Mask of the Andes. Jon Cleary

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      ‘Oh, I appreciate the horns of your dilemma, Harry! Oh, indeed I do. One side of me has nothing but disgust for my compatriot Suarez. But the other side—’ He shrugged; and Taber almost hit him. ‘I am a practical man, Harry. It is the only way to survive.’

      ‘Then we’re going to be impractical and take the risk of survival. At least as far as Suarez is concerned.’

      ‘The sulphur and the rest of it will stay in his sheds till he expires. Then we shall only have his successor to deal with. He will be exactly the same, Harry. A Customs man who did not take bribes would never be promoted, not in this province. It would destroy the system. So how do you propose to have the shipment cleared?’

      ‘I’ll think of something,’ said Taber doggedly, and succeeded in hiding his hopelessness. He had been battling graft for years, never winning even a skirmish with a corrupt official; there had been places, East Africa for instance, where there had been honest officials eager to help rather than to hinder; but he had heard with despair that the system had begun to creep in even there. He had once met an official in Brazil who boasted of his ‘honest corruption’, who set a price according to the income of the man seeking the favour and never went above it. But now Taber had reached the end of his patience. Not just with corruption, but with bureaucracy, obstruction, betrayal, even with FAO itself. He had once been a dedicated team man, but he had become a loner because the team had let him down. Bribery was part of the subscription fee as a member of the team and he was no longer going to subscribe. ‘I’ll think of something.’

      He left Pereira to return to the office in the Land-Rover with the driver. Though he did not dislike the little man, he had had enough of him for the moment; Pereira could not stop talking and he would only continue the argument throughout the day that one should compromise, should accept the realities of a way of life. Taber knew the Bolivian was right, that he should not attempt to bring in here the standards of an outsider. But that did not mean he had to suffer a lecture all day long. He excused himself, saying he had to buy some personal necessities, and quickly left Pereira before the latter could protest he would accompany him. He crossed the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a truck whose driver, one of an international breed, held to the principle that pedestrians were an expendable nuisance. He made it safely to the opposite side and dived into the crowd of Indians drifting through the big market opposite the station.

      Taber always enjoyed markets anywhere in the world. It was an exposure of people’s lives; they revealed not only their wants but their character. Smithfield and Covent Garden and market day in any county town revealed more of the English character than any Gallup poll; and he believed it was the same all over the world. The bright fruits, the coloured rubble of vegetables, the rugs, the copper utensils, were only the surface kaleidoscope; the faces of the sellers and buyers were the real essence. Here even the Indians opened up their expressions, shucked off their masks and revealed the living people behind them.

      He wandered through the alleys between the stalls, looking at the jumble of goods displayed. Battered pots and pans, brass ornaments that promised luck, bundles of candles, cane quena flutes, tiny guitar-like kirkinchos, sandals cut from old tyres. bowler hats, wood carvings of the Christ, the Virgin and the Sun God, take your pick, faded magazines from which Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor smiled their empty international smiles: there was something for everyone, if everyone had money. A woman, small bowler hat sitting high on the pumpkin of her head, stopped by a stall and held out a string bag full of potatoes. The stall-owner shook his head, but the woman persisted. The man hesitated, then picked up two candles, gave them to the woman and took the potatoes. The woman went away, heading for the small church that stood on the other side of the plaza at the far end of the market. The candles would be lit and offered up for God knew what reason. The stall-owner looked at Taber, then held up the bag of potatoes. Taber smiled, shook his head and moved on. He had as little use for potatoes as he had for votive candles.

      He stopped in front of a woman selling coca leaves. She sat huddled under a poncho; a baby hung in a shawl from her back like a growth. She looked up when Taber’s shadow fell across her, then looked away at once: gringos did not buy the coca leaf. A boy of about twelve, barefooted and ragged, crept along the wall of the store outside which the woman sat; he stopped by her, then held out a grimy hand in which lay some coins. The woman looked at him, then scooped some of the pale green leaves into a horn of paper, dropped some grey lime into another horn and handed them to him. The boy at once dropped down on his haunches against the wall, took some of the leaves and began to chew them.

      ‘What’s he doing?’

      Carmel McKenna had stepped out from between two stalls. She was dressed in slacks and a suède jacket and had a pair of sunglasses pushed back on her head like a glass tiara.

      ‘Watch him.’

      The boy took the small wet ball of leaves from his mouth, added some of the powdered lime, then popped the ball back into his mouth. He sat back against the wall, turned his face up to the sun, closed his eyes and began to chew.

      ‘It’s cocaine, only here they chew it instead of sniffing it. He puts the lime in it as an alkaline, to bring out the taste.’ As they watched, the boy, still with his eyes closed, tilted his head to one side and spat. ‘He’s an expert.’

      ‘What sort of expert?’

      ‘The trick is to spit out the saliva without burning your lips from the lime. He’s got it down to a fine art.’

      ‘But he only looks about ten or twelve!’

      ‘They start up here at about seven. They don’t do it for kicks. They do it as an escape from the bloody misery of their existence.’

      He did not condone the habit of coca chewing, but he was abruptly angry with her. Damned outsiders.… Then he remembered the outsider’s standards he had tried to introduce over at the station. He smiled, his stern bony face suddenly made attractive. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I was angry with you.’

      ‘I wouldn’t have known. You look pretty sour all the time. You’d have a ghastly temper, wouldn’t you?’ He had noticed that she had all the adjectives they seemed to teach at expensive schools: ghastly was a class badge. But even as he thought it he smiled inwardly at himself: he still had a county grammar school mentality. They began to walk slowly up between the stalls, the Indians watching them with wary curiosity. ‘Why were you angry with me?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ he lied.

      ‘You’re a very difficult man, Mr Taber,’ she said, then let him off her hook. ‘Tell me more about why young kids like that boy take to cocaine so young.’

      ‘Well, for one thing, by chewing it they can go for days without food. That boy probably doesn’t know what a square meal looks like.’

      ‘He had enough money to pay for the leaves and the lime.’

      ‘A few cents. That’ll keep him going for two or three days. If he’d bought food with it, he’d have got enough for two or three mouthfuls.’

      ‘Do they become addicted to the drug?’

      ‘What do you think?’ he said, his voice irritable again. Christ, these outsiders lived in a cocoon; and this time he did not include himself with her as an outsider. ‘Look.’

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