The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

The search team wraps the two dead men face-to-face in a hammock so “they wouldn’t enter eternity as strangers” (103). They carry the bundle to a marsh, where they throw it into the water. Before night watch, the men see Antonio remove his dentures and clean them. He is about to put them into his handkerchief when, to their surprise, he changes his mind and puts them back into his mouth. He grabs his book and starts to read. Another man asks many questions about the book. Antonio says it is a love story, and the man thinks it must be porn, but Antonio explains that it’s the kind of love story that hurts. The man asks Antonio to read to him, so Antonio starts from the beginning. After the part about the ardent kissing, the man asks Antonio to slow down. He reads on, then the two men, who by now are drinking whiskey and smoking, try to figure out what Venice is and how the houses are built on the water. The mayor interrupts them to say that Venice is in Italy and is built on a lagoon.

As they get into a conversation with the mayor, the mayor reminds them how smart he is and how stupid they are. As the insults fly, Antonio gestures with his hand, and the men grow quiet. In the silence as the rain falls, they hear the “soft sound of a stealthily moving body” (108). Antonio confirms that it is the ocelot. Terrified, the mayor stands up and fires his gun into the ground. The men are furious because they know the cat has been circling them and if the mayor hadn’t fired, she would have come close enough for them to shoot and kill her.

They go inside the store, because animals rarely attack people inside their home, and discuss strategy. The mayor realizes he is “fully discredited” (110) in the eyes of the men and devises a plan to get out of there without blundering to save what is left of his reputation. He tells Antonio that he and the other men will return to the settlement and the government will pay him 5,000 sucres if he kills the animal by himself.

Antonio listens to the mayor, unconcerned about the money or what the mayor might think of him and his men humiliating him. Instead, he wonders why he doesn’t care that the white men have been killed, and thinks that maybe “his life among the Shuar enabled him to see those deaths as an act of justice” (111). He also thinks that maybe the ocelot is asking to be killed by approaching all those men so dangerously close. He speculates that if he kills her, it might be an act of mercy. Maybe the ocelot is looking for a way to die in open combat in a way that neither the mayor nor the other men can understand. Antonio accepts the offer and asks the mayor to leave him cigars, matches, and another round of cartridges. The group strategizes the best way to return to El Idilio and then says goodbye to Antonio, who closes and secures the hut’s window and door.

After they leave, Antonio resumes reading, frustrated that he doesn’t understand the plot of the story. He keeps getting distracted and realizes that he might be feeling afraid. He thinks of the proverb the Shuar taught him—to hide when in fear—and he turns out the lantern. He lies down on some empty sacks that he finds on the floor and lets his thoughts settle “like pebbles when they reach the bed of a river” (112). Antonio talks to himself, trying to figure out why he feels so impatient and what is causing him so much fear. He reasons that the animal would never come into someone else’s lair and that it is more likely going to stalk the group of men. He laments that he didn’t tell them to be careful or give them instructions on how to stay safe. He can’t shake the feeling that the ocelot wants to fight only him, then scolds himself for thinking that the ocelot finds him the only worthy opponent.

Antonio considers the fact that there are fewer hunters now that most of the animals have gone to hide in the east. He remembers how he used to hunt anaconda. The first time he did it was an “act of justice” when the anaconda killed the son of a settler. As he lies there in the dark, he ponders all the animals he’s killed. He wishes his friend Nushiño was with him and asks if the Shuar would release him, but he knows they won’t. He recalls how Nushiño told him that the only animal the Shuar would kill for killing’s sake is the sloth, because once a chief turned evil and dressed as a sloth to avoid capture by the rest of the tribe, since “like monkeys, all sloths look alike” (118). Antonio’s relentless thinking keeps him up all night, and soon dawn begins to light the sky.

