The Adventures of China Iron

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

  I felt I’d lived outside everything, outside of the world that fitted snugly into the wagon along with Estreya and Liz, a world that was already becoming second nature. I learnt what a compass was, the same way I learnt to wear a petticoat and write the alphabet. A bit like learning to swim, that was my new life: thrown into deep water. Our journey too was something like sailing, following in the wake of the Indians, the same route along which the military forts had been built. Oscar the Gringo would be in one of them. So would Fierro, but whatever it took I was planning to stay in the world of the compass, which was his world, Liz’s husband’s I mean, who’d been a sailor. So was Liz in a way. Following the path of the Indian hordes, I began avoiding the quagholes like someone avoiding rocks at sea. We learnt how to find out if the Indians were close by examining the dung left by their animals. It was always dry until one fateful day, when what we wanted – and feared – happened: I stepped in a huge pile of steaming dung in my little Victorian lace-up boots and, lost in thought, into the muck I sank.

  When I wasn’t chatting to Liz or playing with Estreya I was always lost in thought, living in a daydream. Up until that point my life had been absent somehow. My life hadn’t been my own, maybe that was why I was always so far away, maybe not, I don’t know. The damp smelly dung jolted me out of it. The Indians were near. Or a couple of their animals had run away. We didn’t know. I got into the wagon. I took off my dress and the petticoats and I put on the Englishman’s breeches and shirt. I put on his neckerchief and asked Liz to take the scissors and cut my hair short. My plait fell to the ground and there I was, a young lad. Good boy she said to me, then pulled my face towards her and kissed me on the mouth. It surprised me, I didn’t understand, I didn’t know you could do that and it was revealed to me so naturally: why wouldn’t you be able to do that? It’s just that back where I came from women didn’t kiss each other, though I did remember cows sometimes mounting other cows. I liked it, Liz’s imperious tongue entered my mouth, her spicy, flowery saliva tasted like curry and tea and lavender water. I would have liked it to go on longer, but when I grabbed her tight by the hair and pressed my tongue between her teeth she pushed me away.

  I wasn’t sure if that kiss was a British custom or an international sin. I didn’t care, Liz loved me, that much was clear, and even if it wasn’t, there was no going back. From then on, I kept watch, I was always on my horse and stuck close to Estreya, who was also transformed. He went on the alert, becoming a guard dog in the blink of an eye, just like I’d become a boy with a shotgun. Suddenly there was a clap of thunder and I dashed into Liz’s bed for the rest of the watch.

  The Morbid Light of Dead Men’s Bones

  It poured with rain and the water swept away the merciful dust: all was mud and protruding bones. White bones, pearly and iridescent like a devil’s lantern, the morbid light of dead men’s bones, of mortal remains, of skeletons. Bad sign, said Liz, and I was inclined to agree. Those white bones tinged with a bluish gleam by flashes of lightning were the bones of men and women. Some were already bleached and bare as if scrubbed and polished by an army of skilled craftsmen. Others were not, and they slowly decomposed like little suppurating mounds. My Englishwoman was indignant: Savages! They should bury them. Only animals leave dead bodies lying about. She was right, only savages leave the dead unburied, to be picked at by chimangos. My people were savages, and the pampas a sickening dung heap of Indians and white men.

  Tank You Señora for Cure Me

  The rain stopped and we had two or three days of flat horizon, and of being pulled between the fear of being seen and the hope that we would meet others along the way. Until suddenly, against that endless backdrop of the horizon, the earth rose up like tempestuous waves in a storm. We weren’t thrown off, but I reined in hard and the sudden standstill nearly caused the wagon to spew out the half of England we were carrying. Our bodies bore the brunt, as our belongings struck us, not that we felt it, so horror-struck were we by the sight of the pampa erupting. The earth shook itself up, sweeping skywards in spirals that merged and thrust themselves towards the wagon, blinding us. The three of us and our oxen and horses stayed so still that within seconds it had engulfed us like a solid mass of dust, punctured by the unearthly cries of the few birds that live in the pampas and by Estreya barking at the brown cloud from under the feet of the oxen, who were frozen to the spot. Then, as if the birds were lightning and cattle thunder, we heard the low rumble of a stampeding herd. We shook, everything shook, and everything that had fallen on us started shifting, covering us again until the noise became deafening. Then just like that it stopped: no more clamour of hooves, barking or birdcalls. We couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything; the earth had swallowed us up. We were as still as Lot’s wife, but so drenched in sweat that we were turned to mud. We smelled dung and could hear what seemed like the world itself gasping for breath until the dust settled and we saw that we were surrounded by about a thousand head of cattle. They were the same brown as everything else at that point, long eyelashes fluttering and tails flicking with either fear or affection. The cows and bulls encircled us, calm now as if they’d just come home, as if they’d found shelter around our wagon, as if the mere fact of protecting us, Estreya, the oxen, my little horse and the wagon somehow protected them too. Nothing moved, just the dust falling in a gentle haze, and us stock-still amidst this slow revelation of dark animal hides and the dust smudging the air as it fell.

