Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

Later he would reappear suddenly, generally clad in a shrimp pink bath gown, a patent, German Emperor-moustache-shaper over his moustache, and groping for his spectacles. When they were found he once more settled himself for a pleasant time, generally having to go through a second search for a key so that another bottle of bitters could be produced.

The morning after, he would appear, fresh and blue-eyed and solicitous.

“You hef a goot time—yes?” then he would chuckle until he shook in ponderous ripples and go on in Spanish, “I do not remember much—after dinner—yesterday—a good dinner—yes? A good dinner is much in this country of the black gold—the rubber—yes—we drink a little for the digestion, la, la—yes. Hoi, mozo—” the little Indian girl clattered inside for the bottles—“just one little cocktail before the saddle—yes?” His face would beam in its frame of thin whiskers with the proudly upstanding German-emperor-moustaches the center of their radiations.

In the jungles across the river from Mapiri was another rubber barraca in which a Bolivian owner held court. Every morning we could see a dozen thin threads of blue smoke trickling above the forest where his pickers were smoking their morning collection of rubber milk. Over there the cañassa was always on draft for all at all times, while half the week was a fiesta and Sunday a brawling bedlam.

Slowly the days dragged on with an occasional rumor of the progress of the Leccos and the callapos. Once, as much to furnish a variation as anything else, I routed out a couple of jars of mincemeat and ventured on some pies. An oven was heated, a big clay dome, such as our great-great-grandmothers used, from out of which the fire was drawn and on a long handled paddle I shoved in a load of pies. Almost instantly they browned and then passed to a crisp black before the paddle could maneuver them out again. The native population, however, appreciated them highly. It was small loss as the manufacture of pie crust is somewhat of an undertaking—at least in that tropical temperature. The lard, native or imported, is a beautiful amber liquid that is bought or carried in bottles and pours with no more deliberation than so much water.

A little later a general fiesta in Mapiri helped out the dull waiting a little. We noticed an extra number of candles burning before the altar in the little mud-walled church and for some days before there had been the thrumming of hollow-tree drums from the little huts of the village. The night before the great day, while it was scarcely dark, the big drums began booming with a typical Indian rhythm; from the line of huts came the droning wail of the guests that rose and fell in fitful bursts, while now and again a straggling line of drunken Cholos, men and women, in a weaving single file, trotted in a staggering hop around the grass grown plaza. There was feasting and drinking and noise; from the barraca across the river came a delegation to lend a joyous hand. Toward morning it died down, slumbered uneasily during the forenoon, and then began working to a frenzy of excitement as evening approached.

All the drums had been concentrated in the church, tallow dips lined the walls, attached by their own tallow to the sun-baked clay, and cast uncertain masses of shifting shadows that flickered in the hot and smoky drafts; overhead a flood of bats chittered in amazement at the invasion of their domain. On one side of the church were squatted all of the old women in Mapiri with dull, cañassa bleared eyes and cheeks distended with coca leaves hammering out a monotonous rhythm on the drums.

Before the altar and facing it side by side were two lines of the smaller boys with the tallest at the front and then shading down to the rear, each naked to the waist but for some cheap necklaces of gay beads. Each had a forked twig like those we used for our juvenile sling-shots, and strung on a wire or twisted bark thread that connected the forks were a dozen little bits of flat tin hammered out of old sardine cans. Like castanets they jiggled the forked stick in rhythm with the drums and as they jiggled shuffling in a hopping, dancing lock-step in single file up to the altar, and then back in the same way half the depth of the beaten earth floor. As one file advanced the other jiggled back and so on alternately. For hours they had kept it up and there was no sign of either a stop or a rest.

The rest of the villagers flitted in or out as ordinary spectators, still nibbling at portions of the feast or sharing a continuously filled bottle of cañassa with the drumming old women. It was not until daybreak that Mapiri dropped into an exhausted rest.

During this fiesta there had been no shooting of dynamite—that is quarter pound sticks with a short fuse like a fire-cracker. This once more popular amusement had been dampened by the last really important fiesta they had celebrated. A Cholo gentleman had, it seemed, zigzagged out into the grass grown plaza with his stick of dynamite, lighted it from his cigarette, and then in a drunken effort to throw it away had dropped it. He did not notice this trifling difference in his program and swinging dizzily round with the effort of his throw fell sprawling upon the cartridge. His demise is still spoken of with awe on that river. Therefore it was that Mapiri celebrated a quiet fiesta.