The Darkest Heart

by Dan Smith

  Raul removed his hat and ran a hand across his head. The cropped grey hair as rough as the bristles on his chin. ‘Yeah.’ He shivered again, the fever rooting itself deep in his body.

  ‘I don’t know why you pretend it’s what you want,’ I said.

  Raul closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun. ‘It’s Carolina who wants to go to Imperatriz. I lie to myself for her.’

  28

  Daniella waded back to the Deus e o Diabo with me and we unfastened the smaller boat from the back, returning to the shore to collect Leonardo and the old man. Raul insisted on wading out to her as usual, but he looked frail and was already sweating. Leonardo, on the other hand, refused to enter the water. He said he didn’t want to ruin the dressing on his leg, but the pistol never left his grip, and he scanned the water as we rowed out. I didn’t blame him for being afraid. When Daniella and I had returned to collect the smaller boat from the Deus, we had moved quickly, fearful of whatever might be lurking below the surface.

  Usually the old man would have gripped the gunwale and hauled himself up, but now his muscles were racked with pain. His fingers were weak and I had to help him, taking his hands and dragging him up onto the boat.

  For a few moments, Raul’s pride was gone and he stayed on his knees, dripping onto the deck, catching his breath. Rocky circled him, licking at his face, trying to encourage him to pet her. It was as if she knew he was sick.

  In the time between losing Sofia and coming to Piratinga, I’d had nothing to care about other than myself, and seeing the old man on his knees, his breath coming in sharp gasps, was like a weight on my heart. The old man and I had been up and down this river many times, and our lives had both been threatened more than once, but I had never considered his mortality so much as I had these past two days. He seemed to be dying before my eyes, wasting away, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

  Everything in my life had slipped beyond my control.

  Eventually the old man looked up and forced a smile. ‘Can’t even climb onto my own damn boat,’ he said, but the effort of those words was so great that he immediately lowered his head and went back to breathing in wheezing gasps.

  ‘We need to go,’ Leonardo said, hauling himself up onto the boat. He limped past us and dumped his pack on the deck. ‘Or do you three want to waste some more of my time?’ He winced and lowered himself onto the box seat he had been using yesterday.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Daniella turned on him. ‘Can’t you see he’s sick?’

  ‘And I just got bitten by a fucking monster,’ Leonardo snapped. ‘All I care about is making this delivery on time.’

  ‘We’ll make your delivery,’ I told him. ‘Just give him a minute.’ I crouched beside my friend, waiting for him to look up, but he remained that way, forehead pressed to the deck, eyes closed, sweat beading on his face, running along the bridge of his nose.

  I put my arm around his shoulders and brought my face close to his, so I could feel his bristles against my own skin. The heat was coming off him like he was burning up, the smell of sweat and sickness heavy on him. ‘Stay strong,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll get you home soon.’

  Raul nodded and started to stand up. I helped him, gave him something to push against as he found his way to his feet.

  ‘Do you want me to take the wheel?’ I kept my voice low.

  ‘No, Zico. You just watch him.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Daniella.’ I raised my voice. ‘Help him to the wheel. Stay with him.’

  I watched them go, then took a spanner from the housing at the back and reached down into the hatch to reconnect the fuel lines. Rocky stayed with me for a moment, pushing her nose into the compartment, then went back to the old man.

  ‘You stay here,’ I told Leonardo as I threw the spanner back into the toolbox.

  Leonardo reached for his backpack and pulled it up onto his lap. He laid the pistol on the bench beside him and started to open the pack. He took out a scrap of folded newspaper and, for a moment, my heart lurched. It reminded me of the scrap in my shirt pocket, and my hand went to my chest, feeling for it. Had Leonardo somehow taken it from me?

  I felt the familiar stiffness of it against the cotton of my shirt, though, and it crossed my mind that Leonardo and I might be going to Mina dos Santos for the same reason. Perhaps he too was looking for Sister Dolores Beckett. But when he unfolded the paper on his lap, I saw a different kind of problem arise for me.

