Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  But Lourdes shook her head and made excuses. “No, I just can’t get away from my radio program.” But Lourdes missed Kazumasa. She even missed me. Little did she know that J.B. Tweep had made complicated arrangements to send Kazumasa and me up and down and all over the state of Pará to find the very spot where I had been pulled, presumably by another deposit of Matacão plastic. These arrangements were steeped in secrecy; J.B. was taking no chances. GGG Enterprises would have Matacão plastic, or nobody would.

  When the deejay announced that Lourdes had won a trip to the Matacão, she was ecstatic, but there was no way to contact Kazumasa to tell him that she would be coming to join him on the Matacão. Lourdes called Tia Carolina to have her take over her duties in that fourteenth-floor apartment. She kissed Rubens and Gislaine good-bye. “I’ll call you when I get there,” she assured them.

  Hiroshi saw Lourdes off at the bus station. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to go to the Matacão?” Hiroshi asked. “We could have gone together by plane.”

  “The bus is fine for me,” Lourdes smiled. “I don’t think I’m the sort to go by airplane. Besides, I won this trip.”

  “When you get there,” said Hiroshi, “go to my place on the Matacão. You’ll see the Hiro’s sign in blue neon just like here. You can’t miss it. My people will find you a place to stay. I’ve got some business here, but I should be there by the time you arrive.” Hiroshi looked at Lourdes hopefully, but she felt shy and uncomfortable. She was thinking about Kazumasa.

  Lourdes nodded, but four days later, when she arrived on the Matacão, Lourdes made her way to the offices of Radio Chico. Chico Paco was very happy to see Lourdes. He asked about Rubens and Gislaine and even Kazumasa. “Did you know,” he asked Lourdes, “that your patron Seu Kazumasa gave me the money to buy this radio station?”

  “So many people have been helped by Seu Kazumasa,” said Lourdes proudly. “He is the most generous man I have ever known. He’s not like anyone I have ever met.” Lourdes sighed. “I haven’t seen him in several months, you know. I am afraid that something may have happened to him.”

  Chico Paco detected the urgency in Lourdes’s voice.

  Lourdes did not want to lose Kazumasa to the north in the same way she had lost her husband. “I wonder if there is a way to find him. He was supposed to come here to the Matacão, but even his cousin Hiroshi doesn’t know where he is.”

  Chico Paco smiled kindly at the woman whose letter had started a whole new way of life for him. “Maybe I can help you find Seu Kazumasa,” he suggested. “If he listens to the radio, maybe he will answer your prayers.”

  Lourdes decided to volunteer her time for Radio Chico and the Foundation for Votive Pilgrimages. She would wait to see if Kazumasa could be found, and in the meantime, help Chico Paco out. It was such a big mission for such a young man. It was Lourdes’s idea to start something called “Telephone Pilgrimages.” Lourdes helped to compile a list of answered prayers of more modest nature, such as the recovery of some lost article or treasured possession or the blessings of a raise in pay, which could be telephoned in to the Matacão. “Not everyone has such great needs,” she argued. “But everyone, every day, has some small prayer that God answers. They should have a way to show their thanks.”

  Trained “telephone pilgrims” were soon waiting to receive these calls and to place the blessed person’s promise on the Matacão in the form of a lighted candle, prayer or statuette, any one of which could be purchased by a small donation to the foundation. Lourdes made sure that a certificate or prayer book signed by Chico Paco himself was sent out to assure the caller of a completed act of devotion on his or her behalf. And every day, Lourdes herself set a candle at Saint George’s altar, praying for Kazumasa’s speedy return.

  Then there came the idea of using pigeons as votive messengers. Batista had lent Chico Paco a pigeon couple to try the idea out. “Where did you get such an idea?” Batista asked Chico Paco.

  “There was a woman who called the show from São Paulo the other day. I don’t remember her name.”

  “Woman from São Paulo?” Batista bristled. She could only be Tania Aparecida. Was she trying to kill him with work?

  Of course, the foundation was quick to see the possibilities in homing pigeons, symbolic representatives of the Holy Ghost, and immediately contracted with Djapan Enterprises for five hundred pigeon pilgrims. Batista worked day and night to breed pigeons until there was no more room for cages on the penthouse roofs off the Matacão. People below them were beginning to complain about the pigeon droppings on their windows, cars, and incoming guests. Batista had to buy a small plot of land not too far from the Matacão and continued breeding pigeons there.

