The Drunken Forest

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Ah, children, did you arrange your animals comfortably?’

  ‘Yes, they’re all fixed up. It’s a wonderful place for them. It’s very generous of your friend, Bebita.’

  ‘Ahh!’ she sighed, ‘b-b-but he is like that . . . so sweet . . . so generous . . . and such charm . . . ahh! you’ve no idea what charm that man has.’

  ‘How long did it take you to persuade him?’ I asked sceptically.

  ‘B-b-but he offered; I did not persuade,’ said Bebita innocently ‘I rang him up and told him that we wanted to put a few small animals in his garden, and he agreed straight away. He is my friend, so naturally he will say yes.’

  She smiled at us brilliantly.

  ‘I don’t see how he could have refused,’ I said; ‘but seriously we’re terribly grateful to you. You’re rapidly becoming our Fairy Godmother.’

  ‘Silly, silly silly,’ said Bebita. ‘Come and have dinner.’

  Though we appreciated Bebita’s legerdemain in producing a place for our animals, we did not realize quite what an extraordinary piece of magic it was until the following day when we called on Mr Gibbs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said apologetically as we entered his office.

  ‘I’ve tried several places, but I haven’t had any success.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. A friend of ours found us a place,’ I said.

  ‘I am glad,’ said Mr Gibbs; ‘it must have been very worrying for you. Where have you got them?’

  ‘In a house in Avenida Alvear.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A house in Avenida Alvear.’

  ‘Avenida Alvear!’ asked Mr Gibbs faintly.

  ‘Yes; what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing . . . nothing at all,’ said Mr Gibbs, staring at us blankly – ‘except that Avenida Alvear is to Buenos Aires what Park Lane is to London.’

  Some time later, when our captures had eventually gone off by air, we found that we definitely could not go South. The problem was, where to go? Then, one day, Bebita phoned.

  ‘Listen, child,’ she commanded. ‘Would you like to go to Paraguay for a trip?’

  ‘I should love to go to Paraguay.’ I said fervently.

  ‘Well, I think I can arrange it. You will have to fly to Asunción, and then my friend’s plane will pick you up there and fly you to this place . . . it is called Puerto Casada.’

  ‘I suppose you arranged all this with one of your friends?’ ‘B-b-but naturally. With who else would I arrange it, silly?’

  ‘The only snag I can see is our primitive Spanish.’

  ‘I have also thought of that. You remember Rafael?’

  ‘Yes, I remember him.’

  ‘Well, he is on holiday from school, and he would like to go with you as interpreter. His mother thinks that the trip would do him good, on condition that you do not let him catch any snakes.’

  ‘What an extraordinarily intelligent mother. I think the idea’s excellent, and I love you and all your friends.’

  ‘Silly silly silly,’ said Bebita, and rang off.

  So it was that Jacquie and I flew up to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay and with us travelled Rafael de Soto Acebal, bubbling over with such enthusiasm for the whole trip that by the end of the flight he was making me feel like a cynical and jaded old globe-trotter.

  Fields of Flying Flowers

  The sky was pale blue and full of morning light when the lorry bumped on to the small airfield outside Asunción. Still half-drugged with sleep, we descended stiffly and unloaded our equipment. Then we stood around, yawning and stretching, while the lorry driver and the pilot disappeared into a dilapidated hangar that stood on the edge of the field. Presently, to the accompaniment of loud grunts of exertion, they reappeared, pushing a small four-seater monoplane tastefully painted in silver and red. As the two men edged it out of the hangar into the sunlight, they looked extraordinarily like a pair of corpulent brown ants manoeuvring an extremely small moth. Rafael had seated himself on a suitcase, his head drooping languidly, his eyes half closed.

  ‘Look, Rafael,’ I said cheerfully; ‘our aeroplane.’

  He jerked upright and looked at the tiny plane being pushed towards us. His eyes widened behind his spectacles.

