“The Amazon River is the widest and longest on earth; five times greater than any other,” Alex read in the guidebook his grandmother had bought him in Rio de Janeiro. “Only the astronauts on their way to the moon have ever seen it in its entirety.” What the book didn’t say was that this vast area, the last paradise on the planet, was being systematically destroyed by the greed of entrepreneurs and adventurers, as he had learned in school. They were building a highway, a slash cut through the jungle, on which settlers were coming in and tons of woods and minerals were going out.
Kate informed her grandson that they would go up the Río Negro to the Upper Orinoco, to an almost unexplored triangle in which most of the tribes they were interested in were concentrated. The Beast was supposed to live in that part of the Amazon.
“In this book it says that those Indians are still in the Stone Age. They haven’t even invented the wheel,” Alex commented.
“They don’t need it. There is no use for it in this terrain; they don’t have anything to transport and they’re not in a hurry to get anywhere,” replied Kate, who didn’t like to be interrupted when she was writing. She had spent a good part of the flight taking notes in a tiny, spidery writing like fly tracks.
“‘They don’t know how to write,’ ” Alex added.
“I’m sure they have a good memory,” said Kate.
“‘There is no expression of art among them, only the tradition of painting their bodies and decorating themselves with feathers,’ ” Alex read.
“They don’t care about posterity, or showing off. Most of our so-called artists would do well to follow their example,” his grandmother answered.
They were on their way to Manaus, the most populous city of the Amazon region, which had prospered in the times of the rubber plantations at the end of the nineteenth century.
“You are going to see the most mysterious jungle in the world, Alexander. There are places there where spirits appear in broad daylight.”
“Right. Like the Abominable Jungleman we’re looking for.” Alexander smiled sarcastically.
“It’s called the Beast. It may not be the only one, there may be several, a family or a tribe of Beasts.”
“You’re very trusting for your age, Kate,” her grandson commented, unable to suppress a hint of mockery when he saw that his grandmother believed such tales.
“With age, you acquire a certain humility, Alexander. The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything. At your age, you can afford to commit the sin of arrogance, and it doesn’t matter much if you look ridiculous,” his grandmother lectured.
When they got off the airplane in Manaus, the humidity hit them like a towel soaked in warm water. There they met the other members of the International Geographic expedition. Besides Kate and her grandson, Alexander, there were Timothy Bruce, an English photographer with a long horse face and yellow nicotine-stained teeth, his assistant, Joel González, and the famous anthropologist Ludovic Leblanc. Alex had imagined Leblanc as a wise old man with a white beard and imposing appearance, but he turned out to be a short, thin, nervous fifty-year-old man with a permanent expression of either scorn or cruelty on his lips, and the squinty little eyes of a mouse. He was decked out like a movie version of a wild-game hunter, from the pistols at his waist to his heavy boots and Aussie hat decorated with bright feathers. Kate muttered quietly that all Leblanc needed was a dead tiger to put his foot on. In his youth, Leblanc had spent a brief time in the Amazon and then had written a voluminous study on the Indians that had caused a sensation in academic circles. Their Brazilian guide, César Santos, who was supposed to meet them in Manaus, could not get there because his plane had broken down, so he planned to wait for them in Santa María de la Lluvia, where the group was to transfer to a boat.
Alex found that Manaus, located at the confluence of the Amazon and the Río Negro, was a large, modern city with tall buildings and crushing traffic, though his grandmother assured him that nature could not be tamed there and in times of floods, caimans and snakes appeared in patios and elevator shafts. It was also a city of traffickers, where the law was fragile and easily broken: drugs, diamonds, gold, precious woods, weapons. Only two weeks before, authorities had intercepted a boatload of fish . . . each stuffed with cocaine!
