CHAPTER TWELVE - KEVIN'S TALE

'I don't suppose you're hungry?' he asked with a smile, and took a sack containing three bread rolls out of his pocket and handed it to me. I devoured them ravenously, scarcely bothering to chew.

'Take it easy, young fellow. There's more where that came from.'

The man took a can of tuna fish out of his other pocket and opened it. It took me only a few seconds to finish it off.

'Get the bananas,' he instructed one of the others.

I tossed down five sweet bananas and still contemplated him hungrily.

'We'd better get going now, before dark. This isn't a good place to beach the canoe.'

Kevin carried me over to the narrow craft and gently sat me down inside it. Then he ran back to gather up my belongings. He shoved them into the pack, which he tossed into the canoe.

'Wait a minute, Kevin. I left the poncho over there on the rocks. I want it.'

Kevin came running back with the poncho, and then we were on our way.

My eyes were still brimming with tears as we progressed downriver. I couldn't stop weeping quietly, offering prayers of thanks to God. I couldn't bring myself to believe that it was really happening, that it was all over. I hadn't been expecting it, hadn't even dreamed of being saved today. It had never occurred to me that anyone would come for me by river. He had saved my life. Kevin had saved my life. I wept with joy.

The river was turbulent, and Tico, the owner of the canoe, wouldn't let us sit side by side, so I sat behind Kevin, wrapped in an army blanket. A dead fawn lay on the bottom of the canoe.

Tico found a good place to beach the canoe and with his companions set up camp. It wasn't necessary to erect a shelter. They simply spread sheets of nylon on the ground. It wouldn't rain tonight.

Kevin lay me down on the beach and propped my head against a log. He gently washed and dried my feet and then with the tender hands of a skilled nurse rubbed them with an oily, white cream. That done, he carefully put a pair of clean socks on them while I bit my lip in pain.

'I had the same thing,' he told me. 'The doctor told me it's some kind of fungus. This cream works wonders. Your feet will be all right in just a few days.'

They cleaned the fawn and skewered pieces of it. A large pot of rice was already simmering over the fire. Tico came over holding a cup. He had made some lemonade for me. I drank it down gratefully. Then he and his crew went into the jungle to hunt. Kevin covered me with a blanket and then lay down next to me. We stared up at the sky and smoked. He listened attentively while I told him what I had been through.

'I knew that you'd make it. I just knew that you would hold out,' he said. 'I was positive that as long as nothing had happened to you in the river, I would surely find you. That's what I told your embassy too. They didn't believe me. No one did, but I just knew. There's one thing that I don't understand, though. How come almost all of the rice and beans are left? It looks like you ate hardly any at all.'

'It's hard to explain,' I answered. 'It was raining most of the time, so I couldn't light a fire. Anyway, I thought I should save it. I didn't know how long I'd be stuck here. Now you tell me what happened to you.'

Kevin agreed to telling me his story only after he had heard every detail of what I had been through.

'Compared to you, I was on a Boy Scout field trip.' Then he began his tale.

'I'll start from the moment I jumped off the raft into the river. The undertow was much stronger than I had expected, and I was completely helpless. Luckily for me, the current swept me over to the right bank. I climbed out of the water and immediately noticed that the raft was about to slip back into the river. All I could think was, Good Lord, here I am barefoot, so I called to you to throw me my shoes and then the machete. You yelled something like, "Don't leave me," and I thought, What the hell? Who's leaving who? And then you went over the falls. I thanked God when I saw you bob up a long way downriver, still clinging to the raft. I quickly put my shoes on, picked up the machete, and started walking along the rocky shore. I was sure that I'd catch up with you that day or the day after.

'You know how hard it is to walk along the riverbank, and I had no choice but to see if the going would be any better on the other side, where the bank didn't look as steep. That river is a real bitch, but I finally managed to swim across.

'I was very worried about you and didn't know what to think. The river was so treacherous – white water, jagged rocks, sharp bends – and you had no experience and were on your own. You might have fallen into the water and drowned or broken a bone.

