Every good zombie movie plays on one scene: the usually-bustling street, ghostly and vacant in the sunshine. “Where is everyone?” you think. Oh, right – they’ve all been turned into slobbery, skull-munching, dead things. That was about the general sense of things Friday morning.
Handicapped for the umpteenth time by the lack of permission to excavate, John gave up the ghost and gave us Friday to do with as we would. No catches, no caveats, just do as we would. Given the chance, then, most of the group skipped breakfast, and slept like the dead.
This made breakfast something like a treasure trove – twenty empty seats, with fresh orange juice, toast, butter, jam, cheese… and all of it useless to the zombies. I couldn’t really sleep in, so when I hit the dining room at 7:15 AM, it was cuisine cloud-nine. I gathered a cluster about me, pulling from at least four different places, and downed juice after juice, cheese after cheese, and an unholy amount of bread, smothered in globs of warm strawberry jam. Imagine my embarrassment, then, when Dr. Rick and Rosa walked me in on at 7:30, attempting an improbable confection constructed from three pieces of bread, butter, egg, cheese, and jam. Luckily, my escape was swift. I dabbed by mouth with the tissue-like napkin and broke out into the early, zombie-filled morning.
Where to?... where to?... My stomach, which was making a break for my toes, tugged me back toward bed... but frankly, it smells strangely in our room, and sleeping [zombie] Robert sometimes does a weird breathing thing where it sounds as though he needs a respirator. Having thus reasoned my way towards a morning out on the town, I struck out for the bank, ready to do some serious money changing.
I had been putting off this little dance for quite awhile. I brought about half the money I would need in cash, in case I lost it, or was accosted by a zombie horde (okay, last zombie thing, promise). The rest was to be conjured from my ATM card and PIN number from a friendly ATM. There is, thank God, an ATM in Chavín, which, as an aside, I discovered (it’s hidden behind a picket fence and a wall), but it is easily the most enigmatic of its kind. It promises, in broken English, to “fetch your monies,” but doesn’t mention what happens with “your monies” as they come through. What’s the exchange rate? Is there a surcharge? Will Visa cry foul if I suddenly appear to be withdrawing from rural Peru? Reciting the necessary vocabulary under my breath, I waited patiently in the lobby for a man in front of me, who was, apparently, cashing in on years on loose sofa change.
I accosted the man behind the counter full-force, accusing him of obscuring Bank of America’s Peruvian policies (should they have any). Understandably taken aback, he responded in rapid Spanish (don’t they all…?), and managed to convey a few things. First, the ATM is owned and operated by the National Bank of Peru, which is international; thus, “my monies” will flow freely. Second, of course there’s a surcharge – I shouldn’t be silly; I’m in Chavín, not Geneva. Third, he has no idea what the “American Bank” is, or what it charges for Peruvian withdrawals. The American Bank, by the way, is what I had to call Bank of America – it’s remarkably difficult to convey that name in Spanish without sounding like you’re talking about the Fed.
Thoroughly stymied, I had a think for a bit, then decided that as long as I was in the bank, I might as well do money-ish things. So, rather pompously, and as if it was what I came to do all along, I changed my last American $20 bill. Satisfying, that.
With soles burning a hole in my pocket, I decided to hit the market again. I sloughed my Adidas sweatshirt for a grungy white tee, and popped in my contacts. If I didn’t speak first, I could be Peruvian, or at least Brazilian. Thus are the benefits of being tan in a tan land.
I slipped back under the tarps of the bazaar, treading lightly around the edges of rugs and mats. The press of people swirled in eddies at the junctures, clustering and breaking from rows of shiny new pots, woven rugs, and bizarrely, a portly man evangelizing from a TV. The black set-top box was so small we don’t sell them in America anymore, but you could still make out the cream-suited preacher, who was working himself into apoplexy over the coming Rapture (which is, I learned, El Rapto). As much as I felt comfortable marauding in my Peruvian suit, it was still clear that these were a different people – bargaining, dealing, and calling – always calling – in machine-gun tongues. After a good stroll down the main street, I worked my way back out, empty-handed.
