Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  ‘There’s white gold in that forest,’ breathed Anselmo. ‘Just think of it, Katy!’

  He always shortened her name, a habit peculiar to him. Katharine wouldn’t have liked it if anyone else had done it, but from him it was a form of intimacy that she cherished. Briefly, she rested her cheek against his shoulder. She needed his strength and courage, his unwavering self-belief, to shore her up. If anyone could convince her, it would be him.

  ‘We’ll be millionaires! Rich as Croesus. Just imagine…’

  Katharine hardly could imagine, that was the problem. She tried her best. But where Anselmo was all vision and hope and confidence, Katharine often felt herself a poor companion, a vacillating, unreliable foot soldier to his assured, focused general. They just didn’t know anything about this new world they were headed for. Or at least she didn’t, which was perhaps more to the point.

  ‘We’ll be in Manaus any minute now.’ Anselmo pointed ahead where the buildings of the jungle city were just coming into view, rising like beacons from the cleared plain. ‘And then – onwards.’ Anselmo was irrepressible, and, as if to prove it, he flung his hat into the air where it completed three perfect revolutions before he recaptured it, laughing.

  He made it sound so simple. And he wasn’t the only one. Everyone on this ship was the same, the Amazon itself full of hopefuls, of dreamers and believers, all putting their last pound or penny on the guarantee that, in this unpredictable, crazy world, in a century when prices rose and fell faster than a loose woman’s girdle, there was one commodity, one crop that was failsafe. An elixir that was fuelling the world’s development. Whose value would keep on rising, going inexorably up and up and up. Whose future was assured.

  Rubber.

  Everyone else was getting rich from it and Anselmo saw no reason why he and his new wife shouldn’t reap some of the spoils, too. In the border lands between Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, far from the civilised world, rich expanses of forest full to bursting with Hevea brasiliensis, the rubber tree, were waiting to be tapped, to give of their bounty to the modern world that craved it so badly. But to get to these Elysian Fields, they would have to journey deep into the dark heart of the forest, braving whirlpools and waterfalls, snakes and savages, poisoned arrows and piranhas.

  Katharine shuddered, shivering despite the intense, oppressive heat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Anselmo, tenderly. He stroked her chin and looked into her eyes. ‘Not having second thoughts?’

  Katharine gave a short laugh. ‘Of course not. Anyway – too late now. Here we are.’

  As the steamer butted up against the floating dock, there was no disputing that. Here they undoubtedly were, on another continent, in a different hemisphere, a host of unknown challenges – and opportunities – ahead of them.

  Looking out over the harbour, the control that rubber had over everything was immediately apparent. All along the quayside whirred the cogs that oiled the trade: the offices of the aviadors, the merchants who controlled the movement of each precious bolacha, as the balls of rubber were called; the warehouses and the shipping firms. Squeezed into tiny spaces amongst them, the sleazy entrances to brothels and bordellos swallowed up a never-ending stream of customers, disappearing like night beetles into their dark interiors.

  Milling around on the crowded waterfront were men of looks and stature that Katharine had never seen before: copper-skinned Indians; Black men; mulattos; mamelucos; cafuzos and caboclos. And then the dark-skinned Spaniards and Portuguese and the flagelados da seca from the drought-ridden Brazilian interior. The sheer number and array of humanity gathered here was dizzying, and they were all shouting and yelling in their impossible languages, calling up to the boat with offers of God knew what, scrambling to be the closest to the gangplank for when the passengers descended.

  Even from the deck, high above the crowds, Katharine could smell the place, and the people, too: the sharp pungency of sweat; the ripe odour of rotten fruit; the earthiness of the brown, muddied water. A wizened beggar stretched stick-thin arms towards the disembarking passengers, then turned and spat onto the packed mud of the dockside. The spittle lay, foaming, glowing viscously in the light of a street lamp. Katharine looked away. It was too much, too soon.

