Between Extremes

by Brian Keenan

Alone in my own little well of discovery I look, with my novice eyes, over the mass of shapes and swirls of shell. I want to find something. A perfect fossil certainly but more it is the desire to express how it feels to get so close to the beginning of time. Head down low, scrutinizing the squiggles and lines on the little rocks, the musty odour of the earth takes me back to the pottery at school. Yet as the dust of this dry clay runs through my fingers, I realize that it was once the floor of the oceans from which life first crept. This was the ‘primordial ooze’ that started it all.

  I come across Tom sitting on his haunches in a dip between two banks of fossils. Behind him a mountain rises sheer. His face is bright with smiles.

  ‘I am a little boy again.’

  That is just how he looks, tiny compared to the landscape, and as I come closer I see that he has filled his jersey with fossil trophies.

  We spend our final night back at Los Azules camp. Despite all the joys of gaining confidence in the saddle I was delighted to get out of it at last. It had been a gentle day’s work, just three and a half hours, but my legs were still dying. Crossing the river just before the camp I could hardly move them to kick Charlatán on. For the first time, we had done a fair bit of trotting and cantering. For a few seconds I believe I was actually galloping, an exciting and liberating moment, during which, albeit briefly, I felt at one with Charlatán; a vital part of his fluid motion. At one point, as Bri turned Milly, I charged past, unable to resist a cowboy ‘Yeehaa!’

  Moments later, as I slowed Charlatán, he came steaming by, shouting, ‘My testicles are in the back of my throat.’

  After that it was a slow jog to camp. It was great to see Tom, having decided he had all the pictures he needed, getting to grips with Negra. He was trotting and galloping everywhere. One minute he would be off to the right, the next a blur on the horizon, identifiable by the black mass of the horse and the white flash of his sunhat.

  I feel so tired this morning it is a relief that it is only two and a half hours to Don Ramon’s camp. The ride, though, is much hairier than I had remembered – it just shows how nervous I was then. FMy spirits are buoyed, often to the point of out-and-out laughter, remembering Marcus at the camp fire last night. We had been looking back over our week of rough riding, recalling the good and bad moments with equal relish. Marcus had become almost hysterical at one point and it took him a while to calm down enough to let us share the joke. It turned out to be one phrase he had heard Brian endlessly chanting all the way up the mountains on the great ride to Argentina. ‘Focking bastard, focking, focking, focking bastard!’ had been the mantra.

  After a week experiencing the joy of being free of man’s pollution of the environment with waste, noise and light, it is ironic that the first sign of modern man is a hydroelectric plant. The one thing we can get from this place, untouched by electric light, is electric power.

  While we have a final lunch at Don Ramon’s, the horses roll in the grass and lie down to sleep, knowing that they will not be called upon for a little while. Charlatán is as I first saw him, a blur of brown and white on the far side of the meadow. Brian is sitting near the small hillock where we had first lined up for our team photo before setting off. It seems so long ago. After taking his own final photo, he sits scribbling in his little red notebook. He seems preoccupied and I leave him to it. I understand. It is a time for reflection.

  I was watching the camp as the mules and horses were unsaddled for the last time. John lingered for a while with Charlatán before the animal trotted off into a small meadow.

  I wondered what this expedition had meant to those who had suffered and laughed through it. There were so many impressions and memories I wanted to seal in my mind before our departure and final goodbyes to companions.

  In my notebook I was busy trying to cobble together my own ‘memoriam’. I had the uncanny sense that old Pablo was whispering every word into my ear.

  I have infiltrated the stone walls of icons

  and ice ages

  I have stood in the blitzkrieg and the broadside

  of elemental siege

  I have known the neck of Pegasus grow numb

  beneath the stone cold impress of the night

  I have felt raw muscle in man and beast

  quiver in every ascent

  But I know the end of the gallop in the

  footless mist

  For me there is no God but this

  The end long spine of stone and light

  and the advent

  of the beast man taking eagle flight.

