City of the Beasts Read online

  Following the edge of the water that formed into a lake, they quickly came to the fall itself, a solid curtain of water that arched several yards away from the cliff. They were soaking wet, and the roar of the water was so loud that it was impossible to communicate. They could not sign to one another since visibility was almost zero; the water vapor turned the air to white foam. They felt as if they were feeling their way through a cloud. Following Nadia’s command, Borobá was clinging to Alex like a large, warm, hairy Band-Aid, while she followed behind—only because she was tied to Alex, otherwise she would have turned back. The warriors knew the terrain and moved forward slowly but without hesitation, knowing where to set each foot. The two friends followed as closely as they could, because falling only a couple of steps behind would mean losing sight of their guides altogether. Alex saw why they were named the People of the Mist, for the heavy spray formed from the impact of the water.

  This and other waterfalls of the Upper Orinoco had always defeated outsiders, but the Indians had turned obstacles into allies. They knew exactly where to step; they used natural toeholds, or notches they had hollowed out and used for hundreds of years. Those grooves in the cliff formed a stairway behind the cascade that led to the very top. Unless you knew of its existence, and the exact location, there was no way you could climb those smooth, wet, slippery walls with the thundering noise of the falls at your back. One slip and the fall ended in sure death, surrounded by roaring foam.

  Before they were isolated by the noise, Alex had instructed Nadia not to look down; she was to concentrate on imitating his every movement, holding where he took hold, just as he imitated Tahama, who was in front of him. He also had explained that the first part would be the most difficult because of the mist rising from the foaming water, and that as they climbed farther, it would not be as slick and they would be able to see better. That did nothing to encourage Nadia; her worst problem wasn’t seeing, it was dizziness. She tried not to think of the height and the deafening rumble of the falls, but to convince herself that the resin on her hands and feet would help her cling to the wet rock. The rope that joined her to Alex gave her a faint sense of security, although it was all too easy to imagine how one false step by either of them would pitch them both into empty space. She tried to follow Alex’s instructions: concentrate on the next move, on the precise place where she was to put her foot or hand, one at a time, without hurrying and without losing the rhythm.

  As soon as she was certain of her balance, she made a cautious move toward a higher crack or protruding stone, then felt with a foot to find another and inch her body upward. The fissures in the cliff were deep enough to get a good hold, the greatest danger was pushing away from the rock; you had to keep pressed against it. Borobá passed through her mind in a flash: if she was that frightened, imagine what the poor monkey clamped on Alex’s back was feeling.

  As Alex and Nadia moved upward, the visibility improved but the distance between the waterfall and the cliff decreased. The water fell closer and closer to their backs. Just when they were wondering how they could finish the last part of the climb, the notches in the rock curved off to the right. Alex could feel nothing but smooth surface, then he felt someone take his wrist and pull upward. He gathered his strength and landed in a cave in the side of the mountain; the warriors were all waiting there. Pulling on the rope, Alex brought up Nadia, who landed on top of him, stupefied by strain and fear. Poor Borobá didn’t even move; he was stuck to Alex’s back like a barnacle, frozen with terror. The black birds swooped through the solid curtain of water before the mouth of the cave, ready to defend their nests from invaders. Alex could only admire the incredible courage of the first Indians who had ventured behind the fall, maybe in prehistoric times, and had discovered some toeholds and chipped out others, found the cave, and opened the route for their descendants.

  The long, narrow grotto was not high enough for them to stand; they had to crawl or pull themselves forward with their elbows. A milky-white sun filtered through the waterfall; it barely lighted the entrance, and farther on it was dark. Alex, holding Nadia and Borobá tight, watched Tahama come over to him, waving his arms and pointing to the falling water. He couldn’t hear, but realized that someone had fallen or stayed behind. Tahama showed him the rope, and finally he understood that the Indian wanted to use it to go down to look for the missing person. He was heavier than Alex and, regardless of his athleticism, he had no experience in mountain rescue. Alex was no expert himself, but at least he had accompanied his father on a couple of risky missions; he knew how to use a rope and had read a lot on the subject. Climbing was, after all, his passion, comparable only to his love for the flute. With sign language, he indicated that he would go down as far as the rope would reach. He untied Nadia and signed to Tahama and the others to lower him over the precipice.

  The descent, hanging by a fragile rope above the sheer drop, with a sea of water roaring around him, seemed worse to Alex than the climb. He could scarcely see and had no idea who had fallen or where to look for him. The operation was one of a practically pointless daring since anyone who had taken a false step during the ascent would by now be a bloody pulp at the bottom. What would his father do in such a circumstance? John would think first of all of the victim, then himself. John would not be defeated without trying everything possible. As Alex was being lowered, he struggled to see farther than his nose and to breathe, but it was all he could do to open his eyes and he inhaled more water than air. He was swinging in empty space, praying that the liana rope would hold together.

