Paradise With Serpents

by Robert Carver

  So for much of the time I sat in the little cabin and looked out of the window at the river, and the infrequent collections of mud and timber huts with thatch or rusted corrugated iron roofs. More than ever I felt I was travelling up a branch of the Congo. Usually there were no people to be seen, no smoke from cooking fires, not even a dog or pig scratching nearby. Very occasionally I would spot a woman gutting a fish beside a hut, or an Indian sitting in a canoe close to the shore, fishing. The only life generally, though, were a few scratching fowls, clucking in the dust. Once a settlement was well past, the mozo would come back and open the door, and I could make my way back to where Don Octavio nursed the diesels. ‘Pyragues, policía – muy malo, muy, muy malo,’ he remarked to me, once, grimacing. Pyragues were the secret police. Could there really be police or, even less likely, secret police right out here, in the middle of nowhere?

  More important, I felt, was the parlous state of the engines. The diesels were constantly giving trouble – misfiring, overheating, running irregularly. It would be too much to expect that they had been properly marinized. Sometimes one, or both, would stop completely, and we would start to move backwards with the current, drifting downriver again, until the mozo moved aft and started one of the Johnson outboards. He only ever used one, and then at very low revs: petrol was expensive and the outboards used a lot of fuel. Don Octavio would then dive into the engine compartment and start to tinker. We lost time when this happened, for the lancha reduced speed appreciably. Oily, covered in sweat, the capitán would eventually emerge, and the diesels would cough reluctantly into life again.

  Lunch was cold rice, grilled river fish caught by the mozo, with chili sauce, followed by flan, or crème caramel from a plastic container, and another orange, followed by more excellent coffee, doubtless from Brazil. ‘¿Te gusta más caa, señor?’ the mozo asked me after lunch. He had an opened bottle of Tricolor brand rum and three glasses. I said I did, and he balanced the three glasses on a sack of cement. The rum was sweet and strong. We drank three glasses each, then I retired to my cabin for a siesta. I rigged up the mosquito net and crawled under it. There were as yet no signs of mosquitoes but I wanted to be sure. I lit another cheroot and let the dull pounding of the engines relax me towards sleep. The cheroot tasted mild and nutty after the rum and coffee. I stubbed it out, after a while, and turning on my side, closed my eyes. I slept for several hours. When I awoke the sun was declining to the west. My mouth tasted bad until I had a swig of water. I looked outside: nothing had changed except the light.

  Thus we progressed upriver. There was a small latrine that dropped straight into the river in the stern, where, from time to time, I clambered to relieve myself, hoping all the candirú were asleep or otherwise engaged. At regular intervals the mozo came to replenish my thermos with hot water for maté. The two of them had their own maté, but this was a crew-only affair, and I was not invited to participate, for which I was grateful. Supper was more rice, this time with a large, tough beefsteak, mandioca, tomato sauce, followed by a banana and more coffee. There was a small portable icebox amidships which ran off electricity generated by the diesels, where the food was kept cold enough so that it did not start to rot, though the box was not cold enough to produce ice. I saw to my alarm that by dusk I had managed to drink, with a certain amount of help from the crew, well over a bottle and a half of rum. After supper, at which we finished the second bottle, the mozo appeared with a third. ‘¿Otro, señor?’ he enquired, but more as a formality than anything else: already he had the top off and was pouring three glasses. None of us was drunk, but we had been drinking steadily all day. This, I assumed, was what all Paraguayan men who could afford it did, day in and day out: it was no wonder the country had a severe alcohol problem. When night fell I retired to my cabin and rerigged my mosquito net again, making sure no insects had managed to get inside. It grew cooler and the night air was pleasant. I had done nothing all day except lounge and eat and sleep, but I felt tired and went to sleep easily, and slept well – perhaps it was all the rum.

