Back of Beyond (5 page)

Nowhere in the world have I been so plagued. My limbs were visibly swelling with scores of white lumps that began to itch immediately.

Some serious so-called explorer once advised: “Spread your spit around—and never—but never—scratch them.” Spit! I didn’t have a drop. My mouth was desert dry from all the jumping about, and how could I not scratch? The itching was driving me crazy and—the hell with it—I scratched.

In retrospect I suppose I can take comfort in the accounts of early explorers who faced similar torment. Here’s Baron von Humbolt describing his travels up the Orinoco in 1802.

The monks certainly got it right—“more mosquitoes than air”! And I admire Humbolt’s measured prose against my maniacal protestations. Maybe he followed the Wordsworthian code of “emotion recollected in tranquility.” My problem was that as soon as I began to write this section, I could feel that unbearable itching again, and the sense of hopelessness at my plight. Usually I can find at least a temporary solution to the most overwhelming of problems. But not in this godforsaken place.

And then there were the other irritating fears—the feeling that something alive may have got inside you—some evil little worm, or nasty little chigoe flea that lays eggs deep in the flesh of your arms or feet. You wonder at the utter vulnerability of the body with all its orifices and pores and soft skin and secret places that you’d never think of looking at back home. You fear becoming part of the slow jungle rhythm of growth and decay, filled with the seeds of imminent destruction and demise, your limbs mere repositories of uninvited life that one day will unexpectedly and painfully eat its way through those cozy inner passages and emerge as a ghastly slug or beetle or something larger with teeth and slime, threshing and gnashing, a horrific creature out of
The Thing
or
Alien
. Your body no longer seems the sacrosanct castle of the softer life, rather an apartment complex for free-loading tenants, an all too vulnerable victim of probers, nibblers, biters, burrowers, and borrowers of fleshly spaces.

That’s what the jungle can do to you. Make a raving paranoiac out of a perfectly well-adjusted world wanderer.

For all the animal clamor of the jungle you don’t actually get to see much. You know there are monkeys out there, their howling and screeching follows you as you climb higher through the sticky brush, but all I caught were shadowy glimpses and shaking branches where they had been seconds before. Parrots are less shy—but you expect exhibitionism from parrots.

Perhaps one of the most alarming occurrences was a casual aside by Tin in the morning after a particularly sweaty night. He pointed to a set of paw marks near our camp and said quietly, “
Tigre
.”

“Tiger! You gotta be joking!”

But apparently,
tigre
doesn’t mean tiger. It’s usually applied to the jaguar, black creature of the dark shadows, and other smaller members of the cat family that run free through the Venezuelan rain forests. The marks told an obvious story. The creature had come down during the night to drink at a nearby stream and possibly to wait for a prey or two. And there we lay, around our smoldering fire, fitfully sleeping, oblivious of the animal and its threatening presence a few feet away.

Sometimes I’d rather not know about these things. But then, at other times, I can sit transfixed as kingfishers flash like blue diamonds, skimming the surface of streams with their wings. And hummingbirds. No matter how many times I see them I am still entranced by their speed and the way they hover over blossoms, tiny wings beating invisibly, dipping their thin beaks into the soft hearts of each flower. Their colors change constantly like shot silk, and their eyes are big and black. Tiny two-inch-long birds, bee-humming their way through the promiscuous petals, never seeming to tire. How do they rest—and where? I’ve never seen one sleeping or even stilled. People in medieval Europe used to marvel at the devil bird, the swift, which was said to take brief naps on the wing and never landed (later to be found untrue). I get a similar feel with the hummingbird—there’s something mystical in its constant movement. I’d feel a lot better if I could catch one nodding off.

And then there were the butterflies. What a paradise for the serious collector. Some as big as bats, others with harp-shaped wings, some mere shards of electric shimmer—scarlet, indigo, gold, silver-edged, vermillion—swirling like colored snowflakes, catching the shafts of sunlight, turning the dank jungle into a canvas of Klee colors. In moments such as these the ever-present mosquitoes were forgotten. Even Tin and Pan seemed moved as we passed pools where butterflies fluttered in the hundreds over the water and damp pebbles. And it took a lot to move these two.

