Authors: Bruce Chatwin
In Patagonia (14 page)
âAnd what do you keep in there?' I asked.
âAagh! The bugger died on me.'
Curled in the bottom of the cage lay the dried-up skeleton of a thistle.
35
G
OING DOWN to Comodoro Rivadavia I passed through a desert of black stones and came to Sarmiento. It was another dusty grid of metal buildings, lying on a strip of arable land between the fizzling turquoise Lake Musters and the slime-green Lake Colhué-Huapi.
OING DOWN to Comodoro Rivadavia I passed through a desert of black stones and came to Sarmiento. It was another dusty grid of metal buildings, lying on a strip of arable land between the fizzling turquoise Lake Musters and the slime-green Lake Colhué-Huapi.
I walked out of town to the petrified forest. Wind pumps whirled insanely. A steel-blue heron lay paralysed under an electric cable. A dribble of blood ran along its beak. The tongue was missing. The trunks of extinct monkey-puzzles were broken clean as if in a sawmill.
A lot of Boers lived round Sarmiento, and met up at the Hotel Orroz for lunch. Their names were Venter, Visser, Vorster, Kruger, Norval, Eloff, Botha and de Bruynâall descendants of hard-line Afrikaners who emigrated to Patagonia in 1903, sickened by the Union Jack. They lived in fear of the Lord, celebrated Dingaan's Day and took oaths on the Dutch Reformed Bible. They did not marry outsiders and their daughters had to go to the kitchen if a Latin entered the house. Many went back to South Africa when Dr Malan came to power.
But the town's most distinguished citizen was the Lithuanian, Casimir SlapeliÄ. Fifty years ago he found the dinosaur in the barranca. Now, toothless, hairless and in his middle eighties, he was one of the oldest flying pilots in the world. Each morning he put on his white canvas flying-suit, pottered down to the Aero Club in his Moskva and hurled himself and his antique monoplane to the gales. The risk merely increased his appetite for life.
The wind had polished his nose and coloured it pale lilac. I found him at lunch ladling the bortsch into the ivory orb of his head. He had made his room cheerful, in the Baltic way, with flowered curtains, geraniums, diplomas for stunt flying and a signed photograph of Neil Armstrong. All his books were in Lithuanian, the aristocrat of Indo-European languages, and concerned his country's plans for independence.
His wife had died and he had adopted a young Indian couple, out of kindness and for company. The girl sat against the white wall, suckling her baby, devouring visitors with mica-shining eyes.
Casimir SlapeliÄ was a prodigy. Once he had tried to be a bird man. Now he would like to go to the Moon.
âBut I will fly you in the plane,' he said.
âPerhaps,' I said.
âI will fly you over the Painted Desert.'
It was blowing half a hurricane. Driving in the Moskva I noticed that his legs, bowed to a pair of perfect arcs, had little control over the foot-pedals.
âWe'd better not go in the plane,' I said.
âThen I shall take you to my sister. She has a collection of Indian arrow heads.'
We drove to a concrete bungalow and walked through a garden to the back door. A white phallus reared among his sister's marigolds.
âThe tibia of a dinosaur,' said Casimir SlapeliÄ.
The sister had a leathery face of great age. She was one of a tight group of Sarmiento ladies, the archaeologists. They were not proper archaeologists but collectors of antiquities. They scoured caves, killing-sites, and lake shores for the relics of ancient hunters. Each had her network of peons who brought objects in from the camp. The âprofessionals' cursed them as looters.
That afternoon the Baltic exile was âat home' to a Welshwoman. The visitor watched her unworthy competitor unwrap her treasures from white tissue, but her envious eyes did not accord with her patronizing remarks.
Casimir SlapeliÄ's sister knew how to feed her rival's jealousy. She displayed cards covered with black velvet mounted with arrow heads, bright as jewels, and so arranged that they looked like tropical fish. Her fingers played over their faceted surfaces. There were flat knives of pink and green flint; boleadora stones; a blue idol, and some arrows fletched with eagle feathers.
âBut my collection is better,' the Welshwoman said.
âBigger but less beautiful,' said the Lithuanian.
âI shall sell mine to the Presidenta and it will go to the National Museum.'
âIf she'll buy it,' said the older woman.
Casimir SlapeliÄ was bored. We went out into the garden.
âDead men's things,' he said. âI do not like.'
âNor do I.'
âWhat shall we see now?'
'The Boers.'
âThe Boers are difficult but we'll try.'
We drove to the east side of town where the Boers had their bungalows. SlapeliÄ knocked on one and the whole family came out into the yard, stared with set faces at the Englishman, and didn't say a word. He called on another and the door slammed. He found the Welsh husband of a Boer woman who would talk but knew little. And then he found a fleshy Boer woman who leaned over her red garden gate and looked fierce. She also would talk, but for money and in the presence of her lawyer.
âNot very friendly,' I said.
âThey are Boers,' said Casimir SlapeliÄ.
