Through his interpreter, Father Napier asked if Danny and Beatrice were there and was disappointed to find that they had already pushed further south to where the rest of the Wai-Wai lived in Brazil. They had exchanged large amounts of cassava bread for a hunting dog.
People wandered about completing their last chores before getting into their hammocks and chatting.
Father Napier’s enquiries about Danny and Beatrice produced an unexpected result. The young man he had found so breathtakingly beautiful jumped down from his hammock and appeared to be asking permission to do something from one of the older men who nodded his head in assent. The boy was the same boy that Danny had taken hunting and fishing when some of the Wai-Wai passed through Waronawa. His name was Wario.
Immediately, he took a stick and poked the embers of the central fire until the subdued glow broke into flames which flickered over the disintegrating logs and white wood ash like snake-tongues. Men and women lolled in their hammocks watching him.
He had dispensed with his feather ornaments and wore nothing but a loin cloth made of thick material from which hung one tassel of feathers. Father Napier gazed at him entranced. Wario prodded the embers again and began to whisper in a hoarse voice which everyone could hear, but in a language which Father Napier could not understand.
The priest watched as the androgynous boy began not only to narrate, but to act out the parts of each character.
‘A long time ago, Nuni made love to his sister. Yes, he made love to his own sister.’
Wario hugged his chest while he spoke, as if the dying fire did not keep him warm enough, and then he made a long, low sucking noise as he drew in his breath through his lips.
The darkness of the congealed night felt almost palpably dense to Father Napier as he stared at the boy’s fine limbs and flat stomach. There was the sort of silence throughout the house that meant everyone was listening.
‘He came into his sister’s arms right after playing the flute. His spirit remained playing the flute but his body came and lay down beside her.
‘ “Hello, darling, I want to lie in your arms.”
‘ “Is that so? All right. Jump up into my hammock.”
‘ “All right.”
‘ “Who are you?”
‘ “I’m from another village far away. I’ve come to lie with you.”
‘ “All right. Get up in the hammock then.”
‘And he climbed into the hammock and made love to her.
‘ “I’m going back home now.”
‘ “All right. Why did you come?”
‘ “I just came. That’s all.”
‘The flute was still playing, the sound of it running along the breeze.
‘The next night he came again. He left his spirit to play the flute and let his body come to her. He came over and over again.’
Wario stopped speaking and crouched to throw some aromatic hiawa gum in the embers. The resin cracked and popped. Soon the air filled with a sharp, pungent smell like eucalyptus. He continued, now acting the girl’s part, an expression of fear on his face.
‘ “Why does he keep coming?” she asked herself.
‘ “You must live close by. If your home is so far away, how is it you come so often?”
‘ “To tell you the truth, I used to be terribly lazy. I’ve had to overcome all my laziness in order to visit you this often. I tell you, I come from far.”
‘Maybe it’s my own brother who’s coming, she thought.’
Wario placed his hand over his heart and shrank back in a gesture of wariness.
‘That night, to catch him out, she painted him with genipap all over his face. His face got very black.
‘ “Hey. What did she put on me?” ’
There was a look of disgust on Wario’s face as he wiped his cheek and examined his palm.
‘It would not come off. He didn’t come back until after sunset. He had only caught one labba because he spent all the time trying to get the black marks off his face. It would not come off. It was there to stay.’
The fire next to Wario blazed up a little just as the other fires were dying down. Father Napier continued to gaze in admiration at the boy’s crow-black hair and the attractive forward thrust of his wide mouth.
A lizard, overcome by the heat, fell out of the thatch to the ground. Most people were awake and listening or just drowsing off. If a child cried, the mother would take it into her hammock. Father Napier was captivated by the youth’s movements and gestures although he did not understand one word of the story.
Wario walked a few paces up and down, shaking and shuddering.
‘The brother went away for ages. He was too ashamed to face his sister. But when eventually he returned, she took his arm and swung him round.’
