Tierra del Fuego (13 page)

“Vidal was coming back downriver after having deposited his yield of wool when he came to the rim of the valley and found the most heartbreaking sight. Everything had been razed to the ground! The grass had been flattened, and there, strewn about, were the bodies of his wife, his children, and some of his farmhands and shepherds, already rotting and half-eaten by a flock of condors that had taken over the valley. The houses had been uprooted and torn apart as if they really had been the matchboxes they'd looked like from a distance. Most of the sheep had disappeared, and those that remained, ­together with the dogs and horses, were also lying there as testimony to the magnitude of the disaster.”

Clifton stoked the fire with a firebrand and sat for a moment looking at it in silence, while the dancing flames made the shadows alternately shrink and swell in the heart of the forest of oaks.

“The muleteers who were with him say he immediately lost the power of speech,” Clifton went on. “But I spoke with him some time later, and although he stammered I managed to understand what he was saying. But now he really does seem to have stopped speaking completely, and, as you saw, he's even lost his memory—he didn't recognize me today. His reason may or may not be disturbed, but the fact is, it's proved impossible to tear him away from the valley. He built that rusty shack we saw out of some leftover sheets of zinc, and now he lives there, no one knows how or on what, and prowls the area like a shadow, with only that strange spaniel for company.

“Is it his misfortune that's kept the man here, waiting for his end? Is it the love of his dead wife and children, or his vanished ranch, that's made it impossible for him to leave?

“Nobody really knows what goes on inside those who've been struck such blows by fate!” Clifton continued. “I'm not surprised by Vidal's state. I once saw a fisherman carry his food down to the shore in the evening and throw it into the waves at the exact same spot where his wife had been swept out to sea! Every evening, the man waited for a while before throwing the food in the water, as if he still expected her to appear. Then, with renewed excitement, he would throw the pieces of bread into the sea and empty the pot in spoonfuls, as if ­actually feeding his beloved!”

Clifton again stoked the fire and stared into it, as if lost in thought. The flames were reflected in his green eyes like a glow on the surface of water, which at times grew darker, as if ­misted over by some passing shadow. I respected his silence, but it went on for so long that I was afraid he'd already reached the end of his story. Did Clifton take it for granted, in that odd way that he had, that I knew why Vidal's ranch had been destroyed? I couldn't stand it anymore, and I interrupted his reverie.

“But what happened in the valley?” I asked.

“Ah!” Clifton exclaimed.

Realizing that he still hadn't completely woken up, I added, “Could it have been a tidal wave?”

“No, the sea's a long way from here.”

“Don't forget,” I said, “that in Ultima Esperanza the sea cuts across the Andes almost as far as the Patagonian pampa.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but Ultima Esperanza Sound is a very distinct formation, similar perhaps to the Straits of Magellan, which cut through the tail of America and the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. But those are massive prehistoric phenomena. The Baker River is quite insignificant in comparison.

“What happened in this valley was due to a flood, the kind that occurs here quite unexpectedly from time to time. Four years or more can go by without anything happening, but then, when you least expect it, a huge wave of water sweeps across it and covers it to a height of several feet. Then it goes down again, and if it didn't raze everything to the ground as it rose, it will when it goes down, because the current rushes away as quickly as it came, and ends up almost at the same level as the river.

“I found an explanation for the phenomenon when I observed what happens in some of the tributaries on the north side of the Baker River. There, when the winters are bad, and the summers mild, you get floods that uproot the giant oaks and cypresses. These trees get stuck in the ravines through which these rivers run, forming dams. Then one day, the trees get dislodged, the dams break, and the water overflows. The Baker also runs through these ravines, so when the dams break, the water floods all the valleys and passes at a lower level.

“This is what happened in this valley. The tributary that goes down to the Baker near here gradually filled up with material, forming a series of dams. The melting ice and snow that year increased the strength of the water, and one day one of these dams burst, devastating everything.”

“And hasn't anyone else ever tried to live in the valley?” I asked.

“No,” Clifton replied. Then, by way of conclusion, “From the Straits of Magellan to the Gulf of Penas, in among the numberless channels and fjords, there are lots of beautiful pastures like this, and no one knows why they've been abandoned. Forgotten lands, that's what they are!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
man in a gray dustcoat emerged from the sentry box on the quay, walked up to me, and said, “Do you want to go work on Navarino?”

“Navarino?” I replied, trying to remember.

“That's right, Navarino!” he said. “The big island to the south of the Beagle Channel. They need someone there who can turn his hand to anything.”

This offer caught me on one of those days when you can set sail in any direction, and at a moment in which I was wandering the harbor as if separated from myself, like those scraps of cloud that linger in the sky after a storm and that blow away as soon as the first wind arrives.

Something like a storm had indeed occurred inside me, but all that remained of it was the memory of a woman and a touch of darkness in my heart that every now and again ran through my veins.

When I signed the contract, however, I didn't feel the same joy I'd felt on other occasions when I had made some life-changing decision. I was free and I was unemployed, and perhaps I was losing something by abandoning that limbo of idleness and agreeing, for some obscure reason, only half-conscious of what I was doing, to accept that offer to go to Navarino.

The quay in Punta Arenas, carpeted with snow, jutted out like a dark shadow into the sea and the night. Beside it, the coastal cutter
Micalvi
was belching smoke, ready to depart, waiting only for a group of gold prospectors who were on their way to Lennox and Picton Islands to finish boarding. The creaking of winches mixed with the voices of men, a few drunk—they were wiser than me, using alcohol to give them the push they needed to go from one life to another.

Three men were supervising the loading of machinery and provisions, and their brand new leather clothes and the awkwardness with which they gave their orders marked them out as city men unaccustomed to this kind of work. Their voices sounded shrill, nervous and impatient, and among the thirty or so workers, several muttered oaths under their breaths at the vacillation and indecisiveness of these masters.

The sailors looked on with a certain indifference as the gold prospectors came noisily on board. Some smiled, remembering other expeditions they had seen leave with high hopes, just like this one, but much better organized, only to return as poor as ever, their numbers decimated by hunger, mutiny and greed for gold.

At nine, the cutter sounded its siren for the third time, as per regulations. The vessel cast off and gradually moved away from the quay as it turned at anchor, setting a southeasterly course. Soon, the town dissolved into a crown of diamonds at the edges of the Straits.

Apart from the noisy gold prospectors, who never stopped checking their equipment, the passengers included settlers from the islands as well as loggers headed for the most remote and deserted coves.

I leaned my elbows on the rail in a corner of the deck and started whistling a tune that often brings back pleasant memories, sensations and colors, like those Bengal lights that used to be lit on Christmas nights when I was a child.

The cutter advanced like a heavy gray monster, leaving a white wound on the surface of the sea and a smoky halo in the night. The engines gasped monotonously in time with my song and, thus united, we seemed to sink into the darkness.

Around midnight, sleep started to brush me with its raven's wing. I had probably only been lingering on deck in order to avoid lying awake in the grim surroundings of third class. I heeded the call and went down to steerage.

Third class is the same everywhere, whether on land or at sea, and those of us who are part of it are also the same. We constitute a kind of frontier of humanity—we are like the crust of the earth, forever on the outside, exposed to the friction of the elements, the breath of the stars, while the opaque ball inside turns eternally in the darkness of space.

Third class on the
Micalvi
was no exception. Located in the upper part of the forward hold, it looked like a prison cell with its iron bunks one on top of the other, and perhaps it was this resemblance that reminded me of a lesson I had once been taught by a prisoner. I put the straw mat over my body as a blanket, instead of under me, and settled down to sleep.

