The Wild Girl (33 page)

INTERESTING READING, LITTLE BROTHER, ALTHOUGH I’M SORRY TO
tell you that you’re deeply misguided on several scores. For one thing, you clearly know nothing whatsoever about women—me,
la niña bronca,
or any others for that matter—but then again, what man, let alone a seventeen-year-old pipsqueak such as yourself, really does? At the same time, I find amusing the modern conceit of photographers that they are somehow amateur ethnographers, able to capture the essence of a culture in individual “snapshots.” But really, how severely inadequate, not to mention unscientific, such an approach is.

So you see, in addition to trying to keep your notebooks (not to mention your precious camera and film) safe for you, I’ve now appropriated them and I’m going to make a few entries of my own in your absence. Chances are these are going to be destroyed before this is all over, anyway, and assuming that you ever even make it back here, you may still never get to read what I have to say. So far I’ve managed to convince my Apache hosts that these notebooks are BIG medicine, not to be tampered with unless they are willing to risk some very, very bad fortune, indeed. Among the many practical lessons I learned living among the Yanomami in Brazil is that most aboriginal people have in common a certain superstitious reverence for the written word. Because theirs are spoken rather than written languages, they tend to ascribe all kinds of magical properties to books and to those who make them. Which is one reason the Bible has always been a relatively easy sell for missionaries to native peoples, who tend to be unduly impressed that all those stories and lives can exist within that single bound and printed space. What could that be, after all, but magic?

Let me get a few things clear first, Neddy. In your entries about me, you seem rather overly concerned with my romantic (or maybe just my sexual) life, which strikes me as a particularly “male” point of view on your part. I must remind you that the reason I came along on this expedition in the first place was for the rare opportunity to do ethnographic fieldwork, access to which women in my profession have traditionally been denied. We (women, that is) have been largely relegated to doing our research in the libraries and universities, interpreting the fieldwork of our allegedly stronger, heartier, more adventurous male colleagues. Having grown up in the field, albeit very much in the shadow of my father (in more ways than one), when I decided to enter the profession myself, I had no intention of doing so as a glorified secretary serving the men. And so now I’m right where I dreamed of being—as deep in the field as one can get—among the lost Apaches themselves. Any anthropologist in America, male or female, would surely view this as an unparalleled professional opportunity.

And yet, speaking of conceit, I have to admit that under the circumstances of the past forty-eight hours, it’s hard to look at my present situation as a good career move. At the same time, it seems both ironic, and a bit unfair, that whereas a male anthropologist would surely be praised for getting “close” to his subject in the best Malinowskian tradition of direct observation, I’m sure that as a woman, I shall be accused of having compromised my professional objectivity . . . and possibly much worse. Although I’m not at all convinced that American anthropology has adequately addressed the question of where one draws the line in ethnographic fieldwork between being an observer and a participant, one thing for certain is that becoming the slave woman of an infamous Apache warrior is sure to be considered a quantum leap over the line.

In any case, little brother, you are clearly not much interested in anthropological methodology, so I will try to confine my comments here to telling my side of the story that you have begun, the part that you are missing right now, and a bit of the history that you cannot know. I suppose that the very least of our worries at this moment is whether or not these notebooks will survive, when the much larger question is whether or not any of us will survive. Still there is something rather comforting about writing in these pages, isn’t there? They give the notebook keeper a certain illusion of immortality, in the same way that terminally ill people like to make plans for the future in the misguided belief that they can’t possibly die if they have a train reservation.

Here then are some of the things you need to know, Neddy, both those that have happened to me and those that I have pieced together since I have been here. It is a story that does not fit in your viewfinder, that cannot be told in photographs, or in simple notebook entries describing the events of our days. Tolley is quite right about that.

After you, Albert, and Tolley left, my first order of business was to try to keep poor Mr. Browning alive, and as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. It was quiet below in the
ranchería,
the fires burned all the way down to smoldering embers. When Mr. Browning dozed off again, I slipped down from the cave. What a scene there to behold. The area in which the dance had been held looked like a battlefield littered with living corpses, or as if some terrible plague had struck, bodies lying in twisted heaps, the acrid mingling odors of smoke, gunpowder, and vomit. The revelers slept fitfully in the predawn stillness, some breathing heavily and snoring, others moaning sickly or mumbling insensibly in their drunken repose. A feeble hand reached out and grabbed my ankle as I passed, but I kicked it away and hurried on.

With some difficulty I finally located the wickiup where I had patched you up, and there I changed back into my own clothes—my boots, riding breeches, and jacket. I took a woolen blanket and retrieved your satchel with your camera gear and these notebooks, and I found some strips of dried jerky and a piece of flatbread to take back for Mr. Browning, even though he had not yet eaten what the girl had brought to him last night. I went down to the creek and filled an earthen jug with water. The water was clear and cold and in the breaking light of dawn sparkled off the riffled surface of the creek in a way that in different circumstances might have seemed cheerful.

Mr. Browning woke with a start when I got back to the cave. He seemed groggy and disoriented, and even paler than before. I asked him how he was feeling.

“A little foggy, miss, the truth be told,” he said. “I’ve a terrible headache.”

“Drink a little of this water,” I said, holding the jug to his lips. “I’ve brought you a little something to eat.”

He drank. “Ah yes, that’s lovely, miss, very kind of you,” he said. “But really I don’t have much of an appetite.”

“We’re all alone here now, Mr. Browning,” I said. “Just you and me. Don’t you think you could call me Margaret? And I’ll call you Harold.”

