The Adventures of China Iron

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

  Fierro killed my Raúl, but I think he didn’t kill me because I was the only blonde china he’d touched in his life and I was his; that set him apart from the other men, because I was a trophy worthy of a landowner. He took us to another estancia and he went off to work as a mule driver. Months later he turned up, tired and sober, and saw his son. The boy, like Fierro, has moles that form a star in his groin. I saw Fierro’s eyes mist up and he spoke tenderly to me. I didn’t answer. I could never love that drunken bastard Fierro. I’d never been able to, and even less so after he killed my Raúl. Thankfully I didn’t see much of him. I was careful not to let anyone touch me and he didn’t touch me much either. Open up, he’d say every now and then, there’d be a few brief shudders inside me, then off he’d go. When he wasn’t driving his mules he was drinking at the general store or he was flat out on the ground asleep like the rest of them. I was drunk and I just kipped where I fell, he’d say. I didn’t care where he fell, as long as it wasn’t anywhere near me. When he did lie beside me, I thought about killing him, one night I grabbed his knife to bring it down hard on the back of his neck and at that point a thought occurred to me that made me freeze: where would I go? I stood stock still, the very effigy of a murderer: all the weight of the image of two hands brandishing the knife behind the head, back bent, breath held. I’d like to be able to say that a shaft of moonlight glinted off the blade, but I can’t. Everything about Fierro was filthy, even his knife.

  I didn’t have to kill him, they took him away. And I left without knowing where I was going. I betrayed him too. The only person I never betrayed was Raúl: we’d always planned to escape together.

  A Prophet with a Paintbrush

  Of Liz’s origins we knew less, only the little she told us: unlike me, she did have a father and mother, Scottish farmers, both redheads like her. Her father was a farmer more by accident than design. He’d wanted to be an artist and, to be fair, that’s what he was; he spent more time with his canvases than digging potatoes. His wife grumbled, exhausted, what with the vegetable garden and the children to look after, but she loved him and wanted him to paint; she was dazzled by his landscapes, with their diffuse blocks of light, the light of the Lord Jesus – as she saw it – believing the father of her children to be a prophet with a paintbrush. And in a way he was, says Liz, he thought that God was made of something a bit like the sun and he explained the world to her as blocks of colours. Even in complete darkness, when it seems as though He isn’t there, and we feel utterly abandoned, it’s just a matter of looking really hard: something will shine, something will guide us, we have to keep going and look for a spark. Her father would find those sparks in the livid aura around swirling Scottish clouds and piles of potato peelings, their outlines shining brightly; whirlwinds of shorn wool like fireflies against the cottony whiteness of a shifting sky. White on white was something old Mr Scott knew how to paint, and you could easily distinguish one white from another at a glance; he also knew how to depict the sun at its zenith, diffusing sea and pastures. He was a rustic Turner, Liz explained to me as she unrolled a few of her father’s canvases, and I understood what she meant by blocks of light, of course I did coming from the pampas, but I didn’t know what she meant by Turner, so she took out another canvas, Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth . It was a copy that her father had made to sell back home in his village. She then got out another one, which made an even bigger impression on me: a locomotive, black and ferocious, emerging from the slightly translucent yet thick orange light of dawn breaking over a river. You could just make out a little rowing boat; it’s Maidenhead Bridge on the River Thames, Liz said to me, a triumph of the Industrial Revolution, just like the locomotive that’s travelling westward from London. The painting was called Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway . The sky is thick because of smog, Liz explained to me: the air in London was dirty, it had specks of coal floating in it and those tiny particles did two things at once: they refracted and multiplied the dawn, and they made the air grimy. Turner was our prophet too. I liked all that light, her father Bruce Scott’s light, William Turner’s light with his locomotive and his little boat, a light that was so much like ours, yet so far away. I could feel that light inside me, in all of us and in everything we did out in the open air of the pampas, which was so much clearer, I thought, than the air in England. And I was right. I wanted to paint; Liz knew how, and so I got started.

