So, with our problems solved, at least for the moment, we got out the maps and planned our route to the south, to the Patagonian coastline where the fur seals* and elephant seals* gambolled in the icy waters.
At first sight everything seemed to be quite straightforward. Marie had managed to obtain leave from her job, and was to come with us to act as interpreter. Our route was planned with the minute detail that only people who have never been to an area indulge in. The equipment was checked and double-checked, and carefully packed. After all the weeks of frustration and boredom in Buenos Aires we began to feel that at last we were on our way. Then, at our last council of war (in the little cafe on the corner), Marie produced an argument that she had obviously been brooding upon for some considerable time.
"I think it would be a good idea if we take someone who knows the roads, Gerry," she said, engulfing what appeared to be a large loaf of bread stuffed with an exceptionally giant ox's tongue, a concoction that passed for a sandwich in Argentina.
"Whatever for?" I asked. "We've got maps, haven't we?"
"Yes, but you have never driven on those Patagonian roads, and they are quite different from anywhere else in the world, you know."
"How, different?" I inquired.
"Worse," said Marie, who did not believe in wasting words.
"I'm inclined to agree," said Jacquie. "We've heard the most awful reports of those roads from everyone."
"Darling, you know as well as I do that you always hear those sort of reports about roads, or mosquitoes, or savage tribes, wherever you go in the world, and they are generally a lot of nonsense."
"Anyway, I think Marie's suggestion is a good one. If we could get someone who knows the roads to drive us down, then you'd know what to expect on the way back."
"But there is no one," I said irritably, "Rafael is in college, Carlos is up in the North, Brian is studying…"
"There is Dicky," said Marie.
I stared at her.
"Who is Dicky?" I asked at length.
"A friend of mine," she said carelessly, "he is a very good driver, he knows Patagonia, and he is a very nice person. He is quite used to going on hunting trips, so he does not mind suffering."
"By 'suffering' do you mean roughing it, or are you insinuating that our company might be offensive to his delicate nature?"
"Oh, stop being facetious," said Jacquie. "Would this chap come with us, Marie?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "He said he would like it very much."
"Good," said Jacquie, "when can he come and see us?"
"Well, I told him to meet us here in about ten minutes' time," said Marie. "I thought Gerry would want to see him in case he did not like him."
I gazed at them all speechlessly.
"I think that's a very good idea, don't you?" asked Jacquie.
"Are you asking my opinion?" I inquired. "I thought you had settled it all between you."
"I am sure you will like Dicky…" began Marie, and at that moment Dicky arrived.
At first glance I decided that I did not like Dicky at all. He did not look to me the sort of person who had ever suffered, or, indeed, was capable of suffering. He was exquisitely dressed, too exquisitely dressed. He had a round, plump face, with boot-button eyes, a rather frail-looking moustache like a brown moth decorated his upper lip, and his dark hair was plastered down to his head with such care that it looked as if it had been painted on to his scalp.
"This is Dicky de Sola," said Marie, in some trepidation.
Dicky smiled at me, a smile that transformed his whole face.
"Marie have told you?" he said, dusting his chair fastidiously with his handkerchief before sitting down at the table, "I am delight to go to Patagonia, whom I love."
I began to warm to him.*
"If I am no useful, I will not come, but I can advise if you will allow, for I know the roads. You have a map? Ah, good, now let me explanation to you."
Together we pored over the map, and within half an hour Dicky had won me over* completely. Not only did he have an intimate knowledge of the country we were to pass through, but his own brand of English, his charm and infectious humour had decided me.*
"Well," I said, as we folded the maps away, "if you can really spare the time, we'd like you to come very much."
"Overwhelmingly," said Dicky, holding out his hand.
And on this rather cryptic utterance the bargain was sealed.
Chapter One
THE WHISPERING LAND
The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time.
CHARLES DARWIN: The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle*
We set off for the south in the pearly grey dawn light of what promised to be a perfect day. The streets were empty and echoing, and the dew-drenched parks and squares had their edges frothed with great piles of fallen blooms from the
and jacaranda trees, heaps of glittering flowers in blue, yellow and pink.
