Free Voyage By Dhow by Norman Lewis Page A

somewhere in the remote sierra. A tentative appointment was fixed at the Institute’s office for four that afternoon.
    The shaman arrived punctually; a remarkable figure even in Tepic, where there were many Indians in the street, and not a few of them in bizarre regalia. He was a man of about forty, with a small, brown, smiling face and penetrating eyes and, in his cotton shirt and trousers embroidered with deer, eagles and jaguars, and his wide hat decorated with coloured wools and fringed with pendant ornaments, he dominated the discreet environment of the Instituto’s office.
    Fears that he might not wish to be photographed were soon dispelled. Regarded by his countrymen on ritual occasions as an incarnation of the Fire God, the shaman was remote from small-scale intolerance, and he allowed himself, endlessly benign, to be studied from angle to angle, and shifted from position to position, while the shutter of David’s camera clicked interminably.
    It was a huge advantage that although he spoke no English, his Spanish was slow and precise, as if learned late in life, and there were no problems in understanding each other. When we told him of our plans, he shook his head. It would be impossible to see anything of the lives of the Huichols if we went by ourselves. They came down into their five villages only for ceremonial purposes, living otherwise in isolated ranchos throughout the sierra, which no stranger would ever find. We told him that we proposed to make the attempt, whatever happened, and the shaman said: ‘In that case, perhaps you would like me to come with you.’ This we assumed at first to be a piece of Indian politeness, like the offer of a well-bred Spaniard to accompany you when you stop him to ask the way. It was difficult to believe that the shaman really meant what he said, but he did. He was as free as the air to come and go where and when he pleased, he said. We could leave at that moment if we liked.
    Disconcerted a little by this almost inhuman display of independence, we finally agreed to pick the shaman up next morning, and at 5.30 we went in a taxi to find him in a glum little street on the outskirts of the town, where all his neighbours were waiting with their lamps lit to see him off.
    The plane should have left at six, but by the time it lumbered down the runway and bumped into the air towards the sierra the sun was well up. Besides the three of us, there were two other passengers: a Huichol and his exceedingly pretty wife, aged about fourteen. She had the small-boned, elegant face of an Andalusian dancer, without mongoloid traits, but her cheeks were brilliantly rouged in Indian style. At the airport she had sat apart, her back to her husband, in demure Huichol fashion, but now protocol had collapsed under the strain of the experience, and she had buried her face in his neck.
    Through the scratched and misted windows of the Beechcraft, a dramatic landscape had been spread beneath us, rocking gently as the air currents buffeted the plane. We stared down into the green baize-lined crater of the small volcano, and not far from it—despite the fact that Nayarit is supposed to be devoid of archaeological interest—a neat construction of concentric rings that was unmistakably an ancient pyramid appeared and slid away. Ahead, the sierra threw itself in grey waves against the horizon, and the Beechcraft thundered towards them. After my years of air travel in jets, it seemed hardly to move but to lie suspended, flinching and shuddering in each trough of the mountains before the struggle up to clear the next shattered Crusaders’ castle of rock, with a hundred feet or so to spare. At these moments of maximum effort the fuselage flexed gently, and the pilot reached out to make an adjustment here or tighten a wingnut there. The Rio Chapalanga, drawn in its gorges like a flourish under a signature, appeared and vanished again. The shaman, remote from preoccupations and perils, said that the fishing in