Johnny Goes West

by Desmond Cory

  “You’d better bone up on the etiquette,” said Trout.

  “If it comes to a straight gunfight, nobody’s likely to be any faster than you are.”

  “No. But then I’m not the one who matters, and neither are you. It’s Hendricks. There’d better be one of us always with him from now on. . . . Always.”

  “All right,” said Trout.

  A few moments’ silence.

  “. . . A funny thing,” said Trout. “I wouldn’t have called Galdos much of an actor. Would you?”

  “I don’t know. He might be quite good, but in a very limited number of parts. Why?”

  “Because I got the impression he didn’t find what he expected to find, when he opened that box of Hendricks’. He looked to be surprised as all hell. And if he wasn’t acting . . . then he doesn’t even know what carnotite looks like.”

  “He had a good shufty at it, though. Tomorrow he’ll describe it to his tame geologist, and the geologist’ll come up with the right answer. That’s if it’s as unmistakeable as Hendricks says it is. It does look pretty out of the ordinary, and that’s a fact.”

  “But don’t you see,” said Trout, “that it argues against his having killed West?”

  Johnny’s shoulders moved fractionally in the darkness. “A man can get killed round here for any number I of things,” he said. “But there’s only one man who can kill him. And I don’t mean the one who pulls the trigger, either. But Galdos is none of our business, Tiddler. We’re not investigating a murder; we’re here to look for carnotite, and that’s all.”

  “There ought to be a law against people like Galdos ” said Trout, and the end of his cigarette glowed crossly against the palm of his hand. “There”|”:c is, in most countries,” said Johnny. “But not here. Here, he is the law. Weren’t you in Nazi German before the war?”

  “Yes,” said Trout. “And during it.” He considered for a moment. “But somehow that was serious. An Galdos is just . . . well, revolting.”

  “Nazism was serious because it was a retrocession But this country’s never known anything else, as far I can see.” A bird croaked sleepily in the low black horizon of the trees. “You remember what Galdos called them . . . little Caesars. A lot of little tinpot Tamburlaines. And they think in simple terms, like Tamburlaine did. Money is for gambling. Women an for bed. Power is good; there’s no such word as bad. They rule by pain and they’re ruled by their own bodies. All experience is physical and anatomical and sexual, and has to be pushed to extremes.” Johnny’s voice was languid, drowsy; he was almost dropping off to sleep. “They’re not people like you, Tiddler; they’re not even people like me. We can’t communicate with them. We can’t live by their standards. All we can do is ignore them . . . or kill them.”

  His cigarette-end traced an abstract arch through the air in his fingers; extinguished itself slowly, without a spark. “All those long words,” said Trout, almost with awe. “You’re a philosopher, Johnny, and I never knew it. You ought to write a good book for Galdos to read.”

  “It wouldn’t sell,” said Johnny, rising to his feet. “Not as many as if that Gracia woman wrote it.”

  He went back into the long room. The door behind which Maria was sleeping stood half ajar, and he paused for a moment beside it; he could hear the deep rise and fall of her breathing. He stayed still for a moment, his head lowered, one hand touching the woodwork. . . . “Anything the matter?” asked Trout.

  Johnny shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”

  They walked down the room to where the sleeping-bags had been shaken out, beyond the dark shapeless bulk of Hendricks’ body. He had stopped snoring; the hum of the mosquitoes was clearly audible. Fedora lay down—for the sleeping-bags served them purely as mattresses; the night was too hot for anything else— and rested his head on his raised forearm; his eyes stared sightlessly upwards at the darkened ceiling. He was thinking again of the mosquito-net that hung over the bed in Maria’s room; he was too tired now deliberately to divert his thoughts elsewhere; he thought of the mosquito-net, pale yellow and phantasmal, and of the body, naked, surely, and white in the dimness of the room, that lay beneath it. A drop of sweat trickled down his cheek, fell to the canvas bag that he used as a pillow.

  “. . . Fedora?”

  Johnny was instantly, alertly awake. “Yes?”

