, the pitch so perfect, the sound so human and, at the same time, divine. Surely a bird could not produce such a sound?

  ‘The organ bird,’ continued Mac, waving his arm at the trees that stretched unimaginable miles in every direction. ‘It is a favourite amongst us forest dwellers, heard but rarely seen.’ He turned to Katharine with his twinkling smile. ‘These woods are full of wonders.’

  Katharine smiled back. ‘Of course, I don’t know them as well as you,’ she replied, ‘but it certainly seems that way.’

  ‘When you are back in London, I hope you will take with you some fond memories of our Amazonian wilderness.’

  Katharine opened her mouth to reply and then realised she had no idea what she wanted to say. Mac obviously assumed she would go straight home. But Mac didn’t know the full story. By the time she had come to her senses he had gone, off to his office to deal with the affairs of the greatest rubber baron of them all.

  Katharine went to her room and spent the remainder of the day in restless rumination.

  That evening, Charles came to see her. Bandages covered the wounds he’d sustained in the water from bashing against rocks or submerged trees, but he’d had a bath and a shave and looked fairly chipper, all things considered.

  ‘We’re still with you,’ he said to her, without preamble or explanation, his voice a bland monotone. ‘Laure and I. If you decide to carry on – so will we.’

  Katharin
e scratched at her face, which remained an unsightly mass of scabs and weeping sores and continued to itch intolerably. This affliction had saved her life. She still had no idea if she were glad about that or not.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She rubbed her hand across her eyes as if that would help her to see more clearly and took a deep breath. ‘And yes – I will carry on.’

  Right up to that moment she had not been sure which option she was going to take. But as soon as the words were out, she knew it was the only one. Charles looked at her uncertainly as if, when offering his support, he hadn’t actually expected her to take up the offer.

  ‘Right,’ he uttered, tentatively. ‘Absolutely. Well, tomorrow we must resume with our planning and preparing. I shall go and tell Laure.’ He clapped his hands together and turned on his heel, leaving Katharine somewhat stunned about what she had committed to.

  Mac also sought her out, later that evening.

  ‘Of course, you’ll be heading back to England,’ he predicted.

  It wasn’t a question, rather a statement of fact, said with the same certainty of earlier.

  ‘I’ll be happy to take your estradas off you,’ he continued, breezily, without giving her a chance to respond. ‘Of course – well, the truth is that I wouldn’t be able to pay you what Anselmo gave for them. He was, um, a little out of his depth, I fear.’

  Katharine, watching him with a steady gaze, saw his face blanche as he realised his faux pas, referencing deep water that had caused Anselmo’s death.

  ‘You know what I mean, Mrs Ferrandis.’ He coughed, cleared his throat, then carried on. ‘As things stand, you’ll be wanting to get out of here, to take your good self back to London where – well, where things are safer for everyone. So, I’m offering to buy you out. And I’ll throw in your return passage, too. Least, I can do, in the circumstances.’ He paused, gauging Katharine’s reaction. When she didn’t give one, he continued, as if compelled to fill the silence. ‘He was a good man, your husband, and a brave one. I’m sorry for what happened.’