by Cesar Aira
Clarke did not reply: he did not want to get caught up in the byzantine adolescent arguments his companion was so fond of.
“You’re a distant relative of Rosas, aren’t you?”
“Some great-uncles in my family are in-laws of his. My adopted family, I mean of course.”
“Yes, yes. Can’t you ever forget that?”
“Well, I think it’s important.”
“Have you no idea who your real parents are?”
“None.”
“Haven’t you tried to find out?”
“No. Why?”
“How absurd you are! If it’s so important to you, wouldn’t it be logical for you to go to that trouble at least?”
“Did you?”
“I adopted my adoptive parents from the start, and completely. I don’t recall ever having mentioned to anyone that I am a Clarke by adoption.”
“Everyone must do as they think best.”
They rode for a while in silence. Eventually it was Carlos who took up the conversation again:
“In fact, I did make some inquiries. The person who knows is my mother.”
“Of course.”
“But she’s always been very reluctant to say anything.”
“I’m sure it’s for your good.”
“I made her promise that when I am eighteen she will tell me.”
“Do they have other children?”
“I’ve three brothers and three sisters.”
“Do you get on well with them?”
“More or less.”
“I suppose they never get at you for being adopted?”
“Never. They’d pluck their tongues out first. They’re too well-brought-up for that.”
“Too good-natured, you mean.”
“Their upbringing is enough for me.”
“My parents never had children,” Clarke said, then laughed at the way the phrase sounded. But Carlos had not even heard him. He was preparing to carry on talking about his own situation:
“The fact is that my mother . . .” he began, but then he paused, interrupted by something amusing that was happening in front of them — or rather, in front of Gauna, who as usual was some way ahead. A little bird kept landing on the ground in front of the gaucho’s horse, and just as the latter’s hooves were about to crush it, the bird would fly off and settle again a few yards further on, only to repeat exactly the same action a few moments later, like a metronome. Even though Gauna had stayed calm, it was clear that the bird’s obstinate hopping was driving him crazy. He had gone so far as to stop whistling. Clarke spurred on Repetido so that he could get a better view.
“It’s a roadrunner,” he told the tracker. “It can spend hours doing that.”
“Get your shotgun out,” Gauna growled.
Carlos laughed. He maneuvered his horse so that he was in the lead, and the bird immediately adopted him. The other two fell back, listening to the young painter’s laughter each time the roadrunner repeated its senseless gesture.
“Birds of a feather flock together,” said Gauna.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Clarke replied. “Have you never seen a roadrunner before?”
“If I have, I didn’t notice. I’ve had more important things to do.”
“Don’t imagine that to observe Nature is simply a waste of time, Mister Gauna. It can also be a profession, as in my case.”
“So you knew what it was?”
“Yes, and all the species in its family . . .”
“Well then, what did you learn by looking at it?” his companion interjected.
“. . . the family of the ‘caprimulgidae.’”
“Fascinating,” Gauna drawled laconically.
“It’s more fascinating than you might think. There are experts who have devoted their lives to studying this one family.”
“Incredible! What a way to waste their time.”
“They are nocturnal birds. . . .”
At this, the gaucho burst out laughing, which was unusual for him. He was genuinely amused. It was after all broad daylight.
“The roadrunner is the one which comes out earliest, before sunset.”
“I can see that.”
Annoyed by now, Clarke said nothing more. He was a patient man, but he had his limits. Suddenly the bird flew off, with a plaintive cry. Carlos dropped back, and Gauna took the lead once more. The sun began to set. They did not even think of coming to a halt. This was the best time of day for riding. In addition to the refreshing coolness, the light took on a new luster; as it grew dark, the air became more crystalline, and distances defined themselves more clearly. As happened every evening, a glorious pink wash of color spread across the sky. The silence became deeper, denser. Even the two inveterate conversationalists fell quiet. They must have ridden on for a further two hours, until the day gave way to night and the stars began to shine. Stillness reigned. They made camp out in the open, gathering together fossilized straw and strips of quebracho wood for a fire, which Clarke lit with his British tinderbox. As every night, they were exhausted, and moved like slow clockwork figures. It seemed incredible to them that the grass was no longer running backward, two and a half yards beneath their eyes. The horses formed a friendly group around them. They gave them water to drink from a small barrel, then fed them. Afterward, it was their turn: they made some tea, and roasted some small partridges, speaking only in monosyllables, then made ready for the night. All this was done quite rapidly, so that it was only now that the night was losing its final glow in the west. Well fed, relaxed, and with a refreshing tea soothing their aching bodies, their spirits rose again. They could hear the steady breathing of the horses around them. Gauna lit a cheroot, which for him was a sign of good humor.
