Chapter 10: October 2018

In principle, our valley had exceptional climatic conditions. In spring, when the seeds needed as much rain as possible, it was dry like right now in October. In summer, i.e. from December to February, it was the rainy season and it sometimes poured down completely uncontrollably. Due to the proximity to the equator, it was often warm and the sun could burn mercilessly. Due to the altitude in the mountains and the icy peaks only a few kilometres away, there was a noticeable chill through the valley when the wind was right. However, the main wind direction was opposite. A refreshing but relatively warm breeze usually came from the ocean through the deeply cut canyon of the Tiso. Alejandra told Olivia and me that the valley used to be much colder and the wind came from the northwest. Since the mining company had created a passage to the canyon, blasting away mighty rocks, building a bridge and the road to Ashmanton, the wind blew quite steadily towards the snow- and ice-covered mountains.

It took me three days to get the irrigation system in order. Miguel helped me to clean and seal the irrigation channels to the fields and plantations. Babette and Priya cleaned the sluice gates and the inlets to our now only five ponds. The upper pond, two years ago the cleanest and richest in fish, was almost completely filled with rocks, stones, logs, and gravel from the flash flood in February. From my perspective, it would take decades for the waterfall to wash out a usable pond again. Miguel disagreed, pulling individual tree trunks and single large branches out of the cauldron formed by the waterfall with his ox and also with my help. The falling masses of water pushed the stones apart and washed the gravel to the edges. After only two days, a coherent surface of water had formed. The most amazing thing was that we discovered carp. They must have been hiding between the stones and the foliage.

On the way back from the upper pond, I noticed flocks of birds chasing through the trees and performing little dances above the fields when they were startled. They were noisy, pecking at the barks of the trees, hopping all over the ground, being like fools. Then I saw them for the first time, masses of little caterpillars or whatever they were, insects, not quite five centimetres long and busily trying to climb the trees. You could put your foot wherever you wanted in some places, you couldn’t avoid the caterpillars. They crunched and splashed with every step. I was afraid that the small animals would eat our trees bare and destroy the harvest, just like the locusts. With this thought, it was suddenly fun to step on the entire sole of my foot. But no sooner were we a step further than masses of other animals crawled over the remains of the trampled ones.

Alejandra told me that every seven years there is an invasion of millions of the ‘Cigarras’. The Indians called them sitikira. At first there would only be the caterpillars, which developed into small animals with wings. A few days later, you would no longer be able to understand your own word. Everything in the valley would vibrate with the sounds of the love-crazed cicadas. Even at night there would be no peace. After about one moon phase, everything would be over. The animals would die after laying their eggs. The eggs would hatch into small larvae that would drop from the trees to the ground, burrow there and feed there again on tree roots for seven years.

Olivia said that the animals would hardly cause any damage, but the noise would be unbearable. The worst thing, however, would be the plague with the wings. Wild cats, birds, huge numbers of bats, but also the native squirrels, the mice, and the egg-laying voles would come into the valley at that time. All animal hunters first tore off the indigestible wings of the adults. The wings would be carried by the wind through the valley, swirl around the huts, cover the plants near the ground and lie by the millions on the surface of the ponds. Last time, Alonso and Miguel would have shovelled several oxcarts full of wings swept up or fished out of the ponds into the Tiso. The women would burn the wings next to the fields, but this gave off a bad smell.

After dinner, I informed all the palazzo residents. Most of them already knew about the impending plague. Mayari reported that they had had the caterpillar invasion in the village for two days. The caterpillars were shovelled into buckets and pots, covered and water poured over them. After a few minutes, the insects were dead and went into the waste pits for composting.

Everyone was ready to go hunting for caterpillars every day before school and in the afternoon, to collect them and burn them if possible. As I was about to sit down on the terrace in the semi-darkness, I was startled. Large bats were buzzing through the air, settling down everywhere, and holding their feast with the caterpillars. The animals of the valley and the passing guests were in the brightest excitement.

In the morning we were woken up by the shrill sounds of the first cicadas. Already in the afternoon, the wing noises of the male animals were almost unbearable. Zarina asked for the car key and drove with two friends zigzagging along the almost one- kilometre-long road to kill thousands of the pests before they could develop into adults. In some places she was able to make the car drift. The insects’ body remains made the car slide as if on an icy road. But all that was just a drop in the ocean. There had to be billions of insects running riot in our valley to reproduce.

