-I-
"Wait what?" I asked. Something in my ears rang, numbing the semi-foreign conversation around me.
The sensei smiled at one kid who was passing him the moon pictorial card. He waited for the kid to pronounce 'moon' in Kamaiurá language before he changed the card to a picture of a car. It took the kid several seconds before he uttered the word 'car' in Kamaiurá.
"I'm going to the deforested site tomorrow." Da Graça switched the card to another picture.
He was the one who drew the pictorial cards last night; he was surprisingly terrific at it. Yesterday, there was a storm again, and William accidentally left the box filled with the pictorial cards in the center of the village, the spot we conducted yesterday's illustrated questionnaire.
"But you're helping me with the kids." I passed the card to whoever it was, still staring at da Graça. I just realized he had dimples when he smiled. A tiny mole marked his left cheek. He really looked like a kid. Harmless. No wonder the kids liked him. No wonder I liked him enough to depend on him.
Depend?
Da Graça shifted on the flip chair after he ruffled the boy's dirty hair. "This is the last batch of the children. We've been doing this for three days straight." He stared at the queuing naked kids inside the chief's house. "You can handle the grownups. I saw you working every day. You're doing great."
I looked at one kid who just entered the house. He had a monkey perching on his shoulders. Its hands were busy puttering with his unkempt black hair. I couldn't help shivers escaping me. I shifted closer to the sensei. "But there are still the monkeys." My voice almost shook.
"The monkeys are pets, Professor. Not wild animals. They will not go rabid," he said.
I stared at the roof, trying to squeeze my brain for any more excuses to keep him here without sounding suspicious. Sunlight peered into some of the minor cavities between the dried leaves, weakly illuminating the hammocks of the residents. One hen was laying eggs under a small decrepit table against the wooden wall. "How long are you going?"
Da Graça smiled and patted my arm; he pointed to the waiting four-year-old kid who was resting her small, muddy hands on my knees, leaving small hand prints on my black pants. The girl looked at me with big brown eyes, legs squirming from standing too long, I guessed. I called Ethan who was having a conversation with William and passed him my set of cards, asking him to take over. I pushed the kid gently to him.
Da Graça then said, "It takes three days to reach the site, a week for the sampling. So... two weeks?"
"A fucking fortnight?" I asked, not enjoying what I heard. I didn't know why my stomach squirmed in jitters, but I was sure it was because of the monkeys. Only he could save me from the hellhounds. He was a monkey whisperer. Kids and monkeys listened to him.
He looked at my unsolicited RA who was having a conversation with Essien and one of the villagers. "William came back this morning."
"I don't like him."
The sensei laughed, making the next kid in the line laugh too. He pinched the kid's chubby dirty cheek and said, "Você me lembra Myra." [You remind me of Myra.]
At first, I thought he was talking to the kid, but then he looked at me and smiled.
"Quem é a Myra?" ]Who's Myra?] I asked.
"Minha aluna de seis anos. Ela nunca quis treinar com outros instrutores. E sua razão seria: Eu não gosto dele." [My six-year-old student. She never wanted to train with other instructors. And her reason would be: I don't like him.]
To be compared to a six-year-old didn't hurt my pride, because he couldn't be more accurate about me. To know that he thought he was bad at reading people...
I said, "Bem, pelo menos ela concorda comigo que és um amor." [Well, at least she agrees with me that you're a sweetheart.]
His head flipped to me, hard and fast. "What?"
"What?" I shrugged, but inside, I was burning with embarrassment. Sweat trickled my back, both from the heat inside of me and the heat surrounding me.
Sweetheart? The fuck is that? Preposterous.
-II-
I groaned as John dabbed the wound on my ankle with antiseptic. "The horrendous creature will be the death of me," I said, the pounding in my sweaty chest relaxed. "I'm sure I won't receive a commendation from the government if I die here."
If the sensei was here, he would save me. He left for his research a fortnight ago and hadn't come back since.
John laughed off my concern while dressing the scrape on my knee. "The monkeys are pets here, not wild animals. You didn't have to go as far as climbing the tree. Why would you climb the tree though? It's counterintuitive."
"Damn thing gives me the willies."
John flicked his eyes toward the small tree I had failed to climb when the monkeys chased me like bloodhounds. "There. Done." He slapped my sprained ankle. It wasn't that bad, he said, so he basically ignored it.
