by Tom Epperson
“From the people I guided. Even the ones from Europe, most of them spoke English.”
“How many languages do you speak?”
“Three. Spanish. English. O’wa.”
“You’re an O’wa?”
“Yes.”
They’re quiet for a moment. Roque’s calm face under his Chicago Bulls baseball cap looks at the river.
“Back there?” Roberto says. “At the village?”
“Yes?”
“You kept looking up into a tree, but I couldn’t see anything. What were you looking at?”
Roque is silent.
“Roque? Don’t you want to tell me?”
“Sometimes I tell people things and they don’t believe me. They laugh.”
“I won’t laugh.”
“I was looking at a spirit.”
“What kind of spirit?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve seen her before. Many times. Always up in the trees.”
“Her?”
“Yes.”
“When was the first time you saw her?”
“When I was a little boy. The river changed course and our village was washed away. Many people were drowned. I was lost in the jungle all night. I saw her up in a tree and she said, ‘Roque, don’t be afraid, everything will be all right.’ And the next morning my uncle found me.”
“What does she look like? Like a girl?”
“No. She’s like . . . flashes of light on water. Except she’s up in the trees.”
“Did she speak to you today?”
He nods. “She said, ‘Roque, look at me. Don’t look down at the village. Just keep looking at me.’” And then he smiles and points. “An agami heron!”
Roberto sits with Roque and he gives names to all the birds Roberto sees and Roberto studies them with the binoculars: a snowy egret, a black-collared hawk, a white-throated toucan, a solitary eagle, a ringed kingfisher, a capped heron, a great black hawk.
“Those are caciques,” Roque says of a noisy flock of black birds with yellow tails. “People make a soup out of their brains and give them to their babies when they’re a year old. It makes the babies smarter.”
“So did you have the soup when you were a year old?”
He grins. “Yes. But I’m still not very smart. Maybe I should have had another bowl.”
The birds help blot out the images of Jilili. The river narrows and the trees seem taller. Turtles topple off logs and plop in the water at the passing of the yellow boat. Roberto sees flashes of pink, it’s a dolphin chasing fish. Roque warns him to never make eye contact with a dolphin or he’ll have nightmares the rest of his life. A snake swims sinuously in the shallows, and monkeys perform acrobatic tricks in the treetops. A dozen blue and red and yellow macaws fly down the river and disappear around a bend.
“Roberto,” Daniel says, “look at those monsters!”
A pair of black caimans are lying torpidly on the bank. They’re huge, three and a half, maybe four meters long. Roque takes the boat closer, and Daniel snaps pictures until the caimans, annoyed at having their siesta disturbed, slither off into the water.
The sun begins to sink in the western sky, and the jungle’s shadow covers the river. The river becomes shallower, and they encounter islands covered with grass of an almost supernatural greenness, it’s as if it’s lit from within. Spindly-legged birds walk around in the grass, eying them warily as they go by. The boat’s passing through a narrow channel between two islands when the propeller begins to churn and the boat grinds into the bottom. Roque shuts the motor off and everyone has to get out and push. The boat moves along a meter or two and then won’t budge.
“Okay,” Lina says, “one, two, three!” and everyone gives it their all, grunting and gasping. Roberto slips and falls in the water and feels weak and clumsy until Ernesto does the same. Finally the boat begins to slide and then glides free and they all climb back in.
Chest heaving, Daniel unscrews the cap from a bottle of water, but then stops and stares at nothing.
“You okay, Daniel?” asks Roberto, and Daniel nods and then leans out and vomits into the river.
Roque takes the boat slowly through a labyrinth of little islands. The Maniqui’s starting to seem more like a swamp than a river. Wherever Diego lives, it’s not easy to get to. Roberto’s heart gives a lurch when he sees a giant caiman right next to the boat but then it turns into a gnarly floating log. And then he sees a long blue boat with a tin roof pulled up on a muddy bank, and Roque cuts the motor and they’re there.
Roberto and Daniel grab their backpacks and get out of the boat. On top of a hill is a large house of unpainted gray wood surrounded by palm trees. Two men are walking down a path. Lina introduces them to Roberto and Daniel. One is Diego and the other is named Quique.
