by Tahir Shah
A week of routine passed, during which we covered no more than a mile or two a day. It was an absurdly slow advance but, as I saw it, any advance was good going in such intolerable conditions.
We would begin at nine a.m., after a meal of fish stew and rice. The team would pull like mad for two hours, break for raisins, and pull again for three hours. By mid-afternoon they were too exhausted to continue. I would start scouting for a suitable place to camp. Fortunately the river was teeming with fish, which allowed us to conserve the precious supply of Pot Noodles.
Only one thing can maintain the stamina of hard-worked men: an unending supply of hot food. For this reason, I encouraged the porters to fish from the moment camp was struck until we sat for the evening meal. Others would go into the jungle and search for roots and for chonta palm, the heart of which is a rather bland delicacy. Sometimes Julio and his friend Alfonso would shoot a bird with their old shotgun. Whatever was caught was skinned and tossed into the pot.
After a handful of days in the fast current, we had all sustained terrible injuries to our feet. The sand in the river eroded the skin between the toes, and eventually stripped it away completely. Constant immersion prevented new skin becoming hard. The damage was severe, irrespective of the quality of one’s boots.
Each evening after the meal I would sit on a rock and tend my wounds. The only way of preventing our feet rotting was to lubricate them morning and night with petroleum jelly. Feet were not the only cause of discomfort. An expedition on the move sustains all manner of minor injuries. If not treated, they quickly escalate. While making the rafts, one man’s forearm was slashed with a machete and another lost a considerable amount of blood from a knife wound on his hand. Every inch of every man was pocked with insect bites and bee stings. We were all stung so frequently that no one bothered mentioning the pain. My own face was badly swollen — I was stung more than thirty times when I walked face first into a wasps’ nest. I thanked God that my eyes had been spared.
The stones became more slippery with each mile we covered, adding to my fear of snapped ankles.
None of us mentioned Richard, except to voice our delight at his departure. Héctor was the veteran’s loudest critic. “Él es un hombre sin alma, he is a man with no soul,” he barked one morning, “and a man with no soul is empty, like a corked bottle adrift on the ocean.” “But Vietnam damaged his mind.”
“Mi amigo,” he said solemnly, “no hay palabras suficientes para justificar tanta debilidad, my friend, no words are sufficient to excuse such weakness.”
TWELVE
DROWNING
A half-drowned man must be put to bed in dry, heated clothes, hot stones placed against the feet, and his head must be raised moderately. Human warmth is excellent, such as that of two men made to lie close up against him, one on each side.
The Art of Travel
On the morning of the eighth day from Aboroa, Francisco, the crag-faced enemy of us all, spotted a thin plume of smoke rising up from a pile of banana leaves on the far bank of the river. Near to it was a severe rapid, and a series of natural caves carved by the river in ancient times. As we approached, it became clear that the banana leaves formed a primitive dwelling. The earth around it was scuffed up, as if a commotion had recently taken place. Other than the smoke, there was no sign of life.
Héctor clapped his hands, whistled, and clapped again. Still no one came. “This place is Pusharo,” he said ominously. “That must be Javier’s camp.”
“Pancho’s brother?”
The Maestro ducked his head in a nod. A second or two after that, a squat, wispy figure climbed out from the shelter and peered over at our group. He studied us cautiously, his weight balanced as if to take immediate flight if required. Héctor called again. The figure stooped a fraction, then stood tall.
“It’s Javier,” Héctor said.
“Call him over.”
“He won’t come. He has no curiosity.”
“But we have to talk to him, to ask him about the ruins.”
Héctor slunk away to be alone on the rough, stony beach. He had a curious manner of hunting down a contact, getting very close to it, then drifting off, as if he were fearful of something. I went over and asked what was the matter.
“You can’t ask Javier about the ruins,” he said. “Do so and he may kill us.”
“But he’s your friend,” I said.
