'Funny thing,' said Bert. 'I don't speak a word of Spanish. I don't speak anything but English. But I can always make myself understood. Even in Nairobi. Even in Italy. Know how I do it? I sit there and say, "Me - want - a - drink." It always does the trick.'
He soon had a chance to prove that he could hurdle the language barrier. A conductor entered our car. Bert smiled and tapped him on the arm. He said, 'Me - want - a - drink.'
The conductor grunted and walked away.
'That's the first time I ever - '
'Look.'
Ahead, through a black gateway of pinnacles, was a wide flat valley-filled with sunlight; birds were slanted in the sky and on ledges like the diacritical marks on vowels, and there were green streaks, wind-flattened bushes, on the steep mountains beyond. In the centre of the valley, coursing beside fuchsias and white orchids, was a turbulent brown river. This was the Vilcanota River, running north to Machu Picchu, where it becomes the Urubamba and continues north-east to join a tributary of the Amazon. The river flowed from Sicuani, past the glaciers above the crumbling town of Pisaq, and here, where our train was tooting, had formed the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The shape of this valley - so flat and green and hidden - in such a towering place, had attracted the Incas. Many had been here before the Spaniards entered Cuzco, and here others fled, fighting a rear-guard action after Cuzco fell. The valley became an Inca stronghold, and long after the Spaniards believed they had wiped out or subdued this pious and highly civilized empire, the Incas continued to live on in the fastnesses of these canyons. In 1570, a pair of Augustinian missionaries - the friars Marcos and Diego-had the fanatical faith to take them over the mountains and through this valley. The friars led a motley band of Indian converts who carried torches and set fire to the shrines at which Incas were still worshipping. Their triumph was at Chuquipalta, near Vitcos, where for the greater glory of God (the Devil had made appearances here, so the Incas said) they put their torches to the House of the Sun. Some missions were established along the river (Marcos eventually suffered a horrendous martyrdom), but farther on, where the mountains and sky seemed scarcely distinguishable, the ruins were not re-entered. The valleys slept. They were not penetrated again until 1911, when the Yale man, Hiram Bingham, with the words of Kipling's 'Explorer' running through his head ('Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges - / Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!') found the vast mountain-top city he named Machu Picchu. He believed he had found the lost city of the Incas, but John Hemming writes in The Conquest of the Incas that an even more remote place to the west, Espíritu Pampa, has the greater claim to the title.
It was part of the Inca genius to seal themselves into hidden valleys, past rockslides and at the far end of precipitous trails that were lost behind the ranges. Their grasp of advanced masonry allowed them to build secure fortresses and posting stations out of these natural battlements. A few miles after we entered the Vilcanota Valley we came to Ollantaytambo, and if I had not made a separate visit to this place I would not have known how perfectly it had been sited, how the terraces, and the temple walls, could not be seen until one was on top of them. They are all but hidden from the railway tracks and the river, and what you see and think are habitations are Inca watchtowers, hundreds of feet up, tall thick-walled cottages on cliffs which aided the besieged warriors in warning them of Spanish attacks. Ollantaytambo was a success of sorts; over four hundred years ago, a regiment of Spanish soldiers led by Hernando Pizarro attacked this town, and they were defeated. 'When we reached Tambo,' wrote one Spaniard, 'we found it so well fortified that it was a horrifying sight.' The battle was bloody, and the Spaniards were beaten off by Inca slingers, Amazonian bowmen and Incas armed with weapons and wearing helmets and bucklers they had captured from their enemy.
Inca symmetries have a graceful Biblical magnificence: behind these walls there are hanging gardens crowned by twenty-ton megaliths that were quarried several miles away and lifted to this summit. It was not specifically a fortress; it had first been a royal garden.
'They must be for landslides,' said Mr Fountain, going by.
Bert Howie said, 'Hey, what a terrific pair of shoes!'
He was marvelling at my feet.
'Leakproof,' I said.
'Hey, honey,' said Bert to Elvera, 'have a look at these terrific shoes.'
But Elvera was still looking at Oilantaytambo. She mistook the clock-tower in the village square for a church and said she was reminded of the churches in Cuzco. The others mentioned churches in Lima, in Quito, Caracas, La Paz and even further afield; and so, as we travelled through the Sacred Valley of the Incas, no one remarked on the fields of wheat and corn, or the staggering heights of these cliffsides which had been plumbed by glaciation, or our progress into the sun beside this loud brown river. The mention of churches produced a discussion about religion, and with it, a torrent of muddled opinion.
Those gold altars really get me, said one. I don't understand why they don't melt them down and feed some of these starving people. And the statues, said another: they're so exaggerated, always bloody and skinny. Everyone was shouting and argufying at once: the Christ statues were the worst, really gory; the Mary ones were chubby and dressed up like dolls in lace and velvet; Jesus on the cross looked horrible among the gold carvings, his ribs sticking out; you'd think they'd at least make them look human. It went on: blood, gold, suffering, and people on their knees. Why did they have to exaggerate, said one man, when it only ended up looking vulgar?
I had been hearing quite a lot of this. There was patronizing mockery in the pretense of bafflement and disgust. I just can't understand it, they said, but they used their incomprehension to amplify their ignorance. Ignorance licensed them to indulge in this jeering.
I felt my moment had come to speak. I had also seen those churches, and I had reached several conclusions. I cleared my throat.
'It looks exaggerated because it is exaggerated,' I said. 'It's possible that the churches here have bloodier Christs than those in Spain, and they're certainly a lot bloodier than anything you'd see in the United States. But life is bloodier here, isn't it? In order to believe that Christ suffered you have to know that he suffered more than you. In the United States the Christ statue looks a bit bruised, a few tear-drops, some mild abrasions. But here? How is it possible to suffer more than these Indians? They've seen all sorts of pain. Incas were peace-loving and pious, but if anyone broke the law he got unbelievable punishment - he might be buried alive, clubbed to death, staked out on the ground and ritually trampled, or tortured. High officials who committed an offence had heavy stones dropped on their backs from a high cliff, and virgins caught speaking to a man were hung by their hair. Pain wasn't brought here by the Spanish priests, but a crucified Christ was part of the liturgical scheme. The Indians were taught that Christ suffered, and they had to be persuaded that his suffering was worse than theirs. And by the same token that Mary, the world's mother, was healthier and better dressed than any woman in their society. So, yes, the statues are exaggerations of their lives, because these images represent God and the Holy Mother. Right?'
Convinced I was right, I warmed to my theme. Mary in the Church of San Francisco in Lima, in her spangled cape and brocade gown and holding a silver basket, had to outshine any Inca noble and, at last, any Spanish woman of fashion. These divine figures had to be seen to exceed the Spaniard or Peruvian in suffering or wealth - they had to seem braver, more tortured, richer or bloodier in order to seem blessed. Christ in any church was more battered than the very battered leper in the plaza: he had to be. The lesson of the Peruvian - perhaps Latin American - Church demonstrated the extraordinariness of the Saviour. In the same way, the statues of Buddha as a mendicant showed a man who was hungrier and skinnier than the skinniest Buddhist. In order for you to believe in God it was necessary to see that God had endured a greater torment than you. And Mary had to look more motherly, more fecund and rich, than any other mother. Religion demanded this intensity in order to produce piety. A believer could not venerate someone like himself- he had to be given a reason for the holiness of the God statue. And he responded by praising it in the most appropriate way, by enshrining it in gold.