Cloud Road (28 page)

‘Your donkey?’ asked a man, chewing a wedge of bread and cheese.

‘Yes.’

‘If you had bought a strong horse, it would have carried you and your luggage.’

‘Why, thank you, I’ll remember that,’ is what I didn’t say.

The next house produced a dog that made all the others look as if they were on tranquillisers. I remembered the new catapult. There was no Y-shaped grip, just a loop of elastic with a leather patch for the stone. I pulled back, aimed carefully and hit, smack in the middle, the back of my own hand. The second went sideways and hit Dapple, who gave me an old-fashioned Eeyore look.

‘I know it hit the water canteen so don’t complain.’

My main hope seemed to be that our presence would so infuriate the dog that it would die of a heart attack. At last, I got Dapple across the plain and onto a proper path
running
alongside a small river. The weather chilled, the weep of a lone birdcall came from the heights above. We passed a house where a woman lay asleep in the thin sun, and a man winnowed grain, watched intently by a hen and a young pig, which gobbled up stray seeds. I looked up, feeling I had just hallucinated a pure-white rabbit hopping through the solid wall. If this was
Alice in Wonderland,
could I have Elaine back please? I stared again; the rabbit reappeared, saw me and disappeared through what I now saw was a tiny hole at the base of the wall. A guinea pig skipped after it. They were rearing them for meat.

The delays meant I was again finishing the day near a mountain-top instead of down in the next valley. I unpacked in the shell of an old house, eyeing the rising wind. The sky was prematurely dark; it looked like rain. A young man appeared, walking swiftly towards me. I just wanted to be left alone, to cook and sleep.

‘You cannot sleep here, it is dangerous.’ He was tall, strongly built, in his mid-twenties. ‘There are many bad people near here. Up above, there’s a gang: the people are thieves and robbers.’ He used the word
rondo
for gang, so I guessed they were outlaw descendants of the civil guard organised to fight the Marxist revolutionaries of the Shining Path. ‘The chief lives on the crest of the hill. Come and stay with me, and they will leave you alone. I will carry this,’ he said, lifting my pack easily, and leading Dapple down the field. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. His manner was honest and you have to make judgements about people.

He strode down the hill and into a paddock behind an old adobe house with a crack you could put your arm through running right up through the gable end. ‘Why don’t you stay in my house?’

‘That is very kind, but it is more convenient to use the tent.’ I did not want to put him to any trouble, and I’d be likely to pick up fleas. It was nearly dark as I put up the tent; it began to rain. My fingers were numb with cold. He crouched over me, tucking a poncho around my shoulders, as respectfully as a son to his father. When I had everything inside and dry, I stood up to say hello properly.

‘I am John, same as Juan. Call me whichever you want.’

‘I am Merlin,’ he said.

‘Merlin? You know that he was a great magician in the country where I live, Wales?’

‘Yes, I have been told this. This is my wife Martina, my
nephew, Béri.’ Martina was a beautiful woman around twenty with a large baby in her arms. Some faces keep your eyes busy and happy; she had such a face. She smiled, ‘Good evening. You must eat with us.’

‘Yes,’ said Merlin, ‘I want your opinion about something very important.’

‘That would be very nice. I have fresh meat, would you cook it for all of us?’ She nodded. ‘Merlin’s mother will cook it for us.’

I took out the food boxes; an egg had smashed.

‘We will boil the others for you.’

They brought their few animals into the same paddock. We tethered Dapple, the two cows and a newborn,
spindle-legged
calf, so they would not trample the tent. Then they left, not to the broken-down house above me, but to an even more primitive house hidden below, behind a small copse. I followed soon after, and had to crouch to squeeze through the tiny door into the one-roomed stone hut. There was a clay oven built into the wall. Its glow, and a single candle, lit our faces. We sat shoulder to shoulder, except for Merlin’s mother, who sat cross-legged on the floor by the stove. There was a young girl around three years old, who never spoke, and never took her eyes off me.

There was vegetable soup. The steak had been shredded, to go further, then fried with onions and served with huge bowls of potatoes and sweet tea. It was snug and warm. I was sorry I had not accepted their offer to sleep in here, watching the fire die, swapping stories and fleas with each other. Merlin went to a shelf and brought down something wrapped in a cloth. He sat down at my side. ‘I want your opinion on this gold, which I found myself. No one else knows where I got it.’

In his hand, I could see a dark rock glittering with a granular yellow deposit. In that light, I could not tell if it was gold or iron pyrites – fool’s gold. ‘I need to see this in daylight.’

He nodded, as if we now shared a secret, and carefully folded it back into the cloth. Peruvians have caught gold fever, which the Spanish brought over with all their other diseases. The Incas valued gold for symbolic reasons. They showed their contempt for one captured conquistador, it is said, by pouring molten gold down his throat. It is a perfect metaphor for the conflict. Before the conquest, ordinary Incas were subjects without autonomy, with onerous duties, but basic rights. The Spanish made them serfs without rights; the republic has made them citizens without power. Dispossessed, Sierrans now dream of gold mines.

It was a wet and windy night, but a cold, clear morning: the air still, the sky a bone china bowl, flushed with aquamarine and rose. The three-year-old chased the tiny calf from the udder, and brought me steaming milk. I tied on the bags and clipped on my canoe bag, a waterproof bag containing the things I might need quickly: my fleece, waterproof trousers and lunch.

‘Do you know a way of making my donkey walk fast?’

‘All donkeys walk slowly, you spend all day with your arm behind you.’

He asked me again about the gold. I thought of a Gabriel García Márquez character, a retired colonel, living on expectation of a pension that never comes, and thin air. His wife reprimands him, ‘Illusion won’t feed us.’ He replies, ‘It won’t feed us, but it will nourish us.’ That’s hope, Latin American-style.

The metal was hard, not gold. I said, ‘There is a Canadian mine to the south. Show it to the engineer, he will be honest with you. Meanwhile, good luck with your farm.’ I led Dapple into the fields and up to the road. A sound familiar from another distant journey came to me: ‘Chonk!’ I slowed Dapple down, never difficult, and crept to the crest of the next hillock. There was a small group of buff-necked ibises, which I first saw when walking on Christmas morning in Tierra del Fuego, three and a half thousand miles to the south, where they are summer migrants. Thirty inches high and heavily built, they have a rich buff throat and chest, shot through with olive. Their long beaks probed for grubs.

The navigation became easier as the road became a green trail. But Dapple had spent the night reading a book called
How to Be a Bastard.
He refused to cross a trickle of water fifteen inches wide. I pulled, pushed, coaxed, then took down some stones in a wall to lead him higher up, to where it was only twelve inches wide. He took one look and tried to bolt back through the wall. It was all I could do to hold on to the rope. A woman stood staring, obviously delighted not to have to pay good money to watch. I had to slap him with the rope to get him over the water. He was even more adamant that he would not re-cross the wall, which involved negotiating a hideous fourteen-inch drop. I was wondering if I had Peru’s only donkey with vertigo. Was he tired? Was I feeding him enough? Once through, I tied Dapple to a tree, and sat in the shade drinking and sharing dry biscuits with him; a pointless attempt at bonding.

A few miles on, I met a livestock trader, Eutemio Pozo, a tanned, round, hazelnut of a man, driving two mares
and a foal, all carrying fodder. I bought two large sheaves and let Dapple feed. The mare joined in eating her former load. Dapple ate all the grain and left the stalks. If I gave him no more grain, he went back to the stalks, so he was feeding choosily, and not too hungry. ‘Take care with the trail here,’ said Eutemio, ‘the old bridge fell. The authorities did nothing, so I built a new one myself.’ He pointed it out.

Eutemio’s bridge was better than average, but when we crossed, we found the trail in terrible condition. Floods had ripped it to bits. Six-foot deep gullies were cut into bedrock; we slithered down loose rocks and muddy waterfalls. I was caked to my knees. Dapple lost the will to move. I reached a solid house with a few level, handkerchief fields, well sheltered by stone walls. A woman in her early forties said I could camp there for the night. ‘These are my three children, Hilmer, Rosisela and Aparicio,’ three names I had not heard before or since. ‘Would you like to buy some craftwork? We have woollen ponchos.’

‘I need to put up my tent, but show me in the morning.’

