The Darkest Heart

by Dan Smith

  I brought the boat as shallow as I could, and once the Deus was secured, I helped myself to a Coke from the cool box and retook my seat behind the wheel, leaning back, putting my feet up on the dash.

  Daniella came to sit with me, Leonardo staying at the bow, watching us.

  ‘Not much for us to do now except wait,’ I told her. ‘And Leonardo should be more relaxed – there’s no reason not to just go straight to Mina dos Santos and finish the job.’

  ‘Raul will be all right,’ she said, understanding that I was worried about him. She knew what he meant to me. I’m sure of it. It’s good they took him.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m glad he’s gone. He’s safer – we’re safer – but there’s something about seeing him go,’ I said, ‘that doesn’t feel right. He should be my responsibility. I should be taking him.’

  ‘You know that couldn’t happen.’

  ‘No. But still ...’ I shrugged. ‘It feels wrong. Final, somehow.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You’ll see him when we get back.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we get to shore?’ Leonardo called to me. ‘You said we shouldn’t be out in the storm.’

  ‘We’re safe here,’ I told him.

  ‘You sure about that?’ He looked worried, but I turned away from him and spoke to Daniella. ‘The water might chop a bit, give him a scare, but it shouldn’t be too bad. And there’s more shelter here. We should stay under the canopy and wait for the rain. If it’s gone before dark, we’ll move on. If not, we can sleep on the boat tonight.’

  I went to the side, leaned over and looked out to see how far off the rain was. ‘They’ll be well on their way to Piratinga by now,’ I said. ‘Maybe the old man is feeling better, looking forward to being home with Carolina. She’ll make him right.’ Or he might be lying face down between the slats, his cheek in the water that wallowed in the bottom of the boat.

  I shook my head at Daniella. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you come.’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘And miss this? Not for the world.’

  I smiled at her strength, and looked over at Leonardo watching us. Forever watching us.

  ‘Is it always this exciting?’ Daniella asked.

  ‘Usually it’s boring.’ I turned away from Leonardo, knowing I’d have to shut him out. There was nothing to be done with him right now, and if I brooded, I’d eat myself from the inside out. I would take him to Mina dos Santos, we would deliver his guns and then he would pay me.

  Then I would set my mind to the other task I had to carry out.

  I hadn’t thought about Sister Dolores Beckett for some time, but now she appeared to me once more as that black and grey image. Monochrome dots floating in my consciousness, merging to form her likeness, and I wondered what Sofia’s advice would be. What would Daniella say? I watched her and thought about how it would feel to explain my dilemma to her. I had a sense of relieving the weight of my choices, but also of burdening her. And what would she think of me, that I was even considering Sister Beckett’s death?

  ‘Maybe we should press on a bit further,’ I said feeling a sudden eagerness to reach the mine and be done with all of this. The sooner it was finished, the sooner I could get home and put it behind me. ‘Perhaps the rain won’t be so heavy, or maybe it’ll take a while to get here. I could at least push us a little further upriver. That way we’ll get there quicker. Get back to Piratinga faster.’

  ‘He’ll be OK, you know,’ Daniella put her hand on my face and turned my head so I was looking at her. ‘He’ll be fine. Carolina will make sure of it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded. ‘But I can’t help worrying about him he’s ...’ I shook my head.

  ‘Like a father,’ Daniella said. ‘I know.’

  I turned and leaned on the gunwale, looking back at the approaching storm. ‘I want to get back to him. To do something for him. I feel so weak.’

  ‘What would Raul do?’ Daniella asked. ‘Go further or stay here?’

  I stared at the gathering storm, the dark clouds like pursuing beasts spurred on by the thunder that bayed at them. Outlined from time to time by the flickering whiteness of lightning, forcing them closer. Before long, that turmoil would wrap itself around us, taking our senses. If I lost our way because of the poor visibility, our journey would take even longer. And if I damaged the boat, my friend’s livelihood, I could never forgive myself. After all, Imperatriz might not have been Raul’s dream, but the Deus and this delivery were his way of trying to make it happen for his wife.

  ‘He’d stay here.’ I sat down and gripped the wheel, my mind divided between starting her up or staying where I was. Whatever I did, I didn’t want to let my friend down. But even as I thought about it, the first rain began to fall. Tiny ripples and splashes in the river that grew with each passing second, and as it became heavier and harder, I knew there was no way I could take the Deus into it.

  It came at us as a wall of water, a hazy force advancing over the forest, then reaching the Rio das Mortes and beating the surface to froth. One moment it was beyond our reach, just the sound and the rush of cool air coming at us, and the next it was on us and over us and around us. The nails of water were driving into the canvas above, pounding the exposed deck at the bow of the Deus, and battering the tin roof of the covered stern section. It was like the staccato rattle of gunfire that had been my childhood lullaby.

