MAMista (27 page)

He sorted through the instruments that he'd brought from London; a tourniquet, rubber tube, catgut and needles: all the basic plumber's tools. He'd used all of them and shown the ‘nurse' how to do it. What he didn't need he would leave behind: laundered bandages, burn dressings and antiseptic ointment. He put these discarded things into a big canvas bag, with some clips and a crudely made tourniquet. The bag with the red cross on it served little more use than to give a measure of reassurance to the poor devils who went out patrolling, but it was better than
nothing. He fastened the bag and cleared the rest of the things off his bed. As he finished he heard footsteps on the ladder. ‘Is that you, Inez?'

‘I was too late for the flag parade.'

The bugle sounded again and he heard the shouted commands that preceded the lowering of the plain red rectangle. It was the end of the working day except for the discussions, political lectures and the study groups who read Marx aloud each evening.

Inez came to the top of the ladder, stepped off and sank down into the chair watching him. ‘You are going with us tomorrow?' she asked.

‘Is there a choice?'

‘You could talk Ramón round. He has a high opinion of you.'

‘Talk him round? For what reason?'

‘For you there would be no danger on the highway.'

‘And for you?'

‘The others will need someone to interpret to the Indians. And Ramón is not sure that Angel Paz will be able to command the men.'

‘Is Angel Paz in command?' Lucas asked.

‘Who else? You? Singer is a prisoner.'

‘We will have Sergeant Santos with us,' Lucas said.

‘You keep saying “Sergeant Santos” but we do not have ranks in the revolutionary army.'

‘We will fortunately have with us the equal, but experienced and much respected, comrade Santos.'

She said, ‘The men with him will be mostly veterans. They will not readily take orders from Paz.'

‘So why put Paz in command? Put Santos in command.'

‘Paz must lead. The leader will have to read a map and take compass bearings. He must make decisions and perhaps speak in English.'

‘And the MAMista is not yet ready for a woman to command?'

She smiled ruefully. ‘For another route perhaps.'

‘What are you getting at?' Lucas asked.

‘Our route north will cross the Sierra Sombra, and then, beyond, it will cross the Sierra Serpiente. If a man suddenly decided to join Big Jorge and his Pekinistas it would not be a difficult journey west into the provincia de la Villareal. Men live well on the income from the coca crop.'

‘So not all your comrades are politically committed?'

‘If something went badly wrong. If a man were sick. If the leadership was less than determined. Then perhaps a man would be tempted.'

‘Determined? Well, Paz answers that description all right.'

She looked at her watch. ‘I must go to collect the instruments.'

‘I want to take some medical bits and pieces with me. We might need them on the march. You can bring them back.'

She nodded. ‘And Singer is fit enough for such a journey?' She was still trying to see if there was danger there.

‘He's just getting older, Inez.'

‘But he's all right?'

‘A sprain as far as I can see but without an X-ray it's only a guess. We have to depend upon what a patient tells us about the pain and so on.'

‘And you believe Singer?'

‘If I were examining him in a hospital in Tepilo I would discharge him. But he is not in Tepilo, he's about to undertake a gruelling journey through the rain forest.'

‘Ramón has arranged for him to be carried for the first two days.'

Lucas made a face. He reached for a tin of tablets and swallowed one.

‘What are they?'

‘Are you not taking them? Vitamin B complex. I told you to start last week. One a day, together with the Paludrine tablets.'

‘You take them every day?'

‘I do while I'm on this trip.'

‘Do you never think of giving them to others?'

‘I'm giving them to others now: take one.'

‘Not to me, Ralph: to Ramón.'

He looked up. Until now she'd never used his first name. He wasn't even certain that she knew what it was. Lucas said, ‘If Ramón gets sick, I'm here to look after him. If I go down with one of a long list of things, I'm dead.'

‘No, Ralph. You would have me.'

‘What would you do, Inez?'

She was hurt and angry. ‘For you it is funny. I intended no joke.' He was surprised at her sudden rage and looked up to find her eyes brimming with tears. She got up from the chair and went to the ladder.

