City of the Beasts (19 page)

Mokarita lay in the center of the village, where he received the ceremonial greetings of everyone present. Although he took small sips of
masato
, he could not swallow food. Another ancient, famed as a
curandero
, or healer, came to treat Mokarita. He was coated with dried mud and resin, to which he had stuck small white feathers, giving him the look of a strange bird just out of its egg. For a long time, the
curandero
leaped and shouted to drive away the demons in the body of his chief. He sucked several places on his belly and chest, making motions of drawing out the bad humors and spitting them away. Then he rubbed the dying man with a paste of
paranary
, a plant used in the Amazon to heal wounds. Mokarita's injuries were not external, however, and the remedy had no effect whatsoever. Alex suspected that the fall had burst some internal organ, maybe the liver, for as the hours went by, the aged chief was growing weaker and weaker as a thread of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

At dawn, Mokarita called Nadia and Alex to his side, and with his remaining strength explained to them that they were the only foreigners to enter Tapirawa-teri since the village had been founded.

"The souls of the People of the Mist and of our ancestors dwell here. The
nahab
speak lies and do not know justice; they have the power to stain our souls," he said.

They had been invited there, he added, by the instruction of the great shaman, who had told them that Nadia was destined to aid them. He did not know what role Alex played in events yet to come, but as companion to the girl, he, too, was welcome in Tapirawa-teri. Alex and Nadia knew that when Mokarita said "shaman" he was referring to Walimai, and to his prophecy about the Rahakanariwa.

"What form does the Rahakanariwa take?" Alex asked.

"Many forms. It is a blood-sucking bird. It is not human; it acts crazed; you cannot know what it will do. It is always thirsty for blood; it is quick to anger and to punishment," Mokarita explained.

"Have you seen the birds?" Alex asked.

"We have seen the birds that make noise and wind, but they have not seen us," Mokarita replied. "We know that they are not the Rahakanariwa, although they are much like it; those are the birds of the
nahab
. They fly only by day, never at night. That is why we are careful when we make fire, so that the bird will not see the smoke. That is why we live hidden. That is why we are the invisible people."

"The
nahab
will come sooner or later, it is inevitable. What will the People of the Mist do then?"

"My time in the Eye of the World is ended. The chief who comes after me must decide," Mokarita replied weakly.

Mokarita died at dawn. Waves of laments swept through Tapirawa-teri for hours; no one could remember a time before this chief who had guided the tribe for many decades. His yellow-feather crown, the symbol of his authority, was placed on a post until a successor could be chosen. In the meantime, the People of the Mist removed their adornments and painted their bodies with mud, charcoal, and ash as a sign of mourning. There was a great uneasiness, because they believed that death seldom occurred for natural reasons; usually the cause was an enemy that had used bad magic to inflict harm. The way to satisfy the spirit of the dead person was to find the enemy and eliminate him; otherwise the victim's ghost would remain in the world to bedevil the living. If the enemy was from another tribe, that could lead to a battle, but if he was from their own village, he could be "killed" symbolically through an appropriate ceremony. The warriors, who had spent the night drinking
masato
, were fired up, eager to settle the score with the one who had caused Mokarita's death. Finding him and destroying him was a matter of honor. No one was eager to replace the chief since there was no caste system among them; no one was more important than anyone else, the chief merely had more responsibilities. Mokarita was not respected for his position of command but for being very, very old; that signified experience and knowledge. But now the men, drunken and inflamed, could become violent at any moment.

"I believe this is the time to call on Walimai," Nadia whispered to Alex.

She went off to the edge of the village, took the amulet from her neck, and began to blow. The high-pitched owl's screech that came from the carved bone sounded strange in that place. Nadia had thought that all she had to do was use the talisman and Walimai would appear by magic, but now no matter how hard she blew, the shaman did not come.

