I was awake before the old man so I saw him rise. He was up and fresh, nothing like the slow creaking crawl from sleep that I might have expected if I didn’t already know him. I thought I may be in for more goat stew, or maybe eggs, as there were chickens pecking about his field, but as if he were a Santiago socialite, he whisked me off to the café where we had strong coffee, and crumbly goats cheese on fresh crusty bread, hot from the oven and tangy with wood smoke.
When I had hardly had chance for small talk, still less to talk about last night, breakfast was over and he was introducing me to another man, a short, stocky, thick necked man with tough sausage fingered hands the size of shovels.
‘This is Al. He will show you to a road, a better road, that will lead you to the Highway, where you can continue your travels. On the other matter you know the truth, the importance…’
I said what I thought he wanted to hear.
‘Balarubu.’
Al beamed and nodded, deep and slow.
The old man took my hand and gave it a brisk, businesslike shake then turned and was gone. Al led me the opposite way, on the way out of town, and we stopped behind his cart, a light wood and iron vehicle, loaded with root vegetables and pulled by an old ass. We were to walk alongside.
Al was easy company. Short for Alphonse, he insisted on Al. He was a good listener, which meant what it usually means: I like to talk and he didn’t mind, and even gave a prompt with a short question here and there to keep things moving. We must have walked about fifteen miles, but it was OK. There was plenty of shade on the road; we set off early and at first sun was on the other side of the mountain. I had nothing to carry as I slung my bag on the back of the cart, and for a couple of hours in the early afternoon, we stopped, us, ass and cart, under the deep shade of a small copse and napped. Whatever their secret in that village, they certainly lived an easy going life and they all seemed happy.
After my nap, I carried on chatting away to Al. The night before seemed further away, and as we slowly wound round the hairpins, a car or a motorbike spinning past every half-hour or so, no more, I again started to embellish my stories. I was just telling him about the hotel I stayed in the week before in Arequipa in Southern Peru.
‘…and it wasn’t until the morning when I realised that it was actually a brothel, but business was quiet and they let me rent the room.. All the girls were wandering about in their frilly underwear and I thought it was just the owner’s daughters stripping down in the heat…’
I had a sudden buzzing in my head. Not in my ear, right in the centre of my head. I stopped and blinked.
‘Water?’ Al asked.
‘No, it’s nothing, carry on, I’ll catch up.’
All I could think was that I was forgetting something; something important that was right on the tip of my tongue. Something big and important that was skittering across the surface of my brain, like static electricity just short of enough charge to let loose a flash of lightning, but that I still couldn’t catch a hold of and understand; trying desperately to connect up the appropriate neurons, put the round peg in the round hole. By now the ass and cart were a hundred or more metres ahead. Al was standing between the me and the cart, splitting the difference, and the driver of the Toyota Hi-Lux pick-up truck—the Hi-Lux of which I had previously been blissfully unaware—the Hi-Lux which would now send a defiant and life changing message to me—was more than fifty metres above us.
He already knew, the driver of the Hi-Lux of destiny, he had taken the corner too wide and too fast, and was right now deciding that whatever he did now the truck was going over, so now was the last chance to get out. That was the first we knew, Al and me, that the Toyota existed. When we saw the driver sliding down the dirt, his eyes fixed on his pick-up as it flew down the slope, hit a rock, whirled out into the air and landed upright on the left hand side of the cart, pulverising it, and making a nasty mark on the road just where I would have been standing. Just where I would have been standing if I hadn’t had that thought fluttering around.
‘Gotcha!’
Balarubu.
That was the word; the idea I couldn’t get hold of. She left those who didn’t know her alone, but once you knew, you knew. Only one rule, one law.
Always tell the truth.
And there was me, drifting innocently around a brothel in Arequipa. Except in Arequipa I saw no brothels because I stayed in a grotty little hotel in a room I shared with a Kiwi surfhead, Barry, and spent much of the night sitting on the pot watching my shoes after a dodgy burrito from a roadside stand.
Balarubu. Jesus. No, forget Jesus. Balarubu. That was really what you call a warning. I told a lie, when I’d heard of Balarubu but thought it was some funny little folk tale. But this warning. A co-incidence? But what about the buzzing in my head? She was warning me. Al was staring at me.
‘You stupid little boy! I heard you say her name. You know. And then you tell me your pointless stories. Do I care if your travels are interesting? I still have to sell vegetables. Do I care if we walk in silence? Of course I don’t. I make this journey in silence so many times my ass can do it blindfold. Do you care to be interesting so much that you will risk your stupid life for your stupid lies?’
In the previous hours, Al had barely spoken a word. To be fair, he had been busy listening to me. Me and my stupid lies. This tirade shocked me: the way it was so straightforward in Al’s mind that what had happened was, as clear as day, the doing of Balarubu. And I saw then that I agreed. First I heard about her, then I disobeyed her, I was clearly warned, what else did I need? In sixteen years as a Catholic had I ever had a sign? Of course not, we had a God who didn’t on the whole intervene. My old God was in the real estate business, leaving big architectural interventions, and of course the cross, God’s successful intervention into the world of logos. But this kind of immediate and unequivocal intervention, this kind of iron fisted punch in the face, wasn’t the current approach. For Balarubu clearly it was, and if that was a warning, I didn’t want to think what real punishment might comprise.
‘I’m so sorry, Al. I’m so very sorry. There’s nothing I can say to make it better, except that you’re right, I’m stupid. Better to be quiet than to tell stupid lies.’
‘I rummaged through my bag and found my wallet. There were travellers cheques and $180 in cash. I kept $30 to get myself to a bank and gave him the rest of the cash: $150.
‘I hope that helps with a truck, Al. Maybe he will help too,’ I pointed at the Toyota driver scrambling down the hillside and still visibly shaking at his close escape, probably unaware that he was probably not a particularly bad driver, just unlucky to have been handy, a mere tool when Balarubu needed one.
I pulled out my diary.
‘Write down the address, Al. I’ll give you mine. In a few months when I get home I can send more money.’
‘This will do,’ he said. ‘You don’t need my address. You don’t need to come back here. Now go.’
I did as he said. I didn’t want to be there any longer. Al was my last contact with the village. I had to be by myself and think.
The Hi-Lux driver was obviously an honest chap, and Balarubu didn’t see fit to punish him too badly, so he was lucky to own a truck as tough as old boots. And it had landed right way up. He pulled a piece of bent wing away from the wheel, got in and fired up. First time. I asked if I could ride along. He jabbed his thumb at the back and I climbed in. It was probably the safest place in the world. What were the chance of another accident on the same day as ridiculous as that one?
I sat in the pickup, watching the road recede. The Hi-Lux turned off after a few miles, down a dirt track, when he dropped me off. Bbut not before we had reached a bigger, wider, busier road. I was soon picked up again. The way we had come, we were skirting the desert and the heat wasn’t as bad.
I learned a lot about the truck driver who picked me up this time. He was a good and kindly man with a large and interesting family. I knew this because I listened and asked lots of questions. I said very little about myself because I needed to think before I spoke in case what I said didn’t hold close enough to the truth. The driver’s family couldn’t afford him to go spinning off the road because of the thoughtlessness of a stupid boy who didn’t watch his words. Mickey ‘the Mouth’ Jakes, silent as the grave, listening to the family sagas of a Chilean truck driver, nodding, and smiling encouragement. Could be time for a new nickname. Micky ‘the Sphinx’ Jakes? Stupid boy?
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