Contango (Ill Wind) (20 page)

Soon, however, such darker memories were quenched in the idle charm of
Asunçion. Here it was necessary to change vessels, and as the one proceeding
farther upstream did not depart for a couple of days, Nicky and Byrne had a
chance to explore the tree-shaded avenues and lounge in the open- air cafés.
Nicky enjoyed this last taste of elegance; there was little that was ugly or
blatant in the colourful, indolent civilisation. Even amongst shops and
electric trams, there was a feeling of immensities near by, and at evening,
in the cool patios, a certain wistfulness was imaginable, as of a city that
remembered the Conquistadores.

Seventeen days later, amidst the dusk of a thunderstorm that refused to
break, Nicky and Byrne stepped off the launch that had brought them to
Maramba.

This Maramba, far from any railhead, and the end of river-navigability for
anything larger than a canoe, was the point at which they must take to the
land. It was scarcely a pleasant place. It represented, as Byrne had said,
the frayed edges of civilisation, and also the equally frayed edges of
barbarism; but the meeting was disappointingly unpicturesque. The town
looked, as indeed it was, an outpost of an army that had partly given up the
fight. A few clustered buildings rose up from the river-bank, and beyond
them, on the higher levels, various constructions of timber and corrugated
iron littered the scene as far as the dark semi-circle of jungle. The entire
settlement could hardly have been posed more effectively as a symbol of
defeat. Grass pushed between the cobbles of the quays; the stucco peeled off
the houses in ochreous strips; and, to clinch the impression, a clearing
beyond the town was heaped with rusting machinery, festooned already by
undergrowth—excavators and tip-waggons and a crane that upheaved above
the jungle grass like some menacingly poised snake.

But most evident of all to the few arrivals by the launch that afternoon
was the heat. It was not ordinary heat. Nicky had been in India and the Red
Sea without an experience of anything approaching it. It was a heat that
seemed to have size and weight, to lean on the air like something actual and
fleshly. The sky billowed with thunder-clouds, but the heat poured through
them and met a deeper, angrier heat that rose like an emanation out of the
earth itself.

Even the proprietor of the single scorched hotel admitted that the weather
was exceptional. He was a chocolate-eyed, dark-skinned Brazilian, who served
them with beer on a sizzling verandah and showed amazement at their projected
journey. Apparently the route had not been traversed for some years, and they
must expect stretches of practically unexplored jungle, as well as casual
encounters with jaguars, anacondas, and hostile Indians. All of which might
have been perfectly well known to Byrne, judging by the way he received the
information. After the man had gone, he said to Nicky: “Well, I
didn’t exaggerate the unpleasantness of the trip, did I?”

But Nicky only smiled, and the smile returned him by the older man was a
complete settlement of the matter. Throughout the long and less comfortable
journey from Asunçion, their intimacy had ripened; they had talked less, but
had reached deeper and more silent stages of friendship. Nicky’s
happiness had grown to be of a kind that discomfort hardly affected; he who
in New York had been at the mercy of trivial annoyances, found that here, in
this dark-hearted country, physical irritations, such as heat and
mosquito-bites, were endurable by the body without clamouring to the brain
for rage. And this, in some strange and hidden way, was due to Byrne. The man
tranquillised his mind as women had sometimes tranquillised his
body—lent him deep reserves of security from some secret store. They
never talked religion, nor did Byrne’s attitude ever exceed the
supposition that Nicky was a mere adventuring tourist, seeking new thrills
which he must take the risk of not finding. Yet they found much in common,
even on such a basis. Both had courage, Nicky of a sharp, excitable kind, and
Byrne more implacably; they had shown this on an occasion during the river
journey, when a piranha, freshly caught, had flapped about on deck. Nicky,
with no experience of the small but madly voracious freshwater-fish, had not
troubled to keep out of its way, and the tearing teeth had closed into his
arm as he stooped over it. Byrne, ordering him to keep perfectly still, had
then, with calm dexterity, pulled the jaws apart at the risk of having
fingers bitten off. Afterwards they had laughed over the incident, but it had
revealed to both of them a quality in each other which reassured.

