The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (30 page)

Two days later his colleagues from the commission arrived in Entre Ríos. Roger was surprised to see Armando Normand with them, followed by his harem of young girls. Folk and Barnes informed him that even though the reason the Matanzas chief gave for coming with them was that he had to oversee personally the loading of the rubber in Puerto Peruano, he had done so because of how frightened he was with respect to his future. As soon as he learned of the accusations the Barbadians had made against him, he set in motion a campaign of bribes and threats to force them to retract what they had said. And he had been successful with some, such as Levine, who sent a letter to the commission (no doubt written by Normand himself) saying they denied all their statements, which they had been “tricked” into making, and they wanted to make it clear, in writing, that the Peruvian Amazon Company had never mistreated the indigenous people and that employees and porters worked in friendship for the greatness of Peru. Folk and Barnes thought Normand would try to bribe or intimidate Bishop, Sealy, and Lane, and perhaps Casement himself.

Very early the next morning, Armando Normand came to knock on Roger’s door and propose “a frank, friendly conversation.” The manager of Matanzas had lost his confidence and the arrogance with which he had previously addressed Roger. He seemed nervous and rubbed his hands and bit his lower lip as he spoke. They went to the rubber depository, in a clearing with brambles that the previous night’s storm had filled with puddles and frogs. A stench of latex came from the depository and the idea passed through Roger’s mind that the smell didn’t come from the rubber sausages stored in the large shed but from the small red-faced man who looked like a midget beside him.

Normand had prepared his speech carefully. The seven years he had spent in the jungle demanded huge privations for someone who had been educated in London. He didn’t want his life cut short by legal entanglements that would keep him from satisfying his longing to return to England. He swore on his honor he had no blood on his hands or his conscience. He was severe but just and was prepared to apply all the measures the commission and “Mr. Consul” might suggest to improve the operation of the enterprise.

“Put an end to
correrías
and the abduction of Indians,” Roger enumerated slowly, counting on his fingers, “get rid of the pillory and whips, don’t have the Indians work free of charge anymore, don’t allow the chiefs, overseers, and ‘boys’ to rape or steal the wives and daughters of the Indians, get rid of physical punishments, and pay reparations to the families of those who have been murdered, burned alive, or had their ears, noses, hands, and feet chopped off. Stop stealing from the porters with dishonest scales and inflated prices at the store to keep them forever in debt to the company.” All of that was just a beginning. Because many more reforms would be needed for the Peruvian Amazon Company to deserve to be a British company.

Armando Normand was livid and looked at him with incomprehension.

“Do you want the Peruvian Amazon Company to disappear, Mr. Casement?” he finally stammered.

“Exactly. And for all its killers and torturers, beginning with Señor Julio C. Arana and ending with you, to go on trial for your crimes and end your days in prison.”

He increased his pace and left the Matanzas chief with his face contorted, motionless where he stood, not knowing what to say. Roger immediately regretted having given in to the contempt this individual deserved. He had gained a mortal enemy who now might very well feel the temptation to kill him. He had warned him, and Normand, neither stupid nor lazy, would act accordingly. He had made a very serious mistake.

A few days later, Juan Tizón let them know that the Matanzas chief had asked the company for the money owed him, in cash, not in Peruvian
soles
but in pounds sterling. He would travel back to Iquitos in the
Liberal
along with the commission. What he was attempting was obvious: to weaken, with the help of friends and accomplices, the charges and accusations against him and to assure himself of an escape to another country—undoubtedly Brazil—where he would have a good amount of money waiting for him. The chances of his going to prison had been reduced. Tizón informed them that for the past five years, Normand had received 20 percent of the rubber harvested at Matanzas and a “bonus” of two hundred pounds sterling a year if the yield was higher than that of the previous year.

The subsequent days and weeks followed a suffocating routine. The interviews with Barbadians and “rationals” continued to reveal an impressive catalogue of atrocities. Roger felt his strength leaving him. Since he had begun to run a fever in the evenings, he was afraid it was malaria again and increased his dose of quinine when he went to bed. The fear that Armando Normand or any other station chief might destroy his notebooks with the transcriptions of the testimonies meant that in all the stations—Entre Ríos, Atenas, Sur, and La Chorrera—he carried those papers with him and would not allow anyone else to touch them. At night he placed them under the cot or hammock where he slept, a loaded revolver always within reach.

