Between Extremes

by Brian Keenan

  As John and I wandered about independently, our caretaker sat quietly on one of the long benches that lined the walls. There were no rows of pews in the body of the church. I suspected that these people’s religion was of the severe form, and that those who intended to worship in church would feel it blasphemous to sit on their backsides in such a holy place. For them it was only right and proper to stand before their God with their heads bowed, or else to kneel on the hard rock floor.

  But the real masterpieces of this church were the surrealistic murals that lined the walls. I fell in love with them immediately as my eyes hungrily took in the images that these peasant people had painted to adorn their place of worship. In these pictures was the spirit of Hieronymus Bosch, and here too were the dark intimations of Goya and the enthusiasm of Salvador Dali. Here was magic and realism sitting side by side and telling the Christian story with an excited kind of lyricism I had not encountered before. Social commentary, theology, nomadic imagination, and the primitive blasphemy of colour and concept were blazing through these unique masterpieces. This small, empty church didn’t need communicants; it was already full to bursting.

  There was little else to see in this locked-up village. And I watched as the little immaculate caretaker took the huge key from his pocket and carefully closed the church doors. I still wonder if he knows the value of those paintings. I hardly know myself. In comparison to the many monotonous Stations of the Cross that I have viewed in hundreds of other places of worship, these simple iconoclastic murals depicting Christ’s suffering were priceless beyond measure. When we drove off our guide was explaining something about the murals that I had not fully grasped. In one of these paintings the soldiers who were escorting Christ to his crucifixion at Golgotha were all dressed in the uniform of the Spanish conquistadors. Was that perhaps why the little caretaker had eagerly shown us the uniform in the old sea chest? Did he think that he had a holy relic in his church – the uniform of one of those who had driven Christ to his crucifixion?

  Another question was beginning to intrigue me. How was it that those who had brought the faith of Christianity to these remote hills and these tribal people were later seen by those same people as the betrayers of Christ and thus of Christianity? I am sure the men of the Inquisition would not have viewed these blasphemous paintings on this remote church wall lightly. But then Chile was never the golden treasure chest that Mexico and Peru had been for the Spanish Empire. Why would the church of the empire worry about the muddled thinking of some backward Indian imagination in this forgotten landscape?

  As our jeep bumped over the rough-hewn highway John and I chatted enthusiastically about the village we had left. The whole notion of a ceremonial village was fascinating. It was curious to think of a complete village that existed purely for the purpose of ritual. These Indian people lived in a vast changing landscape. They understood it and adapted to it. They came together only to worship and celebrate. So for a few days in every year the little village of Parinacota, like a few other villages on this northern frontier, would be buzzing with life. The people would be telling their stories, sharing their hardships and their humour; some would take wives and others husbands, children would be baptized, families would bury their dead and then disappear into that wilderness until the next festive occasion. I loved the whole idea of a village which functioned only as a place of ritual, and where life was lived elsewhere. I could see how this would bind these people together intimately, so that perhaps they truly felt themselves one tribe and one family and one people. Whatever that sense of a place with a desperate want in it that I had first encountered at the edge of the desert, Parinacota was an epiphany that obliterated the feeling, like a small candle burning in a dark place.

  We lunch in Putré, the main town in the area. The restaurant looks closed and tiny from the outside but proves to be large and quite full. Soap operas, novellas in Spanish, play at full volume on the TV. Nobody seems to be watching them and they are an unwarranted disturbance in a town whose name means ‘the water that whispers’.

  We stop for a coffee in the middle of nowhere as we descend once more into the desert regions. A few buildings around an old railway carriage are run as a café by hippy owners, one of whom, a qualified doctor, tells us that the carriage had originally worked on a railway serving the nitrate mines at Iquique. Built in England it had ended up here to be used as a laboratory for the gold mines in Lauca. I like this woman. Her gentle nature, sweet face and soft complexion belie the harsh environment. But I am surprised with her reply when I ask why she lives in this remote encampment with two children.

  ‘Before I lived in the world, now I live in the earth.’