Diego is wearing a white shirt, blue pants, and no shoes. He has a long brown face with handsome sharp features. He grins as he pumps Roberto’s hand and couldn’t seem happier to meet him. As Roberto shakes Quique’s hand, he’s thinking this is how he thought Chano would look. Tattooed jaguar whiskers extend from under his nose across his cheeks. It appears someone has taken a machete to his neck, judging by the long scar on one side of it. His belt buckle is made of five rifle rounds. He looks Roberto over with a mixture of skepticism and contempt.
“We were getting worried,” says Diego. “Did you have any trouble?”
“Yes,” says Lina, “in Jilili. The Army attacked it and killed nearly everyone.”
“Shit,” says Diego.
“It’s too late to leave for El Encanto. We’ll stay here tonight. We’ll leave at first light.”
“Okay, Lina, I’ll have Alquimedes make us a big dinner,” and then Diego shouts up the hill, “My son, get your ass down here! Hurry!”
A teenage boy is walking down the path, taking his time. Diego shakes his head. “That kid’s so lazy. All he cares about is music. He wants to be one of the Happy Boys, what are the chances of that, huh?”
“Oh, let him dream, Diego,” Lina says. “He’s got plenty of time to get his head on straight.”
He’s certainly cute enough to be a Happy Boy, Roberto thinks, as the boy ambles up. He has big eyes under thick dark eyebrows and full red lips. He’s dressed somewhat flamboyantly for the jungle in a backward orange baseball cap, a matching sky-blue T-shirt and shorts, orange leggings, and orange athletic shoes. Roberto’s first thought is he’s gay, but then he sees how he looks at Lina, ignoring everyone else.
“Hi, Lina,” he says.
“How are you, Marco?”
“Okay. Great.”
“My son, take their packs and put them in the guesthouse,” Diego says, gesturing toward Daniel and Roberto. They both protest they can carry their own packs but Diego says, “No, let him do some work for a change. It won’t kill him.”
Led by Diego, they all head up the path. A bony, brown and black dog with long shaggy hair comes to greet them, tail wagging, barking excitedly.
“Shut up, Duque!” Diego yells. He kicks at the dog but it dodges away.
Roberto feels a sense of relief as they go up the hill. He’s glad he won’t be slogging through the jungle to El Encanto until tomorrow. How pleasant it will be to eat a dinner prepared by a cook named Alquimedes and then to have a good night’s sleep in the guesthouse because he can’t remember a time when he was this tired.
* * *
The sun is close to setting and sends soft light slanting across the top of the hill. Roberto and Daniel are being shown around by Diego, who is proud of his place. The guesthouse is a large round hut with a thatched roof. It has six hammocks, each of a different color, red, blue, green, purple, yellow, and orange, all with matching mosquito nets.
“The colored hammocks was Marco’s idea. I wasn’t convinced but I gave it a try and guess what? The guests loved it. Because we all have a favorite color, right?”
Now Diego leads them to a wooden building near the guesthouse.
“Here’s the bathroom. It has a
toilet that flushes and a sink and a shower. It’s not easy building a bathroom like this in the jungle, but I had to make my guests comfortable if I expected them to come back,” and he smiles sadly. “But now they’ll never come back.”
“You never know,” says Roberto. “Things change.”
“Well, if they do come back, I’ll be here. I was born here; my mother buried my umbilical cord under that tree there for good luck. My grandparents, my parents, and my wife are buried here, but it ends with me. Marco wants to go to the big city to dance all night in discos with flashing lights and beautiful girls. The jungle has always wanted to take the hill back, and someday it will.”
As they’re walking beneath a tree, something drops from its branches and lands on Roberto’s back and grabs his hair. He lets out a shout as Diego and Daniel nearly bust their sides laughing.
“It’s Chico,” Diego says. “He just wants to introduce himself.”
Chico’s a large chorongo monkey with dark-brown woolly fur and a black face and black hands. He perches on Roberto’s shoulder, leans down, gazes at his beard as if he’s never seen one before, and gently tugs at it.
