Such a Pretty Fiction: Chapter 6
This is the sixth chapter of my novel, Such a Pretty Fiction. Chapter 5 is here.
Soledad was in one of the drawing rooms off the veranda. It was still half dark. A buffet was set with cold meats and pastries. A samovar of coffee dripped onto the white table cloth. Her laptop was open, an empty plate beside her.
I slid into a chair across the table. “What time did you get up?”
“Good morning to you too.” She looked at me over the top of her computer, bright and fully awake. “Five thirty. I always get up at five thirty.”
“Is that the secret to your success?”
“I don’t have a secret. Luck and hard work. If I had a secret, I’d share it so we could get more done.” She spun her computer toward me.
She pointed at a map near Iquitos across from where we’d had dinner. I thought of her hand on my shoulder. The organization she worked with had medical boats that plied the Amazon, ferrying doctors to remote villages. Our first stop was a boat tied up for repairs. Soledad would grab any supplies that were going to waste, and then a second boat would pick us up.
“Plus, poking around a dark boat will make a good video. I’ll look like Indiana Jones.”
Based on the stories I had read about Soledad, I expected her to be a minor celebrity in Iquitos. Women in the street saying hello, locals eager to chauffeur her around. It wasn’t like that at all. Instead, we walked back toward the river. Everyone ignored us.
She led me to a covered market thick with people. Stalls were stacked with piles of wilted lettuce and fruits I didn’t recognize. We picked our way between them, toward the river, as the shouts of people hawking echoed down at us off the metal roof. Farther in, plucked chickens with legs and heads still on dangled from ropes. Tubs of fish glistened beneath a film of bloody slime.
At the back of the market, the bank sloped down to a maze of wooden houses floating on the river. Planks nailed on logs formed paths between the buildings. I moved aside for a man lumbering past us, bent over beneath a bulging nylon bag. The plank bobbed under his weight.
I felt like I was interfering with real men doing real work. Dugout canoes, piled high with fruit, were moored along the logs. Soledad had no fear. She strode along the planks, never pausing at an intersection. We stopped when we ran out of path, on a platform that opened onto the river.
“Ferry terminal.” She gestured at a row of long speedboats tied nose in, bouncing gently against one another. “For people in villages along the river. At least if you can afford it. If you can’t, you take your own canoe.” She stood near the edge and scanned the river over the tops of the ferries.
“Which one’s ours?” I asked.
For a moment she looked confused. “Oh. No. Miguel is coming to get us. He lives on the boat. If no one’s on board, it’ll be stripped for parts, so he keeps an eye on things.”
“Soledad!” Her head snapped to the left of the platform. Miguel stood in the back of a Zodiac, waving at us.
She motioned that I should get in first. She sat on the bench ahead of Miguel. The motor revved, the bow of the Zodiac nosed up, and he took us into the river.
The water was brown and flowing fast. I looked back at the shore and couldn’t pick out the market from the rest of the city. It had disappeared into the ragged edge of Iquitos.
As we motored across the river, I understood why it had been so hard to pick out the far bank the night before. This side was submerged completely. Trees poked out of the chocolatey water. Miguel slowed and we glided between them.
They marked the edge of a flooded village. Huts were built safely up on stilts. Children came out on the porches. “Hellooooo!” they shouted at us, laughing.
“Buenos días!” Soledad shouted back. I waved. Beyond the huts a low concrete building peeked out of the river. The tops of the doorways were still visible. The facade was painted. A tennis club.
And then we were out of the village, back into the river.
“An island!” Soledad shouted.
Finally I saw the other side of the Amazon. The boat, painted red and white, stood out against the green trees. Miguel made for the stern.
When he drew close, Soledad sprang onto a catwalk that ran along the back of the boat. Miguel cut the motor and I could hear the river, the birds in the trees. The catwalk was narrow. Soledad had made it look easy. She held out her hand. I hesitated for a moment, then grabbed it.
The boat had two levels above the water line. She led me to the upper deck. It was just a bare floor built on top of the cabins. A long picnic table stretched out below a tarp that shielded us from the sun.
“First things first,” she said. “Let me show you how to work the camera.”
Miguel began hammering metal somewhere on the deck below us. I sat down and pulled the camera out of my bag. It was straightforward. Press a button to record, keep steady and in frame, make sure there was enough light.