36
A
T COMODORO RIVADAVIA I called on Father Manuel Palacios, the comprehensive genius of the South. He lived in the Salesian College, a hulk of concrete, lurking between the cliff and the sea. The storm kicked up clouds of dust, and flares from the oil rigs lit them a lurid orange.
T COMODORO RIVADAVIA I called on Father Manuel Palacios, the comprehensive genius of the South. He lived in the Salesian College, a hulk of concrete, lurking between the cliff and the sea. The storm kicked up clouds of dust, and flares from the oil rigs lit them a lurid orange.
A priest sheltered in the doorway of the chapel, chatting to two boys. He had the prettiest wreath of grey curls. Gusts ripped at his soutane and uncovered his porcelain-white, legs.
âWhere can I find Father Palacios?'
His unwrinkled forehead puckered. He looked concemed.
âYou can't.'
âHe lives here?'
âBut doesn't receive visitors. He is working. Day and night he works. Besides, he is recovering from an operation. Cancer,' he whispered. âHe has so little time.'
He outlined the accomplishments of the Patagonian polymath. Father Palacios was Doctor of Theology, of Anthropological Theory and Archaeology. He was a marine biologist, zoologist, engineer, physicist, geologist, agronomist, mathematician, geneticist, and taxidermist. He spoke four European languages and six Indian ones. He was writing a general history of the Salesian Order and a treatise on biblical prophecies of the New World.
âBut what to do with this writing?' the father tittered. âWhat responsibility placed on our shoulders! How to protect this treasure? How to publish?'
He clicked his tongue.
âWhy do you want to see him?'
âI understand he's an expert on the Indians.'
âExpert? He
is
an Indian! Well, I shall lead you to him, but I can't promise he will see you.'
is
an Indian! Well, I shall lead you to him, but I can't promise he will see you.'
Undeterred by the dust-storm, the polymath sat in a grove of tamarisks, immersed in a North American manual of applied engineering. He wore a blue beret and a baggy grey suit. The tortoise folds of his neck craned from a celluloid collar. He offered me his footstool and begged me sit at his feet. He waved his colleague to a chair that someone had rescued too late from a bonfire, and consulted a silver watch.
âI have half an hour at your disposal in which to outline the prehistory of Patagonia.'
Father Palacios flooded me with information: statistics, radio-carbon dates, migrations of men and animals, marine regressions, upheavals of the Andes or the appearance of new artefacts. Possessed of a photographic memory he could describe in detail every Indian rock-painting of the South: â... in the Second Petrified Forest, there is a unique representation of a mylodon ... at Rfo Pinturas you will find a rodeo of palaeo-llamas, the men are wearing phallic caps ... a second fresco depicts the use of a decoy as described by Pigafetta ... at Lago Posadas there is a mortal combat between a macrauchenia and a smilodon ...'
I took careful notes. The father, his soutane flapping, stood by the charred remains of the chair.
âQué inteligencia!'
he said.
âOh Padre! Qué sabidurÃa!'
he said.
âOh Padre! Qué sabidurÃa!'
Father Palacios smiled and continued. I noticed, though, that he was no longer talking to me. Instead, gazing to heaven, he addressed his monologue to the lowering clouds.
âO Patagonia!' he cried. âYou do not yield your secrets to fools. Experts come from Buenos Aires, from North America even. What do they know? One can but marvel at their incompetence. Not one palaeontologist has yet unearthed the bones of the unicorn.'
âThe unicorn?'
âPrecisely, the unicorn. The Patagonian unicorn was con temporary with the extinct megafauna of the Late Pleistocene. The last unicorns were hunted to extinction by man in the fifth or sixth millennium B.C. At Lago Posadas you will find two paintings of unicorns. One holds its horn erect as in Psalm 29: “My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn”. The other is about to impale a hunter and stamps the pampas, as described in the Book of Job.' (In Job 38:21 it is the horse that
âpaweth the valley',
while in verses 9-10 the unicorn is found unfit to haul a plough.)
âpaweth the valley',
while in verses 9-10 the unicorn is found unfit to haul a plough.)
The lecture melted into a dream voyage. Marquesans beached their canoes in the fjords of Southern Chile, scaled the Andes, settled by Lake Musters and merged with the indigenous population. Father Palacios described his own discovery, in Tierra del Fuego, the sculpture of a headless woman, life size and smothered in red ochre.
âOh Dios! Que conocimientos!'
âAnd you have photographs?' I asked.
âCertainly, I have photographs,' he smiled again, âbut they are not for publication. And now let me ask you a question. Upon which continent did the human species emerge?'
âAfrica.'
âFalse! Totally false! Here in Patagonia, sentient beings in the Tertiary witnessed the formation of the Andes. An ancestor of man lived in Tierra del Fuego before the African australopithecines. Furthermore,' he added casually, âthe last one was seen in 1928.'
âGenio!'
