by Cesar Aira
“Well,” Rosas said, “are you hoping to discover a secret?”
Clarke replied that this was perhaps not the best way to describe his endeavor. The Legibrerian Hare he had been speaking of, which was the principal, if not the only, object of his expedition, was no secret. If it had been, how could he possibly expect to discover it with the limited means he had at his disposal, alone and lost in the vastness of the desert? Yet at the same time, it had to be one, for it to be worth all this trouble. Correctly phrased, the question would have to be: “What is so hidden that it is necessary to travel the globe to find it, but at the same time is so visible that it can be found simply by going to look for it? By definition, such a thing must be anywhere and everywhere, wherever one may be, in this very office. . . .”
“But it’s not here,” Rosas replied, pretending to look under the table.
“That’s because the definition implies a circumlocution, because every definition can be considered a nominal one, and . . .”
Rosas had followed him as closely as he was able, but even so his mind had wandered almost from the beginning, once he had grasped the main idea. He had sniffed Manuelita in there somewhere. Whatever else the famous Hare might or might not be, his daughter was it as well. And by his own hand. He had made this foolish girl the most completely visible element of his politics, but without providing any explanation, which was what made things visible. Darwin had been pointing in the same direction, but he had been so timid it was almost pitiful; he had found it necessary to base it on what Rosas had least need of: belief. As ever, an Argentine had got there first. He felt so pleased, so full of himself that he immediately took several decisions he had been hesitating over: first, to commission a full-length portrait of Manuelita from Pueyrredon’s son; second, to lend the Englishman Repetido for his journey; and third, to accede to the request he had received the previous day from the mother of Carlos Alzaga Prior, an aspiring young watercolor artist, and recommend that Clarke take him along. Everything fitted in, everything was part of the system . . . he sat motionless for a moment, lost in the contemplation of his own grandeur.
2: The Legibrerian Hare
To carry on speaking, Cafulcurá took the cigar from his mouth with the slowest of gestures, wreathed the whole while in a cloud of smoke that gave off a medicinal odor. He muttered the words with his eyes half-closed, as he sat bare-chested on the leather mats strewn on the floor of the tent.
“Wouldn’t you say,” he said, “that travelers to the desert always come to impose some kind of law?”
Clarke spread his arms cautiously, palms outstretched: stated in such general terms, the proposition was irrefutable. The Indian chief’s way of speaking, which Clarke was listening to after an incident-free journey since setting out from Buenos Aires two weeks earlier, had a certain effeminate quality to it, at least on first acquaintance (but this was an impression which, like so many others, vanished with greater familiarity); an uncertainty, something imprecise which itself was not easy to define precisely. Which made it all the more difficult to find oneself in agreement with him on any point in particular.
“One law,” Cafulcurá went on, “is made by a legislator; the other is the kind which already exists in nature, and which we only call ‘law’ by extension.”
“Or vice versa,” the stranger ventured to suggest, since he knew that the Mapuche word for “law” could also mean many other things, among which were “venture,” “suggest,” “stranger,” “know,” “word,” and “Mapuche.”
The chieftain nodded modestly, as if he himself had spoken. He breathed in the smoke once more, rolled his head vaguely, then continued his speech in the same slow drawl he had been using for two or three hours now:
“What the traveler does not know is that when this law is made and/or discovered, it creates a magic circle around itself, from which escape is no easy matter.”
A lengthy silence.
“I beg you not to read anything threatening, or even prophetic, into my words, Mr. Clarke. Simply take them as a description, or a ‘law’ if you like. This circle around a law is a world in miniature within our world, which itself is a miniature. We create the world to fit in with our personal system, so that man can become world. In other words, so that the miniature can become miniature. But miniatures have their own laws, you know. It is not only space which can become minute: it also happens to the corresponding time, which becomes extremely fast. That is why life is short.”
