Senya put her hand on Elaine’s wrist. ‘God did not desert us. When we first bought hives the first bees all died. Juan and his brothers went down into the fields, next to the hives, and prayed, asking God what they should do. While they were kneeling, a black cloud of bees descended and went straight into the hives, and they have prospered ever since.’ She pushed a jar of honey towards us. We spread its amber over the fresh white bread, and bit deeply.
Their story typified the problems facing Tingo María. On the cooler hillsides above the tropical rainforest flourishes an unremarkable-looking bush: Erythroxylum coca. The leaves are like small bay leaves but with a rounded tip. From the earliest times, there is pottery showing men whose cheeks bulge with wads of coca. When chewed, they release a drug that kills pain and hunger. The Inca elite reserved its use to themselves, but the Spanish democratised it, using it to keep their underfed native serfs on their feet long enough to work themselves to death. It became worth more than any crop except spices.
In 1860 a German chemist extracted the active alkaloid, C17H21NO4, and gave the world cocaine, the first local anaesthetic. For the first time, coca was exported. The rich Huallaga valley also produced natural rubber, coffee, quinine and the plant barbasco, whose roots produced the insecticide rotenone. The Second World War stimulated booms in quinine, for troops fighting in malarial zones, and rubber, for military vehicles. In 1945, these markets dwindled; synthetic rubber displaced natural latex, and DDT superseded rotenone. The dairy, beef and tea production promoted by US advisers only made economic sense on large estates. Smallholders continued to grow coca for traditional uses, and for illegal cocaine. By 1960, the Huallaga valley was producing 60 per cent of the world’s coca. From 1961, the US began coercing Peruvian governments to eradicate coca entirely, whatever its use. The economy, culture and traditions of small farmers in the Andes were attacked to solve white-collar drug abuse and the problems of America’s youth. This policy continues. Ecuador has complied, and coca leaves are not legally for sale for any purpose. Peru resists: coca is more central to its traditions; besides, drugs fund most of the graft pocketed by governments.
At first light, I walked down the garden to check Dapple. Her rope was wrapped round her neck, all her legs and the tree. She looked like a failed game of bondage. When I leaned on her shoulder to free her, my hand came away wet with unclotted blood that streamed down to the top of her leg. I tried to see where she could have hurt herself. There was no nail or wire on the tree. When I bathed her coat, I could find no wound. I retied her, and walked back to wash in the yard. Juan was there.
‘Do you have vampire bats?’
‘Yes! They attack livestock, and carry rabies.’
‘That’s all I need, a rabid homing donkey.’ It left me thinking about the underground gallery at Chavín. I later checked. We had been walled in with vampire bats.
Juan surveyed his orchard, ‘I would like more beehives, but since Shirley was born three months ago, Senya has had blood infections and the medicine takes all our money. She is still not strong.’
I gave Senya a little money, ‘Another beehive for the next time we come.’ I gave Juan a packet of fishhooks. Senya said, ‘Do not take water from the big river, it is poisoned with mercury from the big mine.’
We were on the road to the small town of Castillo by half-past eight. Juan had tied the bags on Dapple for us, placing one across the shoulders, and the other along the spine. I couldn’t say I had any confidence in the new arrangement. Senya gave us fruit from their garden, and looked at the hot sun. ‘Today there may be snakes on the trail.’
I showed interest; we had seen little wildlife.
‘Yes, you must take your sticks and kill them!’
The temperature was already 80°F and, as we began climbing the soaring hairpins, there was no movement in the sultry air. After twenty minutes Dapple’s pack slipped to one side. I heaved it back and took up the slack in the cinch. We plodded on. Elaine was walking very slowly, but I knew from her breathing and pale mauve face that it wasn’t through lack of effort. I offered her the bag of coca leaves. She selected around ten, rolled them into a wad, and placed them in her cheek. She gagged. ‘I’d forgotten how horrible they taste.’