In fact it was hard to tell what they were thinking while guiding this odd white man through territory that was once entirely their own.

I have no desire to add to all the diatribes and pious monographs about Western man’s tendency to eliminate rather than assimilate. The latter requires empathy, a tolerance for entirely different perspectives on life; agreement to disagree without violence. The former is far easier and, during the early colonial days of emerging white domination, it was inevitable. The old phrase “One sneeze from the conquistador and a village dies” was so often true. Of course, for a while, there was something of a balance; the white man was no match for malaria, yellow fever, beriberi, and a dozen other fatal ailments until the discovery of immunity drugs. The Indians’ resistance to such afflictions had grown over thousands of years, years of timelessness when change was unwelcome and the old ways tightly bound the forest-dwelling societies. But soon the balance was lost; the white invaders multiplied and the tribes disintegrated or were systematically destroyed by the newcomers. The remnants of once vast tribal cultures were offered “salvation by Jesus” as their ticket to the new world, along with hand-me-down clothes from well-intentioned charities and hand-me-down ideas that bore little or no relationship to the mega-century mysteries of their own indigenous cultures.

Occasionally I saw something sad and lost in Pan’s eyes. He was possibly considered by the local missionaries to be a fine example of paternal assimilation, a pliable first- or second-generation unnative. But a glance at his face would suggest that the indoctrination had taken only shallow root and deeper down lay all the genetic and cultural structurings of his ancient society, the society of his forest-roaming ancestors. At least he was still in his habitat, unlike many of his counterparts, high in their Caracas hilltop barrios or ranchitos. He was free, or free enough, among the soaring tepuis, tolerating the novice antics of this strange man struggling to keep pace with him on these slimy slopes.

It was not hatred or even dislike I saw in his eyes. It was the wary glance of the jaguar, tinged with perhaps a little mirth, and ultimately, I suppose, indifference.

I wish I’d brought a hammock. They’re cheap—especially the authentic Indian ones knotted out of coarse fiber and tough enough to hold a lolling hippo (not that I bear any immediate resemblance to same). My companions always had theirs handy, rolled tight and strapped around their waists. At regular intervals, once every couple of hours or so, we’d pause for a rest and out they’d come, a quick flick to unravel, tied onto a couple of handy trees, and voilà, an instant airy bed on which they lay diagonally, safe from scorpions and ants and snakes, while I dozed off half upright against a tree, my backside only partially protected from nipping predators by a rubber groundsheet. Next time—if there ever is a next time—I’ll know better.

On the third day we woke to a world of gray. Utterly seamless slate gray—the sky, jungle, us. Even the riotous cacophony of howls, screeches, and whistles seemed subdued in the dun dawn. There was none of the normal wet heat of morning. I ate a breakfast of roasted plantains with hardly a bubble of sweat on my face, a most unusual and welcome occurrence. Tin and Pan looked cold. They huddled together like the Indians of the high Andes with hammocks and shirts pulled over their shoulders, sitting close to the fire. For the first time since we’d left Canaima my body felt comfortable. Of course it didn’t last for long. By the time we’d packed up camp the sun had broken through in patches and the heat rose by the minute. But it was a pleasant interlude, and I treasured its memory all through the grinding day.

Tin didn’t seem to want to talk about the Pémon Indians’ poison darts, blown from bamboo blowguns at speeds of up to 120 mph and amazingly accurate, even for the novice. He carried two guns with him and half a dozen arrows stuck in each tube. Each arrow was tapered to a needle-sharp point; the other end was encased in a cottonlike wad that protruded slightly from the blowing end, a sort of primitive packing, not too loose, not too tight, which acted as a flight pad for the blower’s blast and kept the arrow centered down the bore of the tube. The outer casing of each blowgun was decorated in brown dye patterns and tightly woven bamboo strips. One looked like an ancient instrument, chipped, scratched, and darkened with years of use. “B’long father,” Tin explained.

