(Day 15) Cocaine and Rum (Before 9AM)

A sense of eager anticipation hung over the crowd at breakfast. We still (still) haven’t gotten our permission yet, so it seemed inevitable that we had forced another day off from whatever tedium. Done with his bread and juice, Professor Rick rose and coughed to get everyone’s attention. “This morning,” he said “as you may or may not all be aware, we’re still waiting on word from Lima as to the status of our permission request. That means,” and he shuffled and looked up again, “we’ve got a big group and not a lot to do.” The Stanford table looked around at each other, counting people and wondering just how many people could do lithics.

“What we can do,” he said, with a sudden smile, “is a little ceremony we do every year before we start the dig. Now, usually,” he added, “we do it the day of the groundbreaking, but I think in this case its safe to get this out of the way, so to speak. The ceremony to which I’m referring is something you may have heard Alicho talking about,” he said, referring to a site director, “called el pago or, in it’s full form, pago a la tierra. You’ll see what all it entails, but it’s mainly something we do to…” and here he shrugged dramatically, “appease the ‘gods’ of the site, if you believe in that sort of thing. If not,” he added, “and we’re not asking you to, it does keep a tradition, and it is something that the locals at the site like to see us do.”

Pago, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, turned out to be a bit of a material devotional to the earth gods. After our long walk to the site, we huddled in the circular plaza, which, depending on whom you ask, is the oldest part of the site. The sunk circle is lined by a ring of lintel stone, which are (or used to be) carved with fantastical half-human, half-jaguar shapes. The sun had just reached the sandy floor and stretched our shadows to a murky chain yards long. We stood in a circle, waiting for…. well, we didn’t know what.

Dr. Rick appeared on the ridge above the plaza, announcing, as he walked down, “you’ll soon see what this is all about, but I think we’re going to wait for Alicho… before we begin the ceremony proper.” And here he stepped down to the floor with a oomph and a rakish smile. Soon Alicho, Dr. Rick’s… well, there’s no word for it in English… compadre, meaning John is his god-parent, huffed up to the circular plaza. In his hands were two bags of dubious looking leaves, many bags of white powder, and a small glass flask of Ron Captivano rum.

Eyebrows went up all around. We were supposed to drink to Chavín… on a Stanford trip… at nine in the morning? “Hola,” Alicho said, as a quiet descended over the crowd. “Hablen uds. Castellano?” he asked, seeing if it was okay to proceed in Spanish. Enough nods came through that he kept on in Spanish. As a courtesy, and because, largely, I can’t remember Spanish verbatim, I’ll recount in English.

“We are here this morning,” Alicho said (loosely), “because of the Chavín. They who were here before us knew this earth, and today we pay a debt to our ancestors to remove their knowledge,” he said, miming a trade with his hands. “For this, we bring them our gifts,” and he raised the leaves, rum, and a pack of cigarettes flourished from a pocket. “And ask that the earth and the four cardinal directions,” he said, naming each of the four in Quechua, “accept our gifts and our work.”

His small speech done, the tenuous Spanish-speakers looked around at each other nervously. “Okay,” we thought, “we just leave these and go?” Dr. Rick, standing across the circle, cleared things up in English. “So,” he said, “here comes the participatory part. And remember,” he said, leveling some seriously bushy eyebrows at us, “this is voluntary. Alicho is holding two bags of the leaves of the coca plant,” he said, stepping across the circle to stand at my left, “and you may either partake or not, but the thing is to put them in the orifice,” and here he gestured to an as-yet unnoticed hole in the ground maybe five feet in front of my end of the circle. Explanation done for the moment, John accepted two cigarettes from Alicho’s outstretched box, giving one to Rosa. With a small flick, he lit up.

Alicho walked around the circle, holding out the small pink plastic bags of coca leaves, the plastic packets of white powder, the rum, and the cigarettes. Pick your poison, if there ever was one. A few students I wouldn’t have expected, and especially the Peruvians, took a cigarette. Most took a capful of rum, and poured a second down the earth’s gullet. Most also took the coca leaves, and, under Alicho’s murmured instruction, constructed a small fan of seven perfect leaves. When it came to me, I sprinkled rum and took the leaves. I wasn’t sure yet what this business was about, but I admit my curiosity.




