The Cloud Forest

by Peter Matthiessen

  April 27. Atalaya.

  Now is the time of the quarter-moon, and in the jungle the changes of the moon bring rain. This morning the rain fell hard and steadily, and we hunched miserably in the canoe, passing down from the lumber camp where we had slept to the mouth of the Inuya, and from there down the windswept Urubamba to the junction of that river with the Río Tambo: these rivers flow north together as the Ucayali.

  At the Tambo-Urubamba encuentro lies the largest jungle settlement in all the hundreds of miles of rivers between Pucallpa to the north and Puerto Maldonado far away to the southeast in Madre de Dios. This village of five hundred souls is Atalaya. Here Andrés left our humble expedition. He did not believe César’s statement that the outboard canoe could go downriver to Pucallpa in two and a half days, as opposed to the four required when Andrés himself worked in this region during World War II, and all the information we could gather in Atalaya tended to support his opinion. He decided to take the chance that the little taxi plane from San Ramón could get in to Atalaya’s mud strip in the next day or so, rather than risk missing the scheduled flight out of Pucallpa on the thirtieth.

  As we were broke, we had to extract from Cruz the refund he still owed us on the original advance, in order to pay for Andrés’s ticket. Cruz, who had been drinking a little to warm himself after the cold rains of the morning, was offended that Andrés doubted his ability to reach Pucallpa in the required time, and he now shouted angrily that he was losing his shirt on the whole operation. This anger had been building for several days. Cruz’s hope had been that we would decide to go far up the Inuya to the Amahuacas, or at least spend a few days in the Mapuya, which would permit him to earn back the advance given him toward the proposed search for the Picha ruin. Unfairly, he had focused his outrage on Andrés, whose anniversary he saw as the key to his disappointment. Andrés, in turn, had mistrusted Cruz from the beginning, and their mutual dislike came out into the open at Atalaya, with neither man making any real effort to understand the position of the other. Nor was I any help, since I felt irritable myself. But the fault of the decision had been not Andrés’s, but my own, a point which Cruz refused to understand. Cruz ranted to me against the whole ridiculous nature of anniversaries, as well as Andrés’s single-mindedness on this subject, and since my own anniversaries mean little or nothing to me, I’m afraid I have not been as sympathetic with Andrés’s need as I might have been. Like Cruz, I have been somewhat troubled by the financial aspects of the expedition. I have had no confirmation from my sponsors in New York that the Urubamba trip has been approved and, since I feel frustrated anyway, have been somewhat short with Andrés in this regard. Andrés has a low opinion of the meaning of money, which he tends to spend casually whether or not he has it, and while on theory I admire this attitude, I now permitted it, for want of anything better, to exasperate me. As a result—though Andrés and I have avoided an open dispute—the tensions between us are working in all directions and the morale of our little band has reached its nadir.

  Andrés and I parted too hastily, considering what we have been through together. Cruz was impatient and sulky and shouting a lot of unnecessary orders to nobody in particular from the stern of the canoe. I last saw Andrés standing, expressionless, on the river bank in the rain, behind him the dismal huts of Atalaya squatting against the jungle wall. I much regretted my own irritation and felt sincerely sorry that he was gone, as he is an excellent and dependable companion, and his tact and good will, in combination with the august presence of a Porras Cáceres, have made the whole journey far more pleasant than it otherwise would have been. Without him, I might still be in Pangoa, and not necessarily with all parts, or any, in good working order.

  Then we were off down the Ucayali, into the moody jungle afternoon, with the fossil and a cooked monkey in the bow and César brooding over his Swedish outboard in the stern; these outboards, incidentally, are vastly preferred here to the American makes, which are complicated, eccentric, and difficult to repair. What with the weather and the upsetting parting with Andrés, and the prospect of several days of César Cruz’s ill humor, I was feeling a bit moody myself. I was sitting amidships, as I have been for several days, confronted with the snout of the great mud-caked fossil, and thinking how inevitable and just that an animal so patently deficient in both brains and sang-froid should have become extinct. My early fears that collision with a log or shoal would topple the hard-won prize for once and for all into the river ooze beneath the current were momentarily replaced by the notion that this was exactly where it belonged. While beset by this access of cheap philosophizing, I went so far as to ask myself if this rude lump, sculpted by death, did not symbolize the sterility of all our goals, and at this point my attention was caught by the profile of our faithful vassal, Alejandro, upright and rigid, with his Indian face of stone. In this instant there was a strange kinship between him and the fossil, quite apart from the fact that both are caked with mud (this is no criticism; I am caked with mud myself) : Alejandro was suddenly a monolith into which, at odd moments of the day, life might be breathed and wooden, implacable motions instigated by the simple insertion of a banana.

