The Tarantula Stone. Philip Caveney

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СКАЧАТЬ passed with slow, relentless monotony. The long rains of his second year came, when there was nothing to do but lie in the shelter and stare out at the sorrowful yellow waters, swirling ankle deep around the garimpo and across the floor of the shack, bringing with it all manner of creatures – snakes, rats, scorpions. Vast swarms of mosquitoes and plague flies hovered in the air and fed on the abundance of human flesh. At a time like this, a man had to obtain credit to get those things that would keep him alive. There was always an interest rate and the next year was begun with the miner heavily in debt.

      Martin had worked on, stubborn, indefatigable. The third and fourth years, he did better, found six diamonds in all, a couple of them of reasonable size. This time he forced himself to follow some kind of a plan. From each sale he put a little money aside, hiding it in the heel of his boot, and then went ahead and squandered the rest, in the usual flamboyant style, managing to convince his workmates that he had spent everything. He dared not let anybody know he was keeping some back, because inevitably a greedy man would come in the night and take it from him with the blade of a knife. He feigned poverty, asking for credit at the store, even though he no longer needed it. His plan was simple. To amass enough money to escape from the garimpo to something better. It might take him years but there was always the chance that he really would make it good, that he might find a diamond that was big enough to risk running with.

      The news that the war had come to an end deepened his resolve. Now he should be able to get back to … or at least pass through, his homeland. The long rains came again. He bided his time. Sometimes, as he lay in the hammock he had constructed as a safer alternative to sleeping close to the water level, an image would come to his mind, an image of Charles Caine, fat and scented with lavender water, growing steadily rich on the proceeds he obtained by selling his diamonds on the international market; and a calm powerful hatred would come to Martin, a hatred and a hunger for revenge. But then he would remind himself that he had only himself to blame for this misery. He himself had wanted to become a garimpeiro; Caine had only provided the one-way ticket. There were men working at the garimpo who had been here for years and, what’s more, it was plain they would remain here till they died.

      ‘But not me,’ vowed Martin silently. ‘No, not me. I’m going to get out of this.’

      And so the sixth year had begun. Martin’s money stash had now become too big to keep in his shoe. Instead he had made himself a crude money belt out of a discarded piece of canvas, working at the dead of night by the light of a candle. He found another two diamonds that year and treated the money as he had done before, creaming off a little for his nest egg and frittering away the rest. He took to hiding the money belt in a small gap behind one of the roof beams of his shack, afraid that somebody might search him when he was drunk. He carried his gun with him at all times and would have been prepared to use it without a moment’s hesitation, should the necessity arise.

      And then the miracle occurred, the moment of destiny to which his whole life had been geared. It was late July and he was digging in the merciless glare of the midday heat. He was about four feet down into the latest of a seemingly endless series of excavations. Having broken up a large amount of rubble, he scooped it up in his pan, clambered out of the hole and strolled down to the river to sift through the contents. The yellow stagnant water washed round his ankles and he dropped the sieve unceremoniously beneath the surface, gave the rubble a quick swirl and then heaved the contents back onto the firm mud of the shore. He left them for a moment to soak through, strolling back to the hole to continue digging for a while. This was his usual procedure. After about twenty minutes, he clambered back out of the hole and wandered down to examine what he had. He did not hurry himself, since this was only one of hundreds of similar loads that he examined every day. He picked up a piece of stick from the bank and began to sort through the collection of mud and rock, poking systematically.

      For an instant, something seemed to glitter, catching the rays of the sun; but then more mud slid downwards and the light was gone. Martin frowned. He probed with the stick again and found a hardness that seemed far too big to be anything but rock. He pushed his fingers experimentally into the rubble and pulled something free that was the size of a duck egg. He grunted disgustedly and was about to fling the object aside, when another flash of light caught his attention. He gave the object an exploratory wipe with the flat of his left hand, revealing a crystalline, transparent surface below. It was a diamond, the biggest he had ever seen; and he had very nearly thrown it away.

      For an instant, he was struck numb, frozen to the spot. Then he opened his mouth to scream, but snatched the sound away before it left his throat, realizing that other men were working only a few yards away. He closed his hand round the diamond, stood up and kicked out with his boot at the discarded pile of rubbish, scattering it in all directions.

      ‘Nothing but shit!’ he announced bitterly. Then he moved down to the river again, crouched down in the shallows and feigned the act of splashing water on his face, while with his spare hand he doused the diamond in the water, rubbing the remains of the mud from it. He was shaking with emotion and he felt his eyes fill with tears. He dashed them away with muddy water and allowed himself the luxury of a sly glance down at his prize. He had not dared to believe that it could all be diamond, expecting that its size had been increased by lumps of rock adhering to it. He almost cried out a second time. It filled the palm of his hand and was unquestionably the biggest diamond found at Garimpo Maculo, perhaps the biggest ever discovered in the continent of South America. Even sold locally it would make him a rich man. On the international market, it would sell for millions of dollars.

      Realizing that to linger there much longer might make his fellow workers suspicious he slipped the gem into the pocket of his trousers, testing the lining first with his fingers to ensure that there was no hole through which the precious object might slip. Then, composing himself with an effort, he mopped his face on his bandana and forced himself to return to his digging place, keeping his face stony and impassive. He hefted his pick and went on with his work, digging methodically and taking the rubble down to the water’s edge every so often. At the back of his mind was the belief that, where one diamond had been, other lesser stones might occur. But all through that long afternoon, perhaps the longest of his life, he found no sign of anything else. As he worked, he considered the possibilities open to him. There was no way he would announce this find to the compradors. It was the discovery of a lifetime and he would either escape with the diamond or die trying. Once, he thought he saw the man working at the next dig staring at him suspiciously; but he assured himself that this was just the product of his overworked imagination.

      When the brief tropical dusk came, he gathered up his equipment and trudged back to his shack. Impatiently, he waited for full darkness to fall and then, lying in his hammock, by the light of a single candle, allowed himself the luxury of a first proper look at the diamond. There was a curious shock in store for him. The stone was every bit as big as his first impressions had suggested; but what he could never have guessed was the fine, weird beauty of the rough gem. It was quite translucent and when he held it close to the candlelight, he gave a little gasp of surprise. For within the cool depths of the diamond a strange flaw had created a perfectly symmetrical and highly familiar shape. It was exactly like a spider, a tarantula, etched in a slightly grey series of veins within the heart of the stone.

      He knew that shape only too well, for in the rainy season the creatures tended to seek sanctuary in the dusty corners of the hut. Though Martin knew that the bite of a tarantula was rarely very harmful, still he had a horror of their thick, hairy bodies and wriggling legs.

      He replaced the diamond in his pocket and began to draw up his plans. Any man here at the garimpo would readily kill to possess such a stone, so he did not intend to linger. In three days’ time, the regular train back to Rio would depart in the early hours of the morning, but to leave suddenly would inevitably cause suspicion. At Garimpo Maculo, there were only two reasons for leaving, death or sickness. So Martin decided that he would become sick that night. It would not be hard to fake. He suffered from recurring bouts of malaria and it would simply be a question СКАЧАТЬ