April 16. Casireni.
Rudi Ardiles is a well-made young man with no front teeth and a thin mustache; under the circumstances, the mustache cannot be said to do very much for his appearance. Lugarte’s capitaz—Lugarte himself is absent—dislikes Ardiles and says he is a liar of sorts and that on no account should we risk our lives by going with him through the Pongo; while it is hard to put one’s finger on the liars in these parts, it must be said that Ardiles has a wild and shifty eye.
He appeared in mid-morning, and we set off immediately into the jungle. Toward noon we arrived at the clearing of our second boga-to-be; after a short argument this man was conscripted, and we celebrated the agreement over a bowl of caldito, the watery jungle soup in which, from time to time, one comes upon a piece of chicken. In the yard before us a large butterfly hunched along the ground, black as a burned cinder; it raised its wings suddenly, and the undersides were vivid yellow.
In a few minutes we were off again, Ardiles and the new man, Julio, forging ahead up a very steep jungle trail—at one point that afternoon the river was more than a mile below. Since Julio was, if anything, even less clean-cut in appearance than Ardiles, and since they had with them a good part of our gear, I attempted to keep up with them. It was impossible: the endurance of these people is subhuman. I got far ahead of Andrés and our faithful Alejandro, however, and for the next two hours, the difficult ascents and occasional cliff-hanging excepted, enjoyed myself very much. It was a sunny afternoon and, while humid, not uncomfortable in the shade, and I was able to absorb the atmosphere of mountain jungle as I went. As we descend the river the palms increase in variety and number—there are said to be over one hundred species of palms in the Peruvian jungles alone—and in one of these the ten to twelve thorny roots merge to form the trunk at least fifteen feet above the ground. There is also a tree with roots crimson in color; these roots are frequently exposed along the trail. The dominant tree, however, is still the tall white leche-leche.
There were new bird calls and many butterflies, a huge emerald and mauve cricket, and the largest black ant I have yet seen: this beast, an inch long, looked capable of killing one outright. The flowers, more scattered now, are nonetheless numerous and pretty: there is a violet-like species, and a blue-flowered vine, and a lovely orange bell flower. Some of the epiphytes and parasitic plants are starting to appear—one has clusters of tomato-colored berries. At the end of the trail, on the cliff overlooking the river, I came on a stone inscribed with a curious design, like a posed spider. Though not large, it was too heavy to add to our sacks, and I left it behind with regret.
The trail ended in the papaya grove of a Señor Olarte, presently away in Quillabamba; I was offered a papaya and a lemon by a peon and ate them greedily. Ardiles and Julio, with a boy from the Olarte hacienda, were repairing the promised balsa and have cut three new logs for it. The logs are trunks of the balsa tree, a species common on these upper rivers and the one from which the very light wood of children’s model airplanes and other toys is derived: the trees are stripped of their green bark and lashed into place with liana vines. The machete is the only tool used by these people to construct what can be a very large and able craft. Ours is somewhat less than that, having a certain fly-by-night air about it: the poles of a first-class balsa are pegged together with hardwood spikes, cut usually from the black cortex of the chonta palm, while our poles are unpegged. Julio, in fact, made no secret of his contempt for our craft, which seems to me a rather unhealthy attitude.
I photographed the building process—the first photographs I have taken in some days, as the camera has been tied into a rubber bag while traveling, because of the frequent stream and river crossings and the rain. Unlimbering it has been more trouble than I have cared to take, perhaps because I dislike carrying a camera: it seems to me that one misses a great deal of seeing and feeling through thinking of one’s experience in terms of light and angle.
The photographic duties done, I washed myself in the river, which was cold and roiled. Then, sitting on a rock, I washed out my socks and shirt, both in a state of dire emergency. After this, naked in the sun, I devoured a second papaya I had brought along. I rarely exult over food, which does not fascinate me unduly, but the excellence of this papaya can scarcely be appreciated by anyone who has not subsisted for a week on the white mealiness of boiled yuca.
