Trail of Feathers (14 page)

Pedro pointed to a mattress which lay in the shadow of the totem.

‘Get undressed and lie down there,’ he said.

I wondered why the healing of a troubled mind might require nudity. But this was a clinic without convention. Stripping down to my boxer shorts, I stretched out and pulled the gargoyle-grey army blanket up to my chin. The totem-pole froze me with a grimacing stare. And the maestro began his work.

He pulled a handful of coca leaves from a pouch around his neck. Touching them to his brow in respect, he put them on his tongue one at a time. The master’s youngest daughter pushed open the door and sat with the offerings. She was given a few coca leaves, and entered the ritual. After the coca there was chicha for the girl and the priest. Reclining on the mattress, I questioned what part I would play.

My attention was drawn to the yard. Although I couldn’t see what was going on, I didn’t need Pedro’s strength of imagination to guess. A sow was obviously fighting for its life, desperate to escape a butcher’s knife. Its last screams were terrible, high-pitched and frantic, as it sparred with Death. The squeals stopped as suddenly as they had begun. A moment later, the sullen figure of a man swept into the sanctuary. He was barefoot and his apron was drenched in fresh blood. Having honoured the totem with the hog’s foot, he slunk way. The maestro had paid no attention to the sounds of execution. As I was soon to find out, death was a tool of his trade.

The little girl dragged the postal sack over to her father. He loosened the knot with the tips of his fingers and took something from it. I peered over from the mattress. Pedro was holding a large black guinea-pig. The creature, keenly sniffing the air, was held at arm’s length towards the totem-pole. A bottle of agua de florida, perfumed water used by Peruvian shamans, was sprinkled over it. After which the master coughed a lungful of tobacco smoke along the length of its body.

Still damp with holy water, the guinea pig was wrapped in a sheet of white wax paper. I was surprised that it didn’t wriggle. As with a stage magician’s rabbit, it may have been hypnotised in some way. The maestro returned to his stool and chewed another handful of coca leaves. His daughter bent over the offerings and lit another candle. As the wick flickered with life, Pedro unwrapped the guinea pig, sprinkled more agua de florida, and moved over to the bed.

The shadow of the healer fell over me. He peeled back the coarse grey blanket and went to work. First the cuy was pressed to my face, rubbed over my brow, across my eyes, nose and mouth. I felt its warmth, and took in the scent of its soft damp pelt. The sensation was not unpleasant. Pedro held the creature stretched rigid between his hands. He guided it over my body, as if it were some kind of medical instrument. Every inch of skin was touched by the trembling animal. Over my chin and across my neck, up and down my arms, chest and stomach, groin, legs and feet. I turned over and my back was treated.

Anointing with guinea pigs is a common method of Andean healing and divination, known as Jaca shoqpi. It’s a system of medicine embroiled in secrecy. Despite the influence of Catholicism, cuy has remained a central tool in Andean ritual, just as it has a staple food. The strange marriage between New World and Old is represented by a painting which hangs in the Cathedral at Cusco. Painted in about 1670, by Miguel de Santiago, it depicts Christ and his Apostles at the Last Supper. Placed before them is a dish of cooked guinea pig.

When Pedro had finished, I pulled the blanket over my body once again. It was time for the second phase of the operation. The healer dunked the cuy in a pot of water, immersing it completely until it squirmed. Then, grabbing it by the scruff of the neck, he held it over a bright-red washing tub. His daughter passed over the blade of a penknife. It had been sharpened many times, its cutting edge eroded by years of abrasion. The maestro’s muscular fingers grasped the rodent’s back. With great care, he pressed the blade across its lower abdomen in a single incision.

Over the next fifteen minutes he worked away with the knife, separating the pelt from the white membrane beneath. I’m not certain when the animal died; but I am sure it was still alive during the first part of the ordeal. The process of skinning the cuy was extremely meticulous,- every strand of fur was removed, and not a single drop of blood was shed.

Pedro submerged the skinned guinea-pig in water for a moment. I sensed a draught of cold air across my face. The door had been pushed open a crack. Three or four children from the lane had come to watch their favourite part of the treatment - the dissection. The healer didn’t look up, for fear of breaking concentration. An interruption, or takpa, is considered to be the meddling of the Devil.

