Adventure Tales, Volume 6

by John Gregory Betancourt

  There is a silence in the world,

  Which is not peace nor quiet:

  Ever I seek to flee therefrom,

  And walk the ways of riot.

  But when I hear the music moan

  In rooms of thronging laughter,

  A tongueless demon drives me forth,

  And silence follows after.

  THE TAPIR, by Arthur O. Friel

  I.

  That is a queer thing, senhores. You say that the tapir, so common here in South America, is found in no other continent except Asia, and there only in a section which you call Malaysia; and that place is thousands of miles from our Brazil and across a vast ocean. How could our tapir have gotten there? He never could swim so far!

  Oh, I see. Pardon my foolish question. Long ago there were tapirs all over the world, but now they have died out almost everywhere? Yes, I can believe that, for the tapir has no defense except his thick hide and his habit of jumping into water when attacked; and both animals and men must be able to defend themselves, or they will be wiped out by others which are more fierce and better armed. So perhaps the odd part of it is not that there are so few tapirs on earth now, but rather that there are any at all.

  He is a shy fellow, the tapir. He needs to be, for he is hunted both by beasts and by men. Among the wild Indians of our jungle, as you perhaps know, the greatest hunter is he who can find and kill that big, thick-skinned animal with funny nose. The prowling jaguar, too, is always eager to make a meal from him. Possibly you two North Americans also, during your explorations here at the Amazon headwaters, have slain a tapir or two for the sake of fresh meat. Yes? Then I need not tell you any more about that animal, for you probably know as much about him as I.

  Still, I can tell you a tale of a tapir tonight, while this steamer slides along down the Amazon, which probably will amuse you. You have seen the tapir, observed his ways and tasted his flesh. But did you ever find one up in a tree, moaning and weeping from love?

  Yes, it sounds ridiculous. But let me tell you, senhores, if ever I meet another love-sick tapir I shall go straight away and leave him, unless I am willing to get myself into trouble. And this is why:

  * * * *

  One day in the flood season I was paddling down a swollen little river among wild hills in the Javary region—whether it was in Brazil or in Peru I do not know, for I had been on a long rambling trip into unknown country and neither knew nor cared where the boundary might be. With me was a fearless young comrade named Pedro, who, like myself, was a rubber-worker on the great seringal of the Coronel Nunes. The floods having stopped our work in the swampy lowlands, we had taken a canoe and gone out to seek adventures—and had found them. And now, having used up nearly all our cartridges in a battle with headhunting savages, we were on our way back to the headquarters of the coronel, paddling with our regular, long-distance stroke and expecting nothing at all to happen. But suddenly from the jungle near us came a mournful sound.

  We held our paddles and looked. Only a few feet away was the hilly western shore of the stream, thick with bush. The sound had come from there, seeming to be a little distance away from the water and quite high up in the trees. We could not see anything in the tangle overhead, nor hear anything moving there. So after a minute I said softly to Pedro—

  “Only a sick monkey grunting to himself.”

  He nodded slowly, as if in doubt, and continued squinting upward. I stroked again with my paddle, intending to go on. But before I put any power into the push the noise came again. I halted my arms.

  “O-ho-o-o!” wailed a voice. “Oho-oo! Boo-hoo-hoo!”

  We looked and listened. There was no sign of any man being in this place, but the voice was that of a man crying. It was a heavy voice, which ought to belong to a strong man; yet it was snuffling and sobbing there in the bush like that of a woman. To me, and I think also to Pedro, that sound was more dreadful than a cry of pain or a scream of fear; for it seemed that the man must be in a terrible condition to break down in that way. We turned the canoe, which had been drifting down the current, and silently paddled back.

  Pedro, in the bow, jerked his head toward the shore. Looking closely, I saw what I had not noticed before—a quiet creek almost hidden by big drooping palm-leaves. We slipped the canoe through these leaves and stopped short. A few feet ahead of us was another canoe.

  Then the voice came again. It was up over our heads.

  “Oho-oo! What shall I do? I cannot live!” it sobbed.

