Trail of Feathers (35 page)

Ram
ó
n agreed to prepare a special batch of
ayahuasca
. Residing so deep in the jungle as he did, he could get his hands on mature vines. The older the vine, the stronger the
ayahuasca
. No shaman ever grows the vines near his house, for
ayahuasca
vines are too powerful.

Soon after first light, Ram
ó
n took me into the jungle to search for a suitable piece of
caapi
vine. He told me to beware of falling trees. The avenging soul of the sloth he’d killed the day before may come after us. All around animals and insects were feeding. I felt fortunate to be at the top of the food chain.

Early morning was the best time to cut the
ayahuasca
vine, the
maestro
said, as the juices are concentrated in the bark. Selecting an old gnarled liana, he started to chop. Like other shamans I met, Ram
ó
n was an expert with a machete. His arms seemed wasted of their muscle, but they could strike with an immense force. Until a century ago, metal blades were almost unknown to the Shuar, who still hacked off heads and cut vines with stone axes. I would always see the hunters carefully cleaning and sharpening their machetes before going into the jungle. All their weapons were kept in a state of readiness, perhaps a legacy of the head-hunting days.

Cut into foot-long sections, the vine looked very ordinary. Its thin mottled bark and cornsilk-coloured wood hardly smelled of anything. The jungle abounds with plants, some no bigger than a light-bulb’s filament, others stretch up two hundred feet. Every leaf, every tree trunk and seed pod are quite unique. Most are more attractive than the
caapi
vine. So how on earth did the peoples of the Upper Amazon ever come across it, and work out the process of brewing
ayahuasca! It’s
one thing to break off the leaf of a plant and chew it for particular relief, like coca. But it’s a giant leap to mix it with other plants, for an entirely new effect. The reductionist theory, wheeled out by intellectuals, says that centuries of trial and error explains it all. Just as infinite monkeys with typewriters could come up with
Hamlet
, the Amazonians had worked out
ayahuasca
.

Ram
ó
n must have cut about six feet of the liana. He kept repeating that such mature vines were very powerful. But perhaps even he didn’t realise the enduring strength of
Banisteriopsis caapi
. In 1851, the first botanical specimens of the
ayahuasca
vine were taken to Kew Gardens by the celebrated British explorer Richard Spruce. In 1969 they were tested, and found to still contain high levels of the active ingredient, harmaline.

An alkaloid, harmaline is similar to mescaline, the active ingredient in many other hallucinogens (including the peyote cactus, the psi-locybe mushroom, as well as LSD).

When he had collected enough
caapi
, Ram
ó
n gathered leaves from other plants, careful not to take more than he would require. These admixtures contained the actual hallucinogens which would enter our blood thanks to the effects of harmaline on the digestive tract. The specific hallucinations depend on the blend of admixtures used by a particular shaman. There are more than seventy-five plants commonly used as admixtures in the region. Most contain tryptamine derivatives which, as I understood it, lead to the sensation of flight.

Ram
ó
n wrapped the leaves and chunks of
caapi
vine in a cloth, before leading me through the labyrinth of trees and vegetation, back to the village. He was a man of few words, not given to idle chatter. Only once on the way home did he speak.

‘We will take the
ayahuasca’
he said. ‘We will take it together. And we will die. The
ayahuasca
will kill us.’

I didn’t know what to make of the remark, but hoped he was referring to allegorical death.

As soon as we returned to the
maloca
, the shaman’s wife collared me. Sheepishly, she held out an enormous gourd. It was filled to the brim with the usual vile saliva-based beverage. Thanking her, I took a sip. I had sometimes managed to offload the drink on Richard. He had a far stronger stomach than me, and was always mindful to respect hospitality. But he had gone spear fishing with Ram
ó
n’s youngest son. I explained that I felt a bout of malaria coming on. I’m not sure why, but as all Shuar know, you must never drink
masato
if you have malaria.

