The huts were very bare inside: hammocks, gourds, stone axes, and knives fashioned from teeth or claws. Assorted domesticated animals that belonged to the community wandered in and out at will. Bows, arrows, blowguns, and darts were kept in the hut shared by the bachelors. Everything had a purpose. There was no art, only what was essential for strict survival; nature provided the rest. Alex did not see a single metal object that indicated contact with the outside world, and he remembered that the People of the Mist had not touched the gifts César Santos had strung up to attract them. In that, too, they differed from the other tribes of the region, which succumbed one by one to a greed for steel and other goods brought by the foreigners.
When the temperature went down that night, Alex put his clothes back on, but he shivered all the same. He observed that his roommates slept two to a hammock or huddled together on the ground to keep warm, but he came from a culture in which physical contact among men was not tolerated, where most men touched only in fits of violence or in the roughest sports. He lay alone in a corner feeling insignificant, less than a flea. That small group of humans in a tiny village in the jungle was invisible in the immensity of astral space. His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist; maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream . . . an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered that a few days before he had thought he was the center of the universe. He was cold and hungry; he had the feeling it was going to be a very long night, but in less than five minutes he was sleeping as if he had been anesthetized.
When he woke, he was curled up on a straw mat between two husky warriors who were snoring and snorting in his ear the way his dog, Poncho, always did. He untangled himself, with difficulty, from the arms of the Indians and quietly got up, but he didn’t go very far because a thick snake more than six feet long was stretched across the doorway. He stood there rooted like stone, not daring to take a step even though the serpent gave no sign of life; it was either dead or sleeping. Almost immediately, the Indians began to stir and go about their activities with absolute calm, stepping over the snake as if it weren’t there. It was a domesticated boa constrictor whose mission was to rid the place of mice, bats, and scorpions, and to frighten away poisonous snakes. The People of the Mist had many pets: monkeys that were raised with the children, little dogs the women nursed along with their own offspring, toucans, parrots, iguanas, and even a decrepit old yellow jaguar, meek and lame in one foot. The boas, well fed and generally lethargic, allowed the children to play with them. Alex thought how happy his sister Nicole would be in the midst of that exotic domestic zoo.
A good part of the day was spent preparing the celebration for the return of the warriors and the visit of the two “white souls,” as they called Nadia and Alex. Everyone participated, with the exception of one man who sat at the far edge of the village, apart from the others. That Indian was performing the unokaimú—rite of purification—required after killing another human. Alex learned that unokaimú consisted of a total fasting, silence, and immobility that lasted for several days; if that was done, the spirit of the dead person, which escaped through the nostrils of the corpse and attached itself to the breastbone of the killer, would gradually let go. If the person who had killed ate anything, the ghost of his victim grew fat and its weight would eventually crush him. In front of the motionless warrior fulfilling unokaimú was a large bamboo blowgun decorated with strange symbols identical to those on the poison dart that had pierced the heart of the soldier as the expedition had traveled upriver.
Some of the men left to hunt and fish, led by Tahama; several women went to bring maize and plantains from the small gardens hidden in the forest and others were responsible for grinding cassava. The smallest children hunted for ants and other insects to roast; teen-agers collected nuts and fruits and some, with amazing agility, swarmed up trees to take honey from a honeycomb, the jungle’s only source of sugar. As soon as a boy child could stand alone, he learned to climb. These people were capable of running across the highest tree branches without losing their balance. Just seeing them up so high, like monkeys, made Nadia feel dizzy.
