by James Morrow
“And yet, for whatever reasons, I don’t mind feeling like a hypocrite,” she added.
“An irony within an irony,” said Algernon, lifting a goblet to his lips.
“The Covent Garden Antichrist does not trouble herself with mundane regrets,” said Solange.
Now Mr. Chadwick appeared in the cloister, straightaway adding a sardonic note to the conversation. “How impressive that Miss Kirsop knows more about our antichrist than does our antichrist herself.”
“Poker, anyone?” inquired Algernon, shuffling his cards.
A flurry of frowns greeted this suggestion. Chloe suspected that her brother would have better luck convening a game amongst the nautical members of their fellowship, but earlier in the week Captain Runciter and his officers had gone by mule cart to Belém-do-Pará, their aim being to scour the beaches for Equinox refugees and, no less importantly, persuade some packet-steamer skipper that, instead of hiring unreliable aborigines or disgruntled half-breed caboclos frontiersmen to serve on his next voyage upriver, he should instead engage a company of English shipwreck survivors. Before his departure, Runciter had told Chloe and Solange that he intended to represent them as “Claude Bathurst” and “Solomon Kirsop,” eight able-bodied seamen being a more marketable commodity than six plus two women. Given her loosely fitting pirate blouse, Chloe reasoned, not to mention her talent for affecting a tenor voice (two assets her disciple likewise possessed), the deception should prove simple to sustain.
“May I speak frankly, Miss Bathurst?” asked Mr. Chadwick.
“When have you ever employed any other idiom?”
The vicar gestured past the gauzy mosquito curtain towards a flagstone plaza bustling with Indians, all of them belonging to the Tupinambá tribe, a sturdy people with tawny skin and cropped black hair suggesting scholar’s caps. Whether these aborigines had sequestered themselves in Sagrado Coração voluntarily or through clerical coercion Chloe could not say, but they certainly seemed happy enough. Dressed in cinnamon-colored shifts, they laughed and sang as they rethatched the roof of the church, repaired the priests’ fleet of canopied tolda canoes, and tended the goats and peccaries in the livestock pens. Even as the mission Indians labored beneath the relentless sun, their children sported on the plaza, trundling hoops, bouncing balls off the walls (rubber was apparently as abundant in Amazonia as vermin), and firing toy arrows at straw targets, all the while sucking on skewered fruits as if they were lollipops.
When not maintaining the mission or receiving instruction in the Roman catechism, the Tupinambás evidently spent their days outside the walls, tending the priests’ pallid plots of manioc and cacao, the latter crop sown in deference to the European passion for chocolate. According to Mr. Pritchard (who’d once tried his hand at farming), the plantation’s sorry state was not exceptional. Given the region’s poor soil, torrential rains, and ravenous leaf-cutter ants, agricultural prosperity was unlikely ever to visit the Amazon basin.
“How can you pursue your campaign against God,” Mr. Chadwick asked Chloe in a reproving tone, “when you behold the blessings these padres have brought to the heathens? Can you not see that your project is a petty vendetta at best?”
A queasiness spread through her, not unlike the emotion she endured whenever, standing on the stage, she suddenly forgot her lines. In her eagerness to win the Shelley Prize, had she ventured upon waters no mere mortal should dare to navigate? In her determination to triumph at Alastor Hall, had she bitten off so large a portion of presumption that even Jonah’s whale would not attempt to chew it? The Sagrado Coração priests were obviously uplifting the Tupinambás. By what rights would anyone put so benevolent an enterprise out of business?
She set her goblet on the table, having lost her taste for wine, exploration, and deicide. “Your questions give me much food for thought,” she told Mr. Chadwick.
“Much meat for muddlement,” Solange corrected her.
Chloe made no reply but simply scratched a sand-fly bite on her ankle.
The following Sunday, as billows of afternoon heat blanketed Curuçá, a troupe of mission children staged a pageant for their English visitors. Whilst the young players emoted in the plaza, Chloe and her companions sat on the church steps and watched, luxuriating in the shade of palm fronds held by the children’s parents. The pageant unfolded in Tupi, the lingua franca of the eastern basin, and yet she had no trouble following the action, for the players had selected as their subject the story of Noah and the Flood. To form their ark, the children had joined two dugout canoes into a catamaran, one hull holding the patriarch and his family, the other filled with little balsawood tapirs, jaguars, anacondas, sloths, and caimans (an indigenous variety of alligator). Although the children portraying Noah and his clan took obvious delight in their roles, the inundated sinners had even more fun, gleefully flailing and screaming as the remorseless waves sucked them down.