  A sudden, aching surge of homesickness lurched through her. She thought of the tall, thin terraced house in Clerkenwell, her mother’s tired but kindly eyes, her father pulling on his boots as he made his way out of the door to work in the early morning. She heard the prattle of her brothers and sister, their small hands grabbing for their breakfast bread, their squabbling and laughing, and felt an aching, twisting stab of longing for them all, for home, for what she knew and what was familiar.

  ‘Be strong,’ she whispered to herself under her breath, the way she had when she was being teased at school about her height, her thinness, the colour of her hair or the pallor of her skin. Which had been ridiculous because everyone was skinny and pale; it was just that she was even skinnier and paler than the rest, as well as being tall and ginger, and so seemingly deserved to be tormented for it. She looked out again at the city, willing herself to fall in love with her new life. This was their chance, wasn’t it? Hers and Anselmo’s, their opportunity to make something of their lives.

  If only it didn’t feel quite so daunting right now.

  Perspiration pooled between her breasts and trickled down her back, trapped by the tight constriction of her corset, and she shifted her shoulders, wiggling them to and fro in search of relief from the tightness, the pressure. Down on the dock, three majestic Black women were making serene and steady progress through the melee, huge water jars balanced on their heads, tiny infants on their hips. Katharine watched them, admiring their stately gait, the freedom of their movement, unencumbered by tight cords and bones around their ribs, gliding by as if the world belonged to them.

  Perhaps it does, in this strange, foreign land, thought Katharine. Certainly, more to them than to me.

  One of the women looked up at her, standing transfixed by the ship’s railings. She smiled and waved, shouting something that Katharine couldn’t catch as the words dispersed on the breeze and wouldn’t have understood anyway. Katharine smiled and waved back, hope surging through her. If people were friendly, if they were at least that, then maybe everything would be all right.

  Then her attention was drawn elsewhere, to another place in the crowd where a commotion had broken out. In the ensuing scuffle, Katharine heard the thwack of fist upon flesh, followed by animalistic cries of anguish. The fight brought forth the National Guard, dispersing the crowd with random blows of their night sticks, allowing the beggar man to come back into Katharine’s sight, revealed as the throng took flight. Catching her eye, he lifted his reed-thin arm, stuck out his twig of a forefinger and drew it slowly and deliberately across his throat.

  Horror curdled through Katharine’s whole being, instantly obliterating the positive emotions of only a few minutes before. The beggar, recognising the look, opened his mouth to emit a beastly cackle that, though Katharine could not hear it amidst the din, rang in her head like the sounding of a death knell.

  So, this was the Amazon. Life and death on all sides, slipping from one to the other in a heartbeat, safety and danger constantly vying for the upper hand. It was no place for the fainthearted, the weak or the weary. Katharine wanted so much to be as eager and ready for this adventure as Anselmo was. But as she followed her husband down the unsteady gangplank to the floating quay, her exhilaration mingled with her fear and the fingers of an indefinable dread pawed at her heart.

  Chapter Three

  Standing on the wide first floor veranda of an expansive villa in the smartest residential district of Manaus, Katharine looked around her doubtfully.

  ‘Are you sure we were invited?’ she whispered to Anselmo. A horse and carriage had conveyed them and their luggage speedily there; they were guests of Mr and Mrs Patrick McNamara, though he was currently absent, upriver on his extensive rubber estates. Anse
lmo had made his acquaintance in London before they had left, while doing his research about how to set up in business.

  All Katharine knew was the little Anselmo had told her: that McNamara was one of the most powerful, and richest, rubber barons in the Amazon; his wealth legendary; his five children educated at the best schools and universities in England and Paris. He owned the leases on thousands of estradas of rubber trees and was said to employ over 10,000 workers. His house in Manaus, built from stone on two storeys, was surrounded by lush gardens and ringed by a high fence. The room they were in had tall windows and a plethora of decorative features: scrolls, carvings and elaborate flutings. Everything shouted money – and plenty of it. An introduction to McNamara was a golden ticket, Anselmo believed – he knew people in all the right places. And it had saved them from the expense of a hotel in a city where everything, Katharine had been told, was double the price of London.

