The Adventures of China Iron

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

  Liz looked after the old man as if he were her father. She had the armchair brought close to him and there she sat, passing him the bucket every time the poor man was about to be sick and feeding him tiny spoonfuls of tea with whisky, because there’s nothing better than a hair of the dog. While she tended to him she was in tears, and made sure he noticed it; but she never answered when he asked why she was crying. The most important thing is for you to get well again, Colonel, she repeated like a litany, muttering under her breath something about being a decent married woman, about dishonouring her husband and missing him terribly.

  That night, after having watched the poor chinas dragging themselves around the kitchen attempting to clean up the mess, I curled up beside Estreya. The soldiers buried the dead bodies, wondering how to punish those responsible, and took away Miss Daisy and the Little Daisies who were also feeling so rough that they weren’t in a fit state to mete out punishment. The men who had killed slept off their hangovers in the cells that night, fearing what would happen when the Colonel woke up, but not fearing it as much as the officers did when they discovered that there were horses, men and women missing. A search party was sent out to look for them, but I suspect that rather than searching, all they did was lie down to sleep a few miles from the house, leaving their horses standing guard, because they found no sign of the runaways.

  A sign came the next morning, when the old man was starting the day drinking tea with lemon and a few drops of whisky; at Liz’s suggestion he was keeping off the mate. Hernández only found out what had happened when a lone chestnut horse arrived back at the ranch bathed in sweat, and the news hit him like the branch of an ombú falling on his head: deserters, stolen horses, dead men, and those who’d killed them awaiting their fate in their cells of earth and cowhide. He was dumbstruck. Then he began shouting and swearing. He court-martialled the officers who’d been on guard the night of the party, ordered the killers to be executed, flung the teapot and the entire tea service across the room, and only began to calm down a bit when he saw Liz crying. Please forgive me, Colonel, it’s my fault, I should never have had the party, she said, her whole body shaking. In her country people could take their drink and still behave themselves, she didn’t know how things were in Argentina, but please don’t let anyone else be killed. The old man relented a bit, and gave all those he held responsible a week of staking out at Campo Malo. They were also demoted, lost all wages owing to them, as well as forfeiting their wages for the next two years. And they would be put to work in the ditch again. And let God decide who survives, Gringa, they’ll owe you and Him their lives. As the Little Daisies also ended up staked out, Liz was reassured that the chinas would find a way to bring water and shade to their menfolk.

  Goodbye, Colonel

  Hernández’s rage did not abate until nightfall when the whisky brought him back to his talk of rural industry, to the iron railways that would link the pampas to the port and the port with the world and with Great Britain, to the concert of nations in which Argentina would be called upon to play its part in ending hunger across the world, to his talk of educating gauchos. Look at the nonsense they get up to, Gringa! After so many years of schooling, too! Liz asked him what he thought had happened to her husband. He assured her that the Argentine Army would not detain a British subject, they will definitely have freed him, unless he’s done something really bad. How dare you! Liz leapt to her feet. No, no, I’m not saying your husband is an outlaw, I’m just explaining Argentine laws to you, that’s all. He’d heard of a British man who had been picked up by the law by mistake; that was a while ago, and it was also a while ago that they let him go. Show me that map again, I want to see where your land is. He looked at the map for a bit: look Gringa, I don’t know who sold that land to your husband’s employer, but it’s still under Indian control. If he went that way the Indians must have him. Don’t be frightened, they’re not all that bad. Don’t you lie to me, I’ve been reading your book. Not that bad? You’re lying Colonel, I don’t believe you! You yourself recounted what they did to that poor white woman they held captive:

  One squaw there was who hated her

  And wished she’d go to hell.

  Well, one day that squaw’s sister died,

  And – seeing the pale-face close beside –

  The squaw screamed out: ‘I’ll have your hide!

  You killed her with a spell!’

  An Indian brave then dragged her out

  And threatened her full sore;

  Said she her witchcraft must declare,

  She must confess it, then and there,

  If she refused, revenge he’d swear

  Until she lived no more.