Daniel raises his camera. “Smile, Chico!”
Suddenly Chico snatches Roberto’s glasses. “Hey!” he says and grabs for the glasses, but Chico springs back up into the tree. He scrambles out of reach and then hangs by his tail from a branch so he can examine the glasses at his leisure. Roberto looks up at the blur of the monkey in the blur of the tree. He brought an extra pair, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling anxious. He really can’t see without his glasses, and what if something were to happen to both pairs of them?
“Hey, Chico,” says Roberto, “give me my fucking glasses! This isn’t funny, Chico!”
“You’re wrong, Roberto,” Daniel says, snapping pictures, “this is very funny.”
Diego spreads his arms out. “Come on down, Chico, let’s go, baby! Chico!”
Chico leaps out of the tree and lands in Diego’s arms. Diego takes the glasses and hands them back to Roberto. Chico’s left them dirty and smeared and Roberto cleans them with his bandana.
“Let’s go meet Princesa,” says Diego.
They head toward a wooden structure that is evidently the abode of Princesa, whatever she is. Chico jumps to the ground and walks along with them, but then all at once Duque comes charging up. Chico lets out a shriek and runs toward a tree as Diego swings his leg at Duque, this time connecting solidly. Duque yelps and runs off but then circles back to the tree where Chico has taken refuge and barks up at him as Chico screams indignantly down at Duque. Diego laughs.
“Duque and Chico don’t like each other. Duque chases Chico, and Chico sneaks up on Duque when he’s sleeping and pulls his tail.”
The structure’s constructed of heavy planks, as if whatever’s inside is large and powerful. Diego opens the door. “Welcome to Princesa’s palace,” he says, and ushers them in.
There’s no roof overhead, just chicken wire. The floor is covered with grass and plants. A long shallow hole is filled with water. Roberto looks around uneasily for Princesa, then sees in one corner the knot-like coils and twists of a gigantic snake.
“Princesa,” Diego says, “wake up. You have visitors.”
Diego picks up Princesa and puts her on his shoulders. She’s a dull brown-gold color with a pattern of black spots. She’s around four meters long, not that big as anacondas go. Diego carries her outside.
“When I first caught her she was very wild,” he says. “I think she wanted to kill me. One time she got wrapped around my neck and started to squeeze, I thought it was all over for me, but thank god Alquimedes was able to pull her off. Then a shaman told me I should rub her body all over with tobacco and aguardiente for three days in a row, and it worked. See how sweet and loving she is now?” and he caresses her body as it curls around him. “Here, Roberto, you take her.”
He has an aversion to snakes like most people, and he takes a step back as Diego approaches with Princesa.
“Thanks, Diego, but I’d rather not.”
“Oh, go ahead,” Daniel says, enjoying every second of this. “You don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“She won’t hurt you, I promise,” says Diego.
It feels awkward to keeping saying no, so Roberto lets Diego drape Princesa over his shoulders. He staggers a little under her weight. One expects living things to be warm, but her skin is cold. Like Napo’s hand in Tarapacá. Her head with its lightless eyes glides down Roberto’s chest, he can feel her tremendous strength rippling through her body.
Daniel’s taking pictures. “What does she eat?” he says.
“Mostly fish,” says Diego. “Sometimes frogs, turtles, chickens. It’s been over a year since she ate a person.”
He and Daniel laugh. Princesa’s head is now moving down Roberto’s leg.
“I think she wants down,” he says, and he bends over and Diego lifts her off and puts her down on the grass.
Lina walks up. She surveys the scene with obvious disapproval.
“Why don’t you guys leave her alone? She’s not some kind of toy.”
“She doesn’t mind,” says Diego. “She likes people. She likes her life here.”
Princesa is slithering away through the grass.
“If she likes it so much,” says Lina, “how come every time you put her on the ground she heads straight for the jungle?”
Diego walks after Princesa and picks her up. “Lina doesn’t understand you like I do,” he says to her.
Roberto watches him returning Princesa to her prison.
“The only reason he got her to begin with was to make money off her,” Lina says. “She was just an attraction for the tourists.”
