She studied his portrait.
Hard to believe he’d been a pig-herder as a child. Now proudly resplendent, gallant even, in an
exotically plumed hat, white ruff and silver breast-plate, beard of
fastidiously twirled waves and palm leaves sprouting from his military helmet,
quite the caballero. But what of the
shadowy conquistador? Eyes burning with
gold fever, rotten teeth grinding with impatience, brow knotted with
intolerance . . ?
But give Pizarro his due.
Disgruntled, he left behind his confinement in the piggery for a whole new world that loomed beyond the
sty and stench of a mucky scrub of farm in Trujillo, Spain. He must’ve had gumption, self-belief, a huge
conviction in his dream of Eldorado, a restlessness of spirit, to secure a
position on the caravel. No doubt that
first expedition to the southern Americas a lurid nightmare: monstrous black cats growling down from
thick boughs camouflaged by impenetrable brackets of sheeny green foliage and
lianas dangling like nooses, slashes of eyes glinting emeralds in the night
sky; giant white birds with struts and waves of wingspan bigger than the
hook-beaked eagles he’d seen plummeting down on their prey; those long-shanked
sheep with stretched-up necks and upright heads and bodies laden in shags of
wool. And who could forget those
indios? ‘Long ears’, those Spaniards
called them, dripping with gold earplugs and silver pins clasping their
rainbow-coloured ponchos, as if you could just pluck shiny base metals from every
coca bush.
By the end of her first week, Urschla was getting good vibes
about Hogar de Rehabilitacion, a reform institution in the beaten-down,
straggly eastern suburbs of Cuzco, the third largest city in Peru. As a volunteer assigned to the psychiatric
unit, she was only permitted to observe the sessions but could make herself
available for a confessional or two. In
addition, she requested that she might attend the English classes offered to
the twenty-eight inmates and study them more closely in a different
scenario. Swiss-born, she possessed a
good ear for languages, being comfortable with English, not to mention
intermediate-plus standard in conversational French and German. On the day of registration at Leandro’s
Language School, Avenida de Sol, she enrolled in ‘Tandem’ classes, whereby she
could find a Spanish-speaking partner wishing to practise oral English. There in the small cafeteria she met with
her newfound buddy, Conchita, a local lass from the district of San
Jeronimo. Over a Styrofoam brew of
tasteless but highly recommended coca leaves, each would take a turn in leading
the conversation, first in English for half an hour, then Spanish.
One inmate in Hogar de Rehabilitacion’s two English classes
that Urschla couldn’t get a bead on was a cranky-looking man with the sulky
jowls of a pug, who spoke only Quechuan but in class uttered not a word of this
most popular tongue of the indigenous peoples that was finally
acknowledged as a state language in 1975.
This hunched hombre merely sat there, lumpen, at the end of the long
table, nursing that fixed, jowly stare of exasperation.
The English teacher, Mauri, also seemed perplexed about how
to treat him, sometimes putting a hand on the crinkly, dark brown shoulder of
the man’s imitation-leather jacket, occasionally addressing him in halting
Spanish, making a none too subtle point of calling out at the end of class,’
Adios, Senor!’ All to no avail. This guy, this fixture, looking decidedly
worn with bloodshot eyes and a jutting chin, hadn’t even bothered to write his
name on a cardboard tag for the teacher’s benefit but simply stuck fast to his
chair and remained tongue-tied, evidently understanding nothing.
‘At least he turns up,’ Urschla said to Mauri, who obviously
felt embarrassed to have virtually treated this passive brother as
invisible. ‘Coming to class is
optional. He could have gone back to
his room and watched TV.’
‘True, but I’d like management to inform me what he’s
capable of. Or what I can expect from
him. Not only does the headmaster not
give me a class list, but no case histories.’
Yet other men were uninhibitedly demonstrative. Burly Carlos with a large, round head and
bold chestnut eyes, firm biceps, was quite the actor when demonstrating the
meaning of emotions by facial expression, such as anger, fear, horror – the
teacher backing away in mock anxiety – but very gentle in manner and
courteous. ‘Show respect for the
teacher!’ Carlos commanded in his booming voice, as if the brothers might
forget at lesson’s end to clap Mauri’s performance or shake his hand or even
wrap an arm about his shoulders. It was
part of the school’s philosophy that all inmates were obliged to respect one
another as well as the staff. With the
exception of Teacher Mauri, all the men including management called everyone
‘Brother’.
The teacher himself felt awkward about using the word
‘brother’ or even the warm and fuzzy tone it conveyed. He wasn’t particularly close to the men, but
in any case the word itself reminded him of left-wing union meetings held in
Melbourne in the 1970’s. But the main
office in Hogar de Rehabilitacion was welcoming and friendly. Mauri would invariably be invited to join
the headmaster and director for lunch, though he felt slightly queasy when he
spotted through the half-open kitchen door one of the cooking relief scooping
up the rice spilling onto the table with a free hand.
The director, Javier, a tall, thin man almost wasting away,
even though he forked up any scraps of meat left on anyone else’s plate – Mauri
fussed over cutting out minute pieces of meat between the thick veins and
gristle that almost made him gag - was talking about a subject dear to
him: ‘The potato was a poisonous plant,
but it was the Incas that found a way to cultivate it without poison. We have hundreds of different sorts of
potato, different sizes, different colours, different shapes. ‘You will probably eat it every day.’
Mauri said not a word about being denied a taste of this
Peruvian staple at his homestay, but cut himself a slice of a large and healthy
pink tomato. One cautious bite made him
realize his mistake. Coughing and
spluttering, he damn near choked, eyes watering over. ‘Que fuego!’ he gasped.
Both headmaster Enrique and Javier enjoyed a hearty laugh.
