Brasyl (GollanczF.)

by Ian McDonald

  ‘I cannot believe that,’ Falcon said, the first words he had spoken since Quinn began his testimony. ‘I must believe that the world is shaped by our wills and actions.’

  ‘The Rio Branco will run with the blood of the Guabirú and they will vanish utterly from this world: it will happen, it has already happened. Manoel spoke it first, and Paguana in a fit of rage seized a spear and ran him through, again and again. He would have done the same to me had he not been restrained by the Iguapá, and in truth, what good would it have done? The words spoken cannot be taken back. The Guabirú will be destroyed whether the oracle is spoken or not. This is the true horror of the Iguapá gift: the foreknowledge of that which you are powerless to change.

  ‘For that instant only the truth spoke clear out of all the possible answers; then the roar of voices resumed, doubled, redoubled in volume; a million million voices and I could hear each one of them, Robert. I was driven down and apart so that I forgot who I was, where I was. I fled between worlds, a ghost, a demon. I know now I was cut down from the cross and that the Guabirú, with little grace, bound me to a litter to take me back to the City of God. I believe the Iguapá only let me go because they knew I would certainly die. There are moments of sanity and surcease when I became aware of this world: lurching through the trees, carried by blindfolded bearers, and again, at the river, when the Iguapá seized Paguana and poured poison into his eyes, for he had committed sacrilege against the caraíba.

  ‘I recall Nossa Senhora da Varzea at night, a thousand lights upon her, and Diego Gonçalves’ face looking down upon me: I recall seeing my own face flecked with Iguapá gold in a mirror and my own breath misting my image. And all the while the one sane thought in my head was that he must not have it, that I must exert myself, discipline myself not to give voice to the truth I had learned in my madness and visions of other worlds. Deny him it, deny him it; I believe now it was that simple, potent need that drew me back from destruction. But I had no strength, my body was a traitor. Then among the worlds I heard my name spoken and it called me back, and there was Zemba, good Zemba. He it was slipped me from my hammock and took a canoe and pushed us out into the stream, and then all the stars of all the universes opened upon me and I was lost in light.

  ‘Water, Falcon, I beg you.’

  Hands trembling, Robert Falcon held the water skin up to Luis Quinn’s lips. Again Quinn drank deeply, desperately. The tent fabric glowed with the promise of day: a night had been talked away, and all the birds of the forest joined in one whooping, shrilling, clattering chorus.

  ‘My friend, my friend, I cannot believe what you are saying. If it is true . . . Rest, restore your strength. You are still very weak, and it is clear that some residue of the curupairá still affects your reason.’

  Marie-Jeanne had given Falcon the flask - a precious, pretty little thing, chased silver, easily slipped into the place next the heart - at the reception in the Hotel Faurichard the night before his embarkation to Brest. For when you are far from home, and wish to remember it, and me. How he wished for a sip of its fine old Cognac. This monstrous river, this dreadful land, this terrifying endless silent forest that hid horrors at its heart but spoke never a word, gave never a sign. One sip of France, of Marie-Jeanne and her bright, birdlike laughter; but he had stowed it, restowed it, stowed it yet again, it was lost. Not one world but many worlds. A drug that enabled the human mind to see reality and to communicate with its counterparts, the implication being - given that the universe ran to explicable, physical laws and not a quixotic divine will or thaumaturgy - that all minds must therefore be aspects of the one, immense mind. Quinn’s image returned to him, a stack of loom cards unfolding one at a time through the toothed mill of a Governing Engine.

  Quinn had forced himself upright, gaunt face tight with energy and mania.

  ‘Even now I see it, Falcon, though the vision fades - no mind can look on such things and survive. Gonçalves was correct in his supposition that my particular cast of mind - something in my facility for language, some innate ability to see pattern and meaning - allowed me to survive where those before me that he sent to seek out the oracle perished. But I am ridden by a terrible fear, that in my delirium I betrayed the Iguapá and even now that monstrous blasphemy of a basilica is casting off into the stream to enslave them. Falcon, I must go back. I have betrayed my order and my vows. I have left undone that which I ought to have done. There is no help in me. Doctor, I may have need again of your sword.’

  ‘That you shall not have,’ Falcon said, preparing manioc mush. ‘For I shall have need of it myself, at your side.’

  The signs are set, the markers laid down; yet the Iguapá do not come. This is our fourth night upon this strand, and the fear haunts me that they have already been knocked down at the block in São José Tarumás. On the third night of our journey up the Catrimani and the Rio Iguapará we stole past Nossa Senhora de Varzea, the monstrous carbuncle, but was it ascending, or descending with its holds full of red gold? Falcon paused to swipe at a troubling insect, then bent to his journal again. Diligently I log this journey, leagues traveled, rivers mapped, though the purpose of my expedition is utterly lost. I record villages and missions, navigation hazards and defensible positions; but increasingly I ask myself, to what end? Too readily I convince myself no one will ever read these reports and dispatches. Quinn would tell me that desperation is a sin, but I dread that I shall never leave this green hell, that my bones will lie down in the heat and the rot and the pestilence and be covered over with vegetation and every trace of me will be lost. And yet, I write . . .

  A twitch at the tent flap. Zemba entered the scriptorium.

  ‘The Mair wishes me to inform you, they are here.’

  Mair: the hero, the supernatural leader, the extraordinary man. The legend was beginning. Falcon’s own Manaos now used it among themselves; he soon expected to hear it addressed to Quinn directly in place of the commonplace Pai. Zemba had appointed himself Quinn’s lieutenant, but what else besides? Falcon realized that his opinions of Zemba were prejudices drawn from his physical size and the color of his skin. Here was a man rich in skills and insight, taken from his home and people in the sure knowledge that he would never see any of them again, that to him they were the dead, that any life he must make would be here, rootless, reduced to an insect, a speck in the vastnesses of Brazil.

  ‘I am coming.’

  Falcon stepped from the tent into a ring of blowpipes. The unworldly golden faces, the elongated, sloping foreheads of the Iguapá reminded Falcon strikingly, terrifyingly, of an altar screen by some maniacal Flemish painter, judgments and dark deliverers and strange, sharp instruments of inquiry. Twenty weapons drew on Falcon. Quinn sat at his ease propped on a barrel of salt pork, merry almost, though one of the Iguapá, a speaker of the lingua geral, stood before him in clear accusation. It was like a dance between them: the Iguapá striding forward to stab with his blowpipe, bark a question, then step back into the company. Quinn would answer in the same tongue, slowly, patiently, at his ease.

  ‘The índio asks if the Mair is man or spirit. The Mair answers, “Touch my hands, my face,” ’ Zemba translated for Falcon.

  Quinn held out his arms, a black crucifix. Waitacá composed himself before his hunting brothers, then stepped boldly forward and pressed the fingers of his hands into Quinn’s palms.

  ‘The índio begs forgiveness, but it has never happened in the memory of the Iguapá that a caraíba’s soul has returned to his body from the worlds of the curupairá,’ Zemba whispered. Quinn spoke, and the circle of hunters gave a low rumble of astonishment and anger. Falcon noted that some of the golden-faced warriors were still uncircumcised boys. Oh for my sketchbook! he thought. Such singular crania; they must be achieved in infancy by binding the head, as was the custom of many of the extinct peoples of the Andes.

  ‘What did the father say there?’

  ‘The Mair said, “Ask me a question, any question.” ’

  The Iguapá called to e
ach other in their own language. The Manaos waited at the edge of the firelight, suspicious, ready for fight. Falcon caught the eye of Juripari, his Manao translator. One word and the Manaos would strike. One word and it would be more bloody anonymous death on the river sand, unseen, unheard, unmourned.

  Waitacá jabbed his blowpipe at Quinn with a simultaneously stabbing question.

  ‘He says, “And where was your God, O priest?” ’

  For too many heartbeats Falcon felt every poison dart trained on him. Then Quinn snatched the blowpipe from Waitacá’s hand and smartly, impertinently, rapped him on his sloping forehead. Waitacá’s hand flew to the serrated wooden dagger slung across his chest, eyes bulging in rage. Quinn held his gaze; then his face gently creased and folded into a smile, into helpless laughter. The infection of the ridiculous: Waitacá’s wounded pride evaporated like a morning mist; shaking with barely contained mirth, he took the blowpipe back from Quinn and with deadly pomp, tapped the Jesuit on the crown of the head. Quinn exploded into guffaws; released, every Iguapá let free their repressed laughter. Waitacá managed to bellow out a choking sentence before he doubled up. Against will, reason, and sanity, Falcon felt the clench of laughter beneath his ribs.

  ‘What did he, what did the índio say?’

  ‘He said, “Of course, where else?” ’

  The laughter was slow spent, the madness of fear transfigured.

  ‘But my friends, my friends,’ Quinn said, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his filthy black robe, ‘I must warn you, the other father, the Black Pai, is coming. His great church is less than a day from you, and all his thought is turned upon you.’ In a breath all laughter ceased. ‘He intends the reduction of the Iguapá, and all your concealments and traps will not avail you, for he has as many warriors as there are stars in the sky and he would sell every one of their lives to assimilate you into his City of God. Your gods and ancestors will wander lost; your name will be forgotten.’

  A warrior called out a question. Waitacá translated.

  ‘How does the Black Pai know this?’

  ‘Because in my madness I told him,’ Quinn said.

  A susurrus of dismay passed from warrior to warrior. A youth, a still-fat boy, asked, ‘Will the Black Pai take us?’

  Quinn sat back on his barrel, turned his gaze upward to the band of stars.

  You know the answer to that, Falcon thought. You see them still; I think you see them always, those stars of the other skies. All the worlds you told me are open to you.

