Dance of the Dwarfs (7 page)

As soon as I too heard it, I slipped on shirt and trousers and put a clip into the Lee-Enfield. I doubt if I should have bothered if I had been alone. It was papa being over protective. All the same, the incident was more than unusual. The rider had come from Santa Eulalia in the dark, which the llaneros will not, and he was traveling at a much faster pace than they ever do.

Mario had recognized the visitor and opened the gate by the time I got there. It was Pedro, riding his gray gelding bareback with only a halter. He had been using his spurs in good earnest. The beast was bleeding, fighting for breath and full of alarm.

He did not dismount and for once wasted no time in empty speech.

“They are going to cut my throat, friend! I have no hope but you.”

He begged me to give him quickly as much food as he could carry and to ride with him to the edge of the forest. He had nothing at all with him but his machete and an old revolver tucked in his belt.

He was not a man to miss a chance of explaining himself dramatically and at length, so I knew that the affair was urgent and that he had good reason to be afraid. I told Mario to throw into a sack rice, dried and canned meat, matches and whatever he could lay his hands on instantly while I saddled up my reliable Estrellera. The disk of the sun was half above the horizon as we galloped across the creek. In another five minutes we were skirting the edge of the forest towards the only possible passage for a horse which I myself had cut. It would take a lot of finding for anyone who did not know it was there.

As soon as we were clear of the undergrowth and into the trees I dismounted and asked him what the devil was the matter.

He told me that four llaneros had been driving a small herd towards the foothills. Where they were going he, Pedro, did not know. But when they were two days out, nearing the rendezvous where the herd would be taken over, they had been machine-gunned from the air, the cattle scattered and two llaneros killed.

The other two, panicked by the discovery that aircraft could shoot, had ridden back to Santa Eulalia. A mere hour ago they had routed Pedro out of bed, told him to get dressed and firmly shut the door on his wife. They then said that they were going to cut his beautiful brown throat and that, as he had once been a friend, they would stretch it tight and do a neat job. He was a traitor who had sent them off on this errand and then told the government about it on his tac-tap machine.

To me Pedro protested that it was all a mistake and that, as I knew, he never mixed himself up in politics. To them he had said that they might as well have a last drink together—a proposal which appealed to the llaneros' curious sense of humor.

Keeping the bar counter between himself and the naked knives, he picked up a bottle and hurled it at the lantern which one of them was carrying. That of course set the store on fire. Pedro's rotgut was every bit as inflammable as spilled paraffin. In the confusion he yelled to his wife to get out, jumped on his horse and took off across the llano. How he came to have spurs on I can't imagine. I suppose they were always attached to his boots, though his normal pursuits were sedentary.

“They are close behind you?” I asked.

“Not very close. But now that it is day they will ride harder.”

“How can they tell where you went?”

Not an intelligent question. It seemed to me that he could take off into space and not see another human being for days. But of course they knew that he had not even saddle and bridle. He would have to eat raw beef unless he lit a tell-tale fire. He dared not let his horse rest and graze unless he kept hold of the halter, for no South American horse—except rarities like my Tesoro—can easily be caught. Water he could only find at well-known points, giving his presence away by disturbing the cattle. The forest was his only hope, and the estancia his only source of supply.

His intention was to make his way southwest to the banks of the Guaviare and wait there until he could hail a passing canoe. The crossing of the forest would not take him more than two days or perhaps three, but he might have to wait much longer before seeing any movement on the river.

I asked him if he had a compass.

“Pedro needs no compass, friend. I am accustomed.”

“Suppose they follow you?”

“Have you ever seen any of them between the estancia and the trees? No! Since they are determined to kill me, there will be several of them together. When they have given each other courage, they will ride along the edge of the forest but they will not enter it.”

That was certain. They never went where they could not ride.

Thinking of the days of waiting on the riverbank, I wished I had provided him with hooks and a line. I asked him if he was likely to find game. Even an armadillo might just make the difference between hardship and starvation.

“Nobody knows for sure. But there must be hunting.”

“Joaquín told me there are no Indians there.”

“Joaquín is a fool. There are. But they stay in the deep forest and I shall never be far from the edge of the llano. It is said they are very small. The less reason to be afraid of them! Now go with God before the fools come galloping up to the estancia and frighten your girl! Take my horse and keep it till we meet again!”

“What should I tell them?”

“They will not hold it against you. Any of them would help a friend without asking questions. Say that you gave me food and know nothing!”

Well, I do not. I am quite certain that it was Pedro who organized the meat supply and fairly certain that he never informed the government. The interception of the herd was probably due to some clever work by Valera and his colleagues.

I have little fear for Pedro. The forest, almost impenetrable where it meets the llano, soon becomes as open as, say, a ruined church in which the pillars are still upright but a lot of the roof has fallen on the floor. With luck he should be near the riverbank sometime tomorrow. Cutting his way through the last half mile will be long and arduous, and then he may emerge into one of those vile tangles where water, land and vegetation are indistinguishable; but with the river as low as it is a shore of sand or gravel can never be far off.

Lord knows where this story of pygmies comes from! I have never heard it before. Provided they have always kept to the shelter of the trees it is no more or less possible than traveler's tales of hundred-foot anacondas.

Leading his gray gelding, I cantered Estrellera back to the estancia and noticed at least three places where the creek was quite dry between shallow pools. Chucha and Mario seemed ridiculously anxious about me. I had hardly unsaddled and turned both horses into the corral when five of the Santa Eulalia toughs galloped up, loudly demanding entry. I received them as if they were the sixteenth-century caballeros whose manners and cruelty they have inherited, and they were compelled to respond with a due measure of courtesies before coming to the point.