The tension in the village was mounting by the hour. One of the warriors attacked Tahama, and he struck back, drawing blood. Several men had to step in to separate and calm the two hotheads. They decided to resolve the conflict with
yopo
, the green powder that, like
masato
, was used only by the men. They lined up two by two in pairs, facing one another; each was furnished with a long hollow reed, pointed at the tip, and used to blow the powder directly into the opposite person's nose. The
yopo
slammed into the brain like an ax. The affected person fell backward, screaming with pain, and then began to vomit, hop around, grunt, and see visions as green mucus drained from his nostrils and mouth. It was not a pleasant spectacle, but the powder transported the user to the world of the spirits. Some men became demons, some absorbed the soul of an animal, others looked into the future; but the ghost of Mokarita did not appear to any of them to designate his successor.

Alex and Nadia feared that this pandemonium would end in violence, and they tried to keep themselves in the background, hoping that if they didn't make any noise, no one would remember they were there. They were out of luck, though, because suddenly one of the warriors had a vision that the enemy of Mokarita—the cause for his death—was the young foreigner. In one instant, all the men, as one, joined to punish the supposed murderer of their chief, raising their clubs and giving chase. That was not the moment for Alex to think of the flute as a way of soothing spirits; instead, he started sprinting like a gazelle. His one advantage was desperation, which gave him wings—that, and the fact that his pursuers were not in the best condition. In the confusion, the intoxicated Indians tripped, and ran into, and clubbed each other as the women and children urged them on. Alex thought that his hour had come, and the image of his mother flashed through his mind as he ran blindly through the forest.

The young American was no competition for these Indian warriors in speed or skill, but they were drugged and one by one they dropped out of the chase. Finally Alex was able to take refuge beneath a tree, gasping and drained. But just when he thought he was safe, he realized he was surrounded, and before he could start running again the women of the tribe were upon him. They were laughing, as if having caught him was just a joke, but they tied him up firmly and in spite of his swinging his fists and kicking, they dragged him back to Tapirawa-teri and tied him to a tree. More than one girl tickled him, and several put bits of fruit in his mouth, but despite these attentions, they left the rope tightly knotted. By then, the effect of the
yopo
was beginning to wear off, and the exhausted men were slowly leaving their visions behind to return to reality. It would be several hours before they completely recovered their senses and their strength.

Alex, sore from having been dragged over the ground and humiliated by the teasing of the women, remembered Professor Ludovic Leblanc's hair-raising tales. If his theory was correct, he would wind up as a meal. And what would happen to Nadia? He felt responsible for her. In a movie or a novel, this would be the moment that the helicopters arrived to rescue him and he looked toward the sky, but without hope; in real life, helicopters never come in time. In the meantime, Nadia had come over to his tree; no one stopped her because none of the warriors could imagine that a girl would dare to defy them. Alex and Nadia had put their clothes on when the evening first turned cold, and since by now the People of the Mist were used to seeing them dressed, they felt no reason to take them off. So Alex was wearing the belt to which his flute, his compass, and the knife Nadia used to cut him free were attached. In the movies, it takes only one slash to cut a rope, but Alex sweated with impatience as Nadia sawed away for a long time at the leather thongs that bound Alex to the tree. Children, and some of the women of the tribe, came to see what they were doing, astonished at their daring, but Nadia acted with such confidence, waving the knife before the noses of the curious, that no one intervened, and after ten minutes, Alex was free. The two friends began quietly to walk away, not daring to run for fear of attracting the warriors' attention. That was a time when the art of invisibility would have been very useful.

