I’m kicking, pushing, grabbing and ripping at the life jacket attached to the seat in front of me. I wake with a start. There’s dried blood all down the front of my shirt and pants. I have a wound the size of an eyeball on my hand, one bigger on my shoulder and a rip in my chin. The man on the other side of Ben and Saleem is dead…
Abigail was as sharp as the front teeth of two foxes quick dancing to the music of toothpicks. She was funnier than the time I watched Billy Marsdens dainty horse crumble beneath him. She wore a headband to keep back what seemed like a half-mile of hair and had a little jean shirt she tucked up and twisted in a knot, unbuttoned three buttons down so as to let some cleavage ride in the cool Colombian air with her. Her legs kept the company of a mustard yellow skirt and tights that held high above the ankles. She had cheese-puff shoes and a Lego watch that stole her left wrist from showing. Her facial expressions doted on me and then moved down the graffiti lined streets as her eyes followed the skyline passed the tops of all the mountains. She was constantly saying things like “I don’t understand you” and “I don’t think I like you” but despite these remarks she accompanied me inseparably for the better part of our last three days in Colombia. We moved from Police Torture Museums to pints of beer three liters high that reminded her of the London she had left behind. We danced to impromptu shows and laughed till we had to breathe thru our tears. I passed her headed south on a Wednesday morning from the seat of a small plane as I ascended over the city walls. I slightly waved my hand without realizing it for what it was. Colombia. Missing. I grinded my teeth as I do on flights and sleep. Into the jungle. The Amazon. Leticia.
We land and take a few planks of wood with a motor attached up river into Peru and get our entrance stamps. Here the streets are just pathways lined with large branches to keep them above the thick mud and water. You can see the difference between the countries immediately. You can smell the new food, its quiet here. Desolate and muddy. Nothing grows along this shore, the water fluctuates so often it will be gone soon. An office sits amongst the debris and the very wood its made of seems to sweat and smoke. We sweet-talk the attendant into the maximum amount allowed for us in Peru, we walk out with a sentence of a 120 days stamped on our passports, etched in our minds that for the next 4 months we will travel here, get kicked out and bounce into Argentina. Lone. Baring down on the tip of the continent against steel grey motorcycles.
We head back into Colombia the same way we got here. Across felled trees that serve as bridges we wait for our friend Saleem to arrive. Born from Scotland and living in Lima, raised in England, blood baked of Iranian decent. He wears a thick British accent, a steep face and quick laugh. Handsome with the classics. Educated and informed he makes for good company and he can hold his own, proven it on more than one occasion. We have grown close with him over our travels and consider him a brother. We will cross the Amazon into Iquitos together. While we wait overnight for him to arrive we rent motorbikes and ride them thru the jungle into Brazil. Naked as the people here are the dirt roads. Dotted as flesh with freckles stand huts and thatches. Parallel we take the Amazon River for miles. Strange looks brand me either heathen or curiosity. I stand for both. Ride fast in the name of. Bare some flesh and teeth myself.
Saleem enters. We decide to make a marathon of the borders; standing at the ports between Brazil, Colombia, Peru…Leticia was made for an international binge. Bred for lawlessness. A basin for the Wild West, only the steed has changed. 3 countries and as much consumption as you can handle between them. We realize the error of our ways as motorbike after motorbike goes down beneath us. I am now forced to enter the Amazon Jungle with giant gaping wounds found in a holy trinity. Kicked out of Brazil as the morning enters, we were leaving anyways we reply.
We are 6 hours into a 13-hour boat ride up the Amazon River and someone has already died, next to Ben and Saleem rests his bones and awkward eyes. No one seems to sure how it happened. He just was and then he wasn’t. The heat? The fever? The Food? One man pushes breath into his mouth while another puts his fist to chest. No avail. Still wide eyes. No prayer. No music. Still we ride. His lifeless body is covered with a blue blanket. I can’t help but say a small prayer, make the holy trinity back across my wounds. Sacrilegious follows folly. It takes a while to digest like any good ghost….but it seems common here. Everywhere you look there are steep signs of the pattern. In some ways this process is expedited by the jungle even as life around it crawls in pace.
No sleep. I was in such a state of stupid disarray when I board at 4AM that I have no water and there’s none left on this boat. My tongue is sticking to the side of my mouth and it’s the only thing to swallow. The Amazon heat is oppressive and I can barely breathe. We have at least 6 more hours to go. In the seat in front of me a mother is milking her child. In the seat across from me a half bottle of water lies next to the hand of the dead man. I consider both these options with brief clarity and distorted values, then close my eyes and try to force a little sleep. Itch and snarl. Give it the same outlook as any inevitably trapped man and try to find something funny to observe.
Iquitos. We arrive with the smell of some decay. You can only get here by boat or small plane. Closer to the hot stars. Right on the equator. Malaria runs the sunrises, Dengue fever controls the sunsets. Many men made their fortunes off the rubber trade beneath me. It lingers. Once briefed to be the richest city in the world, now it is torn up and toppled over. Piles of dirt and floating cities that do not float this season. Planes don’t fly in the day here because of the vultures. The Witch market boasts your ailments and sell your faith. We stay at a beautiful hotel with a balcony overlooking the jungle. The nearest road out of here is 500 miles away. We gather rubber boots and machetes. We get drunk and fend off hookers with both.
It’s from here we will enter deep into the jungle. Either by military plane or a four day hike. I have some concerns. A psychoactive infusion awaits us here and links us to the future or keeps us behind it. You get what you need they tell me, but I can’t tell if I have lost some faith or am just in a long moment of doubt. I miss Colombia already, the people, customs, and drink. I used the strength she gave me to leave and now my legs feel clumsy. Lucky for me my tomorrow is never the same, though I did have piranha for breakfast again today.
From The Thick,
R. Vigilantics
No comments:
Post a Comment