Guano Page 2

  And the son knew that the manor was haunted.

  María Montserrat Sánchez Ortuño wasn’t as lonely as her father claimed. She was indeed awaiting his return in his apartments in Callao, but without impatience or anxiety. Elbows on her work table, she was reading a book on psychology. The term was still new at the time, or old enough to leave in its wake a multitude of names, thinkers and ideas she liked to lose herself in. Englishmen – Esdaile, Braid, Hamilton, whom she read in their mother tongue; Frenchmen – Liébault, Coué, Charcot, whom she read in their mother tongue; Germans – Herbart, Fechner, Bessel, whom she read, somewhat annoyed with herself, in translation.

  People were saying that the Americans were studying this new science and were developing methods. In New York, they were discovering farther and farther reaches of the human mind. Darker, more pathological, so, ultimately, more fascinating. And she wouldn’t have to learn another language to read the findings of their research – what a relief.

  She remembered everything she read: the words, the typos, the semicolons. Her phenomenal memory meant that she could vaguely remember the flood and the coral pink bell tower. A long voyage by boat. But it also meant she could remember every encounter of her life. When she couldn’t sleep at night, she thought back to someone, at random, and was astonished to find she had so many regrets.

  Montse put aside her reading to look out the window. The ocean was calm and as yet empty. The sun struck her thick, wavy hair, unleashing the red; when sun hit her hair, it seemed to set it ablaze, glowing red, astonishing, even alarming. Under the burning sprigs hid the face of a bird, a tiny mouth, a receding chin. The nose was delicate, down to the nostrils, which, being a little too large, suggested a fiery temperament, or a past life as a Minotaur.

  Another contrast: in the middle of the fire, there were two lakes in the form of shining eyes. Their depths gleamed as if harbouring pearls the size of the moon, Excalibur emerging from the depths, perhaps astigmatism. Curiosity, wonder and youthfulness were apparent in them. But people often misjudge their host, because Montse was already worried about being in her mid-thirties. The official old maid of Callao, she had never found love. Sometimes she looked back at her memories, but there was nothing there. To the point that she no longer looked. She had never found El Dorado, or Atlantis. It wasn’t that Montse didn’t know how to love or that she hadn’t been loved. The problem was one of timing.

  She loved; the object of her affection didn’t realize it.

  She was loved; she fled.

  In the latter case, she often feigned distraction, even deafness. She ignored certain questions, as if they had never been asked. Do you love me? It’s such a nice day. Will we see each other again? What do you think of the Murcia bell tower? Now she remembered their questions, and her evasive words. Sometimes she surprised herself by murmuring a clear answer, changing her answers, too late. The man was dead or married – in any event, far away as she lay in her bed. The verdict could not be appealed. I am one of those people who lives on a delay, Montse thought. On a time lag or in books, but never truly.

  She was also beginning to get used to the idea of dying alone, without a hand to hold. She still had nice breasts, a nice smile. A small belly was blooming under her dress, made of the fat that would eventually settle there, creating the impression that she was a few months’ pregnant, as if. Every morning she tightened her corset.

  She went back to her reading. It said that the human mind contains all worlds except the one we live in. She was waiting for her father and her brother. She didn’t feel as lonely as all that.

  3

  The men played a lot of cards aboard the Triunfo. They kept track of the days in wins and losses. To remember Tuesday, for instance, they thought of three aces and a lost snuffbox. Wednesday was remembered more fondly for the pair and the resulting small gold-plated chain, and then there was the return of the snuffbox on Thursday.

  As luck would have it, some men grew rich in tobacco, and others grew rich in matches. They jealously guarded their possessions, using subterfuge to get what they were missing from a shipmate. They increasingly pulled fast ones, and lies became less scrupulous. There was an epidemic of dubious claims of seasickness to avoid playing, and then claims of miraculous cures.

  On the advice of the captain, the sailors took to bartering, at least after he pointed out the rip in the royal sail that had to be repaired, if they were to do things by the book.

