The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (17 page)

From then on he dedicated part of his savings and income to the associations and schools of the Pearse brothers, which taught Gaelic, and the nationalist journals to which he contributed under a pseudonym. In 1905, when Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin, Roger communicated with him, offered to collaborate, and subscribed to all his publications. This journalist’s ideas coincided with those of Bulmer Hobson, with whom Roger had become friends. It was necessary to create, along with colonial institutions, an Irish infrastructure (schools, businesses, banks, industries) that gradually would replace the one imposed by Britain. In this way the Irish would become conscious of their own destiny. It was necessary to boycott British products, refuse to pay taxes, replace British sports such as cricket and soccer with national sports, and literature and the theater as well. In this way, peacefully, Ireland would break free of colonial subjugation.

In addition to reading a great deal about the Irish past, under Alice’s tutelage, Roger tried again to study Gaelic and hired a teacher, but made little progress. In 1906 the new foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey of the Liberal Party, offered to send him as consul to Santos, in Brazil. Roger accepted, not because he wanted the job, but because his pro-Irish patronage had used up his small patrimony, he existed on loans, and he needed to earn a living.

Perhaps the scant enthusiasm with which he returned to his diplomatic career contributed to making his four years in Brazil—1906 to 1910—a frustrating experience. He never really became accustomed to that vast country in spite of its natural beauty and the good friends he acquired in Santos, Pará, and Rio de Janeiro. What depressed him most was that, unlike the Congo, where, in spite of the difficulties, he always had the impression he was working for something transcendent that went far beyond the consular framework, in Santos his principal activity had to do with drunken British sailors who got into fights and whom he had to get out of jail, then pay their fines and return them to Britain. In Pará he heard for the first time about violence in the rubber regions. But the Foreign Office ordered him to concentrate on the inspection of port and commercial activity. His work consisted of recording the movement of ships and facilitating matters for the British who arrived intending to buy and sell. His worst time was in Rio de Janeiro, in 1909. The climate made all his ailments worse and added to them allergies that kept him from sleeping. He had to live fifty miles from the capital, in Petrópolis, situated in highlands where the heat and humidity were lower and the nights were cool. But daily travel by train to his office turned into a nightmare.

In his sleep he recalled insistently that in September 1906, before leaving for Santos, he wrote a long epic poem, “The Dream of the Celt,” about the mythic past of Ireland, and a political pamphlet, with Alice Stopford Green and Bulmer Hobson,
The Irish and the English Army
, objecting to the recruitment of Irishmen into the British armed forces.

Biting mosquitoes woke him, taking him from a pleasurable siesta and submerging him in the Amazonian twilight. The sky had turned into a rainbow. He felt better: his eye burned less and the arthritic pain had eased. Showering in Stirs’s house turned out to be a complicated operation: the pipe holding the showerhead came out of a receptacle into which a servant poured buckets of water while Roger soaped and rinsed. The lukewarm temperature of the water made him think of the Congo. When he went down to the first floor, the consul was waiting for him at the door, ready to take him to the house of Prefect Rey Lama.

They had to walk several blocks in wind that obliged Roger to keep his eyes half-closed. In the semidarkness they stumbled over holes, rocks, and garbage in the street. The noise had increased. Each time they passed the door of a bar the music swelled and they could hear toasts, fights, and the shouts of drunks. Stirs, advanced in years, a widower with no children, had spent half a decade in Iquitos and seemed a weary man without illusions.

“What’s the attitude in the city toward the commission?” Roger asked.

“Frankly hostile,” the consul replied immediately. “I suppose you already know that half of Iquitos lives off Señor Arana. I mean, off the enterprises of Señor Arana. People suspect the commission intends harm to the person who gives them work and food.”

“Can we expect any help from the authorities?”

“Just the opposite: all the obstacles in the world, Mr. Casement. The authorities in Iquitos also depend on Señor Arana. The prefect, the judges, and the military haven’t received their salaries from the government for months. Without Señor Arana they would have starved to death. Bear in mind that Lima is farther from Iquitos than New York and London because of the lack of transportation. In the best of circumstances it’s two months of travel.”

“This is going to be more complicated than I imagined,” remarked Roger.

