The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗

The following morning - he had gone straight to bed after an inn dinner of feijao with eggs and roast meat, washed down by strong coffee laced with pinga - Solo decided he must get in touch with Waverly to report progress. But first he wanted to ask a few questions of the locals…

He went out into the town to look around.

It was another hot day, the sun blazing from a dark blue sky between drifts of white cloud. The town was pleasant, a survival from an earlier age. There was a river, a square with green turf and a bandstand presided over by a peeling building like a Venetian palazzo, a movie theater with an ornate facade. There were narrow cobbled streets twisting awry the rules of perspective. And above the jumbled roofs with their curved tiles, wooded hills surmounted by a wild rock escarpment pierced the sky.

Against the blinding white walls of the house, men in wide straw hats tipped back their chairs and drowsed. From inside, occasionally, the age-old profile of a woman gleamed pale against the shadow.

Solo threaded his way through a market, enjoying the spicy smells in the shade beneath the awnings, and crossed a square loud with the clatter of small boys on ponies. On the far side, over the ever-present babble of the river, he heard a low murmur of men's voices from a window below street level. He went down half a dozen steps, pushed open a wrought iron gate, and found himself in a bodega.

It was moist and cool after the glare of the sun, and the low-pitched conversation blended well with the woody smells of barrel and cask. Solo ran his eyes over the double line of spigots behind the counter, each with its neat label, and approached the barman.

"I'll take a sercial, if you please," he said, "providing it's chilled but not too cold."

Although he spoke Portuguese well, it was some time before Solo was able to break down the mistrust of strangers sufficiently to take part in the general conversation. Finally, however, as he started to sip his third glass of the dry, clean-tasting Madeira, he found himself sitting down with three men at a heavy, polished table, talking of local trade. One of the men was a wholesaler of groceries and dry goods.

"I suppose you will find a big difference, now that they are building the new city," Solo said. "More clients will mean bigger orders of stock, and larger stocks will need larger premises and so on."

The man gave a short laugh. "Getuliana?" he said. "The new city? When they build it - if they build it – I may have to consider such things. But at the moment that is very much a thing of the future."

"They will never build it," a fat fruit farmer said mournfully.

"If you ask me," the third man, a pharmacist with drooping moustaches, put in, "they never intended to build the place. It's just a way for businessmen in the capital to chisel money out of the government."

"It is not completed, then?" Solo asked innocently.

"Getuliana completed?" the pharmacist exploded. "That would be the day, senhor! The site is flattened and streets are marked out. They say some power cables and drains are down. But not one stone has been laid upon another..."

"Even the machines have departed," the farmer said. "There are a few bulldozers left, a handful of trucks, and one crane, I think."

"Window dressing!" the wholesaler snorted. "To make the people think the work proceeds. In truth only the dispensation of money proceeds - while the contractors and their lawyers disport themselves at Copacabana and Sao Paulo and Bahia. Maybe even at Brasilia."

"But I thought the new dam… One had heard..."

"Ah, the San Felipe dam: that is a different matter. For some reason they have got a move on there. They have been working -"

"That is just what I mean," the pharmacist interrupted. "Not a house is built in the city, yet already the hydroelectric scheme is finished, thousands of hectares of land drowned, thousands of people made homeless, and nowhere for the electricity to go! This is town planning?"

"You are right, Humberto. It is madness."

"I do not agree," the farmer said. "If - I say if - the city is ever to be built, surely it is prudent to have the electricity ready beforehand - then they can use the power to help build the place!"

"No, no. You miss the point..."

"One must consider the dispossessed peasants…"

"I thought" - Solo in turn interrupted, struggling for a foothold in the discussion - "I thought those displaced from their land and their homes by the new reservoir I

had been resettled with the aid of this American missionary body."

"Resettled? Unsettled, more likely," the wholesaler said. "Those women, I suppose you mean? The ones in the uniforms?"

"Well, yes. But -"

"This is a Catholic country, senhor. Admittedly most of the people resettled were either Indians - the Carajas - or country Negroes who worship at their own Candomble. Even so, the susceptibilities of the population as a whole must be considered."

"You cloak the truth with words, Miguel. The fact of the matter is that these women behave in a manner likely to offend anyone, anywhere."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Solo said. "The society - the D.A.M.E.S., it is called - is ultra-respectable. Whenever their members are stationed abroad, they have to live in special hostels and follow a set of rigid behavior rules. What exactly is being complained of here?"

"Drunken singing far into the night, indecent behavior with the men from the site, reckless driving on the roads, unseemly dress - anything you like."

"But this is astonishing," Solo said. "For an organization so well considered..."

"It astonished us, too, senhor. You will not take the criticism personally as an American, I hope. But San Felipe do Caiapo is a very small village."

"I understand. Perhaps the women will go away when the dam is completed and leave the villagers in peace."

"Perhaps. But it is already finished, I believe.'

"You do not know? Is it not a remarkable thing that people drive out to see, this man-made lake?"

The pharmacist laughed. "The road from Goias to Leopoldina is reputed to be the worst in Brazil," he said. "Halfway along it, there turns off the road to San Felipe - and this makes the Leopoldina road seem like one of your superhighways! From here to the dam is almost seventy miles - and over the second half of the journey it is impossible to average ten miles per hour."

"Also," the farmer said, "those building the dam and the power station by the barrage actively discourage visitors, it seems. Besides, it is high in the bare hills and the road, such as it is, follows the lower ground."

"But surely there must be many trucks, convoys of trucks, taking materials to the site?"

"Not through Goias. We see a few - mainly hauliers from the coast carrying Brazilian goods from Volta Redondas: oil and chemicals and that sort of thing. There are others bringing staff south from the river at Leopoldina; they offload it from the boats there. But the bulk of it is flown in to the strip at Getuliana, of course."

"I see... Gentlemen! Your glasses are empty. With what may it be my pleasure to fill them?" Solo said laughing. "And there is certainly one place, after our conversation, that you won't find me visiting while I'm in this part of the country!"