Lobitos

Lobitos

This morning we - Johnny and Fern and I - visited the grocery store to buy milk and Plataño crisps. Sometimes on our way through the desert streets we would see real people, who were always very nullified in their behaviours. Be it the portly fishermen who painted god-fearing slogans on their beached vessels, or the grocery store hermits – the pale ‘abuelitas’ who never stepped outside the dank shade of their tiendas - everyone moved pausingly, in slow, drawn-out stages. These locals were often observed sedentary in transient places, like the open desert on the road between Piscinas point and Lobitos point, as though their consciousness had been intercepted by some unseen, unheard force, and all the hot dilapidated air had put them into a magically quick and unstoppable slumber. 

At lunchtime we walked the path to surf at Piscinas Point. Lugging surfboards, we were harangued by thirsty crickets that tried to crawl inside our bodies for water, and circled overhead by an ominous contingent of black vultures. Scattered around the desert like mirages, were an array of crumbling Victorian mansions. All completely abandoned, as though everyone had packed up and left in a rush. These were the remnants of a British colony from the early 1900’s when Balfour Williamson & company established the ‘Peruvian Petroleum Syndicate’ in Lobitos. For many years, Lobitos was occupied solely by the British and the oil company’s affiliates, and Peruvian locals were expelled from the area. Eventually a new Peruvian government repossessed the town and turned it into a military base in 1968, in case of an Ecuadorian invasion, but the military left some time ago. A lot of these abandoned manors have now been graffitied. The doors painted into pink tongues and wide fanged mouths. The windows painted yellow like cat eyes. The structures have warped, the rooves caved in, and the walls have moved, so that the typically square house frame now ripples in a muscular fashion, like the body of a serpent. These grand old abodes for British oil affiliates, are now animated things, transgressive monsters that snarl and hiss at you while you slope around the open desert looking for a strawberry juice and some shade. They are probably full of ghosts. The only ones who venture into these fiendish buildings are the vultures to lay their eggs.

Last night, a hunchbacked old lech served us Ceviche for dinner on the rotting front porch of his manor, which had recently been painted bright pink. Looking outward, we could see only desert and dead shrubbery. Not another soul around, except for this little fishing family of three generations who were serving us our tea in a bright pink Victorian manor. This was it. Utterly ridiculous and yet the last anchor to reality as it was commonly known. Step outside to nothing. Step outside this building and go back to sleep. The oily master of this last bastion would laugh hissingly at Johnny and I, moving back and forward between the kitchen with bottles of urine yellow Inca-kola, plates of raw fish marinated in ‘leche de tigre’ (tiger milk) and barbecued sweet potato. Each time he served us, he would reach out to grope Fern with clawing hands. His little granddaughter chased a wild dog around with a stick, beating it on the head, protecting her grandmother who sat by looking pleased.

“Leave us little dog!” The little girl scolded.

“Leave me and my dear old grandmother alone!”

I went out back to use their toilet, and almost tripped over the torpid flesh of some freshly caught leviathan just bleeding out in the dirt, it’s huge black eye glaring up at me. It felt like a warning. We left after that, walking quickly back across the plains to our hostel, not quite knowing if we had dodged a bullet or if it was still coming. 

And now, this afternoon. I was woken from my siesta by Fern at my bedside, chortling and putting a lot of effort into simple bodily movements, as though walking through water. 

            “Oi! Wake up. Someone’s drowning.” She chortled. 

I was disarmed by the lack of urgency in her voice. I searched her milky eyes for some kind of substance as she struggled into her blood red bikini, swaying like invisible crowds were shoving her to and fro. I took Fern’s costume change as proof that there really was someone drowning out there, and that all that numb giggling of hers was just a symptom of some kind of chemical interaction she’d had with a plant. I jumped out of bed and ran out to the waterfront. 

There sat Lobitos point…blurred lumps of sunbakers and castle makers littered like corpses on the beach, a golden-brown sunset over the abandoned three-tiered oil rigs that breached like giant black spiders out at sea. Deep empty waters. A silent current pulling down the point, dragging everything down along the jagged plains, where there was nothing. A very treacherous drag down past the jagged plains where the vultures scoured the skies and the cherry red 1980’s Beetle and the Golden Retriever with the abnormal growth on its head waited around in some kind of eternal interchange. And yes, one little girl was getting sucked down there. One little hand rising from the water, each of its pale fingers clawing furiously in different directions, like a patch of worms after their mud has been dug up and exposed them to the light. It was a strange hand that had learnt how to talk. It was saying ‘the sea is strangling me!’

I ran out, dove in swam out to her. A good fifty meters off shore. I pounded out to her, swimming mostly without taking breath, terrified at the thought of meeting a corpse. It was furious, violent, jittery swimming. More like I was beating helplessly against the voluminous body of a tormentor, to let it’s captive go. 

I reached the little girl, and she was still thrashing. Yelping as though burnt whenever she drew breath, like the ocean was made out of fire. I submerged myself underneath her and propped her up on my shoulders and lifted her up like a waterlogged football, so that the desert air could dry her out. After about 40 seconds of this, I came up for air, and then proceeded to side-swim with her toward the shore. She hugged me with a vice-grip, and even though I was full of adrenaline and fear, I became fascinated by the fact that I was responsible for the breath of a stranger. If I was to just release the pressure there’d be a death. The tide would sweep her away like flour on the floorboards. 

I pulled her into shore, to where a crowd had gathered. Jessica our hostel manager was there. Two little niñas stood by the girl’s side and tapped her exhausted body with their bare toes. 

“Will she live?” one asked.

“She will live dear, she is okay” Jessica chimed in. 

“Her sisters,” Jessica told me, gesturing to the little girls.

“What is her name?” I asked.

“Grecia,” the bigger sister replied.

Then she knelt down beside Grecia and tapped her head in panic.

            “Get up. Get up. Please. Come on,” she hissed.

            “Let her rest. The ambulance is coming now,” said Jessica.

Grecia was groaning. Her little legs were flayed out and motionless, exhausted from the task of trying to kick herself above water.      

“Where are your parents?” I asked the sisters. 

The older sister turned around in horror.

            “They are at home in Talara. They mustn’t find out about this. They forbade us from going in the water.”

            “Your sister is going to hospital girl, you need to tell your parents,” said Jessica

            “No, no, no please. I look away one moment…we were just building sandcastles, and suddenly she is getting swept away from us. My parents will kill me.”

One week ago, back at home in Australia, I had flipped a coin and asked it a question. This coin answered me with heads. It told me to catch a plane and go to Peru. Regardless of my own indecisive mentality, the coin toss was my lore. The coin is a bridge between cosmic universe and human reality. It is not to tempt fate, but let it tempt you. It is to ask the higher-ups where to go, because they already have your future mapped out for you. The coin had sent me here, to this desert township called Lobitos, and if I had have gone against it, this little Peruvian girl named Grecia from the city of Talara near the Ecuadorian border would have drowned this afternoon. I never would have known she had died, but she would have. Every action of ours has a consequence, and most of the time, we never find out what these consequences are. We are all strangers flitting in and out of each-other’s realities, moving psychically around a gridwork rigged up by some existential scaffolder. A stranger could have remained a stranger to me and yet perished because of my choice.