  Leonardo took a pinch of the fine white powder and, blocking one nostril, snorted the drug hard into his other.

  ‘Cocaína?’ This explained his behaviour yesterday. The wild look in his eyes. The eagerness to use his weapon.

  ‘For the pain.’ He grinned and noticed the way my eyes went to the pistol on the bench beside him. ‘You thinking about trying to take it from me?’ he asked.

  I watched him, saying nothing.

  ‘You had your chance on the beach.’ He refolded the paper and slipped it into his pocket before taking hold of his pistol once more. ‘You won’t get another.’

  Raul started the engine and took the boat away from the bank. He steered it into the river and watched the water ahead.

  I went to my usual spot on the bow, sitting on the gunwale on one side, leaning back against the railing and removing my flip-flops so I could find purchase on the other side with my toes. With my legs up like that, Daniella sitting below me and to my right, I could see the river ahead, and I could watch Leonardo.

  Seeing him taking the drug reminded me of the boys in the favela, and it annoyed me that I hadn’t recognised it. I knew how unpredictable it made them; I’d seen the way their mood could swing from god to devil in an instant, and now Leonardo had become even more of a liability to us.

  I cleaned both pistols and then removed the knife which I always carried at the small of my back. Seventeen centimetres of Brasilian steel, narrowing to an upturned point. I spat on the flat of the blade and wiped it with my shirt, running the pad of one thumb across the cutting edge, checking its sharpness.

  ‘Don’t understand how you can do it.’ The old man took me by surprise and I looked up to see him sitting in the wheelhouse watching me. ‘Seems like you’re two different people.’ His voice was quiet and weak.

  I knew what he meant. He was using his boat to deliver guns but he didn’t pull the trigger, so he didn’t consider himself guilty of much more than illegal trafficking. He didn’t think about the reality that every bullet on his boat could be used to take a life.

  I was a killer, though. The old man knew that I worked for Costa and he knew what that work involved, so it was difficult for him to understand how I could do it.

  All I had to do, though, was think about the day Sofia died. With that in my mind, it was easy to kill a certain kind of man.

  I closed my eyes and remembered how I had been on the hillside that day, away from the favela houses that piled over one another in a jumble of corrugated iron and wood. I had gone there to get away from the other boys and the drugs and the guns; to look out across the sea, to feel the forest behind me and wonder what it would be like to turn in every direction and not see another person or building.

  I was eating steak and fries with my hands, taking them from the paper wrapping, licking the salty seasoning from my fingers between each mouthful. I could almost taste them now.

  Below me, outside a café, a group of young men were practising capoeira. Someone had a drum and the sound of the beat was drifting up to me, coming to my ears a little later than it was made, mingled with voices of the men singing. I could see the movements of the jogadores, like dancers twisting around each other, in and out, their legs and hands touching the ground and lighting off again, their bodies fluid and lithe. They cartwheeled and moved about like animals and I admired their dedication and their ability.

  When the steak was finished, I ate the last of the fries and drank the last of my beer and leaned
back to look up at the trees. The faint rhythm of the music from the street and the gentle breath of the wind in the trees washed over me and I thought about taking my sister and leaving the favela.

  On my way home I saw Father Tomás and asked him to pray for me before I left him sitting on the church step, smoking a cigarette. It was late afternoon, Sofia would probably be back from work and I smiled, thinking how she’d nag me about my job for a while, telling me the same things that she always did. She’d tell me that what I was doing was wrong, and I would tell her it wasn’t so bad, and I would put some money on the table to pay for our food. After that we would eat, maybe play cards with the old dog-eared deck our father had taught us to play with. We had a tin of plastic counters that he had collected, and we used them for money. Maybe I’d even go out and buy us a couple of beers.

  Except there wasn’t going to be any good-natured argument that evening. No cards. No beer.

