Hour of the Assassins (40 page)

The chief said something to one of the women and she soon returned with an old man who wore tattered trousers and long earplugs decorated with toucan feathers. His face and chest were hideously tattooed. My God, Caine thought desperately. They had called in a
brujo
to treat him. He tried to struggle up, but the chief pushed him forcefully down to the floor again. A feeling of lethargy invaded him and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he found himself staring up at the row of shrunken heads, swaying slightly in the faint breeze, the flickering shadows from the firelight bringing their features back to evil life. The
brujo
was sitting cross-legged by the fire and chanting. Caine wondered vaguely whether his head was about to join those hanging above him. The red firelight, the chanting, the tattooed savages and naked women, made the whole scene seem dreamlike. He could hardly believe that it was real, that it was actually happening to him.

The
brujo
, his tattooed face a demonic red mask as he crouched by the fire, rolled green tobacco leaves into a fat, crude cigar and lit it. He took long deep puffs and the smoke twisted and rose in the updraft of the fire. He passed the cigar to the chief, who took several puffs and then placed the cigar between Caine's lips, gesturing for him to smoke it. Caine deeply inhaled the strong, acrid smoke. It burned his throat and he launched into a bout of coughing.

Still chanting, the
brujo
stirred a dark liquid in a small gourd with a bone-white knife carved from a jaguar's tooth. He placed the gourd to Caine's lips and said something, gesturing for him to drink. Caine hesitated. The brew smelled bitter and poisonous. The
brujo
's eyes gleamed maniacally in the firelight and Caine feared that he was being given poison. The chief and his wives clustered around his naked body, their faces solemn and impossible to read. The chief gestured for him to drink.

“
Ayahuasca
,” the chief muttered solemnly, pointing at the gourd.

Should he drink it? he wondered. If it was poison, the Starfish would win, and he somehow knew that it was more evil than anything in this jungle, In an instant brief as a heartbeat Caine regretted that he might never see C.J. again, that he might never return to tell anyone about the butterflies, that he would never get to the bottom of the Starfish Conspiracy. He longed for the shush of snow and the crystalline purity of the mountain air, the giddy feel of his descent as he and C.J. skied down an Alpine slope towards the warm comfort of a lodge. He opened his mouth and tossed the bitter black
ayahuasca
down in a single gulp.

The
brujo
placed some dry brown leaves on the fire and began to inhale the thick cloud of smoke they sent up. Then he stood up and began to sway and dance as he chanted, his eyes closed, but still appearing open, because he had painted eyes on his eyelids. Caine grew very dizzy and the hut began to spin. It was as though he had become conscious of the earth's rotation and he clung to the floor to keep from being spun off into space.

With a sudden cry the
brujo
sprang at Caine and buried his face in Caine's belly. The
brujo
sucked harshly and loudly at Caine's navel, then sat up and spat into the fire. The spittle seemed to Caine to be a stream of blood, but when he looked down at his navel, there was no wound. Then it came to him that the
ayahuasca
was a hallucinogenic drug and they were trying to help him! The
brujo
was trying to suck out the invisible poison dart that the Achuals believe causes illness. The chief stretched out his hand and touched Caine's forehead and as he did so, the fingers sprouted into branches and the branches into leaves that rustled against his face.

A wind sprang up and stirred the palm fronds into life. The fronds kept whispering and whispering in an unknown tongue. Then the hut was filled with Indians, grinning like gargoyles, their naked bodies swaying in the red glow of the fire and Caine no longer knew what was real and what wasn't. The chanting went on and on to the rhythm of the whispering palms. Beads of sweat rolled down his face and he felt himself floating on a burning stream of molten lava, down the countless miles of the Amazon to the distant darkness of the sea.

He was swimming in the dark ocean, riding the roller-coaster waves. Then he sank into the green depths and a giant starfish wrapped its arms around him, pulling him into its mouth. Caine struggled desperately against the suction of the arms. He cut off the tip of one of the arms with his machete and then he was free. He rose through the water for a long time, and when he finally broke the surface, he was back in the fetid darkness of the mangrove swamp. He began to wade through the still, black water.

