10
I first made the acquaintance of Senor Carlos Montero, owner of the rather preciously named Paradise Crafts Factory, and my personal choice for man most likely to have smuggled Moche artifacts out of Peru, a few days after I’d arrived. It was not an auspicious start to the relationship, as I recall, and certainly not one that improved his standing in my eyes, Montero more than living up to his advance billing from the women on the project. But at least it afforded me an excuse to visit the factory, something I’d been trying to accomplish since I’d first arrived.
The problem was that my life as Rebecca was seriously cutting into the time I needed to solve the problems of my real life. In the morning I rose to the crowing of the rooster in the yard outside the hacienda, not long after five a.m. By six, I’d washed, the degree to which I did so dictated by the state of the water supply, I had the coffee on, some fruit, bread, and peanut butter out on the table, as the team, yawning, made their way to the kitchen, such as it was. Shortly after six, I drove into town, picked up Pablo, the foreman, at one end of town, and a group of students studying with Steve and Hilda who were billeted in a small apartment building right in town. Some piled in the back of the truck, others in the cab. I then drove them to the site, a dusty area just a few hundred yards off the Panamericana, dropped them off, and headed back for a marker on the highway, where I picked up the team of Peruvian workers, eight in all, and ferried them to the site. Then I returned to the hacienda. By that time, Steve would be eager to get going, and Hilda, who apparently thought there were three food groups—caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol—would be well into the cigarettes and coffee she lived on all day. I’d take them out to the site to join the others.
At seven-thirty or so, I picked up Ines Cardoso at the highway and took her to the market in Campina Vieja to buy groceries. While she was doing that, I picked up whatever supplies were needed for the hacienda and the dig: scotch every day, drinking water almost always, film for the cameras, rope, wood, chains, propane for the refrigerator, whatever. As soon as that was done, I headed out to the site to assist with the work there, dropping Ines and her bundle of groceries off at her home. She didn’t mention the incident in my room in the whole time I was there, and neither did I. I didn’t think she’d explain herself if I asked, and furthermore it was difficult to take a warning about the woods very seriously when there were so few trees around.
When I wasn’t running errands, I worked in the lab. Every single artifact at the site, no matter how small or insignificant they might look to me, was sent back, usually in a plastic baggie with a tag on it with details of where it had been found. Each article had to be entered into the computer on a template designed for that purpose: the first cut at information included location, depth in ground, size, material, and a description of some sort. Then there was a more detailed template, depending on the type of material, which was much more specific. Here Ralph and Tracey tried to classify the material by period and culture—middle Moche for example. It was painstakingly detailed work for them. For me it was a kind of mindless activity, simply taking the information given me and entering it in the appropriate place on the template.
At some point every day, and sometimes more than once, I’d pick up the little bags of whatever artifacts had been found at the site, delivering them to Tracey and Ralph, who worked all day in the lab.
If I had a moment to spare, I worked at the site, sometimes as what is called a digger assistant, working under the supervision of Steve or Hilda. The excavation site was about twelve feet square marked off in sections by a grid of string. I was occasionally allowed to clear areas of the site, but usually I either helped with the recording of the artifacts that had been found—by and large, ceramic shards—or carried debris from the pit to the sieve. The sieve was made of a large piece of mesh, about two and a half feet square, framed and mounted on legs, so that it was about waist height. The debris was placed on top, and then the frame was rocked back and forth on its legs so that the dirt fell through, leaving tiny artifacts on the top. These were recorded and bagged to take back to the lab. Nothing, I learned, is removed from a site until it’s been mapped on a grid of the site, recorded, and often photographed.
On a hot day, I was supposed to be out at the site between two and two-thirty to bring everyone back; on a cooler day they worked a little later. Not much though. In the afternoon, the breeze, which would normally be welcomed in the heat, gained in intensity until the dust whipped and swirled around the site. It got in your eyes, your clothes, your hair. You could taste it in your mouth. Worse yet, on a bad day, it drifted back into the excavation, covering up much of the day’s work.
At five every day, I’d be back out at the highway to pick up Ines at her place, to bring her to the hacienda to finish preparing dinner. In between I ferried people and supplies between the site, town, and the hacienda as needed.
At some point every day I went to the commune to check on my two young charges, as I quickly came to think of them, Puma and Pachamama. I rather surprised myself with this sentimental attachment to the two kids. I didn’t quite know how they had wormed themselves into my affections, but it seemed they had.
They’d been assigned a little hut, and Pachamama, with the help of the other members of the group, very quickly made it quite habitable, for a hut, that is. They’d found some woven rugs somewhere which were nailed to the walls to keep the dust and sand out, and someone had lent them a little wooden table and a couple of stools. They were still sleeping in their sleeping bags but had a little platform to put them on. Puma immediately set himself the task of learning Spanish, although it was hardly necessary for life on the commune, the inhabitants being, by and large, Americans. He spoke Spanish to me whenever I visited, and while it was certainly rudimentary at this stage, I thought he showed some real facility for the language.
The head of the commune was a man, who, in a fit of hubris, had named himself Manco Capac, after the first Inca king, said to be the son of the Sun and the Moon. When I asked him why he’d chosen the name, he replied, “Whatever works,” a statement I began to realize was the motto of the commune. That, and “go with the flow.”
Manco Capac was not a tall man, rather short, in fact, about my height, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in presence. He’d been an actor at one time, apparently, before he became the original Inca reincarnated, and it showed. He had a large head, in proportion to his body, moved with a certain grace, as if he’d studied dance, and had a voice that commanded attention. He had piercing eyes, an unusual shade of blue; rather splendid cheekbones; and grey hair pulled back into a very long braid at the back. I’d have put him in his early fifties. One of the other commune members, a middle-aged man who had inexplicably chosen the name Moonray—I gathered that taking an alias was part of the ritual of leaving one’s past life behind—told me that Manco Capac had been on the verge of a brilliant career in Hollywood, when he’d become sickened by the excess, and come to Peru to get back to basics. I could certainly understand someone being sickened by Hollywood, but Manco Capac, imposing though he might be, didn’t look familiar to me, so how close to the verge of success he had actually been was debatable. Failed actor seemed more likely.