Trail of Feathers (26 page)

A few years later, in 1549, the Spanish commander Fernando de Benavente made the first European incursion into the Shuar territories. He had heard of the jungle’s abundance of gold, and was still eager to find El Dorado. His party is thought to have followed the Rio Upano, south from its Andean headwaters, down to the junction of the Rio Paute.

Benavente had planned to establish a town in the region, but fled when he realised that the locals were about to butcher him. However, another Spanish expedition did found two settlements nearby, in about 1552. Crazed with gold fever, they came across some gold deposits. Soon they had built mines, enslaving local tribesmen to work them.

The Spanish forced the Shuar labourers to pay a tax in gold dust which, supposedly, was to be sent as a gift for King Phillip Ill’s coronation. The levy grew greater and greater. Finally the Shuar could stand no more.

One night, in 1599, a group of them slunk into the Governor’s house and pulled him half-naked, from his bed. They dragged him by his hair into the courtyard, and said it was time for them to pay their taxes, as they had been told to do. Emptying the Spanish gold reserves, the Shuar leader, Chief Quirruba, ordered his warriors to melt down the gold in small crucibles.

Meanwhile the Governor was stripped naked and tied hand and foot. Once the gold was liquefied, his mouth was prised open with a bone and, one at a time, the crucibles of molten ore was poured down his throat. At first the Governor screamed, but his tongue was soon burnt away. The liquid gold passed through his body and out via his bowels, killing him in agony.

All around, the Shuar went wild with delight. They slaughtered most of the Spanish contingent and danced until dawn.

From then until the 1850s almost no white man dared to enter the Shuar lands. In 1767 a group of Spanish missionaries strayed into the region. They were presented with the skulls of their Catholic brethren, slain in a previous attack.

Francisco’s shouts drew my attention away from the book.

‘Grande Bretag
ñ
a!’ he called. ‘We have arrived at Great Britain!’

I popped my head over the edge of the hammock. A boy was running along the river-bank. All he was wearing was a tattered tee-shirt decorated with the triumphant face of Mohammed Ali. But I could see no sign of Great Britain. The shaman pointed to three dilapidated shacks, one of which was missing its roof.

‘That’s Grande Bretag
ñ
a,’ he said.

‘But it doesn’t even have a football pitch.’

Ten minutes after mooring at Great Britain, we had established that no mechanic lived there. In fact, it was home to only two families, each with six sons. They had no work, they said.

If only the oil mining company would come here’ said one youth, ‘like it has come to Trompeteros.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Arriba
, up river.’

‘How far?’

The young man snatched at a fly.

‘A day or two from here,’ he said. ‘In Trompeteros everyone’s rich. The oil company gives them money, and the women are very sexy. They wear pink lipstick. And …’ he continued, making sure his parents were out of ear’s reach, ‘… at Trompeteros they have a disco.’

As I thanked the young man for his information, his father came over. The man was in his forties. He had a wispy moustache, bucked teeth and an unusually flat nose.

‘Life here in Grande Bretag
ñ
a is very difficult’ he said softly. ‘We are poor people. There’s no school and no doctor. And the neighbouring villages laugh at us, because we don’t have a football field.’

I sympathised with the man.

‘We do not need help,’ he said proudly, ‘but there is one problem which needs attention. We were expecting the missionaries to come, but they have forgotten us.’

I braced myself to be asked for money.

‘My youngest son has a lump on his head,’ said the man. ‘It has been growing very big, and we don’t know what to do.’

‘If you would cut it off,’ said his wife, ‘we would pay you what we can.’

We asked for the boy to be brought. Shyly, he came out of the house and into the sunshine. His name was Juan, and he was about six. Although shy, he was smiling. That is, until he saw our expressions. Nothing could hide our shock at seeing such a tremendous tumour. The skin around the growth had been shaved. Juan started crying when he saw how worried we looked. I told his father that it wasn’t anything too serious.

‘Then will you cut it off?’ asked the mother. ‘You must have a sharp knife on your boat.’

I suggested that we take Juan and her up-river, to Trompeteros, where the oil company would surely help. The boy’s mother was hesitant. She pushed her husband forward. He would come with us, she said.

Father and son stepped aboard the
Pradera
and we set off up the River Tigre once again.

