Fish Talk

Ernest Schwiebert

( From: A River for Christmas and Other Stories, Ernest Schwiebert, The Stephen Green Press, Lexington. Massachusetts, 1988)

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
-GOYA

Huge mountains filled the moonlight, and their icefields glittered at day-
break. Chocolate mountains rose through the coastal fog, treeless and still
sleeping at breakfast, trapped between the Andes and the Pacific. The
capital lay ahead in its amphitheater of foothills. The fog grew patchy and
thin, and the silver 707-320 was throttled back, starting toward the airport
at Pudahuel.
We were still at ten thousand feet. The biggest peaks towered above
the plane, and where the fog had cleared beyond its starboard wing, we
could see Zapallar. The coast ahead grew sunny and clear. We could see
the empty beaches at Viña del Mar. There were several ships in the harbor,
sharply etched against a pale morning sea, and the rooftops rose steeply
above the circling waterfront at Valparaiso.
Abroche su cinturon, the pilot announced. Fasten your seatbelt.
Our silver 707 settled steadily, its engines running lean and its big flaps
lowered. Large patches of fog still filled the valley. We could see small
fundos and truck farms, and tall windbreaks of eucalyptus trees and pop-
lars. It was late spring and men were working. The beautiful Central Valley
of Chile is remarkably fertile and is famous for its vineyards. Its eucalyptus
groves were brought from Melbourne and Sydney, like the trees of Cali-
fornia, and the coastal foothills are not unlike the wine country above San
Francisco.
Santiago de Chile is a city of 2,925,000, sprawling along the Rio Ma-
pocho and surrounded by huge snow-covered peaks. It is less famous than
other cities below the equator, its qualities less obvious. Santiago is less
seductive than Rio de Janeiro, with modern towers rising along its sweep-
ing Copacabana, and less bustling than Sao Paulo. Lima is much older and
remains richly primitive. La Paz seems scarcely changed since its sixteenth-
century origins, lying at more than twelve thousand feet in the treeless
Altiplano of Bolivia. Buenos Aires has more than 12,000,000 people and
is among the world's most sophisticated cities.
Santiago is seemingly dour and stolid, but such perceptions are wrong.
The city has been plagued by earthquakes since it was founded in 1541,
so few of its colonial buildings survive. Its modern architecture is almost
grimly built of stone and concrete to withstand centuries of seismic activity.
Only the old cathedral, with its red fortress-thick walls and Renaissance
bell tower, remains from its civic beginnings. Santiago is a wonderful city,
but it displays its charms grudgingly. It is difficult to know, since the city
is less gregarious than the Chileans themselves.
Its site is spectacular. The city lies primarily south of the Rio Mapocho,
a stream bed so empty of water throughout the year that its dry gravel is
the butt of continual joking, and small trees grow thickly between its
concrete walls. The principal axis of its core is the Alameda Bernardo
O'Higgins, a magnificent twelve-lane boulevard lined with Spanish chest-
nuts and jacarandas and acacia trees. It is named for the Irish soldier of
fortune who fought for independence from Spain, with the help of an
Argentine army led by Jose de San Martin. The old cathedral of San Fran-
cisco is there. The Calle Ahumada is the busy center of commercial activity
in the city, and the Plaza de las Armas is the principal seat of the govern-
ment, with the Corinthian portico of the Congreso Nacional in its gardens
of palm trees. The National Academy of Arts is aggressively French, with
classical facades and pillars, and its bulging mansard roofs. The Palacio
Moneda was built in 1805 and stands in the windy Plaza de la Constitución.
It is the presidential palace and has many important government offices
too. There are several small volcanic hills in the city, which have been
planted as botanical gardens, and there is a small funicular to the summit
of San Cristobal. Beyond the circular Plaza Banquedano, the lovely Avenida
Providencia leads into the beautiful suburbs called Barrio Alto, the Prov-
idencia and Las Condes and Arrayan. I once found an authentic Thonet
rocking chair in a junk shop at Arrayan and a vintage rifle hung from a big
nail. Its stock was split and its forepiece was missing, but its octagonal
barrel was not too badly pitted, and its brass action still gleamed. It was
a frontier 1873 Winchester, the rifle the Sioux called the Yellow Boy, and
I wondered what it was doing in Chile. I should have bought it, in
spite of its forepiece and stock, but there was no way to manage the
Thonet.
The Andes seem to surround Santiago and its suburbs, which lie at
approximately 2,000 feet. There is skiing at Farallones in the winter, just
north of the city. Aconcagua is not visible from Santiago, but its summits
lie at 22,835 feet, a mountain so formidable that it has a full-blown volcano
on its lower slopes. It is 2,515 feet higher than Mount McKinley in Alaska.
Santiago itself lies in a half-circle of mountains, Tupungata and Farallones
and Maipo, averaging 16,000 feet. These ranges are higher than anything
in Colorado and California, a massive wall rising 14,000 feet above the
city. The Andes are spectacular in themselves, but their magic is not fully
understood until twilight. The optimal place to witness such magic is the
Piscina, the rooftop bar at the old Hotel Carrera, overlooking the Plaza de
la Constitucion and the Moneda. After sunset, when the city is already
slipping into darkness, the entire cordillera still holds the light on its steep
mountain walls until Santiago is awash in lavender and rose.
The same staff was employed in the reception at the Carrera, and the
concierge remembered the old days when I worked in Santiago and kept
a small suite at the hotel before taking a tiny apartment in the Avenida
Bulnes. It was wonderful to see old faces smiling. The rooms are spare
but comfortable enough, and after a leisurely bath to escape the sluggish
effects of flying all night, I took a three-hour nap and completely missed
lunch.
Thunder woke me suddenly. The spring storm broke fiercely across
the city, its sheets of cold rain sweeping through the narrow streets, erasing
the mountains from the sky. Such squalls are often a prelude to summer,
which arrives just before Christmas. The storms mist restlessly along the
Andes, stirring in the windbreaks that shelter the vineyards at Maipo and
San Felipe. The rains pass quickly, darkly wetting the freshly tilled soil.
Some rivers still run milky with snow. Several weeks will pass before the
trout finish their spawning and the best fishing begins. The Chilean spring-
time has unpredictable moods.
The brief squalls still rattled on the windows overlooking the plaza.
Gum tree leaves scuttled across the cobblestones, past the sentries guard-
ing the Palacio Moneda. Its huge courtyard was still gutted and filled with
scaffolding, after the air strikes that shattered the Allende government three
years before. Its solemn facades were still heavily scarred by the smallpox
of small-arms fire.
Fitful periods of sun coaxed hundreds of people into the streets, until
the bitter puelche winds returned swiftly, emptying the streets and stone-
work benches again. The storms finally passed, surrendering the city to
the people, its streets shiny and wet in the afternoon sun.
I took the elevator to the Piscina and found it empty. I ordered a pisco
sour and walked around its parapet wall looking at the city. The swimming
pool was still covered. The Moneda lay below, and there were workmen
swarming in the scaffolding.
It's all changed, I thought sadly.
The streets quickly became busy again. The old waiter brought my
drink to the parapet on a silver tray, and I paid him, leaving the change
with a tip. The old man thanked me and smiled. I was still tired from flying
all night, but it felt good to come back to Santiago. I sipped the smooth
pisco, cautiously testing its strength, and watched the people below. It was
several minutes before I sensed the waiter behind me.
Not yet, I raised my half-filled glass,
You were in Chile, señor?
Yes, I said, I was here often in the last years of the Frei government
Eduardo Frei Montalvo, he said softly.
He was a fine man.
Perhaps too fine, the old waiter said. It was not a gentleman's game
No, I agreed.
It's sad to see our Palacio Moneda standing empty, he sighed. She's like
an old corpse without eyes.
It's still a beautiful building, I said.
The attack was very good, the old man brightened. They say the fighters
fired eighteen rockets at our poor Moneda—and not a single rocket missed!
Good pilots, I nodded,
Many people think they were not really Chilean pilots, because they
were so skilled, he said. Do you agree they were not Chilean?
You think they were gringos'? I smiled.
What do you think, señor?
They were Chilean.

