the Last Place God Made (v5) Page 2

  I had hoped to be on my way in a matter of hours, certainly no later than the following day for in spite of the fact that Manaus was passing through hard times, there was usually a boat of some description or another leaving for the coast most days.

  Things started to go wrong from the beginning. To start with, there was the police in the person of the comandante himself who insisted on giving me a personal examination regarding the crash, noting my every word in his own hand which took up a remarkable amount of time.

  After signing my statement I had to wait outside his office while he got Hannah's version of the affair. They seemed to be old and close friends from the laughter echoing faintly through the closed door and when they finally emerged, Hannah had an arm round the comandante's shoulder.

  'Ah, Senhor Mallory.' The comandante nodded graciously. 'I have spoken to Captain Hannah on this matter and am happy to say that he confirms your story in every detail. You are free to go.'

  Which was nice of him. He went back into his office and Hannah said, 'That's all right, then.' He frowned as if concerned and put a hand on my shoulder. 'I've got things to do, but you look like the dead walking. Grab a cab downstairs and get the driver to take you to the Palace Hotel. Ask for Senhor Juca. Tell him I sent you. Five or six hours' sleep and you'll be fine. I'll catch up with you this evening. We'll have something to eat. Hit the high spots together.'

  'In Manaus?' I said.

  'They still have their fair share of sin if you know where to look.' He grinned crookedly. 'I'll see you later.'

  He returned to the comandante's office, opening the door without, knocking and I went downstairs and out through the cracked marble pillars at the entrance.

  I didn't go to the hotel straight away. Instead, I took one of the horse-drawn cabs that waited at the bottom of the steps and gave the driver the address of the local agent of the mining company for whom I'd contracted to deliver the Vega to Belem.

  In its day during the great rubber boom at the end of the nineteeth century, Manaus had been the original hell-hole, millionaires walking the streets ten-a-penny, baroque palaces, an opera house to rival Paris itself. No sin too great, no wickedness too evil. Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one and set down on the banks of the Negro, a thousand miles up the Amazon.

  I had never cared much for the place. There was a suggestion of corruption, a kind of general decay. A feeling that the jungle was gradually creeping back in and that none of us had any right to be there.

  I felt restless and ill-at-ease, reaction to stress, I suppose, and wanted nothing so much as to be on my way, looking back on this place over the sternrail of a riverboat for the last time.

  I found the agent in the office of a substantial warehouse on the waterfront. He was tall, cadaverous, with the haunted eyes of a man who knows he has not got long to live and he coughed repeatedly into a large, soiled handkerchief which was already stained with blood.

  He gave thanks to Our Lady for my deliverance to the extent of crossing himself and in the same breath pointed out that under the terms of my contract, I only got paid on safe delivery of the Vega to Belem. Which was exactly what I had expected and I left him in a state of near collapse across his desk doing his level best to bring up what was left of his lungs and went outside.

  My cab still waited for me, the driver dozing in the heat of the day, his straw sombrero tilted over his eyes. I walked across to the edge of the wharf to see what was going on in the basin which wasn't much, but there was a stern-wheeler up at the next wharf loading green bananas.

  I found the captain in a canvas chair under an awning on the bridge and he surfaced for as long as it took to tell me he was leaving at nine the following morning for Belem and that the trip would take six days. If I didn't fancy a hammock on deck with his more impoverished customers, I could have the spare bunk in the mate's cabin with all found for a hundred cruzeiros. I assured him I would be there on time and he closed his eyes with complete indifference and returned to more important matters.

  I had just over a thousand cruzeiros in my wallet, around a hundred and fifty pounds sterling at that time which meant that even allowing for the trip down-river and incidental expenses, I would have ample in hand to buy myself a passage to England from Belem on some cargo boat or other.

  I was going home. After two and a half years of the worst that South America could offer, I was on my way and it felt marvellous. Definitely one of life's great moments and all tiredness left me as I turned and hurried back to the cab.

