Authors: Tahir Shah
Cumulus clouds hung above the jungle, growing darker until they could hold not another drop. When they ripped open, they drowned us in rain. As afternoon became dusk, the coral-red sky was reflected in the water, heralding nightfall. Before the last rays of sunlight had dissipated, Venus became visible. Although so far away, she was a companion, a point of familiarity.
Like those who lived on the river’s silent banks, I started to go to bed at dusk, waking at dawn. The idea of staying up past 7 p.m. seemed insane. Only a madman would have wanted to expose himself to the night’s onslaught of bugs.
One evening, as he steered a course along the right bank of the Tigre, Walter told me about a wish that had come true.
‘Nine years ago,’ he recounted in his brusque voice,
‘Yo era muy desgraciado
, I was a very unhappy man. I had no work. My family were almost starving. Then my wife left me, taking our sons. She’d found out that I was going to prostitutes, and wanted a divorce. I didn’t know what to do.’
Walter steered the boat to the opposite bank.
‘I had even thought of killing myself, or running off to Lima. But a friend suggested I visit a shaman who was known to him. He lived in the floating village at Belen. As he owed my friend a favour, he said he’d give me a consultation for free. So, one night I went to see him. I explained my problems: that I had no work and a wife who was angry. The
maestro
told me to take two beans and bury them in the dirt under the floor of our house. I was to water them every morning with lemon juice. When a month was over, he told me to dig up the beans and eat them one at a time. But, before doing so, I was to make two wishes.
‘Although it sounded mad, I did as the shaman had told me. I had no other choice. A week went by. Then another. I was just going to curse the
maestro’s
name, when a remarkable thing happened.
‘My wife came back home with our three sons. She said an angel had come to her in a dream and told her that I was a good man. The angel said she should give me another chance’ continued the
motorista
. ‘But the next week’ he said, ‘an even more incredible thing happened.’
He stopped mid-story to steer the boat across the river.
‘What?
What happened?’
‘Well, I used to go to the market and sell bracelets made of beads and that sort of thing’ he said. ‘It made me almost no money, but kept me occupied. One day, an American woman from Tennessee asked me for directions. We started talking and she bought all my necklaces. She was very friendly. Before she went back home, I gave her my address. The next month she wrote me a letter. She said she wanted to help me. She asked that I write to her once a week, and in return she promised to send me a cheque every month. That’s how it’s been for nine years’ said Walter. ‘Her cheques come as regularly as clockwork. It’s meant I’ve been able to send my boys to school instead of having them work with me. But best of all’ he said, ‘it meant I could buy the
Pradera.’
‘I thought you said this boat was only six months old!’
Walter swept back his hair with his hand.
‘She’s six months and a few years,’ he said.
*
Since the first night, when I had experienced the trauma of the
Pradera’s
loo, my digestive tract had seized up. We had now been on the boat for nine days, and my colon was plugged with an assortment of wretched meals. My medical kit - supplied by London’s Hospital of Tropical Medicine - didn’t contain anything to relieve constipation, only diarrhoea. At first I kept the problem to myself. After all, it’s a private matter. But Richard and the others were fascinated by my lack of bowel movements. On a close-knit river expedition, one man’s bowels are another man’s business.
Cockroach brewed me a cup of coffee, made with seventeen tablespoons of Nescafé. I slugged it back in a single gulp. The crew clustered around me. The only reaction to the coffee was a surge of adrenaline. Walter suggested I drink a litre of vegetable oil. Holding my nose, I did so. Still no result. Francisco said I was a fool for resorting to caffeine and oil as laxatives. He could, he said boastfully, cure my dysfunction with a simple two-part treatment.
First I was to drink a strong tea made from the bark of a tree. He called it
mololo
. Only later was I able to have the bark identified. Known in the West as ‘Cramp Bark’, it’s been used medicinally for centuries in North America. Tribes like the Meskwaki and the Penobscot once prescribed it to cure chronic constipation. It’s curious that Francisco used a North American plant.
The
mololo
tea, which was quite pleasant, warmed me to the shaman’s expertise. I was rather looking forward to the second half of the remedy. He said it would take time to prepare, but should be ready some time that afternoon. I went to my hammock to stare up at the rot.