  Brush in hand, fascinated by the palette of watercolours, I tried to paint the two of us with our oxen. It didn’t turn out that bad. Liz continued talking; she used to be as happy as anything going on walks with her father, and they would talk about life, about the books he got her to read, about her school, about what the future might hold. That future suddenly became clear when she met Oscar: she decided to leave to make her fortune in the far-off pampas. She didn’t know much about them, just that they were almost virgin territory, there for the taking. Her father urged her to go, telling her to follow that new American light and then come back to Scotland; he would be waiting for her. And there she was, guiding my hand that trembled from her touch, under the blue sky of that new world, going to look for the fortune that was hers and that would save her mother from the farm, save her father from everything that wasn’t painting, save her sisters from marriages not of their choosing, and save her brothers from the potatoes and from the British weather that was cold and miserable all year round.

  When Liz tired of talking she kissed me very softly, and this time I dared to slowly brush my tongue over her lips, slowly run my tongue over her tongue, aflame like Turner’s locomotive in the blaze of a London dawn. She pushed me away, oh so gently, and told me to keep going with the watercolour, it was going well.

  PART TWO

  THE FORT

  Dressed to the Nines

  Estreya would bring us his finds: he’d drop bones at our feet and sit wagging his tail proudly, as if bestowing gold upon us. With a little shiver at the idea our own skeletons could meet the same fate, we stroked his head, we embraced, we loved each other all the more amidst the stench of death in the vicinity of the fort. Our love grew stronger as we realised our precarious situation, our fragility heightening our desire. We began sleeping by the fire all together so as to keep watch permanently, something that was becoming more and more difficult as the year wore on: the nights grew longer, as did the shadows during the day. Liz had title deeds that certified ownership of the land she was heading for, letters sealed by the English aristocrat who’d sent her, and a document from Buenos Aires authorising the letters, but the question on our minds was, how could we be sure those savages in the Argentine Army actually know how to read? And even if they do know, we can’t be sure they won’t steal the deeds and kill us all. Early one morning Estreya woke us with a howl. Rosa and I went to see what the dog was trying to show us: it was six fresh Indian corpses with about six thousand chimangos picking at them and at each other, squabbling over the best bits. In short, the four men, one woman, and one child were now little more than carrion for the birds.

  We didn’t dwell on it. Forcefully, Liz took charge. We mustn’t let ourselves be taken by surprise; not only were we a British delegation, we also had to look the part. We had to follow protocol. She ordered us to change: Liz was a lady, I was a young Englishman, Rosa was a servant in proper uniform – there were even uniforms in the wagon, uniforms for every kind of position on the estancia according to the imagination of the aristocrat and his stewards, Liz and Oscar. Dressed to the nines, we travelled past that feeding ground for chimangos; me in my frock coat, Liz in her dress, and Rosa in his uniform, so much fancier than anything we’d see later.

  A Dust Cloud Can Linger

  Under the piercingly hot rays, a cloud of earth was hanging between the ground and the clear blue sky: we arrived at noon on one of the last days of summer. A dust cloud can linger, it can seem as much a part of the sky as the sun and the chimangos. But beware, raised dust means movement and movement me
ans danger: you need to be able to figure out who or what is causing it, stopping it from falling back to the ground, keeping it in the air in defiance of gravity. Rosa rode out in front, bolt upright in his uniform and astride his British saddle, that horrible thing he called it, even though it was obvious he felt much more secure in that attire, if a bit uncomfortable, half choked by the stiff collar, and seated atop that artefact that hindered his movements. Jogging along, he looked like an army general. He stopped just short of the cloud and a few moments later the curtain of dust in front of him cleared a little. That’s when we understood where the animals were coming from: all kinds of worms, grubs, cuys, hares, partridges, rats, vizcachas, assorted armadillos, ñandús, red deer, pumas, and wild boar hurtled towards us tracing bullet-straight lines before vanishing again into the nothingness of the pampa. When the dust had settled a bit more, and we saw the terracotta heads of gauchos appearing out of a ditch with a mountain of earth behind them, we realised what the line was that from up on the wagon we could see stretching across the horizon. The gauchos indicated the route to Rosa and went back to their digging. Now the line was unbroken. We could just make out a figure on horseback, a soldier as dirty as the gauchos. He spoke to someone, surveyed the wagon, paused, and then rode off at a trot, presumably to inform someone of our arrival. Rosa came back to us, dismounted, requested a brush and set about smartening up his uniform, saddle and horse. Let’s go, said Liz, and we set off for the entrance of the fort. The fort was called Las Hortensias, though it didn’t deserve a name that evoked a flower in any sense.