Dr. Rick, to my left, had long since stopped puffing on his cigarette, and held it up like a miniature totem-pole. “The locals believed,” he said, balancing the growing column of ash carefully, “that you can tell a lot about our project by the way the ash grows. Past, present, future – apparently it’s all here,” and he gave us a shrugging sort of look, as if to say, “and what could it hurt?” I stood for a long bit with my wad of coca leaves, not precisely sure what to do with them. John tapped the ashes into the hole with his wife, and sprayed more rum at the hole from pursed lips.

“Um, Dr. Rick,” I said, as he began to do something with his wad. “What are we, uh…” I trailed off… not sure how to ask what to do without looking either like a gringo or eccentric. “Ah,” he said, looking up from his now folded pile of leaves, “well, you fold them, like this,” he demonstrated, doubling the leaves. “And you lick them,” he did so, pulling a face, “and sprinkle some of the bicarbonate on,” (my powder confusion cleared), “double them again, and that goes, as they say, ‘between the teeth and gums.’” I put on my best incredulous face. Granted, our high school (being in the country) had more than its fair share of chewing tobacco users, but if you’d asked me this morning, I would not have told you I expected emeriti Stanford professors to smack contently on cocaine leaves.

We followed suit. Now, before you judge, do remember that this is a local tradition, and, strictly speaking, was the oral equivalent of our breakfast mate de coca tea. “While technically,” John said, sounding like he was at the dentist’s office, “this is a pleasure more properly enjoyed after a long day’s work, I can explain the mechanism. The bicarbonate,” he said, shaking the small white packet of powder, “helps release the alkaloid from the coca leaf. The only effect that you’ll probably feel,” he said, wiggling his hand like a see-saw, “is a slight numbing of your cheek, and a mood elevation.” Dutifully, a good dozen people licked, sprinkled, and tucked, giving us strange chubby bunny cheeks.

Alicho and Rosa continued to talk about pre-Columbian Peruvian deities, and the roles that they may have played at ceremonial centers like Chavín. The sun began to beat down on the plaza, and my cheek, at least, was decidedly numb. There was also a small but marked bit of happiness, rather as though you were looking forward to a hot shower. There, but probably only because I was looking for it. We were all pondering either the strangeness of the entire ceremony, with the alcohol spraying and… I suppose… drugs… when Bodie, the 6’4” Goliath, rolled his eyes back in his head and crumpled unceremoniously to the ground.

He took forever to fall. Granted, he’s a whole lot of human, but there were whole seconds packed in there. In a classic faint, he went all floppy and slumped to the ground. I don’t remember how I got over there, but I do remember that his teeth started to chatter and eyes moved around violently. I figured he might be having a seizure – cocaine induced? – and held his jaw closed to stop him from biting his tongue off, and banging his head against the ground more. His jaw tensed, then grew slack. I asked Robert, who was kneeling at his feet, to raise his trunk, so he’d avoid shock. Slowly, his eyes came around, and met mine, then rested, unfocused, in the middle distance.

There was a hush, as the ripples of his fall spread to the other side of the plaza. People formed a circle a few paces back, and I let my grip slacken off his jaw. He lay for a few seconds, then someone, maybe John, asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Are you alright?” Body looked around in a lazy, unfocussed pass, then sat up and hugged his knees. “Yeah, I think I just fainted,” he said, muffled by his jeans. Eventually, Robert or I helped him to his feet, and at John’s behest, he stumbled over to a shady patch of plaza wall. He sat alone for a few seconds, and Robert and I, feeling responsible, wavered on going over to sit with him. Rosa gestured and we followed him into the shade, each taking seats on carved antiquities.

The group soon broke apart, following Alicho over the hill. Those with a lit cigarette or a mouth of coca slipped it from their lips in small, sticky trails of saliva, and committed them to the gods with a small toss into the hole. We watched the procession file out silently, leaving only John, Rosa, Robert, Bodie and I, though John and Rosa remained by the hole, nodding to team members as they left. John gave his cigarette one last pensive look, then tapped it into the earth. He considered Bodie, who kept his head between his knees in the shade of the plaza. “When you’re ready,” he said, “and take your time… we’ll be back in the lab.” He then looked at Rosa and ambled up out of the sunken circle. Rosa paused for a second, looking at Bodie, then followed Dr. Rick in short, hurried strides.

We whiled away the time for a bit, basically making fun of Bodie’s height and sudden love of the ground. Eventually, with a few sips of water and a moment’s rest, we followed the Ricks down the cobbled road to the hotel.

