by Cesar Aira
“The Widow!” Clarke exclaimed, unable to believe his ears.
“That’s right, the Widow. At least, that’s what I’ve deduced. I’ve never actually seen her, nor found out anything concrete about her. A few garbled words my mother said as she lay dying have allowed me to reconstruct the story. My aunts died at almost the same time — all of them, including my mother, the victims of a strangely simultaneous (and highly suspicious) illness. It was then, around the time of Rondeau’s death at the hands of Cafulcurá (a death which no one will convince me was not due to some act of treachery by my half-sister) that the Widow’s representatives became extremely active in Buenos Aires. The claims on the inheritance, which had been undivided during my grandfather’s lifetime, became more strident. Of course, no one person could claim legitimacy against the others. This was the chance that snake in the grass De Angelis had been waiting for — perhaps inspired by dialectic effusions emanating from Salinas Grandes. He it was who gave Rosas the idea of enjoying the usufruct of all the possessions of my grandfather, General Aristóbulo de Gauna Alvear, while our quarrels went on — perhaps for ever. You should also know that we descend in direct line, albeit a collateral one, from the Hapsburgs, and one royal legacy has continued to figure in all our family’s papers: a large diamond, unique in the world due to its elongated form and the highly unusual way it was cut. Tradition had it that the diamond was handed down by the distaff side, but our logical tendency toward endogamy meant it had more or less stayed in the family, at least until the generation prior to mine. But my grandmother, its last legal owner, died before the eldest of her daughters had reached the age of fifteen, the date established for handing down the stone. Supposedly, presumably at least, it was my grandfather who handed it to his eldest daughter when she reached fifteen, but here comes yet another strange mystery: nobody ever knew which of the three sisters, my mother or the other two, was the eldest. Apparently there were exactly ten months between each of them, and since their mother had raised them hidden away in the nursery of one of our old patriarchal mansions, nobody could say which was which: they themselves must have known, I’m sure, but they never said a word. Did my grandfather know? He never made any comment either, and he was such a drunk and crazy old man that no one would have believed him anyway. The fact is that he died, and they, I am sorry to say, after living lives of easy virtue in their youth, turned into sanctimonious old maids. When they died there was no sign of the jewel. Everyone thought our grandfather must have given it to one of them, even if he had chosen at random. But that wasn’t the case. I should clarify one other small point: as a result of their amorous adventures, the sisters had given birth only to boys, with the exception, discovered much later, of my half-sister: the now infamous Widow. Are you following my drift?”
“I’m following it perfectly. Although, if this were a novel, I’d take the trouble to reread that last paragraph as carefully as possible. So, we’d reached the point where Rosas . . .”
“Rosas, or rather that reptile of an Italian who advises him, used the fact that the legal inventory was incomplete because of the gap left by the diamond, to declare the inheritance proceedings frozen. It’s a common trick among us. What they were after in this case was to suspend matters until they could produce one of the female relatives with the diamond in her possession, so they could negotiate with her ways to divide up half the province of Buenos Aires between them. That’s all the facts for you. The rest is easy enough to guess.”
“I assure you it’s not so easy for me. Couldn’t you give me a helping hand?”
“It seems to me obvious that the jewel has been in the possession of the Indians all these years. It was just what they needed to extort any number of advantageous treaties from that monster of Palermo. When you appeared, the time for the great sleight of hand was ripe; and you were as good an instrument as any to set the whole thing in motion. Why else would Rosas have lent you his best horse? Repetido was the password that you innocently took with you to Salinas Grandes. Once you were there, while they were putting on a great show of pretense, things became more complicated. I have no way of knowing for sure what actually happened, but I have my suspicions. It’s likely there were arguments in the court about handing over the diamond, especially from the faction supporting Juana Pitiley. Leaving themselves without the stone could bring down Rosas’s greed on their heads, and perhaps even speed their own extermination (even though they must be getting a sizeable cut from the deal over the inheritance). If you remember, we saw, or almost saw, the supposed flight of a ‘hare.’ Well, the shape of the diamond precisely recalls that of a hare. As for the ‘legibrarian’ part of it, which I must confess was a surprise to me, it can be explained by the legend of its extraordinary shape. It was cut by an unknown Jew in Amsterdam on the orders of Emperor Charles the Fifth, to fit into Erasmus’s right superciliary arch so that he could use it as a monocle to overcome his astigmatism, for him to be able to ‘read,’ ‘read’ the ‘legible,’ if you follow me: a gift from the Emperor which was never sent as a result of the philosopher’s death.”
