-I-
Although I had only known Professor Smit for a week, I knew he hated small talk. He had never started a conversation with anyone in the delegation. He especially never made eye contact with Aarón. So when I saw him approaching Aarón who was talking to Dr. John after we had our breakfast, I was naturally suspicious. So I stared at them as I helped the women wash the cutlery.
Professor Smit didn't share the same disposition as Aarón. Aarón would fling his arms around as he talked, but Professor Smit would either stand akimbo while looking down or hug himself while tilting his head. I lost sight of the professor twice. Once when a group of tribesmen passed by me while carrying the same leaves they used for the roof, and once when Aarón stood akimbo in front of him. Like me and almost everyone here (the exception being Dr. John), he was half of Aarón's size. They talked for almost five minutes. Professor Smit then scanned the village. He grinned when he saw me. He kneaded his diamond earrings; he wore a set of them today.
I thought he was going to say something to me as he and Dr. John reached the shack, but they passed me and headed for Essien and the village chief.
"Hey, Jona," Aarón called out, beckoning me over. He was now in our hut, strapping his boots.
"What? We're going now?" I said when I reached him.
The FUNAI representatives couldn't come to greet us yesterday because it was said that there was a fight in the neighboring village. So we were going to the camp today to send our paperwork for the site study.
"Change of plans." He stood, towering over me. "I'll go and meet the FUNAI guys with Michael. I need you to stay here and monitor Alicia and Zack. They're setting up the satellite dish." He pointed toward the logistics tent the students sprung up yesterday.
"What?" Even I knew it was a lame excuse. As if I knew any better about technology. I didn't even know Insta Story was a thing until last year, and he knew it.
I knew he decided that it was a bad idea for me to follow him today because Dr. John had to help me massaging my thigh this morning. My muscles had spasmed in pain the whole night due to the cold.
He sighed. "You had bad cramps this morning, querida. You shouldn't push it. Take it easy. Talk to Dr. John. I'm going today just to... well, build rapport with the men. We can start the survey next week after I get the whole info on the terrain from them, okay?"
And here I was, still in the village an hour later when he had gone to the basecamp. I slammed the book I was reading on my rucksack and stood from the hammock.
"This is stupid," I whispered, finally having the mood to monitor Alicia.
"What's so stupid?" Dr. John ducked into the hut. He rolled the canvas 'door' and tied it up. Sunlight peered into the hut, hurting my eyes.
My cheeks warmed. "Nothing."
He scanned me up and down with his black eyes. He was as tall as Aarón, six-foot-three. So when he scrutinized me, it looked like he was prying into my brain with his medical equipment.
Adrian, his medical assistant, ran into the hut. The skinny black guy took the first aid kit under the table and rushed back outside while shouting: "Got this!" The right side of the hut was made into a small working spot, with a folding table and two folding chairs.
I stood at the entrance, calculating whether to ask Dr. John if I could follow Aarón tomorrow. I didn't even ask, but he answered me. "Scouting the forest is not a stroll through the park. You should know better. I told you yesterday that you shouldn't push yourself. You can go once they come back with clear information on the terrain."
He was saying the same thing as Aarón. It made me wonder if that was what they were talking about with Professor Smit this morning.
"But when will I get better? It has been almost six months, and I still have to depend on Oxy when it hurts."
"I'm here to talk about that. We should've talked about it before we came here, actually. Anyway, sit." He pointed to the chair in front of him as he sat on the opposite one.
He stared at me with questioning eyes while probing into the big black medical box on the table. "Da Graça, I allowed you to join this expedition because you're... I would say ninety percent recovered. You should understand the challenges that come with outdoor therapy. I'm here to navigate you through the process. But you also need to understand the extent of your injuries and how far you can push yourself."
The extent of my injuries. I had fractured my hip bone and broken my tibia in six places. I had to have fasciotomies for them to release the pressure in my leg and to get the blood flowing. My orthopedic surgeon had said if I came half an hour later, they would probably have to amputate it.
My finger traced the raised scar along the length of my lower leg. A memento I had to bear my whole life. A proof that I, regrettably, had escaped death. I remembered the day I was wheeled into the emergency room. My father had been crying while holding my hand; and instead of wanting to survive, I prayed to God to take me away. At least I would get to be with my mother in Heaven. But again, God had disappointed me.
