In Trouble Again by Redmond O’Hanlon

Author:Redmond O’Hanlon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241963722
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Electric Eel

12

Watched by a flock of forty-eight Cattle egrets (pure white and absurdly clean) who would flap laboriously into the air when alarmed, circle low, and drop down again at some forty yards’ distance, we spent a further day skulking near the plantation, creeping between the yucca plants, squatting amongst the pineapples, hiding behind bushes whose names were temporarily of no interest whatever, retching at the mouth and at the anus, our intestines driven to violent and constant peristalsis by bad tapir meat or good aguardiente or both.

The day after, still weak but already half cured by Imodium, we repaired the leaks in the two dugouts, stuffing pieces of two of my rotted shirts into the lengthwise slits in the wood and caulking them over with Chimo’s pitch, watched by the women who came to wash their clothes in the river and to scrub them on a rough board by the landing-stage; by four little boys who came to swim; and, from a wicker basket half submerged in the shallows, by three young matamata, two baby chipiro (ordinary-looking turtles with red streaks on either side of the head) and two tortuga (ditto, with yellow streaks).

The following morning we linked the dugouts together, loaded the stores, waved goodbye to the assembled Curipaco, and set off upriver to search for the Fierce People.

‘I am sure that one day we will arrive to the Yanomami,’ said Juan, sitting beside me between the two mounds of tarpaulin-covered cargo in the centre of Chimo’s dugout. ‘Chimo will know how to help us. We will see Gabriel, his friend. Gabriel is a caboclo, a settler from Brazil. He has a hut and a small clearing at Porvenir, and he trades with the Yanomami on the Siapa. We will make our campament with him.’

Galvis sat opposite us in the other boat, still making his way through an ancient copy of the Reader’s Digest in Spanish; Valentine and Culimacaré perched as lookouts in the two bows; and Pablo, wrapped in his blue plastic waterproof cape, fell asleep by the other, unused motor. Chimo, the veteran inland sailor, bound for a river whose upper reaches were unknown even to him, took the helm, hour upon hour without a rest, his pipe clenched in his gums, its bowl stuffed from his fresh supply of Alligator brand Brazilian tobacco, the strongest mixture known to man.

Even under the drab sky of an aparo day, the Casiquiare seemed extraordinarily beautiful. We were on the move again. The small wake from the puttering motor spread out behind us on the sluggish, dirty-brown, flood-swollen waters.

We kept close to the bank to avoid the central current, and every three or four miles we would disturb a solitary White-necked heron perched low down beside the water.

Halfway through the morning Culimacaré suddenly shouted and pointed high up into a tree ahead. Chimo slowed the engine and brought the boats to a standstill, hanging in the current. ‘Pereza!’ he said.

I trained the binoculars where everyone else was looking. A scraggy, grey-green clump of leaves seemed to be on the move near the crown of foliage.

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