by Dan Smith
I turned to Leonardo, pathetic and fearful, trussed like an animal waiting to be slaughtered. Half naked, bleeding and bandaged, he presented a beaten image, but when I caught his eye, there was a twinkle under the false exterior, and the corner of his mouth turned up in the tiniest hint of a smirk. He was taking a small victory from his defeat.
‘Time’s wasting,’ he said.
I put a hand to my pocket and felt the folded paper that nestled in the darkness, softened by the warmth of my chest and the sweat from my body.
‘I need to get to Mina dos Santos,’ Sister Beckett called. ‘Will you take me or not?’
I withdrew my hand as if it had touched something living, and stared at my fingertips. ‘I need to get there too. Today. And if I waste any more time—’
‘Then let me come aboard now and we’ll be away.’
I rubbed my fingers on my trousers and looked at Sister Beckett.
It should have been easy for me to refuse her. I had to do nothing more than take the wheel and move on. I would have to explain to Daniella why I’d made that choice, but I could lie. I could tell her it was because I wanted to make Leonardo’s delivery, secure his pay. I didn’t have to tell her I wanted as little to connect me to the nun as possible.
‘Well, Zico? Are you going to take me?’
‘We’ll take you,’ Daniella said, making me look round at her in surprise.
‘What?’
‘Come on, Zico, it’s the right thing to do.’
Sister Beckett nodded. ‘It is, but I need to hear it from Zico.’
‘All right,’ I said, shaking my head in exasperation. ‘We’ll take you.’
I looked up at the sky and wondered, once again, if someone was watching over Sister Dolores Beckett.
The nun stood on deck, hands on her hips, and watched me approach in the smaller boat.
When I reached the Estrella, I stretched out to take hold of the fixed ladder, and Matt leaned over and looked down at me. ‘Who’s the guy?’ he asked. ‘The asshole on your boat.’ He made a circle with his forefinger and thumb.
‘We’re doing a job for him.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘Delivery,’ I pulled the boat against the Estrella.
‘OK, OK,’ he said, ‘I get it. Too many questions. One of Raul’s special jobs, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
He lifted a bag over the edge of the Estrella where the railing had once been. ‘You look like shit, Zico, you need anything? Some kind of help? That fire back there was tough going.’
I glanced down at myself, seeing the dirt and sweat patches on my shirt. My face would be pale from lack of sleep, and streaked with soot. My bloodshot eyes were tired, my muscles ached and I needed some sleep.
‘I’ll be fine. You know who this woman is?’ I asked him.
Matt shook his head. ‘Dolores is all she said. Speaks good Portuguese but I think she’s a gringo.’
‘Yeah, why?’
Matt grunted and lifted another bag down to me. ‘Just one of those things. Accent maybe, not sure.’
I took the second bag and put it beside the first. ‘Is that everything?’
‘Apart from the passengers.’
‘More than one?’
‘She has a friend with her. Quiet woman.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Mmm.’ Matt leaned towards me and beckoned for me to come closer. ‘There’s something about her “friend”. She has a look about her.’
‘You mean like they’re together’
‘No, I mean like she watches. She doesn’t talk much, she stays out of the way, but she watches. Everything. It’s like, maybe this woman is someone important pretending not to be.’
I dismissed his comment with a wave of my hand. ‘Well, whoever she is, she can stay on the Deus until we get to Mina dos Santos. After that she’s on her own.’
‘You know what?’ Matt said, glancing behind him and lowering his voice further. ‘I thought you were going to let that guy drown. Just let the river suck him right down.’
‘So did I. For a moment that’s exactly what I thought, but ...’ I let my words trail off. ‘So where’s this damn woman then? I need to get going.’
I’m here.’ Sister Beckett leaned over beside Matt. ‘Are we ready to go?’
‘Just waiting for you.’ I let her see my false smile. She needed to know we weren’t going to be friends.
