The river was dark and acidic, like a foretaste of hell. Inky waters leaching tannin from plant debris, logjammed streams from wooded isles, tangles of vines, knotted roots. Rio Negro widened and narrowed, strangled by the walls of the forest. The rising dawn could barely filter through the leafy canopy, where colonies of monkeys shrieked, attracted by the rumbling of the motor. The Maria Nazare, a small riverboat, looked like a steamboat in miniature, with a maximum capacity of six people. Lucie was one of four on board—herself and three crewmen. There was her guide, Pedro Possuelo, as well as Candido and Silverio, two young Baniwa Indian brothers who, according to Pedro, lived in São Gabriel with the twelve members of their family. Three men armed with rifles, machetes, and knives, sitting among coils of rope, jerry cans of gasoline, pots, and scattered food supplies. Individuals whom she knew only by their first names. She wasn’t entirely reassured, but her guide seemed honest enough: he had come to pick her up at the hotel, chatted with the staff, and told them she’d be with him from now on. People knew the man, and knew she was with him.
At regular intervals along the banks, imposing signs appeared, announcing the presence of Indian territories: ATENÇÃO! AREA RESTRITA. PROHIBIDO ULTRAPASSAR . . . Customs notes punctuating the waterway. Pedro came and leaned his elbows on the stern next to Lucie. He was eating small crackers made from cassava—everything here was made from cassava—and offered her one, which she accepted. It was good, chewy, slightly salty. It put something in her stomach.
“I picked up Eva Louts at the airport exit, the same as I did with you,” said Pedro. “I told her I could bring her out there, to the edge of the Ururu territory.”
“How did it go, ‘out there’?”
After swallowing another mouthful, Pedro plunged his hands into a basin and ran clear water over his face. The air was thick, saturated with humidity, marking the transition between the rainy and dry seasons. Ahead of them, the sun was just rising: a fat, severed fruit the color of blood.
“The first time I tried to go to the Ururu territory must be about fifteen years ago. This millionaire anthropologist, kind of an eccentric, wanted to try his luck.”
He showed a wide scar on his left collarbone, as well as tiny buckshot under his skin, around his thighs.
“Buckshot from a rifle . . . I’ve kept it as a souvenir of my years battling poachers. I was young and fearless then. The man paid me a fortune to go there. Exploring conditions were a lot harder than they are today. The boats weren’t as good, no GPS, and the Ururu were buried way back in the jungle. Today they’ve come closer to the riverbanks. A few hours after we got out of the boat, Chimaux and his savages came this close to killing us—he just had to snap his fingers—like that . . . But he realized he had more to gain by letting us live than by slaughtering us. These days he uses guides like me as messengers.”
Nervously tapping the tips of her tall hiking boots on the metal stern, Lucie watched the black, peaceful flanks of the river. She imagined the gray faces watching her, armed with bows and blowguns. She imagined giant serpents rising from the waves. Too many horror movies and other idiocies from the West, giving her a false image of this lost world.
“Messengers? How so?”
“These days, we’ll bring anybody who wants to go up to the edge of the Ururu territory, no questions asked. I don’t care what you plan to do over there. As long as I get paid enough to keep the wheel turning, you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“Those foreigners . . . Chimaux likes to terrify them. He hides in the jungle, prowls around them, sometimes wearing this hideous makeup. Sometimes he attacks them, just as a warning, to show whose territory it is. He’s completely crazy.”
Lucie’s fingers clutched the ship’s rail. Pedro spoke in a natural tone, as if death and horror were his daily bread.
“He spins a wheel of fortune to decide what fate they’ll suffer. Every adventurer knows how it works, knows the rules, the dangers, but they all want to try their luck, because that’s what exploring is about. Everyone wants to learn the secret of the Ururu. Chimaux’s book had the opposite effect of what he’d intended. Instead of scaring people off, it just made them more curious. There’s no shortage of people on this earth who want to see horror close up.”
Pedro nodded at the inaccessible riverbanks.
“The Indians are dangerous. Not that long ago, it wasn’t warning signs you saw posted along the river, but heads on spikes. The natives are out there, all around us. Most of them despise us. Whenever whites have come, they’ve brought only wars, hardship, and disease. These natives have been massacred, enslaved; they’ve seen their women raped. Years have gone by, but the old wounds remain. Today, the nice Westerners think they’ll win them over with hats or iPods, but they’re still the invader.”
Lucie realized how fragile the world was, with its sensitive borders, constantly moving like the boundaries of vegetation. Pedro stared deep into her eyes.
“You’re like that girl—you don’t look like the kind I usually bring out here. You know there’s no life insurance with me, right, and that you might leave a few feathers behind too?”
“Yes . . . Yes, I do.”
Lucie let the silence and the emerald light envelop her. She was afraid, not of dying, but of leaving the world without saying good-bye to those she loved. Despite everything, she felt it was in this luxuriant blend of life and decay that her fate awaited her.
The engine backfired, startling her out of her reverie. A dead log floated downriver, rolling slowly on itself like a wounded crocodile.