For the young American, who had been outside his country only once—that time to go to Italy, the land of his mother’s family—it was a surprise to see the contrast between the wealth of some and the extreme poverty of others, all mixed together. The campesinos who had no land and the workers who had no jobs came to the city in droves, looking for new horizons, but many ended up living in shacks, with no income and no hope. That day a fiesta was being celebrated and people were happy, as they are at a circus or a carnival. Bands of musicians strolled through the streets, and everybody was dancing and drinking, many wearing costumes. Their group was put up in a modern hotel, but they couldn’t sleep for the noise of the music and fireworks and rockets. The next day, Professor Leblanc got up in a very bad mood. He had not slept well and he demanded that they get started as soon as possible because he didn’t want to spend a minute longer than necessary in that “godforsaken city,” as he called it.
The International Geographic group started upriver on the Río Negro—called the “black river” because of the sediment it carried in its waters—toward Santa María de la Lluvia, a village in the heart of Indian territory. Their boat was quite large, with an ancient motor that emitted both noise and smoke and a roof improvised of plastic to protect them from the sun and the rain, which fell like a warm shower several times a day. The boat was stuffed with people, bundles, sacks, hands of bananas, and a few domesticated animals in cages or simply tied by the foot. There were a few tables, some long benches to sit on, and a series of hammocks strung from poles, one atop another.
The crew, and most of the passengers, were caboclos, as the people of the Amazon are called, a mixture of several races: White, Indian, and Black. There were a few soldiers, a pair of young Americans—Mormon missionaries—and Omayra Torres, a Venezuelan doctor who was along for the purpose of vaccinating the Indians. She was a beautiful mulatto, about thirty-five years old, with black hair, amber-colored skin, and the green almond-shaped eyes of a cat. She moved with grace, as if dancing to the sound of a secret rhythm. Men followed her with their eyes, but she seemed not to be aware of the reaction her beauty provoked.
“We must be prepared,” said Leblanc, showing off his weapons. Everyone could hear him, but it was evident that he meant his comments for Dr. Torres alone. “Finding the Beast is the least of our worries. Worse will be the Indians. They are brutal warriors, cruel and treacherous. Just as I described in my book, they kill to prove their courage, and the more murders they commit, the higher their place in the hierarchy of the tribe.”
“Can you explain why that is so, Professor?” asked Kate, not trying to hide her sarcasm.
“It is very simple, madame . . . what did you tell me your name was?”
“Kate,” she clarified, for the third or fourth time. Apparently Professor Leblanc had a bad memory for women’s names.
“I repeat: very simple. It has to do with the lethal competition that exists in nature. The most violent men dominate in primitive societies. I suppose you have heard of the term ‘alpha male’? Among wolves, for example, the most aggressive male controls all the rest and claims the best females. It’s the same among humans. The most violent men command; they obtain more women than other men, and pass their genes on to more offspring. The others must be content with what’s left. Do you follow that? The survival of the fittest,” Leblanc explained.
“You mean that brutality is natural?”
“Precisely. Compassion is a modern invention. Our civilization protects the weak, the poor, the sick. From the point of view of genetics, that is a terrible error. And that is why the human race is deteriorating.”
“What would you do with the weak in society, P
rofessor?” Kate asked.
“What nature does: leave them to perish. In that sense the Indians are wiser than we are,” Leblanc replied.
Dr. Omayra Torres, who had been listening attentively to the conversation, could not help offering her opinion.
“With all due respect, Professor, it does not seem to me that the Indians here are as ferocious as you describe; on the contrary, for them war is more ceremony than anything, a rite to prove their courage. They paint their bodies, prepare their weapons, sing, dance, and go out to make a raid upon the shabono of another tribe. They threaten each other and exchange a few blows, but rarely are there more than one or two deaths. Our civilization is just the reverse: no ceremony, only massacres.”
“I am going to give you one of my books, señorita. Any serious scientist will tell you that Ludovic Leblanc is an authority on this subject,” the professor cut in.
“I am not as learned as you.” Dr. Torres smiled. “I am only a rural physician who has worked more than ten years in this area.”