  ‘Bring your women and your children,’ Quinn said. ‘Your beasts and your weapons, your tools and your cooking pots. Sling your hammocks upon your backs and gather up your urocum and the bones of your ancestors. Make cages for your curupairá, as many as you can carry, male and female both. When you have done all this, burn your village to the earth and follow me. There is a place for you. I have seen it, a hidden place, a safe place, not just for the Iguapá but also for everyone who flees the slave coffle and the block. There will be no slaves. This place will be rich in fish and hunting, manioc and fruits; it will be strong and defended. ’ Quinn inclined his head to Zemba. ‘No one will able to take this place, not the bandeirantes, not the Black Pai and his Guabirú fighters. The name of it will be Cidade Maravilhosa, the Marvelous City. Falcon, gather your supplies and what equipment you deem necessary. Burn your canoes and whatever you do not require on the journey. We leave this instant. I shall lead you.’

  ‘Quinn, Quinn, this is insanity, what madness . . .’ Falcon cried, but Luis Quinn had already disappeared into the dark of the forest. One by one the golden bodies of the Iguapá followed him and vanished.

  OUR LADY OF THE GOLDEN FROG

  JUNE 10-11, 2006

  The book fitted the palm of the hand like a loved, kissed breviary; small, dense, bound in soft, mottled-gold leather that felt strangely warm and silky to Marcelina’s touch, as if it were still alive. Hand-sewn header tapes, a bookmark made from that same brass-and-gold leather, edged with new bright gold leaf; this was a volume that had been bound and rebound many times. The hand-painted endpapers were original watercolor sketches of a river journey, both banks represented, right at the top, left at the bottom, landmark trees, missions, churches all marked. Índios adorned with fantastical feathered headdresses and capes stood in canoes or on bamboo rafts; pink river dolphins leaped from the water. In the top of a dead tree red howler monkeys had been depicted in the oversize but minute detail of a dedicated chronicler. All was annotated with legends Marcelina could not decipher.

  Mestre Ginga signaled for her to set the little book down. The cover bore only the outline of a frog, embossed in gold leaf. With gloved hands he moved it reverently to the end of the folding camp table before setting the coffee in front of Marcelina. She too wore gloves, and had been instructed under no circumstances to get the book wet. She sipped her coffee. Good, smoky, from a Flamengo mug. The walls of the little kitchen at the back of the fundação were painted yellow, the handmade cupboards and work surfaces blue and green. A patriotic kitchen. A lizard sprang from stone motionlessness to skim up the wall between the framed photographs of the great mestres and capoeiristas of the forties and fifties, before the joga became legal, let alone fashionable; men playing in Panama hats down in rodas down by the dock, stripped down to the singlets, pleat-top pants rolled up to the knees. The classic kicks and movement but with cigarettes in their mouths. That was true malandragem.

  ‘So,’ Mestre Ginga said. ‘What did you notice about the book?’

  The car had taken off like a jet from the side of the street, and in the daze and confusion and the shock but above all the single, searing icon of her face, her face, her own face behind the knife, all Marcelina could think to say was, ‘I didn’t know you owned a car.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Mestre Ginga, crashing gears. ‘I stole it.’ It soon became clear that he didn’t drive either, blazing a course of grace and havoc between the taxis on Rua Barata Ribeiro, scraping paint-thin to the walls of the Tunel Nóvo, leaping out in a blare of horns into the lilac twilight of Botafogo. ‘I mean, how hard can driving be if taxi drivers do it?’

  Marcelina saw the glowing blue free-form sculpture that crowned Canal Quatro appear above the build-line. It was a reassurance and a sorrowing psalm, a promised land from which she was exiled. She breathed deep, hard, the calming, powering intake of air that gave her such burning strength in the roda or the pitching room.

  ‘I need a few things explained to me.’

  Into Laranjeiras now, under the knees of the mountain.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Mestre Ginga, leaning back in his seat and steering one-handed. ‘It’s knowing where to start. We’d hoped that you wouldn’t get involved, that we could handle the admonitory before you learned anything, but when the bença was murdered, we couldn’t hold off.’

  ‘That was you at the terreiro.’

  ‘You always were too clever to be really smart,’ Mestre Ginga said. Familiar streets around Marcelina, they were heading up to the fundação. And you still have a Yoda complex. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since that clown Raimundo Soares sent you to Feijão. If he’d kept his mouth shut . . . But after the split with the bença he felt aggrieved. It should have been him got cut up; then we wouldn’t have been in this mess.’

  ‘Wait wait, what is this mess anyway?’

  Onto the corkscrew road, scraping the ochre and yellow-painted walls of the compounds.

  ‘You want to be down a gear,’ Marcelina said, troubled by the knocking, laboring engine. ‘You’re taking it too low.’

  ‘And since when have you been Rubens Barrichello?’

  ‘I watch my taxi drivers. So; that woman with the knife, who was she?’

  ‘Who did it look like she was?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Then that’s who she was. There’s a way to explaining this that makes sense. Otherwise, trust me, in this game nothing is coincidence.’

  Then the stolen Ford drew
up before the graffitied walls of the fundação with its brightly colored, tumbling, happy capoeiristas; and Mestre Ginga, with a haste and tension Marcelina had never seen in him before, unlocked the gates and showed her round the back into the patriotic kitchen.