
He also bore a scraggled growth of dark beard.īemvindo,he offered in Portuguese, believing now that the fellow must be one of the ubiquitous peasants from the coastal cities who ventured into the Amazon rain forest to stake a claim and build a better life for themselves. The fellow’s eyes were the deepest blue, a color unnatural among the Amazonian tribes.

The stranger lifted his face, and Garcia instantly knew his mistake. Welcome, friend, to the mission of Wauwai. Mistaking the fellow for one of the local Yanomamo Indians, Padre Batista pushed back his wide-brimmed straw hat and greeted the fellow in the Indians’ native tongue. His skin, burnt a deep mocha, was tattooed with blue and crimson dyes.

Bare-chested and shoeless, the man fell to his knees among rows of sprouting cassava plants. The figure wore a tattered pair of black denim pants and nothing else. Padre Garcia Luiz Batista was struggling with his hoe, tilling weeds from the mission’s garden, when the stranger stumbled from the jungle.
