Balarubu

No-one seemed at all surprised when I walked into the village. I saw many faces but no-one looked as if they particularly cared. I had become used to people finding me something of a novelty; this pale young Northern European kid out there at the back of nowhere. Most people think of themselves as pretty important, to themselves and their people at least. So where they live is some way or other where it’s at.

At the same time, in the jungles and the mountains of Peru, and the deserts of Northern Chile, you are still aware that where you live isn’t exactly Manhattan; that the people you see are the people you always see. There was no doubting that most places, especially as I was making an effort to stay away from the backpackers much of the time, I was a new face. Then it turned out I was an English kid with (pause while I preen my feathers) pretty damn good Spanish who didn’t communicate by any dumb-show like pointing at my open mouth and rubbing my belly, or making a pillow with my hands and miming sleep.

Doh!

Not here, though. They showed me big, supersized, American Arse sized portions of not impressed. They looked at me like I was Postman Pat strolling through Greendale. Pleasant, welcoming, not particularly interested. At least Postman Pat had the chance of something interesting in his sack. They could be pretty sure mine just had some socks and undies, a couple of spare T shirts and a cruddy travel diary.

Though the place had no more than a dozen or so streets, there was a definite centre.

I wandered around the rough square of houses, hoping there might be a café or something. There was a small shop which seemed to double as a bar.

It was an easy spot. Pick your place on the atlas, stick a pin on the land, find a town, find an old café, there are the old geezers, getting through the day on a beer or two or a coffee, maybe a pipe. Here they were. If there had been anyone new to town this month I would have been surprised. No-one seemed too bothered at my arrival though. It wasn’t as if I wanted banners and brass bands, it’s just when you get used to feeling that frisson of curiosity at your own arrival, it comes to feel like normality. So when you get that ‘back-home’ sense of utter indifference and apathy, well, you notice, that’s all. It wasn’t like they were rude or anything, really it was more a kind of acceptance. They were there at the bar, here was I at the bar. It’s a bar, that’s the kind of stuff that happens.

One of the tables had a couple of chairs free. I pointed.

‘May I?’

‘You’re our guest.’

I thought that was interesting, in a spoddy language-study kind of way. That we have the expression, ‘be my guest’ and they seemed to have an almost identical expression for the same situation, just not quite the same.

Someone drifted up to the table, dressed like a turn of the century shopkeeper—I’m thinking of my idea of a Wild West shopkeeper in the century before last. The version of the Wild West in ancient sick-days-off-school-Westerns-on-TV-in-the-afternoon: that kind of shopkeeper. He had a wild moustache about the size of a small kitten and a stained white apron that came down almost to his ankles, and a baggy white shirt with no collar, fastened at the neck. I asked him for a large water and a small beer, muy frio, as cold as he could make them.

They came out within a couple minutes, coolish, each with a quickly melting ice-cube slowly turning at the top. I drank most of the water down, splashed a little in my palm and rubbed it over my face.

‘You’d like the washroom, young sir?’

‘That’s a great idea, thanks very much.’

I followed him in, closed the door, stripped to the waist and had a good wash, sluicing the dust of the Atacama away and for the first time feeling the cooler, fresher Andean air.

When I came out to drink my little beer and get used to the fact that I was out of the heat, the two old men from my table had gone, but there was someone new, and even older sitting opposite my seat.

‘Do you mind?’ he asked.

‘Not at all. My table is your table.’

There was something about him that drew my attention in close. He seemed about seventy or so, but there something about his bearing that was much younger and more vigorous. He had barely spoken but he had a confident air. His eyes were very true. I cleared my throat.

‘Excuse me, but do you know if they serve food here?’

He shook his head. ‘You will eat at my house, and sleep too. While you are here you are a guest.’

‘I couldn’t, I can’t.’

He led up his hand in the universal halt sign.

‘You can. Don’t worry. You are not only my guest but of us all.’

As I looked around, wondering who ‘us all’ might be. There weren’t many people around but those who were, all were looking at me, smiling, gently nodding, all with a kind of benign agreement that yes, I was their guest. When I describe it, the whole thing sounds a mite threatening and creepy, but it wasn’t at all. It was kind of comforting. You imagine some old guy invites a teenage boy to be his guest and you think ‘Oh really, vicar?’ but I knew there was nothing funny about it.

