The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (38 page)

They spoke for close to an hour. Tizón also insisted that Roger not go back to Putumayo for any reason: he wouldn’t accomplish anything except their killing him and, perhaps, their becoming enraged in one of those excesses of cruelty he had already seen in his travels to the plantations.

Roger devoted himself to preparing a new report for the Foreign Office. He explained that no reforms at all had been made or the slightest punishment administered to the criminals of the Peruvian Amazon Company. There was no hope anything would be done in the future. The fault lay as much with the firm of Julio C. Arana as with the public administration and, perhaps, the entire country. In Iquitos, the Peruvian government was nothing more than Arana’s agent. The power of his company was so great that all political, police, and judicial institutions worked actively to permit it to continue exploiting the indigenous workers at no risk, because all the officials either received money or feared reprisals from it.

As if wanting to prove him right, during this time the Superior Court in Iquitos suddenly halted the review the nine arrested men had requested. The stoppage was a masterpiece of cynicism: all judicial action was suspended until the 237 persons on the list drawn up by Judge Valcárcel could be detained. With only a small group of prisoners, any investigation would be incomplete and illegal, the judges decreed. So the nine were definitively free and the case suspended until the police could bring all 237 suspects to trial, something, of course, that never would happen.

A few days later another event, even more grotesque, took place in Iquitos, putting Roger’s capacity for astonishment to the test. As he was going from his hotel to Stirs’s house, he saw people crowded into two locations that seemed to be state offices, since their façades displayed the seal and flag of Peru. What was going on?

“Municipal elections,” explained Stirs in his thin voice, which was so disinterested it seemed impervious to emotion. “Very peculiar elections, because according to Peruvian election law, to have the right to vote you must own property and know how to read and write. This reduces the number of electors to a few hundred people. In reality, the elections are decided in the offices of Casa Arana. The names of the winners and the percentage of votes they receive.”

It must have been true because that night, at a small rally on the Plaza de Armas, which Roger observed from a distance, bands played and brandy was distributed as they celebrated the election of Don Pablo Zumaeta as the new mayor of Iquitos! Julio C. Arana’s brother-in-law emerged from his “hiding place” indemnified by the people of Iquitos—that’s how he expressed it in his acceptance speech—from the slanders of the British–Colombian conspiracy, determined to continue fighting unyieldingly against the enemies of Peru and for the progress of Amazonia. After the distribution of alcoholic beverages, there was folk dancing with fireworks, guitars, and drums that lasted until dawn. Roger chose to withdraw to his hotel to escape being lynched.

George Michell and his wife finally arrived in Iquitos on a ship out of Manaus, on November 30, 1911. Roger was already packing for his departure. The arrival of the new British consul was preceded by frantic efforts by Stirs and Roger himself to find a house for the couple. “Great Britain has fallen into disgrace here because of you, Sir Roger,” the outgoing consul told him. “Nobody wants to rent me a house for the Michells, even though I’m offering to pay a surcharge. Everyone’s afraid of offending Arana, everyone refuses.” Roger asked Rómulo Paredes for help, and the editor of
El Oriente
solved the problem for them. He rented the house and sublet it to the British consulate. It was an old, dirty house that had to be renovated against the clock and furnished somehow to receive its new tenants. Mrs. Michell was a cheerful, strong-willed woman whom Roger met for the first time at the foot of the gangplank, in the port, on the day of their arrival. She was not disheartened by the state of her new home or the town she had set foot in for the first time. She seemed immune to discouragement. Without delay, even before unpacking, she set about cleaning everything with energy and good humor.

Roger had a long conversation with his old friend and colleague, George Michell, in Stirs’s small living room. He informed him in detail about the situation and didn’t hide a single one of the difficulties he would face in his new position. Michell, a plump, lively man in his forties who manifested the same energy as his wife in all his gestures and movements, took notes in a small notebook, with brief pauses to ask for clarifications. Then, instead of appearing demoralized or complaining at the prospect of what awaited him in Iquitos, he only said, with a large smile: “Now I know what’s at stake and I’m ready for the struggle.”

