AMAZON RIVER -
4 June
I awoke in my hammock to a pink and cyan streaked pre-dawn sky. It was filled with thick grey clouds stretching behind the boat and creating a rectangular frame around the orange sky awaiting the sun to rise. As the sun peeks over the horizon, it again amazes me how quickly it moves. Within moments its full roundness is visible and seconds later it has ascended higher still until it is hidden by the clouds. The sky is as cloudy as it is clear, dark and moody in one direction, clear and beautifully picturesque in another.
I was surprised to awaken so early. I had been kept up the previous night by a loud drunken group of folks playing dominoes on the side of the bar opposite of my hammock, towards the rear of the ship. In the morning, this group returned above deck and I was reassured that I would not spend the trip without company. I had attracted the attention of a couple of young girls who tried talking to me for a while. As I was understanding nothing, I eventually had to ask them to write down their questions and I then labouriously looked up each word in my dictionary. So, it took about 2 minutes for me to understand that they were asking where I was from, and also to see why my answer, "Manaus," was inappropriate. My foreignness soon caught the attention of the louder group. Again we covered the basics of where I'm from and where I'm going, and laughed about the fact that I understand "nada." One woman, Marlene, was particularly persistent in her questions. Eventually she mimed putting on and removing a ring from her finger and pointed at me, which I took to mean, was I married. She seemed happy that I wasn't. So happy, in fact, that she disappeared below deck and reappeared with her hammock which she placed next to mine. Now -- in her day, Marlene may have been attractive, but today, what she had lost in looks she had gained in loudness. Her goose-like laugh, and bloodshot eyes were not exactly winning me over.
I conveniently pretended to understand less than I actually did as she appeared to be joking about me marrying her. She then asked for pen and paper (which, as with books, surprisingly few people brought on this trip) and wrote me a few notes. This gave me a bit a peace, as she went away while I translated. The notes roughly translated to "I find you attractive, I want to hug and kiss you." Once translated, I quickly pocketed them and returned to the book I was reading (Lord of the Rings). When she returned, I acted as though I had forgotten about the notes.
She brought some of her friends over to try to help me understand. One was a heavy-set guy with a big beer belly. After listening to Marlene, he began to make rude hand gestures and then pointed to Marlene, who didn't seem to mind.
I didn't want to lie, and I didn't feel as if I could diplomatically tell her I didn't find her attractive in broken portuguese, so, in portuguese I wrote: "my love is in New York." Which wasn't quite a lie, in the "I love NY" translation, but if it so happened that she misconstrued this as meaning I had a lover in NY, all the better. She did and left me alone for while.
A girl named Hanna overheard our discussion and claimed to speak English. As it turned out, however, after the basic expressions were covered, she was as dependent on my phrasebook and dictionary as I was. Still, she was eager to learn English, so we practiced phrases from my book for a while.
That night, Marlene was drunk again, so I went to sleep with her repeating some English sentences she had picked up: "My name is Marlene... kissa me... my name is Marlene... my name is Marlene... I'm 'onna love you!"