Nicky even contrived to be happy during that first sweltering evening at
Maramba. It was likely to take a few days to make arrangements for continuing
the journey on land, and the prospect of waiting in such a place was not
outwardly pleasing. The hotel was dirty; the bedrooms reeked of stale, oily
distillations; the food was bad; the mosquitoes proved to be of some new and
fiercer variety; and over it all, scarcely less oppressive when night had
fallen, was the heat. Yet the storm did not break. Mutterings could sometimes
be heard in the distance, and the trees stirred fitfully in gusts of wind
that were hotter than the stillness; there was a heavy smell in the air, that
smell of rotting vegetation with which Nicky had already grown familiar, but
here stiffened and coagulated. Another smell pervaded it intermittently, that
of some faintly aromatic furnace; Nicky thought of forest-fires, but Byrne
said that the forests were uncombustible—that, in fact, being the
great obstacle to colonisation. Suddenly, while they were talking in the
hotel lobby, an extra whiff lent identity to the odour—it was like
burning coffee, Nicky decided. Later the proprietor told them that that was
exactly what it was—coffee being destroyed on the plantations because
there was no market for it. He gave them also a long account of other local
calamities—of the English concessionaires who had hoped to obtain
manganese and had left all their machinery behind after a year of fruitless
operations, of tobacco-plantations abandoned by Jap settlers—and that,
he indicated, with an expressive shrug, was anywhere the last stigma of
hopelessness. No, there was nothing in Maramba in these days. It had been
different during the rubber boom, which he could remember as a
boy—those golden years when the trickle of wealth had poured over the
Matto Grasso from the Xingu and the Tapajoz. But now there was nothing,
except the declining river-trade and the small activities dependent upon the
frontier garrison. As for this cursed weather, he had been in Maramba for
twenty-five years, and did not think he could remember anything to equal
it.

Before turning in, Nicky strolled with Byrne about the streets, deserted
and eerily brilliant in the almost continuous sheet-lightning. They stood on
the quays by the shabby-magnificent customs-house and stared at the low line
of jungle across the river— sinister even in the theatrical glare of
the flashes. Once they saw a tarantula scampering, if that were the word,
over some timber-stacks, its dark, leathery body compact of evil liveliness.
Nicky was excited and wanted to approach the monster, but Byrne would not let
him. “There are some things best kept out of one’s mind as long
as possible,” he said, with a close arm-grip. The thrill had set them
both sweating heavily, and just at that moment, over the flat roofs, came the
sound of a woman’s shriek. Instantly, a rain of other sounds scattered
after it—cries of birds, voices in the distance, the bang of a sharply
closed door. Then silence again. “This is really a rather dreadful
place,” said Nicky, a little hysterically. “Everything feels as
if it’s waiting for something to happen.”

“It will be better after the storm,” Byrne answered.

After a short saunter they reached the hotel again. They slept badly; the
mosquitoes were troublesome, and Nicky imagined tarantulas in the
room—perhaps it had been wise, after all, to have missed seeing the
brute at closer quarters. The hours crawled through to morning, but the usual
chill before dawn did not come, nor was the storm any nearer breaking.
Indeed, the clouds seemed to have dissolved in readiness for the daylight,
leaving behind them a thick steamy haze through which the sun shone as
through soiled muslin. Even at breakfast it was far hotter than at any time
during the previous day.

As they lingered over cups of maté, they were visited by the
customs-officer, a heavy-jowled, slouching fellow in a sweat-sodden uniform.
He knew no English, and Byrne and he conversed in a stilted mixture of
Spanish and Portuguese. There was a hitch at first owing to the fact that
Nicky had grown a beard that did not appear in his passport photograph, but
this was eventually explained, and with many bowings and clinkings of glasses
the man became quite cordial. Byrne questioned him about porterage, and
received, after expressions of astonishment at the proposed journey, a
promise to have ready a few likely applicants, if he would call at the
customs-house later in the morning. Byrne said he would, which was the signal
for further civilities and bottles of lukewarm beer. As the officer left, he
said something with great vehemence which Byrne afterwards, with a smile,
translated as: “He says he thinks it’s going to be a rather hot
day.”

