by Cesar Aira
Obeying a sudden impulse, and without telling even Gauna that he was leaving, Clarke climbed onto Repetido and set off for the creek, thinking that was where he was most likely to find Carlos Alzaga Prior. He patted his mount’s neck: with everything that had been going on, he had badly neglected him. He hadn’t given Repetido anything to eat or drink, had left him in the sun the whole time, and now he was making fresh demands of him. The least he could do was go at a walk, and so he did. He promised himself he would bathe Repetido in the stream.
Getting there proved no easy matter. Apart from the fact that all the emotions and riding had left him with his head spinning and feeling drowsy with exhaustion (he had got used to a siesta, and it was exactly that time of day), he had no idea where this oasis was. The previous afternoon he had simply followed Gauna. Now, on his own, every direction looked the same. Of course, in the absolute flatness of the salt pans, all he had to do was to discover which direction to take — then the shortest route was obvious. But, as happens with every line, there were tiny deviations, and these inevitably produced far-reaching effects. In reality, on this plain, any one point was always elusive. The brightness of the air, added to the horse’s painfully slow progress, also made it hard for him to calculate how long it was taking him, and in the end he felt completely disoriented. He decided to follow a broad curve, which despite being longer, was more reliable. It was not for nothing that the Indians had adopted it for their settlements.
Eventually, some children riding plump mares gave him the clue. Since his snail’s pace wanderings had taken a couple of hours, the heat was dying down by the time he saw the riverbank trees, and the bathers were already out of the water. He rode past the beach without dismounting, glancing at the lazy groups as he passed by. He was thinking that there were many things to envy in the Indians’ way of life. They confined themselves to the delicious task of being happy, doing nothing, and having a good time. They ate till they burst, slept like logs, played cards, and let the years slip by. They must know a secret.
He led his horse in among the willow osiers, dappled in the sunlight like giant green and yellow shards. The river followed its fanciful course, with quiet backwaters, deep pools where the water was darker and its bed was covered with tall waving weeds, tiny waterfalls cascading over pebbles, an entire hydraulic system whose charms kept everyone entertained. Who could tell how far this linear labyrinth extended: and it seemed that there were Indians all along it, placed there like ornaments, their skin glistening with water, their black eyes half-closed as they followed the procession of the hours with snakelike patience.
Clarke had taken the same direction as the day before, riding upstream, which seemed to be the one people preferred. But he went a long way with no sign of the young painter. The groups of Indians began to get scarcer, apart from an occasional fisherman dozing to the sound of the birds. Clarke gave up hope of finding Prior in this direction. Perhaps he hadn’t even come to the stream. If he didn’t find him now, he would have to ask their hosts for help, although they seemed to have forgotten he even existed. There was also the possibility that the opposite was true, and that they were keeping Prior shut up somewhere.
Whatever the case, Clarke gave up the search. He found himself alone on a kind of grassy beach, surrounded by overhanging trees. He dismounted, removed Repetido’s saddle and led the horse into the water, making sure beforehand to take off his boots and trousers. The cool sensation of the current immediately gave him a feeling of calm. Repetido drank his fill, then stood quietly with the water halfway up his legs. Clarke was sorry he did not have a bucket to wash the animal with. He cupped his hands and splashed water onto the horse until it was completely wet. What he did have, in one of his fine red leather saddlebags, was a brush, and he set to work energetically. Clarke had always adored horses, and this one General Rosas had lent him was a fine beast. Serenity in a living being is always an admirable quality. He wondered what it was about horses that made everyone admire their beauty. Could it be merely habit? For someone who had never seen a horse, could it seem like a repugnant monster? He could not imagine such a person.
It was the empty hour of the afternoon. A bird sang above his head. The swishing of the brush and the murmur of the water round his feet dulled his senses: He could hear the cry of a lapwing in the distance . . . the horse snorting, the monotonous chirrup of the crickets . . .
When he had finished the grooming as well as he could without soap, Clarke sat on the bank to smoke a pipe. Repetido left the stream and began to browse on some weeds. Clarke thought how good it would have been to have a cup of coffee with his pipe. He tried for a while not to think of his problems, nor of the Indians at all. That the Indians had become part of his problem was nothing more than a stroke of bad luck. His chief concern was Nature, or should be anyway. Apart from a couple of fat Indian women who had appeared while he was washing the horse, had stared at him for a moment, then gone back to wherever they had come from, nobody passed by. Clarke wondered if he was at the far end of the Indians’ bathing area. As he thought about it, he became curious to see what lay beyond. Considered as a line of water that dissected the plain, the stream was a homogeneous whole, whose attractions were interchangeable, but moving along it, it changed without changing, in direct proportion to the distance traveled.
Clarke stood up and, just as he was, without shoes or trousers, walked on about a hundred yards. A different aspect of the stream and its banks presented itself to him, novel despite being vaguely predictable. It was a kind of reworking of the same elements: water, the riverbanks, trees, grass. Fascinated, he walked on further, in the midst of complete silence. All the charm of the place lay in its linear aspect, the way each of its segments was hidden from the previous one: the very opposite of what happened out on the open plain. As he had thought, there was no one around. Even the distant sounds of voices and noises he had heard from time to time on the little beach no longer reached him. The river was a series of secret chambers, following on from each other as in an Italian palace. As he crossed a number of “thresholds,” the mechanism of increasing distance led Clarke to feel he was entering a world of mystery, a self-contained nothingness that invoked the infinite.