Father Palacios then outlined the story (which he has since published in a learned journal) of the Yoshil:
The Yoshil (an Indian name) wasâand perhaps still isâa tail-less protohominid, with lichenous hair of a yellowish green colour. It stood about eighty centimetres high, walked on two feet and lived in the territory of the Haush. It always went armed with a stone or short club. By day it lived in the
ñire
trees
(Notofagus antarctica)
but at night it would warm itself by the fire of a lonely hunter. The Yoshil was probably vegetarian and fed on wild fruits, fungi, and the white grubs that are the staple of the Magellanic woodpecker.
ñire
trees
(Notofagus antarctica)
but at night it would warm itself by the fire of a lonely hunter. The Yoshil was probably vegetarian and fed on wild fruits, fungi, and the white grubs that are the staple of the Magellanic woodpecker.
The first modern account of the Yoshil was that of the Haush hunter, Yioi:molke, who saw one while hunting cormorants at Caleta Yrigoyen in 1886; the last positive sighting was in 1918 by the hunter Pai:men. But the most distressing encounter was that of the Indian, Paka, Father Palacios's informant, some time during the Great War.
Paka was camping alone in the forest when a Yoshil appeared at the fire. He knew of its dangerous reputation, reached for his bow, but the animal bounded for safety. Paka thought he'd be murdered if he slept and lay down with his weapon at the ready. The Yoshil approached. He fired and heard a scream of pain. In the morning he found the corpse nearby. To his horror, the animal had the same features as his brother, who had recently died. He dug a tomb, uncertain if he was burying a Yoshil, or reburying his brother.
âI have decided,' Father Palacios concluded, âto name the creature
Fuegopithecus Pakensis.
The name, of course, is provisional. The Yoshil may be the same species as the other Patagonian protohominid,
Homunculus Harringtoni,
from Chubut. Only skeletal material will clarify the issue.'
Fuegopithecus Pakensis.
The name, of course, is provisional. The Yoshil may be the same species as the other Patagonian protohominid,
Homunculus Harringtoni,
from Chubut. Only skeletal material will clarify the issue.'
âDios! Qué ciencia!'
âAnd now,' he said, âI think we have finished our survey,' and buried himself in his book.
I left, gasping with wonder at the inspiration of the autodidact.
âA genius,' breathed my companion, as we brushed through the tamarisks towards the college buildings.
âTell me, am I wrong or is the college shut?'
âShut,' he said. âShut. Various problems.'
The walls were covered with scarlet fists and the pronouncements of some proletarian front.
âThe boys,' he shook his head. âThe boys.'
The chapel bell clanked.
âAnd now I must go to Mass,' he said. âTell me, brother, which religion have you?'
âProtestant.'
âDifferent road,' he sighed. âSame Divinity.
Adiós, HermanÅ.'
Adiós, HermanÅ.'
37
I
NOW had two reasons to head back to the Cordillera: to see Charley Milward's old sheep-station at Valle Huemeules and to find Father Palacios's unicorn. I took a bus to Perito Moreno and got there in a dust-storm. The restaurant was owned by an Arab, who served lentils and radishes and kept a sprig of mint on the bar to remind him of a home he had not seen. I asked him about traffic going north. He shook his head.
NOW had two reasons to head back to the Cordillera: to see Charley Milward's old sheep-station at Valle Huemeules and to find Father Palacios's unicorn. I took a bus to Perito Moreno and got there in a dust-storm. The restaurant was owned by an Arab, who served lentils and radishes and kept a sprig of mint on the bar to remind him of a home he had not seen. I asked him about traffic going north. He shook his head.
âA few Chilean trucks, maybe, but very very few.'
The distance to Valle Huemeules was over a hundred miles but I decided to risk it. At the edge of town someone had written âPerón=Gorilla' in blue paint on an abandoned police post. Nearby was a pile of gin bottles, a memorial to a dead trucker; his friends chucked on a bottle whenever they passed. I walked two hours, five hours, ten hours, and no truck. My notebook conveys something of the mood:
Walked all day and the next day. The road straight, grey, dusty, and trafficless. The wind relentless, heading you off. Sometimes you heard a truck, you knew for certain it was a truck, but it was the wind. Or the noise of gears changing down, but that also was the wind. Sometimes the wind sounded like an unloaded truck banging over a bridge. Even if a truck had come up behind you wouldn't have heard it. And even if you'd been downwind, the wind would have drowned the engine. The one noise you did hear was a guanaco. A noise like a baby trying to cry and sneeze at once. You saw him a hundred yards off, a single male, bigger and more graceful than a llama, with his orange coat and white upstanding tail. Guanacos are shy animals, you were told, but this one was mad for you. And when you could walk no more and laid out your sleeping bag, he was there gurgling and snivelling and keeping the same distance. In the morning he was right up close, but the shock of you getting out of your skin was too much for him. That was the end of a friendship and you watched him bounding away over a thorn bush like a galleon in a following sea.
Next day hotter and windier than before. The hot blasts knocked you back, sucked at your legs, pressed on your shoulders. The road beginning and ending in a grey mirage. You'd see a dust-devil behind and, though you knew now never to hope for a truck, you thought it was a truck. Or there'd be black specks coming closer, and you stopped, sat down and waited, but the specks walked off sideways and you realized they were sheep.
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