Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  Only the friendliness of the Indian villages they passed through lifted Katharine’s spirits and helped to dispel her despondency. At every one, if they did not stop, a woman would paddle out to deliver gifts of eggs or fruit, corn cobs or brilliant feathers, handing them to her and Laure with shy giggles and wide-eyed curiousity.

  In the evenings, at some time that the canoeists seemed to understand without any obvious sign or signal, each would head for the bank and, when the bottom of the boat hit the sand, all the occupants would jump out and there they would camp for the night. Usually, the Indians chose a spot near a village for companionship and the possibility of supplies. If no food was available, they would go hunting, shooting with their bows and arrows wild pigs, monkeys or birds, and once even a small gazelle, their aim so true that Katharine never saw them miss. They only ever killed what was immediately necessary for everyone’s sustenance and if bushmeat was scarce, the Indians would fish, either with their bows and arrows if the water were clear enough, or by gathering the sap of the barbasco vine and using it to poison the fish as they swam.

  Katharine became more and more impressed by the strength and skill of the Indians, how they could carry the canoes over rocks and waterfalls as if they were no heavier than driftwood, how they could read the river like a book, could use the currents to propel them forward and avoid the rapids that might capsize them. In the settlements they passed, she saw matirí bags fashioned from plant fibres, and sewing thread made from the inner bark of the uaissíma tree. She could not understand why, when the lamentable traits of Indians were discussed by Europeans, their sloth and idleness disparaged, that no one ever mentioned their skills, their encyclopaedic knowledge of the rainforest, passed down through generations, nor their resourcefulness, nor their complete oneness with their ancestral jungle home.

  At one far flung village, larger than the usual collection of half a dozen huts, Katharine was astonished to encounter a Catholic priest in full black robes and dog collar emerging from the undergrowth.

  ‘We are working hard to bring civilisation and Godliness to the heathen,’ he explained, in answer to Katharine’s incredulous enquiry as to what he was doing there.

  ‘Do you think we really need to?’ she questioned mildly. ‘Did they request it? I doubt it, for they seem perfectly content.’

  The priest raised his hands in a gesture of exasperation and mystification. ‘It’s true that they often have little regard for the benefits we bring them, such as the word of the Lord. But we are doing what we can.’

  Katharine didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She had an ingrained respect for the Church but felt no particular need for regular worship – and certainly didn’t see why the Indians should be expected to respect a God they neither believed in nor needed.

  ‘Perhaps their lack of gratitude is because they never asked for those benefits and do not value them,’ she suggested, in a tone of innocuous enquiry.

  The priest’s mouth fell open in stunned disbelief. ‘But, my child, it is our duty to bring all peoples into God’s fold. As the superior race, it is imperative that we do this.’

  Katharine did not reply, instead shaking his hand and excusing herself, hurrying back to the rest of her group. Though she disagreed with his proselytising, she understood that this was considered necessary, that the Indians and other native peoples the world over were judged as requiring Christian intervention from Europeans to save their souls. She had never thought about it much before, just known that this was the way, and it had never occurred to her to question it. But now she was here, amongst these people, she was beginning to see everything differently, to believe that the Indians should be left alone to worship, or not, exactly as they pleased.

  They continued upriver, further and further into the untrodden Amazon. At times, the land sloped gently upwards from the water, at others, they were surrounded by lofty red cliffs gashed by waterfalls and topped by trees whose branches arched across the river, interlocking with those on the opposite side as if engaged in an eternal tug of war. The forest was old, so old that the tree trunks were cloaked by mosses and ferns, their exposed roots gnarled and discoloured like aged teeth, but still strong, clinging to the soil and to life with all their might.

  The tribes they encountered were continually changing, along with the patterns and diagrams tattooed across their bodies and the piercings of their ears and noses. Jonathan and Santiago explained that each spoke their own language and that though some were mutually understandable, many were utterly unique. The deeper they penetrated into the forest, the more Indians they met who had rarely seen a white person, and never a white woman, before.

