The American gave Schr?dinger his best “who, me?” and continued across the river. When Mac emerged from the water, a small crowd had gathered around the agonized soldier.
As MacCready watched, two Germans forcibly held the man down while one of the guides drew an obsidian blade from a leather scabbard. Not surprisingly, the screaming man became even more terrified as the knife-wielding Indian moved toward him with a menacing grimace. Then, in one swift motion, the guide slit open the soldier’s pants, but not the soldier himself. There followed another blur of movement and this time the man’s underpants were sliced open. Immediately the group seemed to take a collective step backward, but their retreat had nothing to do with modesty or embarrassment. To everyone present it appeared as if the screaming man was wrestling with his own penis.
“Es ist in meinem penis!” the man screamed, and a moment later those standing close enough (too close, actually) got a look at exactly what the man was wrestling with.
Even MacCready got a glimpse—just long enough for him to see that the tail section of a tiny fish was protruding from the soldier’s besieged beanpole.
“Es ist in meinem penis!” he screamed again, his eyes wide, imploring someone to help—at which point, one of the man’s friends did step forward; but as he did so, the fish gave a violent wiggle. As the would-be rescuer watched, the visible portion of the creature seemed to shorten considerably and it worked its way another inch further upstream. Now only the wriggling tail fin was exposed.
Colonel Wolff stepped away from the chaotic scene and addressed the guides in Portuguese: “Qual é aquela coisa?”
“Ele é um candiru,” one of them replied.
“Oh shit,” MacCready muttered, though apparently not quietly enough.
The colonel spun toward him. “What?”
“I’m pretty sure he said it’s a candiru.”
“And what is this . . . candiru?”
“A parasitic catfish, Vandellia cirrhossa.”
“A catfish?”
“Yeah, they usually attack larger fish, latch on to their gills, then feed on the blood pumping through them. Very messy eaters.”
“But what is this fish doing inside him?”
“Candiru get excited at the scent of urine,” MacCready said. “Probably because it’s full of the same nitrogen compounds their prey excrete from their gills. Fish don’t urinate.”
As Wolff turned back toward his men, MacCready glanced over at the guides. “Walks with Empty Bladder” was now casually scanning the sky, as if searching for rain clouds or maybe butterflies. MacCready had to suppress a chuckle. “Your man must have relieved himself while he was wading across the stream,” he announced. “His new pal evidently took a wrong turn at Willy’s willy.”
“And how do we get this . . . parasite out of him?” Wolff asked.
Mac shook his head. “From what I hear, there’s only one way to remove a candiru.”
“And what is that?”
The American responded by making a scissoring motion with his index and middle fingers.
Now it was one of the guides who turned away, feigning disgust but in reality hiding a grin.
Less than five minutes later, the expedition resumed its trek toward the plateau—minus the traumatized soldier. Private Schoeppe had been sent back to Nostromo Base, limping, whimpering, and desperately clutching one end of a string that had been fastened around the base of the candiru’s tail fin. He had also been given instructions for the “necessary surgery.”
“Now, that guy’s going to have a serious story to tell if he ever gets home from the war,” MacCready said to no one in particular.
Just up ahead, Corporal Kessler turned back for a moment, “You are right, MacCready, but I think it will be a short story.”
The American smiled, suppressing the urge to keep the exchange going for fear of getting coldcocked again by his outsize SS buddy.
The Indian guides also watched as the sad-looking warazu stumbled past them. They had neglected to tell the strangers that there was indeed another remedy for a candiru attack. This one involved inserting a potion made from the unripe fruit of the jagua plant into the stricken orifice. The extract killed the candiru and dissolved its body, allowing the remains to be urinated out within a day or two.
“Such a common plant,” one of the men said, shaking his head and grinning.
“I have seen many of them this day,” said the other. Then he turned and slashed at something growing across the trail.