MAMista. Len Deighton

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      1

      TEPILO, SPANISH GUIANA.

       ‘It’s the greenhouse effect.’

      The smell of the rain forest came on the offshore breeze, long before they were in sight of land. It was a sour smell of putrefaction. Next morning they awoke to see the coast, and the rusty old Pelicano followed it for two more days. The brooding presence of the vast jungle had had a profound effect upon everyone aboard. South America. Even the crew seemed to move more quietly and passengers spent hours on the confined space they called the ‘promenade deck’. They stared for hours at the mysterious dark green snake of land, and the distant mountains, that all regularly disappeared behind grey mist. For the most part it was flat coastal land: swamps where the mangrove flourished. At twilight flocks of birds – favouring the brackish water – came flying so low that their beaks were scooping up some sort of tiny fish.

      The Atlantic water grew ever more ochre-coloured as they went east. It was silt from the Amazon. The prevailing currents make the water brown all the way to the Caribbean. The steward, obsequious now that the passengers were nearing their destination, passed his battered old binoculars around. He pointed out the sheer-sided stone fortress which now housed political prisoners. It was built on a rocky promontory. He said the guards put meat in the sea to be sure the water was never free of sharks.

      On that last day of the voyage, the Pelicano drew closer to the land and they saw men, isolated huts and a fishing village or two. Then the sweep of Tepilo Bay came into view and then the incongruous collection of buildings that makes the Tepilo waterfront. Dominating it was the wonderful old customs house with its gold dome. Alongside ornate Victorian blocks, and stone warehouses, stood clapboard buildings, their peeling white paint gone as grey as the stonework. They’d no doubt be snatched away by the next flood or hurricane and then be rebuilt as they had been so many times before.

      Here and there window shutters were being opened, as office workers resumed work after siesta. Four rusty dock cranes hung over the jetty where two ancient freighters were tied up. From a castellate tower children were jumping into the water for tourists’ pennies. Beyond that flowed the appropriately named ‘stinking creek’, which vomited hardwood trees when the up-country logging camps were working.

      There were two wooden huts used by the soldiers and next to them a customs shed. Painted red it had been bleached pale pink by the scorching sun. Tall white letters – ADUANA – on the wall which faced out to sea were almost indiscernible. Scruffy, grey-uniformed soldiers, with old Lee Enfield rifles slung over their shoulders, stood along the waterfront watching the Pelicano approaching. An officer with a sabre at his belt and shiny top-boots strode up and down importantly. Not so long ago there had been passengers arriving by sea every day. Now only freighters came, and few of them carried visitors. A radio message that the Pelicano had ten passengers aboard had caused great excitement. It set a record for the month. The chief customs officer got a ride on a truck from the airport in order to be present.

      The national flag – a green, yellow and red tricolour – fluttered from several buildings, and from a flag-pole near the customs hut. It was a pretty flag. Perhaps that was why no one had wanted to remove the royal coat of arms from it when, almost eighty years before, Spanish Guiana became a republic. Also such a change would have meant spending money. By government decree the royal arms were embodied into the national colours.

      Angel Paz watched from the ship’s rail, where the passengers had been told to line up with their baggage. Paz was Hispanic in appearance, Panamanian by birth, American by passport and rootless by nature. He was twenty years old. He’d grown up in California and no matter what he did to hide it he looked like a rich man’s son. He was slim and wiry with patrician features and intelligent quick brown eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. He felt in his pocket to be sure his passport was there. His fluent Spanish should have put him at ease but he couldn’t entirely dismiss a feeling of foreboding. He told himself it was due to the weather.

      The rain had stopped – it had been no more than a shower – and the siesta had ended. Indian dockworkers were lined up on the steamy wet cobblestones waiting to unload the Pelicano. They were small impassive men with heavy eyelids and shiny brown skin. Their T-shirts – dirty and torn – were emblazoned with incongruous advertising messages.

      During the sea voyage, passengers had been expected to keep out of the way of the crew, and not keep asking for the steward. But today they would disembark. Today was the day of the ‘servicio’. The baggage had been brought up to the deck. The cunning little steward – his Galician accent sounding almost like Portuguese – was actually singing, while the bent old man who swabbed the passenger deck, cleaned the cabins and made the beds, was smiling and nodding in a contrived manner. Paz waited patiently behind a couple of passengers with whom he’d played bridge several times. They were from Falkenberg, East Germany – or eastern Germany now that it was reunited – and they were hoping to start a new life in Spanish Guiana. The man – a skilled engineer – had been offered a job in a factory where trucks and buses were assembled and repaired. His pretty wife was wearing her best clothes. They were an affectionate couple, the man attentive and adoring, so that Paz had decided they were runaway lovers. Now they both stared at their new home town, faces tense and hands linked.

      Behind them were four priests, pale youngsters with cropped heads. They had spent much of the voyage looking at maps and reading their Bibles and passing between them a dog-eared paperback called South America on Ten Dollars a Day. Now everyone was watching the delicate process of docking.

      The Pelicano had turned laboriously until she faced upriver. There was a rattle of chain and a splash as the offshore anchor was dropped. The engines roared and whined, churning the muddy water white. All the while the fast current pressed the tired old ship towards the jetty, like a dog on its lead, as the anchor line was paid out. Gently the ship slid sideways until only a thin river of water separated hull from dockside. Ashore, Indian labourers came running forward to retrieve the heaving lines as they came snaking down through the air. The sisal mooring ropes came next, their eyes slipped over the bollards in that experienced way that looks so effortless. As she settled snug against the jetty, with three ropes secured and the backspring in place, the accommodation ladder went sliding down into place with a loud crash.

      ‘Home again,’ said the steward to no one in particular. A steam crane trundled along the narrow-gauge dockside rail to where it could reach the cargo hold. It made a lot of smoke, and a clatter of sound.

      Paz sniffed the air as he picked up his cheap canvas bag to move along the deck. He could smell rotting fruit and the discharged fuel oil that lapped against the hull. He did not like his first taste of Tepilo, but it was better than living on the charity of his stepmother. He hadn’t come here for a vacation. He’d come here to fight in the revolution: the Marxist revolution.

      As he waited his turn on the narrow accommodation ladder, he looked again at the town. Against the skyline stood a monument surmounted by a gigantic crucifix. He was reminded of the tortured Christ who, with gaping wounds and varnished blood, had haunted his dimly lit nursery. This humid town suggested the same stillness, mystery and pain.

      There was nothing to be done about it now. Angel Paz had burned his boats. He’d deliberately ignored the travel arrangements that his uncle Arturo had made for him. He’d cashed in the airline ticket and routed himself so that the last leg could be done by ship. He’d never work for Don Arturo in any capacity. No doubt Arturo would be furious, but to hell with him. Paz had found people in Los Angeles who could put him in contact with the MAMista army in the south. Not even one of Don Arturo’s thugs would be able to find him there.

      The steward approached him, picked up his bag and accompanied him down the gangway. Paz was the only passenger with whom he could talk real Spanish: ‘Put fifty pesetas into your passport and give it to the little СКАЧАТЬ