It was not quite dawn when Milagros leaned over my hammock. I felt his calloused hand brushing my forehead and cheeks. I could hardly see his features in the darkness. I knew he was leaving. I waited for him to speak, but fell asleep without finding out whether he had actually wanted to say something.
"The rains will come soon," old Kamosiwe announced that evening. "I've seen the size of the young turtles. I've been listening to the croaking of the rain frogs."
Four days later, in the early afternoon, the wind blew with terrifying force through the trees and the shabono. The empty hammocks swung back and forth like boats on a tempestuous sea. The leaves on the ground swirled in spiralling dances that died as suddenly as they had begun.
I stood in the middle of the clearing, watching the gusts of wind coming from every direction. Pieces of bark flattened against my shins. Kicking my legs, I tried to shake the bark off, but it stuck to me as if it had been glued on. Giant black clouds darkened the sky. The steady far-off roar of approaching rain grew louder as it moved across the forest. Thunder rumbled through the clouds, and the flickering of white lightning flashed through the afternoon darkness. The groans of a falling tree, hit by lightning, echoed through the forest with the mournful clamor of other uprooted trees crashing to the ground.
Shrieking, the women and children huddled together behind the plantains stacked against the sloping roof. Seizing a log from the fire, old Hayama rushed into Iramamowe's hut. Desperately, she began to beat one of the poles. "Wake up!" she screamed. "Your father is not here. Wake up! Defend us from the hekuras." Hayama was addressing Iramamowe's personal hekura, for he was out hunting with several other men.
Thunder and lightning receded into the distance as the clouds broke open above us. The rain came in a solid sheet, so dense we could not see across the clearing. Moments later, the sky was clear. I accompanied old Kamosiwe to look at the roaring river. Masses of earth toppled from the banks, gouged out by the raging torrent. Each landslide was followed by the tearing of vines, which snapped with sounds like breaking bowstrings.
A great stillness settled over the forest. Not a bird, insect, or frog could be heard. Suddenly, without any warning, a growl of thunder seemed to come directly out of the sun, cracking over our heads. "But there are no clouds," I shouted, falling on the ground as if struck.
"Don't defy the spirits," Kamosiwe warned me. Cutting two large leaves, he motioned me to take cover. Squatting side by side, we watched the rain cascade down from a clear sky. Gusts of wind shook the forest until the curtain of dark clouds hid the sun once more.
"Storms are caused by the dead whose bones have not been burned; whose ashes have not been eaten," old Kamosiwe said. "It's these unfortunate spirits, longing to be cremated, who heat up the clouds until fires light up the sky."
"Fires that will finally burn them," I completed his sentence.
"Ohoo, you are not so ignorant anymore," Kamosiwe said. "The rains have started. You will be with us for many days- you will learn so much more."
Smiling, I nodded. "Do you think Milagros has reached the mission?"
Kamosiwe looked at me askance, then broke into a hoarse, raspy laughter, the laughter of a very old man, resounding eerily in the noise of the rain. He still had most of his teeth. Strong and yellowish, they stood out from his receding gums like pieces of aged ivory. "Milagros did not go to the mission. He went to see his wife and children."
"At which settlement does Milagros live?"
"In many."
"Does he have a wife and children in all of them?"
"Milagros is a talented man," Kamosiwe said, his one dark eye shining with a devilish glint. "He has a white woman somewhere."
Filled with anticipation, I looked at Kamosiwe. I was finally going to learn something about Milagros. But the old man remained silent. When he put his hand in mine, I knew his mind had wandered elsewhere. Slowly, I massaged his gnarled fingers.
"Old man, are you really Milagros's grandfather?" I asked, hoping to bring him back to the subject of Milagros.
Startled, Kamosiwe looked into my face, his one eye scrutinizing me intently as if he had thought of something. Mumbling, he gave me his other hand to massage.
Absentmindedly, I watched his one eye rolling into his socket as he drowsed. "I wonder how old you really are?"
