Serra Boca¹

My parents christened me Ronald Georges Keller, Ronald for Ronald Reagan and Georges

after Uncle George, adding an s in remembrance of some French ancestors. As soon as I

was old enough to understand, I objected that they hadn’t asked me whether I wanted to

be Ronald or George with or without an s. A few years later, I told them I was going to

be R. G. from then on, a decision that met with their resistance, but I showed them just

how stubborn I could be. Reaching my teens, I discovered that the Ronald they had

named me after didn’t deserve that honor. Testy relations with Uncle George also

revealed, as my parents noticed, a “personality conflict” between us. He was born a

lawyer, which “The Law School” merely confirmed. The injustice of “the law”, the “awe”

of which he prolonged, revolted me. As for the s, I relegated it to the attic of oblivion. As

you have probably guessed by now, I wasn’t making friends with my contemporaries or

good impressions on my teachers, much to my parents’ chagrin. My contempt for sports

and stars started many a fight and, though usually outnumbered, I gave as much as I

got. I infuriated my teachers by questioning the questions they asked us. Yet there was

an exception. Isn’t there always? Mr. Glick, a little man with a vaulted back and a

wheezy voice who taught us General Science. He watched us with gleaming eyes as he

revealed the wonders of this subject. Nothing troubled him, nothing could, not even the

worst sarcasm of rebellious youth. He listened carefully and replied calmly, exploiting an

opportunity to teach us something, something always interesting.

About butterflies, for instance. He was using them as an example to show how greatly

reproduction cycles and processes vary among living things. Suzy Shackelheimer, who

sat in back near the door, interrupted him as rudely as usual. Her mascara targeted her

eyes, her lipstick blackened her lips and her polish made black daggers of her finger and

toe nails. She wore a leopard-skin mini-skirt over a black leotard clinging to her so low

on her hips that the top of the cleft between her buttocks appeared. Guess what she had

for a hairdo! Despite her determination to uglify herself, she was a pretty girl, the

prettiest in that class and maybe even in that junior high school.

“Hunh?” warned of immanent attack. “Butterflies?” That chink in her upper front

tooth!

“Yes!” replied Mr. Glick enthusiastically. Seasonal adjustment in the reproductive cycle

assures the continuity of the genus.”

“We don’t need any seasonal adjustments!”

“No, but our ability to control our reproduction exposes us to abuses that jeopardize our

survival as a species. Perhaps butterflies risk extinction less than we do.”

“These flimsy little things that flutter around when it gets warm?” She was fluttering

around with her fingers: unforgettable! “They don’t even know what they are doing!”

Mr. Glick smiled. “No, they probably don’t. Instinct determines it. They don’t have the

option of ignoring it as we do.”

“Are you telling me I should have babies instead of fun?”

Mr. Glick laughed even before we did. Sincerely! “No, but, if I were teaching you sex

education, I would urge you to have both.”

Suzy fascinated me with that fluttering that she so prettily imitated. From time to time, I

asked her to repeat this ballet, which provoked raucous laughter by her aspirants,

incapable of understanding my admiration. Instead of “R. G.”, they were calling me

“Butter Flutter.” I was calling them “stooltoads”, hence many a shoving fight and even a

few fistfights with kicks by my more primitive adversaries. Dad complained that I was

chasing butterflies instead of playing ball with the other kids. The baseball glove he gave

me for Christmas instead of the net I had asked for only reinforced my determination. I

“lent” the glove to a schoolmate more friendly than the others and mowed a neighbor’s

lawn so I could buy a net. The books about butterflies I was borrowing from the library

troubled Mom, so she gave me a Harry Potter for Christmas. The few pages I read and

the others I skimmed struck me as “unscientific”, a concept I had learned from Mr. Glick.

I “lent” it to a “nice girl” across the street. Yet the books on butterflies I was borrowing

from the library no longer seemed scientific enough, so I resorted to interlibrary loans,

which raised the librarians’ eyebrows. I was an egghead to adults and an oddball to

contemporaries, except Suzy.

Invited to participate in a competition, our junior high band traveled to Mammoth in

three school buses. I wangled an unoccupied seat in the rear of the third one. While the

band strutted, boomed and honked around the field of Mega Stadium, I was

concentrating on the butterfly collection in the Museum of Natural Science. The forms and

colors of the specimens fascinated me, but the cruelty of pinning such lively and beautiful

creatures to a board for exhibition horrified me. Losing track of time, I suddenly realized

that I no longer had enough to reach the stadium by a city bus in time for the departure.

I spent nearly all the money I had left on a taxi. My school bus was pulling away from the

curb when I ran up waving my arms, which exposed me to noisy sarcasm as I came

down the aisle. Rather than the waste of money, my oblivious fascination with natural

frivolity shook my parents’ heads.

They continued to shake as I chased butterflies with my net. Since our yard didn’t attract

very many, I was taking buses to the end of the line, so I could hunt them in the country.

My horror of sacrificing them diminished as my ability to kill, preserve and display them

increased. Soon I had a collection more impressive by quality of presentation than rarity

of species. I was also learning to photograph and draw them, skills that complemented

each other. Yet even a rapid sequence of still photos didn’t yield enough data to allow

analysis of butterfly flight. I began to mow three lawns so I could earn enough money to

buy a video camera. I needed one with a shutter speed fast enough to shoot clips for

slow-motion projection. Once I had bought one, I shot fluttering butterflies and analyzed

the results on my computer. I studied flight patterns, speed and speed variations, wing

flapping and flexibility. I admired the butterfly’s ability to derive thrust from the up-and-

down beating of the wings by flexing them to manipulate the air. Likewise the strength

and lightness of their wings, which I examined under a microscope, and the tiny muscles

that powered them, which I measured with a micro-voltmeter. Comparing my data with

that of reputable lepidopterists, I sent them e-mail admiring their work, asking questions

and even wondering why, in some cases, my data differed from theirs. I was making a

name for myself either as an adolescent meddler or a future candidate for recruitment as

a student. When the cold season drove butterflies out of sight, I propped my net up in the

corner of my room and concentrated on the four stages of butterfly development: eggs,

caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies.

Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing, but they sure did it better than we could.

I explained that to Suzy at a party and she listened with genuine interest. Although our

conversation was boring her current boyfriend, she let him stew. I told her she was my

favorite butterfly, which got the laugh I expected, much to the boyfriend’s irritation. He

was just another flower. Suzy and I have always been best friends even though we never

had any fun together. I had my fun with Lori Spivak, a fellow entomology student at

Zenia University. She discovered me in an introductory course for entomology majors.

When I asked the professor if a millimeter tear in wing scales would heal, I could feel her

eyes focusing on me. She began to sit beside me, not only in class, but also in the

laboratory, the library, the cafeteria and everywhere else. Though less attractive than

Suzy, she had a pleasant face, an attractive body, a cordial voice and a friendly

disposition. An intelligent, dedicated and conscientious student, she neither envied others

who got higher grades nor despised those who got lower ones. Since no girl had ever

taken an interest in me, hers surprised me, but I welcomed it. Eager to learn my opinion

on every topic raised by our studies, she listened so carefully that I expressed it at

length. Saying it facilitated writing it when I needed to express it in a paper or on an

exam. My appreciation of her companionship encouraged her to accompany me

everywhere we both had to go. We were crossing the campus one day when she took my

hand, squeezed and held it. Though surprised, I enjoyed her soft, warm grasp without

feeling more than friendly affection for her. Soon she was approaching me whenever the

circumstances encouraged her, such as when I opened a door for her or we found

ourselves alone in a stairwell. My arm reached around her as if it had a will of its own

and, the first thing I knew, we were arm in arm. A few days later, we began to kiss and

hug without any conscious decision by me. Although she was engineering our intimacy, I

was yielding to a temptation for which I could hardly blame her. Goodnight in the hall

outside her room lasted longer and longer, until a weekend when her roommate was

absent. Someone started down the hall, so, without a whisper or even a tug, we entered,

closed the door and continued inside. Before long, we undressed each other, got in bed

and had fun as if we had been doing it all along. Her passion startled me. So fervently did

she sigh in my ear, so vigorously did she massage me that excitement drove me to an

orgasm that made me shout and left me panting. That night awakened in us a craving for

more. As soon as we could find a suitable apartment, we moved into it. How many nights

did it take me to realize that I had made a permanent commitment?

Despite my objections, Lori insisted on doing everything that would interrupt my studies:

shopping, cooking, serving and cleaning up; dusting, running the vacuum and doing the

laundry; defragging my hard disk, buying a cartridge for my printer and checking books

out of the library; etc. When I caught a cold, she nursed me, informed my professors and

kept me in bed until I stopped coughing. She briefed me on the classes I had missed,

even in the two courses she wasn’t taking herself. How did she manage to keep up with

her studies and average B+? It would have been A- without me. Reminded of women’s

liberation, she laughed me to scorn. After five years together, she finished a masters and

I began a PhD with the intention of doing a dissertation on rare butterfly species in

Amazonia. I was worried about our future together. Because of her self-sacrifice, we had

never had a serious quarrel, a disadvantage perhaps, but we did like each other. We had

never mentioned “love”, I definitely wasn’t in love and I doubt that she was either. Yet

our fellow graduate students were calling us “Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Watson.”

One evening, Lori supposed that my PhD would enable me to get a job as a professor of

entomology. With her MA, she could probably get one too, either as an assistant in the

same university or as a teacher in a nearby college or high school. She could do a PhD

later on, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a few kids first? What could I say?

“Maybe...”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe... get married.”

“How about kids?”

“... The trouble with kids is that you have to bring them up. How am I going to help you

if I’m in Amazonia chasing butterflies?”

“You won’t live in Amazonia. You will go down there and chase butterflies for a while

and then you will come home to review your data and write it up. A professorship

will enable you to get support for your travel and expenses.”

“And our kids?”

“I will take care of them while you are away.”

“... Well, we can always try it and see.”

“Try it and see!”

“I didn’t mean the kids. Look: I’m not sure I want to embark on a university career. All

I’m sure of is that I want to keep on studying butterflies.” What I really wasn’t sure of

was whether I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Lori.

“An assistant professorship will allow you six years to make up your mind. If you

decide to do something else, I will get a job and support you so you can get started.”

“... Lori?”

“Hunh?”

“You have always treated me generously and I have always felt indebted to you. But I

wonder if generosity and gratitude are the right emotions to found a marriage on.”

“... Well, stop feeling indebted to me! I haven’t been treating you generously, I have

been treating you selfishly. It’s a privilege to help a gifted scientist. I’m lucky to

have that privilege. As for marriage, should it be founded on any emotion? Certainly

not infatuation, the usual excuse. Why not found it on the ability to live together?

Haven’t we proved that?”

Once I had overcome my surprise, I nodded.

She was even more generous than I had assumed.

We got married and, having completed my coursework, I passed my PhD examination.

Once my dissertation committee had approved my project, I got a grant to fund an

expedition to Amazonia, where Lori accompanied me. We hiked, camped and chased

butterflies for a month despite the heat, the rain, the mosquitoes, the snakes, everything

disagreeable and dangerous in a rain forest. The sex we had on the ground was just as

lusty as on our bed in Concordia. We were happy together, I was happy discovering new

species and she shared that happiness more than vicariously. I began to wonder what I

have been wondering ever since: how could Holmes solve mysteries without Watson?