  *

  I had expected the worst of the hotel but the Palace was a pleasant surprise. Certainly it had seen better days, but it had a kind of baroque dignity to it, a faded charm that was very appealing, and Hannah's name had a magic effect on the Senhor Juca he had mentioned, an old, white-haired man in an alpaca jacket who sat behind the desk reading a newspaper.

  He took me upstairs personally and ushered me into a room with its own little ironwork terrace overlooking the river. The whole place was a superb example of late Victoriana, caught for all time like a fly in amber from the brass bed to the heavy, mahogany furniture.

  An Indian woman in a black bombazine dress appeared with clean sheets and the old man showed me, with some pride, the bathroom next door of which I could have sole use, although regrettably it would be necessary to ring for hot water. I thanked him for his courtesy, but he waved his hands deprecatingly and assured me, with some eloquence, that nothing was too much trouble for a friend of Captain Hannah's.

  I thought about that as I undressed. Whatever else you could say about him, Hannah obviously enjoyed considerable standing in Manaus which was interesting, considering he was a foreigner.

  I needed that bath badly, but suddenly, sitting there on the edge of the bed after getting my boots off, I was overwhelmed with tiredness. I climbed between the sheets and was almost instantly asleep.

  *

  I surfaced to the mosquito net billowing above me like a pale, white flower in the breeze from the open window and beyond, a face floated disembodied in the diffused yellow glow of an oil lamp.

  Old Juca blinked sad, moist eyes. 'Captain Hannah was here earlier, senhor. He asked me to wake you at nine o'clock.'

  It took its own time in getting through to me. 'Nine o'clock?'

  'He asks you to meet him, senhor, at The Little Boat. He wishes you to dine with him. I have a cab waiting to take you there, senhor. Everything is arranged.'

  'That's nice of him,' I said, but any irony in my voice was obviously lost on him.

  'Your bath is waiting, senhor. Hot water is provided.' He put the lamp down carefully on the table, the door closed with a gentle sigh behind him, the mosquito net fluttered in the eddy like some great moth, then settled again.

  Hannah certainly took a lot for granted. I got up, feeling vaguely irritated at the way things were being managed for me and padded across to the open window. Quite suddenly, my whole mood changed for it was pleasantly cool after the heat of the day, the breeze perfumed with flowers. Lights glowed down there on the river and music echoed faintly, the fredo from the sound of it, pulsating through the night, filling me with a vague, irrational excitement.

  When I turned back to the room I made another discovery. My canvas grip had been unpacked and my old linen suit had been washed and pressed and hung neatly from the back of a chair waiting for me. There was really nothing I could do, the pressures were too great, so I gave in gracefully, found a towel and went along the corridor to have my bath.

  *

  Although the main rainy season was over, rainfall always tends to be heavy in the upper Amazon basin area and sudden, violent downpours are common, especially at night.

  I left the hotel to just such a rush of rain and hurried down the steps to the cab which was waiting for me, escorted by Juca who insisted on holding an ancient black umbrella over my head. The driver had raised the leather hood which kept out most of the rain if not all and drove away at once.

  The streets w
ere deserted, washed clean of people by the rain and from the moment we left the hotel until we reached our destination, I don't think we saw more than half a dozen people, particularly when we moved through the back streets towards the river.

  We emerged on the waterfront at a place where there were a considerable number of houseboats of various kinds for a great many people actually lived on the river this way. We finally came to a halt at the end of a long pier.

  'This way, senhor.'

  The cabby insisted on placing his old oilskin coat about my shoulders and escorted me to the end of the pier where a lantern hung from a pole above a rack festooned with fishing nets.

  An old riverboat was moored out there in the darkness, lights gleaming, laughter and music drifting across the water. He leaned down and lifted a large, wooden trapdoor and the light from the lamp flooded in to reveal a flight of wooden steps. He went down and I followed without hesitation. I had, after all, no reason to expect foul play and in any event, the Webley .38 which I'd had the forethought to slip into my right-hand coat pocket was as good an insurance as any.

  A kind of boardwalk stretched out through the darkness towards the riverboat, constructed over a series of canoes and it dipped alarmingly as we moved across.

