I have always hated rushing at things without thinking them through but at the same time I am highly biddable, so that often through life I have agreed to something that in my heart I have felt is a half-baked notion. At times I would throw up resistance to more determined natures but whether this was through caution or stubbornness I am not sure. There were, of course, moments of focus and calm – of being centred – then I would wheel off again into a world of uncertainty. Now I am less often so uncertain; over recent years I have gained confidence. Throughout our friendship Brian has had a great influence on this aspect of my character. Although at times I have felt irritated at his single-mindedness, his passionate adherence to his views is usually encouraging and a reassurance.
The perfect journey has become the journey to hell. It is nearing four in the morning, and a short while ago the guard and steward appeared at our door, jabbered something at me and left leaving the light on. Clearly something of importance is afoot. Brian is deep in sleep but after a few shakes he opens his eyes and listens to the news.
‘I didn’t do anything! Let’s turn the lights out and get some more kip,’ he says, determined that nothing untoward should happen.
I look out the window and see one of the noisy youths from the dining car standing on the platform with his bag. I go out into the corridor and meet a lady from the neighbouring compartment. Fortunately she speaks a little English and explains that an accident further up the line means we have to transfer to buses. This is only the second time we have ventured onto Chile’s rail network and so far it has notched up a 100 per cent failure rate in delivering us to the expected destination. Last time we were marooned in Chillán. I have no idea where we are now.
Blearily we struggle into our clothes and I take out my bags to leave Bri more room for manoeuvre. A steward directs me to a bus so I load my bags and have a smoke while waiting for himself. After what seems an age the steward reappears with Brian’s wheelie bag, loads it and chats to a colleague. The faces at the bus windows are pale in the neon light; everyone looks tired and confused. Suddenly heads turn back towards the station. Butch Cassidy lopes into view, hat down over his eyes, saddle thrown over his shoulder. Only his fellow gringo catches this tough hombre’s muttered comment, ‘I’m too tired for all this malarkey!’ as we stagger onto the bus and find the only two unoccupied seats, at opposite ends.
Pulling out of the station yard I glimpse a sign – Chillán. My God, I think, the place must have a curse against us getting safely through it by rail! I swivel round to see if Brian has noticed the sign but cannot even locate him in the gloom and mass of bodies at the back of the bus.
I try to get some rest and, with the aid of earplugs and eye mask, am asleep when the bus stops at another station and we disembark to board another train. I feel that the lack of sleep and all the disruptions of this nightmare ride are causing me to hallucinate when I try to locate our bags in the pile that is emerging from underneath the bus. Struggling in the throng of people, I bend down to check a bag and realize there is a false leg beside it, with sock and shoe already on. Its owner, quite a young man, appears on crutches. My face must have reflected my confusion and shock as he stops and laughs, saying ‘OK! OK!’ as he sits on his bag to fix the leg. Catching up with myself I smile back and give him a thumbs-up, and go off in search of my own bag feeling humbled. In minutes we are ensconced in a new compartment, bags stashed, bunks set and heads down, dead to the world.
Next morning we dismantle the bunks and settle on the seats to watch the countryside roll by, wondering at the strange coincidence of failing to get through Chillán on the train for a second time.
‘I blame your man Bernardo,’ I tease Brian. ‘Typical Irishman, putting a spanner in the works!’
‘Don’t forget that Neruda was born nearby too,’ observes Brian, ‘so maybe they were both talking to us, wanting us to wait a while, and feel something special.’
As we chat I am leafing through a small guidebook I’d picked up at the Hotel Explora and find a phrase I like:
‘“The explicit purpose of the trip must be forgotten to allow the good side of the unexpected to appear.” Maybe that was what was happening.’
‘I like that,’ says Brian, ‘but humping a saddle around from train to bus and back again in the middle of the night is just a little too unexpected for my liking.’
‘True enough.’ I pause, reading another line from the book. ‘But listen to this. “Almost every discovery is anticipated by a certain knowledge. Action begins the moment one thinks about it. The rest is only the consequence of the idea, or the dream.” That could have been written for us sitting in Beirut! Except that our knowledge of yaks and Patagonia was a bit thin.’
‘Yes, but we were right. We convinced Alfonso.’
It seems fitting that the inspiration for this journey was that scheme to farm yaks in Patagonia. Although we had developed that wild idea with Alfonso, it was really just the icing on the cake of the Chilean adventure. There had been no powerful emotional investment in the project, it was merely something that reflected the vital element of fantasy that we had used to bring us through the bad times. Yak farming was a symbol of our shared sense of humour, the determination to persevere and believe in a future beyond captivity. The exploration of the fantasy has been fun but, because it was a fantasy, we have been free to explore wider horizons both in Chile and in ourselves. This journey has held us together but, unlike our original ‘holidays’, this one has had all the freedoms included.
The profound need for mutual support we had in Beirut is not now so vital. Then we accepted that element of personal surrender: holding oneself in check to give the other room to breathe; affecting greater optimism than one really felt to carry the other through; frankly asking for help – ‘I am frightened, don’t let me go under.’ These things are fainter now. Mutual responsibility, respect and love are still there. But without the spectre of mental and emotional collapse they do not command the old levels of selflessness. We are no longer in survival mode and recognize that relationships demand less when you can stand up and walk out of the door. This journey has reinforced our acceptance of this change and allowed us to enjoy the fact that we are no longer so responsible for each other.
I go down the corridor to take a last look from the back of the train. The door to the small platform is now cordoned off but I am not too disappointed – I have been there. Looking through the door’s grimy window, I see that the printing press is still rolling away. On the way back I meet the guard who tells me we will be in Santiago in twenty minutes. In the compartment Bri is sitting looking out at the countryside as it begins to transform into suburbs. We share that sense of a secret, special, back-door arrival that you find reaching a place by boat or train. It is like looking over a garden fence and seeing the washing out to dry; here we go past ugly industrial sites, shanty areas and lorry parks. We pass old, rusting rolling stock, spot a man sleeping under a tatty bit of carpet and another, in a wide flat area of waste ground, covered in litter, looking neat and clean in trousers and shirt but wandering about looking lost.
‘Oh well, back to Frank’s flat for a shower and tidy up. Then off to the airport and home!’ says Brian.
Sharing this view, it seems like a good moment to clear the air. In other times we voiced our frustrations immediately, realizing that if we did not, they would fester. Our circumstances may have changed, but the need to be open with each other has not.
‘You know, you changing the plans and getting the key to Frank’s place really annoyed me at the time.’
‘I noticed. We were bound to get on each other’s nerves. I was ready to strangle you and those bloody guidebooks.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘I’m sorry too.’
Close friends know each other so well that much is communicated indirectly, the fingers on each other’s pulse able to pick up every change of beat. But when your own emotional pulse is running erratically it is easy to presume to
know what the other is feeling without seeking confirmation. Reactions are read incorrectly and misguide one’s response. Such moments of failed communication can create unstated barriers and sometimes a wilful answer like that of a contrary child. This can escalate to cause moments of barely concealed hostility. I remember seething in La Serena over our efforts to hire a car. It seemed as if we both wanted to prove the other wrong and do our own thing, losing the facility to talk the situation through so that we could arrive at a decision happily and together. Eventually, on a practical level, all was fine and yet for some time I remained irritable, needlessly wasting emotional energy.
Yet the joy of true friendship is that there comes a point when bitchiness is suddenly thrown over; so deep is the relationship that much hurt can be put instantly behind you. A moment of confrontation when problems are aired leads to an affectionate toast, with wine, tea, water or a hug, which puts the world back onto a happier plane where the light is bright and the smiles broad. Happiness is profoundest when it is shared: an expression of love between friends is a wonderful human experience. That deep feeling of companionship envelops me now as we smile at each other then turn back to the view outside. I feel as I have so many times before: here is a man, a complex and kind being with a great spirit, whom I shall always cherish.
As a hundred and one other thoughts and impressions were surfacing, I looked over our tiny cabin. It could not have been any bigger than our cells in Lebanon. I smiled at the notion. We had both been free now as long as we had been imprisoned and here we were thousands of miles from home and sharing a small room once more.
‘Think I’ll walk back to the tailgate again,’ I said, getting up and opening the door. John nodded and I left him to himself.
I disregarded the notice not to pass. It was warm on the tailgate and I could see the small villages hurtling away from us. I wasn’t feeling sad, just guilty. I was glad I was going home, but I wasn’t sure why. There were lots of convenient explanations, but my thoughts were still with Neruda and Bernardo. Both men’s early lives were formed by a significant absence or lack of relationship with their father. My wife was at home waiting to give birth to our first child and the train wasn’t going fast enough for me. Maybe that was another reason why these ghosts had latched on to me so tightly, impressing on me the importance of my own fatherhood.
Was there more to my maudlin introspection than simple homesickness? The train was leaving behind the pungent odour of Neruda’s woodlands. The scent of the early morning was becoming heady with the aroma of cornfields and fruit plantations as sunlight flooded the panorama before me.