  Suddenly one of his feet touched something soft, and an instant later his fingertips were following the shape of a man apparently hanging from nothing. With a shock he realized it was the chief, Mokarita. He recognized him by the crown of yellow feathers that was still planted firmly on his head, even though the unfortunate old man was hung up like a steer on a thick root growing out of the cliff that had miraculously stopped his fall. Alex could not find a purchase for his feet and he was afraid that if he added his weight to the root, it would break and Mokarita would plummet to the rock below. He calculated that the only possible salvation was for him to grab the chief, and he knew he would have to do it with precision, for as wet as he was, the Indian could slip through his hands like a fish.

  Alex pumped hard, swinging almost blindly, and wrapped his arms and legs about the limp figure. Up in the cave, the warriors felt the tug, and the added weight on the rope, and began to haul it in, carefully, very slowly, to keep from fraying the rope or swinging Alex and Mokarita against the cliff. The young rescuer had no idea how long the operation lasted, perhaps only a few minutes, but it seemed hours to him. Finally he felt himself seized by several hands and lifted into the cave. The Indians had to pry him away from Mokarita: he had locked onto him with the doggedness of a piranha.

  The chief adjusted his feathers and smiled weakly. Threads of blood trickled from his nose and mouth, but he seemed otherwise intact. It was clear that the Indians were greatly impressed by the rescue, and they passed the rope from hand to hand with admiration, but it did not occur to any of them to attribute their chief’s rescue to the young stranger. Instead they congratulated Tahama for having had the idea. Exhausted and aching all over, Alex wished that someone would thank him, but even Nadia ignored him. Curled up with Borobá in a corner, she was not even aware of her friend’s heroism because she was still recovering from the ascent.

  The rest of their journey was easier. At a certain distance from the falls, the tunnel opened onto a place where it was possible to climb with less risk. The Indians used the rope to pull Mokarita up, because his legs were weak, and Nadia, because her spirit was shaken. Finally all of them reached the top safely.

  “Didn’t I tell you that the talisman would save you from dangerous heights?” Alex joked.

  “You did!” Nadia admitted, convinced.

  Before them lay the Eye of the World, which was what the People of the Mist called their land. It was a paradise
of magnificent waterfalls, a vast rain forest filled with animals, birds, and butterflies, with a benign climate free of the clouds of mosquitoes that tormented them in the lowlands. In the distance strange formations rose like very tall drums of black granite and red earth. Lying on the ground, unable to move, Mokarita pointed to them with reverence: “Tepuis,” he said in a thread of a voice as Nadia translated, the homes of the gods. Alex recognized them immediately: those impressive mesas were identical to the majestic towers he had seen when he’d faced the black jaguar in Mauro Carías’s courtyard.

  “They are the oldest and most mysterious mountains on earth,” he said.

  “How do you know that? Have you seen them before?” Nadia asked.

  “I saw them in a dream,” Alex answered.

  The chief did not exhibit any pain, as befitting a warrior of his stature, but he had little strength left; at times he closed his eyes and seemed to have fainted. Alex couldn’t know whether he had broken bones or unidentifiable internal injuries, but it was clear he couldn’t stand. Using Nadia as an interpreter, he was able to get the Indians to improvise a litter from two long poles with some lianas woven between them and covered by a large strip of tree bark. The warriors, troubled by the weakness of the ancient who had guided the tribe for several decades, accepted Alex’s guidance without arguing. Two of them picked up the stretcher and they continued along the riverbank for half an hour, led by Tahama, until Mokarita indicated they should stop to rest.

  Their ascent up the side of the waterfall had taken several hours, and by now everyone was exhausted and hungry. Tahama and two other men went into the forest with their bows and arrows and returned shortly afterward with a few birds, an armadillo, and a monkey. The monkey, still alive, but paralyzed by the curare, was finished off with a rock, to the horror of Borobá, who ran over to Nadia and crawled beneath her T-shirt. The Indians started a fire by striking two rocks together—something Alex had vainly attempted when he was a Boy Scout—and roasted their prey on sticks over the fire. The hunter never tasted the flesh of his victim, because it was bad manners and bad luck; he had to wait until another hunter offered his. Tahama had caught everything but the armadillo, so the meal was delayed while the strict formalities of the exchange of food was carried out. When Alex finally had his portion in his hand, he devoured it without a thought for the feathers and hair that remained, and it tasted delicious.

  It was still an hour or two until sunset, and on the altiplano, where the vegetation was less dense, the light lasted longer than in the valley. After long consultation with Tahama and Mokarita, the group again started walking.

  Without warning, Tapirawa-teri, the village of the People of the Mist, appeared right in the middle of the forest, as if it had the same ability as its dwellers: to make itself visible or invisible at will. It was protected by a clump of gigantic chestnut trees—the tallest in the jungle—some of whose trunks measured more than thirty feet around. Their domed tops covered the village like enormous umbrellas. Tapirawa-teri was not like the typical shabono, which confirmed Alex’s suspicion that the People of the Mist were different from other Indians and had had very little contact with other Amazon tribes. The village did not have the usual circular hut with an open space in the center, the place the entire tribe lived, but was composed of small mud, stone, stick, and straw constructions roofed with branches and shrubs that blended perfectly with nature. You could be ten feet away without having any idea that a human habitation stood there. Alex realized that if it was this difficult to see their small settlement when you were standing right in the middle of it, it would be impossible to sight from the air in the way that the large round roof and cleared central space of a shabono could be seen. That might be the reason the People of the Mist had been able to remain absolutely isolated. His hope of being rescued by army helicopters or César Santos’s little plane went up in smoke.