Back in Concordia, we reviewed the data we had compiled, examined the video and the

photos we had taken, the drawings I had made. Then I began to write my dissertation,

assigning the minor problems to Lori and tackling the major ones myself. Since she had

resumed her household chores, I wondered and still wonder how she could find the time.

Her support enabled me to complete my dissertation in six months. It challenged my

director and the other members of my committee to make the customary objections at

my defense. I refuted them by referring to the massive data in my annex. Rather than

the intended examination, the exercise resembled a paper presented to fellow

entomologists. The chairlady of the department took their advice to hire me before

Stanford or Harvard made me an offer ZU couldn’t afford. To sweeten the deal, she

offered Lori a position as my research assistant. My former professors and new

colleagues began to call us Holmes and Watson too.

Lori helped me revise and publish my dissertation, the first of many lepidopterological

studies, articles and books that founded and expanded my reputation. More invitations

than I could accept competed for papers and lectures in meetings at Stanford, Harvard

and other prestigious venues. Yet Holmes could never have accomplished half of what he

achieved without Watson. We also collaborated on books and films about butterflies for

the general public, including several for children, fascinated as they were by the colors,

forms and flutterings. The earnings from this activity necessitated the services of a tax

accountant and a financial advisor to manage our earnings and investments. Lori

assumed the responsibility for our finances so I could concentrate on teaching and

research. Our most spectacular achievement was the Butterfly Vivarium, a greenhouse

containing a tropical garden where butterflies were fluttering around. A glass-enclosed

passageway through the middle allowed visitors to observe them and the vegetation on

which they fed. An adjoining structure housed the equipment, powered by solar collectors

on the roof, that regulated the atmosphere and the lighting. It also contained a

laboratory for breeding and research. Popular success and scientific prestige attracted

many visitors, who paid a nominal entrance fee. When we needed additional funding, the

university and enthusiastic alumni provided it.

Lori and I also had our kids, two boys whom she took care of during my summer

expeditions to Amazonia. I stayed in touch by satellite radio and Rob, the younger one,

wanted to accompany me.

“As soon as you and Max are old enough, I will take the whole family. You don’t want me

to leave him and Mom behind, do you?”

“Aw... !”

Mom and I laughed. Two years at least. I have been neglecting the stumbles and falls of

our predominantly happy life in anticipation of the adventure that isolated me from them.

Concentrating on the most remote region of the Amazon, I continued to discover species

unknown to my fellow lepidopterists. Although I had learned some Brazilian Portuguese

to communicate with my guide and porters, they spoke a native dialect of this language.

I assimilated it by conversation with a guide named Peppi Chikkikoppa, who shared my

enthusiasm for butterflies. His voice, which echoes in my mind, sounded like a cat’s

meow. Short, bow-legged and muscled like a wrestler, he walked and ran with a jerky

gait. His broad face assumed every expression from a gap-toothed grin to a squinting

scowl.

What impressed me most, however, was his rapid and penetrating intelligence. As I

acknowledge in everything I said and wrote, I owe him a wealth of ideas that never

would have occurred to me without him. The best and the worst I learned from him was

a tradition inherited from one of his ancestors. This man had seen a butterfly the

wingspan of which equaled the breadth of his widespread hands touching at the

thumbtips. Its wings had gleamed a brilliant green splashed with pink at the roots. Also

pink, an eye decoy appeared on each hind wing tail and three eyespots on the outer edge

of each forewing. Despite the beating of its continuously flexible wings, it was struggling

against a powerful wind. It had apparently been blown out of Serra Boca, an unexplored

and forbidding cirque in the Andes. The ancestor had even claimed that this giant had

gazed at him dolefully as if pleading for help. Although Peppi shrugged to excuse me from

the courtesy of taking this claim seriously, I couldn’t entirely dismiss it. How often had I

noticed that a butterfly?s black eye, which is really a cluster of six eyes, seems to

express a sad congeniality with me?

I had already dedicated the current expedition to another research project, so I decided

to postpone the preliminary necessity of studying the geography of Serra Boca to the

coming academic year. Once we had finished that expedition, I engaged Peppi as usual

for the next summer and told him that we would search for Lepidoptera Chikkikoppa. His

namesake inspired a huge smile, which amused me all the way back to Mammoth, three

flights on three airlines. Although Lori met me as usual with the boys at Mammoth

International, my fascination with the giant butterfly dampened my enthusiasm over our

reunion. My lukewarm affection disappointed all three of them, hence a feeling of guilt I

tried to explain away. I could tell that Lori was worried. As soon as she and I were alone,

she told me that every time I returned from Amazonia, she found me more remote.

Every time, I agreed, I needed more time to reaccustom myself to my role as husband

and father.

“Maybe I better come with you next summer. My parents have offered to take care

of the boys.”

The danger of depriving our children of their mother as well as their father gave me

pause. I told her about the giant butterfly and the opportunity that justified a dangerous

expedition from which I might not return. “With Peppi taking care of me, though, my

chances of survival must be nine out of ten.”

Lori gave me a knowing look: “More like four out of five.”

“... The summer after next, Lori, I promise. If I neglected an opportunity like this... ”

This time, her look was long, penetrating and sad: “OK, RG. If I lost you... ” She

flicked a tear away. And Lori was no weeper.

It took me two weeks to reintegrate myself in my family, but I became as genuinely

affectionate a husband and father as ever. In fact, the risk I would be running the next

summer reinforced my affection.