‘I’d better get down there, then, hadn’t I?’ She put her hands on the ladder, about to climb down, when another face appeared at her side. The woman Matt had spoken about. She put her hand on Sister Beckett’s shoulder, looked her directly in the eye and Sister Beckett moved to let her climb down first.
I waited as she descended the four or five rungs and stepped into the vessel. She nodded once at me, then stood to one side so she would be between me and Sister Beckett who now put her feet on the ladder and came down. Before she joined us, though, the nun motioned to her companion, asking her to step aside so that she could confront me herself.
The boat rocked in the water, but neither woman showed any sign of worry. They allowed themselves to sway with the motion, as if they had done it all before.
‘Zico,’ Sister Beckett smiled. ‘I’m so glad you agreed to take us.’
She was much shorter than she had looked either on the Estrella or in the clipping I had in my pocket. The top of her head reached no higher than my chest and, close as we were in the small boat, she had to crane her neck to look me in the eye.
She was not a woman who was concerned with appearances. She had a mess of grey hair that looked as if it had never found any particular style. Her glasses were thick, her pale blue eyes magnified behind them, giving her a constant stare. Thin lips, lined with the wrinkles of a woman in her late fifties who had spent little time pampering herself or caring for outward things. She was wearing loose trousers, beige and unremarkable, a shapeless T-shirt which fell to her waist and had a FUNAI slogan across the front in green lettering. The official agency for protecting Indian interests and culture, the FUNAI shirt was the only thing that gave any clue as to who or what she was.
‘You did the right thing, helping that man out of the water,’ she said.
‘For your sake, I hope so.’
‘Why for my sake?’
‘Because you’re coming on board with him.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘What did he do that was so wrong?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘I doubt you could say anything that would surprise me.’ Sister Beckett studied me from behind those thick glasses and I could see a slight squint on one side, as if her right eye wasn’t quite looking at me. ‘I’m Dolores,’ she said, extending a small hand.
‘Dolores,’ I repeated the name, telling myself to think of her only as ‘Dolores’. Nothing else. She was nobody else. I wasn’t supposed to know who she was.
I glanced down at her hand, extending my own more from habit than from wanting to shake hers. She had a loose grip, her hand not quite fitting into mine, so only our fingers came together. She leaned forward, offering her cheek for me to kiss. I made a show of unwilling participation.
‘And her?’ I asked, still holding her hand but watching the other woman. Young, hair the same colour as Daniella’s but cut short. She was almost as tall as I was, her long legs in olive coloured trousers, the kind with pockets low on the thigh. A T-shirt like Sister Beckett’s. She was the same woman who was in the background in the photo in my pocket. I hadn’t recognised her immediately, but now I was sure. I was also certain that there was more to her than met the eye. She was security.
Sister Beckett did have protection; and not just the holy kind.
‘Kássia,’ she said. ‘My travelling companion.’
‘Is she armed?’
Sister Beckett made a strange sound, as if clearing her throat, or perhaps it was a noise of amusement, I couldn’t tell for sure. She smiled her honeyed smile. ‘Zico, we are
armed only with our words and our smiles.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I reckon you might need more than that where you’re going.’
43
Trying to find some inner peace with my frustration at having the nun on board, I had waved farewell to Santiago and Matt and steered the Deus away from them.
Dolores, on the other hand, had gone straight to Leonardo.
She spent a few minutes with him in quiet conversation, checking him over and speaking with subdued concern. All the time she was with him, she had cast glances in my direction. Then she had introduced herself and her companion to Daniella. I half expected Daniella to be pleased to have them there – it would make a change from old men and pistoleiros – but she said no more than a few words to them before coming to rejoin me behind the wheel.
The river was hazardous here, and I kept my eyes on the water so we didn’t end up as Santiago had done, but I glanced back at Dolores from time to time, ensuring that she wasn’t involving herself too much with Leonardo. I had seen his false look of subjugation, and I had seen the gleam that lay behind it. I knew how to read a man like that, but Dolores would see only what Leonardo wanted her to see.
