1

The stranger started out across the mud, where two boys were trying to catch a pig that had escaped from a yard. They kept throwing themselves on to it but it slipped from their arms as they fell and plastered themselves with slime. Then it waited for them and once more the boys’ yells were followed by the pig’s squeals. The stranger, a rucksack and a bag on his back, was calculating where to place his feet so as not to sink in. He kept as far from the scene as he could, to avoid being involved in the hullabaloo raised by a pig and two boys. When the animal again escaped from their fumbling fingers a sharp, violent report filled everybody with fear. The pig fell stock-still in the mud and from its neck spurted a stream of blood that spattered the boys’ cheeks.

They came to their feet and looked up at a strongly-built man with a big moustache and small grey eyes who was replacing his pistol in its holster. The pig-killer waved towards the dead animal and muttered through pursed lips:

‘Come on, take it away.’

The stranger continued towards the other side of the square. He glanced back every so often at the boys struggling away with the pig. When he reached the first step of the stairs up to the buildings he put his luggage down. He drew a deep breath and shook mud from his boots, rapping the heels on the step. Then he took out a cloth, spat into it and sat down to wipe the uppers. He lifted his rucksack and his bag on to his back and climbed the remaining stairs. He stopped before a glass door with the word Printers engraved on it.

He removed his hat and combed his light-brown hair, upturned at the ends. He buttoned his jacket and smoothed it down. His suit appeared to have suffered somewhat during the previous days. He shook his arms and legs to loosen them. His face was broad and brown, framed by unkempt side-whiskers that ran down to his jaw. He looked at himself in the glass door: his green eyes were bright streaks in a dark, weary, neglected face. He cleared his throat, drew another deep breath, and opened the door.

His ‘Good morning’ received no reply from the redhead with ink-stained hands who was tinkering with the printing-press, or from the man seated behind the desk. Marqués walked to the middle of the office and his boots echoed over the varnished wood. He eyed one and then the other, waiting for somebody to speak, but neither was paying much attention to him.

‘I’m looking for work.’

The man at the press raised uninterested eyes and continued moving wheels and greasing axles as he tried to discover what was wrong with the machine. The man behind the desk peered at the stranger over his spectacles and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He was short, and his shiny bald head, surrounded by piles of paper, books, folders and filing cabinets, jerked nervously from side to side. It was as if the desk had been made to the measure of another larger person and he were taking that person’s place temporarily. He frowned, somewhat surprised to see the stranger, and looked him up and down with curiosity. In the end he spoke in a voice dragged up from his throat:

‘What can you do?’

The recent arrival tried to take firm steps towards him but his movements betrayed haste and insecurity.

‘I can write.’

The man at the desk leaned his chair back and opened his eyes wide. His face crumpled as if he were stifling laughter, and he extended his neck to try to catch the eye of the man tinkering with the press. In the end he shook his head, adjusted his spectacles and lowered his gaze back to the papers on his desk.

‘Sorry, stranger.’

There was a moment of silence during which the stranger remained standing with his legs apart in the middle of the office. The man at the desk came to his feet and rummaged among folders on a shelf behind him. Standing, his stature contrasted even more with the space within which he worked. His was a small, muscular, compact form. Rather than the desk being too big for him it seemed that the world was too big for him.

‘I learnt my trade as a writer on the east coast. I can write whatever’s required.’

The man sat down and surveyed the leather boots of the youngster pestering him that sunny morning.

‘It’s easy to see from your ways that you’re from the east coast – and from your boots, too.’

The stranger glanced down at his shiny boots.

‘There won’t be anyone in these parts as well-trained as me.’

‘That I don’t doubt. And what’s someone as well-trained as you doing in these parts?’

This comment provoked laughter from the man at the press, and the stranger looked back at him, having already forgotten him. The stranger settled his feet on the floor again and swallowed hard.

‘I’m looking for work.’

The man at the desk interlaced the fingers of his small hands, on which two gold rings glittered.

‘You’ve said that already.’

He paused and regarded the stranger with a superior expression, shaking his head to indicate that the visit was beginning to annoy him.

‘That isn’t going to open many doors for you. Nothing happens in these parts that needs much writing.’

The stranger put his bags on the floor. He approached the desk. He picked up some sheets of paper packed with advertisements and short pieces of news and leafed through them with interest. His long fingers flicked through the pages. All the well-defined features of his broad face seemed concentrated on the examination of the newspaper. His gleaming green eyes surveyed the publication from beginning to end with great efficiency, almost voracity. He cleared his throat as he gave himself time to digest what he had read, and he replaced the newspaper on the desk.

‘The rivermouth, fur-traders, smugglers, gold-seekers, Aventurei Indians, casinos – and you claim there’s nothing round here that needs writing.’

The printer picked up the newspaper, distanced it from the stranger’s reach, and laughed sardonically until he started to cough. He coughed for a time and then took out a handkerchief to cover his mouth. He stretched his jaws and neck as if trying to find the best position in which to speak with his thread of a choking voice:

‘What do you want us to do to entertain them? Tell me that, tell me that. Come on, you tell me that, Mr East Coast.’

The stranger did not flinch at the printer’s tone of voice and without hesitation he replied:

‘There must be plenty of material for a page of local news. Reports. People would like to know what’s going on.’

‘People! People! What people are you talking about? Sometimes people don’t dare speak and when they do they come straight here to tell us about it. What do you mean by people?’

The stranger grimaced. He strolled to the bags he had left in the middle of the office.

‘I understand.’

‘You made that journey just to come here in search of work?’

‘I can always go further north. The frontier’s big. There won’t be any lack of opportunities for those who seek them out.’

The man nodded, trying to size the stranger up.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Marqués.’

‘I’m sorry, Marqués. I don’t want to discourage you, but those smart boots that must have strolled along grand boulevards are going to have to tread a little more frontier shit.’

