[disclaimer, see M. Foucault, The Order of Things (London, 1970), for much of the following].
(c. 1400)
Icchu Pako steps back from the canvas for a moment. His paint-caked fingers are suspended, arrested by his gaze. Between the vast cage of the canvas that will soon absorb him - his object to represent, and the visual field he inhabits - a representation in our minds eye, Icchu Pako occupies the center of an oscillation.
Icchu Pako confronts our gaze for only a second: we claim little of the ape man's attention in comparison to the subject of his painting. Our imagination cannot penetrate to the front of the canvas. We know not what he intends to represent. When he slaps his hand on the canvas in the next moment, it could be to add a finishing touch; or it is just as likely to be his preliminary outline.
Is Icchu Pako aware that he is the missing link?
---
(present day)
Time slows down, and through the flames, Edward's life flashes before his eyes. In his first eye, an image of hatching from his mother's back; in his second eye, moving to a new burrow at the age of six and leaving his friends behind; in his third, the first bird he killed and ate; in his fourth, the teenage years in which new hair sprouted on new areas of the abdomen and back legs....
-The driver takes a sharp turn at the instant Irish ignites the flamethrower, rendering Art Guy, Gus, Irish, and Edward the tarantula momentarily airborne. The flame misses Edward and Gus but catches Art Guy's napsack and the back seat apolstery. Having lost sight of the spider, Irish evacuates out the right passenger door, army-rolling through the foliage and leaving the door swinging on its hinges. At this moment Art Guy, keeping a level head, hurls his flaming napsack through the left passenger window pane. With the draft caused by the open door on the right, the glass flies back into the faces of Gus and Art Guy. Edward is likewise almost sucked out the open door on the right, but by hooking his strong right feeler on the collar of Gus's Velasquez t-shirt and hoisting himself up, he manages to sink his teeth into the nape of Gus's neck.
Concerned about the fire, the taxi driver attempts to brake, but the taxi is caught in a slide down a viney embankment.
"Everybody out!" he says, bailing from the front seat. Gus and Art Guy, on the other hand, embrace each other, each wailing in different kinds of pain, the vehicle accelerating towards certain doom until it finally charges into a shallow, muddy pond. A pressurized flooding of the passenger compartment douses the fire, but soon the taxi settles into the mud. Without thinking twice our hero and his spider-bitten comrade climb onto the roof.
Machu Picchu rises up in the distance.
---
Feeling less like an upstanding young tarantula and more like an undignified drowned rat, Edward shakes some water off himself and makes his way from the pond towards his burrow, which could now be miles away. The experience in the taxi has startled him; it was the first time he recalled a mental image of himself, and even hours later the images are still emblazoned on his eight retinas. Is there more to the tarantula condition than he first suspected? The thought nags him at first but then excites him, the idea that experience, not just bird-flesh, might satisfy the soul. But with this thought Edward becomes hungry. He finds a loose shred of cotton poncho and begins to build a bird trap.
---
F. B. Irish is not happy. She hides against a tree on the frequent lookout for more fire-breathing spiders, jaguars, and the like. She does not want to be 'rescued,' at the moment, however. If there's anything she fears more than jaguars, it is younger scholars suggesting to her traditions of Last Judgment iconography. If she bides her time, she could lend the Machu Picchu deesis a proper social context on her own watch, and catch up later with her co-explorers for the formal description and photographs. Still, she can't say she isn't spooked.
"Kaw!" goes a mean-looking bird.
"-Shut the hell up," says Irish.
The bird tilts its head.
"You'll blow my cover," says Irish.
The Machu Picchu deesis is executed by an unknown hand before the arrival of Spaniards in Peru. It receives virtually no scholarly attention, mainly because it is argued to have been repainted by an ugly conquistador, painting his own likeness over the faces of John the Baptist, Mary, and Jesus.
"Kaw!" goes the bird, this time creeping up from behind Irish, perching in a soft bed of matted grass which has been paved from the scholar's tumble.
"-Shush, I mean it," says Irish. "I'm going over my historiography."
Even the dumpy little bird looks like its out to get me, she thinks to herself. She shakes her head and closes her eyes.
Not least because of the lack of historical evidence and an over-reliance on antiquated stylistic comparisons the Machu Picchu deesis requires a social reassessment.
"K-" the bird starts, but is immediately cut off by a dull thud.