Once more acting the part of the girl, the same look of distrust as before leapt into Wario’s face.
‘ “It was you who made love to me.”
‘She saw him in the daylight. He had been too tired to leave in the dark as he usually did. He had his face covered with his hands.
‘ “Oh my eyes are hurting. Oh my eyes are killing me.”
‘ “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
‘ “My eyes are stinging.”
‘She pulled his hands away and saw the black patterns on his face.
‘ “You’re lying. You fucked me as if I was from another family.” ’
Wario looked round at his audience in the dim light, about to bring his story to a close.
‘The brother changed after that. He was sad because he knew that he could not have his sister for his wife here on earth, so he rushed out of his hut with his bow and arrows. He came to a clearing and shot an arrow into the sky. It stuck there. He shot another into the butt of the first and so on until he made a ladder of arrows from the ground to the sky. He climbed up until he reached the sky. His sister came after him naked, having thrown away her skirt.’
Wario mimed climbing into the sky, arm over arm.
‘In those days there was no moon. So, after he reached the sky, he became the moon. That’s why the moon’s got a dirty face. She became the evening star. They were able to live together in the sky.’
Father Napier tried to exert an iron will over his erection as he gazed at the young story-teller. He tried to quench it. He prayed. He imagined his whole body cased in metal. He imagined Christ’s image blazing in the heavens and as he turned his head away, he ejaculated uncontrollably and lay staring at the damp thatch, filled with misery, shame and pleasure.
At that point, a short tubby man with a flat nose and shiny hair that swung as he walked climbed out of his hammock and in full view of everyone started to mimic the walk of a tapir. Even Father Napier, when he looked round, recognised the animal, the man was so accurate and comical in his impersonation. His behind wobbled obscenely. He stopped and sniffed the air, peering short-sightedly into the gloom. He whistled like a tapir and lifted up his loin cloth to examine his genitals and blow on them. People began to chuckle.
‘We have a different version,’ said one of the Taruma from where his hammock hung in the gloom.
‘We say that the brother became the sun and she became the moon. He is still chasing her round the sky. Whenever he catches her and makes love to her there is an eclipse. Demons come from the forest and rivers to attack people. Those massive camoodies in the rivers raise their heads from the water to see why the sky has gone dark.’
‘They say the moon is the nocturnal sun,’ chipped in somebody else.
A sleepy argument followed about how, if that were the case, you can sometimes see both the sun and the moon in the sky together.
Little by little, conversation stopped and people slept. Father Napier tried to focus his mind on his plans for the next day, ignoring the stickiness between his legs.
Occasionally, during the night, there was a cough or a moan. Once or twice, people who were cold got up to revive one of the dying fires and talk quietly beside it for a while
.
The River of the Dead
In unremitting heat, like a steam bath, Beatrice and Danny paddled down the olive-green waters of the River Kassikaitiu.
Danny wore nothing but a pair of white shorts. Beatrice had hitched her blue skirt into the waistband and wore one of Danny’s vests. In the back of the boat lay the brown and white hunting dog that Danny had been given by the Wai-Wai. Roots and dead lianas protruded in a stiff tangle from the high sandy banks on either side.
As they passed, a flock of scarlet macaws that had been resting at different angles on these branches took off. Their bright-blue tail feathers flashed in the sun as the stubby bodies and long tails wheeled and they flew screaming into the sky and settled, almost out of sight, in the top of the tallest trees.
‘The Taruma call this the River of the Dead,’ said Danny.
The Taruma had so named the Kassikaitiu because in times of severe drought, when the waters were low, there were ancient petroglyph writings on the rocks at the base of the river. These writings were rarely visible. They were reckoned to be older than the great flood which once submerged the region. The Taruma said that it was by means of those marks, halfway between writing and drawing, that the dead were still able to speak to the living.
