With his backpack stocked with bottles of aguardiente, Oscar travelled with Luigi by bus, communal taxi, DC-3 aircraft, and canoe to the place of refuge of the Cuiva Indians, hidden from the death squads in the jungle fringe along the wide, slow-moving Meta River.
In his alcohol-induced daze, Oscar felt as if he had entered the world of the ancestors as described to him by Old Mary during the evenings in her house around the kitchen table when he was a boy. In the mornings, he stripped naked and swam with the others in the deep, sheltered warm waters of a lagoon. In the evenings, he shared the meals of turtle eggs, catfish, crocodile, and monkey meat, prepared by the women over an open fire. Later on, before retiring to his hammock, he sat down on the riverbank and listened, as Luigi interpreted for him, to the murmur of the people discussing the events of the day and pointing up at the stars and repeating the legends passed down to them by their ancestors over the millennia.
One morning, as he ate his breakfast, he saw a young woman looking at him. She was over six feet tall, with wide hips, large breasts, smooth chocolate-brown skin, and thick, straight black hair that fell down to her waist. Never before had he seen a woman with such a beautiful smile. Never before had he been so attracted to someone at first sight. It never occurred to him that her natural beauty had been enhanced by the aguardiente he had just drunk. He smiled at her and she looked away. She looked at him, he smiled back at her and she looked away. It became a game. One night, she came unbidden and joined him in his hammock. And throughout their night of lovemaking, because he couldn’t pronounce her name, he called her his little Rosa.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Luigi told him when he saw them together. “What if your Rosa gets pregnant? You won’t be here to take care of her and no man will want her. I should have warned you. Never sleep with the Indians. It’s the golden rule of anthropology. And by the way, in the language of her people, her name is Morning Star.”
“But I’m Indian, too, Luigi,” Oscar said. “I’m exempt from that rule. As far as I’m concerned, she’ll always be my little Rosa.”
When the visitors left to return to Bogota, Rosa and Oscar both cried. Two months later, Luigi came to the embassy accompanied by Rosa and asked for Oscar.
“Your friend is back and he’s not alone,” Pilar informed him.
Oscar could scarcely contain his pleasure at seeing Rosa again, even though she spoke only Cuiva and could only communicate with him by sign language. He had thought of her often during their weeks of separation, remembering the heat of the night on the bank of the Meta River and their two bodies thrashing around in his hammock as the posts supporting the five hundred pounds of their combined weight creaked and groaned. He would sometimes see her in his dreams swimming naked in the river. At other times in his imagination he would picture her dressed in the latest designer gown, the most elegant woman in the room, swinging her hips and smiling that captivating smile of hers as she strutted with supreme effortless panache down the runway of a famous Parisian fashion house on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré as the crowd clapped their hands in appreciation. And although Rosa now looked at him as if he were a complete stranger, he was certain she had missed him as much as he had missed her.
“I told you you’d get into trouble when you slept with Rosa,” Luigi said, after Oscar escorted his guests back to his office. “Her family says she’s pregnant and is now your responsibility.”
Oscar immediately asked Luigi to tell her he wanted to marry her.
“You don’t have to do that,” Luigi said. “You can take her to a convent, make a donation, and after the baby is born, the nuns will find someone to take it. They’ll give Rosa Spanish lessons, teach her to cook simple meals, scrub floors, and wash clothes, and then they’ll get her a job as a maid or cook with a rich Bogota family. She won’t be as happy as she’d be if she was living with her family back on the river, but she’ll have a roof over her head and be fed.”
Oscar wouldn’t hear of it. No child of his would be put up for adoption. What if the adoptive parents didn’t love the baby? What if they were just looking for unpaid labour? What if they were to beat the child? What if they were like Pilar and were prejudiced against Indians? No child of his would grow up to be as unloved as he had been. And there was Rosa, his darling little Rosa. She would not spend the rest of her life as a poorly paid servant when she could be the wife of a distinguished Canadian diplomat. He loved her, or at least he thought he did. She would never lead him on and dump him as Claire had done. She was a pure and noble Indian, just like he was, and he wanted more than anything else to spend the rest of his life with her.
When they heard the news, Oscar’s Canadian colleagues told him he was making a big mistake, Pilar had trouble keeping from sneering, and Ambassador Leroux was offended.
“You’re out of your mind. You just can’t wander off into the jungle, pick out a mate, and bring her back to marry as if you were some sort of caveman. Civilized people don’t do things like that. Members of the Department don’t behave like that!”
Ambassador Leroux, Oscar thought, was just upset because he had neglected to investigate the reports of death squad activities despite his lengthy absence on official business in the Orinoco River Basin. Oscar was sure he would come around after he had thought about the matter for a few days. But Ambassador Leroux did not come around. He sent a telegram to the undersecretary to give him the news and to recommend that Oscar be returned to Canada and fired.
As the ambassador waited anxiously for an answer, the Bogota newspapers covered the story in all its salacious details. Columnists, tipped off by Pilar, who had learned that Rosa was pregnant, provided lurid accounts of how Oscar had left the capital for the Orinoco River Basin to save the Indians from extermination at the hands of death squads; how swimming among the piranhas, he had met and seduced a buxom Indian maiden; how he had returned to Bogota leaving his newfound love alone and forlorn in her thatched hut; how two months later she arrived pregnant at the door of the Canadian embassy with a ragged, long-haired student from the University of Verona; how the distinguished first secretary of the Canadian embassy to the Republic of Colombia intended to wed his sweetheart in holy matrimony; how Ambassador Leroux was beside himself with rage; and how the Canadian embassy was now the laughing stock of the entire diplomatic corps.
The telegram from the undersecretary, when it finally arrived, was not to Ambassador Leroux’s liking. The message, copied to the prime minister, the minister of Indian affairs, the minister of national defence, the minister of citizenship, and the RCMP Security Service, took some time to get to the point.
Acknowledge receipt of your message of 1 September. Am personally acquainted with Wolf and am sorry to hear of his troubles. Have consulted within Department with Latin American Division, Legal Division, United Nations Division, Communication Division, Information Division, Protocol Division and Defence Relations Division, and outside Department with Department of the Prime Minister, Department of Indian Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Justice, Department of Revenue, Department of the Solicitor General, Department of Federal-Provincial Relations and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to find solution. There is consensus matter is delicate and everyone stresses importance in exercising great prudence in handling bearing in mind Wolf is only Indian officer in Department and for that matter in entire Canadian civil service. For almost one hundred years, Canadian governments have been trying to prepare Indians to abandon their savage customs and to adopt civilized ways of white man. If all goes according to plan, it is expected that within decade or two, Indians will be given privilege of voting in elections as well as some legal rights presently reserved for white people. Thus would not want, repeat would not want, Wolf to leave Civil Service. He is war hero and example of what governments have been attempting for generations to accomplish with Indians. Worse, if fired because he wishes to marry Indian woman, even Colombian Indian woman, Indian people of Canada and churches would be irritated.
Please provide all necessary assistance to Wolf with his marriage plans, including