Bernie Madoff and the Fall of the Inca

As an aside, I have to explain that my mother, throughout her trip to Peru was glued to a tell-all book about our former neighbor and acquaintance, Bernard Madoff.  Here we were, traveling through what is arguably the most fantastic and intact set of pre-columbian ruins in the Americas, and my mother was fixated on gossip about Madoff and his infamous ponzi scheme.

While walking down from the Ollantaytambo ruins Di-di was laden as usual with the most ridiculous assortment of unnecessary items.  She had scarves, reading glasses dangling from her neck, her camera on a lanyard, a variety of sweaters, a walking stick, and a large brown bag containing  tissues, journals, bottles of lens cleaner,  and purloined baked goods and dinner mints from whatever restaurants we had visited in previous days.  In addition to this payload was the "Madoff Chronicles" held against her chest.

The path was not smooth and was somewhat exposed as it paralleled a fast moving irrigation ditch.  Sure enough, Bernie's book of secrets fell out of her arms and plopped squarely into the rapidly moving water.  I heard mom yell "Ohhh!" and saw a black book floating down the stream past me.  I had no idea what this book was -- I assumed it was one of her journals (she keeps a few in that brown bag) -- so I went into high-alert rescue mode.  I tore down the path overtaking the floating tome, and dropped to my belly in order to grab it before the channel went underground.  Submersing my arm up to the elbow I wrapped my fingers around the binding and yanked it from the water.  To my surprise and chagrin I had not rescued an irreplaceable relic with anecdotes written in my mother's hand about her many trips.  No, I had in my hands a collection of the most puerile tidbits concerning the life of Bernie Madoff.

The irony of rescuing this chronicle of thievery from the rushing waters of a canal built by a culture whose entire existence had been stolen by the Spaniards was not lost on me.  As my brother said, the only disappointment with the outcome was that I didn't let the Madoff Chronicles float down to the river, out of our reach and out of our lives forever.