BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “I was having a nice conversation with another passenger. Leave the boat…? I don’t know. But I can tell you that I seriously thought of throwing a few of them overboard during the night.”

  “I would kill for a nice cold shower.” She rubbed her neck. “I feel as though I were in a sauna!”

  “Unfortunately,” said the professor’s voice, “I’m afraid this is going to take quite a while, dear.”

  He poked his head out like a mole from the depths of his hammock, which was almost on the floor. He rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses.

  “If the hydroplane is waiting for us tomorrow in Belo Monte, as we are expecting, we’ll start right away. So it may be a while before we get the chance to enjoy luxuries like showers or decent beds.”

  We spent the rest of the day wandering on deck, looking at the distant and never -ending horizon of rainforest. We were each lost in our own thoughts, intimidated by the idea of entering an unknown world where we could easily disappear without a trace.

  The monotonous journey was interrupted at dusk, when an engine breakdown forced us to get close to the right bank of the river in order to fix it. It was the first time we had come close to the riverbank since leaving Santarem, and all the passengers came out on deck to look over the side of the boat in an expectant silence. We stared spellbound as we followed the powerful beam that swept that bank from the bridge and which only showed in return the ghostly shadows of an army of trees whose roots were deep in the river bed. There were no beaches, no firm land anywhere, only dense vegetation that emitted intense, contradictory smells of flowers, damp, and putrefaction.

  Along with some other passengers, we helped the members of the crew to launch half a dozen ropes from the shoreward side, trying to secure the boat as well as we could to the trees at our side and those that hung overhead. Anything to prevent the current which, although weaker than in mid-river, was still strong, from dragging the boat while the repairs were completed.

  Just as I was tying a rope to a deck pin, the fun started.

  First there came a series of dry thumps like scattered hail which bounced off the wooden roof of the boat. Several heads came out, surprised, only to discover there were no clouds and the stars shone bright above us.

  Suddenly something hard bumped against my shoulder, bounced, and landed at my feet. It was a round black stone. Intrigued, I bent to pick it up and found it very light. But the moment I had it in my hand that stone began to move, which scared me so much that I instinctively threw it out of the boat. Then I noticed there were people on deck screaming with fear, children running and hopping and laughing while most of the others were just wrapping their raincoats over their heads like tents in absolute indifference.

  I did not understand anything.

  At first I thought everybody had gone crazy at the same time. But I felt the thump of one of those things again, and then another and another, like one of those small black balls a naughty kid might throw at you from a thicket. In a few moments the deck began to appear carpeted by those mysterious black objects, which came out of nowhere to crash against the boat in ever increasing numbers.

  It took me a while to realize they were not objects but living creatures. Big flying beetles to be exact, which for some unknown reason were diving like kamikazes upon the deck and dying shortly after hitting the floor.

  The deafening noise they made when they slammed against the boat was like the sound of a machine gun. While some of the passengers were trying to take cover from the crazy attack as best they could, the others just covered themselves and went on with what they were doing: playing cards or having a lively conversation, as if being bombarded by suicidal beetles were the commonest thing in the world.

  Almost as incredible as their appearance was their sudden disappearance. In a matter of seconds the attack ceased and only the myriad bright black bodies writhing on the floor or being crunched by the passengers’ flip-flops stopped you from believing it had only been a nightmare produced by indigestion.

  But that was not all.

  The crew, armed with brooms and shovels, immediately set about cleaning the boat. They threw all the little bodies into the water, to the delight of a great number of fish which, even though invisible in the muddy water, made the river around the hull boil as they feasted on the dead beetles.

  Then, when it seemed the situation was returning to normal, we began to realize those were not the only insects that had come to visit. The silence of the rainforest and the lull of the river were progressively invaded by a hum as familiar as it was amazing in its intensity.

  The mosquitoes were coming.

  Anyone who has never been in a wild region can hardly imagine what it is like to be engulfed by a cloud of mosquitoes. Taking advantage of our immobility, drawn by the lights and the smell of fresh blood, the unstoppable wave launched itself upon the boat like a biblical plague of wings and stings. By the time I realized what was happening, my hands and clothes were covered by mosquitoes. I struggled to keep them out of my nostrils as I covered my ears and spat out the ones that were trying to get into my mouth.

  Now the passengers were running here and there, screaming and waving their arms around.

  I could barely see anything: the blasted creatures even got caught in my eyelashes. I thought, foolishly, of fetching the bottles of repellent. But against an attack of that size that would not have been of much use, so I decided to look for the professor and Cassandra instead.

  I walked with eyes almost closed and my arm stretched out as if I were wandering through a darkened house, calling my friends amid the racket and trying to guess where our hammocks were.

  Suddenly a hand reached out from nowhere and pulled me without any consideration, making me trip and fall flat on my face on the wooden floor.

  I looked up in an attempt to locate the culprit. To my great surprise I found myself in the little room where we had stowed our luggage. A dozen passengers, Cassandra and Professor Castillo among them, looked at me in amusement under the yellow light of the naked bulb.