  It seems a little trite, but perhaps too many tourists have asked the same question. She wishes us ‘a nice life in the world’ as we leave.

  The cool and damp of the camanchaca are now a fading memory. The world is again burning, blinding hot and the cross-like cacti dotted over the hillsides suggest a mass crucifixion. I wonder how people can stay here: what are they avoiding or discovering? When we pass a modern-day geoglyph with the message ‘Christo Viene’, Christ comes, it strikes me as a somewhat forlorn hope.

  When you think you have seen all the barren mountain landscape imaginable and have been descending for hours, there is the big one, a sheer drop of 800 metres to the Lluta valley, Arica’s other garden. After the sights of the past two days, the terrain of this green, fertile and flat valley, even with its vast walls of light brown cliff that had seemed so alien, is now positively normal, homely and welcoming.

  ‘You can’t get sunburnt through a window, can you?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ says Brian, ‘you just get exceptionally hot.’

  I had planned to get us seats on the shady side of the bus to Iquique. But confusion over where the sun would be in relation to our route and forgetting the rather basic fact that the driver was on the left-hand side of the vehicle meant that I had cocked up. We are sitting behind the curtained driver’s compartment with the sun beating in on us. I am fuming; angry with myself for not working things out correctly and annoyed with Bri for being so blasé. Now he settles back in his seat, doubtless preparing for more sleep. Chin on chest he turns to me. ‘With all those guidebooks and that little compass of yours I’d have thought you could work out where the sun is.’

  ‘At least I was thinking about it!’ I hiss through clenched teeth.

  ‘Temper, temper!’ he says, snuggling down further. I drum my fingers on the armrest in righteous rage. We both like to get things right and both find it hard to resist the ‘I told you so’ attitude when one proves the other wrong. It balances out but, with this long journey ahead and the constant need to be organized, I wish Bri would take more interest in the nitty-gritty of getting about. The whole process of getting our tickets had been dauntingly bureaucratic and it had taken me a while, struggling with my Spanish phrase book, to understand the system. Brian’s only, and not entirely helpful, query as I tried to work things out was, ‘When are we leaving?’

  Once on the bus our names are checked off a list by the steward. Even without the heat of the sun and Brian’s lackadaisical attitude my head is soon swimming. When finally we are on the move, Brian sits up and looks around the bus.

  ‘There are plenty of spare seats, John. Why don’t you take one in the shade where you can cool down?’

  I feel anger rising but then appreciate his tone, gently teasing but also conciliatory. I take the seat across the aisle where I can see the road ahead. We are soon eating up the miles of the Pan American Highway. The name itself conjures up for me endless opportunity and adventure. At times we travel along valley sides at 1,000 metres then swoop down to follow the rocky coastline. It looks beautiful in the sunshine. I listen to the Neil Young tape that Anna gave me and find myself daydreaming, just enjoying the sense of rolling on. Looking ahead the road seems infinite, dead straight; all is flat as far as the eye can see. The road dips a foot to reveal miles more of two-lane black
top. You can really sense you are covering the ground on flat earth like this. Calm now, I feel centred here in the desert – not really reflecting, not thinking ahead, just being of the moment.

  Brian reads and dozes. I cannot help smiling. I am very happy to be with him – he has a big spirit. We are so comfortable most of the time; true, he seems unaware of those around him sometimes, but this comes from independence, not arrogance. Young’s lyric ‘Long may you run’ plays in my ears. Yes, I think, you old bastard, long may you run – white beard shining in the sun.

  This journey is scheduled to take more than four hours. After two it seems as if we have been on the road for a day, and time is dragging. Every now and then we stop and someone gets off. Sometimes there is a little side track, sometimes nothing. I watch the faces as we pull away. They remain impassive, merely blinking away the swirling dust. I feel lonely for them as they head off for heaven knows what remote spot.

  I read what the guidebook has to say about Iquique, our destination.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘What is it?’ asks Bri.

  ‘It says here that our next stop has huge fishmeal plants. After 1980 Chile was the world’s largest producer of fishmeal, and sixty per cent goes through Iquique!’

