The Last Place God Made

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‘Are they still keen on the diamond laws as they used to be?’ I asked.

‘And then some. Diamond prospectors aren’t allowed to work on their own up here. They have to belong to an organised group called a garimpa and the bossman holds a licence for all of them. Just to make sure the government gets its cut, everything they find has to be handed over to the local agent who issues a receipt and sends the loot down-river in a sealed bag. The pay-off comes later.’

‘A hell of a temptation to hang on to a few.’

‘And that draws you a minimum of five years in the penal colony at Machados which could fairly be described as an open grave in a swamp about three hundred miles up the Negro.’

He opened the door of the hotel and led the way in. I didn’t care for the place from the start. A long, dark room with a bar down one side and a considerable number of tables and chairs. It was the smell that put me off more than anything else, compounded of stale liquor, human sweat and urine in about equal proportions and there were too many flies about for my liking.

There were only two customers. One with his back against the wall by the door, glass in hand, the same vacant look on his face as I had noticed with the men on the veranda. His companion was sprawled across the table, his straw hat on the floor, a jug overturned, its contents dribbling through the bamboo into a sizeable pool.

‘Cachaca,’ Hannah said. ‘They say it rots the brain, as well as the liver, but it’s all these poor bastards can afford.’ He raised his voice, ‘Heh, Figueiredo, what about some service.’

He unbuttoned his coat and dropped into a basket chair by one of the open shutters. A moment later, I heard a step and a man moved through the bead curtain at the back of the bar.

Eugenio Figueiredo wasn’t by any means a large man, but he was fat enough for life to be far from comfortable for him in a climate such as that one. The first time I saw him, he was shining with sweat in spite of the palm fan in his right hand which he used vigorously. His shirt clung to his body, the moisture soaking through and the stink of him was the strongest I have known in a human being.

He was somewhere in his middle years, a minor public official in spite of his responsibilities, too old for change and without the slightest hope of preferment. As much a victim of fate as anyone else in Landro. His amiability was surprising in the circumstances.

‘Ah, Captain Hannah.’

An Indian woman came through the curtain behind him. He said something to her then advanced to join us.

Hannah made the introduction casually as he lit a cigarette. Figueiredo extended a moist hand. ‘At your orders, senhor.’

‘At yours,’ I murmured.

The smell was really overpowering although Hannah didn’t appear in any way put out. I sat on the sill by the open shutter which helped and Figueiredo sank into a basket chair at the table.

‘You are an old Brazilian hand, I think, Senhor Mallory,’ he observed. ‘Your Portuguese is too excellent for it to be otherwise.’

‘Lately I’ve been in Peru,’ I said. ‘But before that, I did a year on the Xingu.’

‘If you could survive that, you could survive anything.’

He crossed himself piously. The Indian woman arrived with a tray which she set down on the table. There was Bourbon, a bottle of some kind of spa water and three glasses.

‘You will join me senhors?’

Hannah half-filled a sizeable tumbler and didn’t bother with water. I took very little, in fact only drank at all as a matter of courtesy which, I think, Figueiredo was well aware of.

Hannah swallow it down and helped himself to more, staring morosely into the rain. ‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘What a bloody place.’

It was one of those statements that didn’t require any comment. The facts spoke for themselves. A group of men turned out from between two houses and trailed towards the hotel, heads down, in a kind of uniform of rubber poncho and straw sombrero. ‘Who have we got here?’ Hannah demanded.

Figueiredo leaned forward, the fan in his hand ceasing for a moment. It commenced to flutter again. ‘Garimpeiros,’ he said. ‘Avila’s bunch. Came in last night. Lost two men in a brush with the Huna.’

Hannah poured another enormous whisky. ‘From what I hear of that bastard, he probably shot them himself.’

There were five of them, as unsavoury-looking a bunch as I had ever seen. Little to choose between any of them really. The same gaunt, fleshless faces, the same touch of fever in all the eyes.

Avila was the odd man out. A big man. Almost as large as Hannah, with a small, cruel mouth that was effeminate in its way although that was perhaps suggested more by the pencil-thin moustache which must have taken him considerable pains to cultivate.

He nodded to Figueiredo and Hannah, the eyes pausing fractionally on me, then continued to a table at the far end of the bar, his men trailing after him. When they took off their ponchos it became immediately obvious that they were all armed to the teeth and most of them carried a machete in a leather sheath as well as a holstered revolver.

The Indian woman went to serve them. One of them put a hand up her skirt. She didn’t try to resist, simply stood there like some dumb animal while another reached up to fondle her breasts.

‘Nice people,’ Hannah said, although Figueiredo seemed completely unperturbed which was surprising in view of the fact that the woman, as I learned later, was his wife.

She was finally allowed to go for the drinks when Avila intervened. He lit a cigarette, produced a pack of cards and looked across at us. ‘You would care to join us, gentlemen?’ He spoke in quiet reasonable English. ‘A few hands of poker perhaps?’

They all turned to look at us and there was a short pause. It was as if everyone waited for something to happen and there was a kind of menace in the air.

Hannah emptied his glass and stood up. ‘Why not? Anything’s better than nothing in this hole.’

I said, ‘Not for me. I’ve got things to do. Another time, perhaps.’

