Between Extremes

by Brian Keenan

  The oasis village of San Pedro de Atacama sits approximately 8,000 feet above sea level and lies at the northern edge of Chile’s largest salt flat, the Salar de Atacama which we were to visit in the next few days – though after the trip through the desert on the bus, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why!

  When we arrived at the village terminus I fell out of the bus like a drowning man gasping for air. As always, John was ready with a street map of this isolated desert village in his hand and quickly discovered the way to our hotel. I retrieved our bags from the undercarriage of the bus and hastily strapped mine to my little chrome trolley. But it was a ridiculous contrivance for this place. There were no footpaths and for the most part the roads were rutted dirt tracks. Dragging my luggage over such terrain was like dragging a dead sow behind me. I said nothing as I sweated and grunted in the footsteps of Don John, desert explorer extraordinaire.

  Our hotel was a newly built complex of cabins. We washed and changed before heading back to the village. John, as always, was immaculate. I was sure he must have a travel iron concealed in his luggage. After all, if he could arrive in a tiny desert village in the arsehole of nowhere and miraculously produce a detailed street map, what else might he not have hidden away in that conjuror’s bag of his?

  The main street of the village was little more than a hundred yards long. What had once been a terrace of single-storey, crude wood-and-adobe homes with a single window and door was being transformed into shops, bars, restaurants and more than a few travel offices. Obviously San Pedro was a jumping-off point for desert aficionados from every part of the world. I was surprised at the number of people. More than two-thirds of them looked European but as the native Chilean has so many mixed bloodlines in him one can never be sure. But one thing I could be sure of was that it would not be long before Don Quixote would transmute into Indiana Jones and I would be subjected to the most rigorous set of proposed treks into the desert. I was correct. Before I had even had time to discover a good bar, Indiana Quixote McCarthy had arranged several expeditions and hired a local English-speaking guide. With the confirmation of that last accomplishment I knew I was done for. There was no point arguing.

  Several hours later in one of the tavernas, I was busy sampling the local delicacies while John explained our itinerary for the next few days. As each new venture unfolded, I ordered another bottle of wine, fearful that Indiana’s enthusiasm would not allow us to complete the essential task of sampling all of Chile’s production before we returned home. Home, that was a place that increased in desirability as John’s expeditionary plans were revealed.

  We discussed the journey so far. John declared that if he ever heard the word geoglyph again, he would strangle the person who used it. This reminded me of the woman and her two infants in a tiny shanty hut in the Azapa valley. Her home was built from scraps of corrugated iron, old cardboard and bits of broken wood. Inside were the barest of necessities, a table, two broken chairs and a construction of old fruit cases that served as a cabinet to hold her few possessions. Yet in the centre of the room blazing away incoherently was a huge TV, the kind that is watched by sport fanatics in bars back home. Her lifestyle was little removed from her Inca predecessors but her means of communication was a long way from the stone images on the hillside behind her.

  We talked about those airless nights in the hills above and beyond Arica when we would wake suddenly gasping for breath. John admitted that the sensation had terrified him and I confessed the same. One confession prompted another. We admitted openly that the proposed horse trek over the top of the Andes frightened us more than we cared to think about. Neither of us was a horseman and we were tentatively laying down the seeds of an excuse to cancel that particular expedition. Yet neither of us wanted to be the first to suggest it. Anyway all compass points had to be covered and there were few other options for that west-east leg. Although I was genuinely ill and John was solicitous, I felt I would have to be gasping my last breath, for real, to get out of this one.