  One evening, the convoy stopped at a sylvan paradise where a series of rocks formed a natural pool by the riverbank, fed by springs bursting forth from numerous dark crevices and cascading downwards like liquid silver. Overhead, the leafy fronds of the murumuru palm provided a protective canopy, while beside the pond the feathery plumes of arrow grass rustled gently in the hint of a breeze. As they made camp in a small clearing, the local women trooped down to the water to bathe and, seeing the travellers and being reassured by Jonathan that they came in peace, they gestured to Laure and Katharine to join them. Laure declined but Katharine leapt at the chance. She was hot and sweaty and longed to wash.

  Stripping naked felt awkward for a moment – after all, she had not undressed in front of anyone except Anselmo since she was a small child being bathed in the iron tub in front of the fire in Hawthorn Road. But that awkwardness was forgotten the moment she unlaced her corset. It had pained her since their arrival in Manaus and releasing herself from its constraint was the most marvellous thing she had ever done. Once she felt the evening air against her skin and the cool, silky water lapping at her toes she experienced a sense of liberation she had never felt before.

  The Indian women gathered around, picking up and examining the mysterious garment that was the corset, poring over its construction, holding it up around themselves and roaring with laughter, then scrutinising it again, clearly mystified as to how a body could fit within it. Once they had satisified their curiousity, though still shaking their heads in disbelief, they handed it back to Katharine and she placed it by the rest of her clothes on a mound of sand.

  Wading deeper into the water, Katharine realised that the women were now inspecting her naked body as closely as they had her underwear. Cautiously, they moved closer to her, then tentatively reached out hands towards her and began to fondle her hair, not just on her head but her armpit and pubic hair too, marvelling at it, signalling to each other their wonder at its abundance and fiery orange hue. They themselves were hairless apart from on their heads, so Katharine supposed it was bizarre to them to see such a different species of human being in their midst. They were also completely comfortable with nudity, wearing little if any clothing themselves. As their inspection continued she felt as if she were somehow being welcomed into a different state of being female, where a body was a useful tool and its incredible capacities – of strength and childbearing and milk-providing and nurturing – were lauded and acclaimed rather than hidden furtively away as her culture required.

  Their inquisitiveness about her hair satiated, the women moved on to her belly. No one knew that Katharine was pregnant; she had not told anyone and her natural slimness, combined with the corset, meant that to most observers she did not show yet. But now, standing naked in the pool, she could see the slight swell of her belly, the increased fullness of her breasts, the pinkness of her nipples. The women recognised her state instantly, stroking and patting her while consulting with each other, exchanging knowledgeable looks and confirmatory glances of what they were discussing. Katharine stood in the middle of it, silent and content, letting these women analyse and conclude. She felt no discomfort at their gentle, caressing touches; instead, a sense of profound calm swept over her as if, here in this beautiful place, she had come into contact with the sublime. Suddenly, she felt a certainty that all would
be well, that all difficulties would be overcome.

  That she and her baby would survive.

  The washing over, she and the women emerged from the water and sat on the rocks to dry off. Katharine went to collect her clothes. She picked up the corset and, taking hold of the torturous garment for the last time, she kissed it goodbye. With a huge intake of freely taken breath, she flung it into the air where it sailed like an ungainly bird for a few moments before settling in the branches of a monguba tree.

  ‘No more corsets,’ she said to the uncomprehending women watching her in bewilderment. Truly, foreigners had strange habits. ‘Corsets are for the city, not the Amazon.’

  She laughed and the women exchanged cautious smiles, then tentative chuckles. The ways of the white people were incomprehensible to them, inexplicable and unfathomable – so they didn’t bother to try to understand. Instead, they went back to their huts and their babies and their unfettered lives where no one told them to encase their ribs in the bones of other animals or to cover their ankles for fear they might offend someone.

