The Adventures of China Iron

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

  We Branded Each and Every Animal

  We set off at sundown: I won’t dwell on it, I won’t keep going on about the light or about how it softened everything, even the weeds that moments before had been rough and prickly, despite their flowers. Back then the pampa was a mass of thistles, their purple crowns taller than a grown man: from our perch on the wagon, the purple land rippled gently. The oxen, who led the way, ended up as flowery and thorny as the thistles themselves, they were four-legged plants, cow-cactuses, animals like the ones made by scientists, Rosa said. He groomed them because they deserved it, and I think the oxen loved him for that; they tended to follow him around a bit when he unyoked them. Otherwise, they seemed pretty indifferent to most things. Probably because of the weight of the yoke, poor creatures, dulled by work. We made our way silently following the subtle traces left by the passage of the Indian hordes, traces already getting overgrown with thistles. The Indians trod lightly like cats, with characteristic stealth and suddenness, leaving almost nothing behind. We were a bit afraid of them, but only a bit: Rosa was there, and he was half Indian, he said. He didn’t look it, he was white with a single eyebrow; he looked more Spanish, he was so hairy he looked like a Spanish cuy and he was very hardworking, his hands were never idle. He was only half Indian, his father’s mother was Guaraní and he spoke her language and could use it to bellow out a sapukái, as he proceeded to demonstrate: his eyes watered, the veins bulged on his neck, his face went red, and he howled, scattering the real cuys, sending the chimangos skywards, petrifying the cattle, cracking Liz’s face open with horror, and making Estreya bark himself hoarse at this sudden stranger; apparently it was a good sapukái. Rosa in full battle cry was really quite frightening, he transformed into someone else, the man with the gaucho knife, the man he claimed to be. There wasn’t much point in us explaining to him that we were heading for Tehuelche territory; he was convinced all Indians could understand one another, so it was no use arguing. It wasn’t the Indians, but the fort he was afraid of. He’d deserted a while back. How long ago? He said he didn’t really have much sense of time, but several summers and winters had passed, he’d come down from the north rounding up all the cattle he came across. Liz and I reckoned it must have been about ten years before. We wanted to keep the cows, we could make cheese, Liz said, who was convinced that prosperity only came to those who worked for it. She came up with a good ruse: we could brand all the cattle with the mark of the landowner who had sent Liz and the Gringo to Argentina to oversee his estancia. There was just one problem: we had no branding iron. I found one of those big rings which held up the wagon axles. It seemed just the job and we branded each and every animal. All three hundred and forty-seven of them. Needless to say we made slow progress: the cows, the wagon, the lack of a proper track apart from the Indian trail, which was easier on horseback, with the threat of a quaghole or vizcacha burrows at every step. Nothing helped us, least of all me. I didn’t want to get there. I wanted to live in the wagon forever, in this suspended interval of time, just the four of us without the Englishman; I wanted Liz without her husband, I wanted, I didn’t know what I wanted, I wanted her to love me, to find life impossible without me, to hold me tight, I wanted the pillow beside hers to be mine. I spun the animal branding out over three days, with ever-longer siestas, I plied everyone with plentiful whiskies from the three barrels in the wagon, I asked them questions so they would tell stories. Fear paralysed me: the wagon was like my childhood trunk if the trunk could have grown wheels and some friends had come along. It was another world, one that was truly mine. Everything else was a threat – La Negra, life with Fierro, that shack, cowering silently from all the brutality I’d suffered: no one there had anything to say except about land and meat, going on about cows, rain and drought, gossiping about which farmhand was mounting what girl, and whether so-and-so’s children were also his brothers and sisters as well as his father’s children and grandchildren, wondering whether the owner of the estancia would come or not, if he was coming whether he’d punish or reward, and whether or not there’d be another Indian raid. There wasn’t, they’d already pushed the Indians further and further towards to the desert, to where we were now. The old folk remembered how things had been before, when the Indians would appear like a whirlwind and leave everything dead behind them. They were worse than a plague of locusts: they killed men, cows, even dogs. It was said the reason there was no church was because they’d burnt it down with the people still inside. One of the old men, the one who had taken in my children, was a boy when it happened and he saw the whole thing from up a tree. He heard the screams, smelled the burning flesh, and waited, muted and frozen with fear, on the top branch for the divine lightning bolt that would strike down the heathens. He was up there for two days, and in the end he climbed down, absolutely terrified, but assuming that, for the moment at least, the Indians wouldn’t come back because there was nothing left to steal or kill. And convinced that the lightning bolt of God would have struck them down in the desert. He went to the fort and stayed there until the old guy from the big house returned and took him back, along with a couple of gauchos he’d brought together with the new cows, those beautiful white cows with reddish-brown patches which is how I remember cows being when I was little: English cattle that had been herded onto a ship. Most of the old folk I’d met had arrived after the times of the Indian raids. The Indians didn’t know how to speak, they used to say. They just howled like wild beasts, tore things apart like pumas, knew neither God nor pity, raped women because they had no notion of affection, they even made stew with white folks’ babies because they were more tender than their own: the darker they are, the tougher they are – it’s a well-known fact, said the gauchos, who also prided themselves on being tough; they were dark and macho, not like those lily-livered landowners, they said. That’s why they did the kind of job they did, because they were macho and tough. They laughed imagining the landowner’s blond fair-skinned son trying to round up cattle, break in a horse or bring down a ñandú with a swing of the bolas; they hadn’t lived under the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, nor the first owner of the estancia. The sons of the landowners spent their time in France, and on their rare visits, the gauchos treated them reverently, bowing to them, and calling them sir, if they’d had a tail it would’ve been between their legs. But curiously the gauchos were certain that in a one-to-one fight they’d win. And generally speaking they were right; if they’d fought with knives, the gaucho would’ve walked away unscathed. Or galloped away! quipped Rosa, who in the early hours after plenty of whisky regaled us with his story as if yielding to a lover: he bared his soul to us.