Beneath us, the Deus kept moving, her engine beating hard, thrumming in the loneliness of our location. To my left, the white sands of the shallows gave way to a narrow beach that may never have felt the tread of a man’s foot. Two or three jacaré lay like driftwood, their mouths open to the day, and I glanced over to see Leonardo watching them.
Beyond the beach, a wall of dried mud had baked hard in the sun, and beyond that, a line of vegetation hid anything else from view. A toucan, bright-orange-billed, black-tipped and white-chested, moved amongst the branches searching for berries.
I kept to the right side of the river, where the water was dark and deep, where we were closer to the twisted, forbidding trees that wound their way around each other, standing in unity, uninviting and dense. From time to time, somewhere in the forest, a screaming piha announced itself to the afternoon.
‘How long before we get there?’
I turned to see Dolores standing beside us. She wasn’t looking at me directly, but staring at the trees as they crept past.
‘If the river stays like this, we should be there by sundown,’ I said, wiping my brow. ‘Otherwise ... I suppose we’ll get there when we get there.’
‘It’s inconvenient.’
‘It’s the best we can do. It’s a slow boat, but—’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said. ‘I mean us being here. It’s inconvenient for you.’
I shrugged.
‘I’d like to thank you for helping us.’
I lifted a hand and let it drop, in a brief acknowledgement of her thanks.
‘Do you have any water?’ she asked after a moment in which we both kept our eyes ahead, as if afraid to look at each other.
‘I’ll get some for you.’ Daniella pushed up from the seat and I couldn’t tell if she was eager to offer help or if she just wanted an excuse to escape an uncomfortable situation.
‘A fresh bandage, too?’ Dolores asked. ‘For Leonardo.’
Daniella gave me a questioning look so I nodded and she headed down to the supplies.
When Daniella was gone, Dolores came closer, and I thought she was going to sit down beside me. ‘She’s pretty. Is she your girlfriend?’
‘What difference does it make?’ It was no business of hers. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to be her friend or find anything to respect in her. If I were to kill this woman, I wanted it to be without care and without regret. I wanted to find a reason to hate her, not a reason to like her.
‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ she said. ‘I was just making conversation.’
‘I don’t have much use for conversation.’
‘What else is there on a boat like this?’ She sat down beside me, and the shadow that cloaked me recoiled. It clung to me and whispered in my ear.
You’re going to kill her.
Dolores smelled of cheap soap and body odour. ‘Does he have to be tied like that?’ she asked, and I caught a hint of something on her breath. Peppermint. She had been eating mints. ‘It’s cruel. I don’t like to see any man treated like that, no matter what he’s done.’
‘Everyone can be saved?’ The words of Father Tomás came to mind and that brought an image of Sofia.
‘I think so,’ Dolores said.
‘What if he’s a murderer?’ I asked.
‘Is that what Leonardo is?’
I sighed and wished Daniella would hurry up with the water. Maybe Dolores would be shocked if I told her what Leonardo had done yesterday. Maybe she would be glad he was tied up if she knew the violence of which he was capable. But if I told her, I would have to reveal my part in it. I would have to tell her how I helped to cover it up, and if I didn’t, then I was sure that Leonardo would.
‘Is he a murderer?’ she asked again.
‘It doesn’t matter what he is or who he is,’ I told her. ‘He’s staying right there.’
‘I’ll take responsibility for him,’ she said. ‘Release him and I’ll make sure he does no harm.’
I laughed. ‘You think you could control a man like him? Have you ever met—’
‘I have met many men,’ she said, ‘of many different types. Men like you, Zico, and men with far harder hearts. Some who behave as if they have no heart at all. I’ve been in places and met people even a man like you wouldn’t believe, and not one of those people has ever raised a hand to me. Not one.’
‘Then you’ve been lucky,’ I told her.
‘Please. Release him.’
‘No.’
‘At least give him his clothes.’
‘He’s safer as he is.’
‘Let him have his dignity, if nothing else. Let him have his clothes, Zico.’
