A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees

by Clare Dudman

  ‘Dulce de Leche,’ says Selwyn, standing next to Silas on the deck, ‘that’s what they say it’s like, sweet milk boiled until it’s burnt.’

  Silas nods. As they round the next promontory the water begins to smell of the land, and in some ways seems to be a mixture of the two. The whole estuary is a caramelised cream, a great expanse separating Argentina from Uruguay, Buenos Aires from Montevideo. There is so much silt it hardly looks like water at all.

  ‘We have to be careful now, stick to the channel.’

  The ship edges forward in the shallow water. In the distance he can see the beaches and behind them something green – maybe a forest or at least lush vegetation. Trees.

  He longs so much to reach out and touch them. Inside him something flickers into life. A memory. Walking under the trees with his mother’s hand in his. The shadows of the trees touching them with their cold fingers, something snapping under his foot and the smell of fungus in his hands. His mother is singing and he is joining in; already he can sing in parts, his soprano melody and her alto accompaniment. She smiles at his voice and squeezes his hand as the song picks up speed. Soon they have reached a slope and they are running, not through necessity but because of the song, as if it is driving them forward. They lose some of their mushrooms from their basket but they don’t mind. At the bottom they throw themselves down and look up at the roof of moving rafters above them and listen to the wind swishing through the branches. They grow silent listening and watching – endlessly moving patterns and shapes, a world in their leaves.

  ‘Look, Buenos Aires!’

  A hut and then another hut, then small flat-roofed houses, then larger ones. The greenness fades to brown, and the houses become higher. Then there are sounds, single voices calling out and then more, then bangs and a roar. The Denby approaches the land more closely, noses its way through the brown water until it is surrounded by other ships.

  Silas looks around him from the deck. So much noise – a great clang of voices and colours. Selwyn tries to talk to him, but he shakes his head. No point. So many people, he had forgotten there could be so many people. They walk unsteadily along the gang plank into the dockland of one of South America’s most prosperous cities. Silas is conscious of his worn boots, his frayed shirt and misshapen jacket. He pulls it down, and tries to polish his boots by spitting on them and wiping off the spittle with a rag. He thinks he can smell himself and he hasn’t shaved; an untrimmed beard now accompanies his moustache.

  The people around them are a mixture: some blond-haired, blue-eyed, some of them dark-haired and olive-skinned, some of them obviously Indian, and some of them have the intense black-blue glossy skin of negroes, but all of them move quickly and talk loudly. He is not used to being shoved, not used to being ignored. He tries out some of the Spanish he has learned from Yeluc and Selwyn but no one seems to be willing to stand still long enough to listen. Sweat is trickling from his armpits. He would like to remove his jacket but is afraid to expose the griminess of his shirt.

  They go through slums which have masked their poverty with gaily coloured paint, peopled by women and bare-footed children who have clothes as shabby as his own, then an area of cheap hotels and boarding houses with foul-smelling gauchos playing cards outside – looking lost and ill without their horses. The place stinks. Once Silas had visited his sister in a place called Newtown: a miners’ village. The houses had been built rapidly in rows and at the end of the street had been the privies: a row of seats draining into the brook behind. There were tales of old people falling in and never coming out. It seems as if these people in Buenos Aires are drowning in their own effluent too. They move quickly on, silently, so they can hold their breath. Then they turn another corner and it is as if they have entered a different world: huge stores flank impressive avenues lined with trees, affluent-looking shops look onto small tiled plazas, offices with great mortared balustrades and elaborately grilled windows loom over carefully arranged parks. Everyone is fashionably and immaculately dressed. Women sit under sunshades and sip coffee from tiny cups; men loll back and read newspapers. They walk on and the street disappears under market awnings. Farmers with polished burnt skin sell trinkets and fruit, Indians thrust out skins, feathers and blankets. Birds in cages squawk, while a monkey in a small jerkin chatters on a fat man’s arm. They walk quickly through, their hands guarding their pockets.

  ‘We’re too far east,’ says Selwyn.

  ‘I thought you knew the place.’

  ‘It’s changed since I was here last.’

