Contango (Ill Wind)

by James Hilton

  Hence his somewhat anxious look as he came upon the scene of ruin after a fantastically unpleasant journey. “What our average reader wants,” the newspaper-owner had told him, with impressive warning, “is news that he can digest between stops in a crowded subway-car, while he holds the paper in one hand, strap-hangs with the other, and uses up eighty per cent of his limited intelligence in sub-consciously thinking of something else. Remember that his mental age is about twelve, so that he can’t understand anything difficult, doesn’t like long words or sentences, and simply won’t have highbrow stuff at any price. So for God’s sake don’t be too clever. Write things that are just clever enough for him to think how clever he is for managing to see the point of them. And, above all, go for the human note. People aren’t naturally interested in cathedral stained-glass, for instance, but if a window-cleaner were to fall through some and cut his head off, then I reckon they might be—for about a couple of days. You see what I mean?”

  Mirsky was not quite sure, and his anxieties quickened as he engaged accommodation in a corrugated-iron shelter that had been hastily improvised as a sort of residential press-club. He was not, of course, the only journalist in Maramba. On the contrary, the place seemed full of them—dark-skinned Brazilians and Argentines, a few Americans, and one very gnarled Scotsman from Reuter’s. A few had come by air, but most, like himself, had made the trip from Rio on train and horseback. They were all rather noisily companionable, but though he tried to fraternise, he was aware that he was not their type, and that they knew it as well as he did.

  Well, what could he cable his paper about the earthquake, anyway? The hurrying subway-crowds knew already that there had been one, that Maramba was somewhere in South America, and that therefore, in a sense, the whole thing was pure nonsense and didn’t matter. Their interest, accordingly, would be strictly regulated by the degree to which he could awaken their humanitarian impulses. He could imagine his friend the proprietor saying: “Sob- stories, my boy—that’s what we want. Talk to the survivors. Get them to tell you what happened to THEM. Some little yarn about the faithful dog still howling above the ruins, or prisoners from the local jail who did heroic rescue-work.” …

  Unfortunately, to detail but one of the many negations that awaited, Maramba didn’t appear to have possessed a jail. Nor, when he began to interview survivors, did he obtain anything that seemed worth cabling to New York at so many cents a word. (Incidentally, he couldn’t cable from Maramba; the lines were down, and the nearest accepting-office was at Harama, two days’ horseback-journey away.) Perhaps the trouble was partly his Portuguese, which proved slighter than ever now that he had left Rio; but doubtless also it was in his manner, which was too academic to adjust itself readily to such tragic intimacies.

  Still, he must cable something—that was obvious. He was, indeed, quite apprehensively keen to justify himself, since if he failed to do so he could expect to be recalled pretty quickly, and it would be hard to find another job of any kind. He had a sister living in France who earned just enough money as a music-teacher to keep herself; but he had no other near relatives, and no distant ones that were not in as tough a position as himself. So he must, it was clear, discover the exact angle from which earthquake-news would catch the eye of Manhattan.

  On his second day at Maramba he interviewed the chief of the militarised police that had been sent to maintain order in the afflicted area. Already Mirsky had discovered that here, as in Russia, officials were not above being paid for their information, and in this case a fairly large tip purchased the usual garrulous but almost entirely unprofitable conversation. Keeping the human factor well in mind, he asked how many persons were believed to have perished in the catastrophe, and the chief replied that the bodies already found numbered between two and three thousand, most of them probably victims of the second quake, which had been much more severe than the first. Mirsky continued to cross-examine, but when he asked (perhaps not so tactfully) if the death-roll had included any important personages, the chief of police threw up his arms with a gesture of irritation and answered: “My God, yes, the King of England and Jack Dempsey, naturally! Whom did you expect to find in Maramba during the hot season? Three thousand bodies, man—do you think we have had time to carve all their names on tombstones yet? But yes, you shall certainly see things for yourself. It is not a pretty sight, but you shall see it, since you are so interested. This permit will admit you to the mortuaries.”

