by Will Forest
When the King and Queen realized El Dorado had disappeared, they decided to enlist the enchanted denizens of the Amazon to overtake him. They proclaimed that the battle for El Dorado would be fought as a dance with Amazonian proxies. Queen Isabel selected the Iara as her representative. The Iara actress who appeared onstage had scales painted up her bare legs; the Iara is a mermaid figure, just as I remembered from Zé’s pool-bottom mosaic. The Queen proclaimed that the Iara would surely attract many dance partners, enticing them to leave their homes and join the assault on El Dorado. For his part, King Manuel chose the Boto, the river dolphin, an actor wearing only a pink helmet with a rather phallic bottlenose projecting from its top. The King declared lewdly that the Boto would seduce unbelievable numbers of ‘dance’ partners, creating a progeny that would find, conquer, and populate El Dorado for generations to come. Of course this was all terrifically hyperbolic and allegorical.
Then a jaunty accordion-led forró blared from the speakers, and the actors spread out into the audience in search of dance partners for the Iara and the Boto. The King and Queen alternated between cheering the audience members who danced, and admonishing those who did not.
Pedro quickly placed his arm around Lisbeth, and simply shook his finger at anyone who approached either of them to dance. For my part, I was apprehensive about dancing to the agitated rhythm, but I tried to channel the energetic joy of the galloping women from the horse scene in the animal lottery play. Besides, the torchlight made it difficult for anyone to see clearly—to see my body or anyone else’s. When the Boto approached, as I knew he would, I acquiesced, and what I discovered was that my fear of shame from having my breasts swinging about uncontrollably, was vastly overpowered by the sheer joy of having my breasts swinging about uncontrollably. I felt exuberant, and I caught a glance of Zé dancing with the Iara at the same time. Jota, who had not undressed, danced first with the Iara and then with the Boto. Filo, and the balloon pilot, and many others danced as well. Sérgio was laughing and encouraging Clevina to dance, telling her, “Talvez vire o bebê! Talvez fique bem-virado!” I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that he meant that the baby was breech, and that it might turn the right way from her dancing. She did attempt it, but she needed to sit back down after only a few steps.
No one kept an official count, and the dance ended soon with all the actors disputing who had the most partners, and who had the best partners, pointing at specific audience members and making hilarious comments. But slowly, behind them, El Dorado appeared again. This time, he was downcast, in chains. It was too late, he announced—all for naught. What happened?
The answer came with the sudden entrance of Uncle Sam, wearing his top hat and matching red, white, and blue bodypaint. The bearded actor bore an eerie resemblance to traditional portrayals of Jesus, which made his Uncle Sam rendition all the more uncanny. He chased all the other characters around, threatening actors and spectators alike and shooting them with a squirt gun, all while Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” blasted from the speakers. Most of the audience was laughing uproariously. I did too, at first, but then I quickly found it all utterly depressing.
Soon two more characters sneaked onto the stage: Monkey, a woman wearing only a costume tail, and Macaw, a woman donning brightly colored wings and a beak. Macaw flapped her wings as she chased Uncle Sam, while Monkey undid El Dorado’s chains and creeped over to the speakers to shut off the music. The animals then addressed the audience directly. Monkey urged us all to be responsible guardians of nature, and Macaw implored us to consume less—less water, less energy, less clothing. Uncle Sam, and the King and Queen and even the Pope, had seated themselves in the front and were nodding their heads, seeming to learn from the fauna spokespeople.
Then El Dorado was joined by America onstage, and they had the final words. This was the part when Zé most scrutinized Pedro’s reaction. Some days afterward, Zé helped me write and translate this part, because he remembered the lines:
AMERICA: The white peoples came
thinking this land’s the same
as what they already knew.
EL DORADO: They were quick to condemn
what was odd around them
while traveling through.
AMERICA: But what they discounted
was much more than amounted
to cash for the king.
EL DORADO: All that glitters’ not gold.
As our ancestors told:
Sun and rain paint the ring.
All life’s dear—make it sing!
Then the entire troupe took a bow to our applause, and the Boto and the Iara passed through the audience with hats extended for donations.
Pedro made a big show of pulling a wad of cash from his wallet and depositing it in the Iara’s hat. Then he turned to Zé. “Well, little brother, that was fun. What a great message! But, you know, next time if you’re going to pay all that money and go to all that trouble, invite the media. We could use some good press.”
Zé didn’t know what to say to such a sarcastic, back-handed response. He just walked away. So I felt like I had to say something, and also because I wanted to delay Pedro and Lisbeth from going back to their bungalow for as long as possible.
I cleared my throat. “Pedro… what is it exactly that you’re going to do with this land?”
He turned around as if trying to identify the source of my voice. Then he looked at me directly. “Você está me perguntando isso? Pois vai ter que esperar, sua putinha desajeitada.” His gaze shifted to my breasts. “Talvez você saiba amanhã.”
Of course he answered me in Portuguese—he knew that it would keep more of a barrier between us. It was the coward’s way out. Of course he grabbed Lisbeth’s hand and pulled her up out of her seat before striding away coldly and directly. I could only hope Nelson had enough time.
