by Tom Michell
Juan Salvado was a source not only of amusement but also of good. On seeing the bird, my colleagues would often greet us by imitating the Juan Salvado walk, bemusing the locals, who were naturally far more down to earth as far as penguins were concerned. The boys told me that the ground staff called me el loco inglés—the mad Englishman. But there was no animosity in the nickname, just amusement and incomprehension. Undoubtedly they would never have dreamed of picking up a penguin from a beach or thought of interfering with the natural course of events. Like the gauchos on the plains and the Indians of the Andes, the lives of many of them were grindingly hard and there was no room for passengers, and of course therein lies the problem. Almost all of us are so consumed with providing for ourselves, our families, our futures, and our expanding communities that we don’t notice the plight of wildlife. Is there any chance that the world’s oceans can survive the damage we are causing but just don’t see? In an equivalent way that millions of Marias paid indirectly for the mortgaged homes of the middle classes in Buenos Aires, thanks to inflation, it is the penguins and the rest of nature’s descamisados who pay the real cost of our way of life, in the only currency they have.
Since Rachel Carson published the seminal Silent Spring in 1962 the human population has more than doubled. Simultaneously an enormous number of species the world over, including penguins, have suffered population declines of 80 or 90 percent and are now considered endangered, while others have become extinct. The hypothesis for the collapse of the human population of Easter Island by their degradation of the environment has been postulated as a model for the Malthusian global collapse of our entire species.
The way we live today illustrates human capacity for dramatic change over a very short time, yet despite knowing that our modus vivendi is unsustainable, our modus operandi has so far proved incapable of bringing about the measures necessary to allow wildlife populations even to equilibrate, let alone recover. What seems undeniable is that if the Bank of Nature’s descamisados becomes insolvent, no amount of our money will ever bail us out.
—
But the abiding legacy of Juan Salvador should be one of hope and not despair. In life he brought cheer and optimism to a great many human souls at a time when there was anguish and distress, and my life has been greatly enlightened by the many lessons learned from Juan Salvado—the penguin in a class of his own!
It was the search for photographs of Juan Salvado that made me look in the old packing cases marked “Argentina—To Sort,” which had been languishing for decades in the garage. Most of my pictures had been lost in a minor domestic flood years ago, but I thought it just possible I might find some in there. So it was with nothing less than astonishment that I came across rolls of film I had never actually watched. Never. In truth, I’d forgotten they were even there. I had sent them home from South America for processing, and my mother had stored them to await my homecoming. However, when eventually I did return I couldn’t afford a projector for them, and when there was enough money for such things video had replaced film, so there they remained, unwatched, and slowly they faded from my consciousness. It was a tantalizing moment. When exactly had I bought the movie camera? I racked my brains. Was it just possible that I had filmed the penguin?
An Internet search located the services of a very obliging retired gentleman who lives by the sea, only a short drive from our house. He opened his front door in response to my knock and revealed a veritable museum of recording equipment. Narrow paths wove between floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with every conceivable instrument ever devised for immortalizing fleeting sights and sounds. Beautiful brass contraptions mounted on polished mahogany stood cheek by jowl with crude metal cases bristling with knobs and switches. By breathing in deeply he had just enough room to navigate his empire.
“There is no kind of man-made recording I can’t convert,” he boasted, “from hieroglyphs to HD. This was made in 1896!” he said, caressing a device. Under other circumstances I could have been enthralled by his infectious enthusiasm, but today was different.
I handed over the collection of reels, each with three minutes of film, and agreed to come back later that day. I drove home and spent an uncomfortable afternoon with my imagination, rather like an expectant father in the days when they were excluded from childbirth.
“What are they like?” I asked him on my return, trying hard to suppress my excitement.
“You should have brought them to me years ago,” he remarked helpfully. “They’re dreadful.”
My heart fell. “Isn’t there anything on them?” I asked, fearing the worst.
“It’s pretty grainy, but most of it’s still there.”
My breath caught, my excitement recovered. Could Juan Salvado be there after all?
“Any penguins?” I ventured cautiously, as though fearful of frightening them away.
“Penguins? I didn’t see any penguins, but there’s some fantastic footage of sea lions.”
My disappointment was intense, but in truth, I had been convinced I’d bought the camera after the era of Juan Salvador the penguin.
—
My wife and I watched the DVD as soon as I got home, and it was surprisingly moving to see the people and places of nearly forty years before. Mountains, lakes, and deserts; llamas, condors, and sea lions; from the tropics to the tip of South America—all were captured in so much color and detail. Forgotten names from half a world and half a lifetime away sprang without hesitation to my lips, bringing with them the inevitable flood of emotion.
But it was a bittersweet moment. The joy of finding so much on those films made the loss some years ago of my Juan Salvado photos all the more painful.
