The gold of course was and is replaceable, but, truth to tell, this little amulet fused two apparently irreconcilable aspects of my ancestry into one. At first glance it consisted of a cross, the anomaly of which was that it was hanging ‘upside-down’ when suspended from a chain. The loop was set within the jaws of some hound-like figure giving the token an animistic appearance. It was explained to me that the tripartite cross at the bottom was a Christianised version of the infamous Thor’s hammer. This symbolism only appeared in the Norse world toward the end of the 10th century AD, and signifies the transition within the Viking world from the pagan pantheon of Valhalla towards that of Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity. Considering my own character to be essentially pagan, modified by Christian vices and virtues, I always found that the amulet aptly expressed some of my inner contradictions. Sometimes I would receive criticism for it though. Many people thought it symbolised some cult of Satan. Perhaps not without reason, since a hound made into a cross really is an odd symbol for a God-fearing person to bear.
Along the same line others would say that it is impossible to faithfully serve two masters. These critics therefore discarded me as a hypocrite, if not a traitor. All the same, I was happy to wear it until one day it disappeared and was gone for many years. It turned out that my son’s mother had stolen it from me and had held on to it ever since. Why she finally admitted to having it in her possession, I don’t know. She claimed I had said she could have it, which I of course vigorously denied. In the end she returned it to me and I put the chain with its unusual symbol around my neck again.
Now, I was never so crazy as to deliberately travel around in Latin American countries with a piece of shining gold hanging around my neck. But the whole thing was not very big and it happened that I forgot to remove it when arriving from Europe. For example, I was very grateful when a bus driver in Santo Domingo pointed out to me, that for a gringo to walk around with solid gold around his neck in the streets simply was to be asking for trouble. I immediately realised he was right and removed it. Why I was again wearing it the ominous night when the two burglars stole into my rental house in Galéras, I can’t tell, but that was the moment when that ambiguous symbol, cursed by the evil hands and eyes of my son’s mother, was forever taken away, prompting me to find a new stance between Heaven and Hell.
Speaking of which: midway into his report the police officer enthusiastically saluted the arrival of a very young girl. She was about to take a seat when he ran up to her, pulling her out of the chair. When she was standing upright he started to show off her assets to me, turning her back to front and back again while appreciatively commenting on her silky hair, perky tits, protruding buttocks and slender waist. The next natural step would have been to discuss a price, although, or perhaps precisely because, she might be a cousin or even a sister of his. I admitted to be very impressed by her beauty but politely asked him to finish the report before we attended to this next matter, obviously of much more vital interest to both him and her. He grudgingly returned to the computer to complete his writing. He then handed me the signed and stamped document.
At this point I recalled that the police in Samaná, alerted to their existence by a phone call from a bus driver, had arrested two men leaving Galéras in the early morning of the very same night in which I had been attacked. They had been passengers of his bus and for undisclosed reasons aroused the driver’s suspicion. These had been quite well founded though. One of these two men on apprehension turned out to be wanted for a total of 18 murders in the Dominican Republic. Suspecting that these two sweethearts just might be identical to the guys who had paid me a surprise visit, I asked if I might see a photo of them. To my astonishment the policeman showed absolutely no interest in the matter and waved me off, letting me understand that my audience was over and that I’d better not outstay my welcome.
I was temporarily taken aback, but even this only for a moment. It dawned on me that the demonstrative reluctance on the police officer’s part to do his job could have something to do with the fact that his official salary was meagre. I had not offered to pay anything for him to write me an official report. This meant that once I had also turned down the offer to take on his female cousin, he would not be able to count on any extra money. In his eyes he had done everything that could be expected from him, and it’s more than possible that the last thing he and his colleagues wanted was for a fair-skinned Westerner to turn up as a key witness in their ‘investigation’.
The corruption of the judicial system here is so unfathomable that one can never know if, or to what extent, the local police are actually feeding off the robbing of tourists in the region by secretly receiving a percentage of the spoils. Even if the two delinquents arrested for murder were in fact non-identical to the ones that had visited me, it could also be that the two policemen who refused to go up to my house to look for signs of the perpetrators were actually in cahoots with them, yes, that they might even have seen them escape prior to coming down the road and finding me. Behind the house there is a thicket which the robbers must have crossed to reach the road on the other side. Continuing down that road towards the road leading to Samaná they must eventually have ended up being in the vicinity of the two young police guys on their bike. I don’t say that they must have met. But it’s not altogether improbable. After all, there must be a reason why so few crimes are ever prosecuted. To get away with murder in the Dominican Republic is the easiest thing. Try to tell these people that crime doesn’t pay, when it might be the only thing that really does.
I was indeed tested by Destiny in Galéras. My response and the outcome of the action was such, that even if it really was cowardice not even trying to fight these thugs, that defensive course of action saved my life, because if I had failed to successfully impose myself on them, they probably would have killed, or at least hurt me very badly — perhaps made me an invalid for the rest of my days. On a positive note: my skull had not cracked entirely open from the machete hammering on it, although that was surely because the one they used had not been recently sharpened. It’s also possible that the person handling it had turned the blunter edge against my head. How very considerate that would have been!