Turning to a geographical study of Serra Boca, I encountered an astonishing initial

difficulty. I couldn’t find it on any map, photo or video of the northern Andes. While

examining satellite images one day, however, I discovered a deep cirque surrounded by

spikelike mountains with gaps east and west closed by sharp rock walls. Despite my

relative ignorance of mountain geography, I found this apparently ancient volcanic

formation unique in the Andes. A strong wind blowing through the gaps could have driven

the giant butterfly out of the valley. That close to the Equator, they let the sun shine on

the valley all year long. Green in winter as well as summer, the terrain surrounding the

lake evidenced continuous growth. The consistent warmth of the sun and the relatively

high altitude of the valley floor assured a temperate climate. I could expect to find plant

and animal life entirely different from that of the jungle in the east and the mountains in

the west. I decided that an aerial search for access to the valley and survey of its five

square miles should precede the expedition. After much trouble in raising enough money,

I took advantage of spring vacation to do it. Since the cost of a helicopter exceeded my

budget, I sought a bush pilot with a plane big enough to fly me, Peppi, and a

photographer with his equipment over the site. At first, all I could find refused. As one

replied, there had never been a crash in the area because no pilot was foolish enough to

run the risk. Using his fingers to imitate tentacles, he compared Serra Boca to an insect-

eating plant. I objected that the spikes were immobile, to which he replied that the air

currents circulating around them would have the same effect. I asked him if an extra

thousand dollars would encourage him to overcome the difficulty. His face lit up. He said

he would do what he could without wrecking his plane and killing us all, but we wouldn’t

be able to fly as low and slow as I and my friends would probably like. I guessed that he

wanted to demonstrate his skill, charge other customers the price I had offered and

attract more of them by the publicity resulting from our observations.

Although height and flight don’t usually scare me -- waves and deep water do -- it was

the scariest flight I have ever had. The wind varied constantly in direction and force

buffeting the plane, which dropped, yawed or slowed almost to a stall. The pilot, who was

struggling with the controls, had to gun the engine several times. Seated beside him, I

saw sweat beading his brow and anxiety twisting his face. Would his DeHaviland Beaver

withstand the punishment? Suddenly, vomit sprayed the cabin and Peppi

yelled. The turbulence had sickened the photographer. I was afraid the stink would make

me sick too. While Peppi was trying to clean up the mess with a rag and a bottle of

drinking water, the photographer kept taking pictures and video. My glimpses of the

valley revealed a tall, thick forest covering most of the floor and conifers climbing the

lower, milder slopes. None of us were able to sight any animals or evidence of human

beings. Satisfied that we had explored the valley as thoroughly as possible, I asked the

pilot to fly us over the mountains surrounding it. Climbing above the worst of the

turbulence, to our relief, we passed over the spikes on either side and the walls at either

end. None of us could see any feature that suggested access to the valley. Yet I asked

the photographer to shoot the topography thoroughly, not only directly under us but also

on a slant. All of us were exhausted when we finally landed at the airport. I invited the

others for a drink at the outdoor bar, but the photographer politely shook his head. He

borrowed cleaning fluid, rags and water to clean up his mess. I paid him a bonus too. I

had to draw these extra funds from our bank account, which worried Lori. She was afraid

I might spend too much another time.

The film and the video revealed much more than we had observed. I discovered vapor

which must have been rising from volcanic springs. Likewise thin strands of smoke

twisted by air currents above the trees. They couldn’t have been coming from lava. The

tall trees resembled redwoods and I found one lying on the ground in a position that

suggested it had been cut down. Some red llamas, which resembled no breed I could

identify, were grazing on the foliage of shorter trees growing in rows. A few yellow

herons were fishing around the lake. Magnification revealed a canoe drawn up on the

shore and, after much scrutiny, some oblong dwellings under the trees covered with

thatch. Here and there were tall, naked humans, whose skin resembled a sun-tanned

white, women near the huts and men elsewhere. Two were sawing the fallen tree into

sections while a third watched. Although we could find no butterflies, big or small, blue

areas indicated a flower that thrived in the valley. A thorough search for ground access

finally revealed an S-shaped passage between the western wall and the nearest spike.

Reaching it from the valley would necessitate a dangerous traverse across the top of the

wall and passing through the mountains on the other side would expose travelers to

extremes of altitude, cold, wind and especially rugged terrain. Water flowing down from

snow and ice melting on the steep upper slopes accumulated in the lake, drained by a

small river that seeped through fissures in the eastern wall. A variety of cascades

splashed down the other side, accumulating in another small river, a source and perhaps

the primary one of the Amazon.

I resisted advice from Lori and the few colleagues I had consulted to take other natives

and scientists with me to ensure greater safety and success. The surest way to spoil a

pristine remnant of our contaminated planet, I told them, was to expose it to other

people. Not only would they degrade the site and the artifacts, but also advertise their

existence. Explorers and adventurers would soon flock to Serra Boca seeking fame and

riches. How long would it take them to plunder the botanical, ichthyological,

ornithological, zoological, anthropological and entomological treasures of Serra Boca?

Every butterfly nut would crave a Lepidoptera Chikkikoppa for his collection, every flower

nut, the blue flower for his garden. Every zoo would covet a red llama; every aviary, a

yellow heron; every aquarium... Lord knows what kind of fish the herons were plucking

out of the lake! What if they were good to eat? The herons’ yellow feathers might

introduce another era of ladies’ hats and the llamas’ red fur, one of fur coats. Timber

pirates would raze the trees and sell the lumber to furniture manufacturers who would

furnish dining rooms all over the world with tables and chairs made of exotic wood. Think

what would happen to a community spared the devastation suffered by the rest of their

fellow humans! Christian and Muslim missionaries would compete to convert them;

interlopers and colonists, to enslave them; agricultural and industrial agents, to exploit

them. No!