‘That man deserves no dignity,’ I snapped. ‘If you had been on this boat as long as I have, you’d know that. Stop pestering me and let me get on with taking you, and him, to Mina dos Santos. When you get there, and you’re off this boat, you can give him all the dignity you like.’
She didn’t even flinch. Her face remained calm, her voice measured as if she were talking to a child. ‘Zico, it’s inhuman to’
‘Water,’ said Daniella, holding out a clear plastic bottle. The label had long since gone and the contents were nothing more than boiled water that had been left to cool. It wouldn’t be cold, but it would quench her thirst.
‘Thank you.’ She stood and took the bottle, holding it in both hands and smiling at Daniella before turning to me again. ‘Think about it, Zico. Think about what I said.’
‘I don’t need to.’ I watched her go back to Kássia, but she didn’t sit down. She spoke to her companion as she unscrewed the top of the bottle, then she went to Leonardo and lifted it to his lips. He drank, the water dribbling from either side of his mouth, and as he tipped his head back, his eyes moved in my direction.
‘I was thinking about before,’ Daniella said, sitting beside me. ‘About when he was in the water and you were pointing your rifle at him.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I shook my head at the foolishness of the nun and returned my concentration to the river.
‘I thought you were going to shoot him.’
I glanced down at the flesh of Daniella’s thighs on the seat beside me. There were faint bruises there among the smudges of dirt and soot. A few tiny hairs beginning to show on her smooth skin.
‘I wanted you to do it. Right at that moment, I wanted you to kill him for shooting those men and for making me so afraid and for ...’ She shrugged. ‘Is that wrong?’
‘No.’
‘I wanted you to kill him, Zico.’
‘No you didn’t. It crossed your mind to want it but you didn’t really want it. That’s why you stopped me.’
‘She stopped you. Dolores.’
‘No. It was you. You stopped me. Later, too, when I had the knife at his throat.’
‘I feel dirty for wanting him dead. For seeing those other men like that, all that blood.’
‘It’ll pass. Give it some more time.’
Daniella nodded and glanced back at Dolores. ‘She thinks you should untie him.’
‘That’s because she thinks she can control him.’
‘Control him? Why? Who does she think she is?’
‘God knows,’ I said.
‘You have to admit, though, she’s got something about her.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I mean, she seems nice, but strong. The way she looks at you ...’ She was still watching Dolores, seeing how she offered the water to Leonardo like he was a condemned man. ‘It’s like she’s someone. Does that make sense? The way she treats people, it’s as if she’s someone important.’ She paused. ‘You know anything about her? Who she is?’
‘Dolores,’ I replied. ‘That’s all I know. She said her name is Dolores.’
For a while, Daniella took the wheel and I dozed beside her. I allowed my eyes to close and I let my mind drift into a numbness, knowing that Daniella was competent to do what she needed to, and that Leonardo was safely bound.
There were no dreams for me. Just the overwhelming heat beneath the canopy, snatches of images and conversations, and then, somewhere in a place of darkness, splashed with patches of almost blinding brightness, I heard the rolling drums of thunder. I forced my eyes open and rubbed them awake with rough fingertips.
‘More rain?’ Daniella asked.
‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Half an hour.’
I shook my head and stood, going to the gunwale to look out at the sky. There was a light cover of grey clouds, but they blackened over the forest a few kilometres south. Perhaps Santiago had been right about the acauã sitting in the skeletal hand of the tree. Maybe it had seen the bad weather approaching.
‘Something the matter, Zico?’ Dolores called.
The heat didn’t seem to affect her much. There were no sweat patches on her shirt, no perspiration on her forehead. For some reason that annoyed me, but it was no reason to kill her.
‘The rain,’ I said. ‘If it gets too hard we’ll have to stop.’
She nodded once, but continued to watch me with those intense, pale blue eyes. Again, I couldn’t help feel that she was reading my thoughts, or seeing the shadow that cloaked me. It was as if she knew who I was; that she had seen my dark intent. Beside her, Kássia watched too, but her scrutiny was different. Her look was one of loyalty to Dolores and warning to me.