At Play in the Fields of the Lord

by Peter Matthiessen

  He swam ashore. “No fish,” he said.

  “No fish,” Aeore said. He watched Kisu-Mu expectantly as if to say, If you are the Great Spirit of the Rain, why don’t you stop the rise of waters? He jerked his canoe onto its side to bail it. In pride, unsmiling, he held it there after the water was all gone, so that Moon might marvel at the carved gunwales. When Moon asked about the carving, Aeore looked surly again and let the canoe fall back so that it grazed Moon’s feet.

  But the next day at dawn Moon rose and followed when Aeore left the maloca. The warrior said nothing. They went down to the river and slid the canoe into the Tuaremi.

  The high ground on which the village lay was now almost an island, for the river had jumped its banks and rolled drunkenly across the forest, swirling around the buttressed roots of the great trees. The people were frightened of the flooded forest, which they thought an unnatural place aswarm with ghosts and spirits; because Kisu had brought about the flood, they sulked openly when Kisu-Mu, ignoring the prayers made in his hearing, failed to intervene in their behalf.

  Since Aeore, the most hostile of the Niaruna, was also the most shy and deferential, they went along in silence. Tukanu and all the rest, when not actually stalking game, made a great commotion on the water, banging the canoe sides with their paddles, imitating and conversing with the passing creatures—Ho, Otter, will you bring us a fine fish?—singing, laughing, telling dirty jokes and creating a general racket of good feeling. Toucan! Toucan! Take me with you! But Aeore moved silently, bending his body to the canoe so that his craft flicked through the rapids like a fish. When Moon turned, impressed, to watch him, Aeore burst into a smile, then hid his pride by whistling clear imitations of the sunrise voices and grunting fiercely at a young caiman on a floating tree. He huffed, hissed, and flapped his elbows in imitation of the primitive hoatzins in the low branches; he fluttered like a hoatzin in the water, then became a piranha, whirling away from the hoatzin in distaste—all of this to the rhythm of his paddle.

  But in a moment, as a cat tucks up its tail behind, Aeore stopped smiling, and his eyes withdrew into his painted mask; driving his paddle down against the current, he spun the canoe toward the bank with a twist so savage that water splashed across them. Moon was nearly thrown out wide into the torrent. Then the canoe escaped the flood, passing through a crack in the green wall into the jungle.

  Like forest birds crossing the river, they had passed from light into darkness; the air in his lungs turned cold. The Indian observed him, eyes in shadow; the canoe slipped silently through the gleam. He faced ahead again, taking a paddle. In the light filtering down through the high galleries, the ghostly tree boles loomed and turned and fell back into ranks. The one sound was a hollow toonk as his paddle tip probed a sunken root or timber; they glanced about them lest they wake the giants. Farther from the river, the water changed from muddy brown to a clear black, no more than a foot in depth, from which pale faces of dead leaves peered up like supplicants. They scraped aground. Aeore backed off soundlessly and they moved on again, winding down the high dark avenues, silent as water snakes.

  Far overhead, in a torn place where the light had pierced, birds clicked and fretted at a monkey; the capuchin, clutching its squashed fruit, peered down aghast at the canoe, like a mad subhuman visage in the high window of a tower. The troupials screeched and scattered, and the monkey leaped, too late: a harpy eagle, crest erect, flopped and swayed on the thin branches where the monkey had been foraging. It too peered down at the canoe with a wild mask of rage, oblivious of the weak squirming in its talons. Aeore, shipping his paddle, addressed the eagle reverently in low orisons, while the monkey stared downward sadly, as if reproaching them for the moment of inattention that would cost its life. It still clung to its fig, and even as the eagle cocked an eye to peer at it, raised the fruit vaguely toward its mouth.

  Aeore moved on, in awe. He pointed with his paddle at stray shadows, shapes, but often Moon could only guess what he was pointing at; his own eye could not pierce the creature’s camouflage. They saw agoutis and opossum and a small jaguarundi cat, all perched in fungus gardens of fallen trees; on a massive trunk in a small glade, three peccary raised their bristles and backed into a circle. Aeore did not seize his bow, though in this season meat was scarce. The Indian only nodded at the peccary, murmuring something that Moon could not catch; the pigs left off clicking their tusks and resumed their rooting in the decayed wood.