For the second time in as many days I had allowed myself to believe that my compadre might be hidden in these forgotten frames as though sleeping, just biding his time, awaiting his moment to burst back into my life once again. But as the DVD moved inexorably toward the end, I knew I had been cheated forever. I was frustrated by the inconsequential moments flashing before our eyes on the television screen: a school sports day, a herd of llamas, a city square in which grinning friends raised glasses of beer and wine, wasting those valuable seconds. I couldn’t even find compensation in the sea lions. Despite the pleasure of the precious memories that we’d just watched, I would willingly have traded them all for just one single moment with Juan Salvado.
And then: “Look!” I cried as I leaped from my chair to get closer to the screen, “He’s there! He is there after all! Oh, look! My dear old friend, at long last we meet again!”
There in a swimming pool was the penguin, exactly as I remembered him. For the next glorious, wonderful, blissful two minutes and seventeen seconds, Juan Salvado and I were reunited. We watched to the end in silence; I didn’t trust myself to talk. Of the penguin there was nothing more. How could I have been so remiss as to leave those films unseen for so long? I had been drawing the bird from memory for years, but now, at last, the eponymous Juan Salvador of countless Michell family bedtime stories could be seen for real: the delightful head shakes, wing flaps, and bottom wiggles, which propelled him through the water in that swimming pool like an outboard motor and which my prosaic words would never be able to capture, had been immortalized after all. Juan Salvado had been there, patiently waiting for me all the time.
Those flickering images were much better than I could have hoped for. They showed him in the pool fully restored to health, his brilliant white feathers gleaming in the sunshine—after a molt he showed no trace of the tar or his ordeal on the coast of Uruguay. And then there was his behavior with the boys. After his swim he was standing at the center of a group of about a dozen eighteen-year-olds, and that charismatic bird was the focus of their attention as he preened and dried himself in the sunshine; although far shorter than they were, in feet and inches, by any other measure the penguin had a stature to match them all.
Following the revelations on the DVD my first action was to capture the video clip and email it
to my children. It seemed particularly important to me that I send it to my son, living in India and almost as far from home as I had been when I’d met Juan Salvado. The second action was to look for flights to Argentina.
—
I felt elation as the wheels of the plane touched down on the runway in Buenos Aires one week later. I was back in South America! My sojourn in this country during the 1970s had been such a large proportion of my adult life at the time, and my experiences so significant and different from everything that had preceded them, that I felt some apprehension about what Fate had in store now. On disembarking I felt again the gentle caress of the warm dry air and inhaled deeply in preparation for whatever might lie ahead. As my feet touched the ground I willed it to provide me with some new delight and fulfillment. We celebrate poets because, at moments like these, they say things better than the rest of us, and for me no one captures adventure better than Tolkien.
The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can.
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet,
And whither then? I cannot say.
The trepidation I experienced as I queued at passport control was completely illogical on this occasion, but it was impossible not to recall vividly the time when I had attempted to smuggle a penguin into this country, or to suppress the emotion, and I felt my heart rate increase. My first exchange with authority was with a morose officer, but he became positively affable when he noted the Argentine lilt of my rusty Spanish as we discussed the reasons for my visit, and he even wished me a pleasant stay! It felt almost like coming home.
Much has changed, of course. Shoeshine boys have vanished into the mists of time. The city has been regenerating, and around the docks in particular it now boasts many astonishing twenty-first-century edifices, while restored waterfront warehouses have been converted into the most desirable offices and apartments. Polluted land and waterways have been cleaned and a nature reserve now enhances that area, but I was struck by a wave of nostalgia as I strolled around the well-remembered streets. Buenos Aires, always a fascinating city with its eclectic mix of architecture, drawn from classical European styles at one extreme to the gaudily painted corrugated metal houses of the boca (the area where the poorest immigrants once lived) at the other, has lost none of its beguiling allure and vibrant energy.
Politics was in the air, and with elections looming, the billboards were full of posters. I was not surprised to see that the two towering iconic images of Eva Perón still dominate the immense July 9 Avenue, the twenty-lane artery that flows through the very heart of the capital. Displayed on opposite sides of the citadel-like building that was once the Ministry of Works, the image depicting Eva at the broadcaster’s microphone is connected evocatively in the viewer’s mind with the radio mast that soars from the roof.
Nobody can doubt the significance of that extraordinary woman in the history of this great country. Those images seem to be more than just heritage monuments, too. Posters and postcards of her are prominently on sale in the hundreds of little kiosks that stock sweets, tobacco, newspapers, and periodicals all over Buenos Aires, but quite what her legacy is, however, I found very difficult to assess. Every person I asked had a different opinion.
Much to my pleasure, I discovered that Argentine wines have improved immeasurably and now stand comparison with the best. The quality of Argentine food hasn’t changed at all, though, and it really is as wonderful as I remember. In my view it is still possible to eat better in this country than anywhere else on earth, and interestingly I saw very few people who were significantly overweight, which gave me food for thought, too.