  Caradoc tuts then turns around to face them all with his hands raised. They have reached a shaded quiet street with brightly painted walls in yellows and pinks, and at one door there is a small inoffensive-looking dog lying outside. All at once there is a burst of music and a man and a woman appear at a door shouting and in some sort of embrace. She is young, dark, her hair falling down her back in waves, her mouth picked out in red in a way none of them have ever seen before. She throws back her head and laughs and the man grabs her by the waist and pulls her back inside.

  Caradoc tuts loudly, then marches on briskly, his stick tapping occasionally at the ground beside him.

  ‘Was that a loose woman, do you think?’ asks Jacob.

  Selwyn grins at Silas.

  Silas looks back at the door, hoping it will open again. Inside it looked cool and light, the floor tiled and through another door he thought he saw a garden, with a fountain of gently falling water. He wonders if Edwyn Lloyd is living in such a house. It seems cool, comfortable – a paradise.

  They huddle closer together trying to retrace their steps. Selwyn is right; they must have come too far. The offices of the Minister of the Interior would be in a more salubrious area of the city, somewhere closer to the plazas and the women sipping their coffee. Selwyn stops a tall thin man in sombre dress and he points and indicates a direction with a nod of his head. They walk past grand churches with their doors open, releasing the smell of incense, dust and coolness to the street. Silas drops back to peer inside and marvels at the statues and small wooden confessionals.

  ‘Come on,’ says Caradoc, ‘it’s getting late.’ The rest are moving quickly away. They hurry to catch them.

  They turn off a busy main road into a street that is quieter than the rest. The buildings are plain, grey and massive. There are guards everywhere in bright uniforms and stern expressions, blocking their way and insisting that they do not enter. Eventually they find a small new building with a mortared frontage and a balcony on the first floor. It has a grand entrance, with two large doors opening into a cool tiled entrance hall. The civilian porter directs them to a room lined in dark polished wood where they wait until a young man ushers them into an office.

  The sign on the door says Dr Guillermo Rawson and behind the desk is a tall balding man with an unsmiling face and melancholy eyes. He stands to meet them and holds out his hand, then says a few quick words in Spanish. The room is large. Books line two walls, and on a third is a large map. Besides a large desk there are also a couple of winged leather chairs arranged by a table near the window. There is someone there. Someone reading a book: a silhouette in the light of the window. They are just turning to Selwyn for his translation of Dr Rawson’s words when the man sitting in the chair stands too. For a few minutes it is difficult to see his face, but then he steps out of the light and into the centre of the room.

  ‘Edwyn!’ Jacob says, and leaps forward with his arms outstretched.

  When the Meistr hears their plans he is quiet. His beard has grown longer and more grey since they saw him last, and the skin beneath his eyes is creased and dark as though he is tired. He combs his long fingers through his beard then says quietly and incredulously, ‘You want to move from the land the Lord has kept for us?’

  Caradoc blusters and reddens a little, while the other men look down, embarrassed. Silas glares at them. In the presence of Edwyn Lloyd they seem to lose their resolve. They seem shy of him, as though their backbone disso
lves away.

  ‘I didn’t,’ says Jacob plaintively and for a few seconds there is an awkward silence.

  ‘Nothing grows,’ Caradoc says defensively, ‘the shoots come up but then they just wither away.’

  ‘But the Lord gave it to us. He wouldn’t give us land that was infertile!’

  Turning his back on Jacob, Caradoc turns to face Edwyn. ‘Everything dies, everything. That’s how it is, Edwyn. We can’t carry on. We’ve tried our best.’

  ‘I see.’ The Meistr glances around the room, and looks at each man in turn. The darkness of the skin around his eyes makes them look deeply set, and as they settle on Silas he has a curious feeling of falling into them – as if Edwyn Lloyd’s eyes contain their own small world.