  Helicon butterflies on black narrow wings crisscrossed the silences, and far away a bellbird tolled. Parrots fled, and an iguana, and a small swimming viper; the loop of a large boa constrictor hung suspended from a branch. Aeore urged all of these to go their way. The flooded forest, combining unnaturally the forces of earth and water, was a common ground where all creatures moved in quiet, with respect.

  The bellbird clanged again, remote, unearthly; coiled in the stern, head sunk between his shoulders, Aeore looked trapped. The white bellbird Ulua was the spirit of a girl killed in the act of incest; if heard too close, Ulua’s call would lead its victim to the spirit world, there to keep her company forever.

  S-ss-tchuh! The Indian swung his paddle tip to fend off something in the water; he backwatered. Snout pressed to a submerged root, tail swaying sinuously in the silence of the pool, a huge salamander lay in wait; in the tannin blackness its red blotches glowed. This salamander, drawn from its subterraneum by high water, was out of place, and thus a sign of evil; they fled back toward the river. The bellbird trailed them, still invisible: the bellbird’s call was urgent, as if it flew in search of them. When it did not cease, but came still nearer, the Indian paddled without grace, in open flight.

  Moon wondered if Aeore had not taken him along as some sort of spiritual protection, like a live talisman; when he asked the panting Indian if he had ever before visited the forest in time of flood, he got no answer.

  They struck the river at a point upstream from the place where they had entered, whirling out beneath the trunk of a fallen tree. Here in the world of time and weather, the light seemed bright, though it was raining. He was cold to the bone, and paddled violently to keep warm, in hopes that his ineptness with the paddle would console the man burning behind him. To mollify Aeore further, he inquired once again about the carved symbols on the gunwale. At first Aeore affected not to understand him; when Moon put his finger on one of the carvings, the warrior snapped, “Tarai,” which signified both jaguar and shaman, leaving Moon no wiser than before. But when Moon touched another figure, then another, Aeore said churlishly that the symbols told the story of Tepan and Amanaitu, and the destruction they had brought upon the world.

  IN the days of the Ancestors, Boronai said, there was no death among mankind. There were no old people and no floods, no scorpions and no mosquitoes, no famine and no pain; nor did the vipers possess venom. Jaguar was a friend to Man and hunted with him, and both were creatures of darkness, for there was no light: the Sun lived on the far side of the World.

  Boronai … Boronai’s eyes were deep and soft, as if he knew something that the others did not know, longed for something that he could not know himself. Here in the forest, unable to express himself except in legend, Boronai was condemned to silence. Look at the others, the firelight in their eyes, the eyes of cats; they are savages, and they are ugly, even Pindi. Even Pindi.

  Among mankind was Tepan, who lived with his mother in the night forest of the World and kept a fishing weir along the wide black river. But Tepan’s weir was torn and the fish taken, and he set a macaw there as sentinel. Soon the macaw called out, a-ra-ra, but Tepan was asleep and did not hear.

  “Like Tukanu,” his nephew said. “Be still,” said Tukanu, “and listen.”

  Then Tepan set a dove on guard, and when the dove cried, hoo, hoo, he ran to the river and with his arrow shot a large caiman straight between the eyes.

  “The caiman,” Pindi said, “sank with a sound like this”—she blinked her eyes at Moon–“glou, glou!”

  Th
en the dove called again …

  “Glou, glou,” Pindi repeated, pleased that Moon had laughed.

  “No, no,” a child cried angrily. “Hoo, hoo!”

  … and Tepan saw, on the far bank, a beautiful maiden.

  “Her name was Pindi,” Pindi said. “Glou, glou!” All the men frowned at Pindi, and the women hushed her, and she sulked.

  When Tepan asked the maiden who she was, she burst into tears, saying, “No! You must not ask!”

  “My name is Pindi.”

  At first the maiden, whose name was Amanaitu, would not wed Tepan; when at last she agreed, she warned him that he must not try to seek her parents’ consent. But Tepan objected, and finally she led him far away, to her own village.

  Now, the father of Amanaitu was Jaguar, and Jaguar was furious that his daughter had married Man, and would not recognize the union. Jaguar said, “Henceforward, Man and Jaguar shall no more hunt together, nor shall they be friends.”

  “Now it grows bad,” said Tukanu to Moon; like the children, he looked frightened. Only the old women, poking and cackling, seemed more entertained than awed. “How did bad happen?” Tukanu demanded. “How did bad happen?”

  And the day came when an owl appeared to Tepan’s mother to say that Jaguar had killed Tepan.

  “Aow! S-ss-tchuh!” Tukanu blubbered, glaring accusingly at Moon. “Didn’t I say it? And now it grows still worse!”

  The mother of Tepan followed the owl to the village of Jaguar. She recovered her son’s body and returned. At the funeral ceremony, nipi was drunk, and two kinsmen of Tepan volunteered to avenge him. They traveled to Jaguar’s village, where a feast was under way, and there slew both Jaguar and his wife.

  Now his listeners all cried out, but Boronai watched Moon. Moon thought: How calm he is! How well he speaks! And he is telling his story to me, to me. And why?

  The kinsmen were caught, but the people of Jaguar, frightened by so many deaths, forgave them and set them free, calling after them that there should be no more death, that all must live in peace.

  But Amanaitu left Jaguar’s village and went to the village of Tepan, where she slew the men who had killed Jaguar. Then she cried out, “Now there shall be no death!”

  Boronai … He sees me nod—look, he is almost smiling! And how Aeore frowns! Is Aeore the least innocent or the most?

  But a terrible voice rolled from the Heavens: Death! And there was flood and earthquake, wind and fire, and fish swam out on land and crawled, and animals who had lived in peace attacked one another, and most of the Earth’s living things died in the deluge.

  Pindi said, “Glou, glou”; but Moon refused to catch her eye.

  Now the People cried out to the Great Ancestor Witu’mai, “It was not our fault! If Tepan had not killed Caiman, if Jaguar had not killed Tepan—! Is it not the fault of Witu’mai that bad people appear on Earth?”

  Tukanu was furious, pounding his fist upon the ground. “It was not our fault—!”

  Then the People congratulated themselves that an explanation had been found, and that all was well again. But the Ancestor sent a Messenger in the form of Man, saying, “Before this time you lived in eternal darkness and eternal life. Now you must choose, forever. You may have eternal darkness with eternal life, or you may have light and death. If you choose the first, and then take a life among you, you shall thereafter have the second.”

  The People cried, “But why do you make us choose, when we will only quarrel? We were happier before!”

  And they glared at one another, and harangued and fought. Some said that they had had enough of darkness, and others said that they did not wish to die, and others reviled the Messenger for giving them their choice, and slew him. Then the People stopped fighting, and gazed at the Heavens in dismay.

  And the terrible voice came from the Heavens: “You have chosen. You shall have light and death.”

  And the Heavens cleared, and the World was quiet once again. The Sun appeared, and a warm light bathed the World.

  But even as they praised the Sun, an old man died.

  TUKANU was incensed by the visit to the flooded forest, swearing loudly that Aeore’s irresponsible behavior would bring the guhu’mi down upon their heads; in his excitement he also swore that he would take Kisu-Mu there himself and bring back a canoe bursting with game. To prove this, he shot arrows high into the air in demonstration of his prowess. But until the Falling River Time, when the Tuaremi was sucked back into its channel, Tukanu did not go near the deluged regions, nor did any of the others. Pindi told Moon that night spirits roamed the flooded forest even in daylight, and that the giant anacondas came up out of their swamps and swam among the trees. Aeore believed this too, yet he had dared to penetrate the unknown, for he would become a jaguar-shaman, a wanderer of night worlds.

  Aeore was proud of their adventure, and when the rivers fell again he often took Moon in his canoe. They hunted tapir at the salt licks and speared huge pirarucu in the Creek of the Agoutis; they gathered resin for glue and canoe-caulking from the balata trees, and strychnos vines to make curare poison for their arrows. Once, on a journey of several days, they probed the still creeks to the north, and poled across huge viscous swamps where slept the Mother of Anacondas. They cut wild cane to make new shafts, and wandered among sites of ancient villages now overgrown in purple-flowered tonka bean. They studied strange carvings made by the Ancestors on the river rocks, from which Aeore had copied those in his canoe, and they portaged the Monkey Rapids from which the People sprang.

