I was awoken at what seemed to me to be a most uncivilized hour of the morning by a burst of song from Luna’s bed, in the opposite corner of the room. Song and music ran through Luna’s being as naturally as the blood flowed through his veins. When he was not talking he was singing or humming, and he is the only man I have ever met who can stay up until three in the morning and rise at five, bursting into song before he is even out of bed. But he sang so pleasantly and with such obvious pleasure that you forgave him, even at that hour of the morning, and, after knowing him some time, you took no more notice of it than you would have done of a dawn chorus of birds.
‘The moon is a like a little white drum in the sky,’ he sang from under a pile of bedclothes, ‘leading me to my love with the dark hair and the magic eyes, behind the mountains of Tucuman.’
‘If you sing to all your female acquaintances at this hour of the morning,’ I said drowsily, ‘I should think you lead a pretty lonely life in bed. These things get around you know.’
He chuckled and stretched luxuriously.
‘Today is going to be a fine day, Gerry,’ he said. I wondered how he knew, for the shutters on the two windows were tightly closed. The night air, in which the Argentine will sit as late as he pleases without any harm to his being, becomes, as soon as he retires to bed, a deadly gas waiting to strangle him. So all shutters must be tightly closed to guard against such a dangerous experience. However, when we had dressed and gone out into the patio to breakfast, I found he was right, for it was flooded with sunshine.
We were finishing our last cup of coffee when our troupe of spies appeared to report. Apparently they had been out and about at the crack of dawn, and they made their reports to Luna as he sat there, sipping his coffee, and occasionally giving a lordly nod. Then one of the younger of the spies was dispatched with money to purchase provisions for my specimens, and, on his return, the spies stood wide-eyed and watched me while I chopped up food and vegetables, filled bowls with milk or water, and generally ministered to my animals. When the last one had been fed, we filed out into the sunlit street and started once more on our search of the town. This time Luna used our retinue slightly differently. While we made our way to a house which we knew contained some wild pet, our young helpers fanned out and explored every alley and street in the immediate vicinity, clapping their hands outside people’s doors, and questioning complete strangers as to what pets they kept. Everyone was most good-humoured about this intrusion of their privacy, and, even if they had no creatures themselves, would sometimes direct us to another house in which lurked some member of the local fauna. By this means, during the morning, we ran to earth three more pigmy rabbits, another parrot, two seriemas, a strange, leggy type of bird, and two coatimundis, the odd little raccoon-like predator of South America. We took them back to Luna’s house, caged them, ate a hearty lunch and then, exhilarated by our morning’s success, set out to explore the outer limits of Oran, with the aid of an ancient car, lent to us by one of Luna’s friends.
Luna had learnt, by some M.I.5 methods of his own, that in one of the more far-flung portions of the town was a man who possessed a wild cat of some sort, but no one was quite sure who it was or the exact location of his house. Eventually, however, we narrowed our search down to one rambling street, and by the simple process of knocking or clapping outside every house we eventually found the man we were looking for. He was a large, dark, sweating and unclean-looking man of about forty, with an unhealthy paunch and beady black eyes that were alternately cringing or cunning. Yes, he admitted, he had got a wild cat, an ocelot; and then, with all the fiery eloquence of a pre-election politician, he proceeded to tell us about the animal’s beauty, grace, tameness, value, coloration, size, appetite, until I began to feel that he was trying to sell me an entire zoo instead of one animal. Breaking in on his asthmatic eulogy on the feline tribe in general and his specimen in particular, we asked to see it. He led us round into one of the filthiest backyards I had been in to date, for in Oran and in Calilegua, however poor and tiny the house, the backyard was always neat and full of flowers. This looked like a council rubbish dump, with old broken barrels, rusty tin cans, piles of old wire-netting, bicycle wheels and other flotsam and jetsam. Our host lumbered over to a rough wooden cage in one corner which would have been small for the average rabbit. He opened the door, caught hold of a chain inside and hauled out on to the ground one of the most pathetic sights I have seen. It was a half-grown ocelot, and how it managed to fit in such a small cage was a mystery. But it was its condition that was so appalling. Its coat was so matted with its own filth that you could only just discern the natural pattern of the skin. It had a large, running sore on one flank, and it was so thin that you could, under its matted coat, see its ribs and backbone clearly. Indeed, it was so weak that it wavered from side to side, like a drunk, when it was dropped on to the ground, and eventually gave up the attempt to stay upright, and sank dejectedly down on to its dirty belly.
