by Tahir Shah
“That’s the ayahuasca,” he said.
He motioned for me to watch. The shaman’s assistant went over to the hurricane lamp and turned it off. Flavio swept a white enamel mug into the liquid, and drank its contents. He held out his hands, and the afflicted approached him one by one.
The first person to step forward was a young woman. She couldn’t have been more than about twenty. Flavio asked for details of her condition. The man she loved was in love with another, she said. She had come to gain his affection. The healer asked whether she had brought anything which belonged to the man she loved. She handed him a shirt and a few hairs from his brush. Flavio then asked if she had taken ayahuasca before. She replied that she had not. The enamel mug was dipped into the bucket and presented half full to the woman. When she had drained the liquid, the shaman told her to sit on the quilt.
Next came an old man. He claimed to be plagued by bad spirits. They had already killed his wife, he said, and his son, and they were now coming for him. When asked about ayahuasca, he replied that he had drunk it many times. The mug was filled to the brim and the old man drank. He sat beside the woman on the quilt, and waited.
One after the other, people stepped forward to drink ayahuasca. About fifteen came to the maestro for his help. Their problems ranged from obscure curses and susto, to medical afflictions, such as diabetes and pustules, migraines and malaria. Flavio told three people, all men, that he could not treat them. He didn’t say why.
I noticed that each of the patients had brought a trusted friend or relative with them. The reason for this became clear as the ayahuasca began to work.
The young woman who was out of love threw up first. Her retching was followed closely by the aged man. One by one, the participants gagged or vomited. Several of them clambered off the quilt to defecate. No one was concerned about embarrassing themselves. They were drunk, their movements unsteady, their expressions delirious. The friends and relatives were at hand to soothe them, and to lead them back to the quilt if necessary. The vomiting lasted only for the first hour or so.
Once he had heard their problems and provided ayahuasca to all the afflicted, Flavio took a chacapa from his satchel. The tool, a rattle made from dried leaves, is one of the two most important props used by shamans in the Amazon. The other is the tobacco, mapacho. Shaking the chacapa near the faces of his patients, Flavio began to chant incantations. The endless stream of sound continued for hours. There were no clear words. I was awed by his sheer stamina. The only break was when he lit a wooden pipe, plugged with the mapacho. Drawing deeply on it, he inflated his lungs with smoke, blowing it over the patients.
I asked Gonzalo what was happening.
“The maestro is leading the sick people through the land of spirits,” he said.
“Are they flying?”
“Yes, some have grown wings.”
“Where are they going?”
“On a journey over the jungle, to search for answers to their problems,” said Gonzalo. “Flavio is leading them. He might look like a man, but in his mind he’s a stork.”
“Doesn’t he give them actual medicines?”
Gonzalo grunted.
“Ayahuasca’s stronger than any medicine.”
I was startled by a sound in the trees. A sudden shriek as a predator found its prey. The noise disturbed a nest of howler monkeys, which in turn woke up half the jungle. I looked back at Flavio and his patients. They hadn’t heard the commotion. The chacapa was still shaking, echoing to the rhythm of the chant.
“How could they not have heard that noise?”
“They are flying over the jungle,” said Gonzalo, “they are far away.”
The session continued for about four hours. By the end of it I was used to the nocturnal jungle sounds and was almost falling asleep. Flavio’s patients were regaining their composure. Some of them were still unsteady. Unlike me, their trusted friends were alert, sensitive to the needs of the person in their care. Before they drifted away, back to the river, the Curandero counselled each patient in turn.
“What’s Flavio saying?”
“He’s telling them to drink tobacco water,” said Gonzalo, “and explaining how they must act from now on. They will only be cured if they do as he says.”
As they filtered off, some of the patients handed the healer’s assistant wads of tobacco, a little money, or other gifts. Gonzalo and I made our way back to the canoe, silent like all the others.
The moon was now blanketed by cloud. 1 was fearful of paddling upstream in pitch-blackness. Dugouts are unstable at the best of times. Gonzalo called out to the young boatman, who was curled up asleep on the bank. In one movement, he leapt up and pushed the stern into the water.