Lina’s hair’s wet. She looks refreshed and smells of soap.
“Did you take a shower?” Roberto asks.
She smiles, showing her chipped front tooth.
“Yes, it was wonderful.”
* * *
It’s wonderful. He doesn’t even mind that the water’s not hot. Roberto washes the grime of the journey on the river off his body, he lathers up his hair, he scrunches his eyes shut as he rinses off the soap. He peels the bandages off his arm and gently cleans the knife wound and the boy bite and the ant bites, hoping that nothing gets infected. Napo was right about infections acquired in the jungle: Roberto’s seen them before and they’re not pretty. He turns off the water. The soldier holding the head of the girl by the hair in Jilili comes into his mind and he expels him and rubs a towel over himself. He has just the one pair of pants so he’s forced to put them back on, but he did bring a couple of extra shirts along with a pair of flip-flops so he doesn’t have to clomp around in his muddy boots. Lina’s given him a jar of wild honey and two bandages. He dabs the ant bites with the honey and puts on the bandages and rubs insect repellent on his face and neck and arms and feet and then, feeling half human again, he goes to the guesthouse.
Daniel’s preceded him in the shower, and now he’s sitting at a small wooden table, wearing only his baggy underwear. His cameras are on the table and he’s looking at the photos he took today. Roberto sits down at the table with him.
“How long have you been carrying a gun?” says Roberto.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. A year? It was after I got mugged. I thought that motherfucker was going to kill me. So I got it for protection.”
“Journalists don’t carry guns.”
“I’m not a journalist.” He lights a cigarette and returns to his camera. “These are amazing pictures, man. Here, look at this one,” and he shows Roberto an image on the LCD screen. “Here’s Oropeza standing right next to the guys that got their heads hammered in. And you see the soldier standing next to him? That’s the guy that did the hammering. We’ve got a bunch of pictures like this. Showing him right in the fucking middle of the massacre. We’ve nailed that bastard.”
“No, you nailed him. You took the pictures.”
“No I didn’t.”
>
“What do you mean?”
“This has gone way beyond taking pictures for a story, now it’s documenting war crimes. How long do you think I’d last once these pictures come out? I don’t want to leave the country like you. For the first time, I’m starting to like my life a little.”
“But who would I say took the pictures?”
“I don’t know. Make up somebody, or say you took them. I don’t care. Just leave me out of it.”
“People will guess.”
“Well, they better not guess or I’m fucked.” He exhales some smoke and looks at Roberto. “You didn’t tell anyone else I was coming with you, did you?”
“No.”
But Roberto must not have sounded very convincing.
“Okay, Roberto. Who’d you tell?”
“Nobody. It’s just that I told Andrés I was planning to ask you to come. But I didn’t talk to him after that, so he doesn’t know what happened.”
“When we get back, you need to call Andrés. Say I was too drunk, say I was an asshole, whatever. Just tell him I didn’t go with you. Okay?”
“Okay. But it’s a shame. You could win the Bolívar Prize for this.”
“I’m not a news photographer anymore. I photograph food and furniture and girls. The only thing winning the Bolívar Prize would do for me is get me killed.”
“Whatever you say. But all I know is, you did a hell of a job today.”
Chico walks through the door. He glances at Roberto, bares his teeth in an affable grin-like way, then climbs into the yellow hammock.
“Don’t get too comfortable, pal,” says Daniel. “Yellow’s my favorite color.”
“Think I’ll join him,” says Roberto. He gets up and goes to the blue hammock and lies down on it. He closes his eyes. Sleep immediately begins to envelop him like a rolling black cloud.
“Roberto?” says Daniel.
Roberto forces his eyes open.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Does it really make any sense to go on to this El Encanto place tomorrow?”
Roberto’s puzzled. “Why are you asking?”
“We’ve already got what we came for. More than what we came for. What happened today is one of the biggest stories in years. But what’s the story in El Encanto? We’ll be covering the aftermath of a massacre. We’ve done that plenty of times. I say in the morning we get back in the boat. Get the hell out of Tulcán before we get killed.”