Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  Michelle Mabelle, different from J.B., had always harbored extreme embarrassment and shame about her unusual trinity. But like J.B.—who always retained, despite his successes, an unassuming air, that of an obscure bureaucrat—Michelle was a sort of wallflower, albeit a French one. But while J.B. had, like most Americans, no known ancestry to which he might trace his working-class dilettantism, Michelle came from a long line of bird lovers. It was said that her great-grandfather, while studying a strange species of cockatoo, had met Paul Gauguin in Tahiti. And drawings of North American birds by her great-aunt, who had immigrated to French Canada, predated those of John J. Audubon.

  In the beginning, J.B., occupied as he was with feathers and the pursuit of the excellence of his obscurity through GGG, only saw before him a French ornithologist with an encyclopedic knowledge of pertinent details. Little did he realize that this bird professor with the French-speaking parrot on her shoulder was the very salvation for his third arm, otherwise doomed to tropical atrophy.

  As for Michelle, she had long ago decided to revive the memory of her French-Canadian aunt in the history of women ornithologists. She had no time for the song and dance of male suitors and was certainly averse to the humiliation of being exposed to any instincts she might arouse in a possible admirer. It was not until J.B. innocently fluttered his additional plumage that Michelle felt her own instincts awaken, her three (heretofore disinterested) mammaries mellow like papayas, ready to burst with new-found succulence. Had it not been for the presence of Mané Pena, sawing abstractly at his right ear with a feather, Michelle would have torn her blouse open in a similar gesture of unabashed honesty.

  J.B., who had maintained, even in Brazil (the home of Sonia Braga, Jorge Amado, and the Girl from Ipanema), a life of routine amenities—sorting his beloved clip collection into complicated classifications known solely to J.B., viewing old videotaped movies and National Geographic specials while eating microwaved leftovers, soaking in a hot tub filled with some green mineral powder imported from Japan, a solitary evening at the keyboard with a midi synthesizer after a hard day at the office—suddenly discovered his capacity for insatiable lust. Night after night, one wild weekend after the next, J.B. and Michelle attempted to exhaust the possibilities of unmitigated pleasure.

  “I never knew life could be like this,” sighed J.B., who finally thought he had discovered an activity at which he excelled, but for which his interest would never diminish. His third arm swelled with muscular virility.

  “Moi non plus,” admitted Michelle whose three nipples grazed his chest like the concerted beaks of a trio of sea gulls skimming the waves for perch.

  “Liberty. Equality. Fraternity,” J.B. spoke and pointed lovingly to each mammary from left to right as if these personal designations were tattooed to each breast.

  Michelle’s parrot, observing J.B. from the foot of the bed with a certain hostility, suddenly began to scream the Marseillaise with exaggerated pride.

  “Polly want a croissant?” J.B. asked warily.

  Michelle crawled over, pulling the sheets with her, to speak to the parrot. “Ah, mon cheri,” she said soothingly to the bird. “You aren’t jealous, are you, Napoleon darling?” Michelle cut a piece of Camembert from a round on the bed stand and held the particularly moist and pungent cheese in front of Napoleon’s beak. After a pause, the parrot pecked at her fingers, ate the cheese with wounded pride, then perched with its head poised to one side and defecated over the side of the bed.

  “Do they all eat that stuff?” asked J.B., gesturing with one of his arms at Michelle’s collection of parakeets, cockatoos, doves, and rare birds, all staring from a spreading array of cages now crowding his apartment. He thought a clip collection was much more pragmatic; he could get most of it into a few boxes. The important part of his collection he could actually toss into his pockets.

  “Oh no, Jonathan, darling. Of course not.” Michelle said seriously. “Did you see the mangoes and the papayas that arrived yesterday? Those are for the toucans. And I’ve been very fortunate to get an exceptionally good blend of well-seasoned seed from that Djapan acquaintance we met the other evening. How do you say? Batista was his name.”

  In the mornings, J.B. got used to being awoken by the chatter and screech of what seemed to him a jungle of birds. Michelle explained that among tropical birds, constant duetting was necessary to maintain their bonds in the dense forest. With the advent of Michelle, J.B.’s apartment began to seem like an aviary, his clip collection relegated to a few insignificant shelves along with some old 9.99 objects that J.B. had grown accustomed to. Michelle hired a full-time birdkeeper, who was endlessly filling water troughs and seed feeders and cleaning cages.