Psychologically too I’m robust enough to candidly admit my shortcomings and to be grateful for every extra day in the light of the sun. I have had no subsequent nightmares linked to this intrusion and haven’t developed any new phobias. All I need to do really, to put this unfortunate event in its proper perspective, is to try to imagine what a real battlefield, or even a civilian self-defence, situation would have been like back in the days when dying or surviving was the result of man-to-man combat, not with the simple intention of finding a couple of dollars in each other’s pockets, but of cutting each other to pieces for the sake of cutting each other to pieces. And let’s say that you did indeed survive — by your lucky stars, physical strength, courage and general resourcefulness — how much pain and horror would you not have experienced in so doing? And perhaps all the same eventually perish from an insidious infection, festering in one of your many wounds.
Zauberberg
For reasons of discretion for the people concerned, and as a precautionary measure, I can’t give you the real name of the Andean village I came to visit after my sojourn (described earlier) in Colombian Santa Fé de Antioquia. I have thus given it the fictitious name Zauberberg (Magic Mountain), after Thomas Mann’s famous novel set in a sanatorium environment in the Swiss Alps. This is not because there are many similitudes between what happens to the protagonist in the novel and what happened to me. In fact there is really only one but salient resemblance: I suffered a mountain spell of sorts there.
A ‘mountain spell’ is not primarily, or even secondarily, associated with lack of oxygen, snow blindness, or something like that. It’s a psychological condition, an ominous feeling of having been taken into custody by a spiritual entity residing in the mountains. In rural Scandinavia tradition
al folklore has often identified this condition with some kind of action exerted by the trolls, resulting in psychological obsession and aloofness in the human victim. If not counteracted in time, tragedy and disaster strike because the origins of this obsession are inhuman, demonic, the initial symptom being a growing reluctance to even think about descending from the highlands into the plains again…
As for myself I arrived to Zauberberg after a bus trip that took three hours longer than expected because a landslide had blocked off one of the mountain roads, forcing the driver to turn round and choose an alternative and more time consuming route. Though everything else at first seemed normal, it soon transpired that I had arrived in the village just one day before the annual Fiesta de las Orquídeas. As a consequence there was only a hotel room to be had for that night. In the morning I had to give it up and found myself reduced to the hopeless task of asking for shelter in every hotel, big or small, that I could possibly find. The same hotel managers and owners who one week earlier, or later, would have bent over backwards to accommodate me, could now hardly be made to look up from their newspapers. And though I could see entire rows of doors ajar, revealing so far unoccupied hotel rooms, the answer was unanimous: the rooms were reserved in advance and taken. In truth they weren’t. But the hotel owners knew they would eventually be able to squeeze entire families into those rooms and charge them per capita. In the circumstance I was just bad business and nobody would give me a break.
So I ended up in Lucia Malóca’s place, which was rather like being a visiting family member (albeit a paying one) in a family home. The room I was given, next to the street and only separated from it by two solid wooden shutters (no windows), was very spacious, furnished with two beds, a couch and a TV. The plan of the building was such that all rooms had entrances from an outside corridor facing, on the opposite side, a large uncovered space combining a living and dining room ‘under the stars’. The likewise uncovered toilet and shower was to be found at the far end of this outside patio, behind a wall opposite the kitchen in the laundry area. The latter could have been a nice little courtyard as well, with a neat view of the surrounding mountains. Instead it had a high wall to protect the house from the dirt of the henhouse on the other side. Sitting down among the clothes fluttering in the wind, the only outdoor scenery I could behold from here was a patch of sky filled with birds. The shower, as far as I remember, only had cold water which is pretty much standard in Colombia for all cheaper accommodation in temperate climates. Standard is also the measly trickle it produces when actioned. But none of this really mattered as I was about to enter the twilight zone.
First of all, there was the party area extending from one corner to the other of the central plaza. The frequency of sound waves alone, pitched to storm frenzy, and caused even the incredibly loud fiestas of Santa Fe to pale in comparison. Add to this that some bars and cafes had chairs and tables placed so far towards the centre of the extensive plaza that the waiters had to ‘fill the unforgiving minute with sixty second’s worth of distance run’ every time they took and executed an order. Yet these waiters were cheerful, never complaining, or seeing a difficulty in the situation; they weren’t even expecting you to pay them a tip for their incomparable efforts. Music blasted out from just about everywhere as horsemen and, especially, horsewomen showed up in slick attire: shining boots, tight trousers, black and white hats, and colourful shirts wrapped up in a knot over the lower ribcage allowing flat stomachs and generous décolletages to be seen and duly admired. The equipages would typically ride right up, almost into one of the bars, and order a tray with shot glasses filled with aguardente. These were then taken in one go while the party remained in their saddles. The drinks consumed it was time for yet another show-off around the square. And, it goes without saying: more shots!
