by You Jin
Amid this silence that surpassed all words, there was suddenly a loud plop and a white creature shot into the water and sped towards our boat. I was so startled I cried out, and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. The river, which had been so peaceful, was likewise stirred to life, the waves billowing around our raft, making it shake. Quillis-Sacha yelled, “Stay calm! Just sit still, and hold on tight.”
It takes too long to tell it, but it happened in a flash. The white thing had reached the side of the boat and stuck its claws into the boat.
“Charlie!”
Quillis-Sacha stuck his hand into the water and pulled the big white dog onto the boat. On the one hand, he was so cold he was shivering, but on the other hand, he was very content as he snuggled up to Quillis-Sacha.
I calmed down. Thinking of this dog that had given no thought to its own safety but risked its life to be with its master, I disliked it for scaring me, and yet loved it for its loyalty.
When the boat reached the shore, we once again walked a long way before reaching the hut. The night air was invigorating, and I no longer felt tired.
The hut stood in the depths of the darkness as if it had become one with the jungle. There was only a wan ray of light escaping from the kitchen, like a wisp of vapour. It was only then that it sank in for me that there was no electricity in the rainforest.
Quillis-Sacha took four large candles from the kitchen and lit them. Their flames flickered weakly, then leapt to life. Quillis-Sacha dripped a bit of wax from the candles and stood them on the table, then went into the kitchen to help the cook prepare our dinner.
In a daze, I watched the candle’s flame flicker. Just then, the whole area was filled with the cries of apes, turning the atmosphere strange and treacherous.
When dinner was served, it was more of the snowy white palm core with “some small thing”. I call it “some small thing” because I honestly could not tell what it was. It was like chicken, but not quite. I thought maybe it was a parrot, but it did not seem like it. When I asked Quillis-Sacha, he said secretively, “I think it’s better you don’t ask before you’ve tried.”
The meat was very soft, and a little bitter. I washed it down with the muddy yellow tea brewed from river water. I was rather troubled and suspicious; I really hoped it was not human meat!
After I had put the last piece in my mouth, Quillis-Sacha smiled cheekily and said, “You were eating frog meat.”
Frog meat? Not quite believing him, I asked, wide-eyed, “How come this frog is so big?”
“Oh, this is a special Amazon frog. Some are bigger than a four-or five-pound chicken.” Having said this, he suddenly laughed, although I was not sure why. After quite a while, he finally regained his composure, and said, “Let me tell you an interesting story. Once, there was a Japanese tourist who came here and he stayed in the same bedroom as yours. That night, we talked until one in the morning, then he took a candle and went back to his room. As soon as he closed the door, he screamed. Ha! A grown man screaming like that! It was so funny. I took my gun and rushed in, and found him cowering in a corner of the bed, pointing to a mound behind the door and jabbering away. I looked and found it was just a huge, special Amazon frog. I reached out and grabbed it and carried it out. The next day when the Japanese man had eaten his lunch, he asked me what had happened to the frog. I pointed to the empty plate in front of him and said, “You just ate it.” I did not expect that he would react this way, but his face turned a ghastly colour, and he rushed to the railing, vomiting up everything inside him.”
Risheng and I had a good laugh at this. To tell the truth, I had felt a little nauseous a few minutes earlier too, but laughing like this made my tummy feel better.
Quillis-Sacha chatted enthusiastically, sharing another “interesting incident” with us.
“There was another time that a Canadian guest woke me up with his screams. When I rushed to his bedroom, I found that his face was completely pale and he was pointing at a snake that was writhing continuously on the floor. He stuttered, ‘Snake! A headless snake!’ I looked more closely. In his terror, he was stepping solidly on the snake’s head. It was in so much pain, of course its body was writhing like that.”
In the midst of our merriment, I asked Quillis-Sacha to tell us about the most alarming encounter he’d ever experienced.
