MAMista (31 page)

‘No, we won't get lost,' Singer scoffed, ‘because we are already lost. Isn't that right, Tarzan?'

Lucas said, ‘Look at those hills, Paz. I'd advise keeping to the east of them. To the west that range goes on forever.'

The men looked at the horizon. ‘I figured the river must follow a valley directly north through the mountains,' Paz said.

‘I doubt it,' Lucas said. ‘I'd say that looks like a continuous ridge.'

‘Why didn't you say this at first light?' Paz asked.

Lucas accepted the rebuke and rested the weight of his
pack against a tree. ‘You'd better face it,' he said, ‘we've got to get over the river and we've got to get over that range.' He slipped off his pack and sat on the log again. He could see that this discussion was likely to be a long one.

Paz stepped up on the end of the fallen log and made an announcement to everyone. ‘We'll build a raft. Big enough for two or three men to go upstream for a couple of miles. If there is no village and the river still bends, they will return and we will make the crossing here.'

The men were silent. Only Singer reacted. ‘You make me laugh, chump. I love you! Two men go upstream on a raft. How do you think up these gags?' He laughed.

Paz looked at Lucas, who said, ‘Two men could not do it.' He sank back to rest his shoulders upon the log and put his hat over his face to keep the insects from annoying him.

Paz bit his lip; he was angry.

Singer said, ‘You talk like you got lost in Central Park, instead of in the central provinces. You ever see survey pictures of this region? These rivers get to the sea over a thousand patches of boiling white water. There are no communications here. Nothing! No roads and no villages because you can't get boats along these rivers unless you want to carry them past the rough patches. Look at that river!'

Paz turned to look at it and then he turned to look at Lucas, who was stretched out on the log as if about to go to sleep.

Singer said, ‘Can't you see the flow of it? Toss a piece of wood into it. You'd never see them again. These scrawny Indian kids couldn't hold a paddle in that current.'

Someone threw a stone into the water and it plopped loudly. Paz looked at the water. Singer was right.

Singer said, ‘Even with a real boat you'd need six skilled paddles to move an inch against that kind of current. If you don't believe me, kid, jump on a log and go try.'

Paz didn't have to ride a log; he believed Singer. Singer and Lucas – and even Inez – knew far more about such conditions than he did. Angel Paz was leading the expedition because of his political convictions, not because he was otherwise fitted for the task. Paz looked at Singer. Singer had no doubt worked with the American Special Forces. They would have been properly equipped. They'd have had specialist combat engineers, scuba divers, powered assault boats, battery-lit marker buoys, a life-vest for every man and a couple of flame-throwers to clear the landing space on the jungle's far shore. It must be so much easier to wage war when the proper equipment was at hand. When Singer looked up at Paz again he saw an element of envy in the boy's expression.

Inez was sitting on the log with Lucas. She was watching the men. They never asked her what she thought. Not even Lucas did that. As she caught Singer's eye he said, ‘Your hands are in bad shape, Inez. Could you use a little handcream, sweetie?'

Inez looked at her hands self-consciously. They were red and sore. ‘Yes, I could.'

‘Yes, I could!' Singer roared happily. ‘Yes, I could!' He laughed so much he would have toppled off his chair had he not been strapped into it.

Paz noted the exchange. Handcream was exactly the sort of frippery that an American like Singer might be carrying with him. That did not excuse the woman's stupidity in believing in the cruel little joke. Paz looked at Lucas stretched out on the log. He envied Lucas his fine boots. He kicked gently at the soles of them to wake Lucas up. They were superb jungle boots, high and double-tongued with straps. There were no laces and so no laceholes through which the leeches could crawl. Lucas' boots were soft enough to let him walk without getting tired and tough enough to protect his legs almost to his knees. Paz sometimes felt that those boots gave Lucas an unreasonable
advantage over the rest of them. He kicked harder. Only then did Lucas stir.

‘Don't go to sleep,' Paz said.

‘Drop dead!' Lucas replied without removing the hat from his face.

‘Let's go!' Paz shouted. ‘We move on.'