“I know, but we are nearing the place of negative energy. I can no longer trust my friends. We are nearing Paititi now,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
He blinked in confirmation and rapped his palm over the rock on which he sat. “Míralo, look at it,” he said.
The block was about three feet by two, with straight edges, carved from a slate-gray stone.
“Hand-cut... by the Incas,” he said.
Again, I pleaded with the old man to invite Javier for some food. At last he agreed, as long as the film crew and I conceded to more mental preparation. In turn we agreed, and Héctor called to Pancho’s brother.
A great deal of negotiation followed, loud shouts across the boiling rush of water. Eventually, the nimble figure was lured over to our side with a label-less plastic bottle filled with clear liquid. If hot food is the key to maintaining an expedition’s stamina, then low grade gut-rot alcohol is the key to sustaining its sense of pleasure.
As soon as Javier set eyes on the bottle, he appeared more energetic. Without wasting a fraction of a second, he ran upstream, and dived into the foaming river above the rapids. For thirty seconds we all focused on the miniature head bobbing among the white curl of waves.
“He will drown,” I said. But I was wrong. Javier clambered out of the water, naked but for a band of toucan feathers on his brow, and a pair of tattered boxer shorts. He was five foot tall at the most, his lean frame glistening in the bright jungle light. We welcomed him, oozing with friendliness. He had a kind face, quite round, muscular and smooth. There was the faintest hint of hair on his chin, and a look of innocence in his eye, as if he had never seen a bad deed done. He grew anxious when the Swedes began documenting the scene, with Boris the Bulgarian filming them.
Héctor handed him an enamel cup half filled with pisco, Peruvian grape brandy. He smiled, sniggered, and pressed the rim of the cup to the bridge of his nose. In a moment the liquid was gone. More laughter followed, and another cup of the intoxicating drink.
We made camp, clearing the rocks away from an area of beach. There were many hand-cut blocks of stone; I counted about forty. It looked as if they had been washed downriver. They were so large in size that it was improbable they could have been carried far, even by the most turbulent water.
That evening, I tended the men’s wounds as usual. Their feet were getting worse. I had no choice but to call a two-day halt to allow our feet to harden. At the same time, I urged Héctor to interrogate Javier, but he held an index finger to his lips. “You do not eat an apple until it’s ripe,” he said.
So we waited, all of us drying our feet round the campfire. At dusk Javier passed out; and I reprimanded Héctor for feeding him so much pisco. It was like offering cigarettes to children.
“You are the one who needs purifying,” he said sharply, “not Javier.”
Before turning in for the night, the Maestro lit three candles, and waxed them on to one of the hand-carved blocks of stone as a simple altar. He said a prayer, then reminded us of the danger. We are near the place of negative energy now,” he said, the candlelight washing his face with color. “We need to remain strong, and stay together. You will soon be at each other’s throats, fighting like dogs. But resist, resist!”
He paused to look me in the eye. I could feel the warmth of his presence, his charisma.
“Remember what I told you before,” he said. “To find Paititi you must not look for it, and if you do find it, you will have to repay the earth. Do not look for the ruins, but let them look for you.”
The Maestro paused once again, this time to blow
out the candles. “To have a hope of success, you must clear your mind,” he whispered, “wipe it clean, forget your family, your life, your world... and prepare to enter the Gateway to Paititi.”
The sound of Héctor’s low, sleek voice affected all who listened, charging the audience with energy. You could fight it, but were powerless to prevent it seeping in. The old man was attentive in locating flaws in the psychology of the team, but it was for his own sanity that I was growing increasingly alarmed. The further we progressed up the Palatoa, the more he ranted on about witches and extraterrestrial forces. I was surprised that a Seventh Day Adventist would believe in magic at all, or would resort to his own particular blend of witchcraft to confront the supernatural. After his long harangue, he ordered us to strip to the waists and rub ash from the fire into each other’s chests. I was about to reverse the command, the words were on my lips, but I halted. If the ritual gave the Maestro comfort, I thought, then let him enact it.