*

After lunch, the lab was in an uproar. Apparently, word came through that the Director of the INC (something like our Secretary of the Interior) was visiting the site in anticipation of our pending application approval. Accordingly, the site staff went into a tizzy, tightening ties and taking out the trash, so to speak. “Now, the question is,” Dr. Rick said in the lab as he swept a bag of lithics material into an empty box, “does a foreign archaeologist always have a right to his excavated material?” He slid the box onto a table and continued, “And the answer, probably,” and here he made his favorite see-saw gesture, “is yes. However,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “in the spirit of toeing the line, this all has got to go.” He made an expansive gesture around the lab, roughly capturing the lithics, ceramics, bones, and excavation material of years of Peruvian digging. “If this stuff is found here,” he said, taping a box shut, “it could be interpreted as a violation of our resolution. Not that it really is,” he said, looking up, smiling, “but we’re not going to take that chance.”

The lab became a beehive as all hands on deck ruthlessly shoved bags into bags into bags into boxes, compiling inventories for later resuscitation and inspection. Amusing discoveries were made; obsidian flakes long since thought lost, half of an ancient finger, and what appeared to be some antique piping. I myself have an excellent picture of a bemused Rob holding, tagging, and bagging some unfortunate Chavino’s femur.

As the Festivál bands began their afternoon racket, we boxed and sealed thousands of flakes, shards, and tools into cardboard boxes, supervised by a fluttering Rosa, who called out rollcalls of material. “The lithics, P.D.A, analyzed?” she said, in a thick Peruvian accent, gesturing at a vacant spot on a table. In due course, those boxes and others were lined up and made ready to transfer to the car.

The Ricks apparently own a car in Peru. Perhaps “car” is generous – they own what must be one of the first Land Cruisers ever produced. Sky blue and dirty cream, the monster barely made it out of the seventies with the grill intact. Its cargo hold (well, it sure as hell wasn’t a trunk) fit the entire lab with space for the rearview, and clunked shut with a worrying series of tinkling sounds. Dr. Rick climbed aboard, and Megan and I hoisted ourselves in after him, wrinkling our noses at the smell of urethane, rust, and sweat.

Two things became immediately clear: Number one – you cannot drive the Land Cruiser. The closest word we have for it is ‘navigate’ – rather than actual control, the steering wheel and gearshift are more… avenues of negotiation. If you play nice, the Land Cruiser might change gears and turn right. Or, just as likely, it could cut the engine and roll downhill, a smile plastered across its grill.

Number two: John is a narrative driver. This is to say that, for the benefit of all involved, Dr. Rick will consult the cabin at large about all of his decisions. And I mean all of them. Granted, opening the hotel double doors and strong-arming the Land Cruiser into reverse were dramatic scenes, and anyone would be forgiven for muttering to the rearview, but John (as he insists we call him) treated us to his thought process on every pedestrian, badly parked car, and errant old woman. The scarce five minutes to the site was a cornucopia of such muttered updates as, “would be able to get through there if this guy hadn’t insisted on parking here,” and “man, just a little slower, pal, there we go…”

At the site, it was a short ballet of box-heaving before all of our illicit academia was back in its proper place – a damp backroom just across from the bathrooms. John shook Ivan’s hand, thanking him for the advance warning, and hopped back into the Monster to see about convincing it to take us back.

*

The funny thing about storing all of your lab material is… it’s all stored. That is to say that we’d very thoroughly scrubbed the lab of things to do. We called it an early evening, and were free to see Festivál kick itself off again before dinner.

A word about Peruvians: they really, really enjoy their fireworks. Really, I know there are boom-happy parts of the States, but this section of the Andes has a real thing for explosives. They show their endless love of all things blasty by setting off a firecracker every ten minutes during Festivál. Two dangerous-looking men wander the plaza by day, each with a handful of thin poles in a hand. On the end, attached loosely with tape and best wishes, sit small cherry bombs. Now and again, or when an unsuspecting gringo is near, they’ll bend down to touch the end of their lit cigarette to the tail of the cherry bomb. As they glance away, the stick will suddenly rocket out of their hands into the clear, blue sky.

