The Drunken Forest

by Gerald Durrell

  Some distance away we discovered a siding in which were parked several battered and inscrutable autovias, and under a tree nearby we found an equally battered and inscrutable driver, asleep in the long grass. On being awoken, he admitted that there was an autovia travelling some twenty kilometres up the line on the following morning, and, if we wished, we could travel in it. Endeavouring to forget the buckled lines, I said that this was what we would do; it would give us some sort of picture of the country, and we could find out what kind of bird-life was the commonest. We thanked the driver, who mumbled ‘Nada, nada . . . it’s nothing,’ before falling back and dropping into a deep sleep again. Rafael and I went back to the house and told Jacquie the good news, carefully omitting any reference to the state of the railway.

  The next morning, just before dawn, we were awakened by Paula, who undulated into the room, carrying tea, and beamed at us with grisly cheerfulness that some people seem to reserve for the very early morning. She waddled into Rafael’s room, and we heard him groan unintelligible replies to her sprightly questions. Outside, it was still dark, but the whine of the cicadas was punctuated by an occasional sleepy cockcrow. Rafael appeared, clad in a pair of underpants and his glasses.

  ‘That woman,’ he complained; ‘she so glad when she wake me . . . I no like.’

  ‘It’s good for you to get up early,’ I said; ‘you spend half your life in a somnambulistic condition, like a hibernating bear.’

  ‘Early morning rising makes you fit,’ said Jacquie unctuously, stifling a yawn.

  ‘Are you coming like that?’ I asked our puzzled interpreter, ‘or are you going to put some clothes on’ Rafael’s brow was furrowed as he tried to work out these remarks.

  ‘I should come like that,’ I continued facetiously; ‘it’s a very fetching outfit . . . and if you leave your glasses behind, you won’t be able to see the mosquitoes.’

  ‘I no understand, Gerry,’ said Rafael at length. His English was not at its best in the early morning.

  ‘Never mind. Get some clothes on . . . the autovia won’t wait, you know.’

  Half an hour later we clattered down the line in the autovia, through the banks of river-mist, opalescent in the early morning light. As we left the outskirts of the village, and the last village dog dropped panting behind, the sun rose with sudden brilliance from behind the trees and washed all the colour from the rim of the eastern horizon, and we rocked and swayed along the line, deeper and deeper into the Chaco forests.

  The trees were not tall, but they grew so closely together that their branches interlinked; beneath them the ground was waterlogged and overgrown with a profusion of plants, thorny bushes, and, incredibly enough, cacti. There were cacti that looked like a series of green plates stuck together by their edges, and covered with bunches of yellow spikes and pale mauve flowers; others were like octopuses, their long arms spread out across the ground, or curling round the tree-trunks in a spiky embrace; others again looked like plump green busbies covered with a haze of black spines. Some of these cacti were growing and flowering with their fleshy bodies half covered in water. In between the autovia lines there grew a small plant in great profusion; it was only a few inches high, and topped with a delicate cup-shaped flower of magenta red. So thickly had it spread in places along the track that I had the impression of traveling along an end-less flower-bed.

  Occasionally the forest would be broken by a great grass-field, studded with tall, flame-coloured flowers that covered several acres, and neatly bisected by rows of palms, their curving fronds making them look like green rockets bursting against the sky. These grass-fields were sprinkled with dozens of widow tyrants – birds about the size of a sparrow but with jet-black upper parts and their breasts and throats as white as ermine. They perched on convenient sticks and dead trees, and now and again one would flip off, catch a passing insect, and return to its perch, its breast gleaming and twinkling against the grass like a shooting star. They were known locally as flor blanca – the white flower – a beautiful name for them. Here, then, was a whole field of flying flowers, fluttering and swooping, their breasts shining with the pure whiteness of the sun’s reflection on water.

  Probably the most astonishing tree in this landscape was one with a trunk which bulged out suddenly at the base, making it look like a wine-jar; it had short, twisted branches decorated half-heartedly with small pale-green leaves. These trees stood around in small groups, looking as though they had sucked up so much from the ground that their trunks had swollen in obesity.

