Of Pisco and Peru: Iquitos Pt. 10

‘Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it’s in my basement. . . let me go upstairs and check’ — MC Escher

The song purrs softly through the room in what must be a galley, but looks like a demented biology professor’s hoarding attic and smells like a fouled-up port-a-potty after a weeklong chili cookoff.

Assorted two-liter Inca Kola bottles, filled with a thick, yellow-brown sludge, sit on a metal table next to mounds of green snail eggs piled on a bookshelf. A veritable jungle of impressive ferns and tropical plants hide an Easter egg farrago of dried piranhas, fake shrunken heads, animal skulls, snakeskins, giant turtle carapaces, and store window mannequins in various stages of undress.

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Wild human figure paintings with faces scratched out, haphazardly occupy the room.

And over to the — Crap! A cockroach the size of a cat scurries over my Keen hiking sandals.

The hum of frenetic music switches songs, landing on Kansas’ Dust in the Wind, then stops. Sounds of movement, then metallic clanging noises from behind the doorway curtain with the design of a two-headed green anaconda. One head eats its tail. The other points up to the sky.

On the emerald-green lintel above a wild scrawl in black magic marker:

‘TOYNBEE IDEA

IN MOViE `2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPiTER
“MEANINGLESS! MEANINGLESS!” SAY THE TEACHER
“EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS!”

Meaningless?

“Ah sheee-it!” A male voice.

Sucking in a big gulp of air, I take a step inside a disheveled kitchen. Chahk. Chahk. Chahk. Chahk. I poke my head in a bit further, primed to flee.

Beyond the refrigerator, with his back to me, a gaunt male figure with a shaved head chops thick tree bark at a cutting board near the sink. Stern strokes. CHAHK CHAHK CHAHK CHAHK. . . Pots and pans clang and swing to and fro from the ceiling rack. A lazy white cigarette cloud billows above him, then streaks from the open window’s breeze.

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Has he heard me? A tiny step. The floorboard creaks. I stop, barely breathing. Only the toylike ringing of the wind chimes in the window.

He lifts his head, revealing a bony staircase of vertebrae atop his ivory Guaybera shirt collar. The cleaving halts.

Without turning to me. “There’s beer in the fridge.” The chopping recommences.

Why not? Complying, I open the fridge door, keeping the man and his knife in my line of sight while poking inside.

A fat carboy filled with white sludge sits on a rack, ‘Boa Grassa’ felt-penned on its label in wild script. A smaller bottle reads ‘Dolphin Sperm’.

Gingerly clearing space from a rancid forest’s worth of unidentifiable edibles, I spy a couple bottles of Iquiteña beer in the back.

“The opener’s on the table.”

I wend around a knotted wood table in front of a thicket of potted plants and a large painting of a tortured woman, scarred to disfigurement, blindfolded and bearing a torch against a black storm cloud background. Its inscription is wildly scrawled in black felt pen: E Pluribus Unim.

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The bottle opener’s sterling silver, with some pre-Incan figure of a sun god baring teeth at me. The beer cap pop off easily. “Thanks.”

“Just mixing some Levántate Lázaro. For some clients.”

After balancing my backpack on a chair, I take a swig. He scrapes pieces of fruit into a large metal bowl, then impales the knife blade halfway into a tropical gourd on the counter.

After smearing his hands on a cloth towel, he walks barefoot towards me, picking up his beer bottle.

“Fuck it.” He inspects me with hollowed-out eyes. A flash of recognition, then he catches himself. “So you’re?”

Does he know me? “Doug.”

“Marcello.” We exchange a bony handshake as he sits down.

I look around. “Nice ship.”

He crushes his spent cigarette into a faux, I hope, shrunken head ashtray, then plucks a joint from his shirt pocket, lights it, and takes a drag. “My uncle’s.”

After a sigh, Marcello pulls out a glass pipe, a baggy, and a pirate skull lighter from his other shirt pocket and sets them on the table. “Want a little tokie pooh?”

I shake my head.

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Marcello nods at a digital vaporizer nestled between two banana plants on the table. It looks like Mount Saint Helens after the eruption. Underneath some blinking read out lights is a label: Vülcano ꓭong 5000! “How ‘bout some DMT?”