The Whispering Land

I did my best, in my limited Spanish, to explain the mysteries of air-pockets, and managed to get the basic facts across to her. She lost all interest in the story about her cousin, and waited expectantly for the next air-pocket to make its appearance so that she could enjoy it to the full, for, as she explained, she had not been prepared for the first one. She was soon rewarded with a real beauty, and greeted it with a scream of delight and a flood of delighted laughter. She was like a child on a switchback in a fair, and she treated the whole thing as a special treat, which the air company had provided for her enjoyment, like the meal we had just eaten. The rest of the passengers, I noticed, were not treating the air-pockets in the same light-hearted way, and they were all glowering at my fat friend with faces that were growing progressively greener. By now we were flying over higher and higher ground, and the plane dropped and rose like a lift out of control. The man across gangway had reached a shade of green I would not have thought the human countenance could have achieved. My friend noticed this too, and was all commiseration. She leant across the gangway.

"Are you ill, señor?" she inquired. He nodded mutely.

"Ah, you poor thing," she said and burrowing into her bag produced a huge bag of very sticky and pungent sweets which she thrust at him.

"These are very good for sickness," she proclaimed. "Take one."

The poor man took one look at the terrible congealed mass in the paper bag and shook his head vigorously.

My friend shrugged, gave him a glance of pity, and popped three of the sweets into her mouth. As she sucked vigorously and loudly she suddenly noticed something that had escaped her sharp eyes before, the brown paper bag in a little bracket attached to the back of the seat in front of us. She pulled it out and peered inside, obviously wondering if some other magnificent largesse* from the kindly air company was concealed inside it. Then she turned a puzzled eye on me.

"What is this for?" she asked in a penetrating voice.

I explained the necessity of the paper bag. She held it aloft and examined it minutely.

"Well," she said at last, "if I wanted to get sick I should want something much larger than that."

The man across the gangway cast a look at her ample form and the size of the brown paper bag, and the vision conjured up by her words was obviously too much for him, for he dived precipitously for his own bag and buried his face in it.

When the plane eventually touched down my girlfriend and I were the only ones who dismounted without looking as though we had just been through a hurricane. In the foyer* of the airport her son was waiting, a pleasant-faced man who was identical in shape to his mother. Uttering shrill cries they undulated towards each other and embraced with a fat-quivering crash. When they surfaced, I was introduced and commended for the care I had taken of my protegee* en route.* Then, because the driver who was to meet me was nowhere to be seen, the entire Lillipampila family (son, wife, three children and grandmother) hunted round the airport like foxhounds until they found him. They saw me to the car, embraced me, told me to be sure to look them up* when I was in Salta, and stood, a solid facade of fat,* beaming and waving as I drove off on my way to Calilegua, the place where I was to stay. Kindness in Argentina is apt to be overwhelming, and after having been embraced by the entire Lillipampila family I felt every bone in my body aching. I gave the driver a cigarette, lit one myself and leant back and closed my eyes. I felt I deserved a few moments' relaxation.

Chapter Five JUJUY

The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the foliage, but above all the general luxuriance of the vegetation, filled me with admiration.

CHARLES DARWIN: The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle