The rain is torrential. A thick gray veil hides the shapes of the trees and I am overcome by sadness.
I torture myself looking for explanations of why I’ve had no letters from home. Neither the strength of the downpour nor the imposing sight of the river can distract me, so I’ve turned to writing to alleviate my tension. I will take this chance to recap events since our arrival.
It was about three in the morning on Sunday the 8th and Dr. Bresciani, the director, hearing that the “Argentine scientists” had arrived, got up to greet us. He invited us into his home until a room could be made ready for us. The moonlit night gave us a good view of the buildings and layout of the colony.
It is composed of several wooden buildings, on stilts, scattered round the clearing. Apart from the dining hall, the buildings are one story tall and long, with a row of rooms one after the other. These buildings are connected by plank walkways about three feet off the ground, which enable the inhabitants to move around without getting muddy, as the rainfall is heavy and frequent, particularly during the season they refer to as winter, which actually falls in the months of spring and summer.
As we spoke with the director and contemplated the small town, we were informed that our room was ready. We went along, accompanied by an immense cloud of mosquitoes, welcoming us in their nasty way.
We slept like logs until eleven the next morning. The director invited us to lunch. Conversation revolved around Dr. Pesce and the help he gives them from Lima, especially scientific support, as little can be done materially.
In the afternoon we were invited to play soccer. You have to go by boat to the pitch, which is in a clearing about a mile upstream. The trip was made in an outboard motor boat.
I was daft with happiness—playing soccer in the middle of the jungle—but as ever my thoughts turned to how wonderful it would be if only Grego and Maso were here too. During the game I paid more attention to my surroundings than to the ball, so I played rather badly. Afterward we went and swam in a small river inlet. The temperature of the water was just right. Who knows how long we would have lazed there, if the inevitable horde of mosquitoes hadn’t appeared on the scene. We ran toward the main canteen, waving our arms like windmills to drive away the wretched insects. Several of our fellow sportsmen were waiting for us there and bought us some beers.
On the 9th we visited the asylum. The daily round is as follows: the doctors, the dentist and the auxiliaries get changed in a small room on a raft moored to the colony’s landing stage. Inside there are two changing rooms, separated by a corridor with showers.
In the first room they completely disrobe and in the other they don the garments for the sick quarters. When we were all loaded up, a motor boat took us half a mile downriver to the sanatorium.
My first impression of the hospital was that we’d just arrived at another normal riverside village. The houses are built of pona wood, randomly laid out, shops open to passersby; canoes and motor boats come and go, laden with bunches of bananas, papaya, fresh or salt fish.
But soon our attention was directed to a painful sight. The majority of the men and women had numerous lesions and mutilations. Both their feet and their hands revealed the indelible marks of the evil that afflicts them, as well as loss of phalanxes or whole digits.
The percentage of patients affected by these mutilations was so high that at the earliest opportunity I remarked on this to the doctor accompanying us. He confirmed my first impression, telling me that other leprologists, such as Souza Lima and Fernández, have made the same observation without any explanation for the phenomenon having yet been discovered.
We arrived at the offices, as the doctor’s and dentist’s surgeries are called here. They are all in the same building, raised on wooden stilts. There is a general surgery for related diseases and another for the director, where specialist consultations and minor operations may also be carried out. There is also a treatment room and, finally, a large area containing the waiting room, the dentist’s surgery and the dispensary.
After observing several interesting cases and seeing how the director was gathering data for a paper on “Nervous Syndromes in Leprosy,” where the remote-control guidance of Dr. Pesce was clearly evident, we took a stroll around the sanatorium.
The older buildings, made of pona wood, a type of palm quite common in these parts, are huge and poorly built. The most recent buildings, on the other hand, are made of cedar and much better.
All the patients live as families, with their wives and children. It’s extremely hard to separate parents from their children. All the patients come from communities along the banks of the rivers Ucayali and Yaraví, where leprosy is endemic. Therefore, used to seeing the afflicted around them, people here find it normal to be together and absurd that anyone should want to separate them from their children.
All the same, the light of understanding is gradually straightening out their equivocal ideas, and already many of the children of the sick are in a healthy zone, in a prevention center, under observation to check whether or not they are carrying the disease. When they reach working age they are usually employed by the hospital as health workers.
On this visit we also saw several of the shops run by the sick. These vary from a fishing-tackle shop to a bar with a fridge for cold drinks. Others have cleared part of the jungle to grow tomatoes, yuccas, bananas and other crops. Some of them have done so well that they have purchased their own motor boats.
This independent way of life—so different from what we knew to be the case in Argentina—instead of propelling the patients into flight, ties them closer to the sanatorium and the plot of land they own, which has now become their real home.
We returned to the changing raft, put our shorts on and dived into the river! We swam for an hour and then went for lunch. That afternoon we were introduced to the nuns who work in the laboratory and the children’s shelter. Later we went fishing with one of the doctors. We caught four or five catfish. We threw a net several times, but had less luck than with hooks; in fact, we didn’t catch anything else. We barbecued the fish for supper that night.
Tuesday the 10th we spent the whole morning working at the leper colony. The afternoon was spent playing soccer. While playing I got scratched on the leg and bled a bit. Thinking nothing of it, after the game I dived head-first into the river behind Fúser.
I had hardly surfaced when I felt something sticky on my leg and then quite a sharp pain, like a hypodermic needle. I stood up and lifted my leg exclaiming, “Ernesto, what’s wrong with my leg?” With his usual quick reaction, Fúser snatched at a piranha fish that was clinging to my calf, attracted to the blood from the wound. We got straight out of the water. Falling about with laughter, he showed me the tiny piece of skin, muscle and hair that the piranha had clamped between its triangular teeth.