When I got back, Robert was up, and ready for breakfast. Though it had been scant hours since my obscene feast, I agreed to go with him to Pukutay, a touristy restaurant near the site. Ordering, however, was easily the most frustrating experience I have ever had in a restaurant. While Robert was content to have the pollo saltado, I decided I could have an order of toast. When I asked the waitress, however, for pan tostado, which how I’ve always phrased “toast” in Spanish, she gave me a decidedly blank look. Eager to accommodate, I tried other phrases – “hot bread; burned bread; bread which has been warmed; bread of the fire” etc… with all of them falling short. Robert gave it a go, too, mimicking how you would make toast, if all you had were your hands and an invisible stove. The waitress shook her head slowly. No dice.
We finally called for the bill after more than a half-hour of easy discussion. The owner, who looked like an extra for Dumbledore, called the total across the room - $21 soles. Considering that a sole works like a dollar here, that was a little outrageous. When we asked to see the bill, he wrote out a note, charging us $13 for the orange juice we drank. When we asked him “why?,” he responded that he’d charged us for each kilogram of oranges squeezed. There was also a small charge for the ketchup we’d used. We left no tip.
The crew mobilized after lunch, and formed a Gringo Group to attack the marketplace. Generally, this is a bad idea price-wise; the paler your friends, the higher the starting price, but it was our day off, and there was little else to do. In a giant clot, we barged along the alleys, pointing and gawking at little oddities. When one of the scouts found something we liked, we debated the gift as a whole, then re-dispatched the American with a partner for bargaining – one of the Spanish-fluent dream team who would tug at their elbow, and play Bad Cop. In this way, Becca got a gorgeous blanket, in rich cream and gray, Marcus got a lime-green rug, and Bodie, on a whim, bought two Andean ponchos. We were a well-oiled machine.
I was dispatched with Marcus to the rug dealer, to bargain for a hunter green and maroon rug for my grandma, who asked for something from Peru (in exchange for the spending money she gave me). We worked him down, with synchronized scowls and snorts, to thirty soles – the same price as my blanket – about $13 dollars. Robert and I then tried to undercut the hat vendor lady, who wanted $6 soles for a llama hat for my brother, Charlie. She would have none of it; but, because it was only really $2 dollars, I bought it at-price. Laden again with absurdly cheap llama-wares, we headed back for the hostal.
There are posters that hang around the town, making outlandish promises. Some forecast epic soccer games between states, some promise international singers will perform at Festivál. But by far the most alluring of the broadsides was hung rampant from city hall, a twenty-foot square with incandescent graphics that promised, in no uncertain terms, a bullfight.
We had been looking forward to the fight all week, anticipating the spectacle in a sort of queasy longing. Everyone’s heard of Pamplona; seen the over-pouffed outfits and pirate hats of the matadors. A bullfight is powerful thing in our imagination – we think of the Coliseum, of charging bulls, and the daring acrobatics of the matadores. But what weighed heavily on our minds, as the afternoon drew closer to the appointed hour, was the reality of the show. Having seen the cockfights, we were well aware the bulls wouldn’t make it out alive – as the poster promised in no uncertain terms: “Six will live. Two will die.”
Renato, the jack-off-all-trades who collected money the previous night for tickets, was supposed to meet us in the square at two. Milling around the plaza uncertainly, it was abundantly clear, by 2:20, that Renato was nowhere to be found. Still nervous about our seating, we decided to head for the ring anyway and claim a section for the Americans.
It wasn’t hard finding the place – everyone seemed to be walking away from it. It was a little strange to walk against so many people an hour before an event; this was, after all, the headlining event for Festivál – the coup de grace the mayor spent so much money on. Nevertheless, people of all ages, looking eagerly towards the plaza we’d just left, streamed past us in the afternoon sun, spangled with traditional dancers, who laughed as they swerved close to us. As we grew further and further from the town limits, however, the small trickle of fight-seekers strengthened, so that we could follow our own little crows around a building and up a hill.
The dingy alley along the building was fronted in flaking white paint, and the ground was an oddly tilled fill, spongy enough to catch the footprints of a thousand passers-by. As we climbed the hill, following the sound of a dull roar, you could see the tracks of construction engines crisscrossing in broad, uncompromising strokes. As we crested the slope, it was clear we were in the right place – in front of us, crude but standing, stood the bullfight arena of Chavín de Huantar.
The ring stood at the cap of the hill, but at the foot of the ridge outside of town, which shot up to meet the valley mountains. Small specks of color – Quechua villagers – were gathering on the high slope, so small that you’d need binoculars to see their faces. Seating seemed to be free – though Renato had certainly taken our money, everyone was squatting wherever, in folding chairs, earthen berms, and in many cases, parked cars.