“Believe me, my esteemed doctor, these natives are the proof that man is no more than a murderous ape.”
“And woman?” interrupted Kate.
“I regret to tell you that women count for nothing in primitive societies. Only as booty in warfare.”
Dr. Torres and Kate exchanged a glance, and both smiled, amused.
The first part of the trip up the Río Negro turned out to be a true exercise in patience. They moved forward at the pace of a turtle, and stopped almost as soon as the sun set in order to avoid being rammed by unseen tree trunks carried by the current. The heat was intense, but it got cool at night, and a blanket felt good. Sometimes, when the river looked clean and calm, they seized the opportunity to fish or swim awhile. The first two days, they passed boats of all kinds, from motor launches and houseboats to simple canoes hollowed from the trunks of trees, but from then on they were alone in the immensity of that landscape. This was a planet of water; life sailed along slowly, at the rhythm of the river, tides, rains, and floods. Water, water, everywhere. Hundreds of families lived and died on their boats without ever spending a night on solid ground; others lived in houses on stilts along the riverbanks. Everything was transported by river, and the only way to send or receive a message was by radio. To the American, it seemed incredible that anyone could survive without a telephone. One radio station in Manaus transmitted personal messages continuously; that was how people kept in touch with the news, their business interests, and their families. Upriver, money wasn’t used much at all; the economy was based on barter; fish was traded for sugar, or gasoline for hens, or services for a case of beer.
The jungle loomed threateningly on both banks of the river. The captain’s orders were clear: do not wander off for any reason; once among the trees, you lose your sense of direction. There were stories of foreigners who though only a few yards from the river had died without ever finding it. At dawn, they would see rosy dolphins leaping through the water and hundreds of birds flocking. They also saw the large aquatic mammals called manatees; the females of that species gave rise to the legend of the sirens. At night, they would see red dots in the dense growth along the banks, the eyes of caimans peering through the dark. One caboclo taught Alex to calculate the size of the reptile by how far apart its eyes were. When it was just a small one, the caboclo would dazzle it with a strong light, then jump in the water and trap it, holding the tail in one hand and clamping its jaws shut with the other. If the eyes were wide set, he would avoid it like the plague.
Time went by slowly, hours dragging into eternity; even so, Alex was never bored. He would sit at the prow of the boat and observe nature, and read, and play his grandfather’s flute. The jungle seemed to come alive and respond to the sound of the instrument; even the noisy crew and the passengers on the boat would fall silent and listen. Those were the only times that Kate paid any attention to Alex. The writer was a woman of few words; she spent her day reading or writing in her notebooks, and in general ignored Alex or treated him like any other member of the expedition. It was pointless to go to her and present a problem directly related to survival, such as food, health, or safety. She would look him up and down with obvious scorn, and answer that there are two kinds of problems: those that solve themselves and those that have no solution . . . so please not to bother her with foolishness. It was good that his hand had healed rapidly, because otherwise she would be capable of solving the matter by suggesting he cut it off. (Kate was a woman of extreme measures.) She had loaned him maps and books about the Amazon so he could look things up for himself. If Alex commented on what he had read about the Indians, or outlined his theories about the Beast, she would reply, without taking her eyes from the page before her, “Never lose an opportunity to keep your mouth shut, Alexander.”
Everything about this trip was so different from the world Alex had grown up in that he felt like a visitor from another galaxy. Now he had to do without comforts he had always taken for granted, like a bed, a bathroom, running water, and electricity. He used his grandmother’s camera to take snapshots, in order to have proof to show back in California. His friends would never believe that he had held a three-foot-long alligator!
