Little Tiny Teeth

SIX

There are no roads into or out of Iquitos. A few supplies come in by air, but the great majority of its goods come and go via the river. As with almost every settlement on the Amazon, however, it has nothing resembling a working port or pier or dock. This is because every year the river rises forty to sixty feet in flood season, and then, of course, sinks again six months later. To build a commercial pier able to handle that kind of elevation change is beyond the resources of these jungle communities.

Thus, this being what is laughably called the dry season on the Amazon, John and Gideon got their first look at the Adelita the next morning from the crest of a long, unpaved, muddy, slippery incline that dropped from the level of the town down to the current shoreline.

“There she is,” Phil said as proudly as if he owned her.

“Jesus,” said John, staring. “That’s the Adelita?”

Phil looked offended. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing, except it looks about a hundred years old.”

“It is a hundred years old. More.”

It had been built in the boom times of the 1890s, he explained, to carry supplies and company VIPs to and from the rubber plantations. In the 1920s and ’30s it had spent a decade as a prison ship to transport criminals to hellhole prisons in the jungle. Very few had made the return trip. When Captain Vargas had rescued it from the river five years ago it had been a half-sunk hulk, rusting away on the shore, like quite a few of the other derelicts that were still to be seen along the riverbank. He’d installed twin diesel engines in place of steam power, gotten the boat into reasonable shape mostly with his own two hands, and had been hauling cargo and mail up and down the river ever since. Now he was eager to convert to the burgeoning eco-tourism trade – to what he hoped would be a burgeoning eco-tourism trade. This would be his first try at it.

“So we’re his guinea pigs,” John said. “What the hell, as long as it floats.” He eyed Phil. “It does float, doesn’t it?”

“It floats, all right, but just don’t expect too much,” Phil said. “The accommodations are pretty, um, basic. Don’t expect a basket of goodies in the bathroom.”

“Uh-oh,” Gideon said. “Sounds like the real people are going to love it, but we fake people may have a few reservations.”

But in fact he did love it at first sight. A peeling, white-painted, metal-hulled, much-dinged old bucket of a two-decker about the length of a Greyhound bus, it was everyone’s idea of an old jungle steamer: tubby and experienced and just a little raffish.

Negotiating the slick incline down to it was tricky, but they managed it without falling. Waiting on deck to greet them, effusively and somewhat anxiously, was an overweight, bespectacled, heavily perspiring man in jeans, T-shirt, and a bright new captain’s cap complete with woven gold-oak-leaf filigree. “Felipe, you’re here! Welcome, welcome. I was worried! You are the last to come.” He turned for a second to signal someone in the wheelhouse and at once the engines revved up and someone ran to untie the mooring lines from their cleats and haul them in.

“Captain, these are my good friends Professor Gideon Oliver and Mr. John Lau,” Phil said. “John and Gideon, Capitan Alfredo Vargas.”

“Welcome to the Adelita.” Vargas pumped hands all around. “Welcome, welcome, welcome.”

“ Me llamo Juan,” said John.

“In thirty minutes we have a nice meeting for everyone, yes? In the ship’s salon. Until then, perhaps you would like to see your cabins? Chato will show you.”

Chato, slim, silent, and about five feet, two inches tall, took them to the upper deck, where there were ten cabins, set back to back, five to a side, with doors and single windows opening out onto the deck. He opened their doors – there were no locks – and left without having said a word or once having met their eyes. The boat began to slip away from the shore.

Basic was the right word. Gideon’s cabin, the rearmost one on the starboard side, consisted of a cot-sized bed with a thin kapok mattress under the single window, an open alcove with two shelves and hooks for hanging things – no closet, no drawers – and a bathroom with a sink about as big as a medium-sized mixing bowl, a toilet, and a claustrophobia-inducing shower. Both rooms were in a total of what couldn’t have been even a hundred square feet. Not places to spend a lot of time, but perfectly fine for sleeping. And the barred window over the bed – a leftover from the Adelita ’s days as a prison ship – opened, which was good, because the heralded air-conditioning, a clanking, groaning unit on the ceiling, while it was trying its best, wasn’t quite up to the task. He guessed the temperature in the room was about eighty-five degrees, maybe ten degrees cooler than outside. The humidity was considerably less oppressive, though. It was bearable. It would do.

Fortunately, Vargas had made available two unoccupied aft cabins for the botanists to store their equipment and for everyone to leave their luggage. If not for that, they would all have been climbing over their bags to get into and out of their rooms.

In the bathroom, atop the toilet tank, were a plastic liter-bottle of Cristalina water, a squat, heavy tumbler, a cleanly cut half of a new bar of Ivory soap, and a roll of toilet paper. No toilet-paper holder, no towel rack, no washcloth, and most definitely no basket of goodies. A single thin towel the size of a moderately large dish towel lay neatly folded on the blanketless bed. But everything looked clean and shipshape. The wood-plank walls were gummy with multiple coats of paint, the latest a glossy off-white that had been applied recently enough so that it still gave off a painty smell. Gideon didn’t doubt that under all the dried goop were the original cabin walls that the ship had come with. Except for the air-conditioning, the shower, and the window bars, in fact, he guessed that what he was looking at was pretty much what an 1890s VIP traveler would have found as well.

When he went to the sink to wash his hands and face, he found that there was no hot water. The same cloudy, lukewarm fluid came out of both taps. Well, no problem there, either. There wasn’t going to be much demand for piping hot water on this particular cruise. He washed up as well as he could in the tiny sink, got into a fresh shirt, and went downstairs to join the others. He was surprised to see that the Adelita was already to the outskirts of Iquitos. Ahead lay an unmarred vista of brown river and green jungle.