by PJ Skinner
After an hour or so of tossing about in the crackly sheets, she heard singing in the street. She lay in bed, resisting the temptation to look out of the window. But the singing was insistent and her curiosity got the better of her. She knelt on the bed and pulled aside the nylon curtains. There was a dim street light opposite her room. Underneath it stood the boys from the restaurant. They had a guitar and they sang up at her window. She was not sure what to do but the singing was pretty good, so she opened the window and leant out.
The singing became more passionate and to her surprise, they sang Angie by the Rolling Stones. She smiled at the garbled words that must have been learnt phonetically from the radio. There was no mistaking their intensity.
Suddenly, Wilson came back into the room. He saw Sam leaning out of the window and roughly pulled her in. He smelt of drink and sex which made her stomach turn. He cursed the boys, who ran off laughing. Sam was not happy with this rough treatment, or with his interference in her harmless enjoyment of the serenade. But her Spanish was not yet good enough to complain. She told Wilson sternly to go away, which he did. Then she got back under the covers and forced herself to sleep.
At dawn the next morning, they paid for the hotel.
‘Why were those men singing to me last night?’ Sam asked the manager who spoke English because of his time working in gringolandia.
‘The serenata or serenade, is a way of winning a girl’s heart in Sierramar. When you appeared at the window, you signified interest in the petition.’
‘Wilson told them to go away.’
‘They must have been disappointed. I know I would have been,’ he said, winking at her.
Sam blushed and fiddled with her rucksack. The hotel manager was squat and sweaty but he knew how to deliver a line. After paying, they walked through the cold streets to the ramshackle station to buy their tickets for the train to the coast. San Martin was in the mountains and it was freezing cold at dawn. Sam shivered in her thin cotton shirt and trousers, which she wore for the jungle. Her new wellington boots flapped against her cold legs. She could feel their clammy hold on her calves.
Mist hung over the decrepit station. As they approached, Sam realised they would be competing for tickets with hordes of other people, all carrying huge amounts of baggage of every kind imaginable. The pushing and shoving was something Sam had never experienced before. She struggled to stay on her feet. There did not seem to be a queue for tickets, just a clump of humanity pushing in every direction.
Wilson disappeared into a crowd of bodies swathed in woollen shawls against the cold. Sam could see his fedora moving to the small window where the tickets were being dispensed. She felt as if she had not slept at all on the thin foam mattress over the wooden slats of her bed. It was hard to sleep with Wilson in the same room. There was something about him she could not take to.
The train was due to leave at seven o’clock but Wilson had told her not to rely on the timetable. While they waited for the train to arrive, the road where they stood became a market. Local traders arrived from all directions, carrying their entire stalls on their backs and then setting up shop. There were several scruffy, black, hairy pigs snuffling around on the tracks. One of their more unfortunate brethren was being cooked over a slow fire by a couple of large ladies. The smell of burning hairs and roast crackling crept up Sam’s nose, both revolting and enticing her. She was hungry and could imagine the taste of the pork fat. She drooled.
It was noticeable that the population here consisted of as many black people as indigenous ones. These people were the descendants of African slaves brought to Sierramar by the Spanish during their conquest of the Incas. Sam found it strange to hear them speak Spanish. They spoke with abbreviated words, missing entire chunks of sentences. She could see that whether she liked it or not, she would be heavily reliant on Wilson’s translations to get along on this trip.
When the train finally shuffled in from a siding, she was astonished to see that it was actually a wooden bus adapted to run on rails. There was a mad scramble as everyone tried to get on the train at the same time, despite the seats all being pre-booked. Wilson told her to get on board, while he made sure that all the provisions were loaded on the roof. Sam looked at the sea of hysterical people pushing and shoving, took a deep breath and waded in.
