The Last Place God Made

FOUR

I came to Landro, dark clouds chasing after me, the horizon closing in — another of those sudden tropical rainstorms in the offing.

It was exactly as I had expected — a clearing in the jungle at the edge of the river. A crumbling jetty, piroques drawn up on the beach beside it, a church surrounded by a scattering of wooden houses and not much else. In other words, a typical up-river settlement.

The landing strip was at the north end of the place, a stretch of campo at least three hundred yards long by a hundred across. There was a windsock on a crude pole, lifting to one side in a slight breeze and a hangar roofed with corrugated iron. Hannah was down there now with three other men, pushing the Hayley into the hangar. He turned as I came in low across the field and waved.

The Bristol had one characteristic which made a good landing difficult for the novice. The undercarriage included rubber bungees which had a catapulting effect if you landed too fast or too hard, bouncing you back into the air like a rubber ball.

I was damned if I was going to make that kind of mistake in front of Hannah. I turned down-wind for my approach. A left-hand turn, I throttled back and adjusted the tail trimmer. I glided down steadily at just on sixty, selected my landing path and turned into the wind at five hundred feet, crossing the end of the field at a hundred and fifty.

Landing speed for a Bristol is forty-five miles an hour and can be made without power if you want to. I closed the throttle, eased back the stick to flatten my glide and floated in, the only sound the wind whispering through the struts.

I moved the stick back gradually to prevent her sinking and stalled into a perfect three-point landing, touching the ground so gently that I hardly felt a thing.

I rolled to a halt close to the hangar and sat there for a while, savouring the silence after the roar of the engine, then I pushed up my goggles and unstrapped myself. Hannah came round on the port side followed by a small, wiry man in overalls that had once been white and were now black with oil and grease. ‘I told you he was good, Mannie,’ Hannah said. ‘You did indeed, Sam.’ His companion smiled up at me. The liking between us was immediate and mutually recognised. One of those odd occasions when you feel that you've known someone a hell of a long time.

Except for a very slight accent, his English was perfect. As I discovered later, he was fifty at that time and looked ten years older which was hardly surprising for the Nazis had imprisoned him for just over a year. He certainly didn't look like a professor. As I've said, he was small and rather insignificant, untidy, iron-grey hair falling across his forehead, the face brown and wizened. But then there were the eyes, clear grey and incredibly calm, the eyes of a man who had seen the worst life had to offer and still had faith.

‘Emmanuel Sterne, Mr Mallory,’ he said as I dropped to the ground. ‘Neil,’ I told him and held out my hand. He smiled then, very briefly and thunder rumbled across the river, the first heavy spots of rain staining the brown earth at my feet.

‘Here we go again,’ Hannah said. ‘Let's get this thing inside quick. I don't think this is going to be any five-minute shower.’ He gave a yell and the other two men arrived on the run. They were simply day labourers who helped out with the heavy work when needed for a pittance. Undernourished, gaunt-looking men in straw hats and ragged shirts.

There were no doors to the hangar. It was really only a roof on posts, but there was plenty of room for the Bristol beside the Hayley. We had barely got it in when the flood descended, rattling on the corrugated-iron roof like a dozen machine-guns. Outside, an impenetrable grey curtain came down between us and the river.

Mannie Sterne was standing looking at the Bristol, hands on hips. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Really beautiful.’

‘He's fallen in love again.’ Hannah took down a couple of old oilskin coats from a hook and threw me one. ‘I'll take you to the house. You coming, Mannie?’

Mannie was already at the engine cowling with a spanner. He shook his head without looking round. ‘Later — I'll be along later.’

It was as if we had ceased to exist. Hannah shrugged and ducked out into the rain. I got my canvas grip from the observer's cockpit and ran after him.

The house was at the far end of the field, not much more than a wooden hut with a veranda and the usual corrugated-iron roof. It was built on stilts as they all were, mainly because of the dampness from all that heavy rain, but also in an attempt to keep out soldier ants and other examples of jungle wildlife.