The typical Colombian country horse is not very big but strong all the same. It has been trained to perform a so-called paso fino, which is a super short trot making a very energetic sound as the horse’s hooves move like drum sticks over the cobbled streets. But they can also gallop. For example, I saw — and this was at night time, mind you — a young boy, perhaps eight years of age, straddling his horse bareback, with his baby brother poised in between himself, the horse’s head and the reins, as they thundered down the plaza at what seemed to me vertiginous speed. What it seemed like to the boy’s parents — in particular as far as the younger, hardly more than a wet baby, was concerned — is perhaps an even more interesting question. No matter how good a rider the boy was, the undertaking was both arguably and objectively risky. As for the really little guy — poor thing! — he could only fanatically hold on to the horse’s mane and thereby to his young life. Which he did with great bravery. So I guess this is simply how they break them in — I mean the kids, not the horses!
To what might be considered inspired lunacy, there is also a darker side. Some twenty years ago Zauberberg had been in the grip of malevolent forces. At present this was all but history. But. Because if one just ventured one or two blocks beyond the party plaza one would run into armed paramilitary, posing like sinister shadows on the rim of the light posts. And they weren’t stationed there to calm things down in the plaza — by midnight simply ablaze with human passion — as much as to prevent unwelcome party crashers to enter town. Even the villagers themselves, invisible behind their shutters, wouldn’t hesitate to open fire against serious marauders were they to show up. Nonetheless, anyone living a couple of blocks off the plaza would have to pass by, on his or her way home, these statuesque men in camouflage suits capable of unleashing imminent destruction. Then again, this is something to be considered as part of normal circumstances in Colombia and if anything, people are grateful that there actually are troops there to protect them, just in case.
From one thing to the other, in a country always full of glaring contrast. Lucia Maloca, my landlady, was the spinster among eight sisters (she also had three brothers). By external, independent, expertise she was in addition classified as a bipolar. Upon entering her house I indeed noticed she was nuts, but as the reader knows, my choices by now were sorely limited. The house she lived in was the one the father had once bequeathed to all of his children. However, the rest had founded their own homes and kept busy raising families. That left Lucia alone to take care of the family heritage. On an occasion like this she would rent out rooms to make some extra money, and that’s where I came into the picture, henceforth just waiting for its frame. Since Lucia took a liking to me she had me introduced to her many sisters and brothers at a barbecue party that took place in a villa outside town. In the course of the afternoon, as I spoke to one of her sisters, I came to mention that I wouldn’t mind staying in Zauberberg for some time. Whereupon she, her husband and their daughter, offered me to remain in their country cottage located above the village, since they were just about to head back to the big city after their vacations. I gladly accepted and thus only had to stay in Lucia’s place for a couple of more days.
By this time, though, she, like the rest of the hotel managers in town, had begun to squeeze as many people as she could into her house, which was more and more beginning to resemble a summer camp. My nearest neighbours, for example, were a man and woman in the form of a couple. Their bedroom was only separated from mine by a curtain, and though I had no reason to complain about them, the reverse might not have been true. One night I brought little Alba with me home. It was just one of those things that happen. She wanted it and I needed it. But although — for fear of arousing Lucia’s jealousy — I had admonished her to be very silent and discreet when entering the house, she started to get on the phone trying to make her teenage daughter understand why she was running unusually late this evening. It wasn’t just Alba calling. Of course the daughter started to call back every five minutes. Finally, I had no choice but to ask Alba to either turn the telephone off or to leave right away. But she didn’t want to leave, business unfinished. In an attempt to solve the dilemma
, I resourcefully recalled that there was a small bedroom at the far end of the corridor. The main problem was that we needed to pass in front of the door to Lucia’s own bedroom to get there. This we did. After which things developed in a satisfactory way and I could finally lead Alba back out of the room, down the corridor and let her out in the street before the alba of the day and before anyone could take notice.
Or so I thought. Whether Lucia had actually been awake, or received her information from a third party (and that could only have been my neighbours), I don’t know. The truth is that she, although I took pains to immediately and silently restore the room to mint condition, found out about our nocturnal activities and began to give me glances insinuating I owed her something as well. Technically I certainly didn’t, but Lucia was not one of those ladies who’d give up easily. For days, even weeks, after I had left her house and moved in at her sister’s place just outside the village, she would look me up in the central plaza at night and make me company whether I liked it or not. She would even drive her scooter up the hills and otherwise unannounced pay an impromptu visit to her sister and brother in law’s home, in what seemed an attempt at surveying my activities rather than making sure I was doing OK. In the absence of the former she obviously felt it was ‘her’ house too, and though I had paid a rent, albeit quite modest, to stay there, she would typically hang around for as long as she wanted. At least at the beginning. After a while I learned some techniques as to how to dodge her, for example, by going into hiding, or, by hearing the sound of her moped accelerate up the hill, meet her halfway feigning to be on my way to run errands in the village.
Incidents of Travel in Latin America Page 14