  In the morning Don Octavio said to me after breakfast, ‘Hoy – Concepción,’ today we would arrive in Concepción. And we did make it that day, though very late in the afternoon, due to more engine breakdowns. I was led to my cabin and escorted inside by the mozo as we approached. ‘Mucha policía – muy malo,’ he explained. ‘Tranquilo, tranquilo aquí, señor.’ If I had been spotted on the approach I suspect Don Octavio would have been forced to pay out some propinas or incentivos. We passed under a large bridge crossing the river and slowly made our way to the dockside of Concepción. Low, decrepit buildings in crumbling, dirty stucco, rotting and leprous, lined the waterfront. Rows of wooden carts, on old car and truck axles and wheels with rubber tyres, stood by the dock, with small, exhausted-looking horses and mules between their shafts. One or two battered pick-up trucks waited nearby, the drivers asleep, slumped over the steering wheels, or in the back on piles of sacks. The main street led off the port, pitted and holed like a country track. Rusted tin roofs and looping telephone wires moved off towards the horizon. There was a concrete war memorial by the wharf, and along the river bank were moored ancient cargo steamers, apparently deserted. I grew to know this vista well, for I had to sit in the cabin, peering out of the shutters, for hour upon hour, while the capitán disembarked to sort out whatever paperwork needed to be dealt with. The mozo lay on a sack of rice and dozed. I finished the rum, my hot water for maté, and my cold water. Eventually, finally, well after dark, Don Octavio returned, and we moved off again, upriver, into more permanent – and more private – moorings. ‘Cinco pequeños minutos, solamente, Don Roberto,’ the capitán promised me, but I knew what that meant, and the mozo prepared more food, rice, spam from a tin, chili sauce, chipá – and beer – Don Octavio had bought three cans in Concepción. It was Brazilian, and tasted quite different to the usual Paraguayan brew.

  We ate, and then the mozo made more coffee. Don Octavio had a mobile phone and made several hushed calls in Jalapé, in which my name featured. But nothing happened. I went back to my cabin and prepared for another night on board. But after several hours, just as I was about to turn in and go to sleep, a black, closed hansom cab drawn by a skinny horse appeared to glide out of the gloom on the Concepción side of the river. Don Octavio had a low conversation with an invisible driver, lost in shadows, and then came to get me. ‘Don Umberto y los amigos de su amigo,’ he said, meaning Mac. I repacked my meagre belongings, wrapped the automatic in its cloth again and made my way forward. I gave the mozo two dollars instead of one, which he took without comment or thanks. When I thanked him he said, ‘A sus ordones siempre, muy mio señor,’ and gave a half-bow. I had paid Don Octavio his twenty dollars earlier, when the mozo had been aft, so as to retain decorum. He had folded it carefully and put it in his wallet along with the note Mac had given him in Asunción. The capitán helped me off the boat and on to the shore. He shook my hand and said, ‘Vaya con Dios.’ I thanked him again, turned, and climbed up into the hansom cab. ‘Bienvenido a Concepción, señor,’ said a voice from the driver’s seat. Even before I had stowed my day pack and sat down we had bounced away at a cracking pace. We clipped along over cobbles, and I clung on to a leather strap which hung from the side. The glass windows rattled against the wood. There was straw on the floor for muddy shoes. I had never been in a hansom cab before, but the whole experience was entirely familiar to me from the tales of Sherlock Holmes. My grandfather Cecil Flower had been sent to Malvern College in the 1890s and had been met by a hansom cab at the station. His father had given him a gold sovereign, but in his nervousness he had dropped it in the straw, and had to scrabble about trying to find it: he never did, and cried bitter tears at his loss.

  The blinds were pulled down, so I could not look out and no one could look in. They were fixed in place and I could not open them. It was now pitch black, the tropical night having fallen with its usual suddenness. I wondered if the revolution had arrived in Concepción, if the Oviedi
stas were in control. After the traffic and noise of Asunción, the calm of Concepción seemed unnatural. Only a few vehicles, drawn by oxen or horses, had passed us. A few minutes’ drive later, it seemed, we stopped, and the driver got down and opened the door for me. I got out. In front of me stood a crumbling Italianate stucco palazzo from the early part of the 20th century, completely enveloped in an overgrown garden of palm trees, rampant bougainvillea, orange trees, limes, and bananas, all visible under a pale moon. ‘El Hotel Suizo, señor,’ said the driver, indicating a rusting metal gate, which indeed bore that legend on a faded brass plate; ‘con electricidad y agua corriente’ it also boasted – with electricity and running water. If Asunción had suggested the 1950s and the ambience of Graham Greene, in Concepción I had stepped right back into the world of Joseph Conrad. ‘¿Cuanto?’ I asked, fumbling for my wallet. ‘Todo reglado, señor’ – already paid for. I tipped him half a dollar anyway. ‘Vengo por usted mañana por las nueve y media, señor – ¿bueno?’ ‘Bueno,’ I replied – 9.30 in the morning would be fine. I made my way down the path through the garden towards the hotel with the driver’s soft ‘Buenas noches, señor’ echoing in my ears. I realized I hadn’t actually seen his face, he had been in shadow the whole time. I wondered where I would be going to tomorrow at 9.30. To see Don Umberto, perhaps?

