A Tranquil Star (12 page)

But the Siriono are not a fierce people. They were content to leave them there to expiate their lies, providing them with plenty of water and a little food. For some obscure reason, perhaps because he felt offended, Achtiti no longer came to see them.

Goldbaum said, “I'm a good photographer, but without lenses and without film… Maybe I could make a camera obscura. What do you say?”

“That would amuse them. But they are asking us for something more: that we demonstrate, concretely, that our civilization is superior to theirs, that our sorcerers are more powerful than theirs.”

“It's not as if I knew how to make many other things with my hands. I know how to drive a car. I also know how to change a light bulb or a fuse. Unclog a sink, sew on a button. But here there are neither sinks nor needles.”

Wilkins meditated. “No,” he said, “here it would take something more essential. If they let us out, I could try to take apart the magnetic tape recorder. How it's put together inside I don't know, but if there's a permanent magnet we're in business. We can make it float in a bowl of water and give them the compass, and at the same time show them the art of making a compass.”

“Even though it's called a magnetic tape recorder, I don't think there are magnets inside,” Goldbaum answered. “And
I'm not even sure that a compass would be very useful to the Siriono. For them the sun is enough: they aren't navigators, and when they set out into the forest they follow the marked trails.”

“How do you make gunpowder? Maybe that's not too hard. Don't you just mix carbon, sulfur, and saltpeter?”

“Theoretically, yes. But where would you find saltpeter here, in the middle of the swamps? And there might be sulfur, but who knows where? And, finally, what use would gunpowder be, if they don't have an ordinary gun barrel?”

“I have an idea. People here can die as a result of a scratch, from septicemia or tetanus. We could ferment their grain, distill the infusion, and make alcohol for them; maybe they would also like to drink it, even if that's not exactly proper. They don't seem to be acquainted with either stimulants or depressants. It would be a fine bit of sorcery.”

Goldbaum was tired. “We don't have a fermenting agent. I don't think I would be capable of recognizing one, and neither would you. And then I'd like to see you wrestling with the local potters to get them to build you a still. Maybe it's not completely impossible, but it's an undertaking that would require months, and we have only days.”

It wasn't clear if the Siriono intended to make them die of starvation, or if they wished only to maintain them with the least expense while waiting for the boat to come up the river, or for the final, decisive idea to develop in the two men. Their days passed in a torpor that grew ever deeper, a waking sleep made up of damp heat, mosquitoes, hunger, and humiliation.
And yet both of them had studied for almost twenty years, knew many things about all human civilizations, ancient and modern, were interested in all primitive technologies, in Chaldean metallurgy, in Mycenean ceramics, in pre-Columbian weaving: and now perhaps (
perhaps!
) they would be able to split off a flint stone because Achtiti had taught them, while they were unable to teach Achtiti anything: only tell him by means of gestures about marvels that he didn't believe in, and show him miraculous things that they had brought with them, made by other hands, under another sky.

After almost a month of prison they were short of ideas, and felt worn down to a final impotence. The entire colossal edifice of modern technology was out of their reach: they had to confess to each other that not even one of the inventions of which their civilization was proud could be transmitted to the Siriono. They lacked the basic materials to start with, and, even if these could have been found nearby, the two Englishmen would have been unable to recognize or isolate them; none of the arts that they knew would be judged useful by the Siriono. If one of them had been good at drawing, they could have made a portrait of Achtiti, and, if nothing else, evoked wonder. If they had a year's time, they might perhaps convince their hosts of the usefulness of the alphabet, adapt it to their language, and teach Achtiti the art of writing. For several hours they discussed the idea of making soap for the Siriono: they could get potash from the wood ashes, and oil from the seeds of a local palm. But what use would soap be to the Siriono? They didn't have clothes, and
it would not be easy to persuade them of the usefulness of washing themselves with soap.

Finally, they were reduced to a modest project: they would teach the Siriono to make candles. Modest but irreproachable; the Siriono had wax, wax from peccaries, which they used to grease their hair, and there was no difficulty about the wicks: they could use bristles from the same peccaries. The Siriono would appreciate the advantage of illuminating the inside of their huts at night. Of course, they might prefer to learn how to make a gun or an outboard motor: candles weren't much, but it was worth a try.

They were just attempting to get in touch with Achtiti, to negotiate their freedom in exchange for the candles, when they heard a big ruckus outside their prison. Soon afterward the door was opened, amid incomprehensible shouts, and Achtiti gestured to them to come out into the dazzling light of day: the boat had arrived.

The farewell was neither long nor ceremonious. Achtiti immediately stepped away from the prison door; he squatted on his heels, turning his back to them, and remained unmoving, as if turned to stone, while Siriono warriors led the two men to the bank of the river. Two or three women, laughing and shouting, exposed their stomachs in their direction; all the others in the village, even the children, swung their heads, singing “Luu, luu,” and held out their hands, limp and as if detached, letting them dangle from their wrists like overripe fruit.

Wilkins and Goldbaum had no baggage. They got into the
boat, which was piloted by Suarez himself, and begged him to leave as quickly as possible.

