by Norman Lewis
But one extraordinary circumstance separated Orgosolo from any other town I have ever been in with the exception of a Welsh mining village: the people sang. Groups of sombre Goya-esque figures gathered outside the small taverns waiting for room at the tables inside, and the sound of music and of splendid male-voice choirs poured out into the street. By now, Carlo had found his friends, and after a whispered discussion as to the suitability of such a visit, I was conducted to the bar where Graziano Mesina had killed the young Muscau and shown the bullet holes left by the fusillade.
In this bar, too, they were singing sos tenores, seated at dwarfs’ tables, one man leading with the first verse, and then three more joining in with the chorus, their hands cupped over their mouths to form a kind of resonant chamber; and in this way imparting to the voice a harsh, nasal quality recalling the sound of bagpipes. Musicologists say that sos tenores are African or Asian, rather than European, in their musical affinities, but beyond this they appear to know little about them. They are very beautiful, strange and exceedingly melancholic. All the songs I heard that afternoon were on the themes of parting, sorrow and death, and a typical one began: ‘Let me live on in hope. Don’t tell me my days are numbered.’
The women of Orgosolo were hardly to be seen – black-shrouded creatures that flitted from doorway to doorway with no more than a brief Islamic revelation of the eyes. Their menfolk both in appearance and manner demolished another preconception. One would have expected the reputation of Orgosolo to have been reflected in at least some hint of fierceness or facial brutality. But nothing could have been less true. On all sides, one saw faces of great sensitivity and refinement – often not the faces of our time, but rather of the heroes of Attic and Etruscan pottery: long straight noses with the slightly recurved nostrils of the bedouins, bold Iranian eyes, and mouths often of feminine softness.
And the last thing they wanted to talk about was bloodshed and banditry. One of them, Orgosolo’s most celebrated singer, a twenty-four-year-old unemployed shepherd, said, ‘What’s so important is to understand the social background of these things.’ Giuseppe Muscau was a heroic figure as a man of action, that was agreed (I was invited to meet him when he got back to Orgosolo), but higher still in the social scale were the troubadors – sos poetas. The high spot of their year was the August festa when the professional singers and poets came down from the mountains to take part in the contests in improvised verse – marathon calypsos lasting as much as twelve or fifteen hours on a subject announced by the judges without previous warning. Last year’s subject, to which several thousand verses had been dedicated, was ‘space travel’.
Late that evening, the time came for the pilgrimage to the small green field by the roadside below the town. Three shepherds went with us, including the singer, Salvatore, and we climbed the bank and stood among the grass and the flowers, and the men took off their caps. An old man leading a goat down the road stopped to cross himself.
Salvatore said, ‘The people put up two crosses, and the children used to bring flowers every day. In the end, the authorities had the crosses taken away. I suppose they wanted to do their best to forget the thing.’
He added, ‘All Sardinia turned its back on us. In Nuoro, they sell the cheeses we make in Orgosolo, and the shops sent them back. You might say that we ourselves were stunned. People kept asking each other how such a thing could have happened? Understand me, a man gets killed for some reason, and then his relations get together to even the score. That’s the custom. But this thing didn’t have any meaning. We felt as if there was a debt to be paid, and it was hanging over us. It threw everything out of balance. We are not criminals. We are an oppressed people.’
The time had come to return. The men covered themselves. Orgosolo was ahead, a dark jagged silhouette against the fateful shape of Supramonte, glowing benignly in the evening light.
A shepherd said, ‘Something has changed since then. People showed a little of what they felt when they caught Mesina and handed him over to the police. We were sick of the whole thing. The papers said that the fellows, who turned Mesina in, weren’t long for this world, but you can see for yourself, nothing has happened to them at all. There’s been a change of heart. Even the police feel differently about us these days. They leave us in peace.’
Salvatore said, ‘One of the poetas composed a beautiful lament for the two strangers. You must come back in August if you can, and you’ll hear him sing it.’