Dr. John advised me about opioid medication and the risks of abusing it; the same risks I dreaded. It broke my heart every time I had to swallow the pill. I didn't like the memory that came with it. Dr. John wasn't the one who took my case, but he didn't agree with my physician's prescription. He told me he had asked for a second opinion from Dr. Chen, so we agreed to change my medication to non-opioid painkillers that he had brought to the village (he surprisingly had a large selection of drugs with him). It made the buzzing inhibition on the back of my head relaxed.
I walked out of the hut five minutes later with convoluted information on my own health status. After a few drags of cigarettes, I started toward the logistics tent. Hysterical laughter came from the six-meter Emperor Bell Tent. From the entrance, I could see Alicia and Zack, the forestry students, were joking around a table with a laptop on it. Ethan, Professor Smit's student, wore his round glasses and stepped out of the tent the same time I entered it.
"Oh, hey. Morning, Jona," he said with a small smile. "You're still here. So you've decided to help us with the questionnaire?"
I frowned, not understanding what he was talking about. "What questionnaire?"
"You weren't briefed?" He looked confused.
I just shook my head.
"I'll have Professor Smit talk to you. He could explain it better than me." He smiled and went out.
I watched him until he disappeared behind the tent, trying to understand what he meant.
"Good morning, sir Jona," Alicia said, looking up from her laptop.
She was small-build but muscly. Her skin was the darkest and prettiest shade of brown I had ever seen. It was almost matte black. It made the white of her eyes and teeth looked luminous, like last night's full moon.
"Told you to call me Jona. Sir sounds weird on me." I sat on an available chair next to Zack, who was tinkering with a walkie-talkie. "You got things figured out yet? Saw you guys put up the satellite dish this morning."
"The manual has been helpful so far. Got the generator working, that's one. We point the satellite dish toward the equator, that's two. Ethan is attaching the coaxial cable..." She went on and on about calibrating the dish and technological jargon I could barely understand. So I asked something that I understood.
"Can we Skype with the connection?"
She looked up from the manual and gathered her black, corkscrew hair into a ponytail. Her forehead was beading with sweat. "Satellite internet can be erratic. Weather can greatly dilute the signal. We'll see. I'll let you know when we get the network in, Jona. Why? Damsel at home and you're in distress?" She winked.
I laughed. I was looking forward to calling Noel and seeing how Karma and my students were doing. But I didn't explain it to her.
"I thought you were supposed to go to the FUNAI camp with Professor Chaves and Michael?" she added and drank from her blue bottle.
"Not today." I shrugged, not expounding on the subject. "Anything I can help you with? I'm supposed to monitor your work here, but I see you're doing something I could barely comprehend."
She laughed. "I'm good. Ethan is an obedient lackey."
"I heard that!" Ethan said from outside. "Got the cable, anyway."
"I'll leave you to your business then." I stood.
"I'll let you know once we get a connection."
"Wait." Zack ducked and opened a gray box under the table. "Here."
"Walkie-talkie?"
"You know how to use it?" he asked.
Well, of course. I had used it several times when I hiked American jungles. "Push to talk. Right?" I touched the button on the side of the gadget.
"Everyone has one. Professor Chaves has set up a private channel with you. We're all on channel two." He showed me how to change the frequency. I knew how to do that, but I decided to be polite and listened.
"How far does this reach?" I asked the only one thing I wasn't sure about.
"A mile and a half, maybe farther. We'll know once we start the trek next week."
"Got it," I said and walked away.
It was barely nine in the morning and I had no activity for the day, thanks to the overprotective Aarón.
"You here?" I talked into the walkie-talkie when I reached the hut. Sitting down on my hammock, I waited for Aarón to answer.
The line cracked five seconds later.
"Hey, sweetie. Missed me?" Aarón said.
I wasn't in the mood for his jokes, so I said, "Ethan said something about a questionnaire. What exactly did you talk about with Professor Smit? What's your reason for holding me up?"
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"I told you, Jona. I just want you to take it easy today."
"And?"
He sighed. "Luuk was asking me if he could use your help for his study, considering you'll be in the village today."