The darkly painted Hawker Hunters had flown from Los Cerillos when
Allende went on the radio to refuse surrender. The president promised
to sacrifice his life defending the revolution. The troops waited almost an
hour past their eleven o'clock deadline. The two fighters took out the
massive richly carved doors on their first gunnery pass. There were seven
runs, and eighteen AGM-12 Bullpup rockets were fired. Both the Hawkers
and their small missiles were British-made and had done their work too
well. Huge fires boiled up from the gutted courtyard, and other smoke
billowed high from the shattered portico. The pilots had spent only fifteen
minutes over their sad target. The guard detachment of carabineros had
refused to defend the Moneda against the troops surrounding them. Al-
ende permitted them to leave, along with a team of federal investigators
although their former commander, Eduardo Paredes, was a long-time po-'
litical ally and chose to stay.
The Moneda was defended by Allende and other armed political col-
leagues, who carried AKM-47G automatic weapons manufactured in East
Germany. These weapons were not Chilean military issue. Daniel Vergara
was a communist political ally of Allende throughout the electoral cam-
paign and was rewarded with a key position in the Ministry of the Interior
Vergara was involved in several political quarrels and clandestine incidents
that ultimately served to weaken Allende's popular support. The AKM-47G
weapons in the Moneda that tragic morning were flown aboard a Cuban
cargo plane into Chile on March 11, 1973. Vergara had used his authority
to load thirty crates of armaments directly into trucks at Pudahuel, weap-
onry weighing more than a ton, and forced them past angry customs
officers without inspection. The weapons were also distributed to the
paramilitary civilian guard Allende called his Grupo de los Amigos, and it
was these political guerrillas who ultimately defended the Moneda', along
with snipers in the government offices around the palace. The infantry
encircling the Moneda had still not attacked the thick-walled palace but
were returning sniper fire aggressively.
Brigadier Javier Palacios was leading the army units surrounding the
palace. Palacios waited another seventy-five minutes after the air strikes to
demand Allende's capitulation and attack the Moneda.
Four political advisers close to Allende had left the Moneda when the
Hawkers broke off their attack, crossing the street to the Ministry of De-
fense, and tried to negotiate a peaceful solution. The narrow streets rattled
with gunfire. The snipers loyal to Allende kept them pinned down in the
portico of the Defense Ministry, unable to return or telephone their be-
leaguered leader. The attempt at armistice had failed. Allende sent a num-
ber of staff members and colleagues from a side entry just before Javier's
troops attacked. These civilians were also pinned down by sniper fire
huddling pathetically on the sidewalk with their white flag. Troops vaulted
over them swiftly to enter the building. When the firing stopped, Salvador
Allende sat dead on a brocade sofa in the brightly painted Sala de la
Independencia.
Did he commit suicide? I asked.
I believe it, the old waiter nodded sadly. He told us that he would on
the radio just before the planes attacked—and he told us earlier, in his last
speech to Unidad Popular.
You believed it? I pressed.
Si, cómo no! he said. I was there listening that night.
You were Unidad Popular?
Yes, he said.
Why did Allende fail? I asked.
Because he was a fool, the old man sighed unhappily, and he filled
his government with charlatans and fools.
But you supported him?
It's simple, he said. Allende was not the only fool in Chile.
The little bar downstairs was empty too, except for the old piano
player in the corner, practicing his songs softly. The government buildings
and offices would close in another two hours, and the bartenders were
preparing for the crowds. The bar was strangely quiet.
During the campaign and the weeks that followed the narrow Allende
plurality, the moods of the capital mixed anger with triumphal excitement
and fear. The empty little bar across from the Moneda had been a hotbed
of intrigue for many months. Both the military at the Ministry of Defense
and the proposed cabinet officers of the fledgling Allende government were
being lavishly courted. There were British arms merchants who hoped to
sell Centurion tanks, and the F-6 Lightning to replace the outmoded Hawker
Hunters based at Los Cerillos. The French wanted to sell their Dassault-
Breguet Mirage 5, a sleek delta-winged jet fighter. Czechs were usually
found at the corner table near the piano, selling beautifully made Kalash-
nikovAK-47G automatic rifles. British friends pointed out a famous American
arms dealer having lunch with some Chilean army officers in civilian
clothes. Soviet officers in badly tailored suits stopped off too, along with
the furtive Cubans, who sometimes carried both diplomatic passports and
weapons like the elegant little nine-millimeter Makarov pistol.
The newly appointed Cuban ambassador, Luis Fernandez, was seen
meeting a colleague at Pudahuel, and escorted him blithely past customs
and immigration with the help of Daniel Vergara. The visitor was Manuel
Piñero, who was director of the secret police in Havana.
It was pretty exciting, I thought while the bartender mixed another
pisco sour. It was like a bad Humphrey Bogart picture.
Pardon, señor? he asked.
Was I talking?
Yes, he said. I believe you were.
I was here when Allende was inaugurated, I said. I was thinking back.
Strange day, the bartender nodded and wiped the bar.
Were you there? I asked.
It was impossible to get into the plaza itself unless you were Unidad
Popular, he shook his head. Many tried to get there, but there were political
thugs controlling who actually got in.
To create a completely loyal crowd for the television?
Si, cómo no! he said. But there were three candidates who split the elec-
tion pretty evenly, with less than 2 percent of the vote between Allende and
Jorge Allessandri—two Chileans out of three voted against Allende.
Were you working that day?
No. He laughed caustically. I stood along the Providencia and O'Hig-
gins with the people who voted for Allessandri and Tomic—and thousands
stood there crying when the car carrying President Frei went past.
Too bad he could not run again.
The law is the law, he shrugged. Frei could have easily carried 80 per-
cent of the vote.
What happens now?
The junta is also the junta, he laughed. It's a beast with too many feet
and too few brains—but there was no other choice for Chile.
Think they'll let go? I asked.
The air force brigadier seems to understand conciliation and healing,
he said. He seems to understand that Unidad Popular is finished—and that
the time for military repression is past.
Gustavo Leigh?
Yes, the bartender was shaking another pisco sour. Leigh understands
that Unidad Popular ran things so clumsily that it finished itself—the army
simply provided the pallbearers.
But what happens now? I persisted.
Leigh thinks the junta should try to heal things quickly and stop the tight
control, he said. They've won, but they're still too harsh.
They can't wait too long, I agreed. Frei and the other leaders are getting
old—and if the junta won't let go, there won't be anybody qualified to run
the country in a few years.
Allessandri and Frei are too old already, he agreed. Tomic is a
fool.
And Leigh himself?
He's a thorn in Pinochet's belly, he said. But he's interesting—he might
resign and try politics.
Think Pinochet will let go?
Quien sabe? the bartender laughed. Looks more like a bulldog every day.

The shopkeepers and clerks crowded the Providencia buses at twilight,
milling at the boulevard stops near the cathedral of San Francisco, shel-
tering their heads with wet copies of such newspapers as La Nación and
Mercurio. Others met with friends in small coffee shops and bars, and
some waited for the squalls to pass in the shopping arcades and porticoes
that line the Alameda O'Higgins.
The bad spring weather can last for weeks. Its dampness seems to
impregnate the massive buildings themselves, streaking their somber fa-
cades with rain. Their wet masonry glistens when the sun comes back,
and walking the narrow streets surrounding the Moneda, it is possible to
retrace the rifle and machine-pistol fire that had raked many window.-and
roof parapets and doorways. Pockmarks had chipped and riddled the walls
where the snipers had fired on the troops below and had drawn heavy
small-arms fire in return.
Still tired, I thought. .
I took dinner at the Piscina instead of going out to Providence The
restaurant I liked there could wait until tomorrow. The meal was chilled
almejas on their tiny shells, and perfectly grilled crayfish with a Cousiño
chardonnay. The postre was a pale caramel flan, and I sat a long time over
coffee, watching the lights of the city and its mountains. The times that I
had worked in Santiago, in urban planning and airport work for the Frei
government, had been pleasant in spite of the political turmoil of the
Allende campaign. We spent happy times at Viña del Mar and Riñaca, eating
seafood at small cafes and exploring old waterfront restaurants such as
Menzel's in Valparaiso, and friends from the embassy had taken a little
steep-roofed summer cottage on the coast at Zapallar.
But there were troubled times too. The political quarrels were heated
and erupted often among the architects and engineers at my office The
people were inexplicably changing. Chileans had always been a happy
people in the past but they were becoming curt and short-tempered and
cruel. Their political debates had flared into sharp disputes, bitterly dividing
old friends and colleagues, and entire families were torn apart. It was
raining again at daylight. I took a breakfast of croissants and coffee in my
room, watching the wet city streets. There were patchy scraps of overcast
hanging over the peaks.
The weather was better before lunch. I waved the doorman off when
he pointed to a taxi and walked past the Moneda to catch another myself
in the Alameda O'Higgins. The bright sun was happily welcome.
The boulevards were lined with flowering trees, beautiful jacarandas and olmos
and Spanish chestnuts, and the streets and sidewalk cafes filled quickly at
noon. Old photographers with ancient box cameras on wooden tripods
worked at San Cristobal around the heroic monuments, and wrinkled flower
sellers hawked violets to laughing young couples along the Providencia
and the tree-lined Mapocho.
The capital almost seemed itself. It was still early and I told the driver
simply to drive around. The funicular still climbed its steep rails, straining
to carry loads of schoolchildren to the shrine at San Cristobal. The beautiful
eucalyptus trees were leafing out along the Pedro de Valdivia, and the
walled gardens were bright with scarlet copihue blossoms. The taxi waited
while I circled through the Prince of Wales, searching the old club for
familiar faces, where spectators were sipping their drinks under the Tudor
half-timbered gables of the clubhouse. Several tennis matches filled its
courts. There was a pickup chukkar at the Polo Club, where I had watched
an ironic match on the eve of Allende's inauguration, where grooms were
still walking the sweaty horses.
It felt strange, I thought. Like hearing tumbrils rumble in the Paris
streets—or waiting helplessly for Shanghai or Singapore to fall.
The Providencia was filled with shoppers when I finally reached the
restaurant. The smoky old Parron had opened its courtyard to welcome
the Chilean springtime. The tiny darkly paneled salon still had its zinc-
topped bar from Paris. Several old men sat playing dominoes and cards.
Wonderful cooking smells drifted through the rooms into the courtyard.
The old Parron was still itself. Its patrons still gorge themselves on meat
and roast cabrito and seafood under the grape trellises in the spring, and
I took my pisco through the bar into its sunny courtyard.
Señor? the headwaiter asked.
Pienso aqui, I pointed to a table dappled in leafy sunlight. Gracias.
Si, cómo no, señor! he said.
The waiter came swiftly across the courtyard. Algo de beber? he asked.
Vino, I said. Cousiño Macul.
Blanco o tinto, senor?
Blanco, I said.
The old headwaiter stood watching me curiously when the waiter left.
The vines were alive with finches. The headwaiter came back.
You were here in the old days, he told me. You came often to the Parron
in those times.
Yes, I said. I had an office nearby.
It is a fine time to come back, he said. It is springtime in Chile.
Tiene tiempo macanudo, I agreed.
You've been gone several years, he continued. When were you last with
us in Santiago?
Three years ago.
We have seen some hard times, the old man said quietly, and things
are still not good, but we are still Chileans—we still have hope.
It will take time, I said.
Life goes on, he smiled. Did you see any pretty girls in the Providencia?
Didn't see them, I joked.
You are getting old, he laughed. But you always worked hard—you
sometimes made little diagrams and drawings at lunch.
Those people at Obras Publicas had me pretty busy.
Springtime is bad for working, he said.
You're right, I agreed.
The waiter brought a bottle of Cousiño Macul in a pewter ice bucket
and carefully poured me a glass, rolling his wrist deftly. It was perfectly
chilled, and I nodded happily and took another sip. The brightly colored
finches were quarreling busily. The waiter spoke briefly with the old head-
waiter, glanced across the courtyard to my table, and came back smiling.
Lunch, señor? he asked.
Tiene erizos hoy?
Si, cómo no, señor! he looked surprised. You like our sea urchins?
I learned to like erizos, I said. I like them now.
Something else?
Perhaps an omelet with mushrooms, I studied the menu, and a tomato
salad—are there fresh chirimoyas?
Not yet, señor, he shook his head.
Flan and coffee, I said.
The old headwaiter drifted back to talk, and I shared my wine. Some
things have not changed, he said. The Cousiño is still very good.
It's excellent, I said.
Are you working here? he asked.
No, I replied, I'm going south to try some trout fishing.
I'm from the south, he said.
Valdivia? I asked.
How could you guess that? he asked.
Your accent, I said.
Where will you try the fishing?
Logo Ranco, the young waiter brought my sea-urchin eggs in a chilled
broth with finely diced onions. I have old friends who have a pretty farm
at Llifen.
It was not taken? he interrupted.
Taken? I asked.
Our agrarian reform almost exploded into a civil war, he explained.
It was particularly sad in Linares and Cautin.
Their farm was too small, I said. Only farms larger than eighty hectares
were taken under the agrarian reform.
I believed that once too, he said, because I was Unidad Popular—but
because I'm from Panguipulli, I know the truth.
What happened? I asked.
Our agrarian reform began with Frei, he glanced furtively around the
courtyard, but we changed it into something evil.
You were Unidad Popular?
Yes, he admitted sadly, but we lied about agrarian reform in the Al-
lende years—and the lies helped to destroy us.
What happened? I asked.
President Frei expropriated 1,408 farms legally during his term, he said.
It was his law and the owners were compensated fairly—he took most of
the farms that qualified, about 15 percent of our tillable land.
What happened with Allende?
The Congress was overwhelmed with allegations of illegal expropri-
ations, he replied. Its investigations found that more farms were taken il-
legally in Allende's first two years than Frei took legally in four—and the
police were completely forbidden to interfere.
How many were taken altogether?
Allende took 3,570 farms before the military coup, he admitted sadly.
About 35 percent of the tillable acreage in Chile—after Frei had taken 15
percent legally.
My friends had trouble too.
I'm from the south, he nodded. Many farms and lumber mills and vine-
yards were stolen—roving bands of guerrillas and workers just nailed the
Chilean flag to the gates—and took them in the name of the people.
Did the owners fight?
Some fought back and some simply left the country, he said. Many were
killed—and there were political murders in many towns.
It was a bitter time, I said.
What happened to your friends? the old man asked.
The valley had a band of heavily armed men taking farms, I replied,
and nobody knew who they were.
Probably not Chileans, he interjected.
Who were they? I asked.
Cubanos, he said.
Cubans?
Yes, he confessed.I listened to the Marxist politicians and voted for
them, but I'm still a Chilean first—and roving paramilitary groups led by
Cubans and terrorists were hard to accept.
It happened, I agreed. My friends were warned that they were going
to be killed—their children were on the death list too.
Who warned them? he asked.
It was one of their workers, I said. His brother had attended the meeting
that drew up the death list—and he warned them.
Did they try?
My friends armed themselves and told the leader they would kill him
if he tried to take their farm, I replied. They never came.
Did anything happen? he asked.
Their worker was drowned in the Calcurrupe, I nodded sadly. It's strange
that he died in the river—he was a skilled botero and knew the river well.
You fished with him? he said.
We fished the river several times, I responded. He was very good.
They killed him.
The Parron was not busy that afternoon, and many tables in the court-
yard were empty. We simply sat and talked. Lunch lasted three hours, with
another bottle of wine and several pots of coffee. Pigeons scuttled in the
eaves. The shadows worked across the courtyard, leafy patterns flickering
on the gravel. The old men were laughing in the bar, and the finches were
hopscotching among the empty tables, foraging busily for crumbs. The
young waiter brought us two cognacs.
It's Quinta Normal, the old headwaiter raised his glass. Welcome back.
I remember it well, I said.
I've enjoyed talking, he said. It helps to talk sometimes.
What was it like in Santiago?
It got embarrassing for a loyal Marxist, he said wryly. There were huge
demonstrations of Chilean workers against Allende—copper workers and
farm workers filling the streets in protest—it was hard to explain.
Workers are supposed to support a Marxist state, I laughed.
It's the theory, he admitted ruefully, but the workers' strikes really opened
my eyes—and then we had the Marcha de las Cacerolas Vacias, with thou-
sands of women protesting.
The March of the Empty Pots?
It happened the first year, he explained. Thirteen months after Allende
became president, and there were thousands of housewives beating on pots
outside the Moneda—protesting the food prices and shortages.
Did it happen again? I asked.
The march was broken up when thugs from Unidad Popular attacked
the women with chains, the old man said angrily. It was a terrible day—
and it finished Unidad Popular for me.
What did the women do next?
They were afraid to march, but Allende got a little crazy after they pro-
tested, he continued, because they beat their pots every night at ten
o'clock—and you could hear pots banging all over Santiago.
That's a wild story, I said.
It was all a Marxist fairy tale, he said wryly. Now we're stuck with
soldiers—and the country needs Walt Disney.
Walt Disney? I puzzled.
It's just a Chilean joke, he laughed. Disney has experience with getting
animals to talk.