My ankle flared and twitched. "Jesus! That hurt." I snapped at him. "Say, Doctor, you sure I don't need any kind of shot? Tetanus booster, maybe? Rabies shot?"
His dour disposition returned as he said, "You know what I'll do instead? I'll refer you to Chen for your hypochondria. This is not my field anymore."
I didn't have the time to rebuke because John's MA added: "No offense, Professor, but you fell on your own. The monkeys didn't even lay their fingers on you." He grinned and followed John out of the hut.
Look at these sonofabitches. They were ignoring a wounded patriot. How cold-hearted.
I stood, twitching from the sprained ankle. They disregarded me, thinking I was exaggerating. Hypochondriac? A physician called me a paranoid for worrying about my life. How more paradoxical could it be?
I peeked outside the hut, scanning the length and breadth of the village with a pounding heart. No monkeys in sight, so I stepped out.
The latening sun warmed my face. Sunset was an hour away. The air was placid and cooling down. A group of nude females was braiding each other's hair under that same shack where they cooked, while the men were hanging around the chief's house, smoking and drinking his homebrew manioc beer.
Beyond the tree that I had failed to climb at the outskirts of the village, five naked brats were throwing mangoes at a hornet nest on a tree. Then they scampered willy-nilly, screaming, although the fruit didn't even hit it. I bet their bodies would look like a toad's ass if the hornets became irate and stung them to death. There were zero boundaries for the hornets to cross between nature and their flesh; it was inviting.
I heard a croaking voice. William. It seemed to come from somewhere near. "And there are several other studies on this tribe's socialism. Nothing new I haven't read. But yeah, I can't deny, reading doesn't do justice to experience."
Peeking behind the hut, I saw him orating to the students about the tribe and flailing his arms like a squid. His back was against the hut. They were sitting on the ground in a small circle with a fire in the middle, like summer camp.
William had never sinned against me, but his existence was like the itch on my palm. I never know where to scratch to ease the incessant itch.
I cleared my unobstructed throat, and five heads turned to my direction in sync.
"Because there is nothing new to read. The paper was written over two decades ago. I'm sure lots of things have changed since then," I told William.
"Is the community always this small, Professor Smit? When I heard the word village, I thought it would be a... I don't know. Something more civilized," Alicia said.
I stared at the coal-black girl. I wondered why she and Zack flocked together with us every day. They should have something more pivotal to prove to the world rather than listening to William's discourse.
I rested my back against the hut; my black shirt absorbed the lingering heat. "The tribe is one of the sixteen tribes living in this part of the forest, and they're the biggest at six hundred plus. It made a comeback from an all-time low of ninety-four people in 1954... due to the measles epidemic. They were once on the precipice of extinction. Look at them now. Breeding like rabbits and thriving. So no. This tribe is not small."
William threw the pebble in his hand and rambled before I could continue talking. "Yeah. And due to the measles incident, the Brazilian authorities had declared Upper Xingu as a national park, specially reserved for the indigenous, so to prevent further intrusion and the spread of epidemics they hadn't grown immune to. Not like us. And... And most of the smaller tribes in this part of the Amazon are nomadic, but four of them, including this village, are sedentary. That's why their number is spurting in no time at all. Yeah."
"You're here to learn the language, right?" Alicia asked William.
The sun just slipped below the horizon, and she was beginning to blend in with the surrounding like a chameleon.
"Yeah. To transcribe it, to be exact. And I'm not sure if I can speak it in only three months. I bet Professor Smit can."
"Is that possible?" she asked me.
I'm dead sure I will.
"There's no earthly reason why it is not achievable. Ethnography is very effective in intercultural studies. That's essentially what I'm doing here, interacting with the native, so it will allow me to converse like a native too."
A gravelly voice called out from our left. That Heimlich maneuver laughter. Chaves.
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All I could make out from the distance were the silhouettes of the approaching people and the friction between the sole of shoes and grainy ground. The short silhouettes next to Chaves must be the sensei and their student, Michael.
My constricted chest felt spacious from knowing that the sensei had come back. I knew this feeling. It was the assurance I felt every time I saw my brother. My chest narrowed again.
God. I miss Alex.