  The village was as unreal as the Indians. Just as the huts were invisible, everything around them also seemed hazy or transparent. Objects, like persons, lost their precise contours, fading to the plane of illusion. Out of thin air, like ghosts, came women and children to welcome the warriors. They were very short, with amber eyes and skin paler than that of the Indians of the valley. They moved with extraordinary lightness, floating, almost as if they were not flesh and bone. Instead of clothing, they wore designs painted on their bodies and sometimes feathers or flowers tied to their arms or threaded through an ear. Frightened by the two strangers, the smallest children began to cry and the women stayed back, afraid, even though their men were there, and armed.

  “Take off your clothes, Jaguar,” Nadia ordered as she stripped off her shorts, her T-shirt, and even her underwear.

  Alex imitated her without thinking about what he was doing. The idea of being naked in public would have horrified him a couple of weeks before, but in this place it was natural. Wearing clothes was indecent when everyone else was naked. He did not feel strange about seeing his friend’s body, although he would have blushed at seeing either of his sisters without clothes. The women and children immediately shed their fear and slowly came closer. They had never seen such strange-looking people, especially the young American male, who was so white in places. Alex could tell they were particularly curious about the difference in color between the skin usually covered by his swimsuit and the rest of his suntanned body. They rubbed him with their fingers to see if it was paint, and then laughed real belly laughs.

  The warriors set Mokarita’s litter on the ground, where it was quickly surrounded by all the people of the village. They were talking in whispers, in melodious tones that imitated the sounds of the forest, the rain, the water running over river rocks . . . the way Walimai spoke. To his amazement, Alex realized that he could pretty much understand as long as he didn’t try, but “listened with his heart.” According to Nadia, who had an astounding gift for languages, words are not that important when you recognize intentions.

  Iyomi, Mokarita’s wife, even more ancient than he, came forward. Everyone stepped aside with respect, and she knelt beside her husband without a tear, murmuring comforting words in his ear as the other women, serious and silent, gathered around them, supporting them with their closeness but not interfering.

  Very soon it was night, and the air turned cold. Normally in a shabono there was always a ring of bonfires beneath the common roof for cooking and providing heat, but in Tapirawa-teri, fire, like everything else, was not obvious. Small fires were lighted only at night, always inside the huts on stone altars, in order not to attract the attention of possible enemies or bad spirits. Smoke escaped through holes in the roof, dissipating in the air. At first Alex had the impression that the huts were scattered among the trees haphazardly, but soon he realized that they were distributed more or less in a circle, as in a shabono, and were connected by tunnels or roofs made of branches, giving unity to the village. The Indians could move about using that network of hidden paths, protected in case of attack and sheltered from the sun and the rain.

  The Indians were grouped in families, but the adolescent boys and unwed men lived apart from the others in a common hut provided with mats on the ground and hammocks strung between poles. That was where they put Alex, while Nadia was taken to Mokarita’s dwelling. The chief had been wed in his puberty to Iyomi, his life companion, but he also had two young wives and a large number of children and grandchildren. He did not keep track of his offspring; because who the parents were didn’t actually matter, the children were all raised together, protected and looked after by the members of the tribe.

  Nadia found out that among the People of the Mist it was normal to have several wives or several husbands; no one had to be alone. If a man died, his children and wives were immediately adopted by another man who could protect them and provide for them. That was the case with Tahama, who must have been a good hunter, because he was responsible for several women and a dozen young. A mother whose husband was a bad hunter could choose other spouses to he
lp feed her children. Parents usually promised their girls in marriage at birth, but none was forced to marry or stay with a man against her will. Abuse of women and children was taboo, and anyone who violated that rule lost his family and was condemned to sleep alone; he was also excluded from the hut of the bachelors. The one punishment among the People of the Mist was isolation; nothing was so greatly feared as being ostracized from the community. The concept of reward and punishment did not exist; children learned by imitating the adults, and if they didn’t, they were destined to perish. They had to learn to hunt, fish, plant, and harvest, to respect nature and their fellows, to be helpful, and to maintain their position in the village. They learned at their own rhythm and in accordance with their ability.

  There were times that not enough girls were born in a generation, so the men would go out on long forays looking for wives. The girls of the village, in turn, were allowed to find a husband on the rare times they visited other areas. The Indians also adopted families abandoned following a battle with another tribe, because if a community was too small, it could not survive in the jungle. From time to time, it was necessary to declare war on another shabono; that guaranteed strong warriors and new pairings. It was very sad when the young said good-bye to go off and live in another tribe; only rarely would they would see their families again. The People of the Mist jealously guarded the secret of their village, a defense against being attacked or acquiring new customs. They had lived the same way for thousands of years and did not want to change.