At Play in the Fields of the Lord

by Peter Matthiessen

  Moon could never be sure of his own status, especially in the hostile eyes of Aeore, whom he saw as the greatest threat to his security. In the long fear of the early days he had considered provoking an incident, then bringing forth the revolver like a wand of Kisu and striking Aeore down. It was only a matter of time before some episode would bring Aeore’s suspicions out into the open. Yet to kill the man who had shot the arrow—well, why not? What difference did that arrow make? His own superstition annoyed him.

  Once Aeore asked where he had found his white man’s clothes. How did such things go from Remate, where all white men lived, to Kisu-Mu up in the sky? Because this was the first time he ever saw Aeore smile disarmingly, Moon had answered warily, in a manner which pleased neither of them.

  Kisu-Mu was also the white man’s god, according to Tukanu, who had learned this from his woman at the mission. It seemed logical to the Niaruna that Kisu-Mu should be an Indian spirit in the daytime and a spirit of the white man at night; spirits, unlike ghosts, took the form of Man. Most spirits, said Tukanu, were very hairy or had two heads; at the very least, their legs did not bend at the knees. Yet Tukanu seemed willing to accept Kisu-Mu’s unspiritual appearance, while Aeore was not.

  Aeore seemed to know that Kisu-Mu was not Tukanu’s Kisu, but an agent of Kisu with strong shamanistic powers and therefore a rival of himself. Unlike Boronai, who was a great headman and who possessed certain skills of curing and divination, Aeore was training to become one of the rare jaguar-shamans. The year before, the young warrior had killed a jaguar single-handed with a lance, and while he did not wear its teeth upon his chest, out of respect for Boronai, he could now, under the effects of nipi, assume the form of Jaguar and consort with other jaguars in the night forest. Meanwhile, to enhance his reputation, Aeore became more and more ferocious, and submitted himself to prolonged tests of abstinence and endurance. In recent months, Tukanu told Moon, Aeore would have usurped Boronai’s shamanistic role—though not the role of headman, which was related to one’s status in the clan—had it not been for Kisu-Mu’s induction into the clan by Boronai.

  “If Kisu-Mu was an ordinary man,” Tukanu said cheerfully, “Aeore would kill you.”

  The same evening that Boronai took Kisu-Mu into the clan, Aeore waylaid him at the forest edge. Silent, he made Moon sit down, and squatted opposite him; with rough strokes of his thumb he wiped away Boronai’s markings. Then he painted on Moon’s face the black lightning across the cheekbones that he wore himself, and the same narrow band of red beneath. Then he followed Moon to the maloca.

  Tukanu saw by firelight what Aeore had done, and started shouting. Aeore caught Moon’s gaze and held it. When Tukanu raised his hand to smear Aeore’s work, Kisu-Mu frowned; the hand paused and then Tukanu spun in a half-circle and stamped his foot down on the earth. Boronai watched them, silent as stone. Moon tried to placate Tukanu, but he painted himself thereafter in the manner of Aeore. Sometimes he went down to the river and gazed with pride at the wild new face reflected there—how near and distant were the morning days when, as a child, he had seen his face in the spring rivers of the northern prairie.

  ANOTHER moon had come and gone and would soon come again. His skin was darkened by the sun, he wore red serpents on his legs, and Pindi had cropped his head in the round style of the Niaruna, with short bangs in front. He wore thin fiber bands above his biceps and below his knees, a plaited bellyband, and a crown of monkey fur and yellow toucan feathers, and he carried a black hunting lance made from the iron heart of chonta palm.

  Standing there naked in the open air, as the dugouts of the missionaries circled, then came on again, he wanted to whoop like a small boy in a game. Tukanu was infected by his mirth; his broad cheeks puffed out like the cheeks of a ground squirrel, then deflated in noisy giggles. The other warriors, until now nervous and surly at remaining in plain sight, began to giggle too; the tittering swept up and down the line.

  Only Aeore was unsmiling. Sensing that Moon watched him, he turned his head slowly like a predator; above the fierce band on his cheek, his eyes glinted impassively at Moon before fastening again on Quarrier and Huben, on the four Quechuas. His hand whitened on his bow. Aeore would take no chances with the intruders; at the first sign of threat he would loose an arrow at the canoes and disappear, for he was wary as a fish.

