A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees

by Clare Dudman

  Thirteen

  Yeluc

  I have heard there is another god. My father, the cacique, used to speak of him. This god rules over everything, not just the land of the Tehuelches. He came with the white men and can divide himself into three. Once he was a man-god but now he stays in the sky with all the other gods and the ancestors, and watches over everything. But he cannot watch over your land as well as you, my lord Elal. I follow the paths you trod first for your people, marking them out with trees and patterns of hills and high ground so we might never be lost.

  I guided Roberto with my words in his ear, past the small salt lake and the flamingos, through the small pass where the old cacique Namigo died, and saluted his memory, and on over the wide flat land edged with sea and low distant plateaux. There are spirits and demons everywhere. I can see them crouching in streams and in the shelter of rocks: there a face, there a body curled up like the whorls of a shell. Only I can see, only I know. I ride carefully past. If they are not sleeping, I frighten them away with powerful words.

  I startled a small wild cat from the tangled branches of the molle thorn. As it ran through the undergrowth I thought I saw Elal’s helper Gualichu in its fur, but I was wrong. It was a lesser spirit, chased away by my curse. I let my bag of charms slip back to its place beneath my cloak; it was not needed yet.

  In front, growing larger and larger, the small tip of a finger in the sky, was something that would soon turn into a clump of trees. It marks the bank of the river and sweet water where Seannu would be. To the left of me was the ocean, hissing in its sleep, to the right side a spreading smoke spiral of a large camp fire, too far away to smell. They let me trespass. I harm no one and I eat little. And perhaps they are a little afraid.

  Then I saw another trespasser I did not know. A stranger, one of those I’d seen, a small mantle on his head and below it the same fiery hair as the child. I dismounted and crawled closer.

  When I was close, I saw he was lost. I have seen it frequently – when a warrior exchanges all that he has for a sip of the Cristianos’ rum. They forget the land. They forget the ancestors and the spirits and they forget Elal. They move like this one was – crossing tracks without purpose and then crossing back again. This one though was quiet. The ones with too much of the white-man’s poison roar and curse, laugh and fall over. This one was stumbling, checking something in his hand and then walking forward again. Once he reached the edge of a dune and jumped. He landed clumsily – like a child who is learning about his legs. His foot twisted under him and his face was red but not with ochre. Soon he fell and lay on the ground. I waited for him to rise but he did not. He yelped and crawled towards a cave and then curled up there like an animal waiting to die. I went closer still. He did not move. I could hear a rasping sound in his throat like the sound that the fox makes. Then, when I was almost on him, he threw something towards me. It was a bottle, it lay on the ground where it landed and nothing seeped out.

  He was looking directly at me now but he couldn’t see me. His eyes were pale like a summer sky overhead and for a few heartbeats I stared at them wondering what they meant. I tried to see if there was a spirit there but this shell was empty. His lips were bleeding and his body was making the shaking of the cold. I reached for the talisman that hangs around my neck and he barked at me as if he could see me. I hesitated. I asked Elal for help. Perhaps my Tehuelche spells wouldn’t work on him, but I held onto my talisman anyway – it is the claw of the first animal I killed with a bola: the claw of a mikkeoush and it has not brought me great fortune but even so I keep it with me.

  He shouted again and I began to run. Below the cave was a thicket of calafate, and even though its thorns tore at me I took refuge between its branches. I could still see the white man. Although he looked a little like a Cristiano he was not one of them. He was too pale, and his words were not their words. He sank back on the ground and lay still.

  The sun fell onto the earth and still I waited. The wind breathed coldly on us and I buried myself deeper into my mantle, pulling it higher so it covered my mouth and ears. The moon came up, full and new, and I saluted it and asked it to bless me. It smiled on me and covered the ground with its radiance. The man with the bewitched eyes did not move. Asking Elal to wrap me in darkness I crept forward again. The man was asleep. I touched him first on his arm and then on his face. There was no warmth, and then, when I felt deeper at his neck I could detect just the faintest beating of life. I dropped a little of my water onto his lips and he groaned softly – a sound I could hardly hear like a breeze on grasses. Then, saying my most powerful spell to make life return, I rubbed a little juice of the calafate berry into his lip and waited again. No sound. No sign that he lived. I dropped water on his lip again and then shut my eyes.

  Another place. Another time. Only I can travel. Only I can see. My spirit drifts from me and I look down at Yeluc sitting next to the white man in a cave. Down then, down and down. A dark place only I can see. The mist coming in and then, through the mist he comes. Tortuga. A turtle with a warm back. My helper. Then a place full of water and trees and the moon shining through. A small child with his pale shimmering hair full of fire. It is the white man. His spirit. Weak like a child. Sick. He cowers when he sees us, shouts at us and tells us to go. Then he shrinks into himself. As if he is leaving us. No! I reach out and grab his hand. Pull him onto Tortuga’s back so he leans against me. Not your time, I tell him. Not yet. And he clings to me. Small fingers like pinchers. Like a brother. We are joined now, I tell him. Something stronger than blood.

