excerpt
I, too, was part of the jungle.
Our lovemaking grew into a world of dreams. Apacuana had the
power to take me to a hitherto unknown God, beyond the Church, into
an expanse of uncharted feelings as miraculous as any star-filled sky.
Her body became a refuge, a place for revival, like an inexhaustible
spring of healing waters. It was a gate past which I discovered a world
where loneliness was banished. I was shocked to discover she was part
of me, as much as Bartolomé was, perhaps more.
When we lay in one another’s arms, I forgot to think before I
spoke. I told her things that would have never have left my lips
before I knew her. It astonished me that we could learn compassion
from our own tenderness. This was not a lesson in a book, or a
lecture from a priest, and it was certainly not everyone’s duty to
learn it, but pleasure was natural to her, and she taught me that my
tongue could talk to her in ways I had never imagined possible.
And it was these conversations of pure touch, with our expanding
vocabulary of caresses, that I yearned for, that I craved, as much as
the need to satisfy my own desire. And so I came to value frankness
as a form of kindness. She loved me for who I was, not for what I
represented. The truth was simple with her.
She began to trust me with her thoughts. She talked to me, and she
told me how she feared for her future, for the future of her people, and
especially for Matyba and Padumay. Apacuana was wise beyond her
years, perhaps wise beyond her sex. Or were all women wiser than
men and men were trained by other men not to see?
That morning, at the base of that tree, as we lay staring at the sky, I
suddenly asked myself what, in God’s name, was I doing with her?
She must have read my mind, for she turned to me. “If my bleeding
stops,” she said, “will you stay?”
Five days of hard drinking had passed since the killings, and I saw
drunken people sleeping in the most unlikely places. I left the hut for
bare necessities only, but Apacuana came to see me several times…
Manolis Aligizakis 