His most serious problem was food. He had always been a picky eater, and now they were serving him things he couldn’t even name. All he could identify on the boat were canned beans, dried beef, and coffee, none of which he had a taste for. One day the crew shot a couple of monkeys, and that night when the boat was tied up along the riverbank they were roasted. They looked like a couple of burned infants, and Alex felt queasy just seeing them. The next morning they caught a pirarucú, an enormous fish that everyone but Alex, who didn’t even taste it, thought was delicious. He had decided when he was three years old that he didn’t like fish. His mother, weary of struggling to make him eat it, had given up, and from then on served him only food he liked. Which wasn’t much. That short list kept him hungry the whole trip; all he had were bananas, a can of condensed milk, and several packages of crackers. It didn’t seem to matter to his grandmother that he was hungry. Or to anyone else. No one paid any attention to him.
Several times a day a brief but torrential rain fell and the humidity was horrendous. Alex had to get used to the fact that his clothing never really got dry and that after the sun went down, they were attacked by clouds of mosquitoes. The foreigners’ defense was to douse themselves in insect repellent—especially Ludovic Leblanc, who never lost an opportunity to recite the list of diseases transmitted by insects, from typhus to malaria. He had rigged a heavy veil over the Aussie hat to protect his face, and he spent a large part of the day tucked beneath a mosquito net he had the crew hang at the stern of the boat. The caboclos, on the other hand, seemed immune to the bites.
On the third day, a radiant morning, they had to stop because there was a problem with the motor. While the captain tried to repair it, everyone else stretched out in the shade of the roof to rest. It was too hot to move, but Alex decided it was a perfect place to cool off. He jumped into the water, which looked as shallow as a bowl of soup, but he sank like a stone beneath the surface.
“Only an idiot tests the bottom with his feet,” Alex’s grandmother commented when he came to the surface streaming water from his ears.
Alex swam away from the boat—he had been told that caimans prefer to stay close to the banks—and floated on his back for a long time in the warm water, arms and legs outspread, gazing at the sky and thinking about the astronauts who had experienced that immensity. He felt so comfortable that when something quickly brushed by his hand he took an instant to react. Not having any idea what kind of danger lay in store—maybe caimans didn’t hug the riverbanks, after all—he began to swim as fast as he could back toward the boat, but he stopped short when he heard his grandmother yelling not to move. He obeyed out of habit, even though his instinct was advising the opposite. He floated as quietly as possible and then saw a huge fish at his side. He thought it was a shar
k, and his heart stopped, but the fish made a quick turn and came back, curious, coming so close that Alex could see its smile. This time his heart leaped, and he had to force himself not to shout with joy. He was swimming with a dolphin!
The next twenty minutes, playing with the mammal the way he did with his dog, Poncho, were the happiest of his life. The magnificent creature would circle around him at great speed, leap over him, stop a few inches from his face, and observe him with a friendly expression. Sometimes it swam very close, and Alex could touch its skin, which was rough, not smooth as he had imagined. He wanted that moment to never end; he was ready to stay in the water forever, but suddenly the dolphin gave a flip of its tail and disappeared.
“Did you see, Kate? No one is going to believe this!” Alex yelled when he was back at the boat, so excited he could barely speak.
“Well, here’s the proof.” She smiled, pointing to her camera. The photographers for the expedition, Bruce and González, had captured the event, too.
• • •
As they went farther up the Río Negro, the vegetation became more voluptuous, the air heavier and more perfumed, time slower, and distances beyond measuring. They moved as if in a dream through a landscape of fantasy. From time to time, the boat emptied as passengers got off carrying their bundles and animals, heading for the huts or tiny villages along the river-bank. The radios onboard were no longer receiving personal messages from Manaus, or booming with popular songs; people grew silent as nature vibrated with an orchestra of birds and monkeys. Only the noise of the motor betrayed a human presence in the enormous solitude of the jungle. By the time they reached Santa María de la Lluvia, the only people left onboard were the crew, the group from the International Geographic, Dr. Omayra Torres, two soldiers, and the two young Mormons, who were still with them, but had been felled by some intestinal bacterium. Despite the antibiotics the doctor had given them, they were so ill they could scarcely open their eyes, and sometimes they confused the blazing jungle with the snowy mountaintops of Utah.