It had been eight weeks since my return from the jungle. I had gone there to study the Kandikachaki, one of the few remaining tribes who still believe in the spirit god Santinakucha and, as far as I knew, the last to practice the release. I had lived amongst them for eighteen months. On my return, I had taken advantage of every western comfort in excess, having before thought I’d never again have the chance. I can still smell the blend of garlic and ginger from the Kung Pao Chicken from Lee’s that has been ever present since my return. It had been long enough now that such luxuries had again become routine. In other moments, I felt I had never left.
In truth, I almost never did. Looking back, from this world, the possibility seems ridiculous. But the jungle is different — the littlest problems have a way of becoming something bigger. It started as a cut. You can still see the scar, not much to look at, really. It’s on my right index finger, palm side, just between the two tiny creases that years of bending have etched like memory or dream. I was trying to get some avocados down from their tree. Only the tree was five-stories tall, and I had chosen a pole of bamboo as my uncooperative tool. The bamboo snapped, leaving a jagged edge that easily sliced the tender belly of the aforementioned finger. Had I been anywhere else, a quick wash and a band-aid would have been the end of this tale. But the jungle is different. It’s more than just the complication of the little things — sometimes I sense that man simply does not belong there.
There are holes in my memory. But what remains haunts me. Even now, recounting these memoirs, I am transported back. I am also lying down, but not on this couch. The table’s hardness stings at my hips, my heels, the knot on the back of my skull. The humidity suffocates. My eyes stare up at a roof of thatched leaves, suspended above the noisy tangle of vines and earth by four wooden posts. The bone-grating screech of the jungle drills through my ears, bores through my cortex, amplifies in a hollow somewhere unseen but painfully real. The fever muddles things, thickening what surrounds me in a jelly-like haze that moves too slow. Everything is confused. I recognize little. This appendage is my finger — this I know — the metaphorical little thing that has evolved into everything. I am thankful (to whom I am not sure) that the pain has turned to numb. I hear a cicada singe as it flies too close to the candle’s fire. What a strange instinct for nature to have decided upon, I find myself thinking from far away. One would imagine natural selection to frown on suicide.
Then again, I had always explained my coming to the jungle as a product of instinct. Were the two that different? Having become the subject of my thoughts, I am snapped back to the present. I feel the velvet embrace of the couch and celebrate comfort. Ah, the real world, where things make sense, where a man can privately chase his thoughts to the next. But that instinct…what was that the product of? What I mean to say is — and truly a man must also be honest in his thoughts — this instinct…is that for real? Or is it just a fancy word to make the events that follow seem more important, and less attached to responsibility? Do I truly feel that some predetermined fate that courses my blood, is encrypted in my genes, made my coming to the jungle — indeed, everything that would follow — not only necessary but unchangeable? Why had I really come to the jungle? I had asked myself this very question countless times, as one always does with the hindsight of regret, between hallucinations, each time the fever broke. Why? Was it instinct or merely a curiosity? A choiceless obedience to destiny or an act of free will? Or maybe, I entertain for a moment, it was more like the force the moon feels for the Sun, the unquestionable gravity that lasts throughout time and is immune to questions, to thoughts, to what-if-I-never-went’s. But then the release would still be a mystery. And the release…
I half-imagine the waning moon low on the horizon. A vertical line cuts Santinakucha, the moon god, in two equal halves. Her light side watches over the living, offering them light and guidance. Her dark side is the home of the spirits, their final resting place after the release. Not all spirits live there, of course. Some, those not released from their dying bodies in the ways of the ancients, still wander in the purgatory between Earth and the heavens. To end as a wandering spirit is the worst fate that can befall a Kandikachaki. For whatever pains one’s body might endure in life, the pains of the spirit are eternal.
I hear the drums in the distance. The bass echoes against the solid trees. The rhythm races with the pulse of the gods. Far away, toward the drumming, I see a fire’s orange glow. Its dancing light animates the more-delicate branches above. I lie with my back to the Earth, as I do on this couch, in these fevers, staring up with wide eyes. The sky is splattered with reflecting enigmas, tiny freckles of light that are never what they appear. And there, to the East, is the half-face of Santinakucha, ready to receive the spirits that will tonight be released.
I feel the Earth drop out from below me. I watch the branches above, black fingers against a blacker sky, scrolling, scrolling behind, as if the jungle itself is running from the drums, the fire, from Santinakucha herself. But the jungle is motionless. It is I that is running, not away from the ritual but towards it. I bounce with the rhythm of footsteps, only now noticing the four Kandikachaki’s who carry me. Their dark bodies are naked but for the ceremonial paint and the humid night. I sense the drums approaching closer and imagine something irrational. But that is impossible. The release is for the dying. And here I am, alive. Afraid now, I draw from somewhere deep inside and find a dangling thread on which to grasp. And then, in one desperate spasm, I jump from this hard stretcher and leap from this body.
