Going is Living

I am in a motorized canoe aimed for a cabana 200 kilometers from Manaus. First we are going piranha fishing. The Amazon River shimmers like toffee left out in the sun too long. It winds like diagrams of veins branching through the human body, flowing past islands and trees, twisting, dividing into channels, branching out, rejoining, and endlessly pouring. Blind pink dolphins leap our tiny wake; 100-year-old caimans bask along the muddy banks. “No tongues, “ Nigel, our guide, points. “No joy in eating, the pleasure is in the hunt, the kill.” White birds with yellow feet stride the shore; kingfishers navy blue streaks, race the canoe; vultures circle, trailing black shadows as dark as themselves; needle fish scatter like tinsel at our bow. There is the continuous high-pitched electric whine of beetles; a baboon roars. The heat is a constant weight that presses down, a gentle shoving. I am sluggish, swollen with the humidity. I have never been so hot. Nigel hands me a stick with a hook tied to it with a piece of string. Put a piece of chicken fat on the hook, lower it into the water, yank up – supper! Easy.

Unless, like me, you are sitting with your feet tucked up under yourself so the piranha, already at the bottom of the canoe, don't bite your toes, while schools of frenzied fish leap 3 feet into the air, the water boiling with fins and teeth centimeters from where your fingers grip for balance. The boat rocking from side to side, the water frothing with piranha gnashing at handfuls of chicken fat. Nigel picks up a fish from the bottom of the canoe, pulls a reed from the churning water, “see how sharp their teeth are?” He holds the reed out and the piranha chomps, again, three times, “their teeth are like razors”. Then Nigel is bleeding into the turmoil of chicken fat, mud and piranha, the top of his finger bitten clean off at the first knuckle. I have years of first aid training. I was a lifeguard; I work at a rehabilitation centre for kids. I know how to do A.R., can splint a bone, perform the Heimlich maneuver. I am the perfect person to be with in a situation like this. I lean forward. “I would keep that fish, “ I say to Nigel, “stuff it and hang it above my fireplace.” The fish regurgitates his fingertip; it falls to the bottom of the boat. The fingernail catches the sunlight. Nigel tosses the piranha overboard. He pulls his shirt off with his other hand and wraps his fist. He starts the motor.
I am in a motorized canoe aimed for Manaus.