This Thing Of Darkness (56 page)

He led Darwin out of the tent and across the makeshift parade ground, through a blizzard of salutes. They arrived at a large, fenced-off compound, where Indian prisoners knelt in chains, their eyes blindfolded and their mouths tightly gagged. Rosas spoke to the adjutant, who had three prisoners separated from the others and brought into an adjoining tent. Three loaded pistols were placed on the table opposite.

‘These men,’ Rosas explained to Darwin, ‘were captured at the recent battle in the
cordillera.
We know from our spies that they were on their way to a general council of the Indians to plan a new wave of atrocities. They have already been condemned to death by due process of law. I am now prepared to offer them an amnesty - to show mercy - if they will only tell me where the council is taking place.’

Darwin looked at the three, who stood blinking and panting, their gags and blindfolds having been removed. They were superb physical specimens, in their mid-twenties perhaps, tall and muscular, each between six and seven feet tall, with long, wild, jet-black hair and coppery skin. Rosas nodded to the adjutant, who picked up the first pistol and placed it between the eyes of the first Indian.

‘¿Donde sera la reunion?
’ demanded Rosas. Where will the council take place?

‘No sé,’
replied the Indian blankly. Rosas gave another nod, and the adjutant shot the prisoner through the head. Darwin almost jumped out of his skin. His ears rang from the deafening report of the gun. Blood pooled at the far wall of the tent, where the impact of the ball had flung the Indian’s body. Darwin found himself gagging for breath.

The adjutant placed the second gun against the forehead of the second Indian. A cloud of blue smoke hung in the air from the first shot, making the general’s point as eloquently as ever he could have done himself.

‘¿Donde sera la reunion?’
demanded Rosas, more forcefully this time.

‘No sé,’
replied the second Indian, bluntly, defiantly.

Again, Rosas nodded. Again, the adjutant shot the man clean through the head. This time Darwin was prepared, but that did nothing to lessen the shock. He had seen public hangings outside the Old Bailey, of course, but this was a different sort of execution. Somehow the baying crowds, the food stalls, the ribald remarks, the sheer distance involved when the unfortunates of Newgate met their fate, all combined to lend the proceedings an air of bleak levity. This was altogether starker, more brutal. The second Indian jack-knifed backwards and slumped to the ground, his chains clanking once before falling silent. The adjutant placed the gun at the third Indian’s temple, smiling this time. Rosas spoke once more.
‘¿Donde sera
la
reunion?’

‘Adelante. Dispara. Yo soy un hombre. Sé como morir.’
Go ahead. Fire. I am a man. I know how to die.

Rosas looked at him.
‘Tu deseo ha sido concedido.’
Your wish has been granted.

Darwin stared hard at his feet. The noise of the third gunshot assaulted his eardrums. When he looked up, the third Indian was dead.

‘Do you see what I mean?’ asked Rosas. ‘They are fanatics.’

 

‘I can tell that what you have witnessed has disturbed you.’

Rosas’ voice was full of concern. They sat in his quarters once more, a plate of fresh meat interposed between them on the table, but Darwin did not feel like eating.

‘Allow me to apologize for your distress. But when you have seen what I have seen, Don Carlos — dead children, mutilated women - I must take the tough decisions that are necessary to modernize our society. Patagonia and the pampas must be opened up to free and fair settlement, and these criminals must be wiped out as part of our programme of national consolidation. Ours is a passion allied to reason, Don Carlos, an alliance of strength and justice for the many, and not the few, for the future, and not the past. We must develop a strong, united society, which gives each citizen the chance to develop their potential to the full.’

Sincerity shone from Rosas’ every pore; Darwin felt the warmth of the general’s conviction, and his doubts began to recede once more.

‘I have heard tell, General,’ he ventured, ‘that you are the only man capable of bringing together Buenos Ayres, and Mendoza, and the United Provinces, and all the countries of this region.’

