I walked from the Cathedral (the mummy on view is not that of Francisco Pizarro: his skeleton has recently been found in a lead box in the crypt) to the University Park, and then made a circuit of the city, finally stopping at the Plaza Bolognesi where I sat and reflected on the melodrama of General Bolognesi's monument. It was the most bizarre statue I had seen so far. It was eighty feet high, and at its front was a copy of the Winged Victory; soldiers marched on its panels, and on one ledge was the statue of a man falling from a horse - the horse was there, life-sized, twisted onto its side. Another detachment of soldiers reconnoitred another ledge with drawn swords; eagles, wreaths and cannons in marble and bronze lifted the column higher, and still it rose, with a large grieving woman pressing her body against an upper pillar; more rifles, more flags, more troops - battles on all sides -defeat here, victory there - and higher up two marble nymphs with wings soared, their feet sticking into the air, their wings out, their arms held high and reaching towards the top where Bolognesi himself, in bronze, rushes forward, a pistol in one hand, a flag in the other, facing the wide avenue, the dance halls, the screaming children, the overloaded buses.
'Want to buy some pictures?'
It was a Peruvian, with an old photograph album: tin-miners, old cars, snow-drifts, churches, trains. They were eighty years old. I bought two old train photographs, a dollar apiece, and we talked.
'You will believe me, I hope, if I tell you I have spent some years in your country,' he said in Spanish. He was very ragged and wore a felt hat. 'I lived in Washington, D.C.'
'How did you like it?'
'I should never have left. Lima is no place to live.' He reached into his rags and took out a tattered piece of paper. It was a coupon stating that he had filed a tax-return in 1976. 'I am fully paid up,' he said. 'They will let me back if I choose to go.'
'Why don't you choose to go?'
'I got into trouble here not long ago. There was a man who was drinking too much. He wanted to fight me. So I fought him. I cannot go anywhere. I have to appear in court. But who knows when they will hear the case?'
'You will be all right,' I said. 'After the trial, you can go back to Washington.'
'No,' he said. He thought a moment, moved his lips as if practising a phrase and then said in English, 'I'm flat broke. Like my country.'
17
THE TRAIN TO MACHU PICCHU
Peru is the poorest country in South America. Peru is also the country most visited by tourists. The two facts are related; even the dimmest tourist can count in Spanish - low numbers especially trip off his tongue- and he knows that Peru's gigantic ruins and threadbare currency are a bargain. The student I had met in Huancayo was right: there were some Quechua Indians on the plane to Cuzco, but the others were all tourists. They had arrived in Lima the day before and had been whisked around the city. In their hotel was a schedule: '4:00 am - Wake-Up Call! 4:45 am - Luggage in Corridor! 5:00 -Breakfast! 5:30- Meet in Lobby! . . .' At eight in the morning, some men with shaving cream still stuck to their earlobes, they arrived in Cuzco and fought their way past the Indians (who carried tin pots and greasy bundles of food and lanterns, much as they had on the train) to a waiting bus, congratulating themselves on the cheapness of the place. They are unaware that it is almost axiomatic that air travel has wished tourists on only the most moth-eaten countries in the world: tourism, never more energetically pursued than in static societies, is usually the mobile rich making a blind blundering visitation on the inert poor.
Let Observation with extensive view Survey Mankind, from China to Peru; Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife, And watch the busy scenes of crouded Life.
The result is frequently maddening to both parties.
The visitors wore badges, Samba South America; the badges also served as name-tags. At this early hour in the thin grey air and high altitude drizzle, the haggard faces did not match the tittupping names: Hildy Wicker, Bert and Elvera Howie, Charles P. Clapp, Morrie Upbraid, the Prells, the Goodchucks, Bernie Khoosh, the Avatarians, Jack Hammerman, Nick and Lurleen Poznan, Harold and Winnie Casey, the Lewgards, Wally demons, and little old Merry Mackworth. They were a certain age; they had humps and braces and wooden legs and two walked with crutches - amazing to see this performance in the high Andes - and none looked well. What with the heat in Lima and the cold here, the delays, the shuffling up and down stairs - and they had yet to climb the vertical Inca staircases ('I don't know which is worse, going up or going down') - they were suffering. You had to admire them, because in two days they would be on the same plane flying back to Lima, waking again at four in the morning, and that day arriving in another godawful place like Guayaquil or Cali.
The arrival in Cuzco made me feel wobbly and I felt much worse after lunch. But I decided not to give in to altitude sickness. Feeling slightly sea-sick, a combination of nausea and dizziness, I stumbled around town. The place had a dark brown look of isolation, and there were still signs of the earthquake that had hit it thirty years ago. Virtually the only buildings that did not fall down were the outlying Inca forts and temples, which are indestructible. Indians were selling alpaca sweaters, rugs, ponchos and knitted caps on every street corner. The Indians have a broadbased look, like chess pieces, particularly the women, who wear three skirts, one over the other, and heavy knee-socks; they are stocky and squat and you think, looking at them, that they would be impossible to tip over. They are warmly dressed because they are such expert knitters and get the raw material - the alpaca wool - from their own domestic animals. Only the hat is not woven; one seldom sees an Indian without a hat, usually of raw felt. For the past few weeks I had been asking people why the Indians were so fond of these hats; the explanations were neither ingenious nor interesting and none really explained why European hats were popular. I heard two tourists remarking on this subject in Cuzco.
'I still don't understand about those hats,' said the first man.
'It's like postage stamps, isn't it?'
'Is it?'
'Sure. Everybody licks postage stamps, but there has never been a study to determine if it's harmful to your health. It's the same thing with those hats.'
For the first time since leaving the United States on this aimless trip I saw other aimless travellers. I had been passing myself off as a teacher; they called themselves students. There were advantages in being a student: student fares, student rates, student hostels, student entry fees. Great hairy middle-aged buffoons complained at ticket counters and shouted, 'Look, I'm a student! Do me a favour! He doesn't believe I'm a fucking student. Hey -' They were cut-priced tourists, idlers, vagabonds, freebooters, who had gravitated to this impoverished place because they wanted to save money. Their conversation was predictable and was wholly concerned with prices, the exchange rate, the cheapest hotel, the cheapest bus, how someone ('Was he a gringo?') got a meal for fifteen cents, or an alpaca sweater for a dollar or bunked with some Aymara Indians in a benighted village. They were Americans, but they were also Dutch, German, French, British and Scandinavian; they spoke the same language, always money. Their boast was always how long they had managed to hang on here in the Peruvian Andes and beat the system.
To an Indian selling Chiclets (it was either sweaters or Chiclets) such travellers could be demoralizing. Unemployment was very high in Peru, jobs were scarce, streets were lined with beggars and homeless people. How, then, to account for these thousands of poncho-wearing foreigners who lounged around and lived well but had no visible means of support? The tourists were easy to understand; they came, they went, they made no fuss. But the rucksack brigade were the cause of alarm and despondency.