  More than twenty feet above the ground we spied a sort of house built in the branches of a big tree—a hut made from split palm logs and palm leaves. Up the trunk of the tree ran a stout notched pole making a ladder, such as we rubber-workers use in high tapping.

  “The man must be dying alone up there, poor fellow,” said Pedro.

  I nodded. We stepped out on shore and went to the pole.

  “What is the matter, friend?” Pedro called.

  No answer came. There was a dead silence. Then we heard a slight movement up there, and out from a doorway at the top of the ladder came a head. We saw a dark face, with black hair and eyes. It peered down at us, and we started back. Then, without replying, the man swung himself out of the hut and came down the pole.

  “Por Deus!” muttered Pedro. “He is not dying, nor even sick. He is as big and healthy as—as a tapir.”

  It was so. The fellow was so broad and heavy that it seemed as if the pole, stout though it was, ought to snap under him. Yet he was not clumsy; he came down so easily that we knew his muscles were strong and worked smoothly. I began to believe that there must be some one else up in that house, for it did not seem likely that this big man would have been moaning and blubbering so. But when he stood on the ground I saw that his eyes were wet and his face streaked, and the corners of his mouth turned down as if he were ready to start crying again.

  As I looked at him I could not help grinning—partly because I was relieved, partly because his doleful face looked funny to me, and partly because Pedro’s chance remark about a tapir was so near the truth. Above his heavy body and thick neck was the face of a tapir: for it was much narrower at the jaws than above the eyes, and the nose was so long and curving that it seemed to be not a nose but a snout. And, as I have said, the face was very dark, as the face of a tapir would be. He was a caboclo, with some white blood in him. Still, he looked like a good-natured young fellow, and he was not enough of an Indian to keep from showing his grief.

  “What is the matter with you?” Pedro repeated. “We thought you were dying.”

  The other’s mouth worked, and he sniffled.

  “Maybe I am,” he said in a choked tone. “I think I shall die. Oh, my poor little Bellie! Ah-hoo-wow!” He began to bawl.

  “Your poor little belly?” demanded Pedro. “What ails your belly? It looks very healthy to me. Have you swallowed a live turtle?”

  I snickered, and the tapir-man himself laughed. In the middle of a wail he changed his noise to a snort, and that in turn became heavy laughter. But then his mouth turned down again.

  “You do not understand,” he said. “I have lost my so-beautiful Bellie. It is a great misfortune, and not a thing to laugh about.”

  “Lost your appetite, do you mean?” asked my comrade. “That is nothing to make so much noise over. And I do not think your belly is so beautiful. It sticks out too much.”

  “No, no, you have it wrong!” the Tapir protested. “It is true I have no appetite—I have eaten nothing today, except some chibeh and a few handfuls of pirarucu-fish and some monkey-meat and a few other things. But that is because they have shut up my little Bellie for so long and will not let me have her. Even when they let her out I cannot have her—ah-hoo!”

  “Stop that noise!” I ordered. “And stop your weeping also—it is wet enough here from the rains. Now tell us, what is this Bellie that gives you so much trouble? The matter must be serious if, as you say, you cannot eat more than two men need.”

  He nodded as quick
ly as his thick neck would let him, and told us:

  “Indeed it is serious. My Bellie is a girl who has come to womanhood and should be given in marriage, but her father has not made ready for the feast, and so she is shut up. And the father does not favor me, but will give her to Gastoa. So you see it is a terrible misfortune.”

  “So I see,” I said, “although I do not yet know just what you are talking about. Why is your girl shut up, and what has the feast to do with it? Tell us all about this matter. We are Pedro and Lourenço, seringueiros of Coronel Nunes. Perhaps we can help you.”

  He looked at us as if a little doubtful.

  “I do not think you can help me,” he said. “What I, Deodoro Maia, cannot do for myself is something no strangers can do for me. And perhaps even if we could free my Bellie I still should lose her. She likes men who are tall and handsome.”

  He looked at Pedro as he spoke. Pedro made a very low bow.