Alex was handed a basket, taught how to bear its weight by placing its long strap across his forehead, then with signs directed to follow the other young males his age. They walked some distance into the rain forest, crossed the river by holding on to branches and lianas, and finally came to a group of slender palm trees whose trunks were covered with long, sharp spines. Beneath the leaves, more than forty feet overhead, shone clusters of a yellow fruit that looked a little like peaches. The Indians bound poles together to make two strong crosses, then pushed the fork of one cross tight against the tree trunk and did the same with the other, but higher up the trunk. One of the boys stepped onto the first cross, climbed from it to the second, reached down and pulled the lower cross out and placed it farther up, and, using this technique, and with the agility of an acrobat, quickly climbed to the top. Alex had heard about the feat, but until he saw it done had not understood how anyone could climb without wounding himself on the thorns. The climber tossed down fruit that the others caught in baskets. Later the women of the village ground them and mixed them with plantain to make a soup that was highly treasured among the People of the Mist.
Even though everyone was busy with preparations, the atmosphere was relaxed and festive. No one hurried, and there was more than enough time to play for a couple of pleasant hours in the river. As he was paddling with the other young people, Alex thought the world had never seemed so beautiful, and felt he would never again be so free. After the long bath, the girls of Tapirawa-teri mixed vegetal paints of various colors and decorated all the members of the tribe, including babies, with intricate designs. In the meantime, the older males ground and mixed leaves and bark from different trees to obtain yopo, the magic powder used in their ceremonies.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rites of Passage
THE CELEBRATION STARTED in the afternoon and lasted through the night. The Indians, painted from head to foot, sang, danced, and stuffed themselves with food. It was considered discourteous for a guest to refuse an offering of food or drink, so Alex and Nadia, imitating the others, filled their bellies until they had to throw up, which was thought to be evidence of very good manners. The village children ran around with large butterflies and phosphorescent beetles tied to their fingers with long hairs. The women, adorned with fireflies and orchids, and with feathers in their ears and long picks through their lips, began the festivities by dividing into two facing groups to engage in a friendly singing competition. Then they invited the men to join in a dance inspired by the displays animals made at mating time, during the rainy season. Finally the men took the forefront, first dancing in a circle, imitating monkeys, jaguars, and caimans, then offering a demonstration of strength and skill, shaking their weapons and making flamboyant leaps. Nadia’s and Alex’s heads were whirling; they were dizzied by the spectacle—the tam-tam of the drums, the songs, the cries, and the noises of the jungle around them.
Mokarita lay in the center of the village, where he received the ceremonial greetings of everyone present. Although he took small sips of masato, he could not swallow food. Another ancient, famed as a curandero, or healer, came to treat Mokarita. He was coated with dried mud and resin, to which he had stuck small white feathers, giving him the look of a strange bird just out of its egg. For a long time, the curandero leaped and shouted to drive away the demons in the body of his chief. He sucked several places on his belly and chest, making motions of drawing out the bad humors and spitting them away. Then he rubbed the dying man with a paste of paranary, a plant used in the Amazon to heal wounds. Mokarita’s injuries were not external, however, and the remedy had no effect whatsoever. Alex suspected that the fall had burst some internal organ, maybe the liver, for as the hours went by, the aged chief was growing weaker and weaker as a thread of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
At dawn, Mokarita called Nadia and Alex to his side, and with his remaining strength explained to them that they were the only foreigners to enter Tapirawa-teri since the village had been founded.
“The souls of the People of the Mist and of our ancestors dwell here. The nahab speak lies and do not know justice; they have the power to stain our souls,” he said.
They had been invited there, he added, by the instruction of the great shaman, who had told them that Nadia was destined to aid them. He did not know what role Alex played in events yet to come, but as companion to the girl, he, too, was welcome in Tapirawa-teri. Alex and Nadia knew that when Mokarita said “shaman” he was referring to Walimai, and to his prophecy about the Rahakanariwa.
“What form does the Rahakanariwa take?” Alex asked.
“Many forms. It is a blood-sucking bird. It is not human; it acts crazed; you cannot know what it will do. It is always thirsty for blood; it is quick to anger and to punishment,” Mokarita explained.
“Have you seen the birds?” Alex asked.