*

The blurb on the back of my map said it was the
crème de la crème
of Amazonian maps. Richard and the others made great fun of it. They didn’t trust maps. As the days passed, I began to understand why. The few places which were plotted, were way off the mark. Most villages weren’t featured at all. I insisted that we stop regularly and get the locals to sketch us maps from their own knowledge. Once I got back to Europe, I’d mail their drawings to the map company. The crew thought it was a crazy idea. They knew something I did not. In the Amazon no one has a clue what lies more than five miles in any given direction. More importantly, no one cares. The idea of mapping out an entire region or, for that matter a country, is an example of the Western mind working on overdrive.

The lack of accurate maps did not, however, prevent the art of speculation. Ask someone in the remotest village where Lima is, and they’ll give you an answer without flinching. ‘It’s two hours that way,’ said one man motioning up stream. ‘Three days after Nauta,’ said another, pointing the opposite way. No one would ever admit they hadn’t got the faintest idea. As in India or Central Asia, an Eastern form of hospitality was at work. To admit ignorance was considered impolite.

The end result was that this made navigation and budgeting for fuel virtually impossible. Worse still was the elasticity of truth. The goalposts never stopped moving. One minute Walter would boast he had plenty of fuel to get us back to Iquitos, and the next he’d say that we were down to the last drum. Cockroach claimed his grandmother was a Shuar chief’s daughter, then a few days later he was bragging she came from Guatemala. And Francisco was no better. At first he said he had four children, but then changed it to six.

Walter spoke for the others:
‘Macho naka-naka
, so many lies,’ he said, running the wheel through his hands. ‘In Peru lying is a national hobby, it’s something to be enjoyed. Peruvian women like a man who can tell a big solid lie.’

‘Why?’

Walter put his hand on his chin. 

'They think it’s sexy’ he said.

Juan’s father said the lies were bringing disaster to the jungle.

‘People have learned from the politicians’ he said. ‘They’ve learned that lies protect them … that the truth is a dangerous thing.’

I was touched by the man’s perception. He hugged an arm around his son’s shoulder, coaxing him to be brave.

‘The missionaries taught us to believe in God’ he said. ‘They told us God will cure all our problems. Well, look at Juan, look at his head. Bibles and hymns haven’t helped him.’

Again, I tried to reassure him that the oil company would take care of little Juan. They would have a doctor who could treat his tumour.

Richard jumped down from the roof. He cast a disapproving eye over Cockroach and Francisco who had deserted their bailing stations and were playing cards. The shaman was taking alternate drags from a pipe and a
mapacho
cigarette. He cheated mercilessly and everyone knew it. But fear of his magical powers kept the cook from protesting.

While Juan and his father enjoyed a bowl of stew, made from the rank-smelling legs of a jungle pig, I sat on the roof with Richard. We watched the sun set. And, as we did so, Walter guided the
Pradera
west from the Tigre, down a narrower waterway, the Rio Corrientes. Its name meant ‘current’, although the river’s surface was as smooth as glass. Twisting and turning like a snake on its back, its banks were veiled in the thickest jungle we had yet seen.

‘It’ll be a miracle if this is the right fuckin’ river’ said Richard. ‘Walter’s never been this far away from Iquitos before.’

‘The boat’s leak has got worse,' I said. ‘If we don’t get to Trompeteros soon we’ll be in trouble.’

The Vietnam vet’ put his hands to his mouth and made the solemn call of the squirrel cuckoo.

‘Aukcoo! Aukcoo!’

As he rocked back and forth, the faint sound of a female echoed through the twilight.

‘She’s in love’ said Richard. ‘You can always tell when a female’s in love. But they’re foxy little suckers - they like to keep you guessing. Just like women. You think you understand them and they go and do something stupid.’

Long before meeting Senorita Jane in Iquitos, Richard had been married. In the short time he’d lived in the United States since Vietnam, he had been married twice. His second wife, twenty years younger than he, was a former stage magician’s assistant.

‘She did all that stupid shit with the doves and the juggling balls,’ he said. ‘She had the tight skirts and the blinding smile. We’ve got the cutest little girl. We named her Harmony. That’s what our marriage was, Harmony. I delivered her. She popped out like a little paratrooper.’

Richard called out to the squirrel cuckoo again.

‘Harmony’s all that matters,’ he said under his breath.

Juan’s father asked which engine was powering the boat.