‘Pepper’s very hot, no?’ said the director, cutting himself a larger
slice. ‘The Incas were agrarian people,
you know. It is believed today that the
humble chilli gives you longer life.
But if you go into the forest . . .’
‘The Amazon?’ broke in Enrique.
‘Yes, the world’s largest tropical rainforest,’ continued
Javier. ‘Take care. There are some medicine men, shamans, who
claim to have secret knowledge of certain plants that the rest of us are
ignorant about. Some tourists, mainly
naive Americans, have fallen very sick or vanished after staying in tropical
jungle with shamans.’
‘How you say, witch doctors,’ added Enrique. ‘They believe Pacha Mama.’
‘That’s Mother Earth,’ resumed Javier. ‘Shamans make a hallucinogenic extract from
the Aychuasca vine. The drink has a
bitter taste but expands your consciousness.
Your mind becomes clear as crystal, you can have visions, you become
very aware of yourself. In some Amazon
clinics they use this treatment for curing alcoholism and drug addiction.’
‘But not here at Hogar de Rehabilitacion,’ Enrique said
dismissively.
‘I’ll take the warning,’ said Mauri with a grin, ‘but I’m
more concerned about high-altitude breathing and mosquito bites.’
While waiting in the office opposite the computer console,
manned by one of the brothers, Mauri contemplated the quotations on the wall
that served to remind the men to mend their ways.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
. . .
To bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
Isaiah 61-1
All
we like sheep have gone astray; we have
Turned away every one to his own way:
And the
Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53-6
For that first lesson, Mauri was observed by his tutor
escort, who just before their final bus stop had instructed him to yell out,
‘Baja!’ to inform the driver. Soon
after introducing himself to the dozen men, whom he would soon learn to address
as ‘brothers’ – such was the mutually supportive tone of the institution – a
sharp downpour of rain clattered on the tin roof, so that no one could speak
and be heard for several minutes. His
tutor smiled at his helplessness. To
redeem the situation, he shouted out the theme of emotions and asked the group
to demonstrate a facial expression appropriate to the emotion written up on the
board. Mauri demonstrated ‘frustration’
with the rain dinning down by waving his fists at the ceiling, gritting his
teeth and growling. When it came to ‘anger’, the men gave all-too-convincing
performances, so much so that the teacher feigned cowering in the corner. Big, burly Carlos with a dilated scowl,
jagged molars and muscles swelling on brutish arms was the most
convincing. When he hugged to death the
reluctant teacher at the end of the lesson, Mauri sensed that the class had
accepted him.
Making his way out from Hogar’s administrative office into
the upper yard, Mauri was startled by the almost luminous, staring eyes, a
cerulean blue, of a dog sniffing about his feet. Its shape and markings resembled a slightly smaller husky. Reaching out warily with a hand, he ruffled
about the neck the dog’s coarse coat that felt like old carpet.
‘Ciego,’ said Alberto, the oldest inmate at seventy, acting
as concierge for the week.
‘Blind?’ Mauri replied.
‘Yet his poor old eyes are wide open.
And what luminous eyes they are!
What’s his name?’
‘Que?’
‘Que se llama? Su
nombre?’
‘Wheesky?’ Alberto chuckled.
‘Probably this old-timer’s own addiction,’ Mauri thought.
‘Muy viejo.
Dieciseis, pienso.’
The old dog was sniffing the newcomer’s hand, then stalked
him all the way up the yard to the inner gate, a metal door that Alberto
unlocked.
‘Gracias, senor.’
‘Hasta manana,’ the old man muttered, unlocking the creaking
outer gate and allowing two of the visiting hounds to scurry out and pick over
any scraps among the rubbish strewn alongside the dusty road of compacted
earth.
‘Hasta luego.’
Once outside, Mauri took a sudden deep breath, partly because of that steep incline; partly because the dark green foothills stretching in gentle curves up to the peaks softened in the late afternoon sun. Besides, he was free. He wondered how often the inmates would stare up at those Andean peaks and wistfully reflect on lost freedom. Or whether their own inner emptiness might be reflected in that utterly desolate, utterly tranquil landscape devoid of any human presence or birdsong or hunters tracking the last puma, where once the Inca runners would have criss-crossed those mountains bearing their messages north, south, east or westwards to the four winds from the heart of the empire in Cuzco.
Alighting from the evening bus at Centro, Mauri slowly
plodded up the Avenida de Sol into the Plaza de Armas of colonial colonnades,
then a gradual gradient up a narrow road alongside the Spaniards’ beautiful
baroque cathedral. Huddled singly or in
twos and threes and dressed in European clothes, senoritas would murmur
‘Massage, sir,’ or less discreetly, ‘Amigo, you want massage?’ Looking straight ahead at some indeterminate
angle of stone wall or the bored-looking hombre he regularly passed, statuesque
but unconvincing, too tall and big-boned, acting as Inca warrior replete with
spear and bulging, gold-painted breast-plate, hoping to earn a peso or ten by
posing for a tourist against a large-block Inca stone wall secured later with
mortar by the invaders. Almost bowed by
the puffing effort of the incline, the weight of his shoulder bag of books and
i-pad as well as fatigue, Mauri would never tire of relishing the silvery
stream of Inca masonry beneath the lamplight in the laneways.
‘I received my first kiss today in Peru,’ Mauri declared
chirpily to his hostess, Mariquita, whose plump, doughy face looked startled.
‘I was given a one-hour guided tour by my tutor in Volunteers International,’
he explained, trying to reassure her.
‘This young girl, calls herself Angelina, must’ve been seventeen,
eighteen, suddenly rushed out of her shop, threw her arms around us in turn,
plastered kisses on our cheek, then attempted to drag us into her shop. Realizing we were holding back, she gave us
her card, pinned mementoes on our lapels and told us to come back on Inti
Raymi, when she would give us special discounts. Some whirlwind way of doing business, eh?’
‘Okay, it’s Inti Raymi,’ said Mariquita, with a heavy
sigh. ‘Tribute to the Sun God. Party time in Cuzco.’ Her eyes glanced up at the ceiling. ‘But you be careful. Many tourists robbed at this time. Very busy, you know. Many chicas give massage. They prostitutes, not nice girls. Don’t trust no-one. It’s bad problema. These chicas distract you so their amigos can search your
pockets. They give you drink with drugs. Drugs big problema in Peru. Many tourists come in June, many, many. And . . .’ Mariquita stared hard at him,
‘their amigos offer you cocaine, steal your passport, make you drug mule. They very dangerous, have knife. You take care! Today Peru is cocaine capital of the world. It very sad, no?’
Mauri soon developed the habit of strolling round those fascinating stone alleys with
deep-recessed Inca boutiques bedecked with alpaca shawls, pan flutes and
colourful gimcrack handicrafts for an hour before catching at lunch-time the
blue-and-yellow single-decker bus crammed with immaculately uniformed but
excitable schoolchildren to Hogar de Rehabilitacion. Once, finding himself in a narrow alley that suddenly emptied
itself and settled into an unnatural stillness, he felt a tinge of panic. On passing what appeared to be a cheap pub
with darkened windows, volleys of ribald laughter broke out in echoes along the
stone walls. Mauri quickened his step,
taking two or three turns down unfamiliar alleys, then by chance found himself
in the narrow lane of high stonewall bounded by a row of small stores, where
he’d been accosted by Angelina that first saunter.
What a relief she didn’t recognise him! She was busying about outside her little
shop of strung-up bric a brac and souvenirs, pointing at the stretch of wall
before her, bending down to explain to two small children the mystery of those
Inca stones. ‘And there,’ she was spouting with gusto and American twang,
jerking a finger over the contour of a roundish stone with nodules, ‘is head,
head of puma. You can see?’
‘Look, honey, over here,’ said the tot’s father, shaded by
his white sombrero. ‘It’s like a big
puddy cat. There’s the stump of his
tail, see?’
‘The puma,’ waxed Angelina, unperturbed, ‘is the same form
as our city. Sacsayhuaman is the
head. So Cuzco,’ she rattled on to the
father, ‘was builded in the form of puma.’
‘Wow, how about that, darlin’?’
The little girl in check bolero could only frown and put a
forefinger in her mouth, whereas the boy fired an imaginary gun with two
fingers at the horrible giant and made a splattering sound. Mauri couldn’t discern any animal shape
stirring from those stones, but recalled something about the puma representing
the spirit of the earth.
That first Saturday in Cuzco, Mauri was determined to climb
the narrow, steep one-way street that breathlessly led up San Blas, with deep,
desperate gasps, to Sacsayhuaman, the most extensive ruins of an Inca
settlement nearby. Only about one fifth
of the fortress now remained, much of the stone having been dismantled to
construct the cathedral and other major buildings by the Spanish victors. Somewhere in this vast expanse, it was
rumoured, was the secret burial place of the lost treasure of the Incas.
Having emerged from cobbled stone onto the higher plane of
asphalted main road that wound up to the historic site, Mauri stopped to rest
his arms on the parapet above a small square that in turn overlooked the
city. Not quite the magnificent view of
the valley it promised, due to the haze that hugged the Andean foothills and
blotted out the distant airport runway and snow-capped peaks. The bright sunshine made him squint. Barely could he pick out the twin bell
towers of the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas.
‘That’s where Pizarro’s hacked body was buried,’ he recollected. ‘Murdered by Almagro’s avengers.’
Behind him, a long, mazy wall of four uneven tiers of grey
polygonal stones that attracted the delicate pink rays of sunlight, turning
slate-blue in the shadows of an overhanging tree. Immediately below him, the car park, dark flat, grey stones laid
out in the pattern of interlocking diamonds.
Toiling slowly up the main path from the entrance to
Sacsayhuaman, he first noticed the massive corner blocks taller than himself,
probably weighing over one hundred tons, then the three or four token llamas,
or ‘little camels’ as Pizarro called them, together with their short, stocky
owners in their gaily coloured clothes and black stove-pipe hats, pleading with
hands cupped for one nuevo peso in exchange for a tourist selfie with llama, a
pittance given that twenty-five per cent of Peru’s population earned less than
two dollars a day.
Mauri cast around the altiplano, the high grassy plain with
a promising phalanx of giant stones surging on the hillock to his left,
probably weighing well over one hundred tons, mighty smooth-cut monuments that
the Spaniards couldn’t budge. So this
was where the Cusquenos made their last defiant stand under Manco Inca,
Atahualpa’s successor, in 1536. Most
startling was the double wall in a zigzag shape, supposedly representing the
puma’s teeth. Amongst the scattered
remains lay the natural stone, the black andesite, anchored like a pod of
humpbacked whales, dark magma mounds rising from narrow clefts to serve as
raised viewing platform for the Inca nobility to oversee the neatly clipped
grass of the parade ground. And three
hundred metres away, dominating not only the ruins of the fortress but the city
of Cuzco, rose the statue of Cristo Blanco that shimmered with gold light at
night, testament to the Catholic conquest.
Urschla was seated at the back of the class. The previous afternoon Mauri had rebuked her
publicly as she sat among the men while explaining something in stilted English
with rising animation. They might not
have understood his drift but they must have sensed he was flustered.
‘Everyone listening,’ he’d said quite loudly. But no one was. How he hated having outsiders watching his teaching
techniques. That woman
was still explaining something in Spanish at the far end of the
long table to a group of four, who were lapping up her attention. Mauri felt he was losing control. The irritation was rising in his throat and
he knew he had to sound calm and cautious but firm. ‘Urschla?’ he said quietly. ‘Urschla!’
