by Cesar Aira
Carlos fell about laughing. They carried on in a similar vein for some time. The birds were delicious. They made tea, then Carlos fell asleep. He said he needed to catch up. Clarke, who was if anything ahead on sleep, lay back smoking his pipe and staring at the sky through the foliage. He did not feel like thinking, but preferred the voluptuousness of an empty mind, which was where thinking led anyway. He took up his daydreaming where he had left off when Carlos arrived. . . . Where was he? He was trying to decide between fish and game . . . and there had been no need to decide: he had eaten anyway. He meditated at length without a single thought entering his mind, and this was a happy moment in his life, even though it left no trace. It did however allow him to make a slight adjustment: until that moment he had considered thought to be the true representation of the continuum; now he realized that happiness fit the bill more precisely. Happiness was the real continuum, the one that brought satisfaction.
12: Clarke’s Story
When Carlos woke up (because there is always somebody who wakes up to give fresh impetus to a story), Clarke had already decided to head back for Buenos Aires. He considered their adventure over, and he was not particularly interested in any remaining loose ends. On the contrary, he thought it appropriate that some threads remain unexplained. He had had enough, he was exhausted, and felt like a vegetable, incapable of performing any fresh actions. It may seem contradictory that someone who feels this way should be in such a hurry to depart, but basically it is natural. His mistake was of another order.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began, “and it seems to me the moment has come to turn back. I’ve had my fill of Indians and nonsense, and if we set a reasonable pace we could be back in Buenos Aires in a month.”
“Much sooner even.”
“The fact is I’d prefer not to rush. I’d like to take my time, have a rest, perhaps carry out some observations. Even so, we’d arrive in time for the start of classes, so your parents won’t be put out.”
“Don’t worry on that score!”
“Let me decide what I worry about. What d’you think of the idea?”
“Clarke, you know I’ll do whatever you think best. The only thing I’m sorry about is that you never found your Hare.”
The Englishman felt a momentary flash of irritation.
“If you weren’t so utterly thoughtless, I’d say you were a complete cynic. I don’t know how you can stand there and reproach me about the Hare when you — who came here to paint — never made so much as a single miserable sketch, and . . .”
“I’m taking the pampa with me imprinted on my retinas, that’s what matters! What would you know about art anyway? The English have never painted anything worthwhile!”
“. . . And you forgot your famous Yñuy in a hurry, didn’t you?”
Even as he was saying this, Clarke regretted it, but the boy was so surprised he did not even react bitterly:
“It’s true, Yñuy . . . I swear I had forgotten about her.”
“You see?”
“But I did search for her, you’re a witness to that. Is it my fault I couldn’t find her?”
“Two weeks ago you wanted to get married, now it’s neither here nor there.”
“No, it’s not! If I found her I’d go on loving her. . . .”
“Don’t talk of love, you make me laugh.”
The pair of them fell silent, in a sulk.
“Look Clarke, I have to say it: you’re a bit of a bastard. You had no right to say that to me.”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, ‘sorry,’ ‘sorry,’ but you said it all the same.”
“You deserved it.” But then, seeing that this was getting them nowhere, Clarke chose a different tack:
“Don’t worry. After all, she was the one who left. It wasn’t you who got her pregnant, was it?”
“How could you think that! When I met her, she was at least eight months pregnant.”
“As much as that?”
“She had a belly. . . .”
“Perhaps she’s already had it, who knows? And maybe she’s had it adopted.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s incredible how unconcerned the Mapuches are about their newborn. They claim to be defenders of the human race, but they give up their children without batting an eyelid.”
“Far be it from me to question your wisdom, but I’d say quite the opposite. I think they’re very affectionate with their children.”
“That’s true, but I was talking about the identity of the children when they’re just born.”
“Yes, but that’s what the birthmarks are for.”
“What?”
“The birthmarks. Don’t you have one? I’ve got one on my . . . on my buttock. A small mark that looks like a hare in flight. When we were fighting, and I was . . . well, when I was almost naked let’s say, it was visible, you can’t imagine how much the Indians commented on it, they’re so observant.”
