Jauja. 12 November
Nobody could accuse me of being either conventional or teetotal, yet I’m slightly shocked by the campesinos’ drinking hours. This is Sunday and when we reached Acollo Marco at 8 a.m. there were more men lowering beers in the cafes than there were women emerging from the pleasingly simple 17th-century church. A campesino who starts drinking at sunrise is unlikely to stop until he falls into the arms of his wife, usually to be found somewhere nearby awaiting this outcome. He will by then have spent enough to feed his children well for a week; at 70 soles a litre cerveza is expensive even for us. Chicha however costs only five or ten soles a litre, depending on its quality, and it would make sense for the government to encourage more home-brewing, if necessary by restricting the cerveza supply. But the fat-cat brewers would not approve of that; starving campesino children are no concern of theirs.
While Juana breakfasted off freshly-cut Alf, we each devoured a mound of fried potatoes mixed with onions, tomatoes, chopped goat-meat and peas, and topped with two fried eggs. As we ate, the standard debate about my gender took place among staff and customers. The longer this trek goes on, the more disinclined are the Peruvians (especially the women) to believe that I am Rachel’s mother rather than her father. And this evening, when I confronted a mirror for the first time in months, I could see their point. By now I scarcely look human, never mind feminine, with hideously bloodshot eyes (dust and wind), a dirt- and sun-blackened face, thick cracked lips and hair like a gorilla’s mane. Add to that my Peruvian army boots, bulging bush-shirt, ragged jeans, broad shoulders and deep voice – it’s no wonder I’m addressed more often than not as ‘Senor’.
A two-hour walk down a wide cultivated valley took us to the mountain above Jauja, since pre-Inca days an important town and now the scene of a famous Sunday market. We scrutinised the surrounding fields through binoculars and, seeing acres of Alf, decided on a four-day halt. This morning we were worried by a small sore on Juana’s backbone beneath the crupper leather; this will require rest and care to prevent its turning nasty. Also, her left hind shoe needs replacing.
Clearly Martín de Porrés – a 17th-century Lima boy and the patron saint of animals – was on Juana’s side today. Within half-an-hour of arriving here we had found both a secure corral and a reliable Alf-merchant who has promised to provide 300 soles worth twice a day during our stay. She is an elderly, rosy-cheeked Indian woman whose regular stand is on a corner only fifty yards from the entrance to Teresa’s corral.
Teresa was the first person we met in Jauja, when I entered a grocer’s shop in search of cerveza. She was standing at the counter – a good-looking young mestizo woman, though over-weight. (One sees few shapely Peruvian women, of any age or race.) In her arms she carried a toddler and the shop-keeper was carefully measuring three tablespoonsful of cooking oil into her little plastic bag. On seeing the gringoes she at once invited us to lunch – adding frankly, “I need much chance to practise English which I study in Lima but now forget”. Taking this ball of hospitality on the hop, I asked if she knew of an empty corral for our mula. (I didn’t want to spend all my time in Jauja guarding Alf from voracious pigs.) Teresa promptly offered her own corral, empty but for one piglet too small to matter. She led us to her home in the next street, where the usual double-door gave access to a large patio with a water-tap and an ancient iron sink in the middle (the family bathroom) and spacious but semi-derelict rooms opening off on three sides. The weed-filled, padlocked corral is behind an empty barn that occupies the fourth side. When I explained that before turning Juana loose we must unload her, Teresa recommended the new Santa Rosa Hotel in the main Plaza. New hotels are not really our scene, but the difficulties of guiding a laden mule through Jauja’s narrow streets on market day were extreme and when we came to the Santa, Rosa, before seeing any more appropriate hostelry, we cravenly booked in.
Actually the Santa Rosa is quite congenial. For 250 soles we have a lofty third-floor single room with a wide window looking across the valley to nearby snow-peaks and affording a grandstand view of the hub of the market in the Plaza below. The furniture – bed, table, chair, wardrobe – is of skilfully hand-carved wood. And the staff are friendly, welcoming and by temperament helpful though an endemic inefficiency often renders their helpfulness inoperative. There are of course snags; despite (or because of?) its newness, the Santa Rosa has no running water and the six lavatories near our room, which have glamorous sky-blue fittings, stink most horrifically.
