Ian Watson - The Embedding

Pierre thought sadly: these people are as near to the end of their tether as I am myself. Yet their enemy is my enemy.

“We shall let the world know what real Brazilians think of this ‘civilizing’ venture!” Iza cried passionately. “The tricks are endless. To impoverish us. Drain our resources. Stop us from using our own wealth ourselves. North America needs it desperately. Such are the ironies of so-called aid that in fact Latin America is aiding North America to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually! The cash flow is always one way. North! These Amazon dams are the greatest conspiracy and perversion yet. So we strike at them.”

She fell silent, sick and tired. Her energy supply snapped abruptly. Her eyes burnt with fever—not the fever of a sickness, but a terrible exhaustion, mixed up with a fervent despair.

“I know,” said Pierre gently. “The dam has to be destroyed. It is destroying… wonders, in the jungle here. Wonderful people. Washing them away into the concentration camps of priests. Their language is… a wonderful cultural discovery for me. I’m sorry, this might seem like a minor problem to you people. But I assure you it isn’t. And yet—I’m torn two different ways, meeting you.”

“Why were you going North?”

Pierre shivered.

“I don’t know rightly. I had no fixed idea. It frightens me, now I’ve met you, my aimlessness. My instinctiveness. This obsessed journey. Talking to you reminds me of such a different world—one that means nothing here among the Indians. I feel with you, I think with you. But what can be done? Can the dam be destroyed so easily? Surely it must take lorry loads of explosive to destroy such a thing?”

“There’ll be explosives there,” Iza promised. “And the flood pressure will assist us. We shall also kill the American engineers and their lackeys.”

“Other dams will be under attack too,” the second man—Raimundo—added hotly. “Even at Santarém itself. Whatever happens, the lie of this Amazon development will be shown up before the whole world.”

“What sort of weapons have you got?”

Iza hesitated.

“You think of this as suicide in your hearts, don’t you?” Pierre asked flatly.

Joam shrugged.

“The terrain is not so favourable.”

“These attacks are tactically vital!” Iza burned with an end of the tether passion that broke through the crust of her weariness every time that the obsessive pressures built up in her afresh. “We have to make our presence known, in a shocking and symbolic way. Back in the early days of our struggle Carlos Marighella wrote that there was no timetable for us and no deadlines to meet. But the situation has changed. This yanqui scheme for the Amazon is a monstrous distraction from reality. A fire extinguisher that may quench the realities of revolution for years! The Amazon is the pressure point of imperialism, today. It is our job to panic the Americans. Here where they believe themselves safely protected by their flood. Hidden away from the violence of the cities and the coast.”

Kayapi had been sitting idly all this time. Now Pierre turned to him.

“Kayapi?”

“Yes, Pee-áir.”

“These people are going to attack the dam. Shall we go along with them?” he asked in Portuguese.

“If they go, no need for you to go yourself,” replied Kayapi in Xemahoa. “They are your shadows. You, the substance. Maka-i is being born soon. You must be present. These men will work for you.”

“Why is the opinion of this Indian so important?” demanded Joam angrily. “Is this savage to decide what you do, for you?”

Pierre stared at Joam in revulsion. ‘This savage!’ Pierre could have wept—to swell the flood.

“I’m sorry,” Joam apologized. “Naturally Socialism is for all. What I mean is, the Indian isn’t yet qualified to decide.”

You pay your money and you take your choice. Of Marx or Christ. What did the choice matter to the Xemahoa! Whichever gained control over them, they would be destroyed. The birds of their thoughts scattered. Trapped with birdlime in tin huts.

“I’ll wish you luck,” said Pierre, making up his mind abruptly, arriving at the impossible choice. “I love you as comrades, as deeply as I hate the dam. I want you to destroy it. So much. I want you to empty out that yanqui fire extinguisher.”

“Besides,” interrupted Kayapi, “you never hit anything with your gun, Pee-áir. You are the listener and learner, not the warrior. Bruxo knows. Why do you think he let you meet maka-i the other night? Why do you think the girl comes to your hammock? Why do you think I show you how to eat the earth? Your box-that-speaks is your weapon, Pee-áir, not the gun. I do not say you lack courage. You met maka-i. But you are a different man. Your life has a different shape. Consider wisely. Do not let the birds of your thought fly the wrong way.”

‘You let me come this far towards the dam, Kayapi!’

“Your birds had to fly this way. Now they need to return. These people will do your work.”

“Why do you talk two different languages to each other?” demanded Iza. “He understands your Portuguese perfectly well. Can’t he reply in Portuguese?”

“It’s important that he speaks in his native language. A great thing is happening in the minds of the tribe. He wishes to belong.”

Kayapi looked sullen.

“Maka-i will be born, Pee-áir. Hurry up.”

“You said there was time!”

“I was wrong. There’s no time. It happens soon.”

“He says we have to go back,” Pierre told the guerrillas.

The woman gazed disbelievingly at Pierre.

“Why?”

Pierre chose his words carefully.

“What is happening in his village is very important, as a human event. If I’m not present to see what happens, something amazing might be lost. I can’t risk it. Not just on my own account. But, well—for Man.”

“How can you say so, when you have been with Frelimo and seen what they do for Mankind?”

“This tears me apart. Half of me wants to go on with you. Half has to return. I need to be two people at once.”

“An amoeba,” Raimundo sneered. “A shapeless amoeba wants to split in half.”

“When you meet maka-i,” Kayapi whispered, “you are two men, three men, many men. Your mind is great with words. You speak the full language of man.” But was Kayapi his evil genius or true guide?

“Dear people. Comrades. Iza, Joam, Raimundo. I’m going back with him to the village.”

“What made your mind up?” Raimundo jibed. “The sight of guns? The reality of a point-four-five INA sub-machinegun? The thought of it going bang bang? You despicable bourgeois intellectual. No doubt Ford or Rockefeller is paying you to visit this jungle to dredge up this mystification. Who knows who is paying?”

“Shadow and substance, Pee-áir,” hissed Kayapi. “Is it not strange to meet your shadows in the jungle? They meet you to show you how they will go on for you. Do you imagine it is an accident we meet them?”

“I’ll do what you say, Kayapi. You’ve been right before. In my own terms, it’s wrong. But they can’t be my terms if I’m to understand Xemahoa. If I’m wrong then I shall let everyone know it. I promise.”

“Fair promises,” snapped the woman. “We’ve wasted time and energy on you. I suppose we should shoot you both, for security. But we’re not going to. You can have the opportunity to feel like a worm. Perhaps then you may keep your promise! Such as it is. I guess that is public relations if not exactly revolution. Fuck off then, Frenchman.”

Pierre and Kayapi set off southwards again through the flooded creeks and lagoons. To Pierre’s eyes the water already seemed centimetres higher than on their journey north, and it still rained.