Dance of the Dwarfs (5 page)

I took my siesta in one of his filthy basket chairs. It was twice as hot under his tiled roof—the only one in Santa Eulalia—as under the usual thick thatch. At last I left him sleeping to go and see Joaquín. I wanted to ask him when he thought the rains would come.

Joaquín was peacefully smoking a home-made cigar. His perfectly expressionless eyes were fixed on the water lapping against the jetty of rotten piles where goods are landed—if they don't fall through. By looking closely one could just tell that life flowed in the river and the man.

I laid down on the floor of his hut a few presents from Pedro's store which were very properly ignored. We chatted about neighbors until it was permissible to come to the point. Then he told me that the drought would get worse before it got better, and that he had never known anything like it for twelve years.

“That would be when the estancia was abandoned?” I asked.

“Yes. Twelve years ago.”

“And before that?”

“The rains always came in time.”

“Can you make them come?”

“Can you?”

He did not understand what I meant. Tropical rains are normally so regular that rainmakers have no market. To set up in business one needs a less reliable climate where a witch doctor can make a reasonable forecast on the strength of weather experience handed down from father to son. Presumably there is nothing more to it.

“There is more I want to ask you, Joaquín,” I said. “I must have hands to help me, but no one will come out from Santa Eulalia. Are there any Indians west of the estancia who would work for me?”

“The forest has no men in it.”

“And on the other bank of the Guaviare?”

“Too far. They would not come.”

Well, that was that. No offer will persuade a tribal Indian to do what he doesn't want to do, or to admit that he won't. He will reply that of course he is coming and that he will send his brother and cousin at once. But none of them ever turns up.

Joaquín's flat statement that the forest beyond the estancia is uninhabited lets in the blank. I used the phrase just now of Pedro. It's obsessive. We are able, when in good spirits, to preserve the self in a solid piece; but if anything disturbs this integrity we expand into nothingness. Alcohol is a cure, and the llaneros give themselves to it as I suspect they do to a woman: very quickly and then to sleep. Myself, when the drought or the absurd fencing or my sheer inability to extract straight answers to straight questions, gets me down, I feel that the gift of speech is useless and wish that I could revel in the nothingness like my ancestor, the running ape, when he first broke out from the crowded darkness of the trees.

Mario and Teresa must have been living the most lonely life imaginable before I came. No wonder he needs a wall around him. A wall drives man and wife back on themselves, giving an illusion of solidarity and safety. So night, when no wall can be seen, is a sort of deprivation. Night forces him into unity with his environment, whereas his life is only tolerable if he can keep his environment at bay.

Amateur psychology, but I can't be far off the truth. Obviously it was a drought twelve years ago that finally finished Manuel Cisneros, the enterprising Venezuelan. I never quite grasped that before. Mario ought to have told me. Naturally he did not. He might have frightened off the boss-companion who had dropped from heaven to make his life more normal. Or am I unjust? He always had enough water for his own surprisingly sophisticated garden and had no reason to suppose there would not be enough for me.

Joaquín and I strolled back to the store to collect Estrellera. She does not care for Pedro, who is too noisy and military, but she always touches muzzles with Joaquín though he never brings her anything to eat. He would make a good vet, if anyone here ever bothered with more than centuries-old bleedings, dosings and cauterization. Such practice as he has is confined to Indian pets: monkeys, agoutis and a variety of small creatures and large birds. His diagnosis is absurd but his sympathy is genuine. For him we are all spirits confined in flesh.

So I rode home, night falling when I was half way. Estrellera has no nerves. She will give a snort of indignation at the unfamiliar like any conservative female, but she never shies, stops dead or trembles. If I were a guerrillero I think I would prefer to ride the too-alert Tesoro, but for a journey on which dangers are, I hope, only imagined, give me Estrellera every time!

[
March 25, Friday
]

A day of paperwork. It was about time that I made a précis of my journal and sent up a report to Bogotá, if only to show that I have zealously obeyed my instructions. All experiments of any importance I have initiated myself, disguising such undepartmental enterprise under a respectful amount of paper in triplicate—very necessary when the termites may get it if only in duplicate.