‘Take a drink.’ She took a swig of water, then dipped her finger in the bag of white powder which helps release the active alkaloid. Dapple was frustrating. She wouldn’t keep pace. If I had been carrying my pack myself, I would have been walking faster. The hairpins went on for an hour and a half, until, turning a flank in the hill, there was nothing in front of us but a chasm eight hundred feet deep. A massive landslip higher up had carried away the trail. I couldn’t see any alternative but to retrace our steps for half an hour and cut down to the valley floor. One of the shepherds’ paths might lead to Castillo. Elaine, now a rather pleasant plum colour, walked a little higher than I had. ‘Is this a trail made since the landslide?’
I stumbled up to where she stood, and kissed her. We were soon on a much narrower new path; there wasn’t room for us to walk past each other. The ground fell away beneath us much more steeply. You couldn’t help thinking the ‘one slip and I’ll bounce for a thousand feet’ thought. I glued my eyes to the path, and ignored the view down. When we were in the middle of a particularly narrow section, Dapple’s pack slipped loose. I would have preferred to carry on until we were somewhere safer to fix it, but if a bag fell off now, we would never get it back. We did our first unaided loading of the donkey in the most dangerous position we would ever do it. I sensed Elaine was very nervous. So was I, but I thought it would be better if I pretended this was nothing out of the ordinary.
‘Let’s try lashing the two bags together on the ground with the rope, then hanging one either side of Dapple and securing with the cinch.’ As we lifted them onto her back, Dapple interpreted something I said in English as ‘Giddy-up!’ in Quechua, and walked away. I hopped along at her side, trying to hold onto all our luggage with one hand, and bend down to catch her lead-rope with the other. A quarter of an hour later we had everything back on, much snugger. Twenty minutes later, we rejoined the road, still a little shaken. We passed through a dilapidated village and up through its fly-blown square to two shops whose frontage lay in the shade of a narrow steep alley, which looked like a robber’s alley. This was Castillo. We bought lemonade, drank it straight off, bought more, and drank that too, while locals gathered around, talking about us in Quechua and laughing; the Spanish word carga, a load, came up a lot. Whether they were speculating on what was in the bags, or just wildly amused at our way of tying it on, we couldn’t tell.
This alley was the old Inca road. Imagine stepping out of your front door onto an Inca paving stone. We began to meet family groups bringing their animals home to their villages at the end of day. I asked an old lady if there was any flat land to pitch our tent. She replied in Quechua. I sketched a tent in my notebook and said ‘Flat land?’ in Spanish. She pointed higher up, in pain from a frozen shoulder, and mimed a little money for medicine. We gave her some, and she kissed our hands and blessed us. We passed through a village where the women and children hid from us, and the men moved into groups and stood aside discussing us. I frowned at Elaine. ‘I’m afraid unfriendly people are much more likely to rob us, and Juan warned me this morning about thieves here.’ We came to some small fields enclosed by crude stone walls, and removed enough stones to let ourselves in. We gave Dapple an armful of green corn, and pitched the tent in the top corner of the field close to boulders we could use as seats and tables, and which would shield us from the road. We heard cows, sheep, donkeys and horses being driven down the lane, but no one bothered us. We could see almost back to Huari, a day and a half’s walk away, far away and far below. Children’s voices sang to each other down in the village. Elaine boiled eggs and pasta, and we had onions, tomatoes and chillies. After, we sat tight together in a stone seat, watching shooting stars tracing their silverpoint lines through the constellations. Satellites glided over, and th
e rising moon flooded out the Milky Way. From the darkness came the remorseless sound of chewing.
City of the Dead
Next day things seemed to begin smoothly. By seven forty, I thought we were nearly ready, but Dapple used her shape-shifting powers to turn her back to Teflon, and everything slid off before it could be tied. At eight forty-five we hit the trail alongside a boy who only came up to my hip, but carried an adult’s mattock over one shoulder. He was off to dig the fields. His little sister, her face hidden between a big, low-brimmed hat and a red skirt pulled high up her chest, drove a cow along with a switch. She was tiny enough to walk under it without ducking, but the cow wasn’t allowed to loiter. It was a bright cool morning, ideal for walking.
