BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 9

  During these expeditions, Father—as Jack called him in the journal—had contacted dozens of indigenous tribes which had never before seen, or even heard of the white man. Most of these unknown tribes had turned out to be friendly, welcoming and socially advanced. Others, though, did not seem to have got past the Stone Age and having degenerated through practices like cannibalism their members could hardly be deemed human beings.

  But what really marked Percy Fawcett’s life, and hence that of his son Jack and his friend Raleigh, were the legends circulating through the Amazon about a fabulous lost city which the Colonel had decided to call “Z.”

  With every journey, Percy Fawcett gathered more and more stories that dealt with the history and destiny of that chimerical enclave. His obsession with finding the evidence to confirm its existence grew correspondingly. At last he found the proof he had been seeking, when reading a manuscript signed by Canon J. de la C. Barbosa, in the National Library of Rio de Janeiro. The subject was the incredible journey of one Francisco Raposo to the Mato Grosso. The manuscript told how Francisco Raposo led a group of eighteen settlers through the rainforest in search of fertile land. They crossed mountains, marshes, and rivers until they reached the shores of the Xingu. Once there, while fleeing from hostile natives, they had come upon the remains of a great city which had been abandoned many centuries before.

  That was all Percy Fawcett had needed to convince himself—if he wasn’t already—so he followed the vague clues in the manuscript and decided to set out immediately in search of Z. He took Raleigh and his son Jack— both young, strong, and enthusiastic—with him as sole companions. He sold the exclusive rights to his story to an American publisher, and with the money this brought to him plus a little more he managed to raise from various geographical societies, he organized the expedition. At the beginning of 1925 they left the Brazilian city of Cuiabá, near the Bolivian border, together with six porters, eight mules and two dogs, Shepherd and Chulim.

  From that point, the pages that detailed the trip were so damaged that they were impossible to decipher. As a result, the first legible entry was dated May 29, 1925. It read:

  Today we left behind Camp Dead Horse. Father calls it that because he had lost a horse there, bitten by a poisonous snake in a previous expedition. The two days of rest have been as wonderful as the journey from Cuiabá was long and painful. Who back in well-tamed England could imagine that going through two hundred miles of jungle would take nearly two months! Raleigh’s leg is somewhat better, although the tick bites are still infected and he is limping. But he is strong and I have no doubt that he will heal. Father, on the other hand, seems as healthy as an oak and, although he is more than twice my age and has lost weight visibly since we set off, has not slackened his pace. I can see the spark of stubbornness shining permanently in his eyes.

  We have dismissed the porters with letters for the family, keeping six mules and the dogs, as Father does not want anyone to know where we are going (illegible fragment)… Chief of the Kayapo village has warned us repeatedly against the Morcegos, a mysterious tribe who, according to him, lives in the place we are heading for, and who all the other villages in the region fear as if they were the devil himself. Father insists, though, that it is just a myth, the equivalent of our bogey-man and that in his twenty-odd years of experience in this part of the world, he has never encountered a tribe which you could not deal with in a friendly manner with respect and humility, no matter how bellicose they might have been to begin with. The truth is that stories about the inhuman evil of the Morcegos seem by all accounts to be exaggerated, a product of legends and ghost stories, so I am sure Father is right and that encountering this unknown tribe cannot bring any more problems than with the feared Jivaro or the elusive Yanomami.

  Be that as it may, we were soon stepping where no white man had ever set foot before and discovering places unknown to the rest of humanity. From this moment on our true journey begins.

  May God be with us.

  At that moment, while we were still spellbound by the incredible account Cassie was reading out loud to us, out loud by the light of the fire, the Elder Mengké appeared from the dark like a specter. He was leaning on his staff, in the company of six grim warriors armed with spears.

  The shaman pointed his staff at the blue-eyed man and rebuked him in their incomprehensible language. He grabbed the journal out of Cassie’s hands and leafed through it as he shook his head in anger.

  At last, he looked at the three of us for a long time and with a wave of his hand that admitted no discussion, he ordered us to follow him.

  20

  I had an ominous feeling as we walked between the two Menkragnoti warriors, just the way sheep must have while being led to a gathering of shepherds.

  “I don’t think he liked it one little bit,” I whispered as I walked, “Iak showing us his grandfather’s journal.”

  When I turned toward the professor, I was surprised to see that, instead of being worried by our delicate situation and the sharp spears, he was phenomenally angry.

  “This bastard has lied to us from the very beginning…” he muttered under his breath.

  “Keep calm, Professor,” Cassandra said as she put her hand on his arm to sooth him. “If he’s lied to us he’ll have his reasons. It’s better to stay on his good side if we want to find out what’s really happened to your daughter.”

  The professor breathed deeply as we kept on walking behind the shaman toward the maloka. He was making real efforts to control his anger.

  As soon as we stepped in the communal hut for the second time that night, we noticed that something had changed. In spite of the intimidating attitude of the warriors, I thought I could glimpse traces of what might have been apology or even guilt in the eyes of the shaman, in the light of the fire that burned in the center of the big space.

