Trail of Feathers (29 page)

Between the 1930s and ‘50s, a wide variety of books and publications were written about the Shuar. Most dwelt sensationally on the tribe’s achievement in shrinking heads. Some masqueraded as works of anthropology, but even they contained pictures of their tall, white authors posing with a
tsantsa
.

For thirty years, any amateur explorer worth his salt hurried down to Shuar country, to pass around Lucky Strikes and get his hands on the shrunken heads. Such men came from all kinds of backgrounds. Some were socialites or treasure hunters, others former insurance salesmen or bankers’ clerks. I had long since resigned myself to the fact that, as a collector without a collection, I wouldn’t come across any
tsantsas
in the jungle. There were none left.

Despite the collective obsession for head-shrinking, very few explorers - amateur or professional - bothered to understand Shuar society. It wasn’t until decades later that anthropologists grasped why heads were shrunk at all. The trailblazers had come for a freak show -a true life
Ripley’s Believe It or Not:
shrunken heads for the sake of shrunken heads. They claimed to have found rare examples, too, including Caucasian, Negroid, and Chinese
tsantsas
, and even entire shrunken bodies. While the world yearned for newer and stranger shrunken exhibits, taxidermists’ workshops worked overtime.

Thousands of fake
tsantsas
clutter the shrunken head market, today. Take a look at one of the internet auctions and you find them. Most are crudely made from goat or monkey skin. Study the real thing carefully and you soon notice the tell-tale signs of a fake. Most have skin which is too leathery and hairy to be human,- their noses lack nasal hair, and their ears are poorly sculpted. But at the turn of the last century a few taxidermists across the Americas were making superior fakes.

Procuring heads from morgues in the poor parts of town, they shrunk them expertly. This probably explains why there are so many fake Negroid
tsantsas
. Later they invented a provenance and sold them as rare artefacts to leading museums and private collectors. Genuine
tsantsas
always have the lips sealed with thorns or by pins, made from the chonta palm. Those which have been honoured at
tsantsa
feasts, and are fully complete, have long cotton strands hanging down from the mouth (different from the scrawny strands of twine on fakes). Most also have a hole at the apex of the head, for a cord. Genuine examples tend to have oily complexions, and are lacking facial hair. This gets singed off during the shrinking process.

Up De Graff, in his book
Head Hunters of the Amazon
, talks of an expert taxidermist in Panama who had shrunken human heads, and even entire bodies. One of them, he said, measured no more than twelve inches in length. Flornoy also mentions a shrunken body, that of a Jesuit monk. The story goes that the friar upstaged a Shuar shaman by healing patients whom he had been unable to cure. In a ‘sacred frenzy, drunk with
natema’
, the Shuar denounced the Christian, murdered him with ‘savage passion’, before shrinking the man’s entire body.

As far as the Shuar are concerned, it would be sheer folly to shrink the head of a foreigner. There would never be occasion to do so. The reason is the soul. The head of a victim is shrunk so that the man who cut it off isn’t followed by the victim’s
musiak
, his ‘avenging soul’. The
tsantsa
itself isn’t regarded with much reverence for it is a means to an end. The Shuar traditionally believed that only they and neighbouring tribes had souls. Foreigners were soul-less and so, as far as the Shuar were concerned, you didn’t have to protect against an avenging spirit if you killed one. The idea of a genuine white man’s
tsantsa
, is therefore unlikely in the extreme.

*

As we progressed at walking pace north-west up the Corrientes, the river became increasingly narrow, twisting more with every mile. The banks were abundant with flora. Giant
punga
, kapok trees, clung to the water’s edge, their branches spread-eagled over the river, their red pods ripe and ready to fall. Some still had their magnificent ivory flowers, which Richard told me were pollinated by a species of fruit bat.

The sunshine of mid-afternoon was so bright that I was unable to sit on the roof. I lay in my fetid hammock, trying to ignore the wolfies, which scurried across my chest like rats running from a cage. At my feet, Cockroach was boiling up a toucan he’d traded with someone. Although uncertain why, I was surprised to see that the bird’s meat was blue.

Richard wasn’t discouraged by the bright light. From his vantage point on the roof he broke the silence, calling Walter to bring the
Pradera
to an immediate halt. At first I thought he’d spotted a sandbank, although this was unlikely as the river was so high. I shouted up to him.

‘Dolphins,’ he called back. ‘Dolphins at three o’clock.’

I climbed up onto the roof, screwed up my eyes and peered off the starboard side. Through a break in the kapok trees, Richard had glimpsed a lagoon. In it he’d seen the ridge of a dolphin’s back.

There was only one thing the crew feared more than mermaids -dolphins. As soon as they heard the word
delfin
, they started pleading. Cockroach protested we’d all die if the creatures saw us; and Walter cried out that his brother-in-law had been taken by dolphins on the Rio Nanay, while trying to kill one. Many fishermen wear love charms, he said, made from the dried genitals of a female dolphin. If the fisherman touches a woman while wearing it hidden under his shirt, she’ll fall in love with him. His brother-in-law had been taken by the dolphin princess before he could kill her and make a pendant from her genitalia. Now he lived under the waves, a prisoner in the dolphin realm.

After Walter’s outburst, Francisco piped up, urging us return to Iquitos.

The Shuar have sent dolphins to kill us’ he blurted, ‘they’re a sign,
un mal augurio
, an ill-omen.’

‘Nonsense!’ I barked. ‘I’m sure you’ll learn to like them.’ The shaman froze me with a deranged stare. 

‘They’re
demonios
, demons,’ he said. ‘They will kill us.’ 

Richard delved into his camouflage bag.

With the crew still protesting, he told Walter to take off his precious Wellington boots, and steer the
Pradera
through the waterway into the lagoon. With great reluctance the
motorista
complied.

From his camouflage bag, Richard had taken out a large black Walkman with a built-in speaker. He seemed abashed at owning such a thing. I had never seen him using it.

‘What do dolphins love most?’ he asked me.

‘Fish.’

‘Well, other than fish?’ I shrugged.

‘They love ZZ Top,’ he said.

Once the boat’s engine had been cut, and the frenzy of ripples had calmed, Richard clicked on a ZZ Top cassette, set the Walkman at full volume, and dropped it into one of Walter’s Wellington boots. Leaning over the edge of the boat, he held the boot’s foot under the surface of the water.

‘Waitin’ for the Bus’, a hit ZZ song, vibrated out through the water. By the third track, Cockroach was frantic. He had taken the miniature silver crucifix from around his neck, and held it to his lips. Francisco was crouched over the titanium Primus stove, setting fire to toucan feathers. Dolphins abhor the smell, he confided.

But the burning feathers did little to keep the animals away. By the fifth track, the slender dorsal fin of a grey Amazonian dolphin was cutting through the water towards us. A moment later, Richard noticed another swivelling about on the port side.

Had I not witnessed it myself, I would not have believed the extent of the crew’s terror. Walter poured a cup of petrol over his head. He suggested I do the same. Dolphins, he claimed, hate petrol even more than burning toucan feathers. But I didn’t want to escape from them.

Richard and I eased ourselves into the cool water. Despite my fear of piranhas, I swam towards the middle of the lagoon. The smaller of the pair circled me, diving below the surface time and again. It swooped through the water like a swallow darting through the late summer air. Again and again it passed us, racing at full speed with the other, before peeling away and doubling back. The force of its sweep, and the vacuum which followed it, sucked me down below the surface. As it brushed me I felt its sleek rubbery skin on my hand, and saw the rows of scars which covered its back. Like scratches from a set of long fingernails, the scars marked the dolphin’s place in the group’s hierarchy. I was struck that anyone could equate such a peerless creature with evil, or would want to cut out its genitalia and wear it as a pendant.

We had left the Walkman aboard the
Pradera
. Even though the music had stopped, the dolphins continued to play. The smaller one charged me repeatedly, careering to a stop inches from my face, cackling through its blow-hole. A third one appeared. It was not like the first two - it wasn’t grey, but pink.

Much larger than the grey dolphins, it didn’t have a dorsal fin, only a low ridge along its arched back. River dolphins once thrived in many of the world’s great rivers - including the Mississippi, the Ganges and the Nile. But the pink variety of the Amazon, known to fishermen as
boutu
, are regarded as the most ancient species of river dolphin. Their colour, still a mystery, may be derived from their diet, like that of the flamingo, which turns pink through eating shellfish.

Richard and I swam across the lagoon, the dolphins lunging through the water either side of us. Their movements, precision, and urge to communicate, were captivating. With the sun so brilliant above us, shining on the lagoon’s mirror-like surface, I could have swum there all afternoon. The veteran eventually called me back to the boat. It would be dangerous, he said, to stay in the water too long.

‘Piranhas?’

‘No,’ he riposted, ‘not piranhas, they’ll only come if they sense blood.’

‘Then what’s the danger?’

‘The
camero
fish. It’s very inquisitive … it swims up the body’s orifices and
that
attracts piranhas.’

Once back at the boat’s side, I tried to pull myself up onto the deck, but was too weak to do so. There was only one solution. I had to dive down and swim up the lavatory hole, which was lower, but slippery with excretion.

The moon was full that night. It hung above the jungle like a tremendous ring of gypsum. By its ivory light we navigated a passage up the right side of the river. Walter was fearful that the Shuar might attack. After all, we were now firmly in their territory. Rather than pull in and spend the night nestled up to the trees, I insisted we continue to the next village.

Shortly after nine p.m., Cockroach spotted a row of shacks in the distance, set high above an embankment. I gave the order for the gifts to be made ready. I took warning from Fitzcarraldo’s example: when dealing with the Shuar, be prepared. Cockroach trawled through the bags. He took out a selection of clothing, odds and ends of food, shotgun shells, Fanta bottles, and the Vicks Vapour Rub. He made up three or four individual gift bags.

Once we were in line with the village, Walter killed the engine and drew the boat up to the bank. Unease gagged us all. We had heard so many stories of the Shuar and most ended with the visitors getting their throats slit. Now we had arrived at our first Shuar village. I wondered how we ought to progress. Richard said the best course of action would be to lie low during the night.

I climbed onto the roof. My Maglite was at the ready, but I dared not use it. As I scanned the shacks, the dark roofs absorbing the moonlight, I heard something. It was singing, shrill and harmonious. I motioned to Richard.

‘The ancient Shuar songs,’ I croaked. Tve read about them ! They sing of the heads they’ve taken and the glorious battles they’ve fought.’

The Vietnam vet’ rubbed a hand across his face. Even he appeared to be moved by the songs. He was just about to say something, when I noticed the slender form of a man running down the steep embankment towards us. I strained to see him clearly. He was carrying something. I asked Richard to get his revolver ready; he retorted that threatening behaviour would be suicide.

‘Let’s wait and see what happens,’ he said.

The man called out to us well before he reached the boat.

‘What’s he saying?’

Richard didn’t reply to me, but called out to the man in Spanish, inviting him to come aboard. Cockroach put the boarding plank down. Stooping his head in respect, the young warrior welcomed us to the village, which was called San Jose. He had brought us a gift, he said in broken Spanish. The villagers would be honoured if we accepted it.

The warrior passed something to Richard. It was about the size of a small dog and was covered in scorched fur.

'What is it?’

Praising the man’s hospitality, Richard ripped off an arm and handed it to me. It ended in a miniature hand, with fingers that were scrunched up into a fist.

‘Get your teeth into that,’ he said, ‘and make it sound like you’re enjoying it.’

‘What is it, though?’

‘Roasted monkey.’

During the night I had a dream. Actually, it was more of a nightmare. I dreamt that the chief of the Shuar village was displeased with our gifts. Canned food, Vicks Vapour Rub and Fanta bottles were, he said, useless products from a world preoccupied with comfort. He craved a commodity far rarer than the ones in our nylon sacks: he was longing for a set of American dentures. The chief had seen a poster for
Gone with the Wind
and wanted Clark Gable’s smile. American was best, he said. So angry was he that we’d not brought dentures, that Richard, Cockroach, and I were tied up with
ayahuasca
vines. Then our heads were chopped off with a flint-edged axe. Francisco and Walter only managed to escape the brutal treatment by promising to treat the village’s venereal disease.

I woke from the fantasy as water gushed through the rotting roof onto my hammock. Torrential rain was cascading down, flooding the decks. Cockroach was doing his best to lower the blue plastic sheets which acted as primitive blinds.