Fandango and Other Stories

by Bryan Karetnyk

  “As if you don’t know,” said Esther scornfully.

  “Ah!” The giant let out a heavy sigh. “Will you ride?”

  Esther mounted the horse.

  Dribb turned to Horn. “Farewell, sir,” he said, awkwardly fixing his round eyes on him and stroking his chin.

  “Horn,” said Esther, “don’t go near the swamp. If you do, be sure to drink a lot of vodka. Otherwise you might find yourself ill for a month or two.”

  In the saddle, swaying supplely from side to side atop the horse’s undulating back, she unwittingly cast her radiant beauty into Horn’s line of sight. Perhaps for the first time he looked upon her immaculate figure and her face, so full of life, with a man’s gaze. This couple now riding away pricked him with something like the surprise of disappointment.

  “Hallo! Hop! Hop!” Dribb bellowed, urging the horse on as he bobbed up and down heavily in the saddle.

  “Goodbye, Esther!” Horn called after her.

  She turned around quickly; her face, softened by a fleeting smile, expressed something more than this.

  The pale reflection of youth stirred within Horn’s soul; he took his hat and, with a low bow, threw it in the direction of the retreating figures. Esther, smiling silently, nodded and disappeared among the undergrowth. The giant never once looked around, and when his broad, rounded back vanished along with Esther, Horn thought that young Dribb had been more impolite than was necessary for a savage.

  The day unfolded, ablaze with a torrid blue heat; the sultriness, pregnant with resinous vapors, was dizzying. Again a feeling of profound indifference welled up in Horn; as he absentmindedly stroked the stock of his rifle, he reached the conclusion that the virgin land had lost the charm it once held for the complex apparatus of a soul nurtured on thought. A land that is too mighty and rich wearies the nerves, as bright light does vision. Cleared and disciplined, no more than a pretty view, it could be a wondrous comfort, a lover that never wearied of caresses, a sweet-perfumed bath for those struck ill, frozen by the very thought of the river’s vastness.

  “What about me?” Horn asked of the sky and the earth. “Me?” He recalled his hunting and the trembling of wild bodies, the feeling of self-possession in the midst of danger, the dark flight of the night, the sleep-clouded eyes of the dawn, the gloomy bliss of the forest—and triumphantly he straightened up. Within his self, he was not yet a dead man, nor was he a castrato, nor a beggar in a strange garden. His detachment was founded on reflection. He was himself—Horn.

  In a voice that sounded as though he were dying, the stout fellow groaned—“Oof!”—every time the entrance door flew open, its pulley squealing, and an explosive column of light flashed down on the earthen floor of the little inn. As an innkeeper, he was grateful for the guests; as a man, he cursed them with his each and every thought.

  Yet the guests preferred to see in this stout fellow only an innkeeper and ruthlessly demanded their peach schnapps, beer, rum, and palm wine. Suffering all the while, the stout fellow would clamber down into the cellar, climb up ladders, and, damp with perspiration, retake his place atop his high wicker stool.

  A game was going on in one corner, clouds of tobacco smoke hovered over a pile of wide-brimmed hats; the characteristic rattle of dice mixed with profanity and the clicking of purses. It was relatively quiet; the walls of this serai, which bore the name The Green Conch, had seen real fights, blood, and games of knives whose stakes were life and death. From time to time young strangers would appear with tight leather belts, suspiciously clean hands, and a pile of trinkets; they would coolly and politely play for any sum and would leave the colonists scratching their heads and spitting.

  Lanphier came in unnoticed; his bony body seemed capable of crawling through the gap under the door. More drunk than he had been that morning, holding his pipe between his teeth, he slumped himself onto the gamblers’ table and burst into peals of silent laughter. For a moment the dice stopped clattering against the table; with a look of bemusement, their faces turned to the new arrival.

  “Now, here’s a thing!” the convict wheezed after he stopped laughing, having sensed that the gamblers’ patience was at the end of its tether. “He told the truth: and such a fine young lad, too!”

  “Who?” inquired the stout man on the stool.

  “The new master of the lake.” Lanphier lowered his voice and began to speak slowly. “You see, I paid him a visit today. He’s a fine fellow, to be sure. ‘Were I the governor,’ he said, ‘I’d set fire to this colony from the middle and all four corners.’ He said, ‘They’re all swine and swindlers, and those a little better are fools—as stupid as a thousand crocodiles.’”