‘Would you light a candle for me, Inez? Is that it?' He'd teased her before about the way she illogically reconciled her Marxism and her religion. Once he had looked inside the smart leather Gucci case, thinking it might hold photos of family or lovers. Instead it held a home-made triptych of coloured postcards: a little portable shrine that she could set up anywhere.

‘You know very well,' she said. He heard her reach the bottom of the ladder. She stumbled on the last step to make a hollow clatter against the warped plankwood floor.

‘Are you all right?' he called but she went out without another word, banging the door behind her. Usually she would laugh and not take offence at such jokes but today was different.

Lucas continued with his packing. Her moodiness did not come as a surprise to him. It was a strain. Any man, and almost any woman, working together over a body that is poised between life and death must establish a bond. There were no words needed beyond the cryptic instructions of the surgeon. Surgeons and nurses; such love affairs were … well, notorious he would have said until
now. This had caught him without warning. He'd been unprepared for the mortal despair that suddenly hit the badly injured, and the desperately sick, in this chaos and filth. So was he unprepared for the hysteria of resuscitation. It was an elation to which he'd not proved immune. The heady cycle of despair and joy had brought Lucas and Inez very close.

Often he told himself about the disparity in their ages, their lack of common interests, the difference of nationality, religion, politics and culture. He reminded himself about the sentries she'd killed. No matter: he still wanted her. Wanted her so much that it pained him.

When she returned with the sterilized instruments, he'd already decided which ones he wanted. He wrapped them in a clean handkerchief. He also selected a dagger. It had a very sharp edge and a wicked point; he'd used it as a last-resort probe in the surgery. Now he put it into the sheath that he'd fitted to his belt.

‘I have lost weight,' he said, patting the belt buckle.

‘Yes, I noticed.'

‘Did you?' She was standing alongside him. Her arms were bare. He could smell the expensive soap she'd used. And he could smell the woodsmoke – from the laundry – in her hair. He moved his hand to place it firmly upon hers. She did not move.

They stood there silent for a long time, listening to the sound of the river driving savagely against the wooden supports. On days like this, after the up-country rains, the whole building trembled.

‘So that is where you sleep?' she asked.

‘Yes.' It was an old straw mattress in the corner. ‘I put new filling in it but sometimes insects crawl out and fly around in the night.'

‘I am not frightened of insects,' she said.

She pulled her hand from his and went across the room to close the shutters. She made sure the mosquito net was
across the window and that another one was snugly arranged over the closed trap-door.

Lucas pulled down the net that hung from the roof. ‘That's the trouble with being on the river,' he said. ‘It is plagued with mosquitoes.'

The room was dark now. She went to where he was waiting for her on the lumpy old mattress. He was about to speak again but she put her hand against his lips. There was nothing to say.

Even afterwards she didn't talk. She closed her eyes and sank into a deep slumber. Lucas heard her breathing become deep and regular, as she sank into that coma-like sleep that comes when both mental and physical weariness combine.

Lucas remained awake. His mind was too active to submit to sleep. He loved her, but was this the right time to make everything more complicated? He reproached himself for his weakness and his stupidity. He heard the loud noises of the jungle, and a boatful of drunken locals who hit a patch of mud and spent a long time stuck in mid-river. He heard the sentries pacing and eventually heard them go to the gate of the women's compound and send word to wake the cooks. The cooks' voices were low and sleepy. They cursed the stove and the fuel and the matches. He heard them as they pulled the damp wood from the stoves and tried again with another lot.

‘Lucas, Lucas, Lucas.' Inez mumbled in her sleep and reached out for him. She slid a hand into his shirt and held him. Then, still in that curious grey world of being half-awake, she began to cry silent tears that rolled down her face and racked her in spasms of despair.

Lucas put his arms round her and held her close, murmuring any sort of foolishness in order to comfort her. They stayed like that for a long time. Then the cicadas began the waaa, waaa, waaa, that accompanies every dawn, and enough light came through the shutters for him to see her face still shiny wet with tears. Her eyes did not open.

She sniffed and snuffled and clung tightly to him. ‘Will we ever get there, Lucas?' she asked again and again. Not Ralph now, he noticed. Ralph belonged to another woman in some other world she might never see. She was not awake. He tasted the saltiness of her tears and pulled the edge of the blanket up around her head. The cold winds that followed the river came. They made the structure of the old factory creak and groan and shift its weight alarmingly.

‘Tomorrow will be a long hard day,' he told her, and kissed her gently so that she did not awake.

THE TREK BEGINS
.
‘… ol' man river he just keep rollin' along.'

In the first light of morning no landscape beckons the traveller more seductively than the mysterious prospect of the jungle. From the outer rim of sentry posts, on a hilltop to the north of the winter camp, the party could see for many miles. The nearest peaks were purple, the next ones mauve, then there were blue ones and light blue ones until the horizon blurred into pink haze.

The actual sentry-post was a wrecked Chevrolet. Its paint had faded to a very faint purple so that it was no longer evident what colour it had originally been. There were many stories told about how the Chevvy had got to this remote crest. Some said it was a rented car, its powerful engine stolen to power a boat before it arrived up here. Others said the car had been driven here for a wager by a drunken Yankee millionaire. The stories had been improved by sentries sheltering here from the cold wind and bored beyond measure. Much of the car's glass was intact, although the seats had lost their springs and stuffing. Angel Paz was standing on the roof of the car. He was using his field-glasses to follow the route they must take, while adopting a heroic pose that might have inspired a sculptor.

The hilltop was bare. The men assigned to the journey
north dozed in the welcome sunlight. They had come only three miles or so along the well-trodden outer paths of the camp but already some of them had eaten their rations. Angel Paz jumped from the car roof in a casual demonstration of agility. Then he shouted commands to arrange his party in the formation that he'd devised for the whole journey. There would be three files, each about fifty paces apart. Angel Paz with his fine brass compass would lead the middle file. Santos would lead the left-hand file. This included six packmules, one of them burdened with Novillo's machine gun, another with its equally heavy tripod. The files would close to form a column when the jungle became so dense as to need cutting.

Singer hobbled back to his chair using a stick as a crutch. He was to be carried too, at least for the first day or so. It had been decided that the height of a man riding on a mule would be inconvenient in the close jungle. So he was placed in the middle of the formation, seated on a kitchen chair with two long springy poles fixed to its sides. Two bearers carried him: his head was only slightly higher than theirs. Inez was assigned to help the two men carrying Singer, for each of them was also burdened with his baggage. It was to be Inez's task to maintain contact between Paz and the mule drivers. Paz was anxious about the machine-gun team. Ramón had told him to guard that machine gun with his life. Lucas was at the back with the six men of the rearguard.

Paz had devised a system of arm signals. Fist upraised for halt; open hands for guns ready; spread arms for conceal yourselves in the bush. There was no signal to open fire. They would fire when Paz fired and not before. With Paz and Sergeant Santos these men had all spent the previous day practising their deployments.

Paz consulted his watch and then the compass before looking back to where Lucas stood with the rearguard. Solemnly he waved and Lucas waved back. Paz pumped his
hand twice – move forward – and, without turning to see what was happening behind him, he marched forward along the line indicated by the compass needle. The ground sloped downwards to where the shrubland and trees began again.

The men made very little sound as they moved, for the ground underfoot was dry. They reached the tree line and moved through open country dotted with thorn bushes and scrub. The middle file followed a rough path; the other files made slower progress. As they descended the trees became taller, stouter and closer together so that progress was less easy. It became gloomy too. The blaze marks on the trees became less easy to see and finally petered out altogether.

It was easier underfoot: flat earth under primary jungle. In such constant heat and humidity – without winters to kill the insects – the leaves and debris decomposed quickly. The floor of the jungle was firm and in some places hard like rock. The men got into the swing of a march. There was little talking except the occasional caution passed back to the men behind.

The previous day, Angel Paz had tried to make his peace with Singer and find some common purpose with Lucas. But Paz was not practised at reconciliations and overtures of friendship, and his underlying contempt for both of them proved an insuperable obstacle. If they would not accept his offers of friendship, they'd have to take his orders. That was the way Paz saw it. On the march he would remain aloof. His face was bruised and his body still ached with the pain of the powerful blow that Singer had delivered to his middle. His self-imposed isolation was not good for Paz's temper. More than once he'd lashed out at those nearest to him. All too often the one nearest to him had been comrade Santos. Santos gave no sign of resentment but he was not of the same phlegmatic temperament as the Indians. His calm was self-imposed. Those who knew Santos, and could recognize the look on his face, were waiting for the explosion that was sure to come.

Inez Cassidy too started the march with muddled thoughts. No matter how much she wanted to stay near Lucas, she had fully expected that Ramón would order her to remain at the camp. She had reconciled herself to the idea that such an order would be binding upon her. Even at the hilltop she'd expected a last-minute message. But no reprieve had come. Ramón – always at heart the devious peasant – had smiled and wished her luck and bon voyage. And now she felt the weight of the pack cutting into her shoulders, and with the smell of the jungle filling her nostrils, she knew there would be no turning back.

It was just as well. Without her she felt sure that Lucas would never get to Tepilo. She'd watched him over the period he'd spent in the camp. She'd seen him trying to cope with the problems endemic there. He'd been unprepared for the misery and frustrated by his own inadequacy. ‘Like standing under a waterfall with a teacup,' he'd told her. It said more about Lucas and his mental state than about the camp. He would need her more and more badly in the coming days. That was the only thing about which she was certain.

As she settled into the rhythm of the march she thought yet again about Angel Paz, and the way he'd approached her in the laundry the previous evening with his childlike plea of letting bygones be bygones. She did not hate Paz any more than she hated Singer. They were both the same sort of opportunistic males ready to use anything and anyone for their own selfish purposes.

When she was younger she would have found Paz attractive. He was young and strong and idealistic. But he was also headstrong and simplistic and foolish in ways she could no longer tolerate. She could still see him standing opposite her talking earnestly the previous evening. As usual he'd been unable to speak without pointing and waving his hands about.

‘My mother – my real mother – died when I was seven,' Paz had told her. She hadn't missed the fact that Charrington's
child would have been about that age. Paz had obviously been brooding on that. ‘My Dad sent me to stay with relatives. I guess he wanted me out of the house so that he could bring his girlfriends back there.'

Inez had nodded and started to retrieve the sterilized instruments one by one. She hadn't looked at his face. ‘I must go,' Inez had said, picking up the tray. She could see that Paz would talk and talk until she came round to his point of view. That was always his style of debate. She had moved to go but Paz had come round to confront her again.

‘I didn't know that stupid woman was going to go rushing past the generator,' Paz had insisted. The steam from the boiler had momentarily enveloped him. He'd reappeared from the clouds still gesticulating.

‘I must get back,' Inez had said.

‘To your man?' Paz had asked scornfully.

‘Yes, to my man,' she'd told him. She had stepped around him and made her escape. That was the moment when she'd decided she wanted to make love to Lucas.

They went miles and miles down the steep slope before coming to a sudden change in vegetation. It was a solid wall of greenery. Dense secondary growth followed a straight line. This was an area where the primary jungle had once been cleared and cultivated. Now nature had reclaimed it forcefully.

Paz stopped the party. Imperiously he waved for Santos to come across from where he was at the head of the file. Everyone was breathless. Some of the steeper gradients had caused them to run to keep balanced.

‘We can't get directly through this stuff, comrade Santos,' said Paz. He was inclined to say such things as if Santos was directly responsible for the problem. ‘Bring the machetes forward and take the files in closer. We'll have to work our way round it.'

Santos shouted for Nameo, the big black Cuban. He was the champion cutter. Paz hoped it was not going to prove
a lengthy detour. While they waited for Nameo to come forward, Paz took a jungle knife from one of the men and slashed at the wall of greenery. A flurry of bright butterflies rose in a flittering cloud of colour. Paz kept chopping. When he'd made a gap in the matted growth he reached with the knife to prod the rotting remains of a large fruit. ‘Plantain!'

‘It is a bad plant,' Santos said. It was an irritant that affected the eyes. ‘And there: tobacco!'

Santos pointed to a piece of jungle that looked little different from the plantain. He'd recognized the big leaves of tobacco that had run wild.

Nameo arrived with another Cuban cane-cutter. They were friends and liked to work together. Working alongside an inexpert man with such a knife can be a heart-stopping experience. By now Lucas had come up to see what had caused them to stop. ‘A plantation,' Paz said in answer to his question. ‘Just think of it: some Spanish nobleman with a thousand Indian slaves … maybe got rich enough here to start a dynasty. Maybe went home to build himself a castle in Valencia.'

‘You have a fertile imagination,' Lucas said.

‘We have to work round it,' Paz said. ‘A mile: two miles at the most. Relieve the men cutting every few minutes.' He glanced round to see where Inez Cassidy was, and noticed that she was keeping well to the rear. She'd decided to avoid Paz as much as possible.

The men with the long jungle knives systematically cut a path through the dense vegetation. They worked with the same slow rhythm they had learned on the farms.

They moved on, keeping close to the plantation growth to see the extent of it. It meant working in the dark jungle and it was hard labour for an hour or more. Then they suddenly came upon a large clearing where elephant grass stood as high as the men. They hacked through it and when space enough was cut, they stood quietly for a moment in the hot sunshine. The mules discovered something to eat.
‘Take fifteen minutes!' Paz called. More butterflies – vivid red and yellows – rose into the air.

Lucas went to see if Inez was all right. She'd seated herself on a patch of grass, taken off her pack and put down her rifle. She pointed out a border of wild orchids. The small white blooms had bright orange interiors. There were thousands of them. They made a long curve as if planted there by some dedicated gardener. It was curious to think that no human eye had seen them for at least a century.

Lucas reached out and picked one perfect specimen. He inspected it with great interest. ‘What do you call these?' he asked.

She laughed. ‘Who knows? They say two thousand species of orchid have been identified growing in our country.'

‘Number two thousand and one,' he said and put it into her hat.

Some men took this opportunity to rearrange their burdens and their equipment. Combat jackets were rolled tight and tied to packs. They wet their mouths with water from their flasks. Lucas had forbidden them to drink. This was not because he feared a shortage of drinking water – he feared more the sudden onset of the rains – but because drinks of water would be likely to bring on cramps during the march. Angel Paz tied a sweatband round his forehead. His hair had grown and he was no longer self-conscious of his shaven head. In fact his appearance had brought him instant notoriety, for few men interrogated in Tepilo police headquarters came out anything less than crippled for life.

After the short rest, the cutters moved to the far side of the meadow and began cutting again. They kept to the appointed formation: two cutters leading each file. This pleased Angel Paz and he waved happily to Santos to acknowledge his help. Soon after moving forward they stumbled upon the remains of a low stone wall. Paz said it must have marked the outer boundary of the old plantation.
By keeping close to it they found a way through the secondary growth. Soon they were at a mound that might have been a house or a gate lodge in some former times. Despite their efforts there was no trace of a road to be found. It was strange to think that somewhere nearby there was probably a gigantic mansion. Its furnishings, from chandeliers to carpets, would by now have been devoured by the ravenous jungle.

‘Move on. Move on.'

Now there was another downward gradient. It made for an abrupt descent. As they cautiously made their way between two huge rock-strewn spurs that were bathed in sunshine the jungle was in shadow. The vegetation was thinner here where sunlight was scarce and they could move at a brisk pace. A stream showed a way that was easy to follow.

Angel Paz looked at a roughly drawn map and tried to estimate the distance they had done already. He'd resolved to encourage his men by estimating each day's progress. A good march on the first day would give them something to aim for on every day of the journey.

For half an hour the party followed the course of the mountain stream. The broken, rocky ground dictated the route, for there was no path on the other side of the water. The stream was not gentle. It raced over the rock and then, gurgling loudly, vanished underground to reappear again a few yards ahead. This land to the north of the winter camp had been mapped by the MAMista patrols over the last five years or so. Angel Paz's map did not show the stream. As they marched on the path became more and more overgrown until it ended in a wall of rock. The stream would have to be crossed if they were to continue northwards. By this time the stream no longer went so conveniently underground. It had been joined by other watercourses. And it was not so evidently a stream.