  An Orphan’s Fate

  Rosa’s fate was an orphan’s fate too: he left his mother’s house with his face streaming with blood. He didn’t want to abandon her but he realised that his stepfather would end up killing him the next time they had a run-in. So the young gaucho left home with nothing for company but his knife and Bizco, his young horse. He thinks he wandered for days: he doesn’t remember much, his face throbbed, flies were buzzing round his wound and he was blinded by the fierce Corrientes sun. He fainted. How or why he has no idea, but his horse didn’t head for home; instead it carried on slowly, perhaps aware of its fragile load, until it reached an estancia. He was found by some gauchos, who took him in, and an old woman cured his wound with herbs, poultices and words he’s since forgotten. Once he could speak, he told her all his misfortunes and the old woman took pity on him, made space for him in her hovel, gave him an animal hide to lie on, and allowed him to bed down by the fire. The old woman lived alone; her husband had died and her son had gone off with the militia. She eked out a living by growing squashes and manioc, helped by the charity of the foreman. Her luck turned with Rosa; although he was still just a boy, he was already skilled at horse-taming and he began working with the stock. They were already giving him the wildest horses to break in before he’d even got hairs on his chin. Rosa never beat the horses, he talked to them, str
oking their necks. ‘I had my own tech-nique’, he said, savouring the word as though it was a delicacy; he’d had a bit of trouble learning it and he pronounced it like someone presenting a golden cigar box, or a costly precious jewel, some kind of crown. The gauchos had been amazed by his technique, they thought that Rosa was casting spells on the horses and when they got very drunk they started pestering him. They asked him to teach them; they wouldn’t believe it was just a matter of talking slowly and putting an arm round the horse’s neck. They threatened to chuck him into the corral with all the most dangerous bulls to see if he could make them sweet-tempered too, and none of his explanations would satisfy them. They couldn’t believe he’d got a tech-nique that anyone could use, Rosa told us. By then he had a girlfriend, María the little china was called, she had the longest plaits of anyone in the huts, she fried little pancakes, spoke softly to him, could tell stories, and liked going with him to the marshes. Rosa had made a raft to row among the water hyacinths, and they played around poking caimans in the mouth with sticks. Long sticks, of course, from a distance, and it wasn’t a game they played often. It was quite a sight to see a caiman swallowing an unwary heron in one gulp, and they could easily flip the raft over if they felt like it. But they didn’t. He and María went to the islands on their raft and it was all laughter and kissing. He had his love, he had the old woman who he was very fond of, he had his little horse Bizco, who only he could ride. And he planned to go home to his mother some day and free her from that bastard of a gaucho. At this point in the story, the owner returned. He was old with a long yellowing beard, he looked like the sun and he was a good man. He paid their over-due wages, gave them half a cow to roast and chocolate to drink, he struck up on his guitar, and there was dancing; everyone there – boys, girls, parrots, macaws, cows, horses, toads, lapwings and crickets – all shouted three cheers for the boss! He brought his son along, the young master, who was also fair-haired and seemed delicate; he wore glasses and although you never saw a gaucho with glasses, his father wanted to make a man of him. The cattle herders took him out with them: they taught him to swing the bolas, to use a lasso, to hunt, to cross rivers on horseback, to keep going in the rain, to endure the sun and to fight. He always won, because they let him. The old boss liked Rosa’s way of working with the horses because he didn’t hurt them; ‘you’ve got a technique’, he said and that’s how Rosa learnt to name his talent, ‘teach it to my son’. Rosa showed him, but soon realised that the blond boy couldn’t do it, however hard Rosa tried; he couldn’t learn, so Rosa spent his nights taming the wild horses and the other boy was happy in the morning, priding himself on having a technique of his own. The boy asked Rosa to take him out on the raft. Rosa warned him about the caimans but the young master said no problem, took two pistols along and they came back