MAMista

by Len Deighton

  ‘We follow the river,’ Paz said in response.

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ called Singer sarcastically. ‘I thought we were going to swim it.’

  Paz didn’t look at Singer. ‘Will you keep them all moving, comrade Santos,’ he shouted angrily. ‘It’s not time for a break.’

  The river curved so that they could see along it for miles. The width of it allowed sunlight to slant under the edges of the jungle revealing a riverside track obviously used by local tribesmen. The men marched happily. It was pleasant to breathe the cool air and watch the water but it didn’t last long. Soon the marked path ended. They continued onwards but the sunlight and plentiful water encouraged thick impenetrable growth at the riverside and there were patches of marsh, and streams that joined the river. Progress became more and more difficult. Reluctantly Angel Paz decided to lead the patrol away from the water. He would cut through the jungle until eventually this river looped back across their path. Then they would be forced to make the crossing. There was always the chance that they would find locals with boats who would ferry them over.

  The patrol moved away from the river with mixed feelings. Some men were afraid of the water and afraid of the snakes. Others had begun to look forward to a wash down in the river at the end of the day.

  Only fifty yards from the edge of the river the vegetation changed. They found the simplest sort of primary growth. It was eerie. The spongy humus underfoot absorbed sound so completely that only the loudest noises were heard. It was dark too. Only a dim green gloom penetrated this airless oven. Each breath became an effort, and the moisture could be heard wheezing through their lungs.

  As they walked on, the men became conscious of a strange green ceiling. Now it was not only the mighty trees that blocked out the light, there was another secret ‘forest’ above their heads. They stopped to stare up.

  ‘Will you look at that!’ Singer said. His voice echoed in the enclosed space.

  A tangle of creepers had made a lattice of greenery that was knit tightly together. Upon this tangle had fallen seeds and dead leaves. So had been formed another layer of humus, nearer to the sunlight. From this extra floor of jungle a hanging garden of ferns, creepers, mosses and orchids spilled over. The men walked on slowly, as if in awe of the surroundings. Every few steps there was a loop of vine or a rope creeper. They hung there as if inviting some foolish giant-killer to ascend to this wonderland above them.

  Once the initial surprise was over they moved more quickly, for the forest floor was flat and clear. They were pleased to make up some of the time they had wasted that morning, chopping through the plantation. Although it was hot and humid, the land continued flat and the springiness underfoot lessened the fatigue of walking.

  They had been walking for just over two hours when Singer called out, ‘Hey, Ralphie, old buddy! A word in your ear, amigo!’

  Lucas moved up to where Singer was being carried in princely fashion. He thought it would be something concerning Singer’s sprained ankle. Singer enjoyed complaining while all around him slaved.

  When the going became especially difficult he liked to sing, ‘You and me we sweat an’ strain, body all achin’ an’ racked wid pain. Tote dat barge! Lift dat bale! Git a little drunk an’ you land in jail.’ It was his favourite song and it well suited his bass voice. Between times he kept up a persistent account of his symptoms. It was harassment thinly disguised as humour, and Lucas had become incensed and exasperated by Singer’s aches and pains. And by his singing too.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘No need to snap my head off, Lucas, old buddy,’ Singer said with lazy good humour. ‘I just thought you’d want to know that we are going round in circles.’

  Heavily loaded, Lucas found it difficult to walk while bending to hear Singer’s whispered comments. ‘Is this another of your stupid jokes?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘I don’t know any stupid jokes, old boy!’ said Singer in a suddenly assumed British accent. ‘I’m just telling you that we are going round in circles.’

  ‘I’ve got no time for nonsense.’

  ‘Me, I have. I’ve got all the time in the world. I just got to sit here and watch the world go by: right? I’m a tourist. Okay? We are going round in circles. Do you think lover-boy up front is trying to work up an appetite for dinner?’

  Lucas didn’t reply. He walked on, watching the track and thinking about the route they’d taken.

