Trail of Feathers (4 page)

‘The condor is the messenger,’ he said in English, offering me some of the leaves. ‘Whose messenger?’

Resting the tin on his knee, the man washed his hands over his face.

The condor links us to heaven’ he said. ‘Just as it did the Incas. It is the bridge, the bridge between man and God.’ ‘Could the Incas glide like condors?’ The man twisted the corners of his mouth into a smile. ‘We can all fly’ he said. ‘All of us?’ The man nodded. ‘Si, all of us.’

He paused, to regard me sideways on.

‘Todos tenemos alas
, we all have wings,’ he said, ‘but we have forgotten how to use them.’

Long ago, when the Incan empire was no more than a twinkle in the Creator’s eye, the land was dim and untamed. Manco Capac, the son of the sun, and Mama Ocllo, the moon’s daughter, set off to dispel the darkness. Emerging from the still waters of Lake Titicaca, the couple roamed the Andean wilderness in search of a place in which to construct a great capital. When they arrived where Cusco now stands, Manco Capac thrust his staff into the soil to test its fertility. The rod sank deep, verifying the land’s richness. So he told Mama Ocllo to bury a magic pip in the earth. From that seed, Cusco grew…

Some say the city was built in the shape of a puma, others that it was designed to match the harmony of the Milky Way. As with Machu Picchu, we may never know the real secrets of its past. The Conquistadors reported to Madrid that they had set eyes on the most magnificent treasure in the New World. They were not speaking of the fine buildings, but of the gold which lay within them.

Every ounce of that intoxicating metal was turned into ingots for the voyage back to Spain. Sacrificial urns, idols and plates, crowns, exquisite brooches, buckles, and
tumi
, sacrificial daggers, were melted down and shipped away. Ironically, Peru has once again become the centre of a world gold rush. Multinationals have flooded in, hiring local labourers for a pittance, in the dangerous business of extracting the ore. Hundreds of mines have sprouted up across the Peruvian Andes. But little has changed in the five hundred years since the first Conquistadors arrived in search of El Dorado. The gold mines are still being worked by
garimpeiros
, local miners, for foreign masters, their precious bounty being shipped abroad as before.

Recently scholars have begun to realise that, while popular with the Incas, gold was never given pride of place. The Incas regarded textiles as far more important. When they first arrived in Peru, the Spanish were presented by the Incas with spans of lavish llama-fibre cloth. Considering the gesture to be nothing short of raillery, the Spaniards began a full-scale invasion, fuelled by insatiable greed.

After carving their way across Peru, the Conquistadors found themselves face to face with the Inca, Atahualpa. Covered by sheets of gold, and robed in blue livery, he was borne forward on a litter carried by eighty men. The young Emperor’s head was weighted down by a golden crown; a collar of enormous emeralds choked his neck; his face was shrouded by a long fringe of wool, his ears hidden by disks of virgin gold.

Atahualpa was wrenched from the litter and thrown into a cell, and the slaughter went on. Like his people, he couldn’t understand the conquerors’ fixation. The Incas assumed the Spanish either ate gold or used it in some bizarre medicinal preparation. According to the popular tale, Atahualpa marked a line high on his cell’s wall, offering to fill the room to that mark with gold in exchange for his freedom. The chamber, eighty-eight cubic meters in size, would be filled once with gold, and twice with silver.

The entire empire was mobilised to ferry llama-loads of gold from all corners of the realm. While his people sacrificed their assets to free their sovereign, Atahualpa remained locked up. The prison guards were said to be amazed by the richness of his costume, which included macaw-feathered robes, and an unusual bat-hair cape.

At last almost six thousand kilos of gold and twice that of silver were accumulated and handed over. The Inca braced himself for freedom, but the Spanish general, Francisco Pizzaro, had other ideas. Perhaps sensing an Incan uprising, Pizzaro accused Atahualpa of treason, the penalty of which was to be burned at the stake. The sentence was later changed to strangulation. When he was garrotted outside his prison cell in Cajamarca, many of the Inca’s wives and sisters were said to have hanged themselves so as to accompany his spirit into the afterlife.

*

Plaza de Armas, Cusco’s central square, was once the point at which over twenty-five thousand miles of Incan roads converged. Before the arrival of the Conquistadors, it was known as
Tahuantinsuyu
, The Four Quarters of the Earth, and was laid with soil from the distant reaches of the empire. It has borne witness to battles, executions, mutinies and plagues, to great banquets, coronations and sacrificial rites. These days, virtually every central plaza in Peru is known as Plaza de Armas, in honour of those who died in the 1879 war with Chile.