Cafulcurá fell into a thoughtful silence. The clouds from the herbs he was smoking wafted thicker and thinner. Layers of the perfumed haze rose high into the roof of the tent, which apart from the two of them was occupied only by three sleeping women, three dogs, and an extraordinarily large hen. Clarke sat silent as well. For the first time in his life he was aware of a direct continuum between the topic of conversation and the words used to express it. As they interacted, their values were exchanged: the vertiginous speed Cafulcurá had referred to became instead the immense slowness of real time. This inversion only served to strengthen the continuum. At this hour of the afternoon, Clarke also felt somewhat drowsy, which meant he had to make an effort to concentrate. He was drinking cold tea. The Indian chief was drinking water, or something resembling it. It was relatively cool in the tent, despite the torrid heat outside.
“I was just thinking,” Cafulcurá said all of a sudden, “of what you were telling me. Your brother-in-law is a genius, there’s no doubt of that. When I met him, I thought he was simply a likeable young man; but after what you’ve said, I’ll have to change my judgment. Nothing unusual in that. But I should say: he’s a genius in his own field. I myself have sought to convey similar ideas, but — and look what a strange case of transformation this is — I always did it by means of poetry. In matters like these, it’s important to win people’s belief. But in this particular case, it so happens that we Mapuche have no need to believe in anything, because we’ve always known that changes of this kind occur. It is sufficient for a breeze to blow a thousand leagues away for one species to be transformed into another. You may ask me how. We explain it, or at least I explain it . . .”
He paused for a while to consider how he did explain it.
“. . . it’s simply a matter of seeing everything that is visible, without exception. And then if, as is obvious, everything is connected to everything else, how could the homogeneous and the heterogeneous not also be linked?”
In the Huilliche tongue, these last two nouns had several meanings. Clarke could not immediately decide how they were being used on this occasion, and asked for an explanation. He knew what he was letting himself in for, because the Indians could be especially labyrinthine in these delicate issues of semantics: their idea of the continuum prevented them from giving clear and precise definitions. On this occasion, however, his sacrifice was not unrewarded, because Cafulcurá’s digression, starting from the sense of “right” and “left” that the two words also had, ended thus:
“We have a word for ‘government’ which signifies, in addition to a whole range of other things, a ‘path,’ but not just an ordinary path — the path that certain animals take when they leap in a zigzag fashion, if you follow me; although at the same time we ignore their deviations to the right and left, which due to a secondary effect of the trajectory end up of course not being deviations at all, but a particular kind of straight line.”
“Oh, yes?” said Clarke, who after first thinking with a start that the topic of the reason for his journey was finally being broached, soon found himself drifting off again. He was staring at the chieftain’s hair as the old man looked down at the ground, showing him the top of his head. It was the blackest hair Clarke had ever seen, glistening with bright blue tints. Not a single white strand. At his age, this was remarkable. He must dye it, the Englishman thought; the knowledge these Indians had of chemistry was more than sufficient for that; they knew so much in fact that it was odd that in this case the color they had achieved looked so
artificial, so metallic. As he looked more closely though, he became convinced it was natural after all. There were many astounding things about this man, and this could well be yet another one.
“Every single change . . .” Cafulcurá went on, drawling even more exaggeratedly as he returned to the theme of Darwinism, “even a change in the weather . . .”
At that moment, the noise clearly audible for some minutes outside the tent became even louder; there was the sound of galloping horses (though this was nothing unusual, as the Indians rode on horseback even when they were only visiting their neighbor’s tent), then Gauna came in, apologizing.
Cafulcurá looked at him, a lost expression on his face.
“What’s happening?” Clarke asked him. His guide had turned out to be someone shrouded in mystery. As a guide, he left a lot to be desired. While Clarke waited for a definite excuse to regret having brought him, he had grown used to the idea of being constantly surprised by the gaucho.
“Everybody’s gone to see a hare that took off,” Gauna said.
“You don’t say!” Clarke looked across at the chieftain, who shrugged his shoulders in one of his typical gestures.
“Go and see if you like,” Cafulcurá said.