The writer walked to the door. Grasping the handle he turned back:

‘I’m spending a couple of days here while I decide what to do. If you change your mind it won’t be hard to find me.’

‘Good luck, stranger.’

Marqués opened the door of the newspaper-office and paused outside it, taking in the disappointment of his unsuccessful attempt. Then he began a dogged descent of the wooden stairs. He thought he saw a red tinge in a puddle in the mud and imagined it must be the blood spilt by the pig that had been killed. The sun was beginning to beat down and the puddles left in the square by the recent rains were drying fast. These rains had caught him on the road, travelling in a horse cart. Until they reached Romero its canvas had offered the three passengers poor protection from the inclemency of the weather. It had been a journey to forget, in the company of two villainous adventurers who only spoke to swear and try to swindle money out of him.

Two young women, raising their dresses a little to avoid dirtying them in the mud, were stepping across the square. Their heads were protected with colourful scarves and they were chattering in noisy animation. When they spotted the stranger looking at them from the printing-office stairs they muttered to each other and one of them sent him a cheeky sidelong glance. She made to undo a button on her blouse and let him glimpse the beginnings of her breasts, but then she stopped her hand’s movement and the two girls burst out laughing as they gazed at Marqués, waiting for what he was to be allowed to see.

He heard the girls’ guffaws as his fingers gripped the handrails in his cautious descent into the mud.

He walked towards the river bank, his bags on his back, picking his steps with care so as not to slip and lose his balance. Near the murmur and the coolness of the water, masts of small sailing-boats appeared here and there. The bank, rather than a continuous line bordering the river, had been turned into a complex network of little inlets and bridges; many of these were no more than contraptions that children had made by tying driftwood together with mooring-rope. Sometimes he crossed stepping-stones, leaping over the water, sometimes there were solid bridges. Sheltering from the heat in this boggy area were men repairing sailing-boats and greybeards fishing with bamboo rods. Some suspended their labours with hammers and nails, saws and paint, to cast curious glances at this stranger sauntering along and observing, without any apparent aim.

As Marqués strolled through this humid place while the sun on high became hotter and hotter, he began to feel the weariness of so many days’ fruitless travel, and he decided to look for somewhere cool to rest. The frontier wouldn’t open its doors – he’d lost count of the towns where his services were of no interest to anybody. The climate was harsh, the people were sullen, their speech was hard to understand.

The word adventure was acquiring a meaning different from the one it had when he was developing his dream and devising his plan. His dream had been born as a liberation and was turning into a nightmare. But now there was no return. There he was, with no road back. He’d left fury behind him when he’d told his father that he was off to the frontier. The old man hadn’t even said goodbye. Too high and mighty. Marqués hadn’t expected anything else. That’s how it was between them. After his mother’s death the old man had become obsessive. Before that there had been two of them to put up with him, and she’d taken care of everything. But when she passed away all the world’s woes weighed on the old man, and the old man weighed on him, and with the old man all the world’s woes weighed on him. Everything had to be done to his measure and everything had to be done in his way. Nobody could accuse the son of not trying, he really did try but it was impossible to please him. His voice rumbled on like a sick dog following you wherever you go. And so the frontier became a territory that would free him. He longed for the frontier as a fledgling longs for wings to fly. Before he left he began to receive visits from members of the family – uncles and cousins all trying to persuade him to stay. They must have feared that in the son’s absence the old man’s fury would be turned on them. He’d even sought out a woman of marrying age from a good family! Stubborn as a mule. The day Marqués climbed on to the train the skies opened and a world of water fell. It was like a sign from heaven, a gift, the best possible farewell, he thought: let the rain wash his footsteps away so that nobody could follow him!

His one fond memory was of Uncle Zacarías, his mother’s brother, offering his camera. He hadn’t wanted to take it, he knew how dear it was to his uncle, but he kept insisting. Since his mother’s death his uncle had aged. He was a reserved, quiet man, weak and sensitive, with an eternal mane of thick grey hair combed to one side. When Marqués took the camera, long fingers stretched out to caress his hand in a timid act of belated love. Marqués thanked him for the present with a hug and a promise to write.

The money he’d brought with him wasn’t going to last much longer. To reach Romero he’d walked, travelled on ox-carts and horse-carts, even gone a short distance on a narrow-gauge train, and now, once more, he’d have to rethink his route. He hadn’t foreseen that things would get into such a muddle.

He started walking again, pondering his tribulations. He took out his camera and climbed on to the branch of a tree that the river had washed down, stuck there with its roots in the air. From here he took photographs of the estuary area. Salt water, waves and tides surged up from the sea to mingle with waters that poured down from the river like a liquid blanket from a cold volcano. This was a different space. Not river, not sea, and both at the same time.

He picked up his things and approached a small creek. He removed his boots and placed them on the ground. He removed his socks, put his feet into the water and lowered his back on to the damp grass. With his head on the ground he could hear children running among the rushes with a dog, and women singing as they washed clothes. The sunrays were warming the air and he felt the damp of the ground turning into vapour, into tepid humidity.

He relaxed, he began to nod off, and the wetness of his submerged feet spread throughout his body. But then the children’s cries intensified into anxious shrieks joined by the barking of a dog and screams of the women who’d been singing. Marqués looked all around and heard feet crashing among the rushes. In an instant the riverbank’s tranquil morning became a pandemonium of screaming and barking and stampeding and squealing. He threw on his socks and boots and joined the groups of people rushing to the bridges and jetties. The men who’d been working stopped as if frozen by a cold wave. All were staring at the rivermouth, all gazes were one gaze. Marqués, pushing and elbowing his way forward, reached close to the balustrade. And then he could see what had caught everybody’s attention and had caused such a commotion.

Down the middle of the river came a large boat that suddenly stopped, rolling from side to side, swaying in that place where the river met the sea, unable to continue downstream. In the centre of the boat stood her smoking mast and on it there was a crucified man with a charred body. The boat was like an enormous animal floating helpless and motionless in the water, tragic and fatally wounded. A leaderless animal, strong and clumsy. An animal slaughtered and slit open.

