I was born in Logan, a small town in Utah, about 82 miles from Salt Lake City. As you are probably aware, there are many Mormons in that region of the United States. I myself am an atheist, as befits a physician. The rest of my family are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the official name of the Mormon Church. Since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a very long name to write or pronounce, Mormons often abbreviate it as The LDS Church, an acronym that reminds me of a popular hallucinogenic drug.
A Mormon believes in many weird doctrines. According to the doctrine of continuing revelation, Jesus Christ leads the LDS Church by revealing his will to its president. The belief is also that each individual member of the church can receive personal revelation from God, while going about his or her personal life. However, no revelations were ever bestowed upon me, which makes me the only Mormon to whom God never revealed anything!
Who is this guy that calls himself God? Apparently, he is a king that rules the Earth from his throne somewhere near the star Kolob. I am not entirely sure whether the existence of Kolob is truly an official doctrine of the LDS Church. In fact, I never cared to ask for an audience with the Mormon Church President, in order to learn the whereabouts of God. However, my grandmother was said to have received a revelation that firmly placed God's home in the neighborhood of Kolob.
A Mormon male who abides by the covenants that he himself or by proxy made with God may be considered for priesthood as early as the age of 12. Let me give you my impressions concerning this particular doctrine. I think that religion should have a content rating system similar to the Motion Picture film rating system. Buddhism and Jainism could be classified as entertainment for general audiences. The Seventh-day Adventist Church does have some material that may not be suitable for children. Therefore, a child, who wants to attend the Seventh-day Adventist Church, should receive guidance from a biology teacher or a philosopher, whereas an adult guardian must accompany teenagers under the age of 17, in order to attend any other Christian Church. Finally, no one, 17 and under, should be allowed to step foot in a mosque or synagogue.
There are people, such as the biologist Richard Dawkins, who think taking a kid to a Christian temple is tantamount to child abuse. Perhaps due to a degree of ignorance about Dawkins' books, my grandmother started to take me to church, while I was still indeed very young. I cannot remember how old I was when I entered a temple for the first time, but I can assure you that I was under 17. Notwithstanding, I don't want to discuss this child abuse issue any longer.
Another strange doctrine preached by the LDS Church is the so-called law of chastity, which prohibits adultery, all homosexual behavior, and any sexual relations outside of marriage. The impact that this law had on my life was that I only started a normal sex life at almost 30 years old; it was then that I discovered all doctrines of the LDS Church are bullshit.
There is a custom among members of the LDS Church that is worth preserving - young Mormons often go to distant countries as missionaries. This means that many couples teach foreign languages to their kids, when they are quite young, so that they are apt to spread God's word to non-English speakers. For instance, my parents wanted me to serve as a missionary among South American Indians. To fulfill my father's design for me, I started learning Portuguese and Spanish when I was 3 years old. Of course, we did not know at the time that Indians, as a rule, do not speak either Portuguese or Spanish.
To my regret, my father never saw me taking an airplane from Salt Lake City airport, in order to teach the Book of Mormon to Brazilian, Peruvian, Bolivian or Paraguayan Indians. Instead of giving this simple joy to my father, I decided to go to college when I was 16 years old, and started medical school when I was 20. After medical school at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, I spent an additional five years in a general surgery residency. Therefore, I was almost thirty years old when I finally took an airplane to Brazil.
My father did not go to the airport to say goodbye. He passed away three years before due to a colorectal cancer. However, my grandfather was very much alive and present at my departure.
``These two documents,'' said my grandfather, ``are Title Deeds for real estate in Para, a state of Brazil. I don't know Portuguese, but I believe that they are Beneficiary Deeds, where Charles Ponzi transfers his interest in beef cattle ranches to my father Paul.''
``I heard that the Brazilian government often expropriates large tracts of land, which it returns to the Indians,'' added my grandfather after a few seconds of silence, a trick that he often used to build suspense. ``My opinion is that you should sell this property as soon as you arrive in Brazil. Thus, you will not forfeit your property in exchange for a paltry indemnity. Moreover, you are a vegan, and don't want to have anything to do with the beef industry.''
As I said, my grandfather did not know Portuguese, but I could read a Brazilian document well enough to know that it was written in the Tuscan dialect of Italian. However, I decided to let it pass.
``Don't forget to pay the tithe to the church,'' said my mentally confused cousin. I ignored him.`
`He is an atheist, Peter, he will not pay the Church its due,'' intervened my sister Suzie.
My grandmother started to cry. ``Will you withhold the tithe from the LDS Church? Are you an atheist?''
Here is a situation, where a lie finds its place in the life of an honest man. ``No, Grandma, this is a gossip to keep your love from me. Ten per cent of the money I receive from these deeds will go to the LDS Church.''
The last part of my statement was true, because I was sure that I would not receive one cent from the forged documents. Ten per cent of zero is zero, which is the amount the Church would receive from me.
To cheer up my grandmother, I decided to make a contribution to a noble cause. ``Besides paying the tithe, I will spend another ten percent of the revenue with religious books in Spanish for the Paraguayan Indians.''