But how were Peppi and I going to enter the Boca? And without publicizing our intentions

and destination? It was impossible for any kind of airplane to land and take off.

Expensive and dangerous for a helicopter. We could parachute into the valley and

parachute our equipment from a small cargo plane flying just above stalling speed when

the wind was down. But I foresaw two problems with this approach. In the first place, we

might have to wait a long time for favorable wind conditions and, the longer we had to

keep the airplane ready, the more it would cost. In the second, we would have to leave

the valley on foot by the hazardous western exit. Once we had reached the other side,

we would have to radio for a helicopter to come and get us on a nearby mountain slope.

Provided we still had a radio and power to operate it, otherwise the trek over the

mountains would be dangerous and exhausting. Thus the only option within my reach

was fraught with difficulty and danger. Yet discovery of the giant butterfly and,

incidentally, a rare if not unique phenomenon in our day: an unknown and unspoiled land

and people. I naturally decided to try. Would I ever forgive myself for avoiding the

challenge? I couldn’t take a chance on the regrets that would burden the rest of my

career and no doubt my life as well. Furthermore, the temptation to try what I hadn’t

would tempt the experts in whom I had confided to plan my expedition. As long as I

controlled access to Boca, I could forestall the inevitable aggression of civilization.

The highest hurdle I had to clear was persuading Lori. Had I ever seen her cry? I was

trying to explain the necessity of meeting the challenge I faced when, suddenly, tears

came pouring down her cheeks and she ran to the nearest bathroom, slamming the door

behind her. I felt a void swelling in my body. The threat to our life and family hammered

my determination and yet without smashing it. When Lori reemerged, she had washed

her tears away, but her countenance suggested that she had already lost me.

Disconcerted, the boys turned to me for an explanation, which I found almost impossible

to articulate. After a few tense days, however, we found the hardback of Robinson

Crusoe I had given Max for Christmas on the dining room table when Lori called us for

supper. Despite Max’s polite thanks, he hadn’t found the courage to read more than a

few pages of so thick a volume.

“From now on,” Lori explained, “we are all going to sit down together after supper

and read a chapter of that book. And everybody is going to take a turn reading.”

All her men had big eyes but none of us dared to object, not even Rob, the younger, who

was addicted to the few DVDs “for kids” that Lori and I allowed him. Our readings of

Robinson Crusoe and the discussions they inspired cured him of this addiction and his

reading skill made an impression at his kindergarten. As soon as we cut the lights out

that first night, I expressed my gratitude, admiration and humility to Lori. She hugged

me and, for once, sex came in second. Maybe we had finally fallen in love.

The second hurdle I had to clear was funding. Persuading donors to contribute

necessitated revelations that tended to compromise the secrecy protecting Boca from

predators. I had no choice. All I could do was plead with them to keep the information

secret. A painting of Lepidoptera Chikkikoppa as I imagined it from Peppi’s inherited

description helped to convince them. Lori photographed it, drew up an attractive

brochure and negotiated with the ZU Press to publish it. Brisk sales earned additional

funds to support my expedition. I had already begun to purchase equipment and learn to

parachute from an instructor who flew out of Concordia Airport. Unfortunately, an

awkward landing gave me an ankle sprain, so I had to ice the swelling and hobble around

on crutches for a few weeks. Friends and colleagues were calling me St. Ex the Second. I

had also arranged for Peppi to take parachute lessons and he learned more quickly than I

did. His instructor added a P.S. praising him in a letter Peppi wrote me in his handwriting

and language, which fascinated the sole professor of Brazilian Portuguese at ZU. Further

proof of Peppi’s athletic ability which, fortunately, hadn’t attracted the greed of the

soccer mafia.

My bush pilot helped me find and negotiate with an airline which flew two small Antonovs

to strips in the Amazon to supply the predators who were plundering the rain forest.

Another chink in my armor! The airline charged me for a few practice runs over Serra

Boca before agreeing to fly us and our equipment for a drop. I also paid the bush pilot to

sit in the cockpit and advise the pilot and copilot. A few weeks after commencement at

ZU, Peppi and I had our equipment and supplies packed and ready in a hangar. Lori had

insisted on coming with me and bringing the boys along for the flight and the drop. The

wind calmed sooner than we had expected. Five minutes before we jumped, I hugged my

wife and sons. To everybody’s surprise and delight, Peppi did likewise.

“Like a nice gorilla!” exclaimed Rob enthusiastically.

Out the door I went, felt the slap of the slipstream, the upward heave of my insides and

the downward jerk of my opening chute. I saw the valley rising towards me and the

peaks around me spiking the sky above me. The other three parachutes were following

me in an upward line. Peppi and I waved to each other and I could see his great grin. The

Antonov circled back over us and I saw Lori at the exit door waving, so I waved to her

too. As the distance between us increased, I suddenly felt more lonely than ever before.

The ground was approaching, so I concentrated on landing safely. Another sprain would

be fatal. We and the cargo packs all came down within a fifty yard radius on the grass

beside the lake. What a successful drop! It seemed to augur well for our expedition.

Peppi and I climbed out of our harnesses, folded the chutes and shouldered our

backpacks so we could move our equipment and supplies to a campsite we had chosen.

As we headed for it, we saw yellow herons along the edges of the lake and red llamas

grazing on tree foliage in the distance, but no fellow humans. Then we saw giant emerald

butterflies some fifty yards away and soon one was hovering over us curiously. The

green flushed with pink was even more exquisite than I had imagined. The flexible

forewings caressed the air so that it could hover or move in any direction. It waved its

long, graceful antennae over us. Otherwise except for minor details, my guesswork

proved accurate. The eyes that focused on us mirrored our fascination.