  Singer said, ‘You go tell that jerk that if he’s going to navigate through jungle, he has to have his compass down back of us. He has to take bearings on the way the column moves. You said you were in Nam, old buddy. Boy Scout handbook; chapter one, page one, right?’

  ‘Are you watching the track?’

  Singer let out a little low-voiced laugh. ‘No, lover-boy is watching the track. I’m watching the sun.’

  Lucas looked again at Singer, trying to decide if this could be some elaborate joke that was to be played upon Paz.

  Singer said, ‘Let’s face it, mister. The junior G-man up front wouldn’t notice if the sun did a cartwheel and whistled Dixie.’

  Lucas stared at him for another moment and then called, ‘Paz!’ He hurried forward, hobbling under the weight of his pack, his water bottle, his blanket and his pistol. After him Singer called, ‘Tell him to get his tail down to the rear … Get one of these Indians to take point. These guys maybe will get us there.’

  Paz looked back as he heard Lucas calling his name. Lucas caught up with him and said, ‘I think you should have the compass at the rear of the patrol, Paz. Singer says we are wandering a bit. I think he may be right.’

  Lucas’ exaggerated courtesy did nothing to mitigate the report. ‘I told you before; stop bugging me.’

  ‘Santos!’ Lucas called. The sergeant came to join them. ‘Can you use a compass, Santos?’

  ‘I was there when we captured it,’ said Santos, looking at the shiny brass instrument in Paz’s hands. ‘From an officer in a Federalista patrol. We lost three men.’

  ‘Which way is north?’ Lucas asked Paz.

  Paz looked at his compass. Santos said, ‘This way,’ without looking at it.

  Lucas took Paz by the shoulder and gently turned him to see his men. ‘Look back, Paz.’ The patrol was strung out in a line that curved westwards. He saw the uncertain look in Paz’s face. ‘Give it a try from the back,’ Lucas suggested diplomatically. ‘Let Santos take point. He’s spent all his life in this kind of jungle without a compass. You check his direction as we go.’

  With bad grace Paz complied. The patrol changed after Santos went to point. After an hour or more Santos called the flank leaders closer. The mules came up closer, to a position where Santos could see them. Paz noticed these changes but made no comment. The rearguard was tighter too, for the sound-absorbent rain forest swallowed up the commands that were called. Sometimes Singer repeated them. It was the first useful thing he had done all day.

  The bad feeling between Paz, Singer and Lucas had, during the day’s march, become evident to every member of the force. Even the passive face of Santos had from time to time shown his contempt for the foreigners and the woman. Yet even Santos had to concede that, despite the problems, the day’s march had not gone badly. It was difficult to estimate how far they had come but when Paz said ‘fifteen miles’ he wasn’t contradicted, and they made camp well before nightfall. It was a good site: a dip in the ground where the stream provided water while the elevation was high enough to avoid any risk from a flash flood.

  They made two fires: one for what Paz called ‘command’ and for the sentries; the other for cooking. They used measured portions of dehydrated soup. In it pieces of dried fish were cooked until they were soft enough to chew.

  Lucas and Inez sat together eating their meal. Now that they had become lovers there was a change in her manner. Inez was more solicitous. No longer did she care if the others saw the possessive way she looked at her man. Lucas had become preoccupied and nervous. For him the new relationship wa
s serious and permanent and now he worried about a thousand practical details of its future.

  ‘That clown, Singer,’ Lucas said. ‘I don’t know how I keep my hands off him sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t let him upset you,’ Inez advised. ‘It’s exactly what he wants to do.’

  ‘I just can’t be sure if he could walk or I would kick him off that damned chair.’

  ‘Do you think he’s up to something?’ asked Inez.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘His CIA people must be able to guess what route we must take.’

  ‘How could they do that?’

  ‘The American satellite photos. Ramón says they can read heat emissions. That would show them the position of so many humans in the jungle. From fixing the position of the camps they could guess our route. We have to go on foot: we can’t take wide detours.’

  ‘What else did Ramón say?’

  ‘He wondered if the Americans would try to pick Singer out of the jungle somewhere along the route.’