When my shirt was dry I visited the balsa-builders: they were not finished, and we decided to put off our departure until morning. I returned to the hacienda, climbing up through large banana groves. There Andrés and Alejandro had arrived at last, and both of them were prostrate. I gathered that Andrés had had a bad time of it on the trail, and feel very guilty about it. Poor Andrés expected a calm journey by canoe, surrounded by all his beloved gear, and instead he has spent the last three days stumbling up and down these steep jungle valleys, with nothing certain at the end of it but another dirt floor and more yuca. His clothes are torn and his legs are swollen, and he carries with him a secret dread about his heart. But he scarcely complains, and, as the saying goes, I hope I am half the man he is when I reach his age.
We have now marched from above the Sirialo to well below the Casireni, a negligible distance on the river but a formidable route overland, burdened with gear. Actually we have walked little more than fifteen hours in the past three days, not counting delays and rests, but anyone willing to try this goat path in its present condition for five hours in the heat of a jungle day—anyone, that is, who is not of Quechua extraction and equipped with Quechua lungs, as all these mestizos appear to be—is welcome to do so, with my blessings. I can only say that Andrés Porras Cáceres, a very durable man, will not walk another step if he has to go through the Pongo de Mainique on a papaya rind.
It seems, at last, that our days on foot are over. I am tired myself, and my impressions of our route are blurred, for most of the time, trudging and clambering and sliding onward, I stared at the ground in order to find my footing. But there were some fine moments as well as painful ones—the cold water drunk face down in white mountain streams, the mysterious cries and bird calls, the light-dappled forest stretched high above the roaring river, the scarlet macaws—bolivars or papagayos—which followed us with their raucous screeches, the long files of leaf-cutting ants swaying along with their burdens, like an endless thin green snake, the perched wood butterflies with the strange “eye” on the underside of their lifted wings, and the “eyes” themselves, staring owlishly from the jungle shadows. These details I shall remember longer than the muddy hillsides, the dry, rasping canebrakes, the palm thickets and thorns, the fierce humidity.
April 17. Pangoa.
In regard to weather, we have had bad luck on the river. Today it is raining hard again—it has rained hard at least once every day—and the brown river with its dark, dense green walls is cheerless. We shoved the raft into the current about 7 a.m., and at 7:02 were thrashing toward the bank again, perilously awash; we needed at least two more balsa poles, and Rudi and Julio went into the forest to cut and strip them.
By nine we were off again into the rain, and immediately the river seized us up and bore us remorselessly toward our first emergency, at a mal paso which the Machiguengas call Vacanique, or Cattle Drowning Place: we came over a shallow fall into a strong whirlpool, or remolino, and Ardiles’s uncapsizable craft for a few horrid moments rode at a forty-five-degree angle. In the process waves smashed across the raft and bore away the largest of our sacks. The sack floated, and we retrieved it farther down, only to note for the first time that it had two capacious holes in it, in addition to my sleeping bag.
Bacanique was the worst passage of the day, though several others were a little tight. Had the sun been shining, the whole business might have been quite exhilarating, but the rain poured down and a cold wind was blowing up the valley, and the wildlife which might have stimulated us consisted of one orange serpent, drowned and belly-up in the swollen river. We paddled furiously all morning, not only to avo
id the falls, or tumbos, and the remolinos, but to keep warm, for as a safety measure we were near-naked in our underpants. The raft was permanently awash, to a point above the ankles in the smooth stretches and above the navel—we were sitting—in the rapids. At midday the rain stopped at last, and shortly thereafter, exhausted by a mal paso called Quirimotini, or Place of the River Demon, we beached the raft on a gravel island and rested. A pisco bottle was produced, and a little water-logged yuca, and Julio supplied us with a big jawful of coca, the juices of which, when swallowed, produce a numb, pleasant sensation, a relief from both cold and hunger, and even a vague serenity of mind—one sees immediately why this plant is carried everywhere by the Quechuas, whose bleak existence might otherwise be insupportable. Our Alejandro is a Quechua, and the coca and pisco had a strong effect on him: manning one of the bow paddles when we took to the river once again, he failed to squat when we plunged into a rapid, swaying fearlessly until a shout brought him to his senses.