When we had turned Juana into the corral, with a washed and dusted wound and a banquet of Alf, Teresa insisted on our staying to lunch which she was cooking on a tiny kerosene stove in a cramped, earth-floored, outhouse kitchen. We began with small plates of spaghetti, flavoured with an unfamiliar chopped herb and accompanied by half a hard-boiled egg each for Rachel and me. Then followed watery soup that had been made from one gristly bone, and a few small potatoes. As we ate we realised to our discomfiture that we were in fact eating Teresa’s lunch … A matter we remedied immediately afterwards. Town poverty is a frightening thing. If we accept a plate of potatoes from a campesino we are not depriving anyone of food; but Teresa has to find cash to buy potatoes.
Teresa’s small son is called Vladimir. Both his parents were leaders of Lima’s left-wing student revolt, which prompted the government to close the universities. Like Katie in Tingo Chico, Teresa is unmarried. Surprisingly, in a country much influenced by Iberian Catholicism, unmarried motherhood seems to be no disgrace among what must I suppose be described as Peru’s lower-middle-class. Yet Teresa’s life is not easy. The government provides no social security and Vladimir’s father, who has a reputation for recklessly propagating the species, contributes nothing to his Jauja son’s upbringing. Teresa’s brothers give what they can, which is very little. At twenty-four she is the youngest of a family of five. Her father, a primary school teacher, died of TB when she was seven and as the only daughter she has always been close to her mother. After Vladimir’s birth Mamma moved to Lima to help look after him while Teresa continued her studies. When the university was closed a few months later eleven students were jailed for eighteen months and sixty more, including Teresa and Vladimir’s father, were blacklisted by the police. At about the same time a sister-in-law died in Jauja, as a result of a backstreet abortion, and Teresa returned home to look after her widowed brother, Lonni (Alonso). Lonni is thirty-five but looks much younger; despite being one short of the shilling he has six sons (the eldest sixteen) – all intelligent and charming boys with whom Rachel quickly made friends. Mamma is still in Lima, where she works as night receptionist in a grotty hotel where younger women receptionists would not be safe. Teresa claims that at present she herself would find it hard to get a job in Lima, having been blacklisted – which argument surely assumes an improbable level of efficiency among the police. She is open about her Communist sympathies (Maoist: the Russians are despised for turning ‘capitalist’). In her opinion the Church in Peru, as distinct from foreign nuns and clergy working here, is still supporting the junta dictatorship though many of its leaders have made courageous antigovernment noises.
Back in the Santa Rosa, Rachel pointed out that my jeans are in a state of disrepair beyond the bounds of decency. I’d been vaguely aware of a draught around the crutch and on examining them I realised that she was absolutely right. So we set out on a serious shopping expedition.
‘Colourful’ is the excusable cliche adjective for Peru’s open-air markets. Not only the campesinos’ bright garments, but most of the goods on display – from flamboyant jungle fruits to gaudy plastic sandals – give the scene a peculiar visual hecticness. And in Jauja the atmosphere, too, is gay, despite obviously slack trading. Yet these markets are also uncomfortable reminders that the invasion of Peru by our capital-intensive industries has had a catastrophic effect. Because Third World governments encourage this disruptive investment thousands of Peruvians are unnecessarily destitute and demoralised, with no outlets for their talents and inherited skills. Here there is no reason for blankets and skirts and shoes and crockery to be made in factories. To argue that those investments add to the GNP, or bring in needed foreign currencies, is irrelevant. These effects may make Peru look more prosperous in the World Bank’s next Table of Statistics, but in terms of benefits to human beings they merely ensure that the Haves get more.
Drapers’ stalls abound and we soon found a promising collection of trousers and slacks: no jeans are sold here. A friendly crowd gathered to watch Senora measuring me and much amusement was caused by my rear being too large for most of the garments on display. But at last I was fitted out with a pair of navy-blue slacks which will be kept for best; while trekking I’ll remain indecently exposed. As we were walking away with our purchase, for which I had gladly paid 2,400 soles – the correct price, according to a sticky label – Senora came rushing after us waving 400 soles. We’d been accidentally overcharged: that sticky label belonged to another pair of slacks … This sort of honesty partly explains the blessed absence of haggling in these markets. Most items have a fixed price and if you don’t like it you can push off. This suits me as I’m not a bargainer by nature; to have to haggle, as is the custom in some countries, embarrasses me quite ridiculously.