  ‘To save his ransom?’

  ‘The oil companies have helicopters. Saving a kidnapped American would be good publicity for them.’

  ‘Did Ramón tell Paz all this?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘I wish he’d confided as much to me.’

  ‘You are not an easy man to confide in, Lucas.’ She was able to say it now.

  ‘Am I not?’ He was surprised; he had always thought of himself as the most approachable of men.

  ‘Paz judges, Singer scoffs, but you endure the world about you.’

  ‘Is that what Ramón said?’

  She reached forward and took his hand in hers. ‘Always questions,’ she said. ‘Always questions.’

  After supper Lucas checked the hands and feet of the whole unit. He’d instructed others how to do it but on this first night he inspected every man himself. Men who had been following the edge of the river had leeches on their legs and feet. Adroit use of a lighted cheroot remedied that. There was little else to concern him. The dark forest did not breed the swarms of flying insects they had endured for the first few miles. And the relatively mild daytime temperatures made much of the march no more arduous for most of them than a day’s work in the camp would have been.

  Each man carried a waterproof poncho that formed one half of a bivouac shelter. There were mutterings of protest when Paz said that they must all use them, but it was better to make sure that they all knew how to make cover.

  Lucas and Inez shared such a shelter. Paz said that Singer would share his, with an armed sentry close by in case Singer gave trouble. When he’d finished his meal, Singer’s wrist was wired to his ankle and the camp settled down to sleep.

  ‘Got a cigarette?’ Singer asked.

  Paz opened a tin that contained the dried tobacco leaves that made up one of many such communal supplies. He gave one to Singer.

  ‘Do these boys use grass?’ Singer asked.

  ‘It is forbidden by all revolutionary movements.’

  ‘Well that’s another thing I don’t like about them,’ Singer said. Using his free hand he rolled the leaf on his leg as he’d learned to do, and made a misshapen cheroot. When it was ready he put it in his mouth. Paz lit it for him with a twig from the fire.

  Singer inhaled, coughed smoke, and spat. ‘Oh boy! This is really my chance to kick the habit.’

  Paz was studying Singer with genuine interest when he asked, ‘Why does a guy like you go to work for big business, Singer? Why fight for the fascists in Washington?’

  Singer smiled. ‘What are you talking about, kid? Look around. What have all these years of bombings and shootings done for the locals? Did you see the Indians in the compound when you came shooting your way in? They were well fed, confident and in far better shape than any of the kids we have with us here. Big business is maybe just what this lousy country needs.’

  ‘They don’t need charity, Singer. This country is full of fish and fruit and all kinds of food. Under the ground there is gold, iron ore, aluminum, platinum … who knows what else? It belongs to them.’

  ‘You are a slogan writer’s dream, amigo. Sure, maybe all those things are here, but digging them out is something else again. To dig them out in handfuls would cost a thousand times more than they would bring. You can’t sell minerals to countries who can get the same thing cheaper elsewhere.’

  ‘The answer to world markets is world revolution,’ said Paz. ‘The workers and peasants of Latin America are knocking at America’s door – they’re saying: you’d just better spare a dime, brother, or we’ll burn your pad down.’

  Singer jammed the cheroot in his mouth and with an agility that surprised Paz he rolled over and reached out to grab his collar in his big black fist. ‘You’d like to see America burning, would you, you little creep?’ He shook Paz roughly. ‘What kind of animal are you? Do you call yourself an American? Do you?’

  Only a month ago Paz would have had an immediate answer to that. A month ago he had not regarded himself as an American at all. He had denied his citizenship more than once and supported his denials with vituperative comments on Americans and all things American. Now he felt more foreign than he’d ever felt before. He needed a country, a place where he could shed this awful homesickness. So he did not answer Singer in the way he once would have done. He said, ‘I am an American.’

  Singer let go of him with a rough push. ‘An American,’ he said scornfully. ‘A starry-eyed romantic. An old-time liberal in a new pack; and the secret ingredient is violence.’ He took the cheroot from his mouth and exhaled the smoke with a cough.

