Tintin in the New World: A Romance

by Frederic Tuten

  "I enjoin you to think on these matters, as shall I, for there is much yet for me to learn before the jaguar leaves its secret and provincial lair and takes for its path the open world. How paltry have been my aims, how narrow my scope, how mistaken to loop only the sick branch when the malignant offense must be ripped from its thick, sappy roots.

  "You appear shocked by my words, by my thoughts, my companions, excepting perhaps, you, Madame Clavdia, who sit here as if disjoined from the rest; your mind, if I read it properly, a screen of blankness and repose. I bid you, let us stay and discourse among ourselves whether criminals are born or made and how villains find their way in the dark, why sparrows converse with the dead and whether Satan still dreams of winning heaven."

  "Stay all, but do excuse me," Clavdia said. "The thinness of the air and the prospect of this high view produce the most dizzying effects. I shall, nonetheless, make my way back to the hotel alone quite happily and safely."

  "Leaping lariats! I'll tow you to port, madame, if you'll navigate the course. Me compass's spinning in this lofty altitude." Removing his cap, the captain bowed.

  "Me, too, Madame Clavdia. I'll join you, too, if I may," Tintin added eagerly, his voice high-pitched, his manner the same as if nothing he had said moments before had been said.

  "Let us all depart. Let us together pick our way from this botanic growth. You, Linnaeus, and you, Tournefort," said Peeperkorn, pointing majestically to Tintin and Naptha, "shall be in the advance of our procession homeward, for having snared us in the webs of your classifications, who more deserving to blaze the trail to the simple pleasures of our inn?"

  "I leave, but under protest," Settembrini said, "and with the claim of future rejoinder to Herr Naptha's calumnies, for to leave evil words and thoughts to spread without contest is to collaborate in their corrosive triumphs."

  The group formed rank. With Tintin and Naptha in advance, Haddock and Clavdia behind, Peeperkorn and Settembrini in the rear, they proceeded slowly down the narrow trail. But it was Snowy, with his fits and starts, with sudden bursts of acceleration and just as rapid halts to ferret a salamander from under a rock, who actually led the way.

  — Chapter XIII —

  [Afternoon of the same day.]

  The signs were thick. Reason with them as he might, he could not deny their insistent presence. There were almost too many signs, each worthy of attention. Only yesterday a condor, gripping a two-headed snake in its mouth, swept the heights of Machu Picchu three times, and at that moment an Indian from a nearby village gave birth to a daughter who spoke in several languages.

  Still, the lieutenant resisted. It was too large a matter, too profound to bear, that destiny had chosen him to witness and aid the coming. How could he be certain that the stories his grandfather had told him were true? How could he be sure that the old man's memory was not blurred or that he had not corrupted the ancient prophecy with inventions of his own, or those of others before him? Weighing most in his doubts, he admitted, was his disbelief that he, baked of common clay, undistinguished by birth and accomplishment, should be the knower and first guide. Yet again, the omens and signs were there, seen by all and fully understood only by him.

  Lieutenant dos Amantes thought these things as he sat drinking alone in the patio of his favorite cantina in a village three miles below Machu Picchu. It was market day. He spied Naptha limping through the bustling stalls. A young woman with a child at her breast squatted in the shade of a stone wall. As Naptha passed, she stretched out her arm and opened her hand. Naptha scowled and accelerated his limping pace. Presently another familiar figure appeared: Settembrini. In the bright light of day the lieutenant saw clearly that the Italian's pants were soiled and frayed and that his scuffed shoes sloped sharply down at the heels.

  Settembrini bowed and glanced furtively at the woman's naked breast. Then, suddenly, he raised his head and swept his eyes over the cloudless sky as he fingered his waistcoat in search of a coin. But either the object of his search was not to be found or Settembrini had undergone a change of heart, for he resumed his walk, eyes skyward.

  Lieutenant dos Amantes shifted in his seat and muttered. Snowy suddenly appeared at the lieutenant's foot, and the dog raised himself on his hind legs.

  "You're a good one, aren't you?" the lieutenant said respectfully. "Like your master, I think."

  Snowy rubbed his snout against the soldier's thigh and gave out a little sharp whine.

  "Hasta fuego," the lieutenant called out as Snowy suddenly trotted across the street and disappeared among the stalls.