  Do Come In, My Dear

  We were led through the fort to the main building. It was huge, spotlessly white, and glossy like the hide of a strong, healthy animal. It had a veranda around it, floors that were so highly polished I was afraid of slipping over, a garden full of flowers and birdsong, and a covered well. In the middle of the garden there was a chair covered with red fabric. Once I had touched that fabric I couldn’t leave it alone; its threads were short, and if I stroked it one way the colour was darker, the other way and it became lighter, and it was so smooth. Sitting right there waiting for us was the Colonel. The moment he saw us he stood up. He bowed. He kissed Liz’s hand and began speaking to her. Within two words he knew she was British and pronounced himself delighted to be conversing with someone born in a nation so great as fair Albion’s estate, slipping effortlessly into rhyming English. Liz presented him with the copy her father had made of Turner’s locomotive painting; the Colonel’s joy knew no bounds in either language. It’s as if, he said, you knew that my purpose in life is to bring trains, the engines of progress, to Argentina. Do come in, my dear, I shall have you shown to your rooms, make yourselves at home, I’ll have a bath filled for you to rinse off the dust of the pampas, there’s a room for your brother too, do please make your way along. Then he turned to one of his servant girls: china! Take the visitors to the guest rooms. No sooner had Liz stepped onto the parquet floor, onto the rugs, and seen the pictures on the walls, than she visibly revived like a drooping plant in the rain: she swelled and became radiant, her eyes, her skin, her teeth, everything about her shone. And I finally saw what she’d so often described to me: in a wooden box with a glass lid, which she told me was called a display case, there was a ring. And set in the middle of that ring was a diamond, the stone for which men kill. It was beautiful, as if all the purest water in the world were contained in a single drop, so light and strong.

