Pecked to death by ducks (25 page)

At the summit of the hill there was an archway where several men dressed in those odd tasseled hats asked if I wanted to spend the night. Yes? Then I could stay with Sebastian. The price amounted to seventy-five cents a night.

One of the men showed me the way, and we walked down a sloping cobblestone walk with waist-high stone fences on either side. My room was on the second story of a stone building, covered over in brown adobe. I climbed a small, rickety wooden

ladder, ducked into the door—which was about two feet high— and collapsed on the reeds, feeling very sick indeed.

In Taquile families live in several small houses set around a central courtyard. The stones are covered over in adobe and sometimes smeared with sheep dung against the wind and cold. Each stone house is very small, a single room. One is used for cooking, one for sleeping, one for working. Sebastian Yurca's compound included a larger room that he used as a restaurant to serve his guests.

I was not, I think, good company that first night. Sebastian's daughters seemed very shy, and when I asked them their names, they blushed, stared at the floor, and felt obliged to cover their faces with their shawls. Oh, that a man could ask them such a question. They answered in whispers: Revecca was four; Angelica, twelve; Lina, sixteen; and Juana, nineteen. All the girls spoke fluent Spanish, a second language for them. They pumped a bit more light out of the kerosene lamp for me and told me that I could have pancakes, potato soup, fried potatoes, eggs, or trout. There was never anything else to eat on the island, and the only spices used were salt and pepper.

Juana, the oldest, noticed my condition. She'd seen it often enough before: some gringo with a bad headache and no appetite. Altitude sickness: the sorache. She brought a cup of hot water and set a few sprigs of mint in the cup to steep. Mate de muna, she said, was good for pain. Women drank strong mate de muna when they gave birth.

I sipped at the tea, had a bowl of bland but filling potato soup, and watched the daughters of Sebastian Yurca go about their work in the warm light of the lantern. Lina was weaving one of the red men's belts on a wooden loom. The designs were intricate: a bird, a diamond radiating rays, a circle divided into six parts. Lina worked the threads with a lamb bone polished sharp and smooth. The designs, she explained, all had meaning. The belt was a kind of agricultural calender: when the scissor-billed bird laid its eggs, it was time to plant. The diamond was Inti, the sun, the god of the Incas. The circle in six parts represented the

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island of Taquile, which was, in turn, divided into six agricultural regions. Terraces in some regions were to remain fallow in certain years—there were dots on those areas of the belt Lina was weaving—and others could be planted.

A woman, Lina said, would make such a belt for her husband. It would represent a man's past, present, and future.

How long did it take to make a belt?

Lina paused. She had never thought about it. She guessed that if she worked five or six hours a day, it would take her less than two months.

The other girls had connected a small tape player to an auto battery. They played the music of the Alti Piano, the high, mournful sound of flutes and drums and guitar: "El Condor Pasa," a kind of national lament of the Alti Piano. Paul Simon's version had nothing to do with words of the Peruvian song, but his interpretation caught the mood: "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail." It was the music of a conquered people, plaintive and melodic and somehow triumphant.

The two oldest girls had colorful tassels at the corners of the shawls they wore. Juana said that the tassels meant they could date boys. Single men, she said, wore hats that were white at the end.

Girls who wear the tassels, Juana told me, are said to be "in flower." A married woman cannot wear tassels.

"You mean," I said, feeling much better after my mint tea, "that when you get married, all the color goes out of your life?"

This comment was treated as the height of flirtation. Juana dissolved into giggles and felt forced, once again, to hide her face behind her shawl. My headache was now only a minor annoyance, and I sought to make the girls giggle and hide their faces.

Did Juana have a boyfriend?

Oh blush, giggle giggle, hide behind the shawl, whisper to Lina . . .

And Lina?

The girl went through an agony of exquisite embarrassment. Such a question. It was possible to look only at the floor. A boyfriend! The very thought . . .

There was a new tape on the machine now, a Peruvian version of the lambada. Juana asked if I could dance. It occurred to me that in South America, the lambada, as they say in the movies, was "forbeedin." Somehow I couldn't imagine these shy young women performing a dance that looks like something the dog does to your leg.