I chuckled, but I wasn't finding it funny. Well, it was funny, but in an annoying way. "If he wants help, shouldn't he ask me himself?"
"I'm sure he will."
I was too annoyed to respond. Making decisions without taking my opinion into account was cheap. So I switched off the device and threw it on Professor Smit's hammock.
I scouted the village to burn daylight. The place was too bare. I had nothing to do other than walking and appreciating how thick the trees and the oxygen were. I used to hike a lot as a Forestry student. Even though I was not a fan of the fauna, insects to be exact, the flora calmed me. The air was clean and clear. The timber here didn't smell of varnish. The only smoke in this village came from the burning firewood. The witch doctor's hut didn't smell like my father's office and disinfectant. Again, I was away from the city, away from him.
I sighed, trying to exhale the thought together with my breath.
A shirtless tribesman cycled lakeward. As a group of naked children ran past my left side, Professor Smit shouted Ethan's name somewhere on my right. Ethan came running from the tent with something in his hand—I was too far from them to see what it was—and they were gesturing to each other before they entered the chief's house.
Professor Smit was an amusing guy if I overlooked his arrogance. He was so good at socializing when he wanted to. Somehow, despite his negative traits, he was amicable. He had said that he hated talking with humans, but he did talk a lot. Perhaps it was the lecturer in him? Perhaps it was his inherent talent? His gift of the gab?
He had an affinity for the other egghead, Dr. Chen. Birds of a feather flock together, I guess. Just this morning at breakfast, they were deep in conversation about the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Both were not fans of the Germans, from their openly xenophobic comments about them.
I heard that Dutch people are proud of their directness and their tell-it-as-they-see-it mentality. The rumor is real. Professor Smit did well at representing his birth country.
Five half-naked tribeswomen walked past me with a basket in hands.
"Hey. Deixe-me ir com você...?" [Let me come with you?] I pointed to the basket and to the cassava farm.
I knew they were heading to the farm. They did the same thing yesterday. The villagers wouldn't understand official Portuguese, but they would get my gesture.
The women giggled and nodded, so I followed them through a path that led to a football-field-sized cassava farm and orchard at the edge of the village. It took us fifteen minutes to reach this place. Red branches of the waist-high shrubs stretched out a few yards to the horizon, adding vibrancy to the surrounding greenery. My mind was filled with nostalgia.
When I was a teenager, my mother taught me Japanese cuisines. She was a brilliant cook. I have all of her recipes embedded in my head. We had a cassava shrub in our backyard too. My mother would unbury the tuber and steam it, and we would eat the flesh with sugar.
It took us an hour to harvest enough cassava to make bread for almost six hundred people. Tapioca bread, or as they called it beiju, was their staple. Every nuclear family usually prepared the food independently. They only made it into group work because we were here as guests.
We headed back to the village and started preparing lunch. Several tribesmen brought fish, and the women grilled them. Alicia and Zack joined us half an hour later.
"I assume we'll eat this parched bread every day?" Zack flipped the bread on the big pan, sighing. His eyebrows made him look like he had a permanent scowl. A thin, vertical scar on his right eyebrow gave him a harsher expression.
"Oh, come on, Zack. That's low key rude. You eat what they give or not at all. Besides, this parched bread gives you enough carbs to function the whole day," Alicia said.
"They have snacks here too if you ever get bored... I can see you already are." Ethan slapped his shoulder and sat on the ground between Zack and Alicia.
"Snack? Really? As in?" Zack's protruded eyes thinned in suspicion.
"I saw the kids grilled grasshoppers like s'mores yesterday," Alicia said.
"And big ants," Ethan added as he focused the viewfinder of the camera toward the heating pan. "They seemed to enjoy 'em."
"You could build your food pyramid scheme with those," I said and the other two laughed, but they didn't know how much I cringed inside from the imagery of grilled grasshoppers.
"Never mind. I'm already appreciative of this flimsy bread now." Zack shoved a fistful of hot bread into his mouth and writhed in agony.
I threw him my water bottle as I laughed, and he chugged the water down his throat.
