The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories

The Salvation of Pisco Gabar

and Other Stories

Geoffrey Household

THE SALVATION OF PISCO GABAR

THE
Santa Juana
glided towards the Equator with the overpowering coast of Peru five miles to starboard. The setting sun rested neatly on the tangent of the horizon as if an almighty sextant were about to shoot it. To the east the vast yellow foothills of the Andes turned green and purple where the level rays dug into scattered deposits of copper and gold. From his deck chair on the after verandah Manuel Gabar watched the metallic immensities of the coast. His pleasure was calm and reflective, for he was used to having beauty spread for him on enormous canvases.

His origin was unknown and of no great interest to himself or to his friends. His passport declared him Ecuadorian; but that he knew was untrue, since he himself had bought the document from a friendly official in Guayaquil. His native language was Spanish. His name was one of his earliest recollections, and he was sure it was his; but it gave no definite clue to his ancestry. Nor did his appearance. He was a shortish, powerful man with slightly bandy legs and a snub nose. High cheekbones and wide mouth were evidence of some Indian blood on the mother's side. Grey eyes, thick dark hair on head, hands, and chest, suggested a Central European immigrant as father. A charity school had picked him off the streets of Buenos Aires, taught him to read, and given him to the sea. The sea taught him self-reliance and socialism and cast him up again in South America. Since then he had been a good citizen of the five Andean republics, courteous to all men, breaking only such laws as were meant to be broken, and employing his rough energy and his capital (when he had any) in developing odds and ends of trade that nobody else had thought of.

Gabar had an inquiring mind and was well able to divert himself by elementary speculations on man, his surroundings, and the reasons for both. At the moment it was geology that interested him. He wondered whether the Andes were still pushing westwards into the Pacific. They gave so definite an impression of an advancing wave topped by all the mineral debris of a continent. He also wondered if schools of mining could teach one to spot an exploitable quantity of precious metal by its appearance under the horizontal rays of the setting sun. He had an exaggerated respect for secular schools of all sorts, never realizing that they could but analyze and express the accumulated experience of such adventurers in life as himself.

His reverie was broken by a pleasant but too determined voice.

“If the señor permits, I will join him for a moment.”

Gabar looked round. The setting sun was blotted out by a tall pyramid of black cassock. Dismayed by the silence of the priest's approach and the blackness of him at close quarters, he followed the pyramid to its apex and met the commanding eyes of Don Jesús.

Manuel Gabar welcomed companionship; he was entirely without prejudice against human beings of any color or class, of any degree of virtue or criminality. But he could not abide priests. To him they were enemies of the intellect, moneygrubbers, hypocrites, and buffoons in the fancy dress of piety. Being naturally courteous, he was even more resentful of the intrusion than a ruder man would have been. But he said nothing. There was nothing to say. It was obvious that Don Jesús intended to sit down with or without his permission. He was a magnificent blue-jowled Basque in the flower of middle age. He joined in the deck games and would certainly become a bishop.

“The señor will pardon my interruption,” said Don Jesús, “but am I right in supposing that he lands tomorrow morning at Mollendo?”

“You are.”

“I have a great favor to ask you, if you would be so kind.”

“At your complete service,” replied Gabar with conventional politeness, adding, with detestation of himself and the title, “reverend padre.”

After all, he argued, what did it matter? One said “friend” to cutthroats, “chief” to naked savages,
caballero
to gringo oil-drillers—why not “reverend” to a priest?

“My friend, Don José-Maria, also lands at Mollendo,” the priest said. “He is an old man and before this journey he had never left the plateau. Might I ask you to see him through customs and as far as Arequipa by the train?”

“Yes, but—”

“You yourself, I suppose, are going to Arequipa?”

“I am,” said Gabar.

He would have dearly loved to say he was not. But all the trains from Mollendo passed through Arequipa. It was also certain that he and this José-Maria would leave Mollendo together by the first train after the arrival of the
Santa Juana
. Nobody ever left Mollendo by any but the first train.

“In that case you and he will be traveling companions. I commend him to your courtesy.”