“We have seen the birds that make noise and wind, but they have not seen us,” Mokarita replied. “We know that they are not the Rahakanariwa, although they are much like it; those are the birds of the nahab. They fly only by day, never at night. That is why we are careful when we make fire, so that the bird will not see the smoke. That is why we live hidden. That is why we are the invisible people.”
“The nahab will come sooner or later, it is inevitable. What will the People of the Mist do then?”
“My time in the Eye of the World is ended. The chief who comes after me must decide,” Mokarita replied weakly.
Mokarita died at dawn. Waves of laments swept through Tapirawa-teri for hours; no one could remember a time before this chief who had guided the tribe for many decades. His yellow-feather crown, the symbol of his authority, was placed on a post until a successor could be chosen. In the meantime, the People of the Mist removed their adornments and painted their bodies with mud, charcoal, and ash as a sign of mourning. There was a great uneasiness, because they believed that death seldom occurred for natural reasons; usually the cause was an enemy that had used bad magic to inflict harm. The way to satisfy the spirit of the dead person was to find the enemy and eliminate him; otherwise the victim’s ghost would remain in the world to bedevil the living. If the enemy was from another tribe, that could lead to a battle, but if he was from their own village, he could be “killed” symbolically through an appropriate ceremony. The warriors, who had spent the night drinking masato, were fired up, eager to settle the score with the one who had caused Mokarita’s death. Finding him and destroying him was a matter of honor. No one was eager to replace the chief since there was no caste system among them; no one was more important than anyone else, the chief merely had more responsibilities. Mokarita was not respected for his position of command but for being very, very old; that signified experience and knowledge. But now the men, drunken and inflamed, could become violent at any moment.
“I believe this is the time to call on Walimai,” Nadia whispered to Alex.
She went off to the edge of the village, took the amulet from her neck, and began to blow. The high-pitched owl’s screech that came from the carved bone sounded strange in that place. Nadia had thought that all she had to do was use the talisman and Walimai would appear by magic, but now no matter how hard she blew, the shaman did not come.
The tension in the village was mounting by the hour. One of the warriors attacked Tahama, and he struck back, drawing blood. Several men had to step in to separate and calm the two hotheads. They decided to resolve the conflict with yopo, the green powder that, like masato, was used only by the men. They lined up two by two in pairs, facing one another; each was furnished with a long hollow reed, pointed at the tip, and used to blow the powder directly into the opposite person’s nose. The yopo slammed into the brain like an ax. The affected person fell backward, screaming with pain, and then began to vomit, hop around, grunt, and see visions as green mucus drained from his nostrils and mouth. It was not a pleasant spectacle, but the powder transported the user to the world of the spirits. Some men became demons, some absorbed the soul of an animal, others looked into the future; but the ghost of Mokarita did not appear to any of them to designate his successor.
Alex and Nadia feared that this pandemonium would end in violence, and they tried to keep themselves in the background, hoping that if they didn’t make any noise, no one would remember they were there. They were out of luck, though, because suddenly one of the warriors had a vision that the enemy of Mokarita—the cause for his death—was the young foreigner. In one instant, all the men, as one, joined to punish the supposed murderer of their chief, raising their clubs and giving chase. That was not the moment for Alex to think of the flute as a way of soothing spirits; instead, he started sprinting like a gazelle. His one advantage was desperation, which gave him wings—that, and the fact that his pursuers were not in the best condition. In the confusion, the intoxicated Indians tripped, and ran into, and clubbed each other as the women and children urged them on. Alex thought that his hour had come, and the image of his mother flashed through his mind as he ran blindly through the forest.
The young American was no competition for these Indian warriors in speed or skill, but they were drugged and one by one they dropped out of the chase. Finally Alex was able to take refuge beneath a tree, gasping and drained. But just when he thought he was safe, he realized he was surrounded, and before he could start running again the women of the tribe were upon him. They were laughing, as if having caught him was just a joke, but they tied him up firmly and in spite of his swinging his fists and kicking, they dragged him back to Tapirawa-teri and tied him to a tree. More than one girl tickled him, and several put bits of fruit in his mouth, but despite these attentions, they left the rope tightly knotted. By then, the effect of the yopo was beginning to wear off, and the exhausted men were slowly leaving their visions behind to return to reality. It would be several hours before they completely recovered their senses and their strength.