  At some point the calm was broken: the herd parted like a brown sea to let through a man on horseback, carrying a lamb on the saddle. He bid us good day and said how pleased he was to meet some folks at last. He was on his way to Indian Territory looking for a place to set up with his cattle, and where were we headed? Liz said we were going the same way, Indian Territory. He chuckled and we saw that he had a kind, childish face; this man in front of us looked like a little orphan, but no, at that point at least, he wasn’t the orphan. Stroking the baby lamb, he explained that he’d taken it in because its mother had died. He seemed happy to meet an Englishwoman and a blond boy in the middle of nowhere, he talked non-stop and tried to make Liz talk so he could laugh at her every word. She had to explain England to him, the ocean, the steamer, the desire to travel to the other side of the world. What on earth for? For the same reason as you, Liz replied, to find somewhere to live with my cattle. And where are your cattle, señora? The gaucho’s eyes lit up with amusement when Liz explained to him that some of her cows were coming across, as she had done, on a boat. But why, when we’ve got plenty here already? To improve the stock, of course, since British cows were superior, like almost everything else from Britain. Liz didn’t actually say that last bit, as she started explaining that it was the breeds from Scotland, where she came from, that were the very best. So then she had to explain Scotland, even though she’d never get the Argentines to stop calling her English. I think Rosario, that was the gaucho’s name, started getting bored with so many explanations, because he interrupted Liz and said he felt like throwing some beef on the fire, if we were interested. We were, Liz always loved asado, so she accepted heartily saying we had firewood and that someone would have to milk the cows. Jo, would you do it?

  I went and milked one of the runaways, who was quite docile about it and seemed relieved. I knew a fair bit about cows, although I’d never really stopped to look at their faces. The runaway and I looked at each other, she batted her eyelashes in what I took to be gratitude, as if the milk had been weighing her down. I kept looking and saw in her round, untroubled eyes, her good cow eyes, an abyss, a deep longing for pasture, for a track, for fields of sunflowers even. All this I seemed to glimpse in her pupils along with her urge to lick her calf. She began licking the calf there and then and I looked down and got on with my milking and decided to give her a name, I called her Curry. When I’d finished, both the calf and Estreya started suckling. Estreya had hardly ever had milk in his life and he went at it delightedly until he was sated and lay on his back with his paws
curled up, his tail waggling on the ground in ecstasy.

  Rosario the gaucho introduced himself again while he laid the fire and prepared a spit for cooking the beef, he paused briefly to tear off a piece of the animal’s stomach lining that was a bit dry but still flexible, and he filled it with the milk I gave him and fed the lamb, who then went to sleep at his feet by the fireside. ‘The lamb’s called Braulio. He’s male,’ Rosario pointed out.

  That it was male was obvious. I was the one Rosario was probably confused about, with my men’s clothes and my smooth cheeks. And Liz calling me ‘Jo’. I didn’t offer any explanation, I just helped him gather firewood and stroked the lamb while Estreya sniffed at it in wonder. The way the gaucho had nursed the little lamb was so touching. Yet when he’d built the fire, he stood up, unsheathed his knife, grabbed a calf, stunned it with a stone to the head and slit its throat. Its mother’s distressed moaning made us all feel awful. Rosario surprised me once again with his tenderness: after having killed the calf he went up to the cow and stroked it, asking her forgiveness and feeding her some grass from his hand. The cow carried on lowing dolefully and stumbling around, butting other calves with her head. She was looking for her own calf, which by now was splayed over the fire. I thought for a moment about my little ones, my little boys, but barely, I couldn’t afford to think too much, or cry or let anything drag me back to my life in the shack: I was leaving that behind.