During his last two weeks in Iquitos, the demon of sex once again took irresistible possession of Roger. On his previous stay he had been very prudent, but now, in spite of knowing the hostility so many people connected to the rubber business felt toward him, and the kind of trap they could lay for him, he didn’t hesitate to go out at night to stroll on the embankment along the river, where there were always women and men looking for clients. This was how he met Alcibíades Ruiz, if that was his name. He took him to the Hotel Amazonas. The night porter had no objection after Roger gave him a tip. Alcibíades agreed to pose for him, assuming the postures of classical statues that he indicated. After some bargaining he agreed to undress. Alcibíades was a mestizo, white and Indian, a
cholo
, and Roger noted in his diary that this racial mix produced a man of great physical beauty, even greater than that of the
caboclos
of Brazil, in whom indigenous gentleness and sweetness mixed with the coarse virility of the descendants of Spaniards. Alcibíades and he kissed and touched but did not make love that day or the next, when Alcibíades returned to the hotel. It was morning and Roger was able to photograph him naked, in various poses. When he left, Roger wrote in his diary: “Alcibíades Ruiz.
Cholo
. Dancer’s movements. Thin and long, when it got hard it curved like a bow. Entered me like hand in glove.”

During this time, Rómulo Paredes was attacked on the street. When he left the print shop of his newspaper, three nasty-looking individuals stinking of alcohol assaulted him. According to what he told Roger, whom he came to see in his hotel immediately after the episode, they would have beaten him to death if he hadn’t been armed, and he frightened his three aggressors when he fired in the air. He had a suitcase with him. Don Rómulo was so shaken by what had happened he wouldn’t go out for a drink as Roger suggested. His resentment and indignation toward the Peruvian Amazon Company knew no limits:

“I was always Casa Arana’s loyal collaborator and satisfied them in everything they wished,” he complained.

They had sat on two corners of the bed and spoke in semidarkness, because the flame of the gas lamp barely lit a corner of the room. “When I was a judge and when I started
El Oriente
, I never opposed their requests, even though they often were repugnant to my conscience. But I’m a realistic man, Consul, I know which battles can’t be won. This commission, going to Putumayo on assignment from Judge Valcárcel, I never wanted to take it on. From the beginning I knew I’d be in trouble. They obliged me to. Pablo Zumaeta in person demanded it. I made this trip only because I was following his orders. My report, before I turned it in to the prefect, I gave it to Señor Zumaeta to read. He returned it without comment. Doesn’t that mean he accepted it? Only then did I give it to the prefect. And now it turns out they’ve declared war on me and want to kill me. This attack is a warning for me to get out of Iquitos. And go where? I have a wife, five children, and two serving girls, Señor Casement. Have you ever seen anything like the ingratitude of these people? I suggest you leave right away too. Your life is in danger, Sir Roger. Until now nothing’s happened to you, because they think if they kill an Englishman, especially a diplomat, there’ll be an international incident. But don’t trust that. Those scruples can disappear in any drunken brawl. Take my advice and leave, my friend.”

“I’m not an Englishman, I’m Irish,” Roger corrected him gently.

Rómulo Paredes handed him the suitcase he had brought with him.

“Here are all the documents I compiled in Putumayo, on which I based my work. I was right not to give them to Prefect Gamarra. They would have met the same fate as my report: eaten by moths in the Prefecture of Iquitos. Take them, I know you’ll put them to good use. But I’m sorry to load you down with another piece of luggage.”

Roger left four days later, after saying goodbye to Omarino and Arédomi. Stirs had placed them in a carpentry shop in Nanay where, in addition to working as domestics for the owner, a Bolivian, they would be his apprentices. In the port, where Stirs and Michell came to say goodbye, Roger learned that the volume of rubber exported in the past two months had surpassed the previous year’s record. What better proof that nothing had changed, that the Huitotos, Boras, Andoques, and the rest of the indigenous groups in Putumayo were still being squeezed without mercy?

