Between Extremes

by Brian Keenan

  We had to leave this paradise and move on. There were still 3,000 miles in front of us. After a night in Santiago we left by train for Chillán, birthplace of Bernardo O’Higgins.

  Everyone we spoke to about our plans told us we were unwise to travel by train. They were dirty, noisy, they didn’t run on time; why didn’t we take the bus or fly? Our answer was simple. We believed the best way to see a place was by train. People simply shook their heads as if to say, poor deluded fools. But we were determined and the next day found ourselves at the railway station.

  The train lurched out of the station in Santiago like a great drunken whale, rolling from side to side at unbelievable angles. Suddenly I was beginning to believe all the stories. Five and a half hours of this reckless rocking was not something to look forward to.

  As we hang on to our seats, eyes rotating with every violent lurch, I say, ‘D’you reckon you can get seasick on dry land?’

  Holding his stomach, bulging his eyes and puffing out his cheeks, mimicking someone on the verge of throwing up, Brian replies, ‘If it’s like this all the way to Chillán – how long is it? Five hours? – then yes, it’s almost certain!’

  However, once clear of the station sidings with their mauve and yellow signal boxes, we level out and it is plain sailing.

  There are occasional small shrines beside the track, presumably marking the spot of a tragic accident. In the warmth of the spacious carriage we enjoy that pleasant, comfortable drowsiness that comes when you are free from the bustle of others and from any responsibilities. We watch advertising hoardings flash past, most with Spanish names. The occasional English one, like ‘Chadwick and Sons’, a garage in the middle of nowhere, comes as something of a shock. Their names are probably the last vestige of any Englishness.

  The tidy shanty-like suburbs gave way to acres of bright-coloured containers being loaded with acres of fruit, in preparation for their long journey to the supermarkets of North America. Speeding past, these packing yards looked like an abstract cubist canvas, each square of colour melting into the next.

  Pushing further into the open countryside, the small shacks of the farm workers looked like ghostly throwbacks to Steinbeck’s dustbowl country. The rural stations were dilapidated, peeling pastels of blue, orange and Amarillo yellow. Behind them the dry scorched earth of the Andean foothills sprang up and lost themselves in the heat haze.

  As the train bullnosed southwards, we sank back into the armchair-like seats and talked about the pleasures of Los Lingues and how it seemed that train travel was not as woeful as had been suggested. The carriage might not have been spotlessly clean but it was highly comfortable lying back in the huge leather seats and planning what to do in Chillán. The train had a stewardess dressed in a neat black uniform piped with yellow. She was extremely solicitous and helpful and neither of us could understand why people were so critical. We were soon to find out.

  In the meantime we watched the changing countryside. So many of the rivers we crossed were dried up but still seemed to be of immense width. We passed more stations than we stopped at, and at each of them two or three lean mongrels lay dozing, hopeful of an occasional titbit. The whole countryside seemed paralysed by languor. I watched, infected myself by the lazy drag of the train. Every twenty minutes or so the refreshment trolley would come trundling down the carriage. The attendant’s squeaky voice sang out, ‘Bibedas, sandwich, café, cola, cerveza.’ Hour after hour the squeaky vowels of his Spanish diction ground its affliction on us. But we were forced to put up with such irritations and before we knew it we were off-loading our luggage in Bernardo’s Chillán.

  We knew little about the place apart from the facts gleaned from a book. The original city had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1833 and its replacement was similarly destroyed in 1939. It had also been the home of Arturo Prat, the renowned naval hero, also of Irish extraction. I laughed and said to John that perhaps the fates would be grateful and Bernardo and Arturo would delay any intended earthquakes until our homage to the heroes was complete and we had moved on.

  We booked into a hotel in the town square which was named after Bernardo’s mother, Isabel Riquelme, and after a quick shower and a beer decided to visit Parc O’Higgins.

