“Kayapi—”
“Pee-áir?”
“When we get there—”
“Yes, Pee-áir?”
“When we reach the dam—”
But what? What! He didn’t know!
“Kayapi, how soon is maka-i to be born?”
“When we get back.”
“Tell me what tree maka-i lives with in the jungle?”
“The tree called xe-wo-i.”
“What’s that in Portuguese?”
“The Caraiba have no word.”
“Can you point one out to me?”
“Here? No. I said, Pee-áir, there are kai-kai places only.”
He flourished the fingers of one hand.
“Can’t you describe the tree?”
He shrugged.
“It’s small. Has a rough skin like the cayman. You remember eating some soil? The tree was just beside there.”
“What? But I didn’t see any fungus there.”
“Maka-i was asleep. When the waters come and go, he wakes.”
“Oh, I see—the fungus only grows after the ground’s been covered with water. Is that right?”
Kayapi nodded.
Why hadn’t he thought of taking a sample of the soil that day to run a chemical analysis on, instead of just eating it! Why hadn’t Kayapi told him then that that’s where maka-i grew! Instead of just asking him to eat some earth without explaining. But of course the Indian couldn’t have conceived of taking a soil sample to a laboratory. His body was his own laboratory.
Now that Pierre saw the soil-eating incident in perspective, it all seemed like part of a carefully scripted initiation course. Maybe eating the soil had been some sort of necessary biochemical preparation, before the fungus drug could act on him?
The intricacy of the links that held the mental and social life of these people together! Links between tree and soil and fungus; shit and sperm and laughter. Between floodwater and language, myth and incest. Where was the boundary between reality and myth? Between ecology and metaphor? Which elements could safely be left out of the picture? The eating of a handful of soil? The spilling of sperm on the soil? The counting by significant feathers (in whatever way these were ‘significant’)? The tree that the maka-i grew on?
The scientific answer was to take soil samples and specimens of the fungus, and blood samples from the Xemahoa. To analyse, to synthesize, ultimately to market the results in a neat round pill. Twenty-five milligrams of ‘X’. What would they call the drug? ‘Embedol’ or some such name! First the scientific journals, then the dope market.
Undoubtedly some measurable biochemical change took place within the brain—in its ability to process information, to hold vastly greater amounts before the attention than usual. Might it not even be possible that maka-i actually did convey power over Nature—power to intervene and change the world? For what was nature, what was the whole physical world, except information chemically and physically coded—and he who held access to the information symbols in their totality held direct access to reality, held the magician’s legendary powers in his grasp. Even this did not seem totally impossible to Pierre, in the aftermath of his experience—though Logic and Reason fought against this fantastic dream.
At the very least the Xemahoa had a marketable ‘high’ to set beside mescaline and psilocybin and LSD. Their high was more specific in its function than those other psychedelic drugs. Still, it could be made into another commodity for purchase by the freaked-out pissed-off playboys of the Western World!
Twenty-five milligrams of maka-i. Of embedol. With all its messy appurtenances lopped off. The eating of soil. The rotting of the nostrils. It would be one hell of a commodity.
Yet for the Indians it was that very complex of physical and metaphorical events—the soil and sperm and shit and bloody nostrils—that made up life and meaning and existence.
In the tin refugee camp beyond the orange fly-paper set up to trap them they would be shadows, not substances. Shadows whispering bastard Caraiba words as they faded. The birds would have flown out of their heads over a featurless waste of water with no way home…
When Kayapi and he got to the dam, he must—
What? What!
The sun shone again for a while. They passed through clouds of butterflies. Through swarms of flies.
At midday they chewed more of the dry fish and pulp cake. More rain clouds started massing overhead and soon began trailing a grey curtain of water through the drowning forest.
The problem of what he would do when he got to the dam was snatched from his hands in late afternoon.
Their dugout was passing through rainmists between steelwoods, mahoganies and rubber trees—grist to the future timber dredges—when a flat-bottom boat with a powerful outboard came abreast of the dugout. Two men and one woman were sitting in it. Pierre found himself staring at the muzzle of a submachinegun…
“Put your boat over there under cover,” the woman ordered. Her eyes burned into them distrustfully and feverishly. Beneath the smeared dirt and fly bites puffing her flesh she was maybe young and beautiful. Her companions looked tired and on edge, in their dirty grey slacks and shirts. They had a fervent hunted look about them.
So, perhaps, did Pierre.
Both boats were soon guided under the foliage.
The woman tossed her head fretfully.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Looking for wealth? Prospector?”
“No, senhora. But I’m in a hurry. I’ve something to do.”
“You’re American?” Her eyes hardened. “Your accent sounds strange. You have something to do with the dam?”
Pierre laughed bitterly.
“Something to do with the dam? Oh that’s a joke! Yes, I should indeed like to do something with the dam. Blow it sky-high, to begin with!”
The thin feverish woman watched him contemptuously.
“I suppose you mean to do that with your bare hands.”
“He’s some crazy priest, Iza,” one of her companions said.
“I’m no bloody parasite priest—nor prospector—nor a policeman either!”
These people didn’t look anything like those in the Amazon area who might predictably be armed the way they were. Nothing like the private thugs or prospectors or adventurers. Nor anything like the paramilitary types whom the helicopter had brought to the village. Suddenly, Pierre realized who they might be—and who the men in that helicopter had been searching for. Yet it seemed incredible, so deep in this wet chaos of the Amazon.
“Why do you say policeman? You think we are police?”
Pierre laughed.
“No, my friends. It’s clear what you are. A helicopter landed in the village I was in some days ago. Armed men searched it. They were looking for you. You’re guerrillas. That’s obvious to me. You look like the hunted, not the hunters! They had an easy insolence about them. Particularly their officer. Though they were cowards, too.”
“Paixao…” muttered one of the men, nervously.
“And what did you tell this officer?”
“I told him nothing. I hid in the jungle. Or rather this Indian here pushed me into the jungle to hide me. I thought it was the priests coming back with their nonsense about saving the Indians. Maybe they thought a helicopter would make an impressive Noah’s Ark! You realize the dam is responsible for all this flooding?”
Pierre got a sarcastic look in reply.
“Joam, search him and the boat.”
As the man called Joam made a move to step into their dugout Pierre noticed Kayapi furtively sliding a hand for his knife; and caught his wrist.
“All right Kayapi—they’re friends.”