Marqués’s heart pounded in his chest like a drum as he tried not to blink, not to lose sight for an instant of that image dominating the estuary.

Two wherries drew up to the boat and Marqués joined the silence of all those watching. He took the chance to open his bag and remove his camera. He tried to hold the device with the utmost care but his nerves made his fingers shake and he was surrounded by arms and elbows trying to make room to see the crucified man. He managed to rest the camera on the balustrade and looked down into the viewfinder to centre the photograph.

The river was the entire space, the background and the subject. A liquid, endless space. The rest of the photograph’s elements were inserts. The two wherries were moving in a diagonal from the lower left corner towards the boat in the upper right corner. The boat was listing and the cross appeared almost sideways on. The corpse was a black shape nailed to a death-bed, and the flames had removed all human features. The space separating the wherries from the boat occupied the entire centre of the image. There was a man in the bows with his arms stretched out as if indicating the course to be followed or a desire to take hold of what lay before him. The space between the wherries and the boat had a dark tonality and a tight texture. That space was a liquid abyss.

Marqués replaced his camera in its case and continued along the way that many others had taken towards the inlet. He went as fast as he could over that muddy terrain so as not to miss one second of what was happening. He came across scattered tools and half-finished jobs, half-washed clothes and half-painted boats. The crucified man had frozen the estuary’s morning. Adults were trying to drag away children who didn’t want to lose their place in the first row for the spectacle of the boat’s arrival.

Marqués soon realised that he wasn’t going to get through the crowd, and he searched for a place from where he could see what was happening and take more photographs. His heart was throbbing like a machine about to explode. After trying from various places he went to the side of the inlet, from where he could view the boat’s approach, and he photographed the boldest men darting forward to board her. It was hard to keep the camera still in the midst of so much movement and agitation. Even so, in spite of all the bustle, there was also a strange silence covering everything like an all-enveloping humidity, as if the sight had stolen away the breath of so many witnesses; and all those on deck gazed up at the crucified man without daring to take him down.

He felt taps on his shoulder and turned round. The printing-office boss was standing behind him, and panting. He was trying to get his breath back as he looked from the camera hanging from the writer’s neck up to his face. He leant on the balustrade to recover as he gestured to catch the writer’s attention. He rubbed his shiny bald head and coughed.

Children and adults were still arriving at the inlet. Marqués was waiting for the man from the printing-office to speak. Eventually he managed to point at the boat, and he raised his chin to emit his choking voice:

‘Still looking for work?’

2

Marqués was seated on deck arranging papers inside his leather bag. A gang of children was hanging from the wooden balustrade watching the journalist and his preparations. Men were loading merchandise into the hold, carefully lowering barrels, crates and bales of cloth.

From time to time Marqués would glance at the stevedores carrying the merchandise on their backs and at the carpenters busy with their hammers positioning the new mast. He was impatient to know who’d be travelling upriver with him. The boss of the printing-firm that published the newspaper had turned out also to be the owner of the boat, and no doubt he had more than a couple of other concerns along the river. The venture opening up before Marqués had an air of haste and improvisation, but they both agreed that he’d only be able to discover something about the boatman’s death if he set sail as soon as possible.

He went to sit on the gunwale, gazing at the immensity of the water and hearing the murmurs behind him. He felt anticipation pulling him on. Leading him, taking him by the hand, showing him the way, a watery way. Yesterday he’d resigned himself to the idea of having to travel to another part of the frontier in search of opportunities, and today his luck had changed.

He felt looks drilling into the back of his neck. He sensed river eyes staring at him. The stranger was going to bring the story back. This new arrival with his linen shirt and his leather bags where he carried one of those cameras that make images of what they’re pointed at and who wore a hat of finest felt was going to come back from the river to say who’d crucified the boatman. The river had thrown up a corpse and the writer was going to cling to it like a despairing lover. Hearing the murmurs and feeling the coldness of the stares boring into the back of his neck he wondered what it was that interested the people lingering there. The boatman’s death or the writer’s journey upriver?

The boat’s stern-deck was higher than its main-deck. So to reach the helm, at the rear of the stern-deck, one had to climb wooden steps smeared with dark brown varnish. Each step creaked in a different tone. High on the stern-deck was the leather-bound wheel. From it the view ahead was quite restricted. In the middle of the main-deck was a cabin that impeded vision when looking forward; as if that weren’t enough, between the cabin and the helm stood the mast that the carpenters had almost finished nailing up, and from it the sails would hang. Whoever steered the boat would have to imagine the river rather than see it.

There were other things he didn’t understand. If the helm was astern why was there a tiller in the central cabin? Furthermore, there was also a sealed coal-flap and beside it a disused boiler. Levers and door-handles were dripping with grease and oil, and draped over some pipes was an oil-stained pair of gloves. In the fore-end was a crate, its lid painted dark brown. Inside it was a paddle-wheel like those that steamboats once used, the rods and paddles covered in rust. In addition to these elements of propulsion and navigation were the sails that would hang from the mast, and enormous poles, two on the starboard side and two on the port side, lashed to the guardrails that ran round the boat.

The layout seemed to be the upshot of the processes of time, of the technological advances that had accumulated over the years and of the successive mendings and patchings-up that had saved the life of this habitable surface floating on the river. Rather than a means of transport it seemed to Marqués like an old animal whose belly had been sewn up more than once so that it could keep dragging its longevity along.

Sometimes he had doubts about what he was proposing to do – it seemed a rather reckless adventure. He tried to calm his doubts by congratulating himself on his good fortune, on having the opportunity he’d sought for so long. The trade of putting words together was not one of those most in demand where frontiers were being opened up, and he ought to be satisfied with being given an opportunity. What was more, it wasn’t just any opportunity, it had a perfect ending: a boatman crucified on the smoking mast of his boat. There couldn’t be many writers worthy of their trade who’d let an opportunity like that slip away.