  “You’re a master of tall tales,” said the owner of a coffee plantation, breathing heavily. “You’re lying.”

  Lanphier’s eyes glimmered darkly.

  “I should be dead now,” he shouted, “if this man’s aim were a hair’s breadth better! I accused him of being arrogant and he threw a bullet my way just as cold-bloodedly as if it were a pellet of bread. I jumped out the window quicker than a lizard.”

  “Admit it, you’re lying,” the innkeeper yawned.

  The old man said nothing. Beneath his wrinkled cheeks his jaws convulsed. The gamblers returned to their game. They did not believe Lanphier, but each of them stowed away in a dark corner of his brain these “people as foolish as crocodiles, swindlers, and swine.”

  VI.

  Craning his neck, Bekeko looked up. A monkey was hanging from its tail below a patch of sky; its round, childlike yet old eyes quickly took in the figure of the idiot, sometimes getting distracted and pondering the distance to the next tree.

  Bekeko gave an amicable nod, winked, and with his hands invited the animal to climb down, but the experienced capuchin began screeching incredulously and with alarm, at times pulling hideous faces. Bekeko laughed. A painful, euphoric feeling tore through his mangy little body, and he began to choke with ludicrous delight, shaking from the unbearable excitement. The capuchin, like all living things, he placed above himself, and with polite perseverance, fearing to offend the furry acrobat, he continued his exhortations.

  Then, looking more carefully at the monkey’s wrinkled face, he shuddered and winced; a vague apprehension shook his gaiety. There could be no doubt about it: the capuchin was getting ready to crack Bekeko’s skull open with its teeth and perhaps even sink them into his lean stomach.

  “Now, now …” the agitated man muttered in fright, taking a step back.

  He could no longer bring himself to look up and looked around anxiously, in the hope of finding a branch with which he might defend himself. Under the sky hung a beast of enormous proportions, which for a time had been pretending to be small, but now Bekeko saw it all: a trap had been set for him, and he had fallen into it in the most foolish way. Not yet certain on which side danger lurked (but for the old fellow with a tail), he began to back off, stumbling and trembling with fear. But his enemies lost no time; invisible, they silently crawled through the grass, pricking Bekeko’s bare feet with thorns that painfully stung his skin. The sudden suspicion that an ambush lay in wait behind him brought him out in a sweat. Unsure of what to do, he shifted from one foot to the other, afraid to move, filled with the mad terror of the forest’s excruciating silence and the green giants covering their faces.

  When the enemy did appear, inquisitively examining Bekeko’s puny figure, the idiot screamed, hurled a heavy yellow pellet at this adversary, and slumped to the ground, swooning in the dismal expectation of death. Horn hesitated. Almost frightened, though not by ghosts, he turned over in his hands the little nugget that Bekeko had launched at him. A powerful excitement gripped him; his eyes glittering with surprise, his throat dry from the sudden onset of exhilaration, without thinking, the hunter threw down this dull, dirty lump, forgetting all about Bekeko, the forest, and time.

  The capuchin was still there, swinging; puffing out its cheeks, it pulled an angry face and, having spotted the rifle, wrathfully
gritted its teeth. Then with a noise, it jumped to the neighboring tree, began to hiss, tossed a large walnut at Horn, and dashed headlong away, diving into a thicket.

  Horn looked around. He was pale, enrapt, and finding it difficult to order his thoughts. Despite himself, they flew quicker than grapeshot. The dark seething of his soul demanded release, action; the forest had to be filled with sounds capable of drowning out the screaming silence. Yet its old, indolent splendor dozed all around, indifferently enfolding a confused, pale man in its solemn embraces.

  “Bekeko!” said Horn. “Bekeko!”

  The idiot stuck his head out fearfully from behind a tree trunk. Horn softened his voice, which was almost imbued with a tenderness for the exhausted freak, and he carefully examined this strange being that reminded him of a gnome.

  “Bekeko,” said Horn, “don’t you recognize me?”

