by Nahum Megged
She disappeared down the same path and returned holding a gourd. She took a whitish paste from it and rubbed the substance on Marina’s face. Sometime later, Marina opened her eyes, looked at us, and sat up with great difficulty. We helped her back up to the hut and laid her in a hammock. She fell asleep and her breathing became regular.
Yakura went out of the hut and motioned for me to join her. At the foot of the hut, between some rocks, she placed a dry plant and lit it. The smoke wafted up into the hut. When she was finished, she looked at me and placed two fingers on her mouth, instructing me not to ask any questions.
We walked silently until we reached the spring. Yakura immediately went in, turned to me, and suggested that I take off my clothes and get in the water with her.
“This is the only way to wash that smell that rubbed on you,” she said. How did she know?
I took off my clothes and got into the water. Yakura tossed some small pebbles at me. I sensed there was a mythical seriousness behind her actions. A monkey jumped into the water, and we were three. Yakura went over to the monkey and said something in Yarkiti to it. Then she came close, kissed my cheeks and said, “We can’t be alone. There are eyes everywhere!”
I felt purified when I got out of the water. The sour smell of the homeless author had gone.
We walked to the hut, and when we reached it, Yakura left me and disappeared down a path. I went up to Marina and discovered I had arrived just in time: She opened her eyes as soon as I entered, looking at me with joy. The smile had returned to her face, and her eyes sparkled again. She brought her hand up from the hammock and stroked my face in appreciation.
I asked her if she remembered what had happened, and she shook her head. Then she said she had had bad dreams, probably because of the fever. It seemed to her like she was being sucked into a funnel with nothing but absolute emptiness at the other end.
“Marina,” I told her, “if it weren’t for Yakura’s treatment, you would have become one of the blank-faced people.”
She looked at me with shock, then fell into deep thought. A few minutes later, she asked if the gliders were back. I told her I had seen Clara and Christina in a new hut but hadn’t had a chance to speak with them yet because they were both sleeping a drugged sleep. She slowly stood, and I was happy to see that she was steady on her feet. I supported her when we walked out of the hut, but pretty soon we discovered she was strong enough to walk unaided. We went to the hut where I had seen Clara and Christina, but we didn’t find them there. Once again, I began to doubt my memory, but Marina pointed at a backpack with women’s clothing on it in the corner, and that chased away my concerns.
We went to the round house. I knew I could find the answers there to at least some of my questions. When we neared the center of the camp, we saw a trail of fire blazing through the sky and landing in the forest, not far from the camp. There was no room for mystical speculations: I knew what the source of the fire was. I showed Marina the helicopters hovering above us and immediately grabbed her arm and started running to the stone house, because I knew one could enter the cave system from inside it.
“They must have discovered the camp,” I told her, and I thought of the gliders who had invaded the foreigners’ camps to rescue Clara and Christina. Deafening explosions boomed, and jets of fire lit up the edges of the camp. When the helicopters descended, one could see gas clouds pouring from them. It wasn’t hard to guess what the clouds were made of.
When we neared the stone house, we saw some blank-faced warriors emerging from it, leading five people, all of them white. The prisoners appeared to be much more frightened than the warriors, who hurled their spears into the sky, poured liquids from gourds they were holding, and smeared their faces with red and black war paint. A war had broken out against the epakohe, the primeval sorcerers who had emerged from the great swamps and were attacking the camp in the image of fire-spitting birds.
Other helicopters suddenly appeared, painted white, and attacked the brown helicopters. Maybe the prayers and rituals had helped. One of the helicopters dropped from the sky and exploded very close to the center of the camp. Three huts began to burn, and the warriors immediately stopped their rituals and began to put out the fire. The helicopters disappeared. It was difficult to tell if we had been saved or if the helicopters would return to attack.
Herbert came out of the large house accompanied by Clara, Christina, Yakura, the masked man, and a few blank-faced warriors. Their faces showed no fear. Christina noticed me and immediately ran over. We embraced for a long while. I wanted to ask her about Grisella, but the intensity of our embrace prevented me from speaking. At last, Christina raised her head, stepped away from me, and looked at Marina, who regarded us uncomfortably.
“This is only the beginning,” Herbert suddenly said. “But our plan goes well… harming the forest will not go unnoticed. In the end, we will chase away all the enemies of the rainforest!”
Clara, who was standing beside him, gave Herbert a worried look. Then she came close to Christina and me and whispered, “We descended into a cave from an opening in one of the rooms.” It turned out the cave system could be entered not only from the stone house, but from the round house as well. It’s possible the entire camp had been built on a system of underground pathways. “He is terribly happy,” Clara continued to whisper. “The great war has begun, and he sees himself as St. George about to kill the dragon.” She sounded angry. I could understand why. She had found the man she had been sent to locate but discovered him to be a delusional madman who constantly dreamed of Armageddon.
We went to the smashed helicopters and saw that pieces had scattered in every direction. Burnt bodies lay among the twisted metal parts. Not far from the helicopter, we found a metal box that had remained intact. I easily opened it and found a stack of papers inside. They were professionally drawn maps.