The convulsion wakes me. I open my eyes and see the off-white stucco ceiling above. I have fallen asleep with the television on, white fuzz, static, the electric drone all around, boring. Then the familiar voice of the evening news, a repeat broadcast at this late hour. I focus on the motion of the fan above, spinning, white blades chasing themselves around and around, the voice of the news anchor with words that mean more to somebody else, this singular reality my life line that will keep me from falling back into that nightmare. They comforts me. I relax and feel the fear drift away.
Not long ago, the fear was not so fast to drift away. Weeks had passed and the cut had not healed. And if the red and swollen appendage now-covered in yellow pus was any indication, it had in fact become worse. One day I woke to the most intense pain of my life. I still remember looking down and seeing my entire right arm so swollen that I was sure it couldn’t belong to me, inflated by some subcutaneous practical joke. Soon after, the infection spread to my blood. That’s when the first fever hit. After that, the details are lost. I don’t even remember the recovery, certainly not coming home. Sometimes I still sense the dizzying nausea, the pain, the regret, the desperate pleas to gods I don’t believe in for this all to just stop, just for a moment, to stop spinning, stop hurting, to know peace for just one moment. My vision thickens. The images change.
I open my eyes and see Santinakucha’s soft light staring back. Her half-face paints one side in life, the other in death. Until now, her gaze brought me comfort, knowing she was watching over me. Tonight, she fills me with fear.
The black fingers are again running past me. The Kandikachaki’s are moving, carrying me toward my fate. The drums are louder. They have pulsed since sunset, eagerly awaiting Santinakucha’s arrival. Their voice, it is said, opens the doorway through which Terasimpa, the earth god, will watch. Kotovali, the fire god, watches through the flames. The presence of all three deities is crucial; they provide the bridge that allows the spirits’ final release from their human shells on Earth, their release to the eternal freedom of the heavens.
The legend of Santinakucha lives inside me like a parasite I cannot shake. I feel lost and confused. Images change too quickly, without warning or segue. I feel my thumb and index finger rubbing my closed eyes. The pressure inside my eyeballs pushes back. The world fades to black for a moment, only to reappear as if it’s underwater. I recognize the thatched roof of the jungle. My first thought is that at least I am motionless. I feel empty of hope and cannot slow my thoughts as they race like the blades, the branches, out of reach. The fever is like that, crashing waves of what’s real swirled with what’s not. It is mostly pain and confusion, punctuated by strange hallucinations so vivid that the lines between realities and the mind become blurred. Dreams and wakefulness interchange. I try to move. The throbbing pain tells me that at least my infected arm is real, its pulsing that my heart still beats in life. The incessant humidity, that nagging invisibility that crawls under one’s skin and gnaws at one’s bones until all one can do is scream — that too is real. And the never-ending what-if’s, the circular infinity that chases itself as my thoughts…I don’t even like avocados. And who knew that broken bamboo is as sharp as a blade? What if I had held it differently? Chewed the shaman’s leaves that tasted like chalk as he’d instructed? Or even farther back — what if I had never come to the jungle at all? Never heard of the Kandikachaki and their multi-syllabic spirit god? If only I could go back home — my thoughts always led me there — lying feet-up on a couch instead of this hard table, a white folding box of take-out from the Chinese place down the street, a motionless night alone in front of the TV, the cool breeze of the fan circling above. I feel cold. My body begins to tremble. This is how the fever starts.
Looking back, my nagging what-if’s were not all wrong. The whole avocado incident was not unlike any of the infinite chance occurrences that occupy our everyday lives. Even here, alone and motionless and in every way immune to the outside world, chance finds its way in. I hear the same voice, the electric drone that protects me from the nightmare. It tells me of a family of five, now dead after an accident with a drunk driver. Where is the reason? Their God? What of their fates? And what of all the minuscule permutations that would have changed everything, silent thoughts that fall like muted dominoes. What if the family had left 30 seconds earlier? If the three-year old hadn’t had to pee? If Dad had spilled his coffee and had to change his shirt? Or the drunk had dropped his keys before opening his car door? Had one more drink? One less drink? Took the freeway? Turned right? Got lost? Had never been born at all?
The haunting truth is that catastrophe awaits us in every moment. The jungle is no different from this couch. Our lives are like a three-dimensional grid of parallel lines. Which lines and what events happen to pass ours, and when they intersect, is all a game of chance. It is hard to believe in fate when whole families die as the result of a fourth martini and bamboo poles threaten death. And if we feel the right to ask what-if’s, we must also ask their concurrent what-if-not’s. For all the times we arrived safely, what if the kid did pee and the coffee had spilled and he did take the freeway? What then? Would we have different friends? A different spouse? Career? Home? City? Would our parents have met? Could that be me on the evening news? Would we be here at all? And if not here, where?