  The poor white woman wept and cried

  But it was all in vain,

  The Indian brave, with fury wild

  Hit out at her and seized her child,

  And with his whip he her reviled

  Till she screamed out in pain.

  That savage man, so cruel was he

  He whipped her hard and long.

  The blows fell fast, and still they fell –

  His face with furious rage did swell

  She felt the pain of death and hell,

  Though she had done no wrong.

  At last in fury he cried out

  ‘For this you’re going to pay!

  You killed our girl with your evil eye

  So for your son the end is nigh!’

  At his cruel knife the boy did die:

  Cold at her feet he lay.

  Liz’s reading gave Hernández his colour and his good humour back. Her accent reading the lines in Spanish seemed to amuse him, as it amused me, because he roared and roared and even cried with laughter. My darling Gringa, do you believe everything you read? I invented all that, well nearly all of it. Yes, women are taken captive and no, they aren’t treated like royalty, but it’s not really any worse than the way we treat the chinas. Oh, I’m so sorry Liz, I can’t stop laughing, I said that they capture women but I’ve never heard of them slaughtering white children like lambs, and besides, some of the women seem to have quite a good time with the Indians. My mother told me about one, a British woman like yourself, who fell in love with her Indian captor and didn’t want to go back to civilisation. My mother offered to take her in and get her children back, though I don’t know how she would have gone about doing that, but anyway she didn’t have to, as the British woman said no, she was happy living in Indian Territory with her Chief. My mother saw the blonde-haired Indian again when she went along to the general store to buy provisions and a few luxuries; they’d just slaughtered a sheep, and the Englishwoman actually jumped down from her horse to have a suck at the warm blood. Are you telling the truth now? Yes, yes, I’m not spinning you a tale. I’m just telling you what my mother told me, Gringa. I think she jumped off her horse so that my mother would see her and understand. Understand what? That she’d embraced another way of life, like you are doing here; you left Great Britain with its machines, manners and civilisation, the highest form of civilisation in the world, to come and seek your fortune on an estancia. And I don’t know who can have sold that land to your employer, my dear, but I can tell you that it’s not going to be easy for you to make a go of it there. Unless you do business with the Indians. But why did you lie about them? I’ve already told you, Liz: Argentina needs that land in order to progress. And as for the gauchos, they need an enemy to turn them into patriotic Argentines. We all need the Indians. I am creating a nation on land, in combat, and on paper, do you see? And you are helping us build that nation too. I’m not going to let you go unarmed, I’m going to give you rifles and gunpowder. And a few trinkets that Indians like. The caña that no one here will ever drink again, for a start. Tobacco. And little mirrors, the Indians are terribly vain, you’ll see. Now come with me, I’ve got a surprise for you.

  Off they went. It wasn’t a night for taking risks so I went to sleep in the room that had been assigned to me. I managed to sneak E
streya in and he kept still and stayed quiet as if he understood the situation. He probably did understand a bit; outside, the fierce dogs of the gauchos would have given him a hard time again. I hugged him close and fell asleep. I would see Liz just after dawn, dressed in her wagon gear once more. She showered me in kisses and showed me the surprise that Hernández had given her: it was the diamond. He had put it on her right hand. It lent her red and white colouring even more sparkle.