The young foreigners did not get very far because at just that moment, Walimai made his entrance into the village. The aged witch man appeared with his staff and collection of little bags, his short spear, and the quartz cylinder that sounded like a rattle. It contained small stones taken from a place where lightning had struck; it was the symbol of
curanderos
and shamans, and represented the power of Sun Father. The shaman was accompanied by a young girl with hair to her waist, like a black shawl; her eyebrows were shaved and she was wearing necklaces of beads and polished picks that pierced her cheeks and nose. She was very beautiful and seemed happy, and, though she never said a word, she was always smiling. Alex realized that this was the shaman's angel-wife and was thrilled that he could see her; that meant that something had opened in his mind or his intuition. As Nadia had taught him, he had to see with his heart. She had told him that many years before, when Walimai was still young, he had used a poison knife to kill this girl, as it was the only way to free her from slavery. Though it was a favor, not a crime, when her soul escaped it had clung to his breastbone. Walimai had fled into the deepest part of the jungle, carrying the soul of the girl to a place where no one could ever find her. There he had fulfilled the required rites of purification: fasting and immobility. However, during the journey, he and the woman had fallen in love, and once the rite of
unokaimú
had been performed, her spirit had not wanted to leave him but had chosen to stay in this world beside the man she loved. That had happened nearly half a century ago, and, ever since, she had accompanied Walimai, waiting for the moment that he could fly away with her, he, too, a spirit.

Walimai's presence dissolved the tension in Tapirawa-teri, and the same warriors who only shortly before had been ready to massacre Alex now were relaxed and friendly. The tribe respected and feared the great shaman because he had the supernatural ability to interpret signs. Everyone dreamed and had visions, but only the chosen like Walimai traveled to the world of the great spirits, where they learned the meaning of visions and could guide others and change the course of natural disasters.

The ancient told the tribe that Alex had the soul of a black jaguar, a sacred animal, and that he had come from far away to help the People of the Mist. He explained that these were very strange times, times in which the boundary between this world and the world of the beyond was unclear, times when the Rahakanariwa could devour them all. He reminded them of the existence of the
nahab
, which most of them knew only through stories told them by brothers from tribes in the lowlands. The warriors of Tapirawa-teri had spied on the expedition of the
International Geographic
for days, but they had not understood the activities or customs of those strange foreigners. Walimai, who in the century of his lifetime had seen many things, told them what he knew.

"The
nahab
are like the dead; their souls have escaped their breasts," he said. "The
nahab
have no knowledge, they know nothing; they cannot spear a fish with a lance or fell a monkey with a dart, or climb a tree. They do not go dressed in air and light, as we do, but wear stinking cloth. They do not bathe in the river, they do not know the rules of decency or courtesy, they do not share their house, their food, their children, or their women. They have soft bones and their skulls split at the least blow. They kill animals and do not eat them, leaving them on the ground to rot. Wherever they pass they leave a trail of filth and poison, even in water. The
nahab
are so crazed that they try to take with them the stones of the earth, the sand of the rivers, and the trees of the forest. Some want the earth itself. We tell them that the jungle cannot be carried away on their backs like a dead tapir, but they do not listen. They speak to us of their gods but they do not want to hear of ours. Their appetites are unbounded, like the caimans's. These terrible things I have seen with my own eyes, and I have heard with my own ears, and touched with my own hands."

"We will never allow these demons to come to the Eye of the World; we will kill them with our darts and arrows as they climb the waterfall, as we have done to all foreigners who have tried since the times of the grandfathers of our grandfathers," Tahama proclaimed.

"But they will come no matter," Alex said. "The
nahab
have birds of noise and wind; they can fly above the mountains. They will come because they want the stones and the trees and the earth."

"True," Walimai admitted.

"The
nahab
can also kill with sickness," said Nadia. "Many tribes have died in this way, but the People of the Mist can be saved."

"This honey-colored girl knows what she is saying; we must listen to her. The Rahakanariwa can adopt the form of deadly sickness," Walimai assured them.

"She is more powerful than the Rahakanariwa?" asked Tahama, dumbfounded.

"I am not, but there is another woman who is very powerful. She has serums that can prevent epidemics," said Nadia.

Nadia and Alex spent an hour trying to convince the Indians that not all
nahab
were evil demons, that some were friends, like Dr. Omayra Torres. The limitations of language were difficult enough, but added to that were cultural differences. How could they explain to these Indians what a serum was? They themselves did not completely understand, which is why they chose to say that it was very strong magic.