``Paraguayan Indians do not speak Spanish,'' protested my sister, ``they speak Guarany.''
``Then, the Spirit will guide my words with the gift of tongues,'' I argued, ``and the Indians will understand me.''
Initially, grandmother appeared to be displeased, next became successively irritated, aggrieved, angry, in a crescendo of fury manifestations. Then she started to cry again.
It seems that the Mormons don't trust their own mythology. For instance, in 1850, George Q. Cannon, a missionary in Hawaii, tried to learn Hawaiian, and
gave up. Then, he decided to pray for exercising ``faith before the Lord to obtain the gift of talking and understanding the language. After this prayer, I felt a peculiar sensation in my ears and in my month. From that moment on, I had the impression that people could understand what I said in English.''
Hyrum Jensen tells us his experience with the gift of tongues. As a missionary in Norway, he was discouraged when people ridiculed him for his inability to speak Nynorsk, the language of the majority of the Norwegians. Jensen stopped on the shadow of a tree and prayed the Lord would give him the gift of tongues. After that, Jensen discovered that all Norwegians could speak English and Danish. According to Jensen's own testimony, God made all Norwegians
speak English with more ease than I have ever managed. "You can witness thismiracle yourself, visit Norway and testify to the fact that every adult can speak English. What is more, they can also speak Danish, my mother tongue.''
Notwithstanding all these testimonies, my grandmother apparently doesn't believe that God will bestow me the gift of speaking Guarani.
As I said before, my father was not at the airport for reasons of force majeure, but my grandmother was there. She entrusted me with two large boxes for the Indians or Lamanites, as she used to call them. One of the boxes contained Portuguese translations of The Book of Mormon. The other box was heavy with Spanish versions of the same book. The sacred books were quite useful in South America, since my stock of toilet paper became soaked due to bilge water in the boat, which I used for traveling along the Amazon river.
Additionally to her credit, the boxes were so carefully packaged that no single book was touched by water. Consequently, the exemplars of the Book of Mormon provided a good replacement for my lost toilet paper.
Believe me, I will provide you with a full account of my years in college, the medical school at Johns Hopkins, and my residency training. However, right
now I want to report on an event that happened while I was living among members of an Indian tribe in the north of Brazil. I will not name the tribe, due to the Hippocratic oath, that forbids me to divulge in any shape or form that which I see or hear in the course of my profession.
Upon arriving in Brazil, I heard of a government program by the name of Mais Medicos, which issues a temporary medical license, on the condition that the applying physician takes a job in a remote region of the country. The pay amounts to 3000 US dollars a month.
In the Brazilian list of medically underserved areas, there are a few Indian tribal territories. By the way, the word Indian is the accepted term that Brazilians use, when they refer to people descended from the Pre-Columbian indigenous population of the land. Instead of calling these populations by some polite
noun phrase like Native Americans, while depriving them of their lands and properties, Brazilians eserved 12.5% of the national territory for Indians. All the same, Brazilians still call them bluntly -- Indians.
If a tribe proves that its ancestors lived in a given region, it can incorporate that
region to their current tribal land. This constitutional act applies to any tribe, no matter how large the region is, or how few individuals belong to the tribe. For instance, Fox/Sun Hills Indigenous Land is the home to 20000 members of the Macuxi people. Its perimeter is 629 miles long. In May 2009, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that the Fox/Sun Hills Indigenous Land should be inhabited only by indigenous people, and ordered a military operation to remove all non-indigenous inhabitants. With the addition of Fox/Sun Hills reservation, 46% of the State of Roraima is set aside for Indians.
Of course, Brazilian doctors don't want their practices in a reservation. Therefore, Brazilians who live in large cities like Salvador or Rio de Janeiro form long lines in front of large hospitals staffed by physicians from prestigious
local medical schools, like Unipac or Unifeso. The Indians must be content with a doctor graduated in places like Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School or Université de Médicine Paris Descartes.
I must confess that, when I applied for the job, my goal was not to help poor Indians who live somewhere in the north of Brazil. I was envisioning trips along large rivers on a jet ski with a pretty French female doctor riding the pillion.
I avow that the reality departed from my daydreams in many aspects. The girl who often rode on the pillion was not French, but an American of Danish descent. If you know Logan, my hometown in Utah, you are aware that there are a lot of people of Danish heritage there. Family names like Jensen, Mikkelsen and Jorgensen are commonplace in Logan. Therefore, I was very disappointed when I discovered that the closest European girl from my practice was in fact not only Danish, but also a Mormon Dane.
I am sure that you will ask: ``Well, what is the difference if the girl is French or Danish?'' As a French man would say, ``Il y a une différence'' (there is a qualitative difference).
You certainly noticed that American or English men go simply crazy over French, Iranian or Armenian women. However, if a French or Armenian man shows interest in an American woman, he wants to marry her to obtain the right to stay in the United States. Sorry guys, what I said is politically incorrect, but Truth is often politically incorrect.