Running feet approached and we saw a dozen naked, tall, slender, muscular men coming

with wooden clubs. Surrounding us, they faced us with their feet spread and their clubs at

their sides. They had tan skin, a mop of brown hair, hazel eyes, no facial hair and not

one stitch of clothing. Peppi and I guessed that they were guarding us until their chief

arrived to examine us and decide how they should treat us. As we spoke to each other,

they listened curiously, for we seemed as strange to them as they did to us. Now many

giant butterflies were hovering overhead, apparently attracted by the assembly. Our

interest in them pleased the guards, who smiled and spoke to each other in a chanting

language. Curious men, women and children, all of them completely naked too, began to

approach from both sides of the lake. The men resembled the guards except for the

variety of age. The women had the same skin, hair, eyes and the feminine equivalent of

their bodies. In neither sex did we see any of the usual deformity of self-indulgence or

aging. No obesity, for instance, not even any evidence of infirmity or disability. I began

to worry.

I noticed that several adolescent girls were staring at me and giggling to each other. I

wondered why since, except for Lori, women had never paid me much attention. One of

the girls pushed her way through between two guards and approached inspecting me

from head to foot. Soon two more followed her. The guards and the crowd were smiling

their approval of this curiosity. Then the first girl touched my fly as if to confirm what was

behind it, but I slapped her hand away. She made a little scream and pouted at me,

while the other girls, the guards and the crowd grumbled their disapproval. The guards

told the girls to leave the circle and they did so.

Peppi explained their behavior: “They are wondering what we are hiding under our

clothes.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Then we better show them.”

We unzipped our coveralls to show them our chests and our all-too-hairy legs, which

disgusted them. Yet our partial strip reassured them. We guessed that, if they didn’t kill

us, they would make us strip.

The crowd separated and an elderly couple came through the gap holding hands and

inspecting us. Though gray-haired and wrinkled, they had aged handsomely. They were

wearing skullcaps with imitation giant-butterfly wings slanting upwards at forty-five

degrees and flapping as they walked. These headdresses would have made Peppi and me

laugh if our safety didn’t depend on respect for the chief couple. As they entered the

circle, the chief lady gave me a friendly look and the chief gentleman, a suspicious one.

They ignored Peppi. I waved at the butterflies overhead; pointed at Peppi, myself, our

baggage and our parachutes; tried to indicate our intentions. The lady laughed and the

gentleman grumbled, while some of the others imitated her and others, him. The chief

couple spoke to each other, then each spoke to the others who had imitated him. Further

inspection of us, suggested approval of me and disapproval of Peppi.

Pointing at Peppi, I protested in English:

“What’s wrong with him?”

Looking at him, they all burst out laughing, contemptuously. They were behaving as if I

had tried a ridiculous diversion. The uniformity of their physique and the absence of

invalids suggested eugenics. There were a few hundred of them, a number that the

resources of Serra Boca could support.

The chief woman pointed at our baggage and chanted an apparent request to see what

was in them. Spreading our tent on the ground, we arranged our equipment and supplies

on it. Curious, the crowd peered and murmured, while those in back stood on tiptoes.

The camera and the video recorder caught their immediate attention, so I took the

recorder, shot a clip sweeping around the circle and showed it to them. Surprise and

delight! Approaching, the chief woman discovered a drawing of the giant butterfly that I

had made according to Peppi’s testimony. Enthusiastic, she showed it to the chief man

and then to the crowd while moving around the circle. More surprise and delight!

Encouraged, I put my arm around Peppi and gestured to the crowd to show that he

shared my interest in the giant butterfly. Though diverse, the reaction was not

encouraging.

The chief man pointed inquisitively at the radio and the crank-operated generator to power it.

“Let’s demonstrate it,” I told Peppi. “Maybe we could talk to our familes.”

I cranked while he told his wife that we had landed safely and he cranked while I did

likewise. Both wives sounded relieved. The voices coming from the loudspeaker

astonished our listeners, who approached and examined it to see if someone were hiding

in it. We kept our communications brief to avoid trying our captors’ patience. Once we

had stopped cranking and turned the radio off, I did a pantomime to show that the

women who had spoken were a long way away. The first to understand, a middle-aged

woman named Noo explained that no tiny women were hiding in the loudspeaker. The

outsiders had found a way to transmit these voices

from afar. The amazement caused by this revelation inspired a debate between those

who, as we guessed, envied our advantage and those who feared it. Wouldn’t such

communication with the outside breach the isolation that preserved Boca from

contamination and degradation? Although Noo approved of our radio, a man named Zoft

disapproved. If the disapprovers had their way, we feared, they would destroy our radio.

A gaunt old man with a mop of silvery hair; fierce eyes; thin, straight lips and a kettle-

drum voice, Zoft preached against this evil. Yet Noo answered all of his objections so

that a stalemate resulted. Then she proposed a temporary compromise: lock our radio,

generator and other equipment up until I had demonstrated that I could be trusted. The

chief couple approved.

They indicated that they wanted us to repack our equipment. Once we had done so, two

guards carried it in our backpacks to a village on the north side of the lake, followed by

two more with our parachutes, while the others escorted us to another on the south side.

