"How many will be there?"
"One chief and five elders. It's a start, no more. A preliminary skirmish. I'm supposed to go on my own except for Pedro, of course, the half-breed who's made the contact for me. What do you think?"
"It should be quite an experience."
"Yes, stimulating to put it mildly. I was wondering whether you might consider coming with me?"
The impudence of the request was breathtaking. I sat up and swung my legs to the floor. "Why me?"
"You know more about Indians than anyone else I know. You could be of considerable assistance in the negotiations."
"How far is it to the river if we have to start running?"
He smiled. "See how you feel about it tomorrow. Hannah will be flying the women in first thing in the morning. You could come with them. I've agreed to let them look over the mission."
"Not that you had any choice in the matter."
"Exactly."
He moved out into the sunlight and Hannah came round the tail of the Hayley, buttoning the strap of his flying helmet, Mannieathisside.
"Okay, Colonel, let's go!" he tailed. "The sooner I get you there, the sooner I'm back."
"Can't you wait?" I asked.
He hesitated, the cabin door of the Hayley half-open, then turned very slowly. His face had a look on it I'd seen before that first night atThe Little Boat, when he'd got rough with Lola.
He moved towards me and paused, no more than a foot in it 'Just watch it, kid, that's all,' he said softly.
I told him what to do in good and concise Anglo-Saxon. I think for a moment there he was within an ace of having a go at me and then Mannie got between us, his face white. It wasn't really necessary for Hannah turned abruptly, climbed up into the cabin where Alberto was already waiting and shut the door. A moment later the engine burst into life and he taxied away.
He took off too fast, banking steeply across the river, barely making it over the trees, all good showy stuff and strictly for my benefit, just to make it clear who was boss.
Mannie said softly, "This isn't good, Neil. Not good at all. You know what Sam can be like. How unpredictable he is."
"You make all the allowances for him you want," I said. "But I'm damned if I will. Not any more."
I left him there and walked along the edge of the airstrip towards the house. There was no sign of life when I got there, but the front door was open so I simply walked into the living-room.
I could hear the shower running so I lit a cigarette, sat on the window ledge and waited. After a while, the shower stopped. I could hear her singing and a little later, she entered the room dressed in an old robe, a towel tied around her head like a turban.
She stopped singing abruptly, eyebrows raised in surprise. "And what can I do for you? Did you forget something?"
"You can tell me what I've done," I said.
She stood there, looking at me calmly for a long, long moment, then moved to where her handbag lay on a bamboo table, opened it, found herself a cigarette and a small mother-of-pearl lighter.
She blew out in a long column of smoke and said calmly, "Look, Mallory, I don't owe you a thing. All right?"
Even then I couldn't see it and in any case, after that, all I wanted to do was hurt her. I moved to the door and said, 'Just one thing. How much do I owe you?'
She laughed in my face and I turned, utterly defeated, stumbled down the veranda steps and hurried away towards the river.
All right, so I didn't know much about women, but I hadn't deserved this. I wandered along the riverbank, a cigarette smouldering between my lips and finally found myself at the jetty.
There were several boats there, mainly canoes, but Figueiredo's official launch was tied up and another belonging to one of the big land company agents. The mission launch was at the far end, Sister Maria Teresa in the rear cockpit I started to turn away, but it was already too late for she called to me by name and I had no choice, but to turn and walk down to the boat.
She smiled as I reached the rail "A beautiful morning, Mr Mallory."
"For the moment."
She nodded and said calmly, "Would you have such a thing as a cigarette to spare?"
I was surprised and showed it I suppose as I produced a packet and offered her one. "They're only local, I'm afraid. Black tobacco."
She blew out smoke expertly and smiled. "Don't you approve? Nuns are only human, you know, flesh and blood like anyone else."
"I'm sure you are. Sister." I started to turn away.
She said, "I get the distinct impression that you do not approve of me, Mr Mallory. If I hadn't called out to you, you wouldn't have stopped to talk. Isn't that so?"
"All right," I said. "I think you're a silly, impractical woman who doesn't know what in the hell she's getting mixed up in."
"I've spent seven years in South America as a medical mis-sionary, Mr Mallory. Three of them in other parts of Northern Briazil. This kind of country is not entirely unfamiliar to me."
"Which only makes it worse. Your own experience ought to tell you that by coming here at all, you've only made a tricky situation even more difficult for everyone who comes into con-tact with you."
Well, it's certainly a point of view,' she said good-humouredly. "I've been told that you have a great deal of experience with Indians. That you worked with Karl Buber on the Xingu."
"I knew him."
"A great and good man."
"Who stopped being a missionary when he discovered you were doing the Indians as much harm as anyone else."
She sighed. "Yes, I would agree that the record has been far from perfect, even amongst the various religious organisations involved."
"Far from perfect?" I was well into my stride now, my general anger and frustration at the morning's events finding a convenient channel. "They don't need us, Sister, any of us. The best service we could offer them would be to go away and leave them alone and they certainly don't need your religion. They wear nothing worth speaking about, own nothing, wash themselves twice a day and help each other. Can your Christianity offer them more than that?"
"And kill each other," she said. "You forgot to mention that."
"All right, so they look upon all outsiders as natural enemies.God alone knows, they're usually right."