  That day, when they had first heard the distant motors, the other Indians ran about like birds, but Aeore gazed steadfastly at Moon, as if to fathom him. Though the boats were less than three miles away, straight across the forest, they were still several hours from the mission, for the Espíritu in its upper reaches wound back and forth upon itself like a fat brown snake.

  Aeore was anxious to ambush the invaders at a sharp bend in the river below the mission. Boronai was against this idea; he said that the missionaries might go away and leave the Niaruna in peace once they found the place abandoned. Aeore, backed by his own group of younger warriors, spoke violently to the older man. He said that the People must attack their enemies as fast as they appeared, or the enemies would soon control their forest as they controlled the forest of the Tiro; if necessary, the People could seek help from the Yuri Maha, the People to the East.

  When it seemed that Aeore would prevail, Moon supported Boronai. Aeore, said Kisu-Mu, should lead the young warriors to the mission. They would stand on the bank in war paint and Aeore would shoot an arrow near the boat in warning. Then the Indians would vanish, and soon the white man would go away. To signify his leadership, Aeore would wear the clothes brought by Kisu-Mu.

  It was important to Moon that the missionaries think him dead, but with this gesture he had again aroused Aeore’s suspicions. The Indian was interested not only in the fact of things but in how they worked; in this sense he was less primitive than any of his tribe. Kisu-Mu’s possession of white man’s clothing was much more significant to him than airplanes and parachutes, which could be readily dismissed as magic. He greeted Moon’s suggestion with surly silence and might have refused it but for the envy he saw in the face of Tukanu.

  While Aeore arrayed himself in khaki, the other warriors renewed their paint. Moon could not resist an impulse to go along; he smeared himself heavily with red achote and blurred his features as best he could with the black genipa. Then the band ran swiftly through the forest, crossing the low ridge which separated their own stream from the watershed of the Espíritu, and came out at last in the mission clearing. At the edge of the clearing Moon stopped and removed his sneakers.

  Both boats had soldiers in their bows. When they circled at the sight of the Niaruna and Moon laughed aloud, the Indians, infected, giggled with him, especially Tukanu, who made little sounds like small explosions fore and aft; it was this talent that had given him his public name, for Tukanu meant “Farter.” But Aeore stamped his foot in rage and fitted an arrow to his bow.

  The lead boat circled back; then both came on again, very slowly. Aeore whooped a violent string of words that Moon could not understand, and a second later loosed an arrow. It struck the water right between the boats, and the Niaruna howled in triumph.

  As the white men drew closer, the Indians grew restless; Aeore stepped forward and raised his bow a second time and drove his arrow at an angle into the ground; he strode past it, whirled, and shot another. The arrows formed an X upon the bank, facing the missionaries, who were now so near that Moon could see the strain on the white faces.

  Now Aeore grunted something and moved toward the jungle. The others followed. In the shadows of the trees, lined up on a great log, his companions watched while the Great Spirit Kisu-Mu tied old scraps of canvas to his strange soft feet.

  Not since infancy, Moon thought, had he been in a situation in which he was the slowest, blindest, clumsiest and most inept member of a group; it was like being born all over again. This idea restored his spirits somewhat, and perversely he winked at Aeore. The warrior responded by turning on his heel and moving north into the forest. The motors of the boats had stopped,
and already through the foliage they could hear the excited voices of the missionaries.

  The band moved eastward toward the Tuaremi.

  Though he moved much faster and more quietly than in the early days, he had to struggle to keep up with the Niaruna. He had never envied anything so much as the identity of these people with their surroundings, nor realized quite so painfully how displaced he had always been. He simply did not belong, not here, not anywhere. His trip to the mission had been a bad mistake; he would not return there. Seeing a savage in blue neckerchief and khakis, the missionaries would be certain that Lewis Moon was dead. And so he was.

  The Indians moved like shadows of an owl, flowing in silence across fallen trees and skirting evil pools in a pigeon-toed, shuffle-step trot that looked awkward but was not, while he, stepping more surely than ever before, seemed by comparison to flounder along like something wounded. Yet as the mission fell behind, he moved more eagerly, and an ease returned to him, filling his body like warm sunlight.

  15

  DAYS OPENED OUT, AND FURLED AGAIN AT NIGHT, LIKE JUNGLE flowers. Another moon turned in the sky and then another; in the full moon he thought sometimes of the moths flying between planets. He was content.

  THE Indians ate their main meal of the day at sunset; the men ate first, and the women and children took what was left. Usually there was fish and manioc, and sometimes a stew pot of meat bits and capsicum peppers. In the Time of Waters, meat was very scarce and fish were few, though the men went out every day. One evening there were only two small sabalo for the whole village. Boronai made a joke of this, saying that these monsters had broken three of his best spears; he pretended to hand out giant portions that he could scarcely carry. Covertly, he broke his own humble piece and slipped some over his shoulder to his eldest wife, whom he called the Ugly One. The name was not derogatory, nor did she take it in that way; old age was ugly and youth beautiful. Once Moon had surprised the headman on the path from the plantation; Boronai was trailed by the Ugly One, who had been sick, and he was carrying her heavy net of manioc tubers. The Indian, who had been laughing gently with his wife, became intensely mortified and angry at the sight of Kisu-Mu; he dropped the net as if he had picked it up by mistake, and shouted at the Ugly One to get it down to the maloca as fast as her short legs would carry her. For some days after this, he glowered indiscriminately at one and all, to show his people the tyrannical person with whom they had to deal.

  Nevertheless, Boronai was very gentle with the Ugly One, who was treated better than most women; the men hooted at him amiably for giving her the fish, and Boronai shouted angrily in embarrassment. In the uproar, a child ran against the palm basket of hot manioc, sending the food flying into the dirt; the Indians laughed more loudly still at this new joke on themselves, though the accident had spoiled all the dull work of many hours and would cause them to go hungry. Even the child joined in the laughter.

  Now Aeore came in. He carried a large pirarucu, the largest fish the Indians had seen in weeks, and a sigh of admiration rose around him. But Aeore did not share it in the open way that the two small fish had been divided; he stared at the people with his own curious mixture of shyness and contempt, as if he did not intend to share with them at all. Then he broke off a large piece for himself and slung the rest down carelessly before them. The Indians turned their heads away out of embarrassment, ignoring Aeore’s bad manners in the hope that the bad feeling he had brought would fade away.

  The fish feast was already as depressed and sullen as the poor meal of moments before had been hilarious. Aeore sat to one side, eating alone, and no one spoke. Finally Tukanu, staring straight ahead at nothing, spoke his thoughts, his angry voice blurred by the last shreds of Aeore’s fish still in his mouth: “The one who does not like us—why does he eat with us? Why does he live with us in our maloca? Why does he not go away to his own people?”

  Aeore tossed his last piece of fish onto the ground in front of Tukanu, as to a dog, and stalked out of the maloca; Boronai seized the arm of Tukanu, who was thrashing to his feet. Had Boronai not publicly restrained him to save his face, he would have been forced to attack a man of whose night powers he was much afraid.

  Boronai’s intuition and decisiveness made him the natural leader of the village. He ignored the episode of the fish. But afterward he talked casually to Moon, arriving eventually at an oblique defense of Aeore. Though Boronai rarely agreed with Aeore about anything, he saw something fateful in the coming of the young Yuri Maha; the future of his band must lie with one who had come to them mysteriously out of the Sun forest to the East.

  “He is still too young to lead us; we must wait.” Boronai contemplated Moon as he said this, and his eyes were without savagery; unlike the others, his eyes were never flat and blank, reflecting nothing. Boronai, his people said, had the gentle soul of Tukituk, the forest tanager.

  More and more Moon was drawn toward the mission, to test his disguise again, just for the fun of it. Boronai watched him. Yet he knew that to visit the mission was to dissipate a mystery, to break a spell, before he had penetrated to the heart of it and made it part of him.

  THE time had come when Moon could move barefoot through the forest. He trailed the fishers who dammed the streams and poisoned the fish pools with barbasco; he spent days wandering with the young boys, who taught him how to fold a green-leaf cup to drink the clear water of a creek—his hand-and-slurp technique, roiling the bottom even slightly, they thought extremely rude—and which berries and nuts and insects and mushrooms could be eaten. He learned the names of plants and creatures, and which were valuable and which useless, and which were inhabited by spirits; some of these the Indians would not look at, and some they pointed at without speaking. He learned to find an occasional mark with bow and arrow, to make a fire with a hand drill, to move without sound, to sing.

  He was now accepted so completely that he doubted if the Niaruna wondered any more, or even cared, whether or not he was man or spirit; their line between the sacred and profane was serpentine. He was part of their life, and they cared for him and fed him as they would a dog, a macaw or a child, since he could not—or would not, as the Indians saw it, not comprehending helplessness in a grown male—take care of himself. His efforts with spear and bow and arrow were more amusing than helpful to them; they only grew angry once, when in the early days, drawn to the manioc plantations out of curiosity, he had caused a great disturbance among the women. Both Tukanu and Boronai informed him sternly that the plantations were notorious places for liaisons, and that a man’s presence there would lead to discords which the band could not afford. The women had jeered in cheerful disbelief at Kisu-Mu’s interest in their work; one had lain down flat on her back, her hands behind her head, writhing provocatively, until Pindi came and beat her with a stick.

  He was already fluent in the language, fluent enough to know that Leslie Huben’s notebook contained serious mistakes of definition and interpretation. “These primitive souls have a legend of the Deluge!” Huben had scrawled ecstatically in one margin. “Isn’t this a sign of the Lord’s blessing?” But many peoples, Moon reflected, had a legend of a deluge, since in the ice ages the seas had risen all around the world. Under “Our Savior,” Huben had noted, “I figured out from Yoyo that the Niaruna have some kind of a heathen Sky God. So temporarily I have settled on this name, pronounced Kee-soo, for our own God Almighty, to make His work go faster here.”

  But the Niaruna Creator was Witu’mai, an Ancient of Heaven who also ruled over the Sky of the Dead; He was revered with neither fear nor ceremony, for He lived far off in the sky. It would be foolish, Tukanu told Moon, to waste much breath on spirits so remote; far better to placate the malevolent spirits who circled the village at night, like Tutki, the bald, hairy, huge-eared, one-eyed dwarf with blue-green teeth, feet faced back-ward, a gigantic penis and an appetite for little children, or like ’Hanga, the nightmare incubus who made strange whistling sounds to lure men to their doom, and told the shamans wh
ere to seek wild honey.

  “Listen!” Boronai said. “We have our river and our forest, we have fish and birds and animals to eat, and Witu’mai has taught us to grow manioc! Surely we are living in a golden time!”

  This speech so tickled Moon that he laughed aloud, sharing Boronai’s happiness; he laughed at the extraordinary experience which had befallen him—the perceiving, through the Indians, of a wilderness which heretofore had seemed to him a malevolent nether world, poisonous and stagnated, miasmal. But when he asked what Boronai would do if the white man came, the headman said that he had inherited a potent fetish which would make even the angriest man laugh. “The white man will laugh so hard,” Boronai exclaimed, “that he will no longer wish us harm, and will go away! Look, you shall see!” He took out his fetish, made from the dried skull of a witty bird; he invoked it strenuously, eyes glittering. When Moon only sat quietly, expressionless, Boronai faltered, then stopped entirely. Without a word he laid the famous fetish carefully away.

  Moon had meant to warn him that the white man was not so lightly turned away; now he felt ashamed. He said, “Perhaps the white man will not know how to laugh.” Boronai did not answer; when he spoke again, it was of other things.

  HE bathed his senses in the river, drifting downstream and stroking back again, downstream and back again, in the cold water of the sky. The flood water was roiled and gritty, but the river was bright with a wild sun of the rainy season. Upstream, a canoe danced on the afternoon reflections and came sailing down upon him, swirling past his head. A lean black dugout like the rest, it was better shaped and better made, with symbols carved on the gunwale’s inner rim, and because it rode so light upon the current it was recognizable at any distance. It was the one canoe in all the village in which he had not been welcomed.