Hannah shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

He picked up the bottle of Bourbon and started towards the other end of the bar. Figueiredo tried to stand up, swaying so alarmingly that I moved forward quickly and took his arm.

He said softly, lips hardly moving. ‘Give him an hour then come back for him on some pretence or other. He is not liked here. There could be trouble.’

The smile hooked firmly into place, he turned and went towards the others and I moved to the door. As I opened it, Avila called, ‘Our company is not good enough for you, senhor?’

But I would not be drawn – not then at least, for I think that out of some strange foreknowledge, I knew that enough would come later.

When I ran out of the rain into the shelter of that primitive hangar, I found Mannie Sterne standing on a wooden platform which he had positioned at the front of the Bristol. The engine cowling had been removed and the engine was completely exposed in the light of a couple of pressure lamps he had hung overhead.

He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. ‘Back so soon?’

‘Hannah took me to the local pub,’ I said. ‘I didn’t like the atmosphere.’

He turned and crouched down, a frown on his face. ‘What happened?’

I gave him the whole story including Figueiredo’s parting words. When I was finished, he sat there for a while, staring out into the rain. There was a sort of sadness on his face. No, more than that – worry. And there was a scar running from his right eye to the corner of his mouth. I’d failed to notice that earlier.

‘Poor Sam.’ He sighed. ‘So, we do what Figueiredo says. We go and get him in a little while.’ With an abrupt change in direction, he stood up and tapped the Bristol. ‘A superb engine, Rolls-Royce. Only the best. The Bristol was one of the greatest all-purpose planes on the Western Front.’

‘You were there?’

‘Oh, not what you are thinking. I wasn’t a Richthofen or a Udet in a skin-tight grey uniform with the blue Max at my throat, but I did visit the front-line Jagdstaffels fairly often. When I first started as an engineer, I worked for Fokker.’

‘And Hannah was on the other side of the line?’

‘I suppose so.’

He had returned to the engine, examining it carefully with a hand-lamp. ‘This is really in excellent condition.’

I said, ‘What’s wrong with him? Do you know?’

‘Sam?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s simple enough. He was too good too soon. Ace-of-aces at twenty-three. All the medals in the world – all the adulation.’ He leaned down for another spanner. ‘But for such a man, what happens when it is all over?’

I considered the point for a while. ‘I suppose in a way, the rest of his life would tend to be something of an anti-climax.’

‘An understatement as far as he is concerned. Twenty years of flying mail, of barnstorming, sky-diving to provide a momentary thrill for the mindless at state fairs who hope to see his parachute fail to open, of risking his life in a hundred different ways and at the end, what does he have to show for it?’ He swept his arms out in a gesture which took in everything. ‘This, my friend – this is all he has and three months from now, when hiis contract ends, a government bonus of five thousand dollars.’

He looked down at me for several seconds, then turned and went back to tinkering with the engine. I didn’t know what to say, but he solved the situation for me.

‘You know, I’m a great believer in hunches. I go by what I think of people, instantly, in the very first moment. Now you interest me. You are your own man, a rare thing in this day and age. Tell me about yourself.’

So I did for he was the easiest man to talk to I’d ever known. He spoke only briefly himself, the odd question thrown in casually now and then, yet at the end of things, he had squeezed me dry.

He said, ‘A good thing Sam was able to help you when he did, but then I’m also a great believer in fate. A man has to exist in the present moment. Accept what turns up. It’s impossible to live any other way. I have a book at the house which you should read. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.’

‘I have done,’ I said.

He turned, eyebrows raised in some surprise. ‘You agree with his general thesis?’

‘Not really. I don’t think anything in this life is certain enough for fixed rules to apply. You have to take what comes and do the best you can.’

‘Then Heidegger is your man. I have a book of his which would interest you in which he argues that for authentic living what is necessary is the resolute confrontation of death. Tell me, were you afraid yesterday when you were attempting to land that Vega of yours?’

‘Only afterwards.’ I grinned. ‘The rest of the time, I was too busy trying to hold the damned thing together.’

‘You and Heidegger would get on famously.’

‘And what would he think of Hannah?’

‘Not very much, I’m afraid. Sam exists in two worlds only. The past and the future. He has never succeded in coming to terms with the present. That is his tragedy.’

‘So what’s left for him?’

He turned and looked at me gravely, the spanner in his right hand dripping oil. ‘I only know one thing with certainty. He should have died in combat at the height of his career like so many others. At the last possible moment of the war. November 1918, for preference.’

It was a terrible thing to have to say and yet he meant it. I knew that. We stood staring at each other, the only sound the rain rushing into the ground. He wiped the oil from his hands with a piece of cotton waste and smiled sadly.

‘Now I think we had better go and get him while there is still time.’

I could hear the laughter from the hotel long before we got there and it was entirely the wrong sort. I knew then we were in for trouble and so did Mannie. His face beneath the old sou’wester he wore against the rain was very pale.

As we approached the hotel steps I said, ‘This man, Avila? What’s he like?’

He paused in the middle of the street. ‘There’s a story I’m fond of about an old Hassidic Rabbi who, having no money around the house, gave one of his wife’s rings to a beggar. When he told her what he’d done she went into hysterics because the ring was a family heirloom and very valuable. On hearing this, the Rabbi ran through the streets looking for the beggar.’