  John reminded me of the story I had told him while we were held in Lebanon. When I was about seventeen and trying to impress my girlfriend, I had taken her to a horse-riding establishment somewhere outside Belfast. The young woman running the stable had asked us if we knew how to ride. My girlfriend of that time admitted she didn’t, while I, being full of macho confidence, said, ‘Sure, no problem.’ The young woman looked at me with a knowing eye. She asked one of the stable hands to prepare a horse for my girlfriend, then looking at me, she said ominously, ‘Bring out Billy.’ I soon understood her meaning when Billy was led roaring and snorting out of the stable. My own adolescent arrogance had condemned me to ride this dragon. Needless to say, I ended up making the most pathetic idiot of myself. We both laughed at the memory as Don Indiana McCarthy remarked that ‘Cocky people with no brains inevitably come a cropper.’ I promised I would remind him of his own words before each of his expeditions into the desert. In any case, I recalled how he had nearly drowned one of his own girlfriends on a canoeing holiday in France, doing exactly the same thing as I had. ‘Ah, but that was different,’ he said, pouring us another glass of wine. ‘You see, I thought she could swim.’

  While we were busy reminiscing like two regular old codgers, the bar around us filled up. It felt like some hippy festival, with everyone in bleached jeans and washed-out T-shirts. For a moment I thought I was part of the scene in my own T-shirt and shorts, but after a second glance I felt desperately old. Who was I trying to fool?

  As we were drinking in the youthful atmosphere, as well as the wine, a few of the newly arrived customers joined us at our table. They were a ragbag of different nationalities who were all passing through San Pedro. We spoke with them the way incidental travellers do, about where they had come from and where they were going. Our new friends were impressed by our intended journey. One young man named Ronrico, a student from Santiago, had come to San Pedro simply to get away from his home town. He was tall and lean with long blond hair, more Aryan than South American.

  He spoke to us at great length. He was an engineering student who bitterly rejected the profession he felt he was being pushed into. ‘There is no culture in our country. The young people in university study only for the professions, engineering, the law, medicine. The arts are not encouraged.’ He explained how, after the military coup of 1973, the regime had introduced sweeping university reform. This entailed reducing state funding, raising fees, and eliminating such subversive subjects as the arts, psychology, sociology and politics.

  I complained to him that there was no such thing as a country without culture. If he believed that, he was simply accepting those reforms he was complaining so bitterly about. At this stage the wine was in my head and Neruda was whispering adamantly in my ear. ‘What about Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, Chile’s Nobel laureates? What about Violeta Parra and men like Victor Jara?’ I reeled off the names carelessly. I was anxious to ascertain if he knew that for many people in Europe, Chilean culture was synonymous with subversion and the struggle against authority. I knew I was becoming over-excited and John’s castigating look confirmed it. Ronrico was unmoved by my passion and his answer was simple. ‘There’s no money in art and no-one wants to teach it.’

  It was pointless to pursue the question. Ronrico was young, intelligent, aware and dissatisfied. Out of such responses, cultural renaissance is inevitable.

  On the way home I explained to John how I had felt deserted by Neruda on our trip to San Pedro. ‘Deserted, that’s us!’ John exclaimed, laughing. I had to join in.

  We both stopped simultaneously. The road was pitch black. John’s small pencil torch was doing nothing to aid our homeward journey. Above us the sky was spangled with a hundred thousand million stars. I had never witnessed such a display before. I laced one arm around John’s shoulder and, thrusting the other towards the heavens, quoted, ‘“Look at the stars, Joxer, look at the stars.”’

  John looked skyward and said uncertainly, ‘Se
an O’Casey, Playboy of the Western World?’

  ‘No, John boy, that was Synge.’

  ‘Sing? Sing what?’

  Walking back through the darkened streets, the occasional pool of light spills from a doorway to show a knot of people bidding each other good night. It is very peaceful and becomes yet more tranquil as we leave the main thoroughfares behind and walk between high adobe walls, our footsteps muffled by the sandy path. Our chat about new acquaintances and tomorrow’s trip into the Atacama peters out as our eyes adjust to the absence of any man-made light. Yet it is not dark, we are not stumbling since our way is lit by stars. They are magical: so many, some so sharp, others lost in a bright cloud with their fellows, and all around them the deepest blues, and the profoundest black. It is almost as if you are in touch with the power generating up there, looking into such a distance, and the light, so bright and immediate, is really so very old.

