Contango (Ill Wind) (22 page)

The only son of pre-Revolution aristocrats, he had reached the New World
from Russia in 1919, after typical experiences. A little money saved from the
wreck had enabled him to settle down and acquire American citizenship; and
for ten fairly comfortable years, darkened only by memories, he had lived in
a quiet part of New York and established a minor reputation as a poet and
writer of highbrow art criticism. He had been for a time engaged to an
heiress, but she had broken it off, with no greater effect than to make him
write a rather foolish novel, satirising women in general, which no one had
wanted to publish. His art criticism, however, was good, and he had written a
pleasant little book on El Greco. Then in 1929 had come his second
revolution—and perhaps quite as unsettling as the first, for he was
twelve years older, and more deeply grooved. It was a financial one; his
small income, derived from investments in apparently cast-iron stocks,
dwindled rapidly to less than half, forcing him to face the immediate
necessity of earning a living. Journalism naturally occurred to him, and at
first he had nourished a secret confidence that any of the great American
dailies would snap him up with eagerness. A few months had taught him
differently, and at length, through friendship with a proprietor and a slight
knowledge of Portuguese, he had obtained the post of newspaper-correspondent
in Rio. He had been in Rio a week, without finding anything to write about
except the development of baroque design in Brazilian architecture, when news
came of the earthquake and he had almost simultaneously received a cable from
New York to proceed to Maramba at once and send reports.

Hence his somewhat anxious look as he came upon the scene of ruin after a
fantastically unpleasant journey. “What our average reader
wants,” the newspaper-owner had told him, with impressive warning,
“is news that he can digest between stops in a crowded subway-car,
while he holds the paper in one hand, strap-hangs with the other, and uses up
eighty per cent of his limited intelligence in sub-consciously thinking of
something else. Remember that his mental age is about twelve, so that he
can’t understand anything difficult, doesn’t like long words or
sentences, and simply won’t have highbrow stuff at any price. So for
God’s sake don’t be too clever. Write things that are just clever
enough for him to think how clever he is for managing to see the point of
them. And, above all, go for the human note. People aren’t naturally
interested in cathedral stained-glass, for instance, but if a window-cleaner
were to fall through some and cut his head off, then I reckon they might
be—for about a couple of days. You see what I mean?”

Mirsky was not quite sure, and his anxieties quickened as he engaged
accommodation in a corrugated-iron shelter that had been hastily improvised
as a sort of residential press-club. He was not, of course, the only
journalist in Maramba. On the contrary, the place seemed full of
them—dark-skinned Brazilians and Argentines, a few Americans, and one
very gnarled Scotsman from Reuter’s. A few had come by air, but most,
like himself, had made the trip from Rio on train and horseback. They were
all rather noisily companionable, but though he tried to fraternise, he was
aware that he was not their type, and that they knew it as well as he
did.

Well, what could he cable his paper about the earthquake, anyway? The
hurrying subway-crowds knew already that there had been one, that Maramba was
somewhere in South America, and that therefore, in a sense, the whole thing
was pure nonsense and didn’t matter. Their interest, accordingly, would
be strictly regulated by the degree to which he could awaken their
humanitarian impulses. He could imagine his friend the proprietor saying:
“Sob- stories, my boy—that’s what we want. Talk to the
survivors. Get them to tell you what happened to THEM. Some little yarn about
the faithful dog still howling above the ruins, or prisoners from the local
jail who did heroic rescue-work.” …

Unfortunately, to detail but one of the many negations that awaited,
Maramba didn’t appear to have possessed a jail. Nor, when he began to
interview survivors, did he obtain anything that seemed worth cabling to New
York at so many cents a word. (Incidentally, he couldn’t cable from
Maramba; the lines were down, and the nearest accepting-office was at Harama,
two days’ horseback-journey away.) Perhaps the trouble was partly his
Portuguese, which proved slighter than ever now that he had left Rio; but
doubtless also it was in his manner, which was too academic to adjust itself
readily to such tragic intimacies.

