The Wine-Dark Sea (26 page)

On and on: up and always up. The air was thinner by now, and Joselito was breathing deep. Before they crossed the head of this valley they passed a man in a cloak whose horse had apparently both lost a shoe and picked up a stone: there was no telling, since he led his animal limping off the road and stood behind it, well out of hail. Of infinitely greater consequence was the prospect of yet another blessed downward stretch on the far side of the pass; yet here Stephen, if not the mule, was disappointed, for this before them was not the last valley but only the prelude to an even higher range; and still the road climbed.

A new and immediate anxiety added itself to the rest in Stephen's head and bosom, that of being benighted: already the sun was low behind them; there was twilight down there in the lower part of their present valley; and the western sky was assuming a violet tinge.

Another half hour, a hard half hour, with Joselito grunting as he strode on, and there before them was a new ridge and the parting of the ways. The road split into two thinner paths, that on the right leading to the Benedictine house of San Pedro, the other to the Dominicans of San Pablo. Shading his eyes against the powerful wind, Stephen could see them both quite clearly, a hand's breadth above the rising shadow of the night.

Without the least hesitation Joselito took the right-hand path, and Stephen was glad of it. He respected the Dominicans' austere way of life, but he knew just how far Spanish piety could go and he had no wish to share their severity tonight. 'It would not have seemed so far, if I had not been so long at sea,' he said aloud. 'But as it is, I am destroyed entirely. What a delight to think of a good supper, a glass of wine and a warm bed.' The mule caught his cheerfulness if not his literal meaning and pressed on with renewed energy.

It was still only twilight, but darkening fast, when they came to the convent. Outside the grey wall, before the gate, a tall solitary figure was pacing to and fro, and the mule ran the last hundred yards or so, uttering a feeble hoarse noise - he could utter no more - and nuzzled the Vicar-General's shoulder. Father O'Higgins' particularly Irish clerical face, humourless and stern, changed to a look of simple pleasure, much of which remained when he turned to Stephen, now dismounted, and asked him whether he had had a pleasant ride, whether it had not seemed too long, with this untimely wind?

'Not at all, Father,' said Stephen. 'If I had not been so fresh from the sea, with my legs unused to the unyielding ground, it would not have seemed a great way at all, far from it indeed, particularly with so grand and high-stepping a mule as Joselito, God bless him.'

'God bless him,' said Father O'Higgins, patting the mule's withers.

'Yet the wind makes me anxious for those at sea: we can take shelter, where they can not.'

'Very true, very true,' said the priest, and the wind howled over the convent wall. 'Poor souls: God be with them.'

'Amen,' said Stephen, and they walked in.

Compline, at San Pedro's, was traditionally very long, and the choir-monks were still singing the Nunc dimittis when Stephen was woken and led through passages behind the chapel. The pure, impersonal, clear plainchant, rising and falling, moved his sleepy mind: the strong cold east wind outside the postern cleared it entirely.

The path led him and the others, a line of lanterns, over a ridge behind the monastery and down into the high but comparatively fertile plateau beyond - excellent grazing, he had been told - and so towards a large summering-house, a borda or shieling, ordinarily used by those who looked after the flocks. From the low voices before and behind him Stephen gathered that some men must have come in not only after his arrival but after he had gone to bed. Presently he saw a similar line of lanterns coming down from San Pablo, and the two little groups joined in the barn-like shieling, friends recognizing one another with low discreet greetings and feeling their way towards the benches - few lights and those high up.

First there was a long prayer, chanted, to Stephen's surprise, by the ancient prior of the Matucana Capuchins: he had not known that the movement had so wide a base as to reconcile Franciscan and Dominican.

The proceedings themselves did not interest him very much: there was clearly much to be said for admitting Castro; but equally clearly there was much to be said against it. Stephen did not possess enough knowledge either of Castro or of those who were speaking for or against his admission to form an opinion of much value: in any case he did not think it mattered a great deal one way or another. The support or opposition of so ambiguous a character was neither here nor there, now that great armed forces were about to be moved.

He listened to the general line however, sometimes dozing although the backless bench was a cruel seat for his weary frame, until with relief he heard Hurtado's strong soldierly voice: 'No, no, gentlemen, it will not do. There is no trusting a man who watches the cat so long and closely to see which way it will jump. If we succeed he will join us. If we do not he will denounce us. Remember Jose Rivera.'