  The next morning Katharine rose early and wandered down to the river’s edge, keeping a wary eye out for any jaguars that might still be prowling. There had been prints around their tents at their last camp and an attack could never be ruled out. But the only wildlife on view was a sombre gathering of pig-birds, seated in a tidy row beneath the silvery leaves of the trumpet trees, and a family of capybara. These rodents, that looked so sweet and charming, a bit like small, short-haired pigs, were ubiquitous all through the Amazon and had become as familiar to Katharine as cats and dogs on the streets of London.

  Though the dawn light had come, the sun was still low behind the trees, the forest shrouded in cloud as if wrapped like a precious object. Katharine smelt the freshness of the air, the faint wisps of wood smoke rising from the nearby huts and the earthy, humus smell of the soil after rain. Raising her face to the rising sun, she breathed in the pure essence of her surroundings and sighed, long and low. Promise filled the air, the promise of a future that was hers to mould. She had never had such a feeling before.

  In an azure sky now streaked with pink-tinged clouds, the sun rose further still. Its rays fell on Katharine’s belly and something stirred inside her, a faint fluttering, an imploring scratch that said, ‘I’m here.’

  Casting her gaze downwards, Katharine felt her heart swell in delight as the motion, faint and hesitant as a butterfly’s wings, continued. As the heat intensified upon her skin so did the movement within. It was her baby, calling to her, letting her know it was there, that it was alive and revelling in the new day, just as she was.

  A slow, surreptitious smile spread unstoppably across her face.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ she whispered, and patted her stretched skin in a gesture of greeting. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  That day, freshwater dolphins tailed their canoe for hours, the type that Jonathan told her always travelled in pairs. The Indians feared the bôto, believing that they enticed young men to a watery death, but Katharine was fascinated by them. They performed their distinctive tumble-turns repeatedly throughout the day and only left as night began to fall.

  Over the following days, the canoe convoy was forced by low water levels into a stretch of river known to be inhabitated by hostile tribes, and the atmosphere changed from serene and joyful to one of nervous trepidation. The boatmen kept to the middle of the channel, as far from the reach of poisoned arrows as possible. The dangers were not just on land; one day, looking into the water, Katharine saw a dormant log transmorph before her eyes into a huge caiman, ten foot long, beady eyes piercing straight into hers. Snakes slid past them, on sea and on land, including the type with two heads that, if cut in half by a machete blow, simply wriggled away in opposite directions. Intermittent torrential rainshowers combined with gusty winds ripped trees from the banks and swept them downstream as if light as corks.

  Katharine had the constant sense of eyes in the jungle, watching. At night, the habitual cacophony of animals, birds and insects, underridden always by the screeches of the howler monkeys, was occasionally disturbed by a sudden crash as a branch or tree fell to the ground, or the strange cries of unseen, unknown beings. The Indians put these down to Curupira, the wild man of the forest, who had cloven hooves and a bright red face and was covered in tresses of unkempt orange hair. The fiend even possessed backwards facing feet to throw trackers off his trail, so the legend went. Katharine wanted to dismiss such stories as superstitious nonsense, but in reality there was something about the density of the jungle, the silence amidst the noise, the melancholy that often hung about it, that gave her the feeling that it could be true, and made her look over her shoulder, half expecting to catch a glimpse of Curupira emerging, leering, from beneath the canopy.

  For all the fears of monsters, in truth, it was the jungle’s smallest inhabitants that caused the most harm. After the hideous experience of the face bites, Katharine had thought she had undergone the worst the Amazon could throw at her. But she hadn’t bargained for the myriad insects the region specialised in, some active by day, some by night, making sure there was never a time when humans could let down their guard. Mosquitoes, ticks, centipedes and scorpions could all bite and sting and torture in their own, unique way. Swarms of pium flies surrounded the canoes and chomped at the passengers with a ferocity belying their minute size; blessed relief came only at nightfall as they were active only in sunlight.

  Day passed monotonous day and Katharine yearned to arrive, to be able to sit in a chair rather than on a rock and sleep with four solid walls around her rather than in her canvas mosquito tent, which though it gave some protection against insects, was always soaking wet by morning. She longed to wash and dry her clothes which were permanently damp, green with mildew, and revoltingly smelly – a fact that was only tolerable because everyone else’s were, too. As the journey wore on, she frequently felt alternately cold and shivery, hot and feverish.