'The next day I walked along the river, and when I ran out of bank, I slipped into the water, after stuffing my shirt full of dry wood to help make me buoyant. I had taken off my shoes and filled them with wood chips and tied them to my belt. The river was extremely hazardous, and whenever I came to a section where it was possible to walk on dry ground, I got the hell out of it.

'After a few hours I came to a place where the sides of the river were sheer rock faces and the water was frothy. It looked terribly dangerous, so I decided to climb. I had spent about two hours working my way up the cliff when I came upon a heap of feathers next to a large dead parrot. I touched it; it was still warm. It had been killed just that moment, and I wondered if I could bring myself to eat it raw. I tied it to my belt and started walking. Suddenly an enormous falcon rose up off a nearby boulder and took flight. We looked right at each other. It was angry that I had stolen its prey.

'''Thanks for the meal, pal. I may be a thief, but I need it more than you do.''

'Every time I came to a brook that trickled down to the river, I followed it to see if there was any sign of you. Then I had another surprise: four dry balsa logs. I still hadn't seen the island and the little shore that Karl had told us about, however, so I didn't think there was any point in building a raft, since I must still be upriver from the mal paso.

'I stopped for lunch at noon. I chopped off the parrot's head with the machete, tore its beak out, and took a bite. I cracked its skull open and sucked out its brains, knowing that they contained a great deal of protein.

'I kept on walking, though my feet were damp and my shoes were full of holes. They were full of sand and pebbles, too, which tore the skin off my feet. It was terribly painful, but I was sure that I wasn't far from Curiplaya.

'On the third day after losing you, Yossi, I awoke at dawn, painfully aware of my feet. I knew that if I went on walking, they would only get worse, but like I said, I was sure that I wasn't far from Curiplaya. I cut a branch from one of the trees to use as a walking stick. I put all of my weight on it as I walked. I kept looking for the landmarks Karl had described but saw no sign of them. Suddenly I realised that I didn't have the machete with me. I wondered how I would get along without it. I remember that when I had broken off my walking stick, I had stuck it in the mud. I must have forgotten it there. I decided not to go back for it. My feet hurt so badly that retracing my own footsteps for hours seemed absurd.

'On the fourth day I couldn't stand on my feet anyway, so I just lay where I was. I got to wondering if I was ever going to see you again. I was certain that if you were alive, you would be waiting for me in Curiplaya. Then I remembered Marcus and the way I had been treating him lately. I felt guilty for having made light of the pain he was in and not believing how much agony his feet were causing him. Now I was getting what I had coming to me, I thought. When I got back to La Paz, I would have to apologise to him.

'I rested all that day and night. Once, I awoke to the sound of an approaching animal. I had no flashlight or machete. What could I do? I gripped my walking stick and went back to sleep.

'The next morning I felt a little better. My feet had dried and scabbed over, but when I tried to stand up, I discovered that they were worse than they appeared to be, and the sores split open. I couldn't take a single step. It was horrible. I slid along on my backside and the heels of my feet, inching toward the river. My mind was made up, though: I was going into the water, even though Curiplaya must be near. The cool water felt good.

'I looked around for a log to hang on to and found only a small stump, about three feet long. I drifted in the river for about twenty minutes, clinging to the log. The current swept me along swiftly, and my main concern was what might await me around each bend. But it wasn't so bad. After a short while I noticed that steep cliffs loomed on both sides of the river, and I thought that I must be approaching the pass. I let go of the log and swam frantically for the right bank, where I climbed up the cliff. I was surprised that my feet no longer hurt as much as they had before and I walked for more than half an hour. Finally I climbed back down to the water's edge at a place where there was a small shore with a lot of logs scattered about. The water was placid, and I decided that this couldn't be the pass after all.

'The sight of all those logs made me think about putting a raft together. I set about that task quickly and just as swiftly gave up on it. The logs were so big and heavy that I couldn't budge them. Some of them were stuck deep in the sand, and others were rotten. Only one big, sturdy one was of any use. I dragged it into the water and straddled it with both legs.

'The current carried me downriver. Once, the river broadened and became so shallow that my feet stubbed against the rocks on the bottom, and another time I was washed up against a rock and took a good hard knock. Another time I got caught in a whirlpool, but finally the log got free, taking me with it.

