Ema the Captive

by Cesar Aira

  That was the ceremony: nothing, in other words. The adults kept still and quiet the whole time. The ritual was simply an arrangement, meagre and ephemeral, something that required a maximum of attention while rendering attention futile. Leaving after midnight, Ema made no attempt to hide her disappointment.

  Gombo smiled and said nothing.

  All the Indian ceremonies that Ema would attend later on were the same; they all celebrated a supreme inconclusiveness . . . Supreme because the conclusion was not even withheld: at a certain point the ceremony was simply over, and all the people went back the way they had come.

  .

  The rain lasted all night and continued feebly into the morning. In the hesitant dawn, a slanting ray of sunlight produced a rainbow, which was soon effaced by a wash of luminous gray. The birds announced their presence, one after another: the inhuman screeching of the flamingos was followed by the swallows’ twittering, then the language of the lapwing, which sometimes seemed to be saying “lapwing,” and finally by the resonant caw of a crow in the forest. The murmuring of the water was an invitation to sleep: Ema would have slept a while longer, but a movement in the shadows woke her. It was the little Indian girls, playing and laughing under the sheets. When she opened the shutters, they ran all around the hut. Francisco was sleeping: nothing would wake him until he was hungry.

  The girls offered to go and fetch the milk. But wouldn’t they get wet? They didn’t mind the rain. Ema gave them a jug and a handful of bills so that they could buy cakes if the store was open. She always had a good supply of Espina’s money in her hut: there was no knowing when it might come in useful. She found her two parasols and gave them to the girls. They ran off like does, leaving Ema on the veranda contemplating the desolate spectacle of a puddled street and the trees weighed down with water, heavy as blocks of stone. Black-faced ibis flew over, croaking among the threatening clouds.

  Sitting in the rocking chair, half asleep, Ema lit one of the cigarettes the girls had left behind (they had been smoking since early childhood, accustomed to it by their mothers). The cigarettes were short and fairly thick, made with extremely fine paper and hollow cardboard filters. When she smoked on an empty stomach, they made her dizzy. She had the impression that time was standing still, except at the cigarette’s burning tip.

  Very soon the girls came running back. As well as the milk and the cakes, they brought eggs, bars of cocoa, pies, and a basket of wild plums. They announced, in reedy, quavering voices, that they would prepare breakfast. They were drenched and left wet footprints on the mats. Ema let them take care of it all; from the veranda, she could hear them moving about and chattering. Soon they came out carrying trays laden with steaming bowls.

  When the baby woke up, they fed him milk through a straw. He looked at the gray day with dull eyes — the remains of the rain were still hanging in the air — and sucked hard.

  They were finishing breakfast when one of the neighbors appeared, a stocky “soldier woman” with African blood; the slightest effort always made her go red. She wore spectacles thick as magnifying glasses, with frames that had been broken and mended; they were always slipping down her nose. She came running from her hut, trying to avoid the puddles, but unluckily stepped in every one and ended up soaking herself. Panting and shaking her parasol, she climbed up onto the veranda where Ema and the girls were sitting. They brought her a folding chair, onto which she collapsed, and offered her doughnuts.

  “I need to catch my breath first, hhuh, hhuh.”

  She seemed to be about to choke. The girls stared at her. But when she recovered, she ate and drank more than the rest of them put together. Her husband was asleep — he’d been up all night drinking — and her children were playing in the muddy street. She had four boys, with four different fathers, all myopic like her.

  “How long’s the rain going to last?” she asked. “Autumn begins tomorrow. The wet weather is so sad. This will be your first winter here, won’t it?”

  Ema nodded.

  From the fort came the sound of the seven o’clock gong. It had stopped raining. The sky was silvery. The two women rolled cigarettes. They were smoking and watching the girls, who had gone down into the street, when suddenly they heard the hoofbeats of a horse. Because of the way the street curved, the couldn’t see the animal, which took its time as if going from hut to hut, and finally appeared at the bend. The rider was a soldier known to them both, without a kepi, his wet fringe stuck to his forehead. When he saw them, he stopped dawdling and steered his big white colt in their direction, bringing it right up to the veranda.

  “A good morning to the early risers.”

  “What could possibly have got you up at this hour?”

  “Colonel’s orders,” said the soldier. “An urgent summons.”

  That was unusual. They were expecting him to say something more, but all he did was look at them.

  “In that case,” said Ema’s neighbor, “I’ll have to wake my husband.”

  “He better hurry. They have to report for duty in half an hour.”

  “Why?”

  The soldier shrugged his shoulders. With a gesture, Ema prompted the girls to hand him a cigarette, which he lit himself.

  “What’s it about?” the women asked him. “You must have heard something.”

  “I shouldn’t say, but . . . Apparently the colonel’s worried about a raid.”

  “A raid?”

  “That’s right. A raid.”

  The neighbor overdid her shocked expression.

  “But how could he know? Unless he can see into the future.”

  The soldier looked at her coldly and said nothing. She went mumbling back to her hut, leaving her parasol behind. Ema, for her part, was puzzled. The soldier watched her through the smoke of his cigarette.

  “Will we have be to shut in the fort as well?”

  “If that’s what the colonel orders. Who knows? Maybe the Indians are still far away.”

  He tossed the cigarette away and rode off toward the last huts in the street.

  Ema sent her little friends back to their camp, asking them to come and tell her if there were any new developments. The news had set the whole village in motion, and now the street was seething with activity. Half-dressed soldiers with puffy eyes came out of the huts and saddled their horses. Carrying her child, Ema joined a huddle of neighbors. It was the first scare since her arrival. Traditionally, the Indians did not attack during summer. Perhaps this time they wanted to celebrate the start of autumn with some pillaging. According to some of the women, on several occasions they had been under siege in the fort for weeks on end: an unpleasant prospect for Ema, who had grown accustomed to her excursions.

  Soon they exhausted their speculations and the group broke up. It had begun to drizzle again. Ema went to have coffee with a neighbor, a young half-Chinese woman, who had three children and was heavily pregnant.

  “When are you due?”

  “In the next few days, any time now.”

  “It’ll be hard for you if they make us go to the fort.”

  The neighbor shrugged.

  “Makes no difference to me. I’m convinced it’s all a trick, anyway. Who knows what Espina’s up to, but I bet the Indians have nothing to do with it.”

  The inside of her hut was odd, with tiny red chairs, a bougainvillea in a blue pot, and a row of stuffed herons. The two women spent the morning chatting and smoking, while Francisco played with the neighbor’s children. Just before midday an Indian girl came looking for Ema: the savages had appeared in the distance, on the other side of the river. Ema and her neighbor went outside immediately and joined the procession of women climbing the hill. There was some surprise that the colonel had not decided to give the population refuge in the fort. They supposed that he would do battle on the plain.

  “And what if he can’t stop them?”

 
One way or another, they all suspected that something strange was going on, something not entirely real.

  When they came to the top of the hill, only those with the sharpest eyes could see, on the horizon, beneath the mists left by the rain, the insect-like figures of the Indians’ advance guard. Officers with telescopes crowded the fort’s little towers, and occasionally a spot of sunlight reflected off a lens would flitter through the crowd like a moth. The children played excitedly and kept running off, in spite of their mothers’ warnings.

  The figures got bigger very quickly. According to a rumor, the colonel had proposed a meeting of ambassadors. Whether this was true or not, the onlookers were sure that they would witness negotiations rather than combat. The column of Indians came to a halt, and a few leaders hesitantly went on ahead.

  The doors of the fort opened. The colonel in person came out with an escort. Opportunities to see him were rare, since he generally stayed within the palisades. He was a burly man, with a big gray mustache that looked white because of the contrast with his dark skin. He was wearing a dress uniform and rode out on a powerful bay horse to meet the savages, who were approaching at walking pace on the other side of the river, their bodies painted red and gold, with blue feet and calves. The colonel and his men crossed at a place where the water was shallow over a slew of pebbles.

  The two parties stopped a few yards apart. Espina was the first to speak. From the hill, his words were indistinct, although he spoke with a resonant voice. The Indians squinted at the ground and replied with coughs and monosyllables. The speeches went on for a long time, maintaining the suspense.

  Ema turned and looked at the fort. The mistresses had appeared on the towers, wrapped in silk and tulle like chrysalids, their faces covered with iridescent makeup. They were rarely to be seen, although they did occasionally venture out to the forest in closed carriages.

  The conversation had reached an impasse. The men were silent, the horses turning on the spot. Finally the colonel gave an order to the lieutenant, who went galloping back to the fort. Less than five minutes later (all of this had been prepared), he came out again, very slowly this time, in a silence so deep you could hear the crickets. Behind him came a voluminous cart pulled by two teams of oxen. The load, covered with tarpaulins, swayed as if it were about to topple. By this stage all the spectators were convinced that they were watching a performance. It must have been a kind of ransom in exchange for which the Indians would call off the imaginary raid. When the cart came to ford the stream, some curious onlookers, who were asked to help, managed to get a glimpse of the load, and that was how the rumor started: it was cash — bundles of bills, tightly packed. Many people remained skeptical, because of the colossal sum that such a cargo would represent.

  But the handover dispelled their doubts: one of the Indians lifted a corner of a tarpaulin and poked around in the money with the point of his spear. Without saying anything more, he climbed into the driver’s seat, and off they went, at a leisurely pace. The colonel returned to the fort like a breath released, the gates closed behind him, and it was all over. Laughter was heard.

  Emma went down to the bank of the river, curious to hear what the Indians were saying. She took her place in a circle of young people who were drinking.

  “I think the colonel has come up with the simplest system for avoiding wars,” said one of them ironically. “Why didn’t anyone think of it before?”

  “Maybe it’s not such a novel system,” someone else put in. “Maybe it’s what people have always done. Underneath the frills, history is just a series of payments, the more exorbitant the better. The form and the credit arrangements have changed, but that’s all.”

  “And besides,” said another, “there has never been a war. Which shows that they’ve always been able to put it off.”