  The next one who gets angry, he said, the next one who says he’s sick …

  Simón Cristiano Claro hadn’t played much, preferring another way to keep track of the days. He had a good memory and a calendar in which he dispassionately noted the significant events of the day. This fact, which others mistakenly took for restraint, along with a certain facility with the written word, had quickly made him the ship’s official scribe. The captain gave him orders to recopy, correspondence to embellish, a log to keep.

  He wrote official reports, which were sent to Admiral Pinzón aboard the Resolución. Soon he was being congratulated on amusing turns of phrase. Communiqués went back and forth between ships, ultimately creating a short story of a crossing.

  Seaman injured while mopping, barrel sent careening on account of a broken rope, discovery of a woman among the crew – thrown overboard.

  Simón crossed out that last fabrication. It was too much, too funny to be plausible – after all, they weren’t pirates or vaudeville players.

  Because, to be honest, the days rarely brought more than three aces. His memory and his calendar brought nothing more to mind than an expanse of grey with some blue thrown in and, since the Brazilian coast had come into view, stretches of green and beige. But they were still sailing too far from shore to pick out any interesting details, and had been sailing too close to the high seas for too long for it to continue to make them dream. So they stayed the course, walking that thin line of ennui between the beautiful women in port and the giant octopus, a sort of blind spot of the voyage which, while offering hope of an imminent change of scenery, maintains a calming distance between the subject and object, a buffer zone typical of the all-inclusive holiday. No colonies of monkeys to the one side, no halcyon to the other – and no bathing beauties anywhere to be seen.

  A few ports of call and accompanying shore leaves had given the crew a sneak peek of America and Simón new subjects for a chromatic study: the conjoined silhouettes of Vencedora and Virgen de Covadonga, the brown expanses of women’s bodies – with green, blue or grey eyes. The latter expanses were mostly not suitable for telling, perpetuating the white expanse of the page. Simón found himself looking forward to Cape Horn which, for centuries, in addition to killing men, had offered inspiration for ships’ logs. Beautiful scenes worthy of Victor Hugo: seagulls, the sea, death.

  But they rounded the Horn without incident; it did little to defend its reputation as a graveyard of the sea. Waves licked the decks. To one side, in the distance, the sailors saw the bones of a ship smashed on a reef.

  To quote Simón:

  Two icebergs drifted together, glistening as they melted. They seemed to be holding each other’s great icy hands underwater, turning slowly like two drunks waltzing.

  In the masts, seagulls were taking a breather from the wind.

  But men falling overboard, there were none.

  So he had to settle for including humble anecdotes to spice up the report of the crossing. The captain didn’t check anything – approved, approved – and then sent the reports to Admiral Pinzón on the Resolucíon or to the captains of the Vencedora and the Virgen. These ships then sent the Triunfo this same sort of report, containing similar misadventures with mops, rigging and castaways.

  Simón wondered whether any of these episodes were true, or whether a particular one was false, tried to detect inspiration stowing away in the truth. Were they trying to entertain the other crews the way he was? They were probably having a bit of fun, too. Reality seemed to be crumbling around him as the weeks
went by, and a false reality had replaced the routine gloom. Ghost ships, he thought, faded silhouettes lost among the waves and lies. Three companions that distance turns into strangers and that merely share the same ports.

  But invention also has its boring bits: chamois cloth, rigging, stowaways, paint as faded as the beige wallpaper it was originally meant to hide – wallpaper formerly held in contempt that once again becomes intriguing, that people want to see again, its interest having been restored by having been forgotten. After all, isn’t truth what relieves boredom?

  They docked at Valparaíso on April 18, 1863. Spain had recognized Chile’s independence twenty-three years earlier. So there was no fuss, and no one was made to feel uncomfortable, other than having to get trussed up in full regalia. The appropriate hands were shaken. They visited, in order of protocol, the generals, financiers and aristocrats who requested it. They attended several receptions, where they met the president of Chile, José Joaquín Pérez, on a number of occasions.