The smell of unwashed bodies marinated in wood smoke was pungent and in some cases, nasty. Somehow, she got a foothold on the metal step up into the solitary door to the train. She heaved herself up by holding on the bars on either side of the door. The bars were coated in the grease from filthy hands. Sam let go as soon as she could and staggered up the narrow passageway, trying to avoid crushing the chickens that were lying about, trussed up with palm leaves and fibres. She checked her tickets and looked down the bus. Two very large black men had taken their seats. She did not feel up to the struggle of explaining that in pigeon Spanish and decided to stay standing until Wilson arrived. There was nothing malicious about the bedlam that surrounded her and she felt quite relaxed at being pushed aside by the other passengers in their rush to secure their seats.
When Wilson got on, the interlopers gave them their seats without a murmur of dissent, giving the impression that they were just warming them up. The seats were tiny and definitely designed for the indigenous part of the population. Since the people on board consisted mostly of large black men and very fat women, it increased the feeling of claustrophobic overcrowding. Wilson had to sit sideways with his bony knees sticking out into the thigh of a large mulatto woman, who was perched on a barrel of lard in the passageway.
‘How far is it to San Lorenzo?’ asked Sam, already dreading the journey.
‘Two hundred kilometres.’
‘So how long does it take to get there?’ she asked, cheered by the relatively short distance.
‘The programmed journey time is eight hours but it can take much longer if the train derails.’
‘Eight hours? Is there no quicker way?’
‘It’s possible to go by plane to the coast and come in to Riccuarte by car from the other direction but the train was much cheaper and Mike didn’t want to pay for flights.’
Sam was not surprised. She and Wilson were just about managing to communicate due to her finding her dictionary and using some inspired guessing but this limited conversation to a minimum. She leant on the wooden seat back and admired the view from the train.
The first part of the journey took them through breath-taking scenery that consisted of verdant knife-edged hills, along whose sides the train teetered in an unnerving manner. They passed through several long tunnels in the pitch black. Each time they did so, someone wolf-whistled in the dark, a practice that became more irritating as the trip wore on. The train made numerous stops along the way, but they didn’t last more than a minute or two. There was the inevitable mad rush as people clambered over the luggage and out of the train and pushed past the people trying to get on. The train moved off as the last people were still getting on. It was only a matter of luck that no one slipped under the wheels.
After a very short time, they burrowed into the vegetation that heralded the fringes of the coastal jungle. The tiny villages where the train stopped were only just keeping the jungle at bay. In some places, the vegetation had reclaimed some of the older shacks, and they were disappearing into the trees in a somewhat sinister manner, reminding Sam of the Day of the Trifids movie.
‘Do these villages have electricity?’ she asked Wilson.
‘No, they use candles for light at night.’
‘Water?’
‘They get water from the river for cooking. They wash in the river.’
About four hours into the trip, it occurred to her that if there was no water in the villages, there was unlikely to be a toilet either. She managed to hold on until about six hours had passed, and then she knew she was in trouble. Wilson had not mentioned this problem to her before setting out. Being a man and a Sierramarian and used to this state of affairs, it had
simply not occurred to him. He jumped out and urinated against a tree every now and then, serenely unaware of Sam’s growing discomfort.
The scenery continued to change. The land was now flat. Here and there, the vegetation looked ravaged. Banana and papaya trees replaced the matted tangle of vines and other tropical plants. All the people in the village were black or mulatto. The populations were young and well-nourished. Packs of children swarmed all over the train every time it stopped. Sam was usually the centre of attention as the only white person on board. Every time the train stopped, they crowded around to stare at her, smiled big toothy grins and then looked abashed if she smiled back. Also prevalent at every stop were women and children selling the local take-away foods, such as empanadas and fried bananas with cheese.
‘I’d love one of those empanadas, Wilson,’ said Sam
‘They’re full of germs and will make you ill,’ he replied. ‘I’ll buy you something safe.’