Chile is both varied and quite beautiful. Its startling beauty seems a curious
background for its recent history of political strife. But Chileans had sur-
prised themselves and surprised the world too, with the quarreling that
had lurked behind their happy faces. The geography of Chile is unique.
The country lies along twenty-eight hundred miles of the Pacific, reaching
from Bolivia and Peru past the Strait of Magellan to stormy Cabo de los
Hornos, the fabled cliffs and skerries at Cape Horn.
Chile is less than 150 miles wide, lying tightly pinioned between the
Andes and the sea. Its configuration is difficult to fathom, and its sprawling
ropelike length looks impossible to govern. Yet the mountains are giants,
a barrier so formidable they serve to unify a people clinging to their slender
Pacific wall, and Chileans in the northern deserts and at the Strait of
Magellan obviously share the same fierce pride.
It's hard for others to grasp, explained a Chilean engineer who worked
with me in planning a new national park at Torres del Paine. Think about
a 150-mile strip against your entire Canadian border, with the world's longest
mountain range on one side and the Pacific on the other.
Strange piece of property, I agreed.
Think that Seattle is Arica, he continued, and Kennebunkport is Cape
Horn.
I'm thinking, I said. It's hard work.
Arica lies at the northern frontier with Peru. It is still an astonishing
fifteen hundred miles from the trout-fishing country, the distance from
Boston to Denver. Its northern coasts are treeless and stark, but their rocky
beaches are teeming with life. The coastal seas are quite cold. Chilled by
the icy Humboldt Current, which wells up from Antarctica to flow past the
equator, the Pacific is still fifty to sixty degrees off Ecuador and Peru. The
current is more than a hundred miles across, saturated with rich nutrients
from the latitudes below Cape Horn. Such mingling currents always offer
unusually fertile fishing grounds, sustaining big condor rookeries along
the coast and unthinkable colonies of sea birds.
The chill coastal seas affect the climate of the entire continent, shroud-
ing the northern coasts in almost continually overcast skies. The hot deserts
and arid foothill ranges lift them slightly. Their moisture is trapped and
rising. It soars and billows upward across the cordillera of the Andes and
falls again in heavy rains in the jungle headwaters of the Amazon and
Parana.
The coasts are parched and barren. Few streams reach the sea, and
even their highest arroyos and gullies are usually dry. Water is precious
and scarce, and its existence is obvious at thirty-five thousand feet. The
mountains are dry and brown, and there are faint patchwork traces of
cultivation in some valleys. Cultivation dwindles quickly below Tocopilla,
until the empty Desierto de Atacama lies under the plane, a desert so
bitter that it receives absolutely no rainfall. Its only moisture hangs in its
thin wintry mists. The primitive Atacameno tribes buried their dead wrapped
in woven fabrics, with colorful pottery and woolen bags filled with fish
hooks and utensils and tools made of stone and poorly worked bronze
and bone. The dry soils and parched air preserved everything, and the
corpses were steadily dessicated and mummified. It is not atypical to find
sardines from the Pacific, brittle and still surprisingly silver, lying with
brightly colored toucan and parrot feathers from Bolivia.
Such burial sites tell us something about Chile today, a Chilean an-
thropologist told me at Santiago. These ancient people traveled.
But what about today? I asked.
Shriveled fish and brightly colored feathers tell us they fished and had
frequent contact with jungle tribes across the Andes, he explained. You are
not hungry when you can fish.
But now? I asked again.
It is the same in Chile today, he said. We have poverty, but we live too
close to the sea to have terrible hunger.
The Desierto de Atacama is a puzzle, both a dead landscape and terribly
rich. Its vast deposits of sodium nitrate once supplied the fertilizer called
Chilean saltpeter to the entire world. The mines were swarming with
workers, and the seaports thrived. Almost 70 percent of Chile's exports
consisted of saltpeter until the First World War. The German chemists
Wilhelm Ostwald and Fritz Haber developed methods of manufacturing
synthetic nitrates and plunged Chile into a terrible depression when its
exports of saltpeter withered. Its prosperous northern seaports ebbed
swiftly into poverty, only to flourish again when American metallurgists
found techniques of extracting copper from low-grade ores. The entire
Atacama region held immense lodes of relatively poor copper. Big mines
at Potrerillos and Chuchiquimata were swiftly developed, rivaled only by
the mines at Rancagua sixty miles south of Santiago. Chuchiquimata quickly
grew into the biggest copper mine in the world, its profits erasing any
thoughts of the idle saltpeter pits at Maria Elena and Pedro de Valdivia.
Small ports like Iquique and Antofagasta and Tocopilla, which had
busily loaded ships with chalky sodium nitrates, became prosperous load-
ing copper. The Atacama finally withers in increasingly fertile valleys below
La Serena, a beautiful Spanish colonial city founded in 1544. The Chilean
rivers hold water again, draining the snowfields of the high cordillera at
Aconcagua, and there are big farms and vineyards at San Felipe.
The beautiful Central Valley of Chile sprawls more than two hundred
miles below San Felipe, past Santiago and its suburbs to San Fernando.
The spreading capital has taken too much of these fertile lands. Roderick
Haig-Brown loved what he found surrounding Santiago and described it
perfectly in his book Fisherman's Winter:

We were swiftly free of the great city, and here was the fertile Vale of Chile,
lovely irrigated farms, tiled cottages with gardens full of blazing geraniums,
handsome houses with cool, flower filled courtyards and delicate wrought-iron
gates under arches, water-filled ditches flowing everywhere and great mats of
blackberry vines, called the curse of Chile, tightly grown into hedgerows. On
the roads one met huge tank trucks, wooden instead of metal, carrying wine
instead of gasoline. On the dusty side roads, and on dusty tracks beside the
main roads were horsemen and horse-drawn wagons and oxcarts. The farms
everywhere were lovely, looking old and cherished and rich.

There are big palm trees lining the streets at Ocoa, and it is surprising
to find rice paddies outside the capital at Batuco. The principal vineyards
of the Rio Maipo and some of their wines are justly famous. Farther south
at Angol, there are livestock farms and grain fields in the coastal mountains.
Concepcion is a university city founded in 1550 and has become a center
of commerce and industry too. Arauco is a commercial fishing port, lying
under a foothill copse of pines with white rollers breaking on its beach.
Taica and Temuco are major provincial cities, serving a region of pros-
perous farms and livestock fundos, and there are still large populations
of the Araucan and Mapuche tribes at Lumaco and Lago Budi and Llifen.
The volcano Llaima rises east of Temuco, surrounded by beautiful monkey
puzzle forests and snowfields. There are trout in the rivers between San-
tiago and Temuco, particularly in the Laja and Bio-Bio, which was the
perilous frontier of Araucan territory in Spanish colonial times.