Both villages consisted mostly of oblong dwellings with walls of woven plant-fiber and

thatched roofs, but our guards took us to a smaller, round one. Inside, we discovered a

floor of ceramic tiles and walls of woven plant fiber. Our guards indicated that they

wanted us to undress and saw that we did so completely. Imagine how we felt when they

took us to an outdoor fireplace where women were preparing a meal! As naked as we

were, however, they paid us no attention. The aroma of the cooking seemed as strange

to us as the taste of the food, which one of them served on a large ceramic platter. She

put it in the middle of a woven mat, invited us to sit down on either side and gave each

of us a ceramic spoon. I was impressed by the exotic colors, the unusual design and

flawless finish of these ceramics as well as the decorations depicting flora, fauna and

naked Bocans. We had to force ourselves to eat at first, but soon our hunger took over

and we began to enjoy the nourishment if not the taste. Only then did the woman bring

us ceramic goblets of milk, which tasted so sour that we nearly vomited. Determined to

make a good impression, however, we drank it down. We guessed, correctly as I later

discovered, that it was llama milk.

The guards wanted to take us somewhere else, so we thanked the women, who

interpreted our English and Brazilian by our smiles. Although we were nodding, they were

raising their chins, so we realized that Bocans indicate agreement that way. Nodding

meant disagreement. The guards escorted us to an oblong dwelling with an entrance in

the middle of the side. As we entered, we saw a yellow heron in ceramic standing on a

small table against the opposite wall. The eyes were so vivid that I would have taken it

for a living heron if I had seen it standing in shallow water. Noo greeted us by smiling and

extending her hands towards us with upright fingers. Peppi guessed that she intended for

us to do the same and touch fingers with her, which he did and I imitated him. Pointing at

herself, she said “Go Noo” and then at the heron: “Go”. She waved her hand to indicate

the dwelling: “Unh Go.” A lesson in Bocan, a language unknown to linguists, had begun.

Noo led us to one end of the hut, where an old man, a little girl and a smaller boy were

waiting. As she introduced them, each smiled, raised his chin and touched hands with us,

which Noo called “kah-tee.” She spread a mat across the tile floor, placed leather

cushions in a circle and invited us to sit down. She would say a word or phrase and the

old man, the little girl or little boy would illustrate them. For instance, the old man smiled

and frowned, the little girl stood up and sat down, the little boy walked and ran around

us. Although Peppi was learning faster than I was, we both learned twenty-five words

and phrases in about an hour. I prompted one of them by imitating the flight of the giant

butterfly with my hand.

“Ji-jaw,” said Noo.

The little boy trotted around us flapping his arms.

Intrigued by the lack of writing, I stopped at the door as we were leaving, stooped,

wrote “Unh Noo” in the sand and said it while looking inquisitively at Noo.

She laughed, nodded, said “bidge!”and rubbed it out with her foot.

She accompanied us under escort by the guards to a dwelling in the north village.

Opposite the entrance, we saw a life-size ceramic statue of ji-jaw. The eyes seemed to

focus on us. Once we had admired it, Noo led us to an assembly waiting at the end of the

dwelling: the chief couple and their council, most of whom we had seen that morning.

Zoft was on the chief man’s side and Noo joined the delegates on the chief woman’s

side. The chief woman and those on her side were smiling, while the chief man and those

on his side were frowning. I approached and kah-teed with the chief couple, but, when

Peppi extended his palms, the chief lady merely up-nodded and the chief man down-

nodded. I wondered whether they considered him a subordinate or a degenerate. He

ignored the snub. Our courtesy increased the sympathy of the chief lady and her side,

decreased the antipathy of the chief man and his except for Zoft. This authoritarian

symmetry both intrigued and alarmed me. A subtle shift in the relations between the two

sides might decide our fate. Although our interest in ji-jaw favored us, our intrusion

counted against us, while Peppi’s racial dissimilarity endangered him.

Turning around and separating, the chief couple revealed our folded parachutes on the

floor behind them. Pointing at them, the chief man looked at me inquisitively. Anxious to

demonstrate Peppi’s intelligence and competence, I asked him to explain the purpose of

our expedition. He exploited the opportunity eagerly enough to indicate that he

recognized the danger he faced. I admired his skill with sign language, which far

exceeded mine. Somehow he managed to inform his listeners that his ancestor had

discovered ji-jaw five generations ago. Watching their faces, however, I saw two

reactions, a favorable one by the chief woman and her side, and an unfavorable one by

the chief man and his. Zoft looked downright hostile. On the chief woman’s side, Peppi’s

ancestral association with ji-jaw tended to excuse his racial dissimilarity, but, on the chief

man’s, this inherited fascination threatened to breach the isolation of the Bocan

community.

Once Peppi had finished, I pointed inquisitively at my backpack, which I had noticed next

to one of the parachutes. The chief couple up-nodded, so I took a pad and a crayon out. I

sketched the giant butterfly as seen from above, wrote “Ji-Jah” under it and “Lepidoptera

Chikkikoppa” under that. Showing it to the chief couple, I pointed at the first name, read

it and pointed at them. Then I showed them the second one, read it and pointed at Peppi.

Puzzled, the couple hesitated, which prompted his side to insist on “ji-jah” and hers, to

concede “Lepidoptera Chikkikoppa” with an astonishingly correct pronunciation. Once

they had said it, Zoft snarled the same expression.

Pointing at the pad and the crayon, the chief man said “zik?”, a word I had heard several

times and understood to mean “please.” I handed them to him and he up-nodded. The

couple examined my drawing and writing curiously, then she took the crayon, showed it

to me and asked “zik?” I started to down-nod, but, realizing my mistake, up-nodded and,

reassured, she smiled. At least smiles and frowns meant the same for them as for us.