The Englishman did not need to be asked twice. He was stiff, bored and felt nauseous from the cold tea and the smell of herbs. Ever since their arrival forty-eight hours earlier, they had been moved around constantly. Although this was always done with the utmost politeness, it was beginning to get him down. The Indian elders apparently needed to hold private conversations about fifty times a day, which meant the strangers were asked to leave, and then moved from the new place allotted them half an hour later: always with humble apologies, but with that half-sarcastic fatalism that the Indians were so practiced in. They had assured Clarke that this was not normal, far from it. It was just that he had arrived at a bad moment. Now at least he had the satisfying opportunity to leave out of choice. Moreover, the reason in this case was intriguing. Taking an obvious precaution, he had been careful not to say a word about the hare, but he was afraid that, as so often happens in these matters, he had let it slip anyway, so that all the many interesting allusions to the animal he had heard were a kind of joke at his expense.
He left the tent heaving a sigh of relief. The light outside was devastating. Everything in Salinas Grandes was the harshest white. He had no need to ask Gauna in which direction the event was taking place, because several Indians were heading toward it at that very moment. He leapt on to Repetido. He could see where all the Indians were gathered, about two thousand yards away. The tents of the Mapuches’ imperial capital were arranged in loose semicircles that did not obscure the view on any side.
“Can a hare really fly?” Gauna asked him.
“Only if it’s thrown in the air,” he replied crossly. Gauna had an irritating way of asking questions, with a hint of malice in his voice. He must be half Indian, though his yellow, wrinkled face made him look more Chinese.
Their ponies covered the distance in no time. When they arrived, there were more children than adults present, and the latter were busy playing a game of hockey with a ball of rags. Clarke was taken aback. He caught sight of Mallén, one of Cafulcurá’s favorite shamans, sitting quietly on his horse away from the main group, staring down at his fingertips. He rode over to him, followed by Gauna.
“What’s all this about a hare?” Clarke asked him without preamble.
“I know as much as you do. I’ve just got here.”
Typical reply.
“I heard that a hare had taken off,” Clarke insisted.
“If that’s true,” replied Mallén, “it must have done so before I arrived.”
A small group of children close by them were staring up into the sky. Without saying another word to the shaman, Clarke went over to them and asked the same question. It seemed to him that the children were more polite, more rational — presumably because according to Indian standards, they were less so. They told him that yes, a little white hare (they used the same word for “white” as for “twin”) had taken off into the air, and they believed they had spotted it high in the sky. However, after the verb “taken off” they had used an extra word, the Mapuche enclitic (i’n), which served to emphasize the past tense. It could mean “a minute ago,” “a thousand years ago,” or “before.”
This made the whole thing extremely suspect, but Clarke still threw his head back and looked up. For a while, the children tried to give him indications, using the stars as points of reference, since with their keen eyesight they could see them even during the day. Clarke soon gave up. In fact, he could not decide from what they said whether they were talking about a real animal, or a star of the same name. He went back over to Mallén, where Gauna was waiting for him too. Meanwhile, almost everyone had joined in the game of hockey: there must have been a hundred Indians playing, having a whale of a time. The horses galloped in every direction, frequently crashing into each other, to loud cheers from the spectators. In one of these collisions, an Indian was knocked to the ground, and broke his neck. After that, the game quickly petered out. As they were riding back to the camp, Clarke spoke his thoughts out loud:
“I wonder if that tale about the hare was something real, something that really happened, or whether it was some kind of ceremony or ritual?”
Mallén nodded, showing interest, but no desire to express his own opinion on the matter; to him the difference seemed to be negligible, a mere intellectual quibble. In order to say something, he commented:
“Not here, but further south in regions where we once lived, the winds are so strong that no one would be surprised to see a small animal, a hare for example, flying over their head.”
They were joined by a single rider also on his way back to the camp. Mallén greeted him with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, then turned to introduce him.
“Do you two know each other? Alvarito Reymacurá. Mister Clarke from England.”