I thought again of these ‘fatherless’ heroes of Chile’s past and how this significant aspect of their intimate personal histories had played an enormous part in their own development as poet and politician. And indirectly how this had also played an important role in the development of Chile as a nation, and how that nation perceived itself.
I looked out on the drowsy villages we sped through and the small settlements on the hillside beyond. I wondered how many of the occupants of those adobe cabins were themselves fatherless sons and daughters of the ‘disappeared’. It was as if the earth had subsumed the confusion, grief, anger and sense of loss which were the emotional foundations of my spirit guides. This orphaned nation had never known a natural father to give it confidence and assurance through which its own personality could flower. In desperation, it had floundered under colonial taskmasters and economic exploitation. It had latterly suffered under a tyrant uncle who cared nothing for these children of the earth and whose vision of its destiny was steeped in blood and oppression.
Both Neruda and Bernardo were children of a great love hunger and in the shimmering, apple-scented morning, I knew it was there still, breathing up out of the earth and into every living thing.
Instinctively Chile’s magical landscape had somehow resolved the urgent inclination in me to travel. It was, in its own paradoxical way, a kind of homecoming. I sensed that the only important journeys I would henceforth make would be journeys out of time and into mind. There was another landscape to be discovered and negotiated. The landscape of the heart, the emotions and the imagination had to be opened up and new route maps plotted. Another Patagonian traveller whom I have begun reading since my return writes, ‘We talked late into the night arguing whether or not we, too, have journeys mapped out in our central nervous systems; it seemed the only way to account for our insane restlessness.’
Both John and I know these conversations from our sojourn in Lebanon and perhaps Chile was somehow mapped out for us. Certainly the ‘insane restlessness’ that was our natural reaction to captivity needed to be relieved and fulfilled by exploring this place of our fantasies and we had had to go.
Text Acknowledgements
Extract from The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer (Hamish Hamilton, 1964) copyright © Peter Shaffer 1964. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Poem on p. 324 from Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda (Jonathan Cape, 1970), translated by Anthony Kerrigan, edited by Nathaniel Tarn, reproduced by permission of Jonathan Cape.
Poems on pp. 53, 85, 111, 121, 189, 357 from Canto General by Pablo Neruda (University of California Press, 1991), translated by Jack Schmitt, reproduced by permission of University of California Press.
Poems on pp. 81, 277, 312, 333, 381 from La Isla Negra by Pablo Neruda (Souvenir Press, 1982), translated by Alastair Reid, reproduced by permission of Souvenir Press Ltd.
Brian in the 'utter wilderness above Arica.
John and Eduardo, close to the edge.
Brian on the streets of another hillside ghost town.
Karlen and Brian. 'Not asleep - just resting my eyes.'
Vicuna and llama in the mist in Lauca National Park.
'A landscape to relate to', between El tatio and Banos de Puritama.
Vicuna and llama in the mist in Lauca National Park.
'A landscape to relate to', between El tatio and Banos de Puritama.
'Geysers - Fear and Loathing in Northern Chile'. El Tatio at dawn.
Brian and Enzo in the Salar de Atacama - 'I am fuming.'
In Satan's back passage.
Satan's hump, in the Valley of the Moon.
Moonscape at dusk.
Santa Laura - 'Back where he belongs.'
A restored facade at La Moneda, Presidential Palace, Santiago.
An encounter with the spirit guide, Pablo Neruda, at La Chascona, Santiago.
A quiet moment with Tio Pablo
Neruda's home at Isla Negra, with Tom and Jorge.
'Death to the Torturers', Valparaiso.
Clean air, green water Los Azules. Day One in the High Andes.
'This trek should be a breeze...'
'This trek should be a breeze...'
Travelling light. Mauricio loading a mule.
Butch and Sundance in the Big Country.
'Your money or your life!'
Man and horse in perfect harmony.
Temporary settlement in the Museo valley.
Non-stop tapping. Road-testing the Psion.
Tom in the fossil field: 'A little boy again.'
Ireland greets the dawn.
'Nigel, a word if you please.' Imminent terror on Death Ridge.
Sancho Panza struts his stuff.
Nigel's life hangs in the balance, 15,000 feet above Argentina.
The most comfortable way to sit in a saddle. Don Raman's camp.
Checking out the lifeboats. Ferry to Patagonia.
Bermuda, Brinn and the Brit, Chillan.
Another extreme, Tierra del Fuego.
Tranquillity in the archipelago.
Yak country. Alfonso's farm, Patagonia.
Tranquillity in the archipelago.
Yak country. Alfonso's farm, Patagonia.
Companeros, Chillan.
Brian Keenan, Between Extremes
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