A research team showed pictures of pretty women from different countries to 44000 men in the United States. The preference rating of American men was as follows. Armenian women came first. Bajan women came in second place in the preference of American men. Don't ask me where Bajan women come from. I do not have the slightest idea. French women come third, followed by Colombian, Brazilian and Bulgarian women in that order. American and English women occupied the 9th and 10th place in men's preference respectively.
This result would be great for American women, if the number of contestants were not 10. Why do men prefer certain nationalities? The answer is the ass. Germanic women often have square butts. By Germanic women, I mean Anglo-Saxon, German and Scandinavian women. A square or H shaped butt is due to the position of the hipbones, excess fat around the waist, love handles or genetics. Armenian, Colombian and French women have a bigger, rounder and shapely booty. Before proceeding with my narrative, I will answer the question that my American female readers are impatient to ask. "Doctor, is there a cure for a square shaped butt?"
Before answering the question, I will remind the reader, be it female or male, that Brazilian indigenous people don't mind being called Indians, provided that they receive 12.5% of the national territory. I hope that American women will forgive me for being rude to the point of saying that most of them have square butts, provided that I tell them how to get an Armenian butt. And that is the main point of a book that I intend to write in the future: A sure and safe way to lose weight and get a round and shapely ass.
As for my Danish girlfriend, after two years with me in the Amazon rain forest, and through following my advice, her butt became so pretty that you would take her for a Colombian Wayuu Indian, if she were not blond. Unfortunately, since she is a Mormon, the only kind of intimacy that I shared with my Danish girlfriend were jet ski trips.
I will start my narrative at the point in time when I was traveling on foot to the Indian reservation that the Medically Underserved Area program assigned to me. Pülowi, my guide, was a young Wayuu Indian girl who entered Brazil illegally across the Venezuelan border. Due to the economic crisis in Venezuela, many Wayuu Indians like Pülowi moved to Brazil, where they pretended to be native Macuxi.
I did not care to ask the name of the town that Pülowi and I were crossing on that occasion because a village in the middle of the jungle like that one often doesn't have an official name. It is also possible that different groups of peoplecall it by a different name. A police officer sent by authorities to keep law and order may call it Hell's Gate! On the other hand, a drug dealer who takes a break there while traveling to Colombia or Peru prefers Stopover. Since I did not learn its name, I cannot point to that weird settlement on a map or give you any information about its location. I can say that the river that flows through the town has flooded, a phenomenon that often accompanies the rainy season in that part of Brazil. For as long the rain lasts, a torrent of water flows along the street that runs parallel to the river, and at that time, it was no different.
At last, the rain ceased. The right-hand sidewalk and the street itself were almost dry. A passerby could not see a single car. I must add that there are few cars in the small towns of the Amazonian rainforest. A boat is more useful in that region than a car. In that particular town that Pülowi and I were crossing, one could use their fingers to count the number of cars.
On the right-hand sidewalk, instead of the normal buildings and houses, I noted only white-painted walls. The height of the walls was not uniform, but changed according to the plot of land that it was marking. Notwithstanding, every estate seemed to be surrounded by walls tall enough to hide from view the terrain and every building that one could imagine on it. What secrets the forest dwellers were hiding from curious eyes? Perhaps smuggled goods? Maybe that street was a string of chemical laboratories manufacturing illegal drugs. Another reasonable hypothesis is that gangsters were using the plots to park containers of weapons or stolen goods. I know that you will be highly frustrated when you reach the end of this book without learning the purpose of these high walls around the tracts of land. However, believe me when I tell you I was too scared to stay longer in that unwelcoming place. What follows will show you that my fear was not misplaced. Due to my unwillingness to do any additional exploration, those walls brought only one contribution to this logbook: The town's inhabitants that Pülowi and I were traversing were not excellent and law-abiding people. It would not take long before I confirmed this suspicion.
Before proceeding with the narrative, I will ask the reader to ponder the layout and surprising aspect of the scenery in the street through which Pülowi and I were walking. A river flows on the left-hand side. On the right lies a line of walls without gates or entryways.
``How can the owners or employees reach the buildings or wall-surrounded tracts of land?'' In my mind, I was asking this question to which I never found a satisfying answer.
Only a faraway building broke the disparate line of uneven walls. A compact mass of people was in front of the building, perhaps a movie theater.
The building was still far away. Nonetheless, I started planning how to make my way through the mass of people to carry on my journey.
I strolled due to the heat that danced in the still air. One hundred meters in front of me, Pülowi was running. She was close enough for me to see the swinging movement of her buttocks with pleasure. Whenever she thought that she had distanced far enough away from me, Pülowi would reverse the step, run in my direction, and stop 50 meters in front of me. There, she would practice the monkey jump, the half-moon, and other moves very popular among Brazilian martial arts practitioners. After this display, she would run again forward along the chosen path.
This way, I was walking with regular steps, while Pülowi kept running ahead and back, in a zigzag movement. Of course, she would displace herself in ever longer distances forward than backward so she could advance at the same speed as her companion, of course, that was me.
