A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (29 page)

Everyone was in shock, as you can imagine. Some of the crew tried getting along the bank – you know how people are sometimes found clinging to the branches of trees overhanging the river a mile or so downstream. But it wasn’t like that. That sort of thing is strictly for the movies. Matt was gone, and anyway the crew couldn’t get more than 20 or 30 yards beyond where they’d set up because they don’t exactly have towpaths in the Jungle. ‘Why were there only two?’ Vic kept saying. ‘Why only two?’ They looked around for the Indians who’d helped them set up but they weren’t there. Then they went back to camp and the only person there was Miguel the interpreter, who’d been having a long conversation with one of the Indians and when he turned round all the other Indians had scarpered.

Then we went to see what had happened to the rope round the tree and there wasn’t anything left, it had just gone. Which was pretty odd as it was fixed with one of those fancy knots which simply can’t pull out. No doubt as per contract. Bloody suspicious. Then we talked to Miguel again and it turned out the Indian had started this long conversation with him before we could possibly have had the accident. So they presumably knew what was going to happen. And when we looked in the camp they’d taken everything – clothes, food, equipment.
What did they take the clothes for? They don’t even wear them.

It was a bloody long wait for the copter, I can tell you. The Indians had taken the radio telephones (they’d have gone off with the genny if they’d had a crane) and Caracas thought they’d just broken down again so came as per normal. Two days waiting like two bloody months. Me thinking I’d probably got some filthy fever in spite of the jabs. Apparently when they pulled me out of the river and bashed the water out of my belly the first thing I said as I came round was, ‘Riddled with diseases, I’m sure’ and the crew broke up in this hysterical laughter. Don’t remember, but it sounds like Charlie. Thought I might be in for beri-beri and co. Ouch in spades, I thought.

Why did they do it? That’s what I keep coming back to. Why? Most of the others think they did it because they’re primitive – you know, not white men, never trust a native and so on. That’s no go. I never did think they were primitive and they always told the truth (except when they were teaching me the language) and were a damn sight more trustworthy than some of the white men we had on the job. The first thing I thought of was that we’d offended them in some way we didn’t know – done a terrible insult to their gods or something. But I simply couldn’t think of anything.

The way I’m looking at it, either there’s some connection with what happened a couple of hundred years ago or there isn’t. Perhaps it’s just a chance coincidence. It so happens that the descendants of the original Indians whose raft capsized were also in charge of another raft that capsized at about the same point in the river. Maybe these Indians can only take so much of poling Jesuits upstream and just instinctively snap and turn nasty and shove them overboard. Not very likely is it?
Or
there is some connection between the two incidents. This is what I think anyway. It seems to me that the Indians – our Indians – knew what had happened to Father Firmin and Father Antonio all those years ago. It’s the sort of thing that gets handed down as the women are pounding the manioc root or whatever. Those Jesuits were probably quite big in the Indians’ history. Think of
that story getting passed down the generations, each time they handed it on it became more colourful and exaggerated. And then we come along, another lot of white men who’ve also got two chaps in long black skirts with them, who also want to be poled up the river to the Orinoco. Sure, there are differences, they’ve got this one-eyed machine and so on, but basically it’s the same thing, and we even tell them it’s going to end in the same way with the raft capsizing. I mean, it’s hard to think of an equivalent, but say you were an inhabitant of Hastings in the year 2066 and you went down to the beach one day and these longships were coming towards you and lots of people in chainmail and pointy helmets got out and said they’d come for the Battle of Hastings and would you rustle up King Harold so they could shoot him in the eye and here was a huge wallet full of money for you to play your part. First of all, you might be inclined to do it, wouldn’t you? And then you’d get thinking about why
they
wanted you to do it. And one thing you might come up with – this is just my idea, Vic isn’t so sure about it – is that they (i.e. us) have come back to re-enact the ceremony for some reason that’s tremendously important to their tribe. Perhaps the Indians thought it was a religious thing, like celebrating the 500th anniversary of a cathedral or whatever.