  Chapter Nine

  Standing in the shower at Frank and Noni’s flat as the water gushes over me is an exquisite luxury. The water drains anticlockwise, a miniature of the torrent of the Rio Colorado as the accretions of Andes dust sluice off. I wash and shampoo repeatedly and change into fresh clothes. Tom, Bri and I lounge in the comfort of the sofas drinking cold beers. I think we are all pleased with ourselves at the completion of the great adventure. Also relieved – our bodies are exhausted.

  Sadly, Tom has to return to England. His sense of fun and boundless enthusiasm will be sorely missed. However, in some of the places on our itinerary he will still be with us in spirit as he has given us introductions to more of the friends he and Katie made when they were here in the mid-Eighties. After checking we have all the addresses and phone numbers we need, our last sight of him is of his spectacles flashing on his ever-beaming face as his taxi pulls away outside the apartment block.

  Before setting out on our journey to Patagonia in search of yaks and long-dead Irish revolutionaries, we had planned to have a few days’ relaxation in an old colonial hacienda, Los Lingues, some 80 miles from Santiago. To get there we once again took to the Pan American Highway, that famous road on which the intrepid traveller can journey from Alaska to Patagonia. In our many captive fantasies both John and I had often talked of exploring this mythic highway.

  Everything seemed to suckle off this concrete artery. The section that we travelled now was lined with fruit stalls, small cafés and open-air workshops all ablaze with colour and teeming with life. I could imagine how decades ago this same population would have been strung out along the great rivers of the continent eking out the kind of precarious existence that is the lot of rural people dependent on the geography of their country. Certainly this motorway had injected a new dynamic, but carried with it its own debris from North America. Fast food bars and a few factories stood out glaringly, among the otherwise impressionistic haze of colour. But one particular feature caught our eye. Every few miles we would find astonishing relics, vintage cars and trucks that would be the dream of any collector. Some of them had their year and make chalked on the windscreen: a 1928 Dodge, a 1936 Ford. Amazingly, in some of these backyard workshops we spied small steam locomotives that could have been the original Stephenson’s Rocket.

  ‘Wow, what if we bought one of these, fixed it up and then motored down to Tierra del Fuego?’ I was in tune with what John was thinking. I had in mind the epic motor journey that Jack Kerouac wrote about. A trip down to the bottom of the world in one of these quaint industrial dinosaurs would certainly have appealed to him. It did to me. We could sign the declaration of the independence of Patagonia on the bonnet of that 1928 Dodge. Now that would be something monumental and historic.

  Los Lingues sat back a few miles off the road in the foothills of the Andes. It was part of the Angostura estate given in 1599 by Philip III to the then mayor of Santiago and had remained in the same family for four centuries, preserved in all its colonial splendour. Its native gardens were filled with many trees and flora that had disappeared from much of the rest of the region. Los Lingues itself was named after a tree, the lingues, almost extinct in the rest of Chile, though the hacienda retained a few.

  But this air of colonial preservation was not restricted to the buildings and flora. German Claro (pronounced ‘Herman’) and his son German Junior were our hosts. The senior German was full of aristocratic charm and
wit, most of which he seemed to lavish on any female guest. It was inevitable that, as the owner of such an establishment and descended from such old Catalan stock, he should have such manners.

  German Junior still retained the vestiges of his Catalan breeding. He enjoyed socializing with his guests and, if you were game, he would be more than willing to join you over a few drinks in the regal salon. In the afternoons German Junior could be found wandering the grounds in sneakers, light canvas trousers, a loud colourful shirt and a panama hat. He could have been a character straight out of Our Man in Havana. In the evening he donned a suit and tie, slicked back his hair and joined us in the small private drawing room. It was full of reds and golds and the rich dark browns of furniture that had been built by craftsmen’s hands centuries before we sat there. Shadows of his father’s elegance were visible, but he laughed too much, occasionally pointing out a piece of furniture or a painting and describing its history as if mocking its archaic significance. In one corner was a large hand-scripted and embossed charter from England declaring that German Claro was in direct line of descent, through his mother, from the royal family of Scotland. Maybe it was the Celt in German Junior that tarnished the aristocratic grace his father displayed. There was a sense of pathos behind all his camaraderie. For a moment I thought of Charles, Prince of Wales, a king forever in waiting.