The next day, we woke up in the channels that descend until they join the northeastern arm of the Beagle Channel. The air was as clear as I have ever seen it. The mountains between which we were sailing were like herds of sea monsters cast on the waters, their white backs polished smooth by the winds. The channel broke off for a stretch and the capricious waters of the Pacific rushed through, rocking the ship from port to starboard as it passed, before bursting on the coastal cliffs in a rose garden of foam.

The gold prospectors wandered the forecastle, calmer and quieter now. Rich settlers, with their wives and daughters, socialized on the bridge with the officers. When the light was too strong for me, I slid past anonymous, shadowy figures in the corridors and went and settled in the stern, near a group of four people, among whom one man stood out, a huge man with a square head, his eyes and lips hidden behind a tangle of hair. I discovered later that he was one of the richest ranchers along the Beagle Channel, a Yugoslav who preferred the company of the workers to that of the officers.

The group stood there as if they were talking to each other, but no one moved and no one spoke. After a long while, the huge Yugoslav raised an arm as heavy as a derrick, pointed at some rocks about four hundred feet from the ship, and said in a husky voice, “I once spent seven days on that rock!”

The voice was like thunder, but his stuttering delivery and the way he prolonged the “s,” changing it into a “ch,” made it sound like a child's voice. The overall impression was not so much comic as downright peculiar.

“I almost died,” he continued. “I ate twenty raw beans a day! There are Indians there somewhere, but not a single one showed himself!”

And that was all he said. The other members of the group made no comment, looked away from the rocks, and resumed their previous hieratic poses.

In vivid contrast to this sobriety, a thin, dark-complexioned man of medium height was arguing loudly with an officer on the bridge.

“
Puorco, madonna!
” he cried in a mixture of Italian and Spanish. “What do you
interessare
, passage, ticket paid!
Io
doing it
da
solo
, okay,
io
not
sopportare
all this!
Puorco, madonna!
”

The officer remained imperturbably calm, while the other man waved his arms about as if on the verge of attacking him. He was a well-known seal hunter of Neapolitan origin named Pascualini, famous in the region for his travels and especially for having helped Radowisky, the anarchist who had “liquidated” Colonel Falcón in Buenos Aires, to escape from the penitentiary in Ushuaia. He was protesting because they wouldn't agree to land him where we were at the moment.

But he managed to convince the officer and the cutter reduced speed. Pascualini lowered his little boat, which was no more than fifteen feet long, put a little sack of provisions on board, tied one of the oars to the bench in the middle as a mainmast, hoisted a blanket tied to a broomstick as a sail, put the other oar in place, sat down next to it and with a booming “
Addio
” cast off and sailed away, helped by a favorable southwesterly wind.

“The man's a hobo of the seas!” someone on board said. “He lives among the Indians for a while and then one day he approaches the first passing boat, stops it the way he just did, and brings his harvest of otter skins and seal skins on board.”

 

After three days, the
Micalvi
had let off most of its passengers in various spots. The gold prospectors got off on Lennox Island. I was the last to disembark, in Puerto Robalo, after the cutter had almost completely circled the island of Navarino.

Puerto Robalo is at the foot of a range of mountains that falls almost sheer to the sea, which makes the little valley that runs alongside the coast look like a refuge of dwarves in a land of giants. The rock formation here, at this point where the Beagle Channel is about to flow into the Atlantic, creates an unusual current, with the waters intersecting and interweaving, forming whirlpools at high tide.

Harberton was waiting for me. He was a tall, elderly man, with a face as rough and dark as the bark of an oak. He wore a coat of thick once-black cloth which time had turned as green as moss, and a hat of the same fabric with a wide turned-up brim that made him look like a Protestant pastor.

“Hello,” he said in a surly tone, and in a way that made it sound as if we had always known each other.

He led me to a house built out of thick logs, with a zinc roof, standing beside an oak wood. Inside, I met a young Indian woman and four children.

My work consisted of helping to watch over two thousand sheep, putting the few cows in their pens, yoking a team of oxen from time to time, setting the trammel net whenever it was necessary to supply the kitchen with fish, and a few other tasks.