  Before finally retiring for the night, I flicked through Neruda’s poetic map of Chile. I wanted to find in the tracery of his verse some insight that would unlock the secret of the desert and give me an advantage over it. His poem dedicated to the Atacama offered little consolation. It was full of complex imagery which strained and obscured the energy of the poem. I read and reread until the verse seemed to collapse in a nightmare of obscurity.

  Eventually I switched off the light and lay back in the darkness, thinking that old Neruda must have been suffering from high altitude hallucinations, or at least drinking as much wine as us when he penned those lines.

  The next morning was bright and loud. The lack of any other noise seemed to intensify the thrilling song of the desert cicadas. They reminded me of an amplified dentist’s drill.

  I decided to dress and go for a walk. It couldn’t have been much after the full flush of dawn and, walking the rutted road, I felt like the last person on the earth. Above and around me the desert light was expansive. Its fluorescence toned down an impending sense of melancholy that hung in the air. As I neared the sleeping village and passed the outlying homes, the warmth of the back streets and sense of human presence erased it completely. I was enjoying the stillness of the place and remembering how earlier, in the 1900s, this village was a major stop for cattle drives on their way from Argentina to the nitrate mines. If it wasn’t cattle to feed the miners then the place might well have been filled with stockmen and droves of mules brought to do the ‘donkey work’ in those same mines. But today there were no braying mules or lowing cattle, just the cicadas, and an occasional accompaniment from a cockerel or a barking dog.

  As I turned into one of the back alleys leading directly to the village square, I was confronted by the curious spectacle of two horses and a mule wandering aimlessly towards me. They were, I suspected, the descendants of those earlier mule trains. Their casual gait as they strolled nearer had the air of long and familiar possession about it. I stood and watched the scene until the almost black mule and one of the ponies passed me as if I wasn’t there. The other pony, a yellowing grey colour under a film of dust, sauntered towards me and stopped a few feet away. The whole scene had the look of a clip from a Fellini film. In the silence of the deserted street it was ghostly and unreal.

  I waited for a moment and then moved slowly towards the animal. It stood still until I was only a few feet away and then walked a couple of paces and stopped. It was teasing me. I looked to the other horse and mule, both of whom had their heads turned to watch. They stared, then moved on dismissively. The bone-coloured pony stood its ground but did not look at me. It was determined I should come to it. I walked up to it and patted its shoulder and neck. Its head was massive and looked far too heavy for its scrawny body. Its huge brown eye surveyed me with the scrutiny of an inquisitor.

  I rounded its flanks, patting clouds of dust as I did so and came up on the other side of its head. It was an ugly beast but its eyes were deep and soft. It had Mona Lisa eyes, those curious, unmoving eyes that follow you everywhere. Apart from an occasional quiver of muscle at its shoulder and the dipping of its head like a slow pendulum, the animal was the epitome of incredible patience. It was an old mare, I noticed as I moved to stand in front of it. A length of its mane had been plaited in yellow and blue ribbon and hung down its forehead. It was filthy, which made me think what a perfect mount it would make for Don John.

  I recalled our confessions from the night before. Looking at this hulk of horseflesh, I doubled my intention of abandoning the Andes expedition. I was terrified of heights and had not sat on a horse for more than a quarter of a century. I could probably have found a hundred other excuses but at the root of it I was scared and didn’t know how to deal with it.

  I moved to the horse’s shoulder and, taking a fistful of mane in my hand, half-heartedly attempted to hoist myself onto its back. I expected the creature to bolt and leave me sprawling in the dust but it stood as docile as stone. As a result, my already deflated ego was flattened even more. I gave up on my feeble attempt and patted its head again in a gesture of apology. Those great soft eyes seemed to be reading my thoughts. I drew a deeply penetrating reassurance from them. In their stillness they seemed to be pulling me into themselves and at the same time dragging me out of the fear that was paralysing me. For some moments we stood eyeball to eyeball but it was no contest of wills. Then it slowly moved off and I followed with my hand placed gently on its flank.

