BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “Excuse me, my dear,” he said, coming close and trying to keep his voice calm. “Would you mind clarifying that part where we fell down a waterfall in a hydroplane?”

  23

  First thing in the morning, we decided to go back to the river islet and pick up all our gear. We convinced Mengké that this would be the fastest way to make sure we left the same way we had come and lied through our teeth about having no intention whatsoever of following Valeria’s footsteps. The chief was very willing to help us and appointed a dozen men to come with us, first to reach the sandbar in their canoes and then carry everything back to the village.

  We took the same path as the night before, once again guided by the Menkragnoti warriors. In absolute silence, they seemed to levitate over the path rather than walk on it. As for the three of us, we did nothing but step on twigs and trip over the tiniest thing. In contrast they made not the slightest sound, so that they seemed to slip gracefully through the vegetation as a fish would through water.

  I understood then, as I watched them move like that, that those people were as adapted to their environment as the jaguars, birds, or monkeys that leapt from branch to branch over our heads. Or better still, not adapted but integrated. Perhaps those indigenous people were the only examples of the human species that had become part of their habitat instead of trying to change it as western civilization has been doing for thousands of years.

  In our western eyes these people might appear ignorant and primitive, but they had achieved a harmony with Earth that we could never reach, no matter how many flowers we put in our hair and how many ecological slogans we insisted on repeating.

  At the rear of the silent line of Menkragnoti, Professor Castillo was focused on not stepping on anything that crawled. Cassie seemed to be enjoying the walk, following him with the light step of someone used to field work. I went last with my gaze lost in the swaying of her short ponytail. Like a hypnotist’s watch, it was making me go back in time to the Mali desert. In that distant corner of the Sahara, a love story had begun and then, inexplicably, started to crumble from the moment we decided to live together in Barcelona and face a routine neither of us was…

  “Qué onda?” a voice said in front of me.

  I blinked a couple of times, confused at finding myself back in the real world. Cassie was staring at me in puzzlement.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, walking backward as she spoke. “You haven’t opened your mouth at all. Is anything wrong?”

  I shook my head. “No, nothing, I was just distracted, thinking about my own stuff.”

  “Your own stuff,” she repeated squinting her eyes as she turned around and went on walking. She turned her head more than once to repeat “your own stuff…” with a smile as enigmatic as that of the Mona Lisa.

  A few minutes later, the thick forest began to thin out. I guessed we were finally reaching the river.

  The roar of the water was growing more deafening all the time, even more so than I remembered from last night. Although that made sense, I thought, as I had spent the last twelve hours in the relative quiet of the forest.

  By the time I got to the shore, the Menkragnoti had already arrived. I noticed with surprise that they were looking toward the river pointing at the water and shouting to each other.

  Then I saw the professor leaning against a tree, shaking his head in despair. Cassandra clapped her hands to her forehead incredulously.

  “No… no… no…” she repeated, “La chingada took us…”

  I was baffled. In two strides I was beside them, only to discover that their reactions were not in the least exaggerated.

  It was as though in revenge for their fallen comrades, the alligators had paid us back. Like a horde of armor-plated Attilas, they had decided to avenge the spilled blood of their brothers by launching an attack on our bags and gear.

  Not only had they destroyed everything methodically and systematically, they had also scattered the contents of our bags all over the sandbar—although not much remained there—as well as the margins of the river and the rocks that showed above water. They had even got tangled in our clothes, so that now, as they lay sunbathing on the islet, a small alligator could be seen wearing one of my t-shirts, with the face of a well-known singer on it, around its neck. Another, which the Menkragnoti were pointing at, laughing like madmen, wore a white sports bra on its head like a grotesque hat.

  I’m not sure which was worse, the loss of our equipment or the fun the Menkragnoti were having at our expense. They could be serious and cautious, but given the opportunity of making fun out of someone else’s misfortune, they lost all their restraint.

  “I don’t see the briefcase,” Cassandra said looking this way and that and ignoring all the fuss.

  “The black briefcase?” I asked uneasily.

  “It’s not there. It’s disappeared.”

  Shielding my eyes with one hand, I looked out as far as I could from the shore. But as I strained to see, I knew she was right. A dozen or so alligators were warming themselves on the yellow sand of the islet with their mouths open amid the ruins of our luggage… but there was no trace of the aluminum box that protected our most sensitive equipment. And what was even worse, there was no sign of the small plastic black briefcase with the satellite phone and the GPS.

  The only two instruments that would have allowed us to keep searching for Valeria must now be floating downriver toward the Atlantic.

  “It’s over…” the professor muttered in a broken voice as he slumped to the ground. “It’s all over. Now we have no chance left whatsoever.”

  We did not dare cross over to the sandbar to try to recover whatever the alligators had not torn to pieces, so there was nothing else for us to do but walk along the shore and gather what little the current had left caught in branches and roots.

  The Menkragnoti helped us. They might not fully understand our absolute despair, but they had stopped making fun of us. In about an hour we managed to pick up a pair of pants, several shirts, some underwear, and a small red backpack. And with this pathetic baggage we turned back toward the village in silence, heads hanging low, convinced our improvised rescue mission had reached its end.