When she was confident I knew what I was doing, she leaned over the railing and shouted something to Miguel. The hammering stopped.
“Don’t want that in the background,” she said. “The examination rooms are below deck. The generator’s down, so there’s no power. It’s going to be dark. I’ve got a flashlight and you’ve got the light on the camera. Do your best.”
I followed her downstairs to the stern. She swung open a metal door. A staircase descended into the dark.
“Oh and it might be flooded. Ready?”
Before I could answer, she started down the stairs.
It took more concentration than I expected to keep her in frame. The screen showed her clearly, looking dramatic in the dark hold of the ship. An inch of water had seeped in and swamped the floor. The reflection of our lights danced on the display.
I followed her as she opened doors onto examination rooms. She looked through drawers, pulling out small boxes and bottles of pills. The final room was at the end of the hallway, opposite the stairs. As she swung the door open the hinge squeaked strangely. It seemed off, too high-pitched for a door that size. Soledad ducked. Huddled in the doorway, her headlamp caught two dark shapes flashing in front of her. Bats. I flinched. Stiff wingbeats fluttered over my head. She stepped into the room, looked to her left and right, and stepped back out. She closed the door and went back up the stairs.
I stood to one side to let her pass. My eyes were glued to the display, trying to ignore the bats. I hated being left alone in the dark, watching her ascend back up toward the light. My heart pounded in my ears. When she was halfway up, I broke and sprinted up the stairs.
As I burst back into the sun she laughed like a crazy person. “Oh my god, I barely kept it together! They almost touched me! Blech!” She shuddered and ran her hands over her hair.
“At least you could leave!” I panted. “I had to stay down there!”
She laughed. “Did you lose the shot when they came out of the room? Turn off the camera, that light’s blinding me.”
I still had it pointing at her.
“We’ll have to edit this out,” she said. “Undercuts my image.”
Back on the upper deck we stowed the camera. Branches on the bank stretched toward the boat. Soledad shouted to Miguel. Sounds of hammering floated up from below. She sat close to me on the bench, her hip pressed against mine, and we watched the footage I’d taken.
“You’ve got a natural eye for it, Logan.”
I was obscenely proud.
The second boat picked us up half an hour later. Soledad took me around and made introductions. This boat was a twin of the first, configured exactly the same way, except the lower level was bright and smelled of antiseptic.
We headed downriver. Eight doctors and two dentists were on board for a week. All except two were Peruvians. They knew Soledad and were excited to see her. The two foreigners were doctors from Glasgow. They had the nervous optimism of people starting an adventure.
It took five hours to reach the village. The boat moved slowly to the bank, which plunged straight into the water, only four feet high. A crew member leapt ashore with a thick rope and looped it around a tree. The space where he worked was carpeted with close-cut green grass. It stretched out behind him through sparse trees to a soccer pitch. The village itself spilled around the side of the field, houses on stilts.
Villagers began to form a line, waiting to see the doctors. I took the camera and followed Soledad over a gangplank. She walked down the line of people, crouching to tease the kids. Some of the women recognized her, hugging her and asking questions. She chatted with them and showed them Nosotras.
We crossed the field through the village and were back on the river. Along the bank was a concrete sidewalk, exactly like one you might find in a city. On the right side, the river had washed away the earth. I couldn’t tell how much was supported by solid ground and how much hung over the water. Soledad didn’t hesitate. I let her get out in front, far enough to show her walking on the precipice over the Amazon.
A woman ran out of a hut. She was frantic. Soledad followed her up the stairs and disappeared into a doorway blocked with a piece of burlap. I stepped gingerly onto the sidewalk and went after her.
Inside the hut it was dark. A pregnant woman, her belly bulging, lay on a mattress on the floor, moaning. She looked barely fifteen. Soledad spoke to her, but she didn’t respond. Women knelt around the mattress. One spoke into a phone with a flat voice, the light of its screen illuminating her face. The girl moaned again. I’d been watching through the camera, trying to keep everything in frame. I glanced down at Soledad and realized that the sheets on the mattress were dark with blood. I started to panic. I listened to Soledad’s voice. Calm and deliberate. I looked back at the camera, where the scene was small and two-dimensional.
