The Darkest Heart

by Dan Smith

  ‘We both—’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You like it too much. The things I do ... I do for money. You do it because it gives you a thrill. And you know what, Leonardo? For people like you, it never ends well.’

  ‘For people like us,’ he replied.

  I shivered and folded my arms at my chest as an image of Sister Beckett filled my mind. She was intruding into my thoughts more and more; as constant a presence as my fear for Daniella and the old man. But it was not excitement that I felt when I thought about her. It was guilt and shame and loss. The same feelings that filled me when I thought about how I had failed Sofia and how Antonio had been dragged into my feud with Luis and Wilson.

  ‘I’m not like you.’ I said the words through gritted teeth.

  Leonardo stepped towards me, his pistol practically moulded to his hand it had been there so long. I don’t know what he was going to say or do, but he was distracted by movement from the wheelhouse.

  Daniella was emerging from the waterproof like a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis. The cover opened wide and she stepped out, going to the edge of the boat and throwing the contents of the bucket overboard before she rushed back under the cover. She barely even glanced at us before she returned to her cocoon and disappeared.

  ‘Nice,’ said Leonardo. ‘I like to see a girl throwing her piss overboard.’

  ‘Don’t even look at her,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘Or what? What will you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, nodding at the weapon in his hand. ‘As long as you have that. But remember – I’m not just stuck on this boat with you. You’re stuck on it with me.’

  34

  It rained for a long time and the sky was bleeding light when it finally let up. The clouds broke apart and moved on, the falling sun showing its last as the day faded from us, a blood-red marbling staining the sky over the trees. The river settled and there was relief from the attack on our canopy. The perpetual sound of driving rain was gone, leaving a tranquil emptiness that was accompanied only by the music of rainwater falling from the trees and draining into the river.

  ‘So what now?’ Daniella threw off our cocoon and stood to stretch in the damp evening. ‘We carry on?’

  ‘Well have to stay here.’ I told her. ‘We can’t go any further in the dark.’ Tendrils of steam rose from the deck, hanging low in the air, breaking in the occasional draught, swirling and vanishing.

  Daniella made a tutting noise and went to the side of the boat, taking a breath of the fresh air that’s always left when the rain moves on. She stared out into the remaining light. ‘It looks beautiful,’ she said. ‘You know, in all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never been on the river when it got dark after a storm.’

  I went to stand beside her. ‘It would be even more beautiful if he, wasn’t here.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she agreed.

  ‘I was angry before. About you being here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Not just because I thought it was dangerous, though. You were right when you said I’m like another person sometimes. I didn’t want you to see that. But now? Now I’m glad you’re here. Maybe we should come out on our own sometime,’ I said. ‘When this is all done with, I mean. We can spend a few days together. Leave everything behind like we’re the only ones left in the world.’

  Daniella smiled and raised her eyebrows. ‘Imagine my mother’s face if I told her we were going to do that.’

  ‘You’re here now, aren’t you? Anyway, she’d have no choice if we were married.’

  Daniella turned to me, a quick movement. ‘Are you asking me to marry you?’

  ‘I can’t afford you at the moment.’

  ‘You don’t have to afford me, Zico. You just have to love me.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So are you asking me?’

  ‘Would you say yes?’

  ‘Try me.’ She put her hand on mine, her skin warm. There were faint impressions across her fingers, from the stitching at the edge of the waterproof under which we had retreated.

  ‘When the time is right,’ I said.

  Daniella sighed. ‘If he wasn’t here ...’ She let her words trail away, taking another deep breath.

  ‘Don’t,’ I told her. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. I have to focus. I shouldn’t have said anything.’ There were times, like right then, that I felt she was all I needed. We could be together, have a good life. Not a rich one, not a wealthy one, but a good one. Other times, I thought I wasn’t good enough for her, that maybe her mother was right. After all, I was aiming to finance our marriage on the proceeds of Sister Beckett’s death. Our relationship was to be based on a murder that I couldn’t avoid.