  He carried a gold-headed cane.

  His hair was white and his face smooth.

  He was also the president of the National Ballet.

  One evening, over after-dinner drinks, Admiral Pinzón asked President Pérez about his dual role.

  Presiding over the ballet must offer a change of pace, Pinzón said.

  The entertaining part is being president of Chile, Pérez replied.

  The visits went on for close to three months. Simón accompanied the captains and Admiral Pinzón as chronicler. He wrote a few lines about the wittier remarks and the turkey stuffed with apples.

  To survive, he took walks during the day, left dinners early at night. He wandered the city, exploring the same streets over and over. The sun was invariably lukewarm. The wind, less lukewarm, swept down from the mountains and made him turn up the collar on his coat.

  He observed and was observed.

  And then, after a few weeks, no one noticed him anymore.

  He took notes.

  Valparaíso was barely above water. It was a city of half-tones, watereddown colours that seemed to hold the memory of a long time spent below the surface.

  The people spoke in whispers. The music was played low. It seemed to come from the bottom of the sea and get lost among the squalls.

  Ladies lazed along the squares and docks. Having forgotten a mantilla after mass, they let their thick hair blow in the breeze; it was soon damp from the sea spray and turned to seaweed.

  In the shops, they were received by people who looked like ghosts. They were too mild, too calm. It was as if the entire city knew it was condemned to return to the waves. They hypnotized anyone who watched them. The soul became one with them, the body begged to be thrown into them. The eye could make out all sorts of shapes in the uniform wash and the even swell. The foam became clouds: a giraffe, an astrolabe, someone. The face of Julius Caesar followed by a more familiar nose.

  Is it really you after all these years? You’re coming back to me, here, in Valparaíso?

  So it was hard to blame the locals for being so contemplative. It was as if they wanted to melt into the arms of a wave, the next one, that one, the one after that. The sailors had never seen such dangerous seas. Not even rounding Cape Horn.

  There was no fault to be found with Chile, no one to blame. Both the speeches and the women were beyond reproach. Both had faint flattery for Spain and its men. The feeling was mutual.

  July came and, under the same sun, with the same wind, Admiral Pinzón gave the order to cast off. Some of the crew were short on enthusiasm; others feigned it better. Everyone had grown weary of Valparaíso, of course, but they had grown used to the weariness. It had turned into a bit of happiness that they would use to fill their old age, spent on the balcony watching the shadows move and the neighbour whose husband travels.

  So they left the city and its pastels. Along with the dignitaries, a few women came to say goodbye to a few men. They tossed handkerchiefs. They made each other no promises. Slowly, the houses rose up in tiers on the hillsides. The docks emptied. And the sea met the horizon, like a curtain falling on the set, like an eyelid on a dream.

  4

  The ships sailed on to Peru to continue (lest we forget) the great scientific expedition. Simón had indeed collected two or three leaves and as many flowers in the streets. He kept them between pages in a scrapbook. He looked at them when he needed inspiration. They didn’t offer any.

  On the ships they enjoyed a few days of an all-inclusive holiday. Then they spotted Callao shrouded in fog. They had time to watch the fog dissipate, revealing the first coastal battery, then a stately building surrounded by beautiful statues, which was its city hall; as a final touch, the sun sparkled on the waters in the port. The ships approached stillempty piers. The buildings had few windows. People flocked to them to watch the fleet come in. The sea offered up so few ships.

  They threw out the rigging. They had to wait a few minutes before anyone appeared to tie them to the bollards and then a few minutes more before they could disembark in dignity. The Peruvians had known a scientific expedition was coming, of course; a reception had been planned. But the fleet was early or, in any case, more than on time – Spanish ships braved the seas too well. It was unexpected.