  “Órale, Ulysses,” she said with a mocking smile, “how nice of you to stop by.”

  9

  When the sun came up over the rainforest the following morning, it found us already heading up the tannin-tinted waters of the Xingu River.

  The course of this tributary was much narrower than that of the Amazon, so the banks were only a hundred yards or so from each side of the boat. Now we could see the occasional monkey feeding on a branch or a sharp cormorant diving through the tea-colored waters.

  Meanwhile, life on board went on being essentially boring. The only way to fight the tedium was to join other passengers and try to start a conversation, although the thick Brazilian accent of that area made it hard and we always ended in a series of misunderstandings and gestures that were not as universal as one would imagine.

  At midmorning, while wandering around the deck, I came across Cassandra. According to the crew we still had about four or five hours before we reached our destination at Belo Monte. She was sitting alone on some sacks of rice at the stern deck and staring at the wake of the boat as it disappeared in the windings we left behind.

  I approached and sat down beside her, but she did not move.

  “Beautiful view, isn’t it?” I said after a while.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye but did not say a word.

  “Are you still mad at me?” I asked.

  She turned to me slowly. “Should I be?”

  “Hmm, well, I don’t think so but… as I hardly heard from you since we split up…”

  Cassie stared at the horizon and exhaled. “Those months we spent together,” she whispered softly. “Why did it go so wrong? I thought… I honestly believed that you and I…” She left the sentence in midair.

  “So did I. Really. But that’s how things turned out.”

  “But, why? Why couldn’t we fix it?”

  Cassie’s eyes twinkled in the sunlight and their
color seemed to be a part of the emerald forest around us.

  I noticed that her wavy blond hair was a little shorter than the last time I had seen her, so that now it fell below her shoulders. She looked just as I remembered her the first time we met, on another ship and as part of another expedition in the Caribbean Sea. Many months had passed since then, but looking at her I could swear it had only been a few minutes from the moment I fell hopelessly in love with her.

  I let myself get carried away by the moment and I moved toward her. I closed my eyes and... ended up kissing empty air.

  I opened one eye and there she was, leaning away and looking at me as if I were an orangutan who had tried to seduce her.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she asked, frowning.

  I obviously had no answer to that. “I... don’t know,” I mumbled, “I thought that you... that I...”

  Cassandra took a deep breath. “You see? That’s exactly what I mean! You don’t listen to what I’m saying. I’m talking about the past, my feelings, what happened between us… and all you have in your head is sex”

  “I would’ve been happy with a kiss.”

  “Just shut up, will you?”

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, Cassie. Honestly, all I want is for us to be friends again and feel good with each other.”

  “Yeah, right. Naked friends!”

  “Now you’re acting the way you always did!” I shook my head in recrimination. “First you confuse me. Then when I do what I think is right, you accuse me of being an insensitive moron.”

  “I confuse you!” She was getting furious. “Talking about what happened between us confuses you?”

  “Yes!” I blurted without thinking. “Well, not really. It was all too complicated.”

  “Oh, yes. And putting your tongue in my mouth makes things easier, right?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I said, looking up to the sky as I got to my feet. “I’d rather throw myself overboard than carry on arguing with you.”

  “Go ahead,” she said invitingly. “I won’t stop you.”

  I was angry at her, at myself, and at the turns destiny took. I walked away from her and from the emotional cramps she gave me as far as I could, which was the bow of the boat.

  Apparently nothing had changed since we had been living together in Barcelona. In spite of the attraction we felt for each other, the differences —or perhaps the similarities— of our characters made us constantly clash. We had argued about the stupidest things so that life together had been an exhausting roller coaster of sex and adventure, with deep holes of bad moods, friction, and misunderstandings.

  The weird thing is that in spite of feeling a great relief when we first split up, as time went by my treacherous memory decided to erase all the bad moments of its own accord. Lately, rare had been the time when I did not miss her sorely.

  Of course, scenes like the one we had just enacted helped me remember why we were not together any more.

  10

  At about two in the afternoon, surrounded by a teeming crowd that blocked the way to the narrow gangway leading to the dock, we finally left the Bahía do Guajará. The equatorial sun felt like molten lead over our heads. There were hundreds of passengers carrying bulky suitcases, sacks, and baskets of chickens, pigs with their legs tied together, and little children crying as they clung to their mothers’ backs, frightened by the whole process of disembarking.

  At the same time, another similar crowd was blocking the other end of the gangway, eager to get to the best spots to hang their hammocks for the journey back to Santarem. On top of this, twenty or thirty vendors of dried fish, sodas, and trinkets as well as a stream of shirtless stevedores shouting their services contributed to the chaos that reigned on that precarious river dock in the little settlement of Belo Monte. This was the last harbor on a river that from here on ran through more than twelve thousand miles of virgin rainforest.

  It was the ramshackle border of what we could call civilization.

  At the other end of the pier our next means of transport, tied to the wooden landing stage, swayed with the current. It was a shiny amphibian Cessna Caravan plane painted in navy blue. On the sides of the fuselage was the logo of the AZS Building Company.

