The helicopter landed with a thump and bounced on its skids. The flight from Kinshasa to Kisangani was hot and noisy. Below lay a vast canopy of jungle, broken only by small villages and ox bow lakes, cut off like a memory from the Congo river.

Karl and Briony had been married 20 years but there were problems. Karl’s farm equipment business wasn’t going well and Briony wanted to go back to the Sydney. ‘Civilisation’ she called it. They’d flown three hours in silence.

The young Belgian pilot helped Briony alight from the helicopter, staring at her long, bare legs. Karl got the bags and made their way to where a tall black man, with an extraordinarily large bald head, waved from a tin shed. The heat rose from the tarmac, burned the inside of the nostrils and pressed on the skin like a pinch that never let go. Behind the thick rotting vegetative smell and sauna humidity, lay something sweet, like frangipani. With an elaborate bow the black man gave Briony a hyacinth and a toothy smile.

“Welcome my friends. My name is Nkomo. I hope you had a wonderful flight. I always say the best way to see our glorious nation is from 30,000 feet on the way to Paris. But I joke, ha ha.”

The air-conditioned four-wheel drive swerved around potholes and over spine jarring corrugations as it headed to the river. Six months ago, they’d paid for a ten-day luxury cruise down the Congo back to Kinshasa, retracing the path of the explorer, Henry Stanley. As young lovers they’d ‘done’ Tibet, South America and Russia. They’d climbed snow-capped peaks in Switzerland and camped in the Cambodian jungle. During their Buddhist phase, they lived in McLeod Ganj in the southern Himalayas and sat at the feet of the Dalai Lama. A trip down the Congo might rekindle the fire in their marriage that three droughts and the death of their first baby had extinguished. And then there was the harvester fiasco.

Briony looked at the Lady Alice tied to a derelict pontoon and bit her lip. The crew’s washing was festooned like a semaphore across the wheelhouse. The old tramp steamer looked tired. A cargo container with each end cut off, looking like an over-sized square napkin ring, sat on the rear deck. The mosquito nets thrown back revealed a double mattress and a small side table. A sign said ‘home sweet home’.

“You’re fucking joking,” Briony said pointing at the boat. “Nkomo, this is what the travel brochure says:

“Take a Magical African experience down the Majestic Congo in one of our executive pleasure craft. Hear the jungle drums at night from the comfort of your ensuite room and balcony. Immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of Africa and let your spirits soar!”

“This is not soaring, mate,” Briony snapped. “This is a bloody long way from soaring.”

“Madam is a little critical of our pleasure craft,” Nkomo said, as he carried their bags up the gangplank. “Looks are deceiving. Once you get inside you will see it is beautifully appointed. Much new paint here and there. I travelled on this very vessel myself with my new wife and I can assure you, once you feel the river pull you along, all of your cares will be free.”

Nkomo gave Karl a wink and ran his tongue lasciviously around his fat pink lips.

“No. There has been a mistake,” Briony said. “This is not what we paid for. We paid for a room on the Belgian Star, not this barge,” she said.

“We’re here now, love,” Karl said, reaching for her hand. “Give it a chance. It might be fun,” Karl said.

She gave him a withering look and stared at the river. A bloated ox with its legs cut off floated by, one eye looking at Briony, the other at Karl. Women dressed in bright red and yellow dresses sat in clumps in the bow. Chickens and baby pigs fled across the decks in terror as naked children, armed with switches, chased and flayed them. Men lay on uncoiled ropes and smoked cigarettes. Garbage littered the decks.

“That’s the spirit!” Mkomo said to Karl. “There’s only one thing to remember my intrepid friends. Do not fall off the boat. Most things here bite. Ha ha, ha ha. I will say goed tarief to you – and welcome to paradise!”

The Lady Alice carved its way through the water hyacinths and weeds and made its way to the middle of the channel. The sun beat down on the deck, forcing people to take shelter under large blue plastic awnings. A young, feminine looking black man of indeterminate age took them on a tour of the boat.

“I am Etienne and I will be your servant on the journey,” he said in a soft voice. “Anything you want, call me. We have beer, wine and ice water. You will need to drink a lot of water but don’t drink river water. The Ebola river flows in to the Congo upstream. Not safe.”

He led them through the wheelhouse, down a flight of stairs to the galley. A fat white man in his 70s, lay fast asleep across a mahogany table. An empty bottle of cognac lay on the floor. Deep sweat stains ran under his shirt and across his chest.

“We serve all the meals here. As you are the only guests, I will come and get you,” Etienne said.

“Who’s this?” Karl said, pointing at the man.

“The captain”

“Who’s steering the boat while you’re down here?” Briony asked.