No, that’s not right either. The whole thing was funny, but at least I was in no doubt he wasn’t after anything in the boxers department.

‘You look as if you have had a tiring journey.’

I agreed.

‘Let’s go now.’‘Whenever you’re ready.’

As I stood, a breeze pushed through the square. I shivered, still lightly sweat-coated.

The breeze felt luxurious. I stretched and rolled my head and neck on my shoulders.

‘You’ve been down there; in the heat.’

‘Unbelievable. That’s why I headed up here, to get some relief.’

‘Hot. But not unbelievable.’

I shrugged. That’s what I thought he said, but maybe I didn’t get the full sense. My Spanish was good, but there were still things I didn’t catch. Some kind of idiom maybe, and who could be bothered asking him to repeat? With my bag over my shoulder, I had enough trouble just keeping up with his surprisingly long and loping stride.

His house was on the furthest edge of the village, in its own sloping field, tucked in beneath a rock escarpment, presumably to protect it from winter winds. It had two rooms; a simple kitchen with a pair of gas bottle powered cooking rings, a sink and a tiny gas powered fridge, and a room which seemed to double as living and sleeping, which was draped in rugs and had mattresses around the walls. The light came from paraffin lamps, and washing was at a stand pipe outside, next to the three and a half sides of rough stone walling that stood in where we might have expected to find a toilet. As I looked back over the village, I saw a few roofs sprouting TV aerials, and as I walked through the village, I’d heard the steady hum of small petrol generators, a sound you got used to hearing in the poorer parts of the world, so his decoration and the simplicity of his home wasn’t the norm here. On the other hand, he seemed to get a lot of respect from people in the village.

There was a pot simmering in the kitchen. He ladled out two bowls of thick stew. It was best described as meat and veg. It was rich because it had been cooking a long time. It wasn’t particularly spiced, and it didn’t taste of anything in particular, but there wasn’t so much wrong with it either. The meat was tasty and tender: I’m pretty sure it was goat, and probably a pretty old one too: one with its milk and cheese days behind it. He gave me a hunk of bread to dip in the juice. The bread was a day past its best, but that doesn’t matter so much for dipping bread.

‘You are a very young man for such a long trip. English?’

I mumbled agreement through my mouthful of goat.

‘Tell me about your journey. Tell me how such a young man, a schoolboy in England no doubt, you are fifteen, sixteen?’

‘Sixteen.’ I said.

‘...came to be telling his story in the hut of the village elder in a refuge from the Atacama heat, in the hills of the Andes. I’m sure it is quite a story.’

I settled back on my mattress, put a cushion behind my back and leaned against the wall as I prepared to entertain him. He had touched my vanity spot. If there was one person sure that I was doing a remarkable thing with my South American trek and that I had a fascinating story to tell, it was me. I had started to develop a whole mythology around my trip.

Jake’s Progress.

I started to tell him the story and gave him all the stuff about my school and my teachers, how I had slipped off into the night, leaving no more trace than a shadow on the surface of a great lake: I had a great adventure and boy did he get to hear it.

As I told it, I knew that in a bare re-telling, it didn’t sound quite as heroic as it might. It could come across a bit like:
‘So I got off this bus, stopped in a little town for a couple of days, talked to the locals—did I mention my Spanish is pretty hot—sometimes now I forget if I’m speaking English or Spanish and I can even read the hard news stories in the newspaper—and then I got another bus…’
So maybe I embellished my story, gave it a little more exciting detail than it truly deserved. Someone harsher could put it that I added lies to make the story less dull.

‘And girls. Have you met girls on this trip?’

Jeez, he really knew how to beat around the bush.

I smiled, a big smile and probably a bit of a fake one too.

‘Well, you know, a gentleman doesn’t brag, but as you’ve said, I’ve got an unusual story, and girls like that kind of thing: a bit of spirit, a bit or iron in the soul, so sure, me and girls, you know.’

At that point I was almost embarrassed myself. The story wasn’t quite like that. While there are gap year kids all over the place, most of them are in Europe and Asia. South America really is a bit more out there. The travellers seem to be older—in their twenties mostly. So sure there were loads of women I’d got to meet. But that was the trouble really. I could talk the talk fine with girls my age, maybe up to eighteen, but these tough, adventurous mid-twenties, they weren’t girls at all. They were real women. I didn’t know what to say to them. And they treated me like either a silly runaway, or like a pet kid to mother a bit. I didn’t stand a chance. And as for local girls, there was something in the way. I didn’t often get to speak to girls, and when I did, I got the impression that there was always a dad somewhere close. A hard headed, hard handed dad, very close and very short tempered.