  Finally, after four long weeks on the river, Jonathan changed course, steering the canoe to the left bank.

  ‘We are here,’ he stated, blankly, as the boat’s bottom hit the sandy shore. ‘Norwood.’

  He pointed to an area that had been cleared of primary forest but was now beginning to be engulfed by secondary growth. They were some way ahead of the other canoes so Katharine got her first glimpse of her new home before Laure and Charles were anywhere near. Rising up from the tangle of small trees and creepers was a low hill, and on top of that a house, smaller but not dissimilar in style to Mac’s villa, the offices and storerooms on the ground floor, the living quarters above with the same wide veranda running all around.

  There any resemblance to Lagona ended.

  Half of the zinc roof had fallen off and the veranda sloped and sagged where the supporting posts had rotted or been eaten by beetles. And even from this distance, Katharine could see through the open sides that the rooms were bare, the furniture destroyed by the combined forces of rain, heat, humidity and voracious termites. It was so far from her vision of the log house with white picket fence that she could hardly believe her eyes. How could she have been so deceived? But then she remembered that no one had promised her anything – all Anselmo had said was that a house existed – not what state it was in.

  One thing was certain. Her hope of a chair was not going to be realised.

  Katharine got out of the canoe. Dizziness overcame her, together with an overwhelming feeling of nausea. She only got a few paces up the beach before vomiting profusely and sinking to her knees. Almost crawling, aware of the horrifed glances of Jonathan and the other Indians, she made it to the house, pulling herself upright on the door and reaching out to open it. The handle came off in her hand and chunks of worm-eaten wood crumbled dustily to the ground. Before she could attempt to enter, a terrible curling pain in her belly forced Katharine to run for the shelter of the nearest bushes and squat down behind them. As she crouched, her guts twisting themselves inside out, a pair of s
inister eyes nestled between the tree roots met hers.

  ‘Ugh!’ The scream was involuntary. Katharine flinched but couln’t move far due to her state of half-undress. Wanting to look away but not daring to in case the spider attacked, she kept a wary eye on it, shaking with fear and fever in equal parts. It looked innocuous enough, but Katharine recognised it as one of those that Jonathan had taken particular care to tell her to look out for. It was a wandering spider, possessor of venom that was amongst the deadliest in the world.

  Noisily, Katharine began to sob. The acute stabbing pain in her stomach and the terror of her new jungle neighbours assailed her, nailing her to the spot, incapable of movement.

  An attack of dysentery, a ruined house, killer insects. It was for this that she had travelled thousands of miles up the Amazon. Any confidence she had garnerned deserted her anew.Tears rolled down her cheeks and despair overwhelmed her. She was filthy, smelly and ill, her head ached, her back ached, her legs ached and her belly was pure agony. She did not know how to cope with the conditions here in the tropics, was not equipped, either mentally or physically, to do so. Momentarily, she was jealous of Anselmo for having got out of this hell by dying.

  Perhaps the truth was that he had had a lucky escape.

  Chapter Twelve

  Norwood, 1890

  For three days, Katharine rolled around on a raffia mat, writhing in agony as the dysentery ate into her guts. She drank only boiled water brought to her by Jonathan, Santiago or Laure. The only way to combat the illness was to starve and stay warm. Throughout her rampant sweats, she kept her blankets wrapped around her. When they were soaked by perspiration or the general dampness in the air, someone – she was often too delirious to know who – replaced them.

  On the day the fever lifted, she sat up and looked around in bewilderment. She had been placed on a roughly assembled platform on the ground floor of the house, and a fire kept burning to ward off insects and predators. Gingerly, she swung her feet to the floor and tried to stand. The noise as she stumbled and fell brought the seated Indian, left to guard her, rushing to her side. He called out in a language she didn’t understand and within minutes Santiago and Jonathan were there, closely followed by Laure and Charles.