Acrobats of the Great Abyss

November 12, 2005

I love Pepe but I swear sometimes he reminds me of a modern-day neanderthal. He even kind of looks like a caveman. The bone structure of his face with its pronounced cheekbones and bony stone-age forehead, the thick tribal hair shocking out of his skull, the wooden club, the bone through his nose, all of it calls to mind the classic paleolithic visage only offset by black thick-rimmed glasses that paste him firmly back into the present era where he peers out of deep sockets like a stowaway on the evolutionary chain. Aside from the occasional study of local history, Pepe spends his time thinking about girls and contemplating feminine mysteries that after thirty-three years still keep him baffled and prone to further research. When he’s not rifling off at the beak about girls he’s always explaining to me things he’s read about alpacas and volcanoes and llamas and condors. He’s not one to heed subtle hints of boredom, and sometimes he goes on for so long I feel like thrusting my palm into the bridge of his nose. In the mornings he wakes me up after he’s done boiling eggs. I open my eyes to see him standing in the doorway, shaking his head at me.

“Oh come on. What is dees?” he says.

He walks over my clothes and takes the water bottle from my nightstand and slugs the rest of it.

“What the hell are you doing, Pepe! You’re standing on my goddam shirt and you just drank all my water,” I shout at him (I’m always reproaching him), which starts him laughing and almost causes him to blow the water all over me.

“I’m sorry, friend,” he giggles, and walks out the door with his little ass-hugger man panties on to eat eggs and avocado on toast. He’s always doing mischievous childlike things. One time he took my digital camera and held it in the open window over the bathroom door and snapped a shot of Jhonny wiping his ass. I heard bathroom shouts of protest as Pepe came running back to show me the image of Jhonny perched on the edge of the toilet seat with his ass shifted at a weird angle, staring up at the camera with a look of dread as he realizes what Pepe is about to do to him, and you can see his lips contorted so you know he’s about to shout Pepe’s name. Jhonny’s very sensitive and even effeminate about his privacy and that didn’t go over too well with him. He came out of the bathroom with a morbid look of embarrassment on his face, and I felt bad for him but still couldn’t contain myself every time I stole a glance at Pepe while Jhonny was scolding him and we'd both erupt in laughter again.

Still, at times Pepe has amazed me with startlingly incisive insights into human nature, some of his observations have caught me off guard and led me to conclude that despite all his goofy foibles he possesses an intelligence and cowled profundity you might miss if deceived by his outer primitive caveman vibe.

Jhonny is someone else altogether. He’s about ten years younger than Pepe but has surpassed him already in maturity, property, and career. Pepe covets the TV in Jhonny’s room. While Pepe is still grappling with English Jhonny is nearly fluent and also speaks very good French so is frequently sought after by the travel agencies to accommodate large groups of tourists. Pepe works primarily with one agency and seems reluctant to expand, while Jhonny continues to further himself and has generously presented Pepe with several contacts and opportunities from his own thriving career, which Pepe seems reluctant to pursue. Jhonny has a joyous attitude that rarely darkens, he’s refined and cosmopolitan and always wears nice clothes, and he frolics about in a way that casts an ambiguity on his sexual orientation. Pepe has recounted to me with dubious voice tales of his propensity in the past to cavort with local homosexuals while simultaneously pursuing large women, neither proving nor disproving anything regarding Jhonny’s sexuality, only revealing a certain openness and eccentricity of taste. Of all the Peruvians I’ve met I trust Jhonny most, his integrity is fully intact, and he conducts himself with an air of generosity and goodwill. There’s something pure and saintly about him. In fact, Jhonny was a church boy long ago in northern Peru and was even destined by his father to become a pastor, but when his father died Jhonny’s destiny was freed and he put away the cloth and cut out of town, much to the distress of his family, who had the mould all prepared and everything. He looks to me with a deference and admiration that I try to repel without success. Every time he introduces me to someone he says, “You know, this guy is a fucking genius, man,” at which point I’m expected to produce some evidence of this and can barely speak enough Spanish to dismiss the claim. And to make it worse Pepe keeps introducing me as ‘a very famous writer from America,’ which draws wide- eyed responses and queries that I have to rebut while Pepe laughs hysterically. “No no, don’t worry, I’m nobody,” I assure them, But somewhere in my secret heart I know I’ve only just begun to emerge.