T
HE
S
IRIONO
are not invented. They actually exist, or at least they did until around 1945, but what one knows of them makes one think that, at least as a people, they will not survive for long. They were described by Allan R. Holmberg in a recent monograph (“The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia”): they lead a subsistence-level existence, which alternates between nomadism and primitive agriculture. They are not familiar with metals, they do not possess terms for numbers higher than three, and, although they often have to cross swamps and rivers, they do not know how to build boats. They do know, however, that at one time they were able to do so, and the story is passed down among them of a hero who had the name of the Moon, and who had taught their people (then much more numerous) three arts: to light fires, to carve out canoes, and to make bows. Of these, only the last survives; they have forgotten even the method of making fire. They told Holmberg that in a time not too far back (two, three generations ago: around the time when among us the first internal combustion engines were invented, electric light became widespread, and the complex structure of the atom was beginning to be understood) some of them knew how to make fire by twirling a stick in a hole in a piece of wood. But at that time the Siriono lived in another land, with a desert-like climate, where it was easy to find dry wood and
tinder. Now they live among swamps and forests, in perpetual dampness. Since they could no longer find dry wood, the method of the stick in the hole could no longer be practiced, and was forgotten.

Fire itself, however, they kept. In each of their villages or wandering bands there is at least one old woman whose job it is to maintain a live spark in a brazier of tufo. This art is not so difficult as that of lighting a fire by means of rubbing sticks, but it's not elementary, either: especially in the rainy season, the flame has to be fed palm flowers, which are dried in the heat of that flame. These old vestals are very diligent, because if their fire dies they are put to death: not as punishment but because they are judged to be useless. All the Siriono who are judged to be useless because they are incapable of hunting, sowing, and plowing with a wooden plow are left to die. A Siriono is old at forty.

I repeat, they are not invented. They were reported by
Scientific American
in October, 1969, and they have a sinister renown: they teach us that not in every place and not in every era is humanity destined to advance.

There were four elevators, but one, as usual, was out of service. It wasn't always the same one and even the sign hanging on the door wasn't always the same. This one, for instance, said “Out of Service”; others might say “Not Working” or “Broken” or “Don't Touch” or even “Back Soon.” Maybe it was the doorman, or the superintendent, who changed the signs according to some vaguely ironic whim. There were lines in front of the three other elevators, and this, too, happened every day, at the beginning and at the end of the workday. If his office hadn't been on the ninth floor, Arrigo would have taken the stairs; sometimes he did anyway, for the exercise, but that morning he felt a little tired.

The elevator finally arrived, and it was already full of employees coming from the basement and the sub-basement. Arrigo made his way in energetically but without shoving.
The elevator rose, stopping with a jerk at every floor, and people got on and off, greeting each other distractedly. On the ninth floor, Arrigo himself got off and punched his time card. For two years now there had been a time clock on every floor. It had been a sensible innovation. Previously, there had been only one, on the ground floor, which always caused a terrible bottleneck, partly because there was little discipline, and people tried to push in front of you. In the office, people were already at their desks. Arrigo sat at his post, pulled the color photograph of his wife and their little girl out of the top drawer, and from the second drawer took writing supplies and the index cards left over from the previous day. This was the result of one of the boss's obsessions: at the end of the day, all the desks had to be cleared. Who knows why, certainly not for cleaning, because the desks were cleaned only two or three times a year: if you didn't want dust on your desk, you had to clean it yourself.

Arrigo's job was administrative in nature. Every day, he received a packet of index cards from the floor above. Each card contained the name of a human being and the date of his or her death; Arrigo had only to specify the cause. He would often get angry, for various reasons. The expiration date wasn't always the same: it could be years ahead, or months or days, for no apparent reason, and he felt that this was an injustice. Nor did it seem reasonable that there were no rules regarding age: some days he was handed hundreds of cards for newborns. Then, the boss complained if Arrigo kept to generic formulas: the man must be a sadist or a fan of
crime news. It wasn't enough for Arrigo to write “accident.” He wanted all the details and was never satisfied. He always demanded a correlation between the data on the cards and the cause of death, and this often embarrassed Arrigo.

The first index card of the day wasn't a problem. It bore the name of Yen Ch'ing-Hsu, fifty-eight years old, single, born in Han Tou, where he still resided, dockworker, no illnesses to speak of. Arrigo had no idea where Han Tou was: if he were to check the atlas every time, he'd never get anything done. Yen still had thirty-six days to live and Arrigo imagined him against the backdrop of an exotic sunset, sitting on a roll of cable before a turbid sea the color of a ripe banana; he was exhausted by his daily work, sad and alone. A man like this doesn't fear death and doesn't seek it, either, but he may act carelessly. Arrigo thought about it for a moment and then had him fall from a scaffold: he wouldn't suffer much.

P
EDRO
G
ONZALES
de Eslava didn't give him much trouble, either. In spite of the pompous name, he must have been a poor devil—he drank, had been involved in many fights among illegal immigrants, was forty-six years old, and had worked on half a dozen farms in the far south. He had five more months and would leave behind four children, who, however, lived with his wife and not with him. The wife was Puerto Rican, like Pedro; she was young, and she also worked. Arrigo consulted the medical encyclopedia and came up with hepatitis.

He was studying the third index card when Fernanda called him on the phone. She had seen in the paper that
Metropolis
was playing at some art house cinema; why not go see it tonight? Arrigo didn't like being interrupted at work and was noncommittal. The third index card was fairly obvious; everyone knows what happens to a man who races motorbikes. No one was forcing him to do it; he had only to choose a different profession—in cases like this, there's no need to have scruples. But he felt obliged to provide the details of the fatal accident and the hospital record.