I slept soundly that night, until I felt someone tug at my arm. I squinted at my watch. It was a few minutes before three. Héctor was standing over me. “Javier wants to show us something,” he said.
The warrior had come to, and was brandishing a burning branch. It was crackling furiously, giving off a good light. Javier was smiling now, his almond eyes glowing.
“What is happening?”
“Let’s follow him,” Héctor replied.
We walked a few paces into the foliage which ran along the margin of the beach. I smelt the fragrance of passion fruit, and was deafened by the piercing chorus of cicada wings. Javier was leading the way, with Héctor in his footsteps and I in his. We climbed over a fallen tree trunk, then another, and rounded a bend. The torch flames spat in the breeze as if to warn of a conspiracy. A moment later the undergrowth ended.
Before us was a massive granite rock face. It stood like a curtain in the jungle. As we drew nearer, I saw that its surface was etched with symbols and signs – labyrinths and serpents, faces and suns. “What is this?” I asked, in a whisper.
Héctor ran his hand across an icon of a face: two holes for eyes and the curve of a mouth. “Es la llave hacia Paititi, it is the key to Paititi,” he said.
The sun rose in an arc above Pusharo and dried the porters’ feet. I had forbidden them to go near the water, an order that brought much pleasure. They sat together powdering each other’s toes, boasting of the levels of pain they could endure. After breakfast I returned to the wall and showed its petroglyphs to the film crew. Marco, the banker, said he had seen similar symbols in his childhood, scored into a cave wall in the Urals. “They are very, very ancient,” he said sombrely.
“Older than the Incas?”
“For certain they are,” he replied.
We stared at them, trying desperately to unlock the puzzle. Most of the petroglyphs were within the height of a man; but a few were considerably higher on the wall, as if one man had stood on another to reach. I dug down with a spade, to see if any more symbols were hiding below the surface of the ground. The wall continued very far down. The effort of digging was rewarded with a dozen more petroglyphs: faces, the outline of men, birds and other mysterious signs. The most alluring of all of them was a serpent. It ran horizontally at the right of the wall, etched deep into the granite, a zigzag body ending in a diamond-shaped head.
Héctor was sure the serpent depicted the route to Paititi. He believed we were poised on the creature’s tail, struggling to reach the ruins at its head. The river was the body, he said, running jagged through canyons, gushing down from the headwaters in the Andes. The Maestro regarded Pusharo and its petroglyphs with awe, and said the place was a source of energy, of magic. I had to agree. There was a sense that ancient man had worshipped there, and the legacy of signs was certainly puzzling. But if the symbols had been carved before the Incas, how could they have a connection with Paititi? Héctor said the link was obvious. He declared that Paititi was built on a pre-Inca site. It was the first sensible thing he had said for a long time, and sounded plausible. The Incas had established a society based on overrunning others, and converting conquered assets into their own.
I explored the area to the right of the main granite rock face, climbing on to a narrow ledge. There I found more petroglyphs, including one that depicted a warrior in what seemed to be a feathered robe. It reminded me of the intricate textile designs from Nazca, and helped to support the link to a pre-Incan people.
I had not wanted the porters to see the petroglyphs, for fear they would become alarmed and decide to retreat. Some of the men asked me to allow them to go hunting. I was against the slaughter of wildlife but it provided food for the pot, which meant our dried rations would last longer, so I sent them off. Javier led them into the forest. The hunting also kept the men away from the wall. Francisco was the only one with curiosity. He followed me behind the screen of foliage during the afternoon. When he saw it, he shielded his eyes with his hands. The wall was impressive, but his reaction was over the top.
“They are pre-Incan, I think,” I said.
Crag-face was shaken: he fell to his knees and prayed silently, his lips flickering with words. When he had finished, I asked him for his impressions.
“Can’t you hear them speaking?” he said.
“No.”