“Very original. So according to you, up in Salinas Grandes someone stole the stone?”
“Or faked stealing it.”
“What about Cafulcurá’s disappearance?”
“I haven’t managed to find an explanation for that yet, but you won’t deny it’s linked.”
“There are important holes in your story, Mister Gauna.”
“What’s important aren’t the holes, but what remains. If you look closely, it’s all holes, but the evidence to cover them is there. You must have heard that the Widow is preparing to move on. They say it’s to the Andes, but I have the feeling it’s to somewhere else: once she’s got her hands on the ill-gotten gains, she won’t stop until she’s reached Paris. And today I heard she’s preparing to celebrate the fifteenth birthday of someone who is supposed to be her daughter. . . .”
“Yes, that’s what Coliqueo told me.”
“What he won’t have told you is that when she came through here she tried all she could to buy any fifteen-year-old girl available . . . that can only mean that things have got out of control and she wasn’t ready for the playacting. What I don’t know is where . . . But she didn’t take any girl from here, because Coliqueo refused to sell her one — not out of principle, of course, but to force her to stop somewhere else to find one, so that he could gain time. I’m sure that lunatic has also smelled something odd going on, and is trying to find out what it is. That’s why I think we should follow her traces now while we’re so close to her. . . .”
“It seems to me that you’re using the plural a little too lightly, Mister Gauna. What has your family quarrel got to do with me?”
“But my ‘family quarrel’ is what it’s all about! All the rest is simply idle chatter! Do you want the hare? Do you want Cafulcurá?”
“I’m not . . . convinced.”
“Well then, just listen. There’s more. My half-sister, the Widow, is in fact . . .”
At that moment a deafening noise cut their conversation short. Night had fallen while they were talking, and the Indians had lit their bonfires. There were so many of them, and they were so close together because of the confused huddle of the tents, that the whole camp was lit up like a city. In fact, the profusion of bonfires had brought forward nightfall artificially, and it was not yet completely dark. The sky still gave off a viscous glimmer of light, which made the intervals between each fire a dull gray rather than black. Even the distances floated, mysteriously visible, a while longer.
The shouting was coming from all around them. Clarke, who was always startled by the least little thing, leapt up, his head spinning like a top. Gauna understood what was going on before he did:
“An attack!” he shouted.
And indeed a surprise attack was taking place. A disheveled rider passed close by them, along the top of the riverbank. He was the typical Indian warrior: spear in one hand, stone bolas whirling in the othe
r, his naked body covered in grease, hair streaming in the wind, his face contorted in a ferocious war-cry, his mount galloping flat out under him, plunging forward without reins. The horse’s features were a picture of pure terror. The two men stood paralyzed at the sight, but it was gone in a flash. Fortunately the warrior had not spotted them, but it might be very different with the next one (leaving aside the fact, unimportant as ever in the darkness, that they had nothing whatever to do with what was going on). They rushed to find shelter. As he ran, Clarke looked back and saw other attackers streaming past at the speed of imaginary blinkings of an eye. They were charging along the same path, which must have been chosen by the enemy strategist as one of the lines of attack on the camp. From their new vantage point, he and Gauna could see the upheaval going on there, where only a few moments before the Indians had been peacefully awaiting the arrival of night. The camp was a seething mass of writhing bodies: hideous-looking centaurs launched themselves on howling groups of women; men stood stock still in the center of deadly circles of stone bolas, whose dreadful whirring could be heard even above all the uproar; leaders gesticulated, hoarse from shouting orders into empty air; bodies jerked upright until they reached the height to have their throats cut; children and dogs scrambled desperately amid the horses’ hooves; even the hens were trying in vain to take to the air in fizzing gaggles. And the campfires were reflected in a thousand moving dots, in the sinews of every muscle: the Indians of the camp may have been surprised without their weapons, but not without their body grease — in this at least they were equal to their attackers. A wave of Indians swept out of the camp, then swept back almost at once on horseback.