  These cross reflections subsided gradually with the nagging rain; soon a dim sun peered through the gray woollens of the sky. The Ucayali swings close beneath the foothills of the Andes, and a great flat-topped butte loomed in the west. Downriver one could see bright regions where the sun was shining, and now and then a weak ray illumined the wet canoe. Here and there lay a large white crocodile, mouth inexplicably agape, and large fish swirled at the edge of a passing shoal.

  Toward twilight Cruz came forward from the stern, bearing cans of cheese and shrimps and two large bottles of the excellent Pilsener beer. He had had a nap in the afternoon while Timo, the sole remaining member of his crew, had taken the helm, and he was a new man. This is one of the qualities I like best about Cruz, his ability to carry off disappointments with a flourish. His grand gesture—for after he had cried out at the terrible losses he was suffering, the unreal price of canned cheeses and shrimps at Atalaya made this offering a gesture—is perhaps the most Spanish of his multiple characteristics. While we talked quietly and drank, he pointed out a family of Conibo Indians on the bank—we have passed successively on this journey from Machiguenga to Piro and Amahuaca territory, and thence to Campa and Conibo—and a particularly magnificent lupuna, the trunk of which soared unbranched to the leafy world of its high stories.

  The colors deepened with the intrusion of the light beneath the breaking gray far to the west; beneath the gray, the sky is a bright ocher. The ocher sinks to the purple of the buttes, and below the rim rest cotton tufts of valley clouds, like those seen—how very long ago it seems—on the upper Urubamba. Then the deep green of the palms, the hot-leaved ceticos, the glowing tassels of the caña brava, and beneath these the silver glitter of the river. Against this deep world of late afternoon flew large white, silent birds—the tuyuyu, the wood stork with its dark head and curved bill, the common and snowy egrets, and the large yellow-billed river tern, which ranges the length of Amazonas, from here to the mighty delta three thousand miles away, beyond Belém.

  At sunset the gray sky turned swiftly to shreds of gold, and the gold in combination with the other colors produced the most exalted nightfall I have ever seen in the jungle. This stretch of the Ucayali is superb. The best aspects of the rain forest and broad jungle landscape are here, and downstream, beyond the western banks, the mountains in their harmonies of clouds rise one upon another; the contrasts are incomparable.

  I was filled with a deep happiness and peace. With Andrés gone, the need to hurry has been removed, and though César is still muttering that we will arrive in Pucallpa by the evening of the twenty-ninth—it has become a point of honor with him—there is no emergency about it. In the past few days Andrés has been looking at his watch every other moment and declaiming the time at intervals in a military manner, though I am equipped with a watch of my own and can resort
to it on those rare occasions these days when I feel the need. Under the circumstances, it seems to me a much happier arrangement that he got off in Atalaya, and I only hope that the plane was able to come in today to take him out as far as San Ramón.

  Another factor not entirely displeasing is that I must now work harder at my Spanish. While Andrés was with me, and presenting our wants and ideas so much more ably than myself, I scarcely spoke. Come to think of it, I’ve hardly put a hundred Spanish words together since we left Machu Picchu, nearly three weeks ago. But now I must talk in castillano all the time and already have made noticeable progress.