All of a sudden, he heard something: a quiet, stifled moan, a kind of private crying that was directed at no one in particular, but which had something of a call for help about it. It came from beyond him: to reach it, Clarke would have to cross into another invisible zone. He did so, and was transfixed with shock. All alone on the riverbank sat Carlos Alzaga Prior. He was weeping disconsolately, his head in his hands.
The sight came as a great surprise to the Englishman. He couldn’t recall ever having seen a man cry. It was true the watercolor painter was still almost a child, but there was something adult and definitive about his sobbing that touched Clarke deeply. He was confronting pain, and this brought out a feeling of nostalgia in him — although that was hardly a strong enough word to describe the mixture of anxiety and distress it caused him.
It was as if Clarke saw the youth cut out in a vacuum, in silhouette. Despair produces this kind of vacuum around one. Robbed of all points of reference, the figure could have been either near or far away: he could be a thousand leagues off, and be a giant, or only five inches away, and be a miniature. But he was only a few yards away, and Clarke had to trust to his eyesight, to the normal correlation of size and distance. This inevitability made the scene a cruel one. He thought he saw before him an emblem of his own life, and it terrified him. The terror came from being English, educated, reserved, from being unable to cry in public (or in private), from living inside a bubble and not allowing himself to feel any emotions. His emotional life had dried up years earlier — when in the first flush of his own youth, he had lost someone he loved who might have taught him how to cry. From that day on, he had never felt the sense of dread that is a natural part of life: he could see this now, when he was least expecting it, but in someone else.
His firs
t impulse was to turn and run, but he thought better of it. He went closer. As he had no boots on, he got all kinds of thorns and sharp stones stuck in the soles of his feet. Carlos neither looked up, nor took his hands from his face, nor stopped crying for a second. Overcome with pity, Clarke put his arm round his shoulder. When he tried to speak, words failed him. He wanted to console the boy, but did not know how to. The most natural thing seemed to him to take Prior somewhere else, to go and fetch his horse at least, to get on with his plans and forget about the Indians. He wanted to concentrate on one thing and forget the other. His mind was in such a confused state, however, that the two impulses became entangled.
All the same, the youth allowed himself to be led along a few steps without protesting, sobbing all the while. They had hardly gone a few yards when a shadow fell across them. Clarke was the only one who lifted his gaze. A horseman stood out against the setting sun, mysterious as yet, slightly threatening because of his position above them and because he had stopped and was staring at them. “What’s he going to think?” Clarke immediately wondered. The lugubrious voice that rang out clearly showed him that it wasn’t a question of thinking anything.
“I was looking for you.”
It was the voice of Mallén the shaman. A voice from beyond the grave, filled with concern: the voice of a man with a serious problem. Clarke let go of the youth and stepped to one side so that Mallén would not be against the light. He was taken aback by his face: he seemed to have aged twenty years in a single day.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to talk to you.”
He used none of the usual circumlocutions. The Englishman realized the seriousness of the situation, and did not keep him waiting.
“All right, I’ll get properly dressed.” Then to Carlos: “I’ll be back right away.” He walked on a few steps, but then felt the need to add something more, so said: “Try to calm down.”
Clarke returned to the grassy beach as quickly as he could, with the shaman behind him. He put his trousers on, rubbed his feet briskly to get rid of the gravel and bits of grass, and wriggled into his boots.
“I’m all ears,” he said, facing the Indian.
“Come with me, please. Let’s find somewhere quieter.”
It was difficult to imagine anywhere quieter than the spot they were already in, but Clarke mounted up anyway and followed the shaman, who headed off at a walk in a direction perpendicular to the stream. They were soon in open ground. To Clarke’s surprise, a hill appeared in the distance. It was a gentle one, but well-defined, perhaps in contrast to the flat plain all around. They rode up it. When they reached the top Mallén, who so far had not opened his mouth again, dismounted and invited Clarke to do the same. It seemed strange that by climbing such a little way, they could see so far, but that was a natural property of the prairie: each yard climbed represented a hundred leagues. They sat down in the grass, their faces turned toward the sun. As the Indian still said nothing, Clarke decided to take the initiative with something neutral:
“It’s a fine evening.”
“Would you believe I’m so worried I hadn’t even noticed?”
“You must have your reasons.”
“I’ll say I do.” A fresh, prolonged silence. But the Indian had got started, so Clarke contented himself with waiting. Sure enough, with the lines on his face deepening and his eyes turning even blacker, Mallén began to explain. “What I most feared has happened.”
His words had a special resonance for the Englishman.
It was the kind of expression which, when examined logically, did not make sense. Yet it was the second time in the space of half an hour that he had heard it, in one way or another.
“As you well know,” the Indian went on, “in spite of all the precautions taken, Cafulcurá has disappeared.”
“But hasn’t he appeared again?”