“Very well,” said Gabar. “Very well. I shall be delighted. But I am not a wet nurse, you understand. I won't take any responsibility for him. You had better know that I am not fond of the Church.”

“You will like Don José-Maria. He is only a child. So pious, so simple, an angel among Indians! He understands them very well—too well, perhaps. But there! He is left to himself and we cannot blame him if he takes his own line.”

“I blame nobody,” said Gabar. “We are animals. Will you have a pisco?”

For the first time in his life he had invited a priest to have a drink. It was not because he liked Don Jesús. He detested him. But it was Gabar's fixed habit to drink while talking. His friends had nicknamed him Pisco Gabar—not that he drank more than was reasonable, but he considered the delectable Peruvian grape spirit a necessary prelude to conversation. Even in the Montaña, the network of valleys that ran down from the Andes to become the Amazon, where he traveled with only such essentials as could be carried on his back, he was never without a tepid half litre of pisco to celebrate the improbable meeting of another white man.

Don Jesús was flattered when laymen invited him to have a drink. He seldom refused, but never took more than one. Gabar ordered two pisco-sours. They drank them while Don Jesús talked with worldly and accomplished ease. Gabar answered him chiefly with scowls. He was slightly, and inconsistently, shocked by the priest. At last he made an effort at politeness.

“Have you come from Europe, reverend padre?”

“No, no, my dear sir! From Buenos Aires, from the Eucharistic Congress. A stupendous spectacle! A hundred thousand of the faithful of all nations attending open-air Mass! A supreme affirmation of the faith of America!”

“The opium of the people,” grumbled Pisco Gabar.

“Pardon?”

“I said religion was the opium of the people,” repeated Gabar with a determined piety as of a martyr before his judge.

“I have heard,” said Don Jesús unruffled, “that opium is very comforting. Are you a communist, señor?”

“I think for myself and I do not believe all I am told. I am a human being, a worker!”

Pisco Gabar was eager for battle, and rapidly assembling his anti-religious munitions, which included Marx, Paine, Ingersoll, some Mexican manifestoes, and the invincible materialism of his own spirit. Don Jesús had no difficulty in perceiving his intention, and avoided engagement. He would willingly have tackled a heretic, but with an atheist there was no common ground for discussion.

“A worker?” asked Don Jesús. “A miner, I believe?”

“I am against the whole rotten system,” began Gabar excitedly. “Now take the Mexican Church, for example—”

“Gold!” Don Jesús interrupted dreamily. “Gold! A fascinating subject! You should ask Don José-Maria about gold. Of course his parish is a little difficult to reach.”

“Where gold is, it is always difficult to reach,” said Gabar. “But it can be done.”

“The spirit of the
conquistadores!
You should have been born four hundred years ago!”

“In my way I follow their tradition,” said Gabar, flattered. “In my way!”

It was true. For several years Pisco Gabar had been engaged in a trade of his own invention as profitable and uncomfortable as any in Latin America. The streams of the Montaña were full of alluvial gold. They paid to wash but did not pay to work intensively; the cost of transporting machinery was prohibitive. Some of the valleys were earthly paradises, but only a mule could reach them. Others were drenched in summer by the steady purposeful rains of the Amazon, and in winter by the steady purposeful rains of the Pacific. Even the English went mad after 365 continual days and nights of rain. The Indians worked intermittently at panning the inaccessible streams, but the gold dust had small value to them. A day spent in hunting or cultivation was more productive. Sometimes a trusted fellow tribesman would set off with the communal bag of gold to Cuzco or the nearest mine, and return, if he were neither robbed nor tempted to drink, with such goods as he could carry on his back. It was hardly worth while carrying the gold to a market.

Pisco Gabar hit on the idea of carrying a market to the gold. He established small depots of cotton and leather goods, nails, tools, beads, and whatever was light to carry and considered by primitive minds to be either useful or decorative. At these depots he loaded his back and that of a mule and vanished into the tumbled forests. Weeks later he appeared at the edge of civilization alone and on foot, having given his goods, his animal, and sometimes his coat and shirt in exchange for the ounces of gold dust at his belt. The profit, Gabar explained to Don Jesús, was considerable, but so was the benefit to the Indians. He was, he admitted, a parasite, although a useful one. He compared his function in the Montaña to that of a waste-paper merchant (a profession he had also followed) in a town. He called as regularly as he could, took away an unwanted commodity, and gave unexpected value in return.