  It is not always easy to detect the note of irony in a foreign language, which was no doubt the reason why, a few moments later, Mirsky allowed himself to be ushered into an adjoining shed well-guarded by soldiers. Bodies were still being carried in, while numerous officials were hard at work on their various gruesome tasks. The disaster had been so complete that whole families had perished, and there were comparatively few uninjured survivors to assist in identifying the victims. It was a memorably unpleasant sight, that long, gloomy shed, and after a few seconds inside it Mirsky suspected the rather macabre trick that had been played on him. He had seen horrors in Russia, but nothing quite so concentrated as this. His fastidiousness was revolted, and he was just about to leave as quickly as possible when his attention was drawn to one of the bodies by reason of its more than averagely elegant clothing. Even beneath blood and dust, the shimmer of silk was noticeable, and silk shirts were doubtless rare in Maramba.

  The body was that of a youngish man with a dark, stubbly beard. The feet and the lower part of the trunk had been badly crushed, but the head was unhurt. Near by, in a neat pile, lay the contents of the pockets, ready for subsequent identification; they included cigarettes, a wallet, and a smashed compass-watch of obviously expensive make. Not quite the possessions of an average Maramban. Mirsky picked up the wallet; the maker’s stamp gave an address in Los Angeles. An American victim, then? Was it possible that he had discovered something to cable about at last? Without further hesitation he looked at what was inside the wallet and found a Roumanian passport issued to one Nicholas Palescu. He raised his eyebrows over that, for the name conveyed something to him, though he could not immediately think how or what.

  Then he recollected that a friend of his in California, a Russian film- producer, had written to him recently about a young Roumanian whose real name was Palescu, and who had achieved sudden success in the cinema-world as “Raphael Rassova.” Raphael Rassova! Mirsky rather prided himself on film-ignorance, but even he had heard of that meteor-ascent into fame. Rassova! Was it possible? Though why on earth should the fellow have grown a beard and been visiting Maramba?

  Anyhow, if it were so, if Rassova really had been killed in the earthquake, it would assuredly be a tremendous piece of news to cable exclusively to the paper—a heaven-sent journalistic scoop, indeed. But WAS it true?

  By the time he left the mortuary-shed, Mirsky had almost satisfied himself that it was. Apart from the passport, which was fairly conclusive evidence in itself, there were papers in the wallet showing that their owner had lately sailed from New York. There was also a gold-tipped cigarette-holder monogrammed “R. R.” So many pure coincidences were nearly unthinkable, and complete finality seemed established when, at a later meeting with the Scotsman from Reuter’s, Mirsky led the talk to films and remarked: “By the way, I wonder what that fellow Rassova will do next? He made a great hit recently with that Indian picture.”

  The Scotsman was delighted to prove himself better-informed. “The last I heard was that he’d gone off to the Argentine. He soon had enough of the Seydel woman. Funny thing, that woman can’t keep husbands—or else, maybe she don’t want to. Rassova was her fourth.”

  But Mirsky was not interested in these glimpses into Rassova’s life; all he was concerned with was his death, which he now deemed himself to have settled. It had been an amazing piece of luck, and it was up to him now to exploit it to the full. He must, then, set out for Harama immediately and despatch the cable. Unfortunately, just as he was about to begin the arduous journey, news came of the
bursting of the Orica dam. This further disaster, resulting from the earthquake stresses, had the effect of cutting all communications between Harama and the east; and there was likely to be a week’s delay before the telegraph-line could be restored. Learning this, a few of the journalists flew back to Rio, but Mirsky, though he made several offers, could not negotiate for the air-trip with them.