Francisco led me by the hand to the rock face. He motioned to one of the smiling faces. “Pon tu oreja sobre la boca, put your ear to the mouth.”
I did as he requested. I could not hear a thing, except for the beating of cicada wings in the trees.
“Listen harder!”
Still I could hear nothing.
Suddenly Crag-face was overcome with rage. He pushed me away from the wall. “Estúpido, you fool!” he bellowed. “Why do you endanger the lives of so many men?”
With that, he ran back to the camp, where he sat alone in the shade of a cashapona palm. I was unsure of the reason for his outburst, but he was becoming more disturbed all the time. In the late afternoon I noticed him at the far end of the beach, where the smooth pebbles gave way to sand. He had stripped off his clothes, and was performing what looked like exercises. The Swedes saw him too, and asked me what he was doing. I said I had no idea, but in truth I thought the river was tipping the balance of his mind.
As dusk fell, Javier led the porters back to the camp. The hunting party had been successful, bagging seven or eight scrawny birds. They were plucked, gutted, and flung into a pot of cold river water.
But the last bird was not cooked immediately. The team clustered round it, marvelling. I went over to inspect. It was the size of a grouse, clad in royal-blue feathers, and had a dainty crest, similar to that of a peacock. But the most curious thing about it was the tube of miniature feathers hanging down from the throat. Javier, who had lived in the jungle all his life, had never seen such a bird before.
“Es lindo, it’s nice,” he said, grinning broadly, then stripped away the feathers and tossing the naked bird in with the others.
We spent a second night at Pusharo. The Maestro wrapped himself in a blanket cocoon and went to bed before everyone else. The porters’ morale had been boosted by the rare flesh of the blue bird. They said it tasted like the meat from a hoatzin’s breast.
“I have never eaten that,” I said, rather gladly.
Giovanni, the cook, looked at me with wide eyes. “Entonces nunca has vivido, then you have never lived,” he said.
I lay awake on the second night, weighed down with worry. A mist had rolled in and made it difficult to breathe. At about four a.m. Héctor unfurled himself from his cocoon, fumbled for a torch, and crept out from the tarpaulin. It looked as if he was making his way to the rock face. I pulled on my boots and followed, leaving the distance between us long enough so as not to arouse his suspicion. The path was moist with dew, the air heavy and white with the mist. The Maestro had a long stride and reached the petroglyphs quickly. I stayed well back, watching through a gap in the undergrowth.
He had switched on the
torch and was arching its yellow beam over the symbols as if he was looking for something. I would have approached and asked what he was up to, but thought it wiser to leave him alone. For fifteen minutes he swung the light, skimming it over the contours of rugged stone. Then he put it down, thrust out his hands before him and rubbed them over one of the petroglyphs. I could not see clearly, but realized next morning it had been the symbol of the snake. He pushed against it with all his strength, as if struggling to hold up the wall. I could hear him wheezing, then he fell to the ground, exhausted.
In the morning, Héctor did not eat with the rest of us. He had a distant look in his eye, and seemed tremendously sad. I half expected him to fall away, as Rodrigo and Richard had done. I went over to him with an enamel mug of weak black coffee, with four tablespoons of sugar, just how he liked it. He took it, glancing up in thanks. But our eyes did not meet.
“We must question Javier about the ruins,” I said.
“He knows but he will not take us,” Héctor said gently.
“Can we at least talk to him?”
The old man gazed out at the raging water, and swivelled round to look me in the eye. “All right,” he said. “We will talk to Javier.”
An hour later, the tribesman was back in our camp, with a mug of pisco in his hand. I had dug out a few postcards showing the giant stone walls at Sachsayhuaman. I passed them to him. “That’s what we are looking for,” I said.
Héctor put his arm round the warrior’s shoulders and swung him to face me. But Javier tried to shy away, shifting his weight on to his back foot. “Mira, look,” Héctor said. “Look at these pictures.”