‘Please, Don Carlos, I do not seek power for myself. I only want what is best for Buenos Ayres. But I tell you that if the countries that depend upon the silver trade were to form a federation - the federation of
Argentina,
let us say - with a single currency, a single defence policy, a single economic policy and a single law, then the benefits of such co-operation would be immeasurable. I do not speak of amalgamation into a single, huge nation, of course - nothing could be further from my mind - but to be left out of such a union would be a catastrophe, whether or not I were to lead it. It is better, is it not, to be a leading partner, helping to shape such a federation from the inside, than to be isolated on the outside?’

‘Absolutely,’ agreed Darwin. Rosas’ logic was unanswerable.

The general indicated the plate between them. ‘Please. Have something to eat. You must recruit yourself, and settle your stomach.’

Darwin took a reluctant bite. ‘What is it? Veal?’

‘Puma. Our puma-extermination programme has been a tremendous success. Already we have killed over a hundred pumas in three months. The benefits to agriculture are incalculable. I tell you, Don Carlos, the power of progress, allied to our essential values and beliefs, will prove unstoppable.’

Every syllable the general uttered seemed to be filled with integrity and scrupulous candour. Whatever the atrocities committed by either side in this nasty little Latin American war, here, Darwin felt, was a man with at least the potential to lead his people to some sort of salvation.

‘Don Carlos, I am afraid that my time is running short. But before you return to your own country, let me make you two presents. First’
—
the general drew a piece of paper from the table drawer, scribbled a few lines thereon and sealed it with red wax melted in the candle flame - ‘let me give you a passport. If ever you should meet any problems with officialdom, this paper should see you safely through. It is valid for all the territories under army control. Woe betide the man who dares harm any traveller carrying such a passport!

‘Second, Don Carlos, I hope you will forgive my presumption, but I notice that your morning coat has become ripped. While I cannot hope to replace the costume of an English gentleman here on the Rio Colorado, I am told that you like to ride with the gauchos’ — Rosas snapped his fingers, and a servant appeared at the tent flap — ‘and that you are fast becoming an expert with the
bolas.’

The servant marched across and presented Darwin with a complete gaucho costume — spurs, boots, striped white poncho, voluminous scarlet drawers — and his very own set of
bolas.

‘General Rosas! What a wonderful present! I couldn’t possibly — ’

‘We will make of you
un gran galopeador
yet, Don Carlos!’

‘I am indebted. Thank you so very, very much.’

‘And remember.’ Rosas reached across and clasped Darwin by the wrist. ‘When you return to England, tell them that we are fighting the most just of all wars, because it is a war against barbarians.’

He walked from Rosas’ tent in a daze.

‘How was it?’ asked Harris.

‘Amazing,’ replied Darwin. ‘Quite amazing. He is an incredible man.’

Alongside a row of tents, a figure in bright clown’s makeup was performing a slapstick act before a row of cross-legged troops.

‘Who in God’s name is
that
?
’
asked Darwin.

‘Oh ... the general likes to surround himself with the latest comedians and entertainers.’

‘He did not strike me as a humorous individual.’

‘Indeed not. But I dare say it makes him popular among the troops.’

Harris had woken that morning with a stomach complaint, having eaten none too wisely the previous evening, and announced to Darwin that he would travel with the next convoy of soldiers instead, in the hope of catching him up at some point. So it was that a column of six gauchos took the road north out of camp that day, a proud Don Carlos among their number, the solitary, lumbering figure of Syms Covington bringing up the rear in his naval ducks.

I really must get him a servant’s uniform,
thought Darwin.
He’s making me look absurd.

 

There were seventeen
postas
strung between the Rio Colorado and Buenos Ayres, a total of seventeen days’ ride across the stark emptiness of the pampas. Throughout their journey, the evidence stacked up against FitzRoy and his Biblical flood. On the first day they crossed an eight-mile-wide belt of sand dunes, almost certainly the former estuary of the Rio Colorado at the point where it had entered the sea. On the second day, they came upon gigantic heaps of half-buried animal bones - the result, Esteban told him, of the
gran
seco drought of 1827-30, when a million cattle had perished for want of water.

What would be tbe opinion of a future geologist viewing such an enormous collection of bones?
wondered Darwin.
The bones of all kinds of animals, embedded in one thick earthy mass? Would he not attribute it to a flood having swept over the surface of the land, rather than to the common order of things?

