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> Sepulveda - Full Circle |
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Part three - Notes from a Return Journey Chapter One "WELL, HERE we are," I say to myself, and a seagull turns its head to look at me for a few seconds. "Another crackpot," the gull must be thinking, because in fact I am on my own, facing the sea in Chonchi, a port on the big island of Chiloé, in the far south of the world. I am waiting for the order to board El Colono, a ferry painted red and white, which after having plied the Baltic, Mediterranean and Adriatic seas for several decades, has come to float in the cold, deep and unpredictable waters of the South. Supposedly, after twenty-four hours on El Colono - though the trip can take thirty or more, it all depends on the whims of the sea and the wind - I will disembark eight hundred kilometers further south, in the heart of Chilean Patagonia. While waiting, I think about those two old gringos who pulled the flimsy strings of destiny that brought Bruce Chatwin and me together one winter midday on the terrace of the Cafe Zurich in Barcelona. An Englishman and a Chilean. With not even an affection for the sound of the word 'homeland' in common. The Englishman a nomad because he could be nothing else, and the Chilean an exile for just the same reason. There should definitely be a law against encounters of this kind or, at the very least, they should not be allowed to take place in the presence of minors. At the initiative of Bruce's Spanish publisher, the meeting had been arranged for midday and I arrived right on time. The Englishman was there already; he had settled down with a beer to read one of the perverse El Víbora comics. To attract his attention I tapped on the table. The Englishman |
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