“Very well, Margaret.”

“Yes, that’s much better, isn’t it, Harold?”

“Indeed,” he said, and he smiled . . . dear, sweet Mr. Browning . . . what a fine gentle soul. “What do you think will happen, miss . . . oh, terribly sorry . . . what do you think will happen,
Margaret,
when they discover that the others have departed?”

“I don’t know, Harold. My guess is that they’ll go after them.”

“Yes, I would expect so,” he said. He chewed a little of the jerky and tried to take a bite of the flatbread. “Oh dear, a bit hard, that, isn’t it?” he said. “Liable to break a tooth on that, one is.”

“You should probably try to get a little more sleep,” I said.

“I am rather tired. Can’t seem to keep my eyes open.”

“I’m tired, too,” I said. “I brought us a blanket. I hope you won’t mind my asking, but would it be all right if I curled up next to you, Harold? It’s a little chilly, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all, Margaret,” Mr. Browning said. “Indeed, it would be a great comfort to me.”

So I curled up behind Mr. Browning and covered us with the blanket, and I put my arm around him and held him. “Before we fall asleep, tell me something about your life, Harold,” I said. “Just anything at all . . . You never told me if you’d ever been married. Or if you had a family.”

“My employers have always been my family, miss,” he said.

“Haven’t you ever been in love, Harold?”

“Yes, Margaret, I have. Once.”

“Tell me about her.”

“All right, Margaret,” he said. “Have I told you that I spent several years in Africa with my former employer, Lord Crowley? Yes, in Kenya. You see, the lord was involved in gold-mining operations there. We first went over in . . . in . . . twenty-one, I believe it was. Spent the better part of the decade on the continent . . . a fascinating time really . . .”

And so Mr. Browning began to tell me the story of the woman he had fallen in love with. “Ours was a forbidden love, Margaret,” he said. “She was African, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, and the servant of one of Lord Crowley’s business colleagues. She was so stunningly beautiful . . .” Mr. Browning talked on softly, remembering his forbidden love, the only love of his life, until his voice trailed away, and he drifted off to sleep. And I, too, slept, curled beside him, my arm around him. When I woke again, the moon was low on the horizon and dawn was coming on, and I knew from the cold, still feel of his body against me that Mr. Browning was dead.

I sat for a while in the cave with him, just to keep him company, and because I couldn’t bear to leave him alone. I spoke to him, and told him things that I have never told before. And I wept for dear, sweet Mr. Browning. The
ranchería
lay silent below in the deathly quiet of daybreak. I thought about how simple it would be for me just to walk away from here. Except, of course, that I had nowhere to go. I wouldn’t last a day out there alone, and in any case, they’d only find me and bring me back. Oddly, despite my grief over his passing, with Mr. Browning gone, I was suddenly less afraid, I felt a certain relief, for now I had only myself to worry about. I decided that I would put my professional hat squarely on again, and in the same way that you, Neddy, hide behind your camera, I would thus be able to maintain the illusion of safety. Another lesson I had learned in the Amazon was that one must never allow the natives even a glimpse of one’s fear, for to display weakness is to invite attack.

I walked back down to the
ranchería
. As the sun rose, a number of last night’s revelers crawled off to their wickiups; others were just waking up, so sick and hungover that they barely seemed to notice me. I had in mind to find the girl, and if I could, Jesus, to see that he was safe. I didn’t know where to begin my search and so I started peering randomly inside the huts and wickiups. But before I could find either of them, I ran directly into Indio Juan.

He was sitting on the ground in front of one of the wickiups and appeared to have just woken up himself. He seemed dazed and half drunk still, and when he saw me he looked at me murderously and struggled to his feet. I should have run right then, but instead, stupidly, stubbornly, I stood my ground. I blamed him for Mr. Browning’s death and my anger and grief overcame any fear I had of him in that moment. He staggered toward me; I could smell the stench coming off him—the sweet-sour odor of alcohol, the acrid stink of vomit that stained the front of his shirt, and a deeper, rotten scent that I think is simply the smell of his evil. He held his arms out to me.

“Has vuelto con Indio Juan, mi esclava bonito,”
he said. “You have come back to Indio Juan, my pretty slave girl.”

“Fuck you, you filthy swine,” and I slapped him as hard as I could.

Even in his half-drunken stupor, Indio Juan’s next movements were so brutally fast and rough that I was completely overwhelmed. He grabbed me by the hair, yanked me to the ground, and fell atop me. He is not a large man, shorter than I, but I was astonished by his sheer brute strength. I tried to bite him and he struck me savagely across the face. He held me by the throat, cutting off my wind, tore open my blouse, and pried my legs apart. Unable to negotiate the complexities of my riding breeches, he drew his knife, intending simply to cut himself access. I knew then that I was going to die and I experienced a peculiar sense of detachment. I remember thinking,
Ah, yes, of course, now I remember why women aren’t given ethnographic fieldwork assignments . . .
In the next instant I heard a hollow ringing sound, and the breaking of glass, and Indio Juan went limp atop me. I looked up to see
la niña bronca
standing over us, holding one of Tolley’s empty wine bottles by the neck.

“I hope you killed the bastard,” I said.

The girl and I sat cross-legged together in the wickiup. I had cleaned up at the creek and changed my torn shirt. The side of my face was swollen from where Indio Juan had struck me and it was painful to talk. The girl had built a small fire in front of the wickiup and put a tin coffeepot on to boil.