Chapter 29 Karakarai Falls - 7

Diego patted the bare bottoms of the two mulatto girls that he had brought aboard with his luggage to entertain him during the night and during lunch breaks.He also brought thirty-six bottles of premium whiskey.He pointed at a yellowed photo of Betty Grable—the one that looked like it had been pinned to the wall by a previous traveler— Blowing a kiss, then walked out of the cabin to the aisle, knocked on the door of the cabin next door, and walked in.He found Leiber reading a book as usual. "To the deck?" "No." "I heard people say that the land can already be seen."

"Very well," said Reber without looking up. Diego went on deck alone.The small steamer was packed with a loud and cheerful crowd, mostly black, with a few improvised bands making a deafening noise.Diego thought he couldn't hear a B-29 flying overhead.He climbed up the gangway to the captain, who was not a Brazilian but an Irishman in authority after God on board. "Is it broken down?" "We're waiting." The weather was unbearably hot: the deck seemed to burn beneath your feet, and you had to take precautions if you wanted to lean on the rails.That's what Diego did anyway.He leaned his upper body over the railing.Right in front is a wall of water, nearly two meters away, so long that it can't see the end.This gray-brown wall of water is flowing and soft, topped with golden foam, and floats above the eddies below, which often make countless cloudy spots on the blue Atlantic waters, but those spots will soon disappear. Disappeared.

Diego leaned forward a little more, fascinated by the intense excitement of the spectacle, which was sometimes frightening.The sight of the Atlantic Ocean and the most powerful river in the world meeting and confronting each other violently, never before seen in history, had everything to satisfy Diego. He looked up and could see that the duel was not just between two jets of water.Just vertically above the wall of brown water, the sky is also split in two.The sky on the side near the smoky land was swollen with fuchsia clouds, which moved forward in what appeared to be guards lined up side by side, as if ready to block anyone or anything that tried to rush past them. .On the other side, the sun was shining brightly over the ocean.

"What are you waiting for?" "Wait for the damn navigator." The navigator did not come until six hours later, with an air of indifference. Only then can the ships begin to pass through the turbulent estuary of the Amazon River. Ubaldo Rocha greeted them in Belem.At first Diego was extremely disgusted with him because of his sullen face, his almost total silence, and his air of what Diego called a "know-it-all woodsman."But soon Diego became convinced that Rosa's utter loyalty to Leiber was no less than him, and he began to accept him differently.Since then, the two have gotten along extremely well.

Rosha prepared a big wooden boat and three boatmen.He sent Reber and Diego up the Amazon in the boat.In the early morning of May 14, 1955, they arrived in Manaus.Reb had not left his berth during the entire voyage since embarking at Beren.After the boat passed Santarém, Ubaldo Rosa began to talk.He gave them a brief account of Henry Ford's utter defeat in that neighbourhood.That happened between 1927 and 1946. At that time, the American tycoon invested 20 million pre-war dollars to develop rubber plantations in Amazonia and planted nearly 4 million vines from the Philippines. Imported Hevea saplings.Ford even founded a town of three thousand inhabitants and named it Fortlandia. (How humble!) There are schools, churches, hospitals, stadiums, tennis courts, swimming pools, golf courses, and the store sells goods that are exclusively flown in by plane.This fast-growing automobile dynasty wants to have its own tire production base.However, due to the inappropriate choice of location, considering that it takes eight years for a rubber tree to start producing rubber, it was decided to make a new attempt elsewhere.Ford found that his unprocessed Amazonian rubber cost more than the ready-made tires that were sent to the factory.So, discouraged, Ford sold everything there for only two and a half thousand dollars, and he had spent at least forty times that amount on it.

"What a deal!" Diego said. But when he listened to Rosa's story, he felt uncomfortable, even close to pain; and the longer he lived on this never-ending river, the more uncomfortable he became.He suddenly fell into this strange world, feeling oppressed. At the beginning, after he and Reb escaped from Bogota, he had watched Reb Klimrod go farther and farther, and embarked on his journey of nearly 2,000 kilometers in one hundred days alone.Eight years later, Diego felt this despair and the miserable feeling of being abandoned again. However, in Manaus, Diego insisted on staying with Reber.