In the early evening the shaman came down from the roof. He was holding my green mess mug. It was full to the brim with a hot liquid. Francisco said he’d just finished making the medicine and I was to drink it at once. Following his instructions, I took a deep draught of the liquid. It was very salty and had undertones of tobacco.
‘
¡
Bébetelo!
Drink it up!’ said Francisco impatiently. ‘If it gets cold it will not work.’
I asked him what the beverage was made from.
He didn’t reply.
‘Quickly, finish it,’ he barked.
‘Tell me what’s in it?’
Still the shaman refused to answer.
‘If I tell you what it is, you won’t drink it!’
Cockroach looked up from a pot of boiling oil.
‘Son sus meaos
. It’s his urine,’ he said blankly, ‘you’re drinking Francisco’s urine.’
After the coffee, the oil, the
mololo
tea, and half a cup of the shaman’s urine, I spent most of the night huddled over the
Pradera’s
putrid hole. It was unpleasant, but I was very pleased that the state of constipation had been reversed. Richard was on the roof lying out under the stars. He had taken an extra-strong dose of
sanango
, his favourite nerve-agent.
‘You oughta try it,’ he said cheerfully, next morning. ‘I’ll get Francisco to make you up a batch. It clears your head like nothing else.’
‘I’ve had enough of Francisco’s medicine,’ I replied, ‘and, after all, I’m saving myself for
ayahuasca
with the Birdmen.’
Richard wasn’t listening. Sliding his knife from its sheath, he poked at something in the rot above my hammock.
‘That’s all we need!’ he exclaimed.
‘Horrendous damp rot,’ I said. ‘Never seen anything like it.’
‘Not the rot… the nest.’
‘
Nest
? ‘
‘Arachnid. Looks like it’s just hatched. In a day or two this boat’ll be running with wolf spiders. It wouldn’t be a problem if we had some fuckin’ rats on board!’
Some say that these hairy brown spiders get their name from their wolf-like technique of chasing and hunting their prey. Few others of the species can match their extraordinary speed. Richard showed me how to identify them by their unique arrangement of eyes. He was an arachnophile of the first degree. Wolf spiders have three rows: the lowest has four small eyes, the middle has two much larger, and the upper row has a pair of medium-sized ones.
The plague of spiders was bad news, but was just one of many problems. Our stores of food were going down fast, largely because the crew were eating five cooked meals a day. A valuable sack of flour had mysteriously fallen overboard in the night. And a bottle of bleach had ruptured, ruining most of the sugar. Meanwhile, Walter was complaining that the Johnson needed a new propeller. Without one, he said, we’d be scuppered upstream.
In the cooking area, Cockroach brought another problem to my attention. The boat was sinking. A two-foot crack had developed in the starboard side. I suspected endemic wet rot had something to do with it. I ordered the crew to take it in turns to bail water. They’d have to bail day and night. Fortunately, Richard had a roll of industrial tarred tape in his pack. He said it was ‘core’ equipment. The bailing and the tarred tape kept us afloat. But they were a short-term solution.
Vietnam training had taught Richard the importance of core equipment. His few possessions were super-durable military issue. Army stuff was cheap and tough. He scorned anything made in the private sector, calling it ‘civilian shit’. All my luggage fell into that category. In his book, civilian shit was for wimps, like canned food. Everything he owned from his watch-strap to his underpants was army issue, and came in camouflage green. Camo’ mimicked nature, he said, and nature was all that mattered.
When he was digging out the tape, Richard emptied the contents of his canvas pack onto the boat’s roof. I was struck by the cleanliness and good condition of his gear. He had a US army flashlight with a Morse code button, a fork which doubled as a knife and can-opener, a US army water bottle filter system with drinking straw attached, and a litre of medical alcohol. There was a chipped tin cup as well, and an 18-inch carbon steel machete, a coil of nylon rope, a condom, and two fishing hooks.
‘The condom’s for carrying water,’ said Richard sternly. ‘That is, unless I meet a cute senorita in the jungle.’
I asked about his boots. He rarely took them off.
‘They’re standard US army Altama jungle boots,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a valve which pushes out the water when you walk. They’re the only boots worth having out here.’