  Dos Amantes spoke to his creamy-blue drinking cup as if it were wired to the deepest veins of the world, linking his wavy voice to the trees and brush of the surrounding jungles, to boulders and canyons, to the farthest sandy stretches of his country's foggy coast. In his mind he made this cup the intimate ear of a universe hungry for news.

  "Men and women come and go, all quarrels and all memories of even the most hideous deeds are forgotten, and all the love of the world is forgotten also, all this I know. How much more light there is when one soft word is spoken, when one warm caress is given."

  The sun was setting, the market closing down. The lieutenant had lined before him a dozen cups and saucers. And he had set before them a barricade of shot glasses, now empty. The young mother sat where she had sat that morning, begging from all those who passed by.

  Here was a tableau inspiring of discourse. Here a theme to pluck on, a furious rhetorical serenade to be strummed late into the night: There had been no beggars and no beggary before the Europeans came. Nor wives deserted by their husbands. No hunger, except when the land went mad and scorched the tilled terraced fields or uprooted the corn with torrents of brackish rain. But they came, those Spanish, white and sickly, greedy for stupid, dead gold. Greedy and mean, and jealous of each other. They were the least of their kind, the most abject and most vicious — and the most ignorant of a stupefyingly ignorant people. They knew nothing of the stars except how to find the great poles by them, they could not count the flow of days that made a cycle about the sun, and thus they did not know the fine line of hours between one season and the next, and thus they planted and harvested with the precision of spider monkeys. If one of their men tumbled off his horse and split open his head, they would leave him to die in the brush, moaning and calling for his mother or the mother of the strange god they so much resembled, bearded and white and sickly. Of the arts of healing they knew nothing except to leave to chance what chance would take. And this they called the will of their God. Of a finely shaped bowl they cared nothing except to curse it for being clay and not the metal gold. And finely worked bowls of gold they melted down and poured into molds and shipped away the insensible ingots. Pillage they knew best, and rape and drunkenness, all things in the negative spirit. How to torture a man until he revealed his little hoard of coins or buckle of gold, how to maim a slave so that he must forever walk on his hands and knees, his useless legs trailing in the dust.

  He ordered another coffee. Very strong, like simmering tar itself, to shake him from his sentimentality, from the Spanish infection of lyricism and self-pity. They gave us that, too, the weeping self-pity that brings us to wail about lost love, or the thousand injuries of a kiss not yet won, or the love that endures beyond the grave, love that lives in the bones even after death, even after the bones have become dust. "'Paiva serán, mas polvo enamorado,’" he said to the night.

  The waiter brought his coffee and asked whether he wanted him to clear the table.

  "Never," dos Amantes shouted. "I want these objects here today and tomorrow and until I say to take them — in thirty-eight years perhaps, or maybe never." He ordered another drink, a large pisco sour in a water glass. A thought struck him, and he shouted into the cantina, "A guitar. Bring me a big one."

  There was some laughter at the bar, and dos Amantes remembered that no one in the café owned a guitar and that he himself did not know how to play one, although to do so had once
been the fondest wish of his youth.

  A form was staggering in the twilight. A small animal followed behind. The lieutenant narrowed his eyes and steadied himself against the table edge. The weaving form shaped itself into Captain Haddock, and the animal bringing up the rear, Snowy. The captain slowed down as he approached the mother and child. He shoved his hand into the pocket of his blazer and withdrew a fistful of coins and bills. These he tossed gently on the blanket by the woman's side. She thanked him.

  "Think nothing of it, dear fellow," Haddock answered.

  How fortunate he is, thought dos Amantes, to have found the bottle made just for him.

  The woman called out another thanks to her benefactor, who had progressed some way up the hill.

  "Don't trouble yourself, mate," the captain bellowed back. "Our gizzards need warming these mountain nights. Take your medicine or whatever, as you please."

  Dos Amantes sat alone in the darkness of the patio. A gleaming full moon sparked the row of little glasses. The waiter came out and, on seeing the officer, hurriedly withdrew. He reappeared some minutes later, carrying an oil lamp and a plate.

  "The sandwich is for you to eat and the lamp for you to eat by," the waiter said gently. "One requires food and illumination," he added, obviously relishing the sentiment.

  "It is a kindness of you to do this, Diego, and I esteem you for it. Perhaps you may one day write poetry and join a place of honor beside our greatest poet, Vallejo. It's good that, 'food and illumination.’"

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. I know that you read much and are sensible of things of value."