He learned to catch partridge in a different way, by riding round them in ever-decreasing circles until the birds were sufficiently confused to submit uncomplainingly to their fate. He tried to catch armadillo, but they buried themselves in the sandy soil so quickly that he could not grab them fast enough. Esteban showed him how to fall from his horse directly on to one before it could disappear. The beast curled into an armoured ball in the gaucho’s arms, like a giant woodlouse.

‘It seems almost a pity to kill such nice little animals - they are so quiet,’ said Esteban with a jaunty grin, sharpening his knife on the armadillo’s hide before sliding it ruthlessly between two of its armoured plates. ‘Dinner for this evening, my friends,’ he announced.

At the
posta
that night, little more than an open shed with stabling for the horses and a fire of thistle-stalks, Darwin sat playing cards with the gauchos, drinking
maté
tea and smoking their little paper
cigaretos.
He lost money, of course, but that was as nothing to the joy of his companionship with these wild men. Covington, like Banquo’s ghost, was a pale, sullen presence somewhere behind him, but he did his best to forget about Covington during the evenings. He had spent much of the day teaching the boy how to shoot birds with a rifle, using mustard-shot and dust-shot so as not to damage the all-important skins; by evening, Covington’s principal duty was to melt into the background. Somehow, the servant’s relentless indifference impinged upon the masculine solidarity that bonded him to these marvellous warriors, who were so fearless, so alert, so attuned to their surroundings. A faint cry in the distance, a call from the pampas so slight that Darwin had barely noticed it, froze the card-game in an instant. Every head inclined. One of the gauchos went to the door, knife drawn, and placed his ear to the ground. Then he stood up and laughed. ‘Only a pteru-pteru, boys,’ he said. ‘Only a pteru-pteru.’

On the fourth day, Darwin galloped after a rhea, a South American ostrich, which scooted along the brow of a hill and opened its wings to catch the wind, like a ship-of-the-line making all sail. Proudly, he brought it down with his
bolas
, and the gauchos cut its throat. Covington skinned it, which left the boy crimson to the elbows; they kept the meat for dinner and the skin to be packed up and sent back to Henslow. Then they found its nest, packed with some twenty huge eggs, and rifled that too.

‘If you are a
naturalista,
Don Carlos, then you should seek the
Avestruz Petise,
’ said Esteban, as they loaded armfuls of eggs into their saddlebags.

‘An
Avestruz Petise
- what’s that?’

‘It is a
ñandu —
an ostrich. But it is smaller, and more beautiful, with feathers down to its claws. Its white feathers are tipped with black, and its black feathers likewise are tipped with white. It is very rare indeed. I have only seen one in my whole life.’

‘Esteban, I should very much like to capture an
Avestruz Petise.’

They roasted Darwin’s rhea at the
posta
that night, the best-kept sentry-post they had yet visited. The
posta
-keeper, an old black lieutenant, had been a slave in the West Indies and spoke English. Clearly, he took pride in his command and had worked painstakingly to improve the rudimentary little lodge. He had built a special room for visitors, decorated with crucifixes and engravings cut from the scriptures; there was a small corral for the horses, beautifully constructed from sticks and reeds; there were even little flower-beds planted around the building, which the lieutenant watered assiduously. It might have been a pretty freeman’s cottage on Jamaica, but for the defensive ditch, and the line of straggly, beady-eyed vultures waiting hungrily for the next Indian attack.

‘By your leave, sir,’ said the lieutenant respectfully, ‘but I believe you are the famous
naturalista
from England? I am very proud, sir, to have you as guest at my
posta,
sir, very proud indeed.’

‘Thank you,’ said Darwin graciously. ‘Pray tell me, what is your name?’

‘My name is Michael, sir. I have no other name. I have the honour five years ago to be released from my servitude to Mr Henry Morgan, sir, of Kingston, and to be made a free man. But there are not many opportunity for a free man in Kingston, sir, so I coming south, sir, to Buenos Ayres, where I am conscripted to the army, sir.’