“Logan!” Soledad spoke quickly. “Go back to the boat. Get Teresa and Veronica. Bring the stretcher. Go now. Hurry.”
I stepped back into the light on the porch and rushed down the steps. I ran down the sidewalk, between the houses, and dashed past the line of villagers onto the boat.
Without worrying about my broken Spanish, I managed to find Veronica and Teresa. I led them back through the village toward the river. I was barely keeping it together, tugging on the stretcher, trying to urge them on.
“Be calm,” Teresa told me. “Do not scare them.”
It was horrible to match their pace. Every step felt like a minute I was stealing from the girl on the mattress.
When we reached the hut, the urgency they had been concealing was obvious. They spoke rapidly to Soledad. The Spanish was too fast. I was desperate not to make a mistake. I kept looking at the blood on the mattress.
I lowered the stretcher to the floor. She was only two feet from my face. I could smell the sour scent of sweat. Her eyes were closed. She moaned.
Soledad counted. “Uno, dos, tres.” The women slid her body onto the stretcher. “Uno, dos, tres.” We lifted her. She was impossibly light.
The stretcher moved. We squeezed through the doorway. And then I was on the sidewalk. Past the huts, through the field, toward the boat. The villagers that had gathered to watch melted away to let us through. We maneuvered the girl down the stairs to an examination room. Soledad counted again and we slid her onto a stainless steel table. Someone pushed the stretcher into my hands and ushered me out of the cabin. The door swung shut.
I walked back up the stairs. People on the shore watched me. I had nothing to give them. Without Soledad to hide behind, I felt like the voyeur I was. She had told me about the Amazon. I had imagined grass skirts and nudity. The people looking at me wore jeans and t-shirts.
On the upper deck, one of the dentists demonstrated how to brush a set of oversized teeth. Two decks below, a teenage girl fought for her life. I looked at the river. I was miles away from the world I knew.
When I couldn’t take it any longer, I went back downstairs. Soledad stood on the deck opposite the gangplank, talking with Veronica.
“What happened?” I blurted.
She turned to me, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Did she die?”
“What?” Soledad stepped back. “Die? Of course not. She was in labor, Logan, not dying.”
“But… So you’re telling me she’s OK?”
“I’m telling you they’re both OK. A healthy baby girl. They’re exhausted, but of course they’re OK.” She considered me, her face puzzled. “Did you think she was dying?”
“Of course I thought she was dying!” Now that there was no danger, my relief gave way to anger. I pictured her unconscious, hot with sweat, moaning and unresponsive as we moved her onto the stretcher. “What else was that if not someone dying?”
“Someone in labor,” Soledad said. “It’s scary, isn’t it? When it’s not easy, it’s scary. Almost as scary when it goes well, though, to be honest. Her contractions weren’t strong enough to move the baby. Probably because she’s too young to be pregnant. Not that it was her decision. If we hadn’t been here, it might have been dangerous. But we were here.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. “Some drugs and the baby came out?”
“You’re leaving out some of the gory details, but that’s pretty much how it works.” She grinned at me. “Maybe you should have taken a biology class.” Her voice softened. “It’s sweet you’re so affected by it, Logan. There might be hope for you yet.”
The boat was going to spend the night moored to the shore, then continue downriver. Soledad had arranged for a speedboat to take us back to Iquitos. It came roaring over the water, the bow skipping up and down on the surface of the river.
We thanked the doctors. I tried to give extra feeling to the Spanish I garbled out to Teresa and Veronica. It felt like we had really been through something. The sky over the river was orange with the sunset, pressing down onto the tops of the trees far on the other side. Everyone crowded along the rail, waving and shouting goodbyes as the boat sped away and began a slow, broad arc back to Iquitos. The bank flew by in the twilight.
It had taken us five hours on the medical boat to reach the village. The speedboat took thirty minutes to return to Iquitos, even against the current. We came around a bend, there was the glow of the city, and then we bounced past docks jutting into the river, sending our wake rolling slowly toward them. The driver nosed into a space between the ferries we’d left that morning, jostling and empty in the dark.
We walked back to the restaurant. Soledad was every bit as cheerful as she had been the night before, buzzing about how the women in the village had taken to Nosotras.
