Huáscar I. Vega Ledo
| Translator: Marcelo Villacres |
The papayas were exploding and somehow spreading their seeds through the yungueño ravine; the pineapples and mangoes were doing the same but with less noise. Casimira's head exploded with an even louder thunder and remained strangely encrusted between the branches of a walnut tree while blood snaked down her long and thick braids. Any thought, idea or project in her brain would not ever germinate in this or any other land.
The small 1940 something Ford truck made its way one thousand feet lower, it got there tumble after tumble, yet it seemed intact and happy, it looked like it was making love with the river , looking at the sky, its mouth hanging open and laying on its back.
In its trajectory the truck had spread aguayos , hats, shoes and other things I would rather forget.
Casimira did not die alone, other travellers accompanied her. Yet others remained wounded, bruised and with fractured bones. A most unexpected dew had fallen on the Yungas exuberant vegetation. Suddenly, a body rose amongst the cries and screams of the wounded, it wore a black and very worn suit, a very old chimney hat, and it leaned on a cane of coarse and twisted form yet a cane. The figure appeared to be forty years old and of a strong body, it limped on the left and had a thread of blood tracing a sleeve. He did not let out a whimper, nor an achichiu , nor did he cry, he simply sung, and to the sound of a song he searched for something until he found a slip, which he tore with his teeth and right hand, he slid his coat slightly back and using a small stick tied a tourniquet on his shoulder with his teeth. He pulled his coat back on as he found it uncomfortable to keep it hanging and now he looked as if nothing had ever happened.
Armed with the rest of the slip and a pile of small sticks he went on to apply tourniquets to all the wounded he found through the ravine. He would only stop singing to ask about the injuries and the pain. Several times he climbed up and down the three hundred meters that separated the tragedy and the river, he left a water ration with each wounded and left. He left singing and limping. His lameness was a memory of the Chaco War ; a Paraguayan airplane had shot a bullet through his rear end as he was running to save some jungle children who did not understand the words Bolivia and Paraguay.
A rescue party arrived the following day. Some interrogated their wounded relatives so much that they fainted again. All the survivors were grateful to Don Avelino, but Don Avelino was no longer going up and down the slide covered with stones, leaves and blood. Some remembered seeing him depart while singing and marching, singing children's rhymes...
Somewhere in Los Yungas, near a river, some Callaguayas travellers found him. These are indigenous travellers who are masters of the healing arts and speak many regional languages besides their own (an almost secret language). They thought it was funny to find a grown man singing children's rhymes. The Callaguayas were delighted hearing Don Avelino speak perfect Aymara ; which he had learned along with Quechua and some Guarani during the Chaco War, and so they learned that his left leg was broken. "Ha, ha, ha," they laughed, "you are the luckiest man in the world doctorcito , here are all the plants that you need to heal, we always come to Los Yungas to collect medicinal plants. Let's see, show us, let's see what you've got there."
Immediately one of them started a fire, the other went into the woods and came back with some leaves as big as the back of the wounded, he also brought coffee and other herbs. They half roasted both sides of the leaves until they were moistened by their own oil; then, on a large flat stone they drew a circle using some soil or powder from their chuspas , in the center of the circle they started grinding the leaves, the oil was thus trapped by the powder. Meanwhile they had finished roasting the coffee and started grinding it and mixing it with their saliva. They removed the tourniquet, set the broken bones as blood started slowly dripping from the wound, and slowly applied the coffee ointment until the bleeding stopped. They waited until a portion of ashes was no longer burning hot, and while still warm, they applied it to the wound. Afterward they applied the oily powder to the entire arm, all this they covered with crushed leaves and the slip from the tourniquet, with that they finished the first treatment. Finally, they inmobilized the arm with small pieces of bark from some tree and made him drink an infusion of various herbs.
This whole healing labor was carried out while they laughed and jested as children. "I think he has gone back in time." "Looks like he wanted to go visit Pachamama and got stuck halfway, ha, ha, ha!" "He has not told us his name yet, he does not remember a thing, go get the black stone, we are going to cure him, get the stone." At that moment one of the healers said with great lucidity: "No. Janigua , what we put on him will soften his bones, you know, they will heal better, more easily, you know, as if he were a guaguita , as if he were a changuito . Better if his head thinks like a guaguita, that way his head will help, that way he will heal quickly, you know. As the guagua he is now, let's take him with us for a couple of a weeks, you'll see how he is going to heal, if you want in two weeks we make him old again, ha, ha, ha!"