They wilted back into chairs in the shuttered hotel parlour and tried to
ignore the glare that burst through the slats. It was easier not to move; the
mere exchange of words and sentences evoked fresh streams of perspiration
from every pore; and the thought of the customs-officer crossing those
blazing pavements to the quay-side was oppressive even to the inward eye that
pictured the scene. There were no sounds of life in the hotel, or in the
street outside, or in the whole town, for that matter. Yet, beneath the still
and utterly silent surface, there was a sense of brooding, of life that was
not extinct, but drugged into unconsciousness between the answering heats of
earth and sky. Byrne read a book, but Nicky preferred to sit motionlessly
pondering. How curious, it might be thought, that anyone in his right mind
should deliberately leave civilised luxury for a place like this! It was
madness, perhaps, and if so, it must be a greater madness for him to be
eager, as he was, to push on, deeper and farther into this merciless country,
with Byrne. He was puzzled to decide what it was that chiefly attracted him
in the man—it must be more, he thought, than his half-reluctant
friendliness and calm intelligence. A kind of sureness, perhaps, that he
had—sureness of background, of being in a tradition, something that
made Nicky feel that he himself was not so much sharing an adventure with a
man as marching with an army on a crusade.

Towards midday Byrne said he must go over and see the customs-officer, as
he had promised; but he insisted on going alone. Nicky was by no means
anxious to face the heat, yet as soon as Byrne had gone he wished desperately
that he had gone with him. He felt suddenly afraid, with a renewal of
perception that all was not lifeless as it seemed. He sat for a few moments,
found he could no longer endure the waiting, and then strolled into the hotel
lobby. He was shivering slightly, and wondered if he were falling ill; the
hall-floor, as well as his legs, appeared to quiver as he approached the
street. Seen from inside, the doorway was a slab of yellow, sickly to the
eye; but as soon as he entered the glare he felt a new and more fearful
nausea, for the sky above the opposite roofs was no longer even white, but an
angry, opaque carnelian.

He stood there, increasingly spellbound by dread, while the whole world
seemed poised for some uniquely terrible reckoning. Then all at once there
began a distant growling that came rapidly nearer like the roar of a train
crossing a metal bridge at full speed. He was so puzzled by it that he was
scarcely able to be astonished when he saw, a few yards away across the
street, a length of parapet toppling from a first-floor balcony. It fell with
such disarming grace, and so soundlessly amidst the greater noise, that the
dust- cloud spraying upwards from the smashed stucco seemed no more than
necessary proof that the thing had really happened. Not even yet could he
think of a reason for both the roar and the fallen parapet, and his
perplexity held him aloof from fear until, with a shudder of foreboding, the
truth rushed at him, and with it also a sight incredibly
grotesque—that of the houses opposite waving like banners, and a hole
widening in the roadway as if it were being munched by some enormous and
invisible mouth. Then he was struck between the eyes, and staggered
back….

… When he recovered consciousness he began to cough and vomit. Behind
the clouds of blinding, acrid smoke that swirled about him, patches of
copper- hot sky could be seen; the time, from the look of it, was
mid-afternoon. Timber and masonry surrounded him in a soaring jumble, but
though he felt dazed and ill, he did not think that he had been seriously
hurt, if at all. His arms were movable; he could feel his cigarettes and
revolver still in his pocket. He stirred his legs carefully from under a beam
that had fallen miraculously short of crushing them; they were stiff, but
after a few moments he could drag himself upright and climb a heap of debris
to survey a little more of the catastrophe. “Well,” he kept
thinking, as he strove to regain his numbed senses, “now you know what
an earthquake is like.”…

Then he thought of Byrne and began to clamber amongst the litter in
impulsive search for his friend. But of course, as he soon reflected, the
priest wouldn’t be anywhere near the hotel; he had gone down to the
quay- side to visit the customs-officer. Nicky scrambled a few yards over a
pyramid of brickwork and caught sight of what looked to be a large red-violet
flower growing amidst the rubble. As he approached, the violet spurted out in
all directions, leaving the red by itself, and he saw then what it really
was—the shambled body of a man, with flies above it, waiting to re-
settle. He felt sick again, and shook his head vaguely as the cries of
wounded came to him from left and right. As fast as he could he hastened over
the ruins Co the river-front. He must look for Byrne first. He saw a few
uninjured or slightly injured persons on the way, but they stared at him with
half-crazed eyes as he passed them by. He reached the customs-house at
last—a mountain of rubbish enclosed by jagged sections of wall. There
were several bodies near by, but nowhere that of Byrne. Then he discovered
that his hair was clotted with blood, and that blood was also streaming from
his left arm. Queer, that was; he hadn’t felt any pain. He sank down to
rest for a moment, but the sun flared before his eyes and he felt the world
re-vanishing….