‘You see how tame it is?’ inquired the man, giving us a display of tattered yellow teeth in an ingratiating grin. ‘She is very tame with everybody. Never has she been known to bite.’ He was patting the cat as he spoke, with one great sweaty palm. I could see that it was not tameness that stopped the animal from turning on him, but sheer inertia due to lack of food. She had almost reached the point of no return, where she felt so weak that she just did not care.
‘Luna,’ I said, making a valiant attempt to keep my temper, ‘I will pay fifty pesos for this cat. No more. Even that is too much, for she will probably die. I won’t bargain, so you can tell this bloated illegitimate son of an inadequate whore that he can take it or leave it.’
Luna translated my message, tactfully leaving out my character rendering. The man clasped his hands in horror. Surely we were joking? He giggled feebly. For such a magnificent animal three hundred pesos would be a beggarly sum to pay. Surely the señor could see what a wonderful creature … and so on. But the señor had seen enough. I spat loudly and accurately into the remains of a barrel, lovingly entwined with a bicycle-wheel, gave the man the dirtiest look I could achieve, turned on my heel and walked back to the road. I got into our ancient car and slammed the door with such violence that, for a moment, I thought the whole thing was going to fall to pieces in the road. I could hear Luna and the man arguing, and presently, when I detected a weakening note in the repulsive man’s voice, I leant out of the window and roared at Luna to come on and not waste time. Within thirty seconds he appeared.
‘Give me the money, Gerry,’ he said. I gave him the fifty pesos, and presently he appeared with the box and put it in the back seat. We drove off in silence. Presently, when I had finished mentally working out what I would like to have done to the cat’s late owner, which would not only have been painful but have made his marital state, if any, difficult in the extreme, I sighed and lit a cigarette.
‘We must get home quickly, Luna. That animal’s got to have a decent cage and some food or she’s going to die,’ I said. ‘Also I shall want some sawdust.’
‘Si, si,’ said Luna, his dark eyes worried. ‘I have never seen anyone keep an animal like that. She is half-dead.’
‘I think I can save her,’ I said. ‘At least, I think we’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.’
We drove in silence along the rutted road for some way before Luna spoke.
‘Gerry, you do not mind stopping once more, only for a minute?’ he inquired anxiously. ‘It is on our way. I hear of someone else that has a cat they might sell.’
‘Yes, all right, if it’s on the way. But I hope to God it’s in better condition than the one we’ve got.’
Presently Luna ran the car off the road on to a sizeable stretch of greensward. On one corner of this stood a dilapidated-looking marquee, and near it a small, battered-looking merry-go-round and a couple of small booths made of striped canvas now so faded as to be almost white. Three fat, glossy horses, one a bright piebald, grazed near by, and around the marquee and the boot
hs trotted a number of well-fed-looking dogs, who had the air of professionals.
‘What is this? It looks like a circus,’ I said to Luna.
‘It is a circus,’ said Luna, grinning, ‘only a very small one.’
I was amazed that any circus, even a small one, could make a living in a place as remote and small as Oran, but this one appeared to be doing all right for, although the props were somewhat decrepit, the animals looked in good condition. As we left the car a large ginger-haired man appeared, ducking out from under the flap of the marquee. He was a muscular individual with shrewd green eyes and powerful, well-kept hands, who looked as though he would be capable of doing a trapeze act or a lion act with equal skill. We shook hands, and Luna explained our business.