20
High Adventure with the Chocos of Panama (six hours required)
PANAMA CITY on election eve was like a medieval town placed under an interdict. My plane touched down at about eleven-thirty, and at twelve, midday, all the bars and cafés closed down as this torrid land went dry for thirty-six hours. A sullen, fevered preoccupation with politics had entered the Panamanian blood. People sat at home listening to interminable radio speeches and prepared themselves to go to the polls on the morrow – which in Panama can be an exciting and dangerous experience. Having decided that these two days might be well spent in seeing something of the country’s interior, I was dismayed to learn that travel was restricted during this period. As a precaution against citizens attempting to register their vote in more than one district – a fairly common practice in the past – all movement between voting districts was under a ban. The prospect of seeing anything of Panama in the short time I had to spare seemed a gloomy one. The discomforts of the moment were increased by the fact that the rainy season had just started and it could be expected to rain punctually every afternoon. In fact on that first afternoon in Panama I sat on the hotel’s verandah watching a deluge unequalled in a single day, so the papers said, since 1905. That evening in desperation, and for the first time in my life, I visited a tourist agent in the hope he might be able to suggest some way of escape from this burden of other people’s politics, and rain.
The travel agent, a genial New Zealander named Kemp, who seemed amazed that anybody should actually require his services, at first half-heartedly recommended a visit to the ruins of old Panama. ‘That’s if you like ruins,’ he added. ‘Some people seem to get a kick out of them. Why I can’t imagine. The trouble is you’ve got a whole morning to use up, and the ruins only take a couple of hours at the most – and that’s too long.’ He thought again. ‘You could go to Colon. There’s no restriction of movement in the Zone itself. Can’t say I particularly recommend it though. It laid down and died when they closed the naval base. It’s not a place that had much appeal for me at any time, but the way it is now, it’s like a wet Sunday afternoon in Hull. Say now, how about a trip to see the Indians? You can at least use up six hours that way, and be back before the rain starts.’
He handed me a sheet of paper headed: ‘Tour number six. See the Choco Indians (six hours required).’ I read on: ‘This exciting excursion takes you right into the heart of primitive, untouched Panama. Here you will see primeval man, strange birds, extraordinary beasts, and rare animals, all in a breathtakingly exotic jungle setting. Transported by commodious motor launch, you will be the privileged spectator of the mysterious way of life of the Choco Indian – intrepid hunter, and most remarkable of all Panama’s indigenous peoples. With your experienced native guide (English speaking) you will penetrate to the hidden places of the jungle rarely seen by the white visitor. The keynote of this tour is high adventure. Especially recommended to those prepared to tolerate some discomfort in exchange for a unique travel experience. Bush clothing, and rope-soled shoes for walking over shingles are suggested.’
‘The bit about discomfort is to warn off elderly ladies,’ Kemp explained. ‘This is supposed to be a real expedition in miniature. I mean you could get your feet wet or have a wasp sting you. I can’t take any chances about someone starting a court action over a case of sunburn.’
‘Have you ever done this trip yourself?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘When you’re in the business you don’t. You can’t be bothered. Haven’t got the inclination.
In any case I can’t say I’m wild about Indians. If you go for that kind of thing you’ll enjoy seeing the Chocos, though. There’s nothing like them. You’ll see them going around by the hundred without a stitch on. Paint their bodies all the colours of the rainbow. Mind you, they can be dangerous if you go too far into the jungle. Liable to shoot a poisoned arrow into you. You’ll be all right with our guide though. Whatever you do, don’t forget to take plenty of colour film, or you’ll never forgive yourself.’
Next morning at six, the experienced native guide called for me in a station wagon. I was surprised by the cut and quality of his clothes, his signet ring, his brown suede pointed shoes with white inserts, his bow tie, his fairly competent English and his well-bred reserve. I was unable to associate this man with jungles. To me he offered in his way an example of adjustment to an environment as delicate as that of the armadillo. But his environment was the city. I soon discovered my suspicions to be exact. Dominguín was an expert on what the New Zealander called his ‘Slumming Tour’ which took in Panama’s night-spots (three hours required). He frankly admitted that he’d only seen a jungle from the outside. It turned out that the jungle tour expert was working that day as an officer at one of the polling stations. However, this presented no problem, because all Dominguín had to do, he said, was to drive us to a point where the road touched the shore of Lake Madden, where an Indian would be waiting with the commodious launch. Thereafter the Indian would take over.