  She smiled and squeezed my hand. ‘We are going to get out of this, aren’t we?’

  ‘Of course we are.’

  From the store at the back of the Deus, we took a black and white spotted hammock that had seen better days, and I strung it between two of the supporting poles as close to the wheelhouse as I could. I guessed that Leonardo was going to stay at the stern, protecting his crates and keeping his watchful eyes on us.

  When Daniella asked if one hammock would be enough, I told her I didn’t expect to sleep much that night. I’m going to watch him. Keep you safe.’

  We were close enough to the bank to hear the cicadas, and now that the rain had passed, and the lull in its wake had settled, they were singing louder to make up for lost time. The other insects had come out in force, too, flickering across the surface of the river. From time to time there was a sharp splash in the water as tucunaré, or one of the other wide-mouthed surface feeders, leaped for an insect which strayed too close to a hungry fish. And, as the evening darkened, bats emerged from the forest, flitting across the river and taking the insects from the air.

  ‘You’ll need a net,’ I said to Daniella, as I tied off the first end of the hammock. ‘To keep the mosquitoes away.’

  ‘Dengue fever,’ Daniella said. ‘You think that’s what Raul has?’ She pulled the strings tight at the other end, waiting for me to take them from her.

  There’d been an outbreak of dengue when I was in Rio, in the dirt of the favela. Many people had been ill with it, headaches, fever, aching muscles and joints, the fever lasting not much more than a week. There were those who had bruised like the old man, and others who had been much worse. I’d seen people bleeding from their eyes, blood oozing through the pores in their skin. They weren’t so lucky. They died slowly, the blood leaking out of their bodies.

  Some of the old women said it was evil spirits in their bodies making them sick; that there was nothing they could do to stop them. Sofia told me that the Candomblé priests and priestesses said it was destiny. Not good or evil, just destiny. Either way, they believed there was no hope for the sick – that those who were going to die were going to die. But I had to believe Raul would be all right. I had to.

  ‘With treatment he’ll be fine,’ I said, as much to convince myself as to convince Daniella. I forced a smile and took the hammock cords from her hands, tying them off, making sure it was safe.

  ‘I hope they got to the hospital in time.’

  I stayed where I was, both hands on the hammock, staring at the black and white design. Like dots on a piece of newspaper. ‘They did,’ I told her. ‘I can feel it. The old man will be fine.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because ...’ I tried to find the right words. ‘Because I can’t imagine life without him.’

  There was rice and farinha left in the tins, but they were dry and dull on their own, so I put a lure on one of the old man’s lines and fished in the place where I’d seen tucunaré surfacing for the insects.

  Leonardo watched from a safe distance as I pulled the lure across the water, close to the shore, where the river was littered with sunken forest. Above us, bats skittered and dived in the final moments of dusk, small black shapes flickering like old movie pictures, their movements spasmodic and un
real.

  ‘You’re not much of a fisherman,’ Leonardo said after twenty minutes of fruitless attempts, the sun finally sliding away, the river lit only by the winking cataract of a crescent moon on the blind face of the night.

  But even in the darkness, I continued to cast, telling myself that if I caught a fish, then the old man would be all right. If I landed us something to eat, it meant the old man was in the hospital with nurses around him and Carolina at his side.

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Leonardo. ‘They won’t bite in the dark.’ But, as if to prove him wrong, I felt the line tug and I landed a good fish with plenty of meat on it.

  I took it as a lucky sign.

  The old man would live.

  ‘So now what?’ Leonardo asked as I took the fish from the hook. ‘We going to eat it raw?’

  ‘Who said anything about we?’ I looked up at him. ‘You want to eat fish, you catch one.’ I dropped the roll of fishing line on the deck for him and went to the covered section at the back of the boat.

  ‘You’re not going in there,’ he said, making me stop and turn.