  During dinner I asked German about the large painting that was the central feature of the room. It was a full-length portrait of an old, severe-looking woman. Age had already darkened the oils so that it seemed her face and huge hands were the only points of light. Her austerity was almost frightening. Our host had no hesitation in proclaiming his distaste for this ancient aunt. She had owned a great amount of shares in Chile’s massive copper mine, but had been very ungenerous in her dying bequests. German strongly suggested that he had not fared as well as he believed he should have done. I looked again at her huge, manly hands and wondered if the artist knew what German had told us. Her expression was disapproving. It was without doubt the most severe Scottish puritan face I have ever seen.

  We sit out at a table on a lawn as a cooling breeze stirs the lush trees and plants. In this palatial environment it seems entirely natural when a peacock wanders by. Germans Senior and Junior join us for a drink. We chat about our mutual friends, Tom and the Hickman family, and our plans. After a while German Senior asks, ‘Why did you choose to visit Chile rather than another country in the region?’

  Brian and I exchange glances. He nods at me, so I make a brief mention of kidnaps and captivity before moving on to explain how escapist fantasies had kept us going. Brian is about to take up the story with details of the yak scheme, both of us anticipating laughter, when the older of our hosts raises his hand very slightly with an apologetic dipping of his head. Brian pauses. I notice that German Junior is sitting on the edge of his seat as his father asks, ‘How long were you held hostage?’

  ‘I was in for four years,’ says Bri.

  ‘And I was there five.’

  Brian takes a breath and is about to continue with the yak tale when he pauses again.

  Both men are weeping.

  I think we both experienced a number of such moments when we first came home, often with complete strangers. People would be overwhelmed for a little while as their minds raced and threw up memories of news flashes, prayer vigils, campaign events and film of us walking off an aeroplane to freedom. After collecting themselves, this last image was often their first talking point. Strength coming back to their voices, they would wipe their tears and begin smiling and tell us where they had been and who they were with and what they had said and done on those days. These impromptu emotional exchanges were remarkable. To mean so much to a passer-by is an extraordinary privilege. Apart from the warmth of the moment, it also did much to alleviate the sense of isolation that had so dominated our lives. We had never really been alone. One might almost say we had never been away. Unknown to us we were in the hearts, not only of family and friends, but of thousands and thousands of others who cared for us.

  It has not happened for a while so it comes as something of a shock that these urbane and powerful men, totally at their ease in an environment that has been theirs for ever and probably will remain so, should be so moved by our story. We sit quietly and sip our drinks. Within a few minutes our hosts regain their natural conviviality and we chat on as the shadows lengthen across the lawn.

  Every room in Los Lingues abounded with stories. In fact the whole house was a history book waiting to be reread. The ornate splendour of the interiors and grounds was counterpointed by a simple chapel built in the centre of the estate, once the farm workers’ place of worship. Its cool minimalism was a relief from all the opulence around it. The only concession to the Baroque was a magnificent crucifix hung quietly on one side wall. Every detail down to the faint lines on Christ’s fingernails was apparent. The creamy whiteness of the ivory figure blended almost imperceptibly into the stark decor of the tiny church’s interior, almost invisible until your eyes alighted upon it. This was more than a work of art. It was a work of impassioned love.

  The majesty of it more than equalled anything in the hacienda. I left the chapel enthralled and too frightened to photograph the sculpture. I asked German about it. ‘It’s by Cellini,’ he said nonchalantly.

