“I have a dream,” the policeman whispered conspiratorially to me, “there is so much land here, so much potential. You know what the people need most?”
He took a long sip of brandy, “A whore house! I am going to retire from the police soon, I am not a rich man, but I have saved a little bit of money. I am going to go up river, buy a piece of land and I am going to build the biggest and best whorehouse in the whole of Amazonas. The whole country will know my name. I shall be famous and the people will be happy and contented.”
He poured me another large shot of brandy and left me sitting in the sun contemplating this staggering revelation.
Travelling along the river is more than a pleasant way to spend a few lazy days. The river provides the lifeblood of many towns and small villages which have no other links with the outside world. We stopped at one such small town later that morning. The whole town had gathered on the small dock to wait for our arrival. The town, which consisted of a few shacks huddled together in a particularly malarial looking bank of the river, relies each week on the supplies which the boat brings up.
Within a few moments of our arrival, the crew and towns folk had unloaded 500kg of flour, several agricultural machines, two dozen cases of beer and cacacha and two mysteriously large German sausages which had suddenly appeared from the owners cabin in a rather phallic gesture. One of the women I had been chatting to the previous night suddenly appeared on deck in a beautifully tailored trouser suit, jumped nimbly onto the dock and tossed her channel bag into a waiting pirogue and vanished off into the forest. I stood blinking in the bright sun light. Half our cargo swapped for new passengers, we were off on our way again and the policeman was pouring me larger and larger shots of brandy.
These scenes of domestic normality played out on that sunny quay touched something fundamental in me and made my spirit soar once more. The Amazon has undoubtedly changed since the first Europeans arrived but it remains a region without compromise, the world in its extreme. There are few places as huge and as wild. By admitting that its inhabitants can drive, and that they are neither wiser nor purer nor stronger than you its power is not diminished. It is fairer to judge the people who make their lives here squarely as modern people and as equals. They were born by chance in a hard land at a hard time in its history, pretending otherwise does them no justice. Despite all the scare stories I had read in the newspapers I didn’t, on that day, see that that their world had grown too small and despite its satellite dishes, its cellular phones, its trucks and its televisions, Amazonas remained unsubdued.
After another interesting lunch of farinha and chicken entrails I sprawled out on the back of the boat and picked up my book. I had only read a few pages when I noticed that two of the children who had been tearing about the boat with endless energy were standing a few yards away staring at me intently. After a while they plucked up courage and came a little bit closer. The older of the two asked me what I was doing and examined my book with a mixture of respect, curiosity and suspicion.
“Is it interesting?” he asked in a shy self conscious voice, and then quite unexpectedly plopping his self down next to me, “can you read some of it to me?”
“It’s in English,” I explained. This seemed to cause him some problems as he screwed up his face and looked at me through eyes hard beyond his years. I began to read in a slow clear voice. For twenty minutes or so he sat listening to me as I read from ‘Crime and Punishment’. His mother and two of her friends came over to listen as well. We chugged into the small hamlet of Breves just as I finished the chapter. The two children were sleeping, gently slumped against my shoulder. Their mother looked relieved.
Read all four parts of The Secret Policeman’s Whorehouse
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4