“Alarming things happen often.” His eyes lit up as he said, “But, what left the deepest impression on me was the time I met a tiger. I remember it was after six in the evening at the time. As I was walking in the jungle, I suddenly heard one eerie cry after another. I shone my torchlight all around and saw a tiger cub beneath a tree. Its whole body was so black it was shiny. Its eyes were like fire, its claws pointy and sharp. It was the fiercest sort of tiger. According to what I knew, tigers often went back to their lairs in the evening to feed their young. Now, if I wanted to escape, it was too late, so I stealthily climbed up the tree. After a short while, the mother tiger came back. She was huge. She carried a large chunk of meat in her mouth, which she shared with the cub there under the tree. Hiding in the tree, I did not even dare to breathe too deeply. At first, I thought they would leave early the next morning, but what I didn’t expect was that this piece of meat was enough to feed them for three days. They stayed under that tree the whole time!”
“Then how did you get away?” I asked uneasily.
“How could I possibly get away?” He revisited his fear: “I sat in the tree for three days and three nights, drinking rain water and nibbling on leaves. After three days, mother and cub left, and I stole down the tree and rushed home.”
It really took nerves of steel to survive in the jungle!
“The skills that I use to deal with the wild beasts were taught to me by my grandfather,” Quillis-Sacha said, his eyes taking on a gentle look. “When I was ten, my grandfather started teaching me to shoot a blowpipe and a rifle. He would take papayas, bananas and pineapples and tie them to a wooden pole, using them as targets, and tell me to fire. Practising like this for several years, my eyes and arms grew quite strong. My grandfather turned sixty the year I became fifteen. One day he said to me, “Son, let’s go and spend a week on the mountain.” So we carried a pair of rifles, a pair of blowpipes, a bundle of poisoned arrows, and a packet of salt, and set out on our journey. When we had walked for several hours, we heard the cries of wild boars in the distance. My grandfather yelled, “Not good!” Then he instructed me to climb up a tree quickly with him. Looking down from the treetop, we saw a herd of wild boars rushing ferociously past. If we had not climbed fast enough, we would have been trampled. When the last of the boars disappeared into the distance, we climbed down from the tree. It was then that I saw a lost piglet straggling behind the group. My grandfather handed me a blowpipe and said, “Son, quickly—try your skills!” I aimed the blowpipe at the pig and blew hard. The poisoned arrow flew out, and the pig toppled over. That was the first time in my life I killed a creature of the jungle by my own strength. I was very proud. My grandfather was very pleased and kept praising me. My courage and confidence were really built up from that incident.”
Saying this, he noticed that the candles on the table were burning down, their light growing dimmer. He went into the kitchen and brought a few more candles out. After lighting them one by one, we continued our conversation.
“My grandfather and I lit a fire and roasted meat from the pig I had killed and ate it. Then, we took the raw meat that we could not finish and wrapped it in banana leaves, bound it up tightly, and submerged it in the Amazon River, relying on the coolness of the water to keep it fresh. At night, my grandfather used leaves and branches to build a simple bed, hung it in a tree, and lay on it. But he did not let up in his teaching. He made use of the quiet hours of the night to teach me to recognise and imitate the calls of different monkeys—did you know that there are many types of monkeys in the jungle? Each type has its own call. If we can make the same sound as them, they will take us as friends and happily come to the p
lace in the tree where we rest…”
“How do you usually catch the monkeys?” I asked.
“Well, we use their call to lure them out, then kill them with guns on the spot, or we bring them home alive and cut their heads off with a knife. I think tomorrow we can go into the mountains and I will kill one there for you to see. It’s late now. You should rest.”
I picked up what was left of the candles and walked slowly into the room. We had trekked for a long time through the jungle earlier, and now I was sticky all over. I really wanted to bathe, but there was no water.
There were lots of mosquitoes in the room, buzzing around my ears. Before coming to Peru on tour, I had vaccinated myself against yellow fever, and I was also taking anti-malaria tablets now, so I was not afraid I would pick up diseases from the mosquitoes, but the bites were painful and itchy. Sitting on the side of the bed, I squeezed some insect repellent lotion onto my palm and rubbed it carefully all over myself, then put down the mosquito net and pulled the dirty yellow blanket over me and tried to go to sleep. I was very tired, but could not sleep, no matter what I did. I knew very well that I was actually afraid—afraid that a four- or five-pound fat frog would suddenly jump onto my chest, and even more afraid that a boa constrictor or a poisonous snake would climb on the bed and lie beside me. Later, when I was so tired I couldn’t stand it anymore, I finally fell into a deep sleep.