  So now we were four with Rosario, Estreya, me and my Liz, as I’d started calling her. Rosario carried on with his asados, his feeding bottles made of tripe, and his little orphans: as well as Braulio, he soon adopted a hare, a cuy and a young foal. They all walked along behind the gaucho as if he was a mother duck and they were his ducklings. At night, before spreading out his poncho if he was sober enough – or collapsing wherever if he wasn’t – he would tell us scraps of his life which we’d already half-guessed, having seen how he was. His father died young, his mother was left alone with eight mouths to feed, his stepfather was as vicious as a puma among hens and Rosario, old beyond his years, was forced to flee that cruel life aged ten, pushed to the door by the tip of his stepfather’s knife, to nurse his wounds elsewhere. With a limp, and grey before his time, the poor lad was still looking for someone to look after him in that vast nothingness: so we took him in. He stayed with us, looked after us and we looked after him. He laughed at my men’s clothing but he understood, he said that he thought it was a good thing me dressing like a man, it was like carrying a knife, all women should carry them the way all men do. We knew he was talking about his mother and how he’d have preferred her to have grown a beard if it meant she’d have stayed a widow with him by her side instead of that monster. After another caña, Rosario demanded more English to make him laugh and Elisa, Elizabeth, sang him her songs or told him stories, and he laughed as if ‘two monkeys were dancing minuets upside down’. Then he’d wake up rough, hungover as Liz put it, so she’d lace his mate with whisky and Rosario would come back to life and thank her in the same faltering English every day: ‘Tank you señora for cure me.’

  By Dint of Force

  Liz carried on with her stories about Great Britain. When she went to London, the sky was leaden and smoky from the locomotives and factories, and the almost incessant rain had a sharp tang to it. The air she breathed was damp and grey, with a strange orangey tint, and so heavy and thick that she could almost see it. Yet as soon as she left the city behind, the light gleamed on unbroken fields of grass that stretched all the way to cliffs pounded by the sea. The land ends abruptly there, as if England had been cut off from the rest of the world with an axe, as if the land had been forcibly condemned to an insularity which those of us who live there, we, the British, darling, try to overcome by dint of force, making ourselves the centre, organising the world around us, being the motor, market and matrix of all nations. Here in Argentina we’re so far removed from that other island which rises up sustained by its weaponry, its steamships, its machines invented to dominate the world with ever faster production. That island where metal goods reign as intractably as the railroads laid down all over by royal decree so that the fruits of men’s labour migrates from fields, mountains and jungles to ports, ships and finally into her own port, to the all-devouring mouth of Kronos. That mouth where everything becomes fuel for its own insatiable speed: from the still-warm hairs on a cowhide to the frozen facets of diamonds, from stretchy rubber to crumbling coal. The power of Great Britain isn’t in armies or banks: our strength comes from speed, beating the clock, trailblazing, cutting production times, faster ships, machine guns, banking transactions made in a matter of days, above all the power of the railways dividing the earth, heading for every port laden with imperial manufacturing and returning with spoils and fruits from every land.

  Everything was still possible in that languid time of the pampas, during our chats over Rosario’s asados. He was constantly amused at the sound of English; ‘what’s your word for that, señora?’ he’d ask Liz, and explode with laughter whenever she answered ‘cow’, ‘sky’, ‘horse’, ‘fire’ or ‘Indians’, scattering the birds who were picking ticks off the runaway cows. He would merrily gnaw at a rack of ribs and – in gaucho fashion – wash it all down with caña. Then over pudding he’d start talking to his horses. He was sorry, he said, but the horses couldn’t go travelling with Liz because where she came from, wagons moved by themselves. ‘Wheels move with rods over there, you poor horses would be out of a job! You’d be up shit creek! You’ll just have to stay here with me; where the Gringa comes from, they don’t need the likes of you,’ and he’d pat them fondly. We laughed too and Estreya ate out of his hand and curled up in Rosario’s lap as if he was still just a puppy. Liz sent Rosario off to bed and he did as any gaucho would: he took his poncho and the sheepskin off his saddle and lay down with the animals. He’d taken a shine to Estreya and together they slept out under the stars with Braulio.

  We went, just the two of us, into the warm, yellowish fug of the wagon. Liz snuffed out the candles, stripped me of the Gringo’s clothes, wiped me down with a damp sponge, dried me, put a petticoat on me, lay down in my arms and went to sleep, as if she hadn’t noticed the goose bumps all down my body, nor caught the urgent smell of desire that hung in droplets from the hairs of my pubis until they spread slowly and languorously down my thighs.