Since that town seemed so dangerous, people may wonder why I kept such a slow pace. The northern part of Brazil is hot as hell, that is why! During the day, the temperature often reaches 100 Fahrenheit. What I think is impressive is not my lumbering but the zigzag jogging of the Indian girl.
Although we were advancing very slowly, due to the slow pace that the heat imposed on me and Pülowi's zigzag jogging, we finally reached the crowd of men in front of the movie theater. A psychologist could use the methods that each one of us chose to cross the horde to draw our profile.
The Indian girl penetrated the crowd boldly, poking people who were at her right and left sides, kicking anyone in front of her, squeezing herself forward like a determined winding snake while stepping on any foot that was in her way. Please don't ask me how she was able to avoid harassment from the bullies and attacks from the thugs that gathered in their element. It is possible that the ruffians thought that she was the lover of a local drug lord. After all, what kind of woman could dare to jump in the middle of such a dangerous crowd unless she felt protected by a top dog?
As I told you, there is a river that flows along the left-hand side of the street.
The overflowing water spread over the left-hand sidewalk. A long flatboat was moored across the crowd. The layout was such that the horde took up the narrow space between the river ship and the movie theater leaving no room for easy passage, but the river ship was long enough that
the bow and stern were free of this multitude. I figured I would get around the crowd if I entered the vessel at the bow walked along its deck and disembarked at the stern. The point for me was the boat, in that position, stood out like an invitation around trouble. I guess that an FBI profiler who might observe me performing this maneuver would deem me a coward, a man prone at all costs to avoid confrontation. Pülowi, on the contrary, would be classified by the same profiler as a risk taker.
The ship's rail formed the outermost wall of the cabin. Judging from the size of the cabin, one could infer that the boat was a floating home. However, the owner was elsewhere, in all likelihood. He could even be mingled in with the crowd in front of the movie theater, trying to do whatever the others were doing. The cabin door opened on the deck side, towards the river. Then, I could not see the man crouched at the entrance, and the circumstances seemed to indicate that nobody was home. Therefore, when I jumped onto the deck and started towards the stern, I was startled by a voice coming from my right-hand side, shouting, ``What are you doing on my boat?''
My error is understandable. At the time of these events, I did not know that people do not leave their houses unattended in Brazil. If somebody is stupid enough to leave his or her house without a guardian, theft is inevitable, and invasion followed by squatting is very likely.
%%End here
The deck of the flat-bottomed boat sat only 2 feet above the water level. Therefore, the design of the ship made it easy for me to throw my medical bag over the rail, and raise myself onto the bow deck. There, I quickly recovered my medical bag, and started to walk friskily towards the stern. As said before, the shipmaster's voice stopped me abruptly in my tracks: ``What are you doing on my boat?''
The man, to my reckoning, was about fifty years old. However, it is hard to know the exact age of people who live in that region of Brazil by
appearances, as their skin is marked by wrinkles and grooves. These deep skin furrows could be explained through old age, as well as constant exposure to the hot tropical sun, which also accentuates skin grooves.
If natives from northern Brazil were there with me in front of the boat dweller,
they would not be able to say for sure whether that man had ancestors among South American Indians, Africans or Europeans, but his forefathers certainly came from one of these parts of the world. In Brazil, the climate
and the methods used to earn a living havea deeper influence on the phenotypical aspect than ethnic origin does.
The boat dweller had a length of tobacco, which looked like a thick piece of rope. This he was chopping very finely with a curved knife. The making of straw cigarettes from rope tobacco is very popular among Brazilian
men who live in the countryside. The behavior of chopping tobacco is relaxing, and this psychological addiction adds to the effect of the nicotine. In fact, many Brazilians claim that they managed to get rid of the habit of smoking, but they could not stop tobacco chopping and hand rolling straw
cigarettes. An important component of the behavior is to perform tobacco chopping while crouching on one's heels. Researchers observed that chopping tobacco and hand rolling straw cigarettes consume so much time that countryside dwelling Brazilians end up smoking moderately. At least, if one has to chop tobacco and hand roll one's own cigarettes, chain smoking becomes impossible.
When I mentioned the curved knife that theBrazilian boat dweller was using to choptobacco, the reader certainly imagined some kind of weapon similar to the Turkish scimitar. However, the tobacco chopper's knife did not have the cutting edge on the outer part of theblade curvature. The cutting edge of the Brazilian knife is in fact found within the curved blade. A good way to imagine this knife is as a cutting hook.The shipmaster did not wait for me to arrive
at any conclusion as to the goal of such a knife design.
``What are you doing on my boat? I will answer this question myself.
You thought that I am an old man, therefore you can simply enter my house,
steal my property and kill me in the process, if necessary. After that, you would probably rape my granddaughter. But I have something to tell you. I may be stronger than you, or perhaps you are stronger than me. In any case, do you see this hooked knife? Do you know why it has a cutting edge curved
to the inside? I will answer you this question as well, for you do not seem to know local customs. In my land, that you are visiting, one uses this kind of knife to castrate pigs. The curvature hooks around the testicles, and all one needs do is pull on the knife, in order to complete the task. Since you are a curious man, you certainly have another question. Why do I need such a long knife for castrating piglets? The fact is that this knife has two functions.