dragging two huge creatures behind them, roasted them on a spit, and they were great. He brought wine and they drank it, ending up arm in arm like the best of friends, and from then on they galloped together all over his father’s land. The young master always had to come first and as long as he did, peace reigned. One afternoon, having downed a fair amount of caña, he got it into his head that he wanted to ride Bizco. Rosa said no, explaining that only he could mount Bizco; Bizco was his horse, Bizco had saved his life and he loved him, Bizco was all that he had left to him from his mother. The blond boy said that if an orphan could ride Bizco, he could too. He mounted: Rosa spoke softly into the horse’s ear, persuading him not to resist. The horse walked on, and things seemed to be going smoothly until the blond boy started cracking the whip. Bizco whinnied, reared up like a demon and threw him off. Rosa went running to pick him up; the horse was still quite close by, so the young master got back on and really laid into him with the whip. Bizco threw him off again, the young master got to his feet, grabbed the reins, drew his knife and slashed the horse’s throat. Rosa could still remember the horse’s eyes, how the poor beast looked pleadingly at him when it was already too late, and Rosa flew at the young master and beat him to a pulp. The bastard cried like a girl, the other gauchos came to rescue him and set upon Rosa, who came round to find himself bound hand and foot to four stakes in the ground. The young master came along presently and stood over him, ‘so you thought you could beat me up, you fucking Indian?’ and he took out his prick and pissed on him. The other gauchos laughed half-heartedly, like when they let him win. At night they took pity on Rosa, and when it was pitch black they freed him. He took the best horse and made his escape. He hid in dense scrub, his body aching from the stakes. They came searching for him, but since the young master was the only one who really wanted to find him, he stayed hidden till they forgot all about it or gave him up for lost. Rosa lay in wait for him, and as soon as he galloped past alone, Rosa attacked him. ‘We fell to the ground. He took his pistol out and shot at me. He got me, but I could still use my knife. I stuck it in him. I caught him in the shoulder, then pulled it out and gave him a new smile across his neck. I left him where he lay, spat on him and pissed on him. Then I galloped off.’ Once again alone and wounded, with nothing but his horse and his knife, he set off on his way, only this time in the opposite direction: Rosa was headed home. His dear mother began crying the minute she set eyes on him, begging him to leave, and his brothers and sisters cried too for fear of their stepfather’s fury. Rosa ordered them to get outside and hide behind the trees. His mother pleaded with him not to do anything, said things weren’t so terrible, and who would feed them all, and that she was worried that he, her dear son, would get killed. Rosa didn’t listen. He sat himself down in the shack with his mother’s pot of stew bubbling away. His stepfather came in, asked ‘Where is everyone? What are you doing here you Guaraní piece of shit? What do you want? I’m looking for you, you Indian bastard.’ ‘Me, an Indian?’ exclaimed the older man taking his knife out, ‘draw your knife and we’ll see who’s boss.’ Rosa drew his knife, they circled around the pot, facing each other. The old man struck at Rosa’s chest: Rosa dodged the blade and pushed the old man over. Then Rosa jumped on him, hauled him over, sat on his backside as if he was riding him, grabbed his hair and shouted you bastard, you beat my mother, you cut my face, and you hurt my brothers and sisters, and he slashed the man’s throat from top to bottom. He felt the man die, felt every last shudder of life ebbing out of that hateful body, which gradually slackened as the blood soaked away into the animal hide beneath. Rosa got to his feet and dragged the body outside, took out the hide to cover it up, shouted to his mother to come inside and feed his siblings, then dragged the old man’s body about a league into the marshland and threw him close to four caimans. He saw the animals rouse themselves from their lethargy and creep slowly forwards, knowing their prey wouldn’t run away. They ate the body. Rosa went back home, bid farewell to his mother, told his next oldest brother that it was his turn to be the man of the house, and rode off like someone whose lifeblood is draining away: he left never to return.