“Don’t tell me you believed that official denial! If you did, you were the only one to do so.”
Yet again, this scorn for his naivety. Obviously then, it wasn’t just Gauna. Clarke decided not to let it upset him.
“The fact is, I didn’t stop to think about it. I accepted what I was told, as a matter of course.”
Emerging from his pessimistic daydream, Mallén stared at him as if he were seeing him for the first time that evening:
“Of course. I’d forgotten they suspected you at first. How absurd.” He waved his hand, as if dismissing a triviality. “Well, yes, our chieftain has been kidnapped. And everything appears to indicate there is little chance of getting him back alive. All we can hope is that for some reason or other they postpone his execution. There’s also the fact that his son Reymacurá, who went off in pursuit of his kidnappers, has not returned. As you can see, we only have a slender thread to hang on to.”
“Couldn’t he have disappeared of his own accord?”
“Don’t talk rubbish.”
“So who could it have been?”
“Everything suggests it was our most bitter enemies, the
Voroga.”
“Why shouldn’t they kill him immediately?”
“Mister Clarke, I have decided to confide in you. You’ll soon see why. To my mind, there’s a black-hearted, ferocious woman behind all this. Have you ever heard of Rondeau’s widow?”
“No.”
“A few years ago, Cafulcurá defeated a Voroga chief by the name of Rondeau, and quite logically, put him to death. Among the reparations that were then paid to the defeated tribe (because we have the generous custom that it is the victor who pays) was an offer of marriage to the chieftain’s widow. That woman, who is not even a Voroga by birth but a complete stranger, had the audacity to reject the proposal, and fled with a group of her followers. Over the years, a lot more have joined them, so that today she has a fearsome power.”
“What does she have against Cafulcurá?”
“Nothing, and that’s what is most disturbing. It’s not because he killed her husband, because she herself tried to do that on more than one occasion — she hated him. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have anything against Cafulcurá or anyone else in particular; she’s happy just to be bloodthirsty and to survive.”
“Why do you suspect her?”
“Because she is the only person daring enough to carry out a raid like this, and the only one with so little to lose (she doesn’t even possess any territory) that she doesn’t fear any reprisals. Even so, she must have realized she was going too far, and that is why I suspect she has reached an understanding with the current leader of the Vorogas, that hypocrite Coliqueo, who is the one who stands to gain most from Cafulcurá’s death. My whole line of thinking is based on that hypothesis: if Cafulcurá was taken alive, it must have been her, with the intention of keeping him and threatening her associate with returning him to us if he does not fulfill his promises, whatever they might have been. In that way, she secures her position.”
“I see.”
“I wanted to ask a great favor of you, Mister Clarke.”
“At your service.”
“Will you go to Coliqueo’s camp and try to discover his intentions? I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“But I’ve no idea how to do that!”
“Oh come now, don’t be so modest. If anyone knows, it’s you.”
“How would I get there, with all the tension there is in the air?”
“But you are precisely the one who would have the least problem doing so. How did you get this far?”
“Well . . .” said Clarke, who in reality had never seriously asked himself that question, “I suppose it was due to the skill of my tracker, and good will on your part. . . .”
The shaman looked at him again, this time in genuine astonishment: “You mean you don’t know about the horse?”
“Repetido? What has he got to do with it? Rosas lent him to me, that’s all I know.”
“And where did Rosas get him? Haven’t you seen Cafulcurá’s horse?”
“Yes, it�
��s similar. . . .”
“No; it’s identical.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. . . .”
“Yes, it is! But this is incredible! You mean to say you came here blindly, trusting to your good fortune?”
“Mister Mallén, do me the favor of enlightening me.”
Choosing to ignore the Englishman’s irritated tone, the shaman collected his thoughts.
“In our humble way, we like to breed our horses to produce the piebald effect we admire. Why do we like it so much? Because we can read the language of the different patches of color, and this is very practical for us. Repetido is a horse which exactly reproduces the same patches as Cafulcurá’s favorite, or what might be called his ‘official’ mount, and it is for that and no other reason that you succeeded in reaching Salinas Grandes unscathed. The two horses are twins, foals born at the same time from the same mare, and that mare was the granddaughter of the famous Fantasma, the horse in whose kidneys was found the blue stone which is Cafulcurá’s talisman. Apart from the stone, the legend, and the resulting play on words, Fantasma was the source of a line of twin horses. Your Repetido was a gift from our chieftain to Rosas on the occasion of an eternal peace treaty they signed a few years ago.”
“I had no idea.”
“I’m not surprised. There’s so much we do not know. . . . Well, not to waste time, will you help?”
Clarke only needed a moment’s thought: “Agreed.”
Their conversation was at an end. From their slight elevation, they could see the encroaching night gradually veiling the splendor of the evening sky. Flocks of pigeons rose into the heavens. Everything seemed to invite them to stay a while longer. Then a question occurred to Clarke:
“But, according to what you said, you were expecting something like this to happen, or am I mistaken?”
“Yes and no. It would take a lot of explaining.”
“Then please do so. We have the time. And I wouldn’t want to leave without knowing, it might be useful to me.”