Where Tigers Are at Home (81 page)

He finished with a few occult words designed to attract the favors of the Messenger so that he would continue to guide him and his people.

“
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi
,” Mauro immediately translated, “
miserere nobis
. It’s crazy! If we ever get out of here I’m going to spend the rest of my life inventing a universal language. It’s as if he’s decided not to understand a word of what we’re saying. If he won’t make an effort, all our attempts to communicate with him will get us nowhere. It’s just too stupid!”

“That’s not the problem,” Dietlev said, his voice affected by his fever. “I think he believes we can understand him. We need to try and talk to someone else in the tribe.”

“We’ve got to get out of here, that’s what,” Petersen growled. “I’ve an uneasy feeling about these loonies.”

The shaman took a long tube of bark as thin as a blowpipe, put a pinch of black powder in one of the ends which he handed to an Indian squatting down. Squatting down himself, he put the other end to his nostrils. Holding the tube between his index and middle fingers, the Indian breathed in and blew the dose of
epena
high up into the shaman’s mucous membrane.

“See, I’m not the only one!” Petersen gloated. He’d already observed the same practice among the Yanomami and knew they were witnessing a ritual taking of drugs.

Eyes closed, his face screwed up in pain, the shaman prepared the tube then blew the powder into the nostrils of the one who had just helped him. The Indian stayed on his heels, transfixed, prey to what looked like insupportable pain. He nose began to drip black fluid onto his chin, sinuous trails of snot, which the Indian suddenly made spray out with an abrupt exhalation. Thus he was splashed with the blood of the true world, drawing on his chest a horoscope that the shaman alone could interpret.

It was like a signal; all the Indians in the tribe started to breathe in the magic substance. Between each pinch they quenched their thirst with beer and greedily dug into any food within reach. After the third or fourth inhalation, a man would start howling, waving his arms, then he would stand up for an unmoving dance that made him shake on the spot like a soul in torment. Eventually he would faint and collapse, overcome by the visions. The women would then drag him off a little way, while the one who had blown the drug into his nostrils had it done to himself by someone else.

One hour later most of the men were lying on the ground alongside each other, like corpses waiting to be dealt with.

“
Guardians of the dream
,” the shaman was saying as he deciphered the symbols on the torsos, “
living shelters of the true soul, your hearts do not lie. On them I can see the anaconda and the jaguar, the terrapin and the hummingbird. You are like arrows fledged with dreams, great birds who are consumed in the sky by their wings of fire. The end of all your woes is near, for soon the Messenger will guide us to that mountain where visions cascade down uninterruptedly. Your torsos tell me much: they tell of the return to the land of our birth, to the smiling happiness of newborn babes
 …”

The shaman walked along between the bodies, releasing their penises, swollen by the sensual wanderings of the sleepers’ minds, from their thin shackles, spitting magic arrows at invisible enemies swirling round them like flies. Agitated, close to trance, he came back and stood in front of Dietlev. Petersen was the first to understand his gesticulations: “He wants to get you to sniff his rubbish,” he said in mocking tones. “No way out of it, old chap …”

Elaine turned to Dietlev, full of concern: “Don’t do it,” she begged. “You’ve seen what it does to them.”

“Given the state I’ve reached … and then we don’t know what’ll happen if I refuse. It’s the best way of keeping in their good books. So long, Carter—won’t see you again …”

He stuck the wax tip of the tube in one of his nostrils; when the shaman blew down it, he was immediately thrown back on the stretcher. After a few seconds of an intense burning sensation spreading through his sinuses, Dietlev had the very clear impression that the right side of his brain had frozen with no hope of it ever unfreezing. Opening his eyes, he was alarmed to see the sepia tones of the forest: the harmony of an old photo abruptly torn apart by sudden flashes of lightning, revealing incredible perspectives in which amber and mauve shaded into infinity. A Piranesian delirium, architectural tumors ceaselessly proliferating. He could hear the slow grinding of icebergs, the overthrust of continental plates. Distant whirlwinds started to stir up space with their spirals, cracks appeared all over the earth, which opened up like a round loaf under the irresistible force of the mountains. Stones rose in the air! Before he lost consciousness Dietlev was aware he was witnessing something grandiose, an event mingling the beginning of worlds and their apocalypse.

