City of the Beasts

by Isabel Allende

  At nightfall, everyone except those on guard duty sat in groups around the bonfire to smoke and drink. The atmosphere was dreary and someone suggested a little music to lift everyone’s spirits. Alex had to admit that he had lost Joseph Cold’s famous flute, but he couldn’t say where without telling about his adventure inside the tepui. His grandmother shot him a murderous look, but didn’t say anything, sure that her grandson was hiding a lot from her. A soldier produced a harmonica and played a couple of popular tunes, but his good intentions dropped into a black hole. Fear had possessed them all.

  Kate led Nadia and Alex aside to tell them what had happened in their absence, from the moment the Indians had taken them away. As soon as it was realized that they had vanished, a search was begun; everyone was provided with flashlights, and they spread out through the forest and called for them almost all night. Leblanc contributed to the general anguish with another of his helpful prophecies: They had been dragged off by Indians and at that very moment were being roasted and eaten. The professor seized the opportunity to enlighten them on the habit of the Caribbean Indians, who hacked chunks of flesh off live prisoners to eat. Of course, he admitted, they were not among the Caribs, who had been either civilized or exterminated more than a hundred years before, but you never knew how far their cultural influences might have spread. César Santos had been close to pounding the anthropologist into the ground.

  By the afternoon of the next day, a helicopter had finally arrived to rescue them. The boat with the unfortunate Joel González had reached Santa María de la Lluvia without incident, and the nuns from the hospital took over. Matuwe, the Indian guide, found help, and he himself went with the helicopter to pick up Captain Ariosto. His sense of orientation was so extraordinary that, although he had never flown, he was able to locate their position in that vast green expanse of jungle and to indicate with precision the place where the International Geographic party was waiting. As soon as they landed, Kate insisted that the captain call for reinforcements and organize a systematic search for the missing young people.

  César Santos interrupted the writer to add that she had threatened Captain Ariosto with the press, the American embassy, and even the CIA if he did not cooperate; that was how she had obtained the second helicopter, which brought more soldiers and also Mauro Carías. She did not intend to leave there without her grandson, she had assured them, if it meant searching the entire Amazon on foot.

  “Did you really say that, Kate?” asked Alex, amused.

  “Not because of you, Alexander. It was a matter of principle,” she growled.

  That night, Nadia, Kate, and Omayra Torres stayed in one tent, Ludovic Leblanc and Timothy Bruce in another; Mauro Carías had his own, and the rest of the men hung their hammocks in the trees. Guards were posted at the four corners of the camp and oil lanterns were kept burning. Although no one said it aloud, they thought that would keep the Beast at bay. The lights made them an easy target for the Indians, but up until then, the tribes had never attacked in the dark because they were afraid of the nocturnal demons that escaped from human nightmares.

  Nadia, who was a light sleeper, slept for a few hours and was wakened after midnight by Kate’s snoring. After she checked and saw that the doctor, too, was fast asleep, she ordered Borobá to stay where he was and silently slipped out of the tent. She had studied the People of the Mist very closely, resolved to master their ability to move about unseen, and had discovered that it was more than a matter of camouflaging the body; it took a strong determination to dismiss the physical being. Concentration was required to reach the mental state of invisibility in which it was possible to stand three feet away from another person without being seen. She knew when she had achieved that state because her body felt very light, then seemed to dissolve into thin air. She had to hold to her goal without being distracted and not allow her nerves to betray her, the only way to remain hidden from others. As she left the tent, she had to pass a short distance from the guards patrolling the camp, but she did that without fear, protected by the extraordinary mental field she had created around herself.

