The Darkest Heart (40 page)

Raul and Carolina.

My heart almost stopped beating and a sliver of guilt needled at me. I hadn't thought about Raul in a while. ‘You're right. I was just thinking out loud. Caught up in the moment.'

I couldn't leave the old man.

‘Is this about my mother? Because you think she hates you?'

‘No,' I said. ‘Not because of that.'

‘What then?'

‘Nothing. It was just a thought. Just a stupid thought.'

‘We can't just leave everything behind for no reason.'

She was right. I couldn't just leave. I had the old man to think about. I didn't even know how he was, whether the fever had left him. Maybe he had recovered and was at home with the wife he loved so much.

Or maybe he was still sick, dying in the hospital.

‘Come on,' I said. ‘Let's get this done.'

We left the boat hidden in the undergrowth away from the jetty and kept close together as we made our way through the sombre gloom, following the orange circle of weak light cast by my torch. The path was straight, carved right through the trees, a passage through living darkness where no lights could pierce. Neither the half-winked eye of the moon nor the brightest star could break the arching canopy that spread over us.

Half a kilometre on foot and we emerged into the immense clearing, but there was no sign of the moon or the stars now. In the time it had taken for us to walk from the river, the sky had lowered and grown thick with cloud. Among the trees, the air had been warm and strong with the musky smell of the forest, but out here the breeze whipped about the vast emptiness of the mine, carrying the unwanted smell of rubbish and human waste.

Here we could see the first of the scant illuminations of Mina dos Santos. Naked bulbs sparkling like gold dust in the sun. The orange and yellow flickering lamps were mostly filtered through half-open windows, but some were outside, hung to highlight a
path amongst the ramshackle buildings that huddled as shadows in the night.

‘That's it?' Daniella said, coming to a stop at the end of the path.

‘You expected something else?'

‘I don't know what I expected.'

There was barely enough light to make out the buildings littering an area that had been mined sometime in the past. Any life which had been here was stripped away and the red dirt pounded with power hoses until the ground was cratered and wrecked as if it had been carpet-bombed. Mud walls were shored up with logs, so gnarled and rotten they might collapse under a heavy rainfall.

Among the potholes and trenches and wide spaces of hollowed ground, a series of walkways crawled amongst the dilapidated wooden buildings. The paths were made from all kinds of material, whatever was to hand at the time. There was no order to the planks, logs, pieces of packing crates, cardboard and sheets of plastic that provided routes over the cloying dirt.

‘How many people live here?' Daniella asked, still trying to take it all in.

‘Hundreds. But this is just small. I've heard of places that have thousands of people, all hosing the ground, trying to make a living.'

‘Trying to make a fortune.'

‘No one makes a fortune in a place like this, unless they're the one taking a cut off the top.'

‘Hm?'

‘There's always someone taking a cut off the top. Someone who says the land is theirs. Someone who takes a percentage.'

Daniella shook her head at what she saw before her. ‘It's ugly.'

‘This is nothing. You should see it beyond the houses. During the day, it's like Hell.'

Past the lights and further into the darkness, the ground was a wasteland of mud beds and craters. Within minutes of the sun rising, the noise would be like a thousand souls screaming as the hoses worked all day, cutting the ground with water pumped from the river. There would be men and women everywhere, working the main holes, panning in the
igarapes
, the streams that run off
the main river. Like busy ants, all of them searching for that one unobtainable nugget of gold. And there were those who would kill for just the tiniest flakes of panned metal.

‘Come on,' I said, shifting the pack on my shoulder. ‘Let's get this over and done with.'

We filtered among the primitive shelters on the outskirts of the mining town, as the sky flickered in the distance, followed by the low rumble of thunder.

‘Another storm,' Daniella said. ‘Coming this way.'

As if in confirmation, the sky lit up over the far side of the mine, like a camera flash, bathing everything in a silvery light. It lasted only a fraction of a second but in that instant the full nightmare of the mine was revealed. From the dilapidated buildings caked with mud and grime, to the heaps of rubbish, teeming with rats and insects. Then the light was gone and the weather let out a long and threatening growl.

‘Walk faster,' I told Daniella. ‘It's coming.'

Once past the outskirts of this growing town, we came to more substantial buildings, constructed with more care and ability. These were the homes of the miners who had been here longer, and they were built to last. They had roofs and doors and windows. Some of them even had mosquito netting to repel the insects and keep disease at bay. Many of these buildings had been expanded with additional rooms and porches and outbuildings which split the paths and forced them into a warren of alleys and lanes through the mud.

It reminded me of my home in Rio; the never-ending maze of the
favela
built into the hillside. As if the place itself were alive, always seeking to swallow new people and stretch itself out. Fat and bloated, like a diseased creature whose appetite can never be satisfied.

Our footfall was light on the wooden walkways that snaked among the buildings.

‘You know where we're going?' Daniella asked. She kept her voice to almost a whisper, but if I'd asked her why, she wouldn't have been able to explain it. There was just something about this
place that made her want to feel unnoticed; something unpleasant and threatening.

‘It's changed since I was last here.' I stopped to check my bearings, identifying a route to the building we were aiming for. ‘It's bigger. More houses. More paths.'

‘When were you here?'

‘Six months ago. Maybe a bit more.'

‘And it's changed that much?'

‘Places like this are always changing and ... That's where we're going.' I pointed to a large building built higher up, on a rise. ‘Fernanda's. That's where she'll be.'

‘Who? Where who will be?'

‘No one. It's where we'll get supplies,' I said. ‘There's a bar there, too.'

‘That's the shop?'

‘Shop, hotel, bar, brothel. The woman who ran that place last time I was here was doing everything.' I took Daniella's hand and started walking again.

We navigated the slippery catwalks, heading towards and then away from the building as we followed the pathways. We passed one or two people still sitting outside their shacks despite the approaching storm. People drinking, talking, arguing, playing guitars or listening to music on old tape players. Some watched us, following our progression with suspicious eyes, but most smiled, raised a hand and wished us luck.

‘Why do they wish us luck?' Daniella asked.

‘Luck that we'll find gold. They think we're miners like them. Your disguise must be working. Maybe they can smell you.'

Daniella nudged me hard in the arm, feeling more relaxed now that we were among people, knowing they were not hostile towards us. I had warned her about this place, made her fear it before she came here, but it was best to keep her on her guard. These were not bad people, they were here to earn a living just like anyone else, but when gold and drink and drugs come together, lead and steel and iron are never far out of mind.

I felt the first spots of rain on my shoulders and took Daniella's
hand. ‘Come on,' I said, picking up my pace, knowing the storm would be on us soon.

As we went, I looked out towards the place where the miners would be working tomorrow. Hell had not been an unfair description for it. Further away, though, beyond that area of activity, there were countless abandoned and water-filled holes; the perfect place for something to disappear.

From Fernanda's, I estimated it would take a fit man no more than ten minutes to walk out there in the dark. Perhaps twenty if he were carrying a heavy burden.

Just one more life
, the shadow whispered.

50

Fernanda's was central to the whole mining community. Set on the top of a rise, along with some of the older buildings, it was where the original
garimpeiros
had settled. The hotel had started out as just a small shack, but Fernanda had been here as long as anyone, and she had expanded her empire in the mud.

Without the sophistication to build on two levels, Fernanda's had sprawled outwards as far as it could, devouring the neighbouring plots when others had moved away, given up, or died. Maybe Fernanda had bought some of them out or even pushed people away. She was a resourceful woman.

The rain was falling hard by the time we reached her place. It was rattling on the tin roofs and pounding the wooden walkways, becoming harder with every step we took. When we made it under the roof that covered the exterior of Fernanda's place, we were both soaked through.

There was music here. Louder than we'd heard elsewhere, and there were many voices to compete with the white noise of the insects and the rain that hammered at the covering over our heads.

A generator thumped somewhere in the background, providing power to this outlandish community, and the damp earth was littered with a nest of cabling running in every direction. Sometimes the snaking wires were lifted from the ground by crude telegraph poles, sometimes they ran across the roofs of the buildings, but they always found their way back to lie in the mud, waiting for an opportunity to split and let loose their deadly current.

Straight in front of us, as we came up the walkway, one end of Fernanda's complex was given over to a store. Not a shop, like we
had in Piratinga, because the people of Mina dos Santos couldn't be trusted in a shop. Here, everything was sold through a hatch in a wooden wall, beyond which dim orange lights lit the goods that lined the shelves. There was everything a miner could need, from biscuits to rice and ammunition to alcohol. And if Fernanda didn't have what you wanted, she would get it for you.

At a price.

A dog, crouched between bony paws, lifted its nose and sniffed the air as we approached. Seeing nothing of interest, it rested its chin again and followed us with sad brown eyes.

Inside the store, two women broke from their conversation as we came close, and one of them shuffled over to lean on the counter, looking bored. ‘What you need?'

I wiped my face and scanned the shelves, wondering what Santiago might want for his stay on the sandbank if we couldn't get him free in the morning. Something cheap that would last him. Something I could use if it turned out he didn't need it any more. Rice. Beans. Some beer, maybe, a bottle of
pinga
to keep them going. I glanced down and spotted the shotgun by the counter before looking the woman in the eye and telling her what we needed.

She scribbled it all down on a pink pad and then jabbed the prices into a calculator.

‘You want to have a drink while she puts it together?' I said to Daniella as I placed the notes on the rough counter. ‘See some more of this place?'

Daniella pushed back her wet hair and glanced around looking doubtful, but she nodded her head. ‘OK.'

I couldn't tell if she was being brave or inquisitive, but it was a good opportunity for me to do what I had really come here for. I didn't want to leave Daniella, but I couldn't see any other way, and if she was alone inside Fernanda's for a while, she'd be fine.

‘What time d'you close?' I asked the woman behind the counter.

‘We never close,' she said.

‘I'll come back for it, OK?'

The woman shrugged and scooped the notes from the counter. ‘You paid for it. It's your stuff.'

‘You'll remember me?'

‘I'II remember you.'

I nodded and put a hand on Daniella's arm, guiding her to walk beside me.

We moved away from the store, keeping under cover along the boarded path, passing a group of women standing outside part of Fernanda's complex.

The women here were working, two of them standing together, leaning against the wall, talking and laughing loudly. One of them, an Indian girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, stood straight and stepped towards me when she saw me coming. Her flat stomach and discernible ribcage were naked, while her developing chest was barely covered by the faded yellow bikini top. Tight blue shorts hugged her hips so closely that almost every contour of her was visible. She had tattoos around her calves, crude flip-flops on her feet and she flicked her hair from her face as she approached, backing away when she spotted Daniella beside me. She smiled anyway, just in case she caught my eye and I decided to use her services later.

As we passed, a man came out from the doorway beside which the women stood. He had his arm around a girl, but the moment they were outside, she disentangled herself from him and went straight to the other women. She adjusted the crotch of her shorts before lighting a cigarette and joining the conversation. The man who had been with her stumbled in front of us and headed for another drink.

We followed him, coming to a large boarded area, open at the sides but roofed with a combination of foliage and sheet plastic that amplified the sound of the rain. The heavy drops battered it with a hollow discord, attacking it from all angles. It pounded the ground outside, splashing mud in all directions, and thrashed the paths with such force that it broke into a mist and sprayed the boarded area, but no one took any notice of it.

The original building was set back from where we were standing
now, and to get to it we had to pass through the throng of people. It seemed as though almost the whole town congregated here at night, there was a lot of noise and people, and I guessed that Fernanda didn't have to do too much of the conventional gold digging to earn a fortune in this place.