by Lucia Ashta
Early on she had asked him if he missed his family and his village, if he wanted to return. He didn’t, and so she had gone on to teach him how to make their casita a home. She showed him how to secure a good roof to it, and it was a roof better than any of the huts of Guayucuma had. Again, they gathered jute that was dead or dying, and together they wove. Once they secured the roof onto the frame, not one drop moistened the ground from above; it only crept up from below.
Their hut was secure and provided all the shelter they needed, although it was mostly bare. When he lived in Guayucuma, he had grown accustomed to making the most of the little he had. His needs weren’t many. Now, living with this woman, he realized his needs were even fewer than he had believed them to be.
The more time he spent with her, the more her view of the world around them colored his own. She spoke little, and so he did too. Her words were sparse, but precise, and he learned to interpret everything she said and did to discover its deeper meaning.
She taught him to survive in the jungle, one of the most dangerous places on earth, as if it contained no real perils. He couldn’t understand how the animals didn’t threaten her. Stories of snake charmers and tiger tamers had traveled to Guayucuma from the big city. They were all different versions of the same worn tales, and he had never considered them really true, just stories meant to entertain the children and those bored of routine.
The woman could be a snake charmer and a tiger tamer, if only she wanted to be. On his first full day with her, he had seen enough to believe any outrageous story or legend he had ever heard. She walked through the forest as master of it. But no, it wasn’t that, although the animals flocked to her as if she were their gentle master. It was something else. She was part of the forest. No matter where she was or what she was doing, she became a part of everything greater that surrounded her.
He tried to imitate her. He attempted to glide through the thick growth as if nothing were in his way. He actually expected the gnarled roots and branches to clear for him. Yet they didn’t. The roots were surprise tripping hazards; it didn’t matter that he knew they were everywhere around him. The branches hung too low, and he was constantly jumping back from one that reached for his eyes.
Several times he stood still, letting her move far beyond him, just watching her. He would have sworn that the roots and branches moved out of her way, the flock making its magic available to its leader. But it wasn’t so. The roots and branches were as fixed as they were for him. Yet she never startled; she never tripped. All of her movements were graceful, as if she knew every bump, leaf, and trunk, as if she had created them herself.
She walked gingerly through the trees, running gentle fingertips across leaves and flowers as she passed, stopping to hold a particularly handsome tree trunk. After so much time spent with her, the man began to appreciate some of the beauty as well, but still his focus remained on the sway of her black hair as it swung across her waist and upper buttocks, reflecting the sun that filtered through the heavy canopy above in a shiny black-blue. Her beauty was as magnificent as anything around them, greater even than the dangling orchid with its brilliant pinks and oranges that could match any sunset.
The woman stopped to take in the orchid. She smiled, not at him but at the flower, and rubbed a thumb and forefinger across the silk of one petal.
Without a word, she resumed walking, knowing that he would follow. He always followed. There was no reason to pretend he could lead through the Amazon better than she did. He watched her footfalls. He stepped where she stepped, around poisonous snakes and insects, and avoiding animal homes and sprouting plants that were building their strength.
She took him to the waterfall, where the rushing water roared so loudly that it forced out any extraneous thought. She climbed and ducked under the waterfall, and took a seat, leaning against slippery, moss-covered stone. Water, unreasonably powerful water, streamed in front of them, cascading across the opening that would have otherwise been air. The water never slowed and it never wavered, plummeting with great force.
No human could jump into that waterfall and survive. It wasn’t the lurking predators in the water that would kill you; the innate violence of water traveling in such quantity and at such speed would crush the life out of anyone so daring, or so stupid. If these last months with the woman had taught him anything, it was that life, even minute life, was precious.
If they had wanted to speak, they would have had to shout to be heard. They rarely spoke anyway. Life around them was so vivid that he didn’t even mind the long silences anymore. He discovered that he heard more when he didn’t speak, and especially when he didn’t think of what he might say. When it became still and quiet inside, he found room for those things he had never imagined could fulfill him.
Today was no different. He sank into the wet stone behind him and welcomed the spray the falls misted across his sweaty skin. He leaned his head back and felt the power of the waterfall surging and vibrating through the rock beneath him. Without lifting his head, he passed her a papaya he had picked on the way.
He still knew so little about her. He didn’t know her name and never would. He didn’t know what tribe she was from or how she came to be apart from it, or how she had learned to speak Portuguese. He didn’t know what happened to her family; she must have one, somewhere, even if only bones beneath dirt. He didn’t even know how old she was, though he guessed she was his age.
He had thought of seeking answers to these questions before, and had considered many more than these. Yet every time he came to the point of asking, when he thought he finally would learn more about her, something within urged him not to, or they moved onto another subject, and the opportunity passed. Those facts that before had been so important as to be defining, didn’t seem worth bothering about now.