Zé came back when he realized I hadn’t followed him, and he saw Pedro leaving. “Hey… did he say something to you?”
I had understood more than Pedro thought I would. “He is so nasty, Zé. I asked him about the land and he said, ‘You’re asking me that? Well you’re going to have to wait. Maybe you’ll know tomorrow.’”
Zé sighed. “That was the censored version, right?”
“I can handle it. He doesn’t scare me. I just feel bad for you.”
Zé didn’t answer. We both looked around us—nobody seemed to be in much of a rush to get dressed. The actors were mingling with the audience. The show had been a success, if perhaps not in the way Zé had hoped.
“Look,” Zé said. “Pedro has never forgiven me. See… Lisbeth was my girlfriend. We were starting to get serious, she met my family, flirted openly with Pedro while saying she loved me… I realized she was too shallow for me. So I let her go. She didn’t dump me. Pedro didn’t steal her.”
He had my full attention. “Go on.”
“So I let her go,” he repeated. “But just a little while after that, she got pregnant…”
“Vaya. I see. Does that mean that Pedrinho is really your son?”
“Não! I mean, I love Pedrinho. I love that little guy. Pedro insisted on a DNA test, and the result showed Pedro is the father, but then he claimed that since we’re brothers, our DNA is so close we can never really be sure.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s OK. I don’t expect you to believe me. Seria muito pedir.”
“No, no—I mean I don’t believe that about the DNA test. Look at me, Zé. I believe you. I know that now.”
He embraced me. “Thanks,” he said. “When we discovered Pedrinho is autistic, Pedro claimed it was because he’s really my son, not his. He even wanted to change Pedrinho’s name, but Lisbeth wouldn’t let him.”
“What a pendejo!” I spat out.
“And then whenever I’ve had a serious girlfriend since then—which has only been a couple times—Pedro’s been openly hostile. I don’t know why. Sorry. I should have warned you.”
“He’s a bully and a misogynist. N
o wonder you got the hell away from him.”
Nelson approached us, wearing only a big smile. “Sucesso,” he said.
“Meet us in our bungalow in about ten minutes,” said Zé. “Let me congratulate Jônatas on his production.”
I went with Zé to thank the actors personally for such a clever and engaging performance.
When Nelson joined us later, Zé was looking frustrated in front of his laptop. “Claro. There’s no wifi out here.”
“Yeah, we really should have thought of that, huh?” said Nelson.
“So, what’d you do?” Zé asked.
“I tried the numbers you gave me. The winning combination was Lisbeth’s measurements.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
Zé shrugged. “What can I say? I know my brother’s values.”
“So I opened the briefcase,” Nelson went on. “I was able to get into my laptop—I don’t think he did anything to it other than steal it, to keep me from sending any more copies. Then, right—I realized there’s no wifi signal, but, near the corner where Dona Clevina keeps that skeleton key that I used to get into the bungalow, I had seen a photocopier. So I started looking through the folders in the briefcase, just in case… and there it was. I didn’t know how much you had read, so I had to copy the whole thing! I barely had enough time.”
Nelson held out the manila envelope he was carrying.
“Maravilha!” said Zé.
“Something else. Listen—in the briefcase was a bag, kind of padded. I peeked inside. It contained a necklace of little golden nude figurines, just like in Amana’s story! I was going to take a photo on my cellphone…”
“I thought you lost your cellphone,” said Zé.
“It was in there, too! Zé, what is the deal with your brother? He is crazy! What did he want with my cellphone? I thought I lost it when we were at Abricó, but I must have left it at home that day. I’m quitting working with him as soon as we get out of here.”
Zé sighed. “I don’t blame you. Maybe you can work for me.”
Nelson was poking at his phone. “I hear you. Anyway, I couldn’t take a photo because my cellphone was dead. Do you have a charger?”
While Zé fished for his charger, it dawned on me that Nelson’s description of the necklace in the briefcase sounded like the one Palafox had kept, but was more detailed than what we had read so far in Amana’s story. “Nelson? The necklace in the Amana story has nude figurines on it?”
“Oh—you haven’t read that far yet? Right, her daughter calls it a gold circle first but then she describes it more thoroughly. Keep reading!”
“So it is her daughter, then, the woman giving the testimony…” I mumbled, while finding the last page we had read of Amana’s story.
Chapter 22: Natupari
My fingers tapped impatiently. “C’mon, Zé. We’ve got to hurry up! Here’s where we left off.”
What I learned from my mother is how to know with the necklace. What I learned from my mother is how to bring children into the world. Don’t you see?
I make my home at the lake because I look after that circle. I clean it. I take care of the fish, the herons, the frogs, and the animals that come to drink there. Would you like to be queen of the lake?
What?
Sorry, king of the lake? You must begin by swimming in it, for this is how you get to know it. But truly swimming, and diving, not splashing about with these cloths you use to cover yourself. And swimming with all of you at home under the water, not with your head stuck out all the way like a sick sloth. You must look under the water to be the king of the lake. You must look to the health of the lake as you look to your own health. Have you ever looked under the water? Have you ever looked at yourself under the water?