Just below Olarte’s we had glimpsed two small haciendas: from that point onward we had traveled in Machiguenga country controlled by the Pereiras, though we had seen no sign of human habitation. Even the animals kept their distance, though after the rain had stopped, the birds began to move a little—we saw a few parrots and parakeets and a single flock of macaws. I questioned Ardiles about the trees, and he pointed out a hardwood he called sandematico, which he said was used commonly for canoas. Julio said that monkeys were common in these valleys—as a matter of fact, we ate one last night at Olarte’s, an experience I don’t care to repeat soon again—but we saw none, though we heard everywhere the small white chito, which sounds like a full-throated bird.
In a few hours on the river we had covered twice the distance made in all the past three days on foot.
In the early afternoon the hacienda of Fidel Pereira came into view, high up on a bank at a bend of the river. We wished to stop, but Ardiles, plainly uneasy, stalled around until the swift current had swept us irretrievably past. He repeated an earlier claim that the old man had become extremely difficult and kept an armed guard of Machiguengas to waylay trespassers, and said that we would be far better off in the hands of one of his sons, his own good friend Epifanio. Some Indians attached to Fidel Pereira came to the bank and watched us in silence until we disappeared around the bend.
Epifanio Pereira, a round-faced young man with a permanent vague smile and an air so innocent as to be rather disconcerting, greeted us cheerfully enough farther down the river at Pangoa; Pangoa, the monkey demon associated with the fogs on a nearby peak, is the name of the old man’s former chacra, now worked by Epifanio. At the moment the hacienda consists of one very large high shed, open on all sides, under the eaves of which is a small loft in which Epifanio has his bed; below, there are a rough table and some bins of drying coffee, and around the edges the Indian fires. Spears, bows and arrows, tom-toms, cane baskets, feather apparel, and other equipment of the Indians are strung from the cross beams, and there are, in addition, two small, low Indian palm-leaf huts. Two Indian women, an old squaw and a girl, were squatting over a fire before one of the huts, and two other girls were washing coffee beans in a log trough at the mouth of a small brook. Just after we arrived four men appeared out of the canebrake behind the hacienda and stood watching us with that implacable Indian silence; the women, on the other hand, would not look at us and kept their backs to us whenever possible. All of the Indians were dressed in the poncho-like cushma, a coarse cloth woven from wild cotton, with black, brown, and red stripes.
Ardiles had suggested that the friendship of Epifanio could be won by an offering of pisco, which is hard to come by in the jungle; we placed a half-bottle—we now have a single bottle left—at his disposal, and he drank it off, without apparent effect, almost immediately.
The sun came out in the middle of the afternoon, too late to dry anything; my poor saturated sleeping bag is all one man can carry, and I’m not quite sure where I’m going to lay my head. Not that I shall probably sleep very much in any case, for Andrés tells me I am subject to bodily harm. I have had a stupid dispute with Ardiles, at the end of which I told him that he was sin vergüenza: I should have known better, and I did, but I lost my temper. The expression, mild enough in translation—it means “without shame,” or simply “shameless”—invariably produces an important reaction in Spanish countries, and especially, perhaps, in South America, in the wilder regions of which it is often more sensible to kill a man than to insult him. In any case, Ardiles feels mortally insulted and is openly plotting revenge.
Briefly, Ardiles, sensing our desperation, charged us a bandit’s fee for his services; he excused it by saying that most of it would go toward paying two bogas for their dangerous work. If they did not receive very high salaries, they would not come. But there was only one boga—actually, we needed three—and Andrés, Alejandro, and I did the work of the other. Therefore I suggested to Ardiles that the fee was a little high. He demanded the full fee, however, and since he has us by the throats, I had to pay it. But I also told him what I thought of him, to the dismay of Andrés, who was standing just behind him. “You’ve made a hell of a mess now,” Andrés said to me in English; I can’t recall ever having heard him swear before. Andrés was already seizing the arm of Ardiles, who was on the point of hurling the money to the ground; Andrés signaled to me to go away and let him handle it, and I am watching them now from the table. For the past two hours Andrés has not once let go of Ardiles’s arm, and he has now got him to sit down on a log, down by the river. The Machiguengas and Epifanio (who is three-fourths Indian himself) are observing the whole business with a kind of wary calm, like watchful animals, and Epifanio is still smiling, if that expression of his can really be called a smile.
