Zama

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  During the audience, I told the Gobernador that Manuel Fernández had asked me to intercede on his behalf.

  He rose from his seat, came around the table, and passed behind my back. Then he returned and sat down in front of me once again to put forth the following capricious proposition: One of us, Manuel Fernández or myself, would have to relinquish his support. If the proceedings against the clerk were annulled, the governor would not petition the King on my behalf; if the governor argued my case before the King, he would dismiss Fernández from his post. I had to decide.

  “Right now?” I asked.

  “No. Tomorrow.”

  •

  I did not care to decide.

  A man who writes a book may, at times, be capable of high-minded action. It was my sense and my desire that this book-writing homunculus Manuel Fernández allow me to emerge without moral burden from the thicket. He could make the sacrifice.

  I told him the alternatives with which the Gobernador had presented me and said that I myself had renounced the governor’s favor. However, the governor refused to credit such abnegation. Before resolving the situation, he wanted Fernández to be aware of what I was doing for him.

  Fernández replied that gestures of abnegation gave him pleasure and he was grateful for mine. His extremely modest post meant far more to him than any promotion could mean to me.

  I could think of no answer, nor could I think of accepting his response and leaving it at that. I pointed out that my position was hardly advantageous; I had gone more than a year without receiving my emolument, while he, however modest his post, was paid with some approximation of regularity.

  He answered that a delay of half a year could not be called regularity.

  I was plunged into despair and set aside all notion of another interview with the governor.

  •

  The innkeeper allowed neither his wife nor his daughter to wait on me but served me personally, heaping my table high with excellent food and calling me “Señor Doctor.”

  All unsuspecting, I imagined he must have grown obsequious after reaping bountiful profit from the boat full of gullible travelers that had arrived that morning.

  When lunch was over, he offered me a green liqueur and sat down with me.

  He said he would not yet demand that I pay him all I owed for food and lodging, but that he did need my room, the best in the house, for a married couple who would stay only as long as it took them to negotiate an inheritance in the country. Once these people—I could see them eating at a nearby table—had gone their way, my room would be restored.

  Irritated—the innkeeper persisted in rubbing the palm of his hand over the table, as if to smooth something down, perhaps myself—I replied that very soon I would settle my debts and had made up my mind to move to the house of a family with whom I was on friendly terms.

  •

  I needed to maintain a stern grasp on the possible. Things—too many things—were falling away from me, leaving me naked. The lash of the whip on naked flesh is terrible.

  I told the Gobernador that, presented with his two alternatives, Manuel Fernández had renounced all benefit to his person in view of the harm his claim would occasion to my interests. I applauded the clerk’s stance, noting as evidence of the nobility of his character that he had begged me not to make his decision known to anyone. His one request—should it be possible, I added—was that the decree removing him from his post not blemish his honor, leaving him free to enlist in some far-off military garrison. Far-off was what I wanted it to be.

  The governor heard me out in silence. He then delivered himself of his usual “Bien, bien” and assented. “Bien. The matter will be attended to.”

  26

  Emilia was peeling yams. A tenacious anger was visible on her face, and her attention was turned so entirely toward me that she barely heeded the child.

  Propelled by his knees and his filthy little hands, the child moved about on the dirt floor. With no one to clean them, his nostrils dripped, and the two streams of snot had reached the upper lip, irritating and inflaming the skin. The little one rubbed his face, smearing the snot around with a dirty hand and further injuring the skin. His viscous little fingers then dug back into the dirt, which made a revolting mud.

  This was my son.

  Sometimes I would reproach Emilia for her neglect of the child. This time I was in no mood to do so.

  I was delivering a long peroration. It concluded with the announcement that soon I would be bringing my Vargueño desk, my books, my bed to her house. . . .

  “If you bring the bed, it means you cannot pay the inn.”

  “If I bring the bed, it means I want to be here with you.”

  “There’s a bed here.”

  “You share it with the boy.”

  When she had no response she would conveniently fall silent, for at other times she could be quite loquacious. She went on interminably peeling yams. She cut out the black spots and scraped off whatever yellow flesh remained on the thicker peels. Presumably she was making soup.

  “So, what do you say?”

  “That I’m not your wife. Therefore you must consult me before proceeding.”

  “Not my wife? Aren’t you the boy’s mother, and I his father?”

  “Your wife is another woman.”

  “And you. Tell me, don’t you belong to someone else, as well?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  She aimed the discussion in another direction, unexpected and terrible.

  “Did you bring my money?”

  She called it her money, the money I had to hand over to her. From outside—he had left the rancho without our noticing—the child set up a wail. I thought this interruption would spare me a response. It did not.

  I lent an ear to the infant’s sobs. She called me back to the question that mattered most.

  “Did you bring my money? Answer me.”

  I could not say no.

  I made a sudden display of exultation, thinking to make her share in my new hopes, my joy. But logic dictated that my eagerness to obtain a post in another city was a subject best avoided. Still, I tried to turn the situation around by telling her that the Gobernador, that very day, had, with his own hand, signed a report to the King on the state of my purse and that of the other ranking functionaries who had long gone unpaid.