  When we reached the other end the cabby smiled and slapped the hull with the flat of his palm. 'The Little Boat, senhor. Good appetite in all things but in food and women most of all.'

  It was a Brazilian saying and well intended. I reached for my wallet and he raised a hand. 'It is not necessary, senhor. The good captain has seen to it all.'

  Hannah again. I watched him negotiate the swaying catwalk successfully as far as the pier then turned and went up some iron steps which took me to the deck. A giant of a man moved from the shadows beside a lighted doorway, a Negro with a ring in one ear and a heavy, curly beard.

  'Senhor?' he said.

  'I'm looking for Captain Hannah,' I told him. 'He's expecting me.'

  The teeth gleamed in the darkness. Another friend of Hannah's. This was really beginning to get monotonous. He didn't say anything, simply opened the door for me and I passed inside.

  I suppose it must have been the main saloon in the old days. Now it was crowded with tables, people crammed together like sardines. There was a permanent curtain of smoke that, allied to the subdued lighting, made visibility a problem, but I managed to detect a bar in one corner on the other side of the small, packed dance floor. A five-piece rumba band was banging out a carioca and most of the crowd seemed to be singing along with it.

  I saw Hannah in the thick of it on the floor dancing about as close as it was possible to get to a really beautiful girl by any standards. She was of mixed blood, Negro-European variety was my guess and wore a dress of scarlet satin that fitted her like a second skin and made her look like the devil's own.

  He swung her round, saw me and let out a great cry. 'Heh, Mallory, you made it.'

  He pushed the girl away as if she didn't exist and ploughed through the crowd towards me. Nobody got annoyed even when he put a drink or two over. Mostly they just smiled and one or two of the men slapped him on the back and called good-naturedly.

  He'd been drinking, that much was obvious, and greeted me like a long lost brother. 'What kept you? Christ, but I'm starving. Come on, I've got a table laid on out on the terrace where we can hear ourselves think.'

  He took me by the elbow and guided me through the crowd to a long, sliding shutter on the far side. As he started to pull it back, the girl in the red satin dress arrived and flung her arms around his neck.

  He grabbed her wrists and she gave a short cry of pain, that strength of his again, I suppose. He no longer looked anything like as genial and somehow, his bad Portuguese made it sound worse.

  'Later, angel - later, I'll screw you just as much as you damn well want, only now, I want a little time with my friend. Okay?'

  When he released her she backed away, looked scared if anything, turned and melted into the crowd. I suppose it was about then I noticed that the women vastly outnumbered the men and commented on the fact.

  'What is this, a whorehouse?'

  'Only the best in town.'

  He pulled back the shutter and led the way out to a private section of the deck with a canvas awning from which the rain dripped steadily. A table, laid for two, stood by the rail under a pressure lamp.

  He shouted in Portuguese, 'Heh, Pedro, let's have some action here.' Then he motioned me to one of the seats and produced a bottle of wine from a bucket of water under the table. 'You like this stuff - Pouilly Fuisse? They get it for me special. I used to drink it by the bucketful in the old days in France.'

  I tried some. It was ice-cold, sharp and fresh and instantly exhilarating. 'You were on the Western Front?'

  'I sure was. Three years of it. Not many lasted that long, I can tell you.'

  Which at least explained the Captain bit. I said, 'But America didn't come into the war till nineteen-seventeen.'

  'Oh, that.' He leaned back out of the way as a waiter in a white shirt and cummerbund appeared with a tray to serve us. 'I flew for the French with the Lafayette Escadrille. Nieuport Scouts then Spads.' He leaned forward to re-fill my glass. 'How old are you, Mallory?'

  'Twenty-three.'

  He laughed. 'I'd twenty-six kills to my credit when I was your age. Been shot down four times, once by von Richthofen himself.'

  Strange, but at that stage of things I never doubted him for a second. Stated baldly, what he had said could easily sound like boasting and yet it was his manner which said most and he was casual in the extreme as if these things were really of no account.