The first one is to castrate pigs, as I already made clear. The other one is to gut intruders. I am a civilized fellow, and do not usually castrate men before
gutting them. However, I may make an exception in your case, since you certainly intended to rape my granddaughter. Under these special circumstances, castrate before killing is not an unusual or cruel punishment.''
I tried to show myself as being calm and collected in light of the circumstances I now found myself in, while replying to the long diatribe of the boatman.
``You are mistaken, my friend. I am nota thief, murderer or rapist. All I want to do is to go around that mob over there. That is the only reason for my entering your flat-bottomed ship.''
At this moment, a girl came out of the cabin. She was the granddaughter of the old man, to be sure. She was wearing a soiled sooted dress, which was white at some point in time. However, the girl often held and shook it overan open flame in order to kill fleas and ticks. The girl's hair was tangled and dirty. She was holding a rag doll, which had lost the two armsand one leg. The doll's skirt was also gray with soot, just like the girl's dress.I guess that the girl held and shook the doll over the fire, in order to kill imaginary ticks. Another possibility is that she used her old clothes to make skirts and dresses for the doll.
Suddenly, the girl spoke. ``Grandfather, after killing this bad man, and before throwing the body into the river, cut his hair off for me. I need it for Rachel's wig. The hair of the other bad man, which I sewed on to my doll's head, has almost entirely gone.''
The old man answered the girl: ``I am not sure whether this man is really evil. After all, he has not hurt you or me. Of course, I don't know what he would do, given the chance. For the time being, he is only a trespasser. Anyway, my dear, I still have not had the time to interrogate this individual, as to whether he did not attack us for lack of opportunity or for not being of violent intent. In the latter case, I will give him a speedy death by cutting his throat, and throwing his body over the rail. Besides this, if he is only a trespasser
or a mere thief, I don't intend to mutilate his face or defile his body. However, if he is a rapist or a murderer of children, then I need to make him an example for others with like character. A rapist deserves to be gutted and lay in agony on the deck before being thrown into the river. Whatever is my decision, I think you should enter the cabin. You are too young to witness an execution.''
At this moment, I felt the need to interrupt this not so delicate conversation between this loving grandfather and his lovely granddaughter. This was not due to my having any preference concerning the methods proposed for my death, but purely to gain some time. {\em ``I ask you, dear Sir, do not try to cut my throat, because I don't think I deserve dying so young. I am a doctor, a physician. I was born in the United States, a country where doctors are
held in high esteem and usually do not get involved in crimes. On the contrary, they are always ready to help people. For instance, you have a skin condition that I suspect to be basal cell carcinoma. In simple terms, you have cancer, but not a dangerous and aggressive kind of malignancy. I can heal you.''
The talk about cancer was contrived in order to gain time. I could not diagnose cancer through a glimpse from two meters away, let alone classify the disease as basal cell carcinoma. However, if the man were to buy my talk,
I could fake a medical procedure and try to win his good will. At the very least, I could divert his attention long enoughfor a quick escape. Unfortunately, he seemed too stupid to understand the meaning of carcinoma. Anyway, without waiting for his reaction to my words, I kept my eyes on him, while stepping backwards, in the direction of the stern.
However, I was so unfortunate that I trippedon that kind of step produced through those level differences that often exist between the prowand the stern of a deck. I tripped and fell on my back.
The first thing that a retreating person thinks when she or he falls back is to prop on both hands to get up. This strategy is dangerous, since it precludes the use of hands for defense or attack. Therefore, practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu developed techniques for taking the fight to the ground. I learned these techniques while still at Logan, but they proved to be ineffective on this particular occasion, since my opponent did not make any gesture towards attacking me. He merely shouted orders to his granddaughter. {\em ``Darling, could you bring my shotgun here? It is fixed on the wall, above my bed.''
Masters of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu never told me anything about shotguns. Then I forgot their excellent lessons, turned by back to the boat dweller, raised on my foot and started the six meters that separated me from the stern. Of course, I am not sure about this estimation of the distance that separated me from the stern and safety. Probably I would not be safe even after jumping out of the boat, since the crowd in front of the movie theater could side with the boat dweller. In any case, when I was making the final steps to the stern,
my way was interrupted by the presence of two uniformed men blocking my way.
The police officers seemed to be more interested in the boatman than in me. Therefore, it was to my enemy that one of the police officers, a tall European looking fellow, said: ``So, did you kill the Bolivian? I mean, the Bolivian police officer who was found floating down the river, with large patches of missing hair.''
The other police officer, a short and stout mulatto complemented the thought: ``I wondered who would kill a man to steal his hair. Now I have a good explanation for the event.''
One thing that I learned from Brazilians is to trust police officers less than gangsters. Therefore, while the two police officers were interrogating the boatman, I started to walk around them in order to escape from that ambiguous situation, where I could not tell the true intent of the new arrivals. Nevertheless, the stout mulatto tried to interrupt my get away.
