The geologist rubbed his jaw. “He was squatting?”
“Sorry?”
“Your guide was squatting here, was he? A squatter. On company land. Company has clear legal title to this land, and exclusive mining rights to the hills up there.”
He gave Todd a shrewd look.
“The issue of legal titles is a complicated one here,” Ignacio said. “I’m afraid big companies can obtain concessions from the government over land that settlers quite legitimately own. It’s not always clear who is the squatter.”
“Well, all I can say, Father, is that I’ve seen some pretty official looking maps and documents pertaining to this area, and the ownership is with Rio Anna. If your guide has his own claim, I would take it up with the company. I can’t speak for them, but I would imagine that if he’s got some papers, it might be in their interest to find some compensation.” Glancing at Jefferson, he added, “Drop in the bucket, frankly. When I flew in two days ago, there wasn’t any house.”
“But you must understand why we’re concerned,” Ignacio told him.
“If he has his papers, Father, and you’re going to bat for him, he might actually end up better off than he was before. In all sincerity, this is a class outfit. I’ve been impressed.”
Turning to Todd, he added, “Before you set off any big international protest, you might want to consider whether you’d prefer having one big outfit up here that’s going to adhere to environmental controls. Yes they are, I’m under guidelines — which I agree with, by the way. What’s your alternative? You want to end up with hundreds of little independent operators? You know better than I do they’re just going to pump mercury into the river. Government can’t regulate the garimpeiros. Hasn’t managed so far, anyway.”
“So it’s gold you’ve found, or nickel?” Todd asked.
“I’m not saying we’ve found anything. Like I said, we just set up base camp here a couple of days ago. But up in a chopper, few months back, I saw some formations that could mean a lot of no comment. And you can quote me on that.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a stock option with Rio Anna Mines, would you?” Todd asked.
“Class outfit,” Mankiewicz repeated.
Studying him, Todd asked, “So you were on the expedition that was fired at in April?”
Mankiewicz looked so startled that Todd was convinced he knew nothing about the skirmish. Yet he was also convinced that the April intruders had not been freelance prospectors, but a party from Rio Anna, which was one of Doutor Eduardo’s holdings. Todd thought of the old man’s confident assertion at his camp that the intruders weren’t garimpeiros. Apparently he knew what he was talking about. It was even possible that among those fired on were some Indian agents: turned agents prepared to grant permission for exploration to proceed. It struck Todd now that the doutor was too clever to tell outright lies. What, therefore, to make of his ambiguous offer to “help” the uncontacted tribe? Todd pictured Holly hugging the children. “I just love you to death,” she would say. He’d always hated that expression.
“No sense standing around here baking,” Mankiewicz said. He turned to walk back toward the tents, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“In April,” Todd said, walking beside him, “we had reports of a number of boatloads of men coming through here. They were about an hour past the rapids when arrows were fired across their bows.”
“Arrows?”
“There seem to be people here who regard this as their territory.”
“Oh, look. I was specifically told there’s a reserve northeast of the mountains, but as long as I keep to the south, I’m okay.” He stopped outside the tents.
“Apparently not,” Todd answered.
“Am I going to believe this?” Mankiewicz said, rubbing his forehead. “Where’s it coming from?”
“I mentioned Jefferson had a camp here.”
“Shit,” the geologist said. “I thought we had it all worked out. There’s even a guy with the go-ahead from the Indian bureau. Where’s that guy?”
Todd closed his eyes briefly, then opened them to find it was indeed Celso’s brother’s plane parked at the end of the runway. It took him a moment longer to locate Celso, who was ranging behind the crowd of watching Brazilians, looking over their shoulders, weaving, ducking, dancing with nerves. Everything Todd had seen during their first trip upriver convinced him that Celso hadn’t been present during the skirmish, but it looked as if he might have been turned since then by an agent who had. Jefferson was muttering something like this to himself, and Todd felt a moment’s unease before the settler veered off the airstrip to hunker on his haunches underneath the trees. Turning to Ignacio, he found the priest watching with interest the progress of a column of ants that would soon reach his feet.