  ‘No!’ he exclaimed incredulously. ‘This our plane?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Oh, migosh!’

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’ inquired Jacquie; ‘it’s a dear little plane.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rafael, ‘that is what the matter. . . it is little.’

  ‘It looks strong enough,’ I said soothingly, and at that moment one of the wheels went over a small tussock of grass and the whole structure wobbled and twanged melodiously.

  ‘Oh, migosh, no!’ came from Rafael aghast. ‘Gerry, ce n’est pas possible we fly in this . . . she is too small . . .’

  ‘It’s quite all right, Rafael, really,’ said Jacquie, with the cheerful optimism of one who had never travelled in a small plane; ‘this kind is very good.’

  ‘Sure?’ asked our friend, his spectacles glittering anxiously.

  ‘Yes, quite sure . . . they use this kind a lot in America.’

  ‘Yes, but Jacquie, America is not this Chaco . . . See, she has only one wing, n’est-ce pas? That wing break, we go . . . brrr . . . bang . . . into the forest; and he sat back and surveyed us like a dejected owl.

  Meanwhile the plane had been wheeled into position, and the pilot approached us, his gold teeth flashing in a smile.

  ‘Bueno, vamos,’ he said, and started to pick up the luggage. Rafael got to his feet and picked up his suitcase.

  ‘Gerry, I no like this,’ he said plaintively, as he started towards our aerial transport.

  When all our equipment was loaded, we found there was very little room left for us, but we managed to squeeze in, I and the pilot in the front, Rafael and Jacquie behind. I climbed in last and slammed the incredibly fragile-looking door, and it immediately flew open again. The pilot leaned across me and glared at the door.

  ‘No bueno,’ he explained, grabbing it with one powerful hand and slamming it so hard that the whole plane rocked.

  ‘Oh, migosh!’ came from Rafael faintly.

  The pilot fiddled with the controls, whistling merrily between his teeth, the engine roared, and the plane began to shudder and vibrate. Then we lurched forward, the plane bouncing over the uneven ground, the green grass became a blur, and we were airborne. As we circled round, we could see the country-side below, rich tropical green, with the red-earth roads running like veins across it. We flew over Asunción, its pink houses gleaming in the sunlight, and then, in front of the blunt nose and the glittering circle of propeller, I could see the River Paraguay ahead.

  Flying at that height, we could see that the river formed a fiery, flickering barrier between two types of country: below us was the rich red earth, the green forests and farmlands that surrounded Asunción and made up the eastern half of Paraguay; across the sprawling river lay the Chaco, a vast level plain stretching away to the horizon. Slightly blurred by the morning mist, this plain seemed to be covered with silver-bronze grass, marked here and there with vivid green patches of undergrowth. It looked as though a pair of shears had been taken to it and it had been clipped like the flank of an enormous poodle, leaving the green patches of wool decorating the tawny skin of grass. It was a curious, fireless landscape, the only moving thing being the river, which glittered and twinkled as it moved over the plain, split now into three or four channels, now into fifty or sixty, each coiling and interweaving in an intricate pattern like the shining viscera of some monstrous silver dragon disembowelled across the plain.

  When we crossed the river and flew lower, I could see that what I had first thought to be a dry plain of grass was in re
ality marshland, for now and then the water gleamed, as the sun’s reflection caught it. The poodle wool turned out to be thornscrub, tightly packed, with occasional palm trees bursting up through it. In places the palms grew in serried ranks, almost as if planted: green feather dusters stuck in the bronze grass. Everywhere you could see the sudden, brilliant sparkle of water: an explosion of white light as the sun caught it; yet everywhere the undergrowth looked dusty and parched, its roots in water, but its leaves withered by the sun. It was weird, desolate, but strangely fascinating country. After a while, though, the landscape became monotonous, for there were no shadows except those of the shock-headed palms.