Before I knew it, it was already bright outside. After we had a simple breakfast, Quillis-Sacha urged us to get started on our journey. He pointed out that when we caught a monkey from the jungle and brought it back, we would have to bake its hair off slowly above a fire and skin it before we could cook it. If we didn’t hurry out and hurry back, he was afraid we would not have time to prepare our “monkey lunch”.
He had a machete hung at his waist, and also carried a rifle as he led us into the jungle. The path we walked this time was humid and dark, with many fallen leaves which had already decayed, littering the ground beneath us, and there was an unpleasant smell in the air. Our feet squelched on the rotting leaves, accompanying the calls of the birds and the insects. With the added buzz of the frogs and cicadas, we had an amazing macabre symphony going on.
When we had walked for about forty minutes, Quillis-Sacha started to look upward and utter monkey calls, but even though he called for five or six minutes, there was no response. He turned, shrugged his shoulders, and looked like he was about to say something. Suddenly we heard a sharp bird cry and, at that moment, a look of enlightenment came over his face. He explained, “Tonight there will be a full moon. According to their habits, monkeys don’t come out during the full moon.”
I asked him how he knew it was full moon that night. He pointed to the sky, smiled and replied, “Didn’t the bird make it very clear just now?”
We came to a small brook, so clear we could see the many smooth rocks on its bed. Observing this pure spring water, I felt my throat was parched, as if a fire had been lit inside it. As I squatted, wanting to scoop up a bit of water to drink, Quillis-Sacha restrained me with his hand, saying, “There’s a water tree ahead. The water tree’s water is fresher than the brook’s. Come, I’ll chop a tree branch for you to have a drink.”
We took off our shoes and waded through the water. It was cool and refreshing. The jungle ahead was full of the water trees Quillis-Sacha had mentioned. He took out his machete and, with a thwack, cut a round branch off and held it vertically. It was strange: big drops of pure water rushed out from the cross section where the branch had been cut. I held the branch up high, brought my mouth close to where the water dripped and, without having to suck, the tree water flowed down my throat. I will never forget its extremely sweet freshness.
As we went on, Quillis-Sacha gave us a very valuable biology lesson, pointing out the various types of trees in the jungle and telling us the special properties of each. There were trees that were an antidote for snake venom, healing stomach ailments, diarrhoea, and yellow fever, curing hangovers, making dye and even cosmetics, and good for countless other uses. To an indigenous person, the trees in the jungle were “a treasure box” for survival. They used the “items” in the “treasure box” to heal illnesses, feed the stomach, quench thirst, make clothes (from leaves), build houses, and so much more.
The small path with thick forest lining both sides seemed to go on forever. At the end of the path, we suddenly came across a brightly lit patch where the indigenous people kept their orchards, growing sugarcane and pineapples, all already ripened. Quillis-Sacha cut down several stalks of sugarcane with his machete, then stripped the thick skin off and handed them to us. It was sweet, really sweet. When I sucked it, it was like sucking sugar solution. He also cut down a huge pineapple but, unfortunately, though it was juicy, it did not have much flavour.
When we had passed through the orchard, we were plunged back into the jungle. Quillis-Sacha said, “About three kilometres from here, there is a small place where the Yagua tribe lives. They have not been immersed in civilisation, and they still live primitively. Would you be interested in seeing that?”
“Do they—” I hesitated, then went on, “eat people?”
“No!” Quillis-Sacha laughed. “They are a very friendly tribe.”
Three kilometres, accompanied by our chatting, was like a walk in the park. We arrived in no time. From a distance, I saw a white swirl of smoke rising from the ground.
“They are lighting a fire to cook their breakfast,” Quillis-Sacha said.
When we reached the place where the Yagua tribe lived, I found that they used palm-leaf huts, much cruder than Quillis-Sacha’s: dried leaves for the roof and bamboo branches for walls. There were no windows or doors, with the breeze coming in from every side.