Clarke suspected he was having his leg pulled, but let it pass.
“I’ve got a birthmark as well,” he said, to say something. “Here, between my eyes. You can’t see it because of my thick brows.”
“Let’s see,” Carlos said, coming closer.
“It’s barely noticeable. It’s a V-shape that’s lighter than the rest of my skin.”
“But it’s perfectly visible. It looks just like a hare’s ears.”
The Englishman exploded:
“There you go with the hare again! Are you doing it on purpose?”
Carlos rocked with laughter. Then a moment later, his gaze lost in the distance, he murmured:
“Yñuy is a very sweet girl.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Beautiful. You’d have really liked her.”
“We might still find her.”
“I asked everywhere. . . .”
A silence.
“Shall we head back then?” said Clarke.
“OK . . . let’s. The fact is, I’ve no idea what we’re doing here. Are you sure you don’t want to go to Salinas Grandes?”
“Not on your life. Besides, we’re a long way away.”
“Clarke!”
“What’s the matter? Don’t shout like that, you’ll give me a heart attack!”
“We’re forgetting Gauna!”
“Good. He’s someone who’s better to lose than to find.”
They mounted. While they were ambling along, Carlos kept on about the tracker, so Clarke told him the story of the Gauna Alvear family, and the gaucho’s views on it.
“You can’t deny it’s an ingenious tale,” the boy said when his friend had finished.
“That’s the worst thing about it.”
Night was drawing in. They met up with some Indians. Those Indians met others . . . to cut a long story short: by the next day, Gauna was back with them, and they had completely changed direction. Now they were headed south-west once more, as their guide wished. Such a rapid turn around demanded an explanation.
“Why did you listen to him?” Carlos asked Clarke (they had resumed the order they rode in before the war, with the two of them in the rear, and Gauna fifty yards ahead so he did not have to listen to them).
Clarke did not reply.
“Don’t you see you’re completely underhanded? You tell me, your friend, one thing, then he comes along and . . .”
“I say the same to everyone: yes. What are we losing by going with him? In three or four days he’ll be satisfied, we’ll have had an another outing, and got to know . . . then the three of us can go back to Buenos Aires, as right as rain.”
“No, Clarke. You’re hiding something from me.”
“All right, if you want me to be frank with you, there are two things: first, I’d like to see that famous Cerro de la Ventana; and second, perhaps the Widow really does have something to do with Gauna’s story, in which case we’ll be able to get to know her.”
“But who wants to?”
“I do, for one. Just think if sh
e really is his half-sister.”
“Come off it.”
“Everything is possible, Carlos.”
“Why does that make her so special anyway? What if they are similar? What if she’s got the same rotten nature as him, and has us all slaughtered?”
Clarke shrugged. Then he counterattacked:
“All Gauna told me was that he had learned that the Widow had finally found a girl she could pass off as her daughter, and that she was on a forced march to get to the Ventana to celebrate the birthday. There, from the hands of the unknown Mapuche who has been keeping it all these years, she is supposed to receive a jewel that will release the inheritance that is going to make Gauna a Rothschild, if only he can get there in time. OK, so it’s the most unlikely fantasy in the whole wide world. But he is going to go anyway, with me (which he says would help him, because of Repetido, our four-legged safe-conduct) or without me. Now tell me, with your hand on your heart, if you had been told a story like that, however far-fetched, and it was all the same to you whether you went or not, wouldn’t you at least have been curious? Tell the truth.”
Carlos laughed his fresh, childlike laugh:
“You’re a genius, Clarke. You always manage to convince me.”
“Oh, Good God, it can’t be . . .”
“What?”
“Do you see what I see?”
“You’re right, it’s your friend the Wanderer. Is he coming or going?”
Clarke, raised his voice: “Can you see him, Gauna?”
“Yes.”