  ‘Is it romantic to put food into hungry mouths?’ Paz asked.

  ‘It’s romantic to pile it in the street and hope it won’t be stolen by the greedy,’ Singer said. He was calmer now as he realized the violent reaction he’d invited but not suffered.

  ‘Man must aspire to a better world,’ said Paz.

  ‘Man is atavistic, cruel and greedy, buddy. Grab power by violent revolution and you’ll have another gang come along and grab power from you. So commies have to fix for themselves a system no one can grab. That means secret cops and concentration camps, right?’

  ‘You don’t understand the concept of permanent revolution,’ said Paz.

  ‘I was kind of hoping that it didn’t have to be permanent. I was hoping that one day even you commie kooks would start to patch up the bullet holes, hospitalize the injured, bury the dead, fix the power generators and the plant you are so jubilant about destroying, and start work. Because, as sure as God made little green apples, when the shooting is over the living standard of the workers is going to depend upon what your guys can make or grow and sell to other men.’

  ‘Can you only think of men as components of a capitalist machine?’ Paz said. ‘What about a man’s rights to the land he lives on, the food that grows in the earth, the mineral wealth under it, the fish in the rivers?’

  ‘A commodity is only worth what another man will give for it,’ Singer said. ‘You can’t regiment consumers to take what you want to sell to them.’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ Paz said.

  ‘Doesn’t freedom mean a thing to you, Paz?’

  ‘What freedom are you talking about?’ said Paz disdainfully. ‘You’re a black.’

  ‘I’m not a black any more than you are a Latin. We’re white men in disguise, Paz. Rich daddies and good schools make black men into white men. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘I hate you,’ Paz said softly and sincerely. ‘You are contemptible.’

  ‘I hit the spot, did I?’

  ‘No more talking!’ It was the voice of Lucas calling from afar. ‘The sentries must sleep.’

  Paz decided that this was the time to settle the matter of who was in command. He pulled his blanket back to crawl out of the little tent. ‘I wouldn’t get into a hassle with him,’ Singer said softly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Inez will be on his side, I will be on his side and Serg
eant Santos will be on his side. You might find yourself in a minority of one. The final result could be you shafted and ousted.’

  Paz didn’t move. Singer was right. Paz had noticed some danger signals coming his way from comrade Santos. Given an opportunity to humiliate Paz there was no doubt Santos would take it. It would be retaliation for some of the scoldings he’d suffered in front of his men. And if Santos turned nasty, the men would follow him. Better perhaps to let it go. Paz pulled the blanket round himself and let his head sink back. He heard Singer chuckle in triumph. Paz decided to shout a brief rejoinder but before he’d worked out a suitable one he dozed off to sleep.

  Singer stayed awake, thinking about what he’d said. His hastily contrived words of caution were not so far from the truth. Lucas had the woman with him. If he was going to take over command from Paz it would not prove too difficult. Tonight he’d watched Lucas go round inspecting the hands and feet of the men in a gesture nothing less than Christlike. No matter that Lucas described it as a medical necessity, Singer saw it as a way of befriending every man. If there was a showdown such attention to detail would pay off. Lucas was a cunning old devil. Singer had seen men like him before. For the time being, Lucas was more likely to let Paz continue in command and let him take the flak for everything that went wrong. Lucas was a doctor and that gave him a trump card. He would always find some damned technical reason for doing things the way he wanted them done. It would always be ‘because the sentries must sleep’; not because Lucas wanted to settle back with that fancy woman.

  Singer threw the end of the cheroot on to the dying fire. He saw the sentry pass. He was learning to recognize the sounds of the night. Trees toppled frequently; slowly ripping a way to the ground where they landed with a soft crash that shook the forest floor. But more often the sounds were those of wild animals going to the stream to drink. He wondered if there would be snakes. Singer had been bitten when a child and that episode had left him with a terrible fear of snakes. With an arm wired to his leg he felt especially vulnerable.