‘My husband used to make them, but he has gone. He went to Lima to look for work, and I have never seen him since. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. One man from San Luis Gonzaga, in the valley, told me he had a job and had married again. But I don’t know. He was a good man, but there was never any work: no tourists to sell crafts to.’

A thunderstorm moved over the mountains that towered above the valley I had to cross next morning. The dark cloud moulded itself to the mountain’s form, its vast bulk flowing into chasmic side-valleys, filament flickers of lightning gently probing the bare rock, which the
rainstorms had left shining like ice. During the night, Dapple showed a new talent. I heard a man with a bad chest stealing a donkey. I went out twice, only to find the donkey was playing both parts.

The mother brought me milk hot from the cow. ‘Will you look at a poncho? It’s new.’ I had no use for a poncho; neither the bulk, nor the weight. I wondered how to say no. She brought out a brown woollen poncho. It was stained with flecks of candlewax, and had probably belonged to her vanished husband. She was embarrassed to ask as much as fifty soles, ten pounds, for it, I was embarrassed to refuse so little. She dropped her eyes, ‘Forty soles.’ She needed the money, any money. I wished Elaine was there with her kind good sense to bail me out.

‘I am sorry, it is a lovely poncho. If I wanted a poncho, I would buy this one. Soon I will sell the donkey and I will have to carry everything myself.’ I gave her twenty soles, ‘For the children.’ She cast her eyes down at the charity; took it slowly. I would soon curse myself for not buying it.

The trail slunk between steep hedges; a chute of rock and mud with a stream picking its way gingerly through the muck. It was an hour before we struggled down onto the floor of the Ñupe valley. Opposite us was a sign:
Thermal Baths.
A modern stone stairway with two-
foot-wide
treads led down a hundred yards to a field with small cement pools fed by hot springs. Dapple made a shambles of the descent. He couldn’t remember where he had just put his front legs long enough for the information to still be available to his hind legs. It was unnerving to have my well-being dependent on an animal unaware of the location of half its own body.

Women washed clothes in one pool, families bathed in
another, keeping underwear on, for decency. I unloaded Dapple and turned him to graze. I stripped down, one white body, one hairy body, among the smooth red-brown ones. They all took turns to have a good look, while pretending not to have noticed me. It was an unexpected luxury to float in the hot bath and wash my muddy trousers.

In a much better frame of mind, I was soon walking the short distance north to find a bridge over the swift broad Ñupe River. The bridge filled me with misgiving. It was made from thirty-foot-long tree trunks and capped with turf, but was narrow, about four feet, with no rails. There was a large drop to the river. I couldn’t see Dapple summoning up the nerve. I loosened the rope and wandered on as if nothing had happened. He stopped dead, at the edge of the bank, and I couldn’t blame him. I walked him round in a circle, hoping that in five seconds all knowledge of the bridge would slip through the sieve of his memory. I fussed his fringe and started back to the bridge on a rope so short he could see little except my back. No dice.

There was no point driving the animal from behind; if he panicked he might fall off or knock me into the water. I walked him around for a while, stroking and coaxing, and received three further refusals. I had no more ideas. I tried once more, very slowly, on a long rope. It stayed slack: I knew he must be on the bridge. I tiptoed over, not daring to turn round until we were over. I threw down my day bag and lay down on the bank to drink.

I needed to follow the river until I was opposite the baths, then take the next side-valley. The path was level, but cut to ribbons by water leaking from the irrigation
channel which had been built above the road, instead of below. At the tiny village of San Luis de Gongora, the trail went over an old stone bridge and turned to rise with utter bravura up a flight of broad, steep, grassy steps, going up the hill and into the sky. It is often said that Inca roads never exceed twenty feet; this green motorway was nearly twenty-eight feet wide. On its verge I found a page lost from a child’s school exercise book.

Cloud accumulated and the air cooled. I drank water heavily on the climb, and I was approaching a limestone massif where there would be no water for many miles. I asked an old man where I could stock up. ‘
Pukyu
!’ he said, using the Quechua word for spring, and pointing me to a square cut in the turf, where water milled slowly to the surface. On the hill ahead, old fields were brown and stony. ‘Abandoned because of the altitude?’ I queried.