  As soon as she felt she was safe in the forest, which was faintly lighted by the moon, she imitated the screech of the owl twice, and waited. A little later, she sensed the silent presence of Walimai at her side. She asked the witch man to speak with the People of the Mist and convince them to come to the camp and be vaccinated. They could not hide forever in the shadows of the trees, she said, and if they planned to build a new village, they would be discovered by the “birds of noise and wind.” She promised him that she would keep track of the Rahakanariwa, and that Jaguar would negotiate with the nahab. She said that her friend had a powerful grandmother, but did not try to explain the value of writing and publishing; she didn’t think the shaman would understand what she was talking about since he didn’t know what writing was and had never seen a printed page. She limited herself to saying that the grandmother had a lot of magic in the world of the nahab, although it was of little use in the Eye of the World.

  Alexander had tied his hammock outside, a little apart from the others. He had hoped that during the night the Indians would communicate with him, but he dropped off to sleep like a stone. He dreamed of the black jaguar. The meeting with his totemic animal was so clear and precise that the next day he wasn’t sure whether he had dreamed it or if it had really happened. In the dream, he got out of his hammock and carefully walked away from the camp without being seen by the guards. As he entered the forest, outside the reach of the light from the fire or the oil lanterns, he saw the black feline stretched along the thick branch of an enormous chestnut tree, its tail switching, it eyes glittering in the night like dazzling topazes, just as it had appeared in the vision after he had drunk Walimai’s magic potion. With its teeth and claws he could gut a caiman, with such powerful muscles he could run like the wind, with his strength and courage he could confront any enemy. He was a magnificent animal, king of the beasts, son of the Sun Father, prince of South American mythology. In the dream, Alex stopped a few steps from the jaguar, and, as in his first meeting in Mauro Carías’s courtyard, he heard the cavernous voice speaking his name: Alexander . . . Alexander . . . The voice vibrated in his brain like a gigantic bronze gong, repeating his name again and again. What did the dream mean? What message was the jaguar trying to send him?

  When he awoke, people were already moving around in the camp. The night’s vivid dream upset him. He was sure it contained a message, but he couldn’t decipher it. The one word the jaguar had spoken in his appearances to him had been his name: Alexander. Nothing more. His grandmother brought him a cup of coffee with condensed milk, something he had not tried before but that now seemed like a delicious breakfast. On impulse, he told her his dream.

  “Defender of men,” said his grandmother.

  “What?”

  “That’s what your name means. Alexander is a Greek name and means ‘defender.’”

  “Why did they name me that, Kate?”

  “Because of me. Your parents wanted to call you Joseph, like your grandfather, but I insisted on naming you Alexander, like the great warrior of ancient times. We tossed a coin, and I won. That’s why you’re called what you are,” Kate explained.

  “What made you think I should have that name?”

  “There are many victims in this world, Alexander, and many noble causes to defend. A good warrior name helps in the fight for justice.”

  “You’re in for a big disappointment, Kate. I’m no hero.”

  “We shall see,” she said, passing him the cup of coffee.

  The sensation of being observed by hundreds of eyes had everyone in the camp nervous. In recent years, several government employees who were sent to help the Indians had been murdered by the very tribes they were intended to protect. Sometimes the first contact was cordial, with gifts and food being exchanged, but suddenly the Indians would seize their weapons and attack by surprise. Indians are unpredictable and violent, according to Ca
ptain Ariosto, who was totally in agreement with Leblanc’s theories, and that was why you could not lower your guard, you had to be on constant alert. Nadia tried to argue that the People of the Mist were different, but no one paid any attention to her.

  Dr. Omayra Torres explained that for the last ten years her medical work had been principally among peaceful tribes; she knew nothing about the Indians Nadia called the People of the Mist. In any case, she expected to have more luck than in the past, and this time vaccinate them before they were infected. She admitted that on several previous occasions the vaccine had arrived too late. She gave the injections, but within a few days they fell ill anyway and died by the hundreds.