Sasho was coming back on his last run through Peru and I was looking forward to seeing him again. It would be our last hurrah because he was returning afterward to Slovenia to resume stationary life, what we vagabonds refer to as 'going back.' He was guiding a group of twenty Slovenians on a Peruvian trek en route from Cusco and Puno after wandering the Incan fogs of Macchu Picchu and floating on reed islands in Lake Titicaca with the reed people. Now they were heading for Colca Canyon and to get there you’ve got to go through Arequipa, which is why Pepe and Jhonny and everybody is able to make a living. The Canyon, they say, is the deepest on earth and as far as the guides are concerned it occupies the void in the rock like a money pit, a cash chasm, a dough hole, a currency cleft, a salary valley, a boy-oh-boy arroyo. It nourishes its people with providence like a god. A river runs through the pit, where there is a verdurous oasis with palms and freshwater pools fed by natural fountains. I decided to come along with Sasho and Pepe and all the Slovenians down into the abyss to bottom it out myself and see with mine own eyes. Besides, Pepe was going to give me a good price.

So we were standing around a hostel on calle San Francisco at dusk waiting for Sasho and his countrymen to arrive. It was the weekend of the Peruvian elections and the buses were all thrown off schedule, so the group was coming in later than expected, causing Pepe much distress as he scrambled to rebook transportation to the Canyon and secure everybody’s sleeping arrangements. Sasho appeared from around the corner looking haggard and vexed by circumstance, but when he saw us he broke into a smile and shook his head in the old familiar way.

I looked forward to the trip with the same good-feeling anticipation I remembered from the historic fifth-grade trip to Fredericton with all my ghost friends, anon in the old days of Canada—it still comes to mind even now with all the power of living memory, still visceral and vivid, because it was the first taste of leaving home on my own, all my old friends were there together, we drove until lights came on along the highway, and I was young on the earth and felt like an immortal.

The following morning Pepe woke me early to go to the market to buy bananas and apples and things for the trip. The bus was coming to pick us up soon, so we hurried around the enormous fruit piles gathering our goods and weighing them out and then running off for home.

My rucksack was already packed. When we got back I went on the roof to look at the volcanos and await the bus from the crow’s eye. The sky was immaculate with not a cloud to mar, so I knew it was gonna be a day of sun’s own and a night of one million stars over the Canyon, and I felt one of those little ripples you get before a good thing.

Soon we’d hopped the bus and loaded the Slovenians on from the hostel, who were all speaking Slovenian, so I felt kind of alienated from everyone except Pepe and Sasho. I couldn’t decide if the Slovenians were all a bunch of assholes or not, but I thought they might be. I noticed a few pretty ones, two of which had boyfriends, leaving one remainder of interest: a little cute-cheeked one who wore glasses and seemed to wear a constant blush of utter shyness in every moment. Pepe sat beside me in the front seat, and as we got on the road he plugged in a microphone and began his commentaries in broken English.

The only things missing were a stool and a glass of water. Something about his voice is just completely hilarious. “Hello everyone. I am Pepe.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Dis is Riki. He is from United State. Friend of Bush.” I slugged him in the arm as he cackled into the mic. There was scattered laughter. As we climbed into the mountains Pepe began commentating on the natural world. At one point he goes, “De condor have one egg every year. If something happen to egg, maybe de condor lay another one.” I just lost it, I almost went on the floor laughing, he sounded so goddam ridiculous. Pepe started giggling uncontrollably.

We crossed mountains, we came out onto plains splotched with mountain bogs grazing with llamas and alpacas, there were rocks strewn in the road and down in the valleys there were verdant terraces carved into the cliffs. The Incas had been there once long ago. I decided the Slovenians were a bunch of stiffs and resolved to regard them with indifference until they did something cool to make me like them.

“Shit!” Pepe said suddenly. I asked him what was the matter and he said, “We don’t have a fucking donkey.” He said it so mournfully and he looked so troubled by it that I took one look at him and busted out laughing. Since we would be arriving way past the appointed time Pepe was sweating donkey availability at the late hour, and we needed a donkey to carry the food. It was the first time I’d ever had the privilege of seeing a donkey cause somebody anguish.

After a few hours passed, we pulled into a small town called Chivay to buy food and have lunch. I wandered around for a few minutes and ran into Sasho at a little tienda buying a carton of cigarettes. He went to the liquor wall and pulled off a bottle of Johnny Walker Red and smiled at me with half-wink. “What do you think?” he said. “For the canyon tonight?”  I asked, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. He nodded. “Let’s go half on it,” I said, and so we did.

Coming back to the main square I noticed Pepe all stressed out rushing toward the bus with cheese and avocados. “Friend, we must make sandwiches,” he said in obvious stress. I went to help him, and so began our frantic sandwiching-making frenzy as the slavering Slovenians piled onto the bus for lunch. We fretted and sweated at those goddam sandwiches in the blazing bus-window sun while the Slovenians called out to be fed. It was if they hadn’t as of yet become distinct as individuals, they were an unbroken entity, like a squad of ants or a flock of squawking geese. I secretly began to resent the Slovenians.