“I am,” Etienne said. “But fear not madam, there’s not very much to hit out here. Please feel free to wander about the boat. My mother is a famous feticheuse, like a witch doctor. She was very close to Mobuto. If you wish, she will tell your future.”

“Has to be better than our past,” Briony said.

The captain stirred and Etienne fled up the stairs, yelling down, “My mother will come to you!”

On the third night, the full moon was so bright, the propeller wash looked like silver. Karl closed the mosquito nets and sat on the end of the bed while his wife brushed her long brunette hair. Her hair brushing used to turn him on.

“It’s not my fault about the harvester. Ted was a friend,” Karl said. “You helped his wife out with the baby that time, remember?”

Briony took off her combat pants and slid in to a pair of cotton pyjamas.

“I’m a bloody nurse. Of course I helped. How could you be so stupid?” She snapped. “He owes us $150,000. Now the bank has both his farm and our harvester.”

“Ted gave me the deposit and said he’d get me the rest of the money for the harvester once the crop went to market. How was I to know the bank would bloody foreclose before he could harvest it?”

“Well, you could have pulled your head out of your arse and thought a little harder. You’re meant to be running a farm machinery business. How are we going to come up with that sort of money? We’re cactus,” Briony said.

Karl’s gut tightened. They’d had rough patches before. He’d had a knee operation that put him out of action for two months and she helped him with the physio. Briony’s father and mother had both died within a week of each other. He held her as she cried in bed for a week. He made the funeral arrangements. ‘Cactus’ she said.

He’d always gotten by with a firm handshake and a smile. Farmers liked him. He’d listen to their complaints. He wanted them to do well. But the economy had turned down and the dollar had kept rising and the bloody Chinese had flooded the grain market. Things were tough. You had to stick it out. Things would come right. They always did. ‘Stickability’ his Dad said. You’ve got to have stickability. Other people’s marriages hit the rocks, not his. Not cactus. Not done like a dog’s dinner. Not all over bar the shouting.

An old woman with green hair beads, stoned red eyes and a cheroot cigar, rammed her head through the mosquito net. Her face was deeply etched like an old colonial river map of Africa. Briony screamed.

“I am Hexaba. You, screaming girl, shut up. You’ll wake the children. I tell fortunes. My prices are $20 American dollars – up front – per person.”

Karl gave her the money. Hexaba sat on the bed and poured a fist-full of small golden cowrie shells in to their hands.

“You – screaming girl – throw the shells on to the bed. Do it now! I see everything. I am here. I am there. I was here yesterday and will be here tomorrow. Throw them I say!”

Briony threw the shells. The feticheuse gasped and took a belt from a hip flask. She ran her finger down her nose and then sucked it.

“You are the eldest daughter. You want to fly. Your children are gone. One is dead. You cannot hear its song. You want to pull your husband’s wings off. That is what you are thinking,” Hexaba said. “Soon you will hear your dead child’s song. Love the one you are with.”

“Isn’t that Crosby, Steels and Nash?” Karl asked.

“You! Shut up,” hissed Hexaba, “Throw the shells.”

Karl threw the cowries on to the bed.

Hexaba stared at Briony, then at Karl and then at their baggage in the corner of the room.

“You don’t speak your desires. You think them. You think the Congo is a love potion. You are a fool. It is just a river,” she used her hands to show how it snaked and meandered through the jungle. “Your problems will all be solved. Learn to swim with the current. But first you must stop being a fool.”

“It’s sound advice, love,” Briony said. “You should take it.”

Hexaba stared at their bags again, quickly gathered up the shells and fought her way through the mosquito net.

“Hey, I thought you were going to tell our futures,” Briony yelled.

“This boat is your future. It’s all you’ve got,” and she fled in to the night.

Later that night Karl lay in bed and saw pairs of red and yellow eyes looking at him from the river bank.

The captain invited them to join him for a ‘Crossing the Equator’ dinner. The small dining room was transformed by musk candles, a white table cloth, wine glasses and Handel playing softly from a battered cassette deck. The captain arose from the bowels of the boat through a small door hidden by black muslin cloth. His stomach fell over his black tuxedo pants. He wore a red smoking jacket making him look like a dilapidated playboy. His eyes were an astonishing azure blue. He smiled, bowed to Karl and kissed Briony’s hand and spoke with a light French accent.

“Enchanted madam, monsieur. I am captain Pierre-Charles. I have been indisposed until now, for which I apologise. There are many duties I must attend to. I hope you will not think me a poor host. Please be seated.”

They ate Goliath Tiger fish and cassava, sold to Etienne by a river fisherman. It was steamed and served with yellow rice and an onion and chili salsa. Briony knocked back the drinks and picked at the food.

“Are you a wine connoisseur, Karl?” Pierre-Charles asked.

“What my husband knows about wine,” Briony laughed, “could be written on the head of a mosquito. He’s in to beer. Heavily in to beer.”

