Night of the Jaguar (3 page)

Forgiveness also confused Moie, as did Father Perrin’s idea that love rather than power was the ruling force of the world. One had enemies, and the duty of a man was to destroy them if he could and to appease them if he could not. The idea that one should love enemies seemed insane to him and not
ryuxit.
Father Perrin said that the
wai’ichuranan
didn’t have that word, but only words for little pieces of it, like
harmony, beauty, peace,
and
bliss
. Moie knew that the world was ruled by
ryuxit,
the harmony of the different children of Jaguar, tree rock snake fish bird all together with humans. What was not
ryuxit
was
siwix,
those things that were disharmonious and therefore forbidden. One might love that
which was
ryuxit,
as one loved a woman, but one could not love
siwix
things, that was a contradiction. A
paradox
. Father Perrin had taught him that word, too, meaning things that could be true and not true at the same time, like something being wet
and
dry or light
and
dark. Father Perrin said that Rain, Earth, and Jaguar were all separate but at the same time one and the same. I will make you a theologian before I die, he used to say; that was what the dead people called their
jampirinan
. Moie was not so sure about this, for such thoughts made his head ache, but still the idea plucked at his mind, and he could see that there was something in it beyond his power to express. According to Father Perrin, Jan’ichupitaolik could love
siwix,
and by loving it, he changed it into
ryuxit,
and not only that, but a better
ryuxit
than had been before.

Moie would have certainly dismissed all of this as dead people’s nonsense, if he had not visited Father Perrin’s spirit in a dream shortly after the priest had arrived at Home. There he found not the shriveled sad soul characteristic of the
wai’ichuranan,
but something immense and powerful,
ryuxit
beyond
ryuxit
. So he had let the man live in Home and set up his church and had taught him as much as he thought proper about the ways of the Runiya and of
axa’jampirin,
the path of the spirits, and he had learned much about the
axa’jampirin
of the dead people.

Now Tim was dead, and with Jaguar above the moon, or in heaven with his God, and perhaps this was really the same thing, as Father Perrin had often suggested. Moie sighed and rose and looked at the corpse. The flies and cockroaches had found the body already, they were busy laying their eggs in eyes and mouth and nibbling in dark squirming clots at the torn flesh around the three wounds. He called out and men came in and they took the body down to the river. There Moie made the ritual cuts and filled the body cavity with six large round white stones and drilled a hole into the brain to prevent a witch from reanimating it, and then they sang the funeral songs, as they would have for one of their own, and gave the body to Rain through her child, the River.

The church was sealed up, both physically with mats and ropes and against spirit invasion by Moie, using secret means. No human person would loot there, nor would any mischievous spirit come to feed on the spiritual detritus of the former inhabitant. There was the usual party that night, with food, chicha, and dancing, for Father Perrin was well
liked in Home and also the moon was full, which was always propitious. A person who died at the full of the moon was a friend of Jaguar and so to be especially honored. Moie drank less than usual at the wake, and left while the dancing was still going on. He went on trails his feet knew well, although the moonlight barely penetrated the heavy canopy of foliage and it was dark enough that he could see little floating bright specks, as if his eyes were shut. After a while the ground beneath his feet grew harder, more rocky, and the trees grew shrubbier, and then he was on the limestone escarpment that rose above the rain forest in the center of Puxto mesa. From here he had an unobstructed view of the night sky and this was by design, for the people had always kept this small area clear of growth, as it was sacred to Jaguar and served the Runiya as both a cathedral and an observatory, although with a congregation or astronomical staff of only one.

In the center of this space was a long, low white boulder, almost the shape of a crouched cat, upon which, soon after the creation of the universe, First Man had carved an image of his maker. First Man had made the head and ears, made the mouth open, and placed two large natural emeralds in the eye sockets. He had incised the rosettes all over it as well, and these had grown dark moss in them, so that the effect was startlingly lifelike at night.