Then he was caught in the quicksand again and above him was a wildly screaming chorus of giant spider monkeys, each of them with a human face and he knew them all. There were so many of them. He hadn't realized that his life had touched so many. Lim, pleading for her unborn son, and Dao, screaming about the war. His mother with her green eyes. Wasserman telling him about his father's accounting firm in Leipzig. Chong, his bleeding, mutilated monkey face looking as it had when Caine had straightened his body at Nong Het. The old Gypsy at Auschwitz. Müller screaming “Peru.” And Cunningham and Koenig and Hudson. Harris saying something about how oil is the only thing that counts these days. Inger, drooling, and Pepé, still pierced by the arrow. Mengele screamed, “Is there no redemption?” Father José said nothing, but only stared at him with sad, black eyes. A monkey with sleek blond fur and C.J.'s face swung from a vine and repeated, “you never came back” over and over, until Caine couldn't stand it and he cried out, “I'm coming back, you bastards! I'm coming back!”

He sank into the quicksand, down to an underground river, and then somehow he was floating on a raft down the Amazon. A lithe, naked Achual maiden ran her hands along his body, a sly smile on her brown face in the flickering firelight and then she straddled him, her belly rippling in slow, sinuous curves, like a snake. She uttered a cry of pleasure and moved faster as he entered her, her sweat dripping onto his belly. From inside her he could feel her entire body surging around his penis, beating like a giant heart, with the timeless rhythm of the surf. He came with a shuddering groan and the woman bathed his body with cool water from the river. He could see the stars, like distant campfires in the night. The rustling wind blew them out one by one, like candles, and then it was dark at last.

He awoke to the sound of retching. The morning was hot and clear and all around the village the Achuals were matter-of-factly vomiting. A slim, young woman brought him a large gourd of bark tea to drink. She smiled slyly at him and he wondered if she had been the woman in his dream and whether any of it had been real. He drank the medicinal-smelling tea, which she called
wayus
, and he quickly toddled on rubbery legs to the edge of the hut and threw up. The
wayus
was a violent emetic. Apparently it was the Achuals' normal practice to start the day by clearing their stomachs and surprisingly enough after retching he felt much better.

The woman brought him a breakfast of fried plantain and a number of
characins
, a kind of freshwater sardine, which she had broiled over the fire. He felt stronger than he had in days. His fever had broken and his skin was no longer so tender. Even his stomach had stopped rumbling. That
brujo
could make a fortune in southern California, he mused.

They had dressed him in his filthy clothes once more. The woman took a thin strip of saw-toothed grass and stretched it taut. She rubbed the grass strip along his face and he was surprised to find that it took off his beard as cleanly as a steel razor. She had nearly completed shaving him when the chief entered the hut.

Caine got to his feet and regarded the chief for a long moment. Then he took off his watch, wound it, and gave it to the chief. The chief examined the watch curiously, then held it to his ear. A delighted smile broke over his face.

“Tick-tick-tick-tick,” he said, and clicked his tongue appreciatively. Caine hoo-hooed and placed the watch on the chief's wrist. The chief swaggered out of the hut and soon he was surrounded by Achuals, who clicked their tongues and hoo-hooed in admiration. Caine smiled broadly. The watch was a complete success.

Later Caine called Huey over and asked him about the Ucayali. At first Huey seemed embarrassed.

“Where is the river?” Caine asked in Spanish. Huey shrugged.

“Where?” Caine repeated, and pointed in various directions. The Achual laughed and pointed toward the rising sun.

“Is it far?”

“Sí,
sí
,” Huey laughed.

“How many days?”

“
Sí, sí
,” the Indian said amiably.

It was frustrating and Caine tried to think of another way besides Spanish to communicate. Then he pointed to the sun and described an arc across the sky from east to west. He repeated the gesture until Huey laughed, holding his stomach with merriment. Then he shook his head at Caine and made a single arc from east to west, with a cutting gesture when his finger reached halfway across the sky. Caine laughed and shook his head. It was only a half-day's march to the river!

