Our horseback rides delighted me: I waited for them eagerly at daybreak, when the birds first sang. Heredia had lent me some riding chaps and a pair of rope-soled sandals. With an incomparable feeling of exultation I crossed the lagoon and saw birds’ nests shaped like baskets floating on the water. In a field I found a dark, shiny partridge egg the color of chocolate, and another huge rhea egg.
From the back of the kitchen the voices from a radio could be heard, filling the empty house with echoes. I understood why Heredia had lamented that the inhabitants of the house were not so much silent as invisible. “Other people’s radios are aggressive,” my friend said while he was taking off his boots to put on his sandals. We went out on the patio. It was nighttime. The moon made a deep impression on me. At that time, not from his way of speaking or from his words but rather from his way of boldly distributing the silence, I experienced the startling revelation of Heredia’s intelligence.
We were riding through the fields. I asked Heredia who owned the woods and the houses that we could see in the distance. He explained patiently, “Those woods belong to Rosendo Jara. He has sheep. Those belong to Miguel Ramos, the owner of the store. He has a herd of cattle and a son who breaks horses. That one farther off where you can see a windmill belongs to Valentín Gismondi, a man who is poorer than the others. He has a daughter named María.”
Our friendship slowly progressed as we gradually began to let each other into our confidence. I spoke of my antipathy for my older brother, the silly attitude my mother took with regard to such a natural feeling. Blood ties didn’t exist for me. Wasn’t it enough that we were brothers? Did we have to be friends? Heredia understood me. He spoke to me about his father: “He can’t stand the fact that I’m here. He suspects that I am hiding something from him. Can’t a person live without hiding a secret from his father? Supposing that he investigates and discovers it—it would still be a secret. Nobody can know me. One day he suspects that I am in love, another that I am drinking. Perplexing him amuses me.”
“That’s unkind,” I said unenthusiastically.
“Why is it unkind? Silly people need to be punished. If I were to take him to a ranch house built of mud, without shutters, maybe even without windows, and showed him a girl like María Gismondi, who smells of smoke but abounds in virtues; if I were to tell him ‘This is my girlfriend,’ he would treat me like a criminal.”
“And is that your situation?”
“No, not at all. I wanted to show you my father’s silliness with this example. He is a monster. I have sometimes thought . . .”
I felt the passing of time, its essence in its repetitions. Remembering the present stretches time out even more. I remembered the smell of the rain at the end of the day when Heredia, without explanation, would disappear from the ranch. I would hear his horse gallop off on the dirt road, or would see a cloud of dust that drew farther away with the carriage.
I thought: He returns who knows when, at an hour when I am deep asleep. I hear the sound of his boots on the flagstones in the corridor. He knocks on my window to wish me good night. I hear him in my dreams. While I sleep, time interrupts its conventional rhythm. In lonely places sleep gets bound up with reality. It is like the imitation of a very long life, with its memories. I have been living at this ranch with Armando Heredia for five or six days and yet it seems as if I have been living here in this house for my whole life, that I have always heard this rain, that I have always seen the sunsets, that Armando has always knocked on my window to wish me good night in the middle of my dreams.
We reached the end of the property on horseback and swam in a round watering trough, what they call an Australian tank, that was in the middle of an old orchard. The water only reached our waists, but I felt more pleasure that I did when I swam at the YMCA or at the beaches at Olivos on the River Plate. We happily splashed around in a couple of feet of water. Birds flew down, their wings brushing lightly against the water, and swiftly soared back into the air. While we were getting dressed beneath a willow, the shade of which sheltered us, our conversation moved toward mutual trust.