  My friend Ratinho was waiting at home for me, his face bruised, his lip bleeding. He was sitting on the front step, the door open to the cool darkness inside.

  He looked up as I came to him, standing to meet me.

  ‘Sofia,’ he said.

  It was all he had to say.

  Now, on the Deus e o Diabo, I opened my eyes and wiped them with my forearm. I saw the old man watching me and wondered; if he knew what had happened to Sofia, would he understand then?

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m good.’ I nodded.

  Daniella was staring at the deck in front of her and I wasn’t sure if she was listening or not, but I narrowed my eyes at the old man, telling him this wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. Not here, not now, not in front of Daniella. If the old man wanted to question what I did, how I could do it and still sleep at night, that was his right, but not in front of Daniella.

  I stood and went to him, leaning on the wheelhouse for support. Rocky looked up from her seat next to the old man, then went back to sleep.

  ‘So what was it that Costa wanted to see you about?’ Raul asked, looking at the knife in my hand. ‘What kind of job did he have for you?’

  Without thinking, I touched the shirt pocket over my heart, where the folded piece of newspaper carried an imprint of the nun’s face. ‘I told you I said no to him.’

  ‘And I told you that you don’t turn down a man like Costa. You’re here either because you need to be or because his job is to be done later.’

  I bit my lip and stared at the shining steel in my hand. I thought about how it would feel to tell the old man what Costa wanted me to do; to tell him the price for doing it and the price for not doing it. Perhaps between us we could think of a way out of it, but I swallowed my words.

  I couldn’t tell him.

  ‘Who’s Costa?’ asked Daniella, looking up at me.

  ‘No one.’ I took my hand away from my pocket as if it would betray my thoughts. As if the soft paper were a seething ember. I went to my backpack, lying right in the bow, where the boat came to its tip, and I stuffed the newspaper cutting inside. I didn’t need it reminding me who I was.

  ‘He’s a man who asks people to do things for money,’ the old man said.

  ‘What kind of things?’ But she didn’t need to ask. Even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she knew what kind of things.

  ‘Nothing.’ I studied the smudges of newsprint on my fingers. ‘Take no notice of him, he’s being a devil. A sick old devil.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, but I shook my head at her, wondering what she would think of me, what Raul would think of me, if they knew the other reason why I was here on this boat.

  Daniella pursed her lips at me, pouting like she did when she wanted something. It was a look I liked; the kind of look that promised me something physical if I gave her what she wanted.

  Raul laughed. ‘Now you’re in trouble. There’s always something a woman can hold back if she doesn’t get what she wants.’

  I smiled at my friend. He could make me angry, be full of mischief like a saci pererê, but he was the best friend I had ever had. I knew why Raul found it hard to understand what I did.

  I tested the edge of my knife once more before putting it away, and an image of Sister Dolores Beckett came to mind as I did it. This would be the blade that killed her.

  Just one more life.

  29

  ‘We came this way yesterday.’ Leonardo spoke as he came past Raul, joining Daniella and me, his pistol in his hand. ‘That old mining place is over there.’ He pointed to the abandoned operation where we had seen the Indians fishing from dugout canoes yesterday.

  It was quiet there now. Not another soul on the river.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Leonardo persisted. ‘This some kind of trick? We’re going back the way we came.’

  ‘Why don’t you put that away?’ I asked him. ‘You don’t need it here.’

  ‘We’re going back the way we came,’ he said again, standing midway between Raul and me, the pistol hanging limp, looking first at the old man, then settling on me. ‘Why?’

  ‘You want to be on the Rio das Mortes, right?’ I said, watching his hands.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then this is the way to get there.’

  He looked blank.

  ‘The Rio das Mortes meets the Araguaia about fifteen kilometres south of Piratinga. We have to head back to get to it.’

  Leonardo stared at me. ‘The old man’s getting worse,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be thinking about taking him home, would you?’ He lifted the pistol to waist height and my blood ran cold for a moment, despite the heat.

  I forced myself to soften my expression. ‘Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He needs a doctor,’ I said. ‘And so do you.’ I motioned a hand at his leg. There’s a hospital in Piratinga.’

  Leonardo began to shake his head before I had even finished my sentence. ‘Not going to happen.’

  ‘You need help.’ Daniella joined me. ‘Your leg could get infected.’

  ‘There’ll be a doctor at the mine.’ Leonardo said.

  ‘Not the kind of doctor you’d want,’ she told him.

  ‘Then I’ll wait until I get back to Piratinga.’ The pitch of his voice was heightening. His eyes were flicking from Daniella to me and back again. Those crates have to be at the mine tomorrow.’

  ‘Look at him.’ She lowered her voice and pleaded with Leonardo. ‘You want him to die on this boat?’

  ‘I couldn’t care less what happens to him.’ Leonardo waved his pistol as he spoke. ‘All I care about is getting my delivery to Mina dos Santos in time.’

  ‘All you’ll lose is a few hours.’ I kept my voice even and calm, despite the fear that was building in me as my eyes watched the pistol. ‘Half a day at the most.’ And I was beginning to think that Daniella would be safer in Piratinga too. Luis and Wilson seemed far less of a threat right now than Leonardo was. I should have shot him on the beach instead of the jacaré. I should have let the creature drag him away. I should have taken his pistol. There were so many things I should have done.

  ‘We’re not going to Piratinga.’ Leonardo looked right at me and sniffed hard. ‘If the old man dies, then he dies.’

  Now I stood up, taking my feet off the gunwale and turning to face Leonardo full on. ‘We’ll lose half a day.’ I put up both hands and adopted a pleading tone. ‘That’s all. Is it really worth a man’s life?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Leonardo shrugged and raised the pistol to point it at Raul. He cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows as if inviting me to take his challenge. ‘I could just kill him now and finish the conversation. There’d be nothing more to talk about. Now I know you can take us to Mina dos Santos, it wouldn’t matter.’

  ‘No,’ Daniella said. ‘No you can’t—’

  ‘It’s all right.’ I stopped her without taking my eyes off Leonardo. ‘It’s OK. Have it your way. We’ll go straight on. No stopping,’ I had to put him at ease. Perhaps there was still time to
deal with this situation. I lowered my hand, began to move it towards my waist. My revolver was close. All I needed was for him to drop his guard for a moment, long enough for me to slip my fingers beneath my shirt and ...

  ‘And while we’re talking,’ he said, ‘why don’t you hand over those pistols you’ve got? The rifle in the box up there, as well.’

  Leonardo emptied my pistols onto the deck, the brass casings rolling towards the stern where the boat was heaviest. Satisfied that I was disarmed, he took my empty weapons and my backpack and stowed them along with his own in the box seat he’d been using. There was an open padlock hanging from the catch, so he snapped it shut and put the key in his pocket, smiling at me as he patted his thigh. I watched him strut despite his limp, the usurper king of this small floating wreck, and I wondered how I had let him take advantage of me. Perhaps I was no longer suited for this environment. I had grown soft.

  When I thought about it like that, looking back at Daniella, I realised maybe it wasn’t so bad to have something to care about. Something for which you can commit an extreme act or, as in this case, something for which you need to not commit that act. If Daniella had not been here, I might have taken more of a risk. Leonardo might now be dead and overboard, or things might not have turned out so well for me. I might have tried to stop Leonardo and ended up dead myself. Either way, I’d never know and I had to satisfy myself with biding my time. I was not as harmless as Leonardo might think. I still had my knife, tucked in the small of my back, and there was always the old man’s revolver, stashed in the wheelhouse.

  Once Leonardo had stowed my weapons, he came back to me, waving his pistol, indicating that he wanted me to go and sit with Daniella.