Irish opens her eyes to see a cloud of feathers rising up from the carcass of her harasser. She jumps when she sees that the bird is being devoured by a tarantula; indeed, it looks like the same tarantula she saw in the taxi, but it could be anyone's guess.
She grabs a long stick for defense, but the spider shows no interest in her. It simply drags the bird carcass back into the underbrush.
"You're not so bad after all," says Irish.
---
"Gus, we've got to get off the top of this car at some point," says Art Guy.
"I know what I saw," says Gus.
"Look, even if you did see a pirahna, I promise we'll be fine if we just wade a few yards to shore."
"They gather together in overwhelming schools within seconds. We wouldn't stand a chance."
"Next you'll be telling me about schools of Nessies."
Gus is silent.
"Ah, come on bud," says Art Guy, hitting Gus on the shoulder. "You'll thank me when we're safe on shore."
"What makes you think the shore is so safe? Have you heard of jaguars?"
"Gus...what about the money? Machu Picchu's over there, and we can still get that money."
"My camera needs to dry out, and you threw your napsack with all your notebooks out the window of the car."
"Oh dear," says Art Guy. "I forgot about that."
After a few seconds pause Art Guy jumps in the pond and swims his way to shore.
"Hurry up, Gus, we need to go find my notebook."
"Agreed, and don't forget about your own interests too," says Gus. "Wait, did you see any pirahna?"
"Not one fin."
Gus hops down from the car and slinks his way hurriedly through the water. Halfway through he freaks out and books it to shore.
"Thanks for warning me about the pirahna, friend," says Gus.
---
In sober silence Gus photographs the interiors and exteriors of Machu Picchu while Art Guy walks around aimlessly with a charred notebook.
"Do you remember where she said the deesis was?" says Art Guy.
Gus shrugs, "Somewhere."
"Look I'm really sorry about the pirahna, I just had to get us down off that car."
"Well it worked," says Gus. "We got the notebook, we'll get our money, we didn't die, and you lied to your friend."
Art Guy begins to feel like he's blown it.
"Hey, Gus, what do you say we swap roles. I'll take the pictures; why don't you write the formal analysis? I think this time you'll do a better job of it than I."
"Why?"
"Do you want to swap or not? It's cool if you'd rather take the photos."
"Yeah, let's swap," says Gus. "It'll be a nice change of pace."
"Now where's that deesis?" says Art Guy.
"Intihuata Solar Clock; it's on the underside of an adjacent stone," says Gus.
---
It's at about this time when Irish decides to phone the driver, using a safety radio she has nabbed from his cab while he isn't looking. The plan is to get the driver to guide her through Macchu Picchu, contemplate the image for about the last two hours of daylight, and have a cab arranged for the evening flight from Peru.
No answer.
"Don't do this," says Irish.
For fifteen minutes, no answer on the other end of the line. She tries pressing all the different buttons, speaking into the thing, using phrases like "Hello?" "Testing, one, two," and "Amaziiing Graaace." For a little humorous distraction she breathes heavily into the radio. But the other line does not pick up, and the vast expanse of wilderness begins to send chills through her.
She stands indecisive against the tree, hearing the late afternoon roar of insect songs intensify. Then, out of nowhere, a primeval scream.
"I can't see the wood through the trees - call a spade a spade - I'm on my way," says Irish with a shaky tenor, retracing her army roll back to the road and trotting down it towards Machu Picchu, pretending what she'd heard was delirium.
---
Art Guy and Gus are taken aback by what they see when they turn over the deesis stone: St. John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and Christ, all with the same freakishly bizarre face.
"What do you see Professor?" says Art Guy.
"St. John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and Christ, arranged as a deesis, painted by an indigenous artist somehow aware of the deesis iconography, and who painted it as an intercessory image for his family."
Art Guy frowns.
"I don't think I can follow you there, Gus. The faces here can't have been indigenous."
"Why not?"
"Well it's more likely to have been repainted by a Spanish conquistador."
"Is there evidence of repaint?" says Gus. "Here, use this little x-ray application on the camera and you'll see it."
"Ex ray what?" says Art Guy.
After a lengthy struggle, they take an x-ray photo of the image.
"See?" says Art Guy, "that looks like overpaint. It would be cool if it were indigenous, it really would."
"I stand corrected," says Gus.
---
Like Cronus eating his sons, Icchu Pako takes a bite out of fresh pirahna while perching regally on top of a broken-down taxi in the middle of a pond. He savors the tastes of his royalty, the expanse of his kingdom, the power of his reflection in the water.
(to be continued...)
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