The director is most reasonable, partly because I'm his showpiece. When politicians suggest that we and our like merely sit on our backsides, with an iced drink in one hand while the other explores the frilly intimacies of Latin-American womanhood, all at the expense of the Ministry of Overseas Development, he can always point to his field officer slapping mosquitoes in the dark heart of the continent.

In fact the habitable rooms are often free of insects and at times cool. When I took possession I repaired all fly screens on the barred north windows facing the courtyard and left the south windows as they were, permanently closed by heavy wooden shutters. Mario advised this on the grounds of keeping out the sun when he really meant the night.

No doubt I sound a much more romantic figure than I am. I have comfortable and modern camp equipment, a sufficiency of medical supplies, a well-stocked bar, all the apparatus I require and a minitractor which is the wonder of the district and in the drought is used for giving rides to visitors. I have even a refrigerator, powered by a small petrol-engined dynamo which supplies enough voltage for half a dozen light bulbs as well.

I prefer living on the country to tinned food. That's where the Americans go wrong. They stock up with cans of rations as tasteless as they are luxurious. You can never really get the feel of an agricultural economy unless you surrender to it. Satisfying my own wants is an essential, additional experiment. Besides the eternal bananas and rice, I have vegetables, eggs, fresh beef and unlimited game. My dear Eibar-made 16-bore keeps me supplied with any size of wildfowl I fancy from snipe to geese, and I picked up in Barranquilla an old British Army Lee-Enfield in excellent condition which produces the occasional deer or peccary for the pot.

No, I do myself pretty well. Admittedly the tropical evenings are long, but I pass them reading or playing records (I never can do both simultaneously) or devising a few experiments so unlikely to succeed that they count as amusement rather than work. This diary helps.

[
March 27, Sunday
]

Tesoro has had a touch of colic. Now that the cracked conduits under the wall are delivering such a wretched flow, he is getting too much sediment in his water. I shall have to draw it from the well.

I was possibly unwise to buy him, for he could not be expected to have the resistance of the native criollos. But I have been amply rewarded. The story goes that some singularly vain captain of Venezuelan cavalry—lousy with oil money—imported a palomino stallion from Mexico which he used as a ceremonial charger to impress the girls. As likely as not it impressed his squadron too. We can none of us resist a touch of lunatic flamboyance.

Tesoro was by this beauty out of a criollo mare. He turned out more gold than dun with the chestnut mane and tail of his dam. I got him cheap, fifteen hands being too big for a cow pony. For polo he wouldn't have a fault, being neat on his legs and of quick intelligence. Indeed I cannot see any faults in him at all, beyond those of youth and very sketchy breaking. When I am on his back he expects severity and does not hold it against me; when I am off it, he follows me about like a dog.

I am always entertained by the marked difference of character between my nervous, affectionate gelding and Estrellera. She got her name from being a stargazer as a filly. It now fits her temperament rather than her conformation. She is inclined to be dreamy with strong likes and dislikes, but all that remains of stargazing is a slight suggestion of a ewe-neck. The llaneros think more highly of her than I do, for she is a typical criollo skewbald of 14.2, well ribbed up and staying forever.

I would not change either of them. With those two horses I would back myself to reach the Orinoco—and that is more than one could do by canoe and still arrive all in one piece.

[
March 31, Thursday
]

I have always assumed that promises will come to nothing—and not only in Latin America. Here, however, the promises have such an air of generous enthusiasm that they are a pleasure in themselves. Fulfilment stuns as a devastating and sometimes embarrassing surprise.

On the twenty-eighth the government canoe—more like a barge with an outboard motor—was expected at Santa Eulalia. Since one can never be sure of the exact date of arrival, especially when the Guaviare is low, I did not want to waste time hanging about and sent Mario over to deliver and collect my mail.