  ‘What are those trees called, Rafael?’ I called above the clatter of the autovia’s wheels.

  ‘Palo borracho,’ he answered; ‘you see how they are, Gerry – very fat no? They say they have drunk too much, so they call them the stick that is drunk.’

  ‘The drunken stick . . . that’s a lovely name for them. Most appropriate place for them to live, too . . . the whole forest looks drunken.’

  And, indeed, the whole landscape did look as though nature had organized an enormous bottle party, inviting the weird mixture of temperate, sub-tropical, and tropical plants to it. Everywhere the palms leaned tiredly, the professional bar loungers with their too long heads of hair; the thorn-bushes grappled in an inebriated brawl; the well-dressed flowers and the unshaven cacti side by side; and everywhere, the palo borrachos stood with their bulging, beer-drinkers’ stomachs, tilted at unbalanced angles; and everywhere among this floral throng hurried the widow tyrants, like small, slick waiters with incredibly immaculate shirt-fronts.

  One of the disadvantages of this country-side was made very apparent when we rounded a bend and saw before us a beautiful stretch of marsh, ringed with palms, in which were feeding four enormous jabiru storks. They moved through the grassy, areas and the lanes of bright water with a slow and stately step, reminding me irresistibly of a procession I had once seen of Negro preachers in white surplices. Their bodies were spotless white, and the heads and beaks, sunk meditatively into the hunched shoulders, were coal-black; they moved slowly and thoughtfully through the water, pausing occasionally to stand on one leg and shrug their wings gently. Wanting to watch them for a few minutes, I called out to the driver to stop, and he, looking rather surprised, brought the autovia to a screeching halt on the line, some fifty feet away from the storks, who took not the slightest notice. I had just settled comfortably back on the wooden seat and reached for the binoculars when a zebra-striped mosquito of incredible dimensions rose from the marsh, zoomed into the autovia and settled on my arm. I swatted him carelessly, and raised the binoculars to my eyes, only to lower them almost immediately to swat at my legs, on which another four mosquitoes had materialized. Looking about, I saw to my horror that what I had taken to be a slight mist drifting over the grass was in reality a cloud of these insects which was descending on the autovia with shrill whines of excitement. Within seconds, the cloud had enveloped us: mosquitoes clung to our faces, necks, and arms, and even settled on our trouser legs and proceeded to bite right through the cloth with undiminished ability. Slapping and cursing, I told the driver to start up, for bird-watching under those conditions was impossible, however enthusiastic one might be. As the autovia rattled off, most of the mosquitoes were left behind, but a few of the tougher ones managed to keep up with us for half a mile or so down the track. Being attacked every time you stopped rather detracted from the ride, for it was really quite impossible to halt in a place for more than ten minutes at a time without being driven nearly mad by the mosquitoes. This made any hunting, and particularly filming, a painful and irritating job; when fiddling about with lens and exposure meters I found it essential to have someone stand over me with a hat, to keep at least some of the insects at bay, otherwise it was impossible to concentrate and my temper frayed rapidly. By the time we had reached Puerto Casado again that afternoon I had exposed about twenty feet of film, and all three of us were scarlet and swollen with bites. But that first rid
e, however unpleasant, had given me some idea of the type of country we had to operate in, and the snags that were likely to be encountered. Now we had to settle down to the real job of extracting the fauna from the mosquito-infested depths of the Drunken Forests.

  The Orange Armadillos

  The first specimen caught by the local inhabitants of Puerto Casado turned up at our house forty-eight hours after our arrival. I was awakened at some dark and deadly hour in the morning, when the cicadas and tree-frogs were vying with the local cockerels for vocal supremacy, by a scream so loud and indignant that it completely drowned all other sounds. I sat bolt upright in bed and stared at Jacquie, who peered back at me, equally astonished. Before we had time to speak there came another earsplitting cry, which I placed this time as emanating from the kitchen; it was followed by a shrill and incomprehensible burst of Guarani.

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Jacquie; ‘that sounds like Paula . . . what-ever is happening out there?’

  I crawled out of bed and felt for my slippers.