“At first, when I decided to stay here, my father thought I was crazy,” Heredia told me. “When he finally realized there was no use arguing, because even though he didn’t give me a cent I insisted on staying, he asked, as a last resort, that I go to Buenos Aires to consult a doctor. I accepted. I suffered from insomnia and from frequent headaches. My meeting with the doctor—Dr. Tarcisio Fernández, a psychoanalyst—was comical. He himself had ordered me to be absolutely frank, which is why I insulted him during the meetings I had with him at his office. Later, he himself advised my father to let me come to the countryside and asked me, not expecting that I would listen to him, to write down my dreams. He took a blue leather-bound notebook out of a drawer in his desk, saying as he gave it to me, ‘This little notebook is for you to record your dreams.’ Reconciled, we said goodbye. I promised to obey his request. I wanted to satisfy his childish fancy, I assure you, but I can’t, I haven’t been able to—I don’t dream. Do you have many dreams?”
“Yes, but about absurd things of no interest; many times I believe that I am thinking, yet I am dreaming. I turn into another person: I dream about people, places, and objects that I have never seen. Afterward, when I can’t link them to reality, I forget them. I remember that in one of my dreams I fell asleep out of boredom. No doubt they are inherited dreams.”
“Tarcisio Fernández would find this very interesting,” Heredia exclaimed. “I would like to dream, even if those dreams couldn’t be reconciled with reality. Not dreaming is like being dead. Reality loses importance. I think about Jacob’s dreams, about Joseph’s, about Socrates’s, about Coleridge’s dream that inspired him to write a poem. Sometimes I wake up with the feeling that my memory has a blank page in it; nothing seems to be imprinted on it. I would commit a crime if that crime allowed me to dream. Maidana, please, tell me one of your dreams. If I were you, condemned to dream about people and places that I don’t know”—he interrupted himself for a moment to tighten the strap of his sandal—“surely I would enjoy it. I would devote myself to looking for those places and those people.”
“I couldn’t do that because I don’t have a good memory for faces. I barely recognize people I’ve seen many times in my life. In a dream I have fewer chances to remember them.”
“Tell me some of your dreams,” Heredia insisted.
“Right now I would have to make them up. I don’t remember any.”
Eight in the evening, alone, I wandered through the fields. I wanted to see the birds by the lagoon flying to their nests at sunset. When I crossed a barbed-wire fence I cut one of my fingers. I looked around for a leaf to wipe off the blood but didn’t find anything except wild mustard and the thistles by the road. I reached the lagoon.
I leaned against the reeds, out into the water, to wash my hands when I saw a strange creature crouched on the ground. At first I thought it was a sheep that was lying down, one of those sheep, like lions in some paintings, with a man’s face. I drew nearer, pushing the reeds aside. It was a man, his hair down to his waist, who was sitting in the water, weaving a sort of cage made out of the reeds, something that would doubtless serve to trap birds. I drew near. I spoke to him. He didn’t hear me. In the harsh silence, a sound came from his lips like the song of the finest bird.
Heredia ate little. He didn’t drink wine; he never smelled of alcohol. He was kind to animals. His behavior was correct. I was fond of him. The slanders were unfair: I thought about these things while gazing at the bitter branch of waxy leaf nightshade, covered with red fruits, that I held in my hand.
Heredia sometimes would interrupt our dialogue; he would pull leaves from the trees, put them in his mouth, and chew on them.
“My father has sent me a letter, announcing the visit next week of one of his friends.” He took the letter out of his pocket and smiled strangely. “He is sending him,” he continued, “to spy on me. I don’t intend to tolerate any of hi
s intrusions: with a single shot I will kill anyone who tries to intrude in my private life.”
“Do you have a revolver?”
“No, but I know someone who could lend me one.”
“You would go to jail.”
“I don’t care about going to jail. Anyway, isn’t this a sort of jail?”
“If you like—”
“If I like?” he interrupted suddenly. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
It was raining. As Heredia had predicted, the drops fell into the containers that were spread around my room, falling with rhythmic sounds and such a range of tones that it was impossible not to listen to them (the way you listen to some songs without wanting to).
