City of the Beasts Page 7

  Cesar Santos appeared moments later, as clean and fresh as his daughter, inviting the sweaty members of the expedition to take a dip in the river. Everyone followed except Professor Leblanc, who ordered Karakawe to bring several buckets of water so he could bathe on the terrace; he was not attracted to the idea of swimming in the company of manta rays. Some were the size of a carpet, and their powerful tails not only cut like saws but also injected venom. Alex considered that after his experience with the snake the night before, he would not be daunted by the risk of bumping into a fish, no matter how bad its reputation. He dove headfirst into the water.

  “If you’re attacked by a manta ray, it means that these waters aren’t for you,” was the only comment from his grandmother, who went off with the women to bathe in a different area.

  “Mantas are shy, and live on the bed of the river. Usually they scurry away when they see something moving in the water, but it’s best to drag your feet as you walk in order not to step on them,” César Santos instructed.

  The swim was delicious, and left Alex feeling cool and clean.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Black Jaguar

  BEFORE SETTING OUT, the members of the expedition were invited to the camp of Mauro Carías. Dr. Omayra Torres excused herself, saying that she had to send the young Mormons back to Manaus on an army helicopter because they were sicker than before. The camp consisted of several trailers that had been transported by helicopter and set up in a circle in a clearing about a mile from Santa María de la Lluvia. The units were luxurious compared to the zinc-roofed huts in the village. The compound was equipped with an electric generator, a radio tower, and solar energy panels.

  Carías had similar retreats at strategic points along the Amazon, from which he could oversee his many business dealings, from timber harvesting to gold mining, but he lived some distance away. It was said that he had princely mansions in Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, and Miami, and that he kept a wife in each city. He traveled in his own jet and a small plane, and he also had access to army vehicles, which certain friendly generals placed at his disposal. In Santa María de la Lluvia there was no airstrip large enough to land his jet, so he used his biplane, which, compared to the one César Santos flew, a rusty little tin can, looked supersonic. Kate noticed that the camp was surrounded by electric fences and by numerous guards.

  “What can this man own that requires such heavy guards?” she commented to her grandson.

  Mauro Carías was one of the few adventurers who had become rich in the Amazon. Thousands and thousands of garimpeiros went deep into the jungle, on foot and by canoe, to look for gold mines and beds of diamonds, slashing their way through the vegetation with machetes, devoured by ants, leeches, and mosquitoes. Many died of malaria, some from gunshots, still others from hunger and loneliness. Their bodies rotted in unmarked graves or were eaten by scavengers.

  It was said that Carías had made his start with chickens, that he set them loose in the jungle and then split open their craws to retrieve the nuggets of gold the wretched fowls had swallowed. That story, however, like so much of the gossip about the man’s past, must have been an exaggeration, because in truth gold was not scattered across the soil of the Amazon like kernels of corn. In any case, Carías never had to risk his health like the miserable garimpeiros, because he had good connections and a nose for business. He knew how to give orders and command respect; what he didn’t get through legal means, he obtained by force. Many people whispered behind his back that he was a criminal, but no one dared say that to his face, and it was never proved that he had blood on his hands. There was nothing threatening or suspicious about his looks; he was a pleasant, good-looking, tan-skinned man with well-kept hands and flashing white teeth, always dressed in expensive sports clothes. His voice was melodious, and he looked you straight in the eye when he spoke, as if he wanted to prove his openness with every word.

  This Amazon entrepreneur received the members of the International Geographic expedition in one of his trailers, decorated as a living room, with comforts that didn’t exist in the village. Two attractive young women served drinks and lighted cigars, but never said a word. Alex supposed they didn’t speak English. They reminded him of Morgana, the girl who had stolen his backpack in New York, because they had the same insolent attitude. He blushed when he thought about Morgana, and asked himself again how he could have been so foolish. The two girls were the only women he saw in Carías’s camp; the other employees were men armed to the teeth. Their host offered them a delicious lunch of cheeses, cold meats, shellfish, fruit, ice cream, and other luxuries flown in from Caracas. For the first time since he had left his own country, Alex was able to eat to his liking.

  “It appears that you know this region very well, Santos,” Mauro Carías said to their guide. “How long have you lived here?”

  “All my life. I couldn’t live anywhere else,” he replied.

  “I’ve been told that your wife fell ill here. I’m very sorry to hear that. . . . It doesn’t surprise me; not many foreigners can survive in this isolation and this climate. And your little girl? She doesn’t go to school?” Carías reached out to pat Nadia, but Borobá bared his teeth.

  “I don’t have to go to school. I know how to read and write,” Nadia said emphatically.

  “And that’s all you need to know, sweetie.” Carías smiled.

  “Nadia knows the natural world, and she speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and several of the Indian tongues,” her father added.

  “What is that you’re wearing around your neck, sweetie?” Carías asked in an affectionate tone.

  “My name is Nadia,” she said.

  “Show me your necklace, Nadia.” The entrepreneur host smiled, showing his perfect teeth.

  “It’s magic, I can’t take it off.”

  “Would you like to sell it? I’ll buy it,” Mauro Carías said teasingly.

