Authors: Matilde Asensi
“They’re not here,” she said, and it was enough to make all of us accept the truth that was torturing our minds.
“You can put away the recorder now,” Efraín murmured, contrary.
No, the Yatiri weren’t there. The strange city that we could make out on the other side of the entrance—of obviously Tiwanakan design—was a complete ruin, devoured by the vegetation and devastated by neglect. Nevertheless, despite knowing we would find nothing there, we passed through the entrance and kept walking in silence down a kind of street, along which there still stood two-story houses built with great blocks perfectly joined without mortar. Many had collapsed, but others even still had their roofs, made of stone slabs. And all green, a brilliant green that glittered under the sunlight from the drops of humidity.
We continued down the road until we got to a large square plaza, built probably in imitation of Kalasasaya Temple. In the middle, an enormous monolith resting on a black stone pedestal represented the typical bearded giant of Tiwanaku. On this occasion, however, we observed a considerable likeness to the Traveler who rested in the secret chamber of the Pyramid of Lakaqullu: more than ten feet tall, feline eyes, large ears adorned with the flat circular pieces the Aymara and the Inca had put in their lobes, and a head with the conical shape caused by occipital frontal deformation. The Yatiri had been there, there was no doubt of that, and had spent enough time to raise a new and beautiful city like the one they had left on the Altiplano. Stone stelae like those of Tiwanaku could also be seen scattered around the plaza, displaying in their reliefs images of anthropomorphic bearded beings that gazed toward the four streets running from the corners of the plaza, including the one that had led us there.
“That way,” Efraín ordered, turning right again.
As we followed the direction indicated by the archaeologist and turned down another road identical to the last one, I realized that the effort we had made to cross the jungle and risk a thousand dangers had come to nothing: The Yatiri weren’t there and we didn’t know what had become of them. The map from the gold sheet ended right at the spot where we were, so we had no idea which way to go; and besides, what for? Maybe the Yatiri weren’t anywhere anymore, which seemed the most likely, maybe they had died out, had dispersed, suffered attacks by savage tribes and died. That was our final stop, the end of our hopes. From that moment on there was nothing left to do. Well, there was something: translate the millions of gold sheets in the Pyramid of the Traveler, in case the cure for Daniel would show up someday, if he didn’t die first or if we didn’t all die first. So much damned jungle, so much travel, so many insect bites, and so many dangers, all for nothing. We had come away empty-handed. Maybe I could facilitate the translation process with the gold sheets by improving Marta’s “JoviLoom” and mechanizing the processing of images. Maybe, if I contributed money to the project—which, doubtlessly, would be undertaken between Spain and Bolivia and would end up under the direction of Marta and Efraín—the translations wouldn’t take so many years to be finished, and the information we needed would most likely show up right at the beginning or shortly after. There was also the possibility of finding, somewhere on the planet, a team of neurologists capable of undoing the curse’s effects with some drug or some experimental treatment. During the Cold War, hadn’t they done experiments on brainwashing, mental programming, that sort of thing? I just had to go back home and restart the business from the beginning, going in another direction. Fortunately, money was no problem, and besides, I would also sell KerCentral. Really, I was bored with it.
The street was very long and the jungle had made such vigorous bushes grow up among the remains of the cobbles that the ground rose in many places. At last, we found an enormous building that could very well be, based on its design, a palace or principal residence. It seemed to be in good conditions, and Efraín started toward the entrance.
“We’re not going inside there, are we?” Marc asked, wary.
“We should find out what happened to the Yatiri,” the archeologist replied.
“But it might not be safe,” Marta warned.
“If we’re careful about collapses, we can go in,” he insisted, without turning to look at us.
At that moment I thought I saw something move in the upper part of the building. Maybe it was an trick of the sun, surely the shadow of some bird, because I also heard a very high trill come from the same place, so I didn’t pay it much attention. I was much more worried for Efraín, who, without the least bit of the care he had promised, had gone inside the palace with a firm step.
“Efraín, don’t do anything stupid!” Marta yelled at him. “Get out of there and we’ll continue examining the city!”
“Listen to me!” Gertrude shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth as if they were a loudspeaker. “Get out of there immediately, honey! I’m not going to tell you twice!”
But the archaeologist didn’t reply, and, worried, we shot off into the building, afraid something had happened to him. Dr. Bigelow was really worried; in a place like that, no one could be sure of anything. We suddenly found ourselves in a wide room with some collapsed walls, broken by a magnificent staircase, which we began to walk up very carefully, looking at the sky through the holes in the roof.
Suddenly, the archaeologist appeared at the top of the stairs with a big smile on this face.
“Do you know what wonders are here?” he asked, and then in the same breath, without pause, he stopped us cold. “No, don’t keep coming up. The floor and the walls are in very poor condition.”
“Come on! Now we have to leave?” Lola complained.
“What wonders are you talking about?” I inquired, turning on my heals to begin my downward climb.
“There are some beautiful reliefs on the walls up there,” Efraín explained, descending, “and underneath the vines, you can tell they were painted green and red, to remember the predominant colors of the andesite in Tiwanaku, I imagine. They must have really longed for their old city. There’s also a copy of the bearded figure that we passed in the middle of the plaza.”
“Did you take pictures?” Gertrude asked him, seeing that he had his camera in his hand. The doctor had relaxed when she found her husband unharmed, and now she looked at him with her brow furrowed and a certain menacing air. If I had been him, it would have worried me a great deal, but Efraín was so satisfied that he didn’t notice anything.
“I’ll show them to you later,” he said. “Now let’s go back out to the street.”
My peripheral vision got the impression that something big was sliding as fast as wind through the hollow of a crumbling wall on my left. I turned my head quickly, but didn’t see anything. I began to think I was going crazy and suffering from terrible visual hallucinations, but since I was a very stubborn and suspicious person, I went over to check it out with my own eyes.
“What’s going on, Arnau?” Marta hurried to ask when she saw me change direction.
“Nothing,” I lied. “I only want to see what’s behind there.”
But there was nothing. I cautiously stuck my head in as I finished speaking, and discovered that the space was completely empty. There was no longer any doubt that so many days in the jungle had unhinged me.
We went out into the sun and resumed our walk down the street in search of other important buildings or at least ones that got our attention, but what remained up to the outer wall was in a complete state of ruin covered in profuse vegetation and gigantic trees. We went back,
retracing our footsteps, and agreed, since it was time, to stay and eat in the plaza and make camp at the feet of the monolith of the giant, using his black stone base as the deposit for our packs and the rest of our equipment. Heating water in the little gas stove to prepare a soup, we decided that we still weren’t ready to throw in the towel: We would explore that city completely, from one side to the other, until we managed to find out what had happened to the Yatiri and why they had left, and if we could also manage to find out where to, even better.
“Yes, better,” Marc put in scornfully as he opened a can, “but we don’t have enough food to follow them. We’re here a day behind schedule, so we only have enough food left for six days. For seven, with the extra, but no more.”
“Okay, we’ll go back home when we finish exploring this place,” Efraín declared.
“We can’t stay,” Marc insisted. “Didn’t you hear me say we don’t have food?”
“Nothing will happen to us, though, because we won’t eat much on the last day,” Gertrude remarked. “When we leave Madidi, we’ll regain our lost pounds.”
“Look, Doctor, don’t laugh,” my friend thundered. “Maybe you guys can manage a whole day walking through the jungle without eating, but I can’t, and all the time we spend here studying this place is lost time.”
“We have the coordinates of this place,” Lola observed, in solidarity with Marc, who she knew well enough to know that if he didn’t ingest the necessary amount of food, he could become a danger for everyone. “We can come back whenever we want, in a helicopter.”
Efraín and Marta looked at each other and exchanged affirmative looks.
“Okay,” Marta replied. “When we finish eating, we’ll collect our things and go.”
“I’m sorry, Root,” Lola said, looking at me guiltily.
“I’m sorry, too,” Marc murmured.
“I don’t know why you’re apologizing,” I replied, but I did know; I had been thinking about it as they talked. If there was something in that city to indicate that the Yatiri were still alive somewhere, our leaving would keep us from finding it, and would mean that my brother would have to remain with his brain disconnected until we returned on board a comfortable helicopter. But there was also the possibility that there was nothing to suggest such a thing, so it didn’t matter. As Marta had pointed out to me at some point, nothing had depended on my will since I had set foot in that jungle, or even more concretely, since the problem with Daniel had started, and that was a big lesson that I, the guy who always wanted to have everything under control, who didn’t intervene in anything that he couldn’t direct and manage, was learning the hard way.