  ‘Isn’t that just lovely? At this rate I’m going to be smoking as much as you.’

  ‘Hold on though,’ I say, reading on, ‘the town’s name comes from the Aymara word ique-ique, meaning “place of rest and tranquillity”.’

  ‘Let’s hope it is. But I guess that’ll depend on which way the wind is blowing.’

  As the road scrolls down to the sea, a vast sand dune rises up. Until now there has been none of the rolling Saharan terrain that I associated with deserts, only flats and rocks and barren escarpments. Yet this huge, solitary hump just outside the town is not reassuring. Its rounded shape is gentler on the eye than rugged outcrops but the scale is intimidating. Small whirlwinds, visible by their shadows, race across the dune as it squats at the gates of this important city. One has the feeling that nature is just playing games, waiting for the moment to reassert its authority.

  The bus to Iquique travelled for some 300 kilometres along the coastline edge of the northern desert. It had all the appearance of being one huge sand and gravel quarry. The view through the bus window could not intrigue the eye. Its emptiness and repetitiveness was broken here and there only by small crosses on the roadside, marking the place where someone had departed this life.

  On the hillsides around Arica I noticed how the army had constructed its own symbol of anchor and crossed guns in white-painted boulders. It seemed the military was continuing the history of the geoglyphs that had begun with the Inca empire. It was an interesting comparison. Certainly the ancient Inca civilization was authoritarian and brutal. But back then kings were regarded as sons of the Sun. They were deities without human equal. The brutality of that empire was largely marked by wars of conquest or confined to religious ritual. For a moment I thought of the image of an Inca high priest standing on the temple steps, his arm raised high in the air and in his hand a knife. On a stone altar beside him lay the drugged body of his living, human sacrifice. Into that beating heart the priest would plunge his stone knife and pull out the pulsating bloody organ to be held aloft to the worshippers below him.

  In comparison the role of the military junta in Chile was one of the most insidious examples of state repression in contemporary history. As I was thinking, my eyes again caught a glimpse of one of those simple roadside crosses. How many thousands of the disappeared have not even this simple memorial? I wondered how contemporary Chileans dealt with their recent bloody history. For the regime that had so dominated Chile’s immediate past had also plunged a stone-cold knife into the heart of the Chilean people and ripped it out, pulsing and bleeding, only to be forgotten. I looked about me at the faces of the passengers on the bus and wondered what hidden secrets or what hidden grief pulsed in their hearts. History was not so distant as to be easily ignored.

  But if the landscape outside the bus was sombre, and if it was perhaps conditioning such responses, then the atmosphere of the bus itself was determined not to let it be so. From an old battered transistor radio on the driver’s dashboard, romantic ballads were being blasted out by some South American Sinatra or alternatively the airwaves were crackling with some frenetic salsa. I looked at the driver, who was not only oblivious to my contemplations but also seemed at times oblivious to the road. His head was rolling and nodding in time to the music and from a cigarette burning slowly in his mouth, a long column of ash dripped precariously. Like the roadside shrine we had discovered high in the hills, his window was adorned with miniature fluffy animals, teddy bears and rubber Disney toys. Everywhere there seemed to be ribbons, bows and bells. A dangling crucifix smashed into the windscreen with every roll and pitch of the bus. There was Santa Claus and Mary Magdalene and flower posies and miniature flags. It cheered me up, I don’t know why – perhaps because, unlike the shrine on the mountain, this collage was somehow life affirming.

  Chapter Three

  Iquique was bustling and vibrant and more colourful than Arica had been. But just like Arica there was the awful and inevitable smell of fish processing. The heat and the smell hit us the moment we descended from the bus. I was wearing a sweaty T-shirt, an old pair of shorts and an even more ancient pair of bedraggled sandals. John was immaculate in cotton slacks and a crisp clean shirt. I had an odd assortment of baggage all tied willy-nilly with elastic ropes to a small chrome trolley affair. John had one large bag containing all his clothes and another smaller bag smartly tossed over his shoulder carrying his documents, passport, pen, computer, compass, penknife, string, guidebooks, smokes and God knows what else.