The sun was going down leaving a fantastic haze in the valleys, and as we approached Colca Canyon the enormous spaces were shimmering a golden phosphorescence and the huge rockfaces were lit across the tremendous gulch filled with dying sun. Birds hung on the thermal air and shone. It was a spectacle, a painting in which the artist has gotten mystic about depth and worked with the subtlest colors to melt the sun into the rock. I sat and watched and wondered how I’d write it. I saw a city far down in the void that looked like barnacles clinging to the distant rock.

We pulled into a small quiet town after dusk and unloaded in the square, suiting up our rucksacks and adjusting headlamps to our foreheads. Pepe went off and procured a donkey. We were going to descend in the dark. Sasho poured the Johnny Walker into a water bottle and dumped his cigarette carton into his backpack. The first stars were coming out. Pepe guided us through the streets and out to the farms bordering the gap where there was a footpath among the crops that went alongside fences and through the fields before it abruptly dropped to the bottom of the world. Dogs barked, a radio drifted from the cracks of some farmer’s shack. When we reached the edge of the canyon the darkness had already stolen off with the distance and the immensity of the abyss was obscured by night. Down and down and down.

The dusts ballooned in the light of my headlamp, everything outside my nimbus of light was swallowed by the voluminous darkness of the void, the maw of the world yawning and star-filled, because now there were crowds of spattered light burning all over the firmament, stars everywhere, the purple galaxy ran a band along the outer rim, and shooting stars drew tracers of fire across the dome of my eye. A black dog followed along with us, sometimes scouting out ahead and peering back, eyes glowing eerily with reflected light.

Hours passed. Far down in the dark there was a single light alone that interrupted the empty blackness, and we made our way toward it. A song came into my mind and I sang the lyrics over and over again. Deep dark well, it’s a deep dark well, it’s the deepest and the darkest well that I have ever found, hear me calling you from deep down...

We kept a good pace, Pepe and me arrived at the bottom ahead of the others, we could see their lights further up trickling along the switchbacks. Pepe hurriedly showed me how to get down to the oasis from the trail’s end and asked me to wait for the others while he went ahead and got dinner started, then he ran off toward the lantern light. Silence washed around me. I switched off my headlamp and let the dark have dominion. My head fell back and watched. They found me on a boulder when they finished their descent. “Welcome to the bottom of the abyss,” I said.

Brush overcrawled the path on the last stretch to the oasis. The footpath cut deeper into the ground and narrow rock rose to either side. We came through and out into the open canyon floor, and as I led us down we could begin to make out the dark forms of thatched huts. I felt grass beneath my feet. The whole scene as it was delivered to me took on a surreal quality. Everywhere I looked there were stars, and the stars were girdled by impenetrable hulks of canyon wall that stood against the sky like bleak giants. The air was still and seemed contained as if within the walls of a planetarium.

Pepe emerged with a big smile on his face to greet the group. “Hello, friends. We are in the oasis.”

I crossed over a little brook and stumbled a little from lack of vision, and I was caught up in my own insular thoughts when suddenly someone appeared in front of me with a candle. He was wide-eyed and had twists in his beard and wore a colored scarf tied around his hair. His face glowed in the candlelight––it was like a fortuneteller had suddenly materialized before my eyes, or a caravan minstrel of some kind. It startled me and I stopped in my tracks.

“Man,” he said, “what the fuck are you guys doing here in the middle of the night? We have been watching you coming down for hours, you guys looked like shooting stars.” I saw there was a girl standing beside him, she said, “Yeah, like a bunch of shooting stars. We were wishing on you.” They both seemed energized in a kind of wide-eyed ecstasy. The scene played in my experience like a dream.

“We got off to a late start and had to come down in the dark. When did you get in?” I asked.

“We have been here all day, man. Swimming, laying in the sun,” he said and shook his head laughing, “It’s paradise.”

We started talking about how we’d come to be standing there. I told him I was traveling, laying low for a while in Arequipa and writing. “Really? What’s your name? So I can remember this when you are a famous writer.” I told him, assuming he was a prophet delivering a standard bottom-of-the-world prophecy, either that or he was Diogenes, seeing how he had the lantern. But when I asked him he said, “I am traveling with the circus around Peru. I am an acrobat.” His name was Mani Tiger, and he even whipped out his Swedish passport to confirm his last name was authentic and not just some silly stage name; his passport picture was wide-eyed too, it could have been a little mirror reflecting his candlelit visage at that very moment. So maybe he really wasn't stoned out of his mind.

The girl said, “We were doing cartwheels by the pool today. I didn’t stand a chance against him.” No shit, I thought. They were the sole occupants of the oasis, and I was disappointed when they said they had to go get some rest for the climb in the morning, because I’d envisioned further conversation, a drink or two, somersaults.

“Well, I can’t believe I get to the bottom of the abyss and I meet an acrobat,” I said, musing on variations of cosmic significance. We shook hands as they readied to go, and I arranged to meet the girl in front of the cathedral at five o’clock on Wednesday if I could remember. “See you in the next life,” he said, and flashed a mysterious pearly smile. They retreated with their candle, acrobat and she.

