Beneath A Million Leaves

Yassur and I grouched under our torn canvass tents as the rain launched but another offensive as we waited for a break in the downpour and the coolness of night. The humidity and heat were unbearable. The rain was warm and bullet like, and provided no relief. Yet a dive in the river was no feasible prospect as I had observed a great abundance of caiman, probably due to the near absence of human presence. As the rain pooled in my broad-rimmed hat and dropped onto my nose, I thought to myself what folly it had been to embark on a trip to the Amazon in the middle of the rainy season. As zoological professor at Harvard University and assistant curator to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, I had been tasked to reach an un-contacted tribe in the Amazonian rainforest.

The storms had allowed me to get to know my Indian guide well. Yassur was the finest specimen of the Amazonian Indian I know. Although in his late 50s, his years hadn't caught up with him yet. He had the physique of a gymnast that defied fatigue, and long flowing black hair that reached to his waist. His tan-colored skin bode well with his roughly chiseled features. On his left cheek there was a white scar of which the origin he would not reveal. His voice was low and guttural. When he sang, an eerie wisdom traversed through the language barrier. He was quiet and impassive, yet fiercely loyal and capable of herculean strength. On our journey up river, he had seen rustlings in a tree half a mile away, identified it as a squirrel monkey, and then stalked it until it ended roasting over the fire, a victim of a poison arrow masterfully shot from an enormous blow pipe. I later observed the monkey to be a new sub-species, which I named the black-tipped squirrel monkey because of the spot of black on its tail.

The break in the weather came early that night, and Yassur and I pounced on it with both hands. Soon we were packed, ready, and had set off under a dense canopy of leaves. (From now I rely on the journal I had started to write under the tent to help pass time) Thus weighed down by packs and gear, we slosh through the knee-deep mud in the coolness of night. Wings of innumerable birds can be heard high in the canopy. A jarring yet peaceful symphony of insects chorus from all around. Perspiration drips from my forehead as heat, jaguars, and hostile indians pace through my mind amid the clouds of flies obscuring my head lamp and the scent of night blossoming flowers.

At day break I sink into the moss of a dead tree and lay my head back exhausted after the night’s walk. My eyelids start to close and a stupor of sleep encloses me. A hand grasps my shoulder and shakes me violently. In broken English Yassur tells me,”No camp here, come see.” A couple meters from where I had been peacefully reposing Yassur points at the ground. Cold sweat pours from my forehead, my eyes bulge from their sockets as I kneel down and place my hand next to a paw print so large it dwarfs mine. “El tigre,” Yassur murmurs. Further away he leads me to a tree stripped of its bark as enormous claws rake its surface. They extend 4 meters high, well into the first thick branches. A strong smell of musk penetrates the air. A jaguar of proportions so epic it could be confused with the largest of tigers had visited this area very recently. I quaked with fear and tried to master myself in vain.

“How old?” I stutter. Yassur puts up one finger. I must recount that from that moment we walked briskly and speedily into the jungle in the opposite direction of the tracks until we made camp at midday, all traces of sleep gone.

With camp struck, Yassur goes out hunting as I try to start the fire from the soggy kindling I possess. How that fire mocks! I try for minutes on end to get a flame to light. A long string of obscenities pours out of my mouth that I do not know I hosted. In no small part due to this onslaught of curses the fire leapt out in time to see Yassur come back empty handed. I can not glean anything from his countenance as no emotion ever betrays his handsome features. “Sir!” he exclaims in a worrying tone,”I see no game, but many signs of indians” The jungle seems to come alive as I hear those words. I feel like hundreds of eyes were concealed behind the foliage. Yassur beckons to me as he sets off through the rainforest. Under the shade of an overhanging boulder is an image of a goddess and further away a newly felled tree done in a way only a human could. Flames leap in my heart. Months of toil are soon to be rewarded.

“Yassur, tonight, we search for them and in the morning we meet them.” His usually impassive features suddenly reveal deep anguish. But before I can utter a word the apparition is gone. Walking back to camp we decide to fish for our lunch despite the dangers that lurk in the waters of the lagoon we have encamped by. I cast my line far into the middle of the water and wait. Suddenly and with no warning the line is ripped from my hands with a mighty jerk and starts to slide fast into the murky water. What happens next is extremely hard to recount. My pen shakes and I am gripped with incredible misery and fury. The adrenaline from that moment courses once more through my body and I relive the awful chain of events.

That loyal Yassur, he dives for the line and grabs it with both his hands only to come across a force more formidable and capable than his own. Up from the murky depths bursts a caiman of a size I believed no longer attainable by reptiles. Its cold black eyes dance with blue flames as it opens it jaws wide and clamps down onto the poor fellows leg.

What took place next was a show of strength as man and beast grappled with each other mercilessly. As the strength slowly and inevitably sapped from both, Yassur was knocked to his back and I though it over had it not been for his quick mind. He grabbed his bowie knife from his belt and stabbed the giant through the heart. Blood seeped everywhere and colored the waters red as the caiman wreathed with the spasms of death until it sank back into the lagoon to be devoured by his comrades.

Yassur lay expiring on the bank, a big gash in his leg that bled profusely. I knelt by his side and wept. “Sir not cry, do not meet my brothers, think of what has happened in the past,” Yassur uttered in a barely audible voice. I took his head in my hands and watched the life drain out of his eyes. With one last effort he cried,”Sir must not be sad, not be sad,” and took his final breath. I pushed his body back into the lagoon. There he would once more be part of the forest he loved, once more be part of his home.
I staggered back to camp over come with the crushing blow that had just been dealt upon me. The tears blurred my eyes and formed streams gurgling down my cheek and streaming to the corners of my mouth. How long I wept I do not know. I was not able to honor his last words in that respect making my grief all that much the worse. Alas! The Western heart is not made of what an Indian’s is. A life of luxury and reclining on the plushest couches does not prepare one for the savagery of life as it once used to be.

Slowly, like an exhausted well the waters that fed my tears stopped coming and my vision cleared. “Do not meet my brothers, think of what has happened in the past” Yassur had murmured into my ears. Those words; those faithful words! Every safe possesses a lock with a finely crafted key to unlock its hidden contents. Yet memories have no lock or key. The keys change and mold. So do the locks. Memories buried under the debris of ages take no small key to unlock. Yet that broken sentence let out memories of my childhood, pouring over textbooks studying the downfall of native civilizations across the globe at the hand of the white man. Memories of me giving passionate speeches on what injustice Europeans have performed.

I felt like a knife had been driven through my heart and I gasped in pain. How could I have been so blind? How much, if not for Yassur, would I have burdened that unlucky civilization a day’s journey from my camp? Tears fell once more, tears of remorse, tears of the pressure and the worry I had been abject to for the past months. Delirious with fever yet enlightened and at peace with my discovery I decided to return to my home, where the white man belongs, the places that he has created.