He went up the steps to the veranda and he flung open a louvred door and led the way in. The floor was plain wood with one or two Indian rugs here and there. Most of the furniture was bamboo.

‘Kitchen through there,’ he said. ‘Shower-room next to it. There's a precipitation tank on the roof so we don't lack for a generous supply of decent water, it rains so damn much.’

‘All the comforts of home,’ I said.

‘I would think that something of an overstatement.’ He jerked his thumb at a door to the left. ‘That's my room. You can share with Mannie over here.’

He opened the door, stood to one side and motioned me through. It was surprisingly large and airy, bamboo shutters open to the veranda. There were three single beds, another of those Indian rugs on the floor and there were actually some books on a shelf beside the only bed which was made up.

I picked one up and Hannah laughed shortly. ‘As you can see, Mannie likes a good read. Turned Manaus upside down for that little lot.’

The book was Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I said, ‘This must have been like putting his pan in the river for water and coming up with a diamond.’

‘Don't tell me you go for that kind of stuff, too?’ He looked genuinely put out. ‘God help me, now I do need a drink.’

He went back into the living-room. I chose one of the unoccupied beds, made it up with blankets from a cupboard in the corner, then unpacked my grip. When I returned to the other room he was standing on the veranda, a glass in one hand, a bottle of Gordon's gin in the other.

The rain curtain was almost impenetrable, the first few wooden huts on their stilts at the edge of town, the only other sign of life.

‘Sometimes when it gets like this, I could go crazy,’ he said. ‘It's as if this is all there is. As if I'm never going to get out.’

He tried to re-fill his glass, discovered the bottle was empty and threw it out into the rain with a curse. ‘I need a drink. Come on — if you're not too tired I'll take you up town and show you the sights. An unforgettable experience.’

I put on my oilskin coat again and an old straw sombrero I found hanging behind the bedroom door. When I returned to the veranda he asked me if I was still carrying my revolver. As it happened, it was in one of my flying-jacket pockets.

He nodded in satisfaction. ‘You'll find everybody goes armed here. It's that kind of place.’

We plunged out into the rain and moved towards the town. I think it was one of the most depressing sights I have ever seen in my life. A scabrous rash of decaying wooden huts on stilts, streets which had quickly turned into thick, glutinous mud. Filthy, ragged little children, many of them with open sores on their faces, played listlessly under the huts and on the verandas above, people stared into the rain, gaunt, hopeless, most of them trapped in that living hell for what remained of their wretched lives, no hope on earth of getting out.

The church was more substantial and included a brick and adobe tower. I commented on that and Hannah laughed shortly. They don't even have a regular priest. Old guy called Father Conté who works with the nuns up at Santa Helena drops in every so often to say a Mass or two, baptise the babies and so on. He'll be coming back with us tomorrow, by the way.’

‘You want me to go with you?’

‘I don't see why not.’ He shrugged. ‘It's only a hundred-mile trip. Give you a chance to fly the Hayley. We'll have a passenger. Colonel Alberto from Forte Franco. He'll arrive about ten in the morning by boat.’

‘What's he do? Some kind of regular inspection?’

‘You could say that.’ Hannah smiled cynically. ‘The nuns up there are American. Little Sisters of Pity and very holy ladies indeed. The kind who have a mission. Know what I mean? The government's been trying to get them to move for a year or so now because of the way the Huna have been acting up, only they won't go. Alberto keeps trying, though, I'll say that for him.’

In the centre of the town, we came to the only two-storeyed building in the place. The board above the wide veranda said Hotel and two or three locals sat at a table without talking, staring lifelessly into space, rain blowing in on them.

‘The guy who runs this place is important enough to be polite to,’ Hannah observed. ‘Eugenio Figueiredo. He's the government agent here so you'll be seeing a lot of him. All mail and freight has to be channelled through him for the entire upper Mortes region.’

‘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 comletely 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 his 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.’

‘To get his ring back?’

‘No, to warn him of its true value in case anyone tried to cheat him when he sold it.’

I laughed out loud, puzzled. ‘What's that got to do with Avila?’

