There had been a time when the jungle swarmed with bandeirantes on the make, who had enslaved and hunted the Indians and brought them the benefits of civilisation: shirts to replace their cushmas, and smallpox, influenza and syphilis to help prevent over-population. At that time the rivers were full of little motorised canoes, onomatopoeically called ‘peke-pekes’, which would be taken on portage at varaderos, places where rivers passed each other, separated only by narrow strips of land. Even steamers were sometimes dismantled and transported to another river by the Indians who were treated as no more than pack-animals, and they in turn would ply the rivers on balsa rafts that looked Egyptian. In those days one could row out to whores in canoes, who were known as ‘canoeiras’, and who were paddled up and down by their pimps, the llevo-llevos, because the jungle sets one’s lust on fire worse than Spanish Fly, and everyone, even nuns, experiences the incessant itch of perpetual arousal.
In those days there were still Inge-Inge Indians whose entire language consisted of ‘inge-inge’ repeated with grimaces, intonations and gesticulations which expressed with rare precision the exact naunces of meanings inaccessible in more complex tongues. There were still ‘Cascabeles’ dressed entirely in rattle-snake tails, and there were still people who knew how to shrink heads to four-fifths of their original volume by leaving them for a week on a pole. When they were a little decayed, they would make a vertical gash in the cranium and remove all the bones. The inside was then carbonised with heated stones and the head would be smoked over a fire of palm roots until it was the right size, and even then one could tell if the head belonged to a white man or to an Indian because a white man’s eyebrows were longer. Virtuoso shrinkers of the Cusicuari could reduce a whole human body, but the Putamayo and Yapura, mere amateurs in the craft, preserved the hands, whilst the un-adventurous Cashibos only collected teeth.
In those days people grew immensely rich on the ‘black gold’, sent their clothes to Paris to be laundered, and brought back entire buildings made of steel to erect in the jungle, which are still there today and which are still too hot to inhabit.
But that was all a long time ago, before someone smuggled rubber tree seeds to Malaysia, and before it was discovered how to synthesise rubber unnaturally, and when that happened the jungle became quiet once more, and the buildings became entwined with creepers and disappeared.
But Aurelio still gathered rubber, and still smoked it over the fire, to make big black balls of it, and still knew how to make it flow out of the tree to form sheets, and he still knew of one or two useful things you could do with it, such as caulking canoes. Today he was going to tap a little so that the jungle would not forget how it was done, and so that the spirits of those long departed caucheros and shiringueros would rest happily knowing that their lives had not been wasted nor their skills forgotten. Aurelio was doing it because he hated the loss of a way of life, as his own way of life in the Sierra had been lost when he was young, and as that of the Navantes had been lost.
He had cut the first bandeira on the first tree, and was watching the latex begin to ooze down into the little tin cup, when Parlanchina crept up playfully behind him and put her hands over his eyes, as she had done when she was a child.
‘I knew you were there,’ said Aurelio. ‘I saw the cat come through the trees.’
Parlanchina took her hands away and hung her arms around his neck. ‘Papacito,’ she said, coaxing him, ‘sit down with me and tell me how the world began.’
‘Gwubba, I have told you so many times that soon it will be impossible to remember it.’
‘Once more,’ she said. ‘Sit with me.’
They sat with their backs against the tree trunk, and Parlanchina enclosed her knees in her arms, ready to listen, looking sideways at her father, waiting for him to begin. He pounded a little coca in his gourd and sucked the end of the pestle.
‘I begin,’ he said. ‘There fell from heaven a copper egg, from which sprang the Indians. Then there fell a silver egg, from which sprang the nobility. Then, after a very long time a golden egg fell, and out of that egg sprang the Inca himself.’
‘And who made the eggs? Tell me, Papacito.’
‘It was Viracocha, the Sun.’
‘And who made Viracocha?’
‘It was Pachacamac.’
‘And who made Pachacamac?’
‘No one, Gwubba. Pachacamac is the one spirit of everything.’
Parlanchina thought, and rested her head on her knees, so that her hair cascaded down and flowed to the earth. ‘If Pachacamac is the one spirit, why are there so many gods, and so many people and so many plants, and so many animals?’
‘Because every spirit is a morsel of the one spirit. This spirit may be Pachacamac’s fingernail, and this spirit a hair of his head.’
‘Tell me again, Papacito, why there are different peoples.’
‘The reason is that when Pachacamac saw the peoples born he made a great bowl in which to wash them. The first people he washed came out cleanest, because the water was cleanest, and they were the white people. Then he washed the next people, but the water was a little dirty, so that when they came out they were the Indian people. Then he washed the last people, and the water was no longer very clean, so that when they came out the people were the black people.’
‘Papacito,’ protested Parlanchina indignantly, ‘am I to be called dirtier than you?’
‘No,’ said Aurelio. ‘No, Gwubba. It is only a story of the ignorant. The real reason is that Pachacamac avoids boredom by never making two things the same, so that nowhere in the world are there two things identical. Every people he made different from every other people, and every person he made different from every other person. That is the true reason.’
‘Now tell me, Papacito, how Manco-Capac became the Inca.’
‘Enough of stories,’ replied Aurelio, and he sucked again on his pestle. ‘Tell me why you have not told me that you are to bear a child.’
Parlanchina laughed. ‘Because I knew that you had already seen my belly swell and my breasts grow.’
‘It will be a spirit child,’ said Aurelio. ‘It will be less of the living and more of the dead.’
‘It will be your grandchild, Papacito. It will suckle at my breast and grow, and if there is a body for it, it will live in a body. If not, it will live with us, and be wild with us in the trees.’
‘Is Federico with you?’ asked Aurelio. ‘I have not seen him.’
Parlanchina smiled with resignation. ‘He is not your son, Papacito, and he likes to walk in the mountains and watch, as I watch the path.’
‘I must tell your mother about the grandchild,’ said Aurelio, standing up and putting the coca gourd into his mochila.
‘Before you go,’ said Parlanchina, ‘here is something for you.’
The ancient bitch who had not run with the other dogs was coming through the trees carrying in her mouth, as a cat carries its kitten, one tiny puppy. Aurelio bent down, took the puppy in his arms, and ruffled its ears. The puppy yawned and tried to suckle at Aurelio’s clothing.
‘It is a dog that will never bark,’ said Parlanchina.
‘It is not the same,’ said Aurelio sadly. ‘It has been bred by a spirit. I wanted to breed it myself.’
‘You bred it,’ replied Parlanchina. ‘It was one of your dogs that was the father.’
She smiled indulgently at him as he stood looking at the puppy protectively, giving it his finger to suckle.
‘Thank you for the stories,’ she called, glancing over her shoulder, smiling her mischievous smile, and walking away. The ocelot trotted beside her, and Aurelio watched her go, tall and graceful, chatting incessantly to her cat, leaning down to stroke its head. She was skipping with happiness, and her long hair was flowing like a black river of silk down to her waist. Whenever Aurelio saw her like this, radiant and enchanting, a choke would arise in his throat, and her beauty would make him weep with pity.
When he returned to the clearing he saw that C
armen’s hair had turned completely white, and he knew that at last the whole world had changed and was beginning again.
The years were to prove Aurelio right, even though, as in all periods of improvement and progress there were to be reversals and calamities.
Here the history of the War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts comes to a close, and in its place begins the history of the city of Cochadebajo de los Gatos; of the unsurpassable love of Remedios and the Conde Pompeyo Xavier de Estremadura, of Francesca and Capitan Papagato, of Parlanchina’s child, of the children of Farides, of Annicca, Dionisio and the Coca Letters; all this being also the History of the New Albigensian Crusade and the terrible crimes of the New Inquisition.
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Louis de Bernières, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
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