After this, no one mentioned religion. They stared out of the window and said, 'More pigs' or 'Look, is that a rainbow?' And they went on talking in the off-hand Thornberry way that distracted them fromj what had become for them a dull and eventless train ride.
There was a rainbow poised across the Urubamba. The Incas were the only people on earth, as far as we know, who worshipped the rainbow. And now we were close to what Hiram Bingham called 'the last Inca capital'. The train stopped. Machu Picchu was above us, hidden behind cliffs and outcrops of rock. The tourists were still chattering. 1 had foolishly told Bert Howie about the Victrola in my hotel and how I had played 'Shanghai Lu' on it. Bert said that Ben Bernie had been a Chicago boy, and he began to reminisce as he laboured up the path. High above Bert's yakking head, the sun priests in beautiful robes had stood facing east every dawn on this steepest side, and when the sun. their god, began to blaze above the Andes, the priests extended their arms to it and (wrote Father Calancha in 1639) 'threw kisses to it... a ceremony of the most profound resignation and reverence.' But we had not gone far; we were still near the river, which is troubled and dark, because it reflects the spongy foliage of the overhanging rock, not the sky. 'The water looks black and forbidding,' said Bingham, 'even to unsuperstitious Yankees.'
We continued to climb the steepness. The tourists chattered, stopping only to gasp; the gasping turned to complaint. It was not until the last step, at the brow of the hill, that the whole city was revealed. It sprawled across the peak, like a vast broken skeleton picked clean by condors. For once, the tourists were silent.
18
EL PANAMERICANO
The Panamerican Express is one of South America's great trains, travelling over 1,000 miles from La Paz in Bolivia to the Argentine city of Tucuman. It crosses a national frontier - few in this hemisphere do -and railway travel is never more interesting than when it involves a border crossing. The frontier is nearly always a no-man's land in which fascinating pieces of fraudulent theatre are enacted - the passport stamping ceremony, the suspicious looks, the bullying at customs, the foolishly patriotic pique, and the unexplained delays. I had walked across the Rio Grande from Texas to Mexico, and hiked from Guatemala into El Salvador. I was looking forward to boarding a train in Bolivia and ending up, after three days on the Andean high-plains, in the heart of Argentina.
But first I had to find my way out of Peru. By now, the railway strike had taken hold. Only one line was in operation; the train to Machu Pic-chu was being manned by the Peruvian army. This was strictly for the tourists' benefit - too bad if you were an Indian who wanted to go home on any of the other routes. The miners were also on strike, and the municipal workers had occupied the city hall in Lima. The peaceful demonstrations had become angry mobs, and there were threats of sabotage on the Machu Picchu train. The workers' demand was for £ 1.50 more a month. In Peru, two pounds of meat costs £ 1.50, and two pounds is all the average Peruvian family can afford each month. I was warned that if I did not leave Peru soon the buses, too, would be strikebound; and though I had vowed in Colombia that I would not set foot on another South American bus - good heavens, I had a wife and children ! -1 had no choice but to take one to Puno.
By train the trip would have been simple and enjoyable; by bus, it was dusty and harrowing, over a corrugated road. I could not read on this bus, and that day I abandoned my diary. We reached Lake Titicaca at sundown and crossed it in the steamer M. V. Olíanla in the dead of night. People tell you that this is one of the most enchanting trips on the continent. But I saw nothing: it was night. The last leg, from Guaqui to La Paz, was too brief to be memorable. I recall a puzzled Indian standing among boulders with a llama watching us pass. The llama was a special reproach to me.
The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat,
Like an unsuccessful literary man.
Just above La Paz, as the train rises and travels across the ridge before descending into the city, there are coal-black peaks covered with snow. The snow has a dry ghostly permanent look to it, a far cry from the radiant slush you see in New England.
The bareness of Bolivia had been apparent as soon as we reached the south end of the lake. It was not the cookie crumb bareness of Mexico or the snail shell bareness of Peru or the withered aridity of Guatemala; Bolivia's bareness was the gritty undercrust of the earth, a topography of stony fossils: the topsoil had simply blown away, exposing the country to its old bones. The place could not have looked colder or fiercer. And yet, all the Bolivians on the Guaqui train were friendly, and the hat-style of the Indians - here a brown derby was favoured -gave them a jaunty look. 'You should stay here awhile,' said a Bolivian, and he pointed to the snowy peaks. 'You can go skiing over there.'
The clouds were grey and creased with black, and as we made our descent into La Paz - the city grew larger and uglier as we neared the valley floor - there was a blue-white crack of lightning from the collapsing clouds. Then a thunderclap; and it began to hail. The hailstones bobbled against the train windows; they were the size of marbles - it was a wonder they did not shatter the glass.
I did not feel well. I had slept badly in Cuzco, I had dozed on the bus to Puno; the furious boilers on the M. V. Olíanla had kept me awake crossing Lake Titicaca. I had stomach trouble, and for once my English cement, which was spiked with morphine, did no good. And of course there was the altitude: La Paz was over 12,000 feet, and the train had gone even higher in order to make its way into the city. I had a groggy half-awake feeling, dizzyness and shortness of breath. Altitude sickness had penetrated to my entrails, and though I kept swigging cement and chewing cloves - my teeth had begun to ache again - I knew I would not feel any better until I left La Paz on the Panamerican express.
I had another affliction, too, but this turned out to be an advantage. I cannot remember how I found a hotel in La Paz -1 think I just saw a likely one and walked in. In any case, I was taking some aspirin shortly after finding my room and dropped the water tumbler into the sink. My hand went to it, propelled by instinct, and then I saw that 1 was holding broken glass and blood. It was my scribbling hand, and now the blood was running down my arm. I stepped into the corridor, bandaging the wound with a towel, and called to the room lady who was sweeping the floor. She clucked: the blood had begun to leak through the towel. She took a rubber band out of her apron pocket.
'Put this around your wrist,' she said. 'That will stop the blood.'
I recalled that tourniquets had been discredited. I asked her the address of the nearest pharmacy.
'Maybe you should go to the doctor,' she said.
'No,' I said. 'I am sure it will stop.'
But I had not gone two blocks when the new towel I had wrapped around my hand was soaked with blood. It did not hurt, but it looked dreadful. I hid it under my arm so as not to alarm pedestrians. Then the blood dripped on the pavement and I thought: Goddamn. It was deeply embarrassing to be walking through this large grey city with a blood-soaked towel on my hand. I began to wish that I had tried the rubber band. I left spatters of blood on the crosswalk, and more spatters on the plaza. I asked directions to the pharmacy and saw, when I looked back, that there was a pool of blood where I had paused and a horrified Bolivian watching me. I tried not to run: running makes your heart beat faster and you bleed more.