He wouldn’t feel any different about her once he knew them. He didn’t need to know, really. Or was it that he was afraid that her answers might somehow spoil this idyllic peace that they shared in one of the world’s most dangerous wildernesses? It seemed too good to be true in most ways, and he didn’t want to prove it so.
He had given up all that he knew of life before her to sit behind a raging waterfall, naked, with ripe, hot papaya juice dripping down his hands, arms, and stomach.
He learned all that he needed about her by the way she walked and smiled. The way she caressed flower petals and petted monkeys revealed more than a million words. It was within the silence of a full heart that he found love—true, passionate, tender, hungry love—for the first time. It was here that he discovered who he was and who he might dream of becoming.
7
Part of the Whole
It was difficult to keep track of the lapsing of time. At first, the man counted the days. That was easy enough; the sun would rise on a new day, one of the few reliable constants in an ever-changing life. But once the figure reached into the hundreds, he couldn’t recall what number he was on, and he grew suspicious that he had forgotten to count other days as well.
By the time he reached the five hundreds, he knew his count to be highly inaccurate and was surprised to discover that he didn’t particularly care to know how much time had passed. The certainty was that it had passed, and that time didn’t mind whether he counted it or not.
What he could more readily keep track of was how he was changing. After several years—somewhere between three and five—he no longer needed to follow the woman everywhere to feel safe. Some of her ways had turned out to be contagious and, gradually, he had become more tranquil inside. Inner stillness turned out to be the great secret to connecting with the forest the way she did—or at least, he thought that was the secret to how she walked the jungle as a harmonious part of it.
Tranquility was inevitable amid her silence, and his, and the constant thrumming life of the jungle. He would have had to work to keep his mind trapped in its wasteful loop of endless thoughts that meant nothing in the end. And he had no reason to want that. His mind felt free
r than it ever had, and the rainforest seemed like the ideal home for a free mind.
The woman taught him well. She monitored his actions closely until she was certain that he could uphold the principles of balance and respect that meant more to her than names and facts. The details she cared about didn’t need names, or even words; they could be contained fully in the rich color of a butterfly wing or the flesh of a frog, with its array of saturated pigment.
This was to be one of the rare occasions when she spoke to him at length, even saying things a few different ways to make sure he understood. They were out walking, harvesting food items as they passed. They didn’t need much, and there was no need to store food for later. Food was abundant, ripe and juicy, waiting to be plucked from a nearby branch.
The woman drew around to one of the trees she returned to frequently in their walks. It was one of the oldest. Its trunk was thick, seeping wisdom from every bump in its bark and from every gnarled, exposed root. She loved it. She had never said so, but she didn’t need to. She lit up when she was next to this tree.
“Will you join me?” she said as she began scaling the tree. It had wide, low-hanging branches that curved as if they had been designed for lounging.
He didn’t answer with words anymore, not usually. He climbed and took a seat across from her. She straddled the branch and leaned back. She was made for this kind of thing—but then, it was as if the tree had been made for her. She always found the most comfortable perches, the most perfect fruit, and the slowly running water of peaceful inlets.
He straddled the same limb and also leaned back. The tree branch was comfortable, yet it didn’t curve as if molded to his back. Not like it did for her.
He was used to it, to the differences between them. He couldn’t imagine he would ever become like her. And he was okay with that. He preferred it actually, to leave that special something that only she possessed as hers alone. He folded his arms across his chest contentedly and tilted his face toward the flickering sunlight above.
“She is a beautiful mother tree, isn’t she?”
It wasn’t a real question, and he wasn’t certain if she was talking to him or to the tree. He didn’t ask. He didn’t always understand what she did, or what little she said, but he was accustomed to that. When he didn’t comprehend the deeper meaning of her actions or words right away, he often would sometime later, even if it was a long time later. Her ways always possessed significance; if he couldn’t see it, then he just hadn’t seen it yet.
“You have learned to do things the way I do them, and that is good. It is good that you respect the jungle.
“I want you to know why I honor the forest as I do, so you can choose to do it for yourself, not just because of my example.”
A lizard met eyes with her, as if asking for permission, then climbed onto her hand. She lifted him close to her face and held him there, admiring him while she ran a finger along the length of his back, down to the narrow tip of his tail.
“The forest is alive. It is not just the life that you can observe breathing and moving; it is everything. It is the moss and the grasses; the fruit fly, the spider, the worm, and the ant; as much as it is the jaguar and the puma. As much as it is this tree.
“Life runs through everything in this jungle as it does through everything else on earth. As it does within you.” She shifted her eyes from the lizard to the man, across from her. He watched her, mesmerized by her interaction with their surroundings and by the lilting music of her voice.
“That is why I do not take the life of anything for granted. It is why I step carefully and why I do not take anything that is not ready for me to take. There is a moment when every living thing can be plucked from its mother, when it has served its purpose, or it is ready to serve its purpose by offering itself to another life form.