Pierre-Charles laughed. “Your wife has spirit – a fine quality in a woman. This wine is a Montrachet Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. Do you know it? It has a story. An American couple, maybe a few years older than you, were travelling with us to Kinshasa. They had a dozen bottles. I have no idea where they got them from but I can tell you, it’s very expensive.”

“What happened to them?” Briony asked.

“It was strange mon cher. We pulled in to the riverbank late one afternoon. It was very hot. A tropical rainstorm had just finished and the jungle was alive with animals. The monkeys were screaming. They said they were going for a walk and they never came back. Just disappeared. Poof! Gone. We searched for two hours but there was no trace. In the Congo, one can easily disappear, in more ways than one.”

“Five minutes Captain, until we cross the equator.”

“Thank you, Etienne.”

“So why waste the wine on us?” Karl said. “What’s the occasion?”

“The equator is reason enough but … forgive me. I heard your squabbles. My cabin is below your quarters. No one likes a snoop. Is that the right word? Snoop? You are both so unhappy. We spend all of those years trying to find love, and then when we do, we treat it like a commercial transaction. Do you not agree?”

The wine had gone to Briony’s head and she started crying.

“I must apologise again, Karl. I have upset your wife.”

“Don’t worry about it. She does it all the time.”

“But I do worry. Many years ago, our family had a coffee plantation here. I was 20 and madly in love with a beautiful young woman. She was Belgian. Very smart. She could read Russian, French and German. I used to tell her, Tu sei il sangue del mio sentire. You are the blood of my heart. I wrote her poetry. I would sing to her. You know the love madness, Karl? Of course you do.”

Karl ran his finger around the embossed pattern of an imperial eagle on the white tablecloth.

“The war came in 1963 and revolutionaries with guns and the machetes came and killed the white people. They killed her parents and set fire to the plantation. Her charred body was found in the forest. There was no honour, Karl. No dignity. For the next 20 years I worked as a mercenary. I fought in Vietnam with the Americans, in Nicaragua with the Contras and in Angola. I have done questionable things. Why? Because I failed to protect her. On the day she was kidnapped, I was working in Kinshasa, helping my father secure both of our families passage out of the country. I chose to avenge her death upon myself. When really, I should have thrown the helm around. It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life. Most of life’s problems are piss ant, unless of course the boat sinks. But I jest. Let us stand as we cross the equator. I will say a toast. ‘To my new friends Karl and his beautiful wife Briony, may all of your troubles turn to gold. Salut!”

They drank until midnight, lowering a bottle of cognac. Pierre-Charles played Creedence Clearwater’s ‘Run through the Jungle’, while quoting from a book of Rimbaud’s poetry.

They made their escape holding hands and laughing, and ran to the shelter of their sawn-off cargo container. Karl lay on the bed smoking one of Pierre-Charles’s cigars as Briony secured the mosquito net. She turned around and caught him staring at her legs. They hadn’t made love for a year. The thrum of the engine sent vibrations through the deck as she took off her dress and knickers and crawled in to bed.

“We could do it, you know,” Karl said. “Throw the helm around. We’d get a good price for the house and I’d sell the business. Some fool would buy it. That would pay off the harvester and give us $50,000 to start again somewhere else.”

“Alright. I’m just pissed enough to go for it. As the captain said, ‘it’s better to take home a boa constrictor and entertain it for the rest of your life than crawl through the eye of a camel’. Or something like that. Are you getting undressed or what?” Briony said with mock impatience.

“Give me one minute. I need to release a couple of litres of Montrachet Domaine,” Karl said.

He stumbled out through the mosquito net towards the stern and unzipped his fly. He could hear Pierre-Charles yelling ‘piss ant!’ from the wheel house. He looked at the white ribbon of stars stretching across the sky, swatted a mosquito, turned and rolled his ankle on a deck rope, then stumbled and fell off the stern of the Lady Alice in to the black water.

The chug of the diesel motor drowned his cries. Briony heard the splash, wrapped a towel around her and saw Karl waving in the receding distance. She panicked, looked for a life buoy and found only a child’s life jacket, which she hurled in to the water. She screamed No!, as Karl disappeared in to the night. She hurled herself over the stern and swam towards him.

She clung on to his shoulder while they both treaded water. In the darkness, he could hear her breathing close to his ear. The light of the boat grew dimmer and finally disappeared in to the distance.

“I’m not exactly sure where we are,” he said, “apart from being up shit creek. Let’s make for the riverbank and assess our options.”

She gave him a light kiss on the lips as a pair of red eyes lit by moonlight slid along the muddy river bank. The noise from the jungle was deafening as the current carried them downstream. Insects clicked and buzzed, the monkeys screamed and in the distance, the sound of drums.