The Encounter Read online

  Fala Português? No? Okay, I’ll speak in English…

  You may have seen me. I came over, in a plane. Over the

  village. We landed on the river. And this man here, with red

  cheeks – I followed him into your community. I need a guide

  to take me back to the river.

  To the river? The river? Javari. Javari?

  ACTOR. It was clear that the name of the river was not that for

  them. Red Cheeks, who he had pointed to, began to speak

  urgently, loudly, haranguing the chief.

  SFX: voice of Red Cheeks on mini-speaker, moved around

  the binaural head.

  Pointing at Loren, he didn’t sound or look particularly

  welcoming. His voice grew louder. But then others joined in.

  There was an argument. Everyone was discussing him,

  pointing at him. Even the children. The headman made no

  gesture but he looked at Loren and suddenly smiled at him,

  with teeth like shards of black obsidian. And then as quickly

  as it had started, the interview was over and people drifted

  away and Loren was made to advance back along the fallen

  log to the centre of the village. He was no longer the centre

  of attention.

  SFX: jumble of voices.

  The heat was oppressive. He took on water. He was

  frustrated by his inability to communicate with them. This

  had never happened to him before. There was no way of

  getting back to his camp. He was furious with himself for not

  marking his passage.

  LOREN. That was dumb. I should have marked my trail. Well,

  I’m either in a jam or I’m starting a great experience. But

  that was the dumbest thing I’ve done in twenty-five years.

  The

  ACTOR

  moves to the desk and puts down the speaker.

  ACTOR. An hour before dusk, he was adopted by a family of

  four who offered him the use of a hammock in their hut. He

  stood in the doorway.

  During the following, the

  ACTOR

  takes photos of the

  community. Repeated SFX: camera shutter.

  LOREN. Just beautiful light!

  ACTOR. He noticed again that the whole village felt temporary,

  the huts half-finished. They hadn’t even cut a clearing in the

  forest. They’d just used the space around a fallen tree. Why?

  Why was that?

  LOREN. It’s as if they’re hiding. And the people look hungry…

  God, they’re emaciated. Doesn’t look like they’ve eaten in

  days. What’s going on?

  ACTOR. Across the village, he could see a girl with strikingly

  shiny eyes. She was eating beiju, forest bread made from

  manioc flour.

  GIRL. Tuti? Tuti!

  ACTOR. The boy he’d followed through the forest suddenly

  appeared at her side.

  LOREN. Tuti. So that is his name. Hey, Tuti?

  Takes a photograph. SFX: camera shutter.

  Thanks, buddy.

  I wonder what I’m starting by photographing these people. I

  wouldn’t want to see them inundated by government agents

  and anthropologists. They have no defence against infection.

  I wouldn’t want them to become dependent on outsiders;

  that’s the saddest effect of acculturation. The best safeguard

  is really not to contact them at all.

  Hey, buddy!

  SFX: camera shutter.

  Thanks.

  I’m alone though… and I’m only going to be here a few

  days. My effect on them will be limited…

  SFX: camera shutter.

  Great shot.

  And I hope… unlasting.

  ACTOR. He climbed into his hammock, feeling more alone

  than it is possible to be. Alone in a special sense, because he

  was in the middle of a busy community. As the light faded,

  he thought he heard the voice of Red Cheeks, the man he’d

  followed into the forest, angry, out in the clearing.

  He closed his eyes to shut it out, and then he noticed an

  obscure murmur. A strange inner hum. He realised he’d had

  this sensation before, when he was standing in front of the

  headman. The man with barnacles on his legs. Was it coming

  from the people? Perhaps he was simply imagining it. Perhaps

  it was just in his unconscious? Or just his response to being

  alone in their midst. He lay back into his unconscious.

  SFX: fragments of recorded interviews.

  IAIN McGILCHRIST.

  Earlier you talked about your child, and

  watching this little consciousness grow. And of course the

  child is not a tabula rasa, it’s not a blank sheet. The child

  comes with certain ways of being, and these are then

  enormously enriched and made to grow by the intercourse

  between the baby and those around it, usually the mother

  and the father, and other members of the family. And what is

  happening there, is that over a couple of years, the first

  eighteen months to two years of life, the child is negotiating

  a very complicated fact, which is that he or she is already a

  distinct being, and is also interconnected with all the beings

  around it…

  STEVEN ROSE

  . …one of the problems we have is that our

  consciousness of ourselves, the stories we tell about

  ourselves and the ways in which we view the world around

  us are so profoundly social and so profoundly shaped by

  technology and culture that it’s difficult to think outside it.

  MARCUS DU SAUTOY

  . …but there’s talk now of time

  actually being an emergent phenomenon…

  GEORGE MARSHALL

  . But we’re frightened of the future

  because we don’t like the way that the world is going and we

  feel that. We’re also frightened of our own mortality. We’re

  also locked into a kind of short-term consumerism which is

  about immediate gratification or moving on to the next

  product.