Inevitably the pageant put Chloe in mind of the Reverend Mr. Dalrymple and his ark hunters. Quite possibly they’d already reached Constantinople and were now sailing along the Turkish coast towards Trebizond. Until recently, the thought of Dalrymple making substantial progress would have greatly distressed her, but today she felt indifferent towards her God-fearing rival, for she’d yet to formulate a riposte to Mr. Chadwick’s accusation that her own quest was “a petty vendetta at best.”
When at last the children’s ark came to rest on Ararat, a stately priest named Cristóvão Pinheiro stepped into the plaza, a sun-struck silver cross glinting above his heart. Speaking first in Tupi, then in Latin, next in Portuguese, and finally in English, he placed the pageant in an appropriately Christian context. “After the waters subsided,” Padre Pinheiro explained, “God remained true to His word. In keeping with the rainbow covenant, He refrained from additional worldwide floods. Instead He challenged Mankind with a different sort of deluge, the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for only through that crimson cataract, flowing down the slopes of Calvary and thence into the whole of Creation, might the world be washed clean of Adam’s sin.”
With the coming of dusk the Jesuits recited their evening prayers, the Latin syllables soughing across the plaza like consecrated surf, after which Padre Pinheiro invited the adventurers to the refectory for a light supper of steamed clams and broiled caiman. Presiding over the meal was the head of the mission, Rapôso Sampaio, a seraphic man with a belly of equatorial contours, his presence occasioning in Chloe more convulsions of uncertainty. Like the other Sagrado Coração priests, Padre Sampaio radiated a quintessential kindness, and any renegade actress who presumed to shut down his mission had better be prepared to justify her decision. Was God’s nonexistence a sufficient reason for calling His authority into question? Here and now, at this particular juncture in her fortunes, she simply did not know.
“This afternoon you missed an entrancing pageant,” said Mr. Chadwick to Padre Sampaio.
“So I’m told.”
Padre Pinheiro rapped his knuckles on his forehead, as if to shake his brain in its cradle, forcing the organ to locate bits and pieces of English amidst the welter of Portuguese, Latin, and Tupi. “I hope you found sufficient scriptural integrity in the children’s interpretation. We know how protective you Protestants feel towards the Bible”—he accorded the vicar a merry wink—“in contrast to us Papists, who can scarcely be bothered to read the thing.”
“I’m not a man to make an idol of Holy Writ,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Recall that the Church of England began as Roman Catholicism by other means. We became Protestants only en passant.”
“Ah, the wonders of transmutation,” said Solange.
“I agree with Mr. Chadwick—today we saw a magnificent production,” Algernon declared. “Um espetáculo maravilhoso,” he added in the strained voice of a man who doesn’t speak Portuguese speaking Portuguese.
“Alas, a shadow hung over the children’s efforts,” said Padre Pinheiro. “Before the week is out, those adorable little crianças will be gone, neverm
ore to roll their hoops across the plaza or snuggle with us in our beds, and their parents must also leave. We’re permitted to catechize a given clan for only a month, after which everyone goes to Ilha de Marajó and joins the Corpos de Trabalhadores, which are little more than forced-labor gangs. At least we get to save the Tupinambás’ souls before the overseers break their backs.”
“Some people would say we’ve made a Devil’s bargain,” said Padre Sampaio, parking his palms on his considerable stomach. “However, if we advocate too vociferously for the Indians, the bosses in Belém will protest to the provincial governor, who will in turn speak to the Emperor, who will send a complaint to the Holy Father in Rome.”
“But surely the Pope would take your side,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“Relations between our order and the Vatican are strained at best,” Padre Pinheiro explained. “In the middle of the last century, the Society of Jesus was booted out of the Church altogether, remaining an entity non grata for fifty-six years. Our humble mission survived the expulsion of 1759—we survived the Brazilian war of independence and the bloody Cabanagem rebellion that followed—but we would never survive the renewed hostility of the Holy See.”