  The double front doors opened to my hand soundlessly. The entrance hall lay strewn in shadows. A youth lay slumped forward, fast asleep on the mahogany reception counter. A low light flickered from a brass oil lamp by his side. Large, lumpish furniture, armchairs and sofas, padded with horsehair which was now coming unstuffed, lined the walls. There was wainscotting painted brown to resemble fumed oak, pot plant stands with palms in brass buckets, and framed pictures of the Swiss Lakes on the walls, sepia photographs from the 1890s. Everything spoke of the first decade of the 20th century. The telephone on the reception desk was brass, of the crank handle and blow variety, as seen in silent movies of the pre-1914 era. Behind the sleeping desk clerk were wooden pigeon holes on the wall, from which hung the hotel room keys. None was missing – the hotel was empty. I cleared my throat, and when the clerk looked up at me muzzily, I asked, ‘Do you have a single room with a bathroom?’ in Spanish. ‘No, señor,’ he replied. I found this hard to believe. ‘No hay baños, señor.’ No bathrooms. A single room, then? Wordlessly he took a key from behind him, and with the other grasped the oil lamp. I followed him, cloaked in darkness, up the creaking wooden staircase. Despite the brass plaque outside there seemed to be neither electricity nor running water at the Hotel Suizo. On the first floor, down a corridor, the clerk opened a room with his key. The room was huge and had six beds in it. A single, I queried. Only for you, señor, he promised. All the rooms had many beds, it signified nothing. There was a china bowl and jug for ablutions and a chamber pot for convenience. It was three dollars a night. I took it. Was there a restaurant for breakfast? No, there wasn’t, but one could be found just down the street. After further interrogation I found the hotel could supply Coca-Cola, a bottle of caa, a bottle of mineral water, two types of chocolate snack bar, one called ‘El Snob’, with a picture of a pre-revolutionary French aristocrat in pink frills looking down his lorgnette snootily at one, and another called an ‘Umlaut Bar’, depicting a mean-looking Neanderthal, Bavarian-style youth with violent blond straw hair, dressed in lederhosen, gleefully blowing down a large alpenhorn which curled to his feet. Also at his feet were either several discarded, unwrapped Umlaut bars, or else a vagrant pod of respectablesized human turds, whose previous owner appeared to have been fairly seriously, even painfully constipated. Unwrapped, the Umlaut bar did indeed bear a remarkable resemblance to human excrement. It was full of roughage, in which were nuts and caramel, whereas the El Snob had effeminately pink, decadent-looking crème sandwiched between pallid, wussy-looking wafers. Practising admirable lack of prejudice, I bought two of each, plus Coke, caña and mineral water. I had to descend to the hall again to sign in the register and collect the goodies, which the clerk removed from a large, antique wall safe, which now served as a larder-cumtuck shop. The register was a bulky book covered in leather, and had a blunt-nibbed dip ink pen attached to a chain beside it, so it couldn’t be stolen. The youth poured some of his stale maté into an inkwell to liquify the ink. I scratched my moniker on the lined paper, and added under the column marked ‘occupation’ – capataz de cargadores. Under ‘coming from’ I put ‘Costaguana’ and under ‘going to’ I wrote ‘Provincia Oriental’. I looked to see if Nostromo himself, Mr Gould or Dr Monygham had signed in recently. There was no sign of them. The last guest had left over a month before. Water? I asked. Maana. Breakfast? Maana. Electricity? ‘Unos pequeños cinco minutos, señor.’ I took a candle instead and clambered up to my bedroom, laden with rum and the fixings. The youth’s head was down on the counter again before I even started up the stairs.

  I threw open the windows and shutters. The night was warm and soft, refulgent with amiable tropical scents. I rigged up my mosquito net and lay down under it, drinking rum and Coke, eating my chocolate bars, made in South Korea, I noted, with the ingredients listed in both Spanish and Portuguese. Then I lit a cheroot and blew out the candle, leaving the window open as the room was so stuffy: this was a mistake, but I didn’t realize because I was so tired. I put my glass down on the beside table, stubbed out my cheroot, and closed my eyes for a few moments. Several hours later, the room now quite cold, I awoke suddenly with an unnamed dread and an unnaturally fast-beating heart. The room was bathed in clear moonlight. Two large black slippers, outside the mosquito net, had attached themselves to my big toes. I gasped with horror, reached for my lighter and snapped it on. The creatures squeaked and gibbered in terror at the light, and flopped off my feet, fluttering their leathery wings with frantic attempts to get airborne, bloated as they were with my blood. I gave an appalled shriek and leapt out of the bed as if scalded. Vampire bats! I kicked and struck at them as they tried to get out of the still open window, then, suddenly, they were gone. I shut the window, scoured the room for more of their fellows, and then examined my big toes. Both bore their teethmarks, and welling gouts of blood. I felt sick and weak, and fell back on to the bed. I drank a glass of caa neat and then bathed each toe in rum as well, the alcohol not stinging at all – the anaesthetic still working no doubt. How long had they been there? How much blood had I lost? Were the bats rabid? Well, I would know the last soon enough. I examined the room for other bichos – malevolent wildlife – found a couple of mosquitoes, crushed them with my shoe, and then went back to bed under my net. The moonlight was so bright I had not even needed to light my candle. It took me more than an hour to get to sleep again.

  The next thing I knew was that the youth from the desk below was knocking on my door, telling me that the cab was at the door waiting for me below. It was 9.45. The question of breakfast now became irrelevant. In ten minutes I was trotting through the rutted streets of Concepción, in the cab, the blinds still down. We stopped at another of the town’s fin de siècle Italianate villas, this example of one storey only, with a colonnaded portico in front, the floor to which was covered in terracotta tiles. There was no sign as to what this mansion might house. I got out, and clapped my hands three times, loudly, this being etiquette in rural Paraguay to announce one’s presence. The hansom cab clipped away behind me. After a long pause, in which two green lizards darted rapidly across the tiles under the portico, the front doors, these screened in elaborate wrought-iron work, behind which was frosted glass, were opened from inside. ‘Bienvenido,’ a small, very old man croaked at me. He wore carpet slippers of tartan material, and had a thyroid goitre of impressive proportions hanging from the side of his throat. His voice sounded husky and conspiratorial. He ushered me inside, into a large salon devoid of furniture save for a huge desk and several hard, old-fashioned wooden chairs. He indicated that I be seated and left me alone for a quarter of an hour or so. He returned with a bright red enamel coffee pot, a cup and saucer, a bo
wl of sugar and an aluminium spoon, and another El Snob bar, evidently a Concepción speciality, plus a bunch of five small finger bananas. These were all very welcome. The coffee was superlative, rich and strong, evidently straight from Brazil. It was perhaps the best coffee I have ever drunk in my life. The old man – some sort of caretaker I assumed – returned once again with a bottle of mineral water, again from Brazil, and a thick glass tumbler. I was grateful for the water as already the day seemed hot. I had travelled north towards the equator, and Concepción felt more of a tropical city than had Asunción. In fact, I soon began to feel as if I had actually left Paraguay behind completely, had entered another country, which resembled provincial Brazil circa 1910.

  I had brought my day pack with me, Mac’s automatic wrapped in its checked cloth. I kept it within easy reach. I had no idea where I was or who I would be meeting. My big toes both hurt and were leaking blood into my socks. I wanted to bathe them in hot water and get to a pharmacy to see if they had any suggestions for bat bite ointment. A long, long pause ensued. Nothing happened for what seemed like hours. I ate and drank everything and smoked three cheroots, very slowly. Finally, the old man reappeared with another pot of coffee and more mineral water, but no more Snob bars or bananas. I put myself in a mood of complete Zen calm and abandoned myself to Fate.