To celebrate my augmented wardrobe we had cafe con leche in a large restaurant near the Mercado. At the next table six silent men were drinking hard and frequently peeing, with astonishing accuracy, into a circular hole in the floor which lacked even a token enclosing wall. I like people to be sensibly unhibited about their natural functions but this seemed to be going a little far.
At sunset the market was quickly packed up. All over the town, pathetic family groups had gathered around Pappa’s insensible form. Coca-chewing wives sat blank-faced beside their prone husbands, often with a baby at the breast and a cluster of children nearby, supping off scraps scavenged from the Mercado garbage-heaps. Some men were standing leaning against a wall, their feet far apart, their heads on their chests. Others were sitting slumped in doorways, or on the steps of the church. Others lay stretched out anywhere, like so many corpses after a battle. Their degradation was painful. At times it is impossible to feel proud of being a European. We may belong to a great civilisation but other peoples have paid – and are still paying – the price.
The same. 13 November
Jauja is history-sodden, at least by the standards of a country without a native written language. This morning we descended to the banks of the rowdy Rio Mantaro to view the remains of an Inca suspension bridge once vital to the flow of traffic throughout the Empire. Hernando Pizarro wrote home: ‘The mountain road really is something worth seeing. Such magnificent roads could be seen nowhere in Christendom in country as rough as this. Almost all of them are paved’. However, without fibre-rope suspension bridges across unfordable river barriers these roads would have been useless; and the conquistadores were quick to realise the importance of capturing as many bridges as possible.
We rambled on for two miles to a few mournful lakeside ruins which recalled the days when Jauja was one of the most crucial Inca bases for the control of newly-conquered populations. Before that, it was the tribal centre of the Huancas. Pedro de Cieza de Leon mentions these ruins: ‘This valley of Jauja was all so thickly settled that when the Spaniards entered it, they say, and it is believed true, there were over 30,000 Indians. Now I doubt that there are ten thousand … In all these regions there were great lodgings of the Incas, although the most important ones were at the head of the valley, in the part known as Jauja, because there was a great wall there where there were strong, finely built lodgings of stone, and a house of the sun virgins, and a very rich temple, and many storehouses filled with everything to be found. Aside from this, there were many silversmiths who made goblets and vessels of silver and gold for the service of the Inca and the adorning of the temple. More than 8,000 Indians were on hand for the service of the temple and the palaces of the ruler. All the buildings were of stone. The roofs of the houses and lodgings were of thick beams, covered with long thatch. Before these Huancas were conquered by the Incas, fierce battles took place …
The Inca nobleman, Huamán Poma, did not think much of the Huancas. In his Letter to a King (the king was Philip III) he wrote: ‘The Huanca Indians are very cunning and deceitful. It is their habit to rob women whenever they can and to drive ignorant people out of their homes and farms, which these Indians then keep for themselves. They also succeed somehow in enlisting the support of the friars for their malpractices. The girls wear petticoats and cause a lot of trouble by becoming the mistresses of the priests. The married ones go so far as to give evidence against their husbands so that they can be free to sleep with the Spaniards’. Letter to a King was written between 1567 and 1615. By then the demoralisation of the Indians was far advanced and Poma suggested sensible proposals for cleaning up Peru; they haven’t yet been implemented. Letter to a King is fascinating – I became absorbed in it last night – but also profoundly depressing.
As Francisco Pizarro and his men descended towards Jauja on 12 October 1533 they saw below them the Quitan army, commanded by Yucra-Hualpa. Then, as they advanced, their greatest ally – Indian disunity – became evident. The natives (Huancas) surged onto the road, rejoicing to see invaders who, they imagined, would deliver them from the Incas and restore their autonomy. It was not long since they had been absorbed into the Empire. And already their allegiance to their new rulers had been shaken by Pizarro’s murder of Atahualpa, dynastic squabbles at Cuzco and the consequent weakening of Inca authority, both moral and practical. Also, as John Hemming has pointed out, the Spaniards were helped by ‘the indifference of the native masses to the fate of the upper classes of Inca society’. Incidentally, Mr Hemming firmly discounts the tiresome, tinselly-romantic notion that the Indians were overawed by the Spaniards because they identified Pizarro with the returning creator god, Viracocha.