The work was very easy, and I realized that my presence there was more or less superfluous, because Harberton did almost everything himself, and took his time about it, too.

On the other hand, I soon changed my opinion about the place. There was plenty of time to spare, and the work was almost a game. I milked the cows, collected firewood in the forest, tramped the paths in search of lost livestock, and in the mornings, when I pulled in the net, it was a delight to watch the glistening sea bass leaping in the bottom of the boat, like dozens of severed arms.

At first, everything went very well in that idyllic spot . . .

I say “at first” because it was only after two or three weeks that I really became aware of something strange, something that was gradually to drive me to despair.

Harberton never spoke. After giving me my instructions, showing me the way around, and dividing up the work, he had lapsed into total silence.

His wife and children were used to it, but being in the presence of a man who never spoke was starting to affect me.

He would rise at dawn, put some meat or smoked fish, along with bread and onion, in his canvas knapsack, and set off for the mountains, returning only as night fell.

Once, when there was a snowstorm and he did not come back all night, I went out the following morning to look for him, thinking he might have met with an accident. I found him on one of the highest peaks, having taken shelter in a natural cave in the rocks, smoking his octoroon pipe and staring out at the surrounding landscape. The Beagle Channel was below us, like a green path blooming with foam—the only touch of color, as everything else was completely white. The last foothills of the Andes, which come to an end in Tierra del Fuego, lay there like broken moons, and the island of Navarino itself seemed like the beginning of another strange white world.

The Indian woman didn't speak, either. After she had finished her household chores, she would squat in a corner, with a child in her lap. The eldest of the children was about eleven and was the son of Harberton's first wife, the next two were the children of his second wife and the fourth the child of the third wife. The first two wives, also Yaghan, had died young—a fate that often befalls women of that race when they marry white men.

My refuge was the children. I made them a blackboard and, with a piece of stone that was similar to chalk, taught them to read and write. I would line them up in front of some weathervanes which I had made in the shape of planes, whose interlocked propellers made a noise like an engine, and get them to practice simple gymnastic exercises, run races and play games, until gradually the five of us formed a healthy and cheerful little group. It helped to soften the grim monotony of life there.

“Papa never speaks!” the oldest child said to me one day.

“Yes, he does,” I replied. “He speaks to the trees, the clouds and the stones!”

The child burst out laughing, and I couldn't help doing the same, although I really didn't feel much like laughing.

“Why is he like that?” I kept asking myself, more ­insistently each time. It wasn't that I was especially curious to know what had made him so uncommunicative—it might only have been stupidity or an old man's weariness—nor was it wounded pride on my part, but simply the desire to talk to an intelligent human being. The only one available was him, and he was refusing me that precious gift!

But one day I put an end to my obsession and made a decision. “The man isn't in his right mind,” I told myself. “He's gone crazy with the solitude, the silence, or God knows what, and if I stay here I'm going to go crazy, too. So I'm leaving on the first boat!”

But nothing ever put in at Puerto Robalo, not even an Indian canoe. A Chilean Army cutter was supposed to come every three or four months, but it was already five since the last one!

But it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. One afternoon, a schooner damaged in a storm moored in the inlet of Puerto Robalo until the weather had improved. She was on her way to Ushuaia, and in the wireless station at Wulaia had heard that the cutter was due to come to the island the following Monday. It was already Friday now.

I told Harberton that I had decided to leave. On Sunday night, by the light of a paraffin lamp, he paid me what he owed me, no more, no less.

That night I said goodbye to everyone, and went to bed with the happy thought that the following day I'd be leaving that land of shattered mountains drowning in the sea, and above all that strange man submerged in his silence like an iceberg that only showed a seventh of its total mass, a man as rough and stony as the landscape around him.

The blue light of dawn was peeping through the cracks in the windows of my room when I tried to get up, but couldn't—I was tied to the wooden bed. During the night, while I was fast asleep, someone had crept in and bound me with ropes that imprisoned me like an Indian child in its portable crib.