He returned next day, accompanied by a packhorse loaded with hardware which we needed and, on top of it, an unexpected piece of soft ware. She greeted me very shyly and escaped to Teresa. Mario then presented to me a letter which he had received from an immensely fat and dignified Negress who had insisted on establishing both his identity and mine in the manner of an obstinate sergeant of police. It was from Captain Valera.

My Very Good Friend
,

You will have a few weeks in which to get over your surprise before the Canoe calls at Santa Eulalia on the way back. Put her on board if she does not suit, and accept the excuses of a friend who only wished to be of service to you
.

First, this is not a whore, merely an unfortunate. My girl, who has a good heart, found it like a stranded fish upon the riverbank. She did not immediately inform me, since it was a good-looking little creature which might have caused some dissension in the family. So she boarded it out for some days until she could settle its future
.

When I was about to leave on the little expedition which by good fortune brought me to your house, my girl confessed what she had done. She had to get rid of her find and was afraid that any arrangements made in my absence would come to my ears—as they surely would—and that I should suspect her of commerce rather than charity. Her past, I may say, would justify such suspicion. But her present is in every way loyal and obliging. Her fears that I might change horses if I set eyes on Chucha were entirely unfounded
.

Chucha's history is deplorably vague and unsatisfactory. What else can one expect? A woman is lost among the insects and the trees. The soul clings to its name in nameless places and there is no rest for the body
.

She was given by her mother to a merchant called Samuel. That regrettable transaction must have taken place in the Eastern Cordillera of Bolivia or Peru, for her native language is Aymara. Samuel took her down to the Amazon basin. After a stay in a large city where they did not speak Spanish—probably Manaos—Samuel wandered with her up another river—probably the Río Negro. He seems to have been an irrepressible traveler, but he was kind to her. He was drowned somewhere high up the Orinoco. How the devil he got there from the Río Negro I don't know, so I can't expect her to
.

Chucha, abandoned in the merciless nowhere of our continent, very reasonably presented her undoubted charms to the first man who had a boat with an engine in it—a guarantee that, whatever his appearance, he was not a forest Indian. His name was Pepe and he traded in knives, beads and whistles. He was continually drunk and treated her brutally, whereas Samuel offered her no less affection than he gave to his pet monkey
.

When Pepe threatened to open her up with a machete she ran away from him. My girl says that the spirit of her great aunt had locked up Chucha's womb. Her own deceased great aunt is, I am glad to say, more reasonable. I must admit that I had no idea that the plateau Indians could suffer from the muscular effects of a neurosis which one believed confined to the women of Northern Europe. She must have been sufficiently exposed to civilization to have acquired taste
.

I do not like allowing the poor little thing to die of damp rot complicated by syphilis, and I send her to you with confidence that you will save her from this otherwise inevitable destiny. In the course of various small medical attentions which she badly needed I have had her intimately examined. Indian modesty was appalled, but my girl held her hand and assured her that such was the custom among the rich
.

I can certify that when she left here she had no venereal disease, and that during the undoubted hazards of the journey up river she was under the care of a respectable matron whose husband depends on me for promotion
.

All I fear is your British sense of responsibility. I beg you to ignore it. You know as well as I do that her relationship with you will greatly enhance her value and that a dowry—tiny to you, wealth to some young llanero—would persuade him to wear out two horses in his immediate search for a priest
.

Sentimental cynicism! And barely redeemed by that warmth of friendship which a generous Latin American will allow to blaze on the strength of a single meeting! I reread Valera's letter over a couple of stiff drinks which merely turned one half of me into a rampant stallion while the other half argued. Suppose, I asked myself, this female had been a scientist or some enterprising young woman come from Bogotá to inspect my valuable services to her country? Well, she'd have had to resist attempted rape three times a day, the afternoon attack being marked by the highest fever. Suppose Joaquín had supplied me with something not too jungly from one of the river tribes? I should probably have accepted, since the girl would have a home to which she could return with her presents and be welcome. Chucha had no home. I came to the conclusion that my conscience was bothering me just because she was so helpless. She had no more choice than a mare passed from one llanero to another.