The man; the elder—it only occurred to me then that he hadn’t told me his name or even what to call him—gave a long deep sigh. I thought of my mum and reminded myself to call her as soon as I could get some charge in my phone and find a signal.

‘You are a very pleasant young man.’ He said.

I bristled slightly. If I reacted badly to one thing it was being patronised and this felt like a solid dose and he was about to pinch my nose and push it down.

‘You are headstrong too. This is not a criticism, it is a fact. You are strong-willed, and you do not think hard enough or soon enough about the effect your actions have on others. Also, they say men do not think with their heads, instead they are ruled by another part. For you, it is the mouth.’

I laughed. Was I that obvious?

‘These are serious faults, but that is nothing special. They are serious but sadly they are far from unusual. Everyone has serious faults, and you are lucky to know yours early so you can live a good life, knowing enough to keep your faults in their proper place.’

He stopped and looked me over, checking that I understood him. I did and I was getting worried for the first time. This sounded like we were in for a spot of God-bothering and I got enough of that at home at my tidy, suburban Catholic school.

‘I am about to tell you something that will change your life for ever. I hope it will make it better.’

‘Here goes,’ I thought. ’Give your life over to the Lord!’ or something like that.

I thought for a moment about saving myself the bother and getting up and leaving.

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I had.

Maybe better, maybe not.

Absolutely, it would have been different.

But as he was such a nice old man, as he was so hospitable and friendly, and as he had nailed my personality in no time flat and seemed to be quite a wise man, I decided to sit it out.

Then we could get back to more interesting subject matter.

Like me.

‘You know,’ he said,

‘That Chile is a Christian country. A Catholic country.’

I nodded agreement.

‘We are not. In this village…’

After realising that I hadn’t been told his name, it dawned on me now that neither did I know the name of the village, or even, considering how badly I had researched my trip into the Atacama desert, the name of the region. Only that they were in the Andes, which is a very big mountain range.

‘We are followers of Balarubu.’

There. I’ve said it. No going back now. The first time I heard it: her name, it sounded kind of quaint and folksy.

Now, it sounds as familiar to me as an everyday name like… like God. Or truth.

‘Balarubu is our God,’ he said in the most matter of fact way.

‘I have decided, all of us here have decided, that you should know about her. We don’t get many visitors here. And of those who come, only a few are told the truth. You are chosen.

‘We do not worship Balarubu. She does not want or demand worship. She only wants us to follow her will. That is simple. It is not always easy. It is simple because she only has one wish. Always tell the truth. If you always tell the truth, you will hear little from Balarubu. If you do not tell the truth, there is no act of confession to let you away with an act of penance. You will suffer harshly and immediately. Balarubu is a harsh God but fair.

‘She will not punish those who do not obey her because they have never heard of her, because while they may know that truth is better than lies, they do not know Balarubu and how it offends her.

'Now you are one of us. You know about Balarubu, you are from this point obliged to tell the truth. Let me repeat that.’

This time he spoke more slowly.

‘Now you know about Balarubu. You are from this point obliged to tell the truth. Always to tell the truth.

‘How you make the truth fit in with the rest of your life is entirely your choice. Only important is that you tell the truth. It is all Balarubu demands and all she cares about. No prayer, no priests, no statues, only truth. Welcome.

‘Now, it has been a long day, and I’m sure longer for you. Please ask no questions, I am ready for sleep, goodnight.’

His house had paraffin lamps but he had not lit them. As we talked the light had dimmed. While he told me about his funny folk god of truth, whatever she or it or whatever was called, the sun had crossed the horizon. I watched as he tipped over, loosened the drawstring on his old fieldwork trousers, pulled up a blanket, closed his eyes and was away. I kicked off my shoes, stripped to my undies, went out to the well, washed myself down, came back in quietly—though the old man was snoring gently away—and laid down to sleep.

I remembered the name clearly; the truth god.

Balarubu.

I turned the name over as I drifted off.