The conquistadores spent a fortnight here and, by the time they left, Jauja had been set up as the first Christian capital of Peru. This may strike us as a little premature, when the Spaniards were only half-way to Cuzco where a mighty Inca army awaited them. But the refusal even to think about defeat was what enabled a few hundred men to conquer an empire that stretched from Ecuador to Chile. So Pizarro chose suitable buildings to serve as a church and a Town Hall and left behind eighty Spaniards – forty with horses – as the first citizens of the municipality of Jauja. The stupendous loot already wrested from the Incas was also left here, much of it now regarded as the property of the King of Spain, the rest belonging to individual conquistadores. Therefore many wills had to be made, and other complicated legal documents drawn up, before the crack troops left for Cuzco.
Not long after, Jauja was for Francisco Pizarro the scene of a joyous personal celebration. This fifty-six-year-old bachelor had lost no time acquiring a royal Inca mistress, the fifteen-year-old Quispe Cusi (known to the Spaniards as Ines Huayllas Nusta), daughter of the deceased Inca ruler, Huayna-Capac. In December 1534 this princess presented Pizarro with a daughter, born at Jauja and christened ‘Francesca’ in the ‘capital’s’ tiny church. Both Indians and Spaniards seem to have regarded this distinguished mestizo as a good omen for future racial co-operation and many tournaments and jollifications marked her birth. Pizarro doted on Francesca and promptly saw to it that she was legitimised by Royal Decree, which document is dated 27 May 1536. Ines gave her lover a son in 1535, but they never married. Instead, Pizarro arranged for her to marry another conquistador, Francisco de Ampuero, and their descendants are the powerful Ampuero family of modern Peru. But that was an unusual match. Most of the Spanish leaders helped themselves to Inca princesses – who had been brought up to understand that they should cohabit only with the Inca himself, or with a prince of the blood royal. Yet the conquistadores rarely married Indians, preferring to choose a wife from among the Spanish women who were soon setting sail for Peru by the boatload.
Modern Jauja had a mini-crisis today when senior schoolboys organised an anti-government march (or someone else organised it for them) and policemen armed with machine-guns as well as ‘normal’ weapons were to be seen patrolling every street. Some slight tension was generated, chiefly by the sight of those machine-guns, but neither police nor boys looked seriously violence-prone. Here as elsewhere, the ordinary Peruvian policeman seems a decent type, if not very bright.
Teresa was depressed this morning. Last night Lonni went on one of his occasional binges, which do his ‘condition’ no good, and he had left the family without a single sole for today’s meals. At least we were able to remedy that situation.
Teresa, too, longs to emigrate. She owns two hectares of land – her share of Pappa’s legacy, now let – and would like to sell it and settle with Vladimir in Mexico. But at present only those rich enough to ignore the law are free to leave Peru. When I warned her that Mexico has a monumental unemployment problem she wasn’t deterred. Like many young Peruvians, she is much given to escapist day-dreams. We were appalled to discover that she is employed two days a week to teach English in the local secondary school: Rachel is better qualified to teach Spanish. Teresa herself admits that she merely copies texts from books onto the blackboard, and her pupils copy those into their exercise books, and neither she nor they understands more than ten per cent of the words used. English is compulsory in all Peruvian schools, though few teachers know the language. The mental dishonesty encouraged by this policy is most disquieting. How to breed a nation of hypocrites …
The same. 14 November
Yesterday Juana’s sore seemed to be healing well so we were shattered this morning to find that it has developed into a vile abscess. (Shades of poor Hallam in Baltistan!) The only local veterinario, since Jauja became a motorised region, is a taxi-driver who animal-doctors in his spare time. With Teresa’s invaluable help we tracked Domingo to his home and when he had seen Juana he gave me two ‘prescriptions’ for injections, one to be bought at the smart Agricultural Supplies shop, the other at the no less smart Veterinario Supplies shop. Both of these establishments have a First World aura and are full of the sort of glossy, sophisticated advertisements one never sees elsewhere in Peru. It’s shocking that such shops, packed with expensive, high-powered drugs, can flourish in Jauja despite the lack of a qualified veterinario. Most people doctor their own animals – under the guidance, Domingo told me, of travelling salesmen representing multinational companies. Again we are lucky in our veterinario. Domingo is ‘muy simpatico’: a chunky little man with shrewd bright eyes, gentle hands and a pronounced limp – the result of a mule-kick twenty years ago. His unfailing punctuality boosts one’s confidence in his professional abilities. Recently he declined a job as a drugs company rep. “It is not honest. I have seen fathers spending 1,000 soles on rubbish from these shops while their children go hungry. Now farmers are frightened not to spend. They’ve been told their animals will get new diseases and die if they don’t use drugs regularly.” When Domingo advised us that Juana urgently needs carrots I explained that she won’t even sniff at them, however finely chopped or with whatever mixed. We then agreed that a drugs company vitamin injection would be justified in her case! Domingo says she won’t be fit to travel before Friday.