  As soon as we started walking toward the hydroplane, carrying our bags, the door opened and a man climbed down the floaters onto the landing stage. At the sight of him, I started to wonder whether going upriver in a canoe might be a better bet.

  The opposite of the supposed image of a pilot was summed up in this individual. He was not much over five feet, dark skinned, with a bristly mustache, and generally unkempt. From the corner of my eye I could see the professor and Cassandra studying him apprehensively from top to toe.

  With his old flip-flops, frayed shorts and oil-stained shirt, all he needed was a Mexican hat and a pair of pistols to look like a follower of Pancho Villa.

  “Boa tarde,” he greeted us in a gritty voice.

  “Boa tarde,” we responded all together.

  “Are you the hydroplane pilot?” I asked, praying he would say no.

  “Eu sou,” he said, shaking my hand and confirming my fears. “Getúlio Oliveira, a sua disposição.”

  He must have noticed the way we were looking at him. Pointing at himself he added haughtily,

  “É meu dia livre…”

  In less than twenty minutes we had loaded our equipment on the plane and told him the exact point where we wanted to be dropped. So before I realized, I was sitting in the copilot’s seat comparing the route that appeared on the GPS with the navigation chart I had spread out on my knees. Every once in a while I looked out of the window at the ocean of verdure that sped under our feet at a hundred and eighty-six miles per hour.

  As far as the eye could see, everything was rainforest. Not a village, not a road, not a single clearing where the sunlight reached the ground. Seen from the air the Amazon rainforest could be mistaken for any other jungle: nothing but trees, trees, and more trees, going on and on ad infinitum in an overwhelming green monotony. But experience told me that this impression was wrong and that under that canvas of treetops which hid the floor of the rainforest, life swarmed as in no other place on Earth, and thousands of species of birds, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates—many of them not yet classified by biologists—had made the rainforest their kingdom.

  I was only hoping that the scruffy pilot on my left managing the controls nonchalantly was more concerned about the state of his plane than his appearance, so that we would not have to attempt an emergency landing in the middle of that uninhabited expanse.

  The professor, stretched out on two seats behind me, once more under the influence of an alcohol and Diazepam cocktail, was snoring contentedly. It had been the only way to make him board the plane. Although he was resigned to flying so as to save us weeks of painful land journey, at the moment of boarding he had suffered a panic attack when he saw how apparently fragile the hydroplane was.

  He had asked us to hold on for a second and taken a couple of anti-anxiety pills. Then, under the pretense of getting a soda, he had gone to the dock canteen. Seeing he was not coming back I had gone there to fetch him and found him slumped over the counter with three empty caipirinha glasses in front of him. He was mumbling something about a boat with wings which he was not getting on unless he was dead. I had almost dragged him back to the pier, then with the help of Cassie and the pilot we had made him as comfortable as possible on the plane. Then we left him to sleep it over, knowing it was the only way to make him fly with us.

  Meanwhile Cassie had sat in the last row of seats making it clear she did not feel like talking to me. The pilot, also annoyed at having to work on what seemed to be his day off, had only replied in monosyllables to any question I dared to ask. So, lulled by the redundancy of the landscape and the purring of the engine, not to mention the two nights of insomnia on the boat that were suddenly beginning to take their toll, I fell asleep like a baby with the cha
rt of the course of the Xingu still in my hands.

  I remember dreaming that I was walking through a jungle like no other I had ever been to. It was radiant, and full of colorful flowers that grew on the sides of a pebbled path as though in a well-tended garden. At that moment a beautiful parrot with blue, red, and yellow feathers came to perch on a branch right beside me and with no warning screeched stridently, upsetting that oasis of peace and harmony. I remember that I stared at it with interest because I seemed to recognize a familiar voice in the noisy bird. Just then, the pebbled path seemed to dissolve under my feet. As though caught in a trap, I fell abruptly, then was launched upward violently. Meanwhile the voice was shouting something in an unmistakable Mexican accent.

  I opened my eyes just in time to see the nose of the hydroplane hit the water with a spray of drops and foam, and I discovered with horror that the great mass of dark water of the Xingu River covered the whole windshield. Apparently we had arrived.

  When we hit the surface again I bounced to the ceiling and only missed hitting my head thanks to the seatbelt. The bumping of the floaters against the water shook the plane as if it were about to break into a thousand little pieces. Someone screamed again and this time it had no Mexican accent. It was also closer.

  Although I was surprised at first, I finally recognized the owner of that new voice that sounded so terrified.

  It was my own.

  11

  The plane hit the water again, missing a big rock by a hair’s breadth. If we had even grazed it, the hydroplane’s floaters would have been destroyed.

  The pilot was trying to touch down the right way, in other words against the wind. But that left us at the mercy of the strong current, with the result that the plane was unable to stop.

  “La Gran…” Cassie exclaimed two rows of seats behind me. “Doesn’t this thing have brakes?!”

  For reply the pilot revved down the engine and tried to use the rudder to make it turn. But the huge mass of river water pushed us in a single direction, so that the plane swayed dangerously and threatened to capsize.