'I floated on with the log, and after a few hours I saw a shore with two thatched huts on it. I started calling out, "Yossi! Yossi! Yossi!" but there wasn't any answer. The place looked deserted, and I knew that it must be Curiplaya, and that the village of San José must be only thirty miles farther on. I didn't expect to find you on my way; I thought that you must already be there.

'The river grew quite calm. I drifted along. I may even have dozed. I dipped my face in the water, struggling to stay awake. Then suddenly I noticed two men walking through a stream that fed into the right bank of the river. I called out frantically, "¡Ayuda! Ayuda (help)! I can't walk. I'm lost." The current was strong, and I couldn't make it out of the river. To my great relief, they heard me. They gestured, "Downriver. Go farther downriver," and I could see a small beach downstream. I let go of the log and swam to shore.

'I waited there for almost an hour, wondering what was taking them so long. Maybe they had no intention of coming after me. Maybe they had meant to tell me that there were other people farther downriver. Then I saw them coming on a balsa raft and knew that I was saved.

'I told them what had happened and asked if they had seen any sign of you or the raft, but they hadn't seen a thing. They were hunters and had been deep in the jungle for five days. "You're a lucky guy," they told me. They only came hunting that far upriver twice a year, so I really had been incredibly lucky. Somehow, deep inside, I was sure that it had been more than simple luck or circumstance.

'Four hours later we arrived on the outskirts of San José, where Fausto, the hunter, and his son lived. They brought me to their ranch on the riverbank and lay me down under a thatched roof. They promised that the next day they would send someone on horseback to take me up to the village, which was still nearly an hour and a half away up the river.

'Late the next morning a guy named Pablo turned up and took me to San José on horseback. I asked him how I could get to Rurrenabaque, and he told me I had two choices. One was to make a six-hour ride and then a three-hour walk to the town of Tumupasa, and from there go on by truck. I wrote off that possibility: I couldn't walk. The other way was to take a balsa raft downriver.

'Pablo took me to a man who was the mayor of the village. I told him my story and asked him to arrange for a raft that could take me to Rurrenabaque, and he promised to see to it.

'From there Pablo took me back to Fausto's. I lay there on a hammock, and one of the women treated my feet. She smeared an oily cream over them, which took the burn out of the sores, and I felt much better. A few of the villagers came over for a curious peek at me. They tried to console me but said they hadn't heard a thing about you and that "the river is bad, very bad. It's hard to believe that your friend could still be alive."

'Around eight the next morning the mayor showed up with the raftsmen. This was the seventh day since I'd lost you. He promised that the raft would soon be ready to go. I arranged to send payment for his expenses by way of the priest from La Paz, and he took my word for it. At two that afternoon he came back and said that they wanted to wait until the next day to set out, as it was raining. That day one of the village babies died from a stomach disorder, and everyone was sad and gloomy. I, on the other hand, was thinking about how lucky I was to have been saved. I was still alive, but what about Yossi? You might have drowned. You might have broken a leg or a rib. I didn't want to think about it. You hadn't drowned. You had certainly been swept along with the raft and made it to Rurrenabaque.

'We left in the morning of the eighth day on a trip that the raftsmen said would take a day and a half. It was pouring rain and very cold on the raft. The balseros decided to pull over to the side and look for some kind of shelter from the rain, though we were drenched anyway.

'"Let's go on," I begged them.

'"We won't get any farther than Santa Rosa today in any case and will spend the night there. So there's no reason to be in such a big hurry," one of them replied.

'We did finally set out again and arrived in Santa Rosa that afternoon. There was a group of thirteen young men there, who were very kind and friendly and got my spirits up. They were maintenance men, getting a summer camp ready for French tourists. We decided to spend the night there.

'The next morning I counted off the ninth day. The two balseros and I were once again on the river. By now I no longer deluded myself that I would find you in Rurrenabaque. My two raftsmen, who were experienced professionals, had a difficult time manoeuvring the raft through the treacherous passes. It was obvious that you wouldn't have been able to do it on your own.

