Next morning, Lee felt dry and irritable and empty of feeling. He borrowed Cotter's .22 rifle and set out with Allerton to have a look at the jungle. The jungle seemed empty of life.
'Cotter says the Indians have cleaned most of the game out of the area,' said Allerton. 'They all have shotguns from the money they made working for Shell.'
They walked along a trail. Huge trees, some over a hundred feet high, matted with vines, cut off the sunlight.
'May God grant we kill some living creature,' Lee said. 'Gene, I hear something squawking over there. I'm going to try and shoot it.'
'What is it?'
'How should I know? It's alive, isn't it?'
Lee pushed through the undergrowth beside the trail. He tripped on a vine and fell into a saw- toothed plant. When he tried to get up, a hundred sharp points caught his clothes and stuck into his flesh.
'Gene!' he called. 'Help me! I been seized by a man-eating plant. Gene, cut me free with the machete!'
They did not see a living animal in the jungle.
Cotter was supposedly trying to find a way to extract curare from the arrow poison the Indians used. He told Lee there were yellow crows to be found in the region, and yellow catfish with extremely poisonous spines. His wife had gotten spined, and Cotter had to administer morphine for the intense pain. He was a medical doctor.
Lee was struck by the story of the Monkey Woman: a brother and sister had come down to this part of Ecuador, to live the simple healthful life on roots and berries and nuts and palm hearts.
Two years later a search-party had found them, hobbling along on improvised crutches, toothless and suffering from half-healed fractures. It seems there was no calcium in the area. Chickens couldn't lay eggs, there was nothing to form the shell. Cows gave milk, but it was watery and translucent, with no calcium in it.
The brother went back to civilization and steaks, but the Monkey Woman was still there. She earned her monicker by watching what monkeys ate: anything a monkey eats, she can eat, anybody can eat. It's a handy thing to know, if you get lost in the jungle. Also handy to bring along some calcium tablets. Even Cotter's wife had lost her teeth 'inna thervith.' His were long gone.
He had a five-foot viper guarding his house from prowlers after his precious curare notes. He also had two tiny monkeys, cute but ill-tempered and equipped with sharp little teeth, and a two-toed sloth. Sloths live on fruit in trees, swinging along upside down and making a sound like a crying baby. On the ground they are helpless. This one just lay there and thrashed about and hissed.
Cotter warned them not to touch it, even on the back of the neck, since it could reach around with its strong, sharp claws and drive them through one's hand, then pull it to its mouth and start biting.
Cotter was evasive when Lee asked about Ayahuasca. He said he was not sure Yage and Ayahuasca were the same plant. Ayahuasca was connected with Brujena—witchcraft. He himself was a white Brujo. He had access to Brujo secrets. Lee had no such access.
'It would take you years to gain their confidence.'
Lee said he did not have years to spend on the deal. 'Can't you get me some?' he asked.
Cotter looked at him sourly. 'I have been out here three years,' he said.
Lee tried to come on like a scientist. 'I want to investigate the properties of this drug,' he said. 'I am willing to take some as an experiment.'
Cotter said, 'Well, I could take you down to Canela and talk to the Brujo. He will give you some if I say so.'
'That would be very kind,' said Lee.
Cotter did not say any more about going to Canela. He did say a lot about how short they were on supplies, and how he had no time to spare from his experiments with a curare substitute. After three days Lee saw he was wasting time, and told Cotter they were leaving. Cotter made no attempt to conceal his relief.
Epilogue:
Mexico City Return
Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the course of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetical to geometrical progression seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal.
A smog of bum kicks hangs over Panama in the wet heat. Everyone here is telepathic on the paranoid level. I walked around with my camera and saw a wood and corrugated iron shack on a limestone cliff in Old Panama, like a penthouse. I wanted a picture of this excrescence, with the albatrosses and vultures wheeling over it against the hot gray sky. My hands holding the camera were slippery with sweat, and my shirt stuck to my body like a wet condom.
An old hag in the shack saw me taking the picture. They always know when you are taking their picture, especially in Panama. She went into an angry consultation with some other ratty-looking people I could not see clearly. Then she walked to the edge of a perilous balcony and made an ambiguous gesture of hostility. Many so-called primitives are afraid of cameras. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. I walked on and shot some boys—young, alive, unconscious— playing baseball. They never glanced in my direction.
Down by the waterfront I saw a dark young Indian on a fishing boat. He knew I wanted to take his picture, and every time I swung the camera into position he would look up with young male sulkiness. I finally caught him leaning against the bow of the boat with languid animal grace, idly scratching one shoulder. A long white scar across right shoulder and collarbone. I put away my camera and leaned over the hot concrete wall, looking at him. In my mind I was running a finger along the scar, down across his naked copper chest and stomach, every cell aching with deprivation. I pushed away from the wall muttering