From the nearby bridge on which people were loitering a rope dropped, followed by a thud on the deck. The writer swung round and saw a boy, firm on his feet, staring at him. Before he could react the newspaper-man spoke from on high:

‘There he is. He’ll help you.’

Marqués gazed in amazement at this dark-skinned, bold boy eyeing him, and he looked up at the boat-owner and printer. Then he shook his head and planted his wrists on his hips. His face did not hide his disappointment.

‘This is a child… how can I go upriver assisted by a child? Who’ll steer?’

The lad took a step forward, grasping a boat-hook that towered over him. The writer couldn’t tell whether this child was trying to show that he was a competent deckhand or that he knew how to defend himself with his pole with a hook on the end.

‘I will.’

The boss of the printing-firm continued speaking from the top of the bridge, making room for himself by pushing aside the people thronging there:

‘That’s enough. That’s enough. He’s the best possible deckhand. He’s often sailed upriver with the boatman, he knows the river and the boat. No question about that.’

He paused in his speech as he descended the steps of the bridge. He extended a hand as if making a public declaration or preaching from a pulpit. Marqués was gazing up at him in surprise from the deck.

‘What’s more he’s a mestizo, his mother was an Aventurei. He can help you like nobody else. If he wants to be the new boatman he’s got to show his worth. Can you tell me where you’ll find a better guide?’

Marqués perused the bold deckhand standing in the middle of the boat. Upon his sunburnt skin gleamed a necklace of polished stones. His dark brown hair hung in unkempt locks and from the middle of his head plaits descended beside his left ear and ended in leather thongs. He had a scar on his upper lip that caused that part of his mouth to stay open even when he closed it. He wore a tight blue singlet and loose trousers with large pockets in which he seemed to keep many small metal objects.

The boat-owner and publisher continued down the wooden steps towards the boat. He had a wooden box under one arm and a folder under the other.

‘I sought out another deckhand but he’s in bed with a bad fever and who knows when he’ll get better.’

The boat-owner placed a wavering foot on the gunwale and boarded the boat. He, Marqués and the lad eyed each other on deck in what was a strange and awkward situation for all three.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Cordel.’

Marqués continued speaking coldly, not hiding his annoyance:

‘How old are you?’

‘Don’t know.’

The boat-owner addressed the writer slowly, almost spelling out the words:

‘Quite old enough to steer the boat and know the river. You don’t understand. Indians soon become men.’

With a snort the boat-owner walked into the cabin, and Marqués followed him. He opened the folder and removed some papers.

‘This is what I told you about. You know what I mean. The lists of merchandise. Your load won’t be as heavy as on a routine voyage, but you’re taking a few things they need upriver.’ He took out a cigarette lighter and relit his cigar.

‘This is a big boat.’

The man slapped his folder down on a table and swung round.

‘Not for Cordel. The boatman sailed her alone. Cordel wants to be the new boatman. Do you think I’d let my own boat set off if I didn’t believe Cordel can manage her?’

There was silence between the two men. Marqués had been hearing without listening, biting his upper lip. The other man put his box down and opened it.

‘I’m leaving this with you. It isn’t a bad idea to have one.’

In the box Marqués saw a revolver. The boat-owner took it out and spun the drum. There was also a packet of bullets.

‘You’re in charge of it. Here’s the key. The boatman kept a pistol under his pillow but there’s no trace of it.’

Marqués took the box and fingered its rivets while the boat-owner walked to the door. Marqués grasped the revolver. He swung it from side to side to judge its weight. Its wooden grip gave it a pleasant feel. He replaced it in its box, which he locked. With curiosity he saw the boat-owner talking to Cordel. The lad was listening in silence and finally his boss ruffled his hair. The carpenters were finishing hanging the sails from the mast. The boat-owner climbed ashore and joined the waiting people.

The lad began to get ready for the voyage, moving ropes and crates and tidying up on deck as the carpenters’ last hammer-blows sounded out. Marqués could hear a tense silence all around him. He paced over the deck pursing his lips.

The carpenters collected their tools and timber and clambered ashore. Everybody was waiting for the rope that served as an umbilical cord to be cast off and for the boat to start a new run. The assembled people were observing the writer, now sitting forward and peering into infinity as he faced the immense river. Suddenly and without warning he felt the boat move. He looked back and saw Cordel casting off and using the boathook to ease the vessel away from the quay. It was only the briefest of instants but it was enough for Marqués to notice something breaking inside him, an invisible thread dropping him into a bottomless well.

The writer leant on the gunwale as the lad manoeuvred the boat. With a sombre expression he watched the waves lapping the hull. Cordel dropped the boathook and let out a sail to work to windward. The sea-waves became calmer as the boat continued upstream. Marqués looked back and the waiting people had become tiny shadows fading away on the riverbank.

Sometimes the boat would list to port or to starboard as if struggling against unpredictable currents, but the force of the wind on the sails was enough to right her. Cordel seemed to enjoy the speed of the manoeuvres, lashing and unlashing ropes and gripping the wheel. Observing Cordel at the beginning of his day’s work, Marqués realised that the lad knew his job better than he did his.

The sun was beating down in fury and a barrier of mist was rising over each bank. As they continued upriver the succession of inlets turned into a straighter line, trees became more frequent and vegetation more luxuriant. In this way the morning hours slipped by, wrapped in a damp, hot silence. On either side there was an enormous wall of vegetation and behind it intermittent, mysterious, unknown sounds rang out, boring through the matted trees, so much greenery.

As they advanced they were distancing themselves from the conversation with the boat-owner and from Marqués’s doubts about going on that journey accompanied only by a child. He took out a notebook and began to make jottings and quick sketches of the great variety of palm trees he saw on the river banks. The sun was the third traveller on the boat. A sun that was everywhere and impossible to ignore, a sun that brought sweat and mosquitoes with it. Mosquitoes of all sizes, of all buzzes.

The hours passed by yet they hardly seemed to be moving, as though the world into which they were venturing had a much-elongated entrance hall. It was as if, sailing upriver, they were crossing a great threshold, larger, longer and more imposing than the place to which it led or the place they were leaving behind.

He took out the camera that his uncle had given him. It had a reputation for durability but he always treated it with the utmost care: he knew that however much science had gone into these mechanical devices they weren’t designed for the jungle. He stood up with the camera hanging from his neck and made ready to take a photograph of the lad. Cordel shook his head nervously and raised a hand to prevent the photograph. Marqués lowered the camera in surprise.

‘You don’t like being photographed.’

The lad sent him a serious look and continued in calm control of the boat.

‘Don’t want anything to do with those gadgets.’

His sunburnt skin gave him a tough, weather-beaten appearance. The wound that had left him as a memento an opening in his upper lip was a constant reminder of risk, of peril. When he was agitated the air hissed through that fissure like a warning to those around him. In him there was something of the gangling youth, something of the child, the boatman, the traveller and the Aventurei who distrusts strangers. Different parts of his body seemed younger or older. What there was of a child was his tangled hair and his way of flicking his plaits from side to side as if they were playing in the wind. What had already become adult was his gaze. Cordel kept his eyes half-closed against the sun and this habit had already formed wrinkles in their corners.

‘Did you know the boatman well?’

Cordel did not hurry to answer. His look was hanging on some uncertain point in the distance. As if he were gazing at an absolute, abstract place. An interior space where the river lapped. He shrugged.

‘Sailed with him a few times.’

‘Enough to learn your trade.’

‘He was good at that. Let me steer and taught me much about the river.’

Marqués was silent for a moment and then entered the cabin, where the boat-owner had given him the lists of merchandise and the revolver. He leant on the disused tiller and looked round. There was a notice-board to which papers were fastened with drawing pins, and tools and keys were hanging from small hooks. He could sense a previous presence. Everything there recalled something. Everything belonged to someone else, someone who wasn’t there, someone who couldn’t protect his privacy. Hanging on the wall was a rabbit’s paw, perhaps an amulet, and by its side a reptile’s claw. Marqués removed his trilby and replaced it with a straw hat that he took from a shelf. Here were the boatman’s traces, his movements, but the boatman wasn’t there to tell him that he had no right to be reading the notes on the board – past orders, coffee, sugar, salt, salt meat, rum, gin, soap, etc – and that the hat was his, he was in charge of that boat and nobody else.

Marqués left the cabin in something of a daze, as if emerging from a time-tunnel, a cave inhabited by an unknown past. His eyes had grown accustomed to seeing in the shade, and the sunlight dazzled him. With curiosity Cordel saw the stranger coming out of the cabin wearing the straw hat that had belonged to the boatman. But when Marqués cast a glance at him, the boy looked away.

The writer strolled across the deck and, somewhat disconcerted, pointed at the sails, the cabin, the wheel.

‘She’s rather a strange vessel – it must take time to learn her secrets.’

The lad was silent for a moment, frowning as he considered Marqués’s words.

‘Doesn’t seem strange to me. Don’t know any other. Besides…’

The lad fell silent for another moment.

‘What you steer isn’t the boat, it’s the river. You just have to understand it and know how to go the way it tells you to go. The boat takes care of herself. That’s what the boatman taught me.’

Marqués smiled. It was a nervous smile, an unexpected smile. Marqués smiled because he realised that Cordel was speaking a different language. Cordel was speaking the language of the river. Perhaps it was knowing that he played no part in the language of the river that made Marqués aware of the size of his task. It wasn’t the words of that language that he didn’t understand, it was something else.

‘Can you read?’

The lad nodded.

‘They taught me at the mission.’

The boat was hugging the left bank. The opposite bank was like a distant frontier covered with undergrowth and other vegetation, and as the hours passed its colours faded. The trees’ gleaming trunks were slowly taking on duller tones, and amidst the greenery there were deep holes of darkness where fear lurked with bated breath. Fear suspected or was afraid of watchful pairs of eyes. Human or animal eyes, perhaps both. The hours of the day had slipped by without great changes, just the constant sensation of sailing through the landscape to reach something that maybe wouldn’t be a landscape, that would be different. Something that Marqués still couldn’t put into words, even though that was his trade.

He let drop occasional questions as invitations to Cordel to speak but the lad had his own rhythm. Not only his own language but a different rhythm. A rhythm that rose from the water and passed through the boat to the wheel and from there to the lad. A rhythm to which the writer hadn’t yet become accustomed.

‘Did the two of you talk much?’

‘Less than with you.’

When dusk began to fall Marqués took out his camera to capture images of his first night on the river. Although he could only reproduce the colours in whites, greys and blacks he wanted to take something of that sunset away with him. If he didn’t have proof, nobody would believe a sky like this existed. He placed the camera on a small tripod and picked up a remote shutter release. If earlier he’d taken a photograph of the river ignoring the sky, now it was the sky’s turn.

He included all the colours. He brought together all possible tones, tearing the skin from the sky to take it away with him. The sky was a vault, a dome, an infinite cave. The sun was in the background like a small eye winking behind the tall trees, but in its farewell until the new day it was demonstrating its power in that sunset that made incredible mixtures of hues, ripping the sky open like an immense, chaotic rainbow. In the distance a black spot with outspread wings could be espied, perhaps a condor or an albatross or an eagle, flying towards the nucleus of light hiding behind the trees and indicating the way that must lead to paradise.