Gonzalo sensed my fear.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “if you drown, go to heaven.”
Back in Iquitos, there was no sign of César. I spent my time going back and forth from Ari’s Burger to the Regal Restaurant. Everyone in town seemed to know who I was. The old American, who used to sit at Ari’s all day, every day, motioned for me to join him at his table. Like most of the other foreigners in town, he was gray-haired, with a pot belly and a taste for nicotine.
“Heard you’re going up to Jivaro country,” he said, swigging a Cusqueña.
“They don’t like being called Jívaro,” I said. “It means “savage”.”
“Mighty dangerous up there.”
“Oh?”
He mimed a chicken having its head pulled off.
“A friend of mine went up there back in ’73,” he said. “Took a boat up the Tigre and the Corrientes, right up to the backwaters of the Pastaza.”
He swigged his beer. I waited for the punchline, to hear how the Shuar had gone on a head-hacking spree.
“Did your friend meet any Shuar?”
“Sure he did,” he said. “And he swapped his Oyster Perpetual for one of those tsantsa things.”
“Didn’t he get his head chopped off?”
“No way, man,” he said, “but he did have an AK-47 strapped to his chest.”
Just as I was giving up hope of ever seeing César again, he sent word from the safe-house at Punchana. I was to get there as quickly as I could. Braving the torrential afternoon rain, I rushed over to meet him. The motocarro had to drop me at the end of the road, which had become a morass of mud.
César was sitting beside a stack of white Tupperware boxes.
“Did you get any big bugs?” I asked.
He pointed to the boxes.
“Two Titanus giganticus,” he said, “and a load of others, too.”
“Does that mean we can go on the trip now?”
“We’ll leave in the morning,” he said.
I ate my last meal at La Gran Maloca, literally “the great hut”. It is generally regarded as the best restaurant in the Peruvian Amazon. From the moment I arrived in Iquitos, I’d heard people going on about it. One man had said that the chef used to work for Fernando Belaunde, the former President of Peru. But after disgracing himself by giving his boss a severe case of food-poisoning, he’d had to escape the presidential palace for the jungle.
A gaunt young waiter with watery eyes showed me into the dining room. He was dressed in a Tuxedo with a black bow-tie. Fine original paintings enlivened the walls, and coy carp moved restlessly in a large tank. The waiter placed a linen napkin squarely on my lap. He spoke English with an unusual accent. He said he was from Hungary. His name was Laslo.
I ordered Paiche a la Lozetana, a filleted piece of piraruca, served with roasted manioc. Between bites, Laslo would scamper over and check that the fish was satisfactory.
“I must tell you something,” he said, as I praised the chef’s skill for the twentieth time. “I haven’t been a waiter for very long. Circumstances have made it necessary for me to take this job.”
“Circumstances?”
Laslo’s eyes watered a little more.
“I was working in Dallas,” he said. “While I was there, a man offe
red to sell me some land. He said it was in the Amazon. I’ve always loved the idea of jungle, ever since I was ten years old. So I agreed to buy the land. It’s only fifteen hectares... just a little bit of Amazon.”
“It sounds nice.”
Laslo shook his head.
“I paid far too much,” he said. “I gave him all my savings. Luckily the Polish millionaire who owns this restaurant, gave me a job. The big problem is that I don’t speak any Spanish.”
Laslo invited me to his shack in his little bit of the jungle. If I gave him enough notice, he said, he’d cook up a big pot of Hungarian goulash. Early next morning he sent a pair of books to Hotel Selva for me. The first was called Jivaro: Among the Head-shrinkers of the Amazon. The other was called Head Hunters of the Amazon. Writing of a century ago, its author said: “Iquitos contained so much human driftwood that there was always some new freak to be met, with a strange tale to tell and a still stranger outlook on life.” Nothing seemed to have changed at all.