In La Chorrera, as they were packing their suitcases for the return to Iquitos, Roger saw about twenty Indians from the village of Naimenes come into camp. They were carrying rubber. The porters were young or adult men, except for a very skinny boy of nine or ten, who carried on his head a rubber sausage bigger than he was. Roger went with them to the scale where Víctor Macedo was accepting delivery. The little boy’s weighed fifty pounds and he, Omarino, only fifty-five. How could he walk all those miles through the jungle with that weight on his head? In spite of the scars on his back, he had lively, joyful eyes and smiled frequently. Roger had him take a tin of soup and another of sardines that he bought at the store. From that time on, Omarino did not leave his side. He accompanied him everywhere and was always ready to do any errand. One day Víctor Macedo said to him, pointing at the little boy:

“I see he’s become fond of you, Señor Casement. Why don’t you take him with you? He’s an orphan. I’ll give him to you.”

Afterward, Roger would think the phrase, “I’ll give him to you,” with which Víctor Macedo had wanted to ingratiate himself, said more than any other testimony: the station chief could “give” any Indian in his territory, since porters and harvesters belonged to him just like the trees, the houses, the rifles, and the rubber sausages. He asked Juan Tizón if there would be any problem with his taking Omarino to London—the Anti-Slavery Society would place him under its protection and be responsible for his education—and Tizón offered no objection.

Arédomi, an adolescent who belonged to the Andoque tribe, would join Omarino a few days later. He had come to La Chorrera from the Sur station, and the next day, in the river, as he swam, Roger saw him naked, splashing in the water with other Indians. He was a beautiful boy, with a well-proportioned, agile body, who moved with natural elegance. Roger thought Herbert Ward could make a beautiful sculpture of this adolescent, the symbol of Amazonian man stripped of his land, his body, and his beauty by the rubber barons. He distributed tins of food to the Andoques who were swimming. Arédomi kissed his hand in gratitude. He was displeased and, at the same time, moved. The boy followed him to his house, talking and gesturing energetically, but Roger didn’t understand him. He called Frederick Bishop who translated:

“He wants you to take him with you, wherever you’re going. He’ll serve you well.”

“Tell him I can’t, that I’m already taking Omarino with me.”

But Arédomi was obstinate. He stood motionless outside the cabin where Roger slept or followed him wherever he went, a few steps behind, a silent plea in his eyes. He decided to consult with the commission and Juan Tizón. Did they think it was all right if he took Arédomi to London along with Omarino? Perhaps the two boys would give greater persuasive strength to his report: both had flogging scars. Then, too, they were young enough to be educated and incorporated into a way of life that was not slavery.

On the eve of the departure of the
Liberal
, Carlos Miranda, chief of the Sur station, arrived in La Chorrera. He brought with him about one hundred natives with the rubber harvested in that region in the past three months. He was fat, in his forties, and very white. From his way of speaking and behaving, he seemed to have been better educated than other station chiefs. No doubt he came from a middle-class family. But his record was as bloodthirsty as those of his colleagues. Roger and the other members of the commission had heard several testimonies about the episode of the old Bora woman who, a few months earlier, in Sur, in an attack of despair or madness, suddenly began to shout, exhorting the Boras to fight and not allow themselves to be humiliated anymore or treated as slaves. Her shouting paralyzed the indigenous people around her with terror. Infuriated, Carlos Miranda attacked her with the machete he snatched from one of his “boys” and decapitated her. Brandishing her head, which drenched him in blood, he told the Indians this would happen to all of them if they didn’t do their work or imitated the old woman. The decapitator was a genial, cheerful man, talkative and easygoing, who tried to win over Roger and his colleagues by telling jokes and recounting anecdotes about the bizarre, picturesque individuals he had known in Putumayo.

On Wednesday, November 16, 1910, when he boarded the
Liberal
at La Chorrera’s wharf to begin the return to Iquitos, Roger opened his mouth and breathed deeply. He had an extraordinary feeling of relief. He thought this departure would cleanse his body and spirit of an oppressive anguish he hadn’t felt before, not even in the most difficult moments of his life in the Congo. In addition to Omarino and Arédomi, the
Liberal
carried eighteen Barbadians, five indigenous women who were their wives, and the children of John Brown, Allan Davis, James Mapp, Joshua Dyall, and Philip Bertie Lawrence.