“We’re not talking poisoned arrows here?” Mankiewicz asked.
“Oh yes,” Ignacio said gently.
“Shit. Excuse me, Father. But I’m guessing these aren’t some of your converts.”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Where’s that guy?” Striding forward, scattering the ants, Mankiewicz waded into his watching crew and found Celso, weaving, cringing and smiling at the rear of the crowd. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “I thought these tribes were north of the mountains.”
An interpreter said in Portuguese, “He thought the Indians were out of the way.”
“The bureau has determined there are no uncontacted tribes in this area,” Celso replied
“And the bureau is rather conveniently wrong,” Todd told him in Portuguese.
“What did he just say?” Mankiewicz asked the interpreter.
“I don’t know why you’re so certain,” Celso told Todd. “I’m not.”
“You’re splitting hairs.” Todd turned to the geologist and said in English, “Talk to Doutor Eduardo about the skirmish here, with my compliments.”
“What doctor?”
“This is very confusing for you, I’m afraid,” Ignacio said.
Celso met Todd’s eye for the first time and told him, “You should leave this to Brazilians.”
“Tell that to your friend here,” Todd replied.
“No one’s asking the geologist to make any decisions. He’s collecting rocks.”
“Leave it to Brazilians,” the crew murmured.
“What’s going on here?” Mankiewicz asked.
“A disagreement,” the interpreter answered helpfully.
“Look,” Todd told the geologist. “After the incident, we came up here to investigate. We didn’t find the people, but we found an abandoned longhouse, one of their communal houses. Even Doutor Eduardo — who owns the controlling interest in your Rio Anna Mines, by the way — Doutor Eduardo himself admits that these are nomadic people. It doesn’t matter whether we met up with them. An incident combined with a longhouse proves that they consider this to be part of their territory. The Indian bureau has been persuaded to give you your permit on a technicality: the people can go to a reserve northeast of the mountains. But that doesn’t mean they want to stay there, much less that they plan to stay there. You’re not safe from an ambush, I’m afraid, and you’re even less safe if you fire back. Because I’m telling you, if I hear a word about any of these people getting hurt, I am coming in here with an international campaign that’s going to carbonize your ass. Is that sufficiently clear?”
Mankiewicz sat down on a folding chair. “I bail out of that Panama business and this is what I get.”
Breaking a silence, Ignacio asked, “Do you speak Spanish?”
“Mas o menos,” the geologist replied, in a heavy accent.
“Mas o menos,” the translator repeated in Portuguese. The phrase was the same in both languages, but the pronunciation was different enough that Mankiewicz didn’t understand. He appeared to have no ear for languages, but Ignacio smiled at hi
m hopefully and began to speak in elegant Castillian.
“A moment without complications doesn’t exist. Nor a decision without adverse consequences.” He switched back to English to add, “Yours is such a hopeful language, I sometimes feel it difficult to express myself. It’s curious, for instance, that you have no adequate translation for the French ‘l’etranger.’ I find that the title of the book by Camus is sometimes left untranslated, or translated in different ways. The publishers can’t agree: the outsider, the stranger. Neither of which quite captures the degree of dislocation, perhaps because you prefer not to acknowledge that there are places where you might not belong.”
The interpreter was listening carefully, but Mankiewicz only shook his head. “I’m a scientist, Father. This leaves me behind. I’m afraid I’m going to need some instructions.” He rubbed his face unhappily with both hands. “What a mess,” he said.
They headed back downriver from the base camp not much more than an hour after they’d arrived. Celso stood just inside the forest to watch them leave. The agent probably knew what Jefferson was planning, but he didn’t try to stop it. He had to realize there was nothing left for him to say and no room in which to manoeuvre. Poor Celso. It would appear that the green apple had been harvested. Then boxed.