  “Nothing. Just something I remembered.” Hendricks’ voice was vague, blurred over with the tides of sleep. “Said you wanted a puma. . . . Saw one today. With cubs. Dangerous.”

  “Oh,” said Johnny. He relaxed. “That’s fine.”

  “Go there with a gun one day. Tomorrow, maybe. I know where she lives.” Hendricks’ voice was retreating fast, returning to the dream that had aroused him. “Marked it on the map. She’s a big one.”

  “Thanks,” said Fedora, closing his eyes. “I wouldn’t mind trying. Can’t very well take the mother . . . but I’ll see if I can’t pop off poppa. . . .”

  Hendricks made no reply. After a while, he began to snore again, rather more softly than before. Fedora envied him.

  Chapter Five

  “I’ll stay with him today,” Trout said at breakfast. A “You run into town and pick up some stores. Some coffee, especially. Yes, and see about those letters while you’re at it.”

  Los Cielos in the morning looked like Los Cielos in the afternoon, Los Ceilos in the evening or Los Cielos at any other time of day. A few filthy, half-naked children played in the open ground at the town’s entrance, dispersing with high-pitched unintelligible screams as the Land Rover bucketed past them; as it went by the first of the outlying houses, a woman dressed in black stepped hurriedly indoors and closed the door. The main street lay almost empty, dazzling in the bright morning sun that shone down its length; a donkey moved over the cobbles with two tarnished milk-canisters strapped in panniers on its back; nobody seemed to be in charge of it. Johnny brought the car to a halt; wiped the dust from his lips and forehead with a silk handkerchief; got out. His head was aching slightly and his mouth felt gummy. He was facing, in fact, a typical Venezuelan morning after the night before.

  The Oficina de Correos consisted of a single ramshackle room in an isolated ramshackle house just off the main street; this house being, in point of fact, the second in importance of the combine’s string of brothels. Fedora, entering, found nothing in the room but an old and battered wooden table and an old and battered filing cabinet. He hammered on the table for a while, until a small woman, far more old and battered than any other article the room or, in all probability, the whole house boasted of, came in and asked him what he wanted.

  “Have you any letters,” asked Johnny politely, “for Don Roberto West?”

  “What?” said the old, battered woman.

  She refused to understand him for some five minutes, and in the end denied the impeachment strongly. Fedora offered her a ten-bolivar note. She accepted it, but she still had no letters. Fedora, who had never had much hope of this particular expedition proving a rousing success, effected his despedida as courteously as possible and departed bad-temperedly, in search of a hair of the dog that had bitten him. In the hall, a girl was waiting for him; she had dark hair and was wearing a flowered dressing-gown of Caribbean cotton. “Buenos dias” she said, “caballero.”

  “Another time, perhaps,” said Fedora. “I’m in rather a hurry.”

  He attempted to step past her, but she threw herself bodily into his arms and clung there, panting. “Espere listed, señor. Por favor, espere un momento.”

  Johnny attempted to detach her, torn between a natural exasperation and an unwilling admiration for the evident willingness and stamina of the local male populace; he himself was made of weaker fibre and considered the hours of 10—11 a.m. better employed in solitary drinking. “Look,” he said, “I like you very much, don’t think I don’t, but as the result of an unfortunate accident in the war—”

  “Por favor, no es usted el Señor Fedora?”

  Johnny blinked. “Yes,�
� he said. Slowly. One fan say “Yes” slowly, in Spanish. “Yes,” he said, slowly. “I am.”

  The girl, satisfied, released her grasp. “Please come with me, then,” she said. “Please, kind sir, come with me. Someone wants to talk to you. If you come with me, I’ll show you.”

  Fedora by now had caught on to the general idea. The young lady wanted him to go with her; that was it. “All right,” he said. “I’ll buy it. Go ahead.”

  The girl beckoned, presumably to make sure that the full meaning of her intentions had sunk in, then led the way down a dark corridor smelling rather vilely of something like creosote. At the end of the passageway, she opened a door; Fedora passed through, brushing aside a moth-eaten muslin curtain. The room within was furnished in a laudably simple manner with a bed and a straw mattress. Sitting on the mattress, in an attitude that suggested a deep distrust of possible lurking vermin, was Gracia West.