  Colours Became Detached from Their Objects

  Colours became detached from their objects and floated over them, obscuring them and leaving them behind like dead bodies, like broken eggshells impregnated with reds and whites. White, I could see the whiteness of Liz’s skin rise above the dining table, above the delicacies Hernández had spread before us, above Hernández himself, who was holding forth about livestock farming being a form of civilisation nowadays, a profession requiring scientific methods and refined intelligence, above Hernández’s voice rose the whiteness of Liz’s skin, above the servants who were continually refilling our glasses, above the crockery – oh the crockery! that white porcelain with a blue design of a wood, a little house, a river, it was so lovely – above the jug and wash bowl, above the state of culture of a society that values equally a work of art and a machine, a woven cloth and a fleece, above the silver cutlery that was ranged on the table like a glittering arsenal and which I had no idea how to use, so I just copied Liz, the whiteness rose above me too as I ate salad when she ate it, cut up my bread when she cut hers, speared and cut the Beef Wellington – red cow meat like the kind I was used to but surrounded by vegetables and encased in a sort of shell called puff pastry, the white of Liz’s skin rose above the wine – oh the wine! – that day I tasted red wine for the first time and my pulse quickened and I began to see the white that floated above everything, above the glasses and bottles, above the whole room’s dark mahogany panelling, above me, above the pink silk dress that she was wearing that had a boat neckline, no, a square neckline, a French gown, she explained to me and she’d already told me about France, a country full of elegant people and artists and women of easy virtue, she also had to explain to me what easy virtue was and how only women can have it, the pale gleam floated into every nook and cranny, the whiteness rose above Hernández’s voice, which filled the room with its agricultural industries and the global population boom which clusters in particular places determined by their richness in natural resources, above the charms of social life, and above many other circumstances, above Liz herself I saw that whiteness, her cleavage and the roundness of her breasts which no dress could hide, her white skin radiated round the ranchowner’s dining room together with the red in her flowing locks which reflected her breasts as a river reflects, those red swathes of hair that moved to different currents, like rows of millet blown this way and that by the winds, oh! all the factors that have made it imperative to develop our agriculture and livestock, Liz pushed her hair across her face, hiding and revealing it like a child playing peek-a-boo, now you see it, now you don’t, which not only satisfy our basic needs, and her eyelids, her curved red eyelashes played the same game with her almost transparent blue eyes, those ghostly eyes of hers, and her hair fell over her bosom and my God! I was smitten, and the Colonel saying that it will also provide for the comfort and wellbeing of the working classes, and for the luxury of those who are well off, I was paralysed, and it was all I could do to raise my right hand and lift the wineglass to my lips, that white and that red had overshadowed all the other marvellous things I came to know that night, crystal wineglasses, the tablecloth embroidered with pheasants, flower vases brimming with flowers, wrought silver salvers, I was speechless, but then nobody expected me to speak, since Liz had introduced me as her little brother Joseph, Joseph Scott; the Colonel was getting worked up, bullish, I saw his back lengthen, his chest broaden, his beard become redder and curlier, he seemed to see what I saw, Liz moved like a puma that knows its own strength, Liz was a mighty beast, she was life itself displaying its finest flesh, its most alive and lively flesh, and the Colonel droned on about his cows, rural industry, about how barely thirty years before he’d seen the beacon of civilisation come to Argentina, Hernández talked about mares as he watched Liz shake out her mane, a chestnut mare rearing up on her hind legs, strong and burnished with white and red and pink as the old man carried on with his ode to progress in the pampas, progress that he was bringing, leaving behind the uncivilised ways of previous ranchers, they weren’t a real industry, besides breaking in wild horses, it’s so important to transform those wild animals into well-trained, useful animals he said, spittle drooling from his lips, and on he went, detailing the introduction of shorthorn bulls, English race horses, Friesian cattle, Rambouillet sheep and rams, the wonders of racial improvement with European breeds, and from there he jumped to the transformation that he personally was bringing about: we are transforming a seething mass of larvae into a workforce, just imagine, my dear, it won’t be pa
inless but nevertheless, we’ve had to sacrifice our compassion, we must all sacrifice ourselves in order to consolidate the Argentine Nation, he was saying, beginning to slur his words but speaking as forcefully as ever, he was physically expanding, Hernández was undergoing a volcanic eruption, his face began twitching, we are putting the music of civilisation into the flesh of these larvae, they will become a workforce whose hearts beat to the rhythm of the factory, our bugles play the rhythm of production to discipline their anarchic souls, he said, and his eyes began to wander, each in its own direction, then they sought each other out until he went cross-eyed, then he went purple, his eyeballs almost touching each other, and finally he roared: Everything else is savage, primitive and brutal! and the rural patriarch’s head collapsed onto the table, his mouth spurting a strange kind of seed at us as he fell: a jet of vomit came out, his head split his plate in two, splashing the remains of the Beef Wellington with blood, glasses overturned, spreading wine across the tablecloth, the water jugs toppled and dripped over the edge of the table onto the floor, the liquid, like Hernández’s words, leaving a sticky stain, and a pig’s head intended for the third course leapt to the ground as if it were a bird or a kangaroo – yes, Liz had told me about them in the wagon too, there were kangaroos in the world like huge hares with a bag on their belly to carry their babies around, and they stood on two legs and moved in huge bounds.