  "A foreign revolutionary once called for bread and land. But if you have land, you shall have bread. I like your 'food and illumination' better, for with light we may better see the path to our unfolding destinies, and so we may better conduct ourselves along the trying route. It would not be good if our revolution went the way of many others. We are a gentle people, are we not, Diego? And we should not be made mad with desires of dark roads that promise to lead — someday — to light. No, let us have illumination light the whole course of our road so that we may stop from time to time and look about us and learn where are the ditches and where the bogs and where our path detours to side trails of excess and murder, and we must have light to see what those walking in advance of us are doing — have they donned beguiling new uniforms, custom-made, and weighted their proud chests with decorations just newly created by themselves as adornments of self-love and notice of their superior rights? — and we must have sufficient light to see far behind us to those struggling rearward — are they still on the same path with us, or have they faltered and fallen asleep from boredom or hard work, or are they injured by the journey and thus requiring our aid and our tenderness, for not all are able to march at the same rate? — and we shall require illumination to see our enemies, who would snipe at us and who would otherwise set upon our ruin."

  "Forgive me," interrupted the waiter, "but right now I think you need a big light to find your way home."

  To go home. That was a poor idea. Not home, to that lonely room, his temporary barrack, he was not in the mood for that, not with all this warmth still in him and the need to play a guitar deep into the night. But he would take an evening stroll so that the crisp air and the aroma of the moon-soaked earth might refresh him. And then he would see what was left of the night and what he might make of it, though he knew that finally he would return to his room and there alone in his narrow, hard bed he would smoke cigarettes and listen to the radio.

  The night was friendly and allowed him to feel himself part of the world, or at least close to it. There was still — and perhaps ever would be — much absent and much that eluded him. All about him people seemed linked to one another, and they spoke to the point of their being, while he, bachelor, soldier, revolutionary, Indian, was discontinuous and vague. Suppose he went to a café and ordered a hot chocolate and a man beside him also ordered the same. That man or any person would say, "I'll have a hot chocolate," or, "Let me have a hot chocolate," or some such manner of asking, and that would be that. But for him the request would be charged with strange things. Who is the "I" who asks for this chocolate — is it the same man who thought he wanted this stuff three minutes before? And then there was the matter of voice. His own voice sounded far away from him, a ventriloquist's projection. Sometimes he thought to turn about and find where that strange voice was coming from. To be forever outside oneself, that was no small matter, not unless you had many lives and could keep searching for that other self in the time to come or in the time that had just passed, supposing, that is, that the voice asking for cocoa wasn't too far ahead of you, dying before you could catch up with it, dying someplace on a rainy day, a heap in a little puddle, a heap of voice.

  Suddenly there was a voice. Dos Amantes looked about. There was nobody. Yet now he was certain that he had heard a voice and that it was not his other voice since he himself had not spoken aloud. This new voice, then, must be one that comes and goes at its own will.

  It would be good to go to sleep and let those voices travel where they would. Enough of voices and enough of talk. To sit on some smooth rock was everything. And then, perhaps, once in a while, when a fit big enough to deserve attention swept over him, he would make noises at the moon, little clicking sounds, and then, to surprise it further, let out a long, full, deep, mad howl. He'd see that moon smile a different smile when he got through with it this evening: a smile turned around on a painted cheese.

  "Let us have illumination light all the way of our road," the voice was now saying very clearly. "Yes, we must try, Lieutenant." It was Tintin speaking. And in fact, it was Tintin himself there, not five paces before him, standing serenely, his arms crossed, his head slightly elevated toward the moon. "For who else shall illumine the dark regions of our hearts for us if not we ourselves? And without this benignly critical light how may we investigate our hearts and learn its pitiful fear of all the things it knows? Yes, the light of this illumination must be gentle, for the soul must not be made frightened but must be coaxed gently to emerge from the undercave of its dark hollow like a jaguar of no dreadful purpose.

  "As for now, Lieutenant, there is much about you I wish to learn. How those of your race came to these mountains and with what intent. Come! Let's find a spot where the air is clear. And when it grows too cold, let us make a fire and leave that remaining portion of the cold night to chill itself. Speak, Lieutenant, in whatever voice you hear."

  — Chapter XIV —

  [Later that night.]