We rested around eleven, studying an Inca stair rising unmistakably on the flank of the hill across the valley. It looked a short twenty-minute climb to the pass, with one steep section. We were already well over 13,000 feet, and Dapple’s slow pace was no longer a problem since we couldn’t manage any faster ourselves. At first, there were a few yards of grass between each low stone step, quite a comfortable way to climb. Higher up, frost had broken up the staircase into rubble. It became tricky, tiring work. I had done my best to meet Dapple halfway, learning enough Quechua to say qishta, stop, and ripuna, let’s go. She still repeatedly stopped abruptly. Each time, I lost momentum, balance and breath. Was she deaf? Altitude makes most people irritable: I wasn’t immune. I found myself pointing to the obstacle she had decided was insurmountable, ‘This is Peru, you live here. It’s a nine-inch step onto flat grass. What is the matter?’ Elaine enjoyed this hugely. ‘So the seasoned Andean hiker recommends sarcasm for an animal that thinks “Walk” is a long, difficult instruction.’ Dapple had her own way of answering back. After every admonishment, she blew a tuba solo of rubbery farts.
There was a huge U-shaped valley to our right, recently glaciated, the soil still thin and the grain of the rocks showing through. The Ice Age seemed to have ended in living memory. After an hour we reached the bleak summit of the pass at 14,400 feet. There was a rising slope to our left, a thirty-foot high block of bedrock to our right, and the wind singing like a saw between them. It was no place to linger. As often happened, the landscape changed character as the watershed was crossed. We descended rapidly to a valley carpeted in long wiry grass, where a large tarn lay beneath black crags, its waters dark holly-green. Below it, the wind bent the grasses double, sending ripples of light dancing before each gust. Far away, across the green sea, two girls called to russet dogs. They tore through the pasture driving sheep before them, surfing waves of light, converging on a stone clapper bridge over a river. Lines of sheep were driven together into a gyrating mass, a white whorl of a thumbprint, constantly changing identity.
We perched on a bank above a set of descending hairpins, and wolfed bread, biscuits, fruit and water. Brutal-looking mountains dominated our view left. The land was made from big simple things, like the Creation might have been at the end of the fourth day, before whales swept the oceans, birds cut the air or man burnt a tree or sank a plough. It was tempting to stay, put a fishing-line in the lake and enjoy a few hours of rest. But it was time we no longer had if Elaine was to make her flight. The Inca trail was still clear, although damaged. It ran along the contour and was easy walking for an hour. We looked down on scattered stone huts made from untrimmed boulders, roughly thatched: a glimpse back to the Iron Age. While we maintained our altitude, the river cut a steep gorge and fell rapidly away, turning left into a tenebrous canyon, along whose sides buttresses interlocked like closing teeth. Our trail swept right, up to a notch in a high ridge. It looked tough. We topped up our water in case we became too tired to make it down to another valley. Sluggish, bull-headed fish turned balloon eyes on us. The climb was steep, with stretches of broken stairs that reduced all three of us to a near-standstill. Cloud fell, the temperature dipped, the wind cut. Out of the gloom came ruined walls, an Inca tambo sat astride the pass. An Aplomado falcon glided by, just yards away: warm brown back and slate-grey wings. For a few blissful seconds its beauty took me out of myself and the pain fell away. Below the descending trail was a single smallholding with a sign beginning, We sell. It was deserted. I saw a man far up on the mountain, and called, ‘We buy!’
From a tiny loft, he brought toilet rolls, biscuits, aniseed liquor and a mint liqueur. On each bottle, it said 30 per cent. He pointed, ‘That’s the percentage of drinkers who survive.’ I bought both. He sold us corn, which he insisted on tying on himself, putting a knee in Dapple’s side to tighten the rope.