The rider seemed not to move on the horizon, to be a fixed point. The Englishman told himself he would not take his eyes off him, because he wanted to know how he always succeeded in vanishing. He regretted it was not dark enough yet for him to carry out a triangulation by the stars. There was no point doing it with the sun, because that moved. Over the previous days, the warriors he had commanded in battle were always telling him they had seen the strange horseman, but for one reason or other had never seen him anywhere but on the horizon. Clarke continued to stare at him until all at once he disappeared. It was only a moment, and suddenly he was gone. But in that instant, whether due to a visual trick or a mental fantasy, Clarke could have sworn he had seen the most subtle overlapping; it was not as though the horizon were coming nearer, which would have been the normal thing, but instead as though the whole vast expanse of the plain had been exchanged for another, which was absurd. Clarke became lost in thought.
Gauna had brought another ten horses with him, so the troop they were leading was huge. They also had enough provisions for weeks, so they would not have to go to the trouble of hunting. In their first day of riding they did not meet up with anyone, but on the second they ate at midday with a noisy bunch of Indians out hunting, and they almost found themselves obliged to dine with others. They got out of it by arguing great haste, and camped for the night in what seemed to Clarke to be one of the most enchanting spots he had ever seen: a creek, usually quite narrow but swollen now after all the rain, framed by an exquisite variety of scenic views. By the dying evening light and the first light of the next morning, they collected agate and jasper pebbles, admired thousands of yellow lilies, listened to the birdsong, took long walks along the riverbanks, and bathed not once but twice, before dinner and before breakfast. Frogs lulled them to a restoring sleep.
The next day the weather was clear and fine. Gauna rode on ahead as usual. They had scarcely traveled half an hour when Carlos looked up and said:
“What are those . . . accumulations of earth?”
He did not dare say “mountains,” because the very idea seemed so out of place in these surroundings.
“They’re mountains,” Clarke replied; “and I think . . .” He raised his voice: “Gauna, are they the Sierra de la Ventana?”
“Yes,” said the gaucho without even turning round.
“They are.”
“So we’ve arrived.”
“Not quite. They’re still a long way off.”
They were barely visible on the horizon, an unbroken line of the brightest blue. The three carried on riding for a while in silence, their eyes sometimes fixed on the mountains, sometimes staring out emptily.
“While I remember, Clarke,” Carlos said, “you have to finish the story you started the other day.”
“What story?”
“Well, ‘story’ is just a way of putting it. You were telling me about your great love.”
“. . . ?”
“Don’t you remember? About Rossanna . . .”
“I told you about that?” Clarke asked, genuinely startled.
“Of course you did. It was before the war.”
“I don’t recall.”
“And you left off in the middle.”
“I must have had some reason for doing so.”
“It wasn’t my fault, I assure you. There was some interruption, I can’t remember what. You can’t say there haven’t been interruptions over the past few days.”
“You’re right, more than enough. But are you sure . . . ? It’s completely slipped my mind. But when you say her name . . . it’s not that I always think you’re making things up, but I thought that fragment from my past was one of my best-kept secrets. Sometimes it seems to me it’s the key to my entire life. In a way I’m glad I confided in you, even though I don’t remember doing so.”
“Sometimes I just don’t understand you, Clarke.”
Clarke had submerged himself in a deep well of memories, a darkly veiled expression on his face. Carlos did not insist, but after riding on for a while in silence, he asked again:
“So, are you going to tell me or not?”
“Eh, what?”
“Your story about Rossanna . . .”
“Rossanna died.”
“I’m very sorry. But I must say I was expecting it, from the way you began your story.”
“You’ll end up convincing me I really did tell you. Perhaps I was talking in my sleep?”
“Look, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to tell me anything.”
“No, I’m sorry. Where had I got to?”
“After all this build-up, you’ll think it’s ridiculous if I say I can’t remember, but so much has happened I reckon I do have some excuse. I can recall there was a black man: what was his name? Mandango?”
“Callango. Did I tell you about him too?”
“Stop it, for heaven’s sake! You told me everything, in the classic style. Let me think.” He stroked his smooth, youthful chin. “You’d been attacked by the Indians, Rossanna had disappeared, you and her father, Professor . . .”