“I’d go for a bit of a walk,” Clarke said, “if it didn’t seem impossible to do so here.”
“Off you go,” Carlos replied, “just pretend you’re in London.”
A snigger, then they both lay down flat on their backs on their blankets.
“What an incredible number of stars,” the boy said.
“It’s an impressive sight, isn’t it?”
“Each one in its spot, every single night. It’s incredible how they don’t all get mixed up.”
“It makes you feel so tiny looking up at them, so insignificant.”
“People always say that.”
“The thing is that faced with Nature, the obvious is the only thing to say.”
“How do you mean, Nature?”
“I mean, the world.”
“I thought Nature was things like the grass.”
“No; it’s everything.”
“Us too?”
“Us above all.”
“I wouldn’t change myself for anything or anybody.”
“You’ve spoken the first and last law of Nature. The stars aren’t replaceable either. Nor is a single blade of grass.”
“But I also think that anything in the world would really like to take my place. And in fact, I think they do so at every minute, without my even being aware of it.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head again. It’s as though Nature were to speak through your mouth — and perhaps it does.”
“It’s strange you don’t say ‘mother Nature.’”
“Is that the expression in Spanish as well? I didn’t say it, but I was thinking it. I thought it might sound odd in another
language.”
“You shouldn’t be so worried. It’s much nicer if you just let yourself go.”
“What’s that?” Clarke said, sitting up suddenly and staring at a huge white circle rising above the horizon.
“The moon,” Gauna said drily.
They watched it emerge in silence. Once it had risen above the horizon line, it seemed to shrink to its normal size.
“Mister Clarke,” Carlos said, “tell me something honestly: are you an atheist?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
Gauna threw them a withe
ring look as if they had both gone mad. The Englishman’s face dropped, and he said nothing. He felt strangely content at the youth’s admission, although he was convinced it was nothing more than a coincidence: he was an atheist after thinking it through, Carlos before having done so. But that was also a kind of coincidence, perhaps all the more striking for not being on the same level.
At that very moment, in the deep silence of the night, they heard a dry barking sound close by.
“What was that? Did you cough, Gauna?”
“It’s a fox,” the gaucho said.
Clarke picked up his shotgun.
“Let’s see if I can bag it.”
He set off in one direction, but Gauna pointed him in the opposite one. “He’s over there.”
“Let’s see.”
The plain was bathed in moonlight. Everything was an ashen gray color. The Englishman raised the gun to his shoulder in a classic gesture. With a loud “click,” he cocked the gun: something moved about twenty or thirty yards away. He fired. Carlos went with him to examine the result.
“I knew you wouldn’t miss him,” the boy said when they came to where the dead fox was lying, its bushy tail covering it like an eiderdown.
6: Clarke’s Confession
Three or four days later, they were in exactly the same situation. The distances were as huge as ever, the sky changed colors on cue, they swapped horses regularly, the weather continued stable. Gauna was still morose, Prior irrepressible. His way of conversing was in itself irrepressible, consisting as it did of tiny, meaningless sallies thrown out at every step and at any excuse. He had begun to address Clarke familiarly, both out of sheer exuberance and because, as he said, he considered they were twin souls. At times, Clarke was unsure whether the youth’s remarks were mere absurdities or deliberate mockery, as when Prior showed himself both inquisitive and disbelieving over the question of Clarke’s bachelorhood:
“You’re thirty-five already, Clarke! What are you waiting for to get married?”
“In England, no one marries before they’re forty.”