Bone-white bleachers hung over one side of the arena, itself constructed of huge, curvate concrete slabs, set end-to-end. Slowly, so as not to anger anyone, we slipped down the slope above the arena to its blessedly solid steps. Filing in, we took a few pictures, but were largely content to melt in the sun, to tilt our head back and close our eyes, letting the conversation drift off…
A pudgy lady with sausage fingers was jabbing at us and speaking in a foreign language. We looked at each other helplessly until someone caught on – we were in the Mayor’s family seating. Apologizing profusely under the iron glare of the portly matron, we single-filed back onto the loose soil, all of us scanning for a place to fit twenty white people.
We ended up hopping on a small berm with a good overview of the fight. Becca soon named it Gringo Hill, which would probably have been the locals’ name too – people looooove calling us gringos. Perched awkwardly on the shifting clumps of grass, we readied our cameras for the ornate, official deaths of the bulls.
The bulls start their fighting career in the field next to the ring. Though you can barely make it out through the eucalyptus trees, they are being harassed from all sides of a corn plot. As different workers throw rocks at them, rope their legs or horns, or pull daring “I-just-touched-its-tongue” sort of stunts, the bulls whirl and stamp, frustrated by the agility of its ape tormentors. Eventually, the bull is goaded aboard a trailer, and hit from above as the truck pulls up the hill to the arena.
It is hardly a Coliseum. The concrete sides are thick enough to stop the bull’s charge, certainly, but it was built without honor of fair play. Spaced around the rim of the arena stood large wooden barricades, offering protection to anyone behind their splintery walls from the bull’s sight and charge.
It is into this hellish circle of concrete and wood that the bull is delivered. The trailer backs up to the only gap in the wall, and raises its back door. The bull comes charging out, riled by the pushing and shoving it endured in its cage. Soon, a rodeo clown or a matador flourishes their capes from behind the barricades, waving a bright “hello!” before disappearing behind plywood. The bull charges at the cape full board, then stops at the wooden bulwark, blocked. Again and again – the charge and brake; the performers grow bolder, trying to ride the bull, grab its tail, or do acrobatics ‘round its head.
These fights, largely more harassment, are called lidia, a term crudely appropriated from the word for “free.” This is to say that the point of the first rounds is entertainment only – an appetizer for the later slaughter. As the bulls huff and snort their frustration, the trailer door soon opens, and the bewildered and bellowing bull rushes back in, on its way to a long life of grazing and such. There were six of these circus acts Friday afternoon. The other two were scheduled to die.
The first bull to be sacrificed to our appetite was a velvet-black brute, muscled so clearly that we could see it from the hilltop. He broke the back of the trailer doors open in a toss of his head, denting the aluminum slats. With a bellow, he made immediately for the center of the ring. Behind him, the doors of the trailer clanged shut, and the men who drew the bolt huddled in a small pile under the tailgate. From one of the six safe harbors, a swarthy man in a white and yellow matador suit stepped, prancing with his hooped red cape held high.
He rippled the cape in front of him in a smooth arc, an open challenge. The bull tossed its head and kept a glare at the matador, front legs bowed. Again the matador wheeled to the crowd, arcing the cape in a whirl that flashed red, then yellow, then red. The bull scraped a hoof dangerously against the rocky soil, tail raised and flicking. Then, with a bellow and a motion like a rockslide, the bull charged.
The matador kept the fan rippling to his side, and as the bull ripped its horns at the center of the hoop, he stepped smartly around its side, whipping the cape around him like a toga so that the red disappeared against his livery. With a sprightly step, he pranced away from the bull; a black-slippered flourish, with a bow to the crowd. As the bull turned to charge again, however, he ducked behind the nearest barrier.
And so it went – frilled men would pop in and out of the ring, bluff at the bull, then disappear behind the wood. They worked together to distract the bull when one was in real danger, calling out or making exaggerated moves toward the rodeo clown, who was more than happy to dash between safe havens, drinking and weaving all the while.
Soon, however, it became bloodsport. The matadors stepped from behind their bases with short spears, wrapped in frills and ribbons. Concealed in the handles of their capes, they were invisible to the bull. After a flourish and a taunt, the bull avalanched forward, and in his spin toward the bull’s back quarter, the matador triumphantly pulled the pink-frilled spear from the cloth and plunged it deep into the bull’s shoulder.