'Rurrenabaque is on the banks of the Beni River. We reached it that afternoon. The Beni is much wider than the Tuichi and looked mild and placid, but the balseros told me that it is dangerous too. I clambered ashore and headed straight for the navy base. The CO was in a meeting with his senior officers, so I had no choice but to try to tell his secretary in my broken Spanish what had happened to me. She didn't understand a word. Two Swiss priests who served in the area came over when they heard that a man had been saved from the jungle. They had another Swiss, who spoke English, with them. He translated what I said into German, and the priest then translated into Spanish, and that was the way my tale was told to the secretary. I asked her to place an urgent call to the Israeli embassy in La Paz, but she couldn't do so as there were no direct lines, and I had to wait for the commandante to get out of his meeting.

'The priests took me to their parish. For the first time in weeks I had a good hot shower. They gave me clean clothes and fed me. The nuns tried to console me for your loss. They told me that the Tuichi was known as a particularly dangerous river.

'"Your friend surely drowned, and even if he did make it out of the river alive, his chances of surviving in the jungle were slight."

'No one in the entire town offered me any hope of finding you alive, but I just wouldn't believe it.

'On the tenth day a plane from La Paz was supposed to come in at eight in the morning, and I went to the terminal to wait for it to land. The priest, Father Fernando, had filled out official-looking papers, testifying to what had happened and allowing me to fly without a passport. I waited until fivethirty, but no plane ever showed up. I was upset, for I wanted to get to the Israeli embassy in La Paz. The navy office in Rurrenabaque hadn't even sent the embassy a telegram as they had promised me they would. I was raging. I had wasted an entire precious day doing nothing.

'The following morning one of the nuns awakened me excitedly. A plane was about to land at any moment. She had a truck standing by. By quarter to nine I was airborne.

'When I arrived in La Paz, I headed straight for the American embassy. I knew that I had to hurry to the Israeli embassy, but I needed some kind of identification. The consul listened apathetically to my tale. He simply remarked that I was lucky to be alive and offered his consolations on the death of my friend.

'"But he's not dead," I insisted.

'"Of course he is. How could he possibly have survived alone in the jungle? Just thank God that you're alive, and get yourself home to spend Christmas with your family," the consul replied.

'"And what if I was lost in the jungle? What would you do? Wouldn't you even send a party out to look for me?" I yelled.

'"We would notify this country's foreign office and your family," he answered.

'"And what if it was your son or brother out there in need of help?"

'He didn't reply. Before I stormed out of his office, I asked him to prepare a new passport for me and to notify the Israeli embassy that I was on my way over. Afterward I found out that he never even bothered to make that simple phone call.

'I arrived at the Israeli embassy. I spoke into the microphone at the entrance, explaining in broken Spanish that I had just come from the jungle and that an Israeli friend of mine was still lost back there. I was aware that I was being observed on closed-circuit television. A door finally opened, leading to an inner room. A security man scrutinised me from behind a plate of bulletproof glass. Then he took from me, through a slot in a window, the documents that the navy office and Father Fernando had given me, and finally I was allowed to enter.

'The consul listened carefully to my story. I kept emphasising how urgent it was to get a helicopter and start looking right away. Then I spoke with the ambassador and went through it all again. I told him that my brother had a white-water business in Oregon, and I asked him to call your parents in Israel and get them to help pay the expenses of bringing my brother, together with the necessary equipment, to Bolivia in order to go looking for you. The ambassador promised to do all he could and asked me to call him back that afternoon.

'At two that afternoon I placed my call to the Israeli embassy and was informed that on Monday morning they would have a meeting with the Bolivian air force and that I should come to the embassy then.

'I went straight to the Rosario Hotel, and the desk clerk there told me that Marcus hadn't been back yet. I didn't yet think much of that, for I had never agreed with Karl's estimate of how long it would take them.

'I went over to the Jewish old-folks' home to try to find some Israelis who would be willing to come help me look for you, but the place was empty. No one but Grandma was there, so I just left a note.

'So the twelfth day passed and the thirteenth. Monday finally arrived, the fourteenth day. A Bolivian officer was waiting for me at the Israeli embassy, and he took me to La Paz air force headquarters. We wasted long, precious hours there going over the accident in detail, exactly where it had happened and the events that had led up to it. They listened to my less-thanfluent Spanish and promised that they would do everything that they could, but I had no faith in them at all.

