The Ways of Evil Men (2 page)

She clipped the PLB to the belt of her khaki shorts, switched on the GPS, and punched in the coordinates of the village. Then she hoisted her knapsack to her shoulders and set off.

S
OMEONE OR
something stepped on a twig. It broke with a loud
snap
.

A tapir or a man
, Amati thought.
Nothing else could have done it
. He grabbed his bow.

“Stay close,” he said to his son.

The arrow he chose was tipped with poison. If it was a tapir, he’d kill it for the meat. If a white man … well, let it not be a white man. Not after what those monsters had done.

But the figure that emerged from the forest was neither tapir nor man. It was a woman, one he knew, but white just the same. And she was coming toward him with a smile on her face.

A smile!

Consumed with a towering anger, Amati lowered the bow. Why should he waste poison on a creature such as this? Poison was precious, time-consuming to extract. He’d kill her with his knife.

P
ERPLEXED
, J
ADE
came to a stop. She’d been expecting to find dozens of people. Instead, there were only two: Amati and Raoni, and both were staring at her in the strangest sort of way.

It was true that Amati had always been a bit distant, and Raoni a bit shy, but now their body language and grim faces were making an entirely different impression. Hatred.

If she could have spoken to them she might have been able to defuse it, but speaking was a problem. Raoni’s grandmother, Yara, was the only person in the entire village with whom Jade could actually converse.

Yara hadn’t been born of the tribe. Her native language was a dialect of Tupi, a tongue Jade already spoke, but the language of the Awana was unique. Since the tribe was small and recently contacted, no one else in Jade’s organization had ever attempted to master it. Not before Jade. Not until now.

She’d been learning with Yara’s help. The two women had been working together on a Tupi/Awana dictionary, one that Jade intended to turn into a Portuguese/Awana dictionary as soon as she completed it. But the work was in the early stages, and Jade’s entire vocabulary, at the moment, numbered less than two hundred words.

She remembered advice she’d once received from an expert on the tribes: “When words fail, offer a present. It’s the Indian way.”

The gifts she’d brought, a little concave mirror about nine centimeters across, the strings of beads, and a little aluminum pot, were all in her backpack. But this was no time to go looking for them.

Get closer
, she thought.
Smile. Give the child your knife
.

So she did just that, walked toward them, smiled through her fear, and started unbuckling her belt. The muscles in Amati’s arms and legs went taut. She freed the leather scabbard suspended next to her PLB, taking care not to put a hand to the hilt.

The Indian had no such compunction. Slitting his eyes, he bared the steel of his weapon.

She stopped in front of the boy, knelt down and made the offer. Solemnly, he accepted it. In her peripheral vision she could see Amati’s hand lowering his knife. She turned her head and looked up at him, still smiling. He didn’t return the smile, but he was no longer scowling. He waited for her to speak.

But of course, she couldn’t. Silently, she cursed Carlo Castori. Castori was the parish priest back in Azevedo. Once a missionary, he claimed to have lived among the Awana for more than a year. He’d told her he’d attained fluency in their language, but denied ever having made a dictionary—a claim she found difficult to believe. Who tries to learn a language without making a dictionary?

But, true or not, the man had never been of any help to her, and she’d given up trying to extract anything useful from him. Sign language had become her only option—and she was getting rather good at it. She began by pointing around her and simulating a mystified expression, as if to say,
What happened?

Amati grabbed her wrist. His grip was strong, and it frightened her. She gave a little whimper and stood her ground. Exasperated, he released her, pointed, and took her wrist again, this time more gently. She realized then that he was trying to lead her somewhere, and she went.

With Raoni trailing behind, they passed through the heart of the village, exited the other side, and arrived in a glade occupied by mound after mound of loosely-packed soil. At the head of one of the mounds, the trunk of a sacred Kam’ywá tree had been embedded into the red earth.
Kuarups
, the Indians called them. They personified the spirits of the dead.

Jade’s mouth opened in surprise. Then she closed it and began to count. The mounds totaled thirty-nine, and they
were divided into three neat rows of thirteen each. At last count, there had been forty-one members of the tribe. Two, the man and the boy, were standing next to her.

“All Awana,” he said. And then, in case she failed to understand, added the word “Dead.”

“How?”

“Men kill.”

More words exploded from his mouth, angry words, but Jade was unable to understand a single one. While he spoke, she tried to piece together what might have happened. There hadn’t been a war among the tribes in this part of Pará in living memory. It could have been disease, of course, but what kind of disease could have killed so many so quickly? And, if disease had been the cause, how was it possible that neither the man nor the boy were showing signs of sickness?

A horrible suspicion came over her.

“Rainforest men?” she asked.

“No rainforest men,” he said shaking his head emphatically. “White men.” He stabbed a finger into her breastbone and repeated it. “White men.”

“When?”

He pointed to the sun and held up seven fingers. A week ago. If he and his son had been doing the burying themselves, they must have been digging graves and cutting
kuarups
ever since.

“You come,” she said. “I help. We talk. Hurt bad men.”

“Come where?” he asked. “Talk how? Hurt how?”

“Come,” she said and then pointed to her chest and made a pillow with her hands as if she was going to sleep. She hoped he understood what she was trying to tell him. She wanted to take him to the place where she slept, to her home, to the little city of Azevedo. She pointed at him, then back at herself. “Talk. Father Carlo Castori help.”

He gave a contemptuous snort, said something she couldn’t understand, and made a sign as if he were drinking.
Yes, he knows who I’m talking about. Castori is a drunk
. She made a beckoning gesture. He seemed to think it over.

At last he nodded. Then he said, “How long?” She pointed to the sun and held up one finger. Again, he nodded. “I come. Not Raoni. Your place bad for Raoni.”

She couldn’t argue. Considering the contempt in which the townsfolk held the people of the rainforest Azevedo
was
a bad place for him.

But how will he cope if we leave him for twenty-four hours on his own?

She concluded he’d cope well. Indian boys grew up fast.

“Good,” she said. “You come. Boy stay.”

J
ADE WAS SURE THAT
Amati had never seen a jeep, much less ridden in one, but he hopped in and took a seat as if he’d been doing it every day of his life. He didn’t run his hands over the dashboard or try the knobs on the door as she expected he might. He simply sat there, seldom uncrossing his arms throughout their entire journey.

As she drove, she tried to press him for more details of what had happened. Initially, he responded to her questions, but when it became clear that she understood almost nothing of what he was trying to tell her, he fell into silence.

They arrived in the hottest part of the day, that time between noon and four when the sun seared the treeless streets. Between those hours, the temperatures were almost intolerable for animals and humans alike and Azevedo was prone to take on the look of a ghost town.

It would have deeply offended the sensibilities of the townsfolk to have a near-naked man circulating in their midst, so Jade made Paulo Cunha’s clothing store her first stop. Cunha stocked only the sizes he was likely to sell, and most of the men in Azevedo ran to fat, so all of the shorts were too wide around the waist. Jade had to buy a belt to secure the smallest pair she could find. As for shirts, the Indian’s shoulders and arms were well developed from drawing his bow. She needed something broad across the shoulders. To get it, she had to settle for something much too large by the time it reached his hips. But now, at least, his bare flesh was modestly covered.

The other customers in Cunha’s shop avoided them. One, a woman of about Jade’s age, even scurried backward upon rounding a corner and seeing them coming toward her.

The shrew at the register, a sour-faced individual of about sixty, skewered Jade with a look that went beyond mere disapproval. “You should know better than to bring a savage in here,” she said, pointing at Amati with her sharp chin. “If Senhor Cunha was here—”

“Ah, but he isn’t, is he?” Jade said, sweetly. She laid a hand on Amati’s shoulder. “Where can he change?”

The woman slammed the drawer of the register shut. “Anywhere you please,” she said, “as long as it isn’t in here.”

F
ATHER
C
ARLO
Castori lived in a tiny house adjoining the church. It had whitewashed walls, blue shutters, and a red tile roof.

“Ah,” he said, looking none too pleased to see Jade on his doorstep. “Our esteemed representative of the FUNAI. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

His speech was slurred, but he wasn’t too drunk to identify his visitor. The FUNAI, the
Fundação Nacional do Índio
, was the federal government’s National Indian Foundation—Jade’s employer.

“I’m so glad you’re at home, Father. I need your help.”

He stared at her out of bleary eyes, then looked at Amati. “I know him,” he said.

“And he knows you. He’s an Awana. His name is Amati.”

The Indian said something in his own language. Castori snapped a reply. Jade didn’t understand a word, and she didn’t have to. It was clear the two men detested each other.

“Can we come in?”

For a moment, Jade thought the priest might refuse, but curiosity must have gotten the better of him. He stepped aside.

In the kitchen, on a table surrounded by four chairs, were an ashtray, half full, a glass, half empty, a Bible, and a bottle. He motioned for them to sit, took a seat himself, pushed the Bible aside and picked up the bottle. “Drink?” he asked, waving it in Jade’s direction.

She shook her head. The bottle was clear glass and the content as transparent as water—a sure sign that the cane spirit hadn’t been aged. It took a strong stomach to ingest the stuff. She thought he might offer her something else: coffee, water, a soft drink perhaps. But he didn’t. Nor did he extend the offer of refreshment to Amati.

“Help with what?” he asked, topping up his glass.

“Translation.”

“Why?”

“There’s been a disaster.”

“Really?” The priest raised the glass to his lips, gulped rather than sipped. “What kind of a disaster?”

She told him.

He stroked his chin, drained the remainder of his glass, reached for the bottle and refilled it. Fumes from the strong cane spirit wafted across the table.

“All of them dead, eh?” he said. “Imagine that.” His lack of outrage infuriated Jade. She would have liked to stand up right then and leave, but she knew no one else who could speak the language. She needed him, couldn’t run the risk of offending him, but also couldn’t trust herself to speak. So she sat there, waiting him out, while he took another sip, then, finally, began speaking in the Awana tongue.

She’d hoped he’d translate the Indian’s responses one by one, but he didn’t. He simply engaged Amati in conversation as if she wasn’t there. It seemed to her that quite a long time had passed before he switched back to Portuguese and began summarizing the story: “He and his son went out
hunting. They left the village before dawn, shot a monkey and returned in the afternoon. When they got back, everyone was dead. Everyone. Their whole tribe.”

Jade looked at Amati in sympathy. The Indian didn’t appear to notice. His eyes were fixed on Castori, who treated himself to more cachaça before he continued:

“Corpses were all over the village. They hadn’t been dead long. Most were still warm.”

She couldn’t contain herself. “Does he know what killed them?”

“Poisoned, he said, by a piece of meat.”

“An entire tribe? From a single piece of meat? How is that possible?”

He must have taken her response as criticism—either of his translation or his credulity—because his response was sharp, an explosion of instant anger. “Your question,
Senhorita
Calmon, betrays your gross ignorance of Indians in general and the Awana in particular.”

She tried to placate him. “I make no claim to be an expert, Father.”

“Then I suggest you look upon this as a splendid opportunity to learn something from someone who is. The Awana share food.” He paused to belch, washed the taste out of his mouth with more cachaça, and went on in a milder tone of voice. “The meat derived from every hunt is regarded as common property. If the food is a gift from another tribe, they turn the sharing into a ritual. Everybody is supposed to eat a portion, however small, even if they’re not hungry. It’s meant to honor the giver.”

It took an effort, but Jade moved closer, striving for more intimacy. “Wouldn’t they have noticed that the first people to consume the meat were getting sick? And when they did, wouldn’t the rest stop eating? Or not eat at all?”

“That depends, does it not, on whether the poison was quick acting? It isn’t considered polite to begin until everyone has been served, so they all would have taken their first bites at about the same time. Only the babies, the ones too young for meat, would have been exceptions, but there weren’t any babies, were there?”

Jade shook her head. “No, no babies.”

“No, there wouldn’t have been, would there? A dying tribe, the Awana. Now, let me see, what else did he say? Ah, yes. He buried the bodies and he and his son performed their pagan rituals. They were at it for a number of days before you arrived. Then you came along and promised him justice. And for that reason and that reason alone, he agreed to come here and tell his story.”