The Adventures of China Iron

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

  I Climaxed Too

  At that moment Liz stood up, called the manservant, and ordered him to take his master away and clean him up, then she called one of the chinas and instructed her to heat water for a bath, came over to me and took the wineglass from my hand, took my hand in hers and led me to her room, a huge bedroom with a huge bath, the bed was like a luxurious wagon without wheels, it even had a roof held up by carved wooden posts, and from this roof hung a canopy of the finest silk, golden and gauzy, suspended in airy folds like wisps of cloud. Needless to say I’d never set foot in a room like that before, I’d never seen anything but dirt-floored hovels where we lived and slept on animal skins, and the wagon, and now there was this bed that they called a four-poster, the silk, the gently flickering yellow of the oil lamps, an armchair, where I perched on the edge, intimidated by so many new things and by the red and white of Liz which carried on growing and expanding, until there was hardly anything left outside her dominion, and when she sat down beside me and those cool blue eyes of hers looked into mine, her power was absolute. Even more so when she pinned me against the armchair and kissed me at length, hours on end she kissed me, nobody had ever kissed me so much, and I came to know the warm, wet roughness of her tongue, her saliva spiralling between my teeth, her teeth on my lips, and I came to know more, I came to know so much that night when I first experienced wine and four-poster beds and bathtubs and crystal glasses and ranchers’ ejaculations, I came to know those delicate smooth hands opening my shirt with deft strength, taking my breasts, caressing them gently at first, awakening desire, then squeezing them, rubbing them till it hurt, then sucking them, easing the pain she had caused, Liz sucked my nipples like a calf then bit them like a dog then went back to licking them, the way a baby lamb like Braulio would, and she kissed me again. And at last I recovered the ability to move and to do what I had been wanting to do for hours, to uncover her white cleavage, to place my hands between the silk of her dress and the skin of her breasts, pulling them out and resting them on my hands like the banquet had lain on the silver salvers, at dinner I copied her manners, now I mirrored her caresses, I licked her nipples, which were as pink as the pink silk of the dress she was still wearing until I plucked up the courage to start to undo it, but she grabbed my hands with unexpected strength and stood up, lifted me up and carried me to the bed, where she finished removing my trousers, all the while saying my Josephine and good boy and pushing her tongue into me as if to reassure me, to comfort me and also to lay claim to me, she stripped me naked, took her knickers off, and spread her skirt over me, caressing my whole body with its silk, before positioning herself on top of me, she rested the hollow of her cunt on the edge of mine and began moving back and forth, sliding on my slipperiness, on my sticky secret flesh, on my throbbing cunt, bubbling like boiling water, and I watched Liz from beneath as she swung back and the silk dress no longer covered my eyes, her breasts swaying, her neck arching back towards her heels, red hair cascading down her back almost to her waist, along the curve that began at her neck, her whole body went tense, even her cunt, and then she climaxed, melting into a puddle over me, pouring herself over me, she held me tight, finally allowing me to kiss her, she let me turn her over, face up on the bed, she let me spread her legs and put my fingers inside her, where she was all pink and red like the rest of her, and I felt that soft, wet muscular flesh and licked it, then she let me sit on top of her and find the right place for that new rocking motion, I gazed at her fair skin, I gazed into her clear blue eyes surrounded by red hair spilling over the pillow, and, at last, I climaxed too.

  Tangled Legs

  When I opened my eyes shortly afterwards – we’d hardly slept – Liz and I were interwoven, her red and my straw-coloured hair, her warm slightly bitter breath and mine probably similar, her large freckly breasts and mine the same but smaller, our tangled legs, and – judging by the sticky mass that stretched like elastic between the two of us – our crotches must have been pressed together all night. I’d barely stirred when my body began to rub against hers without my intervention, as if my body had its own plans. Rays of clear light were coming in through the shutters, traversing the shadows, and burnishing all the tiny specks that float in the air of rooms where the light filters in little by little. Just then there was a knock at the door and breakfast was announced. They had breakfast early on the estancia. Later I found out that getting up at the crack of dawn was a military custom, and it wasn’t just decided by the activities or inactivities the day had in store. A deep kiss, enough to flood me down to my feet, was Liz’s way of saying good morning, and then I sneaked off to my room to get dressed and to make sure I emerged through the right door.

  The Colonel was waiting for us in the main hall with two of the chinas; one was serving him mate, the other offered little pastries that were a delicacy of the pampa, a kind of flower with many petals or star with many rays and candied sweet potato in the middle. Later, that self-same girl would show me how to make them. Hernández was ashen and we were extremely pale. He was embarrassed, or at least seemed to be: he didn’t speak to us, he just showered insults on the chinas, damn Indians, are you trying to burn my tongue off with boiling mate and burning pastries, what are you, idiots or murderers? He didn’t look at us either until Liz touched his hand, Colonel, how are you feeling this morning? We all ate far too much yesterday, and we were sick during the night too. That cheered the old guy up; he looked at her, took her hand and kissed it, and began to talk without the venom of just a moment before and without the solemnity of the previous night. You could tell he was one of those men that goes all serious with drink, because alcohol makes some people pompous, some tender, some argumentative, and they can all be the same person depending on the circumstances. I knew that only too well from my husband and his drunken antics, which would become legendary when other people started singing his songs in places where he’d never set foot, as I would discover right there in Hernández’s fort. My dear girl, yes, we ate too much, but my delight in having you here is also just too much! Let’s have some of my eggs, some of my bread and cheese, and let’s drink some of this mate made from the restorative leaves of this fine land and then let’s go out for a walk to blow away the cobwebs in the clean pampa air. Though it clearly doesn’t have a salutary effect on everyone; just look at these cretins, these moronic Indians don’t even know how to brew a decent mate.