‘We need to hurry,’ I urged Elaine, ‘and lose altitude before we stop, it’s turning nasty.’ The wind was rising up to a storm. Perfume from a field of peas in flower drenched us. We jogged down the next steep section into a small village. Just as rain and hail began, we found the only scrap of land big enough for a tent. There wasn’t much room for two to work effectively. Once the outer skin was secure I said, ‘Go inside and clip on the inner lining, and sort out beds and food. No point in both of us getting wet.’ By the time I finished, it was dark, and there was sleet, snow and a bitter wind. I tethered Dapple below a bushy bank out of the worst of the weather; the crunch of her jaw on the corn was like a heavy man walking on frozen snow. I dived gratefully into the tent. Elaine said, ‘I put all the spare fodder underneath the inner tent. It’ll stay dry, and she can’t steal it.’ The tent was a calm haven with a luxurious cushioned floor. There was no chance of cooking; we munched biscuits and slugged at the aniseed liquor. I think the sugar in the biscuits gave us a bigger lift. Hounds guarding livestock on the opposite hill yapped all night. The air froze. We slept wearing scarves and balaclavas.
Just before dawn I went outside to boil a kettle. Our main water bag had split, probably when the man at the shop had lashed the wheat to Dapple, but there was enough left for a hot drink. I teased the stove into a fierce blue roar, and made lemon and ginger tea. Hugging the mug to my face, I watched the dawn reveal frozen raindrops; casual pearls scattered over the tent. The sharp tang of the ginger tea was exquisite. Two hawks cruised over our campsite, and followed us down to the small town of Ayash in the valley, an hour below. From above I could tell: ‘Every house has a shiny metal roof, there’s a new mine here.’
We entered the town watched by cold, war-zone eyes as if we were mercenaries of unknown allegiance. The mine had done this. In the rubble at the road’s edge, a teenage girl sat grinning like a Halloween pumpkin. Her hair was dirty and badly tied. She was dressed in careworn traditional skirts and a cotton sweatshirt plastered with meaningless English phrases: Top Sport Disco, World Quality Number One.
A new river bridge was being lowered by crane. I put my head inside a prefabricated workmen’s hut. ‘Is there a café in the town?’
‘Welcome to the City of the Dead,’ a young woman said cheerfully, ‘that’s what Ayash means. One of the Inca’s virgins was on a journey and fell ill here, and died. There’s no café. I’m Marlena. Sit down, the company doesn’t know who’s drinking its coffee.’
As Elaine tethered the donkey, a smart four-wheel-drive drew up. A tall, bespectacled man stood rooted to the spot when he saw us. He burst into smiles and strode across to us. ‘Eliseo López Correa, I work at the Altamina mine. Are you having a coffee? Come in! The mine is quite new; it’s one of the biggest in Peru, in fact, in all of South America. There’s copper and zinc, molybdenum too, it’s used in light filaments and high-strength steels.’
‘Are you from Lima?’ asked Elaine.
‘I live in Lima, but I’m Argentine, and I work for the Canadian company BHP. It works Altamina in partnership with the Peruvian Government and a Japanese firm. Lima’s a long drive, so I work twenty-one days on, seven days off. This really is the City of the Dead. Up until five or six years ago, before the mine came, the village was so primitive. They never saw any whites, and they stared at us like aliens. Some locals sold land to the mine company. Once they’d drunk the money, they started agit
ating to have the land back, saying it belongs to the community. They can’t understand that they took the money and the land is gone. They threaten our drivers now and again, but they’re usually too drunk to hurt anyone. Our contract stipulates that we provide a certain number of jobs for locals, but they have had no education, and few had ever worked for wages. Even with simple jobs like sweeping up, it was difficult to get a day’s work out of them. We have provided them with everything, mains water, a proper road, a trout farm and a bridge, but most of them resent us.’
‘Has any money been spent on the school, so that they will be able to compete for proper jobs in the future?’
‘We’ve given it a new roof, but there is no one from the community to teach them. If they ever existed, they left. Outsiders won’t work here, it’s too remote and primitive.’
He climbed into his shiny four-wheel-drive. ‘Five more days and I go back to Lima, look me up if you’re there.’
We found the trail in a narrow defile, climbing behind the houses and into a meadow by a small stream, where a hummingbird was bathing in a pool. We stopped for lunch. I joined the hummingbird in the stream. Elaine took a photograph of me bathing. I was skeletally thin. My stomach had shrunk so much there were deep shadows under my ribs. In the picture I am laughing. As we ate, two horsemen stopped to talk. The older introduced himself as Umberte. ‘Ah! The Inca Road! You need La Union, good luck!’
Cloud Road Page 20