Gerrie Nelson - Lab Notes

Olimpia had learned from Eduardo that his brother was furious about being sent to Turbo to oversee the Carrera logging operation again this season. This summer, as industrialist-intraining, Gabriel was to have his own office suite in New York, Paris or Barranquilla and participate in his choice of the many Carrera family interests: shipping, coffee, cattle, petroleum, telecommunications, logging or wineries.

He blamed his “exile to this sweltering gateway to hell” on his father’s displeasure with him, beginning with his bringing an American girl home from the States over the past Christmas holiday.

Olimpia knew that Gabriel Carrera dreaded tomorrow when he and Eduardo and their crew would motor up river into the jungle; Gabriel detested the jungle. And he had told Eduardo that almost more than the jungle, he dreaded going back to graduate school at Harvard in the fall and confessing to what he actually did on his summer vacation.

As the Carreras approached, Olimpia tightened the knot of her cotton blouse at her waist, hiked up the hems of gauzy wide-legged slacks and bounded down the steps waving a tanned arm at Eduardo. Her shoulder-length mane bounced behind her.

In a moment, Olimpia was being introduced to Gabriel Carrera. Eduardo explained to his brother that she was Padre Garza’s niece.

Shifting from foot to foot, feeling like a nervous colt, Olimpia told Gabriel she was doing graduate work in botany at the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. She and Eduardo had discovered last evening that she would be the graduate teaching-assistant in his Introduction to Botany course next semester.

She knew she was talking too fast; that had always been a problem for her. And Gabriel’s amused glance made matters worse; she was forgetting to breathe between sentences.

Eduardo came to her rescue. “I thought we might invite Olimpia and Padre Garza to supper tonight,” he said.

Gabriel nodded, never removing his eyes from Olimpia. “It will be lively dinner for a change. Eduardo and I are quite bored with one another.”

Eduardo shot Olimpia a conspiratorial wink.

Olimpia, unable to contain herself a moment longer, blurted out, “I am traveling up the Atroto River tomorrow with my maid and guard and Indian guide and bearers. Eduardo said we might accompany your flotilla part of the way.” She looked up at Gabriel with all the earnestness she could conjure.

“I imagine people have difficulty denying your wishes,” Gabriel said. “It seems you and Eduardo have done a lot of planning during your short acquaintance. We will talk about it over dinner.” Gabriel smiled and added, “I look forward to hearing what crime you committed to deserve banishment to this place… Eight o’clock?”

Padre Garza appeared at the Carrera villa looking biblical with his white Order of the Passionate Fathers robe, silver hair and beard. In deference to her uncle, Olimpia had wrestled her hair into a demure braid and chose a chaste yellow cotton dress designed to drop from shoulder to ankle without touching her body. But even draped in tenting, her assets could not be concealed.

Gabriel and Eduardo, both wearing cool white slacks and loosely fitting shirts, led their visitors along an echoing terra cotta hallway. On one side, stucco arches framed an untamed atrium garden carpeted with ferns and hung with pitcher plants and multihued bromeliads, their leaves straining upward toward the call of the jungle outside.

In a formal dining room overlooking the garden, Eduardo seated the Padre at one end of the table, and Gabriel pulled out a side chair for Olimpia. She caught him assessing her from head-to-toe, and blushed.

Gabriel uncorked and poured a fruity white wine from his family’s vineyards. Indian servants carried in the first course: fresh grouper with a sauce of jungle herbs. The Padre said Grace.

The wine relaxed the formality, and conversation flowed easily.

Olimpia assured Gabriel that her trip to Turbo was not a punishment. She was an aspiring scientist studying ethnobotany. As part of her dissertation research, she had come to Turbo in quest of medicinal plants.

Olimpia had visited medicine men and women from many Indian tribes around Colombia seeking plants used for native cures. This was her last trip within Colombia this summer. In August she would be going to the U.S.—to a conservatory in the city of Pittsburgh, in the State of Pennsylvania. There she will be teaching outstanding young students at a botany camp sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Here in Turbo, her goal was to track down the legendary Shaman of the Winotos tribe. She hoped she could persuade him to share some of his secret plants used for healing.

“The Winotos have been known to shrink some heads now and then,” Gabriel warned Olimpia. “Does that not concern you?”

“I studied everything I could find on them,” she stated confidently. “They are not threatened by female outsiders: They will not fear that I am a bandido. And they can be certain I will not rape their wives or daughters.”

The three men lowered their eyes.

Guilt compelled Olimpia to drop her gaze also; she had not disclosed the entire truth. According to her research, head shrinking was not the only cephalic art the Winotos practiced. Another of their specialties was mind control. It was reported that the Winotos ’ Shaman used a treatment, involving local tree lichen, to render a person amenable to suggestion—even at great distances. Olimpia was not sure what it all meant, but she intended to find out. The burning objective of her jungle trek was to obtain a sample of that tree lichen, with or without the Shaman’s approval.

Eduardo broke the silence. “How do you feel about Olimpia going into the wilderness, Padre?”

“It may have been preordained. Olimpia has wanted to come to this area for over a year. Then I was assigned here six months ago, after the American missionary priest, Father Lawrence, contracted malaria. But enough about the Garzas. Tell us something about the Carrera brothers.”

Gabriel explained the reason for their impending jungle trek: During the relatively dry winter season, crews had constructed four-meter high dirt levies about three quarters of a kilometer square around dense stands of catevo trees along river tributaries, and they chain-sawed the trees to the ground.

Spring and early summer rains flooded the levies, floating the logs to the surface. Gabriel and Eduardo and their crew would be dynamiting narrow openings in eight adjacent levies, slowly releasing forty-foot logs for transport down the river.

Mosquito screens had been rolled down, and candles that cast amber glows from wall niches burned low. After finishing a dessert of bananas and shredded coconut, the Padre said the hour was getting late and expressed his gratitude for “such a sumptuous feast.”

Gabriel and Eduardo escorted their guests toward the door. Gabriel walked slightly behind Olimpia with his hand ever-so-lightly touching her arm.

Outside, the air was almost liquid. A hazy three-quarter moon illuminated ghostly forms of the jungle’s steamy breath. Olimpia summoned her armed guard from the shadows of the courtyard. He lit a lantern and led the Garzas back to the rectory.

An agreement had been struck: Olimpia and her entourage would accompany the Carrera’s flotilla as far as the confluence of the Rio Atroto and Rio Destino , a three-day trip.

It seemed like a perfect plan.

To: Olimpia Garza

From: Diane Rose

Subject: Possible career move

Dear Olimpia: Vincent and I are being courted by a biotech company (Bayside Research Inc) in Houston. Raymond Bellfort, BRI’s president, stopped in Pittsburgh two months ago on his way home from a biotechnology convention in Boston. He phoned and invited us to lunch, stating that he was recruiting scientists.