The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [137]
Walter laughs and nods, scratching a bite on his chest and smearing the seed-paste pattern in the process.
“I hear you’ll be leaving us soon,” he says.
“Tomorrow.”
“Going back to the big-city life, eh?” His voice carries a note of derision.
Ursula nods, preparing to explain, but Walter doesn’t ask.
“Why don’t you come and say good-bye to the tribe? Dan’s doing a new ceremony today. It might be cool.”
“Dan? I thought Günter was your shaman.”
“His malaria got bad a couple weeks ago. Had to go downriver.” Walter slaps the back of his skinny neck, looks at his hand.
“What’s the ceremony?” Ursula asks.
“We’re honoring the spirits of dead tribesmen.”
“Why? Has anyone in your tribe died?”
“Well . . . ,” Walter says, shifting uncomfortably on his haunches, “not recently. We’re contacting past members. You know. . . .”
“Oh, you’re honoring the real Patahamateri,” Ursula says. She knows this is a bit cruel, but she can’t help it.
Walter pokes around the ground leaves with the end of his bow. “We prefer not to think of ourselves as unreal, actually.”
“Oh, sure. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’d better be on my way.” He stands, his penis at her eye level. Walter is pretty well endowed. No doubt the ego boost his nakedness provides him with compensates somewhat for all the scratches and bug bites. “You coming?” he asks, as an afterthought.
“Sure.”
Walter turns around, displaying his fuzzy, clenched buttocks, and starts walking. Ursula repacks her kit and follows. His blond hair is bowl-cut in the Yanomama style, the base of his skull and the back of his neck bright pink from shaving. His hair’s golden hue attracts bees by the dozens, forcing him to shoo them continually with his free hand.
“Is this going to be an actual Yanomama ritual?” Ursula asks.
“Well, they didn’t use to have much in the way of religious ceremonies,” Walter says. “We kind of felt that it would be a good addition. But there will be plenty of authentic aspects—chants and dances and stuff. We’re pretty sure they’re authentic, anyway. We damn well paid enough for them.”
That the real Yanomama are at least making a bit of money off this whole charade is the one indisputably good thing about it. The shantytown villages of the settlement program are atrocious: the former tribespeople have no work and nothing to do. The men and boys take turns hunting for free pornography on the village WebTV, while the women and girls hang out by the logging road all day, begging for money and prostituting themselves to the loggers. Ironically enough, the dark Avon eye shadow, blush, and lipstick the women now pay so dearly for looks far more savage on their round, childlike faces than the vivid seed paste and flowers they used to wear. The only remaining bright spot in their lives is when one of the neo-Yanomama like Walter emerges from the jungle seeking authentic folklore, herbal remedies, food sources, and, especially, ritual ceremonies. The villagers, dressed in T-shirts and poorly made cutoff jeans and skirts, gather round the naked, painted American or European, and when they’ve finished laughing their heads off, the naked white man tells them he wants to buy a ritual, and the oldest among them nods sagely, negotiates a price, and then explains the appropriate chants and movements. Whether he is giving him actual ceremonies or just making them up off the top of his head is anybody’s guess. The neo-Yanomama long ago gave up trying to get the real Yanomama to abandon their shacks and join them in the jungle. The real Yanomama, particularly the young ones, now regard nakedness, communal living, and Indianness in general as embarrassing and even shameful.
Walter and Ursula enter the neo-Patahamateri village, a large clearing surrounded by a shapono, a single ring of thatched roofing jutting from the ground, propped up by palm slats. In the circular, wedge-shaped space beneath the roof, eighty or so neo-Patahamateri live communally, without a single wall to divide them. They lounge in hammocks,