‘Is US army gear the best?’
‘Some of it,’ he said, ‘but the French make the best clothing. Look at these trousers I’m wearing, they’re herringbone, with reinforced knees and double-lined pockets. They’re fuckin’ handmade!’
Richard had found a last packet of cigarettes at the bottom of his pack. He tore off the cellophane wrapper and was soon inhaling the air of Marlboro country. The shaman was squatting nearby. He had been working on another batch of
sanango
, but now he was going through his own bag of loot.
Francisco was the
Pradera’s
magpie. He’d scoop up any unwanted junk he could find, and tuck it into his voluminous duffel bag. Amongst other things, he was collecting empty tin cans, dead batteries and strands of my used dental floss. When I asked why he needed such things, Walter murmured
‘Para la magia’
, for magic. Francisco’s unconventional dress sense and his strange behaviour had made a great impression on Walter and the cook. They were terrified of him.
The Vietnam vet’ had great respect for Francisco, but he didn’t fear him like the others did. They were an odd couple. The shaman would sit at Richard’s feet in his droopy Y-fronts, talking about the shamanic world. He would scowl when Richard lit up a Marlboro. To Francisco, tobacco was a sacred product. He was disgusted that such a hallowed plant could have become an icon of addiction and branding. Francisco despised Marlboros and everything they stood for. But he viewed me with even greater contempt. As far as he was concerned, a man who didn’t smoke at all had no soul.
*
On the thirteenth day, with the boat going slower and slower against the current, the crew begged Richard for some fresh food. They were, they said, sick of eating canned gruel and spaghetti boiled in oil. They hated each meal more than the last, they claimed, and were only choking them down to please me. This failed to explain why they were eating so much. Richard told Cockroach to fetch an empty sack. He then instructed Walter to tether the boat on the river-bank. Taking his machete, the sack, and a bottle of drinking water, he set off into the jungle.
Cockroach abandoned bailing duty and slunk down the boat to slaughter Rosario. I managed to wrestle him to the ground just before he snapped her neck. She would remain alive as long as I was there to protect her. Francisco was sprawled out at the back of the boat on the drums of petrol. He lit his pipe and was soon lying in a fug of smoke. I kept to the other end of the
Pradera
, hunting for wolf spiders, which were now crawling everywhere.
Three hours after setting off, Richard marched back out from the jungle, the white nylon sack strung over his shoulder. Thanking him, the cook dragged it below. I sat on my hammock and watched as the contents were pulled out one at a time. First came a black-feathered bird. I wasn’t sure what it was. Then,
a paca
, a giant nocturnal rodent, with bucked front teeth and clay-coloured hair. It had been gutted with Richard’s knife. Swishing away the flies, Cockroach delved again into the sack. He pulled out a pig-like peccary, then a
mahasse
, a rodent whose meat is a delicacy in the Upper Amazon.
That night Cockroach cooked up a rich stew made from fresh meat. Walter had six helpings of it, and Francisco ate so much that he had to throw up over the side. I’d been concerned that the meat would go to waste, but it was soon finished. Cocooned in layers of mosquito netting I resisted the stew. Instead, I boiled a pan of water and cooked up a sachet of Lancashire Hot Pot.
Walter went on and on about the propeller and the crack in the boat’s side. But I ignored him. There was nothing I could do except to commandeer Francisco’s cauldron for bailing. The shaman asserted that the pot was a magical tool. If it were used for bailing we would, he said, end up at the bottom of the river. As it was we were heading that way, so I told him to leave me alone. The village of Grande Bretag
ñ
a, Great Britain, was marked on the map. With a name like that, I hoped it might have a resident mechanic. I buried my head in Flornoy’s book
Jivaro: Among the Head-shrinkers of the Amazon
, printed in 1953, and tried to forget about my troubles.
Before the Spanish arrived in the Americas, I learned, the Incan Empire bordered the Shuar land on its west. Just before the Conquistadors arrived, the Inca, Huayna Capac, led his armies against the Shuar. The year was 1527. The Incas were routed so fiercely that they were forced to flee back to the Andean highlands. As a way of saving face, the Inca declared the Shuar unworthy of being his subjects.