And there’s another possibility – that the Indians were actually following the argument between the Jesuits and understanding it a lot better than we thought. They – Matt and me, that’s to say – were arguing about baptising the Indians, and at the point the raft capsized it looked as if I was winning the argument. I was the senior priest, after all, and I was against baptism – at least until the Indians pulled their socks up and stopped some of their filthy practices. So maybe the Indians understood this and tipped up the raft because they were trying to kill Father Firmin (me!) so that Father Antonio would survive and baptise them. How about that? Except that the first time round the Indians saw that Firmin survived and they ran away because they were afraid, and the second time round they saw they’d killed Antonio, which was quite the wrong result for them so they ran away because it had all gone wrong.

Is that right? I just know it’s more complicated than it’s ever going to seem in the newspapers. I shouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood sends a plane to bomb the Indians and punish them for the death of Matt. Or does a remake – yes, that’d be more bloody likely. Who gets the part of Matt? What a career opportunity. I ask you.

Seem to be stuck here for a week or so. That bloody studio and its bloody lawyers. Apparently the movie has to be officially called off in some way and that takes time.

Taking this down to Our Lady of Communications and expressing it. Makes a change to be giving it to a real postman.

all love, Charlie

Letter 13

Christ don’t you do that to me, and I mean
ever
. Two days out of the fucking Jungle after nearly dying and you put the phone down on me. Look, as I was trying to explain to you, she was out here working, it was a complete coincidence. I know I’ve been behaving like a pig,
comme un porco
, for a bit, but please read all my letters from the Jungle and you’ll see I’m a changed man. It’s all over between Linda and me, I told you that before I left. And I can’t control where the woman works, can I? Yes I did know she was going to be in Caracas and No I didn’t tell you and Yes that was wrong but would it have been better if I’d told you? How on earth did you find out anyway? No she isn’t here, as far as I know or care she’s in the West Indies. For God’s sake, Pippa, let’s not throw away five years.

– your Charlie

P.S. Am expressing this.

P.P.S. Caracas filthy dump. Stuck here at least until the 4th.

P.P.P.S. Love you.

Telegram

PLEASE CALL CHARLIE HOTEL INTERCONTINENTAL SOONEST STOP LOVE CHARLIE STOP

Telegram

FOR GS SAKE CALL INTERCONTINENTAL MUST TALK SOONEST STOP LOVE CHARLIE

Telegram

WILL CALL NOON YOUR TIME THURSDAY MUCH TO DISCUSS STOP CHARLIE

Telegram

DAMN YOU ANSWER THE PHONE OR CALL ME PIPPA STOP CHARLIE

Letter 14

Dear Pippa –

As you don’t seem to be responding to telegrams for reasons best known to yourself, I am writing to say that I am not coming home immediately. I need time and space not just to get over the appalling things which have happened to me in which you do not seem to show much interest but also to think through where the two of us are at. There seems no point in saying that I love you in spite of everything because that only seems to irritate you for reasons best known to yourself and which you choose neither to explain nor comment on. I will be in touch when I know where I’m at about all this.

Charlie

P.S. I’m expressing this.

P. P.S. If any of this is anything to do with that creep Gavin I will personally break his personal fucking neck. I should have hit him a lot harder in the first place. And in case you haven’t noticed, he couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. No talent. No cojones.

Letter 15
St Lucia
Some bloody day or other

Listen bitch why don’t you just get out of my life, go on just get out GET OUT. You always fucked things up didn’t you that was your one great talent fucking things up. My friends said she’s trouble and the last thing I should have done was let her move in and I was a bloody fool not to believe them. Christ if you think I’m an egotist you should look in the mirror baby. Of course I’m drunk what do you think it’s one way of getting you out of my head. Now I’m going to get stinko bloody paralytico. In vino bloody Veritas.

Charlie “the Hell-Raiser”

P.S. I’m expressing this.