  From somewhere under his seat the pilot produced a bottle, uncorked it with the aid of his teeth and handed it to me. It was iced coffee, bitter but refreshing. I drank, handed it to Jacquie and Rafael and returned the remains to the pilot. As he stuck the neck of the bottle between his teeth and tipped back his head to drink, the nose of the plane dipped sickeningly towards the silver curve of the river, two thousand feet below. Having drunk, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then leant over and shouted in my ear:

  ‘Puerto Casado,’ and pointed ahead.

  Dimly through the heat-haze I could see that we were flying towards the black shape of a hill that had appeared suddenly and surprisingly in the flatness below.

  ‘Una hora, más to menos,’ yelled the pilot, pointing and holding up one finger – ‘una hora . . . Puerto Casado . . . comprende?’

  For an hour I dozed intermittently, while the dark bulk of the hill grew closer and closer. The nose of the plane dipped as we glided down towards the earth, and the warm upward currents of air caught the tiny machine and shook and buffeted it until it swayed and dipped drunkenly like a flake of wood-ash over a bonfire. Then we banked sharply, and for one miraculous second the Chaco tilted up like a wall, the river hung over one wing and the horizon appeared above us. We straightened out and dropped steadily down to a strip of grass-field which would have been indistinguishable from any other part of the scenery if it had not been for a yellow wind-sock hanging limply on a pole. We bumped on to the grass and taxied to a standstill. The pilot grinned at me, switched off the engine, and waved his hand in an all-embracing gesture.

  ‘Chaco!’ he explained.

  As we opened the door of the plane and got out, the heat hit us with an almost physical blow, and it felt as though the air had suddenly been sucked out of our lungs. The golden grass underfoot was as crisp and dry as wood shavings, patched here and there with clumps, of yellow and flame-coloured flowers. We had just got the last of the equipment out of the plane when a lorry appeared in the distance, bumping over the grass towards us. It was driven by a short, fat Paraguayan with a twinkling smile, who seemed vastly amused at our arrival. He helped us pile the stuff into the back of the truck, and then we jolted off across the air-strip and along a dusty, deeply rutted road through the forest. There was so much dust from our progress, and we were so busily engaged in holding on to the bucking sides of the vehicle, that I did not have a chance to see much of the passing country-side, and within ten minutes we roared into the village of Casado. It was the usual conglomeration of tumble-down shacks, separated by earth roads worn into furrows. We swept past a large mango tree which was obviously the centre of the village, for everyone seemed to be congregated in its shade, either sleeping, gossiping, or bargaining for the odd assortment of pumpkins, sugar-cane, eggs, bananas, and other produce lying there in the dust.

  The little house in which we were to live was at one end of the village, and it was half hidden behind a screen of grapefruit and orange trees and shaggy bushes of hibiscus splashed with enormous scarlet flowers. The house and its cloak of foliage was surrounded by a network of narrow, shallow irrigation ditches, half choked with grass and water-plants. Round these a choir of mosquitoes hummed melodiously, and they were joined at night by a great variety of tree-frogs, toads, and cicadas. The tree-frogs would pipe and trill excitedly, the toads would belch in a ponderous and thoughtful sort of manner, and the cicadas would produce at intervals a sound like that of a soprano electric saw cutting through a sheet of tin. The house was adequate, without being luxurious. It consisted of three rooms, all inter-communicating in the Spanish fashion, and all of which leaked. Some distance away was the kitchen and the bathroom, connected to the house by a covered way. Ten minutes after our arrival I discovered we were expected to share our bathroom with quite a varied assortment of the local fauna: there were several hundred mosquitoes in there, together with a number of large, glittering, and agile cockroaches and several depressed looking spiders that occupied the floor. The lavatory cistern been taken over by some wide-eyed and anaemic-looking tree-frogs and a small vampire bat, which hung there chittering ferociously, and looking, as all bats do, rather like an umbrella that has seen better days.