Marqués was scurrying from side to side. He knew he was a lucky man to witness such a sunset and he was trying to make the most of it with his camera, yet his face showed a certain disappointment because he couldn’t take the colour that he was seeing away with him. He thought that not even with words would he be able to reproduce what he had before him. He also wished he could take that background hum away with him, that conglomeration of sounds that had accompanied them all day long. The jungle shouted, screamed from its trees, the boat creaked from her timbers, dragged herself along, slid along, ploughed the waters. It was a constant hum, the hum of everything. It was an animal hum, low and savage.

Cordel had let out a net at the stern and had caught a dozen fish that were rubbing scales with each other in the keep-net bobbing in the water. The fishing-net was lashed to the stern-winch and it swung from side to side as it danced in the gleaming wake left by the boat. Cordel wanted to sail on while there was still some light, until they reached a cove. They’d eat the fish in the keep-net – they’d be tasty.

‘He…’ said the lad.

Marqués raised his chin and tilted his hat.

‘The boatman?’

‘Yes. He was called Cargo.’

3

There was a faint splashing. Like an object or a limb going into and out of the water. Marqués was sunk in a warm, damp dream, trapped in a liquid jungle. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he lay there. He turned over in the hammock improvised on deck and faced the water. The splashing became clearer. He was breathing with difficulty, as if his lungs were congested.

He half-opened an eye and saw on the water the reflection of an adult face being shaved. Then the hand holding the razor descended and the reflection dissipated in ripples. Marqués sat up and dipped a cloth in the river to make a rapid escape from what he thought was a dream.

Before him was a man of about fifty with splendid white hair putting meticulous finishing touches to his shave. He was seated on a rock by the river, wearing a hitched-up cowl. Marqués was confused and again plunged his neckerchief into the river and rubbed it over his face and forehead. He looked around and saw Cordel playing in a small cove with other lads. They were tied to a rope that he was tugging towards the water. A dog was barking at the water’s edge, not daring to go in.

‘This heat makes one so drowsy, does it not?’

Marqués gave his head a shake and looked at the man, who was still shaving as he sent him sidelong glances.

‘Where am I?’

‘At the mission.’

‘At the mission?’

The friar turned towards Marqués and wiped his razor on his cowl.

‘Someone has to be the Lord’s vanguard.’

The two men regarded each other with curiosity. They were about two metres apart. The friar’s forehead was of a darker colour than the rest of his face, because there was a network of fine wrinkles on it, forming a brown band.

‘Last night was the first night I’ve slept on the river. I didn’t rest as well as I’d have liked. The heat, the mosquitoes and the swaying of the boat didn’t let me sleep. That must be why I nodded off on deck.’

‘I am Father Bento. The only friar left at the mission.’

Marqués nodded.

‘Two fathers who came with me did not survive. The river gives us life but it also brings illnesses and other disasters. Nowadays the Church is more interested in the missions in the south. So I have been left here alone with my work, but I am grateful to the Lord for the great challenge that He has placed before me.’

The friar had the soft, deliberate way of speaking of one who lives between various languages and must take care that his words are understood correctly. He seemed to chew his words like a cow chewing grass before releasing them in short bursts. His face muscles drooped and they continued quivering after he’d finished speaking.

‘I’m Marqués… I’ve come…’

The friar interrupted him:

‘I know. Cordel has told me. Such a misfortune.’

Marqués looked at the path leading up to the Indian village. An old woman followed by a dog was carrying a bundle of firewood, and further on a column of smoke was rising to the sky. Marqués could sense rather than see people in their daily activities. Having finished shaving, the friar stood up and put his razor away in his cowl. Hands on hips, he looked at the children at the side of the river. Then he looked at the recent arrival.

‘What is known about the tragedy?’

‘The boatman returned to the estuary crucified. Someone had burnt him on the mast. On the way back I hope to be able to tell you more. For the moment there are only questions.’

Marqués walked down the gangplank and approached the friar. His shirt, he noticed, was soaked in sweat. He felt a little dizzy, as if about to faint, but it soon passed.

‘Do you come to judge, to govern or to execute?’

‘I come to tell.’

‘To tell?’

‘I’m a writer.’

The friar arched his eyebrows and then perused the writer’s boots.

‘A writer?’

Marqués put his hand on a tree-trunk to sit down and continue talking to the friar. He felt weary and sometimes his breathing seemed blocked, but he was trying to keep calm and not allow it any importance. He blamed it on having slept in the sun longer than he should.

‘An ending doesn’t make a story. I’m going to investigate the rest.’

The friar crossed his arms and regarded Marqués with consternation. Then he lowered his gaze and murmured words that the writer didn’t understand. Sometimes the friar seemed to be holding two conversations at the same time. One with himself, one with Marqués.

‘The rest? You want to know the rest?’

Marqués stayed silent for a moment and watched the boys at play in the cove, climbing on to the boat and diving back into the water. He wanted the friar to be the one who broached the subject of Cargo’s death on a cross, but he seemed to be avoiding this detail. He had a grim expression on his face, apparently still astonished at the writer’s intentions.

‘Cargo was crucified.’

The friar pressed his lips together and pushed them forward. He shook his head in annoyance.

‘That ought to be reserved for the saints.’

‘Didn’t you see the boat on her way back?’

Marqués’s words were slow and spaced out, as if he could thus increase their weight, their meaning. They were plain, unadorned words. Spoken clearly, incisively.

‘I did not see Cargo after he went upriver, which would be more than three weeks ago now. He must have come back by night. Nobody in the village said anything. He does not always stop here, that is true, but if people see him sailing past they always mention it. That did not happen this time. He was a good man.’

The friar measured his replies with prudence and assembled his words with care so that placed beside each other they built a small defensive wall that was as effective as the wall of vegetation separating them from the Indian village. Both impeded access, both stopped people from seeing the other side.

‘His offence must have been very great for him to die in that way.’

The friar placed his hands on his knees, fidgeting uneasily. Whenever Marqués spoke, the friar, rather than listening, seemed to be gathering strength for the next time he himself spoke.

‘Are there not any stories on the east coast? Who can be interested in a story about a poor boatman on the wild frontier?’

