We Dine With Cannibals (29 page)

“Ah, ever since Sir Edmund and his cronies resigned from the Explorers Club, every day feels like Christmas to me!” The professor laughed.

“Cronies?” Oliver wondered.

“Oh, just look it up yourself,” Celia answered him.

“I hear they have started a new club,” Dr. Navel said.

“Yes, the Gentlemen's Adventuring Society,” said the professor. “I fear the Council will be far more open with their work now that your wife has thrown down the gauntlet, so to speak. We have no idea who this P.F. is, but rumor has it that your wife is interrogating scholars of ancient Greek history from Athens to Fiji.”

“Rumors,” said Dr. Navel, glancing at Oliver and Celia. “Just rumors.”

“Pardon me,” said the professor. “The holidays are no time for such talk.”

Oliver and Celia looked at each other. Since they last saw their mother, she hadn't so much as sent them a postcard. During the journey back home, they had told their father everything they knew about the history of the Mnemones and the Council. They told him about the prophecy that the oracle had given them in Tibet and what they'd seen in their vision in the jungle. They even told him about the catalog of the Lost Library in their remote control. Their father was at times shocked, at times amused, and always very impressed with the daring young children he had raised.

But he shocked them himself when he told them to forget about all of it and just watch TV.
He got them cable the day they arrived back at the club. He wanted them to have a normal life, he said, just like he and Claire had discussed when they were trapped in the closet in Snack Cakeville.

And for the past few months, things had been totally normal. Boring even. It was great. This was the first time they had heard anything about their mother in all that time.

“The holidays are a time for presents!” the professor exclaimed, and ran out into the hallway, knocking the moon rock off its shelf. He came back with a wrapped box. “This is for you both to share,” he told Oliver and Celia. Dr. Navel looked at him curiously as he stepped into the hall to put the moon rock back.

Oliver reached out for the present, but Celia got to it first and tore the wrapping paper off. Oliver's shoulders slumped.

“A new backpack,” he said.

From his seat on top of the fridge, Patrick the monkey studied the new backpack carefully. Beverly flicked her tongue.

“Look inside,” said the professor, smiling.

“Two wet suits,” said Celia, pulling out the
thick black scuba-diving suits. “And a book.” Her shoulders slumped.

“Professor, what's this about?” asked Dr. Navel nervously.

“That's the complete works of Plato!” The professor smiled. “In translation, of course … but it's not from me. Open it.”

Celia opened the book and saw that it was inscribed to Celia and Oliver.

“Mom!” she said, recognizing the handwriting immediately.

“Claire!” Dr. Navel exclaimed and almost jumped over the couch to see what his wife had written.

“Dear Celia and Oliver,” Celia read out loud. “I know you hate doing reading during vacation, but I think you'll find that your remote control comes in handy here. You might want to learn what the scholars of Alexandria knew about Plato. Enjoy the rest of sixth grade. I'll see you both
very,
very
soon. With love, Mom.”

Celia set the book down on the table. The apartment was silent for a long time.

“Well,” their father said at last. “I think things
have been normal around here for about long enough.”

“Oh no,” said Oliver.

“Oh no,” said Celia.

“Why don't we have a look at that catalog in your remote and see what your mother wants us to know?”

“I thought you wanted us to have a normal life,” Celia objected.

“Oh, Celia.” Their father sat down between his children. “Normal is so dull, isn't it?” He smiled widely.

“Dinner's getting cold!” Oliver tried.

Dr. Navel ignored him and picked up the remote. “Now, how do we work this thing?” He started hitting buttons.

“That's not it!” said Celia.

“She doesn't know!” said Oliver.

They both reached for it.

“Hold on, I think I know,” said their father as he struggled to keep his children from wrestling the remote from him.

To the people watching from a rooftop across the street, dressed in black and bundled against the cold, it almost looked like innocent family fun.

But they knew better.

Two of them held binoculars to their eyes.

“Let me see,” the third one whined, pushing a wisp of nearly perfect brown hair from his eyes. “You wouldn't even know about the remote if it weren't for me hanging out with those kids!”

“And you would still be half drowned in the Amazon if it weren't for me coming back to rescue you,” snapped Sir Edmund.

“Shh,” said Janice McDermott. “I need to read their lips.”

“Why do you need silence to read lips?” said Sir Edmund.

“I have to concentrate,” she snapped.

“Then we have a deal?” Sir Edmund said. “You'll have your revenge.”

“Oh yes,” said Janice. “And you'll have your library.”

“I just want one thing from it.” Sir Edmund smiled. “And that alone is more than you can possibly imagine.”

“Whatever,” said Janice, who didn't really like all the cryptic explorer talk. Why were they so mysterious about things all the time? She preferred the company of grave robbers.

“What are they saying?” nagged the fake Corey Brandt, whose real name turned out to be Ernest.

Sir Edmund lifted the binoculars back to his eyes.

Through the window across the street, he saw Oliver and Celia Navel let go of the remote control as Dr. Navel pointed at the screen. The professor leaned on the couch behind them and muttered some nonsense that Sir Edmund couldn't make out. But he watched happily as the twins rolled their eyes and their father excitedly mouthed one word:

Atlantis.

“Merry Christmas, Edmund,” Janice said to him with a smile.

“And to you too, Janice,” he answered her. “Very merry indeed.”

THERE ARE A FEW POINTS
I feel the need to clarify before we see Oliver and Celia Navel again on their next adventure.

First, you should be relieved to know that the practice of cannibalism, which was never widespread in the Amazon, is all but extinct. As our friend Qui explained earlier, tales of cannibals were often used by European explorers to excuse their own brutish behavior while they ripped through the Amazon rain forest, stole its resources, and enslaved its inhabitants. Tales of cannibals were often completely made up for no other reason than to sell books!

While the Cozinheiros are an invention of mine, there are indeed at least seventy uncontacted tribes in the Brazilian Amazon. Their way of life, which may seem strange to us, adds great richness to the
ethnosphere—which the real-life explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, Wade Davis, describes as “the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, beliefs, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.” Or as Dr. Navel put it, “from the Songlines of the Aboriginal Australians to celebrity dance competitions.”

While we outsiders might think it would be good to bring uncontacted tribes into our society so they could have things like flu medicine and celebrity dance competitions, like all peoples, they have a right to determine their own destiny and to choose if and when they would like to reach out to the world beyond the forest.

These tribes do have occasional and sometimes deadly encounters with other societies around them and their land is indeed threatened by illegal logging and mining operations. Unlike Qui's tribe in this book, most do not emerge as victors from these encounters. Their personal loss is a tragedy and the destruction of the ethnosphere is an ongoing catastrophe. You can learn more about the challenges that indigenous people around the
world are facing and how you can help from Survival International at
http://www.survivalinternational.org
.

The khipu are real. The Inca created untold numbers of these knotted string bundles and they were used to carry information throughout their empire. However, no one has yet figured out what they mean, and indeed, the Spanish destroyed most of the ones they found when they first conquered South America. The Museum of Natural History in New York City has a wonderful collection of 124 khipu, although only five are on display to the public at this time. It will take a lot more research to crack their code and decipher their mysteries. It will take some vision too.

As for Teddy Roosevelt's expedition, he did actually navigate the River of Doubt with his son Kermit in 1919, and the expedition nearly cost him his life. As far as anyone knows, he did not stumble onto El Dorado, or any other lost city.

Snack Cakeville is not a real place, but it is based on Fordlandia, which is, unbelievably, a real place—a model American town built in the heart of the Amazon by the carmaker Henry Ford. Like Snack Cakeville, his experiment was a failure, and the town has largely fallen into ruin, reclaimed by the jungle and forgotten by history.

Did that answer your questions?

I hope not.

The act of exploration is an act of continual questioning, and unlike Oliver and Celia, I hope you will be curious to learn more about the people and places we encountered in
We Dine with Cannibals
. As Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

I hope you will share with us what you see.

Please visit
http://www.calexanderlondon.com
to share your discoveries, questions, and ideas, or write us an old-fashioned letter at:

C. Alexander London

Explorer, Adventurer, Librarian

Care of: Philomel Books

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014 USA

C. ALEXANDER LONDON
is an award-winning author of nonfiction for grown-ups, an accomplished skeet shooter, a master scuba diver, and a fully licensed librarian. He has watched television in twenty-three countries and survived an erupting volcano, a hurricane, four civil wars, and a mysterious bite on his little toe in the jungles of Thailand. Currently, C. Alexander London lives in Brooklyn, New York.

www.calexanderlondon.com