  It was rather unfortunate that I should have kept these zoological discoveries to myself, for Jacquie was the next one to enter the bathroom, and she reappeared at startling speed leaving a trail of soap, towels, and tooth-brushes behind her. Apparently, when she had entered, the bat had decided he was getting a bit bored with these constant interruptions, and he had swooped down from the cistern and hung, fluttering, in front of her face. She pointed out, rather acidly, that she had not hitherto considered bats essential to clean living. Eventually I managed to persuade her that the creature was harmless, in spite of his anti-social attitude; but afterwards, whenever she used the bathroom, she kept a very wary eye on the bat as he hung aloft, regarding her with an inimical stare.

  We had just finished unpacking our things when we were greeted by another member of the local fauna, in the shape of our house-keeper, a dark-skinned, dark-eyed Paraguayan woman, whose name, she assured us, was Paula. At one time she must have been a handsome woman, but now she had run slightly to seed. Her body bulged in all directions, but, even so, she still possessed an extra-ordinary grace and lightness of movement. She would drift through the house like a chocolate cumulus-cloud on its way to a storm, humming some love-song to herself, her eyes misty, indulging in her own peculiar brand of dusting, which consisted of sweeping everything off tables and chairs on to the floor, and then bending down with grunts of exertion to pick up the remains. It was not long before we discovered that Paula occupied a high and honoured position in the local community: she was nothing less than the local Madam, and she had all the young unmarried females of the village in her care. As their manager, trainer, and protector she took her job seriously. Once a fortnight, when the river-steamer arrived, she would take her girls down to the river-batik and keep a motherly eye on them while they argued and bargained with the steamer’s crew and passengers. The steamer always hooted when it was about three-quarters of a mile down the river, to give warning of its arrival, and this was Paula’s signal to rush into her hut and dress. She would force her enormous breasts into a minute brassiere, leaving out those portions which it could not accommodate, clad herself in a dress, the design of which was almost as startling as its colour scheme, push her feet into shoes with six-inch heels, pour about a cupful of asphyxiating scent over the ensemble and then set off down the road to the jetty, driving a chattering and giggling selection of her wares before her. She looked rather like an amiable and elderly school-mistress, as she herded them along in this untidy, shrill crocodile. Owing to the importance of Paula’s position, she had everyone, including the local constabulary, eating out of her hand. No task was too difficult for her Ask her for something – whether it was some smuggled Brazilian cigarettes or a bowl of delicious Dulce de Leche – and she would immediately marshal her girls and set them to scour the village for it. Woe betide the man who refused to help Paula. His position in the village (biologically speaking) became impossible. She was definitely an ally worth having, as we soon found out.

  Although I was eager to get out and see something of the country, I had to restrain my impatience.
The rest of the day was spent in unpacking and checking our equipment and getting the house more or less organized. Rafael, at my instigation, questioned Paula about methods of getting into the interior. She said there were three ways of doing this: on horseback, by ox-cart, or on an autovia. Further questioning revealed the fact that the autovia was the form of transport which we came to call the Chaco railway, although the term railway was really a euphemism. It consisted of very narrow-gauge rails, on which were mounted dilapidated Ford 8s. This railway went some two hundred kilometres into the Chaco, and so from our point of view seemed a godsend. Paula said that if we went through the village to the line, we would find the autovias parked there, and a driver was sure to be around who could tell us when the next one was due to leave. So Rafael and I trotted off to investigate the possibilities of the Chaco railway.

  Sure enough, on the other side of the village we came on the line, though it took a bit of finding, for it was so overgrown with weeds it was almost indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain, The line itself was so fantastic that I could only stare at it in mute, horror-stricken silence. It was approximately two and a half feet wide, each rail worn down and glossy with use, so buckled that they looked like a couple of silver snakes wriggling away through the grass. How any vehicle managed to stay on them was more than I would understand. Later, when I discovered the speed at which the autovias were driven along these lines, it seemed to me a miracle that we managed to survive our trips on them at all.