In a pouch he carried, a small leather calabash dark blue in color, was a thick gooey ball of curare paste. Instantly lethal to animal and human alike, it is produced in conditions of great secrecy from the pounded and roasted stems of two specific jungle creepers. All Tin would tell me was that his father made one of the most potent concoctions in the upper Orinoco region, and people from other tribes would travel great distances between the tepuis to barter for his tiny leather pouches. The weaker varieties merely disoriented the prey, leaving it vulnerable to clubs and knives for a few minutes. Tin’s left nothing to chance.

We were by a stream one night. He had developed a liking for my Venezuelan cigars and took delight in sucking the pungent smoke deep into his lungs while I merely puffed and dispelled it like a first-time indulgee. It was cool (anything below eighty degrees in that jungle would justify that adjective), and the air was strangely still. Nothing moved; leaves of every size and shape drooped over the chuckling water—big rhubarby ferns, elephant ears, fat succulents, thin mean spindly leaves like stilettos, vivid purple explosions of shamrock-shaped leaves, high palms, and dense ground-clutching clusters of olive-green shoots. A melting pot of leafy variants, each one perfect in itself…but that’s another long diversion.

Tin nudged me and pointed with his head to a large black bird with a huge multicolored beak. A macaw! We heard them all the time and often saw them high against the sky like gliders. I never realized they were so big close up. With slow flowing movements Tin pulled the blowpipe from his waist belt and slid one of the curare-tipped arrows into the tube. At first I didn’t realize what he was doing until the tube was at his mouth. The bird was motionless, unaware of our presence. He was going to kill it.

“Tin. No!”

He paused and looked at me.

I shook my head again. “No. Please don’t.”

On a couple of occasions I’ve been at the firing end of rifles and know the power you feel at that moment before squeezing the trigger. But this seemed too easy, too unnecessary. We didn’t need meat; we were doing fine on fruit and the staples carried with us. Grilled macaw just didn’t appeal anyway. Keeping the pipe at his lips, he picked a pebble from the earth and threw it at the stream. It splashed about two feet from the macaw, which turned, extended its wings, and flung itself frantically into the air.

Almost simultaneously, a huge brown frog that had been sitting on a rock not far from the macaw croaked in alarm and leaped for the stream.

A quick rush of air. The arrow sped out of the pipe like a silver bullet and, impaled in midleap, the frog turned gracefully and landed with a flatulent sound in the shallows. It never moved again. The stream eased past, shaking the arrow’s cotton top. The frog must have died instantly, not just from the curare but from the amazing accuracy of the shot.

Tin turned to me and smiled. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. Much later that night the two of them introduced me to the finer points of the frog-barbecuing. I won’t belabor the details but as a Yorkshire friend of mine used to say, “It weren’t arf s’bad.”

The next day was hard going through the jungle. My guides were way ahead of me as usual. Then Pan turned suddenly with a raised hand and beckoned. We peered together through the sticky gloom at the path ahead (path, of course, being a euphemism for the almost invisible indentations in the rampant foliage). At first I saw nothing unusual but, as my eyes focused, the whole jungle floor became a mass of movement, like a rippling green pond. Tens of thousands, who knows, maybe millions, of leaf fragments with neatly clipped edges were moving upright through the low ferns, each one carried by a tiny brown ant.

“The ants who carry the leaves,” Tin explained.

“Leaf ants?”

He nodded and smiled. We watched the procession, like a New York harbor regatta of little green spinnakers tacking in unison. A magnificent display of precision, endlessly parading in front of us, with the participants totally oblivious of our intrusion. Once again that sensation of absolute order-in-chaos, finite patterns in the green infinity. A single-mindedness of purpose that at once amazed and alarmed.