'That seems to have settled the question,' reflected Stephen. 'What joy.' And soon after one line set out for San Pedro, another for San Pablo, lit by a lop-sided moon, which was just as well, the wind being now so strong that lanterns could not be relied on.

Dear bed again, a remote sense of prime being sung; then an Indian lay-brother with a basin of quite warm water; early Mass: and breakfast in the small refectory. His neighbours were the Vicar-General, who greeted him kindly but who was taciturn at most times and even more so in the morning, and Father Gomez, who was not taciturn at all, though from his impassive, markedly Indian face - a brown Roman emperor -he might well have been. He drank a large quantity of mate from a gourd, observing, 'I know, my dear sir, that it is a waste of time trying to wean you from your coffee; but allow me to pass you these dried apricots from Chile. These dried Chilean apricots.' And after another gourd he said, 'I remember too that you spoke of your wish to see the high mountain, and some of the great Inca buildings. This, of course, is not the high mountain; yet it does approach some quite lofty ground - not the puna, you understand, but quite lofty - and my nephew will be here this morning to look at one of our llama stations. If only the weather were not so disagreeable he could show you something of the country. I spoke of you when last we met, and he begged me to present him. "Ah," cried he, clasping his hands, "someone at last who can tell me of the birds of the southern ocean!"'

'I should be charmed to tell him what little I know,' said Stephen. 'And surely the weather is not so very severe?'

'Eduardo would not think so,' replied Father Gomez. 'But then he is a great hunter. And he creeps up mountains through ice and snow: he is made of brass. He had climbed Pinchincha, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi itself.'

Stephen had rarely taken to a new acquaintance as he took to Eduardo. To be sure, he had always liked the friendly, straightforward, wholly unaffected young on those few occasions he had met them, but here these rare and amiable qualities were combined with a deep interest in living things, birds, animals, reptiles, even plants, and a surprising knowledge of those of his own immense and immensely varied country. Not that Eduardo was so very young, either - such a mass of experience could not be accumulated in a few years - but he had retained the directness, modesty and simplicity that so often disappear as time goes on. Furthermore he spoke a perfectly fluent but agreeably accented Spanish filled with pleasant archaisms, which reminded Stephen of the English in the former northern colonies; though Eduardo's language lacked the somewhat metallic overtones of Boston.

They sat in the cloister with their backs to the east wall, and when Stephen had told him all he knew about albatrosses, which was not inconsiderable, he having sat with them for hours at their nesting places on Desolation Island, sometimes lifting them off to look closely at their eggs - all he knew, particularly about their flight, Eduardo spoke with great eagerness of the guacharo, a very singular bird he had discovered in a vast cavern near Cajamarca in the Andes, a vast cavern indeed, but scarcely large enough for the prodigious number of guacharos that tried to get in, so that some were left outside. It was one of these that Eduardo came upon, fast asleep at noon in the darkest place it could find, the hollow underside of a fallen tree, a bird about the size of a crow, something like a nightjar, something like an owl, brown and grey, flecked with white and black, large winged, fast flying. A strictly nocturnal bird, yet feeding solely on oily nuts, seeds and fruit.

'You astonish me,' cried Stephen.

'I too was dumbfounded,' replied Eduardo. 'Yet such is the case. In the season of the year the people of the village climb up to the cave, take all the young they can reach - mere balls of fat - and melt them down for oil, a pure transparent oil which they use for lamps or for cooking. They showed me the cauldron, they showed me the brimming oil-jars, astonished at my ignorance. I went far into the cave, wearing a broad hat against their droppings, and while they screeched and clattered over my head - it was like being in the midst of a huge swarm of bees, gigantic bees, and a din so that one could hardly think - I saw a small forest of wretched light-starved dwarvish trees, sprung from seeds they had voided.'

'Pray tell me of their eggs,' said Stephen, for whom this was a cardinal taxonomic point.

'They are white and unshining, like an owl's, and they have no sharp end. But they are laid in a well-shaped rounded nest made of... what is it?' he asked a hovering lay-brother.

'There is a gentleman who would like to see the Doctor,' said the lay-brother, handing a card. It bore an agreed name and Stephen excused himself.