“Haussmann.”
“Exactly. You were looking for her. That was as far as we had got, I think: you were heading for the glacier.”
“I told you about the glacier?”
“There you go again! I’m going to ride with Gauna.”
He spurred on his horse, and would have ridden ahead if Clarke hadn’t quickly pushed in front of him with Repetido, who was a genius at this kind of maneuver.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I promise not to say it again. From now on I’ll behave as though I told you everything, which is probably what I did. When the Professor and I returned to where our camp had been before the Indian attack, who looked fierce and had even fiercer intentions, we could find no trace of either Rossanna or Callango. At first I made no connection between the two of them, and if I had done so it would have been to kindle a glimmer of hope because he, when all was said and done, was a member of our expedition. Even the despicable idea that he loved her might have given me hope. We had spent long hours fleeing in a state of despair, and now we were faced with the stormiest, most leaden and sinister nightfall you can imagine. Exhausted, desperate, both of us had the idea of returning to the place that was dearest to us. I wanted to go back to the myrtle wood, and dragged the Professor there with me; and then he, after making sure his daughter was not hidden among the trees, took me off to his glacier. I followed him like
an automaton.”
Here Clarke paused for a moment. Somewhere in his unconscious mind he must have realized that this was the exact point where he had broken off his story before. He began again in a different tone, with a low, troubled voice that lent an air of truth to his strange and horrible account of how the episode had ended:
“To the uninformed, the glacier looked like a massive, threatening mountain of black ice. The fact that it moved added a supernatural touch. It was something to gaze on from afar, then get away from, to talk about at a safe distance. The Professor on the other hand had spent weeks ‘inside’ this wonder of nature. Not that he had gone into the ice, of course, but he had got inside the system of its formation, its movement; he had weighed it up, listened to its heartbeat, had ‘ridden’ it at length. Together with his Indians, now dead, and with the deplorable Callango, still unfortunately alive, he had clambered up to its highest point to hang his plumblines and set up his metronomes. Wearing thick felt overshoes they had spent hours up on the crest of the glacier, measuring the speed at which the wall of ice moved forward. The Professor had grown used to considering this dreadful object as a living being, and that was what motivated him that evening. He needed to calm his anxiety with a scientific image, even though he was the one who had supplied all the science. There was a slight mishap: I would not remember it, had not everything that happened that day been branded in my memory. The Professor lost his way. As it turned out, this was unimportant, because the tragedy had already happened without our being aware of it. For a few minutes we walked along aimlessly, with the Professor wondering what had become of the glacier, and me behind him, my mind a complete blank. Then I reacted and started to guide him. We could hardly see a thing, not because it was so late, but because a dense black cloud was descending upon us, with the noise of an approaching storm. A hurricane began to blow, producing a terrible howling as it whistled off the peaks. It was going to pour with rain at any moment, but that was the least of our worries. Finally we came out from the trees into the clearing made by the thrust of the glacier’s ice and rocks. Its dark mass rose in front of us. We did not look up at it, but were only too aware of the way darkness emanated from the glacier, and its monumental indifference; we could hear new terrifying sounds that the wind was drawing from its jagged needles, and a deep resonance from sonorous depths. At that moment something happened which you may very occasionally have seen during a stormy nightfall. The sun, which seemed to have set at least an hour earlier, was in fact still sinking toward the horizon. And in the lowest part of the sky there was a border more or less free of clouds. So that although the leaden ocean hanging over our heads neither moved nor lifted in any way, all of a sudden a shaft of light appeared, dazzling and theatrical, both bright and gentle at the same time, and a ray of sun found its way through the labyrinths of the mountains and shrieking winds and struck the glacier, illuminating it like a diamond against a background almost uniformly black. . . . It was then we saw her. We saw her the entire time, no more than a minute, that this fantastic sunbeam lasted, and I have continued to see her every day since then, like an epiphenomenon of