‘These Indians,’ he explained, ‘live on the water. They know their way round the jungle like we know our way round the town. If you and I went into one of those jungles by ourselves we’d never come out again. These Indians know every creek, every tree. It’s their life.’
This seemed reasonable enough to me. Our road now, in fact, entered the jungle, and for the first time I saw the rainforest typical of South America, the authentic Green Hell, which begins here on the east bank of the Panama Canal, and extends as a trackless sub-continent of vegetation for 1,200 miles to the edges of the Pampas of the Argentine. Suddenly the grass on the road’s verge had become monstrous – a hedge of green bayonets. Beyond, the jungle pressed forward under its armour of varnished and sculpted leaves, held back at the very edge of the tennis courts and playing fields of the Canal Zone. I stopped the car, got out and enjoyed this confrontation. Twenty paces and I had passed through the green wall into the gothic solemnity of the forest’s interior, into the borderland of millions of acres of twilight and vegetable decomposition. The odours of sap and mould, of roots and rain and leafy decay hung as thick as a London fog. Nothing stirred, but the distances were full of the chuckling and jibing of hidden birds. I came out and struck my foot against a flower, a confection of white waxen tiers jutting leafless from the wet earth. It shattered like glass. Huge morpho butterflies, blue and iridescent, were using the road like traffic, flying along it, up and down, very deliberately, in straight lines, and so slowly that I was able to reach up and snatch one out of the air as it was passing by.
A few miles further along, a side road took us down to the shore of Lake Madden. Here a small handsome indifferent Indian waited with a dug-out canoe, of the type known as a cayuco. The cayuco was fitted with a neglected-looking outboard engine, and it held an inch of brown water, and two or three small dead and malodorous fish in its bottom.
The Indian, splendidly bronzed and muscular, a miniature Apollo in faded bathing trunks, appeared not to notice our arrival. He was standing on one leg with the other flexed, and the sole of his foot pressed against the knee in a posture commonly adopted by the nilotic tribesmen of the Upper Sudan. Dominguín went up to him and started a conversation in Spanish. ‘Are you Juan?’ Dominguín asked him.
The Indian brought his leg down. ‘No,’ he said.
‘I was told to look for Juan. Where’s Juan, then?’
‘Juan’s away voting so they sent me.’
‘They sent you. All right, well look here. This man wants to see Indians.’
‘Why?’ the Indian asked.
‘Don’t ask me. He just wants to see Indians. He’s on a tour.’
‘There aren’t any Indians around here.’
‘What are you talking about? The jungle’s full of Indians. They’re all over the place.’
‘There aren’t any Indians here. They don’t come down here. There’s nothing for them. There’s only one boat comes down here. They sell cabbages. There’s no business to be done round the lake.’
‘We can go up the side creeks and look for them, can’t we?’ Dominguín said. ‘This man is paying to see Indians.’
‘You can’t get this cayuco up the creeks,’ the Indian said. ‘There isn’t enough water in them. It hasn’t rained enough yet. Why don’t we go fishing. There are plenty of fish in the lake.’
‘What kind of fish?’ Dominguín asked. ‘Catfish – tarpon?’
‘Mojarras,’ the Indian said. He pointed to the small, shrivelled, sardine-like objects in the bottom of the boat.
Dominguín now supplied an English version of what had passed between them. ‘He says there aren’t any Indians around just now. He says you come back next month when it’s rained some more and he’ll show you all the Indians you want.’
At this point I decided to take a short cut in the conversation and tackled the Indian in Spanish.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked. I assumed that he lived in a village that might be worth a visit.
‘I live on Mr Coronado’s farm. I’m the one that does the odd jobs.’