They travelled together, playing and dancing like children. The medicine men taught him the medicinal properties of plants while they gave him to drink the same healing infusion. Only once did they change infusions, on that occasion they used a flower that looked like a giant kantuta of hallucinogenic quality in certain dosage, anaesthetic in other dosage and lethal to the nerves in yet another. Don Avelino beamed, that flower connected his mind to another dimension, rather to the dimension where his body was. Don Avelino kept alternating between his childhood and the present. He remembered that the colors of the kantuta were red, yellow and green as the national flag. He remembered it was the month of March, but a March from his distant past, when he was about eight years old and was getting ready to attend the parade of March 23, the day of the sea , the day of the Chilean usurpation of the Pacific, the war of 1879 . He wanted to be in the parade, to be a patriot, he wanted the Chileans to give him back the sea. Like children waiting for presents on their birthday, he waited for March 23 to receive his sea.
The Callaguayas, who were always smiling, became somewhat serious and explained to him that the whole Earth is theirs as well as his, that countries are an invention that creates evil and competition, but if you live sharing, then Pachamama embraces you, Pachamama unites you. "We the Callaguayas continue travelling. Everywhere we are received as Callaguayas, not as Bolivians."
Two weeks of teaching and regeneration of bone tissue passed. The day they turned him "old again" was somewhat sad, it seemed that Don Avelino was aware of loosing his childhood and that perhaps would forget all the things he had learned. His recovery was a whole ceremony. First they put him to sleep like a baby; then, while walking and waving pieces of his blood stained shirt they called out: "Avelino, Avelinito, come, come. Come Suma lulitu , come Avelinito, come, come.".
They say that in dangerous situations one's soul leaves the body. Now they were calling his ajayu , attempting to recover his soul. Almost in unison they returned and placed the pieces of cloth over Don Avelino's chest. Then the eldest, using a deep black round stone brushed the surface of Don Avelino's body, while he sung or murmured something only they could understand.
"Good morning Avelino, Avelinito" "Good morning Jacha-guagua ha, ha, ha!" they greeted him and immediately questioned him. The meritorious told them of the war and his life. He also told them he was on his way to La Paz to find out if all the meritorious war veterans would march on the day of the sea, and that his plans were to return promptly as he was invited to a birthday party, a party thrown by owners of the plantation for their son. He was to go with the little orphan Chojolulo , as his make believe father.
"Go in haste. If you take that route you will reach Churuhuasca in two days, you don't have time to go to the parade now and worse with your arm like that." They gave him some herbs and instructions to continue the treatment of his arm (though it looked already healed). "Here, take some water and a bit of charque . We do not have much but we must share."
The meritorious arrived to Churuhuasca at one in the afternoon of March 25. Chojolulo was waiting for him on the road, all dressed up. The people of Churuhuasca received him as he deserved, as a hero. Chojolulo was proud of his father the hero, though he still had some resentment towards the people for not having been on the road waiting for his make believe father, they had assumed he had died or had gone mad amongst the ghosts of the Paraguayan prisoners. It is said that these Yungas roads are dangerous, such blood suckers, because a great section of the road to Puente Villa was forged with the sweat of malaria and the restrained anger of the Paraguayan prisoners of the Chaco War who chiseled away the giant boulders in this subtropical land surrounded by the Andean mountains. It is said that the prisoners would sleep in caves and huts made with branches, the huts disappeared with time, but the once natural holes that were shaped into long rectangular halls by the Paraguayan chisel remained. It is said that in these caves one can still hear pain ridden voices crying in Guarani . It is said that the stone repeats what it heard, that the delirious ghosts cause hallucinations, and that the stone oozes malaria.
The town's priest and the families of the survivors had thought of some retribution for Don Avelino, they had prepared a medal (another Merit Medal ). It was a medal from the war of 1879 er the sea and saltpetre, one that an old man had left to the Church, to be given to one who had the valor and honor to deserve it. In all justice it now belonged to Don Avelino, who from his Chaco War participation already had four Merit Medals, those he kept in his living room, locked in a strong cabinet with triple pane glass for viewing. He now wanted to go home to put away his new award, to bathe, to treat his wound and to change his clothes. But the people barely let him go under the promise he would visit with them at the birthday party to tell them about the accident and following adventures.