  Involuntarily, Emilia’s eyes grew sharp with self-interest. To conceal it, she rose and, as if she had only just now noticed, went out to the crying child. I followed her, speaking seductive words. “Nineteen months,” I said as we walked. “It has been that long since I’ve seen a real from the King’s treasury. From here, from the city’s funds, during that same period, I’ve drawn what amounts to a bit more than three—about three thousand five hundred pesos. But more than ten months of city funds are still due me from before that and from—”

  I broke off. We had reached the child, who was beneath the planks where the hens sleep. It was late afternoon, when the hens move about and relieve themselves. The boy was standing below them and. . . .

  Emilia moved forward, muttering angrily. She pulled the child out, wiped the excrement off his head with the hem of her skirt, and set him down a little way off. Instead of seeing further to the child’s hygiene, she picked up a shovel and began cleaning the ground soiled by the birds.

  She seemed calmer now and able to listen to me. Still, I had to make an effort. The infant went on moaning, though more softly now, and she was stirring up a cloud of dust. A few of the hens strutted about, perturbed, cackling their mindless challenge.

  “Fijate, pues, Emilia. There are the ten months of city wages still due from before, plus nineteen, makes twenty-nine, less three and a half. . . .Twenty-nine times a thousand makes twenty-nine thousand: twenty-nine thousand pesos! Now let’s see what’s due from the royal coffers. That’s easy. Multiply by five hundred, nineteen times five hundred . . . nineteen times five hundred. . . . No, better to count

&n
bsp; it out in parts: first ten times five hundred and then nine times five hundred. Ten times five. . . .”

  “Go away! Loco! Go away, get out of here!”

  I stopped speaking.

  She raised the shovel in fuming menace. Forewarned, I jumped back to keep my distance from her fury, but she kept shouting “Go away! Go away!” while the terrified baby boy screamed and wept.

  Resigned, I turned away. There was no placating her. I took a few steps in silence.

  But then I turned back to speak, even so. Rigid, legs apart, she lifted the shovel over her head once more.

  At that distance she couldn’t hit me.

  I made a gesture of recrimination and said, “Don’t expect me to come back if you don’t call me back now. Never. Never!”

  But my eyes were on the boy.

  My son. On all fours and so filthy that in the twilight he was indistinguishable from the earth itself: a kind of camouflage. At least—like an animal—he had that defense.

  •

  On the way back I banished the boy and his bellicose mother from my thoughts. It was time to settle accounts, for the Gobernador’s petition to the sovereign would accomplish a transfer, and once in Buenos-Ayres I could demand payment from the viceroy himself. His strongboxes were of greater strength.

  Thus, I told myself, twenty-nine times one thousand makes twenty-nine thousand. Less the three thousand five hundred already received, twenty-five thousand five hundred. Nineteen from the royal coffers, ah, along with the previous month’s delay, made twenty; twenty times five hundred made ten thousand. Ten thousand pesos, plus twenty-five thousand five hundred made thirty-five thousand five hundred. There was the trip across the sea for the petition, then the return trip for the royal decree, which in total would take about the same amount of time that would be required to prepare my journey prior to abandoning my post: a lapse of seven, eight, or nine more months. Nine thousand times five hundred. Or rather ten: ten times one thousand five hundred made fifteen thousand. And if it was only nine months, that made thirteen thousand five hundred. Thirty-five thousand five hundred currently owed, and thirteen thousand five hundred to come . . . forty-nine thousand pesos. The court’s many formalities might make the process cumbersome, and then it would be more than eight or nine months, perhaps as many twelve or fourteen. In which case, five months longer meant seven thousand five hundred pesos on top of the forty-nine thousand. . . . Oh glory!

  27

  The Gobernador requested my presence in his office. He was smiling and affable; philanthropy oozed from him. He showed me the petition to the King, written on parchment and adorned with his signature and seal. It abounded in praise of my person and titles, spoke admiringly of my talent, made very delicate allusion to my aspirations.

  Happiness blazed up within me. I was a forsaken old man to whom a girl had appeared who recognized him as her grandfather, a girl he’d never seen before, whose existence he’d never dreamed of. In this newly revealed granddaughter, the grandfather could at last recognize all the family’s virtues.

  Here was the forgotten mirror of my merits. This was hope; this held out the promise of a reality that was almost within reach. Almost.

  The governor disabused me. “Su Majestad never attends to this sort of request the first time. But still, a first attempt must be made. In a year or two, we will renew it. Then he will take it into consideration.”

  As I withdrew from the office, I found Manuel Fernández behind the door. I asked him what he was doing there. He said the governor had sent for him. Why? He did not know. He was afraid. I should have been fearful, too, but was not. Even a brief conversation between them could unravel the skein of deceit I had spun.

  I decided to busy myself about something or other that would keep me from the office, at least for the day.