Still, he must cable something—that was obvious. He was, indeed,
quite apprehensively keen to justify himself, since if he failed to do so he
could expect to be recalled pretty quickly, and it would be hard to find
another job of any kind. He had a sister living in France who earned just
enough money as a music-teacher to keep herself; but he had no other near
relatives, and no distant ones that were not in as tough a position as
himself. So he must, it was clear, discover the exact angle from which
earthquake-news would catch the eye of Manhattan.

On his second day at Maramba he interviewed the chief of the militarised
police that had been sent to maintain order in the afflicted area. Already
Mirsky had discovered that here, as in Russia, officials were not above being
paid for their information, and in this case a fairly large tip purchased the
usual garrulous but almost entirely unprofitable conversation. Keeping the
human factor well in mind, he asked how many persons were believed to have
perished in the catastrophe, and the chief replied that the bodies already
found numbered between two and three thousand, most of them probably victims
of the second quake, which had been much more severe than the first. Mirsky
continued to cross-examine, but when he asked (perhaps not so tactfully) if
the death-roll had included any important personages, the chief of police
threw up his arms with a gesture of irritation and answered: “My God,
yes, the King of England and Jack Dempsey, naturally! Whom did you expect to
find in Maramba during the hot season? Three thousand bodies, man—do
you think we have had time to carve all their names on tombstones yet? But
yes, you shall certainly see things for yourself. It is not a pretty sight,
but you shall see it, since you are so interested. This permit will admit you
to the mortuaries.”

It is not always easy to detect the note of irony in a foreign language,
which was no doubt the reason why, a few moments later, Mirsky allowed
himself to be ushered into an adjoining shed well-guarded by soldiers. Bodies
were still being carried in, while numerous officials were hard at work on
their various gruesome tasks. The disaster had been so complete that whole
families had perished, and there were comparatively few uninjured survivors
to assist in identifying the victims. It was a memorably unpleasant sight,
that long, gloomy shed, and after a few seconds inside it Mirsky suspected
the rather macabre trick that had been played on him. He had seen horrors in
Russia, but nothing quite so concentrated as this. His fastidiousness was
revolted, and he was just about to leave as quickly as possible when his
attention was drawn to one of the bodies by reason of its more than averagely
elegant clothing. Even beneath blood and dust, the shimmer of silk was
noticeable, and silk shirts were doubtless rare in Maramba.

The body was that of a youngish man with a dark, stubbly beard. The feet
and the lower part of the trunk had been badly crushed, but the head was
unhurt. Near by, in a neat pile, lay the contents of the pockets, ready for
subsequent identification; they included cigarettes, a wallet, and a smashed
compass-watch of obviously expensive make. Not quite the possessions of an
average Maramban. Mirsky picked up the wallet; the maker’s stamp gave
an address in Los Angeles. An American victim, then? Was it possible that he
had discovered something to cable about at last? Without further hesitation
he looked at what was inside the wallet and found a Roumanian passport issued
to one Nicholas Palescu. He raised his eyebrows over that, for the name
conveyed something to him, though he could not immediately think how or
what.

Then he recollected that a friend of his in California, a Russian film-
producer, had written to him recently about a young Roumanian whose real name
was Palescu, and who had achieved sudden success in the cinema-world as
“Raphael Rassova.” Raphael Rassova! Mirsky rather prided himself
on film-ignorance, but even he had heard of that meteor-ascent into fame.
Rassova! Was it possible? Though why on earth should the fellow have grown a
beard and been visiting Maramba?

Anyhow, if it were so, if Rassova really had been killed in the
earthquake, it would assuredly be a tremendous piece of news to cable
exclusively to the paper—a heaven-sent journalistic scoop, indeed. But
WAS it true?

