by Will Forest
I am not wishing to cause offense. I do not understand your offense at humming. I am humming to remember. A humming is a birthing of wind, of sound, of song. I am beginning to think that most babies now are not born as I was. What a greater pain this must be for their mothers. When you are born as I was, you are born in sound, in voice, into your home with the land, in the land, in the water, all as one.
I do not know what is this sacrament of holy baptism.
No, Your Grace, this land does not belong to some faraway king. The land lives in me and I live in the land. You and your people—look at these things, these heavy wrappings you drag around yourself—you stink and sweat from these wrappings and you live as if you were fighting against the land. You say you have rights over the land, and you can give them and take them away, but it is rather the land that gives to us, not rights but responsibilities. What good gold, what good youth, for you? You live in fear of the sun and the water, when it is their union that you should celebrate. Their union is the glowing water, the gold that brings youth. You live in fear of the music your gardeners were singing to the land, to the food you would eat, and so you cover them with wrappings and silence them. You will eat little and poor. It seems that Your Grace does not wish to know about the gold, about the youth, about the glowing water… nor even about how to eat.
This is indeed a name I have heard, because it was one of the names of my father, from your people. He had many names, because he had traveled through many lands. But, yes, I believe you know him as El Dorado.
Yes, yes—my father was the man your people named that way. I did not know him by that name. For me he was Suacha. Another of his names was Tonatiuhpilli. Sometimes he called my mother Xochiquetzal.
But, has not Your Grace been listening? I have never been to a golden city. I have told you that my home is here, my home is me. I don’t know that there is any gold that you would need to rescue. If we needed gold, what you call gold, we traded for it. But most often we sought the gold the sun gives freely.
No, I brought nothing of gold other than the shining circle Your Grace already took from me! And even this you say is some sort of inferior gold mixed with copper. It is not inferior. It holds the shine and the sound for its purpose that you ignore. And the six little people…
Yes, the six little naked women and men, they have their purpose for youth, for health, for the glowing water, for the lake of the womb. You gave me instead this circle you call a rosary, and though it has beads I do not see how it could work in the way I know...
You think I am hiding something? I wear this only for you! See how easily I throw it to the ground? I am Natupari, and I hide nothing! Look at your robe—you could not say the same!
Let me be! Let me stomp on this robe –I will show you! I do not need this thing you call clothes! I have skin, which does not need to be undressed!
Your clothes do not protect you from the jaguar, which finds you by your stink. Clothes keep a smell that the jaguar likes! The jaguar can find you quickly, that is why so many of your people are caught and eaten.
I wash my skin and it does not stink. This is why if I wear anything it is only paint I can wash later from my skin.
If clothes were good, then the animals of the forest would want them, but they do not like them either. They become agitated if you try to put anything on them. These shoes make my feet hurt. I like to run free, but clothes make me fall right down on the ground!
I do not want to trade the feather adornments we make for our heads, in exchange for those clothes you bring. A machete, now that is something that is indeed much more useful than clothes. The best thing for covering our bodies is sunshine, and also macaw feathers.
Yes, I have heard this story from your people. This Eve, this Adam—they did not need clothes. That is where the story goes bad. This is what I know: The body needs to breathe without clothes covering it. The navel is the body, and the body is the home.
Scribal note:
Here the heathen woman flagrantly ignored Padre Nataniel’s further questions, which proved her stories to be lies. The reverend Padre repeated himself, but she began only to hum, and to roll her eyes around as possessed by a demon. She was acting as if the reverend Padre weren’t there, as if he had not just queried her. I began to move toward her, with the plan of escorting her from the room, but she perceived this, and, bold in her desperation, she grabbed my hand and placed my fingers against her lips as she continued humming.
“Fernando,” the reverend Padre called to me, “this is her answer. Quickly, find Roberto, and tell him to bring his quill and parchments.”
Within the quarter part of an hour I had returned with the musician, Mestre Roberto, who began scribbling the melody that the woman hummed anew. I know not of such matters—the mestre’s markings looked to me like dots and flags strewn across the strings of a guitar—but he told me to record the following here, lest his markings be separated from my rendering: that her humming comes back repeatedly to a low do, after scaling up only to mi and sol in varying order and rhythm, and then finally to a sustained ti breaking into a do.
She hummed and swayed and rolled her eyes for some time until she exhausted herself, and then she was led away to be flogged.
My hands were trembling. “How horrible… That’s the end, isn’t it?”
Nelson wore an enormous smile. “But isn’t it a bittersweet ending? She just… she just threw off her robe, like an epiphany, and laid out all her truth for them, and those guys… they had no idea. Those idiots sent her to be whipped, but she wasn’t possessed by a demon, she was in a kind of spiritual ecstasy, maybe a trance. When I read that for the first time, in the hotel room in Lisbon, I had to try it for myself. I swayed and hummed, naked, and I felt a kind of… like an energy, that I had never known before.”
I was running my hands through my hair. “What about the sheet music? This musician… Mestre Roberto… were his annotations with the scroll?”
