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MAMACOCA, p. 5
The young Indian woman comes in and hands him a bowl of fragrant coca tea. Charles looks up at her in wonder She smiles shyly and leaves the room before he has a chance to speak. Charles sips his tea, still puzzled. He sees his clothes neatly folded on a chair next to the window. Placing the tea down on the table nest to his bed, Charles gets up and starts dressing. He kneels down and crawls around searching for his shoes. Suddenly he sees a pair of feet in the doorway. He looks up and has his first impression of the old Indian, who is smiling down at him. He stands up and in broken Spanish asks where he is and how he is speaking to. To his surprise Lorenzo replies in English. "You are in my home. I am the one who saved your life." Lorenzo tells Charles that he is a lucky man. The Peruvian prisons are full of young Americans as stupid as he. Stealing among Indians without getting caught takes a sort of experience dealing with foreign thieves. Now Charles owes his life to Lorenzo and Lorenzo's people. Indian custom demands that such a service be repaid. Charles nods and expresses his gratitude for the help he has received. He is ready to do anything to absolve his debt and get out of the country for good. Lorenzo wants Charles to accompany him on a journey. Traveling in the direction of the eastern slopes, Charles follows Lorenzo on foot across the mountains. It is very difficult for the young man to keep pace with the old one. After a while Charles falls behind. Suddenly finding himself alone, his urge is to turn back and run away, but he knows he will be lost forever unless he catches up with his guide. He tries to jog up the slope, but is exhausted. Like a child playing, the old man comes out from behind a rock, laughing. Charles is not in a mood for jokes. He is tired and hungry and wants to know what they are going to eat. The old man pats his "chuspa." Squatting down, he prepares a chew for Charles. Lorenzo will slowly teach him the secret power of the plant. As a sense of new life seems to unfold within him, Charles finds himself able to walk again. Each breath exhilarates him. Lorenzo imperceptibly increases their pace. "If you want to stay alive, you must learn the Way of the Children of the Sun - endurance, emptiness, vision." Endurance, emptiness, vision. The step quickens. They skip from boulder to boulder. The Indian is the indisputable master. As they move across the mountains, Lorenzo, in utter contempt, shatters Charles' ego, calling him a self-indulgent coward, a greedily pimp, the miserable product of a dead civilization unwilling to see the world as it really is. Charles is enraged. He yells at Lorenzo, calling him a mother-fucking Indian, and swearing he's going to kill him. The Indian keeps just a stem ahead of Charles. Charles strains to the limit of his strength but in utter frustration he is not able to get an inch closer to Lorenzo. Blood begins to drip from his nose. He grasps his chest in pain, feeling his heart pounding violently inside him. Suddenly the Indian stops. Charles falls face down into the rock earth, heaving like a sick animal. The Indian tells him to look back. Charles turns and sees a chasm, dropping below him to abysmal depths. A soul-wrenching shriek explodes from within him and echoes his horror back from across the canyon. The Indian, placing both hands on Charles' shoulders steadies the shaking man. Charles collapses in ruin. Charles looks up at Lorenzo and asks: "How did we get here?" "From over there!" The Indian points to the other side of the precipice. "But how? How could we?" "The same way my ancestors came from a distant star. They eliminated space and time with their minds. I used your anger to focus your vision so that you could be empty of your way of seeing the world. The abyss was not there for you. For you the abyss simply did not exist. This is the way of the Children of the Sun - endurance, emptiness, vision." Once again the two men are traveling. Charles is now a tamed man. He follows in silence chewing the coca leaf. Their movements are rhythm and power. In
the shadow of the massive ruins of Machu Picchu, the Mamacoca points
to a distant valley, the sacred place where Manco, the first Inca,
planted the seeds of the sacred plant, the seeds he brought from a
distant star. |