  The pigeons earmarked as the foundation’s votive messengers were carefully packaged in special cages with complete instructions and sent by air to requesting parties within the suggested radius of the Matacão. Pigeons returned from everywhere to the Matacão with votive messages and prayers. As the messages arrived, a Radio Chico announcer read them over the air. “Chico Paco,” said the announcer, “I think I hear the bell. A votive pigeon has arrived!” Every day, dozens of new callers telephoned in with donations and requests for pigeon pilgrims. The votive pigeon was becoming almost as popular as the telephone pilgrimage. In time, Batista would count as many as a thousand pigeons homing in from various places to the Matacão.

  One day, Chico Paco answered a call from a small northeastern coastal town. He could almost hear and feel the sea breeze sifting through his golden hair. “Chico Paco,” said a familiar voice, “this is Gilberto. I have sad news to tell you. My grandmother Maria Creuza is no longer with us. She has gone to heaven.”

  Chico Paco felt the tears well up in his green eyes, not so much for the old woman, who was after all very old, but for the memory of his friendship and the strange empty place in his heart which could only be filled by his dreams. How hard it was to comply with God’s will.

  “How long has it been? Almost two years? I miss you, Chiquinho,” said Gilberto. “So does your mother. I’ve been thinking that your mother and I could come to visit you.”

  Chico Paco’s heart leapt. From that moment, it would be held aloft until the waves engulfed it and the tide would take it out to sea.

  CHAPTER 21:

  Homing

  It was a world record akin to the eighteenth-century record of 7,000 miles to the West African coast in 55 days. The Djapan pigeon had flown 1,500 miles from the Matacão to São Paulo in 5 days, averaging 300 miles per day and 20 miles per hour. Congratulations came from every corner of the pigeon world. Photographs of the famous Djapan pigeon, Azulzinha, reunited with its pigeon mate and brood on the Djapan back porch, were on all the front pages of the major newspapers. Batista read the newspaper articles with a mixture of pride and jealousy. Tania Aparecida was in most of the photographs, her hair cut and waved in some new style. Batista stared at her features, trying to find the woman he loved within the black-and-white newsprint. He looked at the pigeon Azulzinha; she was the culmination of months of hard work, study and training. Batista and Tania Aparecida were the proud parents of a world-record-winning champion. He and Tania Aparecida should be there together basking in this glory, cooing lovingly at their brood of pigeons and at each other in a honeymoon of bliss. He slumped back in depression but continued to read.

  Of the pigeons sent from the Matacão, one had arrived in record time, and two days later, two more birds straggled in with likewise respectable times. Three birds were discovered in varied stages of their trip, for the most part on target. And Rubens’s bird, to the boy’s joy, straggled in, not a record-winner but certainly a survivor. Five of the Djapan birds were never accounted for, probably lost, killed or waylaid somewhere in the great expanse of Brazil.

  Finally, long after the commotion of the world record had subsided, one bird arrived in New York at the revolving doors of GGG Enterprises, carrying one of Batista’s cryptic notes, which simply read, “Feather.”

  J.
B. Tweep called Batista at his pigeon farm to tell him the news. “I can’t tell you what a sensation your pigeon has caused,” he spoke excitedly. “It means more to GGG than anything our publicity people could devise. We’ve got lines of people filling the New York lobby to see your bird. How did you plan this? I mean, it was a stroke of genius to put in that note.”

  Batista listened to J.B. in confusion. “Seems she went the wrong way.” He scratched his head. “That’s my bird all right. You say the ring on her leg reads DJAPAN?”

  “We’re trying to make the most of this. The publicity people will be contacting you to do a short interview,” said J.B.

  Sure enough, as old Mané Pena knew all too well, the GGG publicity people came through with their cameras and questions. After an hour of questions and another hour of wandering around the pigeon farm, they produced a five-minute piece that was interspersed with material on the Matacão and GGG’s inroads into the science and development of the feather.

  Batista’s New York pigeon caused a commotion in the business world, those repercussions eventually reaching Wall Street, sending GGG stocks shooting upward. Not only people who had an inside track on the market, but also those without an iota of business acumen were throwing their money “on the feather”—GGG Enterprises.