Rachel spent most of the day playing football with Teresa’s nephews while I wrote letters. At noon there came a knock on our door and in walked Huamán, a tall, lean, dark-skinned gentleman, elegantly dressed with close-cropped silver hair. We’d met him earlier, in the Mercado, where he denounced the conquistadores – and everyone and everything Spanish – in a voice crackling with rage, as though Pizarro & Co. had just arrived in Jauja. He’s as odd as two left feet and became feverishly excited on discovering that I’m a writer; he wants me to write a book about his obsession. He claims to be a pure Huanca Indian whose family have been locally prominent since the 15th century and his message is that Peru’s prosperity can only be restored by transferring the capital back to Jauja. Seizing one of our maps, he pointed out that Jauja is as near to the centre of Peru as anywhere could be in such an irregularly shaped country. Like many of his compatriots, he takes an almost mystical pride in his own region but feels no national pride. (To me an understandable sentiment, and one to be much encouraged, globally, for the sake of mankind’s survival.) He claims that Futbol was invented in the Jauja valley, where his ancestors wrapped their enemies’ skulls in their enemies’ skins and kicked them around on cold evenings to keep warm. In pre-Inca times, he said, the peoples of Jauja and Huancayo were more often than not at war, but resentment of Inca domination united them and they have been allies ever since. In 1948 they co-operated to build an airport – men, women and children voluntarily working together, without pay, to improve the region’s communications.
The same. 15 November
Early each morning, while Rachel is still asleep, I enjoy a large glass of herbal tea sold from a barrow that appears in the Plaza just before dawn. This beverage is made from the condensed juices of various plants. Several litre bottles stand on the barrow top and a large kettle boils beside them on a Primus. A finger of your chosen juice (red, yellow, brown or green, or a mixture) is poured into a glass, which is then topped up from the kettle. The result is warming, palatable and presumably nourishing. The green juice, for instance, is extracted from Alf, which Juana considers very nourishing.
Here Wednesday is another market-day and by sunrise scores of stalls were appearing – some carried by barefooted down-and-outs, some balanced on push-carts, some tied to bus roofs, some in taxis, a few in motor-vans which also contained the merchants’ wares. Soon the stalls had been assembled in rows across the wide Plaza, and on the pavements of adjacent streets; and by 7.15, when Rachel and I went to the Mercado for breakfast, most goods were on display.
Mercado breakfasts suit the Murphys’ camelesque life-style. Today we each had several fresh buns with two fried eggs, followed by large plates of pork and maize soup made interesting by arcane bits of entrails the existence of which one had never suspected. All around us cheerful family groups were eating dinner-like meals: rice with pork, chicken with chips, stew with boiled potatoes – or various combinations thereof. They had probably been walking half the night, carrying goods to market. Most ‘restaurant’ stall-holders are helped by their children who prepare vegetables, chop meat, pluck chickens, gut fish. Usually Mamma cooks and Pappa serves up. Nobody fusses too much about hygiene but the end product is almost always delectable.
This is one of the most imposing Mercado buildings we’ve seen and Rachel particularly enjoys the floral aisle: fifty yards of stalls piled high on both sides with carnations, Easter lilies, roses, irises, gladioli and many other unidentifiable blooms. Nowadays, however, not all the food stalls are occupied because of inflation; a sad old man who was having trouble finding buyers for his excellent cheese (we bought the lot) told me that this was the first year he had seen an empty stall at Jauja Mercado – and he has been coming here for sixty-five years!
Wandering across the Plaza, we marvelled at the variety of goods available, despite inflation, but were depressed by the dearth of those beautiful and useful objects for which Andean craftsmen (and women) were once famous. The chicha stalls also offered buckets full of salted pigs’ trotters, and dishes of delicious firm brown trotters’ jelly which we were told is rich in protein; some campesinos are unexpectedly nutrition-conscious. Down a side-street several merchants were selling, for a few soles each, what looked like fifth-hand sex-and-violence comics and soft-porn magazines. These prompted negative thoughts about the value of literacy in the sierra.