"What's the topic of discussion? What's this? A summer camp? Perfect. Got us rodent for supper." Chaves paused. "Don't let the villagers know of our blasphemy. Eating fur-bearing animals could be a taboo here."
"I was asking Professor Smit the possibility of learning the tribe's language in three months, Professor," Alicia said.
"I'm sure he can. He's a polyglot." He put something big and hairy next to the fire source. Capybara. "The language is too alien to my ears, but I'm getting the hang of it. What's the name of the language again? Guarani?"
"Tupi-Guarani. Kamaiurá language is only spoken here. That's why it sounds alien to you." I pointed my index finger to the dry land.
"So it's not a different dialect? I thought it's the... accented dialect of Portuguese or something," Zack said.
Different dialect? Jesus. He must be tone-deaf.
"Nah. It's different," da Graça said. "Portuguese is Indo-European's, a West Romance language, together with Professor Chaves's mother tongue, Spanish. I'm Portuguese. Can't understand a word. Couldn't understand a word. Thanks to Professor Smit's... insistence on having me help him, I now know enough to speak... well, baby talk."
"He's right. That makes it a totally different language," I said. "Old Tupi was first spoken by preliterate Tupinambá people, and it stood out among other South American languages."
The crowd was silent. Waiting for me to continue talking, would be my guess.
So I switched on my anthropological button and continued. "Until the 16th century, Tupi languages were still spoken in many parts of Brazil, mainly in Amazonas, Pará, and here in Mato Grosso. The first account of the language dates back to the early 16th century, when colonists who came to Brazil would learn Tupi, 'cause it was the only mean of communication here at the time." I paused for effect.
"One holier than thou day, foreign Jesuits came to Brazil to evangelize the Indians. They began their missionary biblical works and interpreted the language into written Tupi. In 1759, a man, Marquis of Pombal, expelled the Jesuits, ergo, waning the written language. It happened in a flash of an eye because the new rush of Portuguese immigrants and colonists who discovered gold and gems around here only spoke their mother tongue. The coin flipped. Portuguese became the main communication instead.
"Thus sadly, the Old Tupi survived as a spoken language in isolated inland areas; this place for instance." I sighed. "Millions became thousands. The language split. There are three other villages here around Lake Ipavu, which interestingly share the very same culture with this tribe, but speak totally different languages."
"Aw, that's really sad and heartfelt," Alicia whined.
"In any case, I was afraid that one sorrowful day, spoken Tupi will be forgotten and perish from the Mother Nature the way a plethora of languages have gone extinct. Our aim is to prevent that, or should I say, to slow it down, as the cessation of languages is a part of language evolution. Well, I believe all linguistic anthropologists share the same sentiment. To extend the survival of a language."
"You're real good at lecturing, Luuk. I bet a thousand bucks you have the best undergraduates in the faculty." Chaves laughed.
"Er, that student is me," Ethan said.
"He was until he went behind my back and did a Ph.D. under Norman."
In the plethora of objectionable students in the linguistics department, Ethan was my favorite. He was not a genius, but he worked hard and his casual personality clicked with me. I never had to reiterate like a moron every time I talked to him.
"Oh, sir. The research objectives tempted me. I'm not against you in any way, but who doesn't want to go to the Amazon for such a study? I'll go down in history like Lucy Seki. You were one of the sacrifices I was willing to make."
The students laughed.
"And the Lord is just. God has shown you that I'm your Isaac," I said.
Ethan suddenly gasped dramatically when he looked to his right. A trail of a breathy whistle from him followed when da Graça and Michael started to skin the capybara they brought earlier. "Professor Chaves. That is a rodent?" Ethan pointed to the three-foot-long brown capybara on Chaves's leg. Ethan slowly retracted his knees closer to his chest.
"Never saw one? On Nat Geo? No?" Chaves asked. "It's a capybara, the largest rodent on the planet."
"It's a delicacy in Venezuela," I added.
"So you've tasted it before." Chaves took a knee next to the fire, helping to hold the rodent while da Graça skin its fat leg.
"No. I don't eat rats, thanks," I said.
"That big animal is a rat?" Alicia croaked.
"Linguistics anthropologist knows nothing about flora and fauna. Don't listen to him. It's more of a guinea pig than a rat. It tastes like pork," the sensei said with an edge to his voice.