  I Was Burning My Bridges

  They’re cow parasites, cattle lice, Liz said to me one day. She was talking about gauchos in the same dispassionate tone as she had when she told me that strawberries were red; her voice was perfectly neutral. They’re horse flies too, I added, without hiding my scorn: I was burning my bridges. To leave you have to become another person. I’m not sure how I knew that, I was still so young then; I was leaving with the speed and force of a locomotive, one of those machines I’d sworn to myself I would see, and that I would indeed see one day advancing over pastureland and Indian settlements, pampa and mountains. I was becoming someone else and was leaving behind those who’d been mine: first La Negra, who had treated me roughly but also had her soft side. I can still remember her looking after me when I was very small. I remember a lullaby. I remember cool cloths on my forehead and poultices on my chest. And I had clothes and food and a language to speak and a house, if that’s what you can call those shacks made from mud and dung, with nothing for furniture but a pile of animal skins and bones: the leftovers from an
asado. Yes, Liz – who believed in work more than in God the Father – was right about gauchos being parasites on cows and horses. She was right about my people’s life of meat and water; we didn’t grow squashes or beans, we didn’t weave or fish, we barely hunted, didn’t use any wood other than fallen branches, and then only to make fire. We lived in a kind of stupor, sitting on the skulls of bulls and horses, wearing boots made from horses’ hooves, eating meat morning, noon and night, going to trade animal skins for caña, mate and tobacco in the general store, rounding up or branding cattle. We all used to sleep in a heap, on top of one another, writhing like a mound of larvae, under cattle hides in winter or near a fire made from dry sticks and cow and horse dung to ward off the mosquitoes in summer. In a heap. All of us. Pricks and cunts oozing with no regard for familial ties or taboos, just like a seething mass of larvae. I think La Negra started punishing me for that, when El Negro started to paw at me; she did it out of jealousy – even animals get jealous. I used to steer clear of him, I was scared of that toothless black drunkard from the day he arrived in the house and I tried to cling to her but she swore at me and hit me, so I began to stay away from the fire and put sticks beside me, hoping that if El Negro came near me, the sticks would fall over because he wouldn’t see them in the dark in his drunken state. I hid away with another orphan, a half-Indian boy who had ended up in the huts with us when his mother died. She’d been on her way to Buenos Aires and had fallen as she walked with the baby boy on her back. The gauchos found her unconscious and took her in out of pity. There was nothing they could do for her: she told them she’d escaped from the Indians and she wanted to go back to her family. She pleaded with them to take her boy to the city, and as she talked her face got paler and paler, until that was it. The poor boy just stayed there; they threw food to him, and he wandered from shack to shack like a stray dog, trying to fit in and make himself useful. It was in looking for shelter that he picked up the gaucho ways: he’d fetch and carry water, could light a fire even in a storm, and would fight with a puma if required. In the end he got noticed by the foreman, who decided he was slightly less larval than the rest of them, and taught him to work. He taught him metalworking, how to cut firewood from the few scrawny trees, and to look after the boss’s fruit trees. Raúl was his name, and when I fled from the Negros I got together with him. He was a sturdy little bull-necked gaucho with strong intelligent hands, a dazzling flash of beauty. He set traps with tree branches and we spread our animal skins out to lie on the grass. With him I knew what pleasure our bodies can bring, the sweet joy of being desired and celebrated. A couple of times El Negro, feeling cheated of his property, tried to stand up to Raúl, but he was old by then. And Raúl was a good man. He hardly grazed El Negro’s face. He ought to have killed him, I thought then, and I was right to think so: the old bastard put me up as the prize in a card game and Fierro beat him and between the two of them they dragged me to church by the hair, knackering two horses on the way, and married me off. I stopped speaking. There was nothing that could be done. Raúl looked at me from a distance and I looked back at him, and when my first child was born, Fierro saw he had Indian features. Fierro, who’d never seen himself in a mirror, and who only turned up two days after the birth, up to the eyeballs in caña. By early the next morning my beloved Raúl was dead, with his head split in two like a canyon. He must have been drinking and fallen over, people said. We all knew that wasn’t true. Raúl didn’t drink. By the time the foreman came back, we’d already moved on to another settlement. And although the foreman was very fond of Raúl, he wasn’t flesh and blood.