‘Ah, you want my puma,’ he grinned. ‘But I warn you I want a lot of money for her … she’s a beauty. But she eats too much, and I can’t afford to keep her. Come and see her, she’s over here. A real devil, I can tell you. We can’t do a thing with her.’
He led us to a large cage in one corner of which crouched a beautiful young puma, about the size of a large dog. She was fat and glossy, and still had her baby paws which, as in all young cats, look about three times too big for the body. Her coat was a rich amber colour, and her piercing, moody eyes a lovely leaf green. As we approached the cage she lifted one lip and showed her well-developed baby teeth in a scornful snarl. She was simply heavenly, and a joy to look at after the half-starved creature we had just bought, but I knew, fingering my wallet, that I should have to pay a lot for her.
The bargaining lasted for half an hour and was conducted over a glass of very good wine which the circus proprietor insisted we drank with him. At length I agreed to a price which, though high, seemed to me to be fair. Then I asked the man if he would keep her until the following day for me, if I paid for her evening meal, for I knew that she would be in good hands, and I had no cage ready for her reception. This our amiable ginger friend agreed to and the bargain was sealed with another glass of wine, and then Luna and I drove back home to try and resurrect the unfortunate ocelot.
When I had built a cage for her, and one of Luna’s lesser relatives had appeared with a large sackful of sweet-smelling sawdust, I got the poor creature out of her evil-smelling box and dressed the wound on her thigh. She just lay on the ground apathetically, though the washing of the wound must have hurt considerably. Then I gave her a large shot of penicillin, which again she took no notice of. The third operation was to try and dry her coat out a bit, for she was drenched with her own urine, and already the skin of her belly and paws were fiery red, burnt by the acid. All I could do was literally to cover her in sawdust, rubbing it well into the fur to absorb the moisture, and then gently dusting it out again. Then I unpicked the more vicious tangles in her fur, and by the time I had finished she had begun to look faintly like an ocelot. But she still lay on the floor, uncaring. I cut the filthy collar away from her neck, and put her in her new cage on a bed of sawdust and straw. Then I placed in front of her a bowl containing one raw egg and a small quantity of finely-minced fresh steak. At first she displayed no interest in this, and my heart sank, for I thought she might well have reached the stage of starvation where no amount of tempting offerings would induce her to eat. In sheer desperation I seized her head and ducked her face into the raw egg, so that she would be forced to lick it off her whiskers. Even this indignity she suffered without complaint, but she sat back and licked the dripping egg off her lips, slowly, carefully, like someone sampling a new, foreign and probably dangerous dish. Then she eyed the dish with a disbelieving look in her eye. I honestly think that the animal, through ill-treatment and starvation, had got into a trance-like state, where she disbelieved the evidence of her own senses. Then, while I held my breath, she leant forward and lapped experimentally at the raw egg. Within thirty seconds the plate was clean, and Luna and I were dancing a complicated tango of delight round the patio, to the joy of his younger relatives.
‘Give her some more, Gerry,’ panted Luna, grinning from ear to ear.
‘No, I daren’t,’ I said. ‘When a creature’s that bad you can kill it from overfeeding. She can have a bowl of milk later on, and then tomorrow she can have four small meals during the day. But I think she’ll be all right now.’
‘That man was a devil,’ said Luna, shaking his head.
I drew a deep breath and, in Spanish, gave him my views on the cat’s late owner.
‘I never knew you knew so many bad things in Spanish, Gerry,’ said Luna admiringly. ‘There was one word you used I have never heard before.’
‘I’ve had some good teachers,’ I explained.
‘Well, I hope you say nothing like that tonight,’ said Luna, his eyes gleaming.
‘Why? What’s happening tonight?’
‘Because we are leaving tomorrow for Calilegua, my friends have made an asado in your honour, Gerry. They will play and sing only very old Argentine folk-songs, so that you may record them on your machine. You like this idea?’ he asked anxiously.
‘There is nothing I like better than an asado,’ I said, ‘and an asado with folk-songs is my idea of Heaven.’