The men heaved up their packs again. There were no sighs, no cursing or complaints as one might have expected from other men. This was a revolutionary force prepared to suffer and die. But there was a silence that was a vote of no confidence in Paz and his judgement.

When they had started moving again, Paz came up to Lucas and asked, ‘Can Singer walk?'

‘He likes riding,' Lucas said.

‘Two days! That was the deal. I'm going to put that chair on the fire tonight.'

‘I wouldn't advise you to order him to walk, comrade commander,' Lucas said. ‘I speak not as a medical man but as a friend.'

‘He's as fit as I am.'

‘Perhaps that's true but I wouldn't advise you to try to force him to walk. He'll find so many ways to annoy you and make trouble that you'll end up constructing a chair and pleading with him to sit on it.' Lucas shook the rain off his hat.

‘He'll walk. With a bayonet at his ass, he'll walk.'

Lucas said, ‘I understood that there was a deal: Singer is to be exchanged for cash. I wouldn't think that giving him a bad time will help you. The bearers are not complaining, are they?'

‘I'm in command,' Paz said.

‘You do it your way then,' Lucas said affably.

Paz said nothing. He moved aside and pretended great interest in the river where brightly coloured birds were skimming backward and forward across its rippling surface.

They continued along the riverbank but the effect that
Paz's indecision was having could be seen from the mood of the men. There were other changes. No longer was there any attempt to move in the decreed formation. The force had adapted to the needs of its separate elements. Paz moved about – sometimes at the front, sometimes at the back – using the compass to check their route and watching the rearguard. Singer, seated on his throne, was well forward, with a stick in his free hand to ward off the overhanging branches. The mules and machine-gun team were in the middle so that their difficulties could be seen by everyone and assistance rendered. Santos was at point, with Lucas alongside the mule that was carrying the medical pack. Lucas moved back sometimes to check that all was well with the men at the rear. Inez was ahead of the mules. Hers was a choice position; the path was beaten but not churned by the hoofs.

One hour became two hours and they did not halt. The rain continued steadily and the sky became darker. The jungle was so gloomy at times that the men could see only a few paces ahead. The last vestiges of formation were abandoned when the men at point encountered a patch of very dense growth and fell back calling for machetes. By now Nameo and a couple of his fellow jungle cutters were always ready. At first both Inez and Paz had insisted that they must share the task of trail cutting, but when neither Santos nor Lucas took a turn, and when it became evident that their aid did nothing except slow progress, they let the experts do it.

They came through the bad patch but the going did not get much easier. The rain that had made the ground soft had also filled the gullies that ran down to the river. Until now such ditches had proved insignificant obstacles but the rain sent rich ochre water coursing through them, softened the sides and made the bottoms soft mud. Sometimes men slipped, sometimes deliberately slid, down into the gullies. The men at the front coped well but as each man crossed,
the ditches became worse. More and more men made sure they went ahead of the mules, and the rearguard became caked in mud.

Although he concealed most signs of it, Lucas was weary. Old aches and pains were reminding him that he was too old for such arduous excursions. But his fatigue was mental as much as physical. He could not rid himself of his despondent mood. Today, for the first time, Lucas found himself wondering if any of them would get out of the jungle alive. Tired and miserable, he stayed close to Inez as if her presence would give him strength. He didn't speak. With bowed head he stared at the ground and concerned himself with putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes with great effort he turned to see the line of men behind him and smiled encouragement to Inez.

The rain continued and grew heavier. It thrashed through the jungle, whipped their faces, gurgled underfoot and made mud that almost sucked their boots off. The tedium of the march brought Lucas to the brink of that state of self-hypnosis that is the palliative of athletes and soldiers. So it was with the others. By now, Lucas noticed, most of them were lurching like drunks.

Lucas found it impossible to remove the memory of the jungle he'd seen from ten thousand feet. No roads, no villages; in some regions not even rivers. It was no more hostile than some other landscapes he'd seen but it was interminable; a vast ocean of trees. It had removed any last illusion that man might ever master his environment; he could only despoil it. This thought added to Lucas' black frame of mind.