It was then that I remembered about my precious beetles. They were still in my pack and hadn’t been fed in two days. I opened up the Tupperware containers. Thankfully, both were still alive. Ram
ó
n’s wife showed great interest in the insects. She motioned with her hands, admiring their size.

I should have looked after them myself; they were my responsibility. But given the woman’s enthusiasm, I asked her if she could take them to the kitchen, indicating in sign language that they were partial to rotten wood. She whisked the beetles away.

At the far end of the
maloca
, the
maestro
began to make the
ayahuasca
. Using the end of a Fanta bottle, he smashed the chunks of vine. The harmaline is contained just beneath the bark, and it must be crushed in order to release the alkaloids. Ram
ó
n was meticulous. He counted out five
chacruna
leaves (four inches in length, oval in shape), four leaves of
sanango
, and a few
bobinsana
leaves, and eight roughly made
mapacho
cigarettes. When the ingredients were ready, he laid a few pieces of vine in his cauldron, layering on top a few leaves. Then another layer of
caapi
and more leaves, more of the vine and, lastly, a handful of scrapings from the
sanango
root.

We carried the cauldron down to the water, filled it up and placed it on a special fire. Ram
ó
n did not use the cooking area in the
maloca
for making
ayahuasca
. The concoction was left to brew and the shaman turned his attentions to another matter.

The sloth he had killed the day before was being made into lunch by his wife. Its meat was considered a delicacy. Many Shuar, he told me, no longer ate sloths, for they feared retaliation. Unlike others, Ram
ó
n had not forgotten how to capture the creature’s avenging soul - by making a
tsantsa
from its head. He said that one must never go out to hunt a sloth, but if one crosses your path, you’re entitled to kill it.

Ram
ó
n fetched the head from the kitchen, and held it in his hands, gazing at it. He observed the lifeless features, the copper-brown hair, and the hole where its neck had been severed. Using a home-made blade, a sliver of steel, he started to peel the skin away. The shaman was skilled in the art of scalping, just as the Andean
maestro
had been in skinning the guinea pig. As the sloth had been dead for some time there was no blood. The skin came away from the bone remarkably easily.

The shaman said he always used the same red earthenware pot to boil sloth heads. He lit a fire behind the house, kindling it with banana leaves. The pot was dipped into the river.

When the water was boiling, the head was carefully dropped in. Raiding parties would sometimes carry a smouldering hornets’ nest with them, to light fires. The smoke had the added advantage of keeping other insects at bay. The Shuar could also light a fire quickly using a bow and a hardwood stick. Ram
ó
n demonstrated the technique. But the other Shuar I met, had lost the art, since the missionaries had brought them matches.

The sloth’s head was pulled from the water after about ten minutes. Longer than that, Ram
ó
n said, and the hair would start falling out. I saw none of the oily yellow grease which is said to exude from a human
tsantsa
. The sloth’s head had shrivelled noticeably, and was ready to be sewn up.

Taking some fibre and a splinter of wood, the shaman darned the two flaps of skin together. A sloth is far smaller than a human, so its head requires far less shrinkage to turn it into a
tsantsa
. Ram
ó
n had heated a pan full of sandy gravel on the fire. When it was sufficiently hot, he funnelled it through the sloth’s neck. Time and again, the sand was replaced. As Ram
ó
n agitated it inside the tiny pouch of skin, a smell of burning hair and meat mingled with the banana leaf smoke.

Satisfied that the sloth’s
musiak
had been controlled, Ram
ó
n went to the
maloca
to hang the head up with the others. He left them above the fire for a week or so, he said, after which he buried them in the jungle. On the few occasions that missionaries had cut their way through to the village, they had offered to buy the heads. As Ram
ó
n saw it,
tsantsas
, whether human or sloth, had no intrinsic value, and could therefore not be sold.

During the afternoon, the cauldron of
ayahuasca
boiled down. The shaman refilled it with water and placed it back on the fire. Richard returned from the river with seven good-sized fish. They were flat fish, similar to plaice. He gave them to Ram
ó
n’s wife, who hurried to the kitchen.