On the 11th, while Ernesto was in clinical consultation with Dr. Bresciani, I remained in the lab studying bacilloscope samples. The work is carried out under makeshift conditions. They don’t even have an electric bulb for the microscope, which isn’t of very good quality anyway. Therefore the observation is done under natural light and with poor-quality lenses. Visibility not being good, the margin of error is great.
We told the director about all the difficulties we had encountered. He accepted our comments good-naturedly. It seems to me we are no longer scientists in inverted commas.
That afternoon we went out sightseeing. We were taken to a creek on one of the islands. When the river is at high water, the islands’ lagoons and ponds become part of the Amazon. At its mouth the creek is as wide as any regular river in Argentina, but it soon gets narrow and branches out into the forest.
Our silent voyage amid thousands of trees that shut out the sky was a stunning experience. We encountered myriad birds of every conceivable hue and size: parrots, white and red herons, even a species of kingfisher with incredibly beautiful plumage. We also spied chameleons, boas, monkeys—basically everything one imagines seeing in boyhood dreams of adventure.
Just where the lagoons flow into the river the big fish wait in ambush for the minnows, which fatten up in the ponds when the water is low, so it is a real paradise for fishermen. We weren’t equipped for fishing, but there were a couple of lines with hooks in the boat, though no bait. Fúser skewered a chunk of banana on one of the hooks and spent twenty minutes trying to attract a fish. The doctor and I began to tease him, saying we had never met a vegetarian fish and that banana was good bait if you wanted to catch monkeys. Fúser just laughed at our bad jokes, never taking his eyes off the line. Suddenly he tugged at it and out came a large cunchi.
That shut us up! We immediately chopped the fish up into bait and the three of us went into action. Soon we had a catch of eight or nine fish, including a ten-pound zúngaro. The doctor caught that one, and he was very proud of this deed because, according to the experts, it’s a hard fish to catch, especially on a hook.
Radiantly happy, we returned to the sanatorium with our catch, which the doctor promised to turn into ceviche1 As we said goodbye to him, Fúser, sardonic and to the point as ever, said, “Banana’s lousy bait, eh?”
What else could the doctor and I do but laugh heartily.
Thursday the 12th I worked all morning in the lab. Pelao went on morning rounds with the doctor. For lunch we ate his famous ceviche and in the afternoon went to play soccer. I’ll never tire of repeating how wonderful that short journey is, with the boat crammed full of young people off to play sport after completing their day’s work.
You pull into a small bay with grassy banks graced by beautiful breadfruit trees. This is surely one of the loveliest trees I have ever set eyes on. Something like a chestnut, but broader and with leaves of a brighter green.
But this is merely an introduction to the strangest and most picturesque pitch ever imagined by a globetrotting sportsman like me! In the heart of the Amazon forest, enclosed by thickets of palm and silk-cotton trees, creepers, lianas and ornamental plants all entwined together, it’s an incomparable place.
The pitch is short and wide, just like the one in the National Stadium in Córdoba, where Ernesto, Tomás, Gregorio and I have played so often. It made me think how fantastic it would be to have the three Granados in midfield, with Fúser in goal. But then the thought of the absence of news from home dampened my happiness somewhat. When we got back from the match I radioed Iquitos to see if there were any letters for us. Not one.
That night the director invited us to eat ceviche. We stuffed ourselves! When I go back to Argentina I’m going to try making it with kingfish. Just as we were off to bed, the dentist turned up and invited us to a party at his place.
When we arrived it was in full swing. A “big band,” made up of two guitars and a saxophone, was murdering a Peruvian waltz. Our arrival set off a tremendous round of applause, toasts and shouted welcomes.
People were drinking beer, pisco, sweet wine and chicken soup, in no particular order and huge measures. But Fúser and I were being careful what we drank. We danced to everything: waltzes, marineras, Colombian porros and Brazilian choros, but mostly mambos and tangos, the mambo being all the rage just now and the tangos in our honor.
Friday the 13th it rained all morning, so we didn’t go to the hospital. We went fishing instead, although we were told that the rain churns up the water and mud, making more food available, so the fish don’t bite. And they didn’t. But we met a Yagua Indian who was spear-fishing. We followed to watch how he did it. He was using thin wooden spears with points fashioned from hard wood or carved bone. The handle of the spear is tied to a piece of balsa wood—dyed white, red or blue—by a length of string about ten feet long. He cruises the creeks that flow into the river in his canoe and at the right moment, when a fish is within reach, he hurls his spear. If he hits his target he doesn’t wait, but continues upstream, and the fish swims on with the harpoon stuck in its body.
As the Indian pursued his single-minded hunt for fish, we hoisted up the motor and rowed the boat so as not to break the silence. Imperturbable, despite knowing he was being watched, he continued throwing his darts. If he missed his target, he lifted the harpoon up with his paddle and went on his way without taking his eyes off the water. He tried again, and if successful left the fish flapping in the water.
In less than an hour he harpooned at least nine fish. Then he made the return journey, looking for the colored buoys among the roots and submerged branches. He collected a saltón fish here, a maparache there, the odd paiche. Sometimes the harpoon came up empty, for the fish, although wounded, had managed to escape.
Marveling at the skill of the fisherman, we returned to our residence. We were told that a party was being prepared in Ernesto’s honor: tomorrow he’ll be twenty-four.