On the outskirts of the city we rounded a corner and came upon the first sign of life we had seen since we had started, a covey* of dustmen indulging in their early morning ballet. This was such an extraordinary sight that we drove slowly behind them for some way in order to watch. The great dustcart rumbled down the centre of the road at a steady five miles an hour, and standing in the back, up to his knees in rubbish, stood the emptier. Four other men loped alongside the cart like wolves, darting off suddenly into dark doorways to reappear with, dustbins full of trash balanced on their shoulders. They would run up alongside the cart and throw the dustbin effortlessly into the air, and the man on the cart would catch it and empty it and throw it back, all in one fluid movement. The timing of this was superb, for as the empty dustbin was hurtling downwards a full one would be sailing up. They would pass in mid-air, and the full bin would be caught and emptied. Sometimes there would be four dustbins in the air at once. The whole action was performed in silence and with incredible speed.
Soon we left the edge of the city, just stirring to wakefulness, and sped out into the open countryside, golden in the rising sun. The early morning air was chilly, and Dicky had dressed for the occasion. He was wearing a long tweed overcoat and white gloves, and his dark, bland eyes and neat, butterfly-shaped moustache peered out from under a ridiculous deer-stalker hat* which he wore, he explained to me, in order to "keep the ears heated". Sophie and Marie crouched in strange prenatal postures* in the back of the Land-Rover, on top of our mountainous pile of equipment, most of which, they insisted, had been packed in boxes with knife-like edges. Jacquie and I sat next to Dicky in the front seat, a map spread out across our laps, our heads nodding, as we endeavoured to work out our route. Some of the places we had to pass through were delightful: Chascomus, Dolores, Necochea, Tres Arroyos,* and similar delicious names that slid enticingly off the tongue. At one point we passed through two villages, within a few miles of each other, one called "The Dead Christian" and the other "The Rich Indian". Marie's explanation of this strange nomenclature was that the Indian was rich because he killed the Christian, and had stolen all his money, but attractive though this story was, I felt it could not be the right one.
For two days we sped through the typical landscape of the Pampa,* flat golden grassland in which the cattle grazed knee-deep; occasional clumps of eucalyptus trees,* with their bleached and peeling trunks like leprous
Beagle,
"Hola!"* until the hotel rang with our shouts, but there was no response.
"I think, Gerry, that sometime they are all deceased," said Dicky gravely.
"Well, if they are I suggest we spread out and find ourselves some beds," I said.
So we climbed the marble staircase and found ourselves three bedrooms, with beds made up, by the simple expedient of opening every door in sight. Eventually, having found a place to sleep, Dicky and I went downstairs to see if the hotel boasted of any sanitary arrangements.* The first door we threw open in our search led us into a dim bedroom in which was an enormous double-bed hung with an old-fashioned canopy. Before we could back out of the room a huge figure surged out from under the bedclothes like a surfacing whale, and waddled towards us. It turned out to be a colossal woman, clad in a flowing, flannel nightie, who must have weighed somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifteen stone.* She came out, blinking, into the hallway, pulling on a flowing kimono of bright green covered with huge pink roses, so the effect was rather as if one of the more exotic floral displays of the Chelsea* Flower Show had suddenly taken on a life of its own. Over her ample bosoms spread two long streamers of grey hair which she flicked deftly over her shoulder as she did up her kimono, smiling at us with sleepy goodwill.
inquired Dicky.
la patrona
la patrona.
The next morning, having breakfasted, we did a rapid tour of the town. As far as I could see, apart from the introduction of electricity, it had changed very little since Darwin's day, and so we left and sped down a hill and across the wide iron bridge that spanned the rusty red waters of the Rio Negro. We rattled across the bridge from the Province of Buenos Aires to the Province of Chubut, and by that simple action of crossing a river we entered a different world.