Soon after, she ferried several dishes into the main room of the
maloca
. Richard, Alberto, Enrique and I waited for the famous shaman to sit. He came up the tree trunk ladder, and said that, if I was to take
ayahuasca
that night, I should not eat. The stomach had to be empty. Even
masato
was off limits.

I edged back from the food, thankful that I could pass up the bowl of sloth goulash. Richard wolfed down two helpings of the stew. He picked at one of the roasted fish. Ram
ó
n’s wife then offered her guests the third dish. It was common at a Shuar meal to have no idea what the food actually was. But the dish, which was sitting on a cactus-green banana leaf, was unlike any other jungle food I had come across. It consisted of two hard black lumps, a little smaller than golf balls. Richard passed up the dish, saying he could eat no more. Alberto ate one of the lumps, after peeling off its shell. Ram
ó
n’s wife popped the other one into her mouth. When she had swallowed it, she looked over at me. And, in sign language, she thanked me.

I was just about to ask Richard what was going on, when it hit me. I sensed a jabbing pain in the base of my stomach, and acidic saliva in my throat. Ram
ó
n’s wife had mistaken my precious
Titanus giganticuses
for food.

Just before he died, Ramón’s father had called his young son to where he was lying. The old man had been in a trance for many days, getting weaker and weaker. Even though he was a respected shaman and a healer, his family knew he was about to die. He had finished his work in this illusory world.

Moments before he slipped away, he filled his lungs for the last time, and blew into Ramón’s face.

‘That breath …’ said Ramón, squinting, ‘that breath passed on to me
la sabiduria de la ayahuasca
, the knowledge of
ayahuasca.’

‘How long ago did your father die?’

Ramón thought for a moment.

‘Hace mucho tiempo
, a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I was no more than a child. I still had much to learn.’ 

‘Without your father, who taught you?’

‘The
ayahuasca
taught me,’ he said, ‘and it told me to speak to the trees and plants in the forest. They welcomed me, telling me how to use them.
Ayahuasca
is the pass which opens all secrets,’ Ramón said. ‘It’s the most powerful medicine there is.’

When the third batch of water had more or less evaporated from the cauldron, Ramón filtered away the remaining liquid. It was the colour of caramel.

‘We will leave it to cool,’ he said, ‘and when there is darkness, we can drink.’

I asked Ramón about the rumour that he could fly.

He widened his eyes and put a hand to the nape of his neck.

'Ayahuasca
is very strong,’ he said. ‘I have already told you that. It can be used in many ways - as a purger of evil, as a medicine, a solver of problems … It can take you back in time, or into the future, show you miracles, transform you into a boa constrictor or a leopard’

‘What about flying … if you take
ayahuasca
can you actually fly?’

Ramón looked through me with his gaze, but said nothing.

I found myself thinking about
ayahuasca
and hallucinogens. I knew that my friends would give me pointed looks if they heard I was about to consume a mind altering substance. In the West there’s an extraordinary misunderstanding. Most people forget or merely ignore the link between plants and society. They may be condemning you while they’re smoking a cigarette, or drinking a bottle of beer - both, of course, are made from plants which when smoked or fermented alter the state of the mind.

In our world we have grown away from the land and scorn natural preparations. Hallucinogens have a bad reputation, and rightly so. They are constantly misused by us in societies which are almost incapable of using anything correctly. Active ingredients are stripped out from plants and taken in massive doses for stimulation’s sake. But the Shuar’s use of
ayahuasca
is different. It is a medicinal plant used in the context of a specific culture. It is employed in unison with a rigid structure of ritual, which supports it as a framework. It is taken for answers, not to get high.

In the West people are preoccupied with the vision or sensation they may get by taking a drug. They don’t give thought to the role of the concoction in healing, or its use as a tool. The shamans of the Amazon only take
ayahuasca
or any other hallucinogen when there’s a reason to take it. When I hear of people in Europe experimenting with
ayahuasca
, it turns my blood cold. The plant-derived experience is only part of the equation, the other part being the ritual.