At last she turned round. ‘I’m
trying to teach English here.’ It
sounded like peevish pleading.
She half-turned toward him and nodded, but offered a slight
frown.
It was Velasco who broke the awkwardness between them. Velasco, who was sitting at the far end of
the row, where he could cast lingering, sideways glances at Urschla’s freckles
and sandy-coloured tresses and pale mauve scar that ran down her left
cheek.
Eyes to the front, unflinching, she studiously avoided
returning his gaze, but focused on the whiteboard, where Mauri was explaining
‘Hangman’ to an audience of sceptics.
Velasco turned back to his exercise book, scarcely looking
up. He was rapt in copying out a single
letter, l, but ten times on one line in very neat handwriting, then
again l for the next dozen lines.
He took care to make the upper and lower curls of the letter very
graceful. Even when Mauri stopped all
chatter by mounting a chair to explain with dramatic gestures the noose hanging
from the ceiling and tied round the victim’s neck, then how the chair was kicked
away; at which point he made a deep-throated strangling sound in his
throat. Velasco gave only the slightest
glance before ducking his head. In
spite of Mauri’s antics, the class hadn’t any notion of the word ‘EXPLORER’
or the clue, ‘Columbus’ nationality’.
Next Velasco had fixated on the word BOWL in the
Activity called CIRCLE IN THE WORDS, then in his exercise book in neat,
sloping handwriting repeated BOWL five times on each line for the whole
page. His preoccupation was
occasionally punctuated by clenched blinking, a look of startled fear and
bewilderment caught in the rays of sunshine.
Suddenly, he stopped to write in italics the sole letters f and d
for several absorbing minutes.
‘I apologise for interrupting you, Urschla, when you seemed
to be getting on so well with that group.’
Mauri tried not to sound sarcastic.
‘That’s okay,’ she replied cheerily.
‘Did you take a squiz at what Velasco was doing?’
‘Yes, it was most odd.
He appears oblivious to just about everything going on in class.’
‘Obsessive compulsive?’ said Mauri.
‘I don’t know. I
haven’t seen his case history. If he
was a druggie, he may still be under the influence, so not completely weaned
off it.’
‘He was certainly giving you the glad eye.’
‘Yes, I know, but I wasn’t going to make eye contact with
him.’
The following afternoon Velasco was the first to finish
copying the notes on the board. Surely
the drug hadn’t worked itself so quickly out of his system. Any which way, Velasco still seemed tightly
enveloped in his own world, a law unto himself.
It was the two youngest men, boys in fact, Ruy and
Faustino, who, fifteen and sixteen years old, proved the most mischievous. A teacher seldom likes cheeky pupils to leer
without reason, especially if he is the butt.
Ruy would make a strained gargling noise when over-zealously perfecting
pronunciation practice. At first, Mauri
thought the lad had a speech defect; and that when he choked on a laugh, he was
covering up embarrassment. As for
Faustino, whenever Mauri cast a quizzical eye at him, the nuisance was rocking
on his chair, staring open-mouthed, as if waiting for a rebuke, daring him.
Their addictions to alcohol and/or substance abuse were
never divulged to Mauri. Neither did he
enquire, nor was he confided in by any of the men. That was the preserve of the psychiatric unit. Nonetheless, he reckoned that the two
youngest brothers were most likely
couriers. Their parents would have
stumped up their fees; otherwise the boys’d be detained in prison.
So many of these guys know what it’s like to be stoned, reflected
Urschla with a tired sigh, she who had abruptly kicked the habit at seventeen,
after she’d been glassed in a Barcelona nightclub.
Cuzco’s historic heartland breathes stone; straight, one-way
narrow roadways, narrower paths winding, stretching uphill, sweeping down
valley-bound: cobbled lanes flanked by
uniform rectangular stones and larger slabs, rivers of silver in lamplight at
night. The Children of the Sun loved their
stonework, as aesthetic as practical.
Walls leaning back, concave; the precisely fitted, curved black wall of
Qorikancha, beautiful relic of the sacked Temple of the Sun, with its
gold-plated walls; steep steps to make you gasp with admiration as well as
altitude blow-out; stones worked at twelve angles, all shapes and sizes, massive
jigsaws that stood up to countless earthquakes and Spanish fault-lines. In their contempt, their ignorance, the
conquistadors smashed edifices to their foundations, holy places lustily. Then realized the foundation stones were
expertly, accurately measured and laid – you couldn’t push a pin between these
ashlars – you merely had to resurrect thousands upon thousands of tumbled
stones, marvelling begrudgingly at the Inca disregard for mortar, their pulley
power and rolling slides, and what great skill to erect dry-stone walls with
twelve-sided angles?
How on earth could such a primitive race have quarried,
dressed, conveyed and hoisted such monumental pillars massing above one hundred
tons, some standing like giant guards at an entrance, a heavy lintel resting
above their heads? Why did Inca masons
erect blocks of irregular shapes, gigantic jigsaws tight-fitted, stone hammers
pounding? And why risk balancing them
without the security of mortar? It
defied belief that thousands of labourers could lug them over several
miles. With what? With ropes, rolling logs, levers and poles
or ramps of compacted earth?
Must have taken months to construct a single wall, cutting
blocks from granite or limestone in the quarry, then relaying to the site,
recutting them, sliding, resettling stones by interlocking, walls backward
leaning. Hadn’t those long ears figured
out the notion of a plumbline with their quipus of knotted strings? Even a straightforward window or doorframe
was ridiculously out of kilter; mis-shapen trapezoids, ugly, clumsy, shoddy
workmanship. Just as easy to smash as
many stone edifices of these indios as possible, to crush the life-blood of
their culture, just as in the main square at Cajamarca Pizarro’s soldiers with
a battle-cry ‘Santiago!’ could hack at the hands of the hundred bearers of
Atahualpa’s palanquin to bring the Inca emperor down to earth or topple
thousands of his soldiers with a blast from four cannons released from their
hiding-place in a barn.