  The idiot raised his eyes, unsure whether to say a word. The hunter gently touched his arm, but he immediately jerked it away: a piercing shriek rent the forest. Bekeko was like a frightened hedgehog that had rolled itself into a ball.

  “Very well, then,” Horn continued, as if agreeing with Bekeko on some point. “I’m really not your enemy. I’ll go now, only tell me, my youngling, wherever did you find that glittering little nugget? I need it. Do you understand? For me and Esther. We need a good few of these little nuggets. If you’re good and tell me, Esther will give you some sugar.”

  He reached out his hand and immediately clenched his fist, as if the dim glimmer of gold burnt his skin.

  “Esther …” the idiot muttered indecisively, lifting his head, “will give … sugar!”

  He began blinking plaintively and was again lost in the hazy void of madness. Horn sighed impatiently.

  “Esther,” he quietly repeated, leaning into Bekeko. “You understand, don’t you? Esther!”

  Bekeko’s face broadened as his wide, protruding lips formed a smile. The arduous work of association had been accomplished within him. His dark mind had managed to link together sugar, a name, a man with a rifle, and a woman’s image that floated like a bright, indistinct blur. All of a sudden, Bekeko blossomed with an almost comprehending grimace, one of whining, convulsive laughter.

  “Esther,” he slowly pronounced, scrutinizing the hunter with a frown.

  “Yes,” Horn sighed. His whole body was being torn away, to a feverish intoxication, by his searches. “Esther needs little nuggets like this. Where did you find them?”

  “There!” Bekeko cried, waving his hand and clearly coming to his senses. “Little blue river.”

  “The stream?” Horn asked.

  “Water.” The idiot nodded affirmatively.

  “Water,” Horn repeated insistently.

  “Water,” Bekeko answered, like an echo.

  Horn fell silent. The north, a little blue river, and a little nugget of gold, no bigger than a bullet.

  “Bekeko,” he said, as he began to move off. “Remember: Esther will give sugar.”

  He was already far away from the spot where the frightened half-man sat squirming, and he himself did not notice this. He walked hurriedly, taking great strides, suffused by an unbearable anxiety, as if he were afraid of being late, of losing something of incredible importance. Later Horn would remember everything, starting with Bekeko and ending with that night, as though it were the vague memory of a dream, full of soundless music, one that had swept past in the blink of an eye. A sense of life’s unreality enveloped him: remembering fragments of the past, like a dream about a flock of clouds, and linking this with his present, he experienced the rapture of a seafarer who, in the midst of a fog, spies the virgin shore of an uncharted continent, and the anxiety of a man faced with a stranger lying in wait for him. His body grew stronger and somehow lighter; his face, softened by daydreaming, became engrossed in thought and smiled, as though he were reading an interesting, compelling book, in which grief and rapture, humor and tenderness had been interwoven in a subtle pattern. Tree trunks with the thickness of a well-proportioned hut reached up to the sky like pillars, and he felt like a small child, entrusted to the dependable, mysterious care of the forest, the green depths of the thicket, which recalled the disquieting twilight of rooms engulfed in a deep silence. A little blue river flowed before his eyes, and in its damp sand gold slept innocently, a mighty power, young, like shoots of grass, never yet having known the trembling of human fingers or the lascivious gaze of bourgeois people possessed of an insatiable hunger. He walked in one direction, grudging every step that diverted him whenever he had to pass a tree trunk or a knoll. Gradually, with frowns and smiles, he reached a glittering jungle of the imagination, a thicket of dreams that were no less intoxicating than wine. He was like one who, on the verge of sleep, hears voices in a neighboring room, which mingle with the blossoming of fairy tale episodes, inspiring in his liberated mind his own outlandish prologues. It was everything and nothing, doubt in success and a fierce confidence in it, the feeling of a criminal who leaves prison with empty hands only to find a seven-shot revolver, the impetuous course of desires; his breathless soul was in a hurry to touch the future, while his body, insensible to fatigue, quickened his steps.

  It was that hour of day when, lazily meditating, the evening draws its attentive eyes toward the earth, and the noise of the cicadas rings out more softly, sensing the wary gaze of the Unseen, at work lengthening the shadows of the tree trunks. The forest thinned out, yawning vistas ended in the purple of cliffs, glittering in the blood of the sun, wounded by Diana. Shards of quartz, traces of past earthquakes, flashed yellow as they reflected the light of dawn, and the brief cawing of a cockatoo rang out obstinately and with angry satisfaction. Horn pressed on, his legs moving of their own accord.