  He invited us to sit on palm mats with a wave of his hand, then gave a short speech in a very low voice.

  “We very sorry,” Iak translated in the same tone. “But we no have choice, we no say truth.”

  “All right, all right,” the professor interrupted impatiently. “I just want to know what’s happened to my daughter and why you lied to us.”

  The interpreter translated my friend’s words to the Elder who seemed to have lost some of his haughtiness.

  “White man doomed for Menkragnoti,” he said through Iak, as if it were something so obvious that it required no other explanation. “If we tell truth you disappear like woman you look for. Later come more white men to look for you, and then more… until end of Menkragnoti.”

  “That’s so stupid,” the professor burst out. “Besides, I don’t understand. You say we’ll disappear just like my daughter? Why? Where is she?”

  There was a new exchange of words between the two natives, and in response Iak shrugged his shoulders and said,

  “We not know.”

  At this the professor lost the last of his self-restraint. “How can you say you don’t know! Do you take me for a fool? Tell me where my daughter is!”

  “We tell truth,” the interpreter said apologetically. “She be here with us, but later she go with others.”

  The professor made an impatient gesture. “We know that! But where to?”

  Iak translated again and the shaman looked at us with desolation in his face. Pointing somewhere beyond the walls of the maloka he said with fear in his voice,

  “Menka tamú taj…”

  Iak gazed at old Mengké and after a moment’s hesitation turned to us as his face lost color. Apparently he was reluctant to repeat those words.

  The three of us stared at him, waiting anxiously for the reply.

  He bowed his head, as if searching for the right word in his limited vocabulary.

  “To hell,” he said at last, his voice no more than a thread. “White woman no listen to warning of Mengké… and she now in hell”

  21

  A heavy silence fell like a stone on all of us, under the
palm roof of the maloka. I was really worried about the professor, who had turned white on hearing those words.

  “You’re saying…” he said struggling to speak, “that my daughter is…”

  Iak looked at him without understanding.

  “She go to hell,” he repeated, stressing the words.

  In spite of this dramatic statement, I was not sure that we were interpreting it correctly. I had the feeling something was getting lost in translation.

  “But… how?” I inquired, afraid of the answer. “Do you mean to say she died or—”

  I stopped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Cassie nodded toward the professor who had put his head in his hands and seemed to be sobbing silently.

  “Ulysses…” she whispered.

  With a sad voice, Mengké said a few words that Iak translated quietly.

  “Mengké say he very sorry, he warned white woman but she want to go to hell.”

  I was feeling more and more confused. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mengké tell white woman no go to hell,” he repeated. “She go in night with others and now no know she alive.”

  I shook my head, sensing our mistake.

  “Wait a minute…” I said raising my hand. “Hell is… a place?”

  The interpreter stared at me as if I had asked him how babies are made.

  “We call Menka tamú but not know word for you,” he replied, and pointing in the same direction as the shaman had, he added, “We give name to place nobody want go and nobody come back. Place only demons live.”

  Professor Castillo seemed somewhat recovered from the blow of believing he had lost Valeria forever. The color came back to his face although his eyes were still red.

  Somehow our relationship with the Menkragnoti had taken a different turn. We had now gone from being unwanted visitors to something like relatives in disgrace. Mengké even invited us to sit on a bench reserved for the members of the council, and at an order from the shaman the warriors left the maloka, so we no longer felt their threatening presence behind us.

  “Why do you call that place Hell?” Cassandra asked.

  Iak relayed the question to the shaman, then translated the reply.

  “Learn word in English. White man call Hell place of pain and death, yes? Menka tamú place of suffering, place nothing live, only Morcego demons.”

  “Morcego demons,” Cassie repeated thoughtfully. “Isn’t that the tribe that Jack Fawcett mentions in his journal?”

  “Before maybe tribe but now no.” Iak translated the shaman’s answer. “Before maybe human, but now…”

  “Are Morcegos the enemies of the Menkragnoti?” I suggested, thinking that could be what lay behind it.

  Iak shook his head.

  “Morcegos enemies of all humans,” he said. “Enemies of forest spirits, of gods, of light of sun. They doomed because eat impure meat. They death and Menka tamú home.”

  “Impure meat?”

  “In your tribe, human meat no impure?” Iak looked surprised.

  “You mean to say they’re… cannibals?” Cassandra asked apprehensively.

  Professor Castillo was unable to hide his growing anxiety. He was sweating profusely now and wringing his hands.

  “And you say my daughter has gone to that… Menka tamú?” he said in a hoarse voice.

  Iak lowered his head and said, “We no can stop. She no tell.”

  He was almost sobbing now. “But… why? Why would she go to a place like that?”

  “Remember she’s an anthropologist,” Cassandra said, reading my thoughts. “It meant the chance of contacting an unknown tribe for the first time, and above all a tribe mentioned in Fawcett’s journal. It must have been too strong a lure for her.”

  “Yes, but Valeria had come to study the Menkragnoti, hadn’t she?” the professor objected, “You don’t change the purpose of an expedition as easily as that.”