  Fedora looked round him, puzzled by what he took at first glance to be some new and interesting variation of the badger game. But, quite obviously, there was no one else in the room. Gracia West got up and stepped quickly towards him.

  “Listen,” she said. “I saw you come into town just now. I want to talk to you, but I can’t talk to you here. There’s nowhere in town I can talk to you; it’s too dangerous. Understand?”

  “Dangerous,” said Fedora, still looking cautiously around him. “Of course, that was the word I was looking for. However, if you feel that the danger is really reduced to a minimum by our meeting alone in a bedroom in what has every appearance of being a house of assignment, I can only say that I’m happy—”

  “Shut up,” said Gracia West, placing one hand over his mouth and pressing her breasts hard against his chest. “You talk too much. I noticed that last night, you talk too much. I know what you came here for—and I’ve got what you want. The letters, I mean. I might have something else you want, h’m?” She moved her breasts gently up and down, letting her hand slip down from Johnny’s mouth to where his tie would have been, had he been wearing one; or, alternatively, to where maybe she was thinking of inserting a jackknife. It’s hard to be sure of some things in Venezuela. “I want to talk to you, but I can’t talk here. Listen. . . . Are you listening?”

  “I’m trying hard to concentrate,” said Johnny.

  “Our house is five kilometres’ upriver from yours. You follow the river, you come to a pool with a summerhouse; that’s ours. That’s where I go to bathe,” said Gracia West, “every evening, six o’clock. Like to meet me there tonight? H’m?”

  “All right,” said Johnny. “I don’t mind.”

  “Don’t let anyone see you getting there, that’s all. Once you’re there, nobody’ll disturb us. Now get the sweet hell out of here,” said Gracia West, “you’ve been here about long enough. The girl’ll go with you, and mind you give her a great big kiss in the doorway. It’s all on the house.”

  Johnny nodded and turned away. “Six o’clock,” he said. “Okay.”

  The girl was waiting outside, and escorted him to the doorway. Fedora duly kissed her with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, aware—as he had not been before—of watching eyes, invisible in the darkened windows along the street; ruffled her hair affectionately and turned away. “Hey,” said the girl.

  Johnny turned back. “Yes? What’s the matter?”

  “Una propina” said the girl, extending her hand with a certain near-Roman dignity. “A little something I can keep in memory of you.”

  “Oh,” said Fedora. “Sorry.”

  He gave her a twenty-five bolivar note, and this time stood watching until the door had closed behind her. As he was on the point of turning away, the door opened once again and the girl peered shyly out.

  “Come tonight,” she said. “Ask for Lola.”

  The door closed, at last with finality. Fedora strolled away, fingering his unshaven chin and pondering on this unusual and so far unbroken chain of amatory successes. For the first time it occurred to him that he might rather like Venezuela, when he got to know it better.

  “And you’re going?” said Trout incredulously.

  Fedora flicked a dollop of lather away from the razor and raised his chin once more to the driving-mirror. “Naturally I’m going. Wouldn’t you?”

  “It could be a trap, couldn’t it?”

  “If it had been a trap this morning, I wouldn’t have been able to do very much about it. Anyway, it’s worth taking a chance.” Fedora shrugged, nicked himself. “Ow.”

  “Of course, if she’s on the level, it could be a break.”

  “You’re damned right it could,” said Fedora.

  “And she said she had those letters? . . . Hell, she must know something, then. She must know something.” Trout went for a stroll around the car, studying the shape of his feet as he went. “Maybe she even knows where he found the stuff. It’s possible.”

  “We’ll find out this evening,” said Fedora.

  He dried his face carefully on the towel, looked critically into the mirror again. There were red stains on his forehead and cheekbones where sun and wind had blistered the skin, and tiny pale lines radiated outwards from the corners of his eyes; but the eyes themselves were just the same as ever, a rather cold blue and introspective. . . . “Lunch ready, yet?” he asked.

