Ema the Captive

by Cesar Aira

  The shore receded behind them. Gradually they were surrounded by mist. The shrieks of the children helped the company to stay together, but they lost all sense of direction. In any case, they were bound to be approaching the island, which was at the geometrical center of the lake. And indeed they were. What they heard first was the song of the birds, a tremendous din of chirping that shook the island day and night. Then some mysterious hammer blows.

  Finally, they made out gray shadows in the whiteness, which at first they took for clouds. But they were trees: the island’s magnificent leafy roof. The shapes looked far too big, but as the boats approached, the vast dimensions settled down, and in the end the boats cast up on a beach of fine sand where everything seemed microscopic.

  The horses were the first ashore, then the warriors, who began the hard work of unloading. The children ran about giddily, screaming. The women looked around. Clearly they had missed the camp site, since they couldn’t see any sign of tents.

  When Hual, helped by two of his wives, disembarked, he couldn’t hide his distress.

  “Where could those idiots have got to? Who knows when we’ll find them.” He looked at the trees along the edge of the beach. “The gumbo limbos are in flower. Can’t you smell them? I’m sleepy, and I want to hear some music before going to bed.”

  Indeed, his eyelids were red with sleepiness. But a glance at his men revealed that they were in no state to attend to him. The effort of unloading the bundles and steadying the punt, up to their waists in the water, had worn them out.

  Before long, the young men of the advance party appeared from behind a mound on the beach. Hual could barely contain his impatience. They greeted him with the customary bows, looking happy and satisfied, and being accustomed to the prince’s volatility, continued to smile as they listened to his gloomy reprimands.

  “The tents are ready, on a calmer, better beach, less than two hundred yards from here.”

  “Take me there,” said Hual.

  They set off. The young men chattered on, delighted by every detail of the island. Hual interrupted them: How many chiefs had come?

  “We didn’t have much time to look around, and even less to socialize,” they said, “but as of yesterday there were just three little court parties, and we think one of them left during the night.”

  They told him the names of the chiefs: figures of middling stature; one was related to Hual. In two months time, at the beginning of summer, the desert kings would begin to arrive and amuse themselves, gambling, signing treaties, and relaxing in the sun. Hual, who in spite of his wealth, had no political power at all, preferred to spend a month on the island in spring. All that political posturing, he said, was a sham; he preferred the more thoroughgoing frivolity of dissolute seclusion and amorous gatherings.

  And yet he’d never been able to have the island to himself, since all year round, even in the lulls between the winter and summer seasons, idle chiefs kept turning up with their courts.

  After a five-minute walk they reached the tents, which were the quintessence of fragility. They had the look of star-shaped shells, a form achieved by attaching sheets of paper to a frame of twisted and bound wicker. It was amazing that they had survived the storm. But they were cleverly located among the trees, and perhaps the wind had not been able to get a hold on them. All of them faced the water. An aroma of freshly rinsed lime trees came wafting down to that poetic ocher-and-yellow encampment. Behind the tents were three little ceremonial towers, surrounded by taquara flutes, each four yards long, on which to summon the spirits that were likely to be about.

  Still under the influence of his narcotics, the prince saw nothing. Cloudy-eyed, he turned to one of his wives, instructed her to roll out his mat in the central tent and announced that he was going back to sleep — they should have a look around the area and, above all, take the children with them. Four of five of his wives went into the tent to hold his cigarettes and attend to him; the rest of the party, excited by the novelty of the surroundings, headed off in various directions, having hastily dumped their loads. The children were given permission to go absolutely wherever they liked.

  It promised to be a perfect morning: the sun, although high, was still veiled in red, and Venus shone like a tiny white orange. A breeze was blowing, full of scents and charged with a rousing saltiness.

  The island of Carhué was four or five leagues across, oval in shape, and it had a strange topography, a combination of peaks and troughs, which meant that all the paths constantly rose and fell. It was ringed by a broad belt of sandy beaches, lapped by the waters of the famous lake, which were almost always calm and, like a miniature sea, hosted an exceptional variety of fish. Many chiefs went there exclusively for the pleasure of fishing, and some had quite irresponsibly introduced the strangest species, which had thrived by multiplication or interbreeding.

  As for the flora, there was nothing to match it anywhere in the forest’s eastern sector. The nearly constant temperatures, the frequent rain and the rich tertiary soils combined to make the island a comprehensive showcase of the most curious and beautiful plants imaginable.

  Even in the hottest months the weather remained bearable, which explained the influx of summer vacationers, who would have posed a threat to the environment had they been more active and less given to drinking. At first it was only chiefs who came, in order to converse with their peers, but they were soon joined by all kinds of snobs and money-printers. There were no permanent residents: much as all the visitors enjoyed spending a season on that little floating paradise, it would not have occurred to any of them to settle there for good. The mere thought of it made them nervous.

  As Hual’s people explored the island in various groups they came across numerous camps set up here and there on the beaches or in the groves by parties from other tribes. Circles of youths, enveloped in fragrant smoke and surrounded by empty bottles and gourds. And in the middle, a dice-board. All their chiefs asked of them was to be left in peace. Utterly idle, they had nothing to do but paint themselves and be sublime from morning until night.

  Each encounter involved a long session of greetings and explanations; the newcomers were invited to join the circles and play. Their welcoming and inquisitive hosts offered to act as guides and organize parties for the evening. But these offers had to be declined, since Hual might have had something planned.

  The birds made a tremendous din. In spite of which, