Trail of Feathers Read Online Free PDF Page B

finished’
    ‘Which is your favourite place?’
    The Slovak bent down to loosen his bootlaces.
    ‘How can a father choose between his children?’ he asked. ‘Macedonia was rough like the surface of the moon,- Jordan was tender as a baby’s cry,- Egypt smelled of jasmine, and the Sudan …’ Sven paused to sip his maté. The Sudan,’ he said, ‘was silent as a prophet’s grave.’
    *
    Round the corner from the pawn-shop, Senor Pedro Valentine was holding up a pair of my underpants, stretched out between his arthritic thumbs. Indicating the superior quality of the cloth, to a shop full of female customers, he pouted like a Milanese gigolo.
    ‘That’s the finest cotton I’ve seen in thirty years of laundering,’ he said. ‘I bet they hold your
merchandise
just right.’
    Half a dozen crones cackled. I confirmed that the underpants had served me well, especially during the hazardous days on the Inca Trail.
    Once the elderly women had left, Senor Valentine made me a business proposition. He said that if, on my return, I exported him a container of English underpants he’d sell them in Cusco. He could muster a sales force of schoolboys. We’d be sure to make a fortune. The men of Cusco, he said, were sick to the back teeth of abrasive local underwear.
    Senor Valentine handed me a stack of laundered clothes. Then he picked out a pair of barberry-red knickers and pressed them to his nostrils as if they were a rose.
    ‘Huele
, have a sniff’ he said conspiratorially, ‘a German girl just brought them in, she was
muy bonita, very
pretty.’
    The old launderer jiggled his hands over his chest suggesting large cleavage.
    ‘My wife shouts at me’ he said, ‘she asks why we don’t have a tourist shop like everyone else. She may be angry, but every man in Cusco is jealous of Pedro Valentine. After all’ he continued, ‘who else can sniff the fragrance of fresh knickers all day long?’
    *
    Night falls fast in the Andes, and with it comes bitter cold. A boy of five or six waylaid me as I ascended the cobblestone slope towards my hotel, in Plaza Nazarene. His nose was running, his hair matted with dirt, and his cheeks the colour of oxblood; their capillaries ruptured by the daily cycle of fire and frost. He tugged at my trouser-leg, bringing me to a halt. Breaking into a tap-dance, he displayed a box of battered postcards. As I scanned them one by one, the boy advertised the extra-low price, one
sol
for ten. Cusco’s tourist shops peddle a fine selection of cards, all of them promoting the beauties of Peru. But the young salesman’s were from a different stock.
    The cards portrayed a lesser-known side of the nation. The first six showed an assortment of hideous mummified bodies. The next was of an Andean medicinal stall, replete with llama-foetuses; then there were a series of ferocious-looking men in ponchos, balancing guinea pigs on their heads. But it was the last card which gripped me. It was a highlight from a textile. I looked at the image closely. It showed a crazed sub-human figure, with a leering expression, claws, crude wings, and a string of decapitated heads running down its back. The picture resembled the one Deiches had shown me. Its caption read
Alado hombre del Paracas:
the Birdman of Paracas.
    I slipped the child a handful of coins and put the cards in my jacket pocket. This last might be the clue I’d been waiting for, for the trail to the Birdmen was growing cold. But for now it was time to rest.
    *
    Sven had had a productive morning. Piled high on an empty café chair were an assortment of his winnings. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a green mohair sweater, six paperbacks, two Frisbees, a canvas rucksack, and a cluster of juggling balls. His expensive Walkman was positioned prominently beside the chessboard - like an unobtainable prize at a fairground stall.
    ‘What about a cup of coffee for a poor Slovak?’
    Sven had made an art form out of attracting charity. He considered himself to be above