  Not being by nature a man of action, he was the more impetuous now that he had decided on doing something. He felt that his whole future depended on getting his message through to New York, and that fate, having put the chance of a lifetime in his way, was being particularly malign in depriving him of it by means of a dam-burst. For delay was dangerous, since at any time the identity of the dead youth might be discovered and the whole story become common property. Mirsky felt irritated to desperation as he sat drinking beer in a shanty which was all that Maramba now possessed in the way of an hotel. The weather was hot, food and lodging were unpleasant, everything was fabulously expensive, nor was it by any means certain that the earthquakes had finished their activities. He stared disconsolately at his pocket-map, on which Maramba wanted a good deal of finding. Harama, being at railhead, appeared more conspicuously, and the Orica dam, presumably, was in the hills a few miles to the north. Whichever way one looked at it, Maramba was awkwardly placed. Then suddenly, from the map, the notion came to him that there must surely be other ways of egress to civilisation. After all, it didn’t matter whence he sent his cable, provided he sent it. Could he not engage someone to transport him downstream to the nearest river-settlement that had a telegraph-office?

  He spent an hour in fruitless enquiries on the debris-littered water- front, and only gave up the idea when he found that no place on the river nearer than Asunçion possessed a telegraph-line that did not pass through Harama.

  Then he looked at the map again, and the final but very obvious alternative came to him. Why, in all these plans for getting the news through, should he only have thought of the country to the EAST of the river? Wouldn’t a western journey do equally well? With a thrill of satisfaction, and in some amazement that he had not thought of it before, he found on the map a place called San Cristobal that was scarcely further in the one direction than Harama was in the other. And San Cristobal, moreover, was the terminus of a railway leading to the Andean uplands, so that it was sure to have the telegraph.

  It looked about eighty miles or so, measured roughly with the finger, and he reckoned on three or four days for that—perhaps less if the country proved easy going.

  Leon Mirsky would have been called a man of imagination, but he had omitted to imagine South America. Till a fortnight before, he had never set eyes on it, and his journey up from Rio had not impressed him with much more than the extreme tiresomeness of the country. Actually, when he had crossed the river from Maramba, he thought himself lucky in that the path immediately plunged into the forest.

  He had told no one of his plan to reach San Cristobal, thinking that if he did he might be delayed by enforced companions. He had taken, of course, all obvious precautions—he carried a revolver and a shot-gun, as well as food and tobacco sufficient for several days. He had also, amongst other articles, a pocket-compass, a map which merely gave the names of the two places, with no hint of the kind of country between; and a small edition of Theocritus. With this equipment, and a water-bottle to fill from wayside streams, he thought he had remembered everything.

  He must have looked a rather striking figure as he cantered those first pleasant miles. No doubt some of the Jesuit fathers, trekking along that same forest-path two centuries before, had worn a similar aspect, that of the scholar-adventurer; but the Jesuits did not travel alone. Mirsky, however, was inclined to be especially happy for that very reason. He had always lived a rather solitary life, and he could always thoroughly enjoy his own thoughts and introspections. As he pushed his way on through the suave green tunnel, with the gathering sunlight scarcely visible above the tree-tops, he felt quite entranced with the prospect before him. He was not much of a nature-worshipper, but he perceived that nature here was certainly at her best and liveliest. He gave her, as it were, full marks and a nod of approval, feeling that she would do very nicely as a background to his satisfying emotions during the next few days. And perhaps when he DID get his sensational message through to New York it would still further add to his credit that he had performed this journey as a romantic prelude. Yes, he felt particularly serene as he appraised this shaded loveliness after the hot, dust-blown ruins of Maramba, and his own silences after the friendly but foolish conversation of his fellow- journalists.

  And his scoop would be a memorable one. He pictured the placards: “Raphael Rassova Killed in Earthquake. … Sensational Discovery at Maramba…. Our Special Correspondent’s Graphic Cable….” Yes, this business would certainly establish his reputation, and it mattered to him tremendously that it should. Yet there was another sense in which he was quite certain it did not matter at all. Cinemas and cheap journalism and all that stuff—it wasn’t art—a single square millimetre from a canvas by Ribuera or Morales was worth all the celluloid in Hollywood. He was, indeed, in the position of a man desperately trying to score a goal in a game he rather despised. But there was no doubt of the desperation. It was nourished by a private conceit that made him anxious to show how easily a man of higher intelligence could succeed at a job that was really beneath him. This chasing of news, this seeing of everything from the “human” standpoint, this persistent titivation of the mental palate of the multitude—it was all confusing at first to any man of culture, because he couldn’t bring himself down to its level; but when and if he did, why, it became child’s play.

