-Part 2-
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.
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.
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