  Everyone agreed.

  “War is impossible, so the payments are always futile, or rather, fictitious, like the one today.”

  Another member of the group said that it hadn’t been so fictitious: after all, they’d seen the money and it was for real.

  The one who had spoken earlier burst out laughing.

  “Real money! That’s ridiculous! Money is an arbitrary construction, an element chosen purely for its effectiveness as a means of passing the time. Those bills were printed by the colonel; all he has to do, whenever he feels like it, is start up the new press built for him by the Frenchman.” He remained thoughtful for a moment, then added: “I bet it was all carefully scripted in advance.”

  “But why would he stage such a childish comedy?” Ema asked.

  “To get the money circulating; it’s a bother to distribute otherwise. And it sets a precedent. Maybe, from now on, all conflicts will be like this: a comedy of extortion. A new model. If he gets all the tribes on the outer circuit involved, he could end up shifting several tons of paper money per week.”

  They all admired the colonel’s boldness. But an Indian woman had her doubts.

  “For the moment, all that money is in the hands of one or two chiefs, maybe even just Caful . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter. The money won’t be any use to Caful, or anyone, unless they find a way to distribute it. Or some of it, at least: enough to create a monetary ‘climate’.”

  “And what if the chiefs decide to spend it all among themselves, doing political deals?”

  “That’s the risk Espina’s running. But I don’t think it’s likely. Sooner or later money always filters down from the rich to the poor.”

  Another one of the Indians, who had been listening in silence, shook his head.

  “I’m not so sure about that. For a start, that fortune in the cart is all going to end up in one place: the gaming table. Within a few hours of getting it, they’ll have spent the lot, down to the last cent.”

  “Maybe it won’t be that easy. We don’t know the denomination of the bills. Maybe there’s no one in the whole desert who could meet the stakes. And anyhow, gambling’s just a way to lubricate circulation. You could even say that it is circulation, in its most accelerated form.”

  “Circulation,” the other retorted, “is based on continuity, while gambling produces reversals of fortune that are discontinuous by their very nature.”

  “Gamblers,” another man said, “always end up losing everything, so there is a concentration, although it’s negative. It can’t be an effective way of distributing goods.”

  It was pointed out in reply that the savage kingdoms had based their finances on gambling ever since prehistoric times, and the system had not collapsed, which meant that it didn’t work too badly. The Indians were always going back to prehistory; it was their favorite way of explaining things. In the midst of this discussion, a cadet appeared on the beach looking for Ema, and handed her a letter folded six times. Gombo was informing her that he would have to stay at the barracks that night and would not be able to leave until the next morning. She supposed that he had received a bonus after the recent events and wanted to stay in the fort to gamble it away.

  When there was nothing left to say, the group broke up. Some acquaintances invited Ema to camp with them in the forest, and she accepted: it was a good day to get away, with a dull sun trapped among gray clouds and expectation in the air. They set off in a file for some solitary clearing, Ema on the croup of a big bay horse with the baby slung from her shoulder. For three or four hours, they followed chilly paths enveloped in greenish light. Finally, at a random spot, they dismounted, built a fire, bathed, and began to smoke and play dice. They roasted birds and drank themselves to sleep. As the sun was going down, they were woken by the noise of brawling hyperborean geese. They bathed again, went hunting woodcock and piglets for dinner, and then night fell: the days were growing shorter. They drank and smoked into the small hours, dropping off one by one.

  When the sun came up, they returned. Ema went to her hut. After putting Francisco to bed, she pr
epared some coffee, whose aroma attracted a neighbor. The two women went on weaving their conjectures about the events of the previous day. Ema asked after her neighbor’s husband.

  “He couldn’t leave the fort last night. They say the colonel has put them to work on the printing presses.”

  Later on, when they got bored, they went out into the garden: the rain had finally opened the anemones, which were all red and blue.

  Gombo turned up at midday, in a daze of fatigue, with black bags under his eyes. He went straight to bed and chatted with Ema while she held his cigarette.

  “Is it true that the colonel is going to make you all work on the printing presses?”

  Gombo laughed hoarsely.

  “That’s absurd. Those machines don’t need operators.”

  “So what explanation did they give you?”

  “None. Why would they give us an explanation?”

  “Everyone in the village has a theory.”

  “It is intriguing, I have to admit.”

  “What was the colonel hoping to achieve?”

  “Espina isn’t God, and he’s not trying to play God either — he’s not that stupid — except in the most superficial way. He began by creating money. Now it must be time for the second phase: creating the goods to spend it on. But he’s not interested in that; he’s bowing out. All he wants is to get the money circulating perfectly.”

  “So the attack came in handy . . .”

  “There was no attack. That was a bit of playacting; he rehearsed it the other day with Caful’s nephews.”

  Ema pondered this. She spent the afternoon in the garden, basking in the sun with her child, and when Gombo woke up, after nightfall, she learned something new: in exchange for the “financial solution,” the Indians had promised to send the colonel a gift of a hundred pheasants, his favorite delicacy.