"They also kill the old," she said. "The disfigured, the men-tally deficient. They kill for the sake of killing."
I shook my head. "No, you don't understand, do you? That's the really terrible tiling. Death and life are one, part of exist-ence itself in their terms. Waking, sleeping - ifs all the same. How can it be bad to die, especially for a warrior? War is the purpose for which he lives."
"I would take them love, Mr Mallory, is that such a bad tiling?"
"What was it one of your greatest Jesuits said? The sword and the iron rod are the best kind of preaching."
"A long, long time ago. As the times change so men change with them." She stood up and straightened her belt. "You accuse me of not really understanding and you may well have a point. Perhaps you could help me on the road to rehabilitation by showing me the sights of Landro."
Defeated for the second time that morning, I resigned my-self to my fate and took her hand to help her over the rail.
As we walked along the jetty, she took my arm and said, "Colonel Alberto seems a very capable officer."
"Oh, he's that, all right."
"What is your opinion of this meeting he has arranged to-morrow with one of the Huna chieftains? Is it likely to accom-plish much?"
"It all depends what they want to see him for," I said. "Indians are like small children - completely irrational. They can smile with you one minute and mean it - dash out your brains the next on the merest whim."
"So this meeting could prove to be a dangerous under-taking?"
"You could say that. He's asked me to go with him."
"Do you intend to?"
"I can't think of the slightest reason why I should at the moment, can you?"
She didn't get a chance to reply for at that moment her name was called and we looked up and found Joanna Martin approaching. She was dressed in the white chiffon dress again, wore the same straw hat and carried the parasol over one shoulder. She might have stepped straight off a page in Vogue and I don't think I've ever seen anything more incongruous.
Sister Maria Teresa said, "Mr Mallory is taking me on a sight-seeing trip, my dear."
"Well, that should take all of ten minutes." Joanna Martin took her other arm, ignoring me completely.
We walked through the mean little streets with the hopeless faces peering out of the windows at us, the ragged half-starved children playing beneath the houses. An oxen had died in a side alley, obviously of some disease or other so that the flesh was not fit for human consumption. It had been left exactly where it had fallen and had swollen to twice its normal size. The smell was so terrible that it even managed to kill the stink from the cesspool a few yards farther on which had over-flowed and ran hi a steady stream down the centre of the street.
She didn't like any of it, nor for that matter did Joanna Martin. I pointed out the steam house, one of those peculiarities of up-river villages where Indians went through regular purifi-cation for religious reasons with the help of red-hot stones and lots of cold water, but it didn't help.
We moved out through a couple of streets of shanties, con-structed of iron and pieces of packing cases and inhabited mainly by forest Indians who had made the mistake of trying to come to terms with the white man's world.
"Strange," I said, "but in the forest, naked as the day they were born, most of these women look beautiful. Put them in a dress and something inexplicable happens. Beauty goes, pride goes...."
Joanna Martin put a,hand out to stay me. "What was that, for God's sake?"
We were past the final line of huts, close to the river and the edge of the jungle. The sound came again, a sharp bitter cry. I led the way forward, then paused.
On the edge of the trees by the river, an Indian woman knelt in front of a tree, arms raised above her head, a tattered calico dress pulled up above her thighs. The man with her was also Indian in spite of his cotton trousers and shirt. He was tying her wrists above her head by lianas to a convenient branch.
The woman cried out again, Sister Maria Teresa took a quick step forward and I pulled her back. "Whatever happens, you mustn't interfere."
She turned to me and said, "This is one custom with which I am entirely familiar, Mr Mallory. I will stay here for a while if you don't mind. I may be able to help afterwards, if she'll let me." She smiled. "Amongst other things, I'm a quali-fied doctor, you see. If you could bring me my bag along from the house at some timeI'd be most grateful."
She went towards the woman and her husband and sat down on the ground a yard or two away. They completely ignored her.
Joanna Martin gripped my arm fiercely. "What is it?"
"She's going to have a child," I said. "She's tied by her wrists with lianas so that the child is born while she is upright. That way he will be stronger and braver than a child born to a woman lying down."
The woman gave another low moan of pain, her husband squatted on the ground beside her.
Joanna Martin said,"But this is ridiculous. They could be here all night."
"Exactly," I said. "And if Sister Maria Teresa insists on behaving like Florence Nightingale, the least we can do is go back to the house and get that bag for her."
On the way back through Landrosa rather unusual incident took place which gave me a glimpse of another side of her character.
As we came abreast of a dilapidated house on the comer of a narrow street, a young Indian girl of perhaps sixteen or seven-teen rushed out of the entrance on to the veranda. She wore an old calico dress and was barefoot, obviously frightened to death. She glanced around her hurriedly as if debating which way to run, started down the steps, missed her footing and went sprawling. A moment later Avila rushed out of the house, a whip in one hand. He came down the steps on the run and started to belabour her.
I didn't care for Avila and certainly didn't like what he was doing to the girl, but I'd learned to move cautiously in such cases for this was still a country where most women took the occasional beating as a matter of course.
Joanna Martin was not so prudent, however. She went in like a battleship under full sail and lashed out at him with her handbag. He backed away, a look of bewilderment on his face. I got there as quickly as I could and grabbed her arm as she was about to strike him again.