‘Nothing much, I suppose.’ He grinned wryly. ‘Except that he isn't like that.’

We turned into the alley at the side of the hotel and paused again. ‘You'll find the kitchen door just round the corner as I described,’ he said. ‘Straight through to the bar. You can't miss it.’

There was another burst of laughter from inside. ‘They seem to be enjoying themselves.’

‘I've heard laughter like that before. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. Good luck,’ he added briefly and went round to the front of the hotel.

The kitchen door he had mentioned stood open and Figueiredo's wife was seated on a chair slicing vegetables into a bowl on her knee. I stepped past her, ignoring her look of astonishment and walked across the kitchen to the opposite door.

There was a short passage with the entrance to the bar at the far end and Figueiredo was standing on this side of the bead curtain peering through presumably keeping out of the way.

He glanced over his shoulder at my approach. I motioned him to silence and peered through. They were still grouped around the table, Hannah in the chair next to Avila. He was face-down across the table, quite obviously hopelessly drunk. As I watched, Avila pulled him upright by the hair, jerking the head back so that the mouth gaped.

He picked up a jug of cachaca and poured in about a pint. ‘You like that, senhor? The wine of the country, eh?’

Hannah started to choke and Avila released him so that he fell back across the table. The rest of them seemed to find this enormously funny and one of them emptied a glass over the American's head.

There was a sudden silence as Mannie moved into view from the right. In the old sou'wester and yellow oilskin he could easily have looked ridiculous, yet didn't, which was a strange thing. He walked towards the group at the same steady pace and paused.

Avila said, ‘Go away, there is nothing for you here.’

Mannie's face was paler than ever. ‘Not without Captain Hannah.’

Avila's hand came up holding a revolver. He cocked it very deliberately so I produced the automatic shotgun I had been holding under my oilskin coat and shoved Figueriedo out of the way. There was a wooden post on the far side of Avila, one of several set into the floor to help support the plank ceiling. It was the kind of target that even I couldn't miss. I took careful aim and fired. The post disintegrated in the centre and part of the ceiling sagged.

I have seldom seen men scatter faster than they did and when I stepped through the bead curtain, shotgun ready, they were all flat on the floor except for Avila who crouched on one knee beside Hannah, revolver ready.

‘I'd put it down if I were you,’ I told him. ‘This is a six-shot automatic and I'm using steel ball cartridges.’

He placed his gun very carefully on the table and stood back, eyeing me balefully. I went round the end of the bar and handed the shotgun to Mannie. Then I dropped to one knee beside Hannah, heaved him over my shoulder and stood up.

Avila said, ‘I will remember this, senhors. My turn will come.’

I didn't bother to answer, simply turned and walked out and Mannie followed, the shotgun under one arm.

Hannah started to vomit halfway down the street and by the time we reached the house, there couldn't have been much left him him. We stripped him between us and got him into the shower which revived him a little, but the truth was that he was saturated with alcohol and partly out of his mind, I think, as we put him to bed.

He thrashed about for a while, hands plucking at himself. As I leaned over him, his eyes opened. He stared up at me, a slight frown on his face and smiled.

‘You new, Kid? Just out from England?’

‘Something like that,’ I glanced at Mannie who made no sign.

‘If you last a week you've got a chance.’ He grabbed me by the front of my flying jacket. ‘I'll give you a tip. Never cross the line alone under ten thousand feet, that's lesson number one.’

‘I'll remember that,’ I said.

‘And the sun — watch the sun.’

I think he was trying to say more but his head fell to one side and he passed out again.

I said, ‘He thought he was back on the Western Front.’

Mannie nodded. ‘Always the same. Hopelessly trapped by the past.’

He tucked the blankets in around Hannah's shoulders very carefully and I went into the living-room. It had stopped raining and moisture, drawn by the heat, rose from the ground outside like smoke.

It was still cool in the bedroom and I lay down and stared up at the ceiling, thinking about Sam Hannah, the man who had once had everything and now had nothing. And after a while, I drifted into sleep.