Yes, there was a time when one of the Muisca men wanted to make Amana his woman. He was a hunter. One day he sneaked up to the lake as she was diving, and when she came up from underwater he grabbed her by her hair. He started pulling her back to the village. She was stumbling, but then she fell over on purpose. Since he wouldn’t let go of her hair, he was forced to bend over close to the ground. Amana then kicked her legs from the ground and broke his arm. She lost some hair, but that was all. As for him, he healed, but only because Amana helped him. She set his arm with cane and vines and told him how long to keep it straight. Of course, at that point the man listened to her. When his arm healed, he brought her new bows and arrows.
Our people do not speak of marrying the way you speak of it. But she did meet a man eventually who became her companion and the father of her children. It was my father, the father of my two brothers and two sisters and me. They met when he came to the lake. Like my mother, he was not from that area. But he had not traveled from the south. He had traveled from the north, the northern sea, with an eagle. He came up the river to the Muisca lands.
No, Your Grace, he did not ride the eagle. It is conceivable that a woman could ride a tapir, but how could a man ride an eagle? Would that be one of those miracles you speak of?
He was not a miracle-worker, but he was special, like Amana.
He was not a trader. Or, rather, he was a trader, of words, of… understandings. He said he traveled to the lake because he was looking for my mother. I think he had heard people downriver speak of her skills. So he came as an apprentice, to learn from her, though he was about the same age as my mother, older than the other apprentices. He wanted to live with her, to make a family with her. You see, Your Grace, they lived—what was the word?—naked, and they lived in peace. They lived and loved on the land, of the land. They would make shelter, but it was their bodies that were their homes. They were traders of words, of… doings, about how best to live in their bodies, and they shared these doings with the small community near the lake.
In fact, the first time my mother saw my father, they were underwater. He had approached the lake and had seen that she was gathering reeds from the lake bottom. Somehow he was able to slip into the water undetected. He waited for her to see him, then smiled, bubbling, and held out his open hands under the water and started kicking his legs like a frog. She understood that he was friendly, not like that other man that tried to surprise her.
But then she saw behind my father what he had not: a caiman, closing in on him, its jaws already open. It wasn’t the first time. She knew this caiman, and she knew what to do. She pushed my father to the side, and at the same time she kicked the animal just under its chin.
I mean to say that she knew this animal because she had already had encounters with it. They lived in the same lake. It is only natural. And she had learned how to get the animal to leave her alone. So, as I was saying, she kicked the caiman, and he spun back from the force of her foot. My father instantly saw what had happened, and just as my mother swam in to kick it again, my father grabbed one of the reeds that my mother had left floating in the water. He swam on top of the beast and straddled its back with his legs. The caiman started whirling around in the water but my father threw his chest over the animal’s eyes, which confused it, and then looped the reed around its snout, and quickly tied it tight. The caiman could not open its mouth. It swung its head back and forth, trying to get loose, as my mother and father swam quickly to shore.
Well, Your Grace, I don’t think I know what you mean about miracles. My mother said it was because the caiman was surprised by my father in his lake, and was defending his territory. My mother had made her peace with the animal long before, when she first came to the lake. This is how it is when the land and water are shared the right way. By the time the caiman broke its jaws free of the reed, my parents had already swum to shore and moved away from the waters. And my mother found that my father had already placed on the strand a large pile of the reeds that he collected for her, before she had even seen him. She was very impressed by his tricks.
It was not many days afterward that my mother dove again to the lake bottom, but this time to collect the clay to make the muiraquitã amulet for my father. When she told me the
story, she said she had the intention to make the muiraquitã in the form of a frog, because my father had reminded her of a large frog when they met underwater. But in the end she chose the form of a caiman, since she and my father had worked together to defend themselves but also to share the lake with the caiman. One day she gave the muiraquitã to him, in the lake, near the waterfall that is one of the voices of the lake.
Then my father wanted to make another voice, to make holes in the amulet, to blow air through it with his mouth. But he left it as it was, since it had been a gift from my mother, to stay near his own voice when he wore it around his neck. Instead, he began to fashion other clay figures with holes, and to blow through them for sound, like what you call, I think, music. Sometimes he made them in the shape of frogs and caimans, but also pirarucu fish, or piranhas, or turtles, and sometimes people. This is something that he taught to the others who lived in their group, people like Yari and Zahua. Zahua became very skilled at shaping the clay into these musical amulets, although he did not know how to make the same from gold. His sister Yari learned how to blow their music and put together their songs. She made many songs, for fishing, for hunting, for dancing, for healing. And when it was time for my mother to bring me into the world, Yari and Zahua helped my mother and father and others at the lake to craft the circle and its song - the circle you have taken from me. You do not know its voice, its song. They combined what they knew about bringing people into their homes of this world, and bringing music into the world, and led the whole community to bring me into my home of this world.