  But taking in the disarray that surrounded them, Katharine wasn’t sure they’d made the right decision. Was Mrs McNamara in her right mind to be taking in house guests? She seemed to be in the middle of a major removal operation. Two huge trunks stood open-mouthed against the veranda railings, spilling forth a variety of beautiful fabrics – organdie, lace, tulle and velvet – while cascades of silk, cotton, gauze and Swiss dot billowed from the hands of an army of servant girls as they folded and tucked and rolled. Yet another trunk seemed to be full of sheets and pillowcases, all of the finest linen, the McNamara initials embroidered onto their corners. Perhaps, thought Katharine, Mrs McNamara was going home to Highgate before the rainy season came, when the river swelled to forty feet above its normal height and torrential downpours left the city prone to flooding.

  The arrival of their hostess, accompanied by a flurry of greetings, heralded the possibility of Katharine getting answers to her questions.

  ‘Please, call me Bernadette,’ Mrs McNamara implored. ‘We are really terribly informal here.’

  She smiled brightly but without warmth as she spoke.

  ‘We have come at a bad time,’ apologised Katharine, ‘just when you are leaving. Are you travelling to Europe earlier than planned?’

  Bernadette, distracted by some inexpert packing, spewed forth a stream of reprimands at one of the Indian girls, then a further outburst of impatient instructions at others still arriving with armfuls of rippling cloth. There was something about her manner that was already putting Katharine’s back up. Her voice was harsh and coarse and the way she spoke to her servants was unpleasant. Having been one herself, or close to it when she had been a shop girl, Katharine was always sensitive to the mistreatment of others in lowly positions.

  Unfortunately, though, she presumed the servants were used to being shouted at as they appeared impervious to it. On the boat, at the ports where they had docked en route, and even on the way from the boat to this house, Katharine had seen how the indigenous people were treated – herded like cattle onto the lower decks on board, spoken to as if less than human, though ironically given superhuman tasks to accomplish, the men routinely carrying enormous loads on their backs, supported by thick webbing straps around their foreheads.

  Composing herself after her tirade, Bernadette turned back to Katharine. ‘No, of course we’re not leaving,’ she exclaimed. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  Katharine, bemused and feeling more and more out of place by the minute, flashed Anselmo a nervous glance. She thought that the answer to Mrs McNamara’s question was obvious but refrained from saying so. Anselmo grimaced back at her in silent complicity; he didn’t know what was going on either.

  ‘Shut it firmly,’ ordered Bernadette, as three waif-like women struggled to pull down the lid of one of the trunks and to fasten the buckles that secured it.

  ‘But where is all this – these things – going then?’ Katharine asked, tentatively.

  ‘It’s the laundry,’ replied Bernadette tersely, standing watching over the servants with hands on hips. ‘Off to Portugal, to Lisbon, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Katharine, weakly. ‘It’s just that I didn’t realise—’

  ‘Oh, you’ll get used to it,’ interrupted Bernadette. ‘Everyone sends their linens and dresses back to Europe,’ she continued, speaking as if Katharine really were the dimmest person she had ever met. ‘The river water here is so dirty and muddy; it really doesn’t do a good job at all. Everything gets spoilt.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Katharine couldn’t think of anything more to say in response. This was a different world to the one she inhabited in Clerkenwell, where laundry day was a Monday and her mother boiled pans, scrubbed and mangled all day in the back courtyard of their terrace and hung up the clothes on a haphazard zigzag of washing lines where it swayed and blew in the wind until it was dry. In a wet winter or spring, this could take several days. The extravagance of sending your dirty clothes and bed linen across an ocean to another continent was barely comprehensible.