I look again at the scar on my index finger. How close had I been to death? Close, I thought, or was that all part of the hallucinations, dream-based products of an imagination simmered in fever?
I let my finger fall to my side. This couch feels like heaven, the afterlife. The replay on the television has cut to break, the same white fuzz, electric noise, pixilated nonsense. I feel the cold sweat again, the trembling of a body that no longer belongs to me. I wish the fevers offered no warning. Instead, I am afforded this view from the middle, trying to make sense of something that denies it. How could this fever still be with me? Eight weeks have passed. And the scar, it’s right here on my index finger, just between the two tiny creases etched like memory, or dream. And surely a hospital…I mean, if I was still sick, I would have landed in a hospital at least by now, some sterile white room with sterile white walls and sterile white people who would come in on occasion to draw my blood or hang another bag of medicine on the pole or copy numbers from a machine whose alarms won’t stop beeping, screeching. I would recognize the machines, the nurses, the silver poles stretching up, bags with different colored liquids at their peaks, their drops falling down plastic tubes, their rivers flowing in colors through needles into my veins, veins like the branching of trees, pierced, pierced by silver needles that drain the my spirit from the blood, a lifeless blood, my wandering spirit, having left behind now, the empty shell, a still beating heart that pumps lifelessness in futile circles under a hidden moon.
Or maybe the lines aren’t parallel. Instead they converge, on one point that is both here and now, the ultimate point, that inevitable intersection of life with death. Because each path ends the same. Only our beliefs define what comes next. Our beliefs, and our dreams.
I understand now why dreams seem real. The two are built of the same raw material, the same fear and the same confusion and the same smell of burnt flesh. Even the sweat on a naked chest is there, forming in unseen drops that grow until they fall as the fire gets closer and closer. The only thing that keeps the two separate is the occasional conscious thought, man’s logic, of the impossibility of it all, that things aren’t quite right, this is too strange to ever happen in reality. Not to me, this simply cannot be? And not now, this is not my time. It certainly does not end like this.
On the other hand, these are merely explanations, rationalizations born of man’s sole evolutionary prowess. The mind is expert in deception. Deeper still, and certainly more likely, is the concept that there is much we cannot explain, that we will not explain, and that maybe — yes, this is something now — maybe this is the way it had to end. All the rest was a smoke screen, ideas and pictures invented by the imagination. The fever was only the bridge, like Santinakucha and Terasimpa and Kotovali, bridges between what is real and what we once perceived as real, imagined projections painted in pretty colors with names and reasons for existing, fabricated to entertain, shaped like televisions and avocados and bamboo poles that were built to snap and cut me right here on my index finger on the palm side between the creases.
After all, why would the end be different from the beginning? From the basic elements of fire and earth, in a magical moment when humans touch the gods. The soul must be released before the body dies, with Santinakucha and Terasimpa and Kotovali all present, on this the final day, just as it was inserted on the first. Before the body dies, not after, else the soul be trapped, not released, and spend an eternity in endless wandering. The fire is so close now that I recognize the smell, like a barbecue in July, fireflies, the charcoal flames licking at flesh, hallucinations, a palette of explosions, fireworks between the stars. The flames burn the vines that had tied me down. I am free. All at once. I see the three dimensions. I understand the patterns. My eyes fix on Santinakucha. I hear her chant bellow from my lungs. This will help form the bridge, help guide the release. I watch as my left arm lifts from the hard stretcher and reaches for the stone blade to my right. The sharp edge cuts at my hand, bites into my fingers. I hear a shriek and then recognize it as my own. The rhythm of the drums accelerates, exactly matching the beats of my heart. The thickness softens, the haze lifts. The hallucinations alight. I’ve never known this clarity, this purity, this peace. Divinity.
And in one final moment, so clear it’s transparent, I drive the blade into my puputi, the cord that connected me to my ancestors, the place where my spirit has been contained for too long. I feel the warm blood embrace my hand. The pain is gone now. In its place I feel a lifting. Weightless, rising up, the black branches moving downwards now. Santinakucha’s light grows brighter. And in my last vision I see the empty shell that I once mistook as me somehow gather the strength to rise to his feet and leap naked into Kotovali’s flames. The hollow shriek fades to silence and the dark night becomes light, dancing with the drums’ rhythm in impossible speeds.
And then only peace.
Without effort, to let go.
After so long in a dream.
To finally return home.