“Was Louts able to make contact with Chimaux and the Ururu?”
He nodded.
“Something happened in the jungle, with her. I don’t know how she did it, but she got through. Chimaux took her with him for three days. I’ve never known him to allow anybody onto his lands. My crew and I waited for her at our camp, outside the territory, keeping our rifles handy.”
He spat in the river.
“She didn’t say anything on the return trip. She knew how to keep a secret. But she did let me know she was coming back and that she’d be in touch when she did. Then she left for France and we never saw her again.”
Pedro Possuelo turned around at a signal from one of his men. He headed to the prow, with Lucie following. A blast of the foghorn. The Brazilian pointed toward a large hut at the edge of a distant pontoon dock, which nearly blocked the river.
“We’re coming to the FUNAI outpost. They control all access upstream. Don’t forget, officially, you’re touring along the Indian reservations.” He shoved a camera into her hands. “Photojournalist. Okay?”
“Okay . . .”
He held out his hand.
“Two hundred.”
Lucie gave him the cash that would spare them too many questions, searches, delays. The engine changed gears; fat white billows of smoke curled from every side of the boat. Gradually, black, human shadows appeared in the haze. Machine guns slung across the shoulder, fatigues, combat boots: soldiers. They walked slowly on the dock, while one had remained in the hut, a huge satellite phone to his ear. The sides of the Maria Nazare slowly butted against the fat mooring buoys. Pedro jumped onto the pontoon dock and shook hands: these men knew each other. A few words exchanged in Portuguese, checking papers, money passing from one hand to the other, a few questioning looks toward Lucie. Then smiles, pats on the shoulder: they were through. Pedro hopped back onto the boat, called for them to leave.
Gas to the motor, starting off . . .
At that moment, the man from inside the hut came out and stood in the middle of the dock, hands flat between his belt and his stomach. Through the wisps of fog, he fixed Lucie with a cold smile. Two thick, reddish scars, still fresh, striped his face.
Lucie swallowed hard. The man with the black widow.
As the boat gathered speed, she saw him bring his index finger to his throat and make a slow, horizontal movement, while moving his lips.
Lucie didn’t need to understand Portuguese.
You’re dead . . .
His thick shadow finally dissolved in the fog. Pale, Lucie looked at Pedro distrustfully as he sat cross-legged on the deck, scaling fish with his knife. The soldier had let them pass. Why? Should she be wary of her own guides? What was waiting for them at the end of the trail?
“Who was that man in the hut?” she asked.
Pedro answered without looking up, busy with his fish.
“Alvaro Andrades. Here they call him the Lord of the River. I saw what he did; I think I got what he said to you. ‘When you come back, you’re dead.’ What’s going on with him? I don’t want any trouble.”
“You won’t have any. Are he and Chimaux in touch?”
Pedro got up, bringing his fish and his basin.
“Andrades controls the river. Word around here is that he’s looking for Chimaux. He searches all the boats heading the other way, toward São Gabriel, top to bottom. He’ll search us too on the way back. That’s why what he did worries me. What’s he got against you?”
“I have no idea, I’ve never met him.”
He headed down to the lower passageway, leaving Lucie alone with her thoughts. So Chimaux was trapped in the jungle. After the failed attempt on his life, the killer had bought the military, no doubt putting a stiff price on the anthropologist’s head.
From then on, time seemed endless. Jungle gave way to more jungle, ever more compact and oppressive. The beauty of the bone-white foothills of Pico da Neblina yielded to endless rows of trees, flat as shingles. A lost, desolate horizon.
Eleven hours later, the engine slowed. Meanwhile, they’d had a meal of fish cooked in spicy broth, some porridge, and home-brewed beer. Before them, the river was like a Russian doll: ever narrower confluences, nested one inside the other, right to the end. Occasionally something shone on the banks—mica, fool’s gold—or else caimans disappeared beneath the waves. Lucie found Pedro more and more surprising by the minute. How was he still able to navigate in this labyrinth of swamps choked with rotting tree trunks? The guide didn’t mind boasting: he was the only one who dared come this way, which saved them precious time. Vegetation had invaded everything: water, earth, and sky. Roots drank, dug deep, crept forward. Vines hung in the water like endless stalactites; twisted branches scraped the black surface. A universe without frontiers, hostile to any form of human existence.
Pedro turned the boat about thirty degrees until he was only a few yards from shore.
“This is where we drop anchor,” said the guide. “We won’t get any farther in the boat. In three hours, it’ll be nightfall. We’ll sleep here and tomorrow we start walking.”
There were cracking sounds, birds the color of fire took wing, and Lucie’s attention was drawn by small monkeys with white faces. The capuchins from the video, watching them . . . Pedro was looking toward the jungle. His eyes narrowed. He picked up his rifle and checked to see that it was loaded. With a shiver, Lucie followed his gaze.
“What is it? Did you see something?”
The guide motioned discreetly toward some large banana leaves, which trembled on the right, then on the left, before regaining their chilling quiet.
“I don’t think we’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow or walk very far. They’re already here.”