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. I am one of the few who believe, she said.Large referred to her as Penelope waiting for the return of Ulysses. Like Fawcett's quest for Z, Nina's search for the missing explorers became anobsession. The return of her husband is all that she lives for nowadays, a friendtold the consul general in Rio.Nina had almost no money, except for the fraction ofFawcett's pension and a small stipend that Brian sent her from Peru.As the yearswore on, she lived like a nomadic pauper, wandering, with her stack of Fawcett-related papers, from Brian's home in Peru to Switzerland, where Joan had settledwith her husband, Jean de Montet, who was an engineer, and four children,including Ro-lette.The more people who doubted the explorers' perseverance, themore wildly Nina seized upon evidence to prove her case.When one of Fawcett'scompasses turned up in Bakairí Post, in 1933, she insisted that her husband hadrecently placed it there as a sign that he was alive, even though, as Brian pointedout, it was clearly something that his father had left behind before he departed. Iget the impression, Nina wrote a contact in Brazil, that on more than one occasionColonel Fawcett has tried to give signs of his presence, and no one except myself -has understood his meaning. Sometimes she signed her letters, Believe me. In the 1930s, Nina began to receive reports from a new source: missionaries whowere pushing into the Xingu area, vowing to convert what one of them called themost primitive and unenlightened of all South American Indians. In 1937, MarthaL.Moennich, an American missionary, was trekking through the jungle, her eyelidsswollen from ticks, and reciting the Lord's promise Lo, I am with you always,even unto the end of the world when she claimed to make an extraordinarydiscov ery: at the Kuikuro village, she met a boy with pale skin and bright-blueeyes.The tribe told her that he was the son of Jack Fawcett, who had fathered himwith an Indian woman. In his dual nature there are conspicuous traits of Britishreserve and of a military bearing, while on his Indian side, the sight of a bow andarrow, or a river, make him a little jungle boy, Moennich later wrote.She said thatshe had proposed taking the boy back with her so that he could be given theopportunity not only to learn his father's language but to live among his father'srace. The tribe, however, refused to relinquish him.Other missionaries broughtback similar tales of a white child in the jungle a child who was, according to oneminister, perhaps the most famous boy in the whole Xingu. In 1943, Assis Chateaubriand, a Brazilian multimillionaire who owned aconglomerate of newspapers and radio stations, dispatched one of his tabloidreporters, Edmar Morel, to nd Fawcett's grandson. Months later, Morel returnedwith a seventeen-year-old boy with moon white skin named Dulipé.He was hailedas the grandson of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett or, as the press called him, theWhite God of the Xingu. The discovery sparked an international frenzy.Dulipé, shy and nervous, wasphotographed in Life and paraded around Brazil like a carnival attraction a freak, as Time magazine put it.People packed into movie theaters, the linescurling around the block, to see footage of him in the wild, naked and pale.(Whenthe RGS was asked about Dulipé, it responded phlegmatically that such matters arerather outside the scienti c scope of our Society. ) Morel phoned Brian Fawcett inPeru and asked if he and Nina wanted to adopt the young man.When they examinedphotographs of Dulipé, however, Nina was taken aback. Do you notice anythingabout the child's eyes? she asked Brian. They are all screwed up, as though hurt by the glare. That child looks to me like an albino, she said.Tests later con rmed herassessment.Many legends of white Indians, in fact, stemmed from cases of albinism.In 1924, Richard O.Marsh, an American explorer who later searched for Fawcett,announced that on an expedition in Panama he not only had spotted white Indians but was bringing back three living specimens as proof. They are golden haired,blue-eyed and white-skinned, Marsh said. Their bodies are covered with long downy white hair.They & look like very primitive Nordic whites
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