‘Ah, Spain’s El Siglo de Oro’, Mauri considered. ‘No, rather ‘El Siglo de Oro y Plata.’’
It was hard to imagine the change in Aurelio. The director informed Urschla how this
thirty-something man had gone over the wall several months ago, made his way
home. He was missing his two young boys
dreadfully. Imagine his shock and
disgust when he found his wife in an uncompromising position with another
man. In Aurelio’s own house! Punches were thrown, heated threats
exchanged. Aurelio saw his two sons
cowering in the corner, trembling and wailing.
He was drawn back to Hogar de Rehabilitacion of his own accord,
shame-faced, sullen, seething with anger.
For six months he was wretchedly unhappy, quick to lose his
temper, barely speaking to anyone. The
director expected him to make another dash for it at any time. Then one Sunday afternoon his wife turned
up, scarfed head bowed in contrition, explained in the upper yard beneath the
thatched shelter that that other relationship was finished, terminado
completamente. ‘Estuvo
loco!’ The two boys were always crying
for their daddy. Yet here they were,
chasing squawky, flapping ducks round the upper yard and stroking a snuffling
Whisky, that unseeing dog with penetrating pale blue eyes,
The management perceived a remarkable change had come over
Aurelio and agreed with the psychiatric unit not to alert the police, even give
him some responsibility. What a
personal transformation that caused! As
one of the wardens keeping an eye on the other brothers, he was handed a set of
keys and a two-way radio. Still, he
could not be released, though, no way.
The psychiatric staff couldn’t yet guarantee his mental stability. So now he was asking Urschla if she could
help him find work in the tourist industry.
When Carlos or Aurelio announced the end of lesson through
the open classroom window, scarcely any of the men bothered to stay for the
tutorial hour. Not surprisingly, since
the possibilities were poor: reading aloud
a book to Mauri in English, usually of infant standard with facile cartoons;
English conversation with Mauri or Urschla; or a word game, such as Scrabble. Besides, at four o’clock the men drifted off
to play table soccer with celluloid players on spindles, or table tennis, if
they could find an uncracked ball.
Though what passed for a games table was stained and raddled with
grooves and dints, too short and worm-eaten for classic ping-pong.
Then one afternoon a few minutes into the tutorial hour,
when Urschla was examining her nails and checking her mobile phone for emails, Aurelio’s
cheery face peered round the door. It
was very refreshing to witness his winning smiles and awkward politeness.
‘Hello, Aurelio, did you want to read something?’
‘No read,’ he said.
‘See, I want to be tourist guide.’
‘Oh dear, not another one,’ thought Urschla. ‘His English is pretty basic and he can’t
rely on his charm offensive. Every
unemployed male in Cuzco wants to be a tourist guide. Still, it’s a positive sign.’
‘I have this book.’
He sat down next to her and slid his chair in. Opened up a page near the front. ‘Can we read?’
Urschla hadn’t read the reports on Aurelio’s mental
stability, but he had certainly grown in terms of stature, took his duties
solemnly as if a member of staff, his voice becoming ever more stentorian as he
patrolled the lower yard. Yet here he
was, all fumbles and hesitant smiles, holding out the Fodor travel guide to her.
Following pronunciation practice on the theme of weather,
young Ruy got his tongue rolled in the roof of his mouth, ‘cal loudy’ and
spluttered a laugh. Giving him a stony
stare, Mauri muttered warning:
‘Cuidad! Take care!’
‘Eh?’ said Ruy, cockiness replaced by confusion at Mauri’s
garbled Spanish.
The teacher prolonged the stare, unblinkingly serious. ‘Cuidad,’ he whispered, striving to keep a
lid on his growing annoyance, hoping he hadn’t betrayed to the others any sign
of temper or loss of control. Or had he
said ‘Ciudad’, Spanish for ‘city’, by mistake?
Or pronounced the letter ‘c’ as the Spanish ‘th’ sound instead of the
Peruvian ‘s’?
For the final minutes, Mauri sat down in the middle of one
side of the table between Jorge - ‘George!’ two or three deep voices called
out, as the teacher couldn’t aerate the ‘J’ and pitched for another mood. ‘How many of you watched the Copa de America
on TV last night?’
‘Viva Peru! Peru
play good.’
‘How you say in ingles, “Peru han jugado benissimo?”’
‘Peru played very well.
Who were they playing?’
At lesson’s end, Mauri made a beeline for the oddly subdued
Ruy and reached for his hand to shake.
‘Be a good man tomorrow,’ he murmured with stern countenance.
To his surprise as well as relief, the wake-up call
succeeded. For the final two weeks of
his project, neither lad was a problem; in fact, Faustino was often the first
in class to complete a worksheet, while Ruy was unsneeringly polite when asking
to visit the bathroom.
Unbeknown to Mauri, both stirrers had been reported to the
headmaster by at least one classmate. The last time he clapped eyes on their
sullen faces, they were digging a shallow trench in the mud that ran down
alongside the classroom.
‘Teacher, you must tell headmaster we not rude,’ said a
hangdog Ruy.
‘We desire to learn English good,’ whined Faustino.
‘Mm, I’ll do what I can.’
