City of the Beasts (11 page)

The five soldiers were
caboclos
, all born in the region. The Indian guide Matuwe, hired by César Santos, served as an interpreter with the tribes. The other pure Indian was Karakawe, Leblanc's assistant. According to Dr. Omayra Torres, Karakawe did not act like other Indians, and quite possibly he would never go back to live with his tribe.

The Indians shared everything among themselves; their only possessions were the few weapons or primitive tools each carried with him. Every tribe had a
shabono
, a large, round, communal hut roofed with straw, and open to a clear space in the middle. They all lived together, sharing everything from food to the care of the children. Contact with outsiders, however, was taking its toll on the tribes. It not only poisoned their bodies with illnesses, it affected their souls. As soon as an Indian held a machete, a knife, or any other metal instrument, his life changed forever. With a single machete, they could increase productivity a thousandfold on the small plots where they cultivated cassava and maize. With a knife, any warrior felt he was a god. The Indians' obsession with steel was as powerful as the foreigners' lust for gold. Karakawe had passed the machete stage and had moved on to guns; he was never without his antiquated pistol. Someone like him, who thought more about himself than he did his community, had no place in the tribe. Individualism was thought to be a form of madness, like being possessed by a demon.

Karakawe was a gruff man who had very little to say; when someone asked a question he could not avoid, he answered in one or two words. He didn't get along well with foreigners, with the
caboclos
, or with the other Indians. He did Ludovic Leblanc's bidding reluctantly, and his eyes glittered with hatred when he had to speak to the anthropologist. He never ate with the others, he did not touch a drop of alcohol, and he went off by himself when they camped for the night. Nadia and Alex once surprised him going through Dr. Omayra Torres's baggage.

"Tarantula," he said by way of explanation.

Alex and Nadia decided to keep an eye on him.

As they continued, progress became more and more difficult because the river often narrowed and they came upon rapids that threatened to overturn the boats. In other places, the water seemed stagnant, and there they were impeded by corpses of animals and rotted tree trunks and branches. They had to kill the motors and paddle their way forward using bamboo poles to shunt aside the debris. Several times, what they poked turned out to be large caimans, which when you looked down on them resembled logs. César Santos explained that when the water was low, jaguars came to the river, and when it was high, snakes appeared. They saw a pair of gigantic turtles and a five-foot-long eel that César Santos said delivered a strong electric shock. The vegetation was very dense, and gave off the smell of decaying plant life, but sometimes at night large flowers tangled in the tree branches would open and the air would be heavy with the sweet scent of vanilla and honey. White herons watched, motionless, from the tall grass that grew by the river, and brilliantly colored butterflies were everywhere.

César Santos often slowed the boats at trees with branches stretching over the water, where all they had to do was reach out and pluck a fruit. Alex had never seen any of these strange varieties and did not want to try them, but the others ate them with pleasure. One time Santos guided the boat to the riverbank to collect a plant he said was great for healing wounds. Dr. Omayra Torres agreed, and recommended to Alex that he rub the sap over the cut on his hand, though that was not actually necessary, it had healed cleanly. All that was left was a red line, which didn't bother him at all.

Kate informed them that this was an area where many men had tried to find the mythic city of El Dorado, lured by the legend that its streets were paved with gold and children had precious stones for toys. Many adventurers had plunged into the jungle and traveled up the Amazon and the Orinoco without reaching the heart of that enchanted land where the world was as innocent as it had been at the dawn of human life on the planet. They had died or come back defeated by Indians, mosquitoes, wild animals, tropical diseases, the climate, and the difficult terrain.