  We walked through the town laughing: Bernardo was everywhere. Banco O’Higgins stood solid and imposing at the corner of the square, and even the cabs had roof signs declaring Taxi O’Higgins.

  Chillán was laid out on a grid system. Getting around was uncomplicated but there was really little to see. Earthquakes had obviously destroyed whatever history had been here. Even the statue of Bernardo in the square was hoisted on a huge Nelson-like column. He might be able to look over the land but no-one was able to look on Bernardo. The town was lively and full of young people. Even well into the late evening they could be found walking in couples and groups. This sudden press of people made me think of how empty the countryside we passed through had been. Santiago is said to contain one third of the total population of Chile and I could well believe it. What I realized I had missed as we drove to Los Lingues, and here also, was the roadside art and craft stall. The bric-a-brac of ethnic and local culture was entirely absent. Perhaps Chile’s was an urbanized culture and the long-established mix of diverse immigration had eroded any artistic expression in the form of keepsakes such as I was looking for.

  At the Parc O’Higgins we found a small museum. It was filled with artefacts that some local dignitary had donated to the town and the four walls of the upper gallery were lined with paintings by a celebrated local artist. They were executed in the French Impressionist style, and well worth the space that had been afforded them.

  Finally we found Bernardo’s bronze statue. It was cast in the customary pose of the great general leading his armies into war. His horse reared up on its hind legs, defiantly pawing the air. Bernardo’s sword was thrust forward, calling the charge. But it was somehow disappointing, reminding me of the little lead soldiers I had been given as a child.

  The long, 15-foot-high, stone mural depicting the history of those first years of liberation was, however, a real work of labour and art. Large lumps of rough local stone, carefully selected and positioned, made up the relief of this brutal mosaic. The centrepiece was, again, the Liberator’s charging warhorse. The animal’s snorting mouth was set with pebble-sized shards of uncut marble and flint, its terrified, screaming expression caught perfectly in those broken stone chips. I had never seen such a mosaic before and its simple ingenuity informed me that here was an artistic ability far superior to the kind of local craft work I had expected. This marriage of labour, art and history was something Neruda was teaching me. I knew if he had ever seen this memorial he would have heartily approved. I remembered that on his own sea-facing wall at Isla Negra there was a mosaic made of local stone and glass from his empty bottles and pieces of wood and shell that he had casually picked up.

  As we walked round the park, we discussed the strange paradox of a land liberated by the radical intellectual son of an immigrant Irishman who remained so obviously part of the history and folk memory of the people, compared with the disastrous and appalling years after Allende. There were many parallels and many contradictions that our ill-informed minds could not resolve. But these were the tantalizing questions that a stranger asks. Outsiders, after all, see history as one simple clear projection, a list of events and incidents in time. I was trying to understand things from Pablo and Bernardo’s emotional perspective, wanting to get inside their skins, or rather to allow their ghosts to enter mine so that I might ‘feel’ their response.

  We find a fine statue of Bernardo in the park. On rearing horse he waves his cocked hat at the adoring masses. Every town in Chile has solid statues to national heroes and most of them are good. But what makes this park special is another monument. A wall, 60 metres long, carries a mural depicting scenes from his life in a mosaic of Chilean stone. This tribute to a native son is more powerful than any European public statuary.

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bsp; Born here in 1778, Bernardo was sent at seventeen to London for his education. There and later in Spain he became involved with South American revolutionaries. Given his father’s position as Spain’s Viceroy of Peru, Bernardo’s politics must have seemed remarkable. This aspect of the man’s life – apart from his being half Irish and a liberator – greatly intrigues Brian.

  ‘Didn’t you used to say that you wanted to write something about him, the great Irishman freeing the South Americans from the European yoke?’ I ask.

  ‘Damn right! And we Irish are still trying to throw off the imperial millstone today, aren’t we, Englishman? But that’s only a little part of it. Think of it: your father runs an entire region – Chile and Peru – but you grow up determined to destroy all that he stands for. Why?’