If you’re foolish enough to follow it into the sky, you’ll see a small, bright flash, followed by a completely new cloud that drifts away on the valley breeze. Hot on the tails of this little miracle, a sharp report, like a firing squad or an entire forest snapping at once, hits your ears. Really hits them; the business is not pleasant. It was mainly for this last treasure that I glowered at the dangerous men with boom-sticks.

Anyway, while these men were patrolling their square foot, a hired band from Huaráz, in slacks, oxfords, and wingtips, brassily blared something people recognized enough to mouth along to (in Spanish). A ballet folklorico – traditional Amerind dancers, shook their bells and coup sticks in front of the civic hall, and at the corners of it all, small mountain women bound with their colorful slings looked on wonderingly.

After a good twenty minutes, I tired of the banging – both of the drum and the rockets – and retreated to the hostal courtyard, to help out with a developing game of either “poke-the-parrot” or “catch-and-pet-the-cat.”

*

Both Bodie and Robert felt markedly sick at dinner. Robert still seemed to be holding his own, but Bodie looked like a zombie. Tara, too, was staring at the wall morosely, and Dr. Rick favored them with a sad glance before his dinner announcements started. “So,” he said, slowly, “we’ve begun to pick up our first few sicknesses. I think,” and here he furrowed his brows and cast about the room, “we have a good four people sick, which is about normal for the second week in Peru. Just a reminder, then” he said, carefully, “to take some extra caution when brushing your teeth, eating out, et cetera… that your water isn’t local. Because if it is,” and he gestured at Bodie, who was no doubt pondering his imminent bowel movement, “well…” Nothing really needed to be said.

“I would like to remind everyone” John continued, “that tonight Cristián is going to throw the doors open of the museum one last time before it opens. And,” he said, eyes twinkling, “he’s just recently returned from Lima with… the Tello Obelisk.” The reason he was rocking on his heels so excitedly is because, next to the Lanzón, this native Chavín pole is a favorite of the Peruvian museum-goer. It would be rather like if Mount Rushmore were moved to the same site as the Statue of Liberty. So much heritage!

“To that effect” he said, glancing first at Rosa, then at his watch, “we’ll be meeting at eight-thirty…” he trailed off, scanning the room, “…if you’re well enough, in the courtyard, to head over to the museum.”

To be quite honest, the museum was a little underwhelming a second time around. Okay, to be fair, marble floors were kind of nice – they made you think you’d warped to a first-world country – and a few more exhibits were installed, but poor Cristián had to repeat what we already knew in two languages. Same tour, different languages.

The Tello Obelisk wasn’t the only new addition. In the room about the circular plaza, decorated appropriately with imaginative paintings of ceremonies, a recording was tripped as we came in, playing a sound a bit like Niagara Falls. Cristián explained it was a dramatization of what happens when rain is roaring through Rocas Canal. Dr. Rick and his peers think, he said, that novitiates of the cult probably took the local hallucinogenic cactus and freeeeeaked out at the sound. I almost freaked out, too – it makes you want to go to the bathroom really badly.

I wandered away from the group towards the end – I mean, why stick around for the rerun? – and went in search of the Tello Obelisk. The replica from before was still there, chunky and plastic-looking, in one of the atria. Then, as I stood next to Sara during a mini-lecture on the lapidas stones, I realized the entire wall behind me was cloth. Not just that, but if you focused through it, rather like a microwave cover, there was a tallish thing beyond it. Sara winked, and drew me over to the cloth, separating two bands enough for me to peek through. Sure enough, the obelisk was there, swaddled in cloth, tape, and concrete. Dr. Rick laid a hand on Sara’s shoulder, and quietly shook his head, to indicate we weren’t supposed to eat from that tree, so to speak. I got the feeling that even though he was looking at Sara, he was actually looking at me.

After the tour ended, and Cristián officially led us behind the cloth to the Obelisk (which he referred to by ‘she’), five of us hopped into the back of Cesar’s truck for a ride back to the hostal. By the time we reached the square, the streets were gorged with people. Mountain villagers had come down from the hills, probably on account of the free beer, and stayed to see the fireworks. Calls from street vendors flew thick and fast as the crowd surged back and forth across the square. The car stalled in the midst of the crowd, and we hopped out, striking across the melee for the doors of the hotel.

As we were making it across, one of the huge nightly firework confections exploded in a shower of white sparks, twirling bands, and whizzing fire. We stayed to watch for a bit, but the crowd wore thin – at least for me. I mean, after all, I had technically been drinking since nine that morning.