"Are you an idiot?" Alicia clutched her stomach as she laughed hysterically. "Oh, damn. Your face is precious. Did you get his pictures, Ethan? We can make a meme out of them."
He snapped photos of the weary Zack who was leaning against the shack's pillar, and counted each time he clicked on the shutter button.
"Da Graça." Professor Smit approached us. "I've been searching for you high and low, and here you are, playing house. Jesus. I was on the cusp of losing my patience." He threw his notebook and a voice recorder on the ground and sat on a tree stump stool next to Ethan.
"Where's your walkie-talkie, Professor Smit?" Zack asked. "You could've hollered him."
"Why, thank you for the patent insight." He tsked. "This device you gave me is sans battery." He tossed his walkie talkie to Zack, who caught it with both hands.
"Ah, sorry. I'll get you one after lunch."
Professor Smit dismissed him with a flail of his hand and scanned me up and down.
What's his problem?
"Por que você está procurando por mim?" [Why are you looking for me?] I asked.
The edge of his lips curved in almost an evil way. "Mudança de plan," [Change of plan,] Professor Smit said.
"Tenho a certeza que não planeei nada contigo." [I'm sure I didn't plan anything with you.]
"I have made one for you, naturally." He untied his hair, gathered the wayward strands, and retied it.
So they really made decisions about me behind my back.
His sleeve lifted up and I saw a humanoid bite scar on his left arm. He was more muscular than I thought. Lean like an athlete, broad-shouldered. Then I remembered he told me something about his Jiu-Jitsu trainer. But he didn't look like a martial arts practitioner. Maybe I was being judgemental, but nothing about his posh look suggested that he could be a fighter of some sort.
"There's something I wanted to run past you. So... I found out that Chaves withheld you from the track surveying. And to be honest, that is convenient for me." He kneaded his earlobe. "I require extra hands... well, ears and mouth actually. I need to shepherd as many under-twelve kids as I can and have them orally answer some picture questionnaire. The issue here is," he glanced at the banana trees behind the shack, and whispered, "monkeys are impeding my work. I couldn't punch above my weight when it comes to primates." He shivered as if 'primates' was an atrocious expletive. "You're supposed to be good with them, aren't you?"
"So what was your original plan?" I ignored his egocentric plan. I spread the tapioca dough onto the big pan. The dancing steam tickled the tip of my fingers.
"To have you aid me once you come back from the trekking."
I glanced at him. I couldn't help laughing at his absurdity when he said it with a straight face. "I'm feeling a little backed into a corner here, Professor."
"Well, that's great! Ethan, you're coming too. Zack or Alicia can substitute for photography. William has gone with the chief and Essien to the neighboring village. I'm sure they're not coming back anytime soon."
"William is your RA. He should be the one who helps you. Why me?" I said.
"Didn't you listen to me about him canoeing to the other village at the moment? Tsk." He glanced at Ethan who was taking pictures of the tribeswomen stacking pieces of bread on a wooden tray. Professor Smit then leaned toward me, harrumphed, and whispered: "Besides, I like you more than Norman's... well, my garrulous RA. You should ditch Chaves's ass and become my RA instead so I don't have to deal with him much." His voice seemed like it vibrated deep in his chest.
Something sweet and floral and bitter wafted into my nose. Something expensive. Bergamot. I always hated bergamot, but it smelled heavenly on him. I must have gone nuts because shivers ran up my chest and blood rushed to my face. I like you? What kind of answer is that?
I glanced toward the cloudy sky when my face cooled down. The sun was right above our heads. "Você quer minha ajuda agora? É hora do almoço." [You want me to help you now? It's lunchtime.]
He clicked his tongue. "Não agora. Talvez em duas horas?" [Not now. Maybe in two hours?]
I felt like pulling out his tongue and stomping on it. "Eu não saberia o tempo. Eu não tenho um relógio." [I wouldn't know the time. I don't have a watch.] I gave him a stupid answer just to annoy him the way he annoyed me.
"Your vacuous pretense is on purpose, huh?" He shook his head and said something in Dutch. He was cursing, I was sure. He cursed a lot. He unfastened his blue-strapped watch and pulled my hand. "It's ludicrous how a man doesn't own a timepiece. I swear, next thing I know, you're gonna compute a horologic ephemeris from stick shadows." He clipped his watch around my wrist and stood up.