The expedition members now found themselves in Venezuelan territory, but borders meant nothing there, it was all the same prehistoric paradise. Unlike the Río Negro, these waters were untraveled. They met no other boats, saw no canoes, no houses on stilts, and not a single human being. On the other hand, the flora and fauna were marvelous; the photographers were having a field day, they had never had within the focus of their cameras so many species of trees, plants, flowers, insects, birds, and animals. They saw red and green parrots, elegant flamingos, toucans with long, heavy beaks their fragile heads could scarcely support, and hundreds of canaries and cockatoos. Many of these birds were threatened with extinction because traffickers hunted them mercilessly to smuggle into other countries and sell. An assortment of monkeys, almost human in their expressions and their games, seemed to be greeting them from the trees. There were deer, bears, anteaters, and squirrels and other small mammals. Several splendid parrots—called
papagayos
—followed them for long stretches. These large multicolored birds flew with incredible grace above the boats, as if they were curious about the strange creatures traveling in them. Leblanc shot at one with his pistol, but César Santos managed to jar the professor's arm and spoil the shot. The bullet frightened the monkeys and other birds; the sky filled with wings, but soon afterward, the parrots returned, unperturbed.

"You can't eat them, Professor, the meat is bitter. There's no reason to kill them," César Santos scolded the anthropologist.

"I like the feathers," said Leblanc, annoyed by the guide's interference.

"Buy some in Manaus," César Santos said curtly.

"You can tame parrots," Dr. Omayra Torres told them. "My mother has one at our home in Boa Vista. It goes everywhere with her, flying about six feet over her head. When my mother goes to market, the parrot follows the bus until she gets off, waits in a tree while she shops, and then comes back with her, like a lap dog."

Alex found once again that the music of his flute stirred the monkeys and birds. Borobá seemed particularly attracted. When Alex played, the little monkey sat stone still, listening with a solemn, curious expression. Sometimes he jumped up on Alex and tugged at the instrument, begging for music. Alex would oblige, delighted finally to have an interested audience after having fought for years with his sisters in order to practice in peace. The members of the expedition were comforted by the music, which accompanied them as the landscape grew more hostile and mysterious. Alex played effortlessly; the notes flowed out as if the delicate instrument had a memory and could remember the unmatched mastery of its previous owner, the celebrated Joseph Cold.

The sensation of being followed had possessed them all. Without voicing it, because what is not spoken can seem not to exist, they kept searching for signs in the jungle. Professor Leblanc, binoculars in hand, spent the day examining the passing riverbanks; tension had made him even more disagreeable. The only persons not infected by collective nerves were Kate and the Englishman, Timothy Bruce. They had worked together on many occasions; they had covered half the world for their travel articles and had experienced several wars and revolutions, and they had climbed mountains and descended to the bottoms of seas, so there was very little that robbed them of sleep. Besides, they liked to boast that they were unflappable.

"Don't you feel as if someone is watching us, Kate?" her grandson asked.

"Yes."

"Doesn't it scare you?"

"There are various ways to overcome fear, Alexander. None works," she replied.

Just as she spoke those words, one of the soldiers traveling in their boat fell at her feet without a sound. Kate bent over him, at first not comprehending what had happened until she saw a kind of long shaft buried in the man's chest. Then she knew that he had died instantly: the projectile had passed cleanly between two ribs and had pierced his heart. Alex and Kate alerted the other travelers, who were not aware of what had happened because the attack had been so silent. An instant later, half a dozen guns were fired into the thick growth along the bank. When the roar, the gunpowder, and the birds that filled the sky had settled, they could see that there was no other movement in the jungle. Whoever had shot the lethal dart was crouched down, motionless and silent. César Santos pulled the dart from the dead Indian's body; it was approximately a foot long, and as strong and flexible as steel.

The guide gave the order to continue with all speed, because this part of the river was narrow and the boats were an easy target for the attackers' arrows. They did not stop until two hours later, when they thought it safe. Only then could they examine the dart, which was painted with strange red and black designs that no one could decipher. Karakawe and Matuwe reported that they had never seen those marks before; they were not known to their own tribes or to any others they knew, but they agreed that all the Indians of the region used blowguns. Dr. Omayra Torres explained that even if the dart had not hit the heart with such spectacular precision, the man would have died within minutes anyway—though death would have been more painful because the tip of the dart was dipped in curare, a lethal poison used by Indians for hunting and for war, and there is no known antidote.