  Guillermo Rawson coughs quietly and they turn to look at him. Selwyn apologises to him in Spanish – in the excitement of seeing Edwyn Lloyd again they had almost forgotten he was there. Selwyn takes a piece of paper from his jacket. On board the Denby they had spent most evenings discussing what they would say to the minister of the interior and how they were going to say it. In the end Silas had suggested that someone should take notes and this is what Selwyn looks at now. He examines it for a moment as if refreshing his memory or formulating what he is to say then starts speaking slowly to the minister. It is clear immediately that if he used to be fluent in Spanish he is not any longer and after a few minutes of speech during which he has stumbled over words and Rawson’s face has become fixed with a frown of puzzlement, Edwyn asks quickly if Selwyn would prefer it if he took over.

  Rawson’s eyes follow the conversation. ‘I speak English, yes?’ he says in English. ‘Is better?’

  Edwyn shakes his head and speaks a few words in Spanish. Rawson smiles, nods, and gestures for them all to find themselves seats.

  After looking at the rest of the party Selwyn slowly hands over the sheet of paper.

  Edwyn Lloyd talks quickly to Dr Rawson, and then turns back to them. ‘He says that last year there were droughts everywhere and that is probably why the crops have failed. It has been exceptionally dry. People have had problems all over Argentina.’

  The colonists look at each other then talk quietly together while Edwyn turns again to Rawson, talks and then turns to them again. ‘He says he thinks it is too soon to give up. He thinks you should give it another try.’ Then he lowers his voice. ‘He seems to think he could persuade the government to come to some sort of arrangement over supplies.’

  ‘Would they give us a ship?’ Caradoc asks.

  Edwyn Lloyd turns to Rawson again. ‘He says he thinks that might be possible. He says to go away and think about it.’

  ‘But how do we know what Rawson said?’ Silas asks everyone later. ‘How do we know Edwyn’s telling us the truth? How do we know what he’s telling Rawson?’

  ‘I trust him,’ says Jacob, ‘I don’t think he’d set out to lie.’

  ‘Well, I think he would. In fact I think he’s rather good at it. Do you remember seeing trees in our little paradise? Or lush meadows?’

  Jacob is silent.

  ‘Perhaps he exaggerated a little...’ Caradoc says.

  ‘A little? A little?’ Silas is shouting now.

  ‘Hush boy, everyone will hear you.’

  They are in one of the plazas in the centre of the city. They are sitting together on a shaded piece of dried grass to keep out of the sun. Silas is thirsty, hot and angry.

  He waves Caradoc’s words away with an impatient flick of his hand, and continues even more stridently, ‘He’s obsessed, mad. Doesn’t care how much he twists things... he’ll do anything to make us stay in his precious valley, anything at all. He doesn’t care if we starve to death or we drown in the river or Indians come and murder us all in our beds. He doesn’t care how many of us die, how many children...’ His voice breaks abruptly. The sob that he is trying to fight back makes his throat hurt. Richard. It hits him again. The smell of that fetid hold and the boy’s hand in his, the grip weakening. Gwyneth’s pale cold head resting on her mother’s heaving chest. The emptiness is expanding, thoughts falling into it like the banks of a river in spate. It is all there is, nothing else. ‘We can’t stay,’ he manages to say. ‘We can’t. We’ve tried long enough.’

  Jacob reaches over to him and draws him close.

  Caradoc coughs. ‘We’ll sort it out, bachgen,’ he says stiffly, ‘don’t you worry. We’ll find someone in the embassy to help us. It’s too much for Edwyn Lloyd to do on his own anyway.’

  Buenos Aires’ river, the Río de la Plata, is the result of a confluence of two only slightly smaller monsters: the Río Paraná and the Río Uruguay. They flow through the land north of Buenos Aires. It is a wild place, tamed only at strategic intervals with forts, monasteries and small domed churches, and in this stretch of land, sandwiched between the two great rivers, is the area known as Pájaro Blanco. It is popular with settlers, one of the government officials tells them, they might want to take a look, so Silas together with Jacob and Selwyn travel along the Paraná river to investigate.

  After the cool dryness of Patagonia the delta of the Paraná river is steamy and tropically hot. The river is immense, more like a slowly flowing lake, and the land each side seems well watered and fertile. Silas sits on the deck and stretches out. The sun is hot but there is a pleasant breeze from the water. There are cattle and horses in every direction and Silas wonders if it is true what he has heard – that they are the result of a few escaped horses and cattle which bred so successfully on the nourishing land that there are now thousands running wild, belonging to no one.