Andrés’s heroic efforts have now brought about an uneasy truce, though Andrés himself is most unhappy about the present state of affairs. Ardiles has a code and pride of sorts, and it may be that the reason he is so angry is that he does not feel entirely right about his own position. Nevertheless, he is still talking wildly of revenge—quite seriously, according to Andrés. Ardiles is a Quechua mestizo who feels he has always been cheated and insulted by gringos—and his insistence on the word “gringo” was a factor in the dispute which caused me to lose my temper, though Andrés now assures me that the term applies to all fair-skinned people, not just Americans, and is not insulting in itself. Ardiles is anxious that I pay the penalty for all the gringos in his past. I’m not anxious to pay, of course. Andrés has warned me to keep my revolver under my head tonight, and I think I’ll accept this advice, though I believe the whole thing will blow over. Somehow, Andrés has gotten the money into Ardiles’s proud pocket, which is a big step forward. Andrés’s position with Ardiles is that I do not speak Spanish well enough to realize what I am saying, which is probably true enough; also, I have contributed an apology to the cause. The apology was neither gracefully delivered nor graciously received, but, on theory, it permits Ardiles to have his pride and money too.
One reason Andrés is so worried is that the dispute occurred after Pereira had agreed to get us through the Pongo on a balsa. It now appears that Ardiles is Pereira’s brother-in-law and could probably dissuade the latter from assisting us. Should Ardiles provoke a fight, we would be badly outnumbered; we cannot count on Alejandro, and our opponents, besides Pereira, Ardiles, and Julio, would include a number of Machiguengas, whose arrows, Mr. Jolly claims, can “bring down a hummingbird … at forty feet.” But the alternative—Pereira’s refusal, that is, to help us—wouldn’t be much better, as we can go neither upriver nor down without his cooperation and, under the circumstances, would not be safe where we are even if we had enough to eat. Fortunately, however, Andrés has already suggested to Epifanio that he might be able to use his influence in Lima to help Epifanio obtain some sort of legitimate title to Pangoa, and as Epifanio already has the scent of our dwindling cash, he is, if anything, on our side, at least for the moment. We are all quite aw
are that he and his Indians could take our guns, money, and equipment by force, should they choose to do so, and possibly it is only the prospect of assistance with the land title which deters him. In any case, he is charging us the same high fee as Ardiles did, excusing this breach of his father’s long tradition of hospitality with the confession that he owes so much money in Cuzco that he can no longer go there. We are taking the punishment lying down, and even smiling, for, as Andrés says, we have no choice in the matter and these people know it. Andrés is furious and swears that one day he will even the score.
Our dinner of banana soup went peacefully enough, and even Ardiles and myself managed to address each other in abrupt asides. Meanwhile, the Machiguengas have toasted my sleeping bag over their fire, a permanent installation centered between the burning ends of three large logs; the logs are inched forward as they dwindle. The Indians have relaxed somewhat, and some of them are giggling at our various eccentricities of dress and behavior; they are an open-faced and wide-mouthed lot, very appealing. One of their legends is that long ago their god took away their wisdom and cleverness because the child of this beneficent spirit, while entrusted to them, was swallowed by the river demon of the Pongo de Mainique. The wisdom was given to the whites, or gringos, who have put it to use in the manufacture of billboards and hydrogen bombs: one day, the Machiguengas hope, their god will relent, and their former cleverness will be restored to them, but for the moment they have resigned themselves to both ignorance and stupidity, a marvelous stroke of luck for the Pereiras and other patrones who have enslaved them.
The Cloud Forest Page 20
