“Verdad? It’s a magnificent country, Señora, an opulent country…” (Don Saturnino made no attempt to conceal his pride.) “And yet so backward! A country of much poverty, as you will see… Are you planning to visit the Lagoon?”
“I am,” Daria said, startled.
“From here you can only go to the Lagoon, and no farther than San Blas…”
Daria repressed a shudder: San Blas was her goal (just beyond San Blas).
“Are there many ruins around here?” (She knew from the guidebook that there were.)
“We live on top of ruins, Señora. But there are not so many in these parts. The pyramids of Isla Verde, you can reach them by boat from El Águila… And up in the sierra behind San Blas there is Las Calaveras, the Skulls, an ancient altar of sacrifice. Many thousands of years old.”
(According to the books, these Aztec, or Toltec, or other ruins were at most a thousand years old. But here, in the everyday strangeness of this courtyard, exact chronologies — always a chimera — counted for very little. One was closer to the time scheme of rocks, of plants, than to historical time calculated by learned men…)
“Thousands of years,” Daria echoed, entranced.
Don Saturnino liked a woman who was attracted by the centuries. He remembered his youth, and his eyelids crinkled. He said, “I fought for the revolution here, in my country. We made a good stand at Isla Verde, on top of the pyramids…”
“So, you fought for the revolution too,” went vaguely through her mind.
“Bueno, bueno,” went on Don Saturnino. “There’s a tourist at the Hotel Gloria, he’s traveling in a very fine car… a Mr. Brown. Perhaps you could arrange with him? Our buses are so poor, Señora.”
“What tourist? Do you know him? Where is he going?”
The genial brown face dimmed. “He is an American. I saw him in the plaza. He has a fine car… I like horses better, horses are intelligent…” Daria explained that she wished to travel alone, at her own speed. “I understand. Bueno… Good night, Señora…” Don Saturnino went to lock the outside door with a big, old-fashioned key. Some of the bush’s leaves were a beautiful red, the color of fresh blood, of dark blood, of pink blood. It was a nochebuena, “Tree of the Blessed Night.”
Even on a good map, San Blas figured as nothing more than an insignificant circle marked on an ocher stain between the shore of the lake and the hatching of the sierra; no roads passed through, no trace of an Indian settlement. The lake spread out among wooded hills, but here was only rock and sky. The end of the world — in this part of the world. The automobile road ran along the Laguna, passed through the mountain village of Pozo Viejo — Old Well — descended toward San Blas, then cut at right angles away from it. The dotted line of a track seemed to follow the shoreline farther, petering out after a few miles… Bruno and Noémi Battisti were probably living at that spot. From the city to San Blas it was a good five hours by bus. The guidebook discouraged expeditions in that direction: there were no first-class hotels, no unusual fiestas, no famous landmarks, no indigenous crafts to speak of, nothing but harsh mountains, the Indian earth, the ancient race, unembellished… The map brought a smile of reminiscence to Daria’s lips. Far north of the Trans-Siberian, beyond Lake Baikal, the maps would look much like this one, highways bordering desert lands, and the guidebook, if there was one, would inform of another Isla Verde: “On Green Island stands a tumulus attributed to the Reindeer Civilization…” There, too, the years are counted in the thousands. Under a wan Nordic sun, the solitude might be broken by a sinister encounter with a penitentiary work brigade… Special travel permits would be required… Even more essential, a special armor for the heart, to guard against pity. No Trees of the Blessed Night, only dour, rugged conifers, planted along the slopes like a mounting crowd, an austere motionless army, endlessly measuring the harsh grandeur of existence… Earth, our mother, your deserts are sisters.
On the roads around Samarkand you would ride buses much like this one. Now discolored by dirt, scratches, and dents, it had once been blue. The skins of the men and women who traveled in it were bronzed, burned, golden, coppery, ashen, mirroring the hues of sun-soaked boulders and composted earth, revealing the mix of bloods. The taciturn watchfulness of their eyes, the power of their muscles, their human indigence approached the animal — as did their natural nobility. Their antique Asian faces were pleas-ant — more closed than pleasant. Silver crosses on strands of coral beads hung over white embroidered blouses (loose blouses, similar to the smocks worn by Komi women in the upper Volga…). The driver was a frizzy-headed, negroid athlete dressed in a pink shirt; an image of the Virgin and a profusion of ex-votos composed of nuts and miniature revolvers filled most of his visual field. Instead of forty passengers, the heroic rattletrap took on seventy, plus their hens, turkeys, cats, and a fighting cock. A brown child slept in Daria’s lap; beside her the mother suckling an infant, her swollen breasts as matt as sunbaked clay; she must have been about fif-teen, and crossed herself at every pothole like an old woman. So much sweaty flesh, soiled whiteness, patient breathing, and resignation filled the bus that Daria saw little of the ruddy incandescence of the countryside… “San Blas!” The frizzy-haired driver helped two passengers down, a centenarian native woman and the foreigner. The engine hiccupped once and the bus was gone. Balancing her baskets, the old Indian woman was already climbing the slope, following an invisible path between outcrops singed with rust; her bare feet gripping the stones like a faun’s. She plodded steadily on, bent double, toward a bare, gray summit under the reddening sky. When she vanished between the boulders, the solitude was for a moment total.
“Journey’s end,” thought Daria.
She also thought of snakes: of the graceful snakes that must lie coiled everywhere unseen in the rocky wilderness, of the huge stylized serpents of these people’s ancient art, of serpents of fire, serpents of night.
All of a sudden two dark children dressed in white rags materialized in front of her. They pounced on her suitcase. One said, “To Don Gamelindo’s,” since clearly the stranger could be going nowhere else along this stony path, indiscernible at first, then lined with wild nopals, bristling with thorns, pathetically twisted… The path forked toward tumbledown walls. And Don Game-lindo’s store appeared in the corner of a small rustic plaza: arcades, tall trees outlined against the sunset, baroque church set apart on a crest overlooking the lake… Daria had no time to appreciate all of it, so quickly did the night come down. An electric bulb cast a desiccated glare across the store. The counter, the ropes, the candles, the piles of shoes, the rolls of cloth, the bottles were immersed in emptiness and silence… The dark eyes of a thin-necked nocturnal child peered out from beneath tangled hair but said nothing. They seemed to be the eyes of motionless things. Don Gamelindo appeared at Daria’s back, seemingly from nowhere. He moved without making a sound. “Buenas noches, what do you want?” Thickset, unshaven, in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, with a paunch sagging over his belt and a holster on his hip. His complexion was pale, his small greenish eyes shifted watchfully between puffy lids. Daria explained that she was looking for the plantation of Don Bruno Battisti. Even as she spoke, she felt a sensation of total uselessness. Nothing could exist for her here: no past, no present, no continuity and no tomorrow, no questions and no answers. She herself would cease to exist in the eyes of anything that might be knowable. She nearly said, dreamily, “Where are the snakes?” A hostile land, sharp rocks, aggressive plants, oppressive silence, a night for a disappearance. Don Gamelindo answered, “Yes, La Huerta.”