  On our second night we joined the other guests around a great formal dining table. Among the diners were an American heiress, a wealthy Belgian lawyer and his American wife, and a trio of Chilean folk singers called Los Parakeets. I had a feeling as the meal progressed that the after-dinner drinks in the salon were going to be an interesting affair.

  It was only as we all sat around the huge, magnificently carved table that I began to feel uneasy. The table was arrayed with so much silver and crystal that my ‘meat and two veg’ attitude was quickly wilting. This was in every sense a royal feast and I furtively looked to Don John, signalling my total confusion about the etiquette for such an occasion. John’s head nodded imperceptibly to acknowledge my concerns. Then he lifted his hand casually to his face and tapped his nose as if to say, Don’t worry, watch me.

  It wasn’t long before Chile’s fine wines began to loosen everyone’s tongues. It was obvious from the heiress’s attitude that German Senior had informed all his guests beforehand of our previous experiences. While the other guests politely avoided making reference to our hostage years the heiress jumped two feet first into the situation and fired a salvo of questions on the subject across the table towards us. John made every effort to answer her without going into much detail but the woman had the infuriating habit of not listening to his answers and always interjecting another question before he had finished. As this banal interrogation continued John threw me a silent glance, as if to say, what am I supposed to do with her? I fixed my eye on his and tapped my nose in reply.

  Once the heiress had tired of asking questions, she began to make ludicrous statements about American foreign policy, including suggestions that President Reagan should not have dealt with the terrorists but would have done better bombing Lebanon instead. She went on to point out the worthlessness of the Arab and Islamic world. I listened, thinking I had heard similar idiocy before – only then it had been from the mouth of an impoverished, brainwashed Shi’ite and the object of his zealous dismissal was Reagan, American foreign policy and the ‘terrorism’ of the CIA.

  When I probed her understanding of Irangate and Reagan’s bloody flirtation with certain South American ‘terrorist’ organizations, it was as though she hadn’t heard the question and had already begun talking to the table as if I wasn’t there.

  Some minutes later she attempted to analyse the mind of an Islamic terrorist and question our treatment. When she deliberately posed the question to ‘the Irishman, who will no doubt have his own view of things’, Sancho Panza rose to the bait.

  ‘It’s difficult to talk in such specific terms. Surely the problem is really that privilege and wealth obscure one’s unde
rstanding of the world, just as poverty might. Only the poor’s struggle is for survival while the wealthy struggle to maintain their privilege. It’s an unequal equation and has seriously to limit our ability to respond to the worlds we inhabit.’

  Fortunately our host had been following the conversation intently. As the heiress was about to ask another insensitive question about torture, he quietly but forcefully turned the conversation in another direction. It was a royal dismissal and everyone knew it. The woman shut up like a scolded child and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

  Later when we returned to the salon for drinks, one of the other American guests approached me and apologized for her fellow countrywoman. I smiled and told her there was no need as I’d rather enjoyed the joust. As we spoke, I watched the woman in question drop a glass of wine to the floor. Fragments of the exquisite crystal goblet scattered everywhere and everyone turned at the noise except the heiress who continued talking to her companion as if nothing had happened. It is the habit of the privileged to shatter things and not their inclination to pick up the pieces. I helped clear up the detritus, placing the shards in a napkin before setting it on the ancient sideboard near the heiress, thus enabling me to have another chat with her.

  ‘You know, Irishman, you have a bit of a mouth on you, but I like you. I genuinely like you more by the minute.’

  My answer was out of my mouth before I could stop it. ‘Well, I kind of fancy you for exactly the same reason.’

  And for the rest of the evening, when we weren’t being serenaded by Los Parakeets, the heiress and the Irishman chewed the fat in amicable accord.

  After the meal we take coffee and liqueurs in the great salon. The heiress sits at the grand piano, which she plays very well, and calls on people to sing to her accompaniment. She bellows at me, ‘John, you’re English – gimme some Vera Lynn!’

  I manage a passable ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ but when she calls for more, some subconscious self-preservation system stops me remembering ‘We’ll Meet Again’.