“We’ve prattled quite enough about our problems,” said Padre Sampaio. “Mr. Chadwick tells me you intrepid naturalists hope to reach faraway Galápagos.”
“We seek the primordial Tree of Life,” said Chloe.
“Miss Bathurst exaggerates,” said Mr. Chadwick, grimacing. “Our desire is to study the islands’ exotic reptiles and birds.”
“No, I’m telling the truth,” said Chloe, struggling to recover her freethinking side as an inverted turtle might strive to aright itself. “We shall prove the material unity of all plants and animals or die in the attempt.”
“If the Tree of Life yet flourishes, the place wherein it grows has been evermore denied to mortals,” said Padre Sampaio. “You certainly won’t find it off the coast of Ecuador.”
“The creature we hunt is biological, not biblical.” Even as she spoke, Chloe’s foundering faith in the quest grew more buoyant. “Scriptural trees hold little interest for us—though they may be more accessible than you suppose. If birds ate of Eden’s fruits, they would have scattered the seeds far and wide. A descendant of the Tree of Life or the Tree of Knowledge might very well grow today in Persia, another in Egypt, another in Anatolia, another right here in Amazonia.”
“Such is the utility of excrement,” said Solange.
“Miss Kirsop has been too long at sea,” said Mr. Chadwick in a voice somewhere between speech and expectoration.
“Perhaps you would like to stay here, Reverend,” said Padre Sampaio. “You could help us in our work amongst the Tupinambás, while your coarse companions reach the Encantadas on their own.”
“An appealing proposition,” Mr. Chadwick replied. “But just as you must save heathen souls, so must I tend to my vulgar flock.”
“What we need now is a friendly game of poker,” said Algernon abruptly, producing his pack of cards. “Vamos bater um pôquer?”
* * *
Against Chloe’s expectations, her brother succeeded in convening a game that night, a protracted seven-card-stud tournament that lasted until matins. Instead of poker chips the players used stale discs of unconsecrated communion bread, a choice so scandalous by Mr. Chadwick’s lights that he refused to participate, though the Jesuit players—Padre Sampaio and Padre Pinheiro—decided that such a profane employment of the Host underscored the radical discontinuity between its natural and post-sacramental forms. The big winner was Algernon (evidently poker suited his talents better than faro), who walked away with sixty wafers. But the priests held their own, each making a seven-wafer profit, whilst Chloe and Solange lost their stacks in toto.
As it happened, the poker game had the effect of restoring in full Chloe’s belief in the Albion Transmutationist Club. Even as she blundered away her wafers, invariably failing to discern whether a fellow player was bluffing or not, she recalled the lesson in natural selection she’d taught Algernon back in Seven Dials (the same poker hand becoming, depending on its environment, either a straight, a mere ace-high, or a royal flush). What a piece of work was the Tree of Life! How sublime the notion that had blossomed in Mr. Darwin’s brain! Yes, she decided, yes, God’s nonexistence was a sufficient reason for calling His authority into question, whatever quantity of benevolence the Jesuits might be lavishing on herself, her friends, and the benighted Tupinambás.
Two weeks later Mr. Pritchard and his monkey returned to the mission, the former bearing glad tidings. Thanks to Captain Runciter’s bargaining skills, the wayward company of the lost Equinox had secured employment aboard the packet-steamer Rainha da Selva, the Queen of the Jungle. Her skipper, one Hélio Gonçalves, had contracted to transport a ton of goods and sundries a thousand miles up the Rio Amazonas to the Rio Negro, then northwest along that tributary to the burgeoning provincial capital, Manáos. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Capitão Gonçalves’s vessel would steam out of Belém-do-Pará ten days hence—which meant that Miss Bathurst and her companions must leave the mission at first light. As for the forty-two Equinox castaways who’d escaped in the jolly boats, they’d evidently made their way to the Baía de Marajó and joined the crew of a French merchant vessel bound for Marseille.
Upon hearing Mr. Pritchard’s report, Padre Sampaio told the English adventurers they would find Belém to be “a beautiful city patterned on the incomparable Lisbon,” as opposed to Manáos, “a hodgepodge modeled on nothing at all.” Until recently, he added, Manáos had been called Barra, after its monumental sandbar. In renaming the settlement, the district governor had sought to honor the heritage of the region’s vanished Manaó Indians—though Chloe suspected that, given a choice between not being exterminated by the Portuguese and having a city named after them, the natives would have selected the first alternative.