  “Thank you, friend Deodoro,” he laughed. “But have no fear. Girls do not interest me much. And if they did, I think perhaps I could get one without stealing her from another man.”

  Deodoro thought this over and nodded again.

  “I think that is true,” he admitted. After looking at both of us a while longer, he said: “Yes, I will tell you all about it. Will you come up into my house? I have some cachassa, but no tobacco.”

  “And we have tobacco but no cachassa,” I replied. “It is a fair exchange—a smoke for a drink.”

  So I climbed the ladder and entered his house. He and Pedro followed.

  * * * *

  It was dark inside the place, for it had only one small window-hole, its doorway was hardly big enough to let the tapir-man in, and the daylight outside was dull. Yet the hut was comfortable enough, and it was dry. When we were all inside Deodoro lifted a jug from a dim corner and passed it to us. After a good pull at the cachassa which it contained we sat down on the floor, with our backs to the wall, and tossed him the makings of a smoke. He could hardly wait to roll the cigarette before he lit it.

  “Ah, that is good!” he grunted, sucking a huge drag of smoke down into his lungs and blowing it slowly out. “I have not had a smoke for days.”

  “That may be one reason why you have felt so badly,” I told him. “It is a mistake to be without tobacco when you are in trouble. A drink and a smoke will go far toward easing any kind of pain.”

  “That is so,” he agreed. “But I have been so miserable that I did not think of it. Besides, there is only one place where I can get tobacco—that is at the town; and Gastoa and his brothers and Bernardo, the father of my Bellie, drive me away from there.”

  We said nothing, but waited. Sitting in his big hammock, he puffed at the cigarette until it burned his fingers. The tobacco soothed him, as we knew it would; and with the smoke, another drink, and somebody to talk to, he became quite cheerful. Then he told us of his trouble.

  He, Deodoro Maia, was a native of a small caboclo village some miles to the west, on another little river. The people of this town were jealous of their women and watched them closely. The young girls, who were only children, had nearly as much freedom as the boys; but from the time when a girl reached womanhood until she was married she was watched continually—and after marriage too, for that matter. And it was the custom among these people, when a girl was old enough to take a man, for her parents to make a feast, and a celebration was held and everyone was told that the girl now could marry.

  Now this custom, like many others, had both a good and a bad side. Whenever a girl grew up the whole village could have a merry time at the celebration. But the rule of having a feast at that time was so strong that unless the girls’ parents were able to give that feast she could not be declared marriageable. In that case she was in a bad position; for she was no longer a child, with the child’s freedom, nor yet a woman in the eyes of her people—she was nothing at all. Because of this, and also to keep her always guarded, her father would shut her up until he could give the usual feast.

  This did not mean that she only had to stay in the house. A cage would be built—a tight, strong cage of woven cane inside the house—and she would be put into that cage and kept there like a beast. She might have to stay in that thing for many days; there was no escape for her until the feast was ready. Deodoro told us that sometimes a girl would be shut up so long that when she came out her copper-colored skin had faded almost to white.

  Now Bernardo, father of the girl whom Deodoro wanted, was lazy and drunken, and meant to use his pretty daughter for his own benefit. So he intended to give her to a fellow named Gastoa, who was considered rich in his own village and had brothers who might help support the old drunkard in idleness; at least that was the father’s plan. The man Gastoa was known to be cruel, and the girl feared and hated him; but that made no difference to old Bernardo, who thought only of an easy life for himself. He was so worthless, though, that when his girl-child turned into a woman he had nothing with which he could give the feast. Worse yet, he would not do enough hunting to get the monkey-meat usually dried and kept for the celebration. He only shut the girl into a cage and kept on drinking and sleeping.

  * * * *

  So the moons came and went, and poor Bella—or Bellie, as the Tapir called her—was still a caged woman with no prospect of release.

  The girl’s mother did all she could for her. She worked hard to grow enough green foods for the feasting, and she tried to get Gastoa and his brothers to kill monkeys and salt away fish. But Gastoa was so sure he would have Bella in the end that he could not see any use in doing so much work for her, and so he and his family only laughed and sneered and did nothing.