  There were many times in the favela when rival gangs exchanged shots over the rooftops, muzzles flashing in the night. Some even used tracer rounds that flickered like fireflies as they spat back and forth. As a child, the crackle and stutter had frightened me, and Pai would sit with me, stroking my head to soothe me. Voices would shout in the streets, but he would reassure me. When he was dead and buried, though, I was already twelve years old and accustomed to the sounds. Instead of cowering in our beds, Sofia and I would sit up and play cards or listen to Pai’s old tapes, turning up the volume and singing along with the words. Sofia even taught me to samba, telling me that when I was older, the girls would love it that I could dance.

  Leonardo ran for cover at the stern as the rain vented itself upon us, penetrating everything, splashing back from the deck, driving in at an angle. We were little protected under the canvas awning. My legs were quickly soaked and I drew myself inwards, huddling as small as possible. Daniella crushed herself against me as the cool wind rushed around us, making the rain feel cold on our skin.

  I reached for a poncho that was on the floor under the wheel and pulled it over us. We drew our feet up onto the seat and hugged our knees, keeping our heads low beneath the waterproof.

  Daniella smiled as if the downpour had come to clean it all away. Everything that had happened on the boat since leaving Piratinga, it all came to a stop when the water fell from the sky. Even Leonardo was silenced into insignificance behind us as the rain cascaded onto the canvas, beating out its own rhythm of nature.

  And somewhere not far away, the sky rumbled and cracked as if it were being torn apart.

  33

  The rain came down and down through the afternoon. We ate cold rice left over from the day before, and the last of the beef strips that Carolina had prepared for the old man and me. We barely interacted with Leonardo other than to exchange a look from time to time. Had it not been for the constant and unnerving threat of his presence, it would have been as if he were not on the boat at all.

  I hoped the rain would let up before dark, allowing us to push further west before nightfall. Raul was off the boat and we were set towards our destination, an unavoidable path now that Leonardo had taken control, so my instinct was to move on and get this over and done with.

  The problem I would then face was how to make the nun disappear. Alone in Mina dos Santos, it would have been easy for me to find the right moment, but Daniella made everything more complicated. The gold mine was a wild and chaotic place, full of the worst kinds of people, and I would not want to leave her side. Finding the opportunity to be alone with S
ister Beckett would be difficult, but if I missed that opportunity, I would have to follow her upriver to find another chance. Santiago’s boat could put three times as much water behind her in a day than the Deus could, and it would be close to impossible to catch them, but I couldn’t return to Piratinga without having completed Costa’s job. Daniella and the old man would suffer for that and, of course, five thousand dollars would slip through my fingers.

  I stared out at the rain, my head spinning with all the obstacles that had fallen in my path, and I wondered if the nun had more influence than I had first imagined. Perhaps someone up there was trying to stop me from completing my task. Maybe she had more protection than I thought. I had talked with Costa about bodyguards, and when he said she travelled without them, I thought it would make my job easier, but maybe she had protection of a more heavenly kind.

  ‘If this doesn’t stop soon,’ I said, ‘we’re going to have to spend the night here.’

  Beside me, protected beneath our tarpaulin, Daniella shivered. ‘It’s cold. I should have brought something warmer to wear.’

  ‘Nothing in your bag?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just another skirt and top. And I need to pee.’

  I looked over at the shore, squinting through the haze to see the bank just a few metres from where we were moored. In the sunshine, it would be easy, but now, in this rain, it would be like going into a war zone. The water was boiling, as if it flowed through hell, and the rain pelted the trees with a terrible vengeance. In a storm like this, I believed even Corpo Seco and Anhangá would stay hidden.

  ‘I don’t want you going back there. I’ll have to bring the bucket.’ I shrugged.

  ‘Great,’ she sighed. ‘Get me the bucket then.’

  So I left her huddled under the waterproof and went to the back of the boat. As soon as I was out of the wheelhouse, the rain that drove in at the exposed sides of the boat soaked my shirt and trousers. I pulled my cap low and cursed the weather, heading towards Leonardo who was sheltered in the rear section of the Deus, the door wedged open so he could watch us. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the boxes of rifles, his legs outstretched. The bandage was still tight around his right calf and it looked clean. No blood had soaked through.

  At first, the rain had angered Leonardo. He had leaned on the gunwale and cursed it, shouting into the grey that surrounded us. But nothing out there was impressed by his threats, and when he fired his pistol at the trees, nothing had changed. As the hours passed, he grew more irritable, and then more calm as if resigning himself to helplessness as the storm stayed over us. From time to time, though, he fished the folded paper from his pocket and took a pinch of the cocaína, so we kept as far away from him as possible. I had seen how the drug could overload his mind and I didn’t want to be close to him if that happened again.

  ‘You enjoying the rain?’ he asked, pushing back his cap.

  I leaned down and took the bucket from beside the store.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘No, I’m not enjoying the rain, but I don’t see there’s much I can do about it. And I bet you’re glad we’re not out there, like you wanted.’

  I thought about the knife under my shirt. I considered reaching for it; bringing out that steel and leaning down and ...

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Zico, it makes me nervous.’ Leonardo lifted the muzzle of his pistol just enough to angle it up at me.