At seven the following morning the
Santa Juana
lay two miles off Mollendo. A string of barges, loaded with copper and alpaca, undulated towards her over the long Pacific swell. The tender heaved up and down alongside, her gunwale at one moment below the foot of the gangway and, at the next, ten steps up. The brown boatmen fended her off skillfully while with lazy patience they watched Don José-Maria saying his farewells. Gabar, already seated in the tender, began to look at his watch. He was not in a hurry, nor indeed did he ever allow hurry to afflict him, but he objected to being kept waiting by a priest.

José-Maria insisted on saying good-bye to all the passengers who were up, and was only with difficulty restrained from waiting to say good-bye to those who were still in their bunks. He was seven-eighths pure Indian, yellow and fat and given to simple ecstasies. Since Buenos Aires he had lived in a pious daze. The Congress and the journeying by rail and water had opened the gates of the world to him. He who had never been off the highlands of Peru in his life had dwelt in a modern city, had heard the Holy Father speak over the radio, had realized the true meaning of distance and seas and lands beyond them, had found to his amazement that there were actually Christians who spoke neither Spanish nor Quechua; it was difficult to understand how they could say their prayers. He believed that death would be something like his voyage to Buenos Aires—a stupendous experience shattering all preconceived ideas and startling him with the truth of angels, as had the truth of automobiles.

In his sadness at the end of this adventure he lost count and bade farewell to captain, officers, and passengers over and over again. This done, he lingered at the gangway making a third interminable speech of thanks to Don Jesús. Gabar cut it short by pressing the button of the tender's siren. The sudden and commanding growl brought Don José-Maria hastily down the gangway.

The boatman, settling his straw hat firmly on his head, extended his hand and told the priest to jump. José-Maria bent his knees, prepared, but hesitated. The boat sank far below him. He regarded the rise and fall of the swell in benevolent surprise. With his almond eyes and yellow beaming countenance he resembled a rotund Chinese statuette. The boat rose again and he grasped the outstretched wrist, but still he did not jump. Nor did he let go. The tender sank from under the boatman, who squirmed and kicked in mid-air like a hooked fish. Don José-Maria, having hung on at first from terror and now hanging on lest the boatman should drop, tried to get both hands to the job and overbalanced.

Gabar hurled himself forward to break their fall. José-Maria landed safely, cushioned on him and the unfortunate boatman. While they extricated themselves indignantly, he remained in an unwieldy black ball, his eyes shut and his lips moving in prayer. As no one was hurt, the tender chugged off towards Mollendo.

“I have more luck than I merit,” murmured José-Maria. “I am always in peril by land and sea, yet mercifully delivered.”

“You try your pet saint too far,” said Gabar coldly.

“Impossible—especially when he works through such kindly instruments as yourself, Don Manuel. I am very grateful to you.”

“No reason to be! I'd have done the same for anyone,” Gabar answered ungraciously. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, Don Manuel! A little bruised, a little shaken, but I only need a glass of spirits.”

“I can offer you some pisco.”

“Thank you. Thank you. You are very kind.”

Gabar drew out a half litre of pisco, conveniently placed among his pyjamas at the top of his bag, and offered it to José-Maria. The priest put it to his lips and drank three quarters of the contents.

“Thank you. You are very kind,” he repeated. “I was in great need. Don Jesús did not wish me to drink on board. He is a stern man. Very stern.”

“He certainly gets his own way,” said Gabar resentfully.

“So clear! So knowledgeable in this world! He told me there were four things I was not to do. Let me see! Four things! I was not to drink—that was one. And second—he said I was not to let you leave me till we got to Arequipa.”

“The hell he did!”

“And there were two more. I was not to forget—let me see! My glasses? No, I have them. My trunk? No, it was not that. It contains all I possess, Don Manuel, for I thought I might be years on the road. And then there is a present in it for one much greater than I. No, I could never forget my trunk. Let me see! What was it I must not forget? … Ah, my passport!”