light, any light. Rossanna’s white, naked body was encrusted in the glacier about two yards below the top, that’s to say about a hundred feet above the ground. To our confused, exhausted minds it seemed simply like some kind of ghastly miracle that defied explanation. Nevertheless, I thought I understood what had happened. The deranged Callango had thought up this macabre proof of his love. Demonstrating a skill that could seem remarkable, and indeed was, in the way that feats of madness are remarkable, he had lowered himself on ropes from the top of the glacier, had dug a hole in the ice, had put Rossanna’s body in it, and then had filled it with water which, at those temperatures, had frozen in minutes. For years now I’ve thought about it. I suppose he must have reasoned: if she is not to be mine, she won’t be anybody else’s, she will be part of this huge diamond, frozen, intact for all eternity. . . . He had often carried out similar tasks, with ropes, pickaxes, and buckets of water, for the Professor, so we could hardly be surprised that he knew how to do it. The light began to fade, the sun was going down, this time finally (and this adverb, in a broad sense, also applied to the feelings of my heart); grasping fingers of darkness stole the apparition from our sight. The Professor cried out and pointed: from the summit of the glacier, a confused outline of gray on black, Callango was sliding down, a bundle of ropes under his arm. He had spotted us, and was trying to escape. I raised my rifle, which I had been clutching for hours forgotten in my hand, and fired off a shot, almost without taking aim. I have to tell you that I did it as an automatic gesture, with no hope of succeeding, because not only were we four hundred yards from the target, but I was a dreadful shot, so bad in fact (I had never once hit what I was aiming for) that I had more than once wondered whether I did not suffer from some psychic resistance to shooting. But it so happened that hardly had the shot rung out before the ape-like silhouette of the black man came to a halt, hesitated for a moment, then plunged over the edge of the wall of ice. I thought I heard, with a certain melancholy satisfaction, the thump of the body as it crashed to the ground. In parenthesis, I should say that ever since then I’ve been a crack shot. I don’t think I’ve wasted a bullet in fifteen years. Well, such are the mysteries of the human soul. Night had fallen, and the delayed storm finally broke. A hard rain began to fall, lashing down in squalls of wind, while the sky was crisscrossed with lightning. One of the flashes lit the Professor’s face. I had not been thinking of him for a few minutes, but now I saw the mask of a man plunging into the abyss. I took him by the shoulders and dragged him toward the wood, where I hoped to find shelter. This was not to be; rather, the danger was still more deadly there. The branches of the myrtles were being whipped around, and the whole wood seemed to be on the point of being uprooted, to topple and bury us. As we ran out again, we saw lofty pine trees being torn from the earth, great clumps of snow being hurled from mountain to mountain, and the waters of the lake surging up in roaring black waves, one of which engulfed us and knocked us flat. . . . We ran on again, crazy, desperate; vague ideas flitted through my mind, offering me a remote hope: we could wait till morning, go and fetch Rossanna’s body, give her a proper burial, weep over her, anything. But even these plans were swept away in an apotheosis of horror: a fresh catastrophe befell us, in which the elements themselves seemed to be conspiring. First there was a peal of thunder, unbelievably louder than all the ones which had preceded it; then a lightning bolt fell to earth with a loud boom. We looked toward the spot. Our blind flight had taken us to a place from where we could see everything: the lightning struck the heart of the glacier, which shattered with a cosmic crash of breaking glass. Thousands of tons of ice collapsed on top of each other. I could think only of Rossanna. The Professor was a rag doll beside me, unable to take more than a few feeble steps. I don’t remember much more about that terrible night. I know we ran on again, unable to find shelter, that we somehow survived the following day of rain and winds, and that we ended up in the leather tents of some Indians who had picked us up just as we were about to succumb to the cold and exhaustion. We recovered, in our bodies at least, and started on a long, hazardous journey that eventually took us to Buenos Aires, and from there in a schooner to Southampton. The Professor had not regained the use of his speech, or all his mental faculties, and he died in my arms a few months later in his house in Surrey. As for my life . . . well, it could be said it went on. I studied, I became a naturalist. . . .”