  The sun was still mild as we followed them out, him and the girls, one carrying hot water for the mate and the other carrying the pastries as though the food and drink were part of their bodies, or rather the other way around, the girls formed part of a single body of mate and food, a mere appendage to the needs of the Colonel. The shadows were still long and all the shades of green of the landscape and the pasture itself had the vividness of tender shoots, although little was growing any more; I felt alive, like an animal, like my Estreya, who ran towards me full of happiness at the new day which was always, for my little dog, a great feat or triumph, never something to be taken for granted. I also felt strangely alone, as if separating my body from Liz’s had opened a wound: I was but a few steps away from her and yet, or maybe for that reason, seeing her so much herself, so complete without me though she wasn’t going anywhere, made me ache and awakened my fears.

  My love sickness was interrupted by the sight of a wall of gauchos as highly polished as British boots, sparkling clean gauchos shining like the Colonel’s Bohemian crystal glasses, coiffed and elegant, clean-shaven, with their hair slicked back, I could almost swear they were wearing cologne, and dressed in brown breeches, white shirts, and black canvas slippers. Just like back in the wagon I was surprised to learn that Indians can be heroic, I was struck dumb by the gauchos, it was a kind of revelation that they could be so neat and tidy, forgetting that I myself had gone from china to lady and from lady to young gentleman. The dance that the gauchos performed to the cries of the foreman had two parts, One! Two! One! Two! like a miserable kind of music for giving orders. Th
e gauchos, face down, each on a white sheet, raised and lowered their rigid bodies like planks, using the strength of their arms alone. Gymnastics, said Liz approvingly to the Colonel, How wonderful! You are such a modern gentleman. Press-ups is what they were doing, and they were synchronised in a way that reminded me of flocks of birds back at the settlement; some birds would weave themselves together as if they were one, one thing made of separate parts. I’ve liked watching birds ever since I was a girl, and I still do; they just keep on interweaving together as if nothing at all in the world has changed. Although, I wasn’t so sure I liked watching those gauchos. When they were done they all stopped at once, rolled their sheets into small bundles, hung them from a loop on their belts, stood one behind the other keeping an arm’s distance apart and then began jogging in a circle. This gymnastics was a kind of clumsy dance. The gauchos finally stopped, opened their legs a bit, and, keeping them straight, bent their torsos down until they could grab their feet in their hands. They did this many times until the foreman ordered them to Stand at Ease!

  Good morning, my gaucho brothers! shouted the Colonel. Good morning our master and brother, God grant you a long life! answered the virile chorus of young men standing in a formation of five lines of twenty, in order of height. Time to recite some poetry, my gauchos! Yes, Sir! And standing firmly to attention, with their heads held high they chorused:

  Friendship is our golden rule,

  We help our friends in need.

  We rescue them when life’s at stake

  But ne’er on them demands shall make;

  A loyal friend will always take

  This rule to be his creed.

  Unity in brotherhood

  Protects us from our foe.

  Be true to all your gaucho kin

  And stick with them through thick and thin

  (When danger lurks, a fight within

  Would brotherhood o’erthrow).

  Gaucho brothers, you’re my friends

  And we are bound as one;

  Boss and gauchos, naught divides,

  Like heads and tails – one coin, two sides,

  We are as one, in this take pride,

  Like bullets from a gun.

  Like Indian chieftains with their steeds,

  Like fatherland and estate,

  Just as the flower with scent is cloaked

  Together our destinies are yoked

  And all for one we gaucho folk

  Will make our country great.

  Liz jumped up and applauded, almost dancing, rippling the frills of the delicate white dress she was wearing that morning; she loved the gauchos’ performance. When she got tired of clapping she sat down again and Hernández stood up, took off his hat and said Lord, we thank you for the gifts you have bestowed on us, grant us a good day’s work, then he launched in with: Our Father of gauchos, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come to this estancia, thy will be done on these fields as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and deliver us from evil, Amen.

  Then the Colonel ordered Get to work, brothers! and the gauchos went off in separate groups. Hernández told us that what the gauchos had recited was just a few little verses he himself had dashed off during an unfortunate spell he’d spent holed up in a hotel on the Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires. One day I’d see the port city for myself with the avenue with its lights and bars, with its theatre and Spanish-style houses. So anyway, he went on, he’d written the first part of his poem about a gaucho outlaw there after coming to the realisation that gauchos were only good-for-nothing larvae because they were trapped on the estancias with no schooling, and because the city folk exploited the countryside and were even greater parasites than the gauchos themselves.

