Banos, Peru June 1, 1979
We took the ‘Machu Picchu’ train to Banos, planning to walk from there to the great ruins. We sat on dirty plastic-covered bench seats, two-facing-two. Around me, in my niche, sat a gaggle of mothers and children. Beside me the youngest – in her late teens or early twenties – held a blue acrylic double-knit bundle with a matching hat. Baby boy? At intervals, but with no regularity or reason that I could make out, she rummaged through a dirty cream-coloured plastic bolsa wherein were stashed one little tin of Gloria leche, one thermos of hot water, a plastic bag filled with dirty cream-coloured sugar, and – la piece de resistance – a small glass Johnson and Johnson baby bottle with a nipple that looked like it had ‘been around the block’ – and back. And of course, juggling all of this, and baby too, in a crowded moving train, even though I was holding the Gloria and half a baby too, the bottle managed, nipple first of course, to explore the cracker-crumbed crack between the two seats and the dark and sinister looking spaces between feet, bundles, garbage, urine and floor. But emerging, after this journey, plenty clean enough, as judged by a fleeting glance by mama, to plug the hole now opening rather angrily in baby’s face. Settling back and holding the catch-22-like syringe to baby’s mouth, mama smiles at the two women opposite and begins a discussion of how much better the plastic bottles are – and yes, they may be expensive (likely a few meals for her family), but at least they don’t break (visions of dark dirt-floor houses, bare-footed children with runny noses playing, heedless of danger.
Opposite me sat another young girl, lazily holding a boy of four or five. She feigned interest in the plastic vs glass bottle discussion, smiling and giggling in an almost conspiratorial manner, but was unable to keep her eyes from wandering, enviously, in the direction of a group across the aisle: two youngish couples, glaringly lacking children, laughing and flirting and ordering cervezas, buying large rounds of fresh white cheese and slicing into them greedily, then ripping large chunks of bread from a fresh bought loaf, downing all with beer and laughter. Then sticky-fingering a cuy (guinea pig), a whole cuy between the four of them, and using the beer to wash their hands, licking and laughing while the eyes of my young friend widened, her smile deepened, and for a brief moment she drifted off into a fantasy of a word of food, a carefree life, or maybe honeymoons and ‘him’… Whatever her reveries, she was lurched back into reality by the aggressive rustling about of the older mama beside her, whose child, clad only in a scanty red cotton dress and dirty cream-coloured sweater-shirt, had just soaked the outermost layers of mama’s skirt of many colours. Mock(?) sternness and a slap on the backside for the kid; a whistle-whispered reproach in Quechua. And a sheepish glance from under the shadow of her wide-brimmed high-crowned dirty-white hat with the black ribbon bow-tied round the crown. This mama joined in the plastic vs glass bottle discussion, voicing her opinion that plastic bottles are better. With that she pulled another crusty-nippled bottle out from another dirty white plastic bolsa, and offered the water-thinned juice to her chica.
Endless vendadores roamed the aisles of the train with baskets of choclos and cheese, packaged crackers and cookies, fanta and coca-cola, or brimful loads of sweet cakes and breads – tempting to look at, dreadful to taste. The two younger mamas bought something right away – cokes for themselves, cakes for the kids (who, not being able to work their way through the dry, stale confections, soon lost them to their mothers, whose gummy gaps apparently suffice, especially when food is reduced to a slurry – who needs teeth?
I am distracted again by the noisy chatter of the group across the aisle, and looking over I see what now look like four fat slugs, lolling in their seats, impeded from sitting upright by layers of fat around their bellies, and anyway too exhausted from sitting a few hours in this train, still nibbling away on cuy and bread….
Sitting in the aisle beside me, a little girl with butterfly eyes, rich, dark, clear and so deeply penetratingly. She was cradling a choclo – for her hermana (sister), who she said was traveling segundo (second class) and doesn’t have enough plata (money) to buy one for herself. She’s straddled atop a bulky bundle of white woven plastic – potatoes? yucca? She twists around on her sack-seat and peers up at me sideways, making sure to make eye contact. She wants to tell me something important she says. Something about Machu Picchu. She wants me to know about the ‘reloj de los Incas’ – the famous sun dial at the top of the complex. She slowly and patiently describes it to me, making sure I understand what she is saying; how it’s made of stone, how easy it is to tell eight from noon by the position of the sun on the stones. “How easy it is…” – my mind wanders, thinking of the hundreds of people here, who have asked me what time it is – standing under the almost no-shade of a eucalyptus tree in the high mid-day sun. “What time is it?” And how they repeated the question after seeing the shiny face of my leather and silver minute-minder, and could not comprehend how that little circle of numbers and two slivers of metal cluttering up the lovely white background could possibly tell what time of day it is. But they loved the watch anyway. And I think, does anybody really know what time it is?
Before we arrive at the station, the little girl looks at me solemnly and asks me to promise that I will go and see the ‘reloj de los Incas’ at Machu Picchu. I promise her, solemnly, that I will.
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