“Baghdad, Isfahan, bah!” he replied.
My friend and I looked at each other. He wasn’t as crazy as he looked.
“What’s your name?” we asked him.
“Smith. My name’s Smith.”
This time it was his turn to laugh.
“At least tell us where you’re from. You’re not really a stranger to these parts, are you? Were you born around here?”
“Be quiet! My name is Smith!” he said, adopting a fierce expression and placing a finger to his lips.
“Sit down with us then, Mr. Smith,” my friend suggested. “Sit down and tell us that wonderful story of yours. You’ll find no better audience than us. And we promise never to ask you your real name.”
This time he did sit down in the space made for him by my friend, not on the lower part of the bench, but on the back, like a teenager.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you the nice story now, the one about the monkey from Montevideo. Sorry, my friends.”
“That’s fine, but you must tell us another story,” we insisted.
“Something from your own life, for example. It’s not fair to promise us great things and then tell us nothing.”
“All right, my friends, a story. It’s not the nicest one, but the truest. Something that happened to me a long time ago.”
“Go on.”
He stood up again and brushed the dust from his jacket and his trousers as if wanting to spruce himself up a little first. Then he took out the small tape recorder from his pocket and, after a couple of failed attempts, pressed the Record button.
The red light was on, he had to begin. Mr. Smith gave a little sigh and began to tell us his story, which he intoned rather than spoke.
The road to the last word is a long one. I’ll pause again here and write down the story that Mr. Smith told us on that cemetery path. I’d be neglecting my duty if I didn’t. As someone once said: “Let nothing that has been lived be lost.”
I’ve transcribed the story almost exactly as it was on the tape, merely correcting, or rather, translating a few words and expressions originally in English. I felt they spoiled the flow of the narrative.
Just one more point. The story was untitled and it was my friend and I who gave it the title it now bears: “Maiden name, Laura Sligo.”
Here it is then. Over to Mr. Smith.
Maiden name, Laura Sligo
LAURA SHELDON (maiden name, Laura Sligo), was looking out from the village of La Atalaya at the vast expanse of jungle and listening to the songs of all the inhabitants of the Upper Amazon, to the song of the arambasa, of the papasí, of the carachupausa, of the duck known as the mariquiña, of the shy panguana that dies after laying only five eggs, and of the blue parrot known as the marakana. And to the song of the huapapa and of the wankawi and of the great yungururu. And also to the song of the sad ayaymaman, whose cry is like that of a lost child.
She was listening to the songs of all these birds and of a hundred more and of another hundred still.
But she was not only listening to the birds; she was also listening to the fish of the Unine, of the Mapuya, and of the other rivers in the region, as she sat there, at the door of a shack in La Atalaya, so far from Iquitos, gazing out at the jungle, especially at the green Tierra Alta, where the Unine rises, for that was where all the tracks left by her missing husband, Thomas Sheldon, pointed. It was late evening and Laura Sheldon (maiden name, Laura Sligo) was wondering what could have happened in that jungle, as she sat listening to the birds and to the fish, as she sat listening to the song of the brilliant akarawasu, of the gamitana, of the shiripirare and of the paichea, which grows to a length of nearly ten feet and has a tongue made of bone, and of the añashua, the electric eel that kills with one flick of its tail, and of the shuyua, which can walk on land, and of the paña or piraña and of the maparate and of the palometa, which is good to eat.
She was listening to the songs of all these fish and of a hundred more and of another hundred still.
But she was not only listening to the fish and the birds, she was also listening to the snakes that slither up and down the trees, as she sat there at the door of the shack, looking out at the jungle and thinking about the letter she had received a year before in Dublin: If lost, return to sender: Doctor Thomas Sheldon, Napo Street, Iquitos, Peru, said the return address on the letter, in which her husband declared his intention of journeying deep into the jungle. He wanted to forget the faces of the soldiers he had seen die in Verdun and in Arras, he wanted to forget the terrible bayonet wounds that — God knows — he had been unable to treat; he felt terribly disillusioned with himself and with the world and his primary aim was to cast into the Amazon River the medal awarded to him for his work as Medical Captain. It was a year since she’d received the letter in Dublin and after that there had been nothing, only silence. And Laura Sheldon (maiden name, Laura Sligo) feared that Thomas might already be dead and lying at rest near the source of the Unine, in that same Tierra Alta she was contemplating then as she listened to the fish, the birds, and the snakes of the jungle, to the afaninga that whistles like a young boy, and to the mantona with its ten colors, and to the naka, which is small but very poisonous, and to the black chusupe, that grows to a length of sixteen feet and bites like a dog, and to the giant yanaboa, with a body the thickness of a well-built man, and to the sachamana and the yakumana.
Laura Sheldon (maiden name, Laura Sligo) was listening to the way the songs of all the snakes — and the songs of a hundred more and another hundred still — blended with the songs of the fish and the birds, as she sat there at the door of a shack in La Atalaya, thinking about her husband and unconvinced by what César Calvo and I kept telling her:
“I think the doctor went up the Ucayali and then bore left toward the Unine,” César Calvo, the wise man of Iquitos, was saying. “And if that is the case, then you’ve no need to worry. The doctor will now be among the Ashaninka, who are a good people. The Ashaninka don’t attack viracochas like your husband. I mean, white people who come in peace.”
As well as being a wise man and an expert on everything to do with the jungle, César Calvo was also a good and prudent man. He spoke of the Ashaninka, but not of the Amawaka, the tribe living to the right of the Ucayali, by the shores of the Urubamba, an option that would prove fatal to a viracocha, whether he came in peace or not.
“Now you have less reason to despair than ever, Laura. For the first time in three months, we have a firm trail to follow. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we will find your husband, I’m sure of it,” said I, the man she had hired as a guide in Cuzco, when she was still a beautiful girl just arrived from Dublin, and not a woman worn out and wasted by the jungle. I was fond of her, I felt myself to be her friend, and I would have given anything to be of consolation to her.
But she wasn’t listening to us, only to the inhabitants of the jungle: to the carachupausa, the papasí, the huapapa, to the yungururu, the ayaymaman, and to the yanaboa and the naka; and also to the makisapa monkey and to the wapo toad and to the cupisu turtle.