The Lines

In the desert town of Nazca a comida corriente- 3 soles sign rattled in the wind by a roadside hut. The comida corriente was rice soup followed by beef and rice and rice pudding for dinner. The drink tasted odd. I asked the dumpy waitress what it was. ‘Rice,’ she said, twirling a curl.

A bottle of Cristal was plonked on the table and I sat back and enjoyed the cruising yankee cars, husky-motored, squat and crunching by over the dust, the Cadillacs, the Dodges, the Chevrolets. God, I enjoyed that! Some cumbia playing on the radio, these great big death-vehicles rolling by sending up great billowing clouds of dust, the stumpy waitress bored out of her mind, elbow on bar, chin on hand.

It was then I saw Arthur, a chap from London I’d met in Lima. He was crossing the road towards me. He looked urgent. When he got to the table he lit a cigarette hurriedly and rested long, mauve hands on the table.

‘I bought a car!’

When I finished the rice pudding Arthur took me to see the car. It was a mustard-coloured dodge ’73. A beautiful car, with brocaded brown seating and an enormous wheel wound in tape. When you looked from the front it was like a galloping horse with flared nostrils. What a beauty!

‘There’s the guy with the keys,’ said Arthur. A man in a cowboy hat was strolling towards us. ‘Uh!’ he nodded and pulled a set of keys out of his breast pocket. ‘All yours.’

‘You already brought it?’ I asked Arthur.

‘Ye-eh. You haven’t heard my plan yet.’

‘…?’

‘This is going to make us some money,’ he said, going round to the driver’s side. ‘Get in. Let’s go for a spin.’

Arthur’s plan was that we go round the tourist hostals and find out who wanted to go where. We could fit seven people in the car so once we found five going in the same direction we’d charge them slightly more than it’d cost them to take the bus. That way we’d cover our own expense and get to travel at the same time. The attractive thing for the travellers was they could stop when they wanted and look at an interesting place the bus would never stop.

The idea, a brilliant one, died with the flashing red light on the side of a Policia vehicle. They edged us over to the side of the road. The wind ceased as Arthur brought the car in at a motel lay-by. ‘Shit! What do they want?’ The poli was already stepping out of his door, his hand caressing a white holster.
*

It was getting dark and we were sat with three policemen around a plastic table in a bamboo shack. All gracious smiles, the police introduced themselves in Christian names, maiden names, nicknames and surnames. The first one, in plainclothes, was called Harvey. He looked like the actor, Harvey Keitel. He was a ringer for Keitel in ‘Bad Lieutenant’.

The younger one was called Palacios. He was a slender, feline man in his twenties with beautiful eyes and full, trim moustache. On constant alert, like a grazing gazelle. The older one was Mosquera, a pock-marked man with grim eyes and a crocodile smile.

Arthur was deathly pale and covered in sweat, as if in the throes of the djenge fever. His fierce eyes, ill with intensity, added to the impression. The process of bribing the police with a hundred dollars had taken its toll on Arthur’s nerves. The confiscated Dodge, I reasoned, would probably go back to the same guy who sold it to Arthur once he left Nasca.

‘Don’t worry boys,’ said Harvey, ‘the thing with the stolen car will be our little secret. No trouble at all. You seen the lines yet?’

We shook our heads.

We sat there and drank pisco sours, listening to the dust make different noises outside. Harvey’s was drunk, his eyes liquid. Mosquera had the horn- he wanted to go and ‘grab’ some ladies but Arthur was talking Palacios’s head off about Fidel Castro. He was telling him a worn-out anecdote about how for his Spanish oral exam he prepared using Fidel Castro speeches. Palacios nodded blithely- he didn’t seem to care much about politics.

Harvey Keitel wasn’t too much interested in Fidel Castro either. ‘I know where we can find some little pussies. Real nice ones too, if you boys are interested…’

So we followed them out of the shack to Harvey’s car and Harvey got in the driver’s seat and turned on the siren. WEOOO. Cars cleared out of the way and we pulled out. Harvey drove across town and out of town. Soon we were in the pitch-black desert. Arthur gave me a look of ‘where fuck are we headed?’

‘So! What is it you boys do?’ said Harvey, through a cigarette, his elbow directing the wheel.

‘I'm an anthropology student,’ I said.

‘Anthrowhatsy?’ Harvey cried, making no effort to suppress laughter. Palacios said: ‘It’s about the past, right? It’s about our ancestors…’

‘You shouldn’t be a copper, Palacios!’ interrupted Harvey, ‘you should be a goddamn professor! And you, Arturo? A student, right?’
‘
Politics…’ said Arthur. ‘Excuse me, but can you tell me where we’re going?’

‘We’re going to the Nazca Lines, my friend!’ cried Harvey. ‘That’s what you boysies came here for, is it not?’ Then he winked at Mosquera: ‘But first, a slight detour!’