Villarrica is the threshold of the lake district, a favorite summer region
for city-bound Chileans between Christmas and Lent. Lago Villarrica is a
beautiful lake, with its conical white-hatted volcano smoking steadily in
the distance. Pucon is a major vacation center with several first-rate hotels,
including the famous Hotel Autumalal.
The lake district lies between Villarrica and Puerto Varas, a wonderfully
pastoral country with strong echoes of southern Germany, and boasts a
dozen big mountain lakes scattered along a hundred miles of mountain
wall Its strong echoes of Europe are not mere chance. The region was
heavily settled by Germans, not the Germans whose politics forced them
to hide after the Second World War, but people who came more than a
century ago seeking religious and political freedom in Hapsburg times.
The trout fishing in Chile is their legacy. The German immigrants first
settled between Villarrica and Puerto Varas because the countryside re-
minded them of home, and their husbandry has only strengthened that
sense of place. The big lakes and streams could obviously support trout,
and it was the transplanted Germans who first introduced trout to Chile.
Their tenure is already quite old, and I have fished with young boleros on
several rivers that had obviously German family names but spoke and
understood not a scrap of the language. Their character is obvious in the
tidy farms, neatly fenced and well tended, and in the steep-roofed attic
dormer windows and millwork of their houses and outbuildings. The
faintly Rhenish echoes of their church towers are obvious at Panguipulli
and Calafquen, and at other places throughout the region. BothOsorno
and Valdivia have old German populations, and Puerto Varas has a German
citizenry too, its tidy streets all looking at the Osorno Volcano across Lago
Llanquihue, the biggest lake in Chile.
Puerto Montt is the terminus of the Pan American Highway, a bustling
port of almost sixty-five thousand and a sheltered harbor filled with fishing
boats Its stone quays are a collage of drying nets and crabbing traps and
boats listing on their keels at low tide. Fish buyers gesture and haggle
over freshly caught congrios and long-legged crabs and shellfish, and on
the beach of the clapboard restaurant at Pelluco, a small flotilla of skiffs was
moored high above the water and the men were patiently drying their nets.
Farther south, the Chilean coast is almost roadless and totally wild.
The Andes themselves plunge steeply into the sea, deeply scarred and
fractured by immense seismic fissures. The coast is a broken jigsaw puzzle
of fiords, narrow passages and sounds, a world of only partially charted
islands and skerries. The mountains are still heavy shrouded in icefields,
relict glaciers of the mammoth icefields that helped to shape the entire
southern Andes. There are few trout in many rivers that drain these glaciers,
rivers too cold and silty to support much life. The watersheds that offer
good sport are only partially born in melting glaciers or have lakes in their
drainages that precipitate out most of their milkiness. Such rivers include
the Petrohue, Puelo, Negro, Abascal, Toro, Barcelo, Renihue, Amarillo,
Yelcho, Corcovado, Tic-toe, Palena, Pico, Aisen, and the Rio del Cisnes—
the poetically named River of the Swans.
Few settlements are found in these chill latitudes. Big sheep stations
like Sotomo and Chaparrama and Yelcho are bigger than the handful of
tiny fishing villages on these coasts, in the entire two hundred miles
between Puerto Montt and Aysen. Puerto Aysen lies at the mouth of the
Rio Simpson.
Beyond the Simpson, which has been aggressively logged and settled
since the Second World War, the steep mountains and glaciers spill directly
into the salt, calving off immense shards of ice. Some of these icefields
measure almost a hundred miles in length, slipping patiently toward their
iceberg-filled esteros and fjords. Few settlements exist in the 250 miles of
broken coasts between Aysen and the meat-packing frigorificos at Puerto
Natales, on the Seno de Ultima Esperanza—the mountainous Sound of
Last Hope.
The brushy hill country of Magallanes has few settlements, but it has
the largest sheep stations in the world. Punta Arenas is the provincial capital
of Magallanes, a windswept city of more than sixty thousand on the Strait
of Magellan. The western sea lanes leading into the estrechos lie in a 250-
mile fault. Its fissures lie between Isla Desolación and Isla Riesco, passing
south of Dawson Island and including the faulting rift that holds Lago
Fagnano on Tierra del Fuego itself. The fault rises steeply from the im-
mense lake, displaced southward across the Sierra de Valdivieso into the
famous Beagle Channel, where Darwin passed aboard the HMS Beagle.
Farther south lies the Chilean naval station at Puerto Campbell, on the
barren Isia Navarino, where Mision Inglesas is virtually the last outpost in
Chile. Sixty miles farther south lie the Wollaston Islands and the Cabo de
los Hornos.
Santiago lies half-forgotten there, back along more than two thousand
miles of empty coasts, mountains, immense glaciers, lakes, rain forests,
and almost fifty Fujiyama-perfect volcanoes—less a country than a slender
journey of the mind.

The concierge sent his night porter upstairs for my luggage and fishing
tackle at six o'clock and had a battered taxi waiting. The narrow streets
were almost empty before breakfast. The driver plunged into the inter-
sections with a challenging flick-flick of his lights, and in the outskirts of the
city, there were filmy layers of fog. The poor visibility had no obvious
effect on the driver. We seemed only to drive faster. The parkway was not
fully built, and warning barricades and painted barrels passed in a foggy
blur. I paid the fare gratefully when we finally reached Pudahuel and the
porters took my baggage.
Puerto Montt? I asked.
Aqui, señor! the porters gestured. Aqui!
Mil gracias, I said.
It was another hour before the rose-colored mist lifted enough to fly,
and we were driven out to the Hawker-Siddeley sitting on the ramp. The
military government had curtailed service to Valdivia, maintaining its policy
of postcoup austerity, and had grounded its domestic jet aircraft in favor
of the sleek British turboprops that were cheaper to fly.
The Rolls Royce engines hummed smoothly when we taxied out, hold-
ing briefly at the runway threshold while the bright orange Braniff DC-8
landed, after flying all night from Miami.
Our plane swung into position and started its takeoff roll, its engines
rising in a shrill turbine whine, and we gathered speed to rotate off smoothly.
The truck farms and rice fields lay under the patchy fog, and against the
mountains lay the city itself. Breakfast was chirimoyas and croissants and
coffee, and beyond the vineyards stood the Maipo volcano. It was clear
after Rancagua, and volcano after volcano stood shining in the sun—Maipo,
Descabezado, Chilian, Antuco, the sharp-peaked Velluda, Longquimay, Llaima,
Villarica, Mocho and Choshuenco, Puyehue, Calbuco, Puntiagado, and the
beautiful Osorno.
Beyond Villarrica, the big Chilean lakes lay against the foothills. Cal-
afquen lay beyond Villarrica itself, and I could see the timber-cutting camps
and sawmills at Panguipulli and Enco, and log rafts floating at the head of
Rinihue. Lago Ranco lay ahead, its watery caldera dotted with volcanic
islands. Llifen was clearly visible from ten thousand feet and the city of
Osorno lay ahead. Petrohue lay hidden between its volcanoes, beyond
Puerto Varas. We were descending rapidly into Puerto Montt now, and the
pilots deployed the flaps, our shadow sailboating quickly across Lago Llan-
quihue.
Alberto Schirmer was waiting at the baggage claim, and the cool wind
smelled strongly of the sea. The baggage and tackle arrived, and we drove
into Puerto Montt. We'll have lunch at Pelluco, he said, and then drive to
Petrohue.
Pelluco, I remembered the old restaurant. Still good?
Simple and good, he said.
Pelluco is a fishing village on the sound east of Puerto Montt, at the
head of its shallow seas, a world of shoals and big islands and skerries
that dwarfs Chesapeake Bay. It is famous in a country justly famous for its
mariscos and other seafoods. Its seafood is harvested directly offshore.
The big clapboard restaurant is almost plain and simply furnished, and its
gravelly beach is crowded with skiffs and drying nets and traps. Pelluco
is best known for a huge, steaming hot dish of shellfish and chorizo
sausages stacked high around an armature supplied by a Chilean barnacle,
a species several inches high and shaped almost like an artillery projectile.
The dish is preceded by its own rich broth. It arrives piping hot, shaped
like a wicker beehive, and breathing clouds of steam. The barnacle stands
at its core. It is mostly inedible and is eaten last, since one must eat through
the armor of sausages and shellfish stacked and layered around it. The
spicy little chorizos and bigger sausages are used to wedge and key every-
thing together. There are mussels and rough-shelled oysters and several
species of clams, including a species the Chileans call zapatas because
they seem as big as work boots.
Such a dish is almost an ordeal of eating. The broth stands in a big
tureen, impossible to eat in small portions like the hot bread, and there
are platters for the landfill-sized piles of empty shells. The barnacle is
finally pulled apart to reach the fleshy muscle attached to its single claw. It
tastes exactly like a Kennebunkport lobster.
Hungry enough? Schirmer laughed.
I’ll try, I said. It's just too good to pass Pelluco without eating.
Some white wine? he asked. Concha y Toro?
Cousiño Macul, I said.
Our lunch lasted almost three hours. The fishermen worked busily
on the beach, and a flotilla of skiffs was silhouetted a mile offshore. It was
sunny and cool. The Hornopiren volcano stood on the mainland across
the sound, and the light was almost silvery. Maillen and its sister islands
lay retreating toward the horizon, sharply outlined like ships, with the
biggest islands off Calbuco as pale as smoke from Mapuche fires.
The wine was good and the talk was better, filled with firsthand stories
of the troubled Allende years. There had been a lot of violence in the
Llanquihue country, and Schirmer had lived through difficult times.
It seems like a nightmare, he said gravely. We went from the happy Chile
we bad always known to an armed country—filled with strangers, openly
carrying Soviet weapons.
Who were they? I asked.
Some were obviously Chileans, he replied, but many were not.
Cubans?
There were Cubans, he nodded, and their weapons came mostly through
Cuba.
How did the weapons come?
Secretly, he said. The arms arrived in small shipments and were cached
in the hills—the police found many weapons in many places. ',
How did the Cubans come? I asked.
Los Cubanos all came openly, he laughed. They carried diplomatic \
passports and arrived in Chile with Allende's blessings—Castro sent us the \
biggest army of diplomats in history. \
Were there lots of weapons?
There was a Cuban freighter at Maullin when Allende died, Schirmer
said. People testified that it was filled with arms.
What happened?
When the military took the Moneda, he continued, the Cubans weighed
anchor and sailed without unloading their cargo—and when they were
ordered to stop they simply refused.
Did they try to stop them? I asked.
Chilean pilots followed them out, he said, but they should have sunk
them—so the world could see what they were really carrying.
Were there caches near here?
There were weapons found on the Rio Chamiza, he said. Guerrillas
killed the lumber-camp overseer there—but there were big guerrilla camps
farther north.
Where? I interrupted.
The biggest was at Panguipulli, he replied. Guerrillas took the old Ken-
rick place at Chan-Chan and had a big campamento in the hills.
Rio Enco, I said. I've fished it.
It was a timber-cutting farm of less than five hectares, Schirmer said
angrily. Our laws stipulated that only tracts over eighty hectares were sub-
ject to agrarian reform.
But they just took it? I said.
It happened often, he said. They took fundos that were beautiful and
prospering and remote—legal or not!
Who was leading these things? I asked.
Commandante Pepe, he said. Commandante Pepe was a Chilean named
Jorge Gregorio Liendo—and he was actually given government trucks to
help his guerrillas occupy almost fifty farms here.
What about the police?
The carabineros were ordered not to interfere with the people's will,
he fumed, and there was chaos!
Who gave the orders? I interrupted.
Jose Toha was Minister of the Interior, Schirmer explained, but his li-
aison with Commandante Pepe was Daniel Vergara.
What were they like? I asked.
Toha was a strange one, Schirmer continued. Tall and skeletal and
pale, with a heron's beak and a greying beard to hide a weak chin.
Communist? I asked.
Toha called himself a socialist, he said. But our communist party grew
out of the Socialist Party in 1921—he was certainly a leading Marxist.
What about Daniel Vergara?
Vergara was aprotege of Luis Corvalan, Schirmer rolled his eyes, and
Corvalan led the Chilean communists when Allende was president—Cor-
valan and Toha were close political allies, and Toha appointed Vergara
to his ministry.
What happened to Toha? I said.
Toha was impeached for his unwillingness to police illegal expropri-
ations and his government help to Commandante Pepe, he poured himself
some wine. His successor Heman del Canto was a Marxist politician from
Valparaiso—be was impeached on the same charges, and Toha killed him-
self in 1974.
Who controlled agrarian reform?
Jacques Chonchol! Schirmer growled. Chonchol was a leading young
Christian Democrat throughout the Frei years, and a popular protege of
President Frei—but Allende quickly appointed him Minister of Agriculture,
and Chonchol took control of CORA personally!
CORA? I asked.
Corporacion de la Reforma Agraria, he explained.
You think he was secretly a communist?
Chonchol vanished completely during the coup, Schirmer said drily,
and he surfaced again in Moscow.