  That’s Also Something You Eat and Drink with Scones

  The desert framed the scene, a brownish plain, the same in all directions, a flat surface on which the sky balanced like there was nothing else in the world. You might say that being there, on the wagon box or riding my horse, was living the life of a bird, a bit like flying, your whole body submerged in the air. It doesn’t seem right, there are hardly any birds in the pampas and the few we have are low-flying or can’t fly at all. You get flamingos like clouds of shrill pink on the horizon. You get ñandús that run faster than horses, their strong elastic legs scything the ground and raising the dust. The ñandús connect pampa and sky. And, like at sea, where you know you’re approaching dry land because you start seeing birds overhead, the same happens in the desert with water and groups of people: birds also circle villages and encampments. So being in the pampa was like soaring over a scene with no adventures but its own, its shifting skies and our journeying. Over the dark line of the horizon the sun and the air ravel and unravel. When it’s clear, the sun and air are scattered through a prism at different times of day, cut at dawn into reds, purples, oranges and yellows that turn gold as they hit the ground, where the little green takes on a tender and brilliant texture and everything upright casts long soft shadows. Then the sun crushes it all until the prism comes back. And the night in summertime is dark purple and shot through with stars. All that time I had the soles of my feet and my shadow on the ground and the rest of my body up in the sky. You might say that’s the same everywhere. But no, back there in my pampa, life is life in the air. Even celestial, sometimes; far from the shack that had been my home, the world w
as paradise. I can’t remember having experienced that before, that total immersion in the endlessly shifting light. I felt the light inside me, felt I was little more than a restless mass of flashes and sparks. Quite possibly I was right about that.

  There wasn’t much shade for me beyond the sweet-smelling wagon, the only space that seemed more a part of the earth than the sky even though it was a good few feet above the ground. Home always seems fixed to the ground, even when home is a boat. Or a wagon. And that was my first island, the island that took shape for me as we made our journey, a rectangle of wood and canvas that we kept dark and cool to discourage the flies that seemed to come from nowhere and multiply effortlessly. Of course there were carcasses around and we added even more bones to the world every time we slaughtered one of the hundreds of cows following us. We didn’t kill many: they’re big animals and once we’d butchered one we would cure it making a delicious jerky that Liz had perfected. First she’d plunge the fillets into salt and then steep them in curry and honey. When she reckoned they were ready she’d put them on the fire for a while: they crunched in your mouth, melted salty-sweet and spicy on your tongue, then burned down to your stomach. We didn’t even do that at the settlement. We would slaughter a whole cow, eat what was necessary, and then the rest was for the caranchos. Fierro used to say that the caranchos had to eat too, and I tend to think he was right about that, although he didn’t take into consideration the huge number of carcasses that our country produced, and not just dead cows; Indian and gaucho corpses also fed several generations of scavenger birds. But going back to my life in the air and my home in the bobbing wagon, like I said, we kept it dark and fresh, and as full of nice smells as an East India Company warehouse. The smell of near-black tea leaves torn from the green mountains of India that would travel to Britain without losing their moisture, and without losing the sharp perfume born of the tears Buddha shed for the world’s suffering, suffering that also travels in tea: we drink green mountains and rain, and we also drink what the Queen drinks. We drink the Queen, we drink work, and we drink the broken back of the man bent double as he cuts the leaves, and the broken back of the man carrying them. Thanks to steam power, we no longer drink the lash of the whip on the oarsmen’s backs. But we do drink choking coal miners. And that’s the way of the world: everything alive lives off the death of someone or something else. Because nothing comes from nothing, Liz explained that to me: everything comes from work; that’s also something you eat and drink with scones. Liz would sometimes bake scones in the ovens that I made by digging a pit in the earth. The harder you work, the better it tastes, she declared. I said yes to her, over those months we spent together in the enormous sky of the pampa, I always agreed with her. I could have contradicted her quite easily just by pointing out her delight at asado, something that doesn’t really take a lot of work. I didn’t though, I didn’t contradict her. Back then I thought about it and thought I was being clever. At some point, and I hadn’t even said anything – that was how transparent the distance was between us – she answered that asado doesn’t require much human effort, but you did need an animal to suffer. She said that even Christ, Our Lord, was made flesh in order to be sacrificed: he had worked for the eternal salvation of all of us, and there has never been a world or a life that wasn’t both fuel and flame. And there never would be.