  By then, Ludovic Leblanc had completely lost patience. His mission had been fruitless; he would have to return empty-handed, with no evidence of the famous Beast of the Amazon. What would he tell the editors of International Geographic? That a soldier had died in mysterious circumstances, badly slashed; that they had been exposed to a terrible smell; and that he had taken an involuntary wallow in the excrement of an unknown animal? Frankly, that was not very convincing proof of the existence of the Beast. Nor did he have anything to add about the Indians of the region, because he hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of them. It had all been a wretched waste of his time. He could not wait to return to his university, where he was treated like a hero and was safe from bee stings and other discomforts. He felt that his relations with this group left a lot to be desired, and with Karakawe? A disaster. The Indian he had hired as his personal assistant had stopped the banana-leaf fanning the minute they left Santa María de la Lluvia, and instead of serving him, devoted himself to making the anthropologist’s life even more unpleasant. Leblanc accused him of putting a live scorpion in his knapsack and a dead slug in his coffee, and of purposely having led him to where he was stung by the bees. The other members of the expedition tolerated the professor because he was such a character and because they could make fun of him to his face without his catching on. Leblanc took himself so seriously he could not imagine that others didn’t.

  Mauro Carías sent soldiers out to explore in various directions. The scouts left unwillingly and came back very quickly without any news of the tribe. They also searched the area by helicopter, even though Kate assured them that the noise would frighten the Indians. The writer suggested patience. Sooner or later, the tribe would come back to their village. Like Leblanc, she was more interested in the Beast than in the Indians because she had an article to write.

  “Do you know something about the Beast you haven’t told me, Alexander?” she asked her grandson.

  “Maybe yes and maybe no,” he replied, lacking the nerve to look her in the eye.

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  About midday, there was an alert: A figure had come out of the forest and was timidly approaching the camp. Mauro Carías made friendly signals, and ordered the soldiers to stand back and not spook her. The photographer Timothy Bruce handed his camera to Kate and picked up a video camera; the first contact with a tribe was a unique occasion. Nadia and Alex immediately recognized the visitor. She was Iyomi, chief of the chiefs of Tapirawa-teri. She came alone, naked, incredibly ancient, all wrinkled and toothless, leaning her weight on a twisted pole that served as a staff and with the circle of yellow feathers pulled down to her ears. Step by step she came, to the stupefaction of the nahab. Mauro Carías called Karakawe and Matuwe to ask if they knew the tribe this woman belonged to, but neither did. Nadia moved forward.

  “I can speak with her,” she said.

  “Tell her we mean her no harm; we are friends of her people and they should come to us without their weapons because we have many gifts for her and all the others,” said Mauro Carías.

  Nadia translated freely, without mention of the part about the weapons, which she did not think was a very good idea considering the numbers of arms the soldiers had.

  “We do not want the gifts of the nahab, we want them to leave the Eye of the World,” Iyomi replied firmly.

  “It’s no use, they won’t leave,” the girl explained to the ancient woman.

  “Then my warriors will kill them.”

  “More will come, many more, and all your warriors will die.”

  “My warriors are strong; these nahab do not have bows or arrows, they are slow, clumsy, and they have soft skulls; besides they frighten as easily as children.”

  “War is not the solution, Chief of Chiefs. We must negotiate,” Nadia urged.

  “What the hell is the old crone saying?” asked Carías, impatient because the girl had not been translating the exchange.

  “She says that her people have not eaten in several days and she is very hungry,” Nadia invented on the fly.

  “Tell her we will give them all the food they wish.”

  “They are afraid of the weapons,” she added, although in truth the Indians had never seen a pistol or a rifle, and could not suspect their deadly power.

  Mauro Carías ordered his men to put down their arms as a sign of goodwill, but Leblanc, frightened, intervened to remind them that the Indians often attacked treacherously. With that in mind, the soldiers laid down the submachine guns but kept the pistols in their holsters.

  Iyomi accepted a large bowl of meat and corn from the hands of Dr. Omayra Torres, and started back the way she’d come. Captain Ariosto tried to follow her, but in less than a minute she had turned to smoke in the vegetation.