  We traveled an hour or two after dark, attempting to reach the settlement at Bolognesi. But the night was moonless and the river black, and eventually we struck a shoal and sheared the pin. All afternoon we had passed sections of the bank which were caving into the flood—at one point I watched a large cetico topple over—and now we were forced to go ashore in the dark at a spot where evil rumblings and crashes, cracks and splashes, could be heard from both upstream and down. While César struggled with the motor, I peered at the trees leaning over our heads and wondered if one was about to let go. But soon we were underway again and continued to a point not far above Bolognesi. When we stopped at last, about 7:30, there came from the river the soft puff and blowings of the river dolphins and a sweet musky perfume. I asked César what flowers these were, and he said that the smell was not of flowers but was given off by the large fruit-eating bats. Whether this is true or not, the familiar click and squeak of numerous bats filled the air over the river.

  April 28. Ucayali.

  On the Ucayali the renowned insects of the selva put in an appearance. Mosquitoes in numbers appear at night, including the sancudo, or malaria mosquito, and a tiny combative sand fly. I believe this insect, called “mosquito,” corresponds to the notorious pium fly of Brazil, for it causes the identical raised blood dots. Either of these creatures can bring about tropic fevers, and last night, for the first time, we were forced to use mosquiteros. César and myself, with Alejandro and the boga, Timo, shared a small porch at the chacra of one of Cruz’s numerous contacts on the river; the little white coffin of my borrowed mosquitero swam with that acrid smell one finds throughout these river haciendas, and the smell was replenished throughout the night by Alejandro, who was taking his ease at my elbow. The smell cannot be entirely attributed to its main ingredient, which is sweat: it is far more insidious. Perhaps it has something to do with the yuca diet. In any case, it has of recent days permeated my hat, and I must face the fact that I am now a carrier.

  We rose at four, since César still holds to his avowal that we shall dine tomorrow evening, shaved and showered, at the Gran Hotel Mercedes. I don’t think he can make it, but it will be interesting to see how he saves face as, in Latin America, he is obliged to do.

  We were nearly an hour in Bolognesi, while César looked into some of his lumber dealings, and we paused again a little later in the morning to talk with a friend who lives in a river boat by the bank. César is anxious that I come ashore in each of these places, asking if I wouldn’t like to savor the local color, and it occurs to me that his strategy is this: if we should not make Pucallpa by Friday night, he can now say he would have made it if Don Pedro had not wished to visit Bolognesi and all the other points of interest on the river. But we shall see, and I pledge to record faithfully how this all comes out.

  On we go, downriver, and today Cruz is in capital spirits. He displays our mandíbula to one and all, calling out that it costs five soles to look at it and ten to touch it. Most of the morning Timo ran the boat while César and I swilled beer. He tells me now that he has been through the Pongo, in the month of June, and that he knows the Pereiras; like the Dominicans, he has an intense admiration for the old man, without those overtones of moral disapproval with which the holy men feel bound to qualify their respect for a noted murderer and unrepentant sinner. I asked him if Epifanio was a man de su confianza, as the expression goes, and with a directness unusual in a Peruvian he said shortly, “No.”

  César wishes to come to the United States to visit me—indeed, he can talk of little else—and we seem to have recaptured the camaraderie of three months ago in Pucallpa. For some reason this was quite impossible while Andrés did most of my talking for me. It may be that César is fattening me for a kill of some sort, but I don’t really think so.

  In the early afternoon we stopped at a Conibo settlement near the Chesea River. My dislike of my camera grows and grows, especially when I must point the thing at Indians and other people. I wouldn’t blame the Conibos in the least if they had run us out of camp in a shower of stones and arrows, but these people are less shy of the camera than the Machiguengas and Campas, and a few made me feel like the tourist I am by rushing to put on their best ceremonial dress.

  The Conibos are very colorful, with intricate black face marks, blue dye on the hands, elaborate bracelets of beads and wild animal teeth, and metal ornaments in the nose; the women also wear a long pendant of metal pierced through the lower lip. Most of the men have adopted the shirts and pants of civilization, but the women cling to a kind of black embroidered wrap-around skirt, with a bright blouse which does not quite reach the navel. They usually wear rawhide thongs at the ankle, and their hair is invariably cut in bangs across the forehead. All of these characteristics the Conibos share with other tribes of the so-called Chamas—the Shipibos, who may be seen around Pucallpa, and the Cashibos, who occupy country north toward the mountains, between Pucallpa and Tingo María. Two of these tribes made quite an impression on Dr. William McGovern, an English wayfarer whose Jungle Paths and Inca Ruins appeared around 1928. Dr. McGovern and myself have this solitary bond, that we first approached South America by way of the Amazon on a small ship of the Booth Line.