By the time he left the mortuary-shed, Mirsky had almost satisfied himself
that it was. Apart from the passport, which was fairly conclusive evidence in
itself, there were papers in the wallet showing that their owner had lately
sailed from New York. There was also a gold-tipped cigarette-holder
monogrammed “R. R.” So many pure coincidences were nearly
unthinkable, and complete finality seemed established when, at a later
meeting with the Scotsman from Reuter’s, Mirsky led the talk to films
and remarked: “By the way, I wonder what that fellow Rassova will do
next? He made a great hit recently with that Indian picture.”

The Scotsman was delighted to prove himself better-informed. “The
last I heard was that he’d gone off to the Argentine. He soon had
enough of the Seydel woman. Funny thing, that woman can’t keep
husbands—or else, maybe she don’t want to. Rassova was her
fourth.”

But Mirsky was not interested in these glimpses into Rassova’s life;
all he was concerned with was his death, which he now deemed himself to have
settled. It had been an amazing piece of luck, and it was up to him now to
exploit it to the full. He must, then, set out for Harama immediately and
despatch the cable. Unfortunately, just as he was about to begin the arduous
journey, news came of the bursting of the Orica dam. This further disaster,
resulting from the earthquake stresses, had the effect of cutting all
communications between Harama and the east; and there was likely to be a
week’s delay before the telegraph-line could be restored. Learning
this, a few of the journalists flew back to Rio, but Mirsky, though he made
several offers, could not negotiate for the air-trip with them.

Not being by nature a man of action, he was the more impetuous now that he
had decided on doing something. He felt that his whole future depended on
getting his message through to New York, and that fate, having put the chance
of a lifetime in his way, was being particularly malign in depriving him of
it by means of a dam-burst. For delay was dangerous, since at any time the
identity of the dead youth might be discovered and the whole story become
common property. Mirsky felt irritated to desperation as he sat drinking beer
in a shanty which was all that Maramba now possessed in the way of an hotel.
The weather was hot, food and lodging were unpleasant, everything was
fabulously expensive, nor was it by any means certain that the earthquakes
had finished their activities. He stared disconsolately at his pocket-map, on
which Maramba wanted a good deal of finding. Harama, being at railhead,
appeared more conspicuously, and the Orica dam, presumably, was in the hills
a few miles to the north. Whichever way one looked at it, Maramba was
awkwardly placed. Then suddenly, from the map, the notion came to him that
there must surely be other ways of egress to civilisation. After all, it
didn’t matter whence he sent his cable, provided he sent it. Could he
not engage someone to transport him downstream to the nearest
river-settlement that had a telegraph-office?

He spent an hour in fruitless enquiries on the debris-littered water-
front, and only gave up the idea when he found that no place on the river
nearer than Asunçion possessed a telegraph-line that did not pass through
Harama.

Then he looked at the map again, and the final but very obvious
alternative came to him. Why, in all these plans for getting the news
through, should he only have thought of the country to the EAST of the river?
Wouldn’t a western journey do equally well? With a thrill of
satisfaction, and in some amazement that he had not thought of it before, he
found on the map a place called San Cristobal that was scarcely further in
the one direction than Harama was in the other. And San Cristobal, moreover,
was the terminus of a railway leading to the Andean uplands, so that it was
sure to have the telegraph.

It looked about eighty miles or so, measured roughly with the finger, and
he reckoned on three or four days for that—perhaps less if the country
proved easy going.

Leon Mirsky would have been called a man of imagination, but he had
omitted to imagine South America. Till a fortnight before, he had never set
eyes on it, and his journey up from Rio had not impressed him with much more
than the extreme tiresomeness of the country. Actually, when he had crossed
the river from Maramba, he thought himself lucky in that the path immediately
plunged into the forest.

He had told no one of his plan to reach San Cristobal, thinking that if he
did he might be delayed by enforced companions. He had taken, of course, all
obvious precautions—he carried a revolver and a shot-gun, as well as
food and tobacco sufficient for several days. He had also, amongst other
articles, a pocket-compass, a map which merely gave the names of the two
places, with no hint of the kind of country between; and a small edition of
Theocritus. With this equipment, and a water-bottle to fill from wayside
streams, he thought he had remembered everything.