  Mirsky was a highbrow by disposition. Born amidst a society that had since collapsed, he was sincerely convinced that the inroads of democracy upon the aristocratic principle had been the inroads of the new barbarism upon civilisation. The world of 1931 seemed to him full of proofs of this—so full, indeed, that he had long given up contemplating them. The most resounding proof, to himself, was naturally the personal one—that here he was, forced to do quite ridiculous things to earn a living, when all the time there was in him the capacity to write a great book on Spanish painting, or perhaps a few sonnets. His demands, surely, were not excessive—a roof over his head, food, clothing, a few cultured luxuries—in dollars equal to perhaps a hundredth part of the earnings of this Rassova fellow, whose death was to plunge so many millions in despair. Yet the world, to whom Spanish painting and sonnets were much less important than a film-star’s eyelashes, would not yield him even that minimum tribute. In an aristocratic society, of course, all that would have been different; he would either have had money himself, or would have found a patron. An excellent system, he considered, under which the arts had flourished as perhaps never under any other. His own family had themselves been patrons of such a kind during pre-Revolution days; which seemed to indicate a double loss to the world as a result of their downfall.

  But Mirsky, though a highbrow and an artist, was by no means devoid of robuster qualities. It was merely that, unless he were compelled, he did not bring them into use. He was a good shot, for instance, but he did not care for the more murderous forms of sport; and though his body was strong and in good condition, this was through careful living rather than any attention to athletics. Perhaps also he had a little more than the average man’s personal courage.

  He needed it, even during that first morning in the forest. Suddenly, in the midst of his comfortably meandering thoughts, his horse started violently beneath him, stopped dead, and began to quake with fear. He patted the animal reassuringly, but without effect; the shivering continued, though, so far as he could take in at a rapid survey, there was no reason for it. The vista of dark green thickets festooned with trailing lianes was quite unchanged from similar scenes that he had been traversing for some hours. There was certainly, now that movement of man and beast had stopped, a curious tenseness in the air, and a hint, more th
an a statement, of the terrific heat that was pouring on the tree-tops a few dozen feet above. And a hum of insects filled the silence, as of a million small instruments tuning up for a symphony. But otherwise everything seemed to Mirsky quite unremarkable.

  All at once, however, there came from somewhere in front a faint, slithering rustle, and his heart gave an immediate jump, for not more than a score yards away, in outline scarcely to be seen against the background of undergrowth, there appeared an enormous snake. Its flat, spoon-like head swayed with nonchalant grace about a man’s height above the ground, while its body, thickening and thinning as it drew itself forward, showed yet no visible ending.

  The tremors of the horse were verging now on pitiful collapse. Mirsky tried to coax the animal to turn tail and run, but it would not stir; it was almost hypnotised. The blood was pulsing in his own veins quite as disturbingly, and as he stared at the advancing monster, with its glittering eyes and wide, drooling jaws, he felt a swift sympathy with the beast beneath him as well as a spasm of personal panic. He knew very little about reptiles, except that not all were poisonous, and that most were more timid than they looked. He knew, too, that the South American anaconda, or boa-constrictor, killed its prey by crushing; and from its size he thought it likely that the creature facing him was of this species.

  But there was no time for speculation in the matter. With scarcely any plan of action in mind, except that it was probably better to do anything rather than nothing, he dismounted, drew his revolver, and took a few paces forward. The long procession of curves halted, like a chain of vehicles held up suddenly by a policeman. For a fraction of a moment the ill-matched adversaries faced each other as if in mutual uncertainty; then Mirsky fired, aiming for the head. Owing to nervousness, he missed, but the sound of the shot evidently frightened the anaconda, if it were one, for with a sort of disdainful hurry it swerved sideways and disappeared into the undergrowth.