  ‘All I want is something to cook with.’

  He thought about it, then nodded and raised his pistol as if I might have forgotten he still had it.

  ‘You know, we all just want the same thing,’ I said. There was enough light to make out his shape, the outline of his features, indistinct like a child’s drawing. On a moonless night, the darkess would have been complete, but tonight the sky provided a candle.

  ‘And what’s that?’ he asked. ‘What do we all want?’

  ‘To get you to Mina dos Santos, drop your cargo and never see each other again.’

  ‘All the same ...’ He lifted the pistol again.

  ‘You don’t need to shoot anyone.’ I went to rummage in the store at the back of the boat. When I returned, I was carrying a lamp and an old can of cooking oil, much like a jerrycan, that had been split down the middle, from top to bottom. The edges were rough where it had been ripped in two and there was a grill to place across the top.

  ‘Can’t always get ashore,’ I said. ‘And you can’t exactly light a fire on the deck.’

  Leonardo gave Daniella a knife to gut the fish while I tended the barbecue. When the coal was hot enough, we laid the fish on the grill, and soon the air was filled with the smell of its cooking flesh.

  Daniella and I ate it with cold rice, sitting by the barbecue for its warmth. Leonardo took his knife and his share of the meat, a handful of rice, and limped back to his cave like a wounded and dangerous animal. He sat in the doorway to the storeroom, blocking our path to anything that might be used to cause him harm.

  ‘You should have let him starve,’ Daniella said.

  ‘What good would that do?’ I squinted and looked down the length of the boat. The moon was little more than a wink, but combined with the glow from the barbecue, the light was just about good enough for me to see Leonardo’s dark shape sitting alone. ‘All it would do is piss him off. We need to keep him happy. Happy people make mistakes, they get lazy, they forget to do something, watch something ...’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘And then I don’t know,’ I said, thinking about my knife.

  ‘Would you ...’ She stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth and looked at it before putting it down on her plate.

  ‘I’II do what I have to do. But for now, all that means is getting him to Mina dos Santos.’

  ‘What he did to those people yesterday,’ she said. ‘How can he do something like that?’

  ‘It happens all the time.’ I stared into the embers that glowed and weakened.

  ‘I know ...’ she sighed. ‘But those people did nothing wrong.’

  ‘Leonardo doesn’t care about that.’ I watched her face, seeing nothing but shadow and shape, a glint of orange where the coals reflected in her eyes.

  Daniella and I sat together, talking and watching the night, keeping our voices low to exclude our captor. And when she kissed me, I allowed myself to be lost in her taste for just a moment before dragging myself back to the boat and the reality of our situation. Eventually, she rested her head on my shoulder and became quiet.

  ‘You’re tired,’ I told her. ‘You should sleep.’

  ‘Not sure I’ll be able to. I never liked sleeping in a hammock.’

  ‘You should try.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I already told you. Not tonight.’ I took her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Tonight I watch over you.’

  ‘You promise?’

  I held both her hands in mine. ‘I promise.’

  For a while it felt as if we were alone and I had to remind myself that Leonardo was still there, like a ghost, sitting in the darkness.

  35

  I waited until Daniella was settled in the hammock, then I went to the side of the boat and sat on the deck, positioning myself so Leonardo couldn’t get to her without passing me.

  ‘She’s asleep?’ he asked.

  ‘What does it matter?’ I spoke quietly so Daniella wouldn’t be disturbed by our words.

  ‘It doesn’t.’ Leonardo came to sit near me. He settled on the box seat, a couple of metres away, taking the high ground.

  Clouds had formed above us, covering much of the sky including what there was of the moon, and I assumed that the pistol was still in his hand, probably pointed straight at me. Now the only light was from the remains of the barbecue, and everything outside the boat was black. The world had ceased to exist beyond the weak orange glow of the charcoal; everything had been erased and only we remained, surrounded by the alien sounds of the night forest coming to life. As if demons were pushing at our small barrier of light, waiting for it to fade before they could storm our last defences.