The weather was changing again when we left Pelluco, and it was raining
when we stopped at Puerto Varas. The Osorno and Calbuco volcanoes
were hidden in the overcast. Llanquihue lay leaden and almost still, with
showers working darkly across the water. The volcanoes lay only thirty-
five miles away, but sprawling Llanquihue seemed to reach completely to
the horizon.
We circled the lake toward Petrohue in the rain, passing through Rio
Pescado and Los Riscos. It is a beautiful drive in good weather. The road
follows the lake through a countryside of small dairy farms and orchards,
working directly toward Volcan Osorno. The Bahia del Volcán lies between
Osorno, crossing the steep Rio de las Nutrias. Big rainbows ascend these
little tributaries to spawn each spring. The little German hotel at Ensenada
had been closed since Allende's election, and I stopped briefly because
Haig-Brown had once stayed there. Haig-Brown had found the place hope-
lessly Teutonic, lacking a bar to-soften its ruthless discipline and silence,
and empty of laughter. Haig-Brown found small signs posted throughout
the hotel, proclaiming its philosophy of strict rules. It was not a typically
Chilean hosteria, and in his book Fisherman's Winter, Haig-Brown offered
an atypically blunt judgment:
When I came out after dinner I found a broad tweed-skirted German lady
poking a powerful leather shoe at my lovely catch. "Fish," she said, with
enormous disapproval. "Fish and blood."
Her eyes swept her resting compatriots on the veranda in search of
sympathy, and I withdrew quietly. I felt I was living up to the motto of the
hotel, hanging in printed cards on every wall:
Silencio de cada uno asegura el reposo de todos. The silence of each one
ensures the peace of everyone; more freely, one corpse makes a whole cem-
etery.

Rural strife had closed the little hosteria on the Bahia del Volcan, and
it stood empty in its silence now. Its reposo was finally complete. The road
climbs away from Llanquihue into the beech-and-bamboo thickets that lie
between the volcanoes. Flocks of parakeets darted into the trees, and a
big black-and-white crested bird flew clumsily across the road like our
pileated woodpecker.
What bird is that? I asked.
Carpintero de Magallanes, Schirmer smiled. Magellan woodpecker.
The Sierra Santo Domingo filled the sky ahead, and the Rio Petrohue
lay tight against its steep hillsides. Their summits were lost in the rain. We
circled upstream along the river to his little Hosteria Petrohue, at the outlet
of Lago Todo de los Santos. The little arroyos that plunged down past the
narrow road were murky with glacier melt and black volcanic ash. Im-
mense outcroppings of fractured lava blocked the river diagonally, and
great flumes of turquoise water roared through the fissures and faults,
spilling into the Cascadas del Petrohue.
It's still beautiful, I said happily.
Five volcanoes surround the lake, but they were still hidden in the
clouds. The beaches are gritty and black with their particulates. Great
alluvial fans of sooty ash lie under Osorno. Cerro Puntiagado merely
echoes its volcanic origins, its 7,653-foot peak partially the igneous core
of ancient eruptions. Calbuco is a conical volcano formed of stratigraphic
layers, similar to Puyehue and Osorno. Such volcanoes are the most ex-
plosive when they decide to erupt. Cerro Tronador rises almost eleven
thousand feet across Todo de los Santos, towering above its four sisters
to define the Argentine frontier. Its shattered summits tell us it was once
a larger, stratified volcano that violently tore itself apart.
I've always liked its name, I said quietly.
What's that? Schirmer asked.
Tronador!
Tells us something about its ancient past, he agreed. Thunderer!
It must have been a giant volcano.
Osorno is only nine thousand feet high, but it rises almost from sea
level. The little Schirmer hosteria is almost precariously sited, pinioned
on the gritty beach between the beautiful lake and the volcano. It is not
the highest volcano at Todo de los Santos, but its symmetry is nearly perfect.
It fills the sky and one's thoughts. Osorno is both beautiful and frightening,
its snowfields starting at approximately four thousand feet, looming just
above the inn. It stands alone, a snow-capped pyramid rising from its
immense conical base, roughly circular and fifteen miles in diameter. The
volcano separates Llanquihue from the fiordlike Todo de los Santos.
Its snowfields cover thick glacial tongues, and immense blue-green
fractures and folds are visible at its summit through binoculars. Steam and
urine-colored stains are visible too, particularly in cold weather. Climbers
report the acrid smell of brimstone on still days. Melting snow glitters in
the steep ravines and vanishes in the alluvial fans of abrasive ejecta. No
stratified volcano is ever totally benign, but Osorno has been sleeping
peacefully since our Civil War.
We carried my baggage upstairs and I hurriedly unpacked the tackle.
Schirmer came back when I had found everything. We've still got time for
some fishing, he said. The rain has stopped.
Where should we go? I asked.
We've got two choices, he replied. We can stay here and fish the Boca
Petrohue—or we can take the launch up the lake to Cayutue.
Cayutue? I asked. What's Cayutue?
It's a stream that comes from a small laguna, he said. It's beautiful.
How long does it take? I said.
It's sixteen kilometers, he pointed. Takes an hour.
Let's fish here, I said.
I’ll have to row, Schirmer smiled. You'll just have to trust me above
the outlet rapids—tomorrow I'll get you an honest botero.
I'll trust you, I laughed. Don't lose an oar.

The lagoon above the Boca Petrohue is a still-flowing arm between the
inn and its ferry landing and a pretty little dairy farm across the water.
The lake itself is slightly murky and turquoise with silt from the big glaciers.
Its steep shores are quite rocky, except for the grassy pastures across the
water and dense beds of tules downstream. Steep cypress and coihue
forests rise above the swift outlet on both sides.
It is difficult to judge its depth. Its turquoise flow is simply too opaque
to see the bottom clearly, although great boulders lie under its smooth
face, half-seen and betrayed faintly by its lazy eddies and boils.
Haig-Brown fished the outlet his first afternoon on the Petrohue, with
a bright-eyed boy as his boatman thirty-five years ago. They anchored just
above the rapids and caught nothing, but when they went ashore and
fished the river itself, Haig-Brown took a bright four-pound rainbow that
jumped and fought well. Wading the fast chutes just below the lake, he
took three more fish, including a bright hen rainbow that went almost five
pounds.
Schirmer held us deftly above the outlet without anchoring. It was
cold and felt raw, and we caught nothing there. He rowed skillfully while
I steadily cast and cast and told me a disconcerting story of two children
who had lost an oar there years before. Unable to control the boat, they
were caught in the rapids just below the outlet and killed in the terrible
cataracts downstream.
The bodies were never found, he said.
It was too rainy and raw to put ashore and fish the swift pools below
the lake. We rowed back up the lake while I cast patiently to the shore.
There were big sedges scuttling and fluttering in the tules, and I changed
flies, picking a big bucktail caddis dressed by Polly Rosborough in Oregon.
It took nothing until we had decided to quit. When we had almost reached
the dock, and I was simply trailing a few feet of line behind the skiff, a
good fish took a hatching sedge just beside our starboard oar. I hurriedly
dropped the fly in the ring and hooked a four-pound brown.
Finalmente! Schirmer said. Tiene suerte!
Tenemos suerte, I agreed.
It was raining again when we reached the inn, and its fireplace was
welcome. Schirmer motioned me over to the tiny bar. Frio! he shivered.
Let's have a drink and celebrate—what would you like to toast our fish?
Tiene Quinta Normal? I asked.
Cognac, he nodded.
Did you have problems here before the coup? I took the cognac grate-
fully.
You mean here at Petrohue? he asked.
Yes, I said. Any problems?
Not really, he raised his glass and we drank to our single fish. Our
problems were mostly with paying guests—we didn't have any!
Nobody came to fish?
Nobody came for anything! Schirmer laughed bitterly. We had to sell
our boats and motors and let most of our boatmen go.
What happened to them? I asked.
Many just drifted away, Schirmer continued. The boy you will fish with
tomorrow lives at the farm across the outlet—others had no reason to stay.
But you kept your property, I said.
We were lucky, he shook his head sadly. Others were not so lucky.
Was there lots of trouble?
We had some bad times, he nodded. People were killed defending their
farms—there was an old woman who died here when guerrillas sur-
rounded her little fundo and refused to let the doctor through their bar-
ricades.
Did that happen a lot?
It happened enough that we finally helped each other arm ourselves,
he said. We used small planes to drop food and ammunition and medicine
when guerrillas tried to blockade a friend's farm.
Did guerrillas come here too?
Some men came once, he said, carrying Russian automatic rifles.
What did they want? I asked.
They made me take them all around the lake in the big launch, he said,
looking into all its arms—and they particularly wanted to see the Edwards
house at Playa de los Ciervos.
Agustin Edwards?
Yes, Schirmer said. Allende's people hated Edwards and his family—
not just because they were wealthy and controlled banks and newspapers,
but because of their intelligence and quality—they burned his beautiful
house.
Didn't they own Mercuric?
It's still the best newspaper in the country, he nodded. It's always been
honest—and the truth is still a weapon in a world of lies.
Did the guerrillas stay long?
They stayed a few days, he said, and they never offered to pay us.
Didn't you give them the bill?
No, Schirmer confessed. They had too many AK-47 rifles.
But why were there guerrillas in the countryside? I protested. Allende
was sitting in the Moneda, and they'd already won the election.
Not quite, he said. Not quite.
Why not?
Because mtlitary and police promotions were till outside political con-
trol and Allende failed to win control of the congress too, Schirmer reached
for the cognac bottle, and the old president of Chile was still the most re-
spected politician in the entire country.
Eduardo Frei Montalva, I nodded.
Frei was elected to rejoin the senate in 1973, he explained, with 387,637
votes—the biggest plurality in the history of Chile!
But why were there guerrillas? I interrupted. Who supported them?
Who do you think? he asked.
Were there many?
Thousands. Schirmer exclaimed angrily. Every faction in Unidad Pop-
ular had its own little political army of thugs before the coup-and the right
wing had its own idiots armed to the teeth.
What were they for? tasked.
Che Guevara believed in killing off ability and intelligence and skill
to create a vacuum of leadership, he said. It's a strategy that works.
Were they planning such tactics?
Political thugs from the Vanguardia Organizada del Pueblo killed Ed-
mundoPerezin 1971, he replied, and there were other killings-the killers
had a list of targets, including your ambassador and our Cardinal Silva.
Who was Perez? I frowned.
Frei's Minister of the Interior, he said. Many hoped he might become
president if Chile ever held another national election.
Guevara's theory, I nodded.
Perez had quarreled with Allende's henchman, Coco Paredes, Schirmer
explained, and with Jacques Chonchol.
I met Chonchol once, I said absently.
Where? he interrupted.
It was a big party, I explained. Given by a Chilean sculptor.
What did you think?
Too smooth, I replied. Intelligent and articulate and a little too
oily—untrustworthy and something else.
What else? he asked.
I'm still puzzled, I said. I saw a big cobra once in the border jungles
of Nepal—and that's how I felt meeting Chonchol.
Too bad you're not a Chilean, Schirmer laughed bitterly. It took Frei
and his Christian Democrats twenty years to see Chonchol clearly
You think Chonchol and Paredes were involved in killing Edmundo
Perez?
Paredes was, he said.
But what were the guerrillas for? I persisted.
They were guilty of several political killings, he said. It's common
knowledge they were planning to kill key commanders in the military and
police—they killed an important naval officer after a reception at the Cu-
ban Embassy and murdered a chief of the carabineros at Concepcion.
Some people think Frei was like Kerensky in 1917, I said. Too soft and
well meaning to deal with his times—you agree with that?
Not entirely, he said.
Did they get most of the guerrillas during the coup? I asked.
Between the carabineros and the army, he shook his head, most were
killed or caught in the coup—there were lots of them caught at Panguipulli.
But what were they for?
Allende had some dangerous bedfellows in Unidad Popular, Schirmer
explained. He was not actually a communist, but he was pretty naive in
bis dealings with his own political crazies—I think he was a popular well-
meaning socialist—they were using him and just waiting.
You think they were getting ready to dump Allende? I gasped.
I think Allende was our well-meaning Kerensky in Chile, he nodded,
and I think they would have displaced him conveniently—like Benes and
Masaryk in Czechoslovakia in 1948.
You remember some history! I said.
Chileans have just taken a bath in history! Schirmer said wryly. We've
had too much history lately—and we've been vaccinated!