The car came out of the dust and darkness onto a highway. We then pulled off the highway and down a bumpy track, at the end of which there was a clearing. ‘Here we are, boys!’ said Harvey, flinging open the door. In the middle of the clearing was a bungalow with a tin roof and a round window in the door, omitting infra-red light. Faces were collecting at the window.

‘Where the carajo are we, Harvey?’ said Palacios.

Mosquera laughed at his young police partner. ‘You never been here before? Not even the day of your induction?’

‘No, guevon!’ snapped Palacios.

Mosquera laughed. ‘You haven’t lived, brother!’

Harvey, meanwhile, was talking with the faces in the round window. ‘Hello my pretty little sluts, are you ready for some fun?’

Arthur was looking increasingly nervous. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ’You know what this place is…?’

I attempted to calm him down.

‘It’s not like we can make our way back to town from here. ‘I don’t like this at all,’ Arthur said.

‘I have a wife, cabron!’ Palacios was saying to his partner Mosquera. ‘I’m not going to-’

‘-Don’t be a pussy, partner!’ said Mosquera.

‘Everyone does this. It’s normal. Relax. Divert yourself a little!’

‘Go to hell!’ Palacios brushed the placatory hand of Mosquera off his shoulder.

‘Just think of it-’ the older one paused, searching for the right words, ‘-just think of it like a little insurance policy. For the future of your marriage.’ He made the sign of the bull’s horns. ‘An insurance policy for when your wife gives you the horns, hahaha!’

Harvey was talking prices with the faces in the window. Out came a rat-a-tat-tat of ladies’ voices.

‘ Come on…’ he whined, ‘Let us in! We had a tough day fighting crime. We just drove all this way out here, we’re thisty and we need some drinks and a nice time with some pretty girls.’

Arthur was sweating profusely. He looked incredibly young, no stubble, clean and innocent, blue eyes flashing with everything to prove and the red, political handkerchief tied at his throat. Palacios, meanwhile, was being taunted by Mosquera.

‘Palacios, what kind of man are you?’ said Mosquera.

‘A good one!’ he said.

‘Just come in and just have a drink, ‘ said Mosquera. ‘You don’t have to do anything.’

‘One beer,’ snapped Palacios. ‘But no ‘insurance policy’, as you put it.’

The door opened. ‘Come on boys!’ called Harvey and bundled money into one of the ladies’ hands. The three ladies, stocky Indians, led us in through a burgundy-lacquered porch and a gauntlet of garishly depicted angels and Andalucian maidens on the walls. The Andalucians winked mockingly and the angels looked at us forlorn. Mosquera crossed himself.

A cement-floored room flashed with disco lights and a congregation of Indian girls sat bored on the edge of plastic settees. Several semiconscious men slow-danced like the undead with unfortunate partners.

Harvey bee-lined for a girl in a shiny silver dress, with serene eyes and fat crimson lips. She made a little cabaret of pleasure at seeing him. He grabbed a piece of her arse and with a wink in our direction led her through a side-door. The man wasted little time. We ordered a beer from a huge old woman with bleached hair and shades and sat down on a salmon-pink, plastic sofa.

‘These women are unbelievable!’ Arthur whispered in reverence. ‘They’re so ugly!’

‘This is disgusting!’ said Palacios, fidgeting with the crucifix around his neck. ‘They’re…well, I mean, they’re not women!’

‘Shut it man!’ said Mosquera. ‘You’re out of your head! These girls are beautiful! Look at her- she’s got an ass like two big coconuts swinging there!’

Palacios stood up. ‘I’m out of here!’ he said to Mosquera.

‘Yeah, clear off, asshole!’ said Mosquera to Palacios.

‘You coming, chicos?’ Palacios said to us.

‘Yeah,’ said Arthur.

‘Hey,’ said Mosquera, getting up off the plastic sofa as well.‘You’re not going anywhere without me, boys!’ He wore a grim, mocking smile as he turned to Palacios. ‘If the boys are going, then I’m going too.’

‘What about Harvey?’ I asked them.

‘Harvey will be a good while yet!’ said Mosquera.

‘He spends more time here than at home or the depo.’

‘Where shall we go now?’ said Palacios, his hands on the leather wheel. He turned the key so the car stuttered and insects and dust swirled in the headlight.

‘How about the Lines?’ I said.

‘Those Lines are a waste of time,’ said Mosquera.

As we were deliberating where to go, a great stink came out of the house. We all turned to see Harvey sneaking out with two of the girls- the handsome one in the silver dress and a stocky little, flat-chested girl who could have been no older than 14. ‘Where are you going with the girls!’ came a cry. It was the mistress of the house following behind. ‘Bring them back here! This isn’t a take-away!’

Harvey drunkenly turned and bowed, ‘They won’t be gone for long, madamoiselle!’ then made a mocking, gallant gesture to the girls to get in the car.