Moie sat on a low stone before this image and took two nostrils of
yana
and sang his name song in a loud clear voice, asking permission to speak to his god. Jaguar was hiding now behind clouds that blew past him like palm fronds in a storm. He peeked out, for a moment, then again, and now a long cloud tore away and he shone clear against the black sky, the two deep eyes, the muzzle and its curving mouth, the spotted face and net of whiskers. In the holy language, Moie prayed for aid for himself and his people, and after some time had passed Jaguar swelled and grew brighter and descended from the heavens to his image below.

The god listened while Moie told his tale, of the priest and his death and the danger he had foretold. Then the Lord Jaguar spoke, the voice seeming to emerge from the stone jaws. He said, Moie, you must go into the land of the dead and tell the dead people that this is forbidden to them. Say that the Puxto is for me and the speakers of language, the Runiya, and not for the dead.

At this Moie trembled with fear and spoke, “
Tayit,
how can one human do this? The dead people are so many, and I don’t speak their language very well. They will laugh at me and turn me away from their village.”

Jaguar answered, I will provide you with allies from the dead people who will speak my words for you. And if the lords of the dead people do not do as I demand, I will slay them and feed on their livers. Now drive the fear from your own heart, Moie, for I will go with you and my strength will be yours. And the Lord Jaguar told him other things that would help him on this journey. Then Jaguar sent a part of himself leaping from the stone mouth and it entered Moie through his nostrils and Moie fell senseless on the ground.

When he came to himself again it was dawn, dull and overcast with a chilling mist. Moie rose and walked back down to the village, slapping his arms and chest to restore feeling. Fear was throbbing deep in his belly, but it didn’t rise to his heart, because Jaguar was there. The village was asleep, silent but for the sounds of the animals, the clucking of the chickens and the grunts of the pigs oddly muffled by the mist. He thought briefly about what the people would say when they found him gone. Some other
jampiri
would no doubt try to take his place and the people would either accept him or not, or there might be a struggle between two
jampirinan
and some Runiya might be harmed. In any case he might have died on any day, not that there was much difference between dying and what he was about to do. He would have liked to turn his profession over to an apprentice, but he had none. Jaguar had not marked any boys for that in a long time.

Arriving at the church, he tore down the matting and went in. There was a cloth suitcase in the room where the man had died. Moie took it and the priest’s clothing and fishing tackle and went back to his compound. Pucu, the younger of the two women, was already awake. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Away. Put some food in a basket.” As she did so, he gathered the materials of his profession into a net bag, and also took his blowgun and darts and a water skin of peccary with the fur still on it.

“When will you be back?” she asked. He looked at her and made his expression stern, although he ached to think that this sweet young
face was the last face of his people he would ever look upon. He roped his burden into a convenient pack and said, “When you see me return you will know,” and strode off.

At the river, he selected a new one-man fishing canoe, loaded his things into its prow, selected a paddle and a spare and a gourd for bailing, and without a backward look pushed off into the black river, which was called Paluto by the dead people. The rain continued to fall, sometimes a drizzle, more often in sheets that beat at his naked back. By late afternoon he was past San Pedro Casivare, shielded by the downpour from the eyes of the
wai’ichuranan
.

He paddled for days upon days, hands of days, sleeping fitfully, eating the dried food he had brought until it was gone and afterward subsisting on fish he caught with the priest’s rod and reel, eaten raw, and an occasional piece of fruit he found floating on the river or hanging over it from a tree. He chewed on coca leaves to fight hunger and exhaustion. Once he shot a monkey with the blowgun, but it sank before he could get to it. He rode the Paluto as it debouched into the Meta, a much wider stream. Moie didn’t know its name, nor did he know that the even vaster river the Meta joined was called the Orinoco by the dead people. There was a substantial town at the junction of the two rivers, and now there were large boats in the channel, things that towered over his craft like hills. He also passed swift white vessels full of
wai’ichuranan,
males and females, dressed in bright clothing like parrots, and like parrots they screamed and clucked at him and pointed black sticks and silver gourds at him as he paddled by, but he was not harmed. Now he traveled only when the rain was heavy or very early in the morning. His spirits fell, and Jaguar sent unpleasant dreams of the dead people and their endless villages, the streets of stone and the cliff houses made from stone and glass like shining solid air and rolling things that stank and the dead people thronging around, more than hands could calculate, as many as the leaves in a forest.

