Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [24]
We had (I cannot say enjoyed) our meals in a large communal tent that I quickly dubbed la casa de los mosquitos, because there always seemed to be more mosquitoes humming around within than without. The mosquitoes of Manú have their own happy hour, during which time they leisurely sample whatever purported insect repellent you happen to have ineffectually slathered on your poor, defenseless body in the faint hope of dissuading them from pursuing their natural inclinations to act like a thousand diminutive Draculas. Having sipped their fill of your inadequate repellent and no doubt compared its vintage with that of previous years, they then turn their attention to the evening’s main course: you. At such moments, I would grit my teeth and remind myself that the ferocious biting bugs of Manú are one reason the region remains relatively pristine and has not been overrun by prospectors and poachers.
Drenched in tepid perspiration day and night, we would have killed for a five-minute shower. As yet, the only showers at the site existed in Boris’s plans for the lodge. But there was an alternative, if one was fast enough and brave enough and desperate enough to make use of it.
We were told that the diurnal mosquitoes of Manú clock out at precisely five-fifteen p.m. while their nocturnal counterparts don’t report for work until five-thirty. This provided a fifteen-minute window—no more, no less—during which time every one of Boris’s workers flung off their clothes like a clutch of Wall Street bankers suddenly converted to nudism, plunged madly into the lake, splashed about like a bunch of demented day-trippers from a Lima asylum, erupted from the water, and hastily reclothed themselves.
In the course of our first evening in Manú, Mark and I observed this frenzied and highly localized ritual with a mixture of amazement, envy, and trepidation. This was, after all, my first time in the Amazon and I was . . . leery.
“I guess there are no piranhas in the lake,” I told Boris, who had chosen to forgo that evening’s collective ablutions.
“Oh no,” he corrected me cheerfully. “The cocha is full of piranhas. But they don’t bother you unless the water level is very low or there is blood in the water. All that crazed stuff you see in the movies: That’s just Hollywood. If you want, tomorrow we’ll go fishing for piranhas. They’re very good eating.”
Uh-huh, I told myself. And they no doubt think the reverse is true. By day three, however, the accumulated caked sweat on my corpus was making me feel like an Egyptian mummy imprisoned in a California sauna, and the promise of cool water had grown too tempting to be ignored any longer. So it was that Mark and I found ourselves anxiously lined up facing the lakeshore along with Boris’s milling mob of local indigenous and mestizo workers. Enjoying themselves immensely, they grinned at the two apprehensive gringos in their midst. I could understand but little of what they were saying, but their gestures were eloquent. Resolute but still uneasy, we smiled determinedly back.
The designated moment arrived. As if on command, the last biting insect vanished from the enveloping superheated air. And as though they had been vaporized, clothes slipped off swarthy, muscular bodies as twenty or so men of varying ethnic backgrounds and skin hues promptly plunged into the lake like so many naked schoolboys out of a bucolic Norman Rockwell painting. We all splashed about frantically, my friend and I in a delirium of delight as the almost chill water banished the accrued and all but crusted perspiration from our bodies.
Bathtime was up far too soon. Having been warned, we charged back to shore as fast as we had fled from it and hurriedly dressed ourselves—in the same sweat-soaked clothing from which we had just escaped. I felt like a moth forced to again take up residency in its icky, cast-off cocoon.
Twenty minutes later, we were again drenched in perspiration and glumly readying ourselves for another restless night