Cloud Road (22 page)

At last, a test which was neither unhygienic nor cruel.

‘That gap gets bigger as they get older. If you can get two fingers in side by side, like that, it’s probably over twenty.’

Elaine delved neatly in its mouth like a vet, and pointed to a few caries.

‘You’re a natural,’ I said, eyeing the thick saliva all over her hand.

‘I used to do all that with my cats and dogs.’

I said, ‘You’ve got the job.’

We got back to Huari mid-afternoon. It was very
disheartening, and time was running out for Elaine. ‘I don’t have time to do this next walk now.’ She was close to tears. I said, ‘Let’s go in the first bar we come to. Maybe if my brain is addled, all this will seem normal and reasonable.’ I hadn’t seen the bar when I said it. The only other customers were an old man with no shoes (he may have drunk them) and a porter from the square who found carrying sacks rather complicated. They had a jug of
chicha
, home-brew maize beer.
Chicha
is a Carib word, brought from the Caribbean by the conquistadors, which has displaced the original Quechua word
azua
. Likewise,
maize
has displaced the Quechua
zara
. Few Spanish learned Quechua properly. The splendidly grumpy Inca historian Huaman Poma wondered how priests were capable of hearing confession, when the only local phrases they knew were ‘Take the horse’, ‘There’s nothing to eat’, and ‘Where are the girls?’

Our dead-beat fellow drinkers were regulars. The owner, a woman built like a wrestler, threw four shots of
caña
into each jug to liven it up.

I turned to Elaine, ‘You don’t want to drink here.’

‘Will anywhere else be any better?’ She slumped onto a wooden bench, and was about to slouch back against the wall when she saw the colour of it. I had a jug of
chicha
without the
caña
; she had coca tea.

I took a long draught.

‘What’s the
chicha
like?’

‘Try some.’

‘This is the one they ferment by chewing and spitting it into a bowl?’

‘Yep.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘Tastes like mmmm-mucus.’

‘Pass some over.’ Elaine sipped. ‘Yes it does, why are you drinking it?’

‘You can put your hand in donkey saliva, I can drink something that looks like it. Anyway, not drinking
chicha
didn’t work. I’ve had enough of trying, and being good and coping. I’m going to try sulking and giving up. If I pass out,’ I nodded at the porter, now well into his second supercharged jug, ‘he has a wheelbarrow.’

The bar owner and her daughter toasted a little maize for us, as a snack. They were very friendly. They didn’t know anyone with a donkey to sell. We went back to the restaurant, drank bottled beer, and waited for chicken and chips. The owner confided, ‘There’s a bullfight tomorrow at Cajay village.’

‘Is it close?’

‘Just across the valley.’

Elaine eyed another departing minibus. ‘I have the strange impression that more buses leave than arrive.’

A religious procession came into the small square, shuffling to a small band, carrying Christ in a sedan chair. They let off rockets; I watched them disappear into the sky. ‘That seems to be the only easy way to leave.’

‘They’ll probably land in a field and kill the last donkey.’

The bus dropped us among the throng of churchgoers in Cajay’s cement square. The only other outsiders were two Scottish mountaineers, having a day off to watch other people risk their lives. They vanished into a bar. Ancient
roof tiles lay on adobe cottages like abandoned games of cards. A drunk with a freshly punched face lay on a bench. A young man, his face shining with alcohol, drew hard on his cigarette and lit homemade rockets that he held in his other hand, loosely pointed at the sky. They didn’t leave a picturesque trail, or burst into lights; they simply exploded like a shotgun and sent a whiff of cordite and bad eggs drifting over the assembling dancers. Two fiddlers sawed out verses without a chorus into the thin air: one a gap-toothed smiler with a sparse moustache, the other, a spectrally thin Henry Fonda, blind in one eye. An Andean harp shored up the tinny sound. The local priest was Swiss-German. He moved with self-conscious gravity among his flock, a head taller than any local men. Women brought their children forward for him to bless. His large hand divided the air before them, then lingered on their apple-brown cheeks and downy chins.