Beatrice, unaware of the ancient signs beneath her, thought that she had never seen surroundings that were more alive. The river was about thirty feet across. The trees on either side shimmered, tingled and exploded with exuberant bird noise. The surface of the water teemed with ducks and otters. Over by the far bank an alligator lazed, his goggle-eyes just above the water.
‘See him,’ giggled Beatrice. ‘Mamai Zuna used to say he was hiding because he stole the sun’s fish.’
Danny himself seemed to come alive in the bush. He was more alert, vigilant and inventive than at home. He discovered how to extract oil from paku fish so that they could cook. He invented a way of making cartridges for the gun, although these were often unreliable. And instead of farine, they grated Brazil nuts on their grater and roasted them.
After several weeks hunting and fishing, neither of them missed cultivated food. The supplies they had collected at Barakako, they bartered when they reached the Wai-Wai and Danny got himself a hunting dog. For Danny, meeting up with his friend Wario again should have been a pleasure, but Beatrice’s presence put a damper on it for him. He felt embarrassed so they only stayed a day or two before moving on.
There was an abundance of food. They lived well on fish, nuts, fruit and game. Once Danny shot a monkey. Beatrice singed the hair over a fire she had made on the rocks and scraped it before taking out the intestines and moulding the kidney fat into a sausage. Then they cut the rest and threw it in the pot. After they had eaten, they lazed on the smooth grey rocks in the sweltering heat. Soon they were bitten all over by insects.
Beatrice relished having Danny entirely to herself.
‘Why do you keep staring at me?’ He complained.
She scratched the insect bites on her legs and arms. It puzzled Beatrice too that she still felt this yearning for Danny even though she had him constantly by her side. She turned from him and looked deliberately away towards where the water spouted in a tiny fall at the bottom of the rocks. It has something to do with the passing of time, she thought. I wish I could stop the passage of time.
Danny took off his shorts which were spattered with monkey fat. He balanced himself in the boat and Beatrice pushed it off. She watched him float downstream, a bronze statue, bow drawn, the tree shadows occasionally striping him like a tiger fish. Suddenly, the back of the arapaima he’d spotted earlier became visible to him under the water. He let fly the arrow well below the fish to allow for the refraction of light and then scrambled, all arms and legs, to grab at the shaft which wobbled as the fish struggled.
He brought the boat and the fish back and Beatrice got in the front, trailing her fingers in the water as he paddled. He leaned forward to whisper something in her ear and as he did so, Beatrice experienced a powerful feeling of recognition. All this had already happened. Everything around her seemed startlingly familiar as if she had done it all before, as if she could anticipate everything that was about to take place. She saw every leaf, twig and branch on the bank, every insect on the surface of the sienna water outlined with astonishing clarity. An eternity lasted a few seconds and passed. She recognised the warning.
‘I’m going to have a migraine attack,’ she said.
After the attack was over and she was fully recovered, they slung a hammock in the trees near the bank. Danny fondled her and played with her as a preliminary to long, slow, vegetable acts of love. Later in the night, both of them bitten to pieces by mosquitoes, sandflies and kaboura, they made love more violently as if rubbing against each other frantically would relieve the itching. Smeared with each other’s blood from the bites, they finally fell asleep, arms, thighs and legs entangled like roots.
Broiling hot in his soutane, Father Napier prepared to leave the Wai-Wai. He carried his tin trunk down to the river and supervised the packing of the boat at the landing. His first mission had been a triumphant success.
Several of the Wai-Wai had gathered to say goodbye. Father Napier cast a furtive eye round to see if Wario had come. His brief infatuation with the young man had given an extra vibrant zeal to his teachings. The last two weeks had seen a flurry of baptisms, all of which he had duly recorded in his baptismal book. He was a little disappointed to hear, when he enquired, that Wario had gone off fishing. There had been no sign of Danny and Beatrice returning since they passed through that way.