Kamosiwe's eye came to rest on my face, clouded with memories. "If you lay out the time I've lived, it would reach all the way to the moon," Kamosiwe murmured. "That's how old I am."
We stayed under the leaves, watching the dark clouds disperse across the sky. Mist drifted through the trees, filtering the light to a ghostly gray.
"The rains have started," Kamosiwe repeated softly as we walked back to the shabono. The fires in the huts produced more smoke than heat, but the rainy air created a misty warmth. I stretched in my hammock, and fell asleep to the distant and confused sounds of the storming forest.
The morning was cold and damp. Ritimi, Tutemi, and I stayed in our hammocks the whole day, eating baked plantains, and listening to the rain pound on the palm-hatched roofs.
"I wish Etewa and the others had returned last night from the hunt," Ritimi mumbled from time to time, looking at the sky, which changed only from a faint white to gray.
The hunters returned late in the afternoon of the following day. Iramamowe and Etewa walked directly into old Hayama's hut carrying her youngest son Matuwe in a litter made from bark strips. Matuwe had been injured by a falling branch. Carefully, the two men transferred him to his own hammock. His leg hung limply down and his shinbone threatened to pierce the swollen purple skin.
"It's broken," old Hayama said.
"It's broken," I repeated with the rest of the women in the hut. I had adopted the habit of stating the obvious. It was a way of expressing concern, love, sympathy all at once.
Matuwe gasped in pain as Hayama set the leg straight. Ritimi held his foot outstretched while the old woman made a splint with broken pieces of arrow shafts. Deftly, she arranged them along each side of the leg, inserting cotton fibers in between the skin and cane. Around the splint, extending all the way from the ankle to the middle of his thigh, Hayama bound fresh strips of a thin, resistant bark.
Totemi and Xotomi, the man's young wife, giggled each time Matuwe moaned. They were not amused, but were trying to cheer him up. "Oh, Matuwe, it doesn't hurt," Xotomi tried to convince him. "Remember how glad you were when your head was bleeding after you had been hit with a club at the last feast."
"Stay still," Hayama said to her son. Fastening a liana rope over one of the rafters, she tied one end to his ankle, the other to his thigh. "Now you cannot move your leg," she said, inspecting her work with satisfaction.
About two weeks later, Hayama removed the bark and cane splint. The purple bruised leg had turned green and yellowish but was no longer swollen. She probed around the bone lightly. "It's growing together," she announced, then proceeded to massage the leg with warm water. Every day, for almost a month, she went through the same routine of unfastening the cast, massaging the leg, then tying it back to the rafter.
"The bone is mended," Hayama affirmed one day, breaking the cane splint into small pieces.
"But my leg is not healed!" Matuwe protested in alarm. "I cannot move it properly."
Hayama calmed him, explaining that his knee had become stiff from having had his leg stretched out for so long. "I'll continue massaging your leg until you can walk as you did before."
The rains brought with them a sense of tranquillity, of timelessness, as day and night blurred into each other. No one worked much in the gardens. For endless hours we lay or sat in our hammocks conversing in that odd way people do when it rains, with long pauses and absentminded stares into the distance.
Ritimi tried to make a basket weaver out of me. I started out with what I thought was the easiest kind- the large U-shaped basket used for carrying wood. The women had great fun watching my awkward attempts at trying to master the simple twining technique. I then concentrated my efforts on something I believed to be more manageable- the flat, disklike baskets used for storing fruit or separating the ashes from the bones of the dead. Although I was quite pleased with the finished product, I had to agree with old Hayama that the basket did not look the way it was supposed to.
Grinning at her, I remembered the time a school friend had done her best to teach me how to knit. In the most relaxed manner, while watching TV, talking, or waiting for an appointment, she knitted beautiful sweaters, mittens, and skiing caps. I sat tensely beside her, with tight shoulders, my stiff fingers holding the needles only inches away from my face, cursing every time I dropped a stitch.