The Indian began tugging at his arm, as though wanting to show Caine. Caine brought his thumb to his first two fingers in the Spanish gesture that means
wait
. He walked back to the hut and got his machete. The chief glanced curiously at him. Caine put his hand around the chief's neck and touched his forehead to the chief's. The chief smiled. As he walked away to join Huey, Caine thought that the savage Achuals were really no different from anybody else. Then he followed Huey on down the relatively easy trail.

They reached the broad expanse of the Ucayali by midmorning. Huey cavorted and pointed excitedly at the brown water and the two men embraced and touched foreheads. Caine began searching along the bank and Huey followed him curiously. It took Caine more than an hour before he found a grove of suitable balsa trees. He began to chop at the soft, porous wood with the machete and Huey immediately understood what Caine wanted and enthusiastically pitched in.

The soft wood was easy to work with, and in an hour Caine had half-a-dozen logs trimmed and laid side by side on the riverbank. Each log was about ten feet long and close to a foot in diameter. About a foot from each end, Caine cut a triangular notch for the crosspieces on the top and bottom side of every log. Each notch had the apex of the triangle on top and the baseline about two inches deep in the wood. When all the notches were cut, four to a log, two at each end, top and bottom, Caine cut four relatively straight branches and began fashioning triangular-shaped crosspieces with the machete.

Huey watched with fascination as Caine worked, nodding excitedly every so often. The Indian intuitively grasped the superiority of using the triangular-shaped crosspieces. When the crosspieces were wet and began to swell with water, they would bind the logs securely together, even without lashing. While Caine smoothed and shaped the crosspieces, Huey found green coconuts for drinking and mature nuts for eating, and they stopped for lunch. Then while Caine worked at fitting the crosspieces into the notches, Huey pounded the white coconut meat with a shell and left the pounded meat in the shell to heat in the sun.

Once the crosspieces were slotted across the logs, the two men lashed the ends of the crosspieces with liana vines. Then Caine cut two long branches, trimming one for a pole, and the second, broader branch he fashioned into a paddle-shaped sweep. The raft was ready to go.

Huey handed Caine the shell of heated coconut meat. It was brimming with oil and he gestured for Caine to smear on the oil. Caine stripped and smeared the oil all over his body till he glistened in the sun. The oil would help protect him against sunburn and insects. Then he pulled on his grimy rags once more.

The two men looked at each other. Caine didn't know what to say or do. These people had saved his life. He had nothing left to give them. Then he remembered his Meo bracelet, the one Dao had given him. He pulled it off his wrist and handed it to Huey, who blinked his eyes self-consciously. Then with great reluctance he handed Caine his precious shotgun in return. Caine pushed the gun away emphatically, but the Indian stubbornly resisted. Caine knew he couldn't shame the Indian, so he looked around for something else. He pointed at the toucan feather headdress and the Achual gratefully took it off his head and adjusted it on Caine's head.

Caine took off his shirt and the two men loaded coconuts on it and tied it into a bag. They pushed the raft into the warm brown water, and without any further ceremony Caine hopped on and he was off. He poled away from the shore, the Indian watching him with his impassive gaze. When Caine reached the middle of the river, where the current was stronger, he sat down and began to use the sweep. He glanced back at the shore, but the Indian was gone, as though he had never been.

The tropic sun glinted cruelly off the surface of the water. The raft bobbed gently downstream, the balsa logs riding buoyantly on the placid surface. Caine wondered how long he had before the porous wood became water-logged and sank. He hoped to hit a village and get a boat before then. All he could do was trust to luck. After all, with a raft one doesn't have much choice.

A sense of peace enfolded him as he drifted downstream. He was heading back into the world. Once again the brooding green hedge of the jungle slipped by. Along the near bank he could see what seemed like an endless carpet of giant Victoria water lilies. The pads were thick with bullfrogs croaking a loud chorus that could be heard for miles. He began to feel drowsy in the steaming heat as the current carried him ever downstream. He was on a journey without end. He remembered a lyric from a Janis Joplin song: “Honey, the road don't even end in Khatmandu.”

CHAPTER 17