I told him I was going to Tucuman on this train.
There was a volcano farther south, he said; it had caused a mudslide and ripped the tracks apart. It seemed that they were trying to firt it, but in any case it was four hours to Jujuy, and I certainly would not be in Tucuman until tomorrow.
'What's the point of travelling?' said this swarthy provincial. Tve been around the country-Jujuy, LaQuiaca, all the places. But none of them is as good as Maimara. We've got apples, corn, pears - everything you need. It's easy to grow things here, and it's a pretty town. I saw Villazon once- it was really ugly. I would hate to live there. Here, I have everything I need.'
'Good for you.'
'You should stay here,' he said.
The train doesn't seem to be going, so I guess I am staying here.'
'It is the volcano - it wrecked the tracks. Where are you headed after Tucuman?'
'Buenos Aires, and then Patagonia.'
'Patagonia! That's so far away they speak differently there.' He grinned at me. 'So you were at La Quiaca and you're going to Patagonia. They are at opposite ends of Argentina. I would never go to those places. I would rather stay home.'
'After Patagonia, I will go home.'
'That's the idea!' he said. 'It must be terrible to be so far away from home on a nice Sunday afternoon like this.'
'It is sunny here,' I said. 'I am sure it is rainy at home.'
That's interesting,' he said, and thanked me. He disappeared beyond the rattling poplars.
Just south of Purmamarca, in a dry river bed - the wide valley was surrounded by clouded mountains-1 saw a Palm Sunday procession. I guessed it was that, but it might have been anything. There were easily 2,000 people making their way down the river bed. Many were on horseback, some waved banners and flags, and there was a smartly dressed band, the source of a lugubrious braying. Near the front of the procession some people carried a white box, a coffin, either emblematic or real. And what made this group especially strange was the sky lowering upon them. They were a multitude of tiny figures in a gigantic mural, in which the important feature was the granite muscle in this toppling cloud.
The train moved on, and the cloud continued to drop. It slid down the mountains and into the valley and down the river bed. It hovered at the tree-tops and the afternoon darkened. In fifteen minutes the landscape had changed from an overpowering vista of Argentina, to a weeping late-afternoon in New England. The visibility was about fifty yards; it was warm and dimly white, a world of sudden ghostliness.
It began to drizzle and beside the track there were cleared mudslides. The damage was obvious: wrecked walls and tipped-over culverts, and water rushing at sand-bags. I hung out of the door to look at the land-slip and behind me the sleeping car attendant said, This is the volcano.'
'I didn't realize there were volcanoes here.'
'No, the town is called Volcano.'
I had got it wrong: what I had taken to be a volcano - the descriptions I had heard up the line- was just the name of the town.
'How are we doing?' I asked.
'We will be a day and a half late in arriving in Buenos Aires.'
I spent the rest of the daylight hours reading Friedrich Dürrenmatt's End of the Game. Its original title, a better one, was The Judge and His Hangman. After Jack London's feeble and preposterous plot, Dürrenmatt's struck me as brilliant; and necessary, too, since he had little insight. Such order made him seem like a sage. For railway reading, the best book is the plottiest, a way of endowing the haphaz-ardness of thejourney with order.
At Jujuy I saw that the river which had been dry some miles north was in full flood. Here the Rio Grande deserved its name. Along its banks were leafy trees and flowers, and an evening mist hung over the water. Jujuy looked peaceful and damp; it was just high enough to be pleasant without giving one a case of the bends. The rain on the blossoms perfumed the dark air and a fresh breeze blew from the river. It seemed idyllic, and yet later I heard that Jujuy was so badly flooded that thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes. It is not possible to see everything from a train.
The station was full of Indians, who had come to welcome the Indians on this train from the border. This was the last place in Argentina where I saw so many Indians, and there were people in Argentina who denied that they existed in this country in any great number. So Jujuy seemed a frontier of sorts, the end of the old Inca trail. It was green, a town buried - so it seemed - in lush depthless spinach.
I would gladly have stayed here, and nearly did, but as I stood on the platform I saw twenty new coaches being hitched to our train and, with them, an attractive dining car. I felt wonderful now: no cramps, no altitude sickness; my appetite had returned (and only the day before I had been sitting in Villazon, eating peanuts), and with it a thirst. I went to the dining car and ordered a carafe of wine. The waiter, dressed in a black uniform, set all the tables - tablecloths, silver, vases of flowers. But his exertions were premature. I was the only customer that night.
Dinner - now we were proceeding via the town of General Miguel Martin de Quemes to Tucuman - was five courses: home-made noodle soup, sausage and polenta, veal cutlets, ham salad and dessert. Although the waiter stood nearby, supplying me with a new carafe of wine every so often, after I finished and lit my pipe he sat down with me, clinked glasses and we talked.
He spoke Spanish with a strong Italian accent - many people did in Argentina. But his Italian was poor. 'I'm an Italian,' he said, but he said it in the way Americans say they are Polish or Armenian: it is the immigrant's claim, or excuse, in an undefined country.
'We are lucky to get through on this train,' he said. This is the first train in two weeks that's made it past Volcan. Did you see the landslide?'
I had: the hill of mud had moved sideways across the track.
'Several trains tried to get through it when it was only half cleared and, tweet, off the tracks they came- derailed. So they stopped taking chances. I've been sitting for two weeks waiting for the train to arrive.'
What a fate: this steward waits two weeks in Jujuy for the Panameri-can, and then it comes, they hitch up his dining car and all he gets is one customer- me. Yet he did not seem especially downhearted.
'What countries have you seen?'
I told him.
'And, of all of them, which one do you like most?'
They hate criticism.
'Argentina,' I said.
'The rest of them are so poor,' he said. 'Know how much the best steak costs here? Take a guess.'
I guessed too low; I gave him the peso equivalent of fifty cents. He said - and he was slightly annoyed - that a pound of filet mignon cost seventy-five cents.
It seemed a specious argument for prosperity in a country where the annual inflation rate was between 300 and 400%. Every day, the peso was worth less, and everything but steak rose in price. Most Argentines had steak twice a day, and even the lowliest clerk ordered a great shoe of it, with french fries, at lunch time. And it reminded me that the most violently critical pieces I had read about Argentina were by V. S. Naipaul. His articles appeared in The New York Review of Books, and they aroused a certain amount of controversy. No one had made the obvious point about Naipaul's loathing of Argentina, but then perhaps it was not commonly known that he was a vegetarian.
'What do you think of this train?'
Whatever you do, don't criticize them.
'It is one of the best trains I've ever seen in my life.'
'It should be the best. It's got good equipment - reclining chairs, lots of space and comfort. But look at the people! They're in First Class and they spit on the floor, hang their clothes on the light fixtures, stick their feet up on the nice chairs.' He made mocking Italian gestures and mimicked the slobs he was describing; the cooks, who had also come over to sit with us, found this very funny. 'You see them? What can we do? They don't know how to ride on a train, that's all.'