  ‘It, sounds as though she’s being raped; I said.

  ‘It can’t be that,’ said my wife sleepily; ‘she wouldn’t scream about that.’

  I eyed her disapprovingly and made my way out on to the mist-shrouded back veranda. I was just in time to witness an extraordinary scene in the kitchen. The door stood wide open, and framed against the rosy glow of the fire stood our housekeeper, arms akimbo, her magnificent chest heaving with the effort of having produced that flood of Guarani. In front of her stood a short, thin little Indian, dad in tattered vest and pants, clutching in one hand a very battered straw hat, and in the other what appeared to be a football. As I watched, he spoke softly and soothingly to Paula, and then held out his hand with the football in it; Paula recoiled, and let out another scream of indignation so powerful that a large toad, who had been sitting near the kitchen door, leapt wildly into the dark safety of the hibiscus bushes. The Indian, who was made of sterner stuff, put his straw hat on the floor, placed the football in it, and proceeded to wave his arms and chatter; Paula drew a deep breath and started to wither him with a blast of invective. Two people, at five o’clock in the morning, preparing to shout each other down in the series of catarrhal honks which constitute the Guarani language, was more than I could stand.

  ‘Oi!’ I yelled loudly, ‘buenos dias.’

  The effect was immediate. The Indian scooped up his hat containing the football, and, clutching it to his gaping shirtfront, bowed and backed into the shadows. Paula hitched up her bosom, gave a minute but graceful curtsy, and then drifted towards me, quivering with emotion. ‘Ah, señor,’ she said, panting a little and clasping her hands together fervently. ‘Ah, señor, que hombre . . . buenos dias, señor . . . yo lo siento . . .’

  I frowned at her, and broke into my most fluent Spanish.

  ‘Hombre,’ I said, pointing at the Indian, who was giving a wonderful display of adaptive coloration in the shadows, ‘hombre . . . porqué usted argumentos?’

  Paula rushed into the shadows and dragged the unwilling Indian out. She pushed him in front of me, where he stood with hanging head, and then stood back and with a magnificent gesture pointed a fat brown finger at him.

  ‘Hombre,’ she said, her voice vibrating with passion, ‘mal hombre.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. I was rather sorry for the Indian.

  Paula gazed at me as though I was mad.

  ‘Por qué,’ she repeated. ‘Por qué.’

  ‘Por qué,’ I nodded, beginning to feel like something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus.

  ‘Mire, señor,’ she said, ‘look!’ and she seized the hat that the Indian had crushed to his breast and displayed the football nesting inside. Now it was at close quarters, but in the shadow, I could see that the offending object was smaller than a football, but much the same shape. We all three gazed at it in silence for a minute; then Paula refilled her lungs and paralysed me with a machine-gun fire of rapid Spanish, the only word of which I could understand was the oft-repeated one of hombre. I began to feel in need of some assistance.

  ‘Momento!’ I said, holding up my hand, and then I turned and stalked back into the house.

  ‘What on earth’s going on out there?’ asked Jacquie, as I reap-peared.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. Paula seems to be mortally wounded by the fact that an Indian is trying to sell her a plum pudding.’

  ‘A plum pudding?’

  ‘Well, a plum pudding or a football. It looks like a hybrid of the two. I’m just going to get Rafael to find out what it’s all about.’

  ‘It can’t be a plum pudding.’

  ‘Aha!’ I said, ‘this is the Chaco . . . anything can happen in the Chaco.’

  In Rafael’s room I found him, as usual, curled into a tight knot underneath a pile of bed-clothes, vibrating gently with snores. I stripped the clothes off him and slapped his rump. He groaned loudly. I slapped him again, and he sat up and peered at me, his mouth drooping open.

  ‘Rafael, wake up. I want you to come and translate.’

  ‘Oh, no, Gerry, not now,’ he wailed, peering myopically at his watch. ‘Look, she is only five-thirty. . . . I cannot.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said relentlessly, ‘out of bed. You’re supposed to be the translator of this party.’

