by Nahum Megged
I paged through the new journal, made available to me by some invisible benefactor, and discovered to my pleasure that William had tried to make his handwriting clearer in that particular journal. I supposed it could be a forgery…though William was easily recognizable in the photos pasted into the journal. One of the pages even had a photo of his wife and son.
I turned the pages with hungry curiosity, feeling it wasn’t a coincidence that it had been placed here while I alone remained in the camp. A few of the photos showed the tribespeople, including Xnen and Yakura. In the photo, Yakura did not appear much younger. I realized the journal had been written recently. But William had disappeared in New Guinea four years before!
My nervousness intensified as I realized the photos had been taken since I settled in the village; the tribe had built it not long before my arrival. Xnen looked exactly as I knew him, and in one of the photos Yakura, a snake wrapped around her naked chest, held the walking stick I had found in the central hut. The stones of the ancient temple had also been photographed, the same stones from which I had removed the layer of dirt and leaves and found the carving of the clasped hands.
A few pages that had been pasted together to form a larger surface caught my attention. A map was drawn on them; it showed a road passing next to the village. I had no doubt whoever had drawn it intended to guide me. Could that person have found William’s journal and added his own writings? If that was the case, I wasn’t the only white man in the village. I tried to interpret the map. The spring served as a key, the clearing with the banana trees, the tobacco plot… I couldn’t recognize the rest.
I took the journal and hurried outside, hoping to find the trail marked on the map. After walking past the sites I recognized, I lost the path. Where was the round area in the shape of a snail drawn on the map? Annoyed and frustrated, I decided to sit down, organize my thoughts, and plan my next actions. As soon as I lowered myself to the ground, I noticed in front of me, between the trees, an opening beneath a small mound of dirt. I hurried over and walked past the bats, guardians of the place, as well as a pair of snakes, guardians of the bats, and found myself inside the cave where the magical battle between the two shamans had occurred. I knew that this time I would be able to thoroughly examine it.
A man-made stone table stood at the center of the cave. My instinct told me the table had something to do with the temple of the clasped hands. In a corner, I found the upper opening covered by a thick layer of branches, and beneath it, one of the channels that had drained the rainwater. I followed the channel until I reached cavity that had swallowed the downpour during the rain-filled night. I was curious and decided to go down and investigate it.
After a few minutes of searching, I found some rope, which I tied around my waist, then lowered myself into the pit, taking along my emergency flashlight. As I went down, I steadied myself on the stair-like stones using my hands. They might be the remnants of an ancient stairway. A spacious hall suddenly opened before me, illuminated, it seemed, by a firefly-filled sky. It was an astonishing sight, an impossible sight: a cave whose stone ceiling was as bright as a clear night sky, strewn with stars! I hesitantly placed a foot on the floor. This was not an ordinary cave. Its shape reminded me of a man-made cave, carved into the stone to serve as a dwelling. A near-blinding light emerged from nearby, perhaps the cave’s central room. Here, at the bottom of the earth, the day had found a way to overcome night. A wooden table stood in a corner, a bed of leaves in another. It seemed as if the inhabitants had been there just a moment before and were about to return at any time. The Yarkiti were not capable of building such a place; their tools were not advanced enough.
The brilliant light meant I did not need my flashlight. I walked about the various rooms, in the bright-as-daylight hall and the hall on whose ceiling the fireflies twinkled. Unlit torches stood next to the firefly cave, near a small opening that had been cut into the rock, looking like the opening of a burial chamber. I crossed the threshold cautiously and entered another set of rooms. A dim light illuminated that part of the subterranean world. Wood and stone sculptures stood guard against the walls and at the openings to the rooms. The carvings looked like ancient warriors, their spears crescent shaped. There was something unusual about the figures, so I went closer to get a better look. My initial suspicion was confirmed: The statutes had wings. I didn’t stop to ponder that, rather I continued with my tour.
A large room situated at the heart of this twilight zone held an assortment of clay cookware, including shards bearing writings and images; some I could understand, others I could not. The divine Tepoi Mountain was drawn on one of the shards, the mountain that housed the creator-god, who had breathed the Yarkiti into the world. What appeared to be a drainage channel system surrounded the mountain’s image, and I wondered if one of them led into the complex I had entered. The sacred mountain was also painted on one of the pillars, surrounded by a large circle of women and men. Above the mountain, wrapped with thunderbolts, a man was drawn. Once again, I felt his face looked much like my own. In the eastern corner of the chamber stood an impressive mask. A face was carved upon it, with hands protruding from it.
A book of parchment pages tied with a string lay on the floor. Gently, I undid the string and turned back the cover, whereupon I discovered sheet after sheet of pictograms. I initially wanted to examine the book with my flashlight, but instead I retied the pages with the string and left the book where I had found it. I could not shake the feeling I was defiling a sacred place.
