Van Diemen's Dream (Continuation)

Nana found herself caught in such unfoldings. Goya speculated about a sensual side effect of the formant frequencies. The fluctuations of air pressure massaged Nana’s profile from neck to ear. In return, she licked Goya’s neck. She placed a fingertip on his lips, but the mouth remained closed. Goya was not the type to let anything be inserted, neither into the mouth nor into the ass.

The couple reached the point where the direction of desire could no longer be denied.

“I’m going to fuck you soon, my beauty,” Goya declared with deliberation. Nana assessed the valences. The same sentence could be inappropriate or worn out. It must not level the necessary distinction nor damage Diana’s reputation.

What made the sentence right? The greed of an adequate counterpart made it right.

“I can hardly wait,” said Nana.

Goya pressed between her legs.

From the notes of Friedrich von Pechstein, an ancestor of our heroine. The Kassel/Casseler Privy Council observed, in the 17th century, the nomadic people of the Tapuha along the Amazon. He recognized that this community derived its character solely from the will for freedom. Ethnic justifications fell flat.

As soon as a warrior could no longer hunt fish and birds at will due to failing eyesight, he lost his carefreeness. His personality began to creak. Among the Tapuha’s peculiarities was their respect for the spiritually calcified. The vital appointed elders as senators. The old met as long as the beer lasted; their resolutions were unassailable.

It befell the old alcoholics to inspire the community with fiery speeches for the next battle. They invoked the ancestors’ heroism and the enemies’ cowardice in the collective memory to boost each individual’s self-confidence. Then they assigned positions to the young and ordered the ambush.

“For their only tactic lies in the surprise attack.”

The senators were colossal educators with scaly skin. From Pechstein’s notes: “They gave wine great credit. They did not know the agony of subordinates. They claimed the freedom of artists and ignored the safety of dependents.”

The jesters were no less inventive than today’s project managers in the creative economy. Their childhood lay far away along the streams of memory and imagination. Nearby were the Amazon and dangerous bathing. Everyone had long survived keeping their caiman in the bathroom.

By now, they even had a concept of their own wildness. The tamed peoples on the coast offered deterrent examples. The 17th century depicted Christianized Indians in an image that made nature itself retch. The indigenous touched by civilization’s pestilent breath were so pitiable that they sold themselves. They could not bear work; their enslavement was colonial nonsense.

The Tapuha, however, set up their dwellings according to the advice of drunken soothsayers, at great distance from Portuguese settlements. Their chiefs were recognizable by their hairstyle. They wore crimped waves. They scarred themselves for fortitude. The youngest warriors bore weights and raced until exhaustion forced them to pass on the load. As proof of their merits, they grew their fingernails. This freedom was a great privilege, comparable to a royal fief.

The Tapuha knew no agriculture. Berries and roots served as supplements to game. They placed meat in a pit under leaves and earth and lit a fire above it. The pit functioned like an oven.

Pechstein noted: “The Tapuha roast and braise like champions.”

Spending effort in the kitchen ultimately proved to be a mark of peacefulness. Today we call those peoples pacifist who take their time cooking.

Pechstein observed that the Tapuha appeared very differently in their villages. He followed a group of “giant fair-skinned people.” They wielded “immense bows, which they handled so skillfully that no fly escaped them… In running and jumping, none could match them.”

Apparently, they did not share ancestry with the others. Pechstein wrote: “Just as once in the blast furnaces of Germanic migration tribes merged, apparently anyone can be a Tapuha who seeks connection and whom the community grants strength. I call the fair-skinned group Bow Kings, as their warriors handle their man-sized weapons arrogantly… They are not only unrelated to the Indians, they do not intermingle with them. I saw such men in Tierra del Fuego and in Brittany. They live neither in houses nor villages, but roam like wild animals through the forest and sleep on the bare earth. They sometimes shelter in hollow tree trunks. Without distinction, they hunt humans and animals alike and eat everything raw. They even consume their children if they die shortly after birth.”