The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories (2 page)

Don José-Maria began to search through his pockets. He looked at Gabar with the simplicity of a child.

“I have forgotten it,” he said.

Gabar with unconcealed disgust told the boatman to put back to the ship. He silently consigned Don Jesús to the deepest pit of hell and Don José-Maria to a lunatic asylum, with the added hope that each of them would meet his destiny before there was time for him to deliver the old fool at Arequipa.

“I will go and get it,” said José-Maria, jumping up energetically as soon as they lay alongside the
Santa Juana.

Gabar hastily got between the priest and the gangway. He did not dread the difficulty of reëmbarking the old gentleman so much as the lengthy good-byes which he was certain to say all over again. He hailed Don Jesús, asking him to search José-Maria's cabin for the passport.

“It would be so much better if I went myself,” suggested José-Maria appealingly.

In a few minutes Don Jesús returned with the passport. He handed it to a steward, waved good-bye curtly, and turned away with a certain air of annoyance as the man brought it down to the tender.

“He is angry with me,” José-Maria sighed.

“It doesn't matter if he is.”

“Oh, not about the passport. No! But he must have seen the empty bottles.”

“The empty bottles?”

“Yes, Don Manuel. You see, I felt seasick, and as Don Jesús did not like me to drink and as I needed a little cheer for my stomach's sake …”

Pisco Gabar began to choke with laughter. José-Maria's besetting sin was obvious. Hypocrites! What hypocrites! He did his best to feel indignant but was overcome by amusement. He began to like José-Maria, chiefly because the old man had annoyed Don Jesús. And then it was really impossible to dislike anyone so simple.

“What was the fourth thing Don Jesús told you to remember?” he asked.

“I forget,” answered José-Maria humbly. “
Ay!
It is hard to remember so many things. I am no traveler, Don Manuel. Once a week I go from Huanca del Niño to Chiquibamba—twenty kilometres, Don Manuel—and that is all the traveling I have done since I left the seminary at Cuzco.”

“Huanca del Niño? I have seen a track that leads there. It starts from the valley of the Inambari.”

“Our only road, Don Manuel. A devil of a road! But it matters little, since it is seldom trodden.”

“Isn't there a fort or temple up at Huanca?”

“There are great walls, and within them was once a temple. But it is now a church, Don Manuel—my church.”

Gabar, whose memory was crisscrossed by the lines of obscure pathways, knew the lower end of the track that wound up to Huanca del Niño from the valley of the Inambari. His Indian friends had told him that it was one of the ancient roads from the Montaña to the altiplano and that up on the bare hillsides, where vegetable growth was slow to cover, it was still paved. This he doubted. Huanca he knew only by name as one of the towering bluffs thrown out by the Andes towards the Amazon, and by a solitary glimpse of it from ten thousand feet below. On the distant skyline had been a straight line of somewhat paler yellow than the yellow flanks of the mountain, which suggested that the summit was crowned by prehistoric masonry.

The tender drew alongside the jetty and Don José-Maria hastily followed his black tin trunk ashore and into the customs shed. Gabar went in search of the inspector, for he never paid customs duties on his own west coast. He would have indignantly denied that he bribed, but he took great satisfaction in being on friendly—genuinely friendly—terms with all those in authority. He especially liked to give christening presents to their children. As he seldom entered any port more than once in nine months, he was sure to find that the inspector's señora was either expecting or recovering.

The inspector, with tears in his eyes and gestures of arms and shoulders which violently suggested the upward movement of a corkscrew, was explaining to Gabar the latest obstetrical problem when a customs officer saluted and interrupted them.

“There's a priest,” he said. “A mad priest! He put a curse on me in Quechua. Not of course that I believe in such nonsense, being an educated man and a servant of the republic. Still, it is an insult to the uniform and one is not comfortable—”

“One is not,” said Gabar, instantly making a friend for life. “And so I will remove the curse.”

He pronounced an impressive blessing in the Indian language.

“You all know that I am no friend of the Church,” he explained. “It does not fit into our system. But this old fool is in my charge.”

“In that case, friend Pisco, it is different,” said the inspector cordially.