Taking the pad, she flipped to the next page and sketched a horizontal view of a giant

butterfly with its wings raised in flight as seen from a 45° angle. I admired the

foreshortening. The chief man and both sides grinned, up-nodded, cheered “tee!” and

stamped their feet, so we did likewise. Pointing at her drawing, the chief man made an

embracing gesture, then at mine, and repeated it. Pointing at my writing, he scribbled

disdainfully and did a breast stroke as if to push it away. Zoft pointed at his head and his

lips, made the embracing gesture, then scribbled with his hand and jerked his arm up as

if to throw the writing over his shoulder. The others on his side applauded, but the chief

man merely up-nodded, likewise the chief woman and her side. So they agreed on the

rejection of writing, a detour that degraded ideas flowing from thought to speech. They

suspected our importation of indulging the mind and memory.

But would the chief couple deprive us of writing or worse, eliminate us as a threat to the

intelligence of the community? Pointing at Noo, I named her. Pointing at Zoft, who

didn’t like it, I named him. Then pointing at Peppi, I said: “Peppi Chikkikoppa!”

Surprised at first, they asked: “Peppi Chikkikoppa?”

But then Zoft scoffed: “Peppi Lepidoptera!”

And they all laughed.

Asking for the pad and the crayon, I drew Peppi’s wife, nine kids and father-in-law with

his cane in front of their house with smoke curling up from the chimney. Since I had

never seen any of them or that, Peppi chuckled. The drawing excited much curiosity,

questioning and puzzled glances at him, which we answered by persistent up-nodding.

Taking the pad and crayon, the chief lady flipped to a new page -- how quickly she had

learned that! -- and, with frequent glances at Peppi, drew a likeness that resembled him

strikingly. It not only showed his bow legs, his bulging muscles and his broad face, but it

also suggested his energy. We all admired the sketch because it resembled Peppi, but

they also laughed because it reproduced a likeness that seemed ridiculous and

contemptible to them. Rather than let me sketch my family as I expected, the chief

couple called the guards in to take us away. Before we left, they kah-teed with me but

not with Peppi. Although I pointed him out to them, they turned away.

“Racist snobs!” I shouted in English. “He’s a fellow human being of yours!”

Shocked, all of them turned and stared. Zoft glared at me. The chief man up-nodded to

the guards, two of whom grabbed my arms and pushed me away, followed by others

with Peppi.

They took us on a tour of Boca, showing us the two villages; the shops, the offices, the

schools and the hospital; the fields, the orchards and the pastures where red llamas

approached so we could stroke them; natural resources such as redwood timber, clay

and iron ore deposits; volcanic fire, geysers and cascades. They paid no attention to the

rocky cliffs at either end of the valley or the slopes on either side where spiked peaks

rose above them. Yet high on the south slope, I saw a herd of wild goats with a white and

brown coat. I pointed them out to a guard, who shrugged as if they didn’t matter.

Instead, he recommended the cloud of ji-jaws that followed us everywhere. After this

tour, the guards took us back to our hut, ready by then for us to sleep in. We found two

wood-frame beds with flexible slats supporting llama-leather mattresses stuffed with

llama wool. Our sleeping bags lay on top of them and our personal effects, such as razors

and tooth brushes, were on a table between them. The absence of our pens, paper and

documents didn’t surprise us, but we worried about our radio and generator. I turned to

one of the guards who was apparently waiting for questions or requests. Pretending to

crank the generator, I looked at him questioningly. He nodded, said “bidge” and, to

make sure I understood, he cranked a few turns and did a few breast strokes. We sought

consolation in his failure to throw the generator over his shoulder.

Once he had left, bolting the door from the outside, Peppi and I looked at each other with

the same idea in mind: how could we break out of that jail? Vents at the top of the walls

and under the eaves admitted light, but a wooden lattice isolated them from us.

Fingering the walls, we found that a similar lattice reinforced them from the outside. The

bottoms of the vertical timbers were anchored in a layer of volcanic mortar underlying

the tile flooring. The wood of a horizontal timber snapped Peppi’s razor when he tried

to cut into it. Nor did we find a flint lighter like those we had seen elsewhere, so we

couldn’t burn our way out of the hut. A slab of the same wood, the door swung on three

hinges and two well-spaced bolts slid through rings. All of these iron fixtures were nailed

to the wood on the outside. During our tour, we had seen the head blacksmith forge such

implements over volcanic fire.

Our tour, we agreed, suggested that the chief couple might admit us to the community.

Neither of us mentioned the difference between their treatment of me and him. I was

worried about that and I suspect that he was too. We still wanted to study the giant

butterfly and leave with as much evidence as we could carry, including live specimens.

The two or three months we needed to do that would give us enough time to plan our

escape. Climbing a slope, finding a way to the exit and crossing the mountains would

require clothing and equipment such as that taken from us. Either we had to recuperate it

or replace it somehow and hide it where we could take it when we left. Hardly could we

solve those problems without the complete confidence of the community. We guessed

that Zoft would do everything in his power to substantiate his suspicion of us. Our

relations with Noo, on the other hand, and her support during our hearing before the

chief couple persuaded us that we could count on her to defend us.

No sooner had we agreed on all of that than we heard a knock on the door, which one of

the guards unbolted and opened. They escorted us to the same dining area, where the

same woman served us an evening meal. A salad of red cereal, rainbow tomatoes and

little chunks of green cheese came on another ceramic platter with a dressing that had an

odd aroma. Our hunger and thirst overcame our reluctance and especially because,

instead of sour milk, she served us a delicious fruit drink. The more we drank, however,

the more light-headed we felt. When the guards escorted us back to our hut, drowsiness

was dragging our feet. As soon as the door closed behind us, we flopped on our beds and

fell asleep in the dark. In what seemed like a minute later, a pounding headache woke

me up in daylight. Peppi had disappeared along with his bed and his belongings.

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