'He is cooling his horse outside the gatehouse,' said the lay-brother.

There were two or three other people doing the same after their ride up the last steep hill and Stephen had to look quite hard before he made out Gayongos in military uniform, cavalry moustache and a great slouch hat, which surprised him, disguise being almost unknown at this level of intelligence; but he had to admit that although unprofessional it was effective. Gayongos had a powerful, well lathered stone-horse in his hand: the animal had clearly come up the road at a great pace.

'A man called Dutourd has reached Lima from Callao,' he said in a low tone as they walked the horse up and down. 'He is running about saying that he was ill-treated as a prisoner in the Surprise: ill-treated and robbed, that Captain Aubrey is not what he seems, that the Surprise is not a privateer but a King's ship, and that you are probably a British agent. He has found out some of the French mission and he harangued them in a loud voice in Julibrissin's crowded coffee-house until they became uneasy and walked off. Then he told another tale about an ideal projected republic. He makes a great deal of noise. His Spanish is incorrect but ready enough. He says he is an American, and he had a privateer sailing under American colours.'

'How did he get away, I wonder?' asked Stephen inwardly: the probable answer came at once. 'It is vexing,' he said to Gayongos. 'And at an earlier time it might have been most inconvenient, even disastrous; but now it is of no great consequence. The French will never take him seriously - will never compromise themselves with such a talkative enthusiast: with such a fool. He is incapable of keeping quiet. Nor will anyone else. In any case, I believe things have moved too far to be affected by his vapours. Consider: any complaint, any representations that he may make would have to be dealt with by the civil authorities. In a matter of twenty-four hours or so a military government will have taken power and until independence is proclaimed the civil authorities will not exist.'

'Yes,' said Gayongos. 'That was my view: but I thought you ought to be told. How did the meeting go?'

'It was decided not to admit Castro.'

Gayongos nodded, but his face was somewhat doubtful as he remounted. 'What shall I do with Dutourd?' he asked. 'Shall I have him suppressed? He makes such a noise.'

'No. Denounce him to the Inquisition,' said Stephen, smiling. 'He is a most infernal heretic.'

Gayongos however was not much given to merriment and there was no answering smile on his face as he set off in a shower of small stones and a cloud of dust for San Pablo, to give his journey another face. The dust drifted westward, perceptibly slower than it would have done a few hours earlier.

'Their nest is made of mud,' said Eduardo; and while Stephen was digesting this he prepared a ball of coca-leaves, passed his soft leather bag, and observed, 'The wind is dropping somewhat.'

'So it is indeed,' said Stephen, glancing at a group of people, who had just come into the cloister: early pilgrims were beginning to arrive in both monasteries. 'I hope you will not find your journey to the llama-farm too arduous.'

'Oh, not at all: though I thank you for your kindness. I am accustomed to the mountain, even to the puna, the very high mountain; though I confess that such a blow, at this time of the year and on this side of the Cordillera, is almost unheard of. How I wish it would drop a little more - and from the sky I believe it may - so that you might be induced to come at least as far as Hualpo, our main llama station.'

'Fortified by coca-leaves, I should have no hesitation in setting out within the next quarter of an hour,' said Stephen.

'Once their virtuous principle is infused into my whole being, I shall bare my bosom to the blast with perfect equanimity. It will not be long; already I feel that agreeable insensibility invading my pharynx. But first pray tell me about the llama. I am pitifully ignorant of the whole tribe - have never seen a living specimen and only very few indifferent bones.'

'Well, sir, there are only two wild kinds, the vicuna, a little orange creature with a long silky fleece that lives high up, close to the snow, though sometimes we see a few above Hualpo, and the guanaco. We see some of them too - where would the puma be, were it not for the guanaco? - but they are more usual in Chile and right down to Patagonia. They are more easily tamed than the vicuna, and they are the ancestors of the llama and the alpaca, the llamas being bred for riding and carrying burdens, and the alpaca, smaller animals that we keep higher up, just for wool. Both give quite good meat, of course, though some say not nearly as good as mutton. In my opinion, mutton...'He coughed, blew his nose, and rolled another ball of coca-leaves; but to a reasonably attentive, sympathetic listener it was clear that the Inca - for Eduardo was of the pure blood - regarded sheep as an unwelcome Spanish introduction.