They had several effects in Peru. For one thing, they kept the crime rate down. They did not carry much money, but what they did have they protected ferociously. The Peruvian pickpockets or street thieves who made the mistake of trying to rob one of these travellers always came out worse in the fight that inevitably ensued. A number of times in and around Cuzco I heard a scream and saw an infuriated Dutchman or a maddened American with a Peruvian by the throat. The mistake the Peruvian made was in thinking that these people were solitary-travellers; in fact, they were like tribesmen - they had friends who came to the rescue. It was not hard to rob me, or to mug Merry Mack-worth; but the bearded lout with a poncho over his California Is For Lovers tee-shirt, and the knapsack and only his busfare back to Lima, was a different story altogether; he was tough, and he was not afraid to hit back.
They also kept the prices down. They did not tip or buy anything that was very expensive. They haggled in the market like the Peruvians themselves, buying tomatoes or fruit at the going rate and not paying a centavo more than they had to. Their very presence in a place indicated that there was cheap food and lodging to be had: they kept to one district in Lima, they stayed away from Huancayo, they were numerous in Cuzco. The tourist will pay any price, if forced to: he does not plan to stay long. These other travellers were unshakable skinflints; they had no marked effect on Peru, they certainly did not improve it, but perhaps this was better than a bungling attempt to colonize it with expensive hotels. The argument that five-star hotels benefit a country by producing employment is a silly and even subversive one - it turns nationals into waiters and scullery maids, and that is about all.
The rucksack brigade was very ruin-conscious. It was for many of them one of the justifications of Cuzco. I wondered what it was about the ruins that attracted them. They were not archaeologists and, despite their protestations to the contrary, they were not students either. From their conversations I concluded that they felt a spiritual affinity with the sun-worshipping Incas, and a kind of social affinity -this was almost pure fakery - with the Indians. The Indians made baskets and pots and wove cloth; these were the enthusiasms, either real or imagined, of their well-wishers. In one respect were they un-Indian: they did not go to church. Not only did they not go to mass - all the Indians did so - but also they did not tour the Catholic convents, the cloisters or chapels. The cloisters could be interesting. Apart from the paintings and statues there were instruments of flagellation, whips, iron lashes, the cat, bracelets of barbed wire and steel headbands that had been worn by Santa Catalina and Rose of Lima in painful and bloody mortification (the band was tightened until it drew blood). But the freebooters and tough, bearded students did not go to the cloisters. They preferred to walk six dizzying miles to see the Fortress of Sacsa-huaman - a fort designed to imitate the shape of a puma's jaws - or the Amphitheatre of Qengo with its dark interior altars ('Far out'), or the bubbling spring at the shrine of Tambo Machay farther up the road. The tourists went by bus; these other people used the Inca road, a precipitous path along the mountains north of Cuzco. They come not to reflect on the Spaniards but to live among the remnants of the Incas. It is to them still an Inca city. The Plaza de Armas is not the site of two magnificent churches, but the spot where during 'Corpse Carrying Month' the Incas displayed the mummies they hauled out of the Temple of the Sun. It is no use pointing out that there is no Temple of the Sun in the plaza, for the stones are there: they were incorporated into the Church of Santo Domingo. Every Spanish building wa.s once an Inca building, the roads Inca walkways, the grand houses Inca palaces.
I had neither a tourist badge nor a rucksack. I trod a narrow implausible line between the two and found myself in the company of Mexicans, who considered themselves tourists but who were taken for hippies or, even worse, for Peruvians. 'Take a good look, Paul,' a Mexican said to me one evening. 'Do I look like a Peruvian?'
'Absolutely not,' I said.
'What is wrong with these people? I am in Cuzco for two days and they stop me in the street and ask me directions! I will tell you one thing - two more days and I am back in Mexico. It may be dirty, but it is not dirty like this.'
The next day, just before nightfall, the Mexicans and I were taking a short cut through some back streets in Cuzco and found ourselves in a damp shadowy courtyard. There were no lights in the low buildings; some laundry hung on a rope. A limping puppy made its way to a puddle and drank, a large torn turkey chortled at us, and two Indian women sat on a bench, drinking maize beer out of plastic beakers.
'I hear music,' said one Mexican. His face lit up, and he went closer to the sound: a dark doorway at the side of the courtyard. He entered, but a moment later he hurried out. 'It is a typical bar.' 'Shall we go in?' I said.
There are no seats,' he said. He seemed anxious to leave. 'I will have my beer at the hotel.'
Off they went, the three Mexicans. I entered the bar, and I understood their hurry. The bar was almost underground; it had a low ceiling and was lighted by six sooty lanterns. In this lantern light I could see ragged Indians, grinning drunkenly and guzzling maize beer from dented tankards. The bar was shaped like a trough. At one end an old man and a very small boy were playing stringed instruments; the boy was singing sweetly in Quechua. At the other end of the trough, a fat Indian woman was frying meat over a log fire - the smoke circled in the room. She cooked with her hands, throwing the meat in, turning it with her hands, picking it up to examine it, then taking a cooked hunk in each hand and carrying it to a plate. An infant crawled near the fire; I had had my look, but before I could leave I noticed three men beckoning to me.
'Here is a seat,' said one in Spanish, and he made room on the bench. That man was drinking maize beer. He urged me to try some. I said I had had some in Huancayo. It was different here, he said. But it did not taste any different to me. It was the same sour taste of rancid porridge.
'It is like African beer,'I said.
'No!' he cried. 'This is good stuff.'
I ordered a regular beer and introduced myself, privately justifying the lie that I was a teacher by telling myself that it was easier to explain what a teacher teaches than what a writer writes. Writing is an impossible profession to describe. And even when the disclosure does not produce bewilderment, it causes exaggerated respect and tends to make conversations into interviews. A geography teacher has a harmless excuse for being practically anywhere.
They were, they said, from the Ministry of Works. Gustavo and Abelardo were architects, and the third, whose name was Napoleon Prentice ('It is a good English name, but I cannot speak English') was a civil engineer. The jobs sounded impressive, but the men were poorly dressed and looked rather gloomy.
'You may not speak English,' I said to Napoleon, 'but I am sure your Quechua is better than mine.'
'I cannot speak Quechua,' said Napoleon.
Gustavo said, 'I know a few words, but that is all. You will have no trouble learning it. It is just like English.'
'Quechua is like English?'
The grammar is exactly the same. For example, in Spanish we say "a book red", but in Quechua they say "a red book". Like English. Go ahead, say it.'
'Red book,' I said in English.
They smiled at the phrase, an English stutter in this sonorous Spanish conversation.
Gustavo said, 'You will have no trouble with Quechua.'
They were not from Cuzco. They were, all three, from Lima. They had been sent here by their ministry to design a housing scheme at Quillabamba, beyond Machu Picchu, on the Urubamba River. Abelardo had just arrived; the other two had been in Cuzco for some months.