  •

  Perennially malnourished when not tightly sealed, my purse was held in ill repute, which forestalled all possibility that a household aware of anything beyond my name and position would afford me lodging.

  Over the course of that night, I had crossed the name of every family of my acquaintance off a mental list. Forgetting I had told him I already had a new place of residence, I beseeched the inn-keeper for advice as to who might take me in.

  He plunged a finger into his ear and tickled himself, no doubt to activate his brain. He wrinkled his brow, duty-bound to make an effort. Finally, he said, “I dare not recommend Your Worship.”

  At another time, just two years earlier, the tip of my sword, if not a few two-handed thrusts, would have given him a good case of indigestion. But I had sold both sword and rapier months earlier.

  But I berated him, of course. He grew abashed and confounded and claimed he hadn’t meant to say I was a dubious individual and not to be recommended. No, it was only that he had no heart to recommend a certain family to me, in view of conditions there.

  Bent on giving a quick, elegant turn to our conversation, I demanded that he indicate precisely whom it was he referred to. The innkeeper feared I would not pay him punctually? Well, then, I would go to these people and, by invoking his name and recommendation, do him harm.

  •

  Not only was the name Ignacio Soledo new to me but the ravaged person of the man was, too, and whether the harm had been wrought by the years, by disease, or by vice, I knew not. I told him that though I believed myself to be fully acquainted with as many white residents as lived in the city, I had nevertheless failed, until that moment, to come across him. He made no effort to sate my curiosity, merely informing me that he hardly set foot in the street, and did so only to attend religious offices.

  In sharp contrast to this reserve, he sought to learn more about me than might perhaps be considered discreet. He took my post as a guarantee and wished to know the exact total of my stipend. When I had told him, he begged my pardon for his curiosity, assuring me, with an unconvincingly amiable smile, that he had never before had occasion to do business with so substantial a personage as I, though he’d had dealings with many a merchant and wealthy mariner.

  He declared that his house was safe, and I answered that I, too, believed it to be so, despite its location near the edge of the pineapple fields, for the entire city was calm and only minor infractions occurred, generally petty thefts by Indians in broad daylight, which caused neither damage nor great harm to anyone.

  My quarters did not open, along with others, onto an immense central arcade, as at the Gallegos Moyano house, but had a door of their own that gave directly onto the street, with a storeroom at the back beyond which a courtyard gave access to the rear yards of the house. The rooms were dark, damp, and crammed with wretched furnishings. I indicated to Señor Ignacio that these could be removed. I would bring my own furniture.

  I agreed only to the rental of the rooms. My meals, I informed him, would be taken at the inn. Only when my studies or some deeply absorbing task obliged me to remain in my rooms would I request a light repast.

  This arrangement seemed reasonable to him. Excusing himself, he left me alone in the empty bedroom.

  After several moments he returned and placed a small bell in my hand. I would see little of him, he said, and the house’s residents were few: his daughter and three servants, two of them females of color and one a faithful mulatto. If I rang, one of the slave women would attend to me.

  •

  I had imagined that with my last night at the inn behind me, my sole pressing concern would be the question of how to pay for my room and board while waiting for the long-delayed replenishment of my funds.

  Such was not the case.

  The Gobernador was playing a game, goading and bewildering me.

  In my office, until then my private and exclusive preserve, was a second table. Someone was seated at it: Manuel Fernández.

  He rose to his feet. It was clear from his face that he was not there of his own will. He did not say as much, of course, but begged pardon for his presence in a room consecrated by long tradition to
the Asesor Letrado alone.

  The governor had hit upon a way of humiliating me without displaying disrespect toward my position. Fernández’s table abutted mine. I observed this fact and spoke it aloud to him, but there had been no overstepping of bounds on his part. Manuel Fernández was to pass, from that day forward, for my secretary, and it is acceptable for a secretary to place his table directly adjacent to that of the man he serves.

  “Yesterday, during the afternoon, the Gobernador himself saw to its installation.”

  I needed to know whether Fernández had betrayed me—betrayed me, when all was said and done, by speaking the truth.

  “All this was decided yesterday, is that right? When you went in to see the Gobernador. I know, I know. But tell me, did the two of you review the cases, el tuyo y el mío, yours and mine?”

  Never before had I addressed him with the intimate, disdainful tú of a superior. I did so in emulation of the governor; I would set myself over Fernández from the start. The abusive tú was a prelude to violence; I could feel it in my fists.

  But there was no cause. Though rigid with agitation, Fernández remained sovereign in his obligation to accept and tolerate my aggression. “It may be that the Gobernador has reviewed the case,” he informed me. “I do not know. He did not review it with me, at any rate. He did not allow me to speak. He had already made all the arrangements.”

  Fernández, for his part, was unaware of my machinations.

  We were, then, to some degree in a stalemate, neither having any account to settle with the other. I, at least, acknowledged no debt.

  •

  I had my furniture and books moved to the new domicile.