"This is unacceptable! That arrow could have hit me!" Leblanc protested.

"That is true," César Santos admitted.

"This is your fault," the professor added.

"My fault?" César Santos repeated, confused by the unexpected turn the matter was taking.

"You're the guide! You are responsible for our safety, that is why we pay you!"

"We are not exactly on a tour, Professor," César Santos replied.

"We must turn around and return immediately. Do you realize the loss to the scientific world if anything happened to Ludovic Leblanc?" the professor exclaimed.

The other members of the expedition were too stunned to speak. No one knew what to say until Kate broke in.

"I was hired to write an article about the Beast, and I plan to do just that—with poison arrows or without them, Professor. If you want to go back, you will have to walk or swim, whichever you prefer. We will continue according to plan," she said.

"Why, you insolent old… How dare you…!" shrieked the professor.

"Remember whom you're speaking to, you little twerp," the writer calmly interrupted, seizing him firmly by the shirt and paralyzing him with the glare of her fearsome blue eyes.

Alex expected the anthropologist to take a swing at his grandmother, and he stepped forward to prevent that, but it wasn't necessary. Kate's powerful gaze had doused the rage of the irritable Leblanc as if by magic.

"What shall we do with the body of this poor fellow?" the doctor asked, pointing to the cadaver.

"We can't take it with us in this climate, Omayra; you know how quickly bodies decompose. I suppose we could throw him into the river," César Santos suggested.

"His spirit would be angry, and it would pursue us and kill us," objected Matuwe, the terrified Indian guide.

"Then we will do what Indians do when they have to postpone a cremation; we will leave it in the open for the birds and animals to pick the bones," César Santos decided.

"But there should be a ceremony," Matuwe insisted.

"We don't have time. A traditional funeral would take several days. Besides, this man was a Christian," César Santos argued.

Finally they agreed to wrap the body in a sheet of canvas and place it on a small bark platform they built in the branches of a tree. Kate, who was not a religious woman but who had a good memory and remembered her childhood prayers, improvised a brief Christian ritual. Timothy Bruce and Joel González filmed and photographed the body and the funeral, as proof of what had happened. César Santos carved crosses in the trees along the riverbank, and marked the site as well as he could on a map, in order to recognize the place when they came back later to collect the bones, which would be delivered to the family of the dead man in Santa María de la Lluvia.

From that moment, the journey went from bad to worse. The vegetation became much more dense and they saw the sun only when traveling in the middle of the river. It was so close and uncomfortable that they could not sleep on the boats and, despite the danger represented by Indians and wild animals, they had to camp onshore. César Santos distributed the food, organized the hunting and fishing parties, and assigned shifts among the men to stand guard at night. He excluded Professor Leblanc; it was obvious that the least sound set his nerves on edge. Kate and Dr. Omayra Torres demanded to take part in the guard duty; it seemed insulting to be excluded because they were females. Then the two young people insisted on being accepted, too—in part because they wanted to keep an eye on Karakawe. They had seen him put handfuls of bullets into his pockets and watched him hang around the radio equipment, which from time to time César Santos was able to use to communicate, though with great difficulty, to report their location on the map to the operator at Santa María de la Lluvia. The leafy dome of the jungle acted like an umbrella, blocking the radio frequency.

"Which is worse, the Indians or the Beast?" Alex asked Ludovic Leblanc jokingly.

"The Indians, boy. They are cannibals; they not only eat their enemies, they eat the dead of their own tribe," the professor replied emphatically.

"Oh, really? I'd never heard that," Dr. Omayra Torres said sarcastically.

"Read my book, Señorita Torres."

"Doctor," she corrected for the umpteenth time.

"These Indians kill to get women," he assured her.

"You might kill for that reason, Professor, but not the Indians," the doctor replied. "They don't need more women; the fact is, they have more than enough."