Herbert quickly approached me, snatched the maps from my hand, looked at them and blurted, “So that’s what they were looking for, gold and diamonds, and they will find them, and be buried with them…” And with a broad gesture, he tossed the pages on the ground.
I gathered the papers and looked at the maps. The region depicted in them was very familiar to me. There were a few prominent markings near the sacred mountains, and the stream close to our camp had been marked as well, possibly as a source of gold. To my surprise, Xnen and Yakura’s village had been marked as well. A system of paths joined together to form a wider road that connected the village with Omauha’s mountain. I immediately recognized these trails. They were the same paths I had taken on that distant day, right after the deluge struck the old village, when I reached the edge of the forest and headed out to the savannah. Why had Xnen and Yakura’s village been marked, and how had the invaders discovered the existence of the secret pathway system?
Herbert disappeared. Yakura asked me to accompany the two released prisoners to their hut and walked off with Marina. The three of us sat on the hut floor, and I waited for them to tell me their stories, which did not surprise me and were remarkably similar. They had each been sleeping — Christina in Marina’s house, and Clara at the hotel. Both suddenly woke up from their sleep. Clara remembered the hotel manager had tried to stop the attackers, but she was pushed back and beaten, and a moment later, a piece of cloth soaked with some soporific was pressed against her face. She lost consciousness and woke up in the forest.
In Christina’s story, Tourki replaced the hotel manager. She too had tried to resist the attackers and was beaten. Christina had cried out, because she feared for Grisella, but she was immediately put to sleep and found herself in the jungle. With strange confidence, she determined that Grisella, who was sleeping in another room that night, had not been attacked or kidnapped.
They both said the kidnappers had treated them nicely. Clara believed her kidnappers were somehow related to the authorities, even though they weren’t wearing army uniforms. Chri
stina, on the other hand, had identified many islanders among the kidnappers and believed she had been kidnapped by one of the gangs associated with her family.
They remembered nothing of the second kidnapping, that of the gliding warriors. All they knew was that when they had woken from their sleep, which had probably been induced by drugs, they had found themselves together in the same hut, and a few strange-looking warriors untied them from their hammocks and led them to Herbert.
Christina had nearly fainted upon seeing him and could barely utter a word. Clara, on the other hand, had remained level-headed.
“When I set out on this journey,” she said, “my goal was to find out what had happened to him and possibly find him. But he ended up finding me. We all feared he might have lost his mind in the jungle. Now I’m sure that he has.”
Suddenly, the dog I had named Amir came inside the hut. He crouched and lay beside me, as if trying to atone for the indifference he had demonstrated when I had met him with Herbert. I stroked his head, and he raised his eyes to me. There was so much compassion in his eyes, untypical of a dog. And beside the compassion, hints of a great deal of suffering. Feet climbed the stairway, and the head of a warrior peeked inside. He addressed me in the language of the Yarkiti and instructed me to report to the round house. To the women, who didn’t understand him, he motioned that they should remain in the hut. The dog looked at me again with his sad eyes, as if to say “Don’t leave.” I got up, petted him, and followed the warrior.
On the way, I met Yakura and Marina. In Yakura’s eyes, I recognized the familiar warning: “Ask no questions!” She motioned for Marina to join me and said she was going to the hut of the two kidnapped women, to help them find their way around the camp.
The branches swayed wildly in the rising wind, and the huts moved with them. It looked like a stormy night was ahead of us. I held Marina’s hand and whispered, “The main thing is that we’re together again.”
A minute later, we were washed by torrents of water. We were close to the round house, but we were not in a hurry to seek shelter, allowing the water to wash our bodies.
Marina raised her head to the heavens, closed her eyes, and said, “I wish time would just stand still!”
I kissed her forehead, and we went inside the round house, soaking wet. Torches were burning, and the wind coming through the wall branches played with the fire, which seemed to reflect the lightning flashing outside. When we entered the inner room, we found Herbert leaning over the maps, completely ignoring the raging storm.
The maps looked familiar. I approached Herbert, and he looked up at me, as if he had just noticed our presence. As I got closer, I saw they were the same maps he had angrily tossed aside after they had been found next to the ruined helicopter. Who could possibly understand the man and his actions?
“We’ll need to act fast!” he said. “They will return the first chance they get, and we must reach the center of the ancient ones before them, because that is where the secret lies. They may be occupied with each other for now, but soon enough, they will come inside, into the forest, following the maps they have.”
“Which of us will go and when?” I asked.
“We will go as soon as the storm subsides. We are protected in the meantime. They would never dare to enter the jungle in such weather. We will all set out together, I hope. Everyone who agrees to come.”
“Why should we wait?” I asked. “After all, we can go there underground, using the cave system. It is my understanding that there is an opening in the stone house, and at least one more here.”
“The road we must take does not begin here,” said Herbert, and as if to prove his words, pointed at one of the maps. “We will have a long way ahead of us on the ground, in the forest itself. Only then will we be able to penetrate the hidden world and reach our destination.”