The blade was pressed to the cuy’s neck. And, in a long sweeping movement, the master carved the steel down the rodent’s body. His hands fumbled to contain the mass of organs and entrails. They glistened, for they had been alive minutes before. I was surprised that during the dissection too there was so little blood, presumably a reflection of the healer’s surgical skill.

Pedro caressed his fingers through the jumble of organs. He inspected the cuy’s heart and the lungs, its liver and spleen, kidneys and intestines. Then he examined the animal’s feet, its head, and the colour of its flesh.

‘It is no surprise to me you are troubled,’ he said dismally. ‘I can see your illness.’

‘What’s wrong with me?’

The maestro rummaged through the guinea pig’s intestines like a priest praying with a rosary.

‘Los espíritus malos, bad spirits,’ he said. 

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I see them here in las entrañas, the intestines.’ He held the entrails up to the candlelight. ‘Can you not see where it is scarred?’

Pedro replaced the skin on the guinea pig’s body and wrapped it in the sheet of white wax paper. He would dispose of it secretly during the night. I asked whether it could be eaten. The master was disgusted by my question. Not even the most starving wretch of a man, he said, would be tempted by the tainted entrails.

Now that he had reached a diagnosis, Pedro meted out his cure. He moved over to the totem-pole and pulled from it a long cob of dried maize.

‘Put this under your pillow when you sleep,’ he said. ‘The demons will leave you and enter the corn. You will be as strong as a castrated ox, ready for what lies ahead.’

Peering into my eyes, he seemed to see my future, the place where the trail led.

‘En cuarenta noches … leave the corn under your pillow for forty nights’ he said. ‘You must not shake any man’s hand for that time. Then bury the maize in the ground and put a stone on top of it.’

‘What happens if I don’t do this?’

Pedro stood to his feet and wiped the blade of the knife across his sleeve. His expression soured.

‘If you do not do as I tell you’ he said angrily, ‘the wicked spirits will multiply. They will fill your head like worms, and will crawl down into your body. Every organ will become infected, your flesh will rot, your bones will crack, and your mind with soften, until…’

He broke off abruptly.

‘Until what?’

The healer ran a finger round the curve of his ear. 

‘You would not want to hear’ he said.

The day after my return to Lima from Huancayo, Professor Cabieses’ secretary called. The doctor, she said, had just arrived back and would see me at four o’clock.

The neurosurgical hospital’s waiting area was a fearful place. Patients hobbled in and out. Some wore bandages wrapped around their heads like clinical turbans; others had retort stands clamped to their spines. The man sitting beside me looked quite normal. But every few seconds he would jerk his head to the left, and wink six times with each eye.

I thumbed through an old issue of Hola!, and watched the receptionist file her nails. The procedure reminded me of a blacksmith, re-shoeing a horse. An hour slipped by. The receptionist completed her manicure and started on her hair. More time passed, and she moved onto her lashes. I was about to edge to the door when a short, balding man in an oyster-grey suit marched out of the lift and through reception. The injured and afflicted straightened in respect. The squinting man blinked continuously until tears rolled down his cheeks.

The receptionist slid the tip of an eye-liner across the lid of her eye, inspecting the work in a Gucci compact. She turned to me.

‘Dr Cabieses will see you now.’

The professor was rifling through his bookshelves, looking for something. I took a moment to glance round the surgery, which smelled of antiseptic liquid. It was cluttered with potted plants, each labelled with an identification tag. The walls were heavy with framed certificates, the windows hidden by Venetian blinds. In one corner was a hatstand on which was slung a sou-wester. To the right of the door stood a San Pedro cactus.

Dr Cabieses removed a slim volume from the shelf and turned to face me.

‘I understand you are interested in plants’ he said, in faultless English, extending his arm towards me.

My hand lurched forward instinctively to shake his. Remembering the exorcism in the nick of time, I jerked it back, like a fencer recovering from a lunge. I pressed my hands together in an Indian namaste.

The neurosurgeon retracted his hand, and placed a finger on his lips.

‘Seen a Curandero recently?’ he said.

I told him about my visit to Wali Wasi and about the exorcism.

‘It sounds to me as if you’re having sinus trouble,’ he said. ‘That is, unless you believe in los espiritus malos, bad spirits.’

‘As a hypochondriac I find myself believing in all sorts of conditions’ I replied. ‘I can’t help it.’

Dr Cabieses motioned to a chair at the other side of the broad walnut desk.

‘The mind is a curious thing,’ he said. ‘As is the power of belief. Nothing is stronger than a man’s faith.’

‘What about the effect of ayahuasca on belief?’

The professor peered through the Venetian blinds, down to the street.

‘Ayahuasca is a very serious subject,’ he said.

I told the doctor of my journey from Machu Picchu to Titicaca, and on to Nazca. I said I was looking for traces of ancient flight, for the Birdmen.

Starting at the left corner of his mouth, a smile swept onto Cabieses’ face.

‘Your travels have already answered the question’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you have hunted me down, for you have the answers.’ 

‘What answers?’

Again, the professor peered through the blinds.

‘Let us lay the pieces of the puzzle here on the table,’ he said, slapping his hand down on the walnut veneer. ‘Pizarro’s monks talked of Incas flying in the air. Clausijiro, too, said the Aztecs could glide. But’ the doctor continued, ‘surely the Spanish opposition for flying men came from how their flight was achieved, rather than from the motion itself.’ 

‘Ayahuasca?’

‘Precisely’ said the professor. It has been used for thousands of years across the region. Monks travelling with the Conquistadors called it the “demonic vine”. They persecuted anyone who used it -which explains why ayahuasca was forced into hiding.’

Cabieses adjusted his tie.

‘You see,’ he said, massaging his hands together, ‘ayahuasca, Banisteriopsis caapi, as it’s more correctly known, was a pre-Incan device. Of course it could provide a sensation of flight - the sense of travelling to the gods. But the flight is not the content, but the container.’

Professor Cabieses fixed his eyes on mine, ensuring I was following his words.

‘The content,’ he said, ‘the function of the tool, that is what solves problems. Ayahuasca shows a shaman how to cure an illness, or what the future holds. Other hallucinogens have been used in Native American history,’ he went on, ‘virola snuff, the San Pedro cactus, peyote, psilocybe mushrooms, and all the rest, but none’s as important as ayahuasca.’

‘What of the textiles, the ones which show Birdmen?’

‘The winged cloaks, the feathered head-bands, the streams of vomit from their mouths’ declared the professor, ‘look at the signs … they lead to ayahuasca.’

Gazing down at the linoleum, I thought back to the burial grounds on the Nazca plain.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘with the death of the Incas, I suppose we shall never know the truth of ayahuasca, or the Birdmen.’

Professor Cabieses shook his head in laughter.

‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘I told you the Spanish forced your Birdmen into hiding. That’s exactly where they’ve gone.’

‘Where?’

‘To the jungle!’

The professor explained that ayahuasca was still used by various tribes in the forests of the Upper Amazon, in Ecuador, Brazil and Peru. Known by many names - yagé, pinde, caapi, nape, among them; its complex chemistry has astounded Western scientists. How, they ask, could such primitive people have happened upon such a sophisticated formula?

The inner bark of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine is pounded and boiled at a certain temperature for a certain time, along with a selection of leaves from other plants. The hallucinatory effects don’t come from the vine, but from the leaves, the admixtures. Banisteriopsis caapi allows the intestines to absorb chemicals they would normally filter out. As a result, the hallucinogens slip into the bloodstream.

Professor Cabieses leaned back into his chair.

‘No tribe in the Western Amazon takes ayahuasca as seriously,’ he said, ‘as the Shuar. They call it natema, and for them it’s the key which gives life meaning. They believe the world around us is an illusion. The birds in the trees, the worms in the ground, and everything in between - none of it exists at all. Only by taking ayahuasca, they say, can you enter the real world.’

‘Where are the Shuar?’

‘In the Pastaza region,’ said Cabieses. ‘In the borderlands of Peru and Ecuador. You may have heard of them before,’ he said. ‘They used to shrink heads.’

‘I thought that was the Jivaro.’

‘Jivaro, means “barbarian”,’ the doctor replied. ‘As you can imagine they don’t like being called that. Shuar means “men”.’ 

I praised the extinct art of headshrinking.

‘Ah yes’ said Cabieses wistfully, ‘tsantsas are wonderful things. But it’s so hard to get good ones these days.’