  It takes a long time to return. Every time Tortuga tries to hurry the child groans and tips from his back so I hold him there, keeping him safe.

  Mind within body. Spirit within spirit. Yeluc’s eyes open. Yeluc sees. The man’s cave in darkness. The moon behind a cloud. The man smiling in his sleep and murmuring a word. ‘Meg-an.’

  I touched him and he was warmer. When I put water to his lips he drank. The child within him was quiet now and becoming stronger. I told him to sleep and waited for the moon to cross a hand’s width across the sky. Then, since his breath came slow and deep, I left him and lay alone, watching the stars and wondered if that was where he would go too, if his god was like Elal, waiting to welcome his people to the heavens.

  I was woken by a cry. The man. Shouting and screaming in the sea, standing with the water up to his shoulders and then I knew that some evil spirit was possessing him because he started to drink. The man full of the sea’s poison. The wind blowing harder and the man shivering with pain. Then staggering along the beach to where the river makes its lazy entrance. Then drinking again.

  Now a fight. The spirits from the sea and the spirits from the river. And the moon watching as the man groaned and retched. Vomiting like a snake, loud coughing retches that frightened Roberto so that he trotted towards me and then nuzzled my hand. I whispered into his ear and told him about how the man was fighting demons and that soon he would sleep. And he did. We lay close but he didn’t know. In the night a puma came, his hungry eyes looking for meat, but we chased him away. The man slept on.

  He is thin with hollows in his face. An old warrior and when he sleeps he speaks words with the voice of the wind: ‘Dew, dew,’ and then other words, and I follow them with my mouth: ‘Meg-an, Rich-ard, Mee-ven-wee, Gwyn-eth’. And some of these words are sad as though the people that owned them have gone away and are now souls shining in the firmament. It is bad luck to talk of the stars, I wanted to tell him. Once Elal has shown his children to his kingdom they are no longer ours but his. But the man with the zorro fur spoke on and when he woke there were wet tracks on his face which he wiped away with his hand.

  I will watch you, I told the man. I will be your guardian, your brother. I will let nothing harm you, and although he heard me he didn’t see me. He turned and his eyes were haunted like the rou’s. There was a kind spirit in them, like something young in an old shell, and I wanted to hold it to me and make sure it lived. I guided him alon
g the river, shaking branches of the small willows so he knew where to go. He didn’t see me. Not once. He walked as if he dreamed. And soon we came to where his own kind were and I could lead Roberto away, for then there was the smell of a fox cooking in a pot, and they greeted him with cries and a word that I now know must be his name: ‘Si-las’.

  Fourteen

  Silas looks around him. By daylight he can see he is in some sort of brick-built shelter. The wind howls around the place, grabbing anything that is loose: door-hinges creak and the gaps between the bricks whistle back. He looks at the objects around him: chairs made from the skulls of large cattle covered in furs, tables made from boxes, shelves and beds built into the walls. He props himself up, tries to stand. No one is around. Through the open door he can see the remains of last night’s fire being blown around – a swirl of ashes and small charred branches.

  He is still weak. Beside his bed someone has left a cup of water and a small piece of biscuit. He sits back down on his fur-lined pallet and eats slowly, soaking the biscuit in the water to soften it before breaking off tiny pieces with his teeth. After he has finished he lies back again looking at the ceiling – it is a complicated structure of supporting beams. Who has built this place? Not Jacob and the men that came with him.

  Holding onto walls and pieces of furniture for support he hobbles carefully to the doorway of the cottage and looks outside. Last night Jacob bound his ankle tightly in rags so that it couldn’t move. There is a square with four large brick-built cottages each with doors and shutters for the windows, and in the centre a hearth for a fire and what looks to be a kiln. Around the cottages seems to be a high earth wall. It reminds him of a small fort, because at each corner is a small solid-looking cannon.

  ‘What do you think, Silas?’

  Jacob has returned with some scraps of tinder and is clumsily rebuilding the fire. ‘There’s a moat outside – apparently there’s an old story that Indians won’t attack over water, but maybe it was just that the fellow who built this place wanted to feel like some sort of lord.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘We don’t know, really. One of Edwyn’s servants told me he remembered hearing about some Welshman called Evans wanting to start off a ranch in the Chubut valley but he gave up very soon, after just a few years. The man said there had been a rumour that the Indians had got wind of Evans’ plans and made sure all the cattle scarpered to the hills before he’d even started.’

  Silas sits beside him. Every part of him aches.

  Jacob, he notices, is making a mess of building the fire. Even though he is easing each piece into place, he is getting it wrong, but Jacob is soon standing back and smiling contentedly at his handiwork. He looks at Silas. ‘The Lord was clearly saving this place for us. Why don’t you go outside and see?’

  Silas stands slowly while Jacob looks at him and grins. Nothing seems to affect Silas’ brother-in-law. Although almost as broad and tall as Selwyn Williams, Jacob’s bulk is of the soft sort, consisting of blubber rather than anything as hard as muscle, and his hands, though large, are paw-like and too clumsy to be useful. As he blinks at Silas benignly, Silas wonders yet again how long it takes Jacob to shave carefully away at his cheeks, chin and upper lip to leave this ridiculous fringe of dark honey-coloured beard outlining his face.