‘Coronado’s the guy who hires the boats to my boss,’ Dominguín explained.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But where is your home? Where do you come from?’
‘I’m a Cuna. I come from San Blas,’ the Indian said.
‘Then you don’t know these parts very well?’
‘I’ve been here a month. I’ve been up the river once, that’s all.’
‘That’s the River Chagres,’ Dominguín said. ‘It’s full of Indians. I know people who’ve been up that river. The Chagres is where you see the Indians. They have a big village up there.’
‘Did you see any villages up the Chagres?’ I asked the Indian.
He thought about this. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw villages. There were many villages.’
I detected a trace of eagerness in his tone. Indians everywhere are over-anxious to be the bearers of pleasing information.
‘What were the houses like?’
‘They were houses.’
‘Yes, but with walls, or with open platforms, and just a roof?’
‘I cannot remember. Perhaps they were open.’
‘And the Indians – did they wear clothing?’ ‘So
‘Some wore clothing. Others did not.’
‘This man doesn’t know anything,’ Dominguín said. ‘What’s to stop us going and taking a look ourselves? I tell you, if you want to see Indians, the Chagres river is the place where you’re going to see them.’
‘Can you find the Chagres river?’ he asked the Indian.
‘I think so,’ the Indian said.
‘He thinks so!’ Dominguín said. ‘Can you imagine that? A guide who thinks he can find a river half a mile wide. Well, anyway, let’s go.’
We lowered ourselves cautiously into the cayuco which responded to the slightest imbalance with a violent rocking. Dominguín manoeuvred a handkerchief into position between his posterior and the seat. He took off his shoes and placed them in his lap, put on a pair of darker glasses than the ones he had been wearing hitherto, and then grasped the gunwale with both hands. Perhaps fifteen minutes passed while the Indian tinkered with the engine, and then we were off.
The lake was majestic and unruffled, darkly mirroring the firm clouds of summer. We roared over its surface alternately spray-soaked and sun-scorched towards a curving horizon of forest, rising out of the water. Shortly, the rampart of trees ahead of us divided, and we entered the mouth of the Chagres river. Half an hour passed comfortably, a pleasantly
monotonous passage through an ever-narrowing channel. Small trusses of lavender flowers relieved the unchanging green façades on either side. A few herons broke into flight ahead of us at each bend in the river. And then, with an unpleasant jolting, the propeller shaft struck the shingle of the river bed. We were in shallow water. The Indian stopped the engine, fixed it into the tilted position with the propeller clear of the water, and got out a single paddle with a wide, spear-shaped blade.
Paddling against stream our speed was reduced to less than walking pace. In the next half-hour, we covered only two or three hundred yards. Then the bottom of the cayuco began to drag on the shingle. First the Indian got out and began to wade, pulling the cayuco along. Then Dominguín and I found ourselves in the water too. I now remembered Kemp’s warning suggestion about taking rope-soled shoes on this trip. It was agony to walk barefoot over the sharp pebbles, especially when hauling at and half lifting the cayuco. At practically the same moment Dominguín and I decided to sacrifice our shoes. Relieved of the pain of bruised cut feet we staggered on, sometimes plunging waist-deep into a pool, sometimes being forced almost to carry the cayuco through shallows where the water was only a few inches deep. Finally we came to a stop, exhausted, and Dominguín called to a mulatto, the first human being we had seen since the start of the boat trip; he was sitting in a hammock just above the water’s edge.
The mulatto pulled himself to his feet, straightened his body joint by joint, and came wading out to meet us. He was shaking his head and clicking his tongue, roused into a kind of easy shallow anger at the spectacle of our foolish ineptitude. This man was a member of the half of humanity that lives for ever on the slippery edge of bare subsistence. A short life – perhaps thirty-five years – of utter want had left him toothless, lacklustre of eye, with sagging body; and his mahogany skin was blotched with an ugly yellow as if he had been splashed with acid. Despair hung about him like a ragged shapeless garment. A grey crone of a wife and a brood of sickly children crept out of a shack in the background to watch us.