The lack of space became increasingly evident: tents were knocked down by the flailing horses like houses of cards. The top of the bank on the far side of the river was clear, and the two white men at first thought they could take refuge there. But even as they looked, it filled with a motley gang of horsemen. The bank where they had originally been sitting was now empty, but there seemed no point going back there: their troop of horses had dispersed at the start of the raid. There was no escape. The band of marauders on the far bank charged down, shouting wildly, and Clarke and Gauna were alarmed to realize that they were the target. Clarke ran like the wind back to their things, and felt among the shadowy bundles for his shotgun and a bag of bullets. As he turned again, he saw the silhouette of a savage on the point of spearing Gauna. Clarke shot him and he fell from his horse. The other Indians charged on through a gap between two ridges, heading for the tents. Gauna waited for Clarke to catch him up.
“Are you all right?”
“Never better,” said the gaucho, wheezing like a duck.
“What a disaster,” Clarke exclaimed, gazing at the camp of Agramante that the Indian village had become. Everywhere, bodies had become fountains of blood, which darkened the darkness. Some of the bodies had fallen on to fires, and the stench of charred flesh added another dimension of horror to the scene.
Unfortunately for them, the battle flowed back toward them. A fierce combat was going on behind them. Clarke raised his shotgun and downed two Indians. He ran with Gauna until they were protected by tents. Then they were dragged by a mob of wailing, crazy women toward the very center of the fighting. The most dangerous thing were the bullets which, as usual with the Indians, were fired off at random. More than once they felt them buzz too close to their heads for comfort, like tiny nocturnal bees. All of a sudden, the two men became separated. It seemed as if successive moments of time were all being thrown together: there were women bending over wounded Indians to give them water, while a few steps away, another Indian was climbing on to a bloodstained horse and loosening his bolas. . . . Clarke wondered how on earth he had started out on the outside of the camp, and finished in the center, right where the fighting was at its height. The dust raised by the charging horses had mixed with the smoke from the burning tents to create a thick, impenetrable fog. Everywhere, people trod on dead bodies. Clarke had no time to worry about anything but himself; he tried to avoid any dangerous encounter, and ran first in one direction and then another, until he was completely disoriented. Even so, to his amazement, he still found himself in the thick of the combat, but his dodging kept him out of the way of the hand-to-hand fighting, and he did not have to fire any more shots, despite often being on the point of doing so. Horribly overexpressive horseheads kept looming through the walls of dust and smoke. The Indians’ war-cries constantly echoed through the confusion. Suddenly a rush of people carried him away with them. They plunged through the ruins of several tents, and just as he was trying to jump over the bodies of some wounded Indians, Clarke was astonished to hear . . . laughter. There was something very familiar about it, and from the mist in front of him he soon saw emerge the figure of Carlos Alzaga Prior, together with a group of young Indians of both sexes.
“Clarke, I was so worried about you!”
“Throw that cigarette away!”
The Englishman’s indignation exploded like a storm within a storm. He went up to the youth, seized his arm with his left hand (he was still clutching his shotgun in the other) and shook him, all the while dragging him away from the others. Carlos had a lighted cigarette between his fingers.
“How irresponsible, how thoughtless of you!” Clarke was choking with fury, and had to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard.
Carlos shook himself free. He wasn’t very lucid. The bleary smile did not leave his face even when it was his turn to shout:
“Leave me in peace! You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Come here!” Beside himself, Clarke raised the gun as though he were about to shoot.
Then something extraordinary happened: a horse that may or may not have had a rider (they didn’t see one) galloped between them. Clarke was stunned, but Carlos carried on as if nothing had happened.
“Have a puff,” he said, holding the cigarette out to Clarke between his thumb and his middle finger.