Marqués took his hat off and fanned himself. Sometimes everything round him seemed to be dissolving. There were gleams of light that confused him. He was trying to follow the conversation but his senses were failing him.

‘What are you going to achieve with all this?’

‘The boatman is my work now.’

Marqués was surprised by the friar’s surly tone and he raised his head to give him a sidelong glance. This sudden movement dazed him a little and he rubbed his eyes. It was hard to concentrate.

‘Does that contravene the law of the Lord?’

The friar was so lost in his thoughts that he did not notice Marqués’s state.   

‘I am not sure that I desire to wish you good luck. What exactly do you want?’

‘I want to know what happened to the boatman – the truth.’

The friar regarded him with some annoyance and retorted:

‘There is only one being who knows the truth, and He decides with whom He shares it and whom He illuminates with His torch. Most of us live in the shadows.’

Marqués was trying to fathom what thoughts lurked behind the friar’s tone of voice. Clearly his visit was inopportune. Better leave as soon as possible. He looked for Cordel, to order him back to the boat, but his movements were becoming slower, he felt a cold sweat and when he retched he couldn’t dissemble his stomach’s convulsions.

The friar’s face was shining with oil he’d rubbed on it after shaving. His fleshy, flaccid cheeks sagged in folds. When he wasn’t speaking, his glare was sometimes aimed at Marqués like an arrow.

Marqués felt another sudden cold sweat on his forehead and he grasped at the tree-trunk to avoid swaying. He was aware that something was happening to him, something that needed attention, but he was also aware of the friar’s sullen attitude and didn’t want to show signs of weakness.

‘Cordel and I must start thinking about leaving.’

The friar swayed his head from side to side as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t make up his mind to do so.

‘It is not my intention to be inhospitable – the Lord’s house is always open to the traveller. But I do have my reservations when I see a new arrival preparing to meddle in our world.’

‘Your world?’

As Marqués asked this question a colic seized his stomach, but not wanting to reveal his frailty he avoided grimacing. The friar was gazing down at the earth, where he was making marks with the toes of his sandals. He looked up at Marqués and his surprise kept him speechless for a moment.

‘Are you feeling well?’

Marqués’s reply was to grit his teeth and clasp a hand to his stomach. The friar approached him with concern on his face.

‘Stay still. If you are going upriver it will be better to see to those wounds.’

‘Wounds?’

The friar took his shaving-mirror from his pocket and placed it by Marqués’s neck. The writer saw red marks under his ear.

‘Come with me.’

Marqués was seized by another colic as he stood up, and he shut his eyes in pain. The friar indicated the path to the village. He waved to the playing boys and they waved back without interrupting their game. His gruff tones had changed once he’d seen the wounds.

Huts made of timber and branches were scattered about without any apparent order. Animals wandered free – dogs, goats and pigs. The Aventurei Indians they met gave way to the friar in reverent silence. They wore skirts and loincloths and were adorned with tattoos and other markings, armbands and necklaces of small stones, animal teeth and bones. The women wore diadems set with coloured stones, and their naked breasts were painted. It was then that Marqués noticed the friar’s stooping gait. Perhaps living so long with the Indians had even affected the way he walked, making his constitution imitate theirs.

‘You have a good guide.’

‘Cordel?’

‘He understands the river and he knows the jungle.’

Marqués nodded. He was plodding along and his forehead felt hot. He pressed his hands on his knees as he climbed to the village.

‘He’s a good riverman.’

‘He is proof that good can be born from evil, proof of the power of the Lord.’

‘What do you mean?’

The friar walked on in silence, stopped to gather breath, and spoke again:

‘A gang of heartless settlers, the worst people Our Lord ever brought into this world, kidnapped his mother. When we found her a week later she was mad, wandering through the jungle. Nine months later Cordel was born.’

‘What happened to his mother?’

‘She died giving birth to him. She took Our Lord’s blessing with her to heaven, and the river received her body within its depths.’

Sunbeams were filtering between the branches. They cast a radiant filigree upon the path up which the two men were walking. Marqués stopped every so often to rest and gaze at the immensity of the trees rising like the columns of a cathedral of vegetation.

‘The river received her?’

‘The Aventurei carry notable and wise people to the river. Illustrious people who have lived in accordance with its law. It makes a family proud if one of its members ends up in the river. According to the Aventurei, when the spirit of one of these noble people is taken to the river, its own spirit is purified.’

‘Cordel’s mother…?’

‘She was a good woman, and this privilege was granted her because of her suffering. It was also an appropriate way in which to give a child born in such adverse circumstances something of which to feel proud.’

Marqués was struggling to walk.

The friar helped him to keep climbing.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To see one who can cure you.’

Marqués plodded doggedly on. Sometimes he seemed to be getting better but then the dizziness and the fever came back.

‘If the Aventurei still believe all these things, you aren’t having much success.’

The friar stopped, directed a troubled look at him and, shaking his head, mumbled:

‘You are too quick to judge.’

They made their way towards a hut standing a little apart from the others. They had to climb a small slope to reach it. The friar went to Marqués’s side and helped him along. He was happy to accept the friar’s assistance.

‘Who decides who can end up in the river and who can’t?’

‘Are you still thinking about those superstitions? Who knows? If I want to continue my mission of converting souls for Our Lord… I often have to pretend not to hear, not to see, not to feel… not to know.’

They stopped for a brief rest before reaching the hut. It was round, and in front of it there was a space serving as an entrance-way, a circle bordered by small bushes with a slate path leading across it to the door. A lad was at work on a pail. The friar gestured to him and he stood up and entered the hut. He came back out and continued tapping the pail with a mallet.

