18 EL PANAMERICANO
The Panamerican Express is one of South America's great trains, travelling over 1,000 miles from La Paz in Bolivia to the Argentine city of Tucuman. It crosses a national frontier — few in this hemisphere do — and railway travel is never more interesting than when it involves a border crossing. The frontier is nearly always a no-man's land in which fascinating pieces of fraudulent theatre are enacted — the passport stamping ceremony, the suspicious looks, the bullying at customs, the foolishly patriotic pique, and the unexplained delays. I had walked across the Rio Grande from Texas to Mexico, and hiked from Guatemala into El Salvador. I was looking forward to boarding a train in Bolivia and ending up, after three days on the Andean high-plains, in the heart of Argentina.
But first I had to find my way out of Peru. By now, the railway strike had taken hold. Only one line was in operation; the train to Machu Pic-chu was being manned by the Peruvian army. This was strictly for the tourists' benefit — too bad if you were an Indian who wanted to go home on any of the other routes. The miners were also on strike, and the municipal workers had occupied the city hall in Lima. The peaceful demonstrations had become angry mobs, and there were threats of sabotage on the Machu Picchu train. The workers' demand was for £ 1.50 more a month. In Peru, two pounds of meat costs £ 1.50, and two pounds is all the average Peruvian family can afford each month. I was warned that if I did not leave Peru soon the buses, too, would be strikebound; and though I had vowed in Colombia that I would not set foot on another South American bus — good heavens, I had a wife and children! — 1 had no choice but to take one to Puno.
By train the trip would have been simple and enjoyable; by bus, it was dusty and harrowing, over a corrugated road. I could not read on this bus, and that day I abandoned my diary. We reached Lake Titicaca at sundown and crossed it in the steamer M. V. Olíanla in the dead of night. People tell you that this is one of the most enchanting trips on the continent. But I saw nothing: it was night. The last leg, from Guaqui to La Paz, was too brief to be memorable. I recall a puzzled Indian standing among boulders with a llama watching us pass. The llama was a special reproach to me.
The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat,
Like an unsuccessful literary man.
Just above La Paz, as the train rises and travels across the ridge before descending into the city, there are coal-black peaks covered with snow. The snow has a dry ghostly permanent look to it, a far cry from the radiant slush you see in New England.
The bareness of Bolivia had been apparent as soon as we reached the south end of the lake. It was not the cookie crumb bareness of Mexico or the snail shell bareness of Peru or the withered aridity of Guatemala; Bolivia's bareness was the gritty undercrust of the earth, a topography of stony fossils: the topsoil had simply blown away, exposing the country to its old bones. The place could not have looked colder or fiercer. And yet, all the Bolivians on the Guaqui train were friendly, and the hat-style of the Indians — here a brown derby was favoured — gave them a jaunty look. 'You should stay here awhile,' said a Bolivian, and he pointed to the snowy peaks. 'You can go skiing over there.'
The clouds were grey and creased with black, and as we made our descent into La Paz — the city grew larger and uglier as we neared the valley floor — there was a blue-white crack of lightning from the collapsing clouds. Then a thunderclap; and it began to hail. The hailstones bobbled against the train windows; they were the size of marbles — it was a wonder they did not shatter the glass.
I did not feel well. I had slept badly in Cuzco, I had dozed on the bus to Puno; the furious boilers on the M. V. Olíanla had kept me awake crossing Lake Titicaca. I had stomach trouble, and for once my English cement, which was spiked with morphine, did no good. And of course there was the altitude: La Paz was over 12,000 feet, and the train had gone even higher in order to make its way into the city. I had a groggy half-awake feeling, dizzyness and shortness of breath. Altitude sickness had penetrated to my entrails, and though I kept swigging cement and chewing cloves — my teeth had begun to ache again — I knew I would not feel any better until I left La Paz on the Panamerican express.
I had another affliction, too, but this turned out to be an advantage. I cannot remember how I found a hotel in La Paz -1 think I just saw a likely one and walked in. In any case, I was taking some aspirin shortly after finding my room and dropped the water tumbler into the sink. My hand went to it, propelled by instinct, and then I saw that 1 was holding broken glass and blood. It was my scribbling hand, and now the blood was running down my arm. I stepped into the corridor, bandaging the wound with a towel, and called to the room lady who was sweeping the floor. She clucked: the blood had begun to leak through the towel. She took a rubber band out of her apron pocket.
'Put this around your wrist,' she said. 'That will stop the blood.'
I recalled that tourniquets had been discredited. I asked her the address of the nearest pharmacy.
'Maybe you should go to the doctor,' she said.
'No,' I said. 'I am sure it will stop.'
But I had not gone two blocks when the new towel I had wrapped around my hand was soaked with blood. It did not hurt, but it looked dreadful. I hid it under my arm so as not to alarm pedestrians. Then the blood dripped on the pavement and I thought: Goddamn. It was deeply embarrassing to be walking through this large grey city with a blood-soaked towel on my hand. I began to wish that I had tried the rubber band. I left spatters of blood on the crosswalk, and more spatters on the plaza. I asked directions to the pharmacy and saw, when I looked back, that there was a pool of blood where I had paused and a horrified Bolivian watching me. I tried not to run: running makes your heart beat faster and you bleed more.
The pharmacy was run by five Chinese girls, who spoke Spanish in the twanging gum-chewing way that they speak English. I held my dripping paw over a waste-paper basket and said, 'I have a problem here.' Before leaving the hotel, I had looked up the Spanish words for wound, antiseptic, bandage, tape and gauze.
'Is it still coming out, the blood?' asked one of the Chinese girls.
'I think so.'
'Take that bandage off.'
I unwound the soaked towel. Blood poured out of the slice in my palm: it was a neat cut in my flesh, slightly parted, and with a steady trickle of blood flowing out of it. Now I was bleeding on the counter. The girl moved briskly, got some cotton, dunked it in alcohol and pressed it painfully to the cut. Moments later the cotton was crimson.
She said, 'It is still coming out.'
The other Chinese girls and some customers came over to look.
'What a shame,' said one.
'It does not hurt,' I said. 'I am sorry for making a mess.'
Without saying a word, another Chinese girl twisted a rubber tube around my wrist and tightened it. More cotton was applied to the cut. This cotton stayed white.
The second Chinese girl said, 'Now it is not coming out.'
But my hand had gone numb and I saw that it was turning grey. This gave me a fright. I undid the rubber tube. The blood flowed again down my elbow.
'You should have left the rubber on.'
'I think that is dangerous,' I said.
They tried everything. They poured alcohol on it from the bottle, they squeezed it, they dyed it with Mercurochrome, they sprinkled white powder on it — and now my hand looked like a Bolivian pastry. But nothing worked; direct pressure seemed to make the blood flow faster.