In the morning Antonio leaves the hut and notices the areas where the ocelot has slept and walked. He sees from the broken brush that the animal is not hunting, because the brush could only have been broken by a swishing tail, and cats don’t swish their tails when they hunt. He guesses she is excited and must think her prey is much weaker than she is. He walks for hours in the rain, and when it stops raining momentarily, the jungle is filled with hundreds of rainbows. The lull also brings out the mosquitos. Antonio worries about the rapid evaporation that will follow.

Finally, he sees the ocelot 50 yards away. She is moving slowly, “whipping her flanks with her tail” (121). The rain begins again, much to Antonio’s relief. He watches the cat’s movements and thinks she is cutting off his path to the river. When there is no more than an hour left of daylight, the ocelot keeps him in one spot as if waiting for darkness to attack. He waits for her to move and make a turn before he flees to the river, where he knows he can take refuge in an old prospector’s cabin there. When he hears the river he rejoices, unaware that the ocelot has realized he’s fled. Quickly and quietly she nears him, taking him by surprise and knocking him down a slope with her front paws. Stunned, he stands up with his machete in hand, waiting for her to attack, but she doesn’t. This gives him a moment to move softly and gather his gun. That’s when he sees another ocelot—the male, her mate, “stretched out in the shelter of a hollow tree” (124). He is badly wounded and slowly dying in agony. Antonio realizes that she has brought him there to kill her mate and spare him further agony. He raises the shotgun, aims, and shoots, but not without apologizing first. He kills the male.

He reloads his gun and walks casually to the prospector’s shack. He watches the female come down to be with her mate. He reaches the shack and finds that the rain has nearly destroyed it. He notices a canoe on the river bank and heads toward it, carrying a small bag of dried banana he finds in the ruined hut. He crawls under the belly of the canoe and lies on the dry pebbles with a sigh of relief. He puts the gun near him and relaxes, aware that he is lucky he didn’t break anything when the cat jumped on him. He eats some banana and smokes “with real enjoyment” (125). Then he grows tired and falls into a deep sleep.

He falls into a dream in which his body is painted in the colors of the boa constrictor. He is sitting by the river awaiting the effects of the natema. He sees something in the distance, something that changes shape from a catfish to a macaw to something that has no definable shape but watches him with yellow eyes. The witch doctor who is massaging his terrified body tells him it’s his own death disguising itself to take him by surprise, and this means that it’s not his time to die. The yellow eyes follow him everywhere, coming and going, and he just wants to go away and eat something or take his place next to his wife in the picture on his wall. He wants to leave “this savage land” (127) but can’t. Then he feels eyes through the canoe, which is now shaking and moving. Antonio awakens and realizes the ocelot is on the canoe, trying to shake it over so she can kill him. Beneath the canoe, “the noise of the river and the rain and the animal’s movements were his only link to the universe” (127). She tries to dig under the canoe, so Antonio raises the gun and shoots at her through the canoe, hitting her foot. But he miscalculates and also shoots himself in the foot. He jumps to his feet, surprising the cat, who flattens out on a rock to prepare her attack. “An unknown power forced him to wait” (130) until the cat leaps in the air. When she is directly over him, Antonio shoots. She falls heavily, her chest blown out. He notices she is larger than he thought, “a superb animal, a beauty, a masterpiece of grace, impossible to re-create even in the imagination” (130). With tremendous grief, feeling unworthiness, shame, and degradation, Antonio strokes her, realizing he is not the victor of this contest. His eyes are wet with tears and mist as he pushes the ocelot toward the river, which sweeps her away toward the confluence of the Amazon river. Antonio throws the gun into the water “in a fit of rage,” because it is a “metal monster despised by all living creatures” (130).

Antonio removes his false teeth and wraps them in his handkerchief. He curses the gringo who killed the ocelot’s cubs; he curses the mayor, the gold prospectors, and “all who whored on his virgin Amazon” (131). Heartbroken, he sets off for El Idilio and his love stories that sometimes make “him forget the barbarity of man” (131).