  REBECCA SPOONER. …I was very negatively going to say

  there is no future, but I don’t know if I truly believe that…

  5. The Dream

  Each sentence below is looped, overlapping with the next,

  creating a dreamlike effect.

  LOREN. One fifth of the world’s fresh water is here. The river,

  four thousand miles long. A thousand miles to the east, the

  mouth. Connected. Flowing to the ocean. The Arctic. Where

  does it begin?

  ACTOR. Loren McIntyre was flying, suspended, airborne.

  Hovering above a vision of the jungle and mountains. Like

  an oversized map. It was a dream and in the dream he knew

  it. A vast stretch of jungle spread out beneath him and to the

  east, the two-hundred-mile-wide mouth of the Amazon

  River, and the ocean flowing all the way to the Arctic.

  Clouds hanging in the sky, heavy with water vapour. And the

  source of the Amazon was somewhere in the mountains

  behind him. The forest; phosphorescent as if lit from

  underneath. The phosphorescence was the forest’s rich life

  forms, its treasure. The Christian conquistadors were wrong.

  Pizarro was wrong. Francisco de Orellana was wrong. The

  oil prospectors, the rubber tappers, the missionaries with

  their faith had all been wrong. They were all looking
for

  something else, but in his dream McIntyre recognised it

  instantly, although it didn’t have any words.

  LOREN. It’s the intricacy of the forest… that’s the treasure.

  ACTOR. Something suffused the greenness of the jungle, all

  fed by a single source. Hidden somewhere in the mountains.

  An invisible force; all interconnected, pregnant with a

  captive message.

  LOREN. What is it?

  ACTOR. Then suddenly he was sitting in front of the headman,

  the dream’s camera lens focusing first on the man’s legs,

  with their big warts, before lifting to his face.

  LOREN. Barnacle.

  6. Deeper into the Forest

  ACTOR. He was rudely awakened.

  SFX: huts coming down, intersperses and overlays the

  following text.

  He stepped out, the post came down, the roof came down,

  people were gathered in the clearing, arms filled with

  baskets, drinking gourds, bows and arrows, fishnets. On his

  right and left, other huts were coming down. Suddenly the

  headman himself walked along the crowd as if passing it in

  review. On an unspoken command, the tribe moved off into

  the forest.

  LOREN. Where the hell are they going? Dammit. What is this,

  where are they going again?

  ACTOR. He couldn’t stay here alone. He rushed to catch

  them up.

  SFX: breathing, looped.

  LOREN. Goddammit.

  ACTOR. He was now part of they, walking swiftly along like a

  Mayoruna whose possessions, instead of being bows and

  arrows, happened to be a pen, a notebook, and a camera.

  SFX: camera shutter.

  Half an hour later they crossed a muddy stream. He knew it

  was half an hour because he kept checking his wristwatch, as

  though trying to stay in contact with the clock-operated world.

  LOREN. Goddammit.

  ACTOR. He was being swallowed by the Amazon growth on its

  own terms. And he knew it. He knew the dangers.

  The following from

  LOREN

  is looped to create a jumbled

  internal monologue.

  LOREN. Fungi. Bacteria. Intestinal parasites. Radical

  fluctuations in temperature. A lack of cooked food. No

  purified water.

  ACTOR. These things wove their menace around him – a

  macabre aura, surging up from his unconscious, like a river.

  LOREN. Calm down; think of something else. Keep your mind

  on the pictures. Just think about the

  pictures

  . (

  Looped as a

  reassurance.

  )

  Come on, you’re gonna get the big one! The superlative

  shot! That could be the cover of the

  Geographic.

  ACTOR. But as he panted behind the headman, he thought,

  what a ludicrous ambition! Photographers are always so

  momentary, so fickle. Trying to fix time into one moment.

  Trying to ‘take’ a picture. What lay behind this frenzy, Loren

  thought, was fear. Fear of the future. Fear of losing the past.

  So unlike these people, he thought. They never think of the

  future, they don’t hoard or store up belongings. Time for

  them was an invisible companion, something comfortable

  and unseen like the air. For the civilizados, time was a

  possession. An increasingly more efficient machine.

  SFX: collage of western sounds relating to time.

  Late that afternoon, they broke into what had once been the

  most enormous clearing.

  Barnacle stopped, making everyone stop.

  SFX: thunder.

  A sudden rainstorm lashed down. There was no protection

  from an upper canopy in this place. Loren thought about the

  river’s ability to rise in an instant, flooding the forest.

  7. The First Communication

  ACTOR. He watched the community in astonishment.

  The

  ACTOR

  uses various sticks to create the sound of huts

  being constructed, looped on the binaural head. There are

  sounds all around.