  Pinzón shook the hands that were held out to him, the hand of a priest, a stranger, a mayor. All more firmly than in Chile. Because nothing had been made official between Spain and Peru; nothing had been recognized. The independence of 1821 remained a point of contention. For one of the nations, the matter had been settled forty-two years earlier; for the other, there had never been a matter at all. In fact, they wouldn’t discuss it.

  The Spaniards nonetheless asked where Juan Antonio Pezet was. They were told that the new president was running late, detained at the bedside of the former president who was not quite done dying, but that he would come from Lima. He was on his way. No doubt he would be at the reception being held the next day, along with the generals. Will you come?

  Yes, we’ll come, Pinzón replied.

  They embraced. There were a further three minutes of trumpets and bassoons. Then one party returned to the ships, the other to Callao.

  Simón had to accompany Admiral Pinzón that evening.

  Make sure you record any Peruvian witticisms and the Peruvian turkey stuffed with apples. You can describe Pezet and the others, Peruvians I think. Don’t forget my scathing comebacks, maybe an exotic dish or two.

  It will delight Isabelle later on, the food in particular.

  Despite this encouragement, Simón had to search the mirror for motivation. For History, no; for country, better – but a century from now, who would care about a handful of descriptions of high society, the sheen of a moustache, the cut of a corset? Finally he fell back on the same motivation that always worked. Seeing reflected in women’s eyes that his long journey inspired awe – yes, that’s it, off we go.

  Simón’s beard and hair had seen better days. His weariness showed in his uniform: a patch of dust at the elbow, a button missing from the collar. The sea and Valparaíso had dulled his interest in his appearance. It was as if he had returned from a long time spent lost at sea and was not expecting much of himself or the food that was served. Anything would be better than coconuts or surrendering to the waves.

  They approached city hall. The night was still warm. It was filled with chirping and the lapping of waves caught between docks and hulls. Dew was settling over them as they walked, glazing the medals and épaulettes.

  They went in.

  Life was noisier inside. Less pleasant too. It was filled with men. The new arrivals were announced. The word admiral was said loudly, the word Spain as well. There were looks and nods of heads. One could sense a bit of underlying impertinence. Then the conversations interrupted by Pinzón’s arrival resumed with new vigour: laughter, rude remarks, hypocrisy. Simón looked on.

  A large table filled half the room; place settings filled half the table. Simón didn’t recognize ha
lf the guests. The men sported long useless swords and revolvers; the women wore equally long dresses – but they were pretty, almost useful – and carried fans.

  A bit disoriented, Simón followed Pinzón as he zigzagged between groups, greeting such-and-such a diplomat as he passed, masking a forgotten name with a compliment or kisses to the hands of wives unknown.

  They reached the mayor, bowing and scraping. You’re here at last. People were growing impatient, of course, you know, you’re the main attraction; you’re the evening’s high point. The Spaniards were introduced to other important dignitaries.

  These included a Brit, who had come to observe, and Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco, a general. He was a Peruvian with a handlebar moustache. He was on trend.

  The introductions kept coming. The men weren’t very well entertained – they even missed Chile a little. The mayor’s arm drew great swirls in the air, people came, the mayor spoke, four words were exchanged before they were bid a fine evening. The merry-go-round started up again, they were bid a good time.

  To keep good form, they circulated a little, and the mayor ushered Pinzón over to a group of guests. Oh, ah, delighted. They inquired politely after Madrid. Pinzón returned the courtesy. He knew his capitals.

  He even discussed Washington with an American commodore. The commodore was all too willing. Battles were being waged in his country. Plenty of blood spilled, men turned to hamburger by Gatlings. A fine state of affairs. Imagine your homeland, dear Pinzón, torn apart by a civil war. Imagine killing your cousin and your platoon-mate raping his niece. And all over ideas. Ideas! A bit of cotton, too. Can you imagine?

  The commodore was likeable and knew how to tell stories about his country. He had the name of a cowboy: John Rodgers.