  “There are,” the doctor writes, “the Konibo Indians, who kill off their aged and infirm. There are the Ungoninos, who inflict strange nameless tortures upon their girls at the age of puberty. There are the Kashibos or Vampire Indians who, like the loathesome bats, suck the blood of beast and man.…”

  Actually, it is not the Ungoninos, as Dr. McGovern styles what may be an obscure subtribe of Machiguengas, but the Conibos who are best known for their puberty rites: the ceremony, named pishita, consists of the excising of the clitoris, and is performed not as a torture but in a mistaken effort at feminine hygiene. The Cashibos are not known as the Vampire Indians, though they are sometimes called the Bat People, in the same way that the Shipibos are called the Monkey People and the Conibos the Bird People. At present the Cashibos are in a degenerate state and may soon disappear; unlike the river Chamas, they have failed to adapt to civilization. Not only is their culture disappearing, but they manifest such symptoms of decline as indiscriminate exchange of mates and two husbands for each wife.

  The river Chamas of today are a round-faced quiet people who consider themselves, probably correctly, superior to any jungle tribe of Peru. Their culture is rich and imaginative and includes a lovely, subtle pottery; in fact, they are the only true artisans in the jungle. They will not work for anybody else—though they themselves sometimes keep Campa slaves—and the women, unlike those of many other tribes, are most reluctant to sleep with a white, a mestizo, or even a non-Chama Indian. Frequently, when traveling on the river, one notices Chamas bathing along the banks: this has not been true of the other Indians nor, for that matter, of the whites. Unlike the Campas, Piros, and other tribal groups—and like the enduring Hopi and Pueblo civilizations in North America—they are unrenowned as warriors and have tended to avoid the inter-tribal attrition which has always curtailed the numbers and the progress of the Indians of both continents. Nor do they share the system of the Campas and Machiguengas, among whom any property may be utilized by him who needs or wants it most at any given moment. As all good Americans will agree, only harm can come of such a communistic system, which is on no account to be confused with the Christian ethic.

  Later we
drew to the bank again, at the large lingüístico station at Caco, where we watched the Chamas prepare their meals, mend their fish nets, dry the raw cane for their arrows, and perform in general as Indians are said to do. Some of the younger women struck me as very pretty, despite a red smear about the mouth like a kind of garish lipstick, and the fine mesh of the black face tattoos; unlike the Campa and Machiguenga women, who tend to be bow-legged and flat-hipped when they are not fat, these girls are possessed of fine, straight legs and tidy buttocks.

  At dark, beneath another sky of silver fires, we tied up to a balsa of huge cedro logs being towed slowly down the river. Lumber is presently the chief industry of these regions, and of all the woods the cedro, which is not only handsome and easily worked but floats, is currently most in demand. Its disadvantage is that it occurs as a solitary tree rather than in stands, and removing it from the forest, a process I watched at the encampment of Cruz’s brother-in-law on the Inuya, is a laborious business. The cedro has all but disappeared from the banks of the main rivers—Bates mentions that it was gathered extensively a century ago—but there are many other valuable woods here to replace it, and the caoba is already in general use.

  We drifted in silence, peacefully, and the night was cold, as it often is on the rivers. From the bank, the tarato or raton, that remarkable animal I had first heard on the first night below the Pongo, was venting its loud imitation of Chinese blocks, and its cry was taken up by others farther down: it turns out that it is neither frog nor monkey, but a singular species of rodent. The red cinders of the eyes of floating crocodiles were picked up by Timo’s flashlight, and bats hurried everywhere. I fell asleep at last in the bottom of the canoe, a new experience: in the past weeks, when not on the river beaches, I have laid my head on the mud floors of thatch huts, on the wood floors of Dominican missions, in coca lofts and in cacao bins. Of these, I can recommend only the river beaches, though just now I’d prefer a decent bed to any of them.