Marco was one of the most conscientious men in the weaker,
smaller and more passive second class, which commenced at three o’clock. As well as the quietest and most bewildered
student, the thirty-one year old was the only one who lingered behind
self-consciously for the tutorial session, ever solitary, with his scrawly
homework to be corrected. What on earth
had he been addicted to? One
afternoon, as Mauri was departing through the scrubby yard behind the offices,
he glimpsed Marco leading a twisting snake formation of twenty-odd men round
and through a circuit of chairs acting as obstacles to be negotiated. A trio of psychiatrists were making
observations, while some inmates were helpless with chuckling and unsteady
movement and the raggle-taggle with hands on the chap’s shoulders in front were
supposed to have eyes shut. Even so,
several tailenders clattered into chairs and almost tripped. At their head, eyes open, Marco paused
uncertain, slightly bemused, slightly irritated, as if he couldn’t tolerate the
nonsense behind.
But what exactly was Marco’s addiction? Like most of these inmates, he appeared to
be a decent sort, quiet and shy, his voice almost an inaudible bumbling but
deferential. At lesson’s end, he
wouldn’t embrace Mauri with a bear hug like John, the solicitous father-figure,
who would seize the initiative or ask pertinent questions in a loud voice, completely
absorbed in the task; or the bespectacled, balding Wilfredo, with his gentle,
whimsical smile, a typical family man.
What addictions could they possibly be recovering from? Occasionally, Marco would hover at the door
for the tutorial, uncertain whether to come in, a perpetual loner, with
something weighing on his mind.
Saturday morning’s game of pelota seemed his only release from
frustration and self-doubt.
‘It was all about trust,’ explained Urschla to Mauri next
day. ‘Having belief in your group
leader’s capacity to guide.’
‘Yes, but half of them weren’t obeying by the rules and kept
their eyes open. It certainly provided
them with a good belly laugh.’
The men showed a more serious attitude in their classroom
discussion. The usual half-dozen
contributors set the tone, earnest with a few guffaws from the most attentive
or cynical, the psychiatrists standing either side of the long table, pens
poised over their clipboards, smiles frozen.
‘Yes, whom would you trust?’
Urschla wondered. ‘Some of these
guys might have been duped by their pushers and pimps. Or had drinks spiked in a nightclub? Could you trust Pizarro? One hundred and sixty-eight men did,
apparently. Pizarro sets foot on land
at Tumbes in the north-west of Peru.
Accompanied by slaves, interpreters and disaffected indigenous people,
he soon learns that the Incas are in a fractious state. The legitimate emperor, Huascar, has been
murdered by his younger half-brother based in Quito. Cuzco, the Inca capital, lies at Atahualpa’s mercy.
But did Pizarro’s men trust his judgement when they
finally arrived at Cajamarca? The town
was deserted. Had they fallen into
Atahualpa’s trap? They should have, but
the newly installed Inca emperor dallied too long in getting to the town. It was rumoured he was drinking too much.,
treating his grand entrance as some grand ceremonial as if the son of the Sun
God were immortal
Did Atahualpa trust Pizarro? His spies would have alerted him to that strange, over-reaching
animal, taller and faster than the alpaca that some soldiers sat astride on and
was capable of slicing through the air at high speeds, the big cannons with
smoking mouths mounted on wheels, the flashing sticks of steel. For some reason, the royal retinue took its
time to proceed to Cajamarca. Atahualpa
must have expected on that slow journey south that he would be greeted with all
the respect due to the son of God.
Imagine his confusion when he found the city square utterly
deserted. No sign of the tall, bearded,
motley aliens, who had come far to pay tribute. Not a single clue. Suddenly, without notice, a door opened. Walking towards the emperor was a solitary
man in white habit and black robes with a silver cross at his chest, a holy
man, a friar.
Puzzled looks were exchanged amongst the counsellors. Interpreters were listening to this stranger
from afar. Valverde his name, which he
repeated several times with bunched fingers tapping against his heart. Counsellors to the emperor were straining
to understand this stranger’s message.
Valverde hands the emperor a Bible, explains that Atahualpa must convert
to the true faith. Their anxiety, their
murmuring grows louder. The emperor
hurls the Bible down. What did this
messenger mean, that our emperor must hand himself over, that Inti was not the
one true God?
Sensing mounting anger, the priest scurries back to safety,
fearful for his life. Immediately,
doors flew open, cannons pushed forward, fuses lit and an almighty roar scared
the Inca soldiers into flight or a bloody mass grave. Into that ugly melee of shattered limbs and groans of the dying
charged the Spanish cavalry and infantry heavily armoured, wielding the
renowned swords of Toledo steel. Too
shocked, too maimed, the Inca militia cannot raise an axe or mace or club.
No, Francisco Pizarro was no caballero, but a man driven,
perhaps embittered by the lost status and wealth of his own family, but give
him credit for grim determination, relentless ambition, the courage to take
huge risks. In his teens he joined up
for several exploratory voyages after Columbus had paved the way, accompanying
Vasco Nunez de Balboa’s expedition to cross the isthmus of Panama and feasted
eyes on the becalmed South Seas - quite
a relief from the angry tumult of the Atlantic. Against incredible odds, Francisco Pizarro possessed in spades
the courage and self-belief, like Hernan Cortes in Mexico a decade before, to
overcome the tremendous odds against vastly outnumbering troops.
Reynaldo always hung about the classroom door. There was a muddy patch beneath its step and
a thin ditch next to the narrow, slightly raised but uneven path that ran down
from the administrative block. At his
back were splashes of lurid colours dancing from two clothes lines fully
covered by the brothers’ washing billowing in sunshine. The lesson couldn’t come quick enough.
But once again the kitchen crew of three brothers served up
dinner late. Which meant twenty minutes
would be lost. Shite, a shortened class
would still finish at the usual time!
He had scarcely eaten anything.
Without any sauce, the rice that filled half his plate was dry and
tasteless, stuck to the roof of his mouth.
He missed the sweet chilli sauce his mother would serve up, dotted with
minuscule balls of quinoa, together with a variety of vegetables, not just
these small blobs of potatoes and three or four green beans.