Pepe made a good soup that night. I had two bowls of it. We ate spaghetti on benches with lanterns going. Afterwards, those of us who remained when the others went to bed took turns sipping off the Johnny Walker. A few of the Slovenians emerged from the euro-blob into distinction. I spoke a while alone with Sasho, a heart to heart of sorts, and I agreed to go one day to Slovenia to see him and his country. Someone lit up a little jaybird and it was passed around. There were fits of laughter that left us speechless and good old Pepe took the brunt of it, he didn’t care. In the latest hours only Sasho and Pepe and me remained, until even our spirits waned and we slouched off toward our hut to sleep. I heard the river just below, sluicing me to sleep.

Morning broke like the first morning. I felt the sun warming my bed and opened my eyes to see bright beams filtering down through the thatch, laying a lattice of light on my blanket. Now sunlight was flooding the entire chasm and the whole great hole was vaulted by a clear blue sky. Sasho was staring at the ceiling. I got up and went out. The oasis was full of greenness in the morning light, sprays of red flowers sprayed me in the eyes with bright color, palms rose from the fertile ground and from the fertile ground rose water spouting into pools, where some Slovenians were swimming happily and calling for me to join, and all around the dead rock enclosed us. It was the well amid the waste, and with night gone the vastness of lucid space stood over me, everything was illuminated, I saw all. Pepe was getting breakfast ready, tea and coffee were served. I went to the pool and stuck a toe in. “It’s perfect!” shouted a Slovenian joyously, and I ran to get my shorts.

I spent the day down there swimming in the cool water and laying in the grass reading, graced with the momentary peace and tranquility of mind the place gave me, with intermittent spells of anxiety and restlessness that proved paradise was still lost to me and I’d never get there by foot. Always something to be attained, somewhere further to go, this indeterminate point in the future where it all comes together and there’ll be no more worry or unrest. Until then I’ll keep wandering the abyss, hoping for an oasis, an awakening, a way out.

In the late afternoon we left the oasis and started the arduous ascent back up to the world. It was a grueler. The two heavyset girls gave in part of the way up and were spared by donkeys. We gathered at the summit while the sunset streaked over the land, I struck up a conversation with cutey-cheeks and we walked through the fields toward town. She was the shyest of the shy, she blushed through the dark, and lights came on in shacks and up ahead in the quiet streets of town as we left the countryside.

That night we all ate dinner in a dimly lit restaurant with a hearth burning, and afterward stumbled back to the hostel exhausted. We left in the morning, stopping at a lookout to watch for condors. I saw one swooping with great wings far spread, pinions catching wind, only visible a moment before it disappeared into the rock.

In Chivay we spent an hour at the hot springs and had a big smorgasbord of a lunch at a country restaurant, then headed straight for Arequipa and arrived just as it was getting dark. Everybody was in good spirits that night, we all went out to Déjà vu and celebrated the pagan god Dionysus, ordering pitchers of beer and rum-and-coke and more of the same. I took cutey-cheeks out to the dance floor and everybody followed after us. The place was filling up and the music got louder. I eventually got drunk and lost my mind. Me and Sasho ran to the bar and ordered tequila shots. “I’m going to miss you man,” he said, raising his glass. “You too, my friend,” I said. I meant it, because a strong friendship had grown between us, and it was going to be sad to see him go. We took the shots and rushed back to dance. I got a chance to dance with the finest of the Slovenian girls, whose boyfriend was catching Zs back at the hostel. This weird Egyptian song came on and I got into a kind of hands-on pharaoh dance with her, like Akhenaten probably did all the time with his harem back in the old club days of Giza. At some point later on Bloody Sunday was playing and I was jumping around like a lunatic with Sasho on my back drunk as hell. When salsa began to play in the later morning the last on the dance floor were me and cutey-cheeks, and we could have stayed longer but the others called to us to go and so we all went to get a taxi to my apartment. It was some night. When I woke in the morning I was in a hostel bed and there was somebody sleeping next to me. Unfortunately it was Pepe.

That afternoon Pepe and me said goodbye to Sasho with farewell hugs and saw the group off. He gave a sad smile and walked off. I wondered if I’d ever see him again. Cutey-cheeks was gone too, everyone was gone, and I felt their goneness the way I do every time something good comes to an end, when we all go our own way again. And I can’t help but close her out in the way of a metaphor that came to me from deep deep down—because here we are even now in this huge world that just goes and goes, everyone coming and going and twisting around in this vastest of spaces, the acrobats of the great abyss, whirling in half-tuck through the void, walking this tightrope line suspended over the unfathomable, each reaching out to each, and we’ve got no one but ourselves, no net to catch us when we go careening down before the crowd and lose ourselves in time.