They found José-Maria sitting broodily on his tin trunk and glaring, so far as it was possible for his eyes to glare, at an interested crowd of idlers.

“He shall not touch it, Don Manuel! He asked me to open it and I opened it, but he shall not put his hands inside. It is sacrilege. I cannot allow it!”

“You see, Señor Pisco, he is mad! I said so!” exclaimed the customs officer triumphantly. “My hands are clean—look at them! And I am always ready to use discretion. I would never embarrass a traveler by exposing to the public what he would rather they did not see!”

“I am sure of it,” said Gabar solemnly. “But the reverend padre is very obstinate, and we do not want discussions.”

The inspector, for the sake of the onlookers, sternly ordered José-Maria's trunk to be carried to his office, and from there sent it through the gates with Pisco's baggage, which naturally was not examined. On the way to the station the priest overwhelmed Pisco with thanks, which he waved aside with the remark that had he known Don José-Maria did not wish to expose the contents of his trunk it could have been arranged without so much fuss.

“What have you got there?” he asked. “More empty bottles?”

“Don Manuel,” replied José-Maria, “if I had not received so many favors from you, I should not forgive that question. I am a sinner, but not so wretched that I would pack the signs of my folly next to a sacred garment.”

Gabar was so surprised by this answer that he apologized. The old man had suddenly and unexpectedly put on the full authority of the Church. José-Maria retreated into a dignified silence, while Gabar let himself go into mental abuse of priests in general and this particular nuisance that had been inflicted on him. It occurred to him, however, that he only really liked José-Maria when he
was
a nuisance. His theory was promptly proved right at the station, for there the priest discovered that he had forgotten the fourth essential which Don Jesús had told him not to forget. It was his return ticket. As José-Maria had only a few centavos in his pocket, Gabar paid his fare to Arequipa. Don José-Maria, who had no idea of how to get money from Arequipa to Mollendo and had had gloomy indefinite visions of sleeping on the streets and growing his own maize on the rubbish heaps, was correspondingly grateful.

Gabar's gold peddling had not yet been discussed. José-Maria had heard of it from Don Jesús and wished to invite the trader to bring a stock of goods to Huanca del Niño. He hesitated to do so because he did not consider a few ounces of gold worth weeks of traveling, and, feeling very dependent on Gabar's kindliness, did not wish to abuse it. Pisco, on his part, had given little thought to Don Jesús' advice to ask José-Maria about gold, believing it on later reflection to be a Jesuitical lie.

Now that the train was climbing fussily up into the desert foothills and no further difficulties immediately threatened, José-Maria asked Gabar what route he would take on his next journey.

“To Cuzco and north,” answered Gabar, “unless anything offers at this end of the country.”

José-Maria was silent for a minute or two while he considered whether or not he should accept, without further polite preliminaries, this invitation to talk.

“It's very hot in the train,” Gabar said, taking down from the rack a fresh bottle of pisco which he had bought on the way to the station and handing it to José-Maria. The priest said a short grace and applied his lips to the bottle. He decided that he might take courage.

“How much gold would you expect, Don Manuel, to make it worth your while, if you were to take a long, a very difficult journey to a very distant pueblo?”

“As much as a man can carry and still carry his food,” Gabar replied.

“Not more?”

“
Hombre!
I've seldom got so much!”

“I think if you came to Huanca and Chiquibamba,” said José-Maria timidly, “we could trade you all you could carry. That is—if you stayed a little while.”

Gabar took a pull at the bottle.

“Where do your people get their gold?” he asked. “Have you found an Inca treasure or do you pan streams?”

“Neither one nor the other, Don Manuel. There is a bank of pebbles, and when we have enough water in the stream we wash them down a trough and a little gold remains behind at the bottom.”

“Good God! But with pumps and hoses you could get millions out of those gravel beds!”

“It may be so, Don Manuel. I know nothing of that. But there is hardly enough water for ourselves, and none for the troughs except in the two months of rain.”

“In that case it looks like my usual business,” said Gabar calmly—he was used to having his dreams of instant wealth swiftly shattered. “How do I get to Huanca? Isn't there a road from the altiplano without going down to the Inambari?”