  They were at table again. Herr Peeperkorn had cajoled and bribed the waiters into setting up a special spread of appetizers for himself and his guests. For all but Captain Haddock, who, still alarmed by Tintin's behavior and words that morning, was lying in his bed, drinking whiskey directly from the bottle. Fatigued from the day's long walk and hot debate among Machu Picchu's stone ruins, they made a sorry table. Lieutenant dos Amantes stared at the cuffs of his military tunic and occasionally plucked a thread from their frayed edges; Clavdia mechanically disemboweled the hard rolls she had arranged before her in a row; the two antagonists, still brooding over the words said and unspoken during that morning's touristical expedition, were jotting notes to use for future encounters, Naptha in his Florentine leather pad, Settembrini in his cardboard ledger.

  Tintin fidgeted. His eyes ranged over the small dining room and took in the polished silverware gleaming on the newly set tables. He glanced out the window and studied the contours of the moon-draped hump of Machu Picchu, and finally his gaze rested on Clavdia, his vision blurring and returning to focus and blurring again. He drew his hand to his eyes and remained in that silent attitude until the cataract broke loose.

  "I grow weary of the young," bellowed Peeperkorn, sharply snapping off the cap of a beer bottle and giving it a vicious flick across the table.

  "Youth is all careless dispersion," he continued, "for youth knows not itself but only its own passionate energy, r
estless to run off with whatever novelty and adventure pass its way. Motion contains all meaning for the young, and even a moment lavished on simple reflection is considered a small dying. Thus youth hates acorns and all manner of seeds, for those imply futurity and slow growth over slow time, the unfolding of a great organic form over soft and harsh seasons, and youth would devour acorns on the spot rather than plant and nurture them, greedy as youth is for the taste of the moment and heedless of the life they — these seeds and acorns, I mean — may someday spring. Youth reckons the future as the zone of the never. But in you, my dear young Tintin, I sense a miracle, for you are quick motion embodied, yet motion in carriage with consciousness, representing the mentally and physically active life of a young sleuth as you do. Or is it sluther? Which is correct here? What is the clean one called who tracks down the crimes of others?"

  "Don't let that worry you, Peeperkorn," Clavdia said, flashing Tintin a smile, her fingers squeezing the pits from a quartered orange. "As long as you stay on your side of the fence, what need to know Tintin's professional call?"

  "Why, I thank you, sir, or it seems I should thank you," Tintin answered, averting his eyes from Clavdia's, "though I must say I feel this consciousness of mine, which you speak of, is the rag-and-bone-shop sort, the odds and ends, the trimmings and remainders of a strangely cut cloth."

  "Motion and consciousness, I was saying, rarely combine with youth," Peeperkorn continued, "as I so well know from the lessons of mine own. Ah, hear me! Lessons, lessons, this mountain air breeds them. A mountain of lessons, a lesson of mountains. Motion, I was saying. Yes, in my youth I derided the athletic life, all things sportish and associated with the outdoors, with muscles and agility and exercise. I deemed these endeavors and activities suitable for inferior minds and generally mediocre types, for mules of all variety. Somehow, in my early training, my formal education included, I received the notion from those I most admired — my intellectual mentors, in short — that physical effort of all sort — and especially those of the recreational cast — was better left to those whose lives were destined for base things. Then, to make matters brief" — here went up ill-concealed sighs from the lieutenant and Clavdia — "I found, in my virile twenties — in the twenty-second spring of those years, to be exact — that while the athletic life held no thrills, the intellectual or mental life depressed me. Or should I say that I found it depressing since in all justice, the mental life, in the abstract, does not care whether it does or does not depress anyone. Actually the depression came at a later phase or stage, for at first I felt only a lassitude and fatigue with the mental life. I suppose I passed my youth in the amateur fashion common to certain youths born to a gracious life, to the luxury, calm, and voluptuousness of my generation — never mind which precisely — of European bourgeoisie who estivated on the North Sea or Atlantic coast rather than the Mediterranean or by placid Alpine lakes rather than along the lagoons and grand hotels of Venice. Commonplace was my youth, although it seemed uncommon to me then, praising in myself those very qualities of indolence (some call it laziness) and passivity, sincere recoil from all productive exertion, which my parents, my father especially, found repugnant. I imagined myself at that time something of a dandy, an aesthete, a flaneur, a very precious fellow, you know, never realizing for a moment that in this posture I was playing a role played by so many others before me, a role earlier generations had enacted with originality and daring, never realizing that my generation were blurred reproductions of the originals.