``My partner and me, we just saved your balls and maybe your life. Aren't you going to show your gratitude?'' I was in Brazil long enough to know how to show gratitude, therefore I asked: ``How much do you want?''} The response from the police officer did not help to make the negotiations advance:
``How much do you have there?''
At that moment, I saw Pülowi standing by the door of a car and frantically signaling me. I did not give further heed to the two police officers, reached for the low rail around the stern, jumped to the sidewalk, and ran to the car.
Pülowi entered the car ahead of me, slid on the seat over to the other side. With that movement, she left the open door ready for me to enter the vehicle. As soon as I was half sat, the driver accelerated the car so fast that the door closed on its own inertia.
Pülowi started a conversation in Russian to keep me a par of developments. ``I guess you speak Russian, as I saw you reading a novel by Boris Akunin on your Kindle. When I hired this fake taxi driver, I pretended not to know Portuguese or Spanish. Therefore, when he hears us speaking Russian, he probably will think that we are conversing in an Indian language, such as Quechua. I would doubt very much if he could tell the difference between Russian and Quechua. The point is that we are not safe yet, since this man clearly intends to steal your money and rape me. He avowed these plans to his companions, since he thought that I could not understand what he was saying. Therefore, whatever he does, don't react. Let me handle the situation. My job is to get you safe to Raposa do Sol, so don't let your amateurish maneuvers make this task harder than it already is.''
The street along the banks of the river ended at a glade that grazing animals had cleared in the forest. The driver stopped the car and told me: ``Start walking, leave the little Chinese girl entrusted to my care.'' People in Brazil often confuse native Indians with Chinese or Japanese, since they display oriental features.
The assassin spoke in colloquial Portuguese, when he made the suggestion that I should depart and leave Pülowi behind. However, he was not sure that
I could understand Portuguese. Therefore he made his meaning clear with a Glock pistol that he brandished, using the weapon to make a gesture in the direction of a single line track that penetrated into the forest.
I am not brave enough to face an armed drug trafficker. Even so, I did not hide myself in the forest, as the fake driver suggested. In fact, I stayed put, in doubt about what to do. Even if I would be coward enough to run into the wood, the ruffian, after raping the girl, would remember that I could be carrying money. In that case, he would chase me and kill me easily, since he knew the land. Evasion was not a good option for an intelligent coward, like myself.
After suggesting me the way into the woods, the bully focused his attention on Pülowi. Initially, he pointed the gun on her head, in order to bend the girl to his will. Then he probably concluded that a gun was an excessive resource for taming a young woman, and it could get in his way during the rape. I could infer that the man concluded that a gun was not necessary for the task at hand, because he dropped the pistol on the ground. I immediately thought that an opportunity could arise, where my taking hold of the pistol could be attainable, when the rapist started doing what rapists do best.
I cannot remember what plans I had created in my mind for wrestling the gun away from the thug. In any case, my plans did not come to bear. As soon as the rapist dropped his pants, the girl drew a knife from a sheath on her lower left leg and cut his penis off. The proceeding stage of Pülowi's master plan was to get hold of the gun. Upon doing so, she liberated the wounded man from his misery by shooting him in the head.
I followed the wild woman in silence to wherever she wanted to lead me. We followed the river downstream through the dense forest until we found a motorized boat hidden among the canopies of the low-lying trees that grew on adjacent swampland. It seems that Pülowi left that boat there a few days before for the sole purpose of providing us a quick getaway.
Pülowi piloted the boat to a much bigger town, with well-constructed and conserved buildings. There were many warehouses and illegal sawmills
built in their essence from precast concrete. The Indian girl guided me to a two-floor office facility. Only one of the offices was occupied, and even here, a lone middle-aged man was sitting in a very comfortable chair behind a desk. The girl and I stood, as there were no additional chairs for possible visitors.
The Indian girl told the establishment's owner: ``Here is your man, safe and sound as I had promised you. I hope that my payment has been transferred to my account in Colombia.''
``I still need your services, young woman, and as long as I need your services, be rest assured that I will deposit your money as agreed. Do you need ready cash for your trip back home?''
``I am not crazy enough to carry cash on me in a place like this. When I need something, such as food and tools, I prefer to steal or rob, instead of drawing attention to myself by paying in cash for an item and showing everybody that their attack on me could be profitable.''
``Since you are satisfied that matters between us are settled, you can leave me with the doctor to talk business.''
I thought that the man behind the desk was some sort of government officer in charge of administrating the Indian reservation. Therefore, I asked him when I would depart for the Indian village, where I was supposed to work.
``There is no Indian village. In fact, there is no Pirunucu tribe. The bureaucrats in Brasilia created many fictional towns and villages for bogus medical positions. Politicians and fake entrepreneurs keep half of the payment that should go to the doctors in charge of nonexistent practices. The doctors themselves receive the other half for doing nothing, which is a good deal for everybody!''