No matter, he wasn’t hungry, just pecked for the sake of
appearances. Fortunately, the brothers
left him alone or occasionally slapped him on the back. He hadn’t the foggiest notion of what he
would say to Miranda. Apart from the
usual conversational phrases she had taught him these past six weeks. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he sneered. And spat.
‘The teacher’s here!’ bellowed Carlos from the top of the
yard, his complexion seeming apoplectic, his eyes bulging like a
bullfrog’s. ‘Go to class!’
Reynaldo slunk in towards his usual place at the far end of
the table, the closest position to the teacher. But Miranda favoured the other side of the top end to address
them or write left-handed on the board.
Nevertheless, the scent of jasmine could still make his head spin.
‘Today is a very sad day
. . .’ Miranda was speaking slowly, enunciating her words more carefully
than usual, hoping to attract everyone’s attention, making a point of looking
at each brother in the eye. For some
reason, Reynaldo was slumped in his chair, lips pursed, his head looking
steadfastly at the crumpled sheet of homework he had only half-finished. Tearstains had streaked the faint blue biro
ink. ‘As you know, this is my last day
with you. You have been a great
class. Towards the end of the lesson we
can all hoe into, err oops, perdon, enjoy a lovely cream cake. I shall also present the class with these
presents. She held a gleaming smile for
several seconds that made Reynaldo twitch.
‘Two packets of table tennis balls . . . the Oxford Dictionary of
English-Spanish that I shall place on our library shelf in the consulting
room, so do please use it . . . and a translation into user-friendly English of
the four gospels. I know that book will
be of great comfort to you all.’
Regarded as an oddball, a loner, someone still badly
screwed-up and scarcely communicative, Reynaldo was rarely missed on the Monday
morning three weeks later. His family
never visited at weekends. It was
rumoured that his father was a judge in Lima and a workaholic. The son was reported missing by one of the
psychiatric unit, who had arranged an individual session with him after lunch
out of concern for his increasing depression and alienation from the group
ethos that the management was at pains to promote.
Acting as orderly in the office for the week running
messages for management, Marco was deputed by the director to fetch Reynaldo
in. Not one for grandstanding or
hollering orders, Marco strolled casually down the narrow, uneven path. Brooding as usual, he was still dwelling on
yesterday’s tutorial, where he had struggled to speak more openly to Mauri.
‘You mean you’re a Catholic?’ the teacher had said, making
it easier.
‘Of course!’ replied Marco, more forcefully than usual. ‘Why?
Are you not believer?’
It took a few moments for Mauri to consider his
response. Reluctantly, he answered in a
soft, almost guilty voice: ‘No, I’m
not.’
The sheer bluntness of that muted response shocked
Marco. Teacher Mauri had betrayed
him! ‘How was this possible? Not to be a man of true faith. In Hogar de Rehabilitacion, of all
places! What hypocrisy, calling us all
‘brothers!’’
At Reynaldo’s door, he knocked. No reply. Only the mangled
rips of rap music stabbed back at him.
‘Reynaldo!’ More urgently, he
put an ear to the door, straining, hammering harder. ‘Reynaldo!’
‘Surely, the Spaniards must have had some sneaking
admiration for the Inca stonemasons, however grudging,’ Urschla was
thinking. The breathtaking facility for
lining up all those huge square stones, ashlars they called them, and fitting
them exactly one on top of another, without recourse to mortar or anyone being
able to squeeze a sheet of paper between them – remarkable! Urschla’s guide at Machu Picchu declared the
Incas had used a kind of polish based on plant extract to slide the stones
across the slippery surface to fit exactly one atop another. But she hadn’t heard or read about this technique
anywhere else. These guides at Machu
Picchu, urging on their lingering camera-snapping parties, were notoriously
liberal with the truth, but they did claim that during the worst earthquakes
the Spanish constructions were often badly damaged, whereas the Inca stone
blocks danced to the tremors and either slotted back into position or fell on
the ground close to their original placement.
The day before Inti Raymi, June 24th, the
celebration of the winter solstice, the streets in Cuzco’s historic centre were
hobbled by frantically partying tourists from all over the Americas. The indigenous people also looked
resplendent in best finery, their red-ground jackets striped diagonally with
bold rainbow colours, shoulder bags too with thin stripes. Regrettably, the emergency portaloos were
soon overflowing down the Avenida de Sol with streams of urine that grogged-up
celebrants gaily sluiced through, sometimes in open-toed footwear. Against the tide, at pavement level, a
beggar of about forty was crawling in slow jerky movements on bandaged forearms
and padded kneecaps, a brace of small skate wheels beneath his ankles.
With funds running at a low ebb and not being able to afford
one hundred dollars for a ticket, that week’s fresh Sunday arrival at the homestay
was toying with the notion of breaking into the site of Sacsayhuaman after
dark, carrying her sleeping bag. Elli
had heard the rumour that an alternative entrance did exist but entailed a long
walk round to the car park at the rear of the site. It was unmanned after six o’clock and known to the locals but
rarely used by tourists.
‘You must not do that!’ said a frowning Mariquita bringing
in a bowl of vegetable soup from the kitchen.
‘You are loco! First, it mucho
frio, very cold nights. Also muy pericoloso, too dangerous for girls, for
anyone. Last year, there was satanic
dances done on stone for sacrifice. One
girl was died. You are loco, Elli! You must not do!’
After Mariquita had waddled into the kitchen, Elli turned to
Mauri. ‘What do you think?’
‘You are loco, Elli.
It’s safer to go to work.’
Mauri waved down the green and orange bus bound for San
Jeronimo. Crowded as usual, but the
service was reliably frequent and punctual.
Strap-hanging next to the two front seats reserved for pregnant women,
young motherless children or old men.