Why didn’t Heredia ever take me to the town of Cacharí? The day that I decided to get a haircut, why did he decide on a trip to Azul so that I, quite unwillingly, had to travel by train? Why didn’t he allow me into his room, which was at the opposite end of the house? Was he hiding something from me? My friendship with him, was it all an illusion? I was asking myself these questions when Eladio Esquivel, the housekeeper’s grandson, looked into my window and said, “There is mail for you.” Beneath a hood that had been improvised out of sacks to protect him from the rain, I saw the boy’s smiling face for the first time. I thought, “What a mania I have for finding resemblances among people!” I thought of my father’s face when he was ten. I opened the envelope. I read the signature, hoping not to be happy in vain. I read it with surprise. It was a letter from Mr. Heredia, whom I had completely forgotten. I felt a bit disturbed. I couldn’t identify the Mr. Heredia I had met in Buenos Aires with the father of Armando Heredia. If I had obeyed my first impulse I wouldn’t have read the letter. Perhaps I would have thought how it is impossible to be innocent in others’ eyes. Curbing my disgust I started reading. I can’t repeat the content exactly but the meaning was more or less this: After asking me what sort of reception I had had at the ranch, whether I was enjoying myself, whether I was hungry, whether life in the countryside agreed with me, he brought up his son, begging me for any news about his behavior, physical appearance, etc. The letter, written in a paternalizing and querulous tone, displeased me. The script was large, slanted, and pretentious. I have some knowledge of handwriting analysis. I reflected for a moment on the main traits of the script. I discovered in it his cowardice and vanity. When I raised my eyes, Armando Heredia was facing me. Like a shadow he had entered my room, like a shadow I saw him enclosed in the doorframe through which the greenish and blue luminosity of the rain filtered in. Ever since my arrival at the ranch I had not felt any guilt about my behavior: Armando Heredia hadn’t asked me anything; for this reason, I didn’t feel obligated to tell him about my conversation with his father, nor had I even felt the need to reflect on these things. But standing before him with a letter that seemed to reveal my treachery, my face concealed in the dim light, I felt a deep pang of guilt. Heredia took a few steps back before coming forward again: the light shone in his eyes. I followed the direction of his gaze: it traversed the letter and the irrepressible blush of my face.
“So you are in correspondence with my father?”
I waved the sheet in the air and answered, laughing, trying clumsily to put him at ease. “He has written me these lines. I was trying to analyze his script.”
“You should analyze your own script to discern what sort of a spy you are.” When he uttered these words, Heredia took a pitcher that was sitting on the table and threw it against the wall. The water spilled out like a huge flower. “My father is a fool, but you are a hypocrite. You have come to this ranch under the pretext of needing rest, of studying for your next exams; you neither rest nor study. But you aren’t very good at spying anyway; for that you would have to be intelligent.”
With those words he slammed the door shut and stormed down the hallway. I listened to his metallic steps beneath the sound of the rain.
In my heart, did anger or remorse win out? Anger turned into resentment would be painful; remorse turned into surprise would be more bearable. I prepared my suitcase. I strapped my books together with the leather straps. I was worried about many things: How would I get to the station? What would I say to Mr. Heredia and my parents in Buenos Aires? Where was my scarf? I opened the shutters. It was pouring rain. I went into the kitchen. Nobody was there. I sat down on a bench facing the door. The smoke from the wet wood made my eyes fill with tears. The housekeeper took her time coming and when she saw my suitcase asked me if I was on a trip. I told her I hoped to leave that very night. I found out the train schedule. I asked her whether the carriage could take me; she couldn’t promise anything.
The rain abated. The sky cleared up. I left the suitcase in the kitchen and went out on the patio. I walked into the woods. I was surprised again by the sameness of all the paths through the eucalyptus and the Australian pines. One of the dogs was following me. From the first moment of my arrival it had followed me; in the morning it was always waiting for me by my bedroom door. It was black, woolly, and shy. They called him Carbón.
