Don Martin was a Peruvian Indian from the Cuzco region. He was a Paqo, meaning shaman in Quechua. When I met him he claimed to be 50, but he was actually much older; he himself did not even know quite how old. When the first census of his people was carried out, the officials, who had no previous documentation to go on, simply asked “Hey, you there! What’s your name? How old are you?”, and he replied with the first number that came into his head: “forty!”. So he started ageing from that moment onwards.

He was wearing a worn old poncho over clothes he’d been given by goodness knows whom. I greeted him politely, and it was then that I first met his eyes: his sharp, penetrating gaze burnt into me, and reminded me of some nocturnal bird of prey.

I had come to him so that he might reveal the Mystery to me, and I had many questions for him.

We set off for the Sacred Lagoon of Waypu, near Cuzco, a magical place he was in the habit of visiting at the full moon. On our way there we encountered a number of vendors selling chicharrones, fried pork scratchings; just the smell was enough to make me feel sick, but Don Martin seemed very fond of them, and wanted to stop to buy some. The owner of the restaurant, a plump lady with jet-black hair, met us halfway.

Don Martin began speaking to the woman in Quechua. I didn’t catch a word of what they said; I wasn’t paying attention, and I was anxious to set off again. After a while the woman returned with a huge plate of chicharrones, which Don Martin made short work of while I sipped an insipid, watery cup of coffee. When he had finished eating, Martin got up and headed towards the kitchen.

I stayed there watching the door close behind him. I didn’t understand. I spent three hours sitting on the ramshackle porch of that restaurant; the dust rose up from the street and swirled around in the wind as clouds began to gather in the sky. I became anxious at the thought that time was moving on, it was almost nightfall, and… where on earth had Don Martin got to? When I saw him come back, he was trying vainly to fix his hat; he was practically too drunk to even stand up.  The woman, carrying a small child in her arms, was waving to him. A few days later I learned that Don Martin had cured her of a fever she’d been suffering from for some time, and the woman had thanked him with a bottle of Pisco, a local liqueur, which Martin had accepted willingly…..

I put him over my shoulder and carried him to the car; he was drunk out of his mind. As I drove off, I began thinking “Oh this is just great! The medicine man, the maestro, the man of knowledge has lost it completely. I’ve come all this way to learn from this guy, and he’s so drunk he can’t stand up, he can’t get a hold of himself….”.  

I knew about the childlike soul of the Indios, their boundless enthusiasm, but surely this was taking it a bit far! I was driving and Don Martin was dozing away with his hat over his eyes. I felt uneasy: the dirt road, the dusk that was slowing descending over the horizon and those menacing storm clouds right above our jeep, which, just like Don Martin, was getting on in years….. I turned round towards him and stopped the car. “Don Martin, what shall we do? It’s almost dark, the heavens are about to open, and I’m not familiar with the road. Is there somewhere we can stop?”

He opened just the one eye, squinted at me and got out of the car. From the bag he had with him he took out his mastana, opened it with a gesture that I couldn’t describe as either ritual or commonplace and placed it on the ground. For a Paqo, the mastana symbolises the Texemuyu, the universe of energy in which we live; it is made of cloth, woven with the left hand, and inside it the Shaman keeps the objects from which his powers derive, the objects he uses for healing.

From a little cloth bag around his neck, Don Martin took out a handful of coca leaves and started blowing on them, reciting in Quechua what I imagined were prayers. Once again I met those sharp, penetrating eyes of his, which at that moment appeared to me like burning embers. He now  bore no resemblance to the old drunkard who’d been slumped next to me in the jeep just minutes earlier.

He took out a second handful of leaves and this time he invited me to blow on them three times.

I did as he asked. He began to pray; it looked as if he were talking to the leaves he had in his hand. Then he looked towards the sky, addressing the spirits of the mountains, the clouds and the wind, before blowing softly three times towards the sky. 

This was many years ago now, and since then Don Martin has abandoned his earthly existence, but that night remains very much alive in my memory: the clouds drifting apart above us, the wind whistling through the treetops and the first of the night sky peeking through the clouds to illuminate the entire night sky in all its unparalleled splendour. “We can drive on now,” he was saying, as I looked at him questioningly. “We are the clouds, my son!” I spent years battling against the system of beliefs I’d built up from my materialistic education and upbringing, against my tendency to analyse everything rationally, to judge and to pigeonhole everything in the world around me, with that individualistic presumption that made me feel stupid conversing with the rain. Then one day I gave up the fight.