From the moment I set eyes on that great square, something stirred inside me. Along with the incessant stream of travellers, I realised at once that Cusco was different. Like them, I stopped dead in my tracks, put a hand to my mouth, and held my breath. It was as if I had been let into an extraordinary secret.

Long shadows of the winter afternoon veiled the maze of terracotta-roofs. Cobbled passageways with sheer stone sides led off to the east and the west. Arched doorways hinted at the courtyards which lay behind. Whitewashed walls trimmed in bougainvillaea dazzled me as I explored the back-streets of what must be the most enchanting city on the Latin continent.

At almost eleven thousand feet, the vanilla-scented air was frosty with cold. A gang of street-vendors bustled forward, wrapped up in their winter woollies, tilted bowlers pulled down tight. Every Cusque
ñ
ian seemed to be clutching a shallow basket of goods,- hand-woven Alpaca gloves, ponchos and raspy woollen socks;
quenas
, panpipes, under-ripe lemons, jars of honey and Inca brand cigarettes. For every tray of merchandise there were ten newly-arrived tourists with a little money to spend.

Cusco is a city of bargains. The South American equivalent of Kathmandu, it’s saturated with impoverished adventurers who refuse to leave. Like me, they know that such precious destinations are hard to come by. Stroll down narrow alleys off the main square, and you find rows of shops, selling the effects of the desperate. Half-empty bottles of pink Pepto Bismol, goose-down sleeping bags, waterproof matches, limp loo paper and tubs of Nivea sun-cream.

It was at the back of one such shop, which doubled as a café, beneath a rousing portrait of Ché Guevara, that I met Sven.

He watched me carefully as I poked about in a display barrel of pawned accessories. I examined the blade of an Opinel pocket-knife, checked the sell-by-date on a slab of Kendal mint cake, flicked through a dog-eared, damaged copy of
West with the Night
.

‘Do you play chess?’ he asked with a lisp.

‘Badly’

Before I could stop him, the hunched figure had pulled a board and pieces from his grubby satchel and laid them out. Male pattern baldness had robbed his head of hair, except for a long tuft at the front. His complexion was fair, his eyes an imperial blue, and his forehead was severed by lines. A much-darned grey pullover rolled up to his chin like an orthopaedic neck-brace.

He thrust out a square hand.

‘Sven,’ he said, ‘from Bratislava.’

I took a seat in the window alcove, adjacent.

‘What shall we play for?’ he asked.

‘I have no chance of winning, I’m hopeless at chess.’

He pulled a yellow Sony Walkman from his satchel and placed it beside the board.

‘You can have it if you win,’ he said.

My eyes widened with greed.

‘What happens if I lose?’

Sven stretched over and tugged at my scarf.

‘Wool?’

‘Alpaca’,
I replied.

The game lasted six moves. As my king fell on his sword, the Slovak reached over, unwound my scarf, and twirled it around his own neck.

‘It’s quite nice,’ he said.

‘I should hope so, it was a birthday present from my mother. Sven swept back the tuft of liquorice hair.

‘I have the advantage’ he said softly. ‘I assume you’ve never been banged up in a Slovak prison.’

The chess-player wouldn’t say why he had done seven years in a high-security jail. But he did reveal, over a cup of
coca de maté
, that his friends called him Walkman. He was walking around the world in the name of peace and poetry.

‘The countries which pass beneath my feet’ he mumbled, staring out the window. ‘They are the future. Forget Europe, it’s finished’

‘Which is your favourite place?’

The Slovak bent down to loosen his bootlaces.

‘How can a father choose between his children?’ he asked. ‘Macedonia was rough like the surface of the moon,- Jordan was tender as a baby’s cry,- Egypt smelled of jasmine, and the Sudan …’ Sven paused to sip his maté. The Sudan,’ he said, ‘was silent as a prophet’s grave.’

*

Round the corner from the pawn-shop, Senor Pedro Valentine was holding up a pair of my underpants, stretched out between his arthritic thumbs. Indicating the superior quality of the cloth, to a shop full of female customers, he pouted like a Milanese gigolo.