  “No!” Nadia said, stepping back.

  Cesar Santos interrupted to apologize for the prickly behavior of his daughter. He was surprised that this very important man would waste time joking with a little girl. In the past, no one had ever noticed Nadia, but in recent months, his daughter was beginning to attract attention, and that did not please him at all. Mauro Carías commented that if the girl had lived her whole life in the Amazon, she was not prepared for society, and what did her future hold? She seemed very bright, he said, and with a proper education she could go far. He even offered to take her back with him to the city, where he could send her to school and make a little lady of her, which was as it should be.

  “I can’t give up my daughter, but I thank you, anyway,” Santos replied.

  “Think it over, hombre. I’d be like her godfather,” Carías added.

  “I can talk with animals, too,” Nadia interrupted. Most of those present laughed at what she had said. The only ones who didn’t were her father, Alex, and Kate.

  “If you can talk with the animals, maybe you can act as my interpreter with one of my pets,” the entrepreneur said, and in mellow tones invited them all to come along with him.

  They followed Mauro Carías to the patio formed by the circle of trailers; in the center was an improvised cage constructed of poles and chicken wire. In the cage, a large cat was pacing with the crazed agitation of a wild beast in captivity. It was a black jaguar with a lustrous pelt and hypnotic topaz-colored eyes, one of the most handsome examples ever seen in the area. The minute Borobá glimpsed the jaguar, he screeched, leaped from Nadia’s shoulder, and loped off at top speed with the girl close behind, calling him in vain. Alex was surprised, because it was the first time he had seen the monkey part from its owner voluntarily. The photographers immediately focused their lenses on the cat, and even Kate pulled her small automatic camera from her bag. Professor Leblanc stood back at a prudent distance.

  “Black jaguars are the most feared animals in South America. They do not back off from anything; they have great courage,” said Carías.

  “If
you admire it so, why don’t you set it free?” César Santos asked. “This poor cat would be better dead than captive.”

  “Free it? No, hombre! Not a chance. I have a small zoo at my home in Rio de Janeiro. I’m just waiting for a proper cage to send the cat there.”

  Alex had moved up close, as if in a trance, fascinated by the sight of that great feline. His grandmother called a warning that he didn’t hear, and he kept going closer, until both hands were touching the wire that separated him from the animal. The jaguar stopped pacing, emitted a deep growl, and fixed its yellow gaze on the human outside its cage. It froze in place, its muscles tense, its jet pelt quivering. Alex took off his glasses, which he had worn since he was seven years old, and dropped them on the ground. Cat and human were so close that Alex could distinguish each golden fleck in the pupils of the beast as their eyes locked in a silent dialogue. Everything faded away. Alex was alone, facing the animal on a vast amber plane surrounded by lofty black towers, beneath a white sky in which six transparent moons were floating like the heads of medusae. He saw the cat open its jaws, he saw the gleam of its enormous pearl-white teeth, and in a human voice, but one that seemed to issue from the depths of a cavern, it spoke his name: Alexander. And he answered in his own voice, but it, too, sounded cavernous: Jaguar. The cat and its counterpart repeated those words three times: Alexander, Jaguar; Alexander, Jaguar; Alexander, Jaguar, and then the sand of the plain became phosphorescent, the sky turned black, and the six moons began to whirl in their orbits and scatter like slow-moving comets.

  In the meantime, Mauro Carías had issued an order, and one of his employees came dragging in a monkey with a rope around its neck. When it saw the jaguar, it had a reaction similar to Borobá’s; it began to shriek and jump up and down and wave its arms, but it could not get free. Carías took it by the collar and, before anyone could guess his intention, he had opened the cage with a single precise movement and thrown the terrorized little animal inside.

  The photographers, caught by surprise, should have remembered they had cameras in their hands. Leblanc was fascinated by every movement of the unfortunate simian, which scampered up the wire looking for a way out, and of the cat, which, following the prey with its eyes, crouched and prepared to spring. Without thinking, Alex started running, stepping on his glasses, which were still on the ground, and grinding them to bits. He hurled himself at the door of the cage, intending to save both animals, the monkey from its certain death and the jaguar from its prison. When she saw her grandson opening the lock, Kate ran, too, but before she could reach him, two of Carías’s employees already had him by his arms, and were struggling with him. Everything happened at once—so quickly that afterward, Alex could not remember the sequence of events. With one slash of its claws, the jaguar raked the monkey from the wire and with one snap of its terrible jaws killed it. Blood sprayed in every direction. In that same instant, César Santos pulled his pistol from his belt and fired a perfectly aimed shot to the jaguar’s head. Alex felt the impact as if the bullet had struck him between the eyes, and he would have fallen backward if Carías’s guards had not had a strong grip on him.

  “What did you do, you bastard!” yelled the entrepreneur, whirling toward César Santos and pulling out his own pistol.

  The guards let go of Alex, who stumbled and fell to the ground, in order to deal with the guide, but they did not dare touch him because he still had the smoking pistol in his hand.

  “I set him free,” César Santos replied with awesome serenity.

  Mauro Carías fought to control himself. He realized he could not shoot Santos in front of the journalists and Leblanc.