The next day we found only a few caterpillars, but the piercing reverberation of the adults increased to unbearable levels. New flocks of screeching birds were cavorting in the trees. They could eat their fill but could not contain the plague of cicadas. It was a spectacle of nature. The insects appeared in such large numbers to ensure their survival.

Zarina drove the completely smeared car to the former ore processing plant to clean it with water pressure. Everything was centimetres high with caterpillar carcasses and covered with their excretions. Unfortunately, a terrible mishap happened for us during cleaning. The car could not be started afterwards. When Babette and Zarina told me about it, I was filled with rage. That was all we needed. I turned around without a word, went to the terrace and struggled to control myself.

Babette followed me. “Michael, Zarina meant well. She can’t help it.”

“Yes, Babette. I’m the idiot. I wanted to ban driving, but later laughed along. It’s not so much the car, it’s...” I struggled for the right words.

“Yes, I know,” Babette agreed. “Now we will hardly make the breakthrough.”

Regaining my composure, I instructed Babette. “The car will stay here until the day after tomorrow. Then I’ll try to start it myself or repair the ignition. Please take care of the BMX bikes. I hope at least three are still roadworthy. I’m not sure how long it will take to ride the bike up to the clearing site in the meantime.”

I briefly comforted the crying Chinese woman and asked for the car keys. Priya drove me with the golf cart to the container warehouse, the former ore processing plant.

Together we carefully cleaned the engine compartment and the electrical connections, blew away the water residues with compressed air. The starter motor and the glow plugs received no power. I wanted to look for the cause the next day when everyone was at school, but I had little hope. If a regulator or the control system was damaged, it was impossible to repair without suitable spare parts. And that’s exactly what it turned out to be three days later. We could no longer use our passenger car. Damn, a serious setback.

The noise in the valley was a burden on all of us. It was not only the overloud cicadas, but also the screeching birds strained my nerves. Most of the time we worked in the house. But even there, the teenagers had to hunt for cicadas. A few specimens had strayed into our palazzo, tormenting us almost all night long with their wing beats, which were louder than our lawn mower in the evening.

It was a bad month in general. For the first time we had a contagious infectious disease. First among the Indios in the village, then also among some young women, fever and sore throat appeared. Our doctor diagnosed many of the women and Alonso with bacterial tonsillitis. Ramona suspected that birds or bats had brought the germs to the valley. Fortunately, no small children or newborns were affected. It was not until mid-November that all the sick people were cured, two weeks after the end of the cicadas and the disappearance of the bats and the birds that did not belong in the valley.

To make matters worse, I once again failed as a human being. On the second Saturday in October, Carmen was my surprise guest, chosen by Esther and assigned as my sex partner for the evening. When I found her in my bathtub, I frowned a little. I had only had sex with her a few times since she had given birth to her twins, and honestly, it had never once been a pleasure for me. Carmen was indignant. “You must not be in the mood with me. I’ve been looking forward to this evening for weeks.”

What else could I do? I tried to get her going, which I more or less succeeded in doing. Anyway, I made the next mistake and slept with her without a condom, as I had been doing with pregnant women for months. It was quite a nice evening with her, but the result was devastating for me. At the end of the month, our doctor told me Carmen was pregnant. The last pregnancy was so difficult for her and all of us. Several times I had refused her request for a second pregnancy. This time I felt as if I had fallen into a trap. Our doctor said sarcastically, “Yes, Michael, your chromosomes don’t leave any womb unfertilised. But there is something special about that. May I ask you ‘The Bull of the Valley of Fertility’?”

Annoyed, I yelped back, “You set this up on purpose. I think it’s evil, deceitful, and mean. I hope Carmen survives the pregnancy. She had such severe problems last time, and not just because of the twins. Look at the way she’s been walking for weeks like she’s carrying a heavy bag.”