  “I think so,” said Trout. “Let’s go and see.”

  Johnny threw the towel casually over his shoulder and followed Trout indoors, buckling his belt as he went. In the long room, all was as usual; dimness, a comparative coolness, the never-ceasing murmur of insects. Lunch wasn’t ready yet, after all; but Hendricks was already seated at the table, scratching his ankle and leafing through one of West’s mining textbooks. “Hullo,” said Trout. “Finished your analysis?”

  Hendricks sat back, pushed the book away from him. “Yes.”

  “Any good?”

  “It’s carnotite all right, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I meant,” said Trout, sitting down.

  “I never had much doubt of that. A very fine ore, as nice an ore as I’ve seen anywhere. All the same . . . it’s very odd.”

  “What’s odd?”

  “Well, the stone itself is certainly Permian. I thought that when I first saw it, and now I’m sure. It’s a typical Coconino-type sandstone, the kind of formation you find on the Colorado plateau, for instance. I just don’t get it.”

  Trout didn’t, either. “And that’s unusual, is it?”

  “Oh no, it’s not unusual. It’s very common . . . elsewhere. But I’ll swear that there isn’t a Permian outcrop within a hundred miles of here. The formations here are all Cretaceous, like that bit I showed you yesterday; there’s a Jurassic bed farther down the river, but there’s nothing older than that around—not till you get into Brazil. According to the geological maps, that is to say. Well, either they’re all to cock— which I very much doubt—or else there’s something quite out of the ordinary about those rocks east of the river.”

  “And do you see anything out of the ordinary?” asked Fedora, struggling with his freshly-washed shirt.

  “No, that’s the hell of it. I don’t.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “But since West found that fragment here,” said Trout slowly, “there must be rocks of that same kind nearby. Or doesn’t that follow?” He picked up McKinstry’s Mining Geology, glanced at it hopelessly; put it back on the table. “Look, you couldn’t do a sort of Uncle-Hendricks-of-the-Children’s-Hour act for our benefit, could you? Explaining the situation to us in words of not more than fifteen syllables?”

  “I could. It’s very simple. Look,” said Hendricks. They looked. “The earth round here, same as anywhere else, consists of various layers of rock all lying on top of each other—like a sandwich. The lowest layer, naturally, is the oldest. Then you get the next oldest. And so on. But in places where the newer rocks have been eroded, worn away—then the oldest rocks are actually at the surface. There’s nothing on top of them. Conv
ersely, in a place where soil is constantly being deposited, the older rocks are going to be very deep underground indeed. You follow all that?”

  Trout nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s easy enough.”

  “Heaven knows I’m simplifying it—but that’s all it is, basically. Now right here, the rocks are Cretaceous— which is pretty near the top of the sandwich, so to speak; a quite recent formation. Underneath it comes the Jurassic, normally; and like I said, there’s a place not far from here where the Cretaceous rocks have all been worn away and the Jurassic rocks show through. Actually, it’s not a case of erosion but of a rift; still, that’s irrelevant. The point is that the Permian strata come under the Jurassic—quite a long way under— and the stone where our carnotite happens to be deposited is Permian . . . unless I’m altogether crazy, which I’m not. Now d’you see?”

  Trout nodded again. “It means there’s a place here where both the Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks have worn away, or where there’s a fault of some kind in the surface . . . so that the Permian rocks have been exposed.”

  “Exactly. But—as far as I know and as far as I can see—there isn’t. And that is what’s so odd.”

  Fedora said, in his most tentative and thoughtful voice, “Maybe it came from a mine.” And Hendricks turned to stare at him for a moment.

  “Top marks for that boy,” he said. “That’s just what I was thinking myself. In fact, there’s really no possible alternative. Somewhere in that area I was searching yesterday there must be a disused mine—and a pretty deep mine, too, not just a scratch on the surface. That’s what I’m going to hunt for this afternoon.”

  Trout looked up casually from the contemplation of his large, hard-knuckled hands. “I’ll go with you,” he said, “if I may. I feel like a little exercise.”