For the five days of the voyage to Manaus, he barely left his cabin. He felt demoralized, sick, and disgusted with himself. He barely ate and went on deck only when the heat in the narrow room became unbearable. As they sailed down the Amazon and the riverbed widened and the banks were lost from view, he thought he would never return to this jungle. And about the paradox—he had often thought the same thing in Africa, navigating on the Congo River—that this majestic landscape with its flocks of pink herons and screeching parrots that sometimes flew overhead, and the wake of small fish following the ship, leaping and doing tricks as if to attract the passengers’ attention, harbored in the interior of these jungles vertiginous suffering caused by the greed of the avid, cruel men he had known in Putumayo. He thought of Arana’s motionless face at the meeting of the board of directors of the Peruvian Amazon Company in London. He swore again that he would fight until the last drop of energy in his body to see him punished, this small, well-groomed man who had set in motion and was the principal beneficiary of the machinery that crushed human beings with impunity to satisfy his hunger for riches. Who would dare say now that Julio C. Arana didn’t know what was going on in Putumayo? He had put on a show to deceive everyone—the Peruvian government, the British above all—in order to continue extracting rubber from jungles as mistreated as the indigenous peoples who inhabited them.

In Manaus, where he arrived in the middle of December, he felt better. While he waited for a ship that would leave for Pará and Barbados, he could work in his hotel room, adding comments and details to his report. He spent one afternoon with the British consul, who confirmed that in spite of his demands, the Brazilian authorities had done nothing effective to capture Montt and Agüero or the other fugitives. It was rumored everywhere that several of Arana’s managers in Putumayo now worked for the Madeira–Mamoré railroad that was under construction.

For the week he stayed in Manaus, Roger led a spartan life, not going out at night in search of adventures. He would take walks along the riverbanks and streets of the city, and when he wasn’t working spent many hours reading the books on the ancient history of Ireland recommended to him by Alice Stopford Green. A passion for his country’s affairs would help rid his mind of images of Putumayo and the intrigues, lies, and abuses of the widespread political corruption he had seen in Iquitos. But it wasn’t easy to concentrate on Irish affairs, for he constantly thought he had not finished his assignment and would have to bring it to its conclusion in London.

On December 17 he set sail for Pará, where he finally found a communication from the Foreign Office. They had received his telegrams sent from Iquitos and were aware that in spite of the Peruvian government’s promises, nothing real had been done against the excesses in Putumayo except for permitting the escape of those accused.

On Christmas Eve, he left for Barbados on the
Denis
, a comfortable ship carrying barely a handful of passengers. It was a calm crossing to Bridgetown. There, the Foreign Office had reserved passage for him on the S.S.
Terence
, bound for New York. The British authorities had decided to take energetic action against the British company responsible for events in Putumayo and wanted the United States to join their effort and protest together to the government of Peru for its unwillingness to respond to the demands of public opinion.

In the capital of Barbados, as he waited for the ship to sail, Roger’s life was as chaste as it had been in Manaus: not one visit to the public bath, not one nocturnal escapade. He had reentered one of those periods of sexual abstinence that on occasion lasted many months. At times his mind became filled with religious concerns. In Bridgetown he visited Father Smith every day. He had long conversations with him about the New Testament, which he usually carried with him on his journeys. He reread it from time to time, alternating this reading with the Irish poets, above all Yeats, some of whose poems he had memorized. He attended a Mass at the convent of the Ursulines and, as had happened to him before, felt the desire to take communion. He told Father Smith and he, smiling, reminded him he wasn’t a Catholic but a member of the Anglican Church. If he wanted to convert, he offered to help him take the first steps. Roger was tempted but changed his mind, thinking about the weaknesses and sins he would have to confess to this good friend, Father Smith.

On December 31 he left on the S.S.
Terence
for New York, and immediately upon arriving, without time even to admire the skyscrapers, took the train to Washington, D.C. The British ambassador, James Bryce, surprised him by announcing that the president of the United States, William Howard Taft, had agreed to see him. He and his advisers wanted to hear from the mouth of Sir Roger, who personally knew what was going on in Putumayo and was a man trusted by the British government, the situation on the rubber plantations, and whether the campaign being waged in the United States and Great Britain by various churches, humanitarian organizations, and liberal journalists and publications was true or sheer demagoguery and exaggeration, as the rubber enterprises and the Peruvian government insisted.