  Michelle had names for all her birds, besides the Latin classifications, which J.B. could never remember. The cockatoos were Mimi and Charles, Genevieve and Pierre. The parakeets had names like Guy, Jean-Jacques, Catherine, and Phillipe.

  The toucans were Sartre, Rousseau, and Voltaire.

  Besides Napoleon, there were other talking parrots whose repertoires were equally impressive. Some parrots spoke as many as five languages. Michelle also received as gifts a couple of mynahs who spoke Portuguese. Neither Michelle nor J.B. understood the Brazilian slang, and the bird caretaker wouldn’t explain any of it. “Nonsense,” the caretaker excused himself while the mynahs mocked with gleeful enthusiasm, “Arara fresca só fala français!” (That snob of a parrot only speaks in French.) “A perereca da vizinha ’tá presa na gaiola!” (Literally, the neighbor’s frog is imprisoned in a cage . . .) or “Ei meu amigo, a terçeira e prá coçar saco!” (Eh my friend, the third one is for scratching his balls.)

  J.B. sympathized with the American magpie, Butch, who spoke only English. Often Michelle would find J.B. conversing with Butch. “Hey brother,” Butch would be saying, “Chill out. Jus’ chill out and cruise, baby!”

  And J.B. would insist, “Butch, it’s not like you think. I mean, what if GGG begins to actually appreciate me. Up until now, I’ve had the security of a Japanese businessman but the advantages of an American worker with mobility and the added excitement of instability.”

  “Jus’ cruise. Jus’ cruise,” was Butch’s standard advice.

  “But I don’t want to be appreciated. I want to be left alone! I want inconspicuous control!” complained J.B.

  Michelle surprised J.B. from behind and forced herself into his embrace. “What is it you are discussing with Butch? Always talking with Butch. Perhaps you have forgotten poor Michelle?”

  “I’m worried about my job at GGG,” confessed J.B.

  “Worried about GGG?” Michelle tittered with amusement. “Whatever for?”

  “I think they’re beginning to notice me.”

  “And why shouldn’t they? You are probably the most important person in the entire company! You do everything!” said Michelle enthusiastically.

  “No, Michelle,” groaned J.B. He did not want to know that he might have, in fact, maneuvered himself to a height from which one could easily be kicked off. “Tomorrow morning, I’m going to send out a memo and demote myself back to Associate Director,” J.B. said resolutely.

  “It will just cause gossip,” Michelle said knowingly. “People will say that so-and-so was jealous and slept with so-and-so and you got a raw deal. They will love and notice you even more!” Michelle smiled.

  J.B. sighed. He had always admired, not the visible presidents, but those people behind the scenes, the national security advisors and aides-de-camp, the former chairman of the board, the anonymous party who held 51 percent of the stock, influenced crucial decisions and sometimes, unknown to others, secretly controlled everything. With this in mind, J.B. worked incessantly to retain anonymity and to keep everything and everyone flowing past him into the limelight. After all, J.B. admired the simplicity of the clip, something that held papers together in a neat batch—nothing fancy, taken for granted but indispensable. But it was indeed true that J.B. was responsible for the enormous success of GG
G Enterprises, for its pioneering activities in featherology and plastics, its singular control of those markets, and GGG’s skyrocketing stocks on Wall Street. That J.B., flitting from one position and project to the next, clipping papers together within GGG, had a hand in everything and somehow controlled and wielded enormous power had never been apparent to anyone, until Michelle, the French ornithologist, appeared.

  It was not that Michelle spoke up in public. The simple presence of that suddenly radiant Frenchwoman was enough to make anyone notice the man at her side.

