We left in a hurry the next morning, before the woman who owned the place woke up, because we hadn’t paid the bill and the Camba brothers were short on cash because of repairs to the axle. We drove the whole day until ending up stuck at one of those road barriers the army puts up to stop people traveling when its raining heavily.
Off again the next day and we were detained once more at a barrier. Only in the evening did they let us move on, yet we were stopped again at a small town called Nescuilla, our final stop for the day.
The road was still closed the next day, so we went to the army post to get some food. We left in the afternoon, taking with us a wounded soldier who would get us through the army roadblocks. The strategy worked: a few kilometers down the road, when the rest of the trucks were being stopped, ours was allowed through to Pucallpa where we arrived after nightfall. The younger Camba paid for our meal and to say goodbye we drank four bottles of wine that made him sentimental and promise us his eternal love. He then paid for a hotel room for us to sleep in.
The main task at hand was getting to Iquitos, so we concentrated on that. The first person we hit on was the mayor, someone called Cohen; we had heard a lot about him, that he was Jewish as far as money was concerned but a good sort. There was no doubt he was tightfisted; the problem was whether he was a good sort. He palmed us off to the shipping agents, who in turn sent us to speak with the captain, who was kindly enough, promising the huge concession of charging us third-class fares and letting us travel in first. We weren’t happy with this, and went to see the head of the garrison who said he couldn’t do anything for us. Then the second-in-command, after interrogating us (and in doing so demonstrating his stupidity), promised to help.
We went for a swim that afternoon in the Ucayali River which looks a lot like the Upper Paraná. We came across the deputy, who said he’d secured a great deal for us: as a special favor to him, the captain had agreed to charge us third-class fares and let us travel in first. Big deal.
There was a very rare pair of fish where we swam, called by the locals bufeo. Legend has it that they eat men, rape women and commit a thousand other acts of violence. Apparently it’s a river dolphin, which among other strange characteristics, has genitals similar to those of a woman. So, the Indians use it as a substitute, but they must kill the animal once they’ve finished coitus because the genital area contracts and the penis cannot come out. That night we took on the ever arduous task of facing our colleagues at the hospital to ask for lodging. As expected, they greeted us coldly, and would have turned us away had our equanimity not won them over and we were given two beds where we could rest our weary bones.
*Spanish baroque architecture, characterized by elaborate surface decoration.
*The Hospital de Guía.
*In Spanish, descabellar: to sever the bull’s spinal cord with a dagger.
**Cantinflas was a prolific Mexican comic actor — a Mexican Charlie Chaplin.
*Spanish for bric a brac, or junk store.
UCAYALI ABAJO
down the ucayali
Carrying our packs, looking like explorers, we boarded the little boat La Cenepa just before it left. As agreed, the captain let us into first class where we quickly mingled with all the privileged passengers. After a few whistles, the boat pulled away from shore and so began the second stage in our journey to San Pablo. When we could no longer see the houses of Pucallpa and all that remained was a steady panorama of unbroken jungle, people began to leave the rails and gathered around the gambling tables. We approached with caution but Alberto was struck with momentary inspiration and won 90 soles at a card game called “21,” very much like our “7½.” This victory brought upon us the loathing of the other gamblers, because he had played with an initial stake of just one sol of the national currency.
On that first day we didn’t have many opportunities for friendly exchanges with the other passengers and we kept somewhat to ourselves, not getting involved in the general conversation. The food was scarce and poor. The boat didn’t sail at night because the river was too low. There were hardly any mosquitoes, and even though we were told this was normal we didn’t really believe it, because by now we were used to the exaggerations (and understatements) people make when trying to deal with difficult situations.
Early the next morning, we were off. The day passed uneventfully, except for making friends with a girl who seemed rather easy; maybe she thought we had a few pesos despite the diligent tears we wept whenever there was any mention of money. Toward evening, when the boat docked by the riverbank, the mosquitoes came out in hordes to prove the tangible truth of their existence, attacking us in swarms throughout the night. Alberto covered his face with a piece of net and wrapped in his sleeping bag was able to get some sleep, but I began to feel the symptoms of an asthma attack, so between that and the mosquitoes, I didn’t close my eyes until the morning. That night has escaped from my memory, but I do still remember feeling the skin on my butt that had taken on gigantic proportions from so many bites. I was sleepy the whole next day and stayed in some corner or other, trying to snatch a few winks in borrowed hammocks. My asthma showed no sign of abating and I had to take the drastic measure of getting asthma medicine by the banal method of paying for it. It relieved the attack slightly. We looked out dreamily beyond the river edge to the jungle, its inviting greenery so mysterious. My asthma and the mosquitoes restrained me somewhat, but virgin forests are so compelling for spirits like ours that physical impediments and all the nascent forces of nature only served to stimulate my desire.
The days passed with great monotony. The only form of entertainment was the game we couldn’t enjoy fully because of our economic situation. Two more days went by uneventfully. This trip would normally take four days but the river was so low we had to stop every night; this delayed the journey and turned us into promising targets for the mosquitoes. Although the food is better in first class and the threat from mosquitoes less vicious, I’m not sure what we won in the bargain. We are drawn more to the simple sailors than to that small middle class which, whether rich or not, is too attached to the memory of what it once was to allow themselves the luxury of associating with two penniless travelers. They have the same crass ignorance as any other man, but the small victories they have achieved in life have gone to their heads, and their dull opinions are delivered with even more arrogance simply because they themselves have tendered them. My asthma worsened, though I was following my diet strictly.
A careless caress from that easy girl who showed sympathy for my pathetic physical state penetrated the dormant memories of my preadventurer life. That night as I was kept awake by the mosquitoes, I thought of Chichina, now a distant, intoxicating dream; though the dream’s ending, unusual for this kind of naive reminiscing, leaves more honey than bitterness in my memory. I sent her a soft and unhurried kiss, that of an old friend who knows and understands her; then my mind took a road to Malagueño, that great hall of so many sleepless nights, where at that very moment she would probably be whispering her strange, composed phrases to some new suitor.
My eyes traced the immense vault of heaven; the starry sky twinkled happily above me, as if answering in the affirmative to the question rising deep within me: “Is all of this worth it?”
Two more days: nothing changed. The confluence of the Ucayali and the Marañon that gives birth to the earth’s mightiest river has nothing transcendent about it: it is simply two masses of muddy water that unite to form one — a bit wider, maybe a bit deeper, but nothing else. I had no more adrenalin and my asthma was getting worse; I could eat only a handful of rice and drink mate. On the last day, close to arriving, we ran into a severe storm which meant we had to stop the boat. The mosquitoes swarmed around us in clouds, worse than ever, as if taking their revenge on us for the fact we would soon be out of their reach. It felt like a night without end, filled with frantic slaps and edgy yelps, endless card games like narcotics and with random phrases tossed out to maintain any conversation and pa
ss the time more quickly. In the morning, the fever of disembarking leaves one hammock lying empty and I lie down. As if enchanted, I felt as though a coiled spring was unwinding inside me, taking me to new heights, or into an abyss, I don’t know which… Alberto woke me with a rough shake. “Pelao,* we’ve arrived.” The river had broadened to reveal in front of us a low-lying town with some taller buildings, surrounded by jungle and reddened by the earth beneath them.
It was a Sunday, and the day of our arrival in Iquitos. We docked early at the pier and went directly to speak with the head of the International Cooperation Service. We did have an introduction to Dr. Chávez Pastor, but he was not in Iquitos. They were kind to us anyway, putting us up in the ward for yellow fever and giving us hospital food. My asthma was still bad and I couldn’t get on top of my miserable wheezing, even with up to four injections of adrenalin a day.
The next day I felt no better and I spent it passed out in bed, or rather “adrenalizing myself.”
The following day I resolved to follow a strict morning diet and a more or less strict one at night, cutting out rice. I improved a little, though not much. At night, we watched “Stromboli” with Ingrid Bergman, and Rossellini as the director. You cannot give it any other rating besides bad.
Wednesday marked a distinctly important date for us with the announcement that we would be leaving the next day. The news made us significantly happier, since I had been unable to move because of my asthma and we spent days collapsed in bed.
Very early the next day we began to prepare psychologically to leave. The day passed, however, and we were still anchored; it was announced that departure would be the following afternoon.
Confident that the owners’ inertia could have us leaving later but never before time, we slept soundly. After taking a walk we went to the library, where the assistant, extremely agitated, rushed in to tell us that El Cisne was sailing at 11:30 a.m. It was already 11:05. We gathered our things together quickly and, because I was still suffering from asthma, took a taxi which charged us half a Peruvian libra for Iquitos’ eight blocks. We reached the boat and discovered it wasn’t leaving until three, though it was required that we board by one. We weren’t brave enough to disobey and go to eat at the hospital and, at any rate, it was more convenient not to, because now we could “forget” the syringe they had loaned us. We ate terrible and expensive food with an Indian belonging to the Yagua tribe, strangely attired in a red straw skirt and a few necklaces of the same straw; his name was Benjamín but he spoke almost no Spanish. Just above his left shoulder blade he had a scar from a bullet shot at almost point-blank range, because of “vinganza,”* according to him.
The night was brimming with mosquitoes fighting over our almost virgin flesh. There was an important addition to our psychological perspective in that trip when we learned it was possible to get from Manaos to Venezuela by river. The next day passed calmly, and we slept as much as possible to recover the sleep lost to the hording mosquitoes. That night, at about 1 a.m., I was woken just seconds after I’d fallen asleep and told we had arrived in San Pablo. They advised the colony’s medical director, Dr. Bresciani, who was very welcoming and facilitated a room for the night.
*Slang for “baldy.”
*A mix of Spanish and Portuguese for the word, “revenge.”
QUERIDO PAPI
dear papi
Iquitos
June 4, 1952
The great riverbanks are full of settlements. To find savage tribes you must follow the tributaries deep into the interior — and, this time at least, we don’t intend to make that journey. Infectious diseases have disappeared, but just in case, we’ve been vaccinated against typhoid and yellow fever and have good supplies of atebrine and quinine.
There are many diseases caused by metabolic disorders: the food available in the jungle is nutritionally inadequate, but you only become seriously ill by going without vitamins for over a week, and even if we went by river that’s the longest period of time we would be without proper food. We’re still not sure about this and have been looking into the possibility of flying to Bogotá, or at least to Leguisamo, as the roads are good from there on. It’s not that we think it might be dangerous to travel by river, but we can save money, which later on might be important for me.
Away from the scientific centers where we risk being exposed, our journey becomes something of an event for the staff of the leprosy hospitals and they shower us with the respect due to two visiting researchers. I’ve become really interested in leprology, but I don’t know how long it will last. The patients in the Lima hospital farewelled us so wonderfully we were encouraged to carry on; they gave us a gas camping stove and managed to collect 100 soles, which for them in their economic situation counts as a fortune. Some of them had tears in their eyes when they said goodbye. Their appreciation sprang from the fact that we never wore overalls or gloves, that we shook their hands as we would shake anybody’s, that we sat with them, talking about all sorts of things, that we played football with them. It may all seem like pointless bravado, but the psychological lift it gives to these poor people — treating them as normal human beings instead of animals, as they are used to — is incalculable and the risk to us extremely low. Until today the only staff to have become infected are a medical orderly in Indochina who lived with his patients, and an overly zealous monk I would not like to vouch for.
LA COLONIA DE SAN PABLO
the san pablo leper colony
The following day, Sunday, we were up and ready to visit the colony, but to get there you have to go by river and, as it wasn’t a working day, we couldn’t go. So we visited the administrator of the colony, a butch-looking nun called Sister Alberto, then played a game of football in which the two of us performed very badly. My asthma began to recede.
On Monday we sent a good proportion of our clothes to be washed, then went to the colony to visit the patients’ compound. There are 600 sick people living independently in typical jungle huts, doing whatever they choose, looking after themselves, in an organization which has developed a rhythm and style of its own. There is a local official, a judge, a policeman, etc. The respect Dr. Bresciani commands is considerable and he clearly coordinates the whole colony, both protecting and sorting out disputes that arise between the different groups.
On Tuesday we visited the colony again, joining Dr. Bresciani as he made his rounds, examining the patients’ nervous systems. He is preparing a detailed study of nervous forms of leprosy based on 400 cases. It really is very interesting work because many of the cases of leprosy in this region attack the nervous system. Actually, I didn’t see a single patient who wasn’t presenting such symptoms. Bresciani told us that Dr. Souza Lima was interested in early signs of nervous disorder among the children living in the colony.
We went to the part of the colony reserved for the healthy, where 70 or so people live. It is lacking basic amenities that are supposedly being installed, like electricity during the day, a refrigerator and even a laboratory. They are in need of a good microscope, a microtome, a technician — at the moment this post is occupied by Mother Margarita, nice but not very knowledgeable — and they need a surgeon to operate on nerves, eyes, etc. An interesting thing is that aside from the widespread nervous problems, there are very few blind people, perhaps leading to the conclusion that [indecipherable word] has something to do with it, seeing that most receive no treatment at all.
We repeated our rounds on Wednesday, passing the day with fishing and swimming in between. I played chess with Dr. Bresciani at night, or we chatted. Dr. Alfaro, the dentist, is a wonderful person — relaxed and very friendly. Thursday is a day of rest for the colony so we changed our routine, not visiting the compound. We tried to fish, without success, in the morning. In the afternoon we played football and my performance in goal was less atrocious. On Friday I returned to the compound, but Alberto stayed to do bacilloscopes in the company of that sweet nun, Mother Margarita. I caught two species of sumbi fish, called mota,
and gave one of them to Dr. Montoya to enjoy.
EL DÍA DE SAN GUEVARA
saint guevara’s day
On Saturday, June 14, 1952, I, just a lad, turned 24, on the cusp of that transcendental quarter century, silver wedding of a life, which, all things considered, has not treated me so badly. Early in the morning I went to the river, to try my luck again with the fish, but that sport is like gambling: one starts out winning and ends up losing. In the afternoon we played football and I occupied my usual place in goal, with better results than on earlier occasions. In the evening, after passing by Dr. Bresciani’s house for a delightful, huge meal, they threw a party for us in the dining room of the colony, with a lot of the Peruvian national drink, pisco. Alberto is quite experienced regarding its effects on the central nervous system. With everyone slightly drunk and in high spirits, the colony’s director toasted us warmly, and I, “piscoed,” replied with something elaborate, like the following:
Well, it’s my duty to respond to the toast offered by Dr. Bresciani with something more than a conventional gesture. In our presently precarious state as travelers, we only have recourse to words and I would now like to use them to express my thanks, and those of my traveling compañero, to all of the staff of the colony who, almost without knowing us, have given us this beautiful demonstration of their affection, celebrating my birthday as if it were an intimate celebration for one of your own. But there is something more. Within a few days we will be leaving Peruvian territory, so these words have the secondary intention of being a farewell, and I would like to stress our gratitude to all the people of this country, who have unfailingly shown us their warmest hospitality since we entered Peru via Tacna.