Fortunately for Isabella, I only found out about the unplanned pregnancy after I had agreed to her application to become my partner. I probably would have delayed the matter or even rejected it altogether. But, what can I say; the two weeks with Isabella were a seven-star dinner, a treat for body and soul. Besides, it was clear to me inside, without a car we would never be able to clear the road. Somehow we had to manage without vaccines and without disposable nappies for the next year. I didn’t say my opinion to anyone. Still, I had no real resistance to more children inside of my mind. I only hoped that Lenya and Sula were sensible enough after their unspeakable problems at her delivery not to want a second child.

Amid the deafening noise of the cicadas, I went for a walk with Isa on the first evening of our partnership. In the village, all the inhabitants wore little knots of wool in their ears. One of the younger widows, Cristina, gave us a ball of wool so that the residents in the Casa could protect themselves against the noise, showed us how to make the ear protection and fitted us each with a set of knots. It looked funny, dangling the threads to remove the tight thickenings in front of our ears, but it had an immediate excellent effect. For the first time in days, I enjoyed nature again, the green of the trees and the bushes, the wonderfully sprouted seeds in maize and millet. However, even the animals, especially the sheep and the geese, made a disturbed impression. It was time for the cicadas to finish their mass reproduction.

Cristina showed Isabella and me the first dead males under low Coca trees, which simply died of exhaustion after mating. The females lived a little longer, sticking their fertilised eggs under leaves or on branches. Soon billions of larvae would hatch from them, fall from the tree and burrow into the earth to feed on root juices there again for seven years. I had already marked it in my calendar: October 2025, the next natural spectacle was to be expected.

With Isabella I went to the upper valley. The waterfall, despite the lack of rain, surprisingly brought a considerable amount of water into our valley, well for our fields and flowerbeds. Hand in hand, we walked along the path that I had walked with Esther last year. After a few metres, all we could hear was the water rushing down. Isa turned me towards her and pulled the nodules out of my ear while kissing me sweetly. Yes, the pests could still be heard in the distance, but from here it was bearable. There was no cicada invasion in the upper valley. With the steep rise to the left and right of the waterfall, it was as if Mother Nature had drawn a natural line. Perhaps it was also the higher altitude and the cooler ground that did not provide a habitat for the larvae.

After a few hundred metres, we came to the place where I had sex for the first time with a pupil, with the star of my eyes, Esther. The well-formed stone was pleasantly warm this day, in contrast to the encounter back then, and the moss cushion allowed us to linger longer. It happened as if by magic. Isabella had sat wide legged on me and let her mouth and tongue show her intention, rewarding me with great tenderness and delighting my mind. Almost subconsciously we were united. Only when my partner moved closer to me, endeavouring to fill her completely, did I enjoy the warm and moist embrace of my manhood. Isa wanted to start again the riding games I knew so well from her, but I simply held her tightly with my arms and pressed her taut buttocks against me with my hands so that no countermovement was possible for her any more. I also took on the role of kisser, caressing her face, earlobes and neck. Her well-trained thighs wrestled with me for a while, and then she had understood my request. She concentrated on the muscles of her abdomen, stimulated me with pulsating movements of her vaginal wall.

“Caress yourself, Isa. Be a devil of love. Make your fingers wet with saliva, rub your clit. I want to see you glow.”

Her self-stimulation quickly took effect. When her buttocks began to twitch even though I held them tightly, I knew she was close to her climax. Then I released her body and immediately she intoxicated herself additionally with wild hip movements. In the rush of love, her body gave everything until she surrendered to her orgasm and gasped for breath. It was a wonderful feeling to have her warm upper body pressed against me, to feel her breasts intensely through her intermittent breathing, and to show her mouth my feelings. Our kisses became calmer. Dark eyes looked a t me lovingly. Isabella gradually found her way back from cloud nine, showing me her gratitude for the experience with every gesture.

Afterwards, she didn’t want her renewed lust, but my gift, my contribution to love, my bodily juice. It was not an intoxicating image as she stood before me, her work trousers and homemade knickers slipped to her ankles, at first a little indecisive about what to do. But when she leaned on one side of the stone with both hands, stretched her teeny bottom towards me and called out: “Please, Micha, do it to me. I want a child, badly.” Nothing could stop me any longer. Soon we found a common rhythm. My hands directed her hips as I thrust powerfully into her, withdrawing noticeably slower to fill her again powerfully. Finally I reached the point where only my lust counted, where the voice of the urges inside me told me, ’Fertilise this woman, take no heed!’, and I did my best.