The Whispering Land

Chapter Six A CITY OF BICHOS

The excitement from the novelty of objects, and the chance of success, stimulate him to increased activity.

CHARLES DARWIN: The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle

Ever since my arrival in Calilegua, Luna had been pestering me to accompany him to a town called Oran, which lay some fifty miles away, and where, he assured me, I would get plenty of bichos. I was a bit chary about this idea, for I knew how easy it is to rush frantically from one place to another on a collecting trip, and, though each place in itself might be a good centre, you achieve very little by virtue of your grasshopper-like activities.* I decided to discuss it with Charles, and so, that evening, as we sat gently imbibing gin and watching a moon with a blue halo silvering the palm fronds,* I put my problem to him.

'Why is Luna so keen on Oran?' I asked.

'Well,' said Charles drily, 'it's his home town, for one thing, but this might prove an advantage, for it means that he knows everyone. I think you could do worse than go and investigate,* Gerry. It's got a much bigger population than Calilegua, and in view of what you've found here, I should think you'd get twice as much stuff there.'

'Can Luna get the time off?'* I asked.

Charles smiled his gentle smile.

'I don't think that we would notice his absence for three days,' he said, 'and that should give you time to denude Oran of whatever fauna is lurking there.'

'Could we leave on Monday?' I inquired hopefully.

'Yes,' said Charles, 'that would be all right.'

'Wonderful,' I said, finishing my drink, 'and now I must go across and see Edna.'

'Why Edna?'

'Well, someone's got to feed my animals, while I'm away, and I'm hoping Edna has a kind heart.'

I found Helmuth, Edna and Luna arguing over the relative merits of two folk-songs which they kept playing over and over again on the gramophone. Edna pointed silently to the drinks and I helped myself, and then went and sat on the floor at her feet.

'Edna,' I said, during a lull in the argument, 'I love you.'

She raised one eyebrow sardonically and regarded me.

'If Helmuth wasn't bigger than me I would suggest that we elope,' I went on, 'since the first day I saw you I have been mad about you, your eyes, your hair, the way you pour gin…'

'What do you want?' she inquired.

I sighed.

'You have no soul,' I complained. 'I was just getting into my stride.* Well, if you must know, Charles says that Luna and I can go to Oran for three days. Will you look after my animals for me?'

'But, of course,' she said, surprised that there should have been any doubt in my mind.

'But, of course,' echoed Helmuth. 'Gerry, you are very stupid. I tell you we will help all we can. You have only to ask. We will try and do anything for you.'

He splashed more gin into my glass.

'Except,' he added reluctantly, 'let you elope with my wife.'

So, early on Monday morning, Luna and I set out in a small station-wagon driven by a gay, semi-inebriated* individual, sporting* a moustache so large it looked like a Nature Reserve.* We took with us only the bare essentials of travel: Luna's guitar, three bottles of wine, my wallet well stuffed with pesos, recording machine and cameras. We also had a clean shirt each, which our driver had placed reverently and tenderly in a pool of oil. All the previous night it had rained with a loudness and thoroughness that only the tropics can achieve; this now had thinned out to a fine grey drizzle, but the earth road had turned into something resembling the consistency of a badly-made blancmange.* Luna, undeterred by the weather, the surface of the road and the doubtful driving capabilities of our driver, the fate of our clean shirts and the fact that the roof of the station-wagon leaked daintily but persistently, sang happily to himself as we slithered and swooped along the road to Oran.

We had been travelling some three-quarters of an hour when our driver, concentrating more on harmonising with Luna in a mournful song than on the car, rounded a corner on two wheels, and as we slithered miraculously on to the straight again I saw something ahead that made my heart sink. Before us lay a torrent of red, froth-flecked water some four hundred yards across. At the edge of this, like a line of depressed elephants, stood three lorries, while in mid-stream, twisted to one side by the force of the water, another lorry was being laboriously dragged across to the opposite bank by a thing like a gigantic tractor, fitted with a winch and steel cable. Our driver joined the line of waiting lorries, switched off his engine and beamed at us.