At a road junction, a tall, well-built young man, looking comically incongruous in a natty city suit, was standing behind a table piled with new books and delivering an eloquent spiel about their contents. The bright cover suggested a primary school text book; it depicted a super-healthy campesino family of four (!) encircled by fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs. Examining a copy, we saw that it was a well-produced volume (of mysterious provenance) denigrating the indiscriminate use of modern drugs and urging a return to traditional herbal medicines in cases where there is some evidence that these really do have curative properties. So far so good: but Natty-suit’s sales patter was suspicion-raising. Yet his audience of eleven unhealthy-looking campesino women, all with babies on backs, was listening with touching attention, verging on awe, to this odd mixture of quackery and common-sense. At intervals he paused, frowningly studied the group, then suddenly pointed to an individual and diagnosed – ‘Anaemia!’ or ‘Nerves!’ or ‘Rheumatism!’ or ‘Kidney trouble!’ Then he turned to the relevant page and read out a remedy which would cost the patient nothing but the trouble of preparing it. His cure for alcoholism attracted a few extra listeners. He advocated a combination of herbs and fungi, prepared in liquid form and stealthily introduced into the husband’s diet over a period of a week; this would make the patient feel so ghastly after his next binge that he’d go on the wagon forever. Any children attracted by Natty-suit’s ringing tones were at once turned away because he had a lot to say about the Billings method of contraception, which he explained could be used either way– to increase or lessen one’s chances of conception. The book has several rather clever coloured illustrations to help women determine their most fertile days. But as Billings has been proved disastrously unreliable, even in scientifically-minded societies, it seems unlikely to reduce the Andean population explosion. (Which amounts to a one hundred per cent increase in the last thirty-five years.) Natty-suit’s preaching of the Billings Gospel may mean that he represents some religious sect. Eventually five women bought the book, though it costs 240 soles; I hope their husbands approve. When I tried to get into conversation with Natty-suit he brusquely dismissed the gringo; as Rachel noted, he was the only impolite person we’ve met in Jauja.
Animals are sold on the edge of the town where we saw four young mestizo women sitting by the roadside, looking festive in elaborately embroidered bodices, long multi-coloured and multi-layered skirts and brilliant, handwoven shawls. Each had a hairy brown piglet for sale and this porcine quartet was tethered together, happily rooting on a patch of grass. When Rachel stopped to scratch their backs one woman jokingly urged me to buy a cerdo for my hija. We sat beside them and the usual questions were asked; most women register bewildered sympathy on learning that I have only one child. These four already had several children each and thought the Pill a good idea, even if the padres are against it. But three out of the four said their husbands disapproved, many children being needed to make the most of one’s land. Of course you need less if you have fewer children. Yet every good farmer’s instinct is to make his land as productive as possible and hereabouts no couple can do that without several pairs of helping hands and feet. There is also a deep-rooted fear of children dying and aged parents being left uncared for and homeless. It ill-becomes us who are State-pampered to criticise the ‘fecklessness’ of those whose only security, now and for the future, lies in a sufficient number of able-bodied offspring.
We discussed the parlous state of the Peruvian economy, on which these young women had stronger views than might have been expected. Two of the four had gone through secondary school; it’s odd to think that many of the schoolgirls we see swarming through Andean towns, wearing with-it grey school-uniforms and neat ties, will soon be sitting on pavements clad in traditional attire trying to sell piglets or chickens.
As we talked, we were watching two blue-uniformed market-police closely questioning a wretched-looking old man who had been pushing a hand-cart laden with three sacks of rice. He was suspected of collaboration with a racketeer who has been attempting to ‘corner’ the local rice supply. A small crowd of silent, expressionless men gathered to listen to the questioning; one couldn’t guess whose side they were on. Then the alleged racketeer arrived, accompanied by a senior policeman; he was waving a sheaf of dockets in the air and protesting his innocence. He looked like a small-time racketeer: paunchy, greasy, shifty-eyed. After much further argument, he and his ‘accomplice’ were firmly conducted into the nearby high-walled municipal compound-plus-jail. “Do you think he’s guilty?” I asked our friends. They shrugged. “If he is,” said one, “he’ll be rich enough to get out soon. If he isn’t, he may still have to pay to get out. So it doesn’t really matter.” On which rather discouraging note we parted.