“You and the gentlemen of the commission must be very prudent,” the consul added, hesitating now and lowering his voice. “Not here in Iquitos. There, in Putumayo. Anything can happen in those remote places. It’s a savage world, without law or order. No more and no less than the Congo, I suppose.”

The Prefecture of Iquitos was on the Plaza de Armas, a large space without trees or flowers, where, the consul pointed out, indicating a curious iron structure that looked like a partially completed Meccano, an Eiffel house (“Yes, the same Eiffel as the tower in Paris”) was being assembled. A prosperous rubber-grower had bought it in Europe, brought it back to Iquitos in pieces, and now was reassembling it to be the best social club in the city.

The Prefecture occupied almost half a block. It was a large, faded one-story house, lacking grace or form, with spacious rooms and barred windows, and divided into two wings, one used for offices and the other for the prefect’s residence. Señor Rey Lama, a tall, gray-haired man whose large mustache was waxed at the ends, wore boots, riding pants, a shirt buttoned to the neck, and a strange bolero jacket with embroidered decorations. He spoke some English and gave Roger an excessively cordial welcome full of bombastic rhetoric. The members of the commission were all there, packed into their evening clothes, perspiring. The prefect introduced Roger to the other guests: magistrates from the Superior Court; Colonel Arnáez, commander of the garrison; Father Urrutia, father superior of the Augustinians; Señor Pablo Zumaeta, general manager of the Peruvian Amazon Company; and four or five other people: merchants, the head of the customs office, the editor of
El Oriental
. There was not a single woman in the group. He heard champagne being uncorked. They were offered glasses of a white sparkling wine that, though lukewarm, seemed of good quality, undoubtedly French.

The supper had been prepared in a large courtyard lit by oil lamps. Countless indigenous servant girls, barefoot and wearing aprons, served hors d’oeuvres and brought in platters of food. It was a mild night, and stars twinkled in the sky. Roger was surprised at how easily he understood Loretan speech, a somewhat syncopated and musical Spanish in which he recognized Brazilian expressions. He felt relieved: he’d be able to understand a good deal of what he heard on the journey and this, even though they’d have an interpreter, would support the investigation. Around him at the table, where they had just been served a greasy turtle soup he swallowed with difficulty, several conversations were being held at the same time, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with interpreters who interrupted them, creating parentheses of silence. Suddenly the prefect, sitting across from Roger and his eyes already alight with glasses of wine and beer, clapped his hands. Everyone stopped talking. He offered a toast to the new arrivals. He wished them a pleasant stay, a successful mission, and hoped they would enjoy Amazonian hospitality. “Loretan and especially Iquitian,” he added.

As soon as he sat down, he spoke to Roger in a voice loud enough to stop the other conversations and start another one, with the participation of the twenty or so guests.

“If you’ll permit me a question, my esteemed Consul? What exactly is the purpose of your trip and this commission? What have you come here to find out? Don’t take this as impertinent. On the contrary. My desire, and the desire of all the authorities, is to assist you. But we have to know why the British Crown has sent you. A great honor for Amazonia, of course, and we would like to prove ourselves worthy.”

Roger had understood almost everything Rey Lama said, but he waited patiently for the interpreter to translate his words into English.

“As you no doubt know, in England, in Europe, there have been denunciations of atrocities committed against the indigenous people,” he explained calmly. “Torture, murder, very serious accusations. The principal rubber company in the region, the one that belongs to Señor Julio C. Arana, the Peruvian Amazon Company, is, and I assume this is well known, a British company, registered on the London stock market. The government and public opinion would not tolerate a British company violating human and divine laws in this way in Great Britain. The reason for our journey is to investigate the truth of those accusations. Señor Arana’s company has sent the commission. His Majesty’s Government has sent me.”

An icy silence fell over the courtyard when Roger opened his mouth. The noise from the street seemed to diminish. There was a curious immobility, as if all those gentlemen who a moment earlier had been drinking, eating, conversing, moving, gesturing, had become victims of a sudden paralysis. All eyes were on Roger. A climate of distrust and disapproval had replaced the cordial atmosphere.

“The company of Julio C. Arana is prepared to cooperate in defense of its good name,” Señor Pablo Zumaeta said, almost shouting. “We have nothing to hide. The ship that will take you to Putumayo is the best in our firm. There you will have every opportunity to confirm with your own eyes the vileness of these slanders.”