“Don’t talk nonsense! How can everyone get married when they’re old! No, no, in your case, there’s something very special going on.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. I rack my brains over it, but I can’t find the
explanation.”
Clarke could not help but laugh.
“I’ve traveled a lot . . .”
“All the more reason to marry. When you got back from your journeys, you’d see how your children had grown. Can you imagine the satisfaction? Thirty-five! You could be a grandfather
already.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“But I’m being serious! You could have a child my age.”
“Er . . .”
“No, you say? But if you’d married at . . .”
“All right, all right! How about changing the conversation?”
“Can’t you see you’re scared stiff? You could at least tell me if you intend to get married, even if it’s in your extreme old age.”
“Yes, I’m going to marry. Are you satisfied?”
“Do you think you’ll reach old age?”
“How will I get married otherwise?”
“No, it’s a serious question. I’m certain I’ll reach a hundred. Would you believe it, my great-grandfather is still alive? Old man Alzaga Gonzalez, known as ‘three Zees.’ He’s ninety-six and as strong as an oak. And his wife, a comparative youngster, is ninety-four. They had eleven children and only one of them died — and he was drowned, it wasn’t his health that failed him, no chance. And on my maternal side . . .”
“Wait a minute: didn’t you say you were adopted?”
Prior suddenly remembered. He burst out laughing:
“I’d forgotten. You see, I’m not so dogmatic about it. In fact, I didn’t forget, I said it to see if you’d remembered.”
“Don’t be such a hypocrite! Admit you had forgotten.”
“No, seriously, it was to test you.”
“Admit it!”
“I swear!”
“Admit it, or I’ll leave you here staked out on the ground!”
“All right! Don’t be so gleeful, just because you were right for once! Are your grandparents still alive?”
“I don’t have any: I’m adopted.”
The youth’s laughter rang out across the empty plain hour after hour. Clarke was slightly ashamed of these absurd conversations because of Gauna, but apart from that, he was thoroughly enjoying himself. Life does not often give one the chance to revel in all the childishness one has inside.
“What kind of woman do you like?” Carlos asked him some time later, returning once more to the theme that so fascinated him.
“I don’t have a definite preference.”
“You mean you don’t want to tell me, which is different.”
“All right, I don’t want to tell you.”
“Just as long as they’re not the sort with mustaches and
tattoos.”
“Is that the kind of thing the priests teach you at school?”
“Do you like them educated?
“. . . !”
“Well, you’re such an intelligent fellow, so well-read.”
“I like the silent type.”
“Oh, Clarke, Clarke, you’re so mysterious. The more I know you, the more you surprise me. How many times have you been in love in your life?”
“Only once.”
Clarke responded so quickly that his reply sounded a serious note in the midst of all their idle chatter. Carlos could not help but notice it, and this immediately awoke a real, generous interest in him. Once his curiosity was aroused, it was overwhelming. Clarke regretted his involuntary confession. There are times, he thought to himself; when it is much better to keep one’s mouth shut. But he was sufficiently honest with himself to recognize that it had been his own fault. In all these years, he had not opened himself to anyone about this painful episode in his life. Perhaps now was the time to do so. Carlos was the same age as his silence. There was a certain poetic justice about it all.
“One of these days,” he said, “I’ll tell you about it.”
“No, right now.”
“I promise. Don’t be impatient. You’re bored, and want to be entertained. But in this case, it’s not a question of just talking for the sake of it, at least not as far as I’m concerned. We adults often have unhappy memories, which mean a lot to us. For some reason, we store them up. And it can cause us still more pain if we confide them to inattentive or mocking ears.”
“Don’t insult me, Clarke. I do have some idea about life.”
“Very little.”
“And what does that matter?”
Clarke smiled at him.
“You’re right. What does it matter? I promise I’ll tell you, and you’ll be the first to hear it. Just give me some time to make up my mind.”
“No. Now.”
Clarke did not want to continue the argument, so he said nothing. But after their lunch and siesta, when they were riding out again in the fine afternoon across the empty wastes, the sad poignancy of the hour brought the words flowing naturally to his lips:
“It was many years ago. . . .”
“What was?”
“What d’you mean, ‘what was?’ What happened to me. Didn’t you ask me to tell you?”
“That’s right! I’m sorry, I was thinking of something else.”
“Carry on then, don’t let me interrupt you.”
“No, please, tell me.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything now.”
“Clarke, you’re driving me crazy! I’m sorry, but don’t be so touchy. My mind was elsewhere for a moment, but now I’m all ears.”
Clarke sighed, and began again:
“When I was young . . . when I was your age, my greatest dream was to come and discover this part of America. My father had always spoken so nostalgically of it as a lan
d of fable that it had made an indelible impression on me. My father had been a sailor, a trader, even a soldier. He traveled in Patagonia, Chile and Peru, in the days of General San Martín’s expeditions. His wanderings ended abruptly and without explanation; one fine day he returned to England and his wife, whom he had not seen for ten years. They adopted me, and he never left Kent again. All my adolescent dreams revolved around his years of adventure in America, made more poignant by his mysterious decision to come back home. So that when I was eighteen and had the chance to travel, my dream of getting to know these lands became reality. I went to Valparaiso, where I worked for a year and a half in an import-export house. I made numerous trips into the interior, if that is the right word in a country like Chile, which is so narrow people always walk sideways as though they were in an Egyptian frieze. I visited the northern desert, crossed the Andes a couple of times, and even ventured in a ship to the frozen south. Eventually, I headed south again with a small group which was exploring the possibility of settling there. We traveled overland, and reached the region of the fjords in a glorious springtime. In a shack on the coast I fell in with a compatriot, an aged adventurer who was waiting for the spring thaw to set off into the mountains to discover heaven knows what. He was a geologist and a widower, and was accompanied by his daughter, the wonderful Rossanna Haussmann, with whom I fell head over heels in love. Since she reciprocated my feelings, I said goodbye to my companions and set off with Professor Haussmann and her, who themselves had for company only four Indians and a black Chilean (an extraordinary thing, a black Chilean), by name Callango. Following the professor’s plans, we headed east as soon as the passes were clear. And so began for me a bewitching adventure, in which love and nature came together in one moment and one place, something life does not prepare us for, and which unfortunately is never repeated. Rossanna’s father was interested only in the mountains, in their composition, their mass, their complex relations with the earth’s gravity. Years later, I realized he was a scientist ahead of his time. At that time, his words went in one ear and out the other, while Rossanna’s words of love stayed forever in my heart. We discovered a confirmation of our love in every demonstration of nature’s power. And I can assure you that nature, in those latitudes, is in itself a confirmation. I don’t know of what exactly, but it is. We came upon mountains of black ice, which moved in front of our eyes; forests of giant blue pines, where deer as tall as horses grazed; valleys where every last inch was covered in flowers, while above them hung gigantic cornices of snow carved and polished by the wind; lakes as still as mirrors, winds howling awesome melodies, marble cliffs as lofty as palaces. It was all a delight for us, we felt ‘at home’ with every detail, no matter how big or small. But wherever we went, Callango’s insane eyes followed us. It was he who caused me the worst moment of my life. The man was out of his mind, though this was far from obvious on first acquaintance with him. He was unctuous, clinging, tenacious. By an incredible stroke of misfortune, he had also fallen in love with Rossanna, but in the way that black men fall in love with white women, that’s to say without much hope beyond a sort of perverse devotion; and devotion can never be wholly spiritual, because it is an intensification of desire. I would be lying if I said that was how I thought in those days (I had not even read Hume yet), but I was aware in some obscure way of the danger, and went to talk to the professor. He made excuses for Callango, telling me he had known him a long time, and was aware of the somewhat morbid fascination he had for his daughter, but felt it to be harmless. In his view Callango was a hysterical primitive, with feminoid tendencies. He even suggested he might soon fall for me instead, and then we could all have a good laugh about it. I’ll never forgive myself for the easy way I let myself be convinced by his explanation. One of the reasons was our meeting with a mountain tribe. They were an extraordinary group of Indians, who provided the professor with a lot of material for his notebooks. A little farther on, somewhere on the eastern slopes, we came upon a magnificent wood of myrtles, and made camp there for a while. Nearby was a towering glacier which lent itself perfectly to study as a model of tectonic displacement, and Professor Haussmann proposed to make a detailed examination of its composition and movement. In addition, the local Indians had told him a great number of legends related to this mass of ice, which he said contained quite a few profound truths he wanted to verify. Nothing could have pleased Rossanna and me more, because the little wood was the most wonderful thing we had seen, the place that most stirred our tender feelings; in the midst of those slender golden trees, whose bark was like human skin, but icy to the touch, like no other tree in the world (European myrtles are warm), we rediscovered our love, writ large. We spent our days there, while the professor and the Indians were on the glacier, taking measurements, examining samples, constructing hypotheses. Callango alternated between the two, as though he were everywhere at the same time. More than once, in our transports, we suspected his eyes were spying on us. Of course that strange wood, which in fact was a single tree since all of them shared the same root (how could we or he hide, behind just one tree?), with the diamond of the glacier close by, were enough to create that impression. And also, I was twenty years old, and in love; my ardor prevented me from thinking straight. All I wanted to do was to contemplate Rossanna, who seemed if anything to have grown still more beautiful during the weeks of our journey. It was like having perfection in one’s grasp. Until one day . . . that fateful day when, during a dark, torrid noontime, with the sky full of heavy clouds and a humid electricity in the air, the terrible event occurred. Howling and half naked, a tribe of unknown Indians fell upon us, without the slightest provocation. We were having lunch, in the doorway of the improvised hut where we slept. Spears came raining down, fortunately without doing us any harm, but they were followed by a more dangerous volley of rocks and lighted rags which set fire to our roof and scared off the mules. Our own poor Indians were petrified with fear. The professor and I fetched our shotguns, losing precious time while we loaded them, then fired almost at random. It was only at this point that we realized how vulnerable our camp was: it was in a hollow, with no easy escape routes. We had given it no thought, as there had been no indication we might be attacked. I gave my revolver to Rossanna and told her to withdraw in the direction the mules had vanished in. I thought I could frighten off our attackers with my gunfire, then follow her. You can imagine my distress when I heard shots from the revolver behind my back. Meanwhile, our attackers had come dangerously close. Our four Indians were dead, and there was no sign of Callango. As soon as I could, I left my position and ran after Rossanna. I met up with more Indians, who gazed at me with a crude bloodlust, or so I imagined. It was only the sound of my shotgun which kept them at a distance, a distance which kept changing, not only in extension but in position. In such a labyrinth, and bearing in mind the rocky terrain, it’s hardly surprising that I lost my sense of direction, especially considering the agitated state I was in. I don’t know how I was not killed. The fact is that a long while later I met up with the professor, beside himself and half-crazy, who was also trying to find an escape route. We were both alive and unharmed, but our shared concern was for Rossanna. I had a feeling which was almost a certainty: the savages had abducted her and then, satisfied with their booty (what more could they hope to gain from us?), they had pulled back. It was true we could no longer see or hear them. I swore to myself that I would find her, even if it took years to do so. I consoled myself with the thought that it would not be too difficult. The professor though was in despair over his daughter’s fate. We found the path back to our camp. The Indians had disappeared, taking their dead with them, and leaving the bodies of our assistants. They had stolen a few small things, as though to keep their hand in, and of course they must have taken our horses with them. There was no sign of Rossanna. Still less of Callango. We began a disorganized search. I dragged the old man into the myrtle wood. The daylight had faded although the storm had never broken, and we were in half-shado
w. In fact, several hours had gone by without us noticing it, and nightfall was upon us. Our beloved wood seemed threatening and ugly. We crossed it without seeing a soul, while vague thunderclaps rolled round the mountains. Finally, I came to a halt, distraught, my mind a blank, with no idea what to do or where to go. The professor, who was in no better state than I was, suggested we make for the glacier. His words sounded strange. I didn’t really understand him. But he set off walking, and I followed. . . .”