'The Bolivian officer then took me to navy headquarters, and we went through the whole business again.

'When I got back to the Israeli embassy, the consul informed my that he had gotten hold of a plane and that the search would begin the next day. Thank God.

'I went to the Swiss embassy and notified the ambassador that Marcus and Karl were missing and asked him to put in a call to Apolo to find out if they were there. I myself didn't yet think there was any reason to worry about them, but later at the Austrian embassy the consul gave me a great reason to worry.

'The mention of the name Karl Ruchprecter caught their attention. The clerk asked me to wait and then showed me into the consul's office. He was a heavyset, red-faced man, smoking a pipe.

'"Have a seat, my young friend," he said. "Tell me what you know about Karl Ruchprecter."

'I told him briefly about Karl, what he had told us about himself, and how he had talked us into going along with him on an expedition into the jungle. I told him how he had changed plans because of his uncle.

'"Uncle?" the consul asked. "What uncle?"

'"He told us he had an uncle named Josef Ruchprecter, who owns a big cattle ranch in Reyes Province. Karl was supposed to bring him a truck from Chile next month."

'I told him the story that Karl had told you, Yossi, that his uncle was a Nazi war criminal and that that was the reason he lived in Bolivia.

'"Interesting, very interesting," the consul kept repeating.

'I told him about the Indian village that we had been supposed to visit, how it had turned out to be farther away then we had thought, so we had to turn around and go back, and I told him how we had rafted down the river, how we had split up from Karl and Marcus, and about the accident that you and I had had on the river. I told him that I had come to report Karl's disappearance and perhaps to organise a rescue party if no one heard anything from him within the next day or two.

'I was amazed when the consul laughed. "That's a good one: help you look for Karl Ruchprecter," he said. "We'd much rather help him get lost." And he laughed some more. "An uncle who raises beef cattle? A fugitive Nazi? Karl has such a vivid imagination."

'He noticed the stunned look on my face, and this is what he told me: "Karl Ruchprecter is quite well-known to us, but he doesn't have an uncle in Bolivia. Karl himself is the escaped fugitive. He is wanted by both the Austrian government and Interpol. He's a professional troublemaker, an instigator. He was involved with radical leftist groups in Europe about ten years ago. He and his friends stirred up a lot of trouble, and the Austrian police were looking for him. He was either lucky or well connected enough to make his way here. Someone must have provided him with a false passport.

'"We know that he is here, but there's nothing we can do about it in Bolivia. Now you've brought me some really good news: he's out there in a dangerous jungle without proper food or equipment. It would be nice if he never came back. We certainly aren't going to help look for him," the consul told me with a good chuckle.

'I was angry of course.

'"And what about the Swiss guy he's got with him?" I demanded, but the consul just shrugged his shoulders.

'I was anxious and confused when I went back to the Israeli embassy. The same Bolivian officer helped me to clarify a few details. First he looked on maps and aerial photographs for the Indian village that we were supposed to visit and then made a few phone calls, but he always got the same answer: there is no Indian village, civilised or otherwise, in that entire region.

'I learned that Karl had the reputation of being a dangerous bastard. A few years ago he talked a young German guy into going into the jungle with him, promising him exciting adventures. The German became sick and weak after a few days and pleaded with Karl to take him back, but Karl refused and just abandoned him. The poor guy managed to make it to a little ranch, where they saved his life.'

A chill ran up my spine. Could it really be true? Karl had seemed like a good guy to me. Marcus had taken to calling him Poppa. Could it be that Karl was a threat to Marcus's life? I couldn't bring myself to believe that. Karl had been fond of Marcus; he would never harm him.

'On the morning of the sixteenth day the flight they had promised me took off at nine in the morning and landed in Trinidad, a town in the interior, an hour later. I waited there until the afternoon, when the pilot of the rescue plane informed me that the weather was horrible and he couldn't take off. I was asked to come back the next morning.

