Free Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende Page B

descended upon the village. The smoke blinded us and we could barely breathe, but the alternative was worse: the minute we moved away from the fire we were enveloped in a cloud of insects. For dinner we had tapir, an animal that looks like a pig, and a bland pap they call cassava, or manioc—strange tastes, but after three months of fish and empanadas, we thought the meal delicious. We also had our first taste of a foamy beverage made of cacao, a little bitter, in spite of the spices that had been added to it. According to Padre Gregorio, this cacao is so valuable to the Aztecs and other Indians that they use the seeds as we use coins.
    That evening we listened to the adventures of Padre Gregorio, who several times had traveled deep into the jungle to convert the Indians. He admitted that in his youth he, too, had followed the terrible dream of El Dorado. He had traveled along the Orinoco, which at times was placid as a lake, but at others, a rushing, angry torrent. He told of enormous waterfalls born of the clouds that crash down in a rainbow of foam, of green tunnels through the forest, of the eternal dusk of vegetation barely touched by the light of day. He described carnivorous flowers that smell like dead meat, and others that are delicate and fragrant, but poisonous. And there are birds of sumptuous plumage, he said, and complete villages of monkeys with human faces that spy on intruders from among the leaves.
    â€œFor those of us who come from Extremadura, where it is so stark and dry, nothing but rocks and dust, such a paradise is impossible to imagine,” I commented.
    â€œBut it is a paradise only in appearance, Señora Inés. In a hot, swampy, voracious world infested with reptiles and poisonous insects, things decay very quickly, especially the soul. The jungle transforms men into rogues and murderers.”
    â€œThose who go there only out of greed are already corrupted, Padre. The jungle merely brings out in men what is already in them,” Daniel Belalcázar replied, then jotted down everything the priest had to say in his notebook. He had every intention of following the course of the Orinoco himself.
    That first night on terra firma, Maestro Manuel Martín and some of the sailors went back to the ship to sleep—to guard the cargo, they said, although it occurs to me that they were afraid of the snakes and insects. Others of us, unable to face the confinement of our cabins again, chose to stay in the village. Constanza, exhausted, fell right to sleep in the hammock we’d been allotted, protected by a filthy mosquito net, but I prepared for several hours of wakefulness. The night was heavy and black, throbbing with mysterious presences, filled with sounds, fragrant, and frightening. It seemed to me that I was surrounded by every creature Padre Gregorio had mentioned: enormous insects, snakes that could kill from a distance, and unfamiliar beasts. However, more than those natural dangers, I was concerned about the wickedness of the drunken men. I could not close my eyes.
    Two or three long hours went by, and just as finally I began to doze, I heard something or someone outside the hut. My first suspicion was that it was an animal, but I recalled that Sebastián Romero had stayed ashore, and now that he was not under the thumb of Maestro Manuel Martín, he was a man to be watched. I was not mistaken. Had I been asleep, Romero might have accomplished his purpose in coming, but to his misfortune I was waiting with a small, needle-sharp Moorish dagger I had bought in Cadiz. The only light came from the reflection of coals dying in the fire where the tapir had been roasted. An opening without a door was all that separated us from the outside, and my eyes had become ac customed to the darkness. Romero crawled in on all fours, sniffing like a dog, and approached the hammock where I was supposed to be asleep beside Constanza. He got as far as reaching to pull back the netting, but froze