Gone were the lush green plains of the Pampa, and in their place was an arid waste stretching away as far as the eye could see on each side of the dusty road, a uniform pelt of grey-green scrub composed of plants about three feet high, each armed with a formidable array of thorns and spikes. Nothing appeared to live in this dry scrub, for when we stopped there was no bird or insect song, only the whispering of the wind through the thorn scrub in this monochromatic Martian landscape,* and the only moving thing apart from ourselves was the giant plume of dust we trailed behind the vehicle. This was terribly tiring country* to drive in. The road, deeply rutted and pot holed, unrolled straight ahead to the horizon, and after a few hours this monotony of scene numbed one's brain, and one would suddenly drop off to sleep to be awoken by the vicious scrunch of the wheels as the Land-Rover swerved off into the brittle scrub.
The evening before we were due to reach Deseado this happened on a stretch of road, which, unfortunately, had recently been rained upon, so that the surface had turned into something resembling high-grade glue. Dicky, who had been driving for a long time, suddenly nodded off* behind the wheel, and before anyone could do anything sensible, both Land-Rover and trailer had skidded violently into the churned-up mud at the side of the road, and settled there snugly, wheels spinning like mad. Reluctantly we got out into the bitter chill of the evening wind, and in the dim sunset light set to work to unhitch the trailer and then push it and the Land-Rover separately out of the mud. Then, our feet and hands frozen, the five of us crouched in the shelter of the Land-Rover and watched the sunset, passing from hand to hand a bottle of Scotch* which I had been keeping for just such an emergency.
On every side of us the scrubland stretched away, dark and flat, so that you got the impression of being in the centre of a gigantic plate. The sky had become suffused with green as the sun sank, and then, unexpectedly, turned into a very pale powder-blue. A tattered mass of clouds on the western horizon suddenly turned black, edged delicately with flame-red, and resembled a great armada of Spanish galleons waging a fierce sea-battle across the sky, drifting towards each other, turned into black silhouette by the fierce glare from their cannons. As the sun sank lower and lower the black of the clouds became shot and mottled with grey, and the sky behind them became striped with green, blue and pale red. Suddenly our fleet of galleons disappeared, and in its place was a perfect archipelago of islands strung out across the sky in what appeared to be a placid, sunset-coloured sea. The illusion was perfect: you could pick out the tiny, white-rimmed coves in the rocky, indented shoreline; the occasional long, white beach; the dangerous shoal of rocks formed by a wisp of cloud at the entrance to a safe anchorage; the curiously-shaped mountains inland covered with a tattered pelt of evening-dark forest. We sat there, the whisky warming our bodies, watching enraptured the geography of this archipelago unfold. We each of us chose an island which appealed to us, on which we would like to spend a holiday, and stipulated what the hotel on each of our islands would have to provide in the way of civilized amenities.
"A very,
"No, a nice hot shower and a comfortable chair" said Sophie.
"Just a bed," said Jacquie, "a large feather bed."
"A bar that serves real ice with its drinks," I said dreamily.
Dicky was silent for a moment. Then he glanced down at his feet, thickly encrusted with rapidly drying mud.
"I must have a man to clean my feets," he said firmly.
"Well, I doubt whether we'll get any of that at Deseado," I said gloomily, "but we'd better press on."
When we drove into Deseado at ten o'clock the next morning, it became immediately obvious that we could not expect any such luxuries as feather beds, ice in the drinks, or even a man to clean our feets. It was the most extraordinarily dead-looking town I had ever been in. It resembled the set for a rather bad Hollywood cowboy film, and gave the impression that its inhabitants (two thousand, according to the guide-book) had suddenly packed up and left it alone to face the biting winds and scorching sun. The empty, rutted streets between the blank-faced houses were occasionally stirred by the wind, which produced half-hearted dust-devils,* that swirled up for a moment and then collapsed tiredly to the ground. As we drove slowly into what we imagined to be the centre of the town we saw only a dog, trotting briskly about his affairs, and a child crouched in the middle of the road, absorbed in some mysterious game of childhood. Then, swinging the Land-Rover round a corner, we were startled to see a man on horseback, clopping slowly along the road with the subdued aid of one who is the sole survivor of a catastrophe. He pulled up and greeted us politely, but without interest, when we stopped, and directed us to the only two hotels in the place. As these turned out to be opposite each other and both equally unprepossessing from the outside, we chose one by tossing a coin and made our way inside.