  Getting back to civilization seemed to be a major problem. We no longer had any means of contacting the AZS hydroplane so that it could fetch us. And the closest pay phone was several hundred miles and seven waterfalls away, downriver.

  24

  Back in the village Iak came running to tell us that after a great deal of pleading, Mengké had agreed to give him back his grandfather’s journal. We did not want to think about all the mishaps that seemed intent on happening to us, so we sat down to read the remaining legible pages in the hope of finding out something else that might be useful.

  By the time we finished, those fragments had shed enough light to give us a pretty good idea of how fabulous an expedition that one must have been, almost a century before. Unfortunately it was only a very small part of the whole journal, and practically all the second half had been eaten away by mold and damp. There was no way of knowing how Percy and Jack Fawcett had ended up in that remote village by the Xingu River or what their last days had been like.

  Cassie raised her head from the text she had been studying for the past few hours. “Well, the only thing we know for sure is that the journal is genuine and that Jack Fawcett is Iak’s grandfather. As for the rest,”—she clicked her tongue—“I’d take it with a pinch of salt.”

  “And why’s that?” the professor asked as he pointed at the book she still had on her knees. “Seems pretty convincing to me.”

  “It is. But the story is so…” She spent a moment hunting for an adequate adjective. “So… wild, that I find it hard to believe it’s true.”

  “You mean the part about the Black City?”

  “Listen to this,” she said. “The stone path turned into a much wider paved road. Soon the remains of a cyclopean archway welcomed us into what in its prime must have been a large
plaza surrounded by magnificent buildings of stone and masonry. Father put his backpack on the ground and knelt with arms open wide as he laughed heartily, in pure ecstasy. Raleigh forgot about his hurt leg and began to jump up and down like a fool. And I thanked the heavens for the grace of surviving until this Christmas day of 1925. We have finally found the Lost City of Z, as my father named it almost a decade ago when it was no more than a very remote guess that…”

  Cassie raised her eyes and turned to the professor as she shrugged.

  “This is as far as I can read. The remaining pages have all been eaten away by mold.”

  It was my turn to shrug my shoulders. “Well, I really don’t know. I must admit it sounds a bit weird but—”

  “Weird?” she said with a grin. “Weird would be seeing you washing dishes! This is…” She shook her head without finishing. “Professor,” she said as she turned to him, “nobody has ever found anything bigger than an adobe village on this side of the Andes Range, and you know it. A city like the one Jack Fawcett describes in this journal, hidden in the midst of Amazonia, is… Jesus! It’s impossible!”

  “I’d say impossible is too categorical a word, Miss Brooks.”

  “Call it what you like,” she insisted, “but the thing is there’s no way it can be true. I know archeology isn’t your field, you are a History professor, but you know as well as I do that civilizations aren’t islands, they are consequences of their environment. A city doesn’t appear out of nowhere, by magic. There has to be a social, economic and cultural foundation on which to base its growth on. So far nothing like that has been discovered in the Amazon, so it just doesn’t seem likely that there is one, lost in the middle of the rainforest.”

  “Perhaps this one is the exception that proves the rule.”

  Cassie looked at him with a mixture of impatience and compassion. “I understand that you want this place to exist. But I’m afraid your daughter has gone chasing after an illusion. Valeria may be a well known anthropologist but I’m an archeologist, and believe me, I know what I’m saying when I tell you it just isn’t possible.”

  Up to now I had been following their discussion in silence. “For goodness’ sake, you two,” I said, “what’s the point? The only thing that should matter is whether or not the city was some fantasy of Iak’s grandfather’s. Valeria did believe it and went to find it. She was convinced that was where the Morcego tribe lived. We have to do the same and follow her footsteps.”

  “But, Ulysses!” Cassie said, closing the book like a teacher explaining the same thing to her slowest pupil for the umpteenth time. “If the city of Z doesn’t exist, Valeria and her team could be wandering the rainforest until the end of time. They’re weeks ahead of us as it is, and God only knows where they could be by now. Besides, don’t forget we’ve lost all our maps and the GPS.”

  “And if the city of Z exists?” the professor insisted. “My daughter could be there!”

  “Professor, I just told you it’s—”

  “I’m going anyway. If there’s a possibility of finding Valeria, no matter how remote, I’m going to try!”

  “I’ll go too!” I said without thinking. “I’m not going to let you have all the fun on your own, Doc.”

  Cassandra looked at us in disbelief.

  “But, aren’t you listening to me?” she said in exasperation. “I’m telling you that it’s not possible that the place exists. You won’t find anything by going blindly after it. Neither Valeria, nor the Morcegos, nor that pinche city.”

  “We hear you, Cassie,” I said, patting her knee almost absentmindedly. “But even though you may be right, the professor is going to go after his daughter and I’m not going to let him go alone. Meanwhile, if you want to you could stay here and try to make contact with someone so that they—”

  I stopped in mid-sentence as I saw her face darken.

  “Are you suggesting, Ulysses Vidal,” she began as she got up (using my full name tended to mean trouble) “that while you go into the rainforest with the professor, looking for a lost city, I should stay here waiting… preparing dinner, maybe, master?”

  “Um, I… You were the one that said it was impossible to…” I stammered.

  “So who cares what I said!! I haven’t come all this way for nothing! What the heck… I’m the goddamned archeologist! It would make a lot more sense if you stayed here and I went with the professor.”

  Eduardo raised his hands imploringly.

  “All right, all right… Don’t start fighting over that now. The three of us will go. We’ll use what we can get out of the journal to follow Valeria’s footsteps, we’ll find her, and we’ll get back safe and sound.” He passed an arm around each of us in something like a hug. “You’ll see.”

  As he said this I found myself thinking that my old friend had a long, well founded reputation of never being right in his predictions.

  25

  Professor Castillo reread the battered journal and studied the other objects in the box, in case they gave some clue we might have overlooked. Cassie and I were sitting with him in front of Iak’s hut on an old palm rug, explaining to the Menkragnoti what we had found about his grandfather and the reason why he had come to these lands.

  “He was a great man,” Cassandra said after we had told him what we knew. “You should be proud of him.”

  Iak laughed quietly, unwillingly.

  “Proud?” he repeated sadly. “How proud? Iak impure blood and not true Menkragnoti. They not like my presence”—he pointed at his hut and around—“and that why Iak live here alone. Menkragnoti find my grandfather lost in forest. Hurt and almost dead of hunger. They keep him like…” He looked up at the sky as if he could find the right word there. “Pet,” he said at last with a crooked smile. “Although with years he gain wife, he prisoner of tribe to the day he die little before my father born, he also have impure blood. Iak never belong to council of elders. If woman want give me children one day, for pity. My children also children of white people of impure blood.”

  “But that would be totally unfair,” Cassandra said. “You aren’t responsible for the white people’s sins.”

  His reply was stoic. “Menkragnoti law.”

  “But then,” I said, “why do you stay here, if they despise you?”

  “Where go? To Menkragnoti Iak impure blood. And to white people? Less than animal. Iak spend years working with white men in mine near Marabá. Worst years of my life. Impure blood among Menkragnoti bad, but Indian among whites worse,” he added listlessly.

  The bitterness in Iak’s words rendered any attempt of comfort or advice useless. Unfortunately, that was how things were and there was nothing we could do but commiserate with him in silence.

  “Was that when you learned to speak English?” Cassie asked to change the subject.

  “Yes. Only thing Iak learn in three years, from other workers. They come from tribe Bolivia. Iak want learn to read but…” He shrugged. “Anyway, there Iak know never live like white man, better return and live like my tribe… although they not want me.”

  “Well,” I said in a conciliatory tone, “at least it doesn’t seem that your chief is very angry with you for showing us your grandfather’s journal.”

  Jack Fawcett’s grandson half-turned to me with a look of disgust.

  “They banish me from village one whole moon.”

  Cassandra got up in a fury. “You’ve been banished from the village? That’s ridiculous. You’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Iak disobey council showing my grandfather’s box, same with white woman. That price to pay.”

  “I don’t understand it,” she insisted. “What’s so bad about you helping us?”

  “They say if you go look for woman, you also disappear. Then more men come look for you. Then more and more…”

  “But if you do help us,” Cassie argued, “it will be easier for us to find the Black City and there we’ll find the professor’s daughter and the rest of her team.”

  “That
what council and shaman afraid, that find Black City. They say you not come back, never, without doubt.”

  The three of us listened in silence to his decisive remark.

  “Well, anyway,” I said shrugging it off, “I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll find that Black City, or lost city of Z, or whatever you want to call it. We’ve only got the ghost of an idea which way to head in, we’ve lost our gear and Fawcett’s journal is no big help either.” I crossed my arms. “So, unfortunately, we’re back to where we started!”

  The professor cleared his throat loudly. He was sitting with Jack Fawcett’s tin box open on his lap.

  “Actually,” he said, giving us a cunning look over the rim of his glasses, “that isn’t entirely true, my dear friend.” A broad smile spread over his face. “I think I know where that mysterious city of Z is.”

  26

  Cassandra and I were reduced to silence at the professor’s words. Personally, I was sure the poor man was suffering from sunstroke.

  “What do you mean, you know where it is?” I asked skeptically. “We’ve all read the journal and none of us have found anything useful in it.”

  “That’s true. I didn’t say anything about the journal.”

  “Well then?” Cassie said.

  Instead of replying, the professor opened his hand to reveal a thin silver chain, blackened by time, with an old pocket watch hanging from its end. I had barely noticed it when Iak had taken out his grandfather’s journal.

  The professor turned it over in his hand and scraped the fine layer of rust that covered the copper back. He pointed at the elegantly engraved letters on the metal surface, which read: P.H.F.

  “P.H.F. are the initials of Percy Harrison Fawcett,” Cassandra said. “It’s Iak’s great-grandfather’s watch.”