  We had fish soup, followed by a kind of casserole of chicken stewed in its own blood, which tasted a lot better than it sounds. This was backed up by eggs and olives fried, as usual, in olive oil. And there was a mountain of rice and tomatoes in vinegar.

  Hannah never stopped talking and yet ate and drank enormously with little visible effect except to make him talk more loudly and more rapidly than ever.

  'It was a hard school out there, believe me. You had to be good to survive and the longer you lasted, the better your chances.'

  'That makes sense, I suppose,' I said.

  'It sure does. You don't need luck up there, kid. You need to know what you're doing. Flying's about the most unnatural thing a man can do.'

  When the waiter came to clear the table, I thanked him. Hannah said, 'That's pretty good Portuguese you speak. Better than mine.'

  'I spent a year on the lower Amazon when I first came to South America,' I told him. 'Flying out of Belem for a mining company that had diamond concessions along the Xingu River.'

  He seemed impressed. 'I hear that's rough country. Some of the worst Indians in Brazil.'

  'Which was why I switched to Peru. Mountain flying may be trickier, but it's a lot more fun than what you're doing.'

  He said, 'You were pretty good out there today. I've been flying for better than twenty years and I can't think of more than half a dozen guys I've known who could have landed that Vega. Where did you learn to fly like that?'

  'I had an uncle who was in the R.F.C.,' I said. 'Died a couple of years back. He used to take me up in a Puss Moth when I was a kid. When I went to University, I joined the Air Squadron which led to a Pilot Officer's commission in the Auxiliary Air Force. That got me plenty of weekend flying.'

  'Then what?'

  'Qualified for a commercial pilot's licence in my spare time, then found pilots were ten-a-penny.'

  'Except in South America.'

  'Exactly.' I was more than a little tight by then and yet the words seemed to spill out with no difficulty. 'All I ever wanted to do was fly. Know what I mean? I was willing to go anywhere.'

  'You certainly were if you drew the Xingu. What are you going to do now? If you're stuck for a job I might be able to help.'

  'Flying, you mean?'

  He nodded. 'I handle the mail and general freight route to Landro which is abou
t two hundred miles up the Negro from here. I also cover the Rio das Mortes under government contract. Lot of diamond prospecting going on up there these days.'

  'The Rio das Mortes?' I said. 'The River of Death? You must be joking. That's worse than the Xingu any day. I've been there. I took some government men to a Mission Station called Santa Helena maybe two years ago. That would be before your time. You know the place?'

  'I call there regularly.'

  'You used a phrase today,' I said. 'The Last Place God Made. Well, that's the Rio das Mortes, Hannah. During the rainy season it never stops. At other times of the year it just rains all day. They've got flies up there that lay eggs in your eyeballs. Most parts of the Amazon would consider the pirhana bad enough because a shoal of them can reduce a man to a skeleton in three minutes flat, but on the Mortes, they have a microscopic item with spines that crawls up your backside given half a chance and it takes a knife to get him out again.'

  'You don't need to tell me about the damn place,' he said. 'I've been there. Came in with three Hayleys and high hopes a year ago. All I've got left is the baby you arrived in today. Believe me, when my government contract's up in three months you won't see me for dust.'

  'What happened to the other two planes?'

  'Kaput. Lousy pilots.'

  'Then why do you need me?'

  'Because it takes two planes to keep my schedules going or to put it more exactly, I can't quite do it with one. I managed to pick up an old biplane the other day from a planter downriver who's selling up.'

  'What is it?'

  'A Bristol.'

  He was in the act of filling my glass and I started so much that I spilled most of my wine across the table. 'You mean a Brisfit? A Bristol fighter? Christ, they were flying those over twenty years ago on the Western Front.'

  He nodded. 'I should know. Oh, she's old all right, but then she only has to hold together another three months. Do one or two of the easy river trips. If you'd wanted the job, you could have had it, but it doesn't matter. There's a guy in at the weekend who's already been in touch with me. Some Portuguese who's been flying for a mining company in Venezuela that went bust which means I'll get him cheap.'