Telegram

RETURNING LONDON MONDAY FIFTEENTH STOP KINDLY REMOVE SELF AND POSSESSIONS FROM FLAT BEFORE THEN STOP LEAVE KEY STOP ENDIT STOP

PARENTHESIS

Let me tell you something about her. It’s that middle stretch of the night, when the curtains leak no light, the only street-noise is the grizzle of a returning Romeo, and the birds haven’t begun their routine yet cheering business. She’s lying on her side, turned away from me. I can’t see her in the dark, but from the hushed swell of her breathing I could draw you the map of her body. When she’s happy she can sleep for hours in the same position. I’ve watched over her in all those sewery parts of the night, and can testify that she doesn’t move. It could be just down to good digestion and calm dreams, of course; but I take it as a sign of happiness.

Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence till morning. I fall asleep more grudgingly, thrashing at the waves, either reluctant to let a good day depart or still bitching about a bad one. Different currents run through our spells of unconsciousness. Every so often I find myself catapulted out of bed with fear of time and death, panic at the approaching void; feet on the floor, head in hands, I shout a useless (and disappointingly uneloquent) ‘No, no,
no
’ as I wake. Then she has to stroke the horror away from me, like sluicing down a dog that’s come barking from a dirty river.

Less often, it’s her sleep that’s broken by a scream, and my turn to move across her in a sweat of protectiveness. I am starkly awake, and she delivers to me through sleepy lips the cause of her outcry. ‘A
very
large beetle,’ she will say, as if she wouldn’t have bothered me about a smaller one; or ‘The steps were slippery’; or merely (which strikes me as cryptic to the point of tautology), ‘Something nasty.’ Then, having expelled this
damp toad, this handful of gutter-muck from her system, she sighs and returns to a purged sleep. I lie awake, clutching a slimy amphibian, shifting a handful of sodden detritus from hand to hand, alarmed and admiring. (I’m not claiming grander dreams, by the way. Sleep democratizes fear. The terror of a lost shoe or a missed train is as great here as that of guerrilla attack or nuclear war.) I admire her because she’s got this job of sleeping that we all have to do, every night, ceaselessly, until we die, much better worked out than I have. She handles it like a sophisticated traveller unthreatened by a new airport. Whereas I lie there in the night with an expired passport, pushing a baggage trolley with a squeaking wheel across to the wrong carousel.

Anyway … she’s asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me, so I decide to settle myself against the soft zigzag of her body. As I move and start to nestle my shin against a calf whose muscles are loosened by sleep, she senses what I’m doing, and without waking reaches up with her left hand and pulls the hair off her shoulders on to the top of her head, leaving me her bare nape to nestle in. Each time she does this I feel a shudder of love at the exactness of this sleeping courtesy. My eyes prickle with tears, and I have to stop myself from waking her up to remind her of my love. At that moment, unconsciously, she’s touched some secret fulcrum of my feelings for her. She doesn’t know, of course; I’ve never told her of this tiny, precise pleasure of the night. Though I’m telling her now, I suppose …

You think she’s really awake when she does it? I suppose it could sound like a conscious courtesy – an agreeable gesture, but hardly one denoting that love has roots below the gum of consciousness. You’re right to be sceptical: we should be indulgent only to a certain point with lovers, whose vanities rival those of politicians. Still, I can offer further proof. Her hair falls, you see, to her shoulders. But a few years ago, when they promised us the summer heat would last for months, she had it cut short. Her nape was bare for kissing all day long. And in the dark, when we lay beneath a single sheet and I gave off a
Calabrian sweat, when the middle stretch of the night was shorter but still hard to get through – then, as I turned towards that loose S beside me, she would, with a soft murmur, try to lift the lost hair from the back of her neck.

‘I love you,’ I whisper into that sleeping nape, ‘I love you.’ All novelists know their art proceeds by indirection. When tempted by didacticism, the writer should imagine a spruce sea-captain eyeing the storm ahead, bustling from instrument to instrument in a Catherine wheel of gold braid, expelling crisp orders down the speaking tube. But there is nobody below decks; the engine-room was never installed, and the rudder broke off centuries ago. The captain may put on a very good act, convincing not just himself but even some of the passengers; though whether their floating world will come through depends not on him but on the mad winds and sullen tides, the icebergs and the sudden crusts of reef.