I was not ready to give up basketry. One had to try at least three times, I told myself, as I began to make one of the flat fishing baskets.
"Ohoo, white girl." Xotomo giggled uncontrollably. "You didn't twine it tight enough." She put her fingers through the loosely woven vine strips. "The fish will slip through the holes."
Finally I resigned myself to the simple task of splitting the bark and vines needed for weaving into the most perfectly even strands, which were much in demand. Emboldened by my success, I made a hammock. I cut strands about seven feet long, tied the ends firmly together, reinforcing them with intertwined bark rope below the binding. I joined the liana strands loosely with transverse cotton yarn, which I had dyed red with onoto. Ritimi was so enchanted with the hammock, she replaced Etewa's old one with it.
"Etewa, I made a new hammock for you," I said as he came in from working in the gardens.
He looked at me skeptically. "You think it will hold me?"
I clicked my tongue in affirmation, showing him how well I had reinforced the ends.
Hesitantly he sat in the hammock. "It seems strong," he said, stretching fully. I heard the rubbing of the vine rope against the pole, but before I could warn him Etewa and the hammock were on the ground.
Ritimi, Tutemi, Arasuwe, and his wives, watching from the hut next to us, burst into guffaws, immediately attracting a large crowd. Slapping each other on their thighs and shoulders, they doubled up with laughter. Later I asked Ritimi if she had tied the hammock loosely on purpose.
"Naturally," she said, her eyes shining with loving malice. She assured me that Etewa was not in the least upset. "Men enjoy being outwitted by a woman."
Although I had my doubts as to whether Etewa had actually enjoyed the incident, he certainly held no grudge against me. He advertised throughout the shabono how well he was resting in his new hammock. I was besieged with requests. Sometimes I made as many as three hammocks a day. Several men busied themselves supplying me with cotton, which they separated by hand from the seeds. With a whorl stick they spun the fibers into thread, and twisted them into the strong yarn which I loosely wove in between the strands.
With a finished hammock draped over my arm, I entered Iramamowe's hut one afternoon. "Are you going to make arrows?" I asked him. He had climbed up a pole in his hut and was reaching for cane stored under the rafters of the roof.
"Is this hammock for me?" he asked, handing me the cane. He took the hammock, fastened it, then sat astride on it. "It's well made."
"I made it for your eldest wife," I said. "I'll make you one if you teach me how to make arrows."
"It isn't time to make arrows," Iramamowe said. "I was only checking if the cane is still dry." He regarded me mockingly, then burst into laughter. "The white girl wants to make arrows," he shouted at the top of his voice. "I will teach her, and take her hunting with me." Still laughing, he motioned me to sit beside him. He spread the cane on the ground, then sorted the shafts according to size. "The long ones are best for hunting. Short ones are best for fishing and killing the enemy. Only a good marksman will use long ones for whatever he pleases. They are often flawed and their trajectory is imprecise."
Iramamowe selected a short and a long shaft. "In here I will fit the arrowhead," he said, splitting one end of each cane. Firmly he tied them together with cotton thread. He cut a few feathers in half, then attached them to the other end by means of resin and cotton thread. "Some hunters decorate their shafts with their personal designs. I only do so when I go raiding. I like my enemy to know who killed him."
Like most Iticoteri men, Iramamowe was a superb raconteur, animating his stories with precise onomatopoeia, [* onomatopoeia- using words that imitate the sound they denote] dramatic gestures, and pauses. Step by step, he took his listener through the hunt: how he first spotted the animal; how before releasing his arrow he blew on it the powdered roots of one of his magic plants to immobilize his victim, thus making sure his arrow would not fail to hit its target; and how, once hit, the animal resisted dying.