  Silas shivers. It is too cold to sit still for long. He stands and walks unsteadily towards the entrance of the fort and peers outside. The fort is on a small embankment surrounded by a shallow moat. The moat is dry now but obviously fills with water from the river when the tide is high or the river is in full spate. He takes a few steps outside the fort and looks around him for meadows but all he can see are patches of grass and thorn. It is certainly greener than the land he has so recently crossed, and he supposes that if you came across it from one of the barren slopes a couple of miles away you might have the impression of a meadow, but it is still more yellow than green, and beside his feet there are patches of bare ground where there is no vegetation at all.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Jacob has come to stand beside him. He is smiling and looking around the place as if he is happy.

  ‘Where are the trees? I thought there were supposed to be trees.’

  ‘Over there, look.’

  Silas follows Jacob’s finger. By the river a trio of willows droop over the river, but they are stunted and small.

  Silas is too depressed to speak. The seagull was right. Away from the river, wherever the ground is higher, it is as barren as everywhere else: a few bushes and some scraps of thorn, and between them the sand or the earth, dry and dusty, scooped up by the wind into briefly-travelling vortices.

  His legs suddenly give way and he sinks to his knees. It is a desert, just another desert. He thinks of the promises, the assurances, and Edwyn Lloyd and his carefully chosen words. Seven thousand miles for a desert. Did the Meistr think they wouldn’t notice?

  ‘Here, drink this. It’s a sort of tea,’ Jacob says, pouring some boiling water on to a couple of small twigs in a cup. ‘It doesn’t taste of much, but it’s better than nothing.’

  Silas sips. It has a faintly tarry taste and for a few seconds it fools his stomach into thinking it is being filled.

  Jacob and the rest of the men there had given up waiting for the Mimosa’s lifeboat several days ago, and Silas’ confirmation that it will not arrive at all comes as no surprise. At first they had gone looking for game, trying to trap rather than shoot to preserve ammunition, but had been unsuccessful. Then one of the men managed to trap some sort of long-legged rabbit, and the next day they had come across an injured animal that seemed halfway between a deer and a goat. Neither of these had kept them going for long, of course. From time to time they have seen other strange creatures – a large bird with long legs that couldn’t fly which was like nothing they have ever seen before; and sometimes something that seemed so familiar – a fox just as red and bushy-tailed as the foxes at home – that they were shocked into stillness. Once they saw a small tabby cat which looked quite tame but snarled and ran when they approached. Other times they have seen small dogs, mangy looking things that are also shy but seem much less wild. Then another week had come when they had not found anything at all and in desperation shot a few ducks – but they had been too rich for them and made some of them sick.

  The fire is burning well now and the men are returning. Every morning they do their best to hunt, leaving Jacob to guard the place and tend to the fire. One by one they sit and warm their empty hands.

  ‘Well, what do you think of the place, Silas?’ one man says, waving at the buildings around them. ‘It’s quite a surprise, isn’t it ? Not much different from home. Sometimes when I wake I think I am back in my little place in Carmarthen and Mam is going to be in soon with a cup of tea, but instead in comes Jacob.’ He laughs, then adds more seriously and quietly, ‘but of course I wasn’t starving to death in Carmarthen.’

  ‘And it is a little less like a desert.’

  ‘Yes, there is that, too.’

  They return to stare at the fire, each one silent with his own thoughts for a few minutes until the last man returns with something heavy slung over his shoulder. He rests his gun carefully against the side of the house and then walks slowly up to the rest of them. They look at him with bright expectant faces.

  ‘Bagged something, did you, Ivor?’

  He lays the bird along the ground beside the fire and looks at Jacob.

  ‘A bird of prey, brodyr. We cannot eat this. The good book forbids it.’

  But little by little the bird is plucked, roasted and eaten. For another day their bellies are not empty. In the afternoons they go about their other work: some are clearing the ground, some are trying to make a track to the west, while others are digging out pits for the houses and gradually building up walls.

  The next day they catch nothing, and the next day nothing again. Soon they will be too weak to even walk out of the fort.

  ‘What’s going to happen no
w?’ Silas asks.

  Jacob shakes his head. ‘I don’t know.’ Even he has stopped smiling, and above his lip there are small hairs starting to grow.

  Then, suddenly, there appears a dog. It comes from nowhere. A whippety sort of animal with long legs and a tail that stands up pointed and tall from its backside. It trots around as if it knows the place, sniffing and cocking its leg at every corner then sniffing again. It visits each man in turn, begging or nuzzling up, and then when it receives nothing but a pat on the head from anyone it runs out of the fort into the desert.

  ‘Did I dream that?’ asks Silas to no one in particular. ‘Am I going mad? First a talking seagull and now a stray dog that comes from nowhere?’

  But if the dog was a dream everyone else has dreamt it too. The men go to sleep in their houses while Silas and Jacob keep guard at the entrance.