The Rocket Man (41 page)

Dmitry shrugged. They were in a queue of traffic leaving the centre; he glanced at his watch. It was just after six. The light was strange. There were great holes in the clouds through which the sky glowed with a dirty yellow colour. By a curious illusion the grey clouds seemed transparent while the sky itself seemed dense, opaque. They drove past a tangle of cheap houses in which lights were being lit, past carts drawn by horses and slow-moving bicycles, then out onto the huge curving bridge over the vast width of the Rio Paraguay. From the top of the bridge Dmitry could see the endless, flat, grey-green expanse of the Chaco spreading out before him, doubly mysterious in the half-light. The sky seemed low and threatening.

Madregón said, ‘We may have trouble. It may rain tonight.'

‘Is that a problem?'

‘Once we're off the asphalt highway, yes. But maybe it will hold off. I think so.'

‘Does it rain much in the Chaco?'

‘No, but when it does rain, the water sits on top of the ground. The roads are hard when they are dry, but a little rain and you cannot drive, you slip about all over the place. You understand me?'

Dmitry was having trouble with the Paraguayan Spanish, but he got the gist of it.

‘You didn't tell me your name.'

‘Mitya Gavrilov.'

‘But this is a Russian name?'

Dmitry said vaguely, ‘Yes, the country of my origins.'

‘Well, we have some Russian connections here, you know. Some of the Mennonites came from Russia, did you know this? Also there was a famous cartographer, Juan Belayev – you have heard of Juan Belayev? There have been a number of Russian immigrants in the old days. Now of course it is impossible to imagine a Russian in anti-communist Paraguay. You are from Germany?'

‘From Vienna.'

‘Ah, Vienna. They have trams there too, I think? I have seen them in pictures.'

Over the river they came to the first military checkpoint. Madregón wound down the window. The soldier, who looked barely sixteen, eyed them nervously. ‘
Adónde va?
Where are you going?'

‘Visiting friends in Mariscal Estigarribia.' Madregón chatted for a minute or so, then the soldier waved them on. As they drove downhill through Villa Hayes the road-began to straighten out; there was no traffic, and soon it was quite dark. The road ran straight ahead of them into the darkness, the headlamps illuminating it a short distance ahead, lighting up the stems of the palm trees on either side. From time to time Dmitry caught a glimpse of water gleaming under the palms. César Madregón kept talking. At times Dmitry listened, then his thoughts overtook him; Madregón's voice came in waves as if he was listening to him on a badly tuned radio.

‘We are very excited here, you know,' said Madregón. ‘At first we were all a little sceptical. Rodriguez after all was a military man through and through, and his daughter married to one of the General's sons. But it does seem that he is serious about democratising, there was too much pressure on him from all around. Even in Paraguay we cannot escape the tide of the times. Everywhere in the world the time of the dictator is coming to an end - this is the benefit we are all reaping from the end of the Cold War, no? The US no longer has to support all these dictatorships in the fight against communism, because the fight against communism doesn't signify anything any more.'

As the kilometres rolled by and the landscape remained the same, monotonous, uninhabited and eerie, Dmitry began to have an odd sensation, as if they were driving off the edge of the world – not just of the physical world, but from the whole past structure of a world which was transforming itself. Madregón was right. The old order was breaking apart, yet people continued to think along the old lines, unable to reorganise their mental habits. The outlines of the old system remained, though everything had crumbled within. Dmitry felt a pain in his head, as if his own mind was disintegrating and reforming itself while he sat there, weary, in this car, holding himself upright and still clutching his UN laissez-passer in his hand as if this alone could guarantee his existence. He had the strangest sensation that he was letting go of everything, a consciousness of leaving the world he knew behind, and was heading into the vast, uninhabited heart of the continent, the
terra incognita
.

‘
Impresionante
, eh?' said Madregón.

Dmitry jerked awake. He must have fallen asleep for a moment.

He sat up and peered out into the dark. Madregón was still talking, one hand on the wheel, the other making eloquent gestures in the air. ‘They are planning one day to develop the Chaco. Imagine, in this whole area, half of Paraguay, live only two per cent of the people. Some of these are the
indígenas.
The problem is there is no water, there are no power lines. See that big radio tower for telecommunications over there?'

‘Do the US have a military base here?'

‘Do they? Well that is a good question. There is an airfield near Mariscal Estigarribia. It was built with American engineers – it is huge, asphalted, seven kilometres long. No-one really knows what it is for. One rumour was that it was to land the space shuttle; others that it is lust at strategic point, in case they ever need to land large numbers of troops in South America. The Americans use Paraguay as a listening post, you know. They can take in five countries.'

‘But isn't there something else going on in the Chaco? I read something in the paper in Buenos Aires – something about testing rockets?'

‘Ah, the rocket project. Yes, indeed, it's true. This is an extraordinary business. That is why we have to be a bit careful, these days. It's a German behind it – they say he made a secret deal with Stroessner in his last days in power; but nobody really knows what is going on there. A journalist went to report on it, and never came back. His body was found a few days later. They said it was drug smugglers.'

Madregón leaned towards Dmitry. ‘Listen, I can tell you a very strange story about this. Don't ask me any questions about it, because this is all I know. It happened a few weeks ago, though of course it was not reported in the papers. Two Indians in the forest near Cerro León came across a silver object – something made of shiny metal, cylindrical. They tried to open it, messed around with it, trying to see what it was. When they got home they became very sick and in a few days they died. I didn't believe this, there are so many odd stories told in the Chaco, but a pilot friend and I decided to go and have a look. We overflew the area in a light aeroplane and we did indeed see this metal thing in the forest, but there was no airstrip, we couldn't land. And then a military aeroplane came and chased us away from the site.'