Marina approached us with hesitant steps, and her eyes fell on a series of drawings on the edges of one of the maps. The same masculine image appeared in all the drawings, but always in some variation. It reincarnated into a different figure in each drawing but kept its identity in all of them. In some of the drawings, he wore the images of animals, real or mythological, and in others, the images of gods. Many women were drawn around each of his incarnations, naked or wearing ceremonial clothes. I followed Marina’s eyes and had a feeling I could drown in their depths. Who is that large man, asked the eyes, constantly changing his form and appearance and surrounded by women in each of his incarnations? I felt the rage that was welling in her and remembered Christina, who was waiting in her hut.
Herbert immersed himself in his papers and seemed to have forgotten us. Or perhaps he too had felt Marina’s gaze and did not want to confront it. We left the round house. The rain continued to fall violently, pelting us and thwarting any attempt to speak. When we reached the hut Marina clung to me and said, “Should we walk some more in the rain? We could go inside the hut later.”
I held her hand and wordlessly led her inside the hut. Upon entering, we discovered Yakura, Christina, and Clara waiting for us. Yakura had decided that we should all live together. Someone had even added extra hammocks. The face of the forest daughter was serene, but the two recent captives seemed frightened and preoccupied.
Now we were five: an aging man and four young women. I shyly took off my wet clothes and got into the hammock as quickly as I could. The storm beat at the walls of the hut, and a terrible tiredness overwhelmed me and closed my eyes. Before long, the Noneshi appeared before me again. He sat beside me and spoke, I do not know in what language, but when I woke up I remembered his words perfectly. You have reached the war zone, he said, but it is not a regular war, it is a war of mating, and its purpose is the birthing of children. I wanted to ask him for the meaning of his words but felt a feather tickling my face and opened my eyes. Marina was beside me. The rest of the women were still sleeping. I made room for her in my hammock, and we were embraced by the sound of rain, which silenced all others.
The rain didn’t stop in the morning, yet the camp had remained almost completely dry. On the trail to the stream, one of the blank-faced warriors stopped me and instructed me to join him. I followed him. I’m washed by the rain as it is, I thought, and have no real need to bathe in the stream.
Herbert suddenly emerged from the bushes. “They’re not interested in a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain,” he told me in his indifferent voice. “The time of Omauha has not yet come, so they tell me.”
I understood that the shamans weren’t willing to join his planned journey. He was impatient, while their eyes lingered on the eternity situated on the border of all times.
“And what will you do?” I asked.
“We will have to convince at least one of the tribal chiefs,” he said. “If they all object, we won’t be able to cross the forest.” He walked off beside the blank-faced warrior, who held a huge elephant ear leaf above his head — the forest’s most effective umbrella.
On the path that led to the camp, the four women suddenly appeared, smiling and holding hands. I looked at them with wonder: All the fears and concerns of the previous day seemed to have been completely wiped away. It was Christina who laughingly invited me to join them in the stream. A warm, soft light seemed to emanate from the eyes of Yakura, who marched at the head of the company.
When we reached the stream, the women immediately took off their clothes and got into the water. I suddenly felt no embarrassment. I took off my clothes as well and joined them. The bathing women smiled at me and at each other, as if the night had transformed us into allies. Water above and water all around. I was filled with a great happiness. A snake looked at us from the trees but seemed to be occupied by something else. A few moments later, I saw a fledgling in its mouth.
The women surrounded me and splashed water on me that joined with the water poured down on me by the heavens.
“You have to surrender to us,” sai
d Clara, “you have no choice, you are the only man!”
They all laughed and splashed water on Yakura, who did not understand the words, but understood well what the laughter was about. Even the rain, and the wind with it, laughed between the branches. The man wearing the viper’s mask suddenly appeared and motioned for Yakura, who hurried out of the water and went to him. The two disappeared together between the trees. The game had been interrupted, and mystery had replaced the disappearing Yakura.
“She is the only one who truly knows the secret lying at the heart of things, but I’m sure she won’t tell us anything,” said Marina, and we all agreed silently.
Yakura returned a little later. “Tomorrow,” she said, “as soon as the rain stops, we will begin our journey.”
I translated her words to the other women, and we hurried out of the small pool and got dressed. The rain had let up a little, and sunbeams stole their way through the clouds. Yakura left us and turned to the round house. I assumed she needed to inform Herbert about the change of plans.
By the time we reached our hut, the rain had almost stopped, and only a few drops occasionally fell on our heads, plummeting from the treetops. An inner voice instructed me to part from the women. My feet led me to the closed stone house. A few blank-faced warriors stood around the bridge. I looked at them warily. The inner voice spoke again, resolutely commanding me to overcome my fear, cross the channel, and try to enter the stone house. At the same time, I heard another voice commanding me, with the same level of authority, to stay clear of the stone house and enter the round house. The struggle between the two voices threatened to tear me apart, but the force drawing me into the stone house gradually gained the upper hand.