  Half an hour later, he caught sight of the water. Of course, it was that same little blue river, a narrow stream with the sky at its bottom and the brilliance of sandbanks as pure as gray faience. From a distance it looked like a blue ribbon among a nymph’s green tresses. Its line, cut by the sprawling peaks of individual groups of trees, trailed off toward a rocky grotto black with vines, inwrought crevices, and overhangs, like the folds of green rugs falling down toward the water. Hardly able to move his legs in the damp clutch of clinging grass, Horn made his way toward the blue ribbon and stopped to inhale the sweet, musty aroma of seaweed.

  Here, for the first time, he realized that thirst was relentlessly tormenting his body, and he very nearly fell to his knees, cupping in his palm the warm liquid, like boiling water that had cooled. The limpid drops streamed down his chin and fingers like rainwater. He would gulp down as much as he could, catch his breath, exhale, and again dip his hand into the warm depths.

  The gratification filled him with a weakness that came on suddenly, a heavy lethargy in each of his limbs, a reluctance to move. He gazed at the riverbed, but his eyes were pained by the sun playing on the submerged sand. Gazing more intently, Horn brought his face closer to the very surface of the water, almost touching it with his eyelashes. He spent about two minutes like this; his body shuddered with a momentary, fleeting tremor, and the blood flowed back to his blanched cheeks faster than the shadows of clouds encompassing the plain.

  Yellow scintillations, gently glimmering in the water’s refraction, dappled the untainted riverbed, and the more Horn looked, the more difficult it became to distinguish pebble from gold. It rested mysteriously in the water’s depths, and from its dim kernels little invisible, tinkling fountains struck Horn’s pupils, ringing in his ears like the rapid influx of blood. He broke into peals of laughter and cried out loudly. The trembling sound of his voice echoed in the heart of the forest with a faint rumble before fading away. Horn stood up.

  Everything seemed to him unspeakably beautiful, imbued with the triumph of joy. The bridge of air stretching across to the bank of the future led him to the glittering gates of life, henceforth accessible, where earlier there had stood fortresses impregnable to desire. The earth seemed to have shrunk in volum
e and become like a large globe on top of which stood an agitated man with burning cheeks. And foremost, Horn thought of the power of gold, capable of bringing back a woman. He journeyed to her on board a thousand trains, their wheels fusing into solid discs, and the rails shuddering from the mass of iron carrying him. He would tell her everything a person could, and be with her.

  Then he imagined he heard the word “no,” but already he felt not the insulted party but the avenger, and with grim avarice he sketched scenes of shrewd commercial cruelty, a vast circle of ruin, which drew into its spinning vortex the well-being of the man who had knocked on the door. Horn would flood the world market with undervalued goods. And with each passing day the woman’s face would grow dimmer, because, one by one, her husband’s factories were falling silent, and cobwebs were covering the stagnant nest where his machines had once thundered.

  Scarcely had two minutes passed, but during that time Horn had relived several years with painful clarity. He looked around, his face drawn from the rush of emotion. The sun had dipped behind the cliffs, the light evening shadows now enveloped the cooling earth, and the river glimmered silently.

  He cut out a patch of turf and, setting it at an angle, heaped several fistfuls of sand from the riverbank onto the green surface of the makeshift cradle. He proceeded to cut a piece of bark and, having fashioned from it a sort of ladle, scooped up some water.

  This first moment of labor excited the hunter more than the sand on the riverbed. He kept pouring and pouring the water until a thin, heavy layer of gold glittered amid the grass of the turf. Strength momentarily deserted Horn; he sat down beside his spoils with his hand on the wet surface of the contraption, whereupon a frenzied dance of thoughts instantly quit his wearied mind, leaving behind a stupor like rapture mixed with anguish.

  VII.

  Horn returned sans shirt or smock, with a leather bag full of little nuggets of the aforementioned items, which weighed down his shoulder so much that he found it painful to move his arms. Half-naked and sunburned, he brought to the lake the aroma of the woodland swamp and a sweet, importunate exhaustion.