'I was at the air force headquarters early the next day, but the unpaved runway at the airport was still wet from the previous night's rain. The plane still couldn't take off through all the puddles. The pilot kept telling me there was simply no way anyone could survive seventeen days in the jungle. Especially not in this kind of weather. And especially not a gringo. He didn't come right out and say, "Your friend is dead," but he might as well have.

'Once we were finally up in the air, the pilot told me that an order is an order, so he would fly over the river as he had been told to, but that there was absolutely no point to it, that it was all a dreadful waste of fuel.

'At first we flew at a reasonable altitude over the river and followed its course, but the mountains soon forced us to go higher. From up there we couldn't see anything but trees, and the pilot was not careful to follow the crooked path of the river. He flew a straight course over it, and I realised that there was no hope of spotting you, unless you managed to set the whole jungle ablaze.

'I was more depressed than ever. The pilot made it clear that this was the last search flight he would take me on.

'I went to the navy headquarters in Rurrenabaque. It was evident that no effort was being made to find you despite all the promises I had received. The commandante was nice enough, polite, full of good intentions, but he explained to me that the navy could not possibly organise a search party, as it was against regulations to take a boat up the Tuichi. The only other option I had, he said, was to find someone who would accept payment for taking me up the river.

'"Do you know of anyone who might be willing?" I asked.

'"Come with me," he said, "quickly."

'After a five-minute motorcycle ride we were at the house of Tico, the king of the river.

'"Would you take me to San José?" I asked him.

'"Sure, I was going there tomorrow anyway," he told me, "with Father Diego."

'I explained to him what had happened. "Would you take me on to Curiplaya?"

'"I can take you even farther than Curiplaya," he declared.

'"Up to San Pedro Canyon?"

'"Yes, almost. But that's as far as I can go."

'On the morning of the eighteenth day it was pouring rain, and we had to put off leaving for another day. The next day we travelled upriver until evening and set up camp on a pleasant beach. We were back on the river by six thirty the next morning.

'Tico really is a pro at river navigation. He manoeuvred through the dangerous passes, and when we came to shallows, one of the crew stood up in the prow and hit at the river bottom with a stick, indicating to Tico how deep it was.

'We arrived at San José at ten thirty, and Father Diego set off up the path to the village. Now we could start searching. Tico told me that he had to be back in Rurrenabaque two days later, so he intended to go upriver until we came to a beach called Progreso and then turn around and head back to Rurrenabaque.

'"If your friend is still alive," he said, "then he is most probably near the river, and it is reasonable to assume that we will spot him."

'We travelled upriver – Tico, two crewmen, and I – into a stretch of the Tuichi that Tico was less familiar with, and he was very cautious. We went on without stopping, looking right and left. We saw no trace of a campsite or fire. The storm had left its mark everywhere. Once in a while we encountered a flock of large birds swarming around a carcass on the shore. Tico and I exchanged glances. I didn't want to stop. I didn't want to check. I had never in my life been so depressed.

'Hours passed, and I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that we weren't going to find you alive. Yes, Yossi, it was very sad. I was already thinking of heading back to La Paz. I thought that I would probably find your brother there, and together we would be able to organise another, more effective search party.

'The crewmen stopped the canoe; they had spotted some game and wanted to go into the jungle to do some hunting.

'"I'm paying, and you're not going to stop. We're going on!" I insisted.

'The crewmen looked angry, but Tico understood me, though I don't think that he harboured any hopes of finding you. Half an hour later they stopped again. They had spotted a fawn that had come down to the river for a drink. Tico took aim and fired, and the fawn dropped to the riverbank.

'Around five thirty it started to get dark. The canoe was slowing down. I looked desperately at Tico. He shook his head with sorrow and said, "We'll have to stop at the next shore and turn the boat back. That's it. I'm really sorry, Kevin."

'Then I saw the shore and I knew it was over; tears were choking my throat. Yossi, how will I lead my life knowing I've lost you?

'The men were turning the boat 180 degrees when suddenly I looked over at the shore and saw a rickety thatched hut, leaning over on one side. All of a sudden someone came out of it. No, it can't be Yossi. It doesn't look anything like Yossi. Yes, it is. It is Yossi!