Alex, sore from having been dragged over the ground and humiliated by the teasing of the women, remembered Professor Ludovic Leblanc’s hair-raising tales. If his theory was correct, he would wind up as a meal. And what would happen to Nadia? He felt responsible for her. In a movie or a novel, this would be the moment that the helicopters arrived to rescue him and he looked toward the sky, but without hope; in real life, helicopters never come in time. In the meantime, Nadia had come over to his tree; no one stopped her because none of the warriors could imagine that a girl would dare to defy them. Alex and Nadia had put their clothes on when the evening first turned cold, and since by now the People of the Mist were used to seeing them dressed, they felt no reason to take them off. So Alex was wearing the belt to which his flute, his compass, and the knife Nadia used to cut him free were attached. In the movies, it takes only one slash to cut a rope, but Alex sweated with impatience as Nadia sawed away for a long time at the leather thongs that bound Alex to the tree. Children, and some of the women of the tribe, came to see what they were doing, astonished at their daring, but Nadia acted with such confidence, waving the knife before the noses of the curious, that no one intervened, and after ten minutes, Alex was free. The two friends began quietly to walk away, not daring to run for fear of attracting the warriors’ attention. That was a time when the art of invisibility would have been very useful.
The young foreigners did not get very far because at just that moment, Walimai made his entrance into the village. The aged witch man appeared with his staff and collection of little bags, his short spear, and the quartz cylinder that sounded like a rattle. It contained small stones taken from a place where lightning had struck; it was the symbol of curanderos and shamans, and represented the power of Sun Father. The shaman was accompanied by a young girl with hair to her waist, like a black shawl; her eyebrows were shaved and she was wearing necklaces of beads and polished picks that pi
erced her cheeks and nose. She was very beautiful and seemed happy, and, though she never said a word, she was always smiling. Alex realized that this was the shaman’s angel-wife and was thrilled that he could see her; that meant that something had opened in his mind or his intuition. As Nadia had taught him, he had to see with his heart. She had told him that many years before, when Walimai was still young, he had used a poison knife to kill this girl, as it was the only way to free her from slavery. Though it was a favor, not a crime, when her soul escaped it had clung to his breastbone. Walimai had fled into the deepest part of the jungle, carrying the soul of the girl to a place where no one could ever find her. There he had fulfilled the required rites of purification: fasting and immobility. However, during the journey, he and the woman had fallen in love, and once the rite of unokaimú had been performed, her spirit had not wanted to leave him but had chosen to stay in this world beside the man she loved. That had happened nearly half a century ago, and, ever since, she had accompanied Walimai, waiting for the moment that he could fly away with her, he, too, a spirit.
Walimai’s presence dissolved the tension in Tapirawa-teri, and the same warriors who only shortly before had been ready to massacre Alex now were relaxed and friendly. The tribe respected and feared the great shaman because he had the supernatural ability to interpret signs. Everyone dreamed and had visions, but only the chosen like Walimai traveled to the world of the great spirits, where they learned the meaning of visions and could guide others and change the course of natural disasters.
The ancient told the tribe that Alex had the soul of a black jaguar, a sacred animal, and that he had come from far away to help the People of the Mist. He explained that these were very strange times, times in which the boundary between this world and the world of the beyond was unclear, times when the Rahakanariwa could devour them all. He reminded them of the existence of the nahab, which most of them knew only through stories told them by brothers from tribes in the lowlands. The warriors of Tapirawa-teri had spied on the expedition of the International Geographic for days, but they had not understood the activities or customs of those strange foreigners. Walimai, who in the century of his lifetime had seen many things, told them what he knew.