"Can't dance," I explained.

A chorus of disbelief for a reply. If I was going to tease, Juana said, then I had to dance. She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at me, falsely stern. I stood, took her right hand in my left, put my other hand on her back, and she brushed it away. No, sir, please, don't: not like that. This was, apparently, a lambada in which you only touched your partner's hands. And nothing else.

I had no idea how to proceed and spun Juana away from me in a kind of cowboy two-step. This was received with much laughter and applause. Soon Juana was whirling this way and that and would have looked right at home cutting a rug in any Montana saloon. I was very conscious of my heavy boots and Juana's bare feet.

What kind of dance did I call that?

It is, I said, a cowboy dance.

And so, every night for the next week, at least once, Juana and I danced to the music of a tape deck connected to a car battery in a brown adobe room with the high country wind booming and whistling outside in the night. We danced the cowboy lambada.

The next morning I had pancakes and coffee with the daughters of Sebastian, and started a walking tour of the island. In contrast to the freezing hail of the night before, the sun was now hot and harsh at 13,300 feet. It was, I knew, burning my face.

About an hour from the village, I heard a rhythmic tap, tap, and stumbled upon three men, all of them dressed in the men's basic costume. There were two married men and one bachelor. Alejandro Flores and his two brothers were cutting stone that would be used to build a new schoolhouse. They were donating the work to the community. Tomorrow other men would cut stone for the school.

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Alejandro didn't mind talking while he worked. Everyone on the island donated a few hours of work to the community every week, he said. There were 2,000 people on the island, 318 families. Agriculture had to be very strictly controlled so that everyone could eat: The island was very small, and the weather very harsh. Each Sunday, after Catholic mass, the people met in the central courtyard, where the events of the past week were discussed and plans were made. The highest political authority was the first lieutenant governor.

Sometimes, Alejandro said, men from the outside came to Ta-quile to "organize" the people. These men talked about inflation, insurgency, and police corruption. What did these things have to do with Taquile? There were no police on the island. The people did not want police. Where there are police, there are thieves. Everyone knew that.

Alejandro had been tapping on a rock the size of a large footstool. He used a simple hammer and chisel, gently rapping along the grain of the rock. Suddenly, it fell apart, into two pieces, each of them almost perfectly square. He began trimming one of the pieces, and I recalled that the Incas were, perhaps, the finest stone workers in pre-Columbian America.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud, and the temperature dropped 15 degrees in a matter of minutes. I dug around in my pack for a jacket, but Alejandro and his brothers continued working, apparently quite comfortable. The weather was harsh— it might be 75 during the day and 30 at night—yet people never wore jackets, nor did they strip off a shirt or vest in the sun. Layers of heavy wool, finely made, some anthropologists suggest, create a kind of personal microclimate around the people of Taquile.

The curious uniform the islanders wore allowed a man or woman to work in the fields under all conditions. The clothes a person put on in the morning indicated his or her marital status, age group, relative wealth, and social position. The island existed on subsistence agriculture, but the textiles produced by the people represented the soul of Taquile.

Why was it, I asked Alejandro, that the people of Taquile were so honest that they didn't need police?

PECKED TO DEATH BY DUCKS ▲ 2l6

Alejandro said that if a man stole a sheep, he would be taken before the community at the Sunday meeting; he would be forced to carry the sheep on his back six times around the square, and the traditional twelve authorities, the men who governed the six parts of the island, would whip the man as he passed with heavy woven ropes. If a man killed another man's sheep, he made the same humiliating walk wearing the intestines of the dead sheep wrapped around his head. Then he was taken to the mainland. That man could never return.

"So you see," Alejandro said, "we have no need for police."

Alejandro himself, it seemed, was running for the position of first lieutenant governor.

What were the issues?

"Natural fibers," Alejandro said without hesitation. "Natural colors."