Jefferson didn’t travel much beyond the first bend in the river before putting back to shore. He repacked his kit and asked for a blessing from Ignacio, then slipped off into the forest. Todd took over his outboard, and their diminished convoy headed downstream until they reached the camp of settlers Jefferson trusted. The man agreed to keep the boat until Jefferson got back, while his wife insisted on feeding Ignacio and Todd large portions of their scarce dinner, fish soup with farinha, dried manioc root. Afterwards, they wouldn’t hear of a priest sleeping outdoors, and vacated their rough board house in the encroaching dark, tying their hammocks to the nearby trees. Left inside the smoky house, hanging his hammock in the failing light, Todd paused to scratch himself, deciding he would have preferred the night’s flying insects to the lice and fleas inside. But there was little choice. As the night grew cool, the settlers lit a fire in the clearing and quickly fell asleep.
Todd was exhausted, but knew it would be hours before he could sleep himself. Swinging into his hammock, he could feel the day’s events chitter in his head. And pity, undercutting his rage. The poor bugger of a misplaced geologist. Poor Celso, poor Jefferson. He felt especially sorry for his itchy, overburdened self.
But Todd couldn’t work up any fellow feeling for Doutor Eduardo. Maybe the old man had cried once at the margin of a river that he was piteously misunderstood, but Todd had his doubts. He doubted the doutor cared what anyone thought, as long as they couldn’t prove it in a court of law. He was sure Mankiewicz was right. The papers for Rio Anna Mines were perfectly in order. Soon Doutor Eduardo would order the construction of a model mine that would have the international business press admiring his standardized extraction of more gold or copper or nickel or iron than the world should properly need, forgetting about the unknown species that were lost each day, the illegal mines that would soon flourish in its shadow, and the inconvenient inhabitants of the land whom Todd was afraid were gone now forever. The forest people. Maybe Jefferson.
How had the old man arranged the tribe’s disappearance? Shifting in his hammock, Todd was certain the doutor was behind it. Or more accurately, above it, like a god. A modern god. Post-modern? Certainly post-Darwin: the instigator, the creator who set all things in motion and then stepped back. Not the ancient, meddling Jehovah with his plagues and tests and groaning judgments, dictating moral strictures from on high. No, there was no question of morality in this case, was there?
“Ignacio?” he asked. “You still awake?”
“Unfortunately. The fleas.”
Todd shifted again to face in Ignacio’s direction. “Do you think there’s any chance the people might really have gone to the reserve?”
“If they did, Jefferson will find out,” Ignacio replied. “He says he knows the back way in. The front door being so firmly closed.”
It was one of the few policies of the Indian bureau Todd agreed with: the practice of refusing outsiders access to designated reserves in an effort to protect unacculturated tribes. He felt the full irony of having just helped Jefferson circumvent it, although judging from Ignacio’s tone, this didn’t bother the priest nearly as much as the fleas. He seemed prepared to take the opposite position, and argue that the people should be left free to make their own choices. It was a genial-sounding approach, although Todd had never been able to understand how newly-contacted tribes were supposed to arrive at a sophisticated understanding of all the available choices.
“What if the bureau opened up the reserves, Ignacio?” he asked. “And the first ones in were Protestant evangelicals. Holy hallelujah, let us cover their nakedness — presumably in second-hand clothes. Conversion as second-hand clothes. I’m starting to mix my metaphors. But it can’t be something you support.”
“Mixing metaphors? Conversion is something less flippant, I’m afraid. Being a matter of immortal souls.’’
Todd felt he was grasping Ignacio’s point so slowly, he might as well have been reaching through water.
“I’m sorry if I embarrass you,” Ignacio said. “Faith seems to have become as distasteful a subject as the body once was, to elevated discourse.”
“You weren’t going to try and convert these people?” Todd asked. He sank back in his hammock, feeling mortified. He’d assumed the priest had been helping Jefferson for the sake of justice, and to ease the man’s mind. It had simply never occurred to him that Ignacio might cherish an antique wish to evangelize among the heathen.