I reached another opening, the sound of rushing water coming from beyond it. I went through and found myself in another room with fireflies painting the night skies on the ceiling. I reached the stream and saw wooden sculptures standing erect in the water. A short distance away, I could see stairs winding their way up. In almost complete darkness, I climbed the stairs for a long time before gradually emerging into the light. I was in the forest again. I moved away from the exit in order to look around, but when I turned back and tried to locate the opening, I couldn’t. I felt crushed by my solitude and feared I would not be able find my way to the village.
Suddenly, I heard a familiar cry. It was the voice of the woman who had shouted in the cave when the two shamans had struggled. The sound put me on edge again.
Soon there came another scream, then another. Toucans passed over my head and monkeys hurled twigs at me. I felt a sting in one of my legs. I won’t be able to keep walking much longer, I thought. Then I considered those might be the final moments of my life. In my despair, I almost missed seeing smoke rising from the forest. I walked toward it, allowing it to guide me. The pain in my stung leg was intense. I shuddered, as if feverish. I gathered my strength and kept walking. The clearing and the village were suddenly before me. The smoke that had guided my footsteps came from the central hut. I reached my dwelling and urgently down everything before the images disappeared from my memory.
I looked at my painful leg. The swelling had already decreased, which meant that at least the bite wasn’t venomous. I cleaned the wound with alcohol, applied an antiseptic ointment to it, and fell into my hammock.
Morning
Xnen and Yakura were standing beside me. A cooking pot was in the corner of the room with some plants boiling in it.
“Where did you all go?” I asked.
“Us? We were right here,” they both answered.
“It is your shadow that left you,” answered Xnen, “and we have been treating you for the past two moon cycles.”
“You were sick with tremors,” Yakura added.
“And the camp wasn’t empty? You did not leave for the neighboring village?”
Xnen and Yakura exchanged bewildered looks.
“Your shadow went on a long journey,” Xnen said gravely. “Who knows where the animal that accompanies you went? It could have left the forest.”
I managed to raise myself up enough to see through the doorw
ay. Outside I saw the village alive and well — women bearing loads on their shoulders, men preparing for the hunt.
Had it all been nothing but a delusion? I reached for my journal. Water had destroyed some of the pages, others had been torn, but some of what I may or may not have hallucinated was written there. The letters were slightly distorted, no doubt my hand had trembled. From fear or sickness? And if I had actually embarked on a “journey,” was the battle of the shamans in the cave merely a part of my delusion? I decided to quickly write again all my memories of the past few days and as soon as I did, I lay back in my hammock and fell asleep.
3
The Deluge
Finally, the dreams came back to me. I was on the bank of a large, sprawling river crossing the forest. It was obvious that I needed to travel upon it, but I didn’t know how. Large fish swam upriver, against the current, toward the river’s source, but it seemed to me that I had to go with the current, toward its estuary, and I feared a large waterfall waited for me up ahead. Time passed and my eyes wanted to close. Birds chirped and flew above me, fish swam silently beneath me, and I was trapped by indecision, not knowing what my next step should be because there weren’t any steps to take.
A screen made of water drops issued from the river like a fog, and I strained my eyes and tried to see through it. A woman’s figure materialized behind it. Her hair was long and black, her eyes were black as well, and her body, covered by large, wide leaves, floated on the surface of the water. Was it Minare, goddess of the water and the trees? The screen flickered. Now behind it was a group of people in the heart of the forest, wearing the clothes of the world I’d left, sitting in a circle around a woman who looked a little like the floating figure I had just seen. Then I found myself among them. Someone whispered in my ear that the woman at the circle’s center was very young but had already gone through many hardships in her life.
A fish leaped, dived into the water, then jumped again, as if it were mocking me, the man who does not dare to embark on his way. It was clear that I would not be able to complete the journey to the river mouth unless I grew wings to fly above the rapids. A bird looked at me from one of the trees, as if reading my thoughts. Suddenly, I was overcome with dizziness and my body swayed, as if I had drunk yage…
You were there with me, holding out your hands to help me into the water, to complete the spinning movement and swim downriver. You were so beautiful, your dark eyes so bright and sad. Where are you? Your mouth was moving, pronouncing words I couldn’t hear…
Yakura was looking at us from below, a raft next to her. She tied herself to the raft with ropes crafted from the vine from which yage is made and walked into the river. With gestures and words I couldn’t hear, she seemed to explain that she could lead me to the river’s estuary.
Your eyes told me not to go, and I did not know where I should reach out with my hands to…
The world around me spun faster and faster and my nausea increased, the raft became a small dot gradually disappearing into the horizon. A tall wave lifted from the river, struck and woke me. Then I fell.
Darkness, the hammock had come loose. I shivered on the floor despite the heavy heat inside the hut and in the forest. I looked for the candle, lit it, and tied the hammock back up. I still felt nauseous and dizzy. I wrote the dream down quickly, then I got back into the hammock to try and get some sleep.
Morning. The village was bustling with life. I went to Xnen’s hut and found him preparing the vihu, as if a war were about to begin, or an important ceremony about to take place.