“No thanks,” Clarke shouted, his voice shrill with nerves. He snatched the cigarette, threw it onto the ground, and stubbed it out with the toe of his boot in a rough, vengeful way. Carlos chose to give a dismissive laugh, as if to say: “who cares, I’ve smoked enough anyway.” Clarke was on the point of slapping his face, when something else happened that prevented him doing so: a rush of air only inches from the back of his head as a stone bola crashed by. Clarke threw himself down just in time: the second bola cleaved the air where his head had been. “I would have slapped his face with my gray matter if I hadn’t ducked,” he thought. For the past few minutes, his adrenalin had been pumping. He was thirsty for blood. And more than the scandalous behavior of his young companion, it was something else, something unknown that was awakening in him. He raised his eyes and the shotgun at the same time. An Indian who, with his hair streaming out and his arms waving, looked like a woman, was bending from his horse to finish him off. Clarke fired without taking aim. The bullet struck the Indian full in the belly and lifted him into the air; they saw him do a somersault and land in a sitting position, his tongue lolling out. He was dead. Carlos had already set off running; Clarke followed him.
They came to a halt in a relatively dark spot from which they could look down on most of the battle. They decided to sit on the ground, in order to offer less of a target to any stray bullet.
“It’s incredible!”
“It’s barbaric!”
“They’re Indians from Salinas Grandes,” Carlos said. “I suppose you recognized them?”
So this was their everlasting peace as the fury that had gripped him subsided. Clarke was slowly returning to his normal self.
“I don’t know how I could have shot that poor unfortunate . . .”
“But it was in self-defense!”
“You’re right. At least we escaped.”
“Don’t be too sure. . . .”
“By the way . . . what happened to Gauna?”
“I saw him go by on a horse
a while ago. A horse he must have stolen from a dead man.”
Clarke sighed, slightly ashamed of himself and the irresponsible adolescent by his side.
“I’m sure by now he’s rounding up our horses. I hope he finds Repetido, or Rosas will give me hell. Gauna’s a sensible person.”
“He’s a pillar of strength.”
“Don’t mock. I need to have a serious talk with you.”
“Just look at that! Have they gone mad?”
Clarke looked — not very far, because the clouds of dust added to the darkness of the night and the way his pupils had contracted during his dangerous foray among the fires meant that he could see nothing beyond about twelve yards. Even so, he could make out a line of Indians riding past at walking pace, heading for the center of the camp, obviously on a mission of peace. Although at first it seemed like a hallucination, when Indians from the village came to a halt and stared at the newcomers, they realized it wasn’t. The two of them also went to see what it was all about. When the peace ambassadors reached the center of the encampment, a remarkable scene took place: another procession, just as formal and orderly as theirs, with Coliqueo at its head, came to greet them. Fighting was going on all around, but they were at the center of a zone of quiet. Even the dust settled, so that the bonfires began to throw a fantastic half-light on the meeting. The effect was the same as Clarke had noticed earlier, that of disconnected fragments of time being superimposed on each other, as though war disrupted the normal chain of events. Carlos, who was an expert at recognizing people, whispered to Clarke that some of the chief shamans from Salinas Grandes were among the new arrivals. Apparently there were to be peace talks there and then. The two of them pushed their way to the front row of onlookers, from where they could hear the speeches. A Huilliche who had crossed his eyes elaborately was the first to speak. Without dismounting, of course. With no sign of urgency, he embarked upon a complicated explanation of the state of mind of thirty-one of Cafulcurá’s thirty-two wives. Summing up a speech which lasted a good three-quarters of an hour, it boiled down to the following: these desperate wives had financed a punitive expedition, which was bitterly opposed by the ruling council, who had ordered the dispatch of a simultaneous embassy, comprising the speaker and his companions, to beg forgiveness in order to restore the peace so heedlessly put at risk, etcetera. If the two groups had not arrived at their destination at the same time, this was due to the fact that the second one was distracted by the sighting of a lone rider in the distance . . . then followed a highly complicated geometric-topographical argument, incomprehensible from the outset without a diagram, but in which Clarke discovered certain similarities to ideas he himself had formulated concerning the “wanderer,” whom he had no doubt was one and the same person. Coliqueo listened to all this impassively. After the speaker fell silent, there was a short pause, in which more shots and cries could be heard in the distance, then in what seemed like a prepared speech, Coliqueo declared his acceptance of their apologies. The acceptance of this acceptance would doubtless give rise to yet another speech, but Clarke was in no mood to stay and hear it. He gestured to Carlos, and they pushed their way back through the enthralled throng.