With his eyes fixed on me, he emptied the contents of his quiver on the ground. In great detail he explained about all the arrowheads he had. "This is one of the palmwood points," he said, handing me a sharp piece of wood. "It's made from splinters. The ringlike grooves cut into the point are smeared with mamucori. They break inside the animal's body. It's the best point for hunting monkeys." He smiled, then added, "And for killing the enemy."
Next he held up a long, wide point, sharpened along its edges and decorated with meandering lines. "This one is good for hunting jaguars and tapirs."
The excited barking of dogs, mingled with the shouts of people, interrupted Iramamowe's explanation. I followed him as he rushed toward the river. An anteater the size of a small bear had taken refuge from the barking dogs in the water. Etewa and Arasuwe had wounded the animal on the neck, stomach, and back. Raised on its hind legs, it pawed the air desperately with its powerful front claws.
"Want to finish it off with my arrow?" Iramamowe asked.
Unable to avert my gaze from the animal's long tongue, I shook my head. I was not sure whether he was serious or joking. The animal's tongue hung out of a narrow muzzle, dripping a sticky liquid in which dead ants swam. Iramamowe's arrow hit the anteater's tiny ear, and instantly the animal collapsed. The men tied ropes around the massive body, then hoisted it up the bank, where Arasuwe quartered the animal so the men could carry the heavy pieces to the shabono.
The men singed off the hair, then placed the various pieces on a wooden platform built over the fire. As soon as Hayama wrapped the innards in pishaansi leaves, she buried them in the embers.
"An anteater," the children cried out. Clapping their hands in delight, they danced around the fire.
"Wait until it's cooked properly," old Hayama warned the children, whenever one poked at the tightly wrapped bundles. "You will get sick if you eat meat that isn't well done. It has to cook until no more juice drips from the leaves."
The liver was done first. Hayama cut me a piece before the children got to it. It was tender, juicy, and unpleasantly sour, as if it had been marinated in rancid lemon juice.
Later Iramamowe brought me a piece of the roasted hind leg. "Why didn't you want to try my arrow?" he asked.
"I might have hit one of the dogs," I said evasively, biting into the tough meat. It too tasted sour. I looked up into Iramamowe's face, and wondered if he had been aware that I did not want to be even vaguely compared to Imaawami, the woman shaman who knew how to call the hekuras and hunted like a man.
On stormy afternoons the men took epena, and chanted to the hekura of the anaconda to twist herself around the trees so as to prevent the wind from breaking their trunks. During one particularly vicious storm, old Kamosiwe rubbed white ashes over his wrinkled body. In a hoarse, raspy voice he called out to the spider, his personal hekura, to spin her protective silvery threads around the plants in the gardens.
Suddenly his voice changed to a higher pitch, as shrill as the piercing shriek of a parakeet. "I was once an old child who climbed to the tallest treetop. I fell, and was transformed into a spider. Why do you disturb my peaceful sleep?"
Reverting again to his old man's voice, Ramosiwe rose from his squatting position. "Spider, I want to blow your sting on those hekuras who break and tear the plants in our gardens." With his epena cane, he blew all around the shabono, aiming the spider sting against the destructive spirits.
The following morning I accompanied Kamosiwe into the gardens. Smiling, he pointed to the small hairy spiders busily reweaving their webs. Minute drops of moisture clung to the tenuous silvery threads. In the sunshine they glistened like jade pearls, reflecting the greenness of leaves.
We walked through the steaming forest toward the river. Squatting next to each other we silently watched the broken lianas, trees, and masses of leaves speeding by in the muddy waters. Back in the shabono, Kamosiwe invited me into his hut to share with him his specialty- roasted ants dipped in honey.
A favorite pastime during these rainy nights was for a woman to ridicule her husband for a wrongdoing through a song. A quarrel ensued whenever the woman hinted that her man was better fit to carry a basket than a bow. These disputes always ended up as public arguments, in which others took an active part by expressing their own opinions. Sometimes hours after the quarrel had ended someone would shout across the clearing with a fresh insight into the particular problem, thus renewing the squabble.