City of the Beasts (5 page)

"They don't know, really. The Indians don't count past two. Besides, to them death is relative. If they thought someone had stolen their soul, or walked over their tracks, or taken control of their dreams, for example, that would be worse than being dead. Someone who is dead, however, can go on living in spirit."

"That's complicated," said Alexander, who did not believe in spirits.

"Whoever told you life is simple?"

Kate explained that the expedition was being led by a famous anthropologist, Professor Ludovic Leblanc, who had spent years investigating the trail of the so-called Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, on the border between China and Tibet, without finding him. He had also worked among a tribe of Indians in the Amazon, and made the claim that they were the most savage on the planet; when least expected, they ate their prisoners. This information was not soothing, Kate admitted. Their guide would be a Brazilian by the name of César Santos, who had spent his life in that region and had good relations with the Indians. He owned an airplane that was pretty beat up but still operating, and he planned to use it to fly them into Indian territory.

"In school we studied the Amazon in an ecology class," commented Alex, whose eyes were getting very heavy.

"Well! No doubt that one class will suffice!" Kate said sarcastically. And added, "I suppose you're tired. You can sleep on the sofa and tomorrow, early, start working for me."

"What do I have to do?"

"Whatever I tell you. For right now, I'm telling you to go to bed."

"Good night, Kate," murmured Alex, curling up on the sofa cushions.

"Bah!" his grandmother grumbled. But she waited until he fell asleep and then pulled a couple of blankets over him.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Amazon River

KATE AND ALEXANDER WERE flying across northern Brazil in a commercial airplane. For hours and hours, they had been seeing an endless expanse of forest, all the same intense green, cut through by rivers like shining serpents. The most formidable of all was the color of coffee with cream.

"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, Professor?" 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.