``Creating fake ids or appropriating the id from a dead person is a common practice in Brazil. For instance, crooks often claim that a deceased person is alive to collect benefits from social security or medical insurance companies. In practice, long after the death of the client, hospitals and lawyers keep collecting pension checks, benefits and payments for providing health care. The Program for Medically Underserved Areas case is interesting because the swindlers created whole tribes, towns, and cities to embezzle money. However, this is not the largest scheme for stealing public money! For example, the supplying of water to urban populations provided interesting opportunities for corrupt politicians
to rake off some good cash.''
``The most notorious case of such schemes to earn money with water transference projects, which in fact deliver little or next to nothing of the promised resource, is the transference of water from the San Francisco River to smaller streams in the Northeast of Brazil. The civil engineering work should have taken at least ten years. The fake engineering firms asked for two billion dollars in small installments for completing the project, only to revise the value upward to 4 billion, when arriving at the deadline of completion. It is pointless to say that at the deadline there were no channels to speak of. The make-believe engineers counted on time for removing the necessity of accountability: In ten years, honest engineers and politicians involved in the project would be dead from natural causes, killed or removed from the political process, and the surviving engineers and corrupt politicians would have time for making the money untraceable. The other possibility is that the incumbent government would go bankrupt and stop paying the installments, which would provide a good excuse for interrupting the works,
thus keeping the amount already paid.''
``In this town of ours,'' the man continued, ``the world and his wife are organizing schemes for accumulating wealth. There are people who are chopping down the forest to obtain wood, which will worsen global warming, but not before making the criminals rich from selling the wood to furniture manufacturers in Denmark. There are also people that are mining gold in the Indian reservations, which is by the way illegal. I represent the miners and panners. Since I am not half as bad as many of the criminals here, I saw to it that the Indians receive their fair share of the criminal operation. I am talking about real Indians, flesh and blood human beings, not imagined tribes, such as the Pirunucus. These Indians do need physicians and dentists, and have the money to pay you. What do you think about working for my Indians? Not that I care about these Indians, but they have low immune resistance to
European infectious diseases. If all of them die from the contact with civilization, squatters will occupy their land, and I will not have the monopoly
of buying the gold that belongs to them.''
After thinking for a long time, I answered: ``If what you are telling me is true, I am involved in a criminal scheme, and I will denounce it to the authorities.''
I must reveal a few things about myself. The first revelation is that I am not like Archie Goodwin. This means that I cannot reproduce a conversation verbatim. For those of you who do not know who is Archie Goodwin, Rex Stout wrote many books about an old man, Nero Wolfe, who was so fat that he rarely left his brownstone house voluntarily. Therefore, he spent a lot of money to make his home amenable to all his needs, hobbies, desires, impulses and cravings. One of his passions was eating; the other was orchids,
in that order. Therefore, he hired a Swiss chef and a German gardener. Of course, the Swiss chef was born in that region of Switzerland, where the locals speak French. It was in French that Nero Wolfe discussed the everyday
menu with Fritz; this is the name of the Swiss chef.
In September 1934, Nero Wolfe left his home willingly for the privilege of dining at the same table as Albert Einstein. I guess that he accepted the invitation not because he would sit with Einstein, but because the food was good.
How could Nero Wolfe manage to sustain such an expensive life style? Well, he owned a detective agency, where the only fixed employee was Archie Goodwin. The peculiar ability of Archie Goodwin in repeating conversations verbatim came to my mind because the top of the desk was full of books on Nero Wolfe. The man in front of me certainly was fond of tales about the
obese bon vivant. However, let us return to that strange office with only two pieces of furniture, a desk and a chair.
Before this long digression, where I explained who Archie Goodwin was, this report came to a stop at the point, where I was strongly putting the case to my host of the need to inform the authorities about this scheme
for hiring fake physicians.
``I repeat, it seems that I became one of the victims of a criminal scheme for hiring unscrupulous doctors. The authorities must be told of this embezzlement of public funds.''
``From your choice of vocabulary, gestures and tone of voice, I got the impression that you believe that I am part of these criminal activities. I can also infer that you are a newcomer to Brazil, since you also believe that the local authorities are engaged in crime fighting operations in the broader sense. This may be true, if the criminals are disrupting crimes committed by the authorities themselves, such as corruption, misconduct, passing legislation without rising above self-interest, overpricing, report falsification and fake bids. I could keep on listing the different transgressions of the laws of the land and crimes against humanity that Brazilian authorities have devised to increase their income or for a comfortable retirement plan in Paraguay. Unfortunately, I am not sure whether the English language has all the technical words for describing the variety of unlawful acts that Brazilian public officers commit on a daily basis.''
The old man sat in silence, then he warned me: ``You need to wise up. For instance, did you notice that there is no chair for visitors in my office? The reasons for a person coming to me are many. Very few people enter through that front door, in order to propose a mutually beneficial deal, but given the opportunity through a lapse on my part, they will force the tide to turn in their favor. A slightly larger class of callers want to profit at my expense. Finally, there is a large group of men and women that appear with the clear intention of killing me or taking me for everything they can.''