“Yes, we met yesterday,” said the Indian. He was one of Cafulcurá’s countless children, and a personage of some importance in the court. The son of a giant, he was himself rather small, but he was attractive and had the reputation of being obsessed with sex.
Mallén made some comment about the spectacle they had vainly hoped to witness. Alvarito responded with a brief cackle, although he gave no hint of a smile, which was something the Indians never did.
“How can one see what’s already been, my dear Mallén?”
He must immediately have felt that his comment was out of place, and corrected himself harshly:
“But who cares about that kind of nonsense?”
“Well,” Mallén said with a deep sigh, “if I’m not mistaken, I think our distinguished visitors were quite interested.”
Alvarito corrected himself a second time, turning ninety degrees on the horse’s back as though in a swivel chair, until he was facing directly toward Clarke (though he was staring at the ground). He said:
“Of course, of course! For anyone who has not seen it, it’s of undoubted interest. Even if they never get to see it.”
“It’s disappointing, isn’t it?” said the Englishman.
“No, no, not in the least!”
Mallén was silent. Then he said he had things he must attend to, and tapped his mount on the neck, urging it off in another direction.
“Goodbye,” Alvarito called out to him.
“Be seeing you.”
“I wonder, Mister Clarke, if you would care to come and have a cup of tea at my tent, although I’m afraid it must be in a dreadful mess.”
“I’d love to.”
“And Mister . . .”
“Gauna, at your service.”
So Gauna came along too. Alvarito’s tent was nearby, in the first line of the village. As they dismounted, several small grayhounds came to rub themselves against the Indian’s legs. The Indians always left their horses without tying them up, and Clarke decided to do the same.
They went in. All the tents were exactly the same, inside and out. A group of about ten Indians were playing cards in the center of this one.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, friends, but these gentlemen and I would like to talk on our own for a while.”
“Don’t mention it, Alvarito!” one of the men said, picking up the cards without mixing them. “We’ll go over to Felix Barrigón’s.”
And so they left. Soon afterward, two women came in with some rolls of leather, which they spread out on the ground for mats. The three men sat down and the host called for some tea. Once they were settled, Alvarito Reymacurá crossed his eyes in a squint that seemed almost superhuman, and stared down at the ground. This was a sign of great courtesy that few in the village had offered Clarke until now; this made him feel better. They began to talk.
Summing up the various replies Reymacurá gave to the Englishman’s hesitant questions, and stripping them of their many contradictions, vague points, and digressions, what he conveyed was more or less the following:
“As the perspicacious traveler has quite rightly noted from the attitude of the wise shaman, the question about the reality of the hare which caused all the fuss today was irrelevant. It was something which, literally, was of no interest to anyone. To explain why, as indeed to explain any other lack of interest, one must return to general principles, which might seem to bear no relation to the original question. To put it simply, it could be said that for centuries the central political problem for the savages has been that of the discontinuity of territory.” He did not propose to go into details, partly because it was too complicated, and partly because it spoke for itself. What other problem could the wide open spaces of the pampas have, if indeed they had any, apart from that of discontinuity? As a result of many years pondering this problem, the Indians had constructed a whole logic of continuities, and this had to be borne in mind when even the most trifling event took place. The Mapuches were constantly creating continuities, and so adept were they at this that they no longer even needed to employ visible or virtual connections, but simply used the continuity itself to perform that function. “Take for example what happened today,” Alvarito said. “The hare runs, but by definition it must run across territory. If for example it is running on the continent, it cannot be running on the island. But then if it takes off and lands on the other side of the channel separating the continent from the island, then it is doing so, isn’t it? It is like that sad story,” he added, heightening still further the rather stilted mannerisms of his way of talking, “of the Indian who was leading his three-year-old son by the hand in some celebration where there were crowds of people. At one point his attention wandered and he let go of the boy for an instant: when he looked again, he had vanished. The only thing left on the ground close to the despairing father’s feet was the paper windmill the little boy had been carrying. A kidnapping? Fate? He never saw him again.