The Last Place God Made - Jack Higgins [43]
'Oh, he's that, all right.'
'What is your opinion of this meeting he has arranged tomorrow with one of the Huna chieftains? Is it likely to accomplish much?'
'It all depends what they want to see him for,' I said. 'Indians are like small children - completely irrational. They can smile with you one minute and mean it - dash out your brains the next on the merest whim.'
'So this meeting could prove to be a dangerous undertaking?'
'You could say that. He's asked me to go with him.'
'Do you intend to?'
'I can't think of the slightest reason why I should at the moment, can you?'
She didn't get a chance to reply for at that moment her name was called and we looked up and found Joanna Martin approaching. She was dressed in the white chiffon dress again, wore the same straw hat and carried the parasol over one shoulder. She might have stepped straight off a page in Vogue and I don't think I've ever seen anything more incongruous.
Sister Maria Teresa said, 'Mr Mallory is taking me on a sight-seeing trip, my dear.'
'Well, that should take all of ten minutes.' Joanna Martin took her other arm, ignoring me completely.
We walked through the mean little streets with the hopeless faces peering out of the windows at us, the ragged half-starved children playing beneath the houses. An oxen had died in a side alley, obviously of some disease or other so that the flesh was not fit for human consumption. It had been left exactly where it had fallen and had swollen to twice its normal size. The smell was so terrible that it even managed to kill the stink from the cesspool a few yards farther on which had over-flowed and ran in a steady stream down the centre of the street.
She didn't like any of it, nor for that matter did Joanna Martin. I pointed out the steam house, one of those peculiarities of up-river villages where Indians went through regular purification for religious reasons with the help of red-hot stones and lots of cold water, but it didn't help.
We moved out through a couple of streets of shanties, constructed of iron and pieces of packing cases and inhabited mainly by forest Indians who had made the mistake of trying to come to terms with the white man's world.
'Strange,' I said, 'but in the forest, naked as the day they were born, most of these women look beautiful. Put them in a dress and something inexplicable happens. Beauty goes, pride goes...'
Joanna Martin put a hand out to stay me. 'What was that, for God's sake?'
We were past the final line of huts, close to the river and the edge of the jungle. The sound came again, a sharp bitter cry. I led the way forward, then paused.
On the edge of the trees by the river, an Indian woman knelt in front of a tree, arms raised above her head, a tattered calico dress pulled up above her thighs. The man with her was also Indian in spite of his cotton trousers and shirt. He was tying her wrists above her head by lianas to a convenient branch.
The woman cried out again, Sister Maria Teresa took a quick step forward and I pulled her back. 'Whatever happens, you mustn't interfere.'
She turned to me and said, 'This is one custom with which I am entirely familiar, Mr Mallory. I will stay here for a while if you don't mind. I may be able to help afterwards, if she'll let me.' She smiled. 'Amongst other things, I'm a qualified doctor, you see. If you could bring me my bag along from the house at some time, I'd be most grateful.'
She went towards the woman and her husband and sat down on the ground a yard or two away. They completely ignored her.
Joanna Martin gripped my arm fiercely. 'What is it?'
'She's going to have a child,' I said. 'She's tied by her wrists with lianas so that the child is born while she is upright. That way he will be stronger and braver than a child born to a woman lying down.'
The woman gave another low moan of pain, her husband squatted on the ground beside her.
Joanna Martin said, 'But this is ridiculous. They could be