“No,” said Nelson. “Well, who knows, they could still be somewhere down there in one of those file drawers in the Portuguese National Archives and I just didn’t see them. But I am never going back there again, that’s for sure.”
I stood up and started pacing. “Listen to me. She was not possessed. What was her name?”
“Natupari,” said Nelson.
“Natupari was not possessed. She was not in ecstasy, or a trance, either. Well, maybe she felt ecstatic, but that’s not my point. The reason she was rolling her eyes around is because that was the way she was indicating the pitches she was humming! Don’t you see? Just like Mestre Roberto must have written down the pitches in the European way we all recognize today with notes on a staff, she was giving the pitches in her way—with her eyes!”
Zé threw his hands in the air. “That’s why the necklace figurines have their eyes painted so precisely!”
“And the codex figures, too! Oh Zé, this is…” and then everything else I wanted to say transcended words and came out through our warm, tight embrace that, after a few moments, included Nelson too.
When we separated, Zé said, “And, you have to admit, my hunch was correct! There can be no doubt that Sun Prince and Natupari’s father are one and the same.”
“Yes!” I said. “You were exactly, absolutely, one-hundred-percent correct. And the Europeans thought he was El Dorado, according to this! Or, at least, Natupari thought they were referring to him. It’s an astounding story.”
Zé turned to Nelson. “Amana and Pilli and Natupari lived here, then—is that right? I mean, what we just read… it’s about the history of this particular piece of land?”
Nelson blew air through his lips. “Poxa… It’s hard to say. Apparently Natupari was born in what is now Colombia, né? But she gave her testimony in São Paulo, thousands of kilometers from here. She definitely got around… Maybe she lived on this land at some point, or near here, or maybe not. I don’t think we can be sure.”
“But then what’s the connection between
this document,” I wanted to know, “and the property title Pedro paid you to research?”
“Home,” Nelson said. “Remember? That word moradia. The property title said this land had been moradia de indios. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some colonial meaning of the word—some technical or legal meaning it might have had—and that’s what led me to Natupari, and to the understanding that she used the original Tupi word to mean something more like ‘place in the world’ or ‘place of the world,’ including one’s own body.”
I remembered my own translation challenges. “Zé, in Bark Shield’s narrative, the same thing happened, remember? I translated the Nahuatl word as ‘home,’ but Pilli really meant it the same way Natupari was using it.”
“Sim, com certeza,” said Zé. “But what is my brother trying to do with this information? If we cannot be sure this land is even where the story took place, why did he arrange to steal Nelson’s laptop and cell phone?”
Nelson and I exchanged a glance.
“Zé, olha… seu irmão…” Nelson trailed off.
“Your brother,” I picked up, “probably thinks like the priests and los conquistadores, ¿no? I teased you about being like Cortés, but it’s not you, it’s Pedro. When he read this, he must have convinced himself this land has gold.”
Zé looked down. “Yes, you are probably right. That would explain it. He has always been greedy. I imagined he would clearcut this land, or drill for oil… something. But gold… there has been so much contamination here from mercury in the gold processing. Isto é pior… this is worse than I thought. Muito pior.”
I looked at him and sighed. “Tell us how we can help. That’s what we came for, right? To save the Amazon?”
“He told me he wants to show me something out on the land tomorrow morning…” Zé pointed at me. “And you’re coming with me. Pedro is my older brother, after all—let’s see what it is he wants to show me, and then I think we’ll know if we’re correct about the gold.”
Chapter 23: Gold from Above
April 1, 2012
Western Amazonas State, Brazil
I knew that when Pedro had summoned Zé to go see something important out on the land, Zé insisted that I go along, especially if whatever it was that was so interesting had to do with indigenous cultures. But I didn’t know that it would mean a balloon ride. I mean, how often do you get to go up in a balloon? So I welcomed the opportunity, even though it meant close quarters with Pedro.
After our fruit and cheese breakfast, we set out to the golden balloon, newly inflated. On our way we crossed paths with Filo, just coming to breakfast. I told her I’d be back soon, and asked her if she could please work with Bill to help us figure out something that Zé, Nelson and I had been left pondering after finishing Natupari’s testimony the night before: the meanings that her phrase “glowing water” might hold.
I thought I was dressed appropriately for a balloon ride, in another loose dress, until I realized there was quite a jump into the basket from that little step on the outside wall. Zé and Pedro hopped up and over the side quickly, but I hesitated with my dress on. Lisbeth, obviously prepared, was wearing a light, low-cut blouse, and tight leggings like you’d wear to the gym. I gestured with chin and eyebrows until Zé finally understood my predicament and helped me over the side, while I tried to keep my dress down and still manage to land in the small space left for me inside the gondola.