They entered the hut, where an Aventurei woman, taller than those he’d seen in the village, awaited them. She moved with exemplary serenity and greeted Marqués by lowering her head with the grace of a hind. The friar addressed her in the Aventurei language as she sat on a wooden stool. She rose and, her deeply wrinkled face glistening, approached the writer. She peered at his neck and drew his shirt open to examine his chest. Her hands felt as though they’d brought coldness from some hidden place. Her bones were slender and steady. Marqués could hardly stand without swaying and he breathed with difficulty. The woman approached the friar and spoke slowly to him. He translated for the writer:

‘She is going to bring your fevers down. She says that it is better to do so now than wait for them to worsen. It will be more bearable. Let us wait outside while she sets things up.’

Marqués sat on a tree-trunk and tensely buttoned his shirt.

‘What’s she going to do to me?’

The friar put an arm round his shoulders and tried to reassure him:

‘You are in the best hands. She will care for you.’

The woman came out and spoke to the lad, who was still perfecting his pail with gentle taps. He dropped his tools and ran off towards the village. She went back inside.

The onset of illness was turning into fear of the unknown. Marqués felt himself falling into an abyss. It was as if he’d come here without thinking, led by the friar. His deterioration had been rapid. He was in the middle of the jungle and his senses were failing him. He was seized by occasional shudders and he tensed his face muscles. The furrows that his winces of pain made in his face were running with sweat.

The friar gave him a drink of water from a flask that he carried.

‘Drink, and try not to pass out. You must not give way.’

The woman came out of her hut. She was wearing a long, dark cloak. On her head she had placed a contraption that could be either a wig or a hat. Hanging from it were strips like plaits, in which stones, bones and coins were set. Yellow lines of paint ran down her face. She stood in the doorway swaying from one foot to the other, as through hands held round her mouth she sang words that the writer couldn’t decipher. He was gazing at the woman in alarm and trying to catch Father Bento’s eye in search of support, but Father Bento had found refuge for his gaze in the earth.

The healer approached Marqués and removed his shirt as she chanted in a low voice. She poured liquid from a small leather bottle into her cupped hand and, blowing hard, sprayed the writer’s sweaty body. His muscles were tense and they gleamed in the jungle’s furtive light. From under her cloak she took a stick from which twigs hung and began to flick her own body and that of Marqués. Thus they continued for a while, the woman swaying from one leg to the other and the writer tense, closing his eyes every so often because he didn’t know what to look at. A little later the lad who’d run to the village came back to stand before the woman and, staring at the ground, not daring to raise his eyes, he rattled out something in Aventurei and disappeared.

The old woman gestured in the direction in which they were to go. Father Bento had become an incorporeal presence, an invisible witness, as if he were taking no part in what was happening there. It all would have been easier for Marqués had he received verbal reassurance from Father Bento. But he gazed at the ground without uttering a word, and Marqués supposed that with this silence he was advising him to go along with the woman’s rites. He realised that once the woman had changed clothes neither the friar nor the lad had looked her in the face. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to get better. This wasn’t happening to him. He didn’t believe what was going on. He’d like to take a photograph of what was happening. Be the one behind the camera. He wasn’t the subject of the image. He wasn’t there. All he wanted was to shake his illness off, spit it out as you spit out a piece of bread stuck in your windpipe and stopping you from breathing. This was happening to someone else, it wasn’t him, it was someone else.

He followed the healer. All he could see were trees that seemed to reach the sky, letting little light through. The heat was clammy and breathing was difficult and heavy, making him feel suffocated. His feet sank into the sodden soil. The three of them seemed to be going in circles, marking out a pattern in the jungle, perhaps a damp spiral in the earth. It was as if he were sinking into the bottomless well of sickness.

They reached a clearing where there was a stone circle, and round it stood Indians with, hanging beside their genitals, small drums that they were beating with their knuckles to produce a harsh, sharp sound. Some of them held turtle shells that they scraped with river-fish bones.

As they approached the stone circle another group was arriving on their right. They carried trunks of raffia trees on their shoulders. From these trunks hung great dripping bundles. The Indians’ feet splashed in the waterlogged ground like those of a soaked phantom army flattening the rushes. Every so often Marqués glanced back at the friar, but he was following in silence with his head bowed. Just when Marqués was resigning himself to not receiving any response, the friar muttered:

‘She alone can cure you.’

In the centre of the circle Marqués saw an open pit, and over it the woman spread palm fronds. Into it the Indians tipped their load, which seemed to be a mixture of river mud and fragments of plants. The healer approached Marqués and began to undress him. The illness had paled his dark body, and his white skin stood out amidst the vegetation and the Indians’ brown skins.

The woman sprinkled him with more water and with dry earth from a bag, and walked with him to the pit. She took foul-smelling slime from a small box and spread it round his neck. Its odour almost made him faint. He had to cling to her to avoid collapsing. It was a bitter smell. She continued smearing him with the slime, now on his chest, and after a moment’s indecision he allowed himself to be taken into the pit and lay down there. He felt cold mud enveloping him in its liquid cloak. His heart was pounding, but it was a cold heart, a tremulous heart slowly dissolving into the wettest part of the earth’s core.

Once the healer was inside the pit she brought out a small bottle and made him drink a dark liquid on which herbs and seeds were floating. It was so bitter that Marqués tried to spit it out but she forced his mouth shut. He coughed and she made him drink some more. As the bitter liquid entered his body a sense of well-being began to carry him out of himself towards some other place, borne away in no specific direction to disappear in nothingness. Tears trickled on to his face accompanied, however, by a smile of contentment. A vacant smile wrapped in tears and sickness. His dulled eyes could hardly make out the healer. She took out a flint knife and made two cuts in his chest. When the blood began to flow she covered the wounds with a strip torn from her dress and soaked in the liquid that she had made him drink. He gritted his teeth in a wince of pain. He was nervously rolling his head from side to side, and she stopped him and placed a finger over his lips. He fell into an ever more remote abyss as the healer’s face faded away, with the rhythm of the drums in the background.

Text © Xelís de Toro

Translation © John Rutherford