At Play in the Fields of the Lord (36 page)

By the time Tukanu pitched forward on his face, Moon realized that what he saw being enacted were the last moments of Padre Fuentes.
Acting both roles, the Indian scrambled around like a dog after its tail; he succeeded at last in wrenching a machete from his own corpse and beheading himself with loud coughing grunts accompanying each chop.

Tukanu held up the dripping head.
“Kin-wee?”
he said, out of breath.
“Kin-wee?”
In an access of joy and pride he wrapped his arm around the Great Spirit’s neck, embracing him, then tightened his arm and cut off the Great Spirit’s wind; when Moon elbowed him sharply in the ribs he sat back, laughing feverishly, then reached over suddenly and yanked out a twist of the Great Spirit’s hair.
On their knees they faced each other, the one in cold tears of pain and fury, the other howling in triumphant glee.
Between them fell a sudden and total silence; to Moon, in this moment, the void between himself and the world of Tukanu seemed infinite, beyond all hope of traverse.
Tukanu was leering senselessly, conspiratorially; he inched forward.
Breath harsh as the scrape of rocks, he stared into the eyes of Moon, who inhaled his savagery like a violent odor: the yellowed eyes, the choked nostrils, the drunken vomit smell, the pores.
Now the Indian twisted him by the chin, forcing him to stare into Tukanu’s black pupils, inches away, pupils like pure black holes into the savage brain.
Moon swayed in vertigo; through those black holes he was drawn far back to the beginning of the age … The Indian brought him up short by licking his face as a dog licks, and squealing again with laughter.

Tukanu did a somersault, then sprang up to join the dancing, dragging at the Great Spirit of the Rain with a violence not quite playful; Moon yanked free but was seized immediately by other Indians.
They meant to include him in their dance, and they laughed and howled encouragement.
He stamped up and down, up and down, holding two painted figures by the hands, and
grunting and shuddering with the best of them.
The Indians sang:

Back, back,
back
—stamp.
Forward, forward,
forward
—stamp.
The exertion had his head spinning; when he raised his eyes to the black fringes of the jungle night, the brilliant stars, he swayed and nearly fell.
The man behind him yanked him upright.
Peering closely at this face, a violent crisscrossing of red and black, he saw that it was Aeore.
“You have painted a new face,” he said.
“Tarai,”
the Indian said; as of this night, Aeore considered himself a jaguar-shaman, and his jaguar teeth gleamed upon his chest.
Moon glanced around for Boronai but did not see him.

Then Aeore went off with Pindi into the bushes; the other Indians laughed and pointed and a few went along to observe the spectacle.

Moon’s humor worsened with each drink.
He had watched Pindi as she danced, provoked by her bold smile and tossing hair, the soft skin of her face, the childlike habit of sucking her lower lip inside her teeth, the bold striping of her thighs and hips.
She actually reminded him of Andy Huben, and he tried to imagine how Andy would look with curlicues on her behind.
Very well indeed, he decided.
And he was considering how best to lure Pindi to his side when Aeore, who had been petting her unmercifully, rose and took her by the wrist and led her away from the circle by the fire.

Moon felt annoyance that the Niaruna, drunk or sober, should treat his spiritual presence so casually; it was plain that
they were more afraid of Aeore than of Kisu-Mu.
Even the faithful Tukanu soon lost interest in him.
With the departure of his faithless Taweeda, he had taken up with an old woman; when this salacious elder, her mouth ringed with yellow foam from the masato, came to him and placed her hand upon his groin, he sprang up instantly and was led off into the bushes.

Pindi returned and entered the maloca.
Afraid of his own anger, Moon did not call out to her.
He weaved stupidly through the ruins of the feast, staring down into the faces of his federation; those Indians who were not off in the undergrowth lay heaped around the fire in a torpor, arms flung about one another like huge children.
The slack, broad-featured faces, livid with paint and tapir grease and sweat, stared up at him like so many demonic masks.
In the shuddering light, in the groan and fume and pant of breath of sprawled brown bodies, he smelled something infernal, like the stench of dying moths lying burned at the base of a lantern.
But the smell was no smell of evil but only of mortal exhaustion, of the renewed and endless and irremediable failure of the Niaruna to escape their doomed flesh, as their legend promised, and dance away into the sky.
It was only he who had drunk idly, merely to get drunk.
He pitied their innocence with all his heart; yet, gazing at human beings so reduced, he could not restrain disgust and fear.

From the shadows at the corner of the maloca, Aeore was observing him; the Indian did not trouble to conceal himself.
They gazed at each other across the flame, in the whisper of night insects.
Moon crossed over to him.
“Tell me your name,” he ordered, though he had not known that he would say this.
Aeore was startled; scowling, he backed into the shadows.
Moon sprang at him and bore him to the ground and grasped his wrists.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
The Indian went wild with fright, rolling and kicking in Moon’s grasp; for once he seemed convinced that Kisu-Mu was a spirit.
Moon struggled to hold him, wary of so much fear; the Indian bit him, frenzied.
They thrashed and rolled in the fire shadows until Moon’s greater weight exhausted Aeore, who lay back, panting, teeth bared, burning.
He had not once cried out.
“Tell me your name,” Moon
gasped again, but this time he knew that he had lost.
He winced angrily and stood up, releasing Aeore, who sprang sideways on all fours before he rose and backed away.
In Aeore’s face, emotions fought; if that man could be sure, Moon thought, for just one second, that I am not a spirit, he would kill me on the spot.

In the morning the yard stank with vomit and was aswarm with flies.
Moon had a headache, his stomach was sour with masato, and the sourness seeped all through him.
He felt poisoned.
For the first time since he had joined the tribe he spoke angrily to Pindi.
He told her that she took poor care of New Person, that she had not observed the period of quiet that was necessary for the safety of the infant soul, that—he was disgusted with himself as soon as he had said it—she must choose between Aeore and himself, or there would be
emita
—evil.

The girl crouched on the ground in terror.
She begged him to tell her what she must do.
And because he did not really care enough about her to command her to leave Aeore, he stood frustrated a moment before he said, “I wish that you take better care of New Person.
I wish to know Aeore’s clan name.
Then there will be no
emita
.”

Pindi cried out that Aeore had no clan name.
It was said among the Yuri Maha that he had no father, that his mother had copulated with a spirit in the forest.
After the birth she had run away in shame to join her spirit-lover.
Each newborn child had been a star whose light thereafter would be missing from the heavens; since the orphan’s parentage was so obscure, he was called Child-Star, which signified that he was nameless.

Moon told her that he must gain power over Aeore in order to control him, for the good of the whole Niaruna federation.
This meant nothing to Pindi; she pleaded wildly.
To speak Aeore’s name would surely attract harm to him; he might die!

He awaited her in silence.
More and more stricken, glancing fearfully about, she said finally, “I will whisper the name.”
He bent, and she whispered, “Riri’an,” and then she began to cry.

T
HE CANOES OF THE
Y
URI
M
AHA HAD SLID AWAY DOWNRIVER
,
BUT
a few of the strangers, the Ocelot among them, lingered in the village to help their new allies drink the last masato.
The feast that Moon had thought a shambles had been judged a great success: all agreed that the Niaruna were a mighty nation, that the clans must side against the white man and the Green Indians, that peace must be made with all the tribes east to the Morning Sun.
Aeore was acknowledged a jaguar-shaman, and now the Ocelot was trying to reclaim him, as if Aeore had never left the forests of the Yuri Maha.

Aeore had become ever more arrogant; he now spoke openly to the Ocelot of his suspicion of the Great Spirit of the Rains.
And it was too late to reverse the course of things.

One morning Mutu found and killed a large fer-de-lance.
A ceremonial was called by Boronai, from which the women were excluded—“O Taka ’tdi, we did not wish to do you harm, but only to set you against the enemies of the Forest People”—and
the next day Aeore carried the dead snake to the mission and arranged it upon the gift rack in the forest; then he placed a broken arrow on each of the other three racks.
He too spoke an incantation, as if Boronai’s speech had been of little consequence; he now wore his new face paint and his jaguar incisors at all times.

Moon accompanied Aeore to the mission.
He crept up to the clearing edge and was straining for a look at Andy Huben when Quarrier, who was alone in the clearing, turned and caught him off guard.
Moon froze where he stood, and for a second the missionary’s gaze swung past.
But then Quarrier was speaking to him, and he stood there at a loss, considering what he must do.
He had only to duck backward to disappear behind the vines, but he had an impulse to try out his disguise—more as a game than for good purpose—and so he stared back fiercely.
His game was spoiled by the hope in Quarrier’s face; Boronai had shamed him with that same innocence the day he had shown Moon the fetish that would bring laughter to the angriest man on earth.

The next day the mission was scouted again, and again Moon in his restlessness went with the party.
He strayed off from the others, circling around behind the mission sheds, until he found Andy sewing in her dooryard.
From the forest came Tukanu’s cricket whistle, but he did not answer.
He watched her for a long time, and when she slipped off toward the river, he followed.

He crept down along the bank.
Like a child, the girl was dog-paddling, kicking her sneakered feet in the shallow water, her hair in her face, her solid back and bold white hips awash.
Every few moments she stopped to listen.
When she came out of the water and sat gingerly on a log, he wanted to turn away, but he could not.
He was aroused, and his bellyband hurt him; he fumbled to ease it.
Because he could neither avert his eyes nor suffer the covert, peeping role in which he found himself, he stepped out into plain view.
But her back was to him, and he had moved quietly out of habit, and he stood there for a maddening long time before her head turned slowly and she stared at him.
Her lips parted in fright and her arms crossed on her breasts as she rose and turned away from him; she had gasped,
but she did not scream.
There were drops of water on her back, and red marks and bits of bark on her white hips.

He moved forward.
In Niaruna, she was saying “No,” over and over.
He placed his hands gently on her shoulders, then drew her body back against his own, feeling her flinch and shiver as he touched her.
The sweet smell of her body filled him, the air and sun danced on his skin; and he swayed in a torrent of sensation.
He slid his hands onto her breasts.
Her taut buttocks relaxed and opened out against his belly, her profile turned toward him, toward his mouth, her body turned … Later he imagined he must have kissed her, but perhaps he hadn’t, for just then she sucked up a short desperate breath and held it.
Her body tightened; she was going to scream.
He stepped away from her.
She faced him.

Though he had never taken his eyes from her, he could not recall an hour later what her body looked like, remembering only the arms, simple at her sides, the wide stricken eyes and the pounding wonder in his head.

Then she was gone.
From the direction of the mission he heard her coughing.

That evening, for the first time, Kisu-Mu persuaded Pindi to sleep with the Rain Spirit after dark; they went down to the river bank near the canoes.
He had grown used to the Indian way of love; in this world where the plants writhed, where seeding and flowering, life and death, were all entwined, one could copulate as naturally as one would sleep.
Yet he still disliked making love before an audience, and was enraged when Pindi’s laugh revealed what Kisu-Mu was up to, and brought the Indians flying from their hammocks.
Pindi called greetings as round heads appeared over the bank, and jokes and speculation flew.
Moon clutched her brutally in frustration.
His skin was quickened by the cold and by the rough ground, he wished to shake and crush her, strangle her, devour her.
In a fever he searched the girl’s hard rubbery body, the strange cool skin, the unnamable strong odors which goaded him.
His whole body was like iron.

Sensing this, Pindi stopped laughing and struggled wildly to receive him; she yipped in pain as he forced himself inside her.
A minute later, splayed out on the dirt among the weeds and insects, his head spinning, he stared up at the black leaves of night where the hunting lizard, throat vibrating, tuned its senses to the shrieks of laughter.
The only unhappy thing about it was that before the Indians had come to watch, before he lost himself and screwed the world, he had pretended that he held not rank brown Pindi, but the white clean pious flesh of Andy Huben.

“Kisu-Mu!
Kisu-Mu!
Kin-wee?
Kin-wee?
Ho, Kisu-Mu?”

H
OW
strange it was that a creature he had held so often in his arms, who had laughed and moaned with life only days before, should now be dying.
He did not want to go to her.
He had taken the small Indian girl so much for granted, like the food; it sickened him to realize that he had waited until she was dying to become aware that she was more than a smiling toy to him, that he was fond of her.
As for Pindi, she had seemed to love him, though he could not be sure of this: love was a land he had not learned much about.
In any case, he could not weep if his life depended on it, as it occurred to him that it well might.

Pindi had caught his own bad cold—where had he got it?
She had mounted a wild fever, then sunk into a coma; it looked like influenza.
It had scarcely occurred to him to seize medicine from the mission, when he heard the ululating whoop of an old woman, followed by a groan and stir, as if a wind had passed across the village.

Boronai was giving up his leadership; while Pindi lived, the cures were performed by Aeore.
For three days, and throughout her final night, Aeore danced and chanted.
Brandishing a gourd rattle full of spirit voices, he sucked demons from her body and blew tobacco smoke upon her, but Pindi did not rise out of her fever; she only moaned, and gazed expectantly at Moon.
Aeore too awaited him: if Kisu-Mu was content that Pindi die, then all his cures would be in vain.
But when she died, at the end of a violent fit of coughing brought on by the tobacco smoke, Aeore yelped in surprise and grief.
When Moon came into the maloca, the Indian was shouting in heretic rage at the “Old Murderer
in the Sky.”
Then he rushed outside and went howling off into the jungle.

No nipi would be drunk to determine Pindi’s enemy.
The men glanced at him furtively; the old women muttered openly with old women’s cynical fearlessness, nodding their heads: she who had dared sleep with a spirit in the night had brought a god’s infection on herself.
They could scarcely revenge themselves on the Spirit of the Rain, and as for him, he could not proclaim that Kisu-Mu was innocent, not only because they might kill someone more innocent still but because their instinct had been right: an infection had been brought by Kisu-Mu.

Too much was happening at once.
The strength he needed was displaced by listlessness; he felt constricted, short of breath.
In the afternoon, along the river, his feet went out from under him, and he slid clumsily down the bank.
The frailty of his body had returned, and the need to take care where he placed his feet.
He felt abandoned by the wind and sun.

Four more Indians had flu and lay weakly in their hammocks, coughing; the strange epidemic frightened them.
But New Person, whom Pindi had given to the Ugly One’s daughter to suck and rear, had so far escaped.
Moon told the Ugly One’s daughter that she must keep the child away from all the sick people.

New Person was healthy, full of push and noises.
He spent his days in a cane-splint basket, on a bed of silk cotton from the lupuna tree; in fair weather he was taken out to the plantation in a hip sling.
Moon liked to watch him; Look at him kick, he thought, look at him kick!
In other days he had picked him up and smelled him, and felt him gently to see how he was made, but now he was frightened of infecting him, and kept his distance.

W
HEN
the people at the mission showed no signs of leaving, but on the contrary made new plantings in their garden, Aeore led three men to the mission garden and destroyed it.
Because he suspected that Moon would be angry, he returned to the village in an anticipatory rage and yelled out that the following day an
attack on the mission would be made.
The white men meant to stay, he said to Boronai, and there was no excuse for further delay.

Since Pindi’s death Aeore had been in a state of grief the more fanatic for being inadmissible; he had painted his whole body black with genipa as a protection against ghosts, for he saw evil omens everywhere.
The other members of the tribe, infected by his rantings, were surly and volatile as well.

Moon cautioned Aeore obliquely, addressing his remarks to Boronai.
It would be foolish, he said, to kill the missionaries, for many more soldiers would return to take revenge on the Niaruna.
Therefore a war party must go to the mission and tell the white men that they must leave Niaruna land, that if they were not gone by the next moon—about eight days away—the Niaruna would attack them.

Seated on the ground, Boronai nodded uncertainly.
He could no longer control Aeore, and he knew it, and he knew that the tribe knew it, and he had enough sense not to put old leadership to the test.
Since the missionaries had first appeared, since Kisu-Mu had come and the ways of the People had been disrupted by fear and greediness and strife, Boronai had grown old.
His shrewd bright eye had dimmed, like the eye of a shedding snake, and in the way that the snake casts its skin he was preparing to recede stoically from his days, to die in the way the Indians so often died, by releasing his hold on life without a struggle.
Boronai’s people seemed to know this, for they spoke of him indulgently, and began to neglect him as an old man would be neglected.
He was not old in years, but in the swift rhythms of the jungle he had been defeated and replaced.
The life he knew was coming to an end, and he would go.

So now, for a long time, the headman was silent.
Then he spoke in the silence of the clearing, recounting his life and the old history of the tribe: how they had arrived out of the sky, how they had come to these rivers from far off to the East where the Sun was born, how the white man had come to them out of the West, where the Sun died.
The Indian was the Spirit of all Life—was he not born, and born again, in everything upon the Earth?—and
the white man was the Spirit of the Dead.
But now the white man was among them, and must be driven out.