The Barbadians being on the ship was the result of a difficult negotiation, filled with intrigues, concessions, and rectifications, with Juan Tizón, Víctor Macedo, the other members of the commission, and the Barbadians themselves. All of them, before testifying, had asked for guarantees, for they knew very well they were exposing themselves to reprisals from the chiefs their testimony could send to prison. Roger had pledged he would be responsible for taking them out of Putumayo alive.

But in the days before the
Liberal
arrived in La Chorrera, the company initiated a cordial offensive to retain the overseers from Barbados, assuring them they would not be victims of reprisals and promising them pay raises and better conditions if they would not leave their jobs. Víctor Macedo announced that whatever their decision, the Peruvian Amazon Company had decided to reduce by 25 percent what they owed the store for the purchase of medicine, clothing, household utensils, and food. All of them accepted the offer. And in less than twenty-four hours, the Barbadians announced to Roger that they would not leave with him but continue to work at the stations. Roger knew what that meant: pressure and bribery would make them retract their confessions as soon as he left and accuse him of having invented the testimonies or coerced the Barbadians with threats. He spoke to Juan Tizón, who reminded him that even though he was as affected as Roger by the things that were occurring and was determined to correct them, he was still one of the directors of the Peruvian Amazon Company and could not and should not influence the Barbadians to leave if they wanted to stay. One of the commissioners, Henry Fielgald, supported Tizón with the same arguments: he, too, worked in London with Mr. Arana, and even though he would demand deep reforms in the methods of working in Amazonia, he could not become the liquidator of the firm that employed him. Roger had the feeling the world was falling down around him.

But as in one of those rocambolesque changes of circumstance in French serials, that entire panorama changed radically when the
Liberal
arrived in La Chorrera at dusk on November 12. It brought correspondence and newspapers from Iquitos and Lima. The daily
El Comercio
, from the Peruvian capital, in a long article two months old, announced that the government of President Augusto B. Leguía, mindful of requests from Great Britain and the United States regarding alleged atrocities committed on the rubber plantations of Putumayo, had sent a leading magistrate of the Peruvian judiciary, Dr. Carlos A. Valcárcel, to Amazonia with special powers. His mission was to investigate and immediately initiate the proper judicial actions, taking police and military forces to Putumayo if he considered it necessary, so that those responsible for crimes would not escape justice.

This information exploded like a bomb among the employees of Casa Arana. Juan Tizón told Roger that Víctor Macedo, in great alarm, had summoned all the station chiefs, including the most distant ones, to a meeting in La Chorrera. Tizón gave the impression of a man torn by an insoluble contradiction. He was happy, for the honor of his country and because of an innate sense of justice, that the Peruvian government had finally decided to act. On the other hand, he did not hide the fact that this scandal could mean the ruin of the Peruvian Amazon Company and, consequently, of himself. One night, while drinking lukewarm whiskey, Tizón confessed to Roger that his entire inheritance, except for a house in Lima, was invested in company stocks.

The rumors, gossip, and fear generated by the news from Lima meant that once again the Barbadians changed their minds. Now they wanted to leave. They were afraid the Peruvian chiefs would try to avoid their responsibility in the torture and murder of Indians by blaming them, the “black foreigners,” and they wanted to leave Peru as soon as possible and return to Barbados. They were plagued by uncertainty and apprehension.

Roger, without saying anything about it to anyone, thought that if the eighteen Barbadians came to Iquitos with him, anything could happen. For example, the company would make them responsible for all the crimes and send them to prison, or try to bribe them to rectify their confessions and accuse Roger of having falsified them. The solution was for the Barbadians to disembark before reaching Iquitos at one of the ports of call in Brazilian territory and wait there for Roger to pick them up in the ship
Atahualpa
, on which he would sail from Iquitos to Europe, with a stop in Barbados. He confided his plan to Frederick Bishop, who agreed with it but told Roger the best thing would be not to communicate it to the Barbadians until the last minute.