“But it is not for man to take without honor or to interrupt the natural cycle of life.”
Her eyes returned to the lizard. “Man is no greater than this lizard, or this tree, or a leech. Every one of you serves a purpose that is necessary for balance. Every purpose is important. Every part is.”
She was finished speaking. Already, it was more than she had ever said to him at one time. Still, he didn’t have anything to offer in reply, and he was grateful that she didn’t expect him to surmount the thick lump of emotion in his throat. It wasn’t the few sentences she had voiced; it was rather all that she had not.
And it was also something that he couldn’t readily identify. It was something that was bubbling up inside him, but that he didn’t understand, and was too upset to try. He didn’t know why, but the emotions gurgling up in response to her words were part shame and part admiration, and the two weren’t usually a match.
She released the lizard on the limb behind her and scooted forward toward him. “It is when man trusts nature that nature begins to trust man.” She kissed him on the cheek; one of his tears wet her lips. It was the gentle, compassionate kiss of a mother.
Then she scuttled around him and down the tree with the dexterity of monkeys, and continued ambling through the forest without him.
For once, he didn’t look down to follow her path or to enjoy the beauty of her body. He closed his eyes against a wave of feeling that was threatening to crash inside him, even if he didn’t yet know the reasons why.
8
The Seed
The woman didn’t talk to the man about the importance of honoring the rainforest again, nor did she ask him his thoughts about what she had said. But she did monitor what he did less closely. She didn’t hover over him when he was picking fruit or reeds or sticks. Her hand didn’t wait next to his to interfere before he cut down something alive.
She sensed him walking more carefully behind her. Now, his steps didn’t just evade what might hurt him. New shoots survived, small, delicate threads that were only just beginning to weave an intricate tapestry that would soar to the heights of the forest. Towering trees began with just one seed. All of life did, and for the first time in his entire life, the man thought about the seed from which he had grown.
There was so much that was crystallizing within him that he didn’t know if he could grasp it. Perhaps he would allow what was reshaping him to roll on through without understanding what was happening.
He became vulnerable and raw, and he thought he might understand what the caterpillar felt like transforming in its cocoon. He was shedding an old skin like a snake does.
When so much fell away from the man he had been—before she found him that first time in the jungle, next to his chain saw—what was left beneath was fragile, desiring protection and consideration. He didn’t know who he would become after the process was complete, when he emerged from the cocoon a butterfly.
So he tried not to think about it, and that was not difficult in the rainforest. It was especially easy with her. Like the animals around them, he trusted her; there had never been a question whether he could. She was the right one to feel vulnerable with, to witness the new, soft baby flesh.
He could give himself to her without fear when they made love. He gave to her freely, because he knew she never took too much. The jungle knew it too.
It was on one of these hot, sticky days when they gave themselves to their love that she anticipated his question. She always did. She watched the desire cross his eyes and recognized it for what it was each time.
She wasn’t surprised. She never was. It was innate in him as it was in all life across the earth, the planet she knew as intimately as she knew him.
She could have spoken his question before he did, words and all. “Why can we not create a child together?” It was a sensible request, with him deep inside her, the way humans were designed to continue the cycle of life, yet it was worded in a way that preceded her answer. Even though everything about her echoed the fertility that was apparent everywhere in nature—her hips were round, her breasts full, her abdomen anticipating the swell of life that could grow within her—he knew what her an
swer would be.
It made no sense, he thought even before she spoke. “This body is not meant to bear your child.”
“But of course it is.” He ran his hands convincingly across her breasts, her back, her buttocks, and finally rested on her hips, encouraging her to continue her rocking forward and backward. She enjoyed it as much as he did. It was how they spent much of their days.
Having babies was what people did. At least, it had been in Guayucuma. When boys and girls became young men and women, it was time for them to marry. After a short time, they would begin their own families. It was how it was done. It is undoubtedly what he would have done had he stayed in the village.
As soon as he saw her, he realized that he wanted to live out his life with her. It didn’t matter that they were nearly strangers. There were some things people just knew, and the length of time knowing someone had nothing to do with them.
Once they became lovers, he thought family would become a natural progression of their union. But the days passed—this was when he still counted them—and her abdomen retained its roundness but did not swell further.
“I have borne too many children already. I will not give birth to more in this body. I cannot.”
“Why can you not? We love each other, do we not? Shouldn’t that be all that is needed to create a child? We will love the child as we love each other. We will raise the baby in the jungle. It will be beautiful.”
“It would be beautiful. I know that. But I still cannot.”
“I do not understand.”
“I know you don’t, and I am sorry. But I am already mother to too many. I cannot shirk my responsibilities to the children I already have to change who and how I am to have a child with you.” It was a similar answer to the one she had given him many times before.