He learned from Rocha that the boat was going to Mora, Rocha's birthplace, and then headed up the Blanco. "It's not necessary, Diego. And I have something for you to do. We've agreed." "But two or three weeks won't matter." He was almost pleading, because he felt more and more strongly that something was going on at Reber, though he couldn't quite tell what it was.Reber spoke less and less, his eyes seemed bigger and bigger, and even his shape seemed to be changing.Sometimes he didn't speak to anyone at all, and during the three days at Manaus, Rosa was busy with other people's inexplicable preparations, and Reber talked to the Indians he met two or three times in an unknown language.Besides, he was so withdrawn that he had always been polite, but now he didn't even seem to hear people talking to him.In the past, although his expression seemed to be in a daze, he was never absent-minded.It's unbelievable how often he loses his mind these days.

"Let me go with you, as far as I can go." "Well, as far as Karakarai. Once you get there, you can't go any further." Karakaray. The name sounded vaguely exotic to Didungo, but otherwise meant nothing.He didn't even bother to look it up on the map.The boat left Manaus and arrived in Mora.This is a small settlement, at least not of much interest to Diego. Then I sailed upstream on the Blanco River, which is so dark that there are almost no mosquitoes. "I'm right in the middle of the jungle," Diego felt flustered at the thought. "I, Diego Haas, Mamita's precious son (she has no other children), frequents palace-like places, is worshiped by women, and the head waiter in the world's major hotels is terrified to see me, but Now, I am walking into this "green hell" full of dangers and dangers. The Indians on both sides of the strait must be cannibals.

In fact, he had no choice but to mutter to himself to make fun of him.Leiber was curled up on the bow of the boat at the moment, and he simply didn't speak any more, at least he didn't speak any language of the civilized world.Several times, he looked at the dense forest and made some strange noises. Immediately, many naked Indians jumped out of the forest with hideous faces and two or three meter long bows in their hands. Ubaldo Rocha was less chatty.The crew is no longer the few people in Belem.In Manaus has been replaced by Indians to drive the boat.Thinking that he could only let these people accompany him on the return journey, Diego was worried in advance.

"Just today." The sun has just risen.Diego got up too and climbed out of the hammock.It rained all night and finally stopped.However, the river surged, and large forests were submerged by the quiet river.The surface of the water is as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the scenes in the sky one by one, so clearly that Diego can hardly tell what is the real scene and what is the reflection.He looked in the direction Rosha pointed, and saw a place that had been hit by a forest fire, and it was almost full of new plants, and he couldn't see any difference from other places.Perhaps they were no longer on the Blanco, for here the channel was narrowed by the erosion of trees and foliage.The boat was hauled across on a pole hook and anchored beside a rotten tree trunk that would have served as a pier, its decayed humus having spread to the roots of another tree.Behind and around the trunks are thick walls of literally impenetrable greenery.

Reber jumped from the boat into the water.Much to Diego's horror, he took off the canvas shoes he had worn since Rio de Janeiro, threw them away, and waded barefoot in the murky water, apparently having a good time, regardless of the extremely dangerous animals in the water. haunt. As for Rocha, he walked over the tree trunk step by step, like walking on a tightrope, until he stepped on hard ground. "Of course, God knows if there's any hard ground in this aquarium," Diego murmured. He yelled, "Reb!" just like eight years ago. Reber didn't even look back.He was undressing until he was completely naked.He spoke to the green wall.However, one could vaguely feel movement behind the wall. "You'd better go now," Rocha said to Diego. "Otherwise, they wouldn't have come out. After five years, they might not recognize Leiber. There's no need to take unnecessary risks." As a precaution, he shouted orders to the Indian sailors.So the sailors propped the boat away from the tree trunk with pole hooks, and slid into the current again.Diego sat on the side of the boat, watching the distance between Leiber and himself widening.It wasn't until the distance was widened to nearly a hundred meters that figures emerged from the wall of green leaves that were wet after the rain. "Guaharibo," murmured reverently an Indian sailor on board. Around the tall, naked Reber, more and more people gathered.It was as if hordes of insects had gathered around a wounded giant to feast on.Just as a bend in the river was about to part them forever, Diego seemed to see Reber gesturing to him, as if to say: All is well.At least Diego hoped that Reber had gestured, and pointed to him.Then he went back to the hammock, curled up in a ball, and never felt more miserable than he did now. In Manaus he found the two Brazilian lawyers who had been waiting for him for days.According to Leiber's instructions, he has many things to do with them... . . . He did a lot with them. (end of this chapter)