The rain lasted through the night, but the weather was clearing and the
lake was perfectly still at daylight. The volcanoes were sharply reflected in
its mirror, disturbed only by the feeding of two black-headed swans.
The boteros had already loaded the skiffs on the truck before breakfast,
and they scrambled up with their boats when we carried our tackle from
the inn. The clouds were burning off. The big launch from Peulla came
steadily down the lake, a lazy wake shattering its perfect mirror, and the
chunk-a-chunk echoed in the hills. The schoolyard beyond the boat land-
ing erupted in a happy clamor.
Schirmer clambered into the driver's seat. It's finally clearing, he said.
Looks like a great morning to float the Petrohue!
Can't wait, I said.
The little Rio Maquina plunged past the road, gritty with snowmelt
and ash. Osorno was still completely hidden in the clouds. Spray rose
from the Petrohue falls and drifted upstream across the road. Beyond the
cascadas themselves, which are completely impassable in boats, there is
a great turbulent pool that Haig-Brown fished thirty-five years ago. It is a
pool that fishes well in early spring, and through the heat of the summer,
because it is fed by a cool spring creek that flows at fifty-odd degrees all
year. Its effluents are warmer than the river itself before Christmas and are
much cooler in January and February, in the fierce heat of the Chilean
summer.
We left the Puerto Varas road, turning sharply left into the woodcutter's
trace and fishtailing in its bright-colored mud. The big coihue trees and
bamboo still glistened in the sun, dripping with rain. The boatmen un-
loaded their skiffs from the truck, and we helped wrestle them down to
the river.
Lucho Liedtke! It was the thin blue-eyed boatman with a shock of wheat-
yellow hair. Soy su botero en el Petrohue hoy!
He shook hands almost shyly.
Liedtke? I repeated his name. Konnen Sie ein bischen Deutsch?
Liedtke knew I was speaking German but obviously failed to under-
stand it. No, señor, he grinned sheepishly. No entiendo aleman.
Lucho has no German, Schirmer shrugged.
I know, I smiled.
Ragged clouds still drifted through the tall beeches and colihue and
flame trees. Liedtke worked deftly with his oars. We ran the swift chutes
between the waterlogged trees, and he back-rowed skillfully to hold our
boat against the current while I cast to likely lies.
It's a beautiful river! I thought.
The first mile was swift and strong. Its currents were broken by the
tangled logs and big stones, and dark pockets and seams that held shoals
of greedy rainbows. The fish were mostly twelve to sixteen inches. They
fought hard and spent their strength foolishly, with mindless cartwheeling
and jumping. We fished carefully through the morning. There were several
deep cliff-face pools hung with scarlet notro and trailing vines and elephant
ears, but the bigger fish proved stubborn. Twice we rolled big browns
under my bucktail, but both were sluggish and missed.
Los languidos, Liedtke grinned toothily.
Several times we worked good-looking holes without any sign of fish,
and the young botero took us into the next chute, shaking his head un-
happily. The overcast was completely gone and I shed my rain jacket. We
took several skillet-sized rainbows in the long riffle where we stopped for
lunch. The boatman killed a half dozen and dressed them quickly. Schirmer
and his boatman had already built a cook fire, and I rummaged through
my boat duffle for a fishing thermometer.
What is it? Schirmer asked.
Forty-six, I said. It's still too cold for really good fishing
Some sun should help, he said.
The smoke from our cook fire drifted upstream lazily, and we sat in
the warm grass. The little river meadow lay tucked under a copse of big
coihue and tree ferns, and a clump of elephant ears. It was sunny and
almost hot.
Bad fishing, Schirmer sighed.
But it's a wonderful day, I accepted a wine glass, and the fishing will
get better when the river gets warmer.
The weather improved steadily. We had freshly broiled trout meuniere
with a chilled chardonnay after a hot milk broth with mariscos, and then
there were fat lomos of beef grilled over an open fire. Schirmer produced
his last bottle of old cabernet from the years before Allende.
La ultima botella, he said.
It's Antiguas Reservas! I studied the dusty bottle. How old is it?
Twelve years, he smiled.
The boatmen were stripping a thick stalk of elephant ear, chopping
off the giant leaves and cutting away its stringy skin, leaving smooth banana-
length pieces. Why are they cutting up naica? I asked.
Dessert, Schirmer said.
I didn't know you could eat it, I said. What does naica taste like?
It's related to rhubarb, he laughed.
Rhubarb ten feet tall with leaves as big as a kitchen table, I said. That's
a lot of sour taste.
Try it with some rose-hip jelly, he suggested.
It's pretty good, I admitted.
Finally we loaded the boats again and pushed off. It was getting sunny
and clear. The river grew even more beautiful downstream, and the big
volcano towered behind us, its perfect snow-capped cone reflected in the
still flats. The swift, blue currents eddied through dark channels in the
stones, under lava cliffs hung with flame trees and olmo and flowering vines,
with immense labyrinths of water-logged trees breaking the flow.
The fishing went better.
The first deep run under the brushy cliffs produced a fat three-pound
brown, and we picked up a steady drumfire of rainbows in the riffles and
pockets. Some fish were rising in a big flat, and my boatman muted his
oars to stalk them. We could see every stone on the pale chalk-colored
bottom, but the fish were invisible. The first fish was working above a
tangled jam of coihue trees. It refused my bullet-head bucktail on the first
cast, and I cast quickly again. The fish ignored it too, feeding steadily.
Selective, I thought.
The rises were gentle, almost interlocking bulges and swirls, like trout
feeding on spent mayflies. Sporadic hatches had been coming all morning
without triggering a rise of fish. Bank swallows had been working high
over the riffles, wheeling back and forth to catch the dancing flies.
Mating swarms, I thought.
Selective feeding is seldom a problem on such big Chilean rivers, and
I was not really prepared for it. There was a single box of dry flies in my
boat duffle, and several polywing spinners were tucked into one compart-
ment. I picked a small rusty brown pattern, and a fish intercepted its first
float.
Muy bien! the boatman grinned.
We went ashore and I quickly wrestled into my waders. Liedtke told
me excitedly that he had never seen the mosca seca fished before, and
he was fascinated with the dry fly. Wading is considerably more efficient
than floating, and I took six of the seven fish we saw working, including a
silvery sea-run brown of eighteen inches that jumped crazily.
Gusto la mosca seca, Liedtke laughed.
I like the dry fly too, I said.
Our best fish came later on a bucktail. It was lying just behind a mossy
boulder, tucked under the elephant ears and colihue. It took the fly savagely.
The boatman worked hard, pulling his heavy oars to hold us against the
current, and we circled into a still backwater. His shrill laughter echoed
from the cliffs, almost a girlish cackle, when he finally saw the fish. It was
a sullen fight that carried us fifty yards downstream, and it showered us
both with water when I released it. The big fish went six pounds.
It was a fine stopping place, and the young botero sat smiling while
I broke down my tackle. We sat without talking and just drifted the last
mile, happily content with our fishing and enjoying the river and its vol-
cano, and its wild jungle-looking forests,
Mil gracias, I thought.