  And then a misfortune came to the crops. A herd of peccaries got into them and tore up almost everything, so that Bella’s family had hardly enough left to live on, and all hope of the celebration was destroyed until new crops could grow.

  When this happened Bernardo flew into a drunken rage. As might be expected, he vented his spleen on those who were not to blame. He beat his wife, and then he dragged his daughter out of her cage and beat her too because she was causing so much trouble to him. While he was still ugly Deodoro came in. A fight followed.

  Deodoro, hoping to win the girl for himself, had done the thing which both Bernardo and Gastoa refused to do—he had hunted monkeys, birds, and fish, and dried or salted their meat. He had been very quiet about this, doing his work here at this house which he had built up in the tree, where nobody would be likely to find him. Now, with some of the best pieces of meat, he had gone back to the village to tell Bernardo he would give all he had toward the feast if he could have Bella for his own. But he came at a bad time, for, as I have said, Bernardo was ugly.

  When he heard the young man’s proposition he called him a vile name and kicked the meat into the dirt, where some dogs snatched it and ran off with it. Then he ordered Deodoro out; and when Deodoro hesitated he struck him. This was too much for even the slow, good-humored tapir-man to stand. He hit back and then started in to give the old fool the best thrashing of his life.

  If he had been let alone he might have beaten some sense into Bernardo. But Bernardo, getting the worst of it, yelled for Gastoa to help him. Gastoa came, and his brothers with him, and jumped on Deodoro. They gave him such a beating that he was lucky to escape alive. Then they threw him out of the village, warning him not to come back.

  In spite of this, Deodoro went back—though he took care not to go openly. Several times he went by moonlight, late at night when he knew the village was asleep. He even succeeded in talking a little with the girl through the thin cane wall of the house, and offered to cut a hole there and take her away with him. But, though she hated to be shut up so, still she wanted to be made a woman with the usual ceremony, and she would not consent to running off to some unknown place where she could not see the people whom she had always known. Besides, she did not think very seriously of Deodoro. Nobody did, he said.

  When we asked him why this was,
he said it was partly because of his white blood. He was neither a full-blooded caboclo nor a white man. His mother’s father, he said, had been a white Brazilian trader who stayed for a time on that river while buying sarsaparilla for the market. Before his mother was born this man sailed away, and he never came back. So the girl was laughed at by the others because she had no father, and when she grew up she was sneered at because she was half white. In the same way her son Deodoro was laughed at in his turn, though his own father was a caboclo. The only one who did not jeer at him, he said, was the girl Bella, who sympathized with him when the rest mocked him.

  * * * *

  This story made us sorry and angry—sorry for the young fellow and angry at those who had treated him so. We saw that he was not by nature a fighter, and that, with the whole town against him and the girl unwilling, he felt that there was nothing he could do but stay in his tree and be miserable. He was much in need of help.

  “The big question is, does the girl care for you?” said Pedro. “Does she want you more than another?”

  Deodoro stared out of the door awhile before he answered.

  “I do not know just what she wants,” he said then. “I do not think she knows either. She has not seemed to think much about men. I know she likes me as well as any one, and much better than she likes Gastoa. She does not like him at all.”

  “She likes you but she does not admire you,” said Pedro. “Then you have two things to do—to free her and to make her respect you. Women admire men who are strong and bold. Be strong and bold, friend, and she will realize that you are a man. Now she thinks of you as a boy. Am I right?”

  The Tapir thought again and agreed.

  “You have it right,” he said. “But what can I do? I can not go into the town and shoot everybody that tries to stop me from taking her away. My bullets are all gone.”

  We laughed.

  “Of course you can not,” said Pedro. “That would be a blundering way. Even if you shot down the whole town you would not win what you want most—the girl herself. She would then fear you more than she fears Gastoa. “You want her to admire you, not to be afraid of you. Now let us try to make a plan.”