A second band arrived wearing multicoloured carnival clothes and golden crowns, their faces masked to look like Negroes, or Spaniards with twirly moustaches. Teenagers began a slow dance, as courtly and mannered as Versailles. Slowly the crowd assembled behind a diminutive man in a dark suit, wearing a black homburg with red and white roses woven round the crown. He carried a scarlet banner proclaiming himself, Dr Emiliano Salas, the President of the bullfight. His wife, Doña Carola, taller than him in her high heels, linked his arm. Ordinary Andean music for public occasions is not wistful panpipes, although
El Condor Pasa
has become an Andean anthem, and is heard everywhere. The only indispensable instrument is a drum. One the size of a gasometer began a heavy thudding beat. They led a procession down to the
shade of a copse, where barrels of
chicha
were waiting.

Dr Salas came over with cups of
chicha
. We bowed; I introduced Elaine, then myself. When the party stood up to go, Dr Salas’s brother took Elaine by the arm. A student, her hair tied up, took my arm, saying ‘I’m Lari!’, and we began to dance up through the town to the thunder of the drums, arms linked, five steps rushing forward, then one back. There were three hundred of us, kicking up the dust. Full beer crates were slung onto shoulders. One drunken porter staggered so heavily that a clutch of men descended on him to remove the precious cargo. The only working muscles in the man’s body were those controlling the fingers holding on to the crate. It took five strong men to part them.

The procession filed into the quadrangle of the local agricultural college, where the sponsors had provided free food and drink. The bands took the balcony, and we were taken into the VIP enclosure: wooden benches in a pergola draped with cut vines to provide shade. Dr Salas swept us into its coolness. ‘Please, you are our guests for the day.’

‘Are you the mayor?’ I asked.

‘No, no! I am one of the sponsors. I am from Cajay, but I qualified as a doctor, and moved to Lima to train as a gynaecologist; that is my home now. And you are tourists in our country? What do you think of it? Only here, in the northern highlands, are they as hospitable as this.’ He paused to signal his brother to remove an old man from the end of our bench, and send him to sit in the sun. ‘And your work?’

‘I am a writer, I am researching a book about the Inca highways through the Sierra, from Quito to Cuzco.’ In Britain, when I say I am a writer, it provokes mild
interest. Typically for Peru, an expression of respect stole over his features. ‘And how do you like our country?’

‘We like it very much, it’s our second visit.’

His brother came over with his young son. ‘And what will you write about today?’

‘My first bullfight.’

‘The first!’ He turned to the boy. ‘This lady and gentleman are from England, and have never seen a bullfight! Tell him how many you have seen.’

‘This will be my fifth!’ He examined these deprived strangers. ‘Do you not have bullfights in England?’

‘It has been illegal for over a hundred and fifty years. We never had Spanish-style fights, but large dogs were set on bulls.’

‘Dogs?’ the boy asked, plainly appalled.

I nodded. In a moment, I had become a barbarian. The brother stood up, bowed and went to have a word with his wife, a beautiful woman with large dramatic features, all red mouth, dark eyes and strong cheekbones. He returned. ‘It is decided, you will please do the honour of leading the dance with my wife, and I will dance with your lady-wife.’ His wife tied red and yellow neckerchiefs and sashes on us. Dr Salas waved a hand, the band struck up. It was my moment to escort Señora Salas into the centre of the arena, all eyes on the pair of us. It was traditional to unfold a shining white handkerchief, ironed to perfection, and flick it open for your partner to hold. After two and a half months living out of a backpack, my handkerchief looked like a failed biology project. I undid my new red kerchief, and we advanced into the centre of the courtyard, two tiers of bullfight enthusiasts cheering loudly, and began to dance. Elaine followed magnificently.
As Señora Salas lived in coastal Lima, she was soon out of breath. I was passed from arm to arm, and was given the scarlet President’s banner to carry as we danced to the top of the village, where the football field had been fenced off and surrounded with makeshift stands. Some twelve hundred people cheered us into the ring. We were pelted with sweets and sprayed with beer shaken Grand
Prix-style
from bottles. The VIP enclosure was some wooden chairs on a bank at the head of the arena. We climbed up and, to save the seats for people with smarter clothing, sat on the edge of the bank with our legs dangling down to what I hoped was just above horn height. The President’s wife, Doña Carola, had a silver-coloured rabbit as a lucky charm. A live one. Its back legs were tied together with a pink ribbon, and she held it by the ears all afternoon. Before anyone was ready, the first bull escaped from the truck, and entertained the crowd by charging a policeman from behind. He was the only one who didn’t know it was coming. Only the crowd’s laughter alerted him. He sprinted away and cartwheeled over the top of the fence and into the stalls. It took twenty minutes to corner the bull and remove him. Doña Carola bent down to us, frowning. ‘We paid for a well-known matador, David Gamarra, from Spain. But he has pulled out claiming to be unwell. The real reason is they don’t like to fight at altitude. No one has heard of any of the men they sent instead. They’d better be good.’