  Certainly Batista questioned the presence of the strange, lopsided American. Batista had first noticed Michelle one evening at Hiro’s Karaoke. Hiro’s Karaoke had naturally opened a place on the Matacão to capture the evening tourist trade. After a day of doing the Amazon jungle tour or tanning oneself on the north end of the Matacão, people were ready for an evening of Matacão enchantment, as the tour guidebooks all talked of it. Hiro’s was a five-star sort of place. You could meet celebrities there actually paying to sing their own songs. Michelle loved to go to Hiro’s in the evening, coaxing J.B. away from his clip collection so that she could dedicate and sing for him the theme song from Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Batista noticed the Frenchwoman singing because of the parrot on her shoulder. When he was away from his birds, he missed them and felt pleasantly surprised to see the parrot at Hiro’s. In fact, the parrot Napoleon was a kind of karaoke fanatic himself. Batista watched with amusement when Napoleon sang along with Michelle or even agreed to a solo. Batista made his introductions by sending a bag of his special Djapan birdseed over to Michelle’s table.

  Michelle was quite impressed with Batista’s birdseed, especially since the very picky Napoleon, who would usually eat only Camembert, actually ate the stuff. She had heard of the Djapan champions and knew of the world records set by his birds in long-distance flying time from the Matacão to São Paulo. She was also aware that it had been the first time that homers had ever been sent out from the center of the Amazon. It was an exceptional triumph, and she called Batista over to their table to tell him so. “I have been telling J.B. about your champions and we would like very much to meet them,” Michelle said sincerely.

  “Well,” said Batista, “Most of my best birds are at home in São Paulo. I’m only here temporarily.” Batista paused. He had been saying this for the past six months, but he was still here on the Matacão, and Tania Aparecida was saying something about branching out the operation and setting up a post on the Matacão. She had sent several champion couples via airplane to the Matacão, saying she knew how much Batista must be missing his birds and suggesting that his idea about homing birds to the Matacão was a brilliant one. Batista rubbed a pigeon feather madly over his ear, trying diligently to control his anger. Brilliant idea? What brilliant idea? But Batista knew that she was right. He had her to thank for making Djapan Enterprises a real business. They were actually becoming very successful. So he went to work, leasing the roofs of several buildings on the Matacão and setting up his pigeon cages. Tania Aparecida had set a goal of five hundred birds to start, eventually growing to a couple thousand more. It wasn’t impossible, she said, if you worked it out on a calculator. Batista sighed. In time he would have pigeons procreating on, and flying to, almost every roof on the Matacão.

  “Who takes care of your birds in São Paulo?” Michelle asked.

  “My wife. She’s takes care of everything,” Batista almost groaned.

  “How good it is to have a partner who can handle both your business affairs and the affairs of love,” said Michelle snuggling closer to J.B., who simply nodded at Michelle’s bird conversation.

  “I suppose,” wondered Batista. The last time he’d seen Tania Aparecida, she was a reflection in the rearview mirror of his truck. He had talked to her on the phone once or twice, but more often, a truckload of pigeons would meet him somewhere on the Matacão with a longish note of instructions and her fluttering love banter, which only made him more anxious. Batista’s gaze grazed the Frenchwoman’s double cleavage; he watched the perspiration break out on his beer glass and wondered how he was going to get some relief. All of his pigeon couples were busy copulating on the rooftops all up and down the Matacão. If he could just be released from his invisible cage, he could beat the human record for getting back to his nest. Batista fumbled for his feather. He would just get back to work, moving from roof-top to rooftop, running those birds in and out of the Matacão.

  It was his turn to sing. Smiling at J.B. and Michelle, he stood up. The women in Hiro’s all gazed with longing at his handsome features, all internalized the sound of his voice and understood the meaning of his emotions to be as their own.

  CHAPTER 20:

  Promises

  After some inquiries, Chico Paco soon got hold of a fledgling station that broadcast country music near the Matacão. Presently, Radio Chico was on the air with country music and a new show called “Answered Prayers.”

  Chico Paco went over with his pile of letters and a look of confusion on his face to see Mané Pena’s secretary, Carlos. Carlos, who was as efficient as Mané Pena had said, quickly sorted out the letters. He pointed out that the letters could be classified into several catagories: fan letters and personal questions about Chico Paco (the color of his eyes, et cetera), pleas for carrying out promises, requests for advice, and some hate mail. Finally, there were a few letters from people who claimed that they, too, had made similar journeys to satisfy promises for the sake of some miracle or answered prayer. Carlos prepared a form letter on the computer and answered most of the mail himself. Many letters of support were simply read over the air on Radio Chico.