  They were building another settlement. What was the

  purpose of that? They’d hardly finished building the last one

  when they had destroyed it and now they were building this

  one, a little further on. It seemed to accomplish nothing. And

  again he noticed how starving and exhausted they looked.

  In the middle of the clearing, he saw the headman, whom he

  had now christened Barnacle, sitting in front of a fire on his

  carved stool. His cheeks were gaunt. His eyes were at half-

  mast, but he could see from a distance that his hands were

  moving with precision.

  The

  ACTOR

  takes a pencil and scratches along the nib,

  looped at the binaural head.

  He was whittling an arrow.

  McIntyre knew that if he were to need help or protection at

  some point, he would have to get it from someone of stature.

  He had an idea. He picked up several long fronds of palm

  twine, tore them into strips, moved towards Barnacle and

  stood beside him.

  The

  ACTOR

  stands beside the binaural head.

  His fingers moved slowly at first, remembering a long-

  forgotten trade.

  The

  ACTOR

  takes some strands of videotape from the box

  and rustles them. This is looped, and runs under the next

  dialogue.

  He started to weave an eighteen-strand belt, trusting a trick

  he had learnt in the merchant navy. A way of connecting with

  other men and fighting off boredom at sea. Loren let himself

  be carried by the dance of the fingers. Barnacle’s eyes

  fluttered in appreciation.

  BARNACLE (LOREN

  voice-over

  ).

  Some of us are friends.

  ACTOR. Instants later, he remembered how Barnacle had said

  that some of the Mayoruna were friends. But the headman

  had not spoken. Or had he? No, he hadn’t spoken. Not in

  English and in fact, not at all.

  BARNACLE (LOREN

  voice-over

  ).

  Some of us are friends.

  ACTOR. It felt like a message though the headman had not

  spoken. McIntyre spoke no Mayoruna and none of the

  Mayoruna spoke English. He looked at the headman, but the

  headman didn’t acknowledge him. He leaned closer to him.

  He was close enough to hear him breathing.

  BARNACLE (LOREN

  voice-over

  ).

  Some of us are friends.

  ACTOR. Some of us are friends. Some of us are friends? Was it

  a reassurance or a warning? The headman was working on.

  His fingers passed hairs around the tip of the arrow.

  The beamed message faded. Maybe being so near to him

  explained the sensation. His mind then unconsciously adding

  words in English afterwards.

  He had an idea. He strained and applied a focus, not on the

  words of his next thought, but on the content. Instead of

  thinking…

  LOREN. Hey, buddy, I am a friend too, you can trust me…

  ACTOR. …he tried to fill himself with the feelings of that

  thought. Then he waited.
>
  BARNACLE (LOREN

  voice-over

  ).

  I know.

  ACTOR. …somehow appeared in his mind. Or maybe it was

  just the feeling of the answer with his own words, in English,

  hurrying in to illustrate it.

  Suddenly the headman rose and held out a finished arrow. It

  was a gift, he took it.

  When Barnacle was several yards away he reached into his

  memory. No, he had not spoken out loud and Barnacle

  understood no English. He strained his ears, remembering

  yesterday’s buzzing, wondering whether he was going

  insane. He meaninglessly checked his watch as if that single

  piece of western machinery could counterbalance what he

  was hearing. It was that unique ambience. There were so

  many things here in their pure state, why not thought, too? Why

  not the simplest form of human contact – mind to mind. No,

  for goodness’ sake. But then it had been ratified, because he

  had been given a gift.

  8. Boy and Early Man

  SFX: rain.

  ACTOR. The rain came again. The adults took shelter in the

  half-finished huts and the children splashed out to play. His

  friend Tuti ran across the clearing, laughing, then stopped,

  panting under some leaves.

  SFX: camera shutter.

  Raindrops trickled down them in separate sets of three. For a

  moment Loren put his camera away and just watched the

  little boy watching the rain.

  The

  ACTOR

  creates and loops the pop, pop, pop of the rain

  dripping from the leaves. Then the sound of feet pounding

  and the boy singing to himself.

  He started to pound the ground with his little feet. Loren

  stood and watched. Early man, he thought, had gained the

  concept of succession, the earliest symbol of the passing of

  time by observing natural phenomena. Dripping water from

  faucets, the repeated call of birds, man’s own heartbeat. His

  first clues that time existed in a pulsing vein, invisibly

  uniting all life. From such early rhythms of nature, dance

  was born, to stay with man for ever. Loren watched. He

  watched Tuti dancing the dance of the rain. Devising a game,

  and an interpretation of reality, from three drops of rain.

  The

  ACTOR

  dances. Fragments of sound recordings are

  heard as they dance.

  MARCUS DU SAUTOY

  . And then you see these dots being