Version 2007.02.08

## “Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rainforest” - ©1982 by Florinda Donner-Grau

### Chapter 2

A week later I was on my way in a small plane to one of the Catholic missions on the upper Orinoco with my friend. There we were to meet the other members of the party, who had set out by boat a few days earlier with the hunting gear and the necessary provisions to last us two weeks in the jungle.

My friend was eager to show me the wonders of the muddy, turbulent Orinoco River. He maneuvered the small aircraft with daring and skill. At one moment we were so close to the water's surface that we scared the alligators sunning themselves on the sandy bank. The next instant we were up in the air, above the seemingly endless, impenetrable forest. No sooner had I relaxed than he would dive once again- so low that we would see the turtles basking on logs at the edge of the river.

I was shaking with dizziness and nausea when we finally landed on the small clearing near the cultivated fields of the mission. We were welcomed by Father Coriolano, the priest in charge of the mission, the rest of our party who had arrived the day before, and a group of Indians who cried excitedly as they scrambled into the small plane.

Father Coriolano led us through the plots of maize, manioc, plantains, and sugar cane. He was a thin man with long arms and short legs. Heavy eyebrows almost hid his deep-set eyes and a mass of unruly beard covered the rest of his face. At odds with his black cassock was his torn straw hat, which he kept pushing back so that the breeze could dry his sweat-covered forehead.

My clothes clung damply to my body as we walked past a makeshift pier of piles driven into the mud at the bank of the river where the boat was tied. We stopped and Father Coriolano began discussing our departure the next day. I was encircled by a group of Indian women who did not say a word, but only smiled shyly at me. Their ill-fitting dresses came up in front and dipped in back, giving the impression that they were all pregnant.

Among them was an old woman so small and wrinkled she reminded me of an ancient child. She did not smile like the others. There was a silent plea in the old woman's eyes as she held her hand out to me. My feelings were strange as I watched her eyes fill with tears: I did not want to see them roll down her clay-colored cheeks. I placed my hand in hers. Smiling contentedly, she led me toward the fruit trees surrounding the long, one-story mission.

In the shade, underneath the wide overhang of the building's asbestos roof, squatted a group of old men holding enameled tin cups in their trembling hands. They were dressed in khaki clothes, their faces partly covered by sweat-stained straw hats. They laughed and talked in high-pitched voices, smacking their lips over their rum-laced coffee. A noisy pair of macaws, their brightly colored wings clipped, perched on one of the men's shoulders.

I could not see the men's features, nor the color of their skin. They seemed to be Speaking in Spanish, yet their words sounded unintelligible to me. "Are those men Indians?" I asked the old woman as she led me into a small room at the back of one of the houses fringing the mission.

The old woman laughed. Her eyes, scarcely visible between the slits of her lids, came to rest on my face. "They are racionales. Those who are not Indians are called racionales," she repeated. "Those old men have been here for too long. They came to look for gold and diamonds."

"Did they find any?"

"Many of them did."

"Why are they still here?"

"They are the ones who cannot return to where they came from," she said, resting her bony hands on my shoulders. I was not surprised by her gesture. There was something cordial and affectionate in her touch. I just thought she was a bit crazy. "They have lost their souls in the forest." The old woman's eyes had grown wide; they were the color of dried tobacco leaves.

Not knowing what to say, I averted my eyes from her penetrating gaze, and looked around the room. The blue-painted walls were faded from the sun and peeling from the dampness. Next to a narrow window stood a crudely constructed wooden bed. It looked like an oversized crib on which mosquito wire had been nailed all around. The more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of a cage that could be entered only by lifting the heavy mosquito-screened top.

"I am Angelica," the old woman said, peering at me. "Is this all you have brought with you?" she asked, removing the orange knapsack from my back.

Speechless and with a look of complete astonishment, I watched her take out my underwear, a pair of jeans, and a long T-shirt. "That's all I need for two weeks," I said, pointing to my camera and the toilet kit at the bottom of the knapsack.

Carefully, she removed the camera and unzipped the plastic toilet kit and promptly emptied its contents on the floor. It contained a comb, nail clipper, toothpaste and brush, a bottle of shampoo, and a bar of soap. Shaking her head in disbelief, she turned the knapsack inside out. Absentmindedly, she brushed away the dark hair sticking to her forehead. There was a vague air of dreamy recollection in her eyes as her face wrinkled into a smile. She put everything back into the knapsack and without a word led me back to my friends.

Long after the mission was dark and silent I was still awake, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the night coming through the opened window. I don't know whether it was because of my fatigue or the relaxed atmosphere at the mission, but before retiring that evening I had decided not to accompany my friends on their hunting expedition. Instead I was going to stay the two weeks in the mission. Happily, no one minded. In fact, everybody seemed relieved. Although they had not voiced it, some of my friends believed that a person who did not know how to use a gun had no business going on a hunt.

Spellbound, I watched the blue transparency of the air dissolve the shadows of the night. A softness spread over the sky, revealing the contours of the branches and leaves waving with the breeze outside my window. The solitary cry of a howler monkey was the last thing I heard before falling into a deep sleep.

"So you are an anthropologist," Father Coriolano said at lunch the next day. "The anthropologists I have met were all loaded with recording and filming equipment, and who knows what other gadgets." He offered me another serving of baked fish and corn on the cob. "Are you interested in the Indians?"

I explained to him what I had been doing in Barlovento, touching upon the difficulties I had encountered with the data. "I would like to see some curing sessions while I'm here."

"I'm afraid you won't see much of that around here,"

Father Coriolano said, picking out crumbs of cassava bread lodged in his beard. "We have a well-equipped dispensary. Indians come from far away to bring their sick. But perhaps I can arrange for you to visit one of the nearby settlements, where you could meet a shaman."

"I would be very grateful if that were possible," I said. "Not that I came to do field work, but it would be interesting to see a shaman."

"You don't look like an anthropologist." Father Coriolano's heavy eyebrows arched and met. "Of course most of the ones I have met were men; but there've been a few women." He scratched his head. "Somehow you don't match my description of a woman anthropologist."

"You can't expect us to all look alike," I said lightly, wondering whom he had met.

"I suppose not," he said sheepishly. "What I mean is that you don't look fully grown. This morning, after your friends left, I was asked by various people why the child was left with me."

His eyes were lively as he joked about how the Indians expected a fully grown white adult to tower over them. "Especially if they are blond and blue eyed," he said. "Those are supposed to be veritable giants."

That night I had the most terrifying nightmare in my mosquito-netted crib. I dreamt that the top had been nailed shut. All my efforts to extricate myself proved futile against the pressure of the lid. Panic overtook me. I screamed and shook the frame until the whole contraption tumbled over. I was still half asleep as I lay on the floor, my head resting against the small bulge of the old woman's hanging breasts. For a moment I could not remember where I was. A childish fear made me press closer to the old Indian, knowing that I was safe.

The old woman rubbed the top of my head and whispered incomprehensible words into my ear until I was fully awake. I felt reassured by her touch and the alien, nasal sound of her voice. I was not able to rationalize this feeling, but there was something that made me cling to her. She led me to her room, back of the kitchen. I lay next to her in a heavy hammock fastened to two poles. Protected by the presence of the strange old woman, I closed my eyes without fear. The faint beat of her heart and the drip of water filtering through an earthen water jar put me to sleep.

"It will be much better if you sleep here," the old woman said the following morning as she hung a cotton hammock next to hers.

From that day on Angelica hardly ever left my side. Most of the time we stayed by the river, talking and bathing by its bank, where the gray-red sand was the color of ashes mixed with blood. Completely at peace, I would sit for hours watching the Indian women wash their garments, and listen to Angelica's tales of her past. Like clouds wandering about the sky, her words intermingled with the images of women rinsing their clothes in the water and spreading them out on the stones to dry.

Angelica was not a Maquiritare like most of the Indians at the mission. She had been given to a Maquiritare man when she was very young. He had treated her well, she was fond of saying. Quickly she had learned their way of life, which had not been so different from the ways of her own people. She had also been to the city. She never told me which city. Neither did she tell me her Indian name, which according to the customs of her tribe was not to be said aloud.

Whenever she talked about her past, her voice sounded foreign to my ears. It became very nasal and often she would switch from Spanish into her own language, mixing up time and place. Frequently she stopped in the middle of a sentence: Hours later, or even the following day, she would resume the conversation at the exact spot where she had left off, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to converse in that fashion.

"I will take you to my people," Angelica said one afternoon. She looked at me, a flickering smile on her lips. I had the feeling she had been about to say something else, and I wondered if she knew about Father Coriolano's arrangement with Mr. Barth to take me to the nearby Maquiritare settlement.

Mr. Barth was an American miner who had been in the Venezuelan jungle for over twenty years. He lived down-river with an Indian woman, and many an evening he invited himself to the mission for dinner. Although he had no desire to return to the States, he greatly enjoyed hearing about them.

"I will take you to my people," Angelica said again. "It will take many days to get there. Milagros will guide us through the jungle."

"Who is Milagros?"

"He's an Indian like me. He speaks Spanish well." Angelica rubbed her hands with glee. "He was supposed to accompany your friends, but he decided to stay behind. Now I know why."

Angelica spoke with an odd intensity; her eyes sparkled and I had the same feeling I had had when I first arrived, that she was a bit crazy. "He knew all along that I would need him to accompany us," the old woman said. Her lids closed as if she no longer had the strength to lift them. Abruptly, as if fearing to fall asleep, she opened her eyes wide. "It doesn't matter what you say to me now. I know that you will come with me."

That night I lay awake in my hammock. By the sound of Angelica's breathing I knew that she was asleep. I prayed that she would not forget her offer to take me into the jungle. Dona Mercedes's words ran through my head. "By the time you return you won't have any use for your notes." Perhaps I would do some field work among the Indians. The thought amused me. I had not brought a tape recorder; neither did I have paper and pencils- only a small diary and a ball-point pen. I had brought my camera but only three rolls of film.

Restlessly I turned in my hammock. No, I had no intention of going into the jungle with an old woman, whom I believed to be a bit mad, and an Indian whom I had never seen. Yet there was something so tempting about a trip through the jungle. I could easily take some time off. I had no deadlines to meet; there was no one waiting for me. I could leave a letter for my friends explaining my sudden decision. They would not think much of it. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. Father Coriolano, no doubt, would be able to supply me with enough paper and pencils. And yes, perhaps dona Mercedes had been right. I would have no use for my old notes on curing when- and if, the thought intruded ominously- I returned from such a journey.

I got out of my hammock and looked at the frail old woman while she slept. As if she were sensing my presence, her lids fluttered, her lips began to move. "I will not die here but among my own people. My body will be burned and my ashes will remain with them." Her eyes slowly opened; they were dull, befogged by sleep, and they expressed nothing, but I sensed a deep sadness in her voice. I touched her hollowed cheeks. She smiled at me, but her mind was clearly elsewhere.

I awoke with the feeling I was being watched. Angelica told me that she had been waiting for me to wake up. She motioned me to look at a box, the size of a vanity case, made out of tree bark, standing next to her. She opened the tightly fitting lid and with great relish proceeded to show me each item, breaking into loud exclamations of joy and surprise; as if it were the first time she had seen each article. There was a mirror, a comb, a necklace made out of plastic pearls, a few empty Pond's cold cream jars, a lipstick, a pair of rusted scissors, a faded blouse and skirt.

"And what do you think this is?" she asked, holding something behind her back.

I confessed my ignorance and she laughed. "This is my writing book." She opened her notebook, its pages yellow with age. On each page were rows of crooked letters. "Watch me." Taking out a chewed-up pencil from the box, she began to print her name. "I learned to do this at another mission. A much larger one than this one. It also had a school. That was many years ago, but I haven't forgotten what I learned." Again and again she printed her name on the faded pages. "Do you like it?"

"Very much." I was bewildered by the sight of the old woman squatting on the floor with her body bent forward, her head almost touching the notebook on the ground. Yet she was perfectly balanced as she painstakingly traced the letters of her name.

Suddenly she straightened up, closing her notebook. "I have been to the city," she said, her eyes fixed on a spot beyond the window. "A city full of people that looked all the same. At first I liked it, but I grew tired of it very fast. There was too much for me to watch. And it was so noisy. Not only people talked, but things talked as well." She paused, scowling in a tremendous effort to concentrate, all the lines in her face deepened. Finally she said, "I didn't like the city at all."

I asked her which city she had been to, and at which mission she had learned to write her name. She looked at me as if she had not heard what I asked, then continued with her tale. As she had done before, she began to mix up time and place, relapsing into her own language. At times she laughed, repeating over and over, "I will not go to Father Coriolano's heaven."

"Are you really serious about going to see your people?" I asked. "Don't you think it's dangerous for two women to go into the forest? Do you actually know the way?"

"Of course I know the way," she said, snapping out of her almost trancelike state. "An old woman is always safe."

"I'm not old."

She stroked my hair. "You aren't old, but your hair is the color of palm fibers and your eyes the color of the sky. You'll be safe too."

"I'm sure we'll get lost," I said softly. "You can't even remember how long ago it was you last saw your people. You told me they always move farther into the forest."

"Milagros is going with us," Angelica said convincingly. "He knows the forest well. He knows about all the people living in the jungle." Angelica began putting her belongings into the bark box. "I better find him so we can leave as soon as possible. You'll have to give him something."

"I haven't got anything he'd want," I said. "Maybe I can arrange for my friends to leave the machetes they brought with them at the mission tor Milagros."

"Give him your camera," Angelica suggested. "I know he wants a camera as much as he wants another machete."

"Does he know how to use a camera?"

"I don't know." She giggled, holding her hand over her mouth. "He told me once that he wants to take pictures of the white people who come to the mission to look at the Indians."

I was not keen on parting with my camera. It was a good one and very expensive. I wished I had brought a cheaper one with me. "I'll give him my camera," I said, hoping that once I explained to Milagros how complicated it was to operate, he would prefer a machete.

"The less you have to carry, the better," Angelica said, closing the lid on her box with a bang. "I'm going to give all this to one of the women here. I won't need it anymore. If you go empty-handed, no one will expect a thing from you."

"I'd like to take the hammock you gave me," I said in jest.

"That might be a good idea." Angelica looked at me, nodding her head. "You're a fussy sleeper and probably won't be able to rest in the fiber hammocks my people use." She picked up her box and walked out of the room. "I'll be back when I find Milagros"

As Father Coriolano drank his coffee, he looked at me as though I were a stranger. With great effort he got up, steadying himself against a chair. Seemingly disoriented, he gazed at me without saying a word. It was the silence of an old man. As he ran his stiff, gnarled fingers across his face, I realized for the first time how frail he was.

"You're crazy to go into the jungle with Angelica," he finally said. "She is very old; she won't get very far. Walking through the forest is no excursion."

"Milagros will accompany us."

Father Coriolano turned toward the window, deep in thought. He kept pushing his beard back and forth with his hand. "Milagros refused to go with your friends. I'm sure he will not accompany Angelica into the jungle."

"He will." My certainty was incomprehensible. It was a feeling completely foreign to my everyday reason.

"Although he is a trustworthy man, he is strange," Father Coriolano said thoughtfully. "He has acted as a guide to various expeditions. Yet..." Father Coriolano returned to his chair and, leaning toward me, continued. "You aren't prepared to go into the jungle. You cannot begin to imagine the hardships and dangers entailed in such an adventure. You haven't even got the proper shoes."

"I have been told by various people who have been in the jungle that tennis shoes are the best thing to wear. They dry fast on your feet without getting tight and they don't cause blisters."

Father Coriolano ignored my comment. "Why do you want to go?" he asked in an exasperated tone. "Mr. Barth will take you to meet a Maquiritare shaman: You will get to see a curing ceremony without having to go very far."

"I don't really know why I want to go." I looked at him helplessly. "Maybe I want to see more than a curing ceremony. In fact, I wanted to ask you to let me have some writing paper and pencils."

"What about your friends? What am I supposed to tell them? That you just disappeared with a senile old woman?" he asked as he poured himself another cup of coffee. "I've been here for over thirty years, and never have I heard of such a preposterous plan."

It was past siesta time, yet the mission was still quiet as I stretched in my hammock hanging under the shade of the twisted branches and jagged leaves of two poma-rosa trees. In the distance I saw the tall figure of Mr. Barth approaching the mission clearing. Strange, I thought, for he usually came in the evening. Then I guessed why he was here.

Stopping by the steps leading up to the veranda, close to where I lay, he squatted on the ground, and lit one of the cigarettes my friends had brought him.

Mr. Barth seemed uneasy. He stood up, and walked back and forth as if he were a sentry guarding the building. I was about to call out to him when he began talking to himself, his words pouring out with the smoke. He rubbed the white stubble on his chin, and scraped one boot against the other in an effort to get rid of the mud. Squatting once more, he began to shake his head as if in that way he could rid himself of what was going through his mind.

"You have come to tell me about the diamonds you have found in the Gran Sabana," I said as a way of greeting, hoping to dispel the melancholy expression in his gentle brown eyes.

He drew on the cigarette, and blew the smoke out through his nose in short bursts. After spitting out a few ¦ particles of tobacco that had stuck to the tip of his tongue, he asked, "Why do you want to go with Angelica into the forest?"

"I already told Father Coriolano, I don't really know."

Mr. Barth softly repeated my words, making a question out of them. Lighting another cigarette, he exhaled slowly, gazing at the spiral of tobacco smoke melting into the transparent air. "Let's go for a walk," he suggested.

We strolled along the river's bank where vast, interwoven roots emerged from the earth like sculptures of wood and mud. Quickly the warm, sticky dampness permeated my skin. From under a layer of branches and leaves, Mr. Barth pulled out a canoe, pushed it into the water, then motioned me to climb in. He steered the craft right across the river, making for the shelter of the left-hand bank, which offered some protection from the full strength of the current. With precise, strong movements, he guided the canoe upstream until we reached a narrow tributary. The bamboo thicket yielded to a dark heavy growth, an endless wall of trees standing trunk to trunk at the very edge of the river. Roots and branches overhung the water; vines climbed down the trees, winding themselves around their trunks like snakes crushing them in a tight embrace.

"Oh, there it is," Mr. Barth said, pointing to an opening in that seemingly impenetrable wall.

We pulled the boat across the marshy bank and tied it securely around a tree trunk. The sun hardly penetrated through the dense foliage; the light faded to a tenuous green as I followed Mr. Barth through the thicket. Vines and branches brushed against me like things alive. The heat was not so intense anymore, but the sticky dampness made my clothes cling to me like slime. Soon my face was covered with grimy vegetable dust and spiderwebs that smelled of decay.

"Is this a path?" I asked incredulously, almost stumbling into a greenish puddle of water. Its surface quivered with hundreds of insects that were hardly more than pulsating dots in the turbid liquid. Birds flew away and amidst the greenness I could not discern their color or size but only heard their furious screeches, protesting our intrusion. I understood Mr. Barth was trying to frighten me. The thought that he might be taking me to another Catholic mission also crossed my mind. "Is this a path?" I asked again.

Abruptly Mr. Barth stopped in front of a tree, so tall its upper branches seemed to reach into the sky. Climbing plants twisted and turned upward around the trunk and branches. "I intended to give you a lecture and scare the devil out of you," Mr. Barth said with a sulky expression. "But whatever I rehearsed to say seems foolish now. Let's rest for a moment and then we'll go back."

Mr. Barth let the boat drift with the current, paddling only whenever we got too close to the bank. "The jungle is a world you cannot possibly imagine," he said. "I can't describe it to you even though I have experienced it so often. It's a personal affair- each person's experience is different and unique."

Instead of returning to the mission, Mr. Barth invited me to his house. It was a large round hut with a conical roof of palm leaves. It was quite dark inside, the only light coming from a small entrance and the rectangular window in the palm-thatched roof, operated by means of a rawhide pulley. Two hammocks hung in the middle of the hut. Baskets filled with books and magazines stood against the whitewashed walls: Above them hung calabashes, ladles, machetes, and a gun.

A naked young woman got up from one of the hammocks. She was tall, with large breasts and broad hips, but her face was that of a child, round and smooth, with slanted dark eyes. Smiling, she reached for her dress, hanging next to a woven fire fan. "Coffee?" she asked in Spanish as she sat on the ground in front of the hearth next to the aluminum pots and pans.

"Do you know Milagros well?" I asked Mr. Barth after he had introduced me to his wife, and we were all seated in the hammocks, the young woman and I sharing one.

"That's hard to say," he said, reaching for his coffee mug on the ground. "He comes and goes: He's like the river. He never stops, never seems to rest. How far Milagros goes, how long he stays anywhere, no one knows. All I've heard is that when he was young he was taken from his people by white men. He is never consistent with his story. At one time he says they were rubber collectors, at another time they were missionaries, the next time he says they were miners, scientists. Regardless of who they were, he traveled with them for many years."

"To which tribe does he belong? Where does he live?"

"He is a Maquiritare," Mr. Barth said. "But no one knows where he lives. Periodically he returns to his people. To which settlement he belongs, I don't know."

"Angelica went to look for him. I wonder if she knows where to find him."

"I'm sure she does," Mr. Barth said. "They are very close. I wonder if they are related." He deposited the mug on the ground, and got up from his hammock, momentarily disappearing in the thick bush outside the hut. Mr. Barth reappeared seconds later with a small metal box. "Open it," he said, handing me the box.

Inside was a brown leather pouch. "Diamonds?" I asked, feeling its contents.

Smiling, Mr. Barth nodded, then motioned me to sit down beside him on the dirt floor. He took off his shirt, spread it on the ground, then asked me to empty the pouch on the cloth surface. I could barely hide my disappointment. The stones did not sparkle; they rather looked like opaque quartz.

"Are you sure these are diamonds?" I asked.

"Absolutely sure," Mr. Barth said, placing a stone the size of a cherry tomato in my palm. "If it's cut properly, it'll make a most handsome ring."

"Did you find these diamonds here?"

"No," Mr. Barth laughed. "Near the Sierra Parima, years ago." Half closing his eyes, he rocked back and forth. His cheeks were ruddy with little veins, and the stubble on his chin was damp. "A long time ago my only interest in life was to find diamonds in order to return home a wealthy man." Mr. Barth sighed heavily, his gaze lost on some place beyond the hut. "Then one day I realized that my dream to become rich had dried out, so to speak: It no longer obsessed me, and neither did I want to return to the world I had once known. I remained here." Mr. Barth's eyes shone with unshed tears as he gestured to the diamonds. "With them." He blinked repeatedly, then looked at me and smiled. "I like them as I like this land."

I wanted to ask him so many questions, but was afraid to distress him. We remained silent, listening to the steady, deep murmur of the river.

Mr. Barth spoke again. "You know, anthropologists and missionaries have a lot in common. Both are bad for this land. Anthropologists are more hypocritical; they cheat and lie in order to get the information they want. I suppose they believe that in the name of science all is fair. No, no, don't interrupt me," Mr; Barth admonished, shaking his hand in front of my face.

"Anthropologists," he continued in the same harsh tone, "have complained to me about the arrogance of the missionaries, about their high-handedness and paternalistic attitude toward the Indians. And look at them, the most arrogant of them all, prying into other people's lives as if they had every right to do so." Mr. Barth sighed loudly as if exhausted by his outburst.

I decided not to defend anthropologists, for I feared another outburst, so I contented myself with examining the diamond in my hand. "It's very beautiful," I said, handing him the stone.

"Keep it," he said, then picked up the remaining stones. One by one he dropped them into the leather pouch.

"I'm afraid I can't keep such a valuable gift." I began to giggle and added as an excuse, "I never wear jewelry."

"Don't think of it as a valuable gift. Regard it as a talisman. [* talisman- a trinket or piece of jewellery thought to be a protection against evil] Only people in the cities regard it as a jewel," he said casually, closing my fingers over the stone. "It will bring you luck." He got up, brushing the dampness off the seat of his pants with his hands, then stretched in his hammock.

The young woman refilled our mugs. Sipping the heavily sweetened black coffee, we watched the whitewashed walls turn purple with twilight. Shadows had no time to grow, for in an instant it was dark.

I was awakened by Angelica whispering into my ear. "We're going in the morning."

"What?" I jumped out of my hammock fully awake. "I thought it would take you a couple of days to find Milagros. I better get packed."

Angelica laughed. "Packed? You haven't got anything to pack. I gave your extra pair of pants and a top to an Indian boy. You won't need two pairs. You better go back to sleep. It will be a long day tomorrow. Milagros is a fast walker."

"I can't sleep," I said excitedly. "It'll be dawn soon. I'll write a note to my friends. I hope the hammock and the thin blanket will fit in my knapsack. What about food?"

"Father Coriolano put sardines and cassava bread aside for us to pack in the morning. I will carry it in a basket."

"Did you talk to him tonight? What did he say?"

"He said it's in the hands of God."

I was all packed when the chapel bell began to chime. For the first time since I had arrived at the mission, I went to mass. Indians and racionales filled the wooden benches. They laughed and talked as if they were at a social gathering. It took Father Coriolano a long time to silence them before he could say mass.

The woman sitting next to me complained that Father Coriolano always managed to wake her baby with his loud voice. The infant indeed began to cry, but before his first great shriek was heard, the woman uncovered her breast and pressed it against the baby's mouth.

Kneeling down, I raised my eyes to the Virgin above the altar. She wore a blue cloak embroidered in gold. Her face was tilted heavenward, her eyes were blue, her cheeks pale, and her mouth a deep red. In one arm she held the infant Jesus: The other arm was extended, its hand white and delicate, reaching out to the strange heathens at her feet.