Cinema visit, gossip and police info
April 25-26, 1972
Tuesday April 25, 1972
There were two places that showed films on the island. The FAC cinema was in an airforce building and well organised. The village cinema was constructed from beaten out oils drums and often chaotic with audience participation and commentary.
We went to the FAC cinema last night and saw a terrible film called “The Singing Cowboy”. It was a Mexican musical. The rest of the audience was made up of mostly children (some very young) and Chileans. There were three mothers with small babies too. There were wooden benches to sit on and a notice about parents keeping their children with them and not introducing dogs. A man sold little lollipops and chocolate (5 escudos). The entrance fee was 8 escudos for adults and 4 for children. The man from LAN was there with his little fair haired wife and so was Florencia from down the road. The cinema is in an old warehouse and starts at 8.30pm.
Because there was no television on the island, both cinemas were very popular.
After the film we walked home and Grant had an attack of coughs and sneezes and he took an antihistamine. This morning he stayed in bed awhile. But its hot again today for the first time for days and no sign of more rain.
I went to the ECA frigorifico today to buy butter but there was none. Only big blocks of frozen meat at 40 escudos a kilo. Men sawed them irregularly into two. I bought one chunk for 95 escudos. I felt a bit low and inadequate today and rumour has it that there are to be more tourists in the house this weekend and I find that awfully disrupting.
My role got problematic when tourists stayed because while Grant and I were not tourists to be waited on, we were not quite part of the family either and Carlo would get bad tempered.
After the ECA I went down to the port with Grant, he leaving me at the land office. I sat on the beach awhile and two middle aged women came by, one of whom turned out to be the wife of the ranch manager whose name I forget , and a tourist. The wife said she liked it here but the people were difficult to work with and rather lazy.
Then Veronica turned up in a peculiar sort of bikini and we got talking. She told me (I think) that her baby died at one year four months, a year ago. She breast fed her for 25 months [??]. She had to have a caesarian and showed me a deep scar. She says she can’t live with her mother because of “problems” She’s 20.
Veronica, like Soledad was a young woman of no fixed address. I often wonder how life turned out for them. They’d be old ladies now.
8.30pm
I went down to see the matrona this afternoon leaving Mungo with Carlo. He apparently behaved very badly. Met Maria/Suzy (Georgina’s sister and by then a friend) on the way who was washing and said she was tired with so much work and she was glad to see I wasn’t carrying Mungo because I carried him far too much.
The matrona, Nora lives in a little house overlooking the harbour. She was washing lots of dainty little clothes when I arrived and she sat me down and produced a notebook with figures on births and deaths of babies. After collecting these I asked if I could have details on individuals and she said she’d have to ask the doctor. Then she got to talking about gossip and scandal and remarked how strange it was that people seemed to love you but told you all sorts of lies to hurt you. She has a boyfriend, the director of the school, and while they were going around together she was always being told that he was out making love to other girls when she knew for a fact he wasn’t. Now she has big problems because he definitely has a North American bird hanging around, though she is in Santiago at the moment. Nora has broken off the engagement but is more puzzled and hurt than actually fed up with the boy.
The “boy” went on to be the first Rapanui governor of the island and did marry a North American girl.
She seemed to want to talk about it very much and I just listened. She’s a nice girl – tiny and very pretty with very generous feelings about people but, maybe, not too much imagination. I don’t know. That was my impression.
On the way to the cinema last night Grant told me a few interesting things he’d learnt from his carabiniero [policeman] friend. Firstly that the rather horrific rape story we’d heard from Romero (a continental who ran a little shop selling goods brought in on the plane such as comics and sometimes icecream) was simply an investigation and conviction for the theft of a watch. Secondly that the one thousand dollar theft at the hotel was again the theft of a watch by an inept young boy ‘whose father had left him’ and who showed homosexual tendencies. He didn’t charge the boy partly out of pity and partly because the watch would have to be kept as evidence and the owner wanted it back. Both stories show the force of rumour and gossip here. Apparently homosexuality and bestiality both exist on the island.
I am shocked at my casual yoking of homosexuality and bestiality! My comment, though not dismissive, reflects the heartlessness of attitudes back then. We has still to go through so much (especially AIDS) before inclusiveness penetrated even the bastion of the census!
The bestiality he (the policeman) noticed when following up investigations into sheep stealing. In itself it is not an offence here.
Wednesday, April 26th
We got up late this morning, around 7.30am and Carlo wasn’t up. He went to the cinema last night.. Grant and I went out together this morning and got a lift to the co-operativa with two Chileans. The round faced one has a blonde wife with a flushed face who gave us some tomatoes and radishes and cilandro. I managed to buy a big pink fish and some eggs at the co-op and then went home in a red truck up on the back. After delivering the goods to the house I went out again to the ECA for fideos especiales (noodles, not very special) and a few other things. There was no queue but a little row of women outside who took Mungo off me and gave him a bit of cake whilst I did the shopping.
Afterwards Soledad turned up and bought two tins of Nido (powdered milk) and one of Cerelac (a sort of cereal for feeding to babies) and asked if I’d like to go home with her. I thought she was living in the house near the church where the mother of Georgina and her family lives – but no, she took me up the hill behind the church. On the way we called in at the aunt’s house who owns the bar and the two of them had a row because Soledad said that the aunt had taken a lot of Victor’s clothes. ‘Victor no got much clothes’ Soledad kept saying with her eyes full of tears and that rather sulky look she has. The aunt ranted on and explained to me in very fast Spanish that Soledad went here and there and didn’t do much work etc and I felt very awkward sitting there.
After that we went on up the hill behind the church and met her aunts and second cousins and people. I met a one month old baby girl Loli whose mother said she couldn’t breastfeed because she had so much washing to do the milk went away. She has no water in her house, 5 children, all girls in four years (one set of twins) and she has to come down the hill to wash things.
I met another woman there – Maria Tepano, who said she learnt some English from Father Sebastian and would like to learn more from me. I said I’d teach her.
After coming home to Carlo, who was a little annoyed that I hadn’t cooked lunch, I polished the living room floor again- rather badly, and feeling irritated that I had to.
Went down to meet Nora today but she was at the hospital preparing statistics for Chile. I took Dr Spock (a popular childcare self help book at that time) for her but she was giving a Spanish lesson to Tula the American and an Australian who are both living here now and doing nothing. I went along to the lesson, which took place in the garden, very formally around a table with bits of paper. Nora isn’t going to let any gossip get going there! She taught us the verbs ‘estar’ and ‘ser’ and ‘tenir’ and ‘haber’ with great ferocity and wasn’t just going to have idle conversation.
Tula and the American have been living on Anakena beach for a week. The Australian has only just arrived. As usual Tula asked if I had any cigarettes. They irritate me – those boys. I wonder if they ever get their own cigarettes or they scrounge everything off the islanders.