‘What did it look like, this object?'

‘Round, metallic – hard to say exactly how big it was.'

‘And the sickness which overtook the Indians?'

‘Oh, there were several versions – they got old overnight, they shrivelled up, they vomited blood. I don't know if a doctor ever saw them, I don't even know if it's true. There was talk of digging up the bodies to see what had happened; but you have to understand that there have been stories like this before, of people seeing spaceships and other strange things in the forest. The Chaco is the kind of place where anything could happen and no-one would ever know about it.'

‘On the contrary,' said Dmitry, ‘These days everyone knows everything about what is going on. This rocket project, for instance, is hardly a secret.'

‘No; this is something very curious,' said Madregón. ‘It does not seem to be anything to do with the Americans, and in fact, there have been rumours that the Americans have recently tried to persuade Rodriguez to drop it. There's no doubt that if the Americans wanted the rocket project cancelled Rodriguez would have to comply.'

‘But then,' said Dmitry, ‘If they stop him here, in Paraguay, what's to stop him going somewhere else, maybe somewhere which isn't so amenable to US influence?'

‘Hah!' said Madregón. ‘You are right of course – yes, that must be why.' He glanced sideways at Dmitry. ‘Very good. I like the way you think.'

They stopped to fill up with petrol at Pozo Colorado. Dmitry peered at the map. What looked there like a fair-sized town seemed to consist of a military post, a filling station and cheap café, and a few wooden houses. The proximity of the soldiers standing guard across the road made Dmitry nervous.

‘Don't they ever ask for our papers?'

‘Sometimes. Most of them know me. Want a cigarette? Some
maté
?'

Madregón took a thermos flask and a wooden cup out of the glove-box; he poured water into the cup and handed it to Dmitry. The liquid was green and tasted dreadfully bitter.

Madregón took the cup from Dmitry and drank. ‘So where were you thinking of staying the night? There is a good hotel in Filadelfia.'

‘There's a hotel in Mariscal Estigarribia – the Alemán.'

‘The Alemán.' Madregón shrugged. ‘I've never heard of it.'

He started up the jeep and drove on. The landscape was changing subtly. The palm trees had given way to thicker forests which had been cleared here and there for grazing cattle. Exhausted though he was, Dmitry couldn't sleep; the eerie sensation which he had felt earlier grew even stronger. The two men were silent now; there was nothing but the noise and vibration of the car, the headlamps on the road, the outline of the trees, the dark sky.

Some kilometres north of the turn-off to Filadelfia, past the next checkpoint, they came to the end of the tarmac. Huge earth-moving vehicles stood silent and abandoned on the road. The jeep bounced clown to the old earth road running alongside the earthworks. At once they slowed down; a fine dust blew in through the windows. Madregón wound his up.

The road shone white in the light of the headlamps, which turned every hollow into a pit of darkness. They jolted along the unmade road for some time; conversation was now impossible as Madregón concentrated on manoeuvring the jeep. Finally, round the corner, the headlights lit up a wooden sign proclaiming ‘Welcome to the city of Mariscal Estigarribia.'

Ahead of them, up the road, a brick gateway blocked the entrance to the town. Soldiers stood on either side. Madregón stopped and wound down the window. He handed over his card and said to Dmitry, ‘Your passport?'

Dmitry handed Madregón his UN laissez-passer. The soldier wrote down the number and the registration number of the car. Madregón took Dmitry's pass and studied it.

‘United Nations?' he said. ‘And you want to go shooting
tigre
? You are not, I hope, a member of the UN environment programme?' He handed the passport to the soldier who wrote the details down. Through the gateway was a wide, dusty street, lined with bottle-shaped trees whose swollen trunks were painted white. They drove slowly, past the brick church, a tiny post office, the brick–built houses of the military. He saw no sign of any hotel. Eventually Madregón found a soldier on the street and asked him. Dmitry understood nothing; they were speaking Guaraní. Madregón turned the jeep round and headed back towards the gate.

‘It's just outside the town here – I can't imagine what it is like. I have a friend here I'll stay with. You want me to collect you in the morning?'

Dmitry said, ‘I have to tell you, I have been guilty of a small deception. I did not come here to shoot the
tigre
– I came to meet a woman.'

Madregón stopped the jeep. He looked at Dmitry in astonishment and then roared with laughter. ‘But you should have warned me,' he said. ‘That is much more dangerous!'

The Hotel Alemán lay hidden behind some trees. Dmitry climbed out of the jeep; Madregón stopped the engine. The silence struck him at once; an eerie silence, which after a few moments was filled with the sound of insects and the rustle of the wind in the dry trees. As he walked towards the entrance the fine dust of the Chaco clung to his shoes.

Madregón called after him, ‘I have someone to visit, too. I'll come back tomorrow evening. I hope she is there for you.'

Dmitry walked into the hotel. A man was there, asleep in a chair; he lay with his mouth open, and didn't stir. Dmitry tiptoed past him; no-one else was around. He walked into the courtyard; everything was in darkness. Then a light came on and a door opened. It was Katie, standing in the doorway. She whispered, ‘Come in.'

K
atie stood still, her heart fluttering with apprehension, as Dmitry walked into the room. They stood facing one another in the stark light from the dusty fluorescent tube. Dmitry looked exhausted, his pale skin almost blue in this ugly light; he had an uneven stubble on his chin and his shirt was sticky with sweat. He looked too large, out of place, in this miserable room. He looked as she had expected him, and yet, different. She felt nervous, almost shy; hesitantly, she held out her arms towards him.