  PART THREE

  INDIAN TERRITORY

  Frothing like Foam

  The grass was waving as we set off and the pampa was a two-coloured sea: when the stalks surrendered to the wind the pampa whitened, frothing like foam; when they swayed back it was green and the different shades of grass sparkled, looking like young shoots though it was too late in the year for that. Everything was returning to the earth now, going from light green, yellow, gold, and ochre to brown, and then pitching over. We were able to breathe again, as if we’d just emerged from a cave, as if the air on the estancia had been thick and foul. The air in Las Hortensias you could see through, but it was different, it was like inhaling water, it made you choke and splutter. It was suffocating: hard to breathe in or out. It must have been because of Campo Malo, the sound of the gauchos groaning as they were punished, or the repressed desires of the others for all the things they’d been denied. Yes, freedom is the best air, my darling. That’s how we all felt; even the poor old oxen felt refreshed, lowering their curly eyelashes from the love they felt when we yoked them to the wagon. Estreya ran here and there, happy as any puppy, even though he was quite big, the calves were shaking hips they didn’t even have in a dance that ended with them butting heads and then running towards each other again; it looked to me like they were laughing silently in that playful way that animals have of expressing their happiness. Our belly laughs spilled over onto all the animals around the wagon. Rosa was out in front, in his gaucho garb now, proud of his new horse which was a splendid chestnut, one of the four the Colonel had given us. He galloped back to us and said chuckling, Hey, look at that blue bird gringas, there’s an ombú full of birds’ nests, look at the cows following us like ducklings waddling after their mother, wasn’t the Colonel horrible, not even letting you have a drink in peace, and not letting you gallop when you felt like it. Then he shouted Giddy up, Cielo old girl! to his horse whose leg was pawing at the dirt like a black hoe, and the sparkles from the diamond on Liz’s hand galloped too, those sparkles that against her white skin and red hair left me almost blind with the desire to have her on top of me. Or underneath me. Or alongside. I’d have to wait: I was guessing that Liz wouldn’t like me to touch her in front of anyone else. We ate some jerky and chutney washed down with a few glasses of the wine that Hernández had also given us. The old guy was a pest but he’d been generous with us. I felt a little twinge inside of me, I was torn between gratitude – for the four poster bed, for the chance he’d given Liz to put on those frocks she’d then enjoyed taking off with me – and feeling giddy with relief. It was as if I, having just crossed the bridge over the ditch back into the pampa, was one of those pale wispy clumps that appear on thistles after the withering of the seed-filled flowers. Flowers of a purple so vivid that it seems stolen from the sky at sunup or sundown. That’s still the way I say it, even though I now know that the sun doesn’t go up and down. It just goes around and around, burning itself out like any fire.

  As If the Milky Way Began or Ended Right There in Her Hands

  We would arrive at the Indian encampment armed with transparency: caña, mirrors – because reflections are diaphanous too – and, best of all, Liz’s shimmering diamond. I couldn’t tell whether the Milky Way began or ended right there in her hands, the pampa sky unfurled from her middle finger like a river where the constellations sparkled quietly like calm stones belying their true nature as bubbling and boiling volcanoes. Liz was going over her last conversation with Hernández. ‘They’re not stupid, Gringa. They’ll know how much that diamond is worth. But they just can’t help themselves when it comes to shiny trinkets and strong drink.’ ‘I can understand that, Colonel, can’t you?’ ‘A bit, yes, I can, we’re only human, although some of us are impregnated with the future, destined to spill our seeds of tomorrow on virgin lands, whilst others live outside time, Gringa, like animals.’ ‘I suppose you’re right. They’ll probably like whisky too.’ She was dressed in her wagon clothes again, mostly grey, dull green or brown, always modest. Liz was speaking to me as though all those nights we’d spent together had never happened, as if she’d never mixed her saliva with mine, as if, in short, there was nothing between us. The blue sky quickly covered over with looming expressive clouds: they spoke of the West, of the sun that embraced us once more despite the punishing wind, they spoke of sudden showers, the smell of rain carried on the wind, of the earth breathless and ready to receive the rain, they spoke of my desire for the sky to come tumbling down so that we’d have to stop and Liz and I would have to get back inside the wagon, so I’d have to strip off the sodden clothing stuck to her body, after seeing her dash to put up the lightning rod and after I’d run about rounding up the hens. They were clucking and fussing that day as they always did when there was a storm, but even more nervously this time, it must have been the flash of lightning which bounced off Liz’s ring, dazzling them, that made them lay the sparkling eggs that would later hatch into the glossy black-plumed cockerels that Kaukalitrán would adore.