I shifted to stand as near to Zé as possible. He wore a loose button-down shirt, shorts and sandals. Pedro was wearing a rather formal outfit given the circumstances—pressed slacks, dress shoes, and a polo with the Queluz logo. What I also could not fail to observe, as the flame leapt up into the billowing golden oval above us and we started to lift into the rainforest morning, was that the balloon’s color matched the lustrous necklace perched over Lisbeth’s elevated bosom. There were a half dozen little golden nudes… I concluded that it must have been the necklace Nelson had seen in Pedro’s briefcase. But the nudes were small, and rather Western-looking. Their unpainted eyes looked straight ahead.
I couldn’t resist. “Lisbeth, what a lovely necklace!”
She smiled. “Pedro gave it to me this morning. Isn’t it lindo?”
“I’m curious—can I see?” I pointed at the closest nude.
“Yes, of course. São de ouro… Twenty-four karat.”
I was less interested in the quality of the gold then in discovering whether they had hollow openings in the back. They did not. There was no ocarina on the necklace, either. I caught Zé’s eye—he had also seen the differences.
“Very fine quality,” I said. “What a precious gift.”
Pedro had watched all this with a big grin. “I had it made especially for her. It’s based on an ancient document linked to this land, and it is worth… how much did I tell you, querida?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.” Lisbeth’s hand went to her chest protectively.
“Fifty thousand dollars, Zé. Now, I see this woman here is wearing an amulet,” Pedro said, pointing at me. “I’m going to guess you gave it to her. How much was it?”
I was indeed wearing the gold-coated muiraquitã that Zé had retrieved for me from the bottom of his pool. It was just a small amulet compared to Lisbeth’s array of pendants. Zé was stuttering, probably trying to estimate a price, so I interrupted him.
“It’s… priceless,” I said, using the lowest voice I could manage.
Zé smiled. Pedro swatted the back of his hand at his brother’s chest and then changed the subject, telling Zé it was just going to be a short trip, that he needed to show him something from the air.
We drifted only a couple miles from the lodge, toward the west I think, and so we did not reach a very high altitude, but it was high enough for a trio of bright pink spoonbills to fly below us. I watched in wonder as the beautiful birds came to a landing on a small, gourd-shaped lake.
Pedro tapped his brother’s arm. “Olha. Olha lá,” he said, pointing just beyond the lake. The pilot was now attempting to keep the balloon as still as possible. Pedro spoke then to the pilot, and what I could understand from their conversation was that Pedro wanted us to rise higher up, but the pilot was concerned about not being able to maneuver before accidentally crossing into Colombia.
“What are we supposed to be seeing?” Zé asked.
Pedro was pointing at a grassy field that contained two large ditches in the shape of circles, with smaller concentric circles inside them. These circles stood out because they were on cleared land that was surrounded by thick rainforest on all sides as far as the eye could see. “These are the geoglyphs,” he said.
“Oh, like the Nazca lines?” I asked.
“Professora, those are far away in southern Peru,” Pedro clarified impatiently, without looking at me, “but here, in the western Amazon, there have been many geoglyphs discovered recently, thanks in part to satellite imagery, but also because of land clearing, like you see here.”
“Okay, I see there are some circles,” said Zé. “But what’s the meaning?”
“Oh Zé, you are playing innocent in front of your lady friend,” said Lisbeth. “Are you embarrassed?”
From her remark I made out instantly what we were looking at. The layout of the ringed ditches, in relation to the little lake almost directly below us, was what Zé apparently had not recognized.
“It’s like a carving of a woman, in the earth,” I said. “Those huge circles are her breasts, with nipples, and the lake is her womb.”
The smallest hint of a smile graced Pedro’s face. “Exatamente. That’s what I said, too, when we saw it yesterday, right, querida?” He turned to his little brother. “Zezinho, aprenda da sua professorinha.”
Lisbeth smiled. “You know, seeing her again, I realize that she is like me, this giant, savage woman. Her breasts are natural, yet they are also man-made, não é?”
I thought that was funny, and, again, I knew that the trend for Latin American women was to be more open, eve
n proud, about having undergone plastic surgery. Pedro kissed her.
“Confirmado,” said Zé. “Now I see her. But then, she is international, too, this woman. She has the breasts of Miss Colombia, but her womb is Miss Brazil’s.”
Pedro laughed. “Yes, now you see. But not even all of her womb is in Brazil, and this is a small problem, Zé.” Pedro pointed to the lake. “How to divide this up? I will be technical… her vagina, her cervix, and almost all of her uterus is on our land. But there is a section at the top of her womb that lies in Colombia.”
“So… made in Colombia but with a Brazilian passport!” said Ze.
“And the baby has to cat-crawl back to Colombia to get the milk!” added Lisbeth, laughing.
It was a silly conversation in awkward English, and I felt a little forward by interrupting, but I asked a question out loud, to myself as much as to anyone else. “Did the people who lived here create the breast geoglyphs to go with the lake womb that was already there?”
“Are you asking me?” said Pedro. “According to Zé, you are the one who is supposed to be explaining all of this for us. Look—maybe they made the breasts afterwards, or maybe they made the lake womb, too. The whole landscape has been altered, and together it makes a massive fertility idol. Worship of the body, the mysteries of sex and birth.”