  Living off these rich pickings are the gauchos, solitary men on horses, their dress so similar it has now become an unofficial uniform: small hard hats, brightly coloured neckerchiefs and wide-legged leather trousers with belts and sashes. They have a reputation for hard living and wildness, but as Silas passes them they look peaceful enough and contented, one or two of them waving and shouting a greeting when they are close. He imagines living here, owning his own estancia and clearing the land for more cattle. He would build one of these vast whitewashed buildings with their low red-tiled roofs. Then he imagines Megan and Myfanwy standing outside, scrubbed, clean, smartly dressed and well fed. They could even have servants and then Megan could be like those women he saw in Buenos Aires sipping indolently from a delicate cup. Yes, he decides, he could live here. The air is warm, the area lush and fertile. The work might be hard at first but it would not be the unrelenting grind that there was in Chubut. They could afford to relax a little, smile again, and talk.

  They stop at the larger settlements. First, the city of Rosario, with its sandy beach, flat-roofed villas, bustling with boats, proud of being the place where General Belgrano first raised the Argentinean flag forty-five years ago. It is fast expanding now with European immigrants and anxious to attract more. Then they reach Santa Fe itself. Silas wanders through the streets with his mouth open; he had thought it would be a frontier town, dirty, unkempt – like the poor part of Buenos Aires. But instead he finds shady plazas, cathedrals with domes instead of spires, beaches by the river and lakes and houses that are whitewashed and bright in the sunshine. Inside, the buildings are just as bright and immaculate. There are tiled floors, white walls, elaborately carved wooden ceilings and through each window the sunlight splashes; a reminder of God, Jacob says, and for once Silas understands exactly what he means. Santa Fe. Even the sound of the place is beginning to feel good in his ears: ‘Silas James of Santa Fe’. He could import his own piece of Wales up the Paraná river – dressers, settles, chairs, tables, blankets – he could even help to furnish a chapel and have his name on the family pew. It would have to be simple of course, like this Jesuit Iglesia, but without the domes on top, a fusion of Welsh and Spanish. They would go every Sunday dressed up in these smart severe costumes the locals wear: black and tailored, a little whiteness at the neck. Yes, that would suit the Welsh colonists very well, they would fit in, and like these colonists they are not af
raid of a little hard work. All they need is a chance, and land that will respond to their labours.

  ‘What do you think, Silas?’

  He smiles his approval.

  Edwyn Lloyd is less enthusiastic. He meets them again in the lounge of their hotel when they return to Buenos Aires. ‘If we go there, we will lose our Welsh.’ His voice is quiet, strained.

  ‘If we stay at Chubut we will lose our lives.’

  Edwyn Lloyd looks at Selwyn and fastens him with his eyes. ‘You haven’t given it a fair chance.’

  ‘We nearly starved, Edwyn,’ Selwyn says, ‘you weren’t there to see us.’

  ‘Nevertheless we should go back, try again.’

  ‘No, Edwyn. We’ve decided,’ Caradoc says, ‘we are going back to the colony to tell them our choices, while you sort out the details. We’ll leave it to them to decide, of course, but I’m sure I know what they’ll say.’

  Edwyn Lloyd sits abruptly, his face set. Silas looks at him, trying to decide what he sees there – maybe anger, defeat, or resolve – it is difficult to say. His eyes are staring into the distance, the shadows beneath them emphasising their blueness, and as Silas examines his long straight nose, his glossy lush hair and full beard, he remembers what Megan told him once – that Edwyn Lloyd’s face was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful face she had ever seen. He becomes aware of Silas staring and his eyes change, flick suddenly from looking at some distant thing to something closer. He smiles tightly, ‘Ah, Silas, ffrind, what do you say?’

  ‘What I have always said, of course – we should leave the Chubut and find somewhere better.’

  ‘Ah, of course, you too.’ The black beard shakes.