‘It’s a Johnson 65.’

‘A
Johnson’
he said quietly, ‘a Johnson could get you to the end of the world.’

‘We’re going to the Pastaza, to meet the Shuar,’ I said. The man replied without turning his head: ‘They’re dangerous people.’

‘That’s what I’ve heard.’

‘They’re the Antichrist,’ he said curtly. ‘When they kill a man they drink his blood, and eat his kidneys. It’s human kidneys they like most. If the kidneys taste bad, they carve out the eyes and eat them.’

‘Have you met any Shuar?’ I asked.

The man didn’t reply. He hadn’t finished his rundown of Shuar cuisine.

‘They like to eat caimans’ gall bladders, and dogs’ tongues boiled in urine,’ he said with revulsion. ‘If you don’t eat the food they give you, they’ll poison you with
ampihuasca.’

He asked why I was so interested in the Shuar.

‘They fly,’ I said. ‘They are Birdmen.’

Juan’s father swatted a baby wolf spider on his cheek.

‘Ayahuasca …
you are speaking of
ayahuasca?'

I nodded.

‘Es una medicina muy potente
, it’s very powerful medicine,’ he said. ‘Take it and you’ll fly like a great white
jabiru
stork. Your wings will take you to the other world. You’ll see wonderful visions. But
ayahuasca
can be dangerous,’ he mused, ‘be careful, you must be careful!’

‘Of what?’

‘Cuidado con el aterrizaje
, be careful how you land,’ he said.

Trompeteros is a small town in the Upper Amazon whose reputation beats all the rest. Nestled on the north bank of the Corrientes River, the community surpasses even Iquitos when it comes to vice and depravity. Ask at the remotest jungle village and they’re sure to have heard the legends. They will tell you of the underdressed women, the
chuchuhuasi
liquor, and the discotheque.

For three days Walter, Francisco and Cockroach spoke of nothing but Trompeteros. They harped on and on about the taste of its gut-rot brews, the
mapacho
, and the supply of seductive under-age women. There was no question that their speculation couldn’t answer. Remarkable, I thought, considering none of them had ever been near Trompeteros before. I wasn’t interested in the vices available, but I’d heard that the town had one of the finest hotels in the Amazon.

As the
Pradera
navigated the remaining few miles up river, Francisco imparted a last piece of valuable lore. Go for the girls with gold teeth, he said. The more gold they have in their smile, the better they can satisfy a man in
certain
carnal ways. White teeth were a sign of frigidity. Walter agreed - sexual acumen and teeth went hand in hand. His wife, he boasted, had no white teeth at all.

We had been on
Pradera
for too long; shore leave was well-deserved. With the crew running wild after the gold-toothed women, I was uneasy that the boat might be robbed. Although much of the food had been ruined or already consumed, there was still valuable fuel and equipment, not to mention the Johnson 65. As well as guarding the
Pradera
, someone would have to look after the
Titanus giganticus
beetles, and Rosario, who needed regular feeding. Until the repairs were done, bailing also had to be done constantly.

The crew would take it in turns to stay on the boat. I drew up a roster and pinned it to the medicine cabinet. Anyone found abandoning bailing duty would go without food for two days. Richard and I were exempted. He wanted to go walkabout in the jungle, and I planned to spend my time ashore, ordering room service and taking hot baths. But before getting too comfortable at the hotel, I promised to take Juan to the oil company for treatment. I gave him a cherry-flavoured lollipop with bubble gum inside.

*

Cockroach took the first shift to bail and keep watch. I'd cautioned him to protect the giant beetles beyond all else. Nothing was so important as their survival. If there were any problems, he was to defend himself with my moose knife. Walter went to look for a man to repair the hole in the boat’s side. He was desperate to get the repairs done quickly, so that he could hunt for gold-toothed women. Tying a bandanna over his head, Richard set off into the undergrowth. I asked when he would be back.

‘When I’m ready,’ he replied.

After making enquiries, I learned that Plus Petrol, the oil company, had its offices on the southern bank of the river. I took Juan and his father across in a dugout. We were received at a steel-framed jetty, and escorted into the plant. All Plus Petrol employees had identical yellow construction helmets and American-made Wellington boots. Everything they wore, or held, carried the gleaming Plus Petrol logo. They looked as if they’d stepped out of a TV commercial for their firm.