Siriko beamed as he loaded up a pile of graters to take home. Titus and his boys climbed on board. As the boat pushed off from the landing, Father Napier promised through his interpreter to return in a year or so to carry out confirmations. The priest waved farewell. For a while, they raced with one of the Wai-Wai boats but the Wai-Wai soon streaked ahead and disappeared into one of the creeks.
Six weeks later, he reached St Ignatius in the north savannahs, exhausted but happy. As soon as he had unpacked and bathed his feet, he got two of the boys to boil up some coffee which he drank, revelling in the luxury of condensed milk which he had not tasted for months.
Danny and Beatrice headed even further south. They set off on foot, with the dog, across the Acarai Mountains. In the hills the breezes were cooler and they made their way along trails that led round great black boulders and old burial caves. They camped for two nights in a cave under an overhanging boulder before Danny discovered some old, whitened jaguar shit in a corner and they decided it might not be safe. Soon they entered another stretch of lightly wooded forest.
The dog made hunting easier. Danny would listen for its bark. If the sound moved, he knew the dog was chasing quarry. If the sound came from one place, he knew the dog had either caught the creature, or it had gone to ground or it was a turtle. He regularly cleansed the dog’s nostrils with pepper so that its sense of smell would be keener. He shot parakeets and roasted them as a treat for the dog.
The fourth day after they had left the cave, they were threading their way through the forest when the dog began to growl. Beatrice looked down on the ground to see what was troubling it. Danny laughed.
‘Look up,’ he said.
Hanging down, almost in Beatrice’s face, was the tail of a jaguar. She followed the line of the body sprawled along the large branch and was dazzled by two phosphorescent eyes that hung, three feet above her, in a moving pattern of spots, leaf shadow and amber sunlight. As the pattern shifted, the animal appeared to be juggling with its own eyes. She stared, mesmerised, so close that she could see the pale yellow-green eyes in segments like a halved grapefruit.
‘It’s all right,’ said Danny. ‘She’s just eaten. You din see the hog carcass back there?’
They continued, single file, along the trail.
The proximity of the jaguar excited Danny and he became talkative.
‘Never underestimate a tiger. They have fantastic
imagination. Uncle Shibi-din saw one get in a boat once and float downriver. Another time he saw one rearranging a cow it had killed so that the cow looked as if it was asleep. That way he fooled the vultures and could come back for meat the next day. And once he was lured into the forest by the sound of someone chopping wood. When he got close, he found it was a tiger lashing the trunk of a tree with its tail. They can swim, climb trees and run fast. Uncle Shibi-din said they were the sun on earth. They’re ventriloquists too. They can make their voice sound as if it’s coming from somewhere else.’
‘Yes,’ Beatrice joined in. ‘And Daddy saw one trying to drag a cow up a steep bank but the horns kept catching. The tiger broke the horns against a rock until it could pull the cow up easily.’
Beatrice could have bitten her lip. The mention of their father threw a pall over the conversation. Danny became silent. Beatrice followed behind him.
When they came right up close to the next Wai-Wai settlement in Brazil, Danny suddenly lost his nerve and refused to go on. He felt as though there was an invisible barrier round the village, a magnetic field keeping him out.
They began to quarrel. Beatrice’s voice became high and querulous as he consistently objected to approaching the village. She tried begging and cajoling but he insisted on building a shelter a mile or so away from the settlement.
‘The kaboura flies are biting me to pieces,’ she sulked. ‘We could hang our hammocks in their big house. It would be much better.’
‘I’m not going,’ said Danny fiercely. ‘People are saying things about us.’ His face flushed the way she remembered it doing when he was upset as a child.
Beatrice had no qualms about visiting other villages because, at heart, she did not believe that they were doing anything wrong. Any partnership that felt so natural could not, in her eyes, be bad. She knew that, for some reason, what they were doing was not totally acceptable to people but, in her own mind, her conscience was clear. And she believed that everybody would agree with her secretly, in their own heart of hearts.
The Ventriloquist's Tale Page 17