It was all surreal to me. We walked down the same dusty streets toward the paddle boat. The cinder-block buildings lining the river were empty, their windows dark. Streetlights were sporadic. We moved between light and dark and back again. My whole body felt drained from the worry of watching the girl die. Soledad kept chattering. I floated through the night, following her voice. If she fell silent and disappeared, leaving me walking alone between the buildings, it all would have made some kind of sense.
Again we were the only people in the restaurant. Soledad ordered two pisco sours and two beers. The waiter nodded and scurried off to the kitchen. She lisped cerveza as we’d been doing the night before. I forced a smile.
The drinks came. Spaghetti sounded comforting, something familiar. When the waiter returned, I made sure to speak first so Soledad couldn’t order for me.
“Logan, what’s going on? You feeling OK?”
I had been staring over her shoulder without realizing it. She was looking at me. For the first time that evening, she didn’t look ready to crack a joke.
“I was sure that girl was going to die.”
“Still the girl?”
I nodded.
“That’s it?”
“I feel drained. Like I’ve been up for days.”
The look in Soledad’s eyes scared me. I was afraid she was going to laugh.
I looked away and imagined the closed door on the boat. “I was sure in that room you were cutting her open to save the baby. I was one of the last people to see her alive.” My arm was folded on the table. Soledad reached out her hand and set it on top of mine.
“That could have happened. You’re right.” Her voice was tender. “But it didn’t. We were there and we helped her.”
She was silent for a moment. Her skin, soft and slightly damp with sweat, made my nerves sing.
“I’m impressed that you felt it so deeply, Logan. You would’ve made a good doctor. Not enough doctors care this much. In the US, people do it for the money. That’s less common here. It doesn’t pay as well. People need more help. The doctors mean more. One of the reasons I like working here. The doctors are better people.”
She left her hand on top of mine.
“In med school I thought I was going to be a neurologist. There’s a joke that women doctors become OBGYNs or pediatricians, and I swore to myself I wouldn’t be one of them. But on rotation you have to watch a birth. Mine was a woman that was in labor for hours. She wanted a natural birth. She was worried about hurting the baby, so she didn’t want any drugs. Twelve hours later she gave in. She begged us for them. An hour later the baby was born. But it wasn’t right. When the doctor stepped back and held up the baby, it was dead. Blue. Totally quiet. Everything in the room stopped. We’d let her wait too long. The father was standing next to the bed, the look on his face… I leaned against the wall. I wanted to scream. But then the doctor spanked it and it started to cry. The life came back into the room. He gave it to the mother, and everything was fine. It was like for ten seconds I’d been forced into some terrible future, seen how bad it could be, and then got to go back and choose a world where everything was fine. After that, I couldn’t do anything else. Whatever I did with medicine, I had to keep that moment from happening. We did it again today.”
I watched her, captivated by the story. She didn’t move her hand.
“Maybe this can be the same experience for you. We can make a difference if we care…” Suddenly her face changed, her eyes wide. “Do you think if I told that story again we could get it on film? That would’ve been perfect!” She broke into laughter, and the somber doctor was gone.
After dinner we walked back slowly along the stone wall. The trees were golden canopies above the streetlights. The street was closed to traffic, and the cafés facing the river had set tables up on the road. White light spilled out their doors. We floated down a tunnel of white and gold. Passing through the dark space between two streetlights, our hands brushed. Electricity ran up my arm again, and she took my hand. The row of cafés drifted past us, and she led us toward the hotel. We crossed the street together. Unhurried. Hand in hand. I felt invincible standing next to her, staring down the headlights.
The Dawn of the Amazon rose up out of the dark. Tasteful lighting threw shadows up the walls toward the black sky. Gravel crunched under our feet. The staff at the desk greeted us. I wondered if they noticed that the world tonight was different than it had been in the morning.
At the top of the stairs I tried to decide if I should invite her into my room. She made it easy, standing close to me for a hug, putting her face in my neck. Her hair felt cool on my cheek. I breathed her in. For an instant she was all there was. She kissed my neck, mouth open slightly, enough to feel the hint of wet. She stepped back.
“Buenas noches, Logan.” She looked up at me, two feet away, standing in a hallway in a mansion in the jungle on the Amazon, smiled, and turned away.