Perplexed, both from not understanding his jargon and from his action, I stared at the watch. Breitling Exospace. My hand jerked toward him as I gasped. "Wait! Take it back. This costs... at least five thousand dollars. Don't joke around with something this pricey." I tried to get it off, but he flailed his hand in front of me.
"It's not five K. It's eight point six K. It's cheap. Keep it. I have another watch with me. You've been ruffling my feathers since last week... asking Chaves the time every damned day. Give it back to me after we finish this expedition, then go buy one already." He peeked behind me. "So, what's for lunch? The insipid bread again?"
-II-
Fifty-three kids aged seven to twelve years old clustered around us, seated on the ground, enjoying the sweets I brought with me from America. Some of them had a monkey perched on their shoulders.
"It was not even that hard to gather them," I said to the professor. "I gathered fifty percent of the total children in this village on the first try."
"Yeah, using candies like a creep." He stood close to me, peeking at the crowd with a frown, rattled. "And when I said primates, I wanted you to gather homo sapiens, not monkeys."
"Quantas vezes devo dizer-lhe? Eles não vão incomodá-lo, Professor." [How many times should I tell you? They won't bother you, Professor.]
"Tell that to my twelve-year-old self!"
"What happened to your... twelve-year-old self?" I asked. "You have a bad history with monkeys?"
"Bad history?" he hissed. "Bad history is Christopher Columbus's history in the school textbook." He rolled his sleeve and showed the humanoid bite scars. "I was attacked by two monkeys that were so hell-bent on stealing my M&M's."
I cringed from my spiritual pain. "Sorry to hear that." I approached a box containing flashcards, the kind you use to teach kids in pre-school. "É isso que você quer que eu te ajude?" [Is this what you want me to help you with?]
"Yes." He threw a suspicious glance toward the monkeys before he approached me. "This and interviews. The people are illiterate, so this is the only work-around. We will find out the correlation of language shift with age for now."
"So there has been a study about the language? Researchers had reached this place before?"
"Yes. In 1976 and 2000. Though twenty years ago, there was barely four hundred tribespeople in this village, and the assimilation of the societies was low. I have the complete lexicon from the study in 2000, and it will be a reference for me to codify the language shift and re-transcribing the language... in case I found any shift."
"Como vamos entrevistá-los? Nós não falamos a sua língua. Você?" [How will we interview them? We don't speak their language. Do you?] I was sure I knew the response.
"Theoretically, yes. I am not yet conversant in their vernacular. I will be after three months. The vocabulary is small. We're here for the practicality. But to answer your first question, several tribesmen are fluent in Portuguese in this village. They participated in a Teacher Training Course in the year 2000. It was to educate the tribespeople in the national language of Brazil--Portuguese. Essien and them will help us with the interview and interpretation throughout the study period." He pointed toward three men around his age.
They were distributing the flashcards and talking to the naked children.
"This is where you will be functional to me. Besides me, you're the only one... well, let's exclude William and Chaves who are not here now... who can speak both Portuguese and English."
His train of thought clicked in my brain. "So I'm a translation tool for your students? I thought Ethan can speak Portuguese."
"That's another thing you'll help me with. Speaking Portuguese with him. He's not that fluent. He's decent in reading, but not in speaking. It's a pain to work at his pace. And to be exact, you're the interpretation tool. But you get the gist, yes. You have your head screwed on right." He smiled. It looked genuine from how many porcelain teeth he was showing me.
I didn't understand how he could exploit me and look so happy about it.
"And don't think I'm exploiting your labor. I'll pay your salary as my RA."
"One, let me reiterate that I'm not your RA. I'm helping just... for the sake of it. Two, I don't need a salary."
"As the owner of three gyms in Palo Alto, I'm sure you have a heap of money in your bank account. But it's still unethical to use your service without remunerating you."
When he didn't open his mouth, he looked... amicable and breathtaking. The harsh sunlight highlighted his blond wavy hair that barely touched his wide shoulders. His reddened, mild sun-tanned skin that appeared too flawless for a man glistened in sweat. He even gave out the air of regality.
But he was simply a posh, rude anthropologist.