  It was enough to drive a man insane.

  ‘I looked in your pack.’ Leonardo leaned forward to spit into the fading embers. ‘I thought it was mine at first, it’s hard to tell the difference in the dark.’

  ‘Did you find anything you like?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He fumbled for a moment, then a match flared and I saw his face in the brilliance of the flame. The smell of phosphorus floated to me, a sweet and pleasant odour that faded almost as quickly as it had appeared. He flicked the match overboard and dragged on his cigarette.

  ‘What’s this?’ He clicked on the torch from my pack. The beam was directed at the newspaper clipping Costa had given me yesterday morning.

  I fought the urge to sit up and snatch it from him. I couldn’t let him think it was important. I didn’t want him to mention it to Daniella.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Can you read?’

  ‘Of course I can read.’

  ‘Then read it.’

  Leonardo turned the clipping so he could look at the words. He shone the torch at the black print, then shook his head and threw it to me. ‘You read it. My eyes are tired.’

  ‘You can’t read.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Don’t be ashamed,’ I told him. ‘There are worse things about you. And I can’t read either. How about that? Two illiterate gunmen struggling over a piece of newspaper.’ I looked at the typed words and wondered what they said about the small woman surrounded by people. ‘But I’ll learn.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because there’s no reason for it. You are what you are.’

  I turned the paper over in my fingers, staring at the picture of Dolores Beckett. ‘Maybe I want to change,’ I said. ‘Be something else.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘For you maybe.’ I folded the clipping along the creases that were already there, the soft paper closing in on itself, hiding the doomed nun from sight. I slipped it into my shirt pocket, back where it had been before, as if it were its rightful place.

  ‘So who is she?’

  ‘She’s no one.’

  I watched Leonardo finish his cigarette and lig
ht another one from the firefly stub of the first. His face appeared in the glow every now and then when he took a long drag, and I could hear the faint crackle of the tobacco, the inhalation of breath. Somewhere out in the darkness, life surged. The simmering blackness, completely devoid of light, was filled with the electric hum of peeps and flutters and croaks and chirrups. An endless assortment of life, each with its individual voice contributing to an orchestra of sound that was almost tangible; as if I could reach out over the side of the boat and touch it, draw it into the light with my fingertips.

  ‘It’s so damn dark,’ Leonardo said.

  We might have been suspended over oblivion, the last remaining people on earth. He shivered and drew himself closer to the embers.

  ‘You afraid of the mapinguari?’ I asked. ‘Maybe the boitatá?’

  ‘I don’t even know what that is.’

  ‘It’s a giant headless snake with horns and burning eyes. Blind during the day, but at night it sees everything. Comes out to look for food.’

  Leonardo snorted and spat overboard. ‘Sounds like something for the camponêses and pescadores.’

  ‘Well, they believe it,’ I said. ‘And looking out there it’s hard not to believe there’s something in the darkness. There’s worse things than jacaré out there.’

  He straightened his injured leg in front of him and leaned back, glancing over his shoulder. The pistol was visible now, hanging limp in his hand, the coals glinting on the steel.

  ‘There are places where it’s like the forest goes on for ever,’ I told him. ‘You’ll see it yourself when we go upriver. It gets narrow, the trees close in on you and it feels like something’s watching you from in there. You see things.’ I stared out at the darkness of the trees. ‘And if you’re not superstitious,’ I said, ‘how come you have the figa round your neck?’

  ‘Someone gave it to me.’

  ‘The same person you were thinking about yesterday? Someone important?’

  Leonardo said nothing.

  ‘They say it blinds you if you look into its eyes,’ I told him. ‘The boitatá. They say it’s there to punish the people who threaten the forest. It punishes the ones who burn the trees, just like Curupira punishes the ones who kill the animals. Is that why you’re here, Leonardo? To threaten the forest?’