Jean looked impatiently at the river every day. He hoped that at that very moment she would arrive. His one and only. He knew every detail of the shore, every shadow in the harbor, the reflection of the sun on the water was engraved in his brain, every voice about the arrival of a ship was his friend. And everyone knew him, crazy Jean, the one whose mind had been consumed by hope, the target of ridicule for sailors who emptied themselves into local prostitutes and irritation for eternal cynics.
Every day he hung on the harbor like an inventory to anchor hope, he had no information about her or his children, uncertainty every day tore off a piece of the illusion that happiness had not abandoned him after all and that maybe after all, there was some chance of meeting again, meeting with his Isabel. He was often a target of competent and incompetent advisors, invited and uninvited guests of his conscience who parroted him to forget her, to have pity on the children and to marry again. All those years they convinced everyone that they were right. Except him.
On the other side of the Amazon was Isabel. Four thousand and eight hundred kilometers away from Jean, the former beauty through whose veins flowed the blood of the conquistadors but also that of the Quechua Indians, a mixture that does not tolerate failure, educated and aware of the world around her. And she was waiting for Jean, whom she married too young, seemingly inexperienced. By her own will and to the immense joy of Jean, the twenty-something old cartographer who had come from France to measure the circumference of the equator and give it a final dimension to our planet, in the Le Condamine expedition.
And she expected news every day, and her sadness gave her a heavy expression in her eyes, she knew every detail of the coast, every shadow in the harbor, the reflection of the sun on the water was engraved in her brain, every voice about the arrival of a ship, and she was a friend. She spent eight years with him before he decided to leave for France. After the death of their daughter from the usual tropical diseases, they still decided to go. But now he refused to take her with him. He knew the risks of the expedition, he convinced her to stay and watch the children, they wouldn't be gone for more than a few months anyway.
If only he had known how much those few months would cost.
And he was right, almost half of the expedition was left to rot in the Amazon swamps, a tribute to discovering and charting new routes. The forgotten heroes of a forgotten war.
Still, he reached his destination on the Atlantic coast, with rough maps that he had compiled himself. Now he just had to send a message to her to come. And he did. The letter never arrived, lost in the curse of human madness and the sadistic games of chance. Spain and Portugal closed the area to the French, on the way to another war to gnaw at South America.
The road was closed. There was no forward, no back. As if the whole of Amazonia was not enough, now it was also divided by local maniacs thirsty for blood and gold. The future did not keep up with the present. At least not for Jean and Isabel.
A detour was needed. Jean set out through a bureaucratic labyrinth that was as nasty as the Amazonian one. He wrote, begged, sought passage through the Spanish-Portuguese territories. He tried to overcome obstacles, cynicism, misunderstanding, open hostility. Months turned into years. Jean decided that enough was enough and that it was time to take his fate into his own hands. He was helped by La Condamine, his mentor who managed to use some of his personal connections with local Portuguese powerful people. One thing did not leave Jean in peace...he knew that the Portuguese were aware of his attitude towards them, of the correspondence in which he accused them of their massacres of the natives. His suspicion slowly grew into paranoia. Had they forgotten?
Although both La Condamine and the local governor assured him that everything was in order...they even provided him with a ship to reach Riobamba, to Isabel. After so many years of troubles and apathy, he saw a trap even where fate had not intended to set it for him. He boarded the ship and set off. Every whisper of the sailors seemed to him like a conspiracy and an intention to throw him to the piranhas. One evening he got off the ship in Oyapoc, a small town forgotten by everyone, even by the crazy gods of the Quechua Indians. The ship continued and without him reached some destination that was not Riobamba, by the captain's will. And Isabelle heard rumors of a ship carrying him, several hundred kilometers away. Those rumors were enough to convince her to set off through the jungle, even though she had no knowledge of the dangers and despite warnings that she was going to certain death. Those who persuaded her were persistent and convinced everyone.
Except for her.
The small amateur expedition she had hastily assembled and financed was doomed to failure. No one survived the journey; they all ended up as the local cynics had predicted, playing the role of ominous birds in the eternal fear of being killed. Malaria and the swamp took their toll. The end of a love's journey.
Except for Isabelle.
Alone, half-crazy with fear, eaten by insects and despair, she continued. Like her ancestors who went to find El Dorado and left their bones in some remote pit, dreaming of the city of gold, she too went. With the vague instinct inherited from her other side, the Indian, she sought her El Dorado. And he was a certain Jean Gaudin, a man of flesh and blood whom she was not even sure was alive.
On 22nd of July 1770, she saw a settlement. With a last effort of will, she dragged herself to the first houses of...Oyapoc! The same place where Jean had reached.
They were finally together!
There are many things that cannot be explained rationally. This is one of those cases. Two spirits impenetrable under the fierce blows of fate. An insignificant episode in the history of South America, a mere footnote compared to the supposed great games and events.
Or something else entirely.
(Roger Mortis 017)
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