  “Well, I’d say that’s exactly what she did,” I said, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

  22

  We could hear the cries of the nocturnal animals on the other side of the thin wall of palms that separated us from the forest. They heightened the sense of unreality we felt in the semidarkness that surrounded us, barely diluted by the dim light of the fire.

  “In your grandfather’s journal,” Cassie suddenly asked, in a thoughtful voice, “there’s a mention of a lost city in ruins that he called “Z.” Do you know anything about that?”

  Iak translated the question directly to Mengké, as if it had been for him alone, and waited for him to reply.

  “We not know,” he said, then went on translating the shaman’s words. “Legend tell of place where live ancient people, before Menkragnoti come to land, but nobody know where. Legend tell big city of black stone like night. We call Black City. But nobody see.” He pointed at his own eyes. “Never. Because legend.”

  Iak’s last words remained floating in the air like a cloud of smoke, so insubstantial that a mere mention of it might cause it to disappear.

  “That legend of the Black City…” the professor said slowly to the native. “Did you tell it to my daughter?”

  “Like tell you.”

  “Then,” Cassie said trying to unravel the tangle of events while she looked up at the palm roof, “if I understand correctly, you told Valeria… the white woman… that legend.” She looked back at Iak. “Then, after you’d shown her the journal, she and her team left in search of the ruins of that lost city. Which according to the journal is somewhere in Morcego territory.”

  “If she found the Black City,” the professor said, “she would find Fawcett’s city of Z…”

  “And if she found Z…” I said, “she thought she’d find the Morcegos.”

  The mystery of Valeria’s disappearance was beginning to make sense. Once we put together the pieces of the old Menkragnoti legend and Percy Fawcett’s journal, they both seemed to be referring to the same place under a different name, the place where the daring anthropologist was hoping to find the mysterious tribe of the Morcegos.

  There was only one last detail that prevented us from completing the picture.

  “Where is the Black City?” I asked.

  Iak looked at the shaman before he answered.

  “We not know…” he said shaking his head. “We tell legend of ancient people. Tell no go there. We show white woman book of my grandfather. We no tell way to Black City…”—he shrugged his shoulders—“because nobody know where city.”

  In spite of Iak’s apparent honesty, there always seemed to be a loose end in his explanations.

  “Wait a minute,” I insisted. “You just said a moment ago that the city of the men of long ago is in Morcego territory, right?”

  Iak gave me the kind of look you would give a child who keeps asking the same dumb question over and over.

  “Land of Morcego very big. You not know where you go and you walk and walk years in forest and no find nothing. No use look for Black City or tribe of Morcegos if you not know. And…” he added with a worried look, “if Morcegos find white people in Morcego land…” he left the sentence hanging in midair, leaving us to imagine the consequences.

  The retired professor of Medieval History, Valeria’s father, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and mopped his forehead with his dirty shirt sleeve.

  “So my daughter,” he said as he put his glasses back on with shaky hands, “has gone in search of this tribe of cannibal Morcegos that everybody’s afraid of. Without even knowing where it is, and going into unexplored territory which you, who live in the rainforest, refer to as Hell.” He breathed heavily, exhaling with difficulty. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I beg you to be honest… Will I ever see my daughter alive again?”

  Iak translated the question for Mengké in a sad whisper. The shaman lowered his eyes and shook his head heavily.

  Back in our palapa, Cassie and I sat down on the same stumps we had sat on less than two hours ago. We, on the other hand,
were not the same any longer.

  The professor seemed to have sunk into a tormented silence. He was keeping apart from us in the dark with his head in his hands, staring at the tips of his boots, as if he thought they could give him answers to his despair.

  Cassandra, also silent, played with the sphere of her diving watch, looking lost. Meanwhile, I could not help going over everything we had been told, again and again. I could not rid myself of the idea that there was a piece of that incredible puzzle still missing.

  “Doesn’t all this seem too… unlikely?” I said at last.

  Cassandra turned to me, arching an eyebrow.

  “Ulysses…” she said with a wave of her hand. “We’re with some tribe in the Amazon rainforest, looking for the professor’s unknown daughter. She’s gone looking for a mysterious tribe that appears to be living in a lost city which I, and remember I’m an archeologist, have never even heard of. And add to that,”—she gave a twisted smile—“the fact that just a few hours ago we were nearly eaten by a horde of hungry alligators, shortly after we’d fallen down a waterfall in a hydroplane. So just which part of this pinche story do you find unlikely?”

  I ignored the sarcasm. “Yeah, I know. It’s just that it doesn’t seem likely that, with nothing but guesses and coincidences to go on, a group of scientists should go into the forest just like that, without really knowing where they’re going. I don’t know…”—I clicked my tongue—“it seems to me this sort of thing only happens in movies.”

  “I don’t know where you think you’re going with that.”

  “Neither do I. It’s just that it looks as if there are things they haven’t told us yet.”

  “Like what?”

  “No idea,” I said, watching Iak’s shadowy outline as he made his way back to his own hut. “But, one way or another, we have to find out.”

  Professor Castillo had raised his head from the ground and was eying Cassandra with sudden interest.