“
Ay!
If only there were! There was such a road in colonial days. But many years ago, before my time, perhaps two hundred years ago, the western side of the hill was washed away. And now a man must go down from Cuzco to the Montaña and up again to Huanca. But you will travel with me, Don Manuel, and a guide will show us the way.”

“Another pisco?” suggested Gabar, avoiding the invitation.

“Thank you, Don Manuel. It is indeed hot in the train.”

“I know the way to the foot of your mountain,” Gabar said. “But what happens then?”

“You follow the track up, always up, till you come to a steep gully which cuts a line of cliffs. Here one must turn right or left along the foot of the cliffs. The right path leads to Huanca and the left to Chiquibamba. There is a patch of bog below the fork.”

“What would you like me to bring your people?”

“Some tools and rough steel for working, Don Manuel, and a few pretty things for the women. I like to see them look well at Mass. And some images. Saint Joseph, I advise.”

“I will not encourage superstition,” declared Gabar firmly. “No saints!”

“What a pity you do not believe! It is a shame that so good a man should be a heathen! But do not be angry with me if I ask you to bring some little Saint Josephs. Quite little ones, Don Manuel. The Child and His Blessed Mother can never feel neglected by us, but my parishioners have so little to put them in mind of poor Saint Joseph. And they will pay you well, Don Manuel. Gold for little Saint Josephs that only cost you a sol apiece at Cuzco!”

“It's against my principles,” said Gabar. “I can't be bought. And I will not be a party to perpetuating the present system!”

“I do not understand,” said Don José-Maria unhappily. “How is it possible that you can hate what is so simple and good? I will pray for you, Don Manuel.”

“If it gives you any pleasure,” remarked Gabar, shrugging his shoulders, “you can add the other hundred million workers who don't believe fairy tales.”

At Arequipa Gabar handed over Don José-Maria to a bevy of local churchmen who were at the station to meet him. The priest intended to stay there for a week or two while he made arrangements for a guide and transport to take him home. Gabar, although he had developed a toleration for José-Maria, had no intention of being his companion on a journey which would certainly last ten days and possibly more. When he saw the old man again, he pleaded urgent business in the north and roundly declared that if he were to go to Huanca at all it must be immediately. He made a selection of the goods he had in store at Arequipa and took them by rail to Cuzco, where he bought two llamas and a mule. Within a week he was on his way to the upper Inambari.

It needed a fine eye for country to cross half a dozen of the great herringbones of ravines and ridges lying with their heads up against the main range and their tails in the Brazilian forest. Pisco Gabar traveled partly by instinct and partly by inquiry from occasional Indians. A compass was useless, since most of the time he was traveling in the only direction allowed by the ribs of the herring, which was never at any given moment the direction in which he wanted to go. Movement for man and animals was appallingly hard. A day's march was a scramble up from a gorge, a laborious working in zigzags through semi-tropical forest, where the mincing steps and high-carried heads of the llamas well expressed their distaste for such vulgar luxuriance; rough trampling over the scrub above the tree line; and a rush over the barren hilltop in order to get out of the wind and down into shelter for the night's camp—twenty miles across country from the previous camp, but not more than three by the straight line of an imaginary tunnel.

There were, however, few serious discomforts, for that part of the Montaña was a paradise of trees, flowers, and running water. Even the insects were more spectacular than bloodthirsty. Pisco was accustomed to the utter loneliness of the Montaña, and loved it. His religious emotions—he himself would never have called them such—were satisfied by the worship of Nature. He delighted to muse by his campfire on the curious habits of orchids, pumas, caverns, and storms, and to find explanations; but he was unaware that his own appreciation of them also demanded an explanation.

On the evening of the eighth day he camped on the upper Inambari at the foot of the track which led to Huanca del Niño. He was up before dawn, and two hours later on top of the ridge that bordered the river. A close-set group of conical mountains faced him, their peaks rising to an average height of 16,000 feet. This was the eastern rampart of the main range. The high points which appeared to be peaks were not really such, but bluffs rising comparatively little from the altiplano beyond. On one of them he saw again the straight yellowish-white line of a pre-Inca wall, flattening the top of the escarpment and marking the site of Huanca del Niño.