During our trip north to Lago Ranco, we sat watching the beautiful foothill
country and the high snow-covered mountains in the distance. The dairy
herds were mixed. Fat Holsteins grazed with brown Swiss and palomino-
colored Guernseys. The fields were pale green and lush, and in the rolling
country beyond Frutillar, the fields were saffron-yellow and the orchards
were blooming. Memories of other Chilean springtimes crowded my thoughts
as we passed Paillaco.
The weathered clapboard houses and outbuildings stood in wind-
breaks of poplars and pines. Moss grew thickly on the split-rail fences and
posts, and on shingle roofs and chimneys and anything else facing south.
The wooden houses were silvery grey with the salt carried on the Pacific
winds. Puffy clouds hung against the mountains. Lago Ranco lay ahead, its
sprawling drowned caldera glittering beyond the dairy farms and rolling
hills. The mountains had turned almost black with spring squalls. There
are several tributaries feeding the big lake, including the large river called
the Calcurrupe, which rises in the Lago Maihue.
Why are you smiling? Schirmer asked.
Was I smiling? I said. Guess I'd forgotten how beautiful this is.
It is beautiful, he nodded. Chile Lindo.
Lago Maihue itself is drained through a narrow half-mile lagoon, weedy
and thickly bordered with reeds. There is a little clapboard school at the
outlet, with a pretty farm on its south hillside too, and a trout lake in the
steep notch beyond. Its upper end is like a jungle fjord, fed by icy little
rivers called Blanco and Hueinahue and Currinhue. The lake is weedy and
fertile, its aquatic growth crawling with scuds and dragonflies and other
nymphs. Its big rainbows are quite silvery, with pale olive backs and
delicate spots scattered across their dorsal surfaces and tails. Such fish are
slabsided and deep, shaped more like smallmouth bass than trout, and
rise quite freely. The Maihue gathers itself slowly in its stadium-sized outlet.
It spills past a huge cobblestone shoal into a churning flume, tight against
towering thousand-foot cliffs. The swift birth of the Calcurrupe is fright-
ening.
The Calcurrupe itself boils with spume, spilling deep and strong in a
circling chute against the mountain wall. Like the lake that gives it birth,
the Calcurrupe swiftly drains a seismic fault, with steep mountains rising
to its south. Its highlands are occupied by small bands of Mapuches, who
cut the brush and berry thickets in the spring for planting and burn the
thickly piled cuttings. Their smoke hangs across the valley in the mornings,
and the mountains glow with hundreds of fires at night.
The Calcurrupe flows approximately ten miles to Lago Ranco at Llifen.
Its first mile winds through a series of brushy channels, between the outlet
and its Cumilahue tributary, where I had once taken a twenty-eight-inch
brown six years before. The river is almost like a lagoon downstream,
thickly bordered by tules and cypresses, and with entire forests of water-
logged trees tangled thirty feet down. The sunk forests were ghostly and
skeletal straight under our skiff, great structures hung with undulating
fountain moss and weeds.
The river is too formidable to wade in most places. It is almost entirely
fished on day floats with skilled Chilean boteros, although there are shallow
riffles and bars that a bold fisherman can attempt wading. Its Contessa Pool
is wadable at its throat, and its primary tongue reaches a quarter mile
downstream in early spring. Another wadable stretch lies off the grassy
little meadow where we stop to enjoy midday asados, a gravelly shingle
I called the Playa de los Almuerzos. Another reach of wading water lies
just above the Llifen ferry, across from the beautiful Hadida farm. Its mouth
at Lago Ranco is boat-fishing water, usually fished at twilight and before
breakfast. It is almost an estuary and surrenders immense trout, but I have
never wanted to fish there.
The Cumilahue is different, we passed through Futrono and circled
the lake. It's a pretty wading-sized river—it's a river worth traveling almost
six thousand miles to Chile.
It is crystalline and richly fertile, with hot springs in its headwaters
on the Choshuenco volcano, and miles of pale pea-gravel riffles. The Cum-
ilahue is a primary spawning ground for both its own fish and for spawning
runs from the Calcurrupe and Lago Ranco itself. Big browns arrive in the
fall and stay to winter over, and silvery rainbows swarm upstream in
September and October. Both species are still in the river when the season
opens and can stay for weeks during a rainy year. The hot springs sustain
heavy populations of crayfish and transparent little Galaxias and fly hatches.
Spawned-out kelts mend and recover quickly, and the fry that drift back
downstream toward Lago Ranco grow swiftly too. Its fly-hatches are excel-
lent, and the Cumilahue is famous throughout Chile,
The Cumilahue flows into the Calcurrupe about a mile below Lago
Maihue, but several other rivers flow directly into Lago Ranco itself.
The Quiman and Caunahue drain the high rain forests that surround ,
the Choshuenco volcano. The Furaleufu is a strange little brown-trout river,
with marshy lagoons and fallen trees. The Nilahue is a large river, rising
in a world of barren ashfields and pumice chimneys and deeply eroded
fissures. The valley floor has collapsed below its falls, and huge clumps of
naica and flowering vines hang from niches in its postpile cliffs. Beeches
and flame trees and bamboo grow thickly, and we climbed down a big rauli
to reach the valley floor. The Rininahue is a glassy little river with a charming
backcountry hotel. Its big waterfall stops the spawning runs, over almost
a mile of butter-colored gravel above Lago Ranco, and the big lake itself
is a remarkable fishery.
We had lost sight of the lake when the road dropped down the moun- ,
tain to cross the Caunahue on its timber trestle. The little river is a wild
flume there during snowmelt, when it forces through seismic fractures a
hundred feet deep and less than twenty-five feet across at the bridge.
Haig-Brown traveled to Llifen thirty-five years ago to gather material
for Fisherman's Winter and would still recognize its simple houses and
post office and the headquarters of the carabineros above the lake. The
simple country hotel where he stayed to float the Calcurrupe is gone, lost
in a tragic fire many years ago, and its foundations are hidden in brambles.
His other observations about Llifen in Fisherman's Winter remain true:

I first learned about Llifen and Lago Maihue and its Calcurrupe country from
my friend Edouard de Rothschild when we were fishing a swollen British
Columbia stream in May. When he heard that I was going to Chile, Edouard
wrote to urge me again not to miss the place. He was quite right. Although
my time there was far too brief, I believe that Llifen could well prove the
most important fishing center in Chile.

The perspective of thirty-odd years has largely proved Haig-Brown's
judgment correct. Its fisheries offer decent sport throughout the season
when the summers are not too warm after Christmas, and when there is
sufficient rain to keep the rivers cool. Other fisheries exist farther south
that might rival those at Llifen, but most are anadromous fisheries based
on migratory sea-trout runs that last briefly.
But over the years, I believe the Llifen region has fished best in the
Chilean springtime, during the several weeks before Christmas.
We circled the pretty lagoon at Llifen, past the stony alluvial fan of the
Caunahue, and entered the dusty streets of the village. The little post office
and boat landing were unchanged, like the confiteria and the police bar-
racks, and the little clapboard grocery run by the pretty young girl we
called the Dama de las Cebollas. There were several Mapuche fires clearing
the mountains beyond the Calcurrupe, and their filmy haze hung between
the hills. Bigger mountains lay toward the north, still holding big pockets
of fresh snow. Several steep monoliths rise just beyond the village, thickly
covered with vegetation, shaped like giant thousand-foot bollards and
capstans. The valley floor itself is a fertile patchwork of dairy farms and
orchards and thickly grown forests. It is strange that Haig-Brown made no
mention of the Cumilahue in Fisherman's Winter, although his party had
to cross it in making two floats on the Calcurrupe from Lago Maihue. The
big tree-covered monoliths were behind us now, like the steep pinnacles
in a painted Chinese scroll.
We reached the little Hosteria Cumilahue in late afternoon, swinging
the truck under its massive timber gate into a lane of flowering copihue
trees. Its gardens had grown more beautiful in six years. Schirmer's men
were already unloading my baggage, and the sturdy Chilean maids were
laughing and helping. Flocks of tricaques chattered noisily in the trees,
scolding a big hawk that rode the thermals overhead, and a great flock of
Chilean lapwings wheeled past. Adrian Dufflocq was in the flower gardens
below the house, helping another guest with his casting, and he ignored
my outstretched hand.
Ernesto! Dufflocq almost crushed me with a wild abrazo hug. It s been
almost seven years since we've seen you at Cumilahue-welcome home to
Chile!
I'm happy to come home, I bear-hugged back.
Dufflocq! he introduced himself to Schirmer respectfully. I know who
you are—and your troubles with the CORA guerrillas.
You bad your troubles too, Schirmer said quietly.
Have you time for a whisky?
Mil gracias, but it's several hours back to Petrohue.
We all shook hands warmly. Gracias por todo, I said. Muchisimas gra-
cias por la pesca and everything else!
For nada, Emesto! Schirmer said.
Dufflocq hugged me roughly as Schirmer left in his truck. Lets have a
drink, he said happily, and tell me about everything!
I'll try, I said.
Dufflocq is the son of a famous Chilean professor, the scholar who
wrote the best-known reader used in Chilean schools. He is vigorous and
good looking and articulate, with strong opinions and loyalties. His friend-
ship is warm and intense, and I would not like to challenge his dislike.
Dufflocq's ancestors were French, from the Basque country in the foothills
of the Pyrenees, and his character still echoes the humor and fierce pride
of such mountain people.
His ancestors were probably fishermen too, having come from the
Gave d'Oloron country, where there are still a few Atlantic salmon. The
cathedral at Oloron Sainte Marie still has a salmon fisherman and his catch
carved into its weathered stonework portico. The alpine forests and big
Chilean lakes and rivers have fascinated Dufflocq since his boyhood, and
trout fishing is an obvious footnote to his Basque blood and its passion
for the mountain country that lies on the Spanish frontier.
His apprenticeship began at Lago Villarrica in those childhood sum-
mers when the family tried to escape the February heat of Santiago. There
was fishing there in the Token, and in the big lake itself under the smoking
volcano. But the principal fishing center was Pucon, where the Zapata
family had been fishing boteros for generations on the swift Trancura.
Alfredo Heusser lived at Pucon too, the best-known angler and flydresser
in Chile Dufflocq completed his apprenticeship under Heusser, fishing and
making flies and guiding parties in the summers. His lessons were mastered
well. Heusser is gone today, having lived well past eighty years, and Dufflocq
has since become the most famous trout fisherman in Chile.
How's the fishing? I asked.
It's been pretty good, Dufflocq replied, but the Cumilahue has changed.
What's happened?
You'll see, he explained. We've had some terrible floods that filled many
pools with stones and hurt the fishing—and it tore out the new bridge to
Lago Maihue just last year.
Had many guests? I asked.
We had almost no guests from other countries after the Allende in-
auguration, he said. Mostly embassy people—but more people are coming
again now.
What about the fly-hatches?
The high water hurt them too, Dufflocq shook his head sadly, but they 're
still pretty good.
You had the best in Chile, I said.
We lost a lot of small rainbows in the floods, he said. Lost some freshly
hatched brown trout too.
It held mostly browns in the old days, I said. Is that changed?
They're coming back, he smiled. We don't see as many of those lav-
ender, purplish old browns with bright magenta spots—but they're coming
back, and we still get big silvery rainbows and browns running up from
the Calcurrupe.
Are there big rainbows now? I asked.
We're getting some good fish these days, Dufflocq said. Getting some six-
to eight-pound fish too.
Is there still time to try them?
Si cómo no! he said.
We walked through the gardens to the big meadows upstream after I
had quickly rigged my tackle. The pool behind Bernardino's farm was my
favorite. It was less spectacular than the big cliff pools nearby, with their
bald exfoliated rock dwarfing the little river, but it had great beauty in its
flowering trees and bamboo. The meadows were beautiful too, with a few
big coihue trees standing among acres of wildflowers, and we walked up-
stream slowly.
I hear they tried to take the farm, I said.
They tried, he said. You remember the night General Schneider was
killed?
Yes, I said, we checked and cleaned your guns.
And carried them to bed, he said.
You had trouble later?
We had some armed troublemakers in the valley for several months,
he continued. They took some farms—and we were on the death list too.
Where were the police?
Allende's people ordered them to permit the will of the people, he ex-
plained, but these people were not from Llifen—and many were not even
Chileans.
What did you do? I asked.
Loaded a shotgun and went to see the leader at three in the morning.
Was he Chilean?
No, he said. I'm still not sure what he was!
What the hell did you tell him?
I told him I wanted him to understand me, he laughed darkly, and
that I knew his men could take my farm by force, but I told him that I was
a simple Basque with strong feelings—and that I would kill him myself if
they tried.
Did it work?
They never tried, he shrugged. Guess it worked.
Did you mean it? I asked.
I don't know.
The mountain rose steeply across the river, an impenetrable forest of
beeches and Chilean bamboo, mixed with flame trees and magnolias and
bell-flowered olmos. There are beautiful pelu along the Piedra Pool, and
we stopped to admire them. The Chilean rain forests are wonderful before
Christmas, and it is easy to understand Darwin's fascination with the exotic
species found in these latitudes.
The bird life was everywhere along the river too. There were gaudy
scarlet-breasted flickers and checau birds. Chilean ousels were busily col-
lecting caddis grubs in the riffles. Flocks of black ibises passed overhead,
and their cries echoed from the mountain. Mockingbirds warbled and
trilled from the bamboo thickets, and big carpinteros hammered at dead
trees. Kingfishers darted among the cypresses along the water, and when
we crossed through the orchard to the river, a big flock of black-and-white
queltegues rose noisily from the shallows.
Correntino! I pointed.
We watched the torrent duck slip from a big stone and swim swiftly
upstream, streaming bubbles and working its tiny wings like fins. Corren-
tinos kill fish, Dufflocq smiled, but I love them too much to care.
They're wonderful, I agreed.
The pool behind Bernardino's farm comes down swiftly past thickets
of colihue and shelves off under the trees and vines, spilling from the
deep whirlpool under the big cliffs upstream. But it had changed in the
floods. It was not as deep as I remembered it. The steep mountain wall was
an exotic curtain beyond its glassy flow, but the cypresses and beech trees
had been stripped away, like the mossy logs layered in the swift currents.
What should I fish? I asked.
Dufflocq suggested a small Muddler tied with olive-dyed bucktail and
turkey. It was a pattern I had dressed for many years to suggest the darkly
mottled Chilean crayfish, after dyeing a half-dozen Muddlers in a saucepan
years before.
I found an olive Muddler in my vest, and my fingers were shaking
slightly as I fastened it to the leader. The river flowed swift and smooth,
and I slipped into the. current, still feeling the old shivers of anticipation.
The fly dropped against the bank and settled into its teasing swing. I took
a shuffling step and repeated the cast, placing the Muddler under the trailing
vines. I fished through the pool without moving anything and waded
quietly back upstream. It hasn't fished well since the worst flood, Dufflocq
said, but don 't give up on it yet—try that little polar-bear bucktail you used
to tie, the little silver-bodied Puye.
I might still have one or two, I said. I’ll look.
Fish it down into the shallows.
The tail-shallows looked too thin and exposed to shelter a good fish.
Every stone and pebble was clearly visible. Nothing came to the slim silver-
bodied fly until I had fished through again and stopped casting.
Don't stop yet, Dufflocq called.
There was a small branch caught in the smooth current, broken and
still connected to its roots, its leaves wet and still green. It had probably
snapped in the last storm and was still alive. I dropped the sparsely dressed
bucktail just above the branch. It worked through its swing. I cast again,
dropping it closer and working the fly past the leafy shadow. It still looked
good, and I cast back to the partially drowned branch, teasing the fly well
back under the snag.
The current bulged, lifting the entire snag slightly and sending a huge
swirl downstream. There was a fish ghosting behind the fly. Its swelling
swept into the riffles and died, and the fish was gone.
Try him again! Dufflocq yelled.
We decided to rest the fish. Several minutes later I repeated the cast,
and when the fish bulged again, I slowed the fly quickly. Its bow wake
suddenly dissolved into a rolling splash, and then I felt its weight.
The entire shallows erupted in a wild cartwheeling jump, and the fish
shot downstream. It held briefly in the riffles. The swift current boiled up
across its back until it looked like a stone breaking the flow. It exploded
again, showering spray in the twilight until it almost reached its sheltering
branch. Several times I forced it away from the snags, feeling the leader
catch like a straining guitar string, but the big fish came free. It finally
circled, just beyond my reach, and when it surrendered, it threshed wildly.
You were right! I babbled excitedly.
Four kilos, he guessed.
Eight or nine pounds seemed about right. We stood admiring its silvery
length in the shallows, and I stooped down to remove the fly. It's a beautiful
rainbow, I stroked the fish gently. No puedo matar—she's too beautiful!
Let's go home and celebrate, he suggested.
Si, cómo no! I said.
We released the fish carefully and stood watching while it gathered
its strength. The current slipped over its dark shoulders. Its gill covers
worked steadily. The trout lay quietly for several minutes until it simply
drifted away.
It's still some river, I sighed.
There was a big fire in the grate when we finally reached the house,
and a grinning boy was bringing more wood. Patricia Dufflocq was busily
lighting the lamps and candles. The Mapuche serving girl brought the
whisky tray and the ice bucket, and Dufflocq poured me a drink.
Dinner, Patricia called.
Our dinner began with tiny shrimps and almejas in a white-wine sauce,
and the serving girls followed with a broiled trucha criolla, the succulent
Chilean perch. The chardonnay from Maipo was wonderful, and when the
girls brought a crown rack of freshly killed lamb, Dufflocq returned with
a dusty bottle.
Emesto! he said. You remember your last stay at Cumilahue?
Si, cómo no, I said. Perfectly.
You remember the wine? Patricia asked.
You still have it?
We have all the bottles you signed, Dufflocq laughed. We told you we'd
keep them until you came back.
I'd forgotten, I admitted.
Dufflocq carefully opened the bottle, trimmed the foil to hold its cork,
and poured it.
Welcome home, they said. It's been too many years.
Antiguas Reservas, I said. Gracias.