  Rarely did Aeore express himself; their communion was a silent one. He seemed intent on revealing to Kisu-Mu an inner mystery, for what purpose Moon never knew; this mystery became the more obscure the more he tried to solve it. Aeore gave the Great Spirit of the Rain no credit for omniscience, assuming from his ignorance of Niaruna ways that Kisu-Mu had much to learn. Yet he did not permit himself the liberties that Tukanu took with Kisu-Mu; nor would he, Moon thought, until he had resolved a point not even suspected by the others—that Kisu-Mu was not a god at all, but a common trickster, like the trickster turtle.

  ONE evening in this period the young warriors who had served that day as scouts returned from the mission with the new machetes and packets of salt put out on the gift racks. The village split immediately into hostile groups. One of these, led by Aeore and composed largely of those who would not share in the booty, ranted furiously that the white man had come to stay, that he had come as an enemy—had he not brought in Green Indians with their guns?—and that he must be driven out or killed; this group then broke into factions of its own, disputing ownership of the four guns that would be captured in the victory.

  A second group was led by Tukanu, who had acquired one of the machetes, and who—though he had never seen a gun actually fired—asserted forcefully that the Green Indians could kill ten Niaruna with each shot, and that any survivors would be deaf as stones. This estimate of the power of guns had been passed down to Tukanu from those forebears who had participated in the great massacre at the rubber camp, long, long ago.

  The two groups faced each other in the center of the clearing. The men were stiff as stalking dogs, exchanging insults in a vibrant whining singsong and fingering their weapons; much of the abuse was ritualized, one side looking past the other as it spoke, while the recipients of the abuse politely awaited their turn. Then a remark was made which caused both sides to shout at once; Aeore called out that one of Tukanu’s allies had long wished to kill Aeore himself. Since Aeore had ambitions as a shaman, he was simply making a discreet threat on the accused’s life. The threat, with its overtone of sorcery, frightened all the men on both sides, and Boronai, seeing the village on the point of self-destruction, commanded the scouts to return all presents to the racks by sunrise, in the exact position they had found them. The scouts agreed to this more readily than Moon expected, though not before a last sulky exchange which nearly upset the compromise. But once it was seen that nobody would get the presents and that the ban
d would revert to its usual custom of sharing food, feather headdresses, canoes and, under certain circumstances, dogs and wives—everything, in fact, according to the need, except for bows and cooking pots—the hostility vanished quickly, and by the next day all was as gay and amicable as before. After this episode, nevertheless, the factions led by Aeore and Tukanu remained intact.

  So far, Moon had forestalled Aeore’s demand that Boronai attack and kill the missionaries. Guzmán must not be given his excuse to wipe out the Niaruna. He tried to persuade Aeore that if the Niaruna took no notice of the mission, the white men would soon go away; if they did not, the mission gardens could be destroyed and the white men threatened. But Aeore insisted that the white men wished to make slaves of the Niaruna, as the Niaruna once made slaves of the filthy Tiro; that the white men were teaching evil—emita—to Kori’s band, and would do as much for them. Moon tried to understand the latter point, which had something to do with Kisu; but when pressed for an explanation, Aeore only spoke more angrily and incoherently. Boronai and Tukanu, as well, were extremely uneasy on this subject, and refused to talk to him at all.

  The scouts continued to watch the mission, and the day came toward the end of the rainy season when the Hubens and the Green Indians went away downriver, leaving the Quarriers alone. Meanwhile, Tukanu had been seized once more with love for his Taweeda. He wished to abduct her from the mission, and would have done so had not Taweeda herself refused to go along. Taweeda had now become addicted to beads and bandages, and could not understand why Tukanu did not present himself to the missionaries and avail himself of the same supply. At a loss, Tukanu decided to comply. As the band suffered from a shortage of adult women, and since Tukanu seemed convinced that Taweeda would come away with him sooner or later and perhaps bring her husband with her, Boronai gave the love-struck man his blessing.

  Aeore, having first denounced Tukanu, then proclaimed that he too would go along, to make certain that the Farter spoke the truth. Moon persuaded Boronai to go with Aeore, lest Aeore provoke some lethal incident. The headman agreed to this on the condition that he be accompanied by his young wife Pindi, who had come originally from Kori’s band in exchange for the captive nuns, and wished to see her people. For a moment it seemed that the entire group, which a few days before had shouted fiercely for the slaughter of the Quarriers, now meant to go there and befriend them; Moon only suppressed a mass evacuation with the greatest difficulty.