So, at about ten o’clock that evening, a friend of Luna’s picked us up in his car and drove us out to the estate, some distance outside Oran, where the asado had been organized. The asado ground was a grove near the estancia, an area of bare earth that told of many past dances, surrounded by whispering eucalyptus trees and massive oleander bushes. The long wooden benches and trestle-tables were lit with the soft yellow glow of half a dozen oil-lamps, and outside this buttercup circle of light the moonlight was silver brilliant. There were about fifty people there, many of whom I had never met, and few of them over the age of twenty. They greeted us uproariously, almost dragged us to the trestle-tables which were groaning under the weight of food, and placed great hunks of steak, crisp and sizzling from the open fires, in front of us. The wine bottles passed with monotonous regularity, and within half-an-hour Luna and I were thoroughly in the party spirit, full of good food, warmed with red wine. Then these gay, pleasant young people gathered round while I got the recorder ready, watching with absorbed attention the mysteries of threading tape and getting levels. When, at last, I told them I was ready, guitars, drums and flutes appeared as if by magic, and the entire crowd burst into song. They sang and sang, and each time they came to the end of a song, someone would think of a new one, and they would start again. Sometimes a shy, grinning youth would be pushed to the front of the circle as the only person there capable of rendering a certain number, and after much encouragement and shouts of acclamation he would sing. Then it would be a girl’s turn to sing the solo refrain in a sweet-sour voice, while the lamps glinted on her dark hair, and the guitars shuddered and trembled under the swiftly-moving brown fingers of their owners. They danced in a row on a flagstoned path, their spurs ringing sparks from the stone, so that I could record the heel-taps which are such an intricate part of the rhythm of some of their songs; they danced the delightful handkerchief dance with its pleasant lilting tune, and they danced tangos that made you wonder if the stiff, sexless dance called by that name in Europe was a member of the same family. Then, shouting with laughter because my tapes had run out and I was in despair, they rushed me to the table, plied me with more food and wine, and sitting round me sang more sweetly than ever. These, I say again, were mostly teenagers, revelling in the old and beautiful songs of their country, and the old and beautiful dances, their faces flushed with delight at my delight, honouring a stranger they had never seen before and would probably never see again.
By now they had reached the peak. Slowly they started to relax, the songs getting softer and softer, more and more plaintive, until we all reached the moment when we knew the party was over, and that to continue it longer would be a mistake. They had sung themselves from the heavens back to earth, like a flock of descending larks. Flushed, bright-eyed, happy, our young hosts insisted that we travelled back to Oran w
ith them in the big open back of the lorry in which they had come. We piled in, our tightly-packed bodies creating a warmth for which we were grateful, for the night air was now chilly. Then as the lorry roared off down the road to Oran, bottles of red wine were passed carefully from hand to hand, and the guitarists started strumming. Everybody, revived by the cool night air, took up the refrain, and we roared along through the velvet night like a heavenly choir. I looked up and saw the giant bamboos that curved over the road, now illuminated by the lorry’s headlights. They looked like the talons of some immense green dragon, curved over the road, ready to pounce if we stopped singing for an instant. Then a bottle of wine was thrust into my hand, and as I tipped my head back to drink I saw that the dragon had passed, and the moon stared down at me, white as a mushroom-top against the dark sky.
7.
Vampires and Wine
The vampire bat is often the cause of much trouble, by biting the horses on their withers.
CHARLES DARWIN: THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. BEAGLE
On my return from Oran the garage almost overflowed with animals. One could scarcely make oneself heard above the shrill, incomprehensible conversations of the parrots (interspersed occasionally with a shrill scream, as if some local female was being raped), the harsh rattling cries of the guans, the incredibly loud trumpeting song of the seriemas, the chittering of the coatimundis, and an occasional dull rumble, as of distant thunder, from the puma, whom I had christened Luna in the human Luna’s honour. As a background to this there was a steady scrunching noise that came from the agouti cage, for it was always engaged in trying to do alterations to its living quarters with its chisel-like teeth.