After Diamonds
an excerpt

6 May
Rio Negro, Brazil
Money left: 120 cruzeiros; $80US in (unusable) traveller’s checks

R. and I are on a riverboat sliding down the Rio Negro toward Manaus. The fare for the 3-day journey was $8, so we are almost broke, and this is the final stretch. We joined the Negro last night from the Branco – suddenly leaving our brown river and entering what seemed like a vast satiny lake. We stood on deck and saw the Southern Cross high in the sky, the stars gleaming in the river.

But now it's the last morning and I’m sitting on the wooden bow watching dawn on the river surface. An even funkier boat just chugged by trailing an opalescent wake. The young cook brought me a cup of delicious coffee – all the way up here from the tiny “galley,” if you can call it that, way below. We’ve crossed the equator.

Our boat is so beautiful. There are about 30 passengers on this tiny (30-ft.?) vessel steaming down this glossy, sky-veined river, the hammocks in their soft rose-orange colors hung up all through the boat in gentle arcs. All the kids were loosening up and socializing by last night. There was a big poker/rummy game in the middle of the deck, under the hammocks, with my pack of cards.
This morning everyone, everyone, trooped around with their toothbrushes decorated with an inch of white toothpaste. It was so funny -- not one, not two, not three, but thirty, and the numerousness changes to very funny and finally to a kind of pop art.

I am working on my Portuguese every day, but it is so much harder than Spanish. The pronunciation, the tenses, everything. I haven’t even reached the point yet of distinguishing words – so far it’s just a jumble. Beautiful to listen to, though!

Yesterday we stopped at a decrepit dock by a little forsaken hut. As we all jumped off the boat each of us was instantly struck by the presence and gravity of the jungle – tall stately trees at least 70 feet tall, royal palms, thick medium-sized trees about 30 feet tall, dense shrubbery, dim with light shafts here and there. I saw a blood-red bird-of-paradise growing wild.

Then various men were up in the cacao trees throwing down fruit. It’s a yellow gourd like a large summer squash; you knock it against something and the gourd cracks around the waist. You pull it open and inside the seeds are hanging like hats on a hat-rack, surrounded by a delicious white cream – tangy, mellow, and a little minty at the end! The back of your tongue goes into ecstasies. Then you must spit out the soft purple seed – if you bite into it it’s bitter and acrid. That is the cacao (cocoa) bean, from which chocolate is made.

We later stopped at a beautiful little village at a bend in the river, with a big old-fashioned sawmill and an outdoor church with seats and a cross. This wild jungle is so ancient, with the richest soil in the world. The bank on the right just thinned out into a row of trees standing in water and through them I could see in the distance the real bank perhaps, farther than the Hudson at its widest.

The first night it was growing into dusk, the reflections were gloomy in the water and we spotted an animal pushing its way across the river to the other side. Immediately everyone was in a frenzy. The crew lowered a dugout canoe and went after it with a rifle. It was the most horrifying episode. My heart just died for it when I saw it, bravely, desperately swimming away from the dugout. But when it seemed to be outstripping it we’d come around in the boat and keep it from getting to the bank – so it would turn again.

They started shooting at it from the dugout. They kept missing. It would dive and then come up way far away, to our relief, but after about 8 or 10 times it started getting tired, couldn’t swim underwater for so long – it had no chance. Finally it was wounded, too, but kept on swimming. Eventually they had to lasso it, the stupid fools. I was so upset, I went storming up to the wheelhouse and said “Basta! Basta!” to the pilot – he just laughed and chucked me under the chin – but I was praying that the animal would make it. I thought of diving in to divert attention (“woman overboard!”) while it could escape but I didn’t. (Piranhas. Leeches.)

Finally they hauled it on board with a chorus of macho grunts. It looked like a cross between a pig and a moose. They called it a capybara. It had hair and a mane, was big, its body the size of a large cow, but had short legs. They cut it up and roasted it that night. I tried some liver and it was very good. I wasn’t going to eat it but as I thought about it I realized eating the meat would be the only way for me to make the whole episode right in my own mind. I have to separate the value of free meat from the spectacle of man against beast. Wasting the meat would be the worst thing of all. You just have to thank the animal.

This afternoon -- Manaus and the Amazon.