  “Hold it down!” Mauro Carías ordered the guards.

  “He killed it! He killed it!” Leblanc babbled, red-faced with excitement. The death of the monkey, first, and then the cat, had driven him into a frenzy; he acted as if he were drunk.

  “Don’t concern yourself, Professor Leblanc. I can get all the animals I want. Forgive me, I fear that this was not a spectacle for soft hearts,” said Carías.

  Kate helped her grandson get to his feet, then took César Santos by the arm and started toward the exit before the situation could grow more violent. The guide allowed himself to be led by the writer, and they left, followed by Alex. Outside, they found Nadia with a terrified Borobá clinging to her waist.

  Alex tried to explain to Nadia what had passed between the jaguar and him before Mauro Carías threw the monkey into the cage, but it was all jumbled together in his brain. The experience had been so real that he could have sworn that for a few minutes he was in a different world, a world with gleaming sand and six moons whirling through the firmament, a world where he and the jaguar blended into a single voice. Although he could not find the words to tell his friend what he had felt, she seemed to understand without the need to hear details.

  “The jaguar recognized you because it is your totemic animal,” she said. “We all have an animal spirit that accompanies us. It is like our soul. We don’t all find our animal; usually it’s only great warriors and shamans who do, but you discovered yours without looking. Your name is Jaguar,” said Nadia.

  “Jaguar?”

  “Alexander is the name your parents gave you. Jaguar is your real name. But to use that name, you must be like a jaguar.”

  “And how is that? Cruel and bloody?” Alex asked, thinking of the beast’s jaws as it tore the monkey apart in Carías’s cage.

  “Animals aren’t cruel the way people are; they kill only to defend themselves, or when they are hungry.”

  “Do you have a totemic animal, too, Nadia?”

  “Yes, but it hasn’t been revealed to me yet. Finding your animal is less important for a woman, because we get our strength from the earth. We are nature,” the girl said.

  “How do you know all these things?” queried Alex, who by then was beginning to have faith in what the girl told him.

  “Walimai taught me.”

  “The shaman is your friend?”

  “Yes, Jaguar, but I haven’t told anyone that I talk with Walimai, not even my papa.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Walimai likes solitude. The only company he can bear is his wife’s spirit. He shows up from time to time in a shabono to cure an illness or take part in a ceremony for the dead, but he never appears to the nahab.”

  “Nahab?”

  “Foreigners.”

  “You’re a foreigner, Nadia.”

  “Walimai says that I don’t belong anywhere, that I’m not an Indian and not a foreigner, not a woman and not a spirit.”

  “What are you then?” asked Jaguar.

  “I just am,” the girl replied.

  Cesar Santos explained to the members of the expedition that they would go upriver by motorboat, traveling through Indian territory as far as the waterfalls of the Upper Orinoco. There they would set up camp and, if possible, clear enough ground to carve out a small landing field. He would go back to Santa María de la Lluvia to pick up his plane, which they would use for speedier contact with the village. He said that by then the new engine would have arrived, and it would simply be a matter of installing it. With the plane, they would be able to go to otherwise unreachable areas of the mountains where, according to the testimony of some Indians and adventurers, the mythological Beast might have its den.

  “How does a gigantic creature climb up and down terrain that supposedly we can’t manage?” asked Kate.

  “We are going to find out,” César Santos answered.

  “How do the Indians get there without a small plane?” Kate insisted.

  “They know the lay of the land,” the guide said. “Indians can climb those gigantic palm trees that have the trunks covered with long spines. They can also scale the rock faces of the waterfalls, which are as smooth as mirrors.”

  The party spent a major part of the morning loading the boats. Professor Leblanc had brought more bundles than the photographers, including a supply of bottled water to use when h
e shaved because he was afraid of mercury-polluted water. It was futile for César Santos to remind him that they would be camping far upstream of the gold mines. At the guide’s suggestion, Leblanc had hired Karakawe, the Indian who had been fanning him the night before, as his personal assistant to look after him for the rest of the trip. Leblanc explained that he had a bad back and could not carry anything at all.

  From the first day of their adventure, Alexander had been responsible for his grandmother’s things. That was one aspect of his duties, for which she was paying him a minimal amount, to be collected upon their return if he did his job well. Every day, Kate jotted down the hours her grandson worked and made him sign the page; that was how they kept track of what she owed. In a moment of candor, he had told her about destroying everything in his room. She did not consider that to be terribly grave, since it was her opinion that one needs very little in this world. She offered him a salary since he planned to replace what he had demolished. His grandmother traveled with three changes of cotton clothing, vodka, tobacco, shampoo, soap, insect repellent, a mosquito net, a blanket, paper, and a box of pencils—all of it in a single canvas bag. She also had an automatic camera, so ordinary that it had provoked hoots of laughter from the professional photographers, Timothy Bruce and Joel González. Kate let them laugh. Alex had even less clothing than his grandmother, plus a map and a couple of books. He had fastened his Swiss Army knife, his flute, and a compass to his belt. When César Santos saw the compass, he commented that it would not be any help in the jungle, since it was impossible to travel in a straight line.