All morning Rachel had been seeking a suitable present for Vladimir, whose second birthday this is. The choice was limited. A few stalls were piled with pyramids of violently-coloured boiled sweets in plastic bags which one wouldn’t give one’s worst enemy. Other stalls displayed rows of fragile plastic toys which any normally energetic small child would convert within moments to potential weapons of self-destruction. A crockery stall offered a selection of crudely-painted pottery money-box animals of surpassing ugliness; reluctantly, Rachel bought a llama – the least repellent creature on view. We’d been invited to the party the day we arrived, when Teresa was already in a pleasurable tizzy about it. Birthdays are Great Occasions in Peru and for her this was an excuse to break out and have a beano.
The party began at 6.30 – and so did a thunder storm of truly Andean proportions. Sheets of blue lightning pulsated above the patio and the echoes of the last crashing roar merged into the next. I hurried out to reassure Juana, but our mula was undismayed. Not so however the lonely little piglet, who was having hysterics in a corner and had to be taken to the kitchen and cuddled back to calmness.
There were eleven guests: nine cousins, all wearing coloured paper hats made by Teresa this morning, and ourselves. Lonni, not yet recovered from his recent lapse, appeared once at the door, peered at us morosely for a moment, then vanished. The square, high-ceilinged room had rough, dirty, once-white-washed walls inexplicably decorated with faded framed photographs of long-since-dead members of the Swedish royal family. Two small candles, set on the long, wobbly table, provided the only illumination. (Jauja has an electricity supply of sorts but Teresa can’t afford it.) A rickety iron bed, now being used as a trampoline by the younger children, occupied one end wall. A small dresser held Teresa’s library, mainly Maoist; there was no other furniture. Torrential rain hammered on the tin roof, the earthen floor was uneven and the broken double-door blew open in the gale if not blocked by a large stone. All afternoon Ferdy (Lonni’s eldest) had been tinkering with a primeval record-player which he at last induced to work. A plastic bag of 45 rpm Andean songs and dances was then taken from the dresser cupboard and the boys danced in the cramped space available while the little girls sat po-faced on the bed and Vladimir thoughtfully rubbed segments of an orange into his hair. When we had all toasted the birthday boy in nonalcoholic chicha, flavoured with cinnamon, the feast was solemnly carried through the storm from the kitchen on the far side of the patio. First, stewed cuy with potatoes in a mild curry sauce; then The Cake, mixed by Teresa and baked, not entirely successfully, by a cousin of hers who lives nearby and has an oven. Rachel surreptiously slipped her share to me: not hard in the gloom. Everyone’s helpings were meagre and Teresa herself hardly ate anything. Vladimir’s only presents were from the gringoes and his mother (a plastic train engine). I have grown very fond of Teresa and was saddened by her stricken face when she cut the soggy cake. So much love and thought and money had gone into it …
The night was still and starry as we walked back to the Santa Rosa through empty streets flowing with rain-water. “That was a good party!” said Rachel. “Much more sensible than we have at home.”
The same. 16 November
This morning we found Teresa weeping tears of anger. She had discovered that the cake was a failure because of a major emotional crisis in her cousin’s household while it was being baked. Four years ago Pilar’s handsome, smooth-talking husband migrated to Lima, got himself another woman and left Pilar to provide as best she could for their six children, the eldest being then aged ten. A month ago he reappeared without warning and Pilar, for economic rather than emotional reasons, decided to forgive and forget. But he stayed only a fortnight before deserting again, this time with the beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter of Jauja neighbours – who have put the police on his trail, to no effect. And yesterday morning, while the cake was in the oven, Pilar discovered that she is pregnant again. In such circumstances the Peruvian poor have no redress. If family members did not so loyally support each other in adversity, the level of suffering – mental and physical – would in many cases be intolerable. Generally, marriage (or the lack of it) is taken lightly here. There is complete freedom for irresponsible men and no security for women and children.
Domingo has pronounced his patient cured but advises us not to leave until Saturday to give her time to recover from possible anti-biotic side-effects. He wouldn’t accept any fee, saying that we have had to spend too much on injections. Today we hogged Juana’s mane, and Rachel groomed her to brilliance. Viewing her after this beauty-treatment, Domingo remarked that if we sold her here we could buy a sturdy pony for half the price fetched by an elegant mula. His eyes twinkled when I reacted rather as though he’d suggested I should sell Rachel. Not only do we love Juana, but she – God knows why! – loves us. Even when fodder is not an issue she follows me around Teresa’s corral, rubbing her forehead on my shoulder, and when she hears our voices in the patio she greets us delightedly from beyond the high wall. One can’t exchange animals as though they were mere motor-cars! And Domingo would, I suspect, have been quite shocked had we acted on his suggestion.
The same. 17 November
Tonight our bodies are clean, our hair is shining and even our toenails have been pared: an abnormal state of affairs brought about by immersion in a tributary of the Montaro, some ten miles away. Would that we’d known of this pool’s existence much sooner! This morning Teresa invited us to join herself, Pilar, another cousin (Milla) and all their fifteen children on a laundry expedition. The town’s feeble water supply forces many Jauja families to do the weekly wash as their (and our) ancestors did – in rivers and streams. We all assembled outside Pilar’s house more or less punctually, but then there was a financial crisis: nobody had enough soles for the bus fares. (For adults 40 soles return, for children 10 soles – quite a lot of money.) My offer was gratefully but firmly declined and Pilar’s eldest son went sprinting off to borrow from his paternal grandfather who owns a licensed coca-shop. (The coca-trading scene is at present very confusing; we are sometimes told that under the junta government all coca-selling is illegal.) Meanwhile, five bundles of laundry wrapped in blankets, and an enormous battered tin tub, and the three smallest children were all piled into a cycle-cart and we followed the barefooted cyclist to the bus terminus on the edge of the town, near the municipal cemetery. A funeral had just taken place and groups of subdued campesinos in black petticoats and shawls, or dark ponchos, were gathered outside the imposing fifty-foot gateway through which could be seen much fanciful topiary. Women were selling cerveza and roast pork snacks from handcarts and several men were lying, already ‘stocious’, on mock-marble seats in the shade of a double row of cypresses.
Our ultra-decrepit bus was so thickly covered with red-brown mud that it looked like a prehistoric monster; one expected a long neck and small head to appear at any moment. Its driver looked like everybody’s image of an escaped mass-murderer. A burly man, he had long arms, a square squashed face, virtually no forehead, tiny red-rimmed eyes and a mouthful of jaggedly broken black teeth. In practice, however, he was a splendid character who went to great trouble to secure the laundry and tub on an already over-loaded roof, said the children could travel free because times are so hard and drove with Vladimir on his knee to ease the congestion.
The laundry pools are near a village, on the flat green floor of a fertile valley all criss-crossed with lines of swaying eucalyptus and surrounded by chunky grey-blue mountains. Here the tributary flows clear and swift. But in three places, not far apart, it suddenly quietens and spreads to form knee-deep pools with convenient boulders on which even the thickest blankets dry astonishingly quickly. “No wonder we get so thirsty in the Andes,” commented Rachel.
Although washing clothes is not among my favourite occupations I wouldn’t mind using this sort of ‘launderette’ once a week. All but the toddlers set to, rubbing and rinsing and stamping and wringing – hard work under the hot sun and I felt sorry for Milla, who is seven months pregnant. But her eldest son, an endearing boy of thirteen, quietly saw to it that she was spared the most strenuous tasks. We were much impressed by Pilar. Misfortune has not extinguished her sense of humour and she is a decisive disciplinarian – but also patient and loving – with her happy, affectionate brood on whom the family traumas have so far left no visible mark. Milla, Pilar’s eldest sister, in fact leads an even grimmer life, coping with a loutishly alcoholic husband, eight children (one a mongol) and an almost defunct bakery-cum-grocery shop.
During mid-afternoon the sky abruptly clouded over, as has been the weather pattern throughout the past week. Theoretically this is the rainy season but it’s getting off to an uncertain start. The cruel irregularity of the Andean rain-fall explains why the Indians’ religion, from pre-Inca times to the present, has centred its main rituals on the weather. Too much rain can sweep away the precious top-soil, containing next year’s food-supply, and wreck homes, barns, flocks, tracks. Too little rain can bring about the misery we saw further north and cause whole regions to be abandoned. When the Indians chant as they plant, they are not simply being light-hearted but are attempting to propitiate those divine agencies which control the weather.
Tomorrow we’ll be back on the trail and this evening we consulted Domingo – an exceptional Peruvian, who can map-read – about our route to Cuzco. I was particularly anxious to find a redura by-passing Huancayo (pop. 260,000), which by Andean standards is a city. But Domingo said, “It is far from Cajamarca and your mula is getting tired. You must keep her on the easiest road. She is not fit now for difficult paths where you cannot get her good food.”