We fished together for several days, and the Cumilahue surrendered good
fish every time we tried it. Good rainbows seemed to hold in the likely
places, bright fish mixed with strong well-mended kelts that had spawned
in September and had fattened quickly on crayfish. Several times I hooked
fish that seemed like big browns, but I lost them quickly.
Nothing wrong with big rainbows, Dufflocq laughed.
But where are the browns?
They're still here, he teased. Not like the old days—but they're here.
No se puede, I said.
It's possible to catch them, he said, but browns are never easy.
You're right, I agreed.
Our last day I decided to fish the long pool below the old trestle
bridge. The curving reach of water lies under a high cutbank of chocolate-
colored soil, its cornices so alive with nesting swallows that I call it the
Golondrinas.
It lies on the Yugoslav dairy farm two miles above the Hosteria Cum-
ilahue. Its owners had fled Europe in 1940, when the British were driven
from the beaches in northern France, and they left the country when
Allende took office thirty years later in Chile.
Were they worried about expropriation? I asked. How big was their
farm?
Too small to qualify, he said.
Why did they go?
They left suddenly, Dufflocq explained. Said they'd seen it all before.
Tito too, I nodded.
The Golondrinas flows two hundred yards under its soft cutbank cor-
nices. Its throat lay under a thick clump of mimbres, where a deep hole
had scoured out under the roots, and there were other sheltered pockets
downstream. Still farther down, several holes had formed between two
large stones, and there was a deep run under the trees at the tail. The run
had given me a six-pound brown many years before.
Dufflocq watched from the high trestle. I chose a darkly hackled Pan-
cora, the dense palmer-tied wet fly carried by most Chilean fishermen and
developed by Dufflocq's master at Pucon. I dropped it twice, letting it settle
deep past the roots. It was taken hard, and the reel started shrilly as the
fish hooked itself.
Rainbow! I shouted to Dufflocq.
It went twenty-four inches, with a red stripe fully three inches wide, and
it doused me with water when I released it. I wiped my sunglasses and
watched a big mayfly hatch from the shallows at my feet. The fish had fought
hard along the roots, and I moved nothing when I fished it through again.
Farther downstream, under the cornices of busily nesting swallows,
there was a strong boil behind the fly. The fish rolled again without taking.
It took the third cast solidly and quickly stripped the reel into its backing,
jumping like a tumbler. It took several minutes to control the fish. It bolted
several times, and twice it frog-walked me into the backing again. It was
a fine cockfish, almost completely recovered from its spawning, and it shot
back into deep water.
Thirty yards more I hooked and lost another big rainbow above the
boulders. It took the fly aggressively, hopscotched wildly back upstream,
and almost dry-docked itself in the shallows.
It's stuffed with big rainbows, I thought happily.
There was a quiet splash in the tail shallows in the smooth run under
the cipreses trees, and I turned to watch. Big mayflies were hatching more
steadily now. The fish came again, porpoising to take a yellowish mottle-
winged drake. I studied the smooth current until I could capture a spec-
imen. It proved surprisingly like a yellow-mottled hatch common in Catskill
country, although none of our fly-hatches is found south of the equator. I
changed the sinking line and added a fresh 4x leader before rummaging
through my flies for a likely pattern. There was a single Yellow Drake in
the big Wheatley box, dressed with pale yellow-dyed grizzly and delicately
flecked wood-duck wings.
It looked perfect and I gently preened its feathers. The cast worked
out and settled. The fly rode nicely just above the trout, its wings cocked
and floating well. The smooth current bulged under its drift. The fly drifted
through the fish's lie and I teased it off, dried it with a few quick false
casts, and cast again. The trout took it softly and shook itself when I struck.
Big brown! I thought excitedly. Big brown!
Its bulk and coloring were unmistakable. The fish shook its head, prob-
ing deep along the bank, searching out hidden roots and snags. It bolted
sullenly upstream. I felt the nylon grate briefly and slip free, touching a big
stone. It held and the fish porpoised, shook itself angrily, and bolted back past
me. It forced me to follow, stumbling in the twilight among the stones, and
took the fight to the Cane Weaver's Cottage. It was getting dark and I netted
it gratefully. It writhed powerfully, twisting in the meshes, and I admired its
twenty-six inches. It lay gasping in the shallows, facing into the flow, while my
pulse and breathing settled. The big fish finally drifted off.
Hasta pronto! I whispered.
The lights in the trees were welcome when we reached the farmhouse,
and the Southern Cross glittered in the sky. The soft wind smelled like
rain. Dufflocq was preparing to broil the meat in the fireplace, but there
was still plenty of time for a hot bath, and when I was soaking he brought
me a glass of wine. Supper was quite late. Patricia served marinated mar-
iscos and a thick lentil soup with freshly baked bread, and when the meat
was served, Dufflocq opened another dusty bottle of Chilean cabernet.
I've got afresh case of Antiguas Reservas, he said. Sign them with some
sketches of flies—and they'll wait in the cellar until you come back.
I'll be back, I said.
The ragged clouds pushed into the narrow valley, drifting in thick
layers against the steep mountain walls. The stars were gone. It started
raining before we left the supper table to gather around the fire, softly at
first, and then drumming steadily on the roof as the storm gathered strength.
The sullen puelche wind rose quickly in the darkness, driving the bad
weather deep into the Andes. It blew pebbles and dust in the village streets
until they grew wet and shining in the lights from the houses. There was heavy
static on the radio at the headquarters of the carabineros, and the roads were
empty. It was snowing on the volcano. Angry whitecaps rolled across the big
lake, breaking across the shallow bar off the Calcurrupe's mouth.
Our supper was finished. Coffee cups and wine glasses were scattered
on the stone hearth, and the fire felt good. The puelche grew stronger in
the darkness, sighing past the eaves, and the fire sputtered and flared as
the wind licked past the chimney. Our candles guttered briefly too, and my
trip was almost over. It was time to start for Santiago in the morning, and
we sat talking of other seasons, sipping cognac while the fire settled in
the grate and died.
You're leaving already, Dufflocq and his wife protested. You always
leave too soon—our best hatches are still coming.
What are they like? I asked.
We've got a big yellow mayfly that you've never seen, he said, and a
big orange stonefly with parrot-green wings!
You're joking! I protested.
Ernesto, Patricia said gravely. Adrian never jokes about fishing.
When do they hatch? I asked.
Christmas, he said.
The dying fire flared again briefly when she gathered its embers, and
Dufflocq brought more wood from the porch. The wind moaned softly
outside. Patricia added a fresh log and worked the bellows.
Christmas is still two weeks away, I said unhappily, and I can't stay—
those hatches are something for another time. Rain rattled across the big
windows. The fresh log had started to burn brightly, and I swirled the
cognac in my glass, smiling and staring into the fire.
What are you thinking? he asked.
Nothing, I sighed. Just thinking what a fine present the Cumilahue would
make—and about getting a river for Christmas!

Fish Talk

Saturday, October 02, 2010

The Legacy

Saturday, August 29, 2009

A River for Christmas

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