  As silky and glossy blue-black as their feathers was that night; our night.

  The Earth Croaked

  When the rain had passed the earth croaked, birds splashed in the puddles, flapping their wings and setting the air chirping, and the rainbow had one leg shorter than the other: since leaving the estancia the world had started to slope upwards. I’d only just noticed it, blinded as I was by the need to touch Liz, for her to touch me, as if bread and water sprang from her hand, the air I needed to stay alive even. With Liz, everything had become the pain of choking desire, the tension of the thread that bound us, whilst I was cut up imagining our separation as soon as we found Oscar. But I’d never seen a lame rainbow, nor had I seen the earth curve upwards leaving the pastures down yonder, pastures that spread out with the soft grace of ruffles on a dress, waves of violet and yellow flowers each with their diminutive shadows; because shadows were falling everywhere, adorning everything with subtle contrasts, and higher up and further on, the herons and biguás and flamingos heralded a lagoon. Everything that morning, life itself, was a warm embrace.

  What goes up must come down, even the planet; I’d just learnt that and now the poor oxen were learning it. Even going downhill they had no respite; rather than pulling, they had to brace themselves, and they tried to look behind to see what was pushing them. I think they already felt like the wagon was part of them, so they must have thought a part of themselves was bearing down on them; they wanted to escape, on they trotted until tufts of waving reeds began to appear on either side of the Indian trail. We stopped and unyoked them; Rosa got an asado going, partly because he was hungry and partly because the mosquitoes and black barigüí flies were eating us alive and the smoke would repel them. There was no other sign of life until Rosa caught three cuys and the little critters began to scream, their little paws scratching at this giant man, their bodies arched in pain; we were their Campo Malo, poor things. Then, a little while later, the smell of their flesh browning in the fire wafted over, and we were satisfied body and soul.

  An Erratic Flight

  Like the sense of peace rising from our full bellies, mushrooms sprang up from the damp earth. The pampas carried on undulating gently and I realised that undulations appear to sway even though they are still, and that they have more colours than the plain: like a dog stretching, the whole earth arched its back and the stiff fur of its uneven hillocks looked like water with reflections rippled by the wind. Where once life on the road had seemed sky-blue to me, now it went from deep purple to lilac, to yellow and orange,
to white, to light green and dark green, occasionally allowing a rare glimpse of brown. It was as though the rainbow’s shorter leg had spread its colours on the ground, and so it went on, getting stronger and more clearly defined, as if the colours found their true nature as we went along, and the earth itself took flight, no longer as dust clouds but as airborne flowers. Butterflies flutter impetuously, appear to gather momentum, then dawdle a bit till they are almost motionless, and just when they seem a mere plaything of the wind, they begin to flutter again. Theirs is an erratic flight compared to that of birds, birds which suddenly flocked around us, as if sprung from the low line of hills. Most birds glide. They don’t constantly flap their wings: like butterflies, their wingbeats are intermittent, and between times they spread their wings. But unlike butterflies, their flight effortlessly traces a harmonious arc. Hummingbirds are somewhere between birds and butterflies, in their bright colours, of course, but also in their ceaseless, electric flight. Maybe they’re closer to insects. The air was a living mass of creatures and the buzzing of the bees and the flies and the barigüí and the mosquitoes was its breath. I began to breathe in time with them, I let myself be part of that low sound which at night swelled with the odd croaks of muddy creatures. We were nearly in the wetlands where water doubles happiness just as it doubles every image reflected in it, filling each one with plural lives.

  So between mud and air we journeyed on, with me drunk on the scent of flowers and the Colonel’s wine. Liz had decided the wagon was carrying too much so we set about lightening our load in a festive mood. The invisible threads connecting us were like hammocks, we swung to and fro singing in Spanish and English and in the language the three of us invented as we went along, in which Estreya played his part, trying to bark in harmony.