It was obvious that the conditions in the kitchens were dreadfully unsanitary but this did not stop Sam from sulking. Wilson bought some boiled white rice and some unidentifiable cremated meat. She had never been fond of rice and liked to eat meat still in its death throes, so she was not impressed by this culinary delicacy.
‘What meat is this?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Peccary? Monkey? No idea.’
‘Monkey? They eat monkey?’
‘Maybe not. It’s probably pig.’
‘It’s horrible.’
‘You’re not in England now. I thought you were tough. Eat the food. You won’t get anything better until you are back in Calderon.’
She chewed her way through most of it and ate the rice which was very salty and made her thirsty. She did not dare drink any water. The lack of sanitary facilities had become a serious problem. She had been hoping that they would pull into a bigger town with a public toilet, but the towns were getting smaller and more primitive. They never stopped long enough for a pee break.
Just when she thought she would have to apologise to Wilson for flooding the seat, the train shunted into a siding. Their train had to make way while one coming the other way passed by on the single track that made up the railway system. Sam grabbed her chance and climbed over the other inhabitants of the train in a frantic rush. She dashed out between the shacks on stilts and down to a small pond. People were washing themselves and their clothes in it at the same time.
The combined effect of the sprint and the sound of water defeated her abused bladder. She squatted behind a tree and tried to look inconspicuous as the only white person in a black village taking a volcanic leak behind a spindly tree. She avoided eye contact with the crowd of children watching her from close quarters and rushed back to the train. The train was pulling out again and she only just managed to get a foothold as it moved off.
She clambered over the bodies and chickens and bananas with a look of pained relief that made Wilson laugh. It was his fault for letting her drink two bottles of cola at the station before they set out. She had a nagging feeling he had done it on purpose and decided not to drink anything on the way back.
Finally, just when the pain in her bottom engendered by sitting on the wooden seats for nine hours had reached the unbearable stage, the train arrived at San Lorenzo, a bigger town of wooden huts and mud streets with a similar station to San Martin’s. Leaving the train was complete bedlam once again. Local youths offered their services as baggage carriers and fought over each bag dropped down from the roof. Wilson had his work cut out, ensuring that nothing went missing in the pandemonium.
When they were organised at last, they hired a pickup truck for the last leg of their journey. This truck took them to Riccuarte, a small shantytown in the middle of the rain forest, with one main street lined with coloured street lights. The road was appalling and by the time they arrived, she felt as if she was sitting on a tenderised steak.
Wilson talked to a local man, who seemed to be expecting them. He directed them to follow him up the main street to a ramshackle house which stood on stilts. There was no door and it had only one habitable room. The floors in the other rooms were rotten and had caved in. Two lopsided log stools made up the lavish furnishings of this palace. Sam and Wilson had a bilingual conversation with lots of inventive sign language about the facilities of the house.
‘Where is the toilet?’
‘There is no toilet. You have to go to the forest or the river. There is nowhere to wash either, just the river, which runs parallel to the main street.’
‘But won’t everyone see me?’ asked Sam, remembering the crowd for her last performance.
‘The best time for relieving yourself is in the morning before everyone gets up. You can have a quick wash in the river at sun-up before breakfast or in the evening, as it gets dark.’
‘Okay, I will.’
‘You must be careful when you wash in the river,’ said Wilson.
‘Why? Are there crocodiles?’
‘No, this isn’t Africa. There’s a small fish in the river. It’s very dangerous.’
‘Like a piranha?’
‘No, it is called a Candiru. It likes urine. It follows your pee and goes in to your urethra. The small fish has small spines behind its gills that prevent it from being removed once it has gone in. You must go to hospital to cut it out.’
‘That sounds awful,’ said Sam, ‘how do we stop them?’
‘You must always wear tight underwear in the river.’
‘Okay, thanks for the warning.’
Sam could not imagine the point of these fish. What were they doing in the urethra anyway? She took exaggerated care with her ablutions that evening once she realised the danger involved. This involved all sort of body contortions which ended with her falling head first into the river. Her whiteness was a novelty, so she had an audience despite the hour and was forced to wash with her back to the town, still wearing her clothes from the day’s travels.