  They waited the rest of the day, staring at the undergrowth, without seeing anyone, while they put up with the warnings of Leblanc, who expected a contingent of cannibals to burst out of the jungle at any moment. The professor, armed to the teeth and surrounded by soldiers, had been petrified ever since his first glimpse of the naked great-granny in her crown of yellow feathers. The hours went by without incident, except for a moment of tension caused when Dr. Omayra Torres surprised Karakawe snooping through her boxes of supplies. It was not the first time that had happened. Mauro Carías came in and told the Indian that if he saw him near the medicines again, Captain Ariosto would immediately arrest him.

  That afternoon, just when everyone thought the old woman was not coming back, the entire tribe of the People of the Mist materialized in front of the camp. First they saw the women and children, insubstantial, dim, and mysterious. Several seconds passed before they saw the men, who in fact had been there longer and were standing in a semicircle. They surged out of nothingness, mute and proud, headed by Tahama, painted for war with the red of the onoto, the black of charcoal, the white of lime, and the green of plants, adorned with feathers, teeth, claws, and seeds, and with all their weapons in their hands. They were right in the camp, but they blended so well with their surroundings that the nahab had to blink their eyes to see them clearly. They were airy, ethereal; they seemed barely sketched upon the background, but there was no doubt that they were also fierce.

  For long minutes, the two bands observed each other in silence, on one side the transparent Indians and on the other the dumbfounded foreigners. Finally Mauro Carías shook himself out of his trance and took action, instructing the soldiers to serve food and hand out gifts. Heavy-hearted, Alex and Nadia watched the women and children accept the trinkets intended to draw them into the camp. They knew that those innocent gifts signaled the end of the tribe. Tahama and his warriors stood alert, weapons still in hand. The most dangerous were the thick clubs, which they could swing in a matter of seconds; aiming an arrow would take longer, giving the soldiers time to shoot.

  “Explain to them about the vaccine, sweetie,” Mauro Carías directed.

  “Nadia. My name is Nadia Santos,” she repeated.

  “It’s for their good, Nadia, to protect them,” Dr. Omayra Torres added. “They will be afraid of the needles, but actually, it’s not as bad as a mosquito bite. Maybe the men would like to be first, to set an example for the women and children.”

  “Why don’t you set the example?” Nadia asked Mauro Carías.

  The
perfect smile that never left the tanned entrepreneur’s face faded at the girl’s challenge, and an expression of absolute terror flitted across his face. Alex noted Carías’s extreme reaction. He knew people who were afraid of getting a shot, but Carías looked as if he had seen Dracula.

  Nadia translated, and after long discussion, in which the name of the Rahakanariwa came up often, Iyomi agreed to think about it and to consult with the tribe. They were in the midst of these conversations about the vaccine when suddenly Iyomi murmured some order—imperceptible to the foreigners—and the People of the Mist vanished as quickly as they had appeared. They returned to the forest like shadows, without so much as the sound of a footfall or a single word or one baby’s cry. The rest of the night, Ariosto’s soldiers stood guard, expecting an attack at any moment.

  Nadia awakened at midnight when she heard Omayra Torres leaving the tent. She supposed the doctor was going outside to relieve herself in the bushes, but she had a hunch that she should follow her. Kate was snoring away, deep asleep as usual, and had no inkling of her tent-mate’s activities. Silent as a cat, using her newly learned talent to be invisible, Nadia moved forward and hid behind a huge fern. The doctor was silhouetted against the pale moonlight. A minute later, a second figure approached and to Nadia’s surprise took the doctor in his arms and kissed her.

  “I’m afraid,” the doctor said.

  “Nothing to fear, my love. Everything will work out fine. In a couple of days, we’ll be finished here and on our way back to civilization. You know how much I need you . . .”

  “Do you really love me?”

  “Of course I love you. I adore you, and I will make you very happy. You will have everything you desire.”

  Nadia made her way back to the tent, lay down on her mat, and pretended to be asleep.