excerpt
That was a strange kind of animal. I didn’t think it was a pig, too
slender and bony, and too big and fleshy to be any kind of bird I knew.
My turn came, and I sank the gourd and extracted it with the
stock, which I drank and found to be dull but palatable. As the
liquid diminished, Urquía took the charred carcass and tore it
apart, giving a piece to each man. I couldn’t see clearly, for she had
her back tome, but when she gave Conopoima, who sat beside me,
his piece, my stomach lurched. It was a little hand with fingers
curled up by the heat.
Stories of cannibalism came to my mind. Was it a child we were
eating? Conopoima took the hand and with his teeth peeled the
fingers of their flesh, nails and all, leaving the tiny bones bare.
I didn’t have time to do anything but gape before she favoured
me with the head. It was the head of a monkey with a horrible grin
on its face.
I am sure it was deference to give me the head, but, by all the
saints in heaven, how could I eat it? And how could I not eat it? I
looked around, swallowing the contents of my stomach a couple of
times as they rose, insisting on being expelled. I saw the men
relishing here a hand, there a leg, foot and all, picking out of their
mouths the tiny bones of the toes or a nail, or just spitting them out.
They stared at my inaction, their conversation slowly dying.
I looked at the gourd and turned it over to avoid the monkey’s
almost human face. Then I cracked a smile and held the head with
one finger while I sipped the small amount of liquid left. A cold
sweat broke out on me as I fought the need to retch. I forced myself
to swallow and appear content. Guacaipuro’s eyes gleamed. They
were testing me again.
I deliberately tore a piece of skin from the scalp so that everyone
had time to see, and put it in my mouth and chewed. Swallowing
proved more difficult, but Baruta’s disappointed expression gave
me the push I needed, and I forced it down. Once, twice, three times.
I managed to pick enough meat out of the head to expose a patch
Manolis Aligizakis 