“Marikitare,” I addressed him by his official title, and he raised his eyebrows, wondering why I had chosen such a formal greeting. “I had a strange dream last night, and I’m hoping you can help me find the path of wisdom hidden in it.” I told him of my adventures in the place where the stream had turned into a rushing river, halfway between its source and its mouth, and he hurriedly handed me a bowl full of an herbal drink he had just prepared.
“The poison of the marake ant is still in your body,” said Xnen. “The marake’s sting can lead you into the spirit world, but it can also suck you into a dizziness from which one can never leave… Were you swept into the yage spin without yage?” Xnen continued to mutter, as if speaking to himself. “Were you shown the river estuary, the place beyond which nothing can go on? They say that our ancestors knew how to continue from the place where the river burns, all the way to Tepoi, the mountain where everything began because everything would one day end there. What did the river mouth look like?”
I told him I hadn’t seen the estuary, only two paths — related to two different women — that led there: the flight and spinning movement and the raft Yakura had tied herself to with yage ropes.
“It seems that she alone knows what the estuary looks like.”
“You mean Yakura?” I asked.
“Maybe Yakura as well,” the shaman answered, “but I was thinking about the other woman, who visits the village from time to time… she was there. Once we get there we might find out that the source and mouth of the river are one and the same. After all, we spend all our lives walking backward…”
Xnen went silent. He rolled the bitter ceremonial tobacco and was soon lost in thought inside clouds of smoke. His eyes turned white, and I knew he was somewhere else, beyond the screen of fog I had seen in my dream. I turned silent too. I had not yet enacted the tribespeople’s sentence. They believed I had been hallucinating as of late, and that dreams came to me during my waking hours as well: the villagers’ journey to the neighboring settlement, William’s journal, the caves in which the ancient people dwelled. I told Xnen I was leaving, even though I knew he could not hear my voice and would not notice my absence.
One of the village women went past me and flashed a warm and inviting smile. How old is she? I asked myself. These women were ageless, she could be a teenager or a grandmother.
Without warning, I was beset by sharp pains. One stung the wrist of my right hand, another spread through my chest, making it hard to breathe or move. I could think of no explanation for these pains and their sudden appearance. Each cough or movement of my left hand made my chest squeeze with agony; every motion with my right hand turned into a stabbing at the root of the thumb. If I were far from here, if I were home, I would feebly go to a doctor and ask him to help me not to leave this earth so soon… But here, who could I turn to? If I told Xnen of my distress, he would be convinced a spirit roaming the village had decided to settle in me. It must be that my Tepoi, the mountain of my last being, was getting closer to me,
and this is why you are appearing before me, visiting this distant place and showing me, in my dream, the spinning that would lead to the mouth of the river…
Would my children be able to guess the jungle had devoured me, once they realized I was not coming home?
I walked about in the camp, and again met the woman with the kind, inviting smile. Beauty sticks pierced the skin above her chin and bit into her cheeks. I was certain our encounters weren’t random, nor was her smile. I followed her. Now and then, she turned her head to be sure I was still walking down the path she had marked for me. She led me to the large, round central hut and went inside.
At the northern end of the hut, next to the post that serves, according to the villagers’ belief, as a ladder to the spirit world, was a mud statue in the image of a black dog, a German shepherd — just like I had seen in my hallucinations. I went to the statue. It was hollow, like all sacred sculptures, because only hollow sculptures could talk. I looked at the dog’s eyes, made of sparkling quartz. Through the quartz eyes, a gate was opened to me,
and I was there again, in a stormy winter night, asking you if now, after the children had fallen asleep, you would like to go out for a walk with me, to stroll beneath the waterfalls of heaven, as we had loved to do in our youth. Amir wagged his tail, eager to join us. Silently, you put on your coat like you always
did. It was pitch-black outside. The few street lights were dark, power lost in the storm. Trees swayed madly, and we walked slowly, breathing in the winds and the rain, splashing in the puddles and feeling the clothes sticking to our flesh. Amir began to bark, begging us to go back home.
“You’ve turned from dog to mouse?” I asked him as he started whining.
We felt sorry for him and decided to go back home. When we got close to our door, we saw a small figure, a fairy-tale dwarf, with his arms wrapped around a street light. We hurried over and saw it was our three-year-old son, who had gone out in the storm to look for us, wrapped in a coat he must have found next to his bed. When he had felt the wind threatened to snatch him away, he hugged the darkened street light pole and remained there, absolutely still, for who knows how long. Our clever, loyal dog barked and whined, asking us to go back. We stroked his wet fur, and I took our child into my arms, holding him tight, and we all went inside the warm house.
The glittering eyes of the dog were sad and wise.
I asked the woman to tell me her name and what she was doing in the central hut.
“My name is Yakura, and I am preparing the place, because tonight, when the heavy rain begins, the village elders will gather here to dance the Dance of Winds. I’m preparing the paint bowls and feathers and fruits. The other women will come later on.”
I was confused by her name. “How many women are called Yakura in this village?” I asked.
“Yakura is not an ordinary name,” she answered. “It is a sign in the stars seen through the forest. She who is born under that sign is called Yakura.”