“Jefferson knows he must consecrate this marriage,” Ignacio said. “And then there is the question of baptism for his daughter. Jefferson is devout; he wishes this.”
“Baptizing one of these children, Ignacio?”
“Oh, yes,” he said.
Todd closed his eyes in pain. “And I was a party to this,” he said.
“It will eventually count in your favour, I’m sure.”
“Now you’re being flippant, Ignacio. Please, I’m actually feeling terrible.” He levered himself up again. “You can’t really want to go in and try to take away these peoples’ indigenous beliefs? If there is a God, surely it doesn’t matter what road you use to reach him. What religion, what metaphors.”
“But I’m a priest, you know,” Ignacio said. “Every week, I conduct a mass in which I take small wafers and some very bad wine and they become the sacred body and the blood of Christ. This is not a metaphor, my friend, but a miracle. It may have become bad odour to talk about faith these days. But allow me to say that I live at a place where the metaphor becomes reality.”
Todd pursed his lips unhappily. “So you’re a metaphor and I’m a cliché,” he said. “Both of us thrashing around in a legendary wilderness. Oh, this makes me feel just fine.”
“I’m glad of that, at least,” Ignacio said, settling back into his blankets.
Now Todd knew he wouldn’t sleep at all. Unhappy, uncertain and increasingly cold, he shifted restlessly from side to side. Insects were running relays across his belly. Soon he needed to urinate. He might try to play the intellectual, but he was really just a flea bite weighed down by a bladder. He scarcely had enough energy left to get himself outside. Only with the greatest effort could he drop his feet out of the hammock and reel across the pitch-black room, groping for his pack, his flashlight, and finally the door.
Outside, unzipping, Todd felt only contempt for himself. He kept presuming such neat divisions in life, right lined up against wrong, when really there was neither unmixed good nor unchanging bad. Far from being a fighter for the good and true, he was simply one of the checks and balances humankind threw out to ensure its own continuation. He was a small part of a great unconscious dialectic; an amoral,
perhaps genetic attempt to ensure the preservation of the species. There was something defensible in that, or at least inevitable. Yet as he zipped himself up again, Todd suspected that even if this were true, if there were this role, he was far from the best person to fill it. Too many people saw him as a symbol of something they didn’t like, which gave them an excuse to stop listening to what he said. Padding inside, he wondered if he should give up and go home. Right home, to his own house, and spend his time taking care of the children. There was something symbolically pleasing in that, a man renouncing his privileged position to take on the world’s most undervalued task. And Holly would certainly like it.
“Ignacio,” he asked, grasping his hammock.
“Yes, my friend.”
“Do you ever have doubts?”
“No.”
But he’s a fanatic, Todd thought. He shone his torch on the priest.
“No doubts at all?”
“I’m not that big,” Ignacio replied.
“I’m sorry, Ignacio, but is that a case of false humility?”
“Very deserved humility.”
Todd lot the torch drop. “So I fail even at that,” he said.
16
Holly sounded far away. It wasn’t just the long-distance line, but the nervous way she answered the phone. It had been a week since Todd left her on the airplane, and he’d hoped to find her sounding more like herself. It was just as well she couldn’t see into his booth at the telephone company, where the fluorescent tube cast too harsh a light on everything he’d been through since.
Nothing had gone smoothly. A few hours out from the camp of Jefferson’s friend, on a river as wide as a small, muddy lake, their motor started coughing, threatening to stall. Ignacio tried to gear down, but the motor cut out instead, and when Todd came back, reaching to open the casing, he burned his hand on the overheated metal. Ignacio didn’t understand; he’d just had the motor reconditioned. Ducking his hand in the river, Todd felt paranoid enough to wonder whether this might have been the problem, and shivered to feel a surge of cold wind on his back. Looking north, he saw a storm running toward them, and nudged Ignacio. They both gaped at the boiling clouds, then Ignacio grabbed a paddle to make for shore, while Todd wrapped his hand in a strip of torn shirt and quickly joined him.
Drink the Sky Page 17