  Overnight, the fame of the Djapan pigeons had spread around the globe, and Batista was suddenly accosted by business proposals, pigeon enthusiasts, and reporters from all over the world. A market astrologer from New York, anxious to propose regular pigeon flights carrying Batista’s messages direct to his Wall Street office, called daily, trying to develop a proposal that would appeal to Batista. “Just start something up for me. Anything,” the market astrologer pleaded on the phone. “I’ve heard all about your prophetic messages. About that Japanese and his ball. Well, what he did is peanuts compared to what we can do together. This is Wall Street! You name your deal!”

  Another odd fellow from Las Vegas came around in a pinstripe suit. He said he was the friend of a Brazilian dancer who did a follies show on the strip. He showed Batista pictures of the Brazilian dancer in an enormous headdress with rhinestones and feathers. “Come to Las Vegas,” he nudged Batista. “I can show you a good time.” Batista looked at the pictures of a tall shapely mulata, but he was not impressed. Tania Aparecida was several times more beautiful, he thought. What if this fellow were to meet Tania Aparecida and she in turn were to see this stuff, all this glamour and what-not? Batista fumed. He waved off the foreigners and their foreign proposals. He had enough work from Tania Aparecida’s crazy ideas. There was bird feed to negotiate, cages to build, water troughs to clean, pigeon dung to cart away. He had nearly a dozen full-time workers, expensive incubating machines, barns, silos, and trucks. The pigeon votive and advertising business alone was work for another dozen people. He was already plagued by deadlines in several cities to raise substantial broods. He didn’t like to leave it to an assistant. He wanted to be there to let the birds out with their advertising messages. He didn’t have time for any nonsense.

  But as Batista suspected, Tania Aparecida would not have brushed off the man in the pinstripe suit so easily. It was not because of the rhinestones or the headdress on the mulata or because of any gifts of gold watches and diamond earrings, but because Las Vegas would have sounded like a nice place to visit. Tania Aparecida looked at the map to see where the Djapan pigeons were flying, and she compared this with so many other exotic places in the world. Brazil was a big country, and their pigeons were flying everywhere. It would not take much more to get them to fly even farther. After all, one had reached New York. New York, thought Tania Aparecida. Somehow, she would find a way to get to New York.

  It was thus that Tania Aparecida got the idea to provide special services for special occasions, a sort of greeting-pigeon business. Her marketing approach was to sell pigeons as monogamous, familial, dependable and loving creatures, the perfect messenger to send one’s love, best wishes, or condolences. She set up an experimental pigeon route between São Paulo and the nearby city of Campinas. Special homing posts were created where customers could write their messages and direct them to and from São Paulo and Campinas via pigeon. It was an immediate success. Grandparents sent happy birthday pigeon notes to their grandchildren in São Paulo, while lovers sent discreet messages from Campinas to São Paulo and so forth. In no time at all, Tania Aparecida was opening new homing posts in towns everywhere. The entire state of São Paulo was soon crisscrossed with Djapan Greeting Pigeon routes, and other states were eager not to be left behind in this trend. Tania Aparecida could hardly get to the next town fast enough to establish another homing post. Soon she found herself as far from her home as Rio Grande do Sul, thousands of miles away at the very southern tip of Brazil. From there, it was a short hop to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Djapan Pigeon Communications went international.

  “Where are you?” Batista shouted into the phone. “Who is watching things in São Paulo?”

  “You needn’t shout, darling,” Tania Aparecida talked calmly into the phone. “Mother has everything under control. We had to move out of the tenement, you know. It was much too crowded. I got her a nice place in Suzano, you know where all the Japanese live. Thirty acres. It should be enough, don’t you think? I’ll give you Mother’s new number . . .”

  Batista scribbled the number on a scrap of paper. “What about the champions?” he asked. “Did they go to Suzano too?”

  “Of course,” Tania Aparecida assured him. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said. “There’s a publisher that wants to put all of your messages in a book.”

  “Messages?” Batista had not relinquished his own weekly pigeon-message flights, which now flew into the Matacão and were announced on Radio Chico. People still followed with sustained ardor Batista’s famous weekly pigeon messages, which continued to provide surprising strokes of luck for some and profound wisdom for others.

  “They are going to call you. I’ve got to go, but I’m sending you a surprise. I miss you terribly.” She hung up.