  Maybe it was the silence and the strange desert light but somehow the village seemed larger and appeared to open itself out to me. My eye seemed to penetrate into every obscure recess, discovering in each dark corner little cameos of life. Clothes flapping on a line. Shoes discarded at a doorway, or children’s playthings scrambled on a porch.

  Everywhere around us the wind-washed clapboard and eroded adobe took on the worn texture of a patchwork quilt. We must have made a queer sight, like a dumb animal leading a blind man through a street. But, however curious, it was an illuminating communion between man and beast. This old mare was showing me more than the village. It was showing me how to see, and I was walking as if in a trance. My eyes were glutted.

  Suddenly it stopped, rolled its eyes for a moment and trotted off, turning a corner and disappearing as magically as it had appeared.

  I was alone again but comforted. The old quilt of the village wrapped itself around me. I wandered into the square and passed the adobe house where Pedro de Valdivia in 1540 had rested with his coterie of conquistadors and Peruvian Indians. Opposite was the Iglesia San Pedro, a seventeenth-century church built from adobe and cactus wood, and held together with large welts of leather that may well have been made from the hides of cattle and mules too old or too ill to make the desert crossing with the entourage.

  The village was beginning to awaken and I decided to return to see if John had risen. Along the main street the pink adobe walls looked like a woman’s make-up compact. As I walked homeward, dark Indian faces began appearing in doorways like curious turtles.

  Around the breakfast bars and tourist offices, the young travellers were settling in. For all their gaudy T-shirts emblazoned with the multifarious patented names and products of American consumerism, I thought that San Pedro had not changed so much. Valdivia’s conquering army and then the stockmen with their herds had simply been replaced with this new transient population. It was inevitable, I supposed. The three or four days when those stockmen rested over with their animals were called ‘La Tablada’. I was still unsure what our own ‘Tablada’ would produce. We still had McCarthy’s hairy expeditions in front of us, but I was consoled by the earlier companionship of the old mare. Whatever happened on our forays into the Atacama, we had always the relative comfort of San Pedro to return to.

  When I reached the hotel, John was up and chirpy as the cicadas that had entertained me earlier. He was bursting for breakfast and when I told him I had already been for a walk, he asked if I had met anyone. ‘A couple of old nags and a mule,’ I said.

  Chapter Five

  San Pedro, with its re
gular streets of adobe houses, is just what one would imagine a South American town to be. The interiors of the houses look fairly basic through their open doors. Some have gardens shaded by fine plants and trees where senior citizens chat and doze, dogs loafing at their feet. Ancient and battered pick-up trucks cruise slowly past stirring up lazy clouds of dust. Now it is the weekend, the square is busy with crowds of folk walking around, children playing in the dust while the men and women take part in a kind of boules, called Rayuela, in which they throw heavy metal pucks from twenty feet at a yard-square tray of mud with a wire across it. The winner is the one who gets the puck nearest the wire. A couple of soldiers strolling around remind us we are near both the Bolivian and Argentinian borders.

  People cheerfully return our greetings as we wander the back streets in the heat, every now and then catching a refreshing glimpse of a snow-capped volcano. We have been thinking it would be a good idea to spend some time on horseback as our planned week-long trek is drawing closer and we are both having moments of anxiety; our experience of riding is virtually zero so even a couple of hours in the saddle would, we hope, be encouraging. It turns out that all the stables are closed or their horses all hired out. If we can we will try again tomorrow.

  Later we head out of San Pedro in a minibus crammed with other passengers. We are on our way to the salt flats of the Salar de Atacama. Our guide, Enzo, points out a pillar of dust shimmying across the fields; a little tornado or twister.

  ‘We call it a diablo, a devil!’

  Enzo is about my height, slightly tubby and, judging by his clothes, very keen on the colours blue and purple. He has a large bumbag with water bottles and also a plastic bag for food and tapes. He speaks very lightly in terrific English that he learned from books. He also speaks German and French and is learning Japanese and Italian.