  We were an odd couple standing like two lost sheep in another town perched between desert and sea. Without hardly looking for it John pulled a street map from his satchel. If John was irrepressibly curious he was also an inveterate organizer. I watched him study the map and move his head slightly as he mumbled, ‘Right, yes. Yes, OK. Yes,’ while all the time his finger was drawing an imaginary line in the air. ‘OK, let’s go,’ he commanded and struck off down a side street. ‘Intrepid traveller, my arse,’ I said scurrying behind him. We found the hotel, quickly registered and went up to our room. After dumping his bags, John headed out again, saying, ‘I’ll see you in the bar in a bit, I’m going to take a look around.’ I nodded in agreement. The welcome blast of the air conditioner kept the town’s heat and the smell of fish at bay. I slept easily; there was no need here to worry about gasping for air.

  Brian has been suffering from a minor stomach bug and is resting until evening. As dusk starts to fall I stroll out from our hotel into Plaza Prat. Globe street lamps and green lights strung out from the top of a clocktower light the square as families saunter about under the trees, the air filled with the lilt of children at play. I enjoy the peaceful atmosphere and realize that part of the pleasure comes from being alone for a while and meandering at will.

  I stop and look up at the brightly lit Teatro Municipal. Its broad façade dominates the square and reflects the prosperity of the port in Victorian times when nitrates and minerals were shipped abroad from the mines inland. The Teatro is adorned with four statues of women depicting the seasons – though from what I’ve read about Iquique they should only honestly depict one: summer, summer, summer and, well, summer. As the sun sets, the mountains beyond this white edifice turn an ever deeper pink. As I near the hotel once more I spot turkey vultures wheeling and settling in a high palm across the road from our room. Perhaps they have spotted the ailing Brian.

  Later I made my way to the hotel bar. ‘Una cervesa, por favor, señor.’ The bar was empty and the barman seemed glad of my company. Within a minute he set me up a tall frosted glass of beer and with it a small saucer of olives as big as walnuts. I sluiced it down and ordered another.

  The waiter pulled the beer and smilingly asked where I was from. His curiosity was t
empered by reserve. I told him that I was from Ireland and waited for a moment. It was obvious he was not used to foreign guests. There was a small misunderstanding when he thought that I was from Holland. I corrected him by repeating the word Irlanda, and when I received a quizzical look I spoke the words Irlanda and Irlandés, trilling my r’s like a parrot. The encounter must have looked like a scene from Fawlty Towers. Finally, to get my point across I joked that I was the great-great-great-nephew of Bernardo O’Higgins, the liberator of Chile. The barman smiled nervously and said, ‘Oh, yes,’ as he watched me devour yet more olives. By now I was on my second dish.

  I gathered from his furtive glances that my remark had unsettled him. I sipped my beer slowly and tried to look a little less demented than I imagined he thought me to be. I was becoming anxious that my throwaway joke had backfired. He passed me a couple of times rearranging bottles and glasses. Each time he took a long, lingering look at me. My discomfort grew. When I noticed him whisper to one or two locals who had come in, nodding towards me as he spoke, I was convinced my travels in Chile were about to end with a great deal of physical ignominy. I was wishing McCarthy would arrive to even up the odds. I had finished my second dish of olives and the beer was at its last half-inch. I couldn’t get up and run now, and if I coolly called for another drink it might force the barman to act out what I thought he was thinking and unceremoniously tip this demented, olive-eating insulter of the Great Liberator onto the street.

  As I watched him from the corner of my eye, he emerged from behind the bar counter and ushered me towards the window. ‘Come, come,’ he said. I walked towards where he was standing, trying to look unperturbed. The hotel fronted onto a square and the waiter was pointing towards it. ‘See, there you are. Here is your great-grand-uncle standing in the square in Iquique,’ he said beaming widely. I looked out and saw he was pointing to the statue in the middle of the square. Sure enough there stood the great liberator, my great-great-grand-uncle, Bernardo.