Inez missed her step and Lucas stopped while she caught up with him. He yielded the trail to her. Just the variety of walking in a different order gave some relief to the monotony. He touched her arm as she passed him and she brushed his hand with hers. For a few minutes the ground was firmer and easier.

It was Angel Paz who began to sing. Where he found the energy was hard to say but he took the responsibility of command very seriously. He recognized that morale needed help. Characteristically Paz chose an old marching song of the Spanish communists. It had been sung at the great battle of Teruel in Spain's civil war. There, both armies had stood and perished in the bitter cold; there the communists' war had been lost for ever.

‘Los amantes de Teruel, Tonta ella y tonto él.'

The legend is an old one. The men knew it and took up the song. It tells of a poor boy who returns to his home town to find his rich sweetheart is marrying another. He kills himself and she dies of grief on her wedding day.

‘Los amantes de Teruel, Tonta ella y tonto él.'

The men roared the chorus: ‘Oh the lovers of Teruel – stupid boy and stupid girl.' In their version it was not a sentimental song. Inez took Lucas by the hand and he found enough breath to growl the chorus. She laughed. Singer's bass voice could be heard too, singing with great spirit as if the words had some special meaning for him.

They sang other songs. ‘They are using tomorrow's strength,' Lucas said.

‘Tomorrow they will find more,' Inez said.

Lucas hitched up the straps of his pack so that they did not rub the chafed places on his shoulders. From the rear they heard the whistle blasts that told Lucas and Inez to fall back to where Paz was at the rear.

They let the column move past them and were glad to halt for a moment. Today somehow was different; the men had become closer as men do when threatened. Perhaps, thought Lucas, they'd all suddenly realized the extreme danger of their predicament. Lucas rested an arm on Inez's shoulder. As they passed, men grinned at him in a way they had not previously done. Lucas grinned back.

Lucas and Inez fell in alongside Paz. ‘We'll stop when we get to the river,' he said.

‘Don't slacken the pace on my account,' Inez said.

‘It's for me,' said Lucas.

‘We'll cross here,' said Paz. He'd been steeling himself to say it. Now he'd blurted it out and committed himself. ‘We'll cross whatever it looks like.'

‘Very well,' Lucas said.

They marched on. Lucas stayed at the rear, uncertain whether Paz wanted to say more. Seen from the back the fatigue of the men was obvious. Their heads disappeared as they bent their backs. Many were not alert enough to avoid the branches and bush. They blundered into obstacles, tripped over roots and slipped on the mud.

There were more gullies now as they came near the river's edge. The worst ones had been cut deep and sheer-sided by last year's rains. The exertions of three or four men were needed to tug the protesting mules across such chasms. Stores and packs, the machine gun and Singer had to be manhandled over. The long string of men bunched and became a crowd. It was while Santos and the men at point were crossing such a gully that the commotion started.

From somewhere up ahead rose hysterical cries. The wailing and bellowing was unprecedented. It alarmed Paz. Men came running back along the trail. Paz grabbed one of them and said, ‘What's happened?'

It was René the bullfighter. He looked at Paz open-mouthed but didn't answer. Novillo the machine-gunner was with him. Tears were running down his face. He tried to answer but instead he doubled over as if suffering stomach cramps.

Paz pushed him aside roughly. ‘Santos! Santos!' he called in alarm. Santos was gabbling away in some dialect that even Inez didn't understand. He looked at Paz and grinned. Paz drew his pistol and pushed his way forward. Where were the mules? Where was Singer and his chair?

Lucas took Inez by the arm. He looked round, his soldier's eye differentiating between visual cover and the protective
kind. Inez was shouting at a soldier but she was getting no sense out of him. He pointed and laughed nervously. There were more cries from the men at the front: hurrahs like the winning side at a Latin American football match.

Cautiously Lucas and Inez moved forward. The men were standing all along the ridge of the gully. All were looking down into it. Singer was at the bottom. Upside-down, still bound to his throne, his head was touching the surface of the water there. He'd hit the side on the way down and was coated in thick black mud while his pink-soled feet were stuck up in the air like hands in surrender.