ANOTHER VOICE

A moral dilemma involving one's mule fracturing a leg in the Andes

MATTHEW PARRIS

Guanay, Bolivia Picture yourself at 15,000 feet in the Andes, looking out across the high plain of Bolivia, a distant volcano, Sajuma, catching the early morning sun on the frontier with Chile, 100 miles away. The landscape at your feet is a composition in yellows and browns, dry rock, bare earth, sun-burned grass and ice.

Far from standing on a mountain-top you are at its feet! The massif of Mount Illi- mani rises another 7,000 feet behind you, her glaciers still in shadow. An airborne plume of snow whipped from the high ridge is caught in the dawn light. The plume looks motionless, but you know that up there is a raging, freezing gale in the eye of the sun. You know this because this is the mountain you have just climbed.

Imagine our mood. We felt an exhausted exaltation. We had arrived back at this base camp, a small flat pasture below the snow- line, the previous evening, having risen hours before dawn from a higher camp, clawed and crunched our way in the full moon to the summit with ropes and axes, then descended all the way to base where now we stood. We had slept in aching triumph.

Now we were to make our way down to the nearest road. South American Indian porters had arrived at sunrise from a village below to help carry tents and equipment. Breath steaming in the frozen air, they stamped sandalled feet and drank tea as their mule and donkeys grazed, uncon- cerned at the bustle of breaking camp.

Or, rather, the donkeys were uncon- cerned. The mule was a troublesome beast. Mules are valued by the Indians more high- ly than donkeys (some $400 for a mule, $100 for a donkey) because of their speed and strength, but a mule lacks an ass's mute forbearance. Ours had already been vexed by a snapping dog which followed the porters, and now — the dog having been chased away with stones — the mule still bridled. When bags were ready for loading, a woman covered its head in her brightly woven blanket, but this subdued without calming the beast. Still agitated, the mule was loaded with a heavy rucksack and two big kitchen hampers.

The mule was still. All seemed well. Then all at once came a surprise attack from the dog. He darted in, snarling and snapping. The mule threw off its blindfold and bolted. The creature showed surprising power, accelerating away down a gentle slope from our camp, the dog in hot pursuit and bark- ing wildly. All of us — climbers and Indian porters — were left gaping as the mule and its tormentor tore away from us across the broken pasture. There was a sense of impending accident.

Suddenly the mule was down. A bag had slipped, legs had become tangled in the rope, and the beast had nosedived at great speed into a gully. Everyone ran towards the flail- ing bundle of animal, straps and barking dog. Concern was at first for our belongings and the dog was chased away, but the mule seemed unable to get up, ensnared, it seemed, in its slipped load, legs kicking.

The animal was calmed, the baggage dis- entangled and carried away for inspection. But still the mule seemed to be struggling to rise. I thought I saw one front leg flop- ping uselessly. When, finally, the beast was pulled to its feet, it was instantly clear what the problem was. The right front leg had been disabled by a compound fracture of the knee. The fracture was complete. Below the knee the leg dangled useless, apparently hanging by the tendon. You did not need to know much about animal frac- tures to see that this was beyond remedy. The mule was a goner. It began to graze, standing on three legs, apparently unper- turbed as the fourth hung limply from the knee.

What do you do? In England, I felt sure, the animal would be shot. But none of us had a gun and, besides, it was not our mule. `It will have to be killed,' said one of us to the head porter, who assented politely as South American Indians do when confront- ed with any confident assertion by a gringo; but it was plain nobody had any intention of doing anything more about the mule. `Peruvian salami', said one Bolivian. You do not eat mules and their hides are of lit- tle value: like a broken shoe or a piece of orange peel, it must therefore be discarded.

The Indians took this huge economic loss with a passive acceptance equal to the mule's. Since it was irremediable, they wasted no tears or anger, but moved to the next item of business — deciding how to redistribute the animal's load.

`It was an accident,' pleaded the head porter, concerned only that we might charge him for the damage to our bags. That the loss of the animal should be borne by him was not disputed. You may think these people unfeeling, but they treated the animal's suffering only as they treat their own: one hardly ever sees them crying out in pain or over any loss. Adversity, death, injury are greeted with a massive passivity; a man may chop off his finger by mistake, bind up the wound and carry on working.

And so we reloaded the bags on to other animals and humans, and prepared to leave. But the mule was still there, hopping, stumbling and grazing. Did it know, did it understand, what had befallen it? Was it in pain? Did it have any half-conscious animal inkling that if wild dogs or another stumble did not get it, cold and gangrene would? I parried my conscience by trying a caption for a new Gary Larson cartoon: 'For the mule, a serious setback; for Mr and Mrs Condor and their hungry children, a sign that God is good'. The condors will have it within six days,' someone said.

But what a way to die, freezing and stum- bling into some final fall, then lying there for days, perhaps, in pain, sun by day, ice by night, waiting for the flap of the condor's wings. I flung a stone at the dog in sudden anger, but the dog scampered off, a raga- muffin inappropriate to bear so much anger or guilt.

What do you do? There were rocks, but a mule's skull is surely hard. We had a bread knife. I was momentarily gripped by the idea that the others might hold the mule down while I tried to cut its throat, but is that easy, with mules? I discarded the thought; the oth- ers seemed less concerned, anyway. Only afterwards did we discover that each of us thought himself alone in being upset. As we threaded our way down the path, the mule began to stumble away from the pasture and up the hill, as though looking for death.

On my bus, days later, fixed as a transfer to the driver's window was the motto (I translate) 'God is Love'. Also 'Christ is coming'. Also 'Long live my mother-in-law, but far from me'. Also 'Benediction of Our Lady of Urkapifia'. Also 'Here it is forbid- den to have cholera. Go somewhere else', and 'It is dangerous to stick your hands out of the window'. At Cambridge, my tutor in moral sciences told me that real moral dilemmas occurred in textbooks, but hardly in real life. 'Take care of the seats,' said another sticker, 'they are your seats.'

The mule was not our mule. We left it stumbling up the mountain, foreleg dan- gling like a wind-chime. What do you do? What have I done? I have earned a little money by writing about it.