‘That’s the finest cotton I’ve seen in thirty years of laundering,’ he said. ‘I bet they hold your
merchandise
just right.’

Half a dozen crones cackled. I confirmed that the underpants had served me well, especially during the hazardous days on the Inca Trail.

Once the elderly women had left, Senor Valentine made me a business proposition. He said that if, on my return, I exported him a container of English underpants he’d sell them in Cusco. He could muster a sales force of schoolboys. We’d be sure to make a fortune. The men of Cusco, he said, were sick to the back teeth of abrasive local underwear.

Senor Valentine handed me a stack of laundered clothes. Then he picked out a pair of barberry-red knickers and pressed them to his nostrils as if they were a rose.

‘Huele
, have a sniff’ he said conspiratorially, ‘a German girl just brought them in, she was
muy bonita, very
pretty.’

The old launderer jiggled his hands over his chest suggesting large cleavage.

‘My wife shouts at me’ he said, ‘she asks why we don’t have a tourist shop like everyone else. She may be angry, but every man in Cusco is jealous of Pedro Valentine. After all’ he continued, ‘who else can sniff the fragrance of fresh knickers all day long?’

*

Night falls fast in the Andes, and with it comes bitter cold. A boy of five or six waylaid me as I ascended the cobblestone slope towards my hotel, in Plaza Nazarene. His nose was running, his hair matted with dirt, and his cheeks the colour of oxblood; their capillaries ruptured by the daily cycle of fire and frost. He tugged at my trouser-leg, bringing me to a halt. Breaking into a tap-dance, he displayed a box of battered postcards. As I scanned them one by one, the boy advertised the extra-low price, one
sol
for ten. Cusco’s tourist shops peddle a fine selection of cards, all of them promoting the beauties of Peru. But the young salesman’s were from a different stock.

The cards portrayed a lesser-known side of the nation. The first six showed an assortment of hideous mummified bodies. The next was of an Andean medicinal stall, replete with llama-foetuses; then there were a series of ferocious-looking men in ponchos, balancing guinea pigs on their heads. But it was the last card which gripped me. It was a highlight from a textile. I looked at the image closely. It showed a crazed sub-human figure, with a leering expression, claws, crude wings, and a string of decapitated heads running down its back. The picture resembled the one Deiches had shown me. Its caption read
Alado hombre del Paracas:
the Birdman of Paracas.

I slipped the child a handful of coins and put the cards in my jacket pocket. This last might be the clue I’d been waiting for, for the trail to the Birdmen was growing cold. But for now it was time to rest.

*

Sven had had a productive morning. Piled high on an empty café chair were an assortment of his winnings. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a green mohair sweater, six paperbacks, two Frisbees, a canvas rucksack, and a cluster of juggling balls. His expensive Walkman was positioned prominently beside the chessboard - like an unobtainable prize at a fairground stall.

‘What about a cup of coffee for a poor Slovak?’

Sven had made an art form out of attracting charity. He considered himself to be above using money. The Queen, the Pope and he had one thing in common - none of them carried cash.

I pulled out the postcards I had bought the night before.

‘Wonderful,’ he said, ‘mummies and dried llama foetuses.’

‘What about this one?’ I pointed to the Birdman.

Alado hombre del Paracas’
he read, rubbing the tip of his nose with a bishop. ‘Mummified bodies are one thing,’ he replied, ‘but never make light of the winged-men.’

‘Who are they?’

The Slovak glanced through me with his gaze. ‘Look at that picture,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’ I studied the image: ‘A wild creature, half-man, half-bird, adorned with severed heads.’

Is that
really
what you see?’ asked the Slovak. Look again. Look beyond the obvious’

Again, I scrutinised the figure, taking in its wide psychotic eyes, its spewing tongue, the individual stitches of embroidery.

They flew’ I said under my breath. ‘I'm sure of it….’

Sven splayed his fingers on the table like the legs of a starfish.

They glided, they soared’ he said, like flying squirrels’

‘Were the Incas the first to make a gliding wing?’

‘We have a saying in Bratislava’ he said: ‘The wings of an eagle are the arms of a man.’ The Slovak twisted his fingers faster and faster until they blurred. ‘If you believe they flew, then they did.’

At that moment a tall, spindly woman entered the café. A mane of jet-black hair peaked into a crest above her forehead, before cascading down her back. Silver hoops dangled from her ears, reflecting the light as she walked.