Given the option to go to work, he realized he was expected – the
inmates were gifted no holiday; just another normal day in Hogar de
Rehabilitacion. Entering the yard, he
was greeted by old Whisky recognising his voice and scent, tracking him down
the yard toward admin. Jealous, the
black labrador leapt up and kept rushing in between Mauri and the blind Whisky,
snapping and steering him away, demanding to be stroked himself behind the
ears. The cackle of ducks released from
their pen celebrated their occasional freedom by foraging in the clumps of
grass and splashing and shaking off water in their pool.
The headmaster embraced him warmly, flashing his dazzling
white teeth with a slight twist to his jaw.
‘Welcome, Teacher Mauri!’
Perhaps Enrique doubted that a volunteer teacher would voluntarily clock
on for work during this two-day holiday for Cusquenos. His gratitude and the generous helping of
duck, beans, carrots and potatoes with rice cheered Mauri, who was pleased to
escape the festive crowds jamming Sacsayhuaman in the Plaza de Armas as well as
the buses to and from Centro. The
management appreciated his uncomplaining gesture. ‘Mauri is a true friend of Hogar de Rehabilitacion!’ declared
Enrique, which pleased him. ‘The men like you,’ added the headmaster in his
hale and hearty voice. ‘They like you
very much.’ Head bowed, Mauri felt his
eyes water. It was reassuring to be
appreciated. An introverted teacher was
usually riddled with doubt.
At Mauri’s departure, Whisky was lying asleep, deaf to his
calls, while five of the ducks whose feathers were now being plucked, he
noticed with regret, had been strangled in anticipation of the morrow, the
celebration of Inti Raymi. Even in this
outer suburb of San Jeronimo, the locals were laying out their stalls on the
pavements, beautifully woven bolts of material, or squatting down
patiently. ‘Pictures, amigo?’ ‘Hats,
sunglasses?’ in spite of the fact that Mauri was already sporting his Polaroids. On the street stalls, slices of pineapple
were already suppurating in their own juice, avocadoes as big and round as
cannon balls were being peeled with mushy, green-stained hands, while the
snails on offer were busy chomping over their bed of lettuce.
Gazing up at the now so familiar orange-tinged face of the
mountain, Machu Picchu, Urschla took in a deep breath and wondered how the
Incas contrived to blend stone structures into the surrounding landscape, in
particular the hillside terracing, row upon row of unmortared rocks
cascading. The Inca estate (palace,
storage centre?) fitted so snugly, following the contours of the hillside and
encompassing such natural features as large boulders and vertical lozenges.
Had Pizarro no idea about the existence of Machu
Picchu? The site was known by local
farmers, but was deserted by the time the conquistadors had set foot on
Peruvian sand. Perhaps after the death
of their extraordinary leader, Pachacutec, there was no longer any desire to
maintain such a palatial retreat. More
likely, the inhabitants had perished from diseases borne by the recently
arrived Europeans, probably smallpox.
There was no sign that the conquistadors or chroniclers knew of its
ghostly existence three thousand metres up amongst a forest of clouds. And it was only by chance in 1911 that the
American geologist, Hiram J. Bingham, was guided there.
The forest of cloud shrouded and levelled the distant
mauvish peaks but not the mighty V-shaped ravine forested behind. Even Machu Picchu trailed wisps half way up
its face, its segmented ribs falling all the way down to the Urubamba river
curving round at its foot. Nestled into
the immediate foreground, the store-houses and, across a grassy square, the
living quarters and grey retaining walls interleaved with rows of grassed-over
agricultural beds cascading into the forest’s darker green foliage.
She could make out the steep path unravelling down and round
to the exit, but from this height the path of scaly stone clearly undulated like
waves; while the variety of stonework of the walls – small rocks, large
boulders at base, deep-textured greys, dark, rectangular eyes for windows; the
entire vista held her mesmerised in its thrall. How could such a crazy heap of worthless minerals make such an
impact on her spirit? Even as she
squinted into the sun, the dark greens of forest transmuted to smoky blue as a
mantle of cloud wafted down the mountainside.
But taking in a wide sweep with her eyes, Urschla did feel
some surprise, some regret even, that her blissful peace wasn’t punctuated by
any birdsong. No sighting of the Inca’s
symbol of the heavens, a single golden condor riding on the currents of warm
air. Had they too been hunted out of
the mountains? She did give a start on
the narrowest of paths that wound round to the Inca bridge, fascinated by the
mineral streaks of ochre, brown and black running down the mountain and the
stringy clumps of green lichen. All of
a sudden, something bounded from the scrub bushes three or four metres across
her path. Stopping in her tracks with a
gasp of fright, she glimpsed a ball of fur, bold stripes, black, brown,
gingery, vanishing in a trice, headless.
Back at Leandro’s, she searched for clues on Google for
animal habitats in the Andean uplands.
The pampas cat appeared too small, but when she laid eyes on the Andean
mountain cat, whose banded bushy tail was as long as its body, she was certain
she had found the answer, even though it was adjudged an endangered species and
hardly ever sighted.
‘Probably, a puma,’ said Javier in his typically laconic way
when she described what few characteristics of the creature she’d witnessed.
‘No,’ she protested, suddenly all too knowing about the
fauna of Peru. ‘This . . . thing was a
third of a puma’s length. With a bushy
tail this long. And very pronounced
stripes!’
“I’ve never seen one,’ said Javier, crestfallen. ‘It will surely bring you luck.’
Whether this strange hybrid of animated bush and skittering
fur would or would not, Urschla didn’t care.
It was as much a revelation as the surprise discovery that her temporary
bedroom in the century-old homestay was built on top of Inca foundations. Just for those few moments blessed with
tranquillity, up above those fragged, silvery stones that appeared to shiver in
the dazzling sunshine, she wandered in a meditation of otherworldly
enchantment.
Michael Small
May 31-September 21, 2015