  ‘Yeah, it makes great drama. He hardly knew his father, according to my books.’

  ‘That’s true – he used his ma’s name until after Ambrose died. Then he came back here and lived on the old man’s estate, very happily it seems, till the independence movement got going.’

  The early nineteenth century was a period of extraordinary upheaval. North America had won its independence from Britain, the French Revolution had toppled the monarchy there, and then Napoleon conquered Spain leaving her colonies, including Chile, in a state of limbo. Although swearing allegiance to the deposed king, most grasped the opportunity of greater independence with alacrity and governed themselves, paying only lip-service to the Spanish crown.

  In Chile, local leaders formed a junta in 1810. By 1813 they had a firm grip on the country and had even written a constitution. When the Spanish king Ferdinand was reinstated after Napoleon’s defeat in the Peninsular War, he looked to re-establish his rule over the colonies and backed an invasion of Chile. In October 1814, General O’Higgins’s Chilean patriots were decisively beaten at Rancagua.

  We walk along the mural, studying the scenes depicting the Rancagua debacle and the subsequent flight over the Andes to Argentina. Just over two years later, O’Higgins returned with the Argentine general José de San Martin and their ‘Army of the Andes’, numbering some 3,600 men. At the Battle of Chacabuco in February 1817 the Spanish army was routed. A new government was set up and O’Higgins was named Director Supremo.

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you!’ I say. ‘“As Supreme Director I, Brian Bastardballs Keenan, devise a new ruling . . .”’

  ‘Quite right too. From now on all Brits will touch the forelock and call me El Big Supremo!’

  For months on end during our captivity we had no books and only a set of dominoes to pass the hours. Dominoes is a great game but when you have played it a thousand times, it loses some of its appeal. With nothing to do and so much time to fill, we invented games to get through the days. In a cell just large enough for two mattresses we would sit crosslegged, facing each other. Having begged a bit of old cardboard box and the loan of a pen from a guard we would try to remember games from childhood and reinvent them. We drew a winding path marked out with spaces and obstacles, a customized version of snakes and ladders.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘but how can we make dice, we’ve nothing heavy enough.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Brian, carefully shaping a piece of card into a hexagon with the nail clippers. He marked the edges ‘one’ to ‘six’ and put a dead match through the centre. He spun it and the improvised dice came to rest on ‘six’.

  ‘There you are, six to start, so I’m off!’

  He was highly imaginative and could overcome difficulties that would have me giving up. But he had the infuriating habit of foreseeing a problem in the first few rounds, calling a halt and, with the immortal phrase, ‘I have devised a new ruling’, changing the game and usually eradicating my advantage with it.

  Reading more about O’Higgins I feel that our jokes about El Supremo might suggest more substantial similarities between the two men. He and Brian both grew up in places of civil conflict, both became keenly political in their youth and both developed a liberal view of how society should be run. I imagine that Bernardo shared some of Bri’s charisma, perhaps also some of his eloquence, yet I have a strange idea that were they to meet they would find it hard to communicate; their clear-sighted stubbornness provoking what to an outsider would be a mystifying tension.

  O’Higgins was Supreme Director for six years. Though he introduced many liberal social reforms, ultimately he fell foul of public opinion because he was undemocratic. He alienated the church and landed aristocracy by raising taxes to promote his liberal reforms and trying to rework rules on land ownership and inheritance. Threatened with an army revolt, he resigned in 1823 and went to live out his remaining years in exile in Peru.

  ‘What a strange thing,’ I say. ‘The man who seems now to be synonymous with Chilean freedom only lived in the country for twenty years, and died an outcast.’

  ‘I wonder what made him tick? How would he have lived those last twenty-odd years? He had a farm in Peru – the great general turned homesteader. Seems he never married but, like his dad, fathered children with local women. It would be a tough job bringing him to life.’

  ‘Yes. But I think you should try – takes one uppity bugger to know another!’