Finally, my interlocutor ended his line of thought: "In any case, when you say that you will report the misappropriation of public funds, you sound as you were threatening somebody. Since, I am the only person in this room, it seems as though your threat is aimed at me. The fact is that I have nothing to do with this health scam. I found out that it existed through pure chance. When people in Brasilia discovered that you would come here to take up a doctor's position for an inexistent tribe, they decided it would be best to kill you, since you could call public attention to what they are doing. As things stand, the criminals do not have operatives in this part of the country, and so
they contacted my cousin Pafuncio to do the job, who subcontracted me. I don't know what I would do if the amount paid were large enough. However,
I am a little soft and sympathize with your predicament. Therefore, I am proposing a deal, where you will do exactly what you intended to do at the start of your long wending journey to this place, to wit, provide health services to an Indian tribe.''
``Sorry for being rude. I guess I will accept your offer for no other reason than to discover a way for returning to civilization.''
``I don't know why this place cannot be considered as civilized. Perhaps because people here prefer to do business with Indians, instead of exterminating them with the intent of bringing a doubtful brand of civilization. Don't worry. You won't find civilization in the abstract sense of the word, but you will enjoy all benefits of civilization. In the restaurant downtown, you can drink French wine, eat ratatouille and hear La Vie en Rose on an old jukebox. Sorry, the waiter does not speak French, only the whores do. I am not sure
whether our health service is as good as in Paris, but providing health care is your job, isn't it?''
At that moment, a blond young woman appeared behind me and poked my ribs with the muzzle of a handgun. Since I was not expecting an interruption in that strange conversation, hearing a voice behind me coupled with the poke in the ribs, really gave me a fright. The official, at least, let's call him that, explained the situation, both to calm me and prevent the new arrival from becoming overly protective by shooting me.
``Sorry, Doctor. I called Ms Anita Nikolaisen, who will show you your accommodations, and teach you the basics of Nheengatu, that is the language spoken by the tribe where your practice will be located. To make
sure that I receive what is due for my intermediary services over this whole arrangement, the hired doctor, in this case you, should double as my interpreter in my dealings with the council that governs the Indians. Therefore, it is important that you learn at least some Nheengatu with the help of Ms. Nikolaisen.''
After signaling to the blond woman that everything was fine and that I posed no threat, the man continued his rambling.
``Since I couldn't imagine a better way of calling Ms. Nicolaisen, I pressed the panic button under my desk top. When Anita hears the signal from the panic button, she enters my office shooting. I raised my hand, as a signal for her not to kill you. The hand signal sometimes works as intended.''
Anita continued the explanation, giving her side of the whole episode, as an excuse for her behavior toward me.
``The problem is that I did not know anything about the signal. When I received the panic signal, I thought that we were under attack. I entered here ready for shooting. What is your name? Well, Mr. Jensen, I refrained from killing you, not because of Mr. Rafael's raised hand. For one thing, I was afraid that the bullet could hit my boss, after going through your body. Besides this, I don't know what you carry in this suitcase, but it may be a bomb ready to explode if you drop dead and release a possible trigger that you keep pressed while you are alive and conscious. Whereas if the terrorist keeps such a trigger pressed down, the bomb does not explode, but if an agent
of law kills the fanatic, he automatically releases the trigger, and the bomb goes off. I heard that Islamic fundamentalists rely on such a device.''
``Now that I have learned of my narrow escape from death, let us discuss my wages.''
``I am afraid you didn't understand what is going on. My business is not healthcare. I do not run a charity institution. I am a racketeer. The contract is very simple: You pay 20% of every penny you earn in the Indian Reservation. The value is so low, because you are going to render me invaluable services as an interpreter and bookkeeper of the gold extracted from the mines."
``Then, how will I earn my money?''
``That is a good question. Should I answer that this is your problem? You bet I should! However, since you are a foreigner unaccustomed with the practices of the land, I will elaborate on the standard answer. The Indians have their share of the valuable minerals extracted from their land. Therefore, they can pay your fees. Then you have the gold diggers that are stabbed from time to time. If you save the life of a stabbed man, or a shot man for that matter, you can send him a fat bill. When I say send a fat bill, I don't mean really send a fat bill. Brazilian miners carry their valuables, such as gold nuggets, precious stones and even foreign currency in their underpants. Everybody knows that. Therefore, at airports, the first thing that a customs officer checks are the underpants of any individual suspected of smuggling money from one place to the other. Even though most people know where the valuables are, nobody steals from a wounded miner. Except his doctor and nurses of course. If you save the life of a man, you can collect some 70% of his belongings as fee. Please, collect at least 20%, that is my part of the deal. Leave him with 30% of his money or gold nuggets, for the trip back home.''
Before sending me away, the racketeer added: ``There is another way of making your stay in Brazil profitable. From time to time, French cosmetologists come to this particular region of Brazil to buy raw material for soaps, perfumes and the like from the Indians. You can intermediate the sale of such products and acquire a sizable amount in euros. Don't forget about my 20% here as well.''
As Nietzsche would say -- Also begann mein Untergang.