In the sky, Jaguar left to visit his mother, Rain. He shrank to emptiness. Then he grew tired of his mother’s advice, as all men do, and he returned to shine down round and bright on the endless waters, and left again, and returned again and left. In places Moie encountered boiling rapids and whirlpools, but he had spent much of his life navigating the white waters of the upper Paluto and these proved no worse.
After the rapids came calm brown waters so wide that in the early-morning mists he could not see either shore. The rains slowed and ceased and the country around the Orinoco changed from rain forest to drier palm lands. He passed a large city at night, looking like the city in his dream, with bright dots of light streaming from its cliff houses, like captured stars. A roaring thing crossed the air above the river and disappeared. He had heard that the dead people had metal canoes that flew like birds and he saw it was true. Moie himself flew through the air silently using a different method.

After more days, there was another great city and then the palm lands turned to swamp and the river divided itself into narrower streams. He let Jaguar guide his direction and one day he dipped his hand into the river and drank and found the water was salt. He had heard from Father Perrin that the sea was salt, and had not really believed it, but now he knew it was so.

He passed mangrove forests and mud flats and ahead lay a flat sheet of water and in the far horizon a brown smudge that he thought must be Miami America. He tied his canoe to a mangrove root and, taking his blowgun, he waded along the edge of the sea. Before long he came to a shallow bay full of feeding flamingos and other seabirds. He shot two flamingos. On the beach he built a big fire and dismembered the birds and scorched their feathers off and then wrapped the meat in palm leaves and mud and buried them in the hot coals. He ate the stringy flesh and drank water from his skin. Then he headed his canoe out into the gently rolling waves.

It took him all day to cross the ocean, and when he got to the other shore, he was mildly surprised to see that America looked very much like San Pedro Casivare. Father Perrin had told him many stories about his home and it was not like this: only a shambling wooden dock, some low shacks among the palm and pepper trees, and black-skinned people going about their business. He dragged his canoe to the sands and went ashore, properly dressed in his feathered shoulder cape and quetzal-feather hat, for he wanted these people to know he was a
jampiri
and so to be respected. There were some black people standing and sitting in front of a small building and he went up to them and in Spanish said, “Pardon, sirs and madams, is this Miami America?”

They gaped at him. He asked the question again, but they just chattered in a strange tongue and their children surrounded him, staring. A woman ran off down the street and returned with an old yellowish man. This person spoke Spanish. He asked Moie where he came from. From Home, said Moie, and I want to know, is this Miami America, for I have crossed the sea after traveling on many rivers and I have heard it is on the other side of the sea.

The man said, no, it was not Miami, it was the town of Fernandino on the island of Trinidad, and he also said you have not crossed the sea at all, but only the Gulf of Paria. He explained that the sea was much, much bigger and that one could not cross it in a canoe. And would the gentleman like something to drink?

So they sat on chairs in the shade and drank a kind of chicha from bottles, which Moie had not done since he was a boy, and the man, Ezra, told him that he had at one time traveled the whole world, working on the white man’s ships, which were canoes as large as hills, and he knew both Spanish and English, the language they spoke in America, although in Miami they spoke Spanish, too. And he said that if the gentleman wanted to go to Miami, he should go to Port of Spain, north of here, and find a ship and get aboard it secretly at night and hide and it would carry him to Miami. Ezra told him many things about how to do this, and the many dangers involved, for in the old days when he was a sailor he had in this way helped many people go to America, to become rich, as he had become rich working for the ships.