The rain, a fine drizzle, barely broke through the foliage. The earth in the eucalyptus grove wasn’t damp. The layers of leaves trapped the energy of the sun’s rays, and in the rain gave off heat and an intense odor. I sat down at the foot of a tree where I could watch the entrance to the house. I thought sadly about the pleasant and unpleasant aspects of my stay. About how little I had studied, about Heredia’s insults, about the seeming indignity of my attitude, about the horseback rides, about the swims in the Australian tank, about the death of the Indian Cacharí, when I was disrupted from my thoughts by Carbón, who ran barking in the direction of the house. Later, I saw a car pull up. A man got out, then another. They entered the house. They came back with the housekeeper and her grandson. They tried to lift a very heavy bundle out of the car. I stood up, hoping to see more clearly. I understood that it wasn’t a bundle or a crate: the men were respectfully moving a dead body from the car.
With the sense of unreality that one feels after having spent a sleepless night, I followed the housekeeper through the corridors. Armando Heredia was summoning me. For the first time I entered his room. Terrified, I stopped at the door. Armando was lying down, a handkerchief over his forehead. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a basin on a chair next to his bed. With a weak voice I heard him babble, “They told me you were about to go. Maybe I overstepped, maybe I made a mistake. I am violent.”
“Are you better?” I asked, nervously interrupting what he was saying. “What happened?”
“I was on my way to town. Instead of walking around the border of the pastures, the way I usually go on rainy days, I took the road. The mud was as slippery as a floor of soap-covered stones. Suddenly my horse slipped, got frightened, and fell into a hole, next to the ditch by the road. I didn’t feel anything. Some neighbors who were passing in a car picked me up and brought me back here unconscious.”
“Were you hurt?”
“A little, on my head, on my hip, on my left arm,” he said, trying to sit up in bed.
He pulled up his sleeve showed me the deep wound on his arm.
“I don’t understand how I got this,” he muttered perplexedly. He added, “Some stone or the edge of the ditch.”
Heredia needed painkillers and antiseptic. I rode to town to find some. I dismounted, tying the horse to a post, and entered the pharmacy. I took advantage of this pretext to visit Cacharí and get away from the ranch for a while. After buying the medicines, I wandered around the town. Clouds of dust constantly rose up: a fine dustlike sand swirled in the air. A row of phoenix palms ran down the middle of the main avenue where I walked. I went into the store and bought a mate made of porcelain with the inscription FRIENDSHIP and a pack of cigarettes.
Sitting at the counter, in a pose of sweet indifference, was the girl I had traveled with a few days before. She was resting near a bottle, staring at me. I leaned one arm on the counter and looked at her with adoration. I said to her in a low voice, “W
aiting?”
Without taking the hint and without ceasing to stare at me, she changed her posture, took a package and a bottle full of vinegar that the storeowner had given her, and hurriedly walked out the door. Disappointed, I left the store to follow the girl. She had disappeared into the sunlight and the silence. I walked past the square shadows of the houses to my horse, mounted, and rode back with a single hope: the hope of seeing her.
The cries of the cowhands passing with their herd grew louder, then disappeared in a tumult of moos. Armando Heredia could now sit up in bed: the swelling in his arm had gone down. We had renewed our friendship. One day we were talking and laughing about our dispute as if it had happened to other people. For the first time, I stopped to look around the room—the curtains, along with some pieces of furniture, made it dark, blocking the poorly placed windows and the windowpanes of the door; all of the room’s angles were askew and it was far too long; its whitewashed walls revealed dark dirty colors here and there. The bed was made of iron and had a little oval landscape above its frame showing a boat with sails unfurled and a blue sky with clouds. The chairs were worn out with use. The chest of drawers, a very tall and desolate ruin, had a broken mirror. The bedside table was gray; it was missing a drawer (in the gap I could see some books, a bottle of aspirin, a green pencil, and a penknife). An almanac from 1930 was hanging on a nail on the right wall and on the wall next to the door there was a reproduction of a painting that must have been by Delacroix. I walked closer to the painting to inspect it: in the dense green of a tropical landscape a tiger was attacking a jaguar.
Thus Were Their Faces Page 4