I sensed if she wasn’t satisfied, the second bull would be held back while she went in to gore the matadors herself. All three bullfighters were around thirty, and slight but muscular in build. The principal matador leaned on the fence, dazzling in gold brocade, occasionally
venturing out to see how the bull reacted. If it charged him, he slipped back behind cover, his step suddenly alert, his stance like a dancer. The cloud was thickening, the air darkened. The master of ceremonies signalled the men in the ring,
‘¡A la muerte!
’ and drew the edge of his hand across his throat.

The next animal was San Pedrito, a heavier bull, a little over four years old. It was solid, and suspicious, with long horns that swept up from their ivory bases to dark grey tips. It was released cleanly, and the assistant matadors turned
banderilleros
, stabbing heavy metal darts into the great muscles of the neck, to weaken control of his head. The matador came out a few times to gauge its mood, which was no better than you might expect. In between, he became a Goya portrait, utterly still except for his eyes, which never left the bull. When the matador took over, he played the bull skilfully, eventually going down on one knee with his back to it. He exchanged capes to pick up the red
muleta
, which he laid on his slender sword, the last six or seven inches of which curved down slightly. He worked to bring the bull to a standing position where he could finish it. Time after time, he was unable to hold the bull steady. Either it kept coming towards him or turned aside. His face was intense, showing pressure and
frustration
. When he eventually struck, it was out of impatience, not opportunity. The bull raised its head, foiling his thrust. The blade went in by the right shoulder, aimed at the aorta. It was badly deflected, and came out low on the front of its chest. He threw his cape over the bull’s head, it stood still, and he pulled out his sword. The wounds began to bleed. More than a dozen times he brought the bull to position but it would not stand facing him where
he could strike. He lunged and missed altogether.

The crowd began to whistle and boo. ‘He’s suffering!’ cried a man at my shoulder. The matador finally set the bull up, but in a corner. The crowd, regarding it as a cheap kill, yelled ‘To the centre!’ The matador relented and worked the bull into the open. He struck. It was worse than before. The blade emerged half way down the animal’s ribs. The exit wound bled profusely. Dr Salas stood up: ‘Ladder, ladder!’ A stocky man behind us took a sharpening stone and a knife from a sack, and whetted it before climbing down into the ring. The matador’s face was locked on the bull, a mask of determination. He wanted to end it by his hand, and not be snubbed by lassoes and a knife. But he failed to hold the bull or the crowd. The laughter over the first bull, which never fought, was turning to tragic farce with this second one, which wouldn’t die.

Some local men walked past the matador and lassoed the bull at the far end of the arena, and fell on its tired head and held it low for the knife-man, who felt for a gap between two vertebrae and severed the spinal cord. The bull fell to its knees. The men who had held its head leaped back. Still it would not die. Several men stabbed at the neck, and held out cups to drink the blood. The back legs were tied together. They dragged it off. The front legs kicked weakly as they scored two lines through the dust. The knife-man returned to sit by us, a spot of blood on the brim of his hat, and one hand dark with gore.

The next bull was played skilfully, and returned to the truck. The performance felt flat. I understood now that without the kill, the ‘fight’ was meaningless. It was no more dramatic than a man teasing a cow. He could only
achieve a negative: not being hurt. We had come to see death. The following bull was played rapidly, and struck cleanly by one of the assistants. It cantered to the other end of the arena, and stopped. In bemusement, it felt its legs go soft, and its body thump into the dust. The last bull was Burgomaestre. As soon as it was released, it eyed the rails and the people behind. They swung their boots at him, and threw beer and orange peel. He stopped, slipped his front hooves over the lower rail, ducked his head, and escaped. The crowd parted like curtains, and we could see the animal cantering round the car park.