The girls crammed in on the back seat. When Harvey got in the back too the younger one squeezed onto Arthur’s lap, who looked at me furtively, then back at the girl. ‘What age do you give her?’ he said, ‘She’s barely even…’ And his voice trailed off. It was true- She was astonishingly young, those ear-rings looked so big on her, the mascara and eye-liner accentuating the bambi eyes. Arthur’s hand crept up her arm and onto her shoulder. She looked down at him with practiced intimacy. The handsome, older one, rougher and more worldly wise, her eyes calm and suspicious, a smile ever-ready to pander to men, she turned her gaze upon me. As she chattered nonsenses with Harvey the guarded eyes remained on mine.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Palacios.

‘The lines,’ said Harvey.

Again we were rumbling through the desert, the car enveloped in an illuminated whirl of dust. We were passengers in a sandstorm, the rest of the world invisible. Palacios had one hand on the wheel, one eye on the road and one grave eye on the girls via the rearview mirror. Everyone was in good spirits, even Palacios. Harvey and Mosquera were in raucous mood, passing around a little bottle of aguardiente, good firewater which burns out the mouth and gradually the mind, leaving an empty warm space where one feels clean and clear. Arthur joined in the intoxicated humour and pandered to the younger girl, his troubled eyes half drowning in aguardiente.

The one in the silver dress refused the aguardiente and kept me fixed with that intelligent gaze of hers, her chest square and strong and bronze, crisscrossed by the reasonating silver of the dress, curving abruptly to a halt at her ribs and then leaving an open track over the smooth slope of her stomach. Muscular thighs edged open slightly, her gaze still on me.

The car jolted to a standstill, sending us flying. The little one volleyed off Arthur’s lap into the front seats. We were there.

They were the reason I had come to Nazca. The Lines. 22 km north of the town on a sweeping desert pampa surrounded by two river valleys. I climbed out of the car and saw a flight of stairs lit up by the car’s lights. Without waiting for the others, I ascended to the top of the watch-tower.

Among the images inscribed into the plain's surface, although I could not see them all, are a humming bird, a spider, a whale, a dog, a monkey and a flower, as well as spirals and trapezoidal spaces. Then there are the eight hundred straight lines in the earth, some of which were slightly lit and one could make out.

The Nazca Lines are one of the world's great mysteries. They’ve perplexed experts for centuries. Because of their size it’s only possible to see the lines and geometric etchings from above. For the twenty first century tourist this means ascending the watch-tower. Or hiring an aircraft. For a man of Nazca of between 200 and 700AD (when the nearby city of Carhuachi was abandoned) there would have been no way of getting a proper view of the Nasca Lines.

This led anthropologist Erich Von Daniken to hatch the idea that they were an invitation to aliens. He claimed in his book 'The Chariots of the Gods' that the Lines were a landing pad for extra-terrestrial spacecraft. Aliens, making visits to the primitive peoples of earth to help them in their evolution. But then why the depictions of animals and the abstract patterns? Was it in-flight entertainment for landing and departing passengers? Or was it a brochure for ET eco-tourists?

A lady called Maria Reich was so devoted to unraveling the mystery of the Lines she lived in Nazca until her death in 1998 and was known as The Lady of the Lines. Reich believed the lines were a gigantic astronomical calendar.

After Maria Reich’s death, Cambridge professor Gerald Hawkins continued her work by comparing azimuths' directions and the angles of the Nasca lines with the brightest stars and with the sun and the moon and a whole load of shit I don’t understand. He fed all the data into a computer but could find no alignment between the patterns on the pampa and the stars and the planets. The Nazca Lines were no calendar.

Most recently Jose Lancho Rojas, the Peruvian archaeologist, had sought to show the lines were a ceremonial walkway used to make offerings to the Gods in the sky. He encouraged the present-day artisans of Nasca to recreate some of the images.

I looked up at the sky. I wondered; who did they want to see this and why? The sky was clear and immense. There was just one cloud, pure and white, a beacon gleaming directly above me. What a cloud! It looked like rope, twisted into a wide loop high up. A nebulous hand slowly formed within the loop and gradually began to emerge from inside it. It seemed like the hand was beckoning to me. ‘Come on up!’ it said.

‘How the fuck do I get up there?’ I said.

‘Just come on up!’ I wanted to, but I really couldn’t see how to get up there. Like everyone else, I had no answer, and thought to myself: It’s all a big woofwoof to me, the universe and everything.

There was a cackle from below and then the revving sound of the car engine. I looked down to see the car backing, sending its red tail-lights over the white stripe on the road. ‘Hey!’ I heard Arthur’s voice and his panicked footsteps. ‘WHAT THE FUCK!’ I saw the girls excited in the backseat of the vehicle looking back at Arthur as he rushed at the car. A car window opened and Cumbia and Harvey’s laughter mixed with the wheels turning on the dust. The car growled away and Arthur was left in a cloud. He coughed and spluttered as the red light lights grew smaller and closer together on the road leading out of the valley.

The great black mountains stood resolute in the bluing gloom. The valley echoed with the dimming grumble of the car. Arthur joined me on top of the tower. We sat down and waited for the sun to come up.