Manaus, Brazil: Moving Limbs (cont.)

The lodge itself was an expanse of floating wood flooring with a roof of dried leaves, picnic tables up front, and maybe ten rooms—which were glorified, wooden cubicles—in the back.  The Israeli man had been shocked at first by the lack of excess.  On seeing the lodge, he announced that he was going to call Lucia from the airport and ask for a refund.  The rain made the mattress damp so we slept nights in our sleeping bags. 

It felt like a camp that would make parents nervous, but  kids would love.

I felt good about our choice.  I was glad for the lack of conveniences, the minimalist nature of the lodge.  Superman, and the rest of the small staff, had an obvious respect for the environment, and a warmth that closed the distance between us.  It narrowed further the next day, when we returned from a day trip to find that one of the lodge’s larger boats had almost sunk while we were gone, filled with rainwater. 

They needed a hand, so a couple guys and I happily did what we could.  One side of the boat had dipped below the water line, and it took a long time to figure out how to lever it up so they could pump the water out of it.  After a week of vacation, the physical work felt refreshing, especially doing it alongside the Amazonians, who retained their relaxed cheer throughout. 

When we finally got things right, I was positioned in another boat, lashed behind the sinking one, with a member of the staff who had lost the lower part of his right arm.  He had served many of our meals, and perhaps because we could not communicate verbally, he underscored his graciousness with vigorous head-nodding and twinkles of his eye.  I found his largeness of spirit inspiring, as anyone would.  Katayoon and I had cringed when the Israeli man spent a lunchtime complaining about the lack of beef while he stood feet away, placing food on the table.  I liked being with him then, being able to share a smile when the pump started and boat started rising, as the last of my concerns slipped away.

Superman supervised our trips the way the most responsible kid in detention watches over the others.  We took our excursions on what he called “Amazon time,” which meant whenever we got around to it.  He gave some of us pet names; the Israeli became “Abacaxi,” which means pineapple—or, in slang, stupid. 

Over the three days of our trip, Superman took us fishing for piranha, on a jungle trek—where we learned about the Amazon’s plants and took turns swinging over a hillside on a vine—and on a canoe trip through a “flooded forest.”  We had come in the rainy season, and with the watermark forty feet above the forest ground, it felt like flying as you paddled past half-submerged trees.  We saw a tarantula and dolphins and a glorious sunrise. 

On the last day of our trip, Superman told us how the rubber boom ended.  It was quite simple:  on orders from the director of England’s Kew Gardens, one Sir Henry Wickham smuggled thousands of rubber seeds from the Amazon out of Brazil.  Eventually, the English discovered that latex could be harvested from rubber trees more easily in Southeast Asia than Brazil.  And that was it; the end of the wealth that had brought the Teatro Amazonas, and such pride, to Manaus.

The group stood around a rubber tree as Superman related the history.  He struck his machete into the tree, which goes by the Indian name “caoutchouc,” or weeping wood.  A thin stream of dirty-white latex poured over the bark, resembling tears.  Superman didn’t refer to Wickham by name; he called him “some English fuck.”  He said it harshly, with his face to the ground.  Only then did he turn his coy eyes up to us—backpackers from the colonizing nations of Europe, Israel, and the United States—with the ghost of a smile on his lips.  His anger was not a put on, but his eyes said:  I’m just having fun.  Get over yourself.

I had.  It didn’t even bother me when we entered the ramshackle home of a native family, on whose property the rubber tree stood.  If I hadn’t known Superman by then, I would have been worried that the visit would not respect the dignity of our hosts.  But I did know him, and even when the Israeli called out “where are the Indians!?”—doing it in his most plaintive voice, with the man of the house standing right next to him—I knew it would be alright.  Before we left, the host was playfully wrapping a leathered snakeskin around the Israeli, and everyone was getting a laugh. 

On our way to our departing flight, Katayoon and I stopped to thank Lucia.  She hugged us, and told us the news she had just received.  After we left, one of the workers at the lodge had been in an accident.  His arm.  She didn’t have the full news yet but she believed he might have lost his arm.

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