There were, it seemed, some people on the island who would knit hats or scarfs with synthetic material. They might even use artificial dyes to color the products and sell them to tourists like myself. Alejandro thought tourists could buy such things anywhere.

People had such short sight. There was television everywhere in the world, Alejandro said. Why would people need it here? Or loud music. It was a quiet island, very traditional, and it should be kept that way. When the political men came to organize the island, Alejandro asked them, "And where do you stand on natural color?" The men had no answer. They knew nothing of Ta-quile. The people asked political organizers to go away.

Alejandro, like most people I met on Taquile, was a tireless talker and storyteller.

All the young men of his island, he said, want to visit Lima, if only for a few days. For the men of Taquile, Lima is a kind of Disneyland of danger and violence, of strange, gratuitous wonders.

So when Alejandro decided it was time for him to see the great city, he approached the local shaman, called a paq'o, and asked advice. Was it his time?

The paq'o, who was very wise, sat at a wooden table and

spread out three of the leaves of the sacred plant, coca leaves. A coin was placed on the middle leaf, and this represented the all-seeing eye of God. A crucifix was placed below the coin to indicate that Alejandro and his family were Catholics. The leaf to the left was turned over so that the dull side was up: It was a sign of bad luck and trouble. The right leaf lay shiny side up. If God and the spirits willed it, the right leaf would triumph in the upcoming test, and Alejandro could go to Lima without worry.

The paq'o gave Alejandro five of the dull green leaves, and they fit neatly in the palm of his right hand. He closed his eyes and emptied his hand in a sweeping gesture, so that the leaves fell across the coin and the crucifix. The paq'o examined the way the leaves had fallen. All shiny side up, a very good sign. And the leaves traced a relatively straight line, somewhat below the crucifix. They rose from the left and pointed to the shiny leaf at the far right. Alejandro Flores would have good luck in Lima.

Lima. The air there, in that great city, was very thick and very dirty. Still, the bright-colored lights glittered at night, because there was electricity everywhere.

On Taquile, there is no electricity, and a man can see the stars.

One day, during his visit to Lima, a strange-looking foreign man stopped Alejandro on the street. He was very excited about something, and Alejandro thought perhaps this tall, thin man was crazy or drunk. No, the man said, please don't go. Please, sir, the man said, just allow me to ask a few questions. Where had Alejandro gotten the wool to weave his belt?

From sheep, of course.

His own sheep?

Yes, everyone on Taquile raised sheep.

And how did they spin the wool? Did Alejandro have a machine?

No, he spun the wool by hand. Mostly the wool is spun clockwise.

Mostly?

Sometimes, Alejandro explained, the wool was spun in the opposite direction when it was to be used to finish the edge oi I

garment. The backward spin created good luck and warded off nasty spirits.

The man stared at Alejandro as if he'd just said something strange and amazing; something like: I can fly like a bird when I like.

The man began to guess about the clothes Alejandro wore. They were woven on a wooden loom, he said, the kind where the four edges are pounded into the ground.

That was true.

And the colors, this golden yellow, it came from the leaf of a certain tree? Boiled for several hours?

Yes.

And the reds: Were they from the beetle of the cactus plant? Cochineal?

Yes. Alejandro grew his own cacti, and allowed the beetles to infest the plants. His wife might sometimes take one or two of the insects and press them in her hands to form a bright red juice she used to paint her lips and fingernails. It was, Alejandro thought, the fullest, most beautiful red color on earth.

And to color the wool with cochineal?

Alejandro said that he gathered the beetles, allowed them to dry in the sun, and boiled them for several hours until he had a pot of the most beautiful red dye anyone had ever seen.

And the foreign man knew about the process, which surprised Alejandro. He knew that the color was fixed—so it wouldn't bleed when washed—with salt, fermented potato water, and fermented human urine.

The man said that, with a few exceptions, Alejandro made textiles in exactly the way they had been made in the Alti Piano several thousand years ago. Those ancient textiles, the man said, were among the finest ever produced, anywhere. Perhaps Alejandro could come to his country. There were many scholars who would want to speak with him, many people who would come see him create "art."