Traffic now follows the road signs and signals in an orderly fashion and pedestrians can use the crossings with assurance, but many of the trains are still old, utilitarian, and quite devoid of any comfort. With tickets costing less than 2p per mile, I felt a surge of the old exhilaration that comes from setting off on a shoestring escapade anew, and I yearned to do some serious traveling again and for the freedom to set out in pursuit of adventure. But my time was limited, so I only explored the local old haunts, still familiar despite the decades that have elapsed. As the trains clanked and jolted, groaned and lurched along, I remembered their music fondly. After one short journey, the familiar Victorian solidity of Quilmes station hove into view, and I asked myself how many times I had alighted here. Amid all the new congestion and bustle of the town, I wondered if I would be able to find my way to the college, but something automatic took over and in less than twenty minutes I was standing at the gates.
My tour of St. George’s included some of the impressive new developments, but otherwise the school was essentially unchanged. I paused for a few moments as I looked at the terrace where once I had spent so much time, and I imagined Juan Salvado’s sparkling eyes as he said, You’ve been a long time! I was wondering what had happened to you. What have you been doing, amigo mio…what took you so long to come back?
—
It was not a train but a superb double-decker bus that I found myself in, humming along new motorways out of Buenos Aires and toward San Clemente, a town about two hundred miles from the capital where there is a sea life center, and to which I had received a cordial invitation. As twilight ended and the dazzling sun broke over the horizon at the dawn of a new day, it cast shadows of infinite length across the perfect flatness of the landscape, the quintessence of la pampa. Not for me the motorbike of my youth on this occasion, although I cast envious and even lustful eyes over the many machines that I saw.
In only five hours I was at the park and being shown around by Andrea, granddaughter of the founder of the center, David Méndez. I learned that at the same time as I found Juan Salvado in Uruguay, David Méndez, the retired owner of a seaside campsite, had come across a number of penguins on his local beach, here in Argentina, similarly devastated by oil. Like me, he had attempted to rescue some of the birds by cleaning them in his home, with considerable success.
Word of David’s triumph in returning penguins to the sea spread in the locality, and the project grew as more damaged birds were brought in to be treated or their whereabouts reported to the indefatigable retiree. Next, his work extended to include sea lions and dolphins that had been similarly affected by oil and pollution in the local waters. Before long, people wanted to see for themselves and to support the endeavor, so in 1979 Mundo Marino was created on a newly acquired site of about one hundred acres. Today it possesses the largest sea aquarium in the Southern Hemisphere. Naturally, at the time I had no way of discovering David’s early work in San Clemente, which was still limited to his private home, any more than David Méndez had any chance of finding out about my rescue of Juan Salvado.
The staff at Mundo Marino have since become experts in rescuing marine animals from pollution, which deplorably and inexcusably still ravages wildlife the world over. With nearly forty years’ involvement in work of this kind, the senior staff are recognized globally as authorities in the rehabilitation of animals damaged by environmental disasters, and they are ready to respond to calls for assistance wherever and whenever they happen. Since 1987, when recordkeeping began, more than 2,500 penguins have been rescued, of which about three-quarters were the victims of oil pollution.
I was ecstatic to be allowed the privilege of entering the penguin enclosure. Here, under an enormous canopy, perhaps a hundred Magellan penguins were behaving exactly as I remembered them in the wilds of Punta Tombo, and I reveled in the moment. Had there been facilities like these in the zoo in Buenos Aires, I don’t doubt I would have entrusted Juan Salvado into their safekeeping.
I was given a bucket of fish and the opportunity to feed the birds, and of course I jumped at the chance. It had been so many years since I had last fed a penguin—my penguin—and the lump in my throat was h
ard to ignore. The fish were significantly larger than the sprats I had bought in the Quilmes market, but, just as I had done for Juan Salvado, I took one by the tail and held it out temptingly for the penguin nearest to me. The bird apparently had no idea what to do, and one of the keepers showed me a technique that involved holding the penguin’s head in the palm of one’s hand while closing thumb and forefinger under its beak. Thus blindfolded, the penguin started snapping for food and took the fish it was given. I was intrigued. This method was so much more cumbersome and time-consuming than the simple and obvious method we had used with Juan Salvado, so I asked how the technique had come about.
It was during the keeper’s careful explanation about how newcomers have to be force-fed—just as I had discovered with Juan Salvador—until they got used to feeding in the water that I lost concentration. I suddenly caught sight of a single penguin that stood out among the crowd of monochrome birds. With his extravagant, luxurious eyebrows together with orange eyes and beak, the lone rockhopper penguin found it impossible to be anonymous amidst the rest. For no reason obvious to me, this little bird abruptly started making his way through the penguin crowds and directly toward my feet, as though he were on an errand of supreme importance. He hopped up onto a conveniently situated large rock and looked up at me in a beseeching sort of way that said, Will you scratch my tummy, please? Naturally, I was overjoyed to oblige, so I stooped and gently rubbed his chest. Of course, he felt exactly like Juan Salvado, and he responded in exactly the same way, by pressing against my fingers and looking straight into my eyes.
In answer to my enquiry about him, I was told he was the single rockhopper from a group of rescued birds and although he had now fully recovered, he couldn’t be released until another rehabilitated rockhopper was ready to be set at liberty. “You can’t release penguins on their own,” the keeper explained. “Like sea lions, come to that, they simply won’t go without a fellow creature of their own kind; they won’t leave.”