A book that ends on a note of gratefulness cannot very well leave unthanked those who made this trip possible, starting of course with Angélica, to whom this book is dedicated and who not only had to suffer through all my hallucinations and detours during the voyage itself but the far worse madness of the writing process.
It goes almost without saying that all of the men and women whose names are mentioned in the preceding pages contributed significantly to our quest in the North. But of what use would it be to list all over again each and every one of them, how they took us into their homes and offices and workshops, how they showered us with gifts and meals and stories?
I do need, however, to briefly recognize those who helped me in ways that went far beyond the call of duty. The shape of this trip owes much to Sergio Bitar, who spent many hours phoning, helping me hatch plans, and I am only sorry that he was unable to join us in Antofagasta. Nor should I forget the efforts of Natalia Varela, who organized most of my program in Iquique, Pisagua, and Arica. As to Lautaro Núñez, he not only provided the wisdom and camaraderie that are attested to in many chapters of this tome, but also opened many doors in his native Iquique. Nor would Arica have afforded me the wonderful guidance of Calogero Santoro had Lautaro not arranged that particular link with his disciple and collaborator. Mario Pino was particularly gracious before, during, and after my visit to Monte Verde; Carolina Agüero provided us with overwhelming (and much needed) hospitality and intelligence in San Pedro de Atacama; Senén Durán was exceptionally generous with his time and his knowledge; and Ivor Ostoijic and his wife went out of their way to make us feel at home in the city where Angélica’s ancestors had disembarked. Thanks also to Pelao Gavilán for the many meals he cooked for us at El Vagón—particularly the last one. And of course Jinny—thank you for allowing me into your life and Freddy’s. And Miguel Roth and Jenny under the stars and there’s Hernán Rivera Letelier and his wife, Mari, and … but I am on my way to cataloguing the whole roster, I seem to be breaking my promise to spare readers a prolonged roll call.
Better then that I should now highlight some of those whose names were not mentioned in Desert Memories and who nevertheless were crucial to the success of this excursion. Gloria Figueroa and her staff at the Hotel Orly gave us the support and friendliness we have come to expect each time we stay at that extraordinary hotel in Santiago. And Jin Auh, my friend who represents me at the Wylie Agency, offered me invaluable support, both when defining the voyage and over the months it took to finish the manuscript during a time that could not have been easy for her. Jennifer Prather, my assistant, unflinchingly answered my needs for information and juggled schedules and bibliographies with equal measures of goodwill and cheerfulness. And the Duke University library did its habitually competent job in furnishing the books and texts I required to seek out the origins of just about everything on this planet. And I was privileged to have the support and enthusiasm of Elizabeth Newhouse and Larry Porges at National Geographic, with special recognition and indebtedness to my editor, John Paine, who carefully read the manuscript and made it so much better with his intelligent suggestions.
But a pilgrimage such as this one should not end without a final story, a story that is also, in its way, an acknowledgment.
The last night of my journey, the night of Sunday, May 26, 2002, just before I took the plane back to Santiago, I visited Don Fortunato Manzano Manzano at his home in the barrio of San José in Arica.
I had gone to see him because he is a yatiri, an Aymara shaman who was born in the highlands of the Andes, very close to where Chile meets Bolivia and Peru, and now spends most of his time in Arica tending to the souls and bodies of the many Indian inhabitants of the city. I had imagined, when first planning the trip, that it would be particularly appropriate to meet, at the very end of my wanderings in the desert, one Chilean who was descended from its original inhabitants, someone who still claimed to be the intermediary between heaven and Earth, the altiplano and the sea, the gods above and the gods below. A man whose primary language was not Spanish (and certainly not English), but the Aymara that had been spoken in these lands before the conquistadores came and that had survived all the subsequent invasions and humiliations. I nursed the vague idea that perhaps something might be revealed to me in that encounter, if I placed it at the very end of my voyage.
It turned out that I was unable to spend as much time with Don Fortunato as I would have liked. I got lost in the labyrinth of streets of the barrio made up almost entirely of Aymara Indians, and did not connect with him till several frustrating hours had gone by. Indeed I had begun to wonder, as I roamed and rambled and interrogated neighbors and residents, whether his extremely nebulous instructions on how to find his house had not been a sort of test, a way in which he was determining whether I wished to contact him enough to persevere. But the real reason I could not have a longer conversation with him once I did manage to stumble on his abode was that my body had suffered a back spasm at the very instant the day before when I had finished unloading our bags from the car at our hotel in Arica. My back has given me trouble for years and this was not the first time that, at the end of a prolonged trip—and in this case I had just driven thousands of miles—as soon as my muscles begin to relax, I am racked with pain.
Angélica had requested that I cancel all my Arica engagements and spend our last day on this journey resting with her at the luxuriously verdant Azapa Inn. Hadn’t we had enough of dust and roads? Didn’t I need to take care of my health? But I left her there, at the very entrance to the oasis stretching many miles into the faraway mountains, enjoying the lush greenery and flowers and hum of birds that would rival any Garden of Eden anywhere, and set out to meet the mummies and the giant figures that I fiercely knew I had to see. So I admired the calm tender immobility of the mummies even if I could not rest myself, I communed with those dynamic gods up on the hills striding into eternity even though I might be limping, keeping my appointment with the first migrants who had happened upon these lands ten thousand years ago.
My ache and paralysis and tiptoe movements making me even more determined as the day wore on, that I should also meet at least one descendant of those migrants, those people who had made this desert their home, I would shake the hand of Don Fortunato Manzano Manzano even if it killed me.
Our meeting was not going to kill me.
We talk about many things with the yatiri, one more exploration of how the culture of the Andes intersects with our contemporary world and sends us messages that we would do well to heed and—and I would love to go on, I really would, but after a while I cannot stand the pain and I rise gingerly from the sofa and tell Don Fortunato that I must unfortunately leave, the day has been far too long, the journey even longer.
“You cannot go,” he says, “not before I give you something for your back,” and disappears into the arcane rear of the house from where feminine voices have come floating and the echo of a door that opens and closes, opens and closes. And then he reemerges with a potion in his hand, a sort of balm that smells of eucalyptus and other less definable aromas, herbs from the altiplano, the yatiri says, and orders me to lie down on the sofa and undress so my back is exposed to his touch.
I close my eyes.
“Do you believe in Aymara medicine?” his voice asks.
I tell him the truth. Yes and no. I believe and do not believe.
Behind me and above me I hear him mutter words to God and the Virgin in Spanish and after making the cross—I can feel the faint rustle made by the wind of his fingers in the air—he recites something in Aymara, and then deeply applies the salve, burns it briefly into my back, where the pain is most intense. He rubs for not more than a minute. He says this part is very cold and when I tell him that in the States ice is used to soothe a tense muscle, he snorts and commands me to keep the afflicted area as warm as I possibly can and not to wash the oil off.
And it works, his concern for me, that care from a stranger.
It works, not just that evening and the next day. In all the days that followed, I have not had one new incident of back spasm, not even one night or dawn of distress since Don Fortunato Manzano Manzano pressed his fingers into my bones in Arica six months ago.
The last gift from the desert. That I bear in my very body. The balm that an Aymara healer had received from his father, perhaps from his mother, a form of wisdom that had been transmitted down and down from who knows how many generations back and back, back and back to the very limits of human time, a last gift from those men and women and, yes, children, who had first walked America, danced America, loved this land.
They must have known something about easing pain.
They must have known something about defeating death in the desert.