I had been worrying that we had too much luggage. As well as my own bags, we now had the gifts and the supplies which César had bought with my money. But in Jivaro, I’d read the highlights of the inventory taken by the Frenchman Bertrand Flornoy on his three-man trip into the jungle in the early 1950s. Even by Hiram Bingham’s example, it was an impressive one.
Amongst many other things, Flornoy had packed up three-quarters of a mile of blue and white cloth; 10,000 feet of cinemagraphic film; 220 rolls of regular film, 8,000 pills of quinine sulphate; 160 phials for intra-muscular injections; a complete surgical outfit, a selection of dentists’ instruments; 400 lbs of concentrated bread, 220 lbs of manioc flour, 220 lbs of rice and 900 tins of various foods. The entire lot weighed more than 4,500 lbs. Flornoy even took a taxidermist along.
In the good old days of Iquitos’s rubber barons, the fine buildings on the water’s edge would resound with riotous soirées. Tycoons would out do each other wasting money, to prove their wealth. They held Babylonian parties, with bucket-loads of Sevruga caviar and fountains of vintage Champagne; they lit cigars with £10 notes, and gambled $50,000 on the toss of a coin. If anything, Iquitos’s night-life had grown even wilder over the decades. But the fine wines and dinner dress had been replaced by a culture founded on warm beer and watery milkshakes.
The few foreigners living there, had a methodical routine. If the day belonged to Ari’s, staring at buxom local women, then the night was the preserve of the Gringo Bar. I had passed it a hundred times, but with a name like that, it had seemed too obvious a place for a gringo to go.
Before going to bed I had buried the maize cob in the dirt behind the hotel, and pulled a flagstone on top of it. Forty nights had passed since I’d been treated by the maestro at Wali Wasi. Furling the foam rubber pillow around my head and ears like a bonnet, I tried to sleep. But the sounds of unbridled passion from next door, and the banging of the headboard, kept me awake. I got dressed and went across the main square to the Gringo Bar.
My curiosity was soon satisfied. Dozens of scantily clad local girls were prancing about, jumping in and out of a jacuzzi, into which cascaded a mock waterfall. Most of them had on what the Brazilians call “dental floss bikinis”. Some were wearing even less. In a town which is said to have eight women to every man, a gringo with a little hard currency goes a long way. The handful of men, all over fifty, were wearing Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip-flops. Lounging back on cane chairs, they sipped beer from chilled glasses as doting young ladies fondled them. It was gringo heaven.
A giant Scandinavian called Lars tried to befriend me.
“Going to Jivaro country?” he asked, pushing a girl off his lap.
I nodded, impressed that even he, a complete stranger, knew my travel plans.
“Hope you’re taking gifts,” he said.
“We’ve got all sorts of things – food, clothes and lots of Fanta bottles.”
Lars flinched.
“What about Vicks Vapour Rub?”
“What about it?”
“You’d better stock up with it.”
“Why?”
Gulping a mug of Cristal lager, Lars looked over earnestly.
“The Jivaro warriors rub it into their genitals,” he said. “They think it gives them more stamina with women.”
*
A fleet of motocarros were needed to ferry the nineteen sacks from Punchana down to the docks. César and his three young brothers met me at the quay. The rusting hulk of a ship was being mobbed by a throng of people. It was a scene of utter desperation. Hundreds of passengers were fighting to get up a narrow gangplank. They were carrying everything they owned like refugees – wicker chairs and chests of tools, wheelbarrows, stepladders, pots and pans and, of course blenders.
César’s brothers pushed their way onto the boat, and formed a relay to get the loot aboard. César and I followed. Greasing an official’s palm with a few extra soles secured us two cabins. They were located beside the main lavatories, but were still a far better option than sleeping out on the decks, like everyone else. I stowed my bags under the bed, chaining them to its frame. Then I barged into César’s cabin.
One of the boys was lying on the bed, naked. César was standing over him with his pants down. I looked at them. They looked at me. Time seemed to stop. I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Somehow I managed to get out of the cabin, and shut the door behind me.