Their diet would consist of rice, meat, cheese, peanuts, crisps, chocolate and tuna, which guaranteed that she would not have to solve any more bathroom problems for at least a couple of days. It was monotonous stuff but at least it was germ-free.
The first night, she suffered from a sore throat and slept poorly on the lumpy wooden floor. At one point, she woke up to a tugging feeling against her head. She was horrified to find herself face-to-face with a large rat, who was busying himself cutting off pieces of her hair for his nest. He seemed similarly startled and disappeared into a hole in the floor. It was impossible to sleep after that and she sat in a corner flashing a torch at every creak and groan emitted by the hut. She spent a long night wondering why she had not joined a bank instead of being so stubborn.
Wilson slept like a log, ensuring that Sam would hate him even more in the morning.
VI
The next morning, they got up before dawn and waited on the riverbank in the cold dawn light. Four men had been selected to travel with them. Don Moises was the undisputed leader of the group and was accompanied by Carlos, Rijer and Gustino. Moises was a mestizo, the dominant group in Sierramar consisting of people of mixed European and Amerindian races. He looked out of place in this village of predominantly black people. He had an air of solemnity and a patriarchal bearing that seemed at odds with his surroundings. A woman called Doña Elodea also joined the expedition to do the cooking and panning. She was very pretty and might have been in her late forties. It was difficult to be sure.
They were chatting about the day ahead and tried to include Sam but she could not understand them. She was disheartened by her inability to capture what people were saying. It had been hard enough in Calderon, although with a lot of effort she had definitely made good progress there. However, the local accent in Riccuarte was very strong, the equivalent of Glaswegian in Britain, and was proving impossible to decipher. She had to rely on Wilson to translate in his pigeon English. She was not always convinced by the result. Whether he did it on purpose or not, she could not
tell.
Wilson hired a canoe hollowed from a single long tree trunk. It could easily take all seven of them, with their provisions and bags stowed at the front. It had tool marks on it that showed it had been made by hand. There were blocks of wood on the floor that served as seats but Sam could see that comfort was not a priority. She sat down on one of the blocks and felt the damp creeping into her trousers. The chill crept up her thighs to the back of her knees. She leant forward, grabbing her knees to try to take some of the pressure off her back and steeled herself for a long day.
Carlos steered the canoe away from the bank with a long paddle at the back of the boat. Then he picked up a long pole. At the front, Rijer and Gustino, both with a foot on the edge of the canoe for balance, used long poles to punt the boat up the stream by sticking them in the riverbed and pushing the canoe forward. Carlos did the same at the other end, using the paddle to steer when necessary.
When the canoe arrived at a rapid, they all disembarked and hauled it upstream past the rapid and into calmer waters. The canoe was immensely heavy and even with the buoyancy afforded by the water, it took a massive effort from the team to drag it through the rapids against the current and around the rocks. Sam could not help much but she still tried and was soaked each time by the strong waters of the river. She found it exhilarating to use her physical strength in this way and was reminded of the old Tarzan movies she had watched as a child. Unfortunately, there were no friendly elephants to pull the canoe upriver in this version of the film.
It took them four hours to get to the farthest boundary of the mining claim that they were investigating. They were at the highest navigable part of the river, in the interior of the rain forests that grew between the Andes and the coast of Sierramar. The region was almost untouched by human development due to the absence of roads. The only places that had been colonised were the banks of the innumerable rivers. Most of the villages had populations of black people. They had, by and large, replaced the local indigenous population, except for isolated villages. The vegetation was built up into huge verdant banks, rising many metres above the riverbanks. Here and there among the leaves were small huts on stilts surrounded by banana trees. Sam was disappointed by the lack of wildlife. The only parrots she saw flew so high that she only knew what they were from the racket they made.