  Over the weeks they spent in Manaus, while Anselmo was busy setting up in business, Katharine had time to find out that extravagance was a way of life here. The city spewed wealth and luxury, conspicuous consumption was not only encouraged but expected. Brazilian banknotes took second place to gold and diamonds in terms of currency, and everyone seemed to be in a race to spend money, whether on ever bigger and better houses and offices, or on clothes, foodstuffs and luxuries from all over Europe. The shops were full of French champagne, Danish butter, Swiss watches, British firearms. Rubber barons clothed in white linen had themselves transported in sedan chairs so that they never need dirty their shoes in the tropical mud and rain.

  The levels of debauchery, hinted at by the many houses of ill repute she had seen when they docked, shocked Katharine even more than the profligacy. Indian women were openly advertised as bodies for sale and brothel madams boasted river cruises with champagne and music for whoever had the cash and the desire.

  The most eye-catching extravagance was the enormous, elaborate opera house that was under construction in the city centre. Designed in the Renaissance style, all the materials had been imported from Europe, including monumental blocks of Carrara marble that stood amidst the red Amazonian mud like white vestal virgins.

  Rubber was fuelling the greatest consumer boom the New World had ever seen and no one was in any hurry to slow down.

  Early every morning, when Anselmo had disappeared off to meetings with banks and aviadors and all the other movers and shakers it was necessary to grease the palms of in order to succeed in the Amazon, Katharine was left at a loose end. Though she and Anselmo were in this together, women were no more expected to play a part in business dealings in Manaus than they were in London. As she couldn’t bear to stay in the house and listen to Bernadette McNamara berate the servants, she took to wandering the streets each day, getting to know the city, staying out for as long as she could bear the oppressive heat. The fear she had experienced at first had largely dissipated, to be replaced by a gentle melancholy, a loneliness characterised by a pervasive homesickness for her mother and father, her brothers and Mabel – always little Mabel at the forefront of her mind.

  Telling her parents immediately after their marriage that she and her new husband would be leaving for another hemisphere had been so hard, though in the end Anselmo’s absolute conviction that they could not fail had won them over.

  ‘It’s natural for young people to want to make their own way in the world, to plough their own furrow,’ her mother had concluded, with a sad but benevolent smile.

  ‘You have so many opportunities these days,’ her father had added between the coughs brought on by an attack of pleurisy. ‘So many chances that we didn’t have. Everything’s different now. It’s right that you should take a few risks, go for gold.’

  ‘Or rubber,’ Katharine had interjected, and they had all laughed, lightening the mood.

  She wrote to her family almost every day and longed for news of them in return, but the post, as everyone told
her, was unreliable, mail taking an age to arrive if it ever got there at all.

  One day, Katharine stayed out later than usual and found herself dizzy and lightheaded in the glare of the equatorial sun at its full height. The air was so thick with heat she could hardly breathe, and the river water that spewed prolifically from gold cherub fountains in the public gardens only served to intensify the thirst that had come upon her. Exhausted, she sank onto a bench beneath a silk cotton tree as tears of self-pity pricked behind her eyelids. Anselmo was too busy, and too fired up with excitement, to trouble with her doubts and worries; her family were far away and she had no idea when she would next hear from them, let alone see them. Mrs McNamara was a shrew of a woman whom she longed to get away from. Katharine was covered in heat rash and sweating unbearably in her tight corset and long dress. Out of sorts with everything, she let the tears fall. Why not? Who was there to see, or to care?

  After a couple of minutes of doleful sobbing, a sound attracted Katharine’s attention. She glanced around to be greeted by the sight of a delicate, exquisitely patterned little bird padding gracefully out from the undergrowth, lifting each matchstick-thin leg proudly at every stride. It strolled serenely towards Katharine, its small head darting from side to side, its eyes bright and enquiring. Calmly, it looked up at her as if asking permission, before bending its neck and plucking a spider daintily off the hem of her dress.

  Katharine, tears stemmed, laughed out loud.

  ‘Hello, little creature,’ she said to the bird. ‘What are you after?’