SEVENTEEN
Saigon of South America
I leant on the river ferry’s railing, looking out at the pandemonium on the quay. Even more passengers than before were fighting to get aboard. As I stood there, staring, still in shock, I considered what seemed like an unreal situation. How could I set off in search of a wild tribe with a paedophile as a guide? Worse still, this was a paedophile molesting his own brother. The decision was an easy one. I returned to César’s cabin. Although almost unable to look such a degenerate in the eye, I said that we would not be going into the jungle together.
To my surprise, he didn’t seem at all perturbed. He told me to take the supplies, and that he would return the money I had paid. He’d be glad to pass up such a dangerous journey, he said.
Feeling as if a prize-fighter had punched me in the face, I rattled back to Hotel Selva with a convoy of motocarros. The receptionist supervised, as the sacks were taken to my old room.
Words cannot express my sense of defeat.
I told the receptionist what had happened, what I had seen on the ferry.
“Bueno sí, oh yes,” she said freely, “everyone knows that Señor Vargas likes his little boys.”
“Do they?”
“Of course they do,” she replied, “there are no secrets in Iquitos.”
“But they’re sus hermanos, his brothers!”
“Is that what he told you?”
I admitted it was.
“That’s a lie. They aren’t his brothers, but sus novios, his boyfriends.”
Over at Ari’s Burger, I was in no mood for Florita’s pouting. She must have sensed this, because she brought over a banana milkshake and hurried away. I sat in a corner facing the wall, unable to speak.
The old American chain-smoker came over.
“Heard you just found out about César,” he said.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me César was a paedophile?”
He thought for a moment.
“You were so happy with him,” he said, “no one wanted to spoil your trip.”
The fact that César liked children was bad, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. He was the most wanted man in town. He had been convicted dozens of times for ripping-off tourists and acting as a pimp, for theft, drug dealing and a range of sex offences.
“César Vargas,” he said, snorting, “he’s the Dennis the Menace of the Amazon.”
In the afternoon I sat on a bench in Plaza de Armas with my head in my hands. The usual scrum of boot boys and chewing-gum dealers hung well back. Word had spread of my misfortune. Whatever the circumstan
ces, I couldn’t allow myself to do business with a known paedophile.
The first drops of rain splashed onto the tiled surface of the square. In the Amazon, where it pours almost every day, the rain can drench you in under three seconds. But it isn’t seen as the scourge of nature it is in the West. Rain is the lifeblood of the jungle.
I left the bench and sought refuge in the Gringo Bar.
A smattering of young women were carousing with older foreign men, to the sound of the Bee Gees. As I entered the bar, there was silence. Everyone turned to look at me. The girls stopped fondling, the glasses ceased clinking. Even the Bee Gees fell silent.
The barman, an old American with a bald head and a Hawaiian shirt, slapped a tumbler of guaje juice down in front of me.
“It’s on the house,” he said.
I thanked him and sat down in the corner. A middle-aged man asked if he could join me. He had gray hair, fleshy white legs and a sunburned nose. He was an American called Max. Everyone would tell you behind his back that he was CIA, an “active cell”. He said he had retired from the Agency, and that he bred snakes. Like most of his fellow countrymen lying low in Iquitos, I suspected he had been lured by the cheap beer and the inexhaustible supply of available jungle women.
As far as Max was concerned, I was now one of the boys. I’d been bitten by the jungle, as he put it. I’d been initiated.
“But even if I can get some more money sent,” I said, “I haven’t got a guide. I need someone who knows the jungle, someone who has no fear of the Shuar.”
Max called out for another drink.
“You need a man who can trek through the rain-forest in the dead of night,” he said. “A man who can kill an anaconda with his bare hands,-who can live on a diet of tree grubs washed down with his own urine,-a man who’s taken ayahuasca a hundred times, who’ll protect you if it means sacrificing his own life...” Max paused, “a man who has no fear.”
“Does such a man exist?”
Wiping the froth from his mouth, Max glanced at the wall clock.
“He should be here in five minutes,” he said.
The Texan I’d met at Ari’s swept in out of the rain and slapped a soggy dossier on the table.