Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (16 page)

“No, no, no,” said Switters, shaking
his head, forcing a big smile and trying to appear as genial as the toastmaster
at a booster club prayer breakfast. He raised his arms in the universal
peacemaker gesture and inquired conciliatorily, though in bad Spanish, what the
trouble might be. This precipitated a dueling barrage of rapid-fire
Campa-Spanish that sounded like stormy-night static on Radio Babel. It took a
while, but eventually details of the dispute emerged, aided considerably by the
fact that when cornered, the mestizo turned out to speak a surprisingly
excellent brand of English.

Evidently, two weeks earlier, Inti
had given Fer-de-lance (in order to enhance his reputation in one way or
another, the mestizo had assumed the name of a deadly Amazon pit viper) a case
of Lima’s finest pisco in exchange for a baby ocelot. The animal could be
expected to fetch a high price in
Pucallpa
. Later upon the very evening that Switters had hired
Inti, the Indian had been caught trying to peddle the ocelot on the fringe of
Pucallpa
’s semilegal parrot market. A game warden cited him for
violating one of
Peru
’s new wildlife protection laws and confiscated the cub, but Inti informed
him that he was heading again into the upstream bush the following dawn and
promised to release the cat in the forest near where it had been captured, if
he could have it back. After much discussion, the warden agreed. A bottle of
pisco sealed the bargain.

That would explain,
Switters
thought,
the potbellied guy in the shabby brown uniform who stood on the
dock with folded arms and saw us off that morning. I wondered about that
gentleman.

What Inti had done instead, however,
was to return the little ocelot to Fer-de-lance (for the first time Switters
now noticed a lidded, jiggling basket off to one side) and demand his pisco
back. Fer-de-lance was having none of that, if for no other reason than that
the bulk of the brandy had already met its brandy fate, which was to say, it
had been sucked into that black hole that yawns at the gates of human yearning.

Switters finally settled the matter
by convincing the strange mestizo to return a single bottle of pisco to reward
Inti for his trouble and save his face, while he, Switters, would assume
custody of the ocelot. The idea wasn’t to smuggle the cub home for Suzy,
although that thought crossed his mind, but to release it on his way to the
colpa to free the parrot. Ah yes. The Switters Pet Liberation Service.

That concluded, he stepped over to
the gently rocking basket and stooped to lift its lid, intending to ascertain
that the cub was not overheating in there, wondering, at the same time, if it
might grow up with some animal memory of Suzy’s amateur brassiere. The instant
he touched the woven top, however, there was a rude cry, and Fer-de-lance
seized his arm, gripping it in fingers as strong as steel pincers.

“Shit,” Switters muttered. “I
should’ve known it wasn’t going to be that easy.” He tried to relax his muscles
and clear his mind, as he’d been trained to do in martial arts. “Here goes my
glad morning. Here goes my nice fresh suit.” Then, in one liquid motion, he
sprang to his feet, whirled,
pak sao
ed Fer-de-lance’s hand away from his
arm, and unleashed a punch.

The punch was not as fast as it might
have been (he was as far out of practice as he was out of shape), and before it
could land, an amazingly agile Inti blocked it. Inti then grabbed Switters’s
right arm, and Fer-de-lance reestablished his steely claim on the left one.
Solicitously, they turned Switters around. The basket, upended in the action,
lay on its side—and from it there slowly slithered, flexing and reflexing, an
anvil-headed snake as black and glistening as evil itself, death rays fairly
shooting from its slitty chartreuse eyes.

The crowd cleared. Inti pulled
Switters away. He pointed toward a second basket that sat in the shadow of a
thatched overhang a few yards distant. He commenced to snort, hiss, and stomp,
much as he had when Switters had been startled by the spider. “Yeah, I get the
picture,” Switters grumbled. “And I suppose a pathological sense of humor is
better than no sense of humor.” By the time he looked around, Fer-de-lance had
somehow steered the viper back into its container.

“Okay, pal, your sleazy business
deals have wasted a good half hour and nearly got me snakebit. Let’s get this
circus on the road. Where the hell’s our tour guide to the parrot spa?”
Naturally, he had to rephrase the question. When he made his query intelligible
to Inti, the skipper—ocelot basket (the correct basket) in his arms, pisco
bottle stuck in his waistband like a pistola—assured him that his juvenile
playmates had been sent to procure the finest guide available and would be
showing up with that esteemed colpa connoisseur at any moment.

“Good. It’s getting late. And it’s
getting hot.”

Indeed, though it was not yet
midmorning, the sun was looking down on them like the bad eye of a billy goat,
jaundiced and shot with blood; and beneath its baleful glare, every living cell
in every living thing seemed to slump like a Dalí watch. Switters felt his
protoplasm turning into dry-cleaning fluid, and his suit, which soon enough
would
need
a good cleaning, was glued to his body like a poster to a
wall. The load of perspiration seemed to double his weight.

Breathing slowly, shallowly, as if
the steamy air might choke him, he lagged several feet behind Inti while they
traversed the marketplace. They hadn’t gotten far before he became aware of
another commotion of sorts. This one was occurring around Sailor’s cage.

The pyramid cage was surrounded by a
group of male Indians, five or six in number. Switters identified them as
Indians not so much by their painted faces (geometrically arranged dabs of
berry pulp), their features (long, flaring noses, chiseled cheekbones,
sorrowful dark eyes), or their clothing (thorn-ripped cotton shorts and not
much else) as by their haircuts.

Among the forest tribes of
South America
, countless languages were spoken, countless differing
customs practiced. The one thing virtually all of them had in common was the
unisex pageboy hairdo. It was as if in dim antiquity, back before time had
really got its motor going, some primordial deity—the Great God Buster Brown,
perhaps—had swept through the immense Amazonian woodlands with a clay bowl and
a dull knife and administered to every early mortal the same bad coif. Hardly a
unifying element—tribes that traditionally attacked each other on sight sported
identical bangs—it nevertheless had persisted and prevailed. What Gaia the
Hairdresser hath styled, let no man shear asunder.

Mixed blood South Americans tended to
style their locks according to European fashion, allying in that manner with
their countrymen of pure Spanish or Portuguese ancestry. In
Lima
, though, Switters had observed that certain of the
youngish
blancos
—Hector Sumac and that girl, Gloria, at the club, for example—had
begun to wear their hair in refined, upscale versions of the Indian crop.
Switters wondered if there was a standardized Amazonian name for the style, if
it had a different name in each tribal language or if it was something so taken
for granted that it had no name at all other than each tribe’s word for
hair
.
Momentarily, he was tempted to ask Inti what he called his haircut, but on the
off chance that the boatman might answer “Arthur,” as George Harrison had
responded to the same question in
A Hard Day’s Night
, he held his
tongue. There was some trouble even a troubleshooter didn’t go looking for.

Little or no trouble, it turned out,
was brewing at the beer stall. The group of Indians wasn’t angry or rowdy, it
was simply intrigued for some reason by Sailor Boy, excited just enough so that
its members had transcended their usual reserve and were milling about his
cage, pointing scarred brown fingers and stopping passersby to question them,
or so it seemed, about the parrot inside. That was a bit bewildering because
Sailor, while a handsome bird, even in advanced maturity, was by no means a
rare or exceptional specimen. And just bringing a pet parrot to this part of
the world was probably akin to bringing a Miller Lite to
Bavaria
.

“They shopping for antiques or
something? The warranty on this cracker-burner expired years ago.” Switters
asked Inti, as best he could, what the attraction was, but Inti didn’t know nor
could he find out in any appreciable detail, for although Inti and the
Boquichicos bunch both spoke varieties of Campa, the dialects lacked sufficient
vocabulary in common to permit any but the most rudimentary exchange. And since
Inti and Switters didn’t have a lot of words in common, either, the most
Switters could determine was that the Indians weren’t actually interested in
Sailor Boy, they were interested in his
cage
.

“Perfect,” said Switters. “Can you
inform your country cousins that this unique, custom-built aviary is about to
be vacated in the next couple of hours and I’m prepared to make them a real
sweet deal. What do they have to trade? A diamond bracelet, maybe?” Aware that
rough diamonds were occasionally found in the gravel riverbeds thereabouts, he
was thinking of Maestra.

The three-way language barrier proved
insurmountable, however, and though the Indians’ curiosity about Sailor’s
portable prison not only persisted but intensified now that its owner had
appeared, Switters’s interest flagged, and he began looking about for signs of
the Pucallpa boys and the colpa guide. “They must be getting that guide from a
mail-order catalogue,” he complained, fanning himself with his hat.

When they did finally appear, the
lads were accompanied not by a local tracker but by R. Potney Smithe.

“Hallo again,” called the
anthropologist brightly. Vapors of gin preceded him. “The news about town is
that you’re in requirement of a chap to lead you to the parrot wallow.”

“Is that a problem?”

Smithe chuckled. “Hardly, old man.
The trailhead’s just behind the church over there. A straight shot, more or
less, all the way. Follows the river. Unless you’re achingly keen on
contributing to the indigenous economy, you really shouldn’t be wanting a
guide. I’d be happy to tag along, though, if you feel the need for
companionship.”

“Ain’t no shortage of that,” said
Switters, gesturing to indicate the captain and crew of the
Virgin
as
well as the contingent of local Indians.

“I see.” When Smithe acknowledged the
Indians around the birdcage, they closed in and buttonholed him, speaking
respectfully, although all at once. To Switters’s surprise, the Englishman
spoke back to them in their own language, and for a few minutes they carried on
a conversation, often looking deliberately, meaningfully, from the parrot cage
to the jungle and back again.

Smithe turned to Switters. “Blokes
have a fascination with this bloody cage.”

“Obviously. Why?”

Smithe pulled thoughtfully at first
one of his fleshy cheeks and then the other. His jowls glistened in the heat
and humidity like burst melons. “Symbolism,” he said. “Homoimagistic
identification or some such rot. Never mind that. It’s simple, really. This is
only the second, um, pyramid shape the Nacanaca have ever seen.”

“The first one must have been a
doozy.”

“Quite.” Nodding his big head, Smithe
smiled mysteriously. “Assuming that
doozy
can be construed to mean
‘impressive’ or ‘outstanding,’ it was—and is—rather a doozy.”

Briefly Switters entertained a vision
of some lost pyramid, a ruin of ancient architecture hidden in the jungle out
there. It would have had to have been Incan, though, and he knew that Incan
pyramids bore but a passing resemblance to the Egyptian structures after which
Sailor’s cage was modeled. He scowled at the anthropologist, as if demanding
that he continue, and Smithe appeared about to oblige when a sudden squawked
command caused everyone within earshot to act for a split second as if they
were shaking invisible martinis.

“Peeple of zee wurl, relax!” is what
they heard. Just like that. Loud. Out of nowhere.

“Bloody hell!” Smithe swore.

“Aheee!” exclaimed Inti.

“Send in the clowns,” muttered
Switters, for reasons that were not entirely clear.

Although intimately accustomed to
raucous bird cries, the Nacanaca had jumped more comically than any of them.
When they recovered, they asked Smithe what the “magic” parrot had said, for
they were convinced it had made a pronouncement, quite likely with supernatural
implications. Smithe conferred with Switters, who replied, “You heard it right,
Potney. The ol’ green featherduster has bade us chill out, calm down, and
lighten up; which, if you can forgive the parade of conflicting prepositions,
is as sage a piece of advice as we’re likely to get in this life—especially
from an erstwhile housepet.”

When Smithe succeeded in conveying
the essence of Sailor’s favorite saying, the Nacanaca’s fascination seemed to
escalate. They jabbered to Smithe and among themselves, going on at such length
that Switters lost patience and broke in to announce that he was leaving at
once for the clay lick. He motioned for one of the crew to carry the cage,
since Inti was toting the ocelot and he, himself, was going to be occupied with
taping atmospheric footage on the camcorder. Maestra might as well get a good
show out of this.