  The surprise was that instead of communicating by telephone, he could now communicate with Tania Aparecida via their pigeon communication service. “The airways are ours,” she exclaimed. “And it’s completely free!”

  Batista’s jealousy still attempted to spread its clinging web through the communication system. “Tania Aparecida: Where were you when I called at 2:00 AM yesterday? What were you doing at such an hour?”

  “Darling, 2:00 AM your time is 10:00 AM here. I was in important negotiations,” Tania Aparecida returned.

  “Do you know how long it’s been?”

  “It’s only temporary. Look how far we’ve come!”

  “It’s going to be a year!”

  “How time flies!”

  Batista raged impotently as Tania Aparecida wove the Djapan Pigeon Communications network farther and farther over the globe and, as she had always wished and dreamed of, traveled abroad for the company to New York, London, Paris, and Las Vegas.

  PART V:

  More Loss

  CHAPTER 22:

  Plastics

  As Kazumasa and I took off to search for other Matacão locations, research concerning the nature of the Matacão’s plastic structure was constantly churning up new information. As J.B. Tweep had explained to Kazumasa, after the first succeses in actually cutting the rigid plastic of the Matacão to obtain core samples, new breakthroughs establishing the means of molding and shaping the plastic were made. The new technology associated with the Matacão plastic would rapidly become the wave of the future, and GGG Enterprises was definitely leading this wave with most of the technology under wraps. J.B. had foreseen the eventual stabilization of feather sales and was eager to find new and dramatic sources of revenue. Once Matacão plastic technology became cost-effective, GGG would revolutionize the plastic market with one incredible novelty after another.

  One of the great breakthroughs in plastics had to do with the magnetism of Matacão plastic. No
t only did this open up new possibilities for refrigerator magnets, it was also discovered that this magnetism could be programmed in an infinite number of “addresses,” making possible GGG’s personalized credit cards without numbers or names. Matacão plastic magnetized credit cards were virtually indestructible and impossible to counterfeit. GGG, of course, would provide the computerized scanner to read the magnetized, coded information held within a seemingly blank piece of plastic. Instantly, a wealth of data regarding the purchaser—card number, license number, social security number, address, home and business phones, credit rating, checking account number, simulated signatures, and recent photographs of authorized users—could be made available on a monitor. Magnetized credit cards, known as MCCs for short, would suddenly replace the antiquated stuff and send the credit-card insurance business scurrying for some new gimmick like a toll-free number to restore lost cards through an express mail, twenty-four-hour service. Magnetized credit cards were so reliable that people would be able to use them to purchase things like real estate, stocks, and gold bullion. GGG, it would be claimed, had accomplished what no one before had been able to achieve: it had turned plastic into gold! But for the compromising system of computer records, some had even considered the replacement of cold currency with a nationalized MCC system a real possibility. Some even predicted that currency would cease to be used by the year 2020 or even sooner.

  The wonderful thing about the Matacão plastic was its capability to assume a wide range of forms. When the means of molding and shaping this marvelous material was finally discovered, the possibilities were found to be infinite. Matacão plastic could be molded into forms more durable and impenetrable than steel; it was harder than diamonds and, at the same time, could be spread out in thin sheets, as thin as tissue paper with the consistency of silk. Every industry from construction to fashion would jump into Matacão plastics. At a plastics convention, all sorts of marvels were displayed—cars made completely out of Matacão plastic, from the motor to the plush velveteen fabrics of the seats; imitation furs and leathers made into coats and dress pumps; Danish furniture made of Matacão “teak”; and all sorts of plants, from potted petunias to palm trees. The remarkable thing about Matacão plastic was its incredible ability to imitate anything. In the past, imitation leather had always had a telltale vinyl appearance, and silk flowers only seemed real until one got close and noticed the dust collecting in the stamens and pistils. But Matacão plastic was so true to reality that, even upon touch and a lot of palpating examination, one could not tell the difference. At the plastics convention, two tiger lilies, one natural and the other made from Matacão plastic, were exhibited for public examination. Few, if any, of the examiners could tell the difference between the real and the fake. Only toward the end of the convention, when the natural tiger lily began to wilt with age, bruised from mishandling, were people able to discern reality from fabrication. The plastic lily remained the very perfection of nature itself. Matacão plastic managed to re-create the natural glow, moisture, freshness—the very sensation of life.