The Lost Origin (44 page)

“That isn’t true,” the archaeologist said. “I can assure you. You know how impulsive Marta is. She can’t trust anyone on faith. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, Efraín,” she murmured, then added by way of an apology. “I’ve been hasty. I’m sorry. I tend to get ahead of everyone else’s thoughts and I know that for you a journey into the jungle is unthinkable. That’s why I came to the conclusion that you were going to reject our offer to join the expedition, and I was afraid you would take the material with you or that you would refuse to share it with us.”

My muscles relaxed and I calmed. I, in her place, would have thought the same. I just would not have been so direct. But I could understand her suspicions.

“So, what do you say?” the Yankee doctor asked us. “Are you coming with us?”

Jabba opened his mouth, obviously to say something, but also obviously, Proxi gave his foot a hard stomp that hurt even me. My friend, of course, shut his mouth suddenly.

“I will go,” I said, very serious. “I don’t at all like the idea, but I think I should try. It’s my brother who needs my help, and although I’m sure you would do everything possible to bring back the cure he needs, I wouldn’t feel right waiting. Besides, and forgive me if I’m too sincere, but in case you didn’t bring it, I would always think it was because I hadn’t gone with you, because you hadn’t cared enough, or because, since it wasn’t the main objective, you had let it go
by unnoticed. So I should go, but I can’t speak for my friends, because they have already done a lot and they have to make their own decision.” I looked at Marc and Lola and waited.

Jabba, with his brow furrowed, remained mute.

“Would you take it out of our vacation time?” Lola asked, suspicious.

“Of course not!” I replied, offended. “I’m not that much of a bastard, am I?”

“Sorry Arnau, but you can never trust your boss, especially if your boss is also your friend. Those are the worst.”

“I don’t know what planet you come from, honey,” I replied, very irritated, “but I don’t think you have any reason to complain about me.”

“No, I don’t,” she agreed mildly. “But my mother has taught me since I was a little girl that you can’t be too cautious, and as an IT security expert, I confirm it. So, if you’re not going to take time out of our vacations, then we’ll go with you.”

“I also have a say, don’t I?” Jabba protested, facing Proxi. “I don’t agree with this decision you’ve made on my behalf. I don’t want to go to the jungle. There’s no way I’m going into that dangerous place! I like nature, true, but only when it’s a normal, European nature… without wild animals or tribes of Indians who shoot arrows at white men.”

Proxi and I looked at each other.

“Arnau is more of a coward than you,” she rallied him, “and he’s going to go without complaint.”

“He has a sick brother and I don’t.”

“Fine,” Lola said, giving him the cold shoulder, “don’t come, then. Root and I will go. You can go back to Barcelona and wait for us.”

That seemed to make an impression on him. The idea of being separated from the group, marginalized, returned to Barcelona like a package, and more than anything, the idea of Lola wandering around the world without him, running the risk of falling into the arms of another (the jungle was known to be very aphrodisiac, and savages were known to be very thin and attractive), was more than he could take. He looked like a contrite orphan with a lost, pained expression.

“How can I let you go without me?” he protested weakly. “What if something happens to you?”

“Someone will lend me a hand, don’t worry.”

Marta, Efraín, and Gertrude looked at us, disconcerted. They still weren’t sure whether the scene taking place before their eyes was a serious conflict or a normal stupidity. With time, they would get used to it and not pay it any attention, but in that first interview, they looked lost. Something had to be done. It wasn’t a good idea to drag out a violent situation for our hosts.

“Okay, come on, stop being an ass,” I told him. “You’re coming, and that’s it. You know that Lola will never admit she’s afraid to go without you.”

“What!” she exclaimed. “Arnau, you really are an idiot.”

I wiggled my eyebrows significantly at her so she would understand my ploy, but she didn’t seem to get it.

“Fine, I’ll go,” Marc conceded. “But you’ll pay for everything.”

“Of course.”

Marta, who had already had a chance to get to know (a little) Jabba inside the pyramid, was the first to react:

“Very good. It’s decided then. The six of us will go. How about we stay here tomorrow to begin work on the gold map?”

I nodded.

“But what about your excavations in Tiwanaku?” I asked.

“Suspended until our return, due to bureaucratic procedure,” Efraín said with a big smile on his lips. “And now, how does a good drink of aguardiente sound? You haven’t tried anything better in your lives, I promise!”

Loaded with all our computer equipment and with the material we had taken from the pyramid (doughnut included), we took a
movilidad
the next day and presented ourselves at Efraín and Gertrude’s house at noon. Apparently, Marta always stayed there when she was in Bolivia, so it was like her second home, since, according to what she told us, she spent at least six months a year in Bolivia. I wondered what kind of marriage hers was, with the husband living in the Philippines and her hanging around the other side of the world in the other direction, but in the end, it was none of my business; although that didn’t stop Proxi from speculating at length on the subject for a few days.

That Wednesday, the 12
^th
of June, dawned cool and autumnal, so we didn’t mind sacrificing it working on the damned cubist map from the chamber. We had to make sense of it, and in order to do so, Efraín had spent all morning contacting all his friends and acquaintances in the government and the army with the goal of finding the most detailed map of Bolivia currently in existence. A couple of scholarship students from Tiwanaku and a
conscripto
¹⁶
brought it shortly after our arrival, and we were impressed when we saw the enormous quantity of zones the country had—especially in the Bolivian Amazon—that were shown empty and marked “without data.” Those maps, of course, weren’t even close to being household maps. They were the best and most detailed official maps of the country, so no little girls had colored in their geographical voids. The enlargements of the parts of the jungle that Efraín had ordered were especially pitiful. It was then, looking at those white holes, that I understood what he had told us the night before: The world wasn’t completely explored, or totally mapped; not even satellites watch everything from the sky, as much as we were taught to believe the contrary.

We enlarged the images from the map on the gold sheet and Sarmiento de Gamboa’s map using Efraín and Gertrude’s computers and printers. While we were at it, we made some adjustments to the Windows operating system the computers ran, leaving it more stable and effective, so that the famous blue screens signaling supposedly serious errors stopped popping up. The result of the enlargements was a perfect matching up of the significant points on both maps, with the unexpected surprise that where Sarmiento’s ended, the gold sheet also ended, showing a little more of the path, but only to end abruptly in a triangle that was identical to the little cheese wedge on the back part of the doughnut. I quickly told them of my discovery of the day before, and took the stone ring out of my bag to show it to them.

“I don’t understand how it can be related,” Marta objected, setting it carefully on the table after examining it. “It must be some kind of calling card. The end of the path means that the Yatiri are here—and she touched a spot on the gold map. All we have to do is put this sketch over the army maps and check the location of the refuge.”

It was easier said than done. The army maps were as big as sheets, and in comparison, our enlargements looked like napkins, so we had to reprint them, bigger, and in sections, with the lines of the drawing separated from the gold sheet from the chamber, so we wouldn’t go crazy or blind. When we at last managed our objective, we had to place a lamp on the lower end of the
large dining room table, which had a glass surface, to be able to see the route clearly and draw it on the military map with a pencil. Of course it was much easier, much clearer, when we entered into one of the biggest blank areas of geographical void in Bolivia, because the black line of the drawing stood out perfectly as it moved mercilessly forward into the middle of that nothingness to stop in the perfectly visible baggy triangle; a tiny pyramid in a giant desert.

“What region is this?” I asked, breathless.

“But, Arnau, kid!” Lola admonished. “Can’t you see where it says ‘without data’ there in the middle?”

“Of course I see it,” I declared. “But, even so, this part of the country must have been given some name, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Efraín replied, cramming on his glasses and leaning over the table. “It’s in the Northeast, between Abel Iturralde province and Franz Tamayo province.”

“The provinces here have people’s names?” Marc asked, taken aback.

“Many, yes,” Gertrude clarified, with a smile. “Some were christened by force during the dictatorship. Franz Tamayo was, until 1972, the famous land of Caupolicán.”

“Oh, shit, now I see it!” the archaeologist exclaimed suddenly, standing. “Our path of the Yatiri Indians enters the Madidi National Park, one of the most important protected nature reserves in all of South America.”

“So why is all of this blank?” Lola asked, pointing at the enormous geographical void. “If it’s a national park, they should know what’s inside.”

“I just told you, Lola,” the archaeologist insisted. “It’s a protected natural reserve of gigantic proportions. Look what is says here: nineteen thousand square kilometers. Do you know how much that is? A lot. It’s one thing, on a map, to mark theoretical boundaries, and another very different one for anyone to have set foot there. Besides, not all of this Terra Incognita is part of the park; of course a Bolivian national park would have to end at the Bolivian border, but here you can clearly see that the unknown territory also extends into Peru and Brazil. And look at this faint line delineating the edges of the park, it runs outside of the geographical void. This area is known.”

“There’s only jungle there,” Marc objected.

“And what else do you want in a park in the Amazon?” Marta replied, then pointed at Tiwanaku on the army map. “So the Yatiri left Taipikala around 1575, a date on which Sarmiento de Gamboa had access, we’ll never know how, to information about their escape route. Before that, they were dying from the illnesses the Spanish had brought from Europe and living in hiding, distributed among the agricultural communities of the Altiplano, passing themselves off as peasants.” The professor’s finger was delicately tracing the line of pencil drawn on the army map. “They left in the direction of La Paz, but they did not enter; they headed for the high snowy peaks of the Cordillera Real mountain range, and crossed them, taking advantage of the pass formed by the Zongo River Basin, until it joined with the Coroico, which took them to the gold mines of Guanay. From there, they continued their descent into the jungle, following the Beni River. Maybe they used boats, maybe they didn’t, it’s hard to know, although the route, by the way, consistently follows waterways.”

“But the conquistadors would have easily discovered a group of boats full of Indians,” Lola remarked.

“Undoubtedly,” Marta agreed, and both Efraín and Gertrude nodded. “That’s why it’s hard to imagine how they managed it, if they really did. Also, we should remember Sarmiento de Gamboa’s phrase: ‘Two months by land.’ Maybe they left on foot, pretending to be a
commercial caravan, to justify the llamas loaded with bundles, or maybe they did it in small groups, in small families, although that would also have been much more dangerous, especially in the jungle. You can see how the route leaves the Beni river here and goes into the middle of the jungle, into unknown territory.”

“That whole area is inside the Madidi National Park,” I remarked. “Can we enter?”

“No,” Dr. Bigelow said emphatically. “All the parks have very strict rules on that point. To be able to enter, you need some special permits that they only issue for reasons of study or research. Now they’re letting up a little because ecotourism and adventure tourism in these natural areas are turning into important sources of income, even for the indigenous communities, but the visitors can only enter with authorization and only to follow some fixed routes that don’t go very far into the jungle and that aren’t excessively dangerous.”

“Dangerous in what way?” Marc wanted to know, with a pathological interest.

“Caimans, venomous snakes, jaguars, insects…,” Gertrude listed without turning a hair. “Oh, of course! You’ll have to be vaccinated,” she said, looking at the three of us. “You should go to a pharmacy right away and buy the syringes, then go to the International Polyclinic, which isn’t very far, to get vaccinated against yellow fever and tetanus.”

“We have to buy our own syringes?” Jabba marveled.

“Well, the vaccines are free, but you have to bring your own syringes with you.”

“And do we have to go now?” I asked dejectedly.

“Yes,” Gertrude replied. “The sooner, the better. We don’t know when we’ll have to leave, so it’s not a good idea to delay. I’ll go with you, if you like. We’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

While we got our things and left the house heading for a pharmacy, driven by Dr. Bigelow, I turned to look at Efraín and the professor:

“Start thinking about how the hell we’re going to explain the research we want to do in Madidi Park so they give us permission to enter.”

“Well, believe it or not,” the bald archaeologist replied, “that’s what I had in mind.”

We submitted like saints to the injections in the International Polyclinic, a place that made me uneasy until I satisfied myself that the hygienic measures were acceptable. Then I stretched out my arm, convinced that I wouldn’t die of an infection or an abscess although not at all sure of the secondary effects of the vaccines. I’d had the tetanus one a couple of times in my life (although only the first dose), and I didn’t remember having had any reaction from it, but the yellow fever one worried me a great deal, even after knowing that it could only cause a slight headache and a mild fever. In fact, I felt sick for the rest of the day, although, I must admit, only when I thought about it.