The bull roared its displeasure, and stopped short of charging the matador back to his base. He made snapping motions at the stake, which was no longer than a forearm, and sunk deep into his joint. Soon the next matador stepped from the shadows, this time concealing a blue-beribboned harpoon. In another pass, it waved gaily from the bull’s back, bobbing a bit with every surging stride.
As more and more spears we were stuck into the bull’s back and body, the blood began to flow freely. Thick and hot, it coursed in little trails down the bull’s side, dark red on dark black, really only visible when the bull would corner, and spray the ground pink. Its great lungs began to work heavily, sucking in more air with a sound like a leaky bellows. It moved slower, and attacked less often, taking longer pauses to list, slightly, in the center of the ring.
Seen him unsteady, the matadores moved for the glorious finale, abandoning the frilly stakes in favor of silver, slender rapiers. With every pass, and an “¡Olé!,” the steel would slice in and out, cardinal where it had been wet only seconds before. Each stroke was aimed for the heart, but the bull, from determination or genes or simple strength, did not falter from each blow. And again, and again, the matadores whirled around him together, a closing circle, each with a blade behind the cloak, each sinking it to the hilt when the bull turned its heaving back.
A drunk jumped into the ring – apparently one does every year. As the matadores waltzed around the bull, calling out as they stabbed away, the drunk, holding a beer bottle and a short, brutish dagger, huddled behind the nearest barricade.
The bull began to flail wildly, bucking so that its horns grew dangerously close to the pink-stained embroidery of the matadores. One by one, they slipped behind the barricade, until the bull was left alone, heaving and butting at the wooden face. Two of the matadores reached their arms out over the barricade and stabbed mercilessly, the rapiers robbed of all glamour. From above, too, the rodeo clown mocked the bull, pulling faces and shooting foaming beer at its bloody head.
The blades stuck, but did not kill. The bull bucked on, each thrust with the strength of its desperation, of a cornered wild thing, of an animal that sees its death. It was pinioned with three spears, two swords, sunk to the hilt through its ribs, and still it charged the barrier, rose-colored foam leaking from its mouth.
In the end, it was the drunk who killed it. After ten long minutes of hacking, he kneeled unsteadily on the wooden fence, dropped his bottle, and began digging at its head with his dagger. Each short chop seemed to do nothing, maybe only anger it more, until one chop, served as the drunk leaned dangerously over the cornice, felled the bull. The dagger fell, the light went out of its eyes, and it crumpled to the ground, as cleanly as if a cord had been cut.
I made my apologies and left.
Back in Chavín, it was the last night of Festivál. Three towers, the most yet, were taking shape in the town center, and the most eager drunks were clutching happily at the free beers. Street vendor lit their lamps and clogged the streets, calling out their wares: salted, sweetened, or fried. One of the promised famous people was wailing into a microphone as trumpets rang out, brassily; in the square, villagers kicked their feet in and out in an Andean jig. Unenthused, and a little tired off all-night parties, I went to the room to wait for dinner.
After dinner, Dr. Rick gave a blow-by-blow of his day. He’d had no part in the bullfight, instead, he’d taken the Rick clan to see the official opening of the Chavín museum, which was dedicated by the President. Though we’d seen the helicopter earlier, we hadn’t seen the man himself, though Dr. Rick described his figure as one of “substantial character” – a euphemism, if ever there was one.
“You all know I have my misgivings with the current administration,” he said, looking pensive, “especially because our family knows the former President. But I have to be honest,” he said, nodding his head ruefully, “that guy gave an impressive speech. I mean, he had notecards, but I didn’t see him use them, not once! ... and… that was an impeccable talk on the importance and history of the Chavín center. I mean,” and he hesitated before continuing, “it could have easily served as an introductory lecture to a class on Peruvian archaeology.” With his eyebrows permanently raised in shock, Prof. Rick took a seat, our cue to leave.
We began our movie series again that night, comfortable snuggled under our new llama blankets. By popular demand, we watched Chocolat, the story of a French woman who changes her town with cocoa. We were forewarned by people who’d seen it before that to watch it without chocolate at hand was not only a sin; it was torture. Obediently, Robert and I slipped out to the corner store, to buy twenty soles worth of chocolate to distribute to the impromptu theatre. Nibbling on our snacks, we made it through before midnight, and I must say: excellent movie. Also, excellent call on the chocolate-run – I might have died otherwise.
We split up for the night, tucking the projector and blankets away, retiring to our separate rooms. I fell asleep to confused thoughts of hairy blankets, beer-soaked bulls, and death by chocolate.
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