The trail led through a tangled lemon grove and spilled us into the deserte plaza, which was really just a ragged field with a little crumbling adobe church at one end and a schoolhouse at the other.
It was deserted, except for a large bull lazily switching his tail under the orange tree that grew in the exact center of the square.
A small figure of a man came trotting toward us: a barefoot Indian in ragged trousers and raggeder shirt, who doffed his straw sombrero and bowed to us with the grace of a European diplomat. He was the governor of the district, and what could he do for us?
Lodgings? Ah, there was no inn, and he regretted sadly that his own small house could not accommodate us. Then approached the most enchanting old figure it has ever been my lot to behold. Tiny, tiny, bent and withered, with long, black braids that showed little grey over her shoulders, a copper face seamed, but wrinkling deeper in a friendly smile. She was barefoot (we later discovered that there was a pair of shoes in the village, and that they belonged to the school mistress), and wore a bright red, ankle-length skirt so full and stiff it made you think of an antique doll.
She took immediate charge of the situation.“My daughter,” she said, “will be pleased to have you stay with her. She has a big house,” she added proudly.
After the unfriendliness of the Sierra town, I found an unexpected lump in my throat, and when Sandoval said, “Muy simpatica … what a darling mamacita,” I couldn’t say anything at all.
We dismounted and followed her through the doll’s town. There were perhaps twenty-five or thirty little log houses. I’d never seen anything like them before, and never since. They were tiny things, the logs white-washed and put together like a rail fence, so that no windows were needed—just doorways, that had, of course, no doors—with low, thatched roofs. They all seemed to be of one room, with a fireplace of rocks in a corner, perhaps a rough table, and a hammock or pallet for sleeping.
The daughter’s house was big. It was, in fact, two houses, one the kitchen, and the other a long, low room with hard-packed earth floor furnished with built-in benches and table.
The daughter, a young woman with a tiny infant at her breast, came from the kitchen. She was rather tall, barefoot, and dressed much as the mamacita was, with black, shiny braids falling over the front of her low-cut white blouse that did not conceal her lush bosom. Her face completely stopped me. What part Indian she was, and what part Spanish, I never knew, and she may not have, but she was a woman of rare beauty. The same thought came instantly both to Sandoval and to me. Later he said dreamily, “I wish I were a great artist. I should paint her as the Virgin of the Andes.” And in that still, calm face lay the essence of all madonnas.
She took us to the main house, where Sandoval disposed of the gear and set up my cot. This was the guest room where he, the mule driver, and I were to sleep. The Virgin, her husband, and the baby slept in a loft which was reached by a toy outside staircase.
Very shortly, the villagers came drifting in to pay their respects to the strange phenomenon of visitors, and by the time dinner was served in the kitchen, at least half the population was there. I counted twenty-three people squatting around the walls on the earthen floor as Sandoval and I ate. Either they had eaten before or it was the custom to serve strangers separately, for we were the honored guests, with a tiny, low table laid for two at one end of the room. From somewhere a coarse white cloth was produced to cover it, and it was neatly laid with carved gourds, wooden spoons and forks. There was little from the outside world in Omia—the only things I remember now were a few knives and some cheap glass bottles.
The first course was soup with large pieces of yaca (a root which is somewhat like potato in flavor) and pieces of corn on the cob floating in it. There was a dark meat in the rich broth which Sandoval said was pavo del monte, wild turkey. The Virgin knelt over her cooking fire in a corner while we ate the soup.
The second course was also soup— chicken soup with yuca and a special kind of banana and generous chunks of breast of chicken. The third course was Guinea pig roasted in a clay olla. In all the houses of that region you found Guinea pigs, usually in the kitchen; as we ate they scurried about under the table, squeaking shrilly, being chased by kittens and puppies.
After we had finished, everybody drifted toward the other part of the house; and as I stepped into the tropic night bright with low-hung stars, from somewhere in the distance came the music of Quechua flutes. The rest of the village had come to call, and we must have been fifty in the big room while the Indians gave us music that hasn't changed in a thousand years—music of the Inca kings, strange cadences of harp, flute, and Indian violin.
The guests, holding the sleeping children, sat on the benches, on my cot, on the floor, all silent until the concert was finished. Then with formal bows and many muy buenas nocbes, they drifted away. Juan was soon snoring on a bench, and I was about to climb into my cot when it occurred to me that I had forgotten temporarily the reason for the long journey.
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