  Rafael put on his glasses and glared at me with tousled dignity. ‘I am translate, yes,’ he said, ‘but I am not translate at five in the morning’.

  ‘Look, stop talking and get some clothes on. Paula’s got an Indian out there and they’re arguing over something that looks like a football . . . I can’t understand what it’s all about, so you’ve got to come out and translate.’

  ‘How I love this Chaco!’ said Rafael bitterly, as he pulled on his shoes and followed me, groaning and yawning, to the kitchen. Paula and the Indian were still standing there, and the football still reposed in the Indian’s hat.

  ‘Buenos dias,’ said Rafael, blinking sleepily at them, ‘qué pasa?’ Paula’s bosom swelled, and she proceeded to tell the whole story to Rafael, dancing about the veranda in a wonderful, flesh-undulating pantomime, breaking off now and then to point at the silent culprit with his plum pudding. Eventually she came to a breathless halt, and leaned exhausted against the wall, holding a fat hand to her heaving torso.

  ‘Well?’ I asked Rafael, who was looking bewildered, ‘what’s it all about?’

  Rafael scratched his head.

  ‘I no understand very well, Gerry,’ he said. ‘She say this man bring a bad thing . . . er . . . how you say? a dirty thing, no? Then he tell her lie and say you buy this.’

  ‘Well, what is the blasted thing, for Heaven’s sake?’

  Rafael rapped a question at the plum-pudding owner, who looked up and smiled shyly.

  ‘Bicho,’ said the Indian, holding out the hat.

  Now, the first and, to my mind, most important word I had learned on arriving in South America was ‘bicho’. It meant, literally, an animal. Any and every living creature was classified under this all-embracing term, and so it was naturally one of the first that I had committed to memory. So, hearing the Indian use the magic word, I suddenly realized that what I had mistaken for a plum pudding was a living creature. With a cry of delight I pushed past Rafael and pulled the straw hat from the little Indian’s grasp and rushed into the kitchen, so that I could see its contents by the light of the oil lamp. Inside the hat, curled into a tight ball, lay a creature I had long wanted to meet. It was a three-banded armadillo.

  ‘Rafael,’ I called excitedly, ‘just come and look at this.’

  He came into the kitchen and stared at the creature in my cupped hands.

  ‘What is it, Gerry?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘It’s an armadillo . . . you know, a peludo, the small kind that rolls into a ball . . . I showed you pictures of i
t.’

  ‘Ah, Yes,’ said Rafael, light dawning, ‘here she is called the tatu naranja.’

  What does naranja mean?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘Naranja mean orange, Gerry – you know, the fruit.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. It does look rather like a big orange rolled up’.

  ‘You want this?’ Rafael inquired, prodding it with a cautious finger.

  ‘Good Lord, yes; I want lots of them. Look, Rafael, ask him where he caught it, how much he wants for it, and can he get me some more.’

  Rafael turned to the Indian, who was standing beaming in the doorway, and asked him.

  The little man nodded his head vigorously, and then broke into halting Spanish.

  Rafael listened and then turned to me.

  ‘He say he can get you plenty, Gerry. Il y a plenty in the forest. He wants to know how many you want.’

  ‘Well, I want at least six . . . But what price does he want?’

  For ten minutes Rafael and the Indian bargained, and then Rafael turned to me.

  ‘It is good for five guarani?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s a reasonable price. I’ll pay him that. Look, Rafael, ask him if he can show me the place where these things live, will you?’

  Again Rafael and the Indian conferred.

  ‘Yes, he say he can show you . . . but it is in the forest, Gerry . . . We must go on horse, you know.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, delighted. ‘Tell him to come back this afternoon and we’ll go out and look for some.’

  Rafael relayed my suggestion, and the Indian nodded his head and gave me a wide, friendly smile.

  ‘Bueno . . . muy bueno,’ I said, smiling at him; ‘now I’ll go and get his money.’

  As I sped away into the house, the armadillo still lovingly clasped in my hands, I heard Paula give a despairing yelp of horror, but I was in no mood to consider her outraged feelings. I found Jacquie still sitting up in bed, moodily contemplating the mosquito bites on her arms.