  What we’d heard was from the second part of the poem, written after Hernández had restored his name to honour, and was living in Indian Territory with his own soldiers, who were learning to be farmhands and lookout men, drovers and dab hands with the bolas, sharp shooters and vets, skilled horse riders and horse breakers. It was no easy task, having to form men for this century, it was an educational undertaking that few understood. Many said there was no need to spare the blood of gauchos, but he did spare it: he considered the gauchos every bit a part of the estancia as any one of the cows and he wouldn’t let a single one die without good reason. He’d even written the continuation of his poem, an instructive booklet it was, he explained, a manual for the education of agricultural labourers, so that they could truly understand that they, the farmhands and the master of the estancia, like the Colonel and his soldiers, were all one thing. And the only country they were going to get was the one they were building for the colonels and landowners, who, like him, had to learn to do everything themselves in a burgeoning nation, they were all in the same boat.

  Look, look, come up here with me, my dear girl! – around midday the mate gourd was topped up with a bit of caña to whet the appetite – and Hernández began climbing up the lookout post. We all followed him even though he was only talking to Liz. Once at the top he spread his arms out in a lordly gesture, taking in the entire horizon and turning around like a fine lady dancing a minuet with dainty little steps, quite at odds with his hefty physique, and he went on: What can you see? Nothing but my own work. There are no cities, no people, no roads, no other farmers, no culture. There is nothing here, my dear . Do you really think they could build anything on their own? What did they build? Hovels, no more sophisticated than the skeletons and hides they put inside them! They are creatures of the land, my good lady, they are one and the same as the land, they are made of the same stuff as they eat, and they never emerge from the primordial mud. They need me, they need us, of course we need them too, but they can be replaced by others. No one can replace me, I have sold a million books, I have led troops into thirty-six battles, I have cultivated so many fields, hither and yon, further than you can see with those pretty little eyes of yours that don’t miss a thing. Give me another mate , damn you! he barked, turning to the china, what, have you fallen asleep? Fill it right up. He sucked on the metal straw, and started climbing down again just as a couple of gauchos began to climb up, I think so that if the Colonel lost his footing they would break his fall with their own bodies.

  He didn’t fall on top of them. Liz looked fascinated, she was looking at him with something like love, which made it hard for me to breathe. We went for a walk, the old man taking Liz’s arm and Rosa and I following a bit behind, with Rosa ranting about how he was being treated on Hernández’s estancia. He too had had to wash with soap: the gauchos washed every night before eating. All the unmarried men slept in the kitchen around the fire; they wouldn’t let them set up home on their own so as to avoid certain vices. What vices, Rosa? You know what I’m talking about. No, I said, What vices? Of men lying together or looking for girls and then not being fit for work because their master only wants them to work, to be clean, to learn to read, and to go to mass. Fiestas are forbidden except on Saturdays and even then he only allows them a tiny drop of caña, never mind how much he puts away himself. No one can have more than one girl. They have to get up at the bugle call, wash, get dressed, have breakfast, do their exercises and then start work at the next bugle call. They do different kinds of jobs, some that aren’t even meant for gauchos: metal work, wood work, milling the grain, that’s one thing, but growing flowers and fruit, baking bread, patching up shoes, sewing shirts, that’s women’s work, Jo, and then there’s sowing corn and millet and squash and vegetables, the master makes them eat vegetables, and then they have to fight for all they’ve grown with the insects that devour everything, the way pumas eat hares, and on top of all that the frosts and the hail. Being a farmer is like being at war, Rosa explained to me, all the more determined in his plans to raise cattle and nothing else.

  I hurried to catch up, Liz and Hernández were chatting under a red-leafed tree, sitting on a rug spread with fruit, water, cheese, bread and win
e. That was called a picnic. He was explaining his plan to her: what he was creating was more than just an estancia, slowly but surely he was building a modern city, he was putting each gaucho through a process that started as soon as they arrived at the fort, until they became a part of it. The gaucho would be given the hardest tasks first, like digging the ditch that was gradually enclosing the estancia, not so much because the Colonel considered it particularly useful but because he needed something to get the new men used to hard graft, to tire them out so that at night they would collapse exhausted instead of getting drunk, and thus there would be no need to punish them – you have to have a cool head to know how to drink – the Colonel needed to get them used to waking up and going to sleep at the same time every day, get them used to the cycles of activity and to hygiene. It was also a rite of passage, the ditch was almost a branding iron, something to mark the men; from then on a new life had begun. He made them dig a grave for their pasts, a frontier, a before and after. It was the first step in shaking them out of the larva stage. Then they would begin to help out those who were already skilled at diverse tasks. And there was the school. Those who had been there longer could now read and write. Hernández let them have the Bible because religion teaches good things like monogamy. And obedience to the Lord. And you’re the Lord, aren’t you? Liz asked him and the two of them laughed and the first crack appeared in my new-found faith. It didn’t matter, I said to myself, trembling but also happy, if life was going to present me with more nights like the one I’d just had I wasn’t going to need a god.