Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins Page B

in the cloying humidity, and except for flights of
parrots and the occasional flash of flower—a cascade of leopard-spotted
orchids, a treeful of red blossoms as big as basketballs—grew quickly
monotonous.
    The river, on the other hand, was
agurgle with antics. In exhibitions of reverse surfing, flying fish and
freshwater dolphins leapt from the water to catch brief rides on shafts of
sunlight. Then, putting a spin on that feat, cormorants, wings folded like a
high-diver’s arms, would plunge beak-first into the water, presumably,
since they rarely speared a fish, for nothing but cormorant kicks. On benches
of gravel, heavy-lidded caimans did Robert Mitchum imitations, seeming at once
slow and sinister and stoned. Cabbage-green turtles that must have each weighed
as much as a wheelbarrow load of cabbages slid off of and onto mud banks and
rocks, while frogs of various hues and sizes plopped on every side like
fugitives from mutant haiku. (“Too damn vivid,” Bashō might have
complained in seventeenth-century Japanese.) Around a bend, three tapirs, the mystery
beast from Kubrick’s 2001 , waded the stream. According to Juan Carlos,
most of Peru ’s tapirs had been killed off by hunters, depriving the
animal of its right to inhabit the world and depriving the world of living
proof of what would result were a racehorse to be mated with Porky Pig.
    Because low water had exposed many
rocks that in the rainy season would be well submerged, Inti was forced into
almost constant maneuvering, and the Little Virgin could no longer
average her customary six knots per hour. The slower pace, combined with the
Abujao’s more abundant attractions, afforded Switters the opportunity for an
unusual riverine interface. Despite his distaste for the incessant teeming that
characterized tropical South
America , he was by no means
insensitive to natural wonders, and he felt he ought somehow to take advantage
of this opportunity. There was a fly in the ointment, however. Simulium
vittatum.
    His attentive powers were blunted by
the persistent need to throw wild punches at the proboscises of the diminutive
Durante-esque devils—and to fend off larger, unidentifiable insects who kept
trying to crash the party. In the entomological kingdom, the quest for lunch
was ongoing. Switters could empathize.
    No comida.
    No concentración.
    And meditación was out of the
question.
    The next morning, when Inti and the
boys returned from the bush with their second empty pisco bottle and facefuls
of sheepish expression, Switters held out his hand.
    “Gimme coca,” he said.
    Externally, day two on the olive
Abujao mirrored day one. For thirteen more lunchless hours, they zigzagged
among mossy boulders and through sopping streamers of feverish heat, attended
by squadrons of black flies that refused to quit them until a late afternoon
downpour literally drowned the biting bugs in midair.
    Internally, the furniture had been
rearranged. Switters was booming with vim. Impervious to hunger, he was
possessed of such a quantity of unvented vigor that he longed to leap into the
river and race the boat to Boquichicos. This he could not do, due to caimans,
spiny catfish, the odd swimming viper, and the fact that he’d put his silk suit
back on in order to expose less of his flesh to those South American things
that would feed upon it.
    Energized yet strangely at peace, he
reclined on his rapidly moldering cardboard couch, his face, hands, and feet
impastoed with the root goo that caused him to resemble a comic-book Chinaman
(in real life, Asians were no more yellow in complexion than Caucasians were
truly white), the wad of leaf in his jaw beckoning—reaching out!—to the massive
green rampage of forest spirits along either bank. Or so it seemed. At some
point he commenced to play with the baby ocelot.
    That Switters was no pet-lover has
been established. For days he’d paid keener notice to the wild parrots in the
trees than to poor Sailor in his nearby cage.