This particular household had a surprisingly large number of children. Resting, running, playing, or crying, they were everywhere. I counted eight. In the house, there were two young women with big round bellies, looking ready to burst.
One youth was holding a long blowpipe and aiming at a banana on a tree, practising his shot whilst an older man stood to the side giving pointers. An old woman sat on the ground stringing dried fruit together onto a very fine string, probably to be worn as an ornament. Seeing us, they all broke into warm, friendly smiles, pointed to the mat in the grass hut, and invited us to enter.
“That young fellow is the father of these children,” said Quillis-Sacha, pointing to a man who looked like a youth. “The two women are his wives. The older ones are the children’s grandparents.”
“So young, and already so many children!”
“In the jungle, a man marries at fifteen, a woman at thirteen. Generally, one man will have several wives.”
Seeing all those children, I shook my head and sighed. “So many children! How can they feed all of them?”
“By hunting, fishing and planting,” Quillis-Sacha said. “Often after they have eaten breakfast, the man will go out and engage in manual labour whilst the women stay at home to cook and watch the children. Sometimes, they will also make some handicrafts, take the river bus, and sell them to the small villages along the banks. Their life is completely self-sustaining. There are more than three thousand types of fish in the Amazon River. The jungle has an abundance of wildlife, and the land is extremely fertile. This is our livelihood, an endless source of wealth.”
Just then, the sticky-looking food in the pot over the fire pit was cooked. The two pregnant women filled up wooden bowls with the contents of the pot and brought them over to us. I declined hurriedly, but graciously. As we prepared to leave, all of the Yagua tribe, with their upper bodies uncovered, came out and stood in a row at the door of their grass hut, smiling and waving.
Quillis-Sacha took us back by another path. When we reached his hut, exhausted and breathless, I looked at my watch and saw that it was already past one in the afternoon. We had been out since eight in the morning. That meant we had been walking in the jungle for more than five hours!
I was so t
ired my legs felt weak. I lay on the hammock, and within minutes, was sound asleep. I had no idea how long I had slept when suddenly I felt a cold sensation sweeping across my face. Opening my eyes, I found that a misty rain was falling. Raindrops fell through the grass roof in a steady flow, and I was wet from the waist up. I rushed into the bedroom, thinking I could shelter from the rain, but then I realised that inside the whole house there was not a single dry spot.
Quillis-Sacha heard the sound of someone running around the house awkwardly, and stuck his head out from the kitchen calling, “Lunch is ready! Come on!”
It definitely was a very different sort of lunch, with the wind blowing over us and the rain falling on us. On the table, everything was getting wet. We were soaked through. The meat on the plates, the soup in the bowls, and the tea in the cups were all mixed with rain water. It was like having a picnic in heavy rain.
When the rain stopped and the sky cleared, it was already five in the evening. We packed up our bags, and Quillis-Sacha took us back to Equitos in the high-speed motorboat.
The wind was strong and the waves fierce while the boat bounced along the surface of the water, as if we were sailing across the high seas. I sat in the boat thinking back over our tour, and I felt somehow cut off from the world. I could not imagine how Quillis-Sacha managed to move between town and jungle, two lifestyles so completely different from one another. When I asked, he smiled and said, “In town, I am only a guest. In the jungle, I am at home. Eventually, I will return home. But—”
Having said this, he paused for a very long time, then decided to confide in us. “I have a bit of a problem now…”
“Is it that you are afraid you can’t adapt to jungle life without water and electricity and all the conveniences?” I guessed, thinking myself very clever.
“No.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “I have a girlfriend I like very much, and she’s from the city. We met in Lima. For my sake, she left her job in Lima and came to work in this small town of Equitos. For someone used to living in the big city like she was, this is a huge sacrifice. I’ve taken her to the jungle to stay for several days, and she doesn’t like it. She finds it impossible to adapt. So, when I asked her to marry me and go back to the jungle, she refused. She wants me to choose—do I want to go back to the jungle and give her up, or do I want to marry her and not return to the jungle. Tell me, how can I possibly choose? Now, all I can do is go about life one day at a time.”