I gasped and spit a diminutive insect that stuck onto my tongue. "You were the one who mistook caiman for a crocodile, and I am the one who knows nothing about fauna?" I scoffed. "Preposterous."
No response.
It took several tries for Chaves to convince the students (except for Michael) to eat it once they grilled it well done. Then they gobbled on it like there would not be tomorrow. After two weeks of feasting on fish and beiju, even something as gross as pork made me salivate. The level I was stooping to... Good Lord.
"Professor Smit?" Chen called out from our right. His voice was so unusual, I didn't need to think twice. It was so gentle, yet thick, like the sound of bubbles underwater.
"Yes?" I grimaced at the taste of the capybara meat. Bland, like rubber.
"Chen. Come join us," Chaves said to the psychiatrist. "I couldn't find you anywhere earlier."
"Look at the fire. Reminds me of Camp Mariah." He laughed but didn't sit down. "Never mind. Thanks for the invitation. And Smit, I was working in the tent just now, using the computer, etcetera. Please know that we're dangerously low on petrol. I don't think the generator will last to this weekend."
"And William, you didn't care to tell me?" I asked William's legs. That was all I could see.
"I was about to," his legs answered by straightening up in front of him.
Chen continued: "Please keep me posted on your decision. I could always come with you to the transition village to buy petrol. Now, I'll be in the chief's house in case you're looking for me. He's brewing manioc beer." He chuckled and walked away.
The only reason I would be looking for the psychiatrist was if I went out of my tree from having to deal with William again.
"I'll go with Zack tomorrow if that's alright," William said.
"You'll stay here and continue your work. Save whatever data you can before the generator dies on you. I'll go instead." I turned to da Graça. "Você vem comigo, sensei." [You're coming with me, teacher.]
"Oh, só agora você se importa de me perguntar diretamente? Eu pensei que você vai pedir Aaron para me fazer trabalhar para você e mentir sobre ele." [Oh, only now you care to ask me directly? I thought you'd ask Aaron to make me work for you and lie about it.] He sounded annoyed.
So he knew about me asking Chaves for his help. I glanced at Chaves's direction. Loudmouth.
I didn't feel the need to explain. Without compunction, I said: "So... Is that a yes? I could ask for Chaves's consent if you really need one. He agreed with me all right last time. And this is not some kind of conscription. But that won't change anything. Você ainda está vindo comigo. Olhe para o meu tornozelo. Você não estava aqui, e eu quase morri." [You're still coming with me. Look at my ankle. You were not here, and I almost died.]
"Oh, that sounds exactly like conscription to me." He stayed silent for a few seconds. A babble of noise lingered around us. Then he answered. "I'm bitter with Aarón as much as I'm angry with you, but I've spent the whole week with him, and I needed to get away."
"Oh, now I'm your escape hatch?" I mimicked his breathy 'Oh'.
"You really don't recognize an emotional cue." He sighed.
"I don't. So are you coming with me?"
He shook his head, but he answered yes. Weird guy. Having two contradictory ideas in his brain must have had made him woozy.
I patted his head. "Sweet creature. I know you enjoy being with me." I laughed, and he groaned. "Hey, don't you have salt? I could really use some salt. The meat is damn plain. Now I know I don't miss out anything not eating pork." I threw the bone into the fire, and the fire roared for a moment, highlighting everyone's face.
-III-
"Então precisamos voltar aqui a cada duas semanas para o gás porque é racionado?" [So we need to come back here every other week for gas coz it's rationed?] da Graça asked the shopkeeper, exasperated. Like a thirsty animal, he looked at the gasoline barrels stacked against the shebang's frail wall.
The town was anachronistic, stinking to high heaven, and miserable. Every hundred steps, there was a small shop that sold nothing useful to us. Fertilizer, livestock, plants, doodads, fertilizer, snacks, plants, doodads. This place was not a residential town. It was simply a transition point for commodities trading, the same town we stopped two weeks ago to stock on gasoline before we reached Kamaiurá-though it was Chaves and Michael who bought it before.
They only allowed us to buy a barrel of fuel. I had expected that much. Gasoline wasn't an abundant commodity in this part of the world. Coming here every week or every month was not an optimum choice; every week would be too cumbersome, and for a 12000-watt generator, a hundred liters of gasoline won't last for a month even if we rationed the usage to several hours per day.
