“Well, we’re in for a big one. I don’t think those of us who live in large North American cities truly appreciate the kind of climatic and therefore social changes weather conditions like El Nino cause,” he went on. “We catch glimpses of how vulnerable we can be to weather during droughts in the Midwest, flooding or ice storms in other places, but to a certain extent we’re protected from major weather patterns. Not so down here.
“In the desert, you can really be at the mercy of the elements. There was terrible flooding here during the last El Nino, people killed in mud slides. And then there’s the cholera that tends to come along with the flooding. I should add this is not an entirely new phenomenon. You can see evidence of it in the archaeological record. It may even have been these kinds of weather patterns that ended the Moche empire. Anyway, another El Nino is on its way, and we’re seeing the climatic and social changes that come with it. Fish stocks are down. The warmer than normal water is killing the sea plants and fish. One of the Peruvian workers on the site estimates the fishing is off by almost eighty percent. That means that the people who make their living fishing are in a bad way. Some of them are trying to turn to a little farming to keep going.
“At the same time, we’ve got drought elsewhere, so people are on the move. In some cases, they are just moving in and taking over land near the coast here and starting to farm it.
“Needless to say, the locals are not happy with the new arrivals—they call them invasores, invaders— particularly since good land is hard to come by, and fishing is all but gone. The newcomers, unfortunately, are armed in some cases, and there have been a couple of very nasty confrontations. Times like these push people to the limit.
“And the rain hasn’t even started here yet. It’s winter here, remember. Normally we can get in and out in a season before there’s any rain, but it’s raining already in Chile, so we may have to pack up early and go home. That’s why we’re the only team in these parts this season. The others decided to give this year a pass. And I confess it’s one of the reasons I worried a bit about those two kids we picked up on the highway. I don’t think the campesinos, the local farmers, will be any more pleased to see these young invasores than they will the people from inland, and even if they don’t mind, our young friends could get caught in the cross fire.
“We’re being extra careful ourselves. We try to stick together as a group out at the site, and always have at least two of us at the hacienda at any time. It is, as you’ll see, a little isolated.
“I haven’t scared you with this, have I? We just have to take precautions, that’s all. And there is some good news in this, by the way. It’s made it a lot easier to get Peruvian workers on the dig, with so many people looking for work. Small as we are, archaeology is getting to be the major employer in this town, what with our project and Montero’s crafts factory on the other side of the highway.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, as I digested all this. The road was following what appeared to be a very wide ditch on our left, several hundred yards wide, which I eventually realized was a riverbed, with only a trickle of water in the center of it. We were heading, I knew, in the direction of the sea, so this ditch, it would appear, was near the mouth of the river. The road was deserted. There were no houses lining it, and only the occasional clump of trees to the right. From time to time we would see someone, in one case a man riding a donkey, but otherwise the place was just about empty. Our truck left clouds of dust in its wake.
After a mile or so of bumping along like this, we came up to a small woodland and passing that turned right several hundred yards, then drove across a concrete irrigation canal and over a slight hill.
I don’t think I will ever forget my first view of the Hacienda Garua. Steve had said the hacienda was a little isolated, but that didn’t come anywhere near describing it. It seemed to me to be overwhelmingly lonely, a huge old house, once very grand, that had fallen into decay. The house was angled, I could see, to take in the breezes and a view across the river’s mouth to grassy dunes and the sea beyond. The hacienda was two storeys, with a beautiful carved wood door, the carving now dry and cracked and broken. There were large windows on the main floor only, with wood shutters, several of them pulled tight, a couple of them hanging askew on rusty hinges and banging against the wall in the breeze.
The house had once been yellow ochre, I could tell, but the paint was now faded and cracked. In front of the house was a fountain, a stone cupid holding a conch shell, silent and dry. Off to the right on the edge of the woods were the remains of a small building, a little folly perhaps, a place once used to enjoy the outdoors. Now it was a shell, a row of archways leading nowhere. Dust swirled in the yard as Steve pulled the truck up to the door and cut the engine.
The place had an air of a ghost town, somehow, even though I knew it was inhabited. As I approached the door, I half expected to hear music and voices from within, the clink of silver and crystal from some ghostly party held a century before. Instead, all I could hear was the sound of a dog barking somewhere and the distant crowing of a rooster. I stood there, just looking at it, almost overwhelmed by the desolation, as Steve began to unload the back and help Ines with her baskets.
Slowly, and somewhat reluctantly I admit, I walked through the huge door and a large entranceway to find myself in an interior courtyard, open to the sky. If houses can be said to have a personality, this one was introverted, its energy directed inside. While the outside of the house was austere, architectural features were reserved for the interior. The courtyard floor was fashioned of large polished stones—marble, I thought—under the dust. Several were cracked and worn. There was an open hallway, verandahlike, on all four sides of the courtyard and on both floors, raised slightly above courtyard level and reached by three marble steps on each side of the entranceway and an equal number in the center at the end facing me.
The verandahs were held up by Italianate columns, and lined with wrought iron railings, white paint peeling, and the walls showed signs of the same yellow ochre of the exterior. On all four sides of the main floor, and three on the second, several rooms, judging from the number of doors and windows I could see overlooking the courtyard, led off these verandahs. The second floor, on the end straight ahead of me and opposite to the entranceway, was open at the back to catch the breezes, and I could see the sky, grey and overcast beyond.
I heard footsteps behind me. “Hands up, turn around slowly, or I’ll shoot,” a voice growled.
9
For heaven’s sake, Lucho! Do you have to be a complete dork?“ a woman’s voice exclaimed.
I carefully inched my head up and to the right until I could see a young woman leaning over the railing on the floor above. “Put that thing away, you idiot,” she said to someone I couldn’t see. “Lucho,” she said, glancing at me but tossing her head in the general direction of whoever it was behind me, “is practicing to be a terrorist.”
“A freedom fighter,” the man’s voice said peevishly. “And I’m not practicing, I’m training. Training to be a freedom fighter.”