'Mucha agua'* he pointed out to me, in case my eyesight should be defective and I had missed noticing the miniature Bay of Biscay we had to cross. I knew that the previous day this broad torrent had probably been a mere trickle of water, shallow and glinting over its bed of pebbles, but one night's rain had swollen it suddenly and out of all proportion. I knew, from experience, how a tiny stream can grow into a fierce full-sized river in next to no time,* for once in West Africa I had had my camp almost washed away by a stream that started by being a mere three feet wide and four inches deep, and had, in the course of an hour or so, turned into something resembling the upper reaches of the Amazon. No one who has not seen this sudden transformation can believe it, but it can be one of the most irritating (and sometimes dangerous) aspects of travel in the tropics.

At last, after an hour of waiting, the last of the lorries had been hauled over and it was our turn. The hawser was attached to our bumper and gingerly we were drawn into the flood. Slowly the water rose higher and higher, and became stronger, until it was rustling and lapping along one side of the station-wagon like a miniature tidal wave. The water spurted in through the cracks of the door and trickled across the floor under our feet. Gradually the water rose until it covered our shoes. We were now approximately halfway across, and the force of the water was kindly but firmly pushing us downstream so that, although to begin with we had been opposite the tractor and the winch, we were now some fifty yards downstream from them. The hawser was taut, and I felt as though we were some gigantic and misshapen fish that the two laconic-looking Indians on the tractor were playing.* The water had now reached the level of the seats; here it paused for a moment and then overflowed generously under our behinds. At this crucial moment, sitting in half an inch of icy water, we heard the winch step.

'Arrrr!' roared the driver, sticking his head out of the window, his moustache quivering impressively, 'que pasa?'*

One of the Indians leapt off the tractor, and loped slowly off down the road; the other pushed his big straw hat on to the back of his head and slowly approached the bank of the river.

'Nafta no hay.'* he explained, scratching his stomach with every evidence of satisfaction.

'Fine bloody time for them to run out of petrol,' I said irritably to Luna.

'Yes,' said Luna despondently, 'but the other Indian has gone for some. He will not be long.'

Half an hour passed. Then an hour. By now our nether regions* were so frozen that we were all shifting uneasily in our seats to try and get some feeling back, making noises like a troupe of hippopotami enjoying a wallow in a particularly succulent swamp. At last, to our relief, the Indian appeared loping down the road carrying a can of petrol. He and other Indian then had a long argument as to the best method of putting the life-giving fluid into the tractor, while our driver roared insults at them from between chattering teeth. But at last they had finished this highly complicated operation, the tractor sprang into life, the hawser tightened and we were drawn slowly but inexorably towards the bank, while the water-level in the wagon fell.

When we eventually reached dry land we all got out, removed our trousers and wrung them out, while our driver soundly berated the Indians for their attempted homicide, while they both grinned amiably at us. Then the driver, in his shirt-tails,* opened the bonnet of the car and peered into the engine, his moustache twitching, muttering to himself. He had carefully wrapped in cotton waste certain vital parts of the internal organs of our vehicle before we entered the flood, and these he now unwrapped, and then proceeded to dry other parts of the engine. Eventually, he climbed in, pressed the starter, and with a wide grin of pride, heard the engine roar into life.* We piled in and jolted off down the road, the Indians waving their straw hats in gay farewell.

We had travelled some five miles and were just beginning to dry out when we met our next water hazard.* The road here ran along the lower slopes of the mountains, and the terrain was intersected at intervals by deep, narrow gorges through which the water from the mountains drained. Where the road crossed one of these narrow but powerful rivers one would have thought that the simplest engineering method would have been to throw a small bridge across from bank to bank. Apparently the vast numbers of these rivers made this too costly, and so another method was employed. A slightly concave apron* of cement was laid across the river bed, which at least gave your wheels some purchase.* In the dry season, of course, this looked merely like a continuation of the road, but when the waters from the mountains stormed down they roared over the apron, sometimes four feet deep, and then dropped into a graceful ten foot waterfall the other side to join the river lower down. A few days covered with water and the cement developed a surface like glass, owing to the algae that adhered to it, and so it was considerably more hazardous than the original riverbed would have been.

Here there was no winch to help us, and the driver nosed* the station-wagon carefully into the red water, scowling fearfully behind his bristling moustache. We had got half-way across the invisible cement apron, when the engine stalled.* We sat and looked at each other mutely, until suddenly the force of the water piling up against the side of the vehicle shifted it an inch or so in the direction of the waterfall on our right, and then we were all suddenly galvanised into activity. We none of us wanted to be sitting in the station-wagon if the torrent suddenly got a good grip on her and swept her over the edge and downstream among the tangle of rocks we