Sandoval came back from the river, his black hair gleaming wet and his dark face glistening from scrubbing, as darkness was complete. It was an established custom in camp to let our uncivilized Indian friends cook and eat first; we usually played rummy by the fire until they had finished. Sandoval went up the ladder of the stilted hut to get the cards and, returning, said,“Look what I found in the bottom of my duffle bag.”He held up a bottle of the cheap red wine which they call corriente.
“Bueno,”I said.“Then the menu for tonight seems to be red wine, soup, squash, sacba-vaca, and coffee.”
The tapir was as succulent as anything I have ever eaten … delicate, tender, but with a flavor which still eludes description. I'd had many an expensive dinner in New York and in other places in the world, with all the trappings of china, linen, and service, which I hadn't relished half so much.
A little breeze down from the Andes whispered in the palms that grew over the kitchen thatch; night was black an velvet. An owl hunting for his supper booted close to the hut and all the forest seemed alive around us.
But under the frail thatch there was a bright cooking fire, food, and companionship. If there was a definite lack of the thing called civilization with its encumbrances of iceboxes, white enamel stoves, and electrical gadgets, it wasn't much noticed.
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