Chojolulo helped the meritorious with the cleansing and treatment of his wound. At four thirty in the afternoon Don Avelino was all dressed up and entering the plantation with his make believe son. It was only then that he realized he had not brought a gift for the eight year old boy, but no one else seemed to notice it, not even the birthday boy who hugged and kissed him with enormous admiration. The boys eyes were filled with the ecstasy of having a flesh and blood hero present. Immediately the boy sat down and handed a guitar to Don Avelino, only then did the boy realize the hero was injured, but quickly Chojolulo grabbed the guitar's fingerboard and started to fret the strings and the hero started to strum with his right hand, and so the "make believe father and son" sung. "A cuequita !" "The Infierno Verde !" " Boquerón Abandonado !" yelled the old men who are metiches even in children's parties. The hero satisfied the requests of the elders with one or two songs and then went on to entertain those who had invited him. It turned out that the hero was an expert on singing children's rhymes of old and new. The guitar chords were simple and he called them out for Chojolulo to make while he sung. Together they sung " Mambru se fue a la guerra ", " Aserrín Aserrán ", " Arroz con leche " and many others.
The boys put pots or tutumas on their heads as helmets and used sticks as swords or rifles and paraded while singing "Mambru...". During "Aserrín Aserrán" two groups were formed, one of boys and the other of girls; as a line with their arms intertwined, each group would step towards the other while repeating a stanza and would step back for the other to do the same. On "Arroz con leche" most of the boys disappeared, only a few remained and were too embarrassed to even sing a verse, the girls smiled and mischievously sung next to their mothers "...that she knows how to open the door to go out and play..."
When the children were tired of singing and dancing, the hero played the part of a referee during the fights that arose from the games of chorro-morro , tunkuña , kumunta , pesca-pesca , oculta-oculta .
The games of kumunta and chorro-morro are rough and so they are preferred by the boys, but some girls like to jump on the backs of the boys forming the base, just to show that they too can play. Few are the girls who are courageous enough to play kumunta, as it requires to jump on top of each other forming a pile of bodies. In this game, besides getting crushed, one may get hit by elbows and knees. Francisca Eulalia and the girl known as media-nuca did not mind such faint pain, they were the ones who instigated these games. On the other hand, the girl known as chiti golpe-pecho was the champion at playing tunkuña on the cachi , jumping and jumping, adding and adding points on that ancestral game form of hopscotch.
The frantic commotion was such that even the adults played pesca-pesca and oculta-oculta, it was a good thing that the court yard and the house were so large and that there were so many places to hide, even in holes of some of the trees.
The hero interceded on behalf of the children so they would not be forced to sit at the main table to drink the hot yungueño chocolate with masitas . The children performed their duty and had their meal in the courtyard where they had been playing, in the same courtyard where on February of last year the old-grandfather's birthday was celebrated, the grandfather died in October and was buried in November and so never got to see the light of the new year. The eight year old boy was greatly affected by that loss, and so most of the previous month he spent it reading books on top of trees, and being quiet and gloomy when he was at the level of the ground and other people. Now the eight year old boy was very happy, the hero had transformed his party into a gathering of elders, it almost looked like his grandfather's party. The servants and the women in the family were madly running around trying to take care of all the adults and so the children had more freedom and were amusing themselves almost uncontrollably. And it was that the people of Churuhuasca used the excuse of paying homage to the hero to visit the plantation's main house, while obviously bringing a present for the birthday boy. The eight year old boy never again would receive so many presents as on that occasion, but his view of the world also changed on that day. The books "Treasures of Youth" he devoured on the tree branches, and the tales the hero told had stirred in him the desire to leave the nest, to leave Churuhuasca, to follow the road of the spiral question mark that was inscribed within himself.
The eight year boy did not care that the accustomed queque and sweets were missing, he did not even notice that his parents had to prepare a meal that evening for all the adults and children who stayed much later than anticipated, the only thing he cared about was his hero not leaving, but it was already one in the morning and Don Avelino was tired and wanted to retire. The children hugged and begged the meritorious to tell another story before leaving. One more story.
And so Don Avelino began: "I don't know how many they were, sometimes they seemed to be two, others three, or five, or six. It was as if they knew how to twist reality, as if they were doing magic instead of medicine. Those Callaguayas who found me ..."