"Now we know we can't try to use Skype every day to call home." I sighed, counting the money to pay the fat, sweaty, amazingly smelly shopkeeper.
"Really? It's my fault we ran out of fuel?" he snapped.
"I said 'we', not 'you'. Where did you learn your English? Japan?"
His cheeks reddened, and he whispered a weak sorry. He looked reluctant, but then he bowed to me and exited the pungent store.
The shopkeeper's jowls shivered when he said he would send someone to transfer the barrel to our small boat. I asked him if there was any motel around.
"Onde vais?" [Where are you going?] Da Graça trailed behind me when I walked in the opposite direction of him. "That's not where the boat is."
"Looking for a hotel. Motel. Room. B and B. Pig pen. Whatever the hell they call it here. I haven't slept in two days. I'm not going through a miserable four-day trip when I can separate it into two-day jaunts."
"You're spending the night here? I... I didn't bring any changes of clothes. And the boatman will be waiting for us."
"I let him know earlier." I scanned his black clothes. "And I've told you to bring extra clothes." I continued walking to a one-level brick building with a false front. No name board. "I don't like sharing, but I hate to see a gay man naked in front of me either. I have an extra for you to wear."
"Told you I'm not gay." He paused. "You read the Bible and the Quran every morning. What are you? Christian? Muslim? Are you... homophobic? You always find the need to mention about me being gay. What's the deal even if I am gay?"
"Let me make this clear. I have nothing against same-sex relationships. I just don't trust gays. It's my issue." I pushed the creaking wooden door and headed straight to the obese female receptionist behind the tattered, mold-smelling desk. "But you're the last person I would see as a predator. Don't worry." Weird, but my homo radar didn't really go off when I was with him.
"Not that I'm not glad you don't see me as a predator or something. But why not?"
I shrugged a shoulder. "God knows why."
Then I continued wending my way along the muggy, short hallway. This place looked like a scene from James Wan's movies. Cobwebs stuck on every nook and cranny of the ceiling. I shoved the key to our room into the rattling knob.
"Jesus, I hope there won't be any storms. Or we'd lie gazing at the stars tonight." I pushed the squeaking door open, and my feet fixed on the threshold. My heart almost froze. Something painful began to flutter in my stomach when I saw the bed, and I had to take several deep breaths to calm the crawling paranoia in the box I had locked behind my head. I honest to God didn't think that the dirt-cheap room in the middle of this shitty town would provide a proper legged bed.
Da Graça stood next to me. "O que está errado? Não ir em?" [What's wrong? Not going in?]
I barely heard him from the pounding in my ears. "Sensei. I think... it's fine to go back today. I changed my mind."
"Why?" He pushed me gently and peeked into the room. "I know you're all about luxury, and I can't say the room is good, but it's not Hell either, no matter how hot the room is." He crawled onto the navy blue queen-sized bed (there was almost no space to walk in this seventy-square-feet room) and switched on the fan. It mewled to life and blew humidity toward my direction. He then pushed the bay window, and the heat dissipated. "The river is more than a mile away. I'm not walking again. It's almost dark outside. You know I can't see well in the dark." He was kneading his knee as he spoke.
I wiped the forming sweat above my lip. I could feel the pulse in my wrist.
"Hey, what's wrong? Sit down. You look pale." He reached for my elbow, and I slapped his hand away.
"I'm fine."
"Let me tell you this again. No matter how... mushy you see me, I am not gay. I won't take advantage of you even if we share the same bed." He grinned, but it was muscle-work. No endorphins were involved.
I snorted. Perhaps it was the defense mechanism from the panic, but I found his facetious remark hilarious. Mushy. So I laughed until my diaphragm got as tight as my schedule at Stanford University.
"What's so funny?" He sat on his folded legs, the way Japanese do.
"You actually think you can take advantage of me? A mushy guy like you?" I pinched his cheek.
"Ow!" He slapped my hand, mumbling something in Japanese. He extended his hand. "The shirt you wanna lend me."
I stared at his small palm. Can he save me with his small, mushy hand?
But he saved me from the monkeys. Monsters listened to him. He was a monster whisperer. I would be fine with him here. Yes, I would.
My paranoia crawled back to the back of my mind.
He would definitely save me from the monster under the bed.