  That evening we went in search of one Enrique Schuler. Our guidebook informed us that the banks did not give a good exchange rate and we should ask for this character at the Café Paris. It all sounded a bit dubious but we had no alternative. It was evening, we had run out of cash and we were leaving the next day.

  Eventually, with only the vaguest of directions, we found our man after trailing around the back streets for some time. In a tiny shop selling nothing but balls of knitting wool, the mysterious Enrique stood talking to the lady owner. He quickly ushered us in and changed our traveller’s cheques. He was pleasant, polite and not the least bit seedy, with something of the look of a parish priest about him.

  As we returned to the town centre, the evening streets were still filled with young people and disco music was everywhere. We settled at a pavement table at the Café Paris and ordered brandies while we sat and watched the nightlife pass by.

  I wake next morning, my mind full of only one thing: is John Bruton with Fine Gael or Fianna Fail? I am perplexed for a moment at this odd concern so far from home, then realize we must have been talking politics last night. After eating we spent a couple of hours at a pavement café. Dimly I recall drinking cognac and suddenly I have one of those alarming ‘morning after’ flashbacks. Brian is sitting grinning at our table. I am standing with my back to the café wall preparing to demonstrate the gait of the younger German at Los Lingues. Why I wanted to do this I cannot imagine. After a while, though, I became aware of the waiter giving me odd looks so I returned to my chair. It must have been then that, illogically, we turned our attention to Irish politics.

  After a restorative breakfast we head for the market: aisles of stalls spread out from a hub, specializing in everything from flowers to spices, foods to hardware, even saddles. Brian is keen on a saddle, but settles on an elegant poncho in the colours of County Mayo. We wander around, buying some water and snacks for our next expedition on the train, to Temuco.

  The market was a delight, teeming and symphonic, full of people and voices shouting and laughing and calling out their wares. It was like walking into a huge aquarium of colour. John bought a hat which made him look like Harrison Ford, or so he thought, and I bought some special riding gear for a young horse-fanatic niece. I snapped pictures like a maniac and began to understand the paintings that we had looked at the day before.

  On our return to the station, we discovered our train had either left or never arrived or perhaps was not even running that day. It was difficult to tell. In the absence of any reliable information about its replacement, we decided to take the bus.

  Chapter Ten

  Chilean bus stations are like those the world over – a large hall where the various bus companies have little offices, usually no more than dingy cubic
les. You book your place and then wait for the departure to be announced over the tannoy. Beyond a few seats and a newsstand there is rarely any comfort on offer other than a couple of kiosks selling a sad-looking array of sandwiches and drinks.

  It is a banal process. People wander about rather aimlessly with bags and bundles until their destination is announced and they move to the stated departure point. Although often there is quite a send-off for a family member, being Chilean these are fairly subdued affairs, even the children letting out only the odd yelp.

  We queue for our bus – then, at the last minute, my stomach threatens revolution so I nip to the lavatory. This too is basic. I have to pay to get in and for loo paper too; not advisable when you are in a hurry and do not have the time to search Berlitz for the right phrase. In any case, would it have the Spanish for ‘I’m desperate, pal, get out of my way!’ Within seconds of surpassing the various hurdles, I hear Brian bellowing.

  As the bus pulled out, I jumped up.

  John, John . . . he’s not here! Tell them to stop, I kept telling myself. Where is the stupid bollox?

  ‘Stop the bus!’

  I tried to squeeze past a very elderly lady fussing in the aisle. ‘Mes amigo,’ I said, panicked by the bus’s apparently imminent departure.

  ‘Mes amigo,’ I said again, pointing to the bus shelter. Everyone looked perplexed at the demonstrative gringo shouting, ‘Stop, stop.’ Fortunately my panic and insistence paid off. The bus stopped.

  Everyone seemed genuinely concerned as I jumped off, but they started laughing when Harrison Ford dashed out of the gents’, buckling and zipping himself together, as I shouted, ‘For frigg’s sake, John, come on. Come on, will you!’