The journey to Belém, two days and fifty miles by mule cart southward from Curuçá, proved dreadful, a trial in which the remorseless sun and the omnipresent invertebrates conspired to maximize the travelers’ misery. Seated in the load bed along with Solange, the vicar, and her brother, Chloe lurched to and fro as Mr. Pritchard, in the driver’s seat, guided the reluctant mules along the crumbling and rutted Estrada dos Jacarés. Throughout the trip she clutched both the boxed transmutation essay and a Tupinambá reed basket containing dried fish and manioc bread from Padre Sampaio, all the while suffering the appetites of sand-flies, chigoes, sauba ants, and bête-rouge ticks (roaring evolutionary successes every one, she mused, grand-prize winners in the Malthusian struggle for existence). But at long last the travelers were rewarded with Cidade das Magnas, the City of the Mangos: fair Belém, whose more attractive features—its baroque churches, pristine houses, sumptuous governor’s palace, streets shaded by Asian fruit trees, and great central cathedral—fully affirmed Padre Sampaio’s admiration for the place.
It was only after everyone had moved into the Hotel da Antonio José Landi, however, the bill having been paid by Capitão Gonçalves in anticipation of their employment aboard the Rainha da Selva, that the mule-cart ordeal finally evaporated from Chloe’s mind. All during the long and languorous afternoon, she and her disciple washed each other in a porcelain tub (fingertips rippling along soapy skin, palms kneading sore muscles): a venerable Brazilian tradition, she decided, pondering the ancient warrior-women whence the Amazon River had taken its name—for doubtless those daughters of Bellatrix had derived as much satisfaction from pleasuring one another’s flesh as from breaking their enemies’ bones.
Cured of weariness but not of hunger, Chloe and Solange descended to the hotel saloon, where they proceeded to share a seafood supper with their fellow adventurers. Though pleased to be once again in the vicinity of the alluring Mr. Dartworthy, Chloe was disappointed by the vacuous conversation he and Captain Runciter elected to impose upon the gathering. Back at the Jesuit mission, the talk had variously encompassed the Catholic view o
f the rainbow covenant, the need to avoid antagonizing the Holy See, and the joy of walking in the light of God. Here in Cidade das Magnas, by contrast, there was evidently only one subject worth discussing: rubber—raw hevé, that is, liquid latex, the thick, milky fluid that surged through the countless stands of cau-chu trees that flourished everywhere in the basin, a vein of white gold stretching from Belém to distant Manáos to faraway Iquitos in Peru.
A boom was in the making, Mr. Dartworthy averred, popping an oyster into his mouth. The past decade had found hundreds of industrious Indian seringueiros—rubber tappers—systematically harvesting latex, curing it over wood fires, and selling the resulting spheres, the fat and unwieldy peles, to predatory middlemen, the aviadors. Last year alone, Mr. Dartworthy noted, Manáos had sent two thousand tons of rubber down the river for exportation to northern centers of commerce, and the aviadors would probably ship twice that much next year. Even as the English adventurers sat chattering about the seringueiros and their vaguely romantic, largely wretched lives, scores of would-be rubber barons were descending on Manáos, determined to turn that scrofulous city into a cosmopolitan metropolis commensurate with the great capitals of Europe.
Captain Runciter now distributed the pasteboard passports that Capitão Gonçalves had forged on his new crew’s behalf, then flourished an additional document, a crumpled sheet of yellow paper. “If you doubt that the barons would have Manáos become the Paris of Amazonia, consider our bill of lading,” he said, devouring a cuttlefish tentacle. “We’ll be hauling six crystal chandeliers, eleven gilt-framed mirrors, seventy-five satin cushions, nine brass spittoons, six rolls of velvet, fourteen Chinese screens, one upright piano—”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Solange, savoring a morsel of eel, “but whoever compiled that list is less interested in creating the Paris of Amazonia than a Nineveh on the Rio Negro. Each of those goods is destined for either a saloon or a bordello. I’ll wager the bill also includes mercury powder, the medicine by which harlots treat the diseases that accrue to their profession.”