“Does it hurt?” asked Laura.
“It’s not too bad,” I lied.
I was determined not to slow our progress and I began taking down the tent and gathering up the things we needed to put in the canoe, more energetically than ever, in fact, as if the bite had given me renewed strength.
“Shall we go on?” I asked. They both looked at me apprehensively, afraid that at any moment I might collapse. But, as César had said, I was a strong young man. I could withstand the poison that was still inside me.
We dragged the canoe down to the water and, with all three of us rowing, we set off up the Unine, toward the green Tierra Alta where we hoped to find Dr. Sheldon. We had been on the river for about two hours when a new song joined the habitual song of the jungle inhabitants. It was monotonous, repetitive.
The wise man of Iquitos raised his head to listen harder.
“The manguare have begun to sound,” he said, explaining that this was the name the Ashaninka gave to their wooden drums.
“We’re getting near, then.” I sighed. I couldn’t wait to get there. I was feeling weaker and weaker and my ankle was terribly swollen. I wasn’t so sure now that I could withstand the naka’s poison.
The good man of Iquitos nodded. Yes, any moment now the Ashaninka would appear. Then he added something he had kept secret until then:
“The Ashaninka are good, honest warriors. They’d never kill anyone in an ambush,” he began. Laura and I remained silent. “They don’t use curare,” he went on, “it’s not the virulent, painful poison that the Amawaka, for example, extract from snakes. They use a poison taken from the tohé plant, which kills instantly and painlessly.”
I think it was then that Laura and I realized the great danger we were in. César Calvo certainly chose his moments for telling us such things.
“But I don’t think they’ll harm us. As I’ve told you before, they don’t attack viracochas who come in peace.”
Meanwhile, the manguare were beating in the jungle, growing louder and louder. The Unine River began to narrow.
I soon became incapable of rowing. I lost all strength in my arms and it hurt me just to move my leg. And yet I did not feel unhappy, it was as if the pain were unimportant. After all, I was next to Laura, the beautiful girl I had met in Cuzco, the woman I cared most about in the world, and what mattered was that she find Dr. Sheldon and return with him before the rainy season set in, so that she would not have to stay here among the Ashaninka. For the Ashaninka were a very noisy people, constantly beating those drums of theirs, their manguare, and that wasn’t what I wanted for Laura. I hated to hear her crying the way the ayaymaman cried.
“I’m not crying,” Laura said.
I sat up a little and opened my eyes. I was no longer in the canoe, but lying down on a beach by the Unine River. And indeed Laura wasn’t crying, she was smiling as she mopped the sweat from my brow with a white handkerchief.
“We’ve given you some quinine and the fever’s gone down considerably,” Laura said. She was still smiling.
I felt ashamed. I had no idea what I might have said in my delirium. I feared I might have declared my true feelings for her.
“Can you hear the drums?” asked César Calvo, kneeling down beside me.
It was impossible not to. The clamor of the manguare filled the jungle.
“I hope the Ashaninka come soon. Only a shirimpiare can save your life now,” he added.
“A shirimpiare?” I asked.
“That’s what they call their medicine men.”
I tried to get up, but in vain. All my strength had ebbed away. I believed the time to say good-bye had come.
“Laura, César, listen to me a moment,” I said. “It’s best if you leave me here. You go on alone and find Dr. Sheldon before the rains come. I’d just like to say how glad I am to have known you both.”
“You silly boy!” exclaimed Laura, laughing, and the good man of Iquitos laughed too. They hadn’t the slightest intention of abandoning me.
I went back to sleep, but this time I slept calmly and dreamed we were roasting monkey meat and that the three of us, Laura, César, and I, were having a party. But there was too much noise at the party, as if we were not the only people there, as if there were many other people, all of whom were eating, singing, and shouting.
Worried by what I heard, I opened my eyes again to find that the visitors we had so long expected had arrived. Before me stood three Ashaninka and behind them another ten, another hundred, another thousand. They filled the whole beach, waving their bows and arrows. They were completely naked, their faces and bodies daubed with red and black paint.
César Calvo and Laura were trying to talk to the man who was apparently the leader of the group. They pointed at me again and again and I thought I could make out the two most important words to me at the time: naka and shirimpiare. Then I lost consciousness.
I did not come to until many days later and I was not a witness to what happened after the Ashaninka had agreed to take us to the place where they were living. However, according to what César Calvo told me later, we entered the village surrounded by children and in the midst of general merriment. It seems the Ashaninka were much taken with Laura’s blond hair and whenever one of the Indians touched it, the others would explode into loud laughter.
Then the majestic figure of Pullcapa Ayumpari, the shirimpiare, had appeared, the only Ashaninka with the right to paint his body and face in three colors, with white as well as the red and black that the others used.
“I realized at once that he would do us no harm. He looked at your ankle and frowned as if he were concerned about the swelling,” César said.
“The Ashaninka build two huts for each individual,” he went on. “One, which they call tantootzi, for the family and the other, which they call kaapa, for their guests. Pullcapa Ayumpari ordered you to be taken to his own kaapa. Laura and I were given a good hut on the other side of the village. Can you really remember nothing of what happened?”
“Very little,” I replied. “I remember that the Ashaninka looked after me and that I slowly began to feel better. Apart from that, all I remember is the rain. The noise it made on the roof of the kaapa used to wake me up.”
“Of course. You were hovering between life and death for twenty days. More than enough time for the rains to begin.”
César Calvo was absolutely right. I had spent twenty days in the house of the shirimpiare, Pullcapa Ayumpari, and when I left, I was completely cured. An old woman signaled to me to follow her and led me to the hut occupied by my companions. As soon as I entered I saw Laura and my heart leapt: She was a lovely woman again, the same beautiful girl I had met in Cuzco. It seemed the Ashaninka had also been ministering to her and had restored her to health as well.
Laura let out a yell and threw her arms around me. She was laughing and crying at the same time and kept saying how glad she was to see me again. She had feared the worst.
Yet she was downcast. She had discovered nothing about her husband. There was no trace in the village of Dr. Thomas Sheldon.
“The Indians don’t want to tell us anything,” said César Calvo. “Either that or they can’t. Every time I ask them something they just burst out laughing. It’s the same with the old woman the shirimpiare has placed at our service. I try to worm things out of her but it’s useless. She just laughs and goes on with her work.”