“I promise you, Arnau,” Marta said, very serious and very aware of the thread of my thoughts, “that I will do everything in my power to solve the problem with Daniel as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” I answered dryly, more to hide my frustration than to reject her promise, a promise of which I not only planned on reminding her when the moment came, but of which I would make a serious project and participate in myself.
“Who has the stone piece you guys took from Tiwanaku?” Efraín asked at that moment, with a hand resting on the statue’s pedestal and a strange expression on his face.
“Me,” Marc replied.
“Would you mind giving it to me?”
“It must be at the bottom of my pack,” Marc grumbled, standing. “I’ll have to empty it.”
“Go ahead, do it. I promise to serve you a big plate of quinoa after.”
All of us thought we detected something strange in the archeologist’s attitude, so we kept
looking at him while Marc rifled through his belongings, looking for the doughnut.
“It’s okay, guys! I’ll explain everything!” Efraín exclaimed, laughing at our anticipation. “Come and see what I’ve found by chance at the feet of the giant.”
Gertrude, Lola, and Marta were already there before he finished talking, looking at the place where the archeologist’s hand was resting, and I went over and calmly peered over their heads. A small protuberance on the black stone, in the shape of a little wedge of cheese very similar in size to the hollowed out triangle on the doughnut, could be seen in the middle of the stone, at the feet of the monolith.
Marc walked over with the stone ring and gave it to Efraín, who put it over the protrusion, confirming that they fit together perfectly, since the doughnut wouldn’t budge. We immediately noticed that the arrowhead carved on the upper part was clearly pointing toward a corner of the square from which ran one of the streets we hadn’t gone down, the one between the street that had brought us here from the entrance and the street that had gone to the palace with the reliefs.
A whistle, loud, sharp, and of course impossible for an animal to make, erupted from the heights. We barely had time to raise our heads to look for the source of the disagreeable sound, when all the roofs of the buildings around the plaza filled with elongated figures armed with dangerous looking spears, which pointed directly at us. Everything had happened so fast that no one moved a muscle, or cried out, or made any sound. Numb and turned to salt statues, we contemplated that Dantesque scene in which dozens of naked Indians threatened us with their spears from the terraces and roofs on all four sides of the plaza.
I knew without a doubt that those sharp-tipped spears were really dangerous. Maybe if they had threatened me with a rifle or a pistol, ignorance, which is very brazen (since I had never seen that kind of weapon before in my life, except, of course, in movies), ignorance, I say, would have kept me from feeling fear. But those very long javelins, which must be practically as tall as their carriers, paralyzed me with terror; I could almost feel how they penetrated my flesh. Which also contributed, I suppose, to the fierce appearance of those Indians: Obviously, we couldn’t see them well from where we were, but they looked like they had their faces covered by terrifying black masks that made our blood run cold.
The seconds kept going by and not even the air moved in that place.
“What do we do?” I whispered, calculating the necessary pitch so my companions could hear me and the Indians on the roofs could not. Those savages, however, must have the ears of a cat, because by way of protesting my words, or as a threat, they again emitted a high whistle which burst our eardrums and caused the profoundest of silences in the jungle surrounding us.
A lance that I didn’t see passed by my hip with a sharp whisper and buried itself deeply in one of our packs. The dry sound it made when it embedded itself in the pack, breaking the waterproof fabric, was repeated several times, so I supposed they were shooting at our bags from several angles and that what they really wanted was to keep us from moving or speaking. Of course, they succeeded: Like me, my companions must have felt a mortal cold moving up their legs to their heads, a cold that stiffened our muscles on its way and cut short any thoughts of breathing. Then there appeared in front of us, from the street the stone doughnut was pointing at, the guy who must have been the leader of that aborigine patrol, surrounded by five tough and bad-tempered looking bodyguards. They walked with a slow, dignified step, as if they felt very superior to us, the poor foreigners who had the bad luck of setting foot in the wrong neighborhood. I told myself that if we had chanced upon one of those uncontacted Indian tribes who killed white people as a warning to keep anyone else from entering their territory, as had happened several times in Brazil in recent years—Gertrude had told us that when we were
already in the jungle, when we couldn’t have a change of heart and turn back—we were in trouble. Our lifeless bodies would show up near some civilized place as colorful and strategic no trespassing posters.