  The letters from persons who had spoken of making similar pilgrimages for answered prayers were answered personally by Chico Paco:

  “Dear Brother/Sister So-and-So: I was pleased to read your letter and learn that I am not alone in my mission to walk for answered prayers. Everyday I receive requests from the blessed who need our help. I am only one man with two feet. Can you help me?”

  To Chico Paco’s surprise and delight, the response to his own letters was overwhelming. Past pilgrims from all over Brazil converged on the Matacão and the headquarters for “Answered Prayers” to commit themselves to new pilgrimages. In a matter of weeks, Chico Paco surrogates were marching forth from every possible place in Brazil, some walking barefoot, some on their knees, some lugging crosses, others waving banners, bearing abandoned crutches, pushing empty wheelchairs, heading processions with saints carved in wood and plaster of Paris, all in a direction toward the Matacao, all complying with some promise to walk for an answered prayer.

  Back at Radio Chico, a growing number of personnel, volunteers, and Chico Paco enthusiasts carefully followed the progress of each pilgrim on enormous wall maps. Radio Chico was kept informed by several jeeps with long-distance connections that were employed to track down and follow the pilgrims and update the show’s listeners. Chico Paco himself hosted the show.

  “Brother Zé!” Chico Paco would speak to the pilgrim in some remote town in Goiás. “Hallelujah! You are nearing your destination.”

  “That’s so!” Pilgrim Zé would proclaim. “And I want to send my abiding love to my family and to Dona Mariamelia Rosa for whom I am making this great walk.”

  “Praise the Lord!” said Chico Paco, hailing his distant pilgrim on. “I believe Sister Clara, who is marching from Paraná, will be meeting you in a few days. Our reports show that she is not but a few miles from where you are.”

  “Sister Clara and I will walk to the Matacão together!” announced Brother Zé.

  “And I will meet you personally as you arrive!”

  The popularity of Chico Paco’s “Answered Prayers” was so enormous that shows were rebroadcast or pumped live to a growing number of stations all over the nation. As Chico Paco’s pilgrims marched to the Matacão, money poured into Radio Chico, “Answered Prayers,” and the new parent institution, the Foundation for Votive Pilgrimages.

&nbs
p; Everywhere, people were proclaiming the new church on the radio waves, the living angels marching toward the Matacão and the growth of a new and popular faith based on the renewed belief in prayer itself, Chico Paco as a new religious leader and his pilgrims, now referred to as the New Disciples.

  Lourdes, back in São Paulo, listened to the radio with great interest. She had followed the progress of Chico Paco to the Matacão and, weeping tears of joy, observed his arrival for the sake of her son, Rubens. Rubens himself was ecstatic to learn that Chico Paco had released his pigeon from the Matacão. When Radio Chico went national, Lourdes, like so many others, became an avid listener, almost abandoning the prime-time television soap operas. Besides the live updates of “Answered Prayers,” Chico Paco hosted another popular show which interviewed various pilgrims and the actual people whose prayers had been answered, recounted numerous stories of pilgrimages, and gave accounts of famous pilgrims in history. There was also a show in which members from opposing positions on religious issues—usually regarding miracles or answered prayers, saints, and blessing techniques—were invited to debate their opinions. There was also a call-in show in which listeners telephoned and expressed their concerns and experiences on live radio. Throughout the programming, by calling in and giving the correct answer—often the name of a pilgrim or saint for the week—listeners could win free trips to the Matacão or certificates entitling them to one surrogate pilgrim for any answered prayer.

  This was how Lourdes won a trip to the Matacão.

  Now, Kazumasa and I had not returned to São Paulo. In fact, besides a postcard or two, Lourdes had not heard anything at all about Kazumasa for several months. She had asked Hiroshi about Kazumasa, but Hiroshi had received only a cryptic note about Kazumasa’s having to stay longer in the north. “Don’t worry about him. He’s used to traveling, that ball and him,” Hiroshi told her. “Come out with me for an evening of karaoke,” he urged Lourdes.