VERY EARLY THE
next morning Elaine was woken by the sound of voices punctuated by crying children. First of all she had a quick look at Dietlev—he was still sleeping and appeared to be breathing normally. Then she got our of her hammock to have a look outside the hut. The whole tribe was packing its bags … Woken by Elaine, Mauro and Petersen went to the mat over the entrance.

“It looks as if they’re leaving,” Mauro said, a touch of concern in his voice.

“And taking us with them,” Petersen added, seeing a little group of Indians approaching.

Once in the hut the two men they already knew indicated that they were to pick up their rucksacks and follow them. With great signs of deference, they lifted up the stretcher while other Indians took the various feather ornaments down from the central pillar.

Elaine’s face shone: at last they had understood, they were taking them to some civilized place where Dietlev could receive medical help. Cheered by this prospect, Mauro returned her smile. Petersen’s eyes were sunken, his complexion gray, his expression hard. All he did was shake his head at the other two’s silent joy.

The whole tribe plunged into the forest. The indifference with which the Indians had abandoned their village was disconcerting. They were only taking the strict minimum with them, a monkey-skin bag, twists of chewing tobacco, bows, arrows and blowpipes. In woven baskets held on their back by a strap around their forehead, the women were carrying a few mats, hammocks and various receptacles; they were also taking embers from the hearth with them, but none had paid the least attention to the heaps of food still scattered round the smoking ashes of the bonfire. Curled up in the carrying cloths, the babies were sucking at their mother’s breasts. A population of refugees setting off on
their exodus, Elaine thought without dwelling on it. She felt guilty at having allowed herself to hope: however horrible it was, however present in her thoughts, Yurupig’s death was tending to fade as the prospect of reaching safety grew more imminent. Obsessed by the vision of his tortured head, Mauro was making every effort to erase even the unfortunate Indian’s name from his mind. As for Petersen, he didn’t remember him until much later and then to blame himself for not having thought of recovering the compass.

The shaman seemed to know exactly where he was going. The long procession made fairly good progress under the hostile cover of the jungle. Dietlev still hadn’t woken; despite all her efforts, Elaine couldn’t get him to open his eyes. His coma was worrying, though she couldn’t tell whether it was an effect of the gangrene or of the powder blown up his nose by the shaman. The Indians had recovered fairly easily, but the fact that Dietlev had never experienced it before would explain a longer period of recuperation.

“What did he mean, yesterday evening?” Mauro asked as he met her anxious look. “He was talking about someone called Carver or Carter, wasn’t he?”

The reminder made Elaine smile. “Carter,” she said. “It’s an old private joke. I don’t know if you’ve read ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’ by H. P. Lovecraft? The story begins with a guy going to a cemetery, an unknown graveyard he’s discovered. He takes a friend called Carter with him. They lift a slab and discover a flight of stone steps … The guy knows he’s going to have to fight ‘the thing,’ some kind of fiendish entity from the depths of time, et cetera, et cetera—the usual Lovecraft. He leaves Carter on the surface and goes down into the tomb. As they have a field telephone with them, Carter remains in contact with his friend. He hears him panicking, then everything gets more frenzied until the moment comes when it’s clear he’ll never get back to the surface. At the end of the first chapter the guy orders Carter to replace the slab and
then manages one last sentence: ‘
Tão longo, Carter
.’ I did think it a bit odd, but that was all. What could it be that was
so
long? But then you’re not surprised at anything in Lovecraft, I just accepted it as an enigma. It was Dietlev who one day pointed out to me that it was a mistake in the translation. The original English text simply said ‘So long, Carter.’ It didn’t make much difference to the rest of the story, but it ought to have been translated by something that meant ‘Goodbye, Carter’ in Portuguese, say ‘
Até logo, Carter
.’ You know Dietlev and his twisted sense of humor. He made me laugh at it so much, we got into the habit of using the phrase for saying goodbye. A kind of in-joke between us, at one time …”

“I see,” said Mauro.

AFTER THEY HAD
been going for two hours, Petersen broke the sulky silence he had maintained since they left, simply saying, “There’s a snag.”

“What’s wrong?” Elaine said.

“What’s wrong is that we’re going away from the river; look at the moss on the tree trunks.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing all the time,” Mauro said with some irritation. “They generally grow facing the sun, thus indicating south—”

“Well done, sonny, except that you’ve got the wrong hemisphere and it’s the exact opposite. We’ve been heading due northwest since the start. I waited until I was absolutely certain before telling you.”

“But what does that matter?” Mauro replied. “The important thing is that they’re taking us somewhere; the actual place doesn’t really matter as long as there’s some means of contacting the emergency services.”

“Northwest, you said?” Elaine asked.

“Yes,
senhora
. And not deviating by even a hair’s breadth.”

Elaine vainly tried to visualize the map. Only Dietlev could have said what there might be in that direction. “And have you any idea what we might find going in that direction?” she asked.

“Not the least,” Herman said with a shrug. “The farther we go to the northwest, the deeper we go into the jungle, full stop. There’s never been anything up there, never will be. A blank space on the map, there’s quite a lot of that round here.”

Elaine did indeed recall those gaps, so attractive that she’d had dreams about them during the preparations for the expedition. And now that she was near them, they brought tears to her eyes.

Mauro was making every effort to fight off a sense of discouragement. “Assuming you’re right,” he said a little less aggressively, “why would they take us with them in the jungle? It’s a question of logic: they surely won’t have left the village just for fun, will they? What you’re saying just doesn’t stand up …”

“And Yurupig?” Petersen asked. “What was that for? You know what goes on inside their heads, do you? If I had a compass I swear I’d try to give them the slip—and as soon as possible!”

“What’s stopping you, since you know exactly where we’re heading? Off you go, don’t worry about us.”

Petersen ignored his mockery. Apart from the fact that it was impossible to make headway through the jungle without a machete and other equipment, he was exhausted. His body was cracking up all over. If the cocaine had allowed him to look as if he were taking it all in his stride during the first few days, now it was making him suffer rather than helping him. As its effects wore off he was prey to such weakness and depression that he had to take another dose, with increasing frequency and in greater and greater quantities.

“We’ll discuss it later,” he said eventually, “but I’ll be damned if we see even the shadow of a white man in that area.”

Elaine knew that she would not be able to just set off for the river. Whatever destination the Indians had in mind, they had to trust them—or see themselves, she suddenly realized, as their prisoners. Despite what they’d done to Yurupig, she found it impossible to feel in danger with them. The whole tribe continued to treat them with perfect consideration; there were even men or women coming up to them to touch Dietlev’s stretcher in a gesture that was clearly compassionate. Each time she tried to say a friendly word, to put on an inviting look, but the Indians were too overawed, just one little girl had returned her smile.

THEY FINALLY STOPPED
at around four in the afternoon. The whole tribe seemed to have great fun searching the undergrowth for a place to camp for the night. Lean-tos of a sort were erected with amazing rapidity—four poles supporting a crude roof of palm leaves beneath which each family quickly spread out their mats and hammocks. Blowing on the embers, the men lit fires in the middle of these shelters. By a stroke of luck three howler monkeys and a coati were shot; a worm-eaten tree trunk provided an abundance of big grubs; the girls brought back some honeypot ants, some honey and the pith of young palm trees cut up by the adults. Wild oranges appeared as if by magic.

Dietlev still hadn’t woken; Elaine cleaned up the stump of his leg as best she could then gave in to her weariness. Mauro and Petersen slumped down beside the fire as well, they too exhausted by the day’s walk. Plagued by insects that the smoke hadn’t yet managed to drive off, they nibbled on some beans from a tin they’d opened, not being able to bring themselves to eat the food the shaman had sent to them. Mauro tried the oranges, but they were so bitter they were sickening. As for the honey, it was used to thicken a kind of porridge which, seething with grubs, produced the same effect.

The Indians observed them with a discreetness that was in inverse proportion to their curiosity: the more marvels they showed—tins of food, knives or matches, fantastic objects that flew across their field of vision like breathtaking comets—the more they pretended not to be interested. They were not intimidated by those-who-had-come-out-of-the-night, but basic politeness toward the newcomers—even if they were supernatural beings—demanded this friendly reserve. To look a woman in the eye was to sleep with her, to stare at a man made him a mortal enemy; between seduction and combat there was no room left to follow impulse without jeopardizing the whole social order.