I gave them my word that Pedro was not in the estancia. He had asked for food, which I had given, and then I had ridden with him to the forest and taken his horse. He had told me only that some gentlemen had tried to cut his throat and set fire to his store, but did not say why. Could they enlighten me?

“A private affair,” one of them replied, showing no disapproval at all of my behavior. “I need tell you only that he has well deserved it.”

I watched them through field glasses vaguely searching the frontier between trees and llano, and saw no more of them till they called in for a drink, two hours before sunset, on their way back to Santa Eulalia.

[
April 9, Saturday
]

I found Chucha crying this morning. She was comforting her lime sapling, or else it was comforting her. It is a totem, like a vegetable and living teddy bear, with which she takes refuge in trouble. She would not tell me what the matter was. I hope the loneliness is not getting on her nerves. She is a creature of closed horizons, of mountain valleys and rivers. This vast emptiness may oppress her. One needs to travel over it on a horse, not to look at it hopelessly from our oasis.

At first she was as frightened of the horses as her ancestors in Peru. For her they were alarming and self-willed animals with ferocious sets of teeth, only to be handled by the conquerors and certainly not by humble women. Neither Tesoro nor Estrellera was helpful. Tesoro is only half broken by European standards—and Estrellera was very well aware that at last she had a human being in front of her who could be bullied.

But Chucha's ancestral inferiority complex is now on the way to be cured. Partly this is due to the presence of the llaneros the other evening. They were showing off in front of a pretty girl how magnificently they ride, yet they were all much darker skinned than she is. And partly it is due to Pedro's Pichón, who has gone out of his way to be polite to her ever since she nervously offered him the first carrot he had ever tasted. He likes women anyway. Pedro's wife used to treat him as a pet. He is a proper corporal's horse, quiet and unintelligent, willing to carry a pack or a rider. I think I can persuade Chucha to sit on his back.

But what can she wear? That's a problem which Teresa, who dresses in a single shapeless garment with one of my old shirts underneath, would be unable to solve. Nothing at all is the right answer. It would be less indecent than a skirt rucked up round her waist; but both Chucha and Teresa would certainly be shocked at the thought of an Indian Lady Godiva. I should also fear for the pale primrose skin on the inner part of her thighs. The
chiripá
of the Argentine pampas would look very well on her. I must try to remember how the length of cloth used to be folded and fixed in position.

[
April 10, Sunday
]

I made a dashing job of the
chiripá
by cutting up a green nylon pup tent which it is unlikely I shall ever want. The little darling thought the whole business of fitting the square around and between her legs most improper. In an obscure way I can understand the taboo. The business of a male is to undress, not to take a too intimate delight in dressing. Naturally enough I was entranced by this unexpected modesty. She responded, but still seemed disturbed. Enjoyment without joy. I must be more considerate and stop behaving like an archduke in a high-class brothel.

In the first cool of the evening I mounted her on Pichón—who fortunately approved of the
chiripá
—and suggested that we ride to the edge of the forest. She wouldn't hear of crossing the creek; so we walked our horses up the east side of the marshes where she became more cheerful and exclaimed at the colors of the birds. I should like to dress her in flamingo feathers. A vulgar thought! It offends against her simplicity. In any case I have to be content to set off her prettiness with things folded and belted like the
chiripá
. It would be reasonable to ask the Mission to fly in a sewing machine.

It has just occurred to me that Pedro's tac-tap is out of action, so that it will take anything from three weeks to a month to make a request and get a reply. Well, we are remarkably self-sufficient.

[
April 11, Monday
]

This is the devil! I promised myself that nothing should hurt her while she was in my care, and now she is heading straight for tragedy.

There were tears again during the siesta; so I petted and encouraged her until the reason came out.

“Porque te quiero, Ojen.”

I do not know how far the Indian of the altiplano shares our conception of love. Did the conquerors import romantic love along with their music, speech and religion? I think I must assume they did, though all the evidence I have is that she looked straight into my eyes when she said she loved me and foresaw that there could be no happy ending.

I replied of course that I loved her too, but she knew very well that my
te quiero
did not mean the same as hers. What am I to do about this when the time comes? Love is a quite unnecessary serpent in our Eden. Valera would laugh and ask me what the hell I expected. Yet I didn't expect it. I could shrug my shoulders if Chucha had been a whore responding desperately to kindness and admiration. But what she feels and cries about is not, I think, that fairly predictable response. It is far nearer a child's unthinking, wholehearted love. I can't reject it and I don't want to. There is a father/daughter relationship between us. I cannot act as my own psychiatrist, but I suspect that if I had not been using her body with immense physical and aesthetic satisfaction I could have answered with absolute sincerity and in a quite different sense that I loved her. Am I suffering from the stupid contempt of the male for the woman he has bought? But I didn't buy her. She was a present.

I told her that I thought she had been crying because she was lonely. She replied that she could never be lonely any more because she would remember me even if I was not there. I wonder if she read that slowly in some ragged page torn from a magazine or if it came from the heart. Does it matter? Words must have a source. Then for no reason at all she suddenly saw the comic side of the
chiripá
and started to giggle. Her moods travel like the flickering of wind over the rushes.

“Now that we understand each other …” she began.

That, too, was spoken out of a child's instinct. There was a peace and confidence between us which, I see, I had hardly given a chance to grow.

“Now that we understand each other, promise me you will never go to the trees!”

I assumed that in some way she did not wish me to be associated with her past. I am always creating complexities where there aren't any.

I explained that it was my trade to go to the trees: that anything which grew on the llano in partial shade was of interest to me and that we knew far too little of conditions of soil and geology at the border. That was beyond her. I put it more simply. Why does the forest stop where it does and not somewhere else?