Читать книгу The Adventures of China Iron - Gabriela Cabezón Cámara - Страница 16

Tank You Señora for Cure Me

The rain stopped and we had two or three days of flat horizon, and of being pulled between the fear of being seen and the hope that we would meet others along the way. Until suddenly, against that endless backdrop of the horizon, the earth rose up like tempestuous waves in a storm. We weren’t thrown off, but I reined in hard and the sudden standstill nearly caused the wagon to spew out the half of England we were carrying. Our bodies bore the brunt, as our belongings struck us, not that we felt it, so horror-struck were we by the sight of the pampa erupting. The earth shook itself up, sweeping skywards in spirals that merged and thrust themselves towards the wagon, blinding us. The three of us and our oxen and horses stayed so still that within seconds it had engulfed us like a solid mass of dust, punctured by the unearthly cries of the few birds that live in the pampas and by Estreya barking at the brown cloud from under the feet of the oxen, who were frozen to the spot. Then, as if the birds were lightning and cattle thunder, we heard the low rumble of a stampeding herd. We shook, everything shook, and everything that had fallen on us started shifting, covering us again until the noise became deafening. Then just like that it stopped: no more clamour of hooves, barking or birdcalls. We couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything; the earth had swallowed us up. We were as still as Lot’s wife, but so drenched in sweat that we were turned to mud. We smelled dung and could hear what seemed like the world itself gasping for breath until the dust settled and we saw that we were surrounded by about a thousand head of cattle. They were the same brown as everything else at that point, long eyelashes fluttering and tails flicking with either fear or affection. The cows and bulls encircled us, calm now as if they’d just come home, as if they’d found shelter around our wagon, as if the mere fact of protecting us, Estreya, the oxen, my little horse and the wagon somehow protected them too. Nothing moved, just the dust falling in a gentle haze, and us stock-still amidst this slow revelation of dark animal hides and the dust smudging the air as it fell.

At some point the calm was broken: the herd parted like a brown sea to let through a man on horseback, carrying a lamb on the saddle. He bid us good day and said how pleased he was to meet some folks at last. He was on his way to Indian Territory looking for a place to set up with his cattle, and where were we headed? Liz said we were going the same way, Indian Territory. He chuckled and we saw that he had a kind, childish face; this man in front of us looked like a little orphan, but no, at that point at least, he wasn’t the orphan. Stroking the baby lamb, he explained that he’d taken it in because its mother had died. He seemed happy to meet an Englishwoman and a blond boy in the middle of nowhere, he talked non-stop and tried to make Liz talk so he could laugh at her every word. She had to explain England to him, the ocean, the steamer, the desire to travel to the other side of the world. What on earth for? For the same reason as you, Liz replied, to find somewhere to live with my cattle. And where are your cattle, señora? The gaucho’s eyes lit up with amusement when Liz explained to him that some of her cows were coming across, as she had done, on a boat. But why, when we’ve got plenty here already? To improve the stock, of course, since British cows were superior, like almost everything else from Britain. Liz didn’t actually say that last bit, as she started explaining that it was the breeds from Scotland, where she came from, that were the very best. So then she had to explain Scotland, even though she’d never get the Argentines to stop calling her English. I think Rosario, that was the gaucho’s name, started getting bored with so many explanations, because he interrupted Liz and said he felt like throwing some beef on the fire, if we were interested. We were, Liz always loved asado, so she accepted heartily saying we had firewood and that someone would have to milk the cows. Jo, would you do it?

I went and milked one of the runaways, who was quite docile about it and seemed relieved. I knew a fair bit about cows, although I’d never really stopped to look at their faces. The runaway and I looked at each other, she batted her eyelashes in what I took to be gratitude, as if the milk had been weighing her down. I kept looking and saw in her round, untroubled eyes, her good cow eyes, an abyss, a deep longing for pasture, for a track, for fields of sunflowers even. All this I seemed to glimpse in her pupils along with her urge to lick her calf. She began licking the calf there and then and I looked down and got on with my milking and decided to give her a name, I called her Curry. When I’d finished, both the calf and Estreya started suckling. Estreya had hardly ever had milk in his life and he went at it delightedly until he was sated and lay on his back with his paws curled up, his tail waggling on the ground in ecstasy.

Rosario the gaucho introduced himself again while he laid the fire and prepared a spit for cooking the beef, he paused briefly to tear off a piece of the animal’s stomach lining that was a bit dry but still flexible, and he filled it with the milk I gave him and fed the lamb, who then went to sleep at his feet by the fireside. ‘The lamb’s called Braulio. He’s male,’ Rosario pointed out.

That it was male was obvious. I was the one Rosario was probably confused about, with my men’s clothes and my smooth cheeks. And Liz calling me ‘Jo’. I didn’t offer any explanation, I just helped him gather firewood and stroked the lamb while Estreya sniffed at it in wonder. The way the gaucho had nursed the little lamb was so touching. Yet when he’d built the fire, he stood up, unsheathed his knife, grabbed a calf, stunned it with a stone to the head and slit its throat. Its mother’s distressed moaning made us all feel awful. Rosario surprised me once again with his tenderness: after having killed the calf he went up to the cow and stroked it, asking her forgiveness and feeding her some grass from his hand. The cow carried on lowing dolefully and stumbling around, butting other calves with her head. She was looking for her own calf, which by now was splayed over the fire. I thought for a moment about my little ones, my little boys, but barely, I couldn’t afford to think too much, or cry or let anything drag me back to my life in the shack: I was leaving that behind.

So now we were four with Rosario, Estreya, me and my Liz, as I’d started calling her. Rosario carried on with his asados, his feeding bottles made of tripe, and his little orphans: as well as Braulio, he soon adopted a hare, a cuy and a young foal. They all walked along behind the gaucho as if he was a mother duck and they were his ducklings. At night, before spreading out his poncho if he was sober enough – or collapsing wherever if he wasn’t – he would tell us scraps of his life which we’d already half-guessed, having seen how he was. His father died young, his mother was left alone with eight mouths to feed, his stepfather was as vicious as a puma among hens and Rosario, old beyond his years, was forced to flee that cruel life aged ten, pushed to the door by the tip of his stepfather’s knife, to nurse his wounds elsewhere. With a limp, and grey before his time, the poor lad was still looking for someone to look after him in that vast nothingness: so we took him in. He stayed with us, looked after us and we looked after him. He laughed at my men’s clothing but he understood, he said that he thought it was a good thing me dressing like a man, it was like carrying a knife, all women should carry them the way all men do. We knew he was talking about his mother and how he’d have preferred her to have grown a beard if it meant she’d have stayed a widow with him by her side instead of that monster. After another caña, Rosario demanded more English to make him laugh and Elisa, Elizabeth, sang him her songs or told him stories, and he laughed as if ‘two monkeys were dancing minuets upside down’. Then he’d wake up rough, hungover as Liz put it, so she’d lace his mate with whisky and Rosario would come back to life and thank her in the same faltering English every day: ‘Tank you señora for cure me.’