  Without another word, I backed away, returning to the wheelhouse and passing the bucket to Daniella.

  ‘You’re not going to stand there,’ she said as it disappeared beneath the cocoon of the waterproof. ‘I don’t want you watching me.’

  ‘I can’t see you.’

  ‘I don’t want you listening, then.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ I nodded. ‘Sure.’

  I moved towards the middle of the boat, and Leonardo laughed as I came closer to him.

  ‘Nature,’ he said as he gripped the side of the doorframe with one hand and pulled himself up, trying to keep his leg straight. He winced as if it might be giving him pain, but I saw the flash of irritation in his eyes too.

  Once he was standing, Leonardo looked out at the river, and for a fraction of a second, there was something boyish about him. Young and fit and good-looking, I wondered what it was that had brought him to this moment in time.

  ‘You can’t stop nature,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe.’ I watched the water, seeing a million drops hitting its surface like scatter gun pellets, ripples merging and fighting one another for space in the vast river. The insistent hammering on the tin roof and the canvas over my head marrying in a numbing harmony that became a single sound in my skull. Patches of brown-white froth whipped up around the banks and broke free and floated out into the river like small islands, and although I cursed my luck and I cursed the weather around me, I could see there was a terrible beauty in it.

  ‘Whatever we do, it’s always stronger than us,’ he said. ‘You can’t stop it.’

  ‘Tell that to the bulldozers.’

  Leonardo nodded as if he hadn’t thought of it like that. ‘That’s true. Maybe some nature you can stop.’

  ‘Mina dos Santos is like a hole in the ground,’ I said. ‘I don’t see nature winning there. Unless there’s nothing left for them to mine, I can’t see people wanting to leave. If there’s nothing left, maybe people will move on, find somewhere else, and then the forest will grow back like that other place we saw, but otherwise ...’ I shrugged and clicked my tongue, a melancholy mood coming over me, brought on by the hypnotising beat of the rain.

  In that second, I could believe that neither of us was in charge now, there was no captain on this boat. The weather had levelled us. Now we were just two men, equal on the river, and perhaps it meant that for a while we could behave as men should.

  ‘Maybe the owners will push out,’ Leonardo said. ‘Make the mine a whole lot bigger.’

  ‘Too much Indian land round here,’ I told him. ‘That mine’s not getting any bigger. There are too many people trying to stop it.’

  I put a hand round as if to scratch my back.

  ‘I heard there are landowners, big landowners who own that place. Everyone else, they just work for them.’

  ‘Of course there are. There’s always someone bigger.’ I looked at the water and slipped my hand beneath my shirt, reaching for my knife. ‘There’s always a bigger fish. Someone at the top taking their cut.’

  ‘And maybe they’re looking to expand,’ he said.

  As my fingertips brushed the handle of my knife, I looked round at him, beginning to see a connection between the rifles and Sister Beckett. Landowners and activists and guns weren’t a good mix and I wondered how they all fitted together. ‘Yeah? I haven’t heard anything. Where d’you hear that?’

  Leonardo shrugged. ‘Around.’ He leaned to one side so he was facing me. His right arm rested along the gunwale, the pistol still in his hand. Three or four steps and I would be right beside him. If I could knock his hand, or run my blade across it, the gun would fall into the river and he would no longer be dangerous. But all he had to do was move that barrel a few centimetres to one side and he could shoot me as dead as he had shot the fishermen.

  I glanced back at the wheelhouse, where Daniella was huddled beneath the waterproof, and once more imagined what would happen to her, alone with Leonardo in the storm.

  I withdrew my fingers and took a deep breath. ‘You know this was an important place for the Portuguese?’ I said. ‘They used to mine gold here. The old man told me that.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘He said they took a lot of gold back then. There’s supposed to be treasures hidden somewhere out here, too, buried by a slave. Jose Maria dos Santos.’

  ‘Sounds like shit to me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe these landowners are hoping to find it.’ I watched for another reaction, thinking he knew more than he was saying, talking about expansion. ‘Find gold, at least. Bu
t they’re not going to hose for small flakes, they’ll blast it out. Blow the place to hell.’

  ‘It’s the kind of thing they’d do.’

  ‘And it sounds like you know something no one else does.’

  He couldn’t help himself, the way his eyes flickered and he glanced at the cases we had unloaded from the plane. A quick look, almost too quick to notice, but it was there. And that look gave a lot away. He knew something was going to happen.

  ‘What are they for, Leonardo? What are the guns for? You starting a war?’

  ‘You really want to know, don’t you? The old man said he never wants to know, but you do, don’t you?’

  ‘What are you?’ I asked. ‘Some kind of fortune hunter?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about digging for gold. Do I look like a worker to you? It’s money I’m interested in.’

  ‘A mercenary, then?’

  ‘I’m just a guy who gets paid for doing a job others don’t want to do.’ He watched me. ‘And I’m guessing that’s a lot like you.’

  ‘I already told you, we’re nothing alike.’