“We are grateful, señor,” Roger agreed.

And at that very moment, with an excitement unusual in him, he decided to subject his hosts to a test that, he was sure, would unleash reactions which would be instructive for him and the members of the commission. In the casual voice he would have used to speak of tennis or the rain, he asked:

“By the way, señores. Do you know whether the journalist Benjamín Saldaña Roca, I hope I’m pronouncing his name correctly, happens to be in Iquitos? Would it be possible to speak to him?”

His question had the effect of a bomb. The diners exchanged looks of shock and anger. A long silence followed his words, as if no one dared touch so thorny a subject.

“But is it possible!” the prefect exclaimed at last, theatrically exaggerating his surprise. “The name of that blackmailer has reached even London?”

“That’s true, señor,” Roger agreed. “The denunciations of Señor Saldaña Roca and of the engineer Walter Hardenburg made the scandal concerning the Putumayo rubber plantations explode in London. No one has answered my question: Is Señor Saldaña Roca in Iquitos? Might I see him?”

There was another long silence. The discomfort of the guests was manifest. Finally the father superior of the Augustinians spoke.

“No one knows where he is, Señor Casement,” said Father Urrutia in a very pure Spanish clearly different from that of the Loretans. Roger had more difficulty understanding him. “He disappeared from Iquitos some time ago. People say he’s in Lima.”

“If he hadn’t fled, we Iquitians would have lynched him,” declared an old man, shaking a choleric fist.

“Iquitos is the land of patriots,” exclaimed Pablo Zumaeta. “No one forgives that individual who invented despicable stories to slander Peru and bring down the enterprise that has brought progress to Amazonia.”

“He did it because the knavery he had prepared did not succeed,” added the prefect. “Were you informed that Saldaña Roca, before publishing those infamies, tried to extort money from Señor Arana’s company?”

“We refused, and he published that fairy tale about Putumayo,” stated Pablo Zumaeta. “He has been prosecuted for libel, slander, and extortion, and prison is waiting for him. That’s why he fled.”

“There’s nothing like being on the spot to find out about things,” Roger remarked.

The private conversations destroyed the general one. The dinner continued with a dish of assorted Amazonian fish, one of which, called the
gamitana
, had a delicate, delicious flesh, Roger thought. But the seasoning made his mouth burn.

When the meal ended, after saying goodbye to the prefect, he spoke briefly with his friends on the commission. According to Seymour Bell, it had been imprudent to bring up so abruptly the subject of the journalist Saldaña Roca, who irritated the prominent people of Iquitos so much. But Louis Barnes congratulated him because, he said, it had allowed them to study the irate response of these people to the journalist.

“It’s a shame we can’t talk to him,” replied Roger. “I would have liked to meet him.”

They said good night, and Roger and the consul walked back to the diplomat’s house along the same route they had taken earlier. The noise, revelry, songs, dances, toasts, and fights had become even louder and Roger was surprised at the number of small boys—ragged, half-naked, barefoot—standing at the doors of the bars and brothels, spying with mischievous faces on what went on inside. There were also a good number of dogs digging through the garbage.

“Don’t waste your time looking for him, because you won’t find him,” said Stirs. “Saldaña Roca is probably dead.”

Roger wasn’t surprised. He, too, suspected, when he saw the verbal violence the mere name of the journalist had provoked, that his disappearance was permanent.

“Did you know him?”

The consul had a round, bald head, and his skull sparkled as if covered with little drops of water. He walked slowly, testing the muddy ground with his stick, fearful perhaps of stepping on a snake or a rat.

“We spoke two or three times,” said Stirs. “He was very short and somewhat hunchbacked. What they call a
cholo
here, a
cholito
. That is, a mestizo. The
cholos
tend to be gentle and formal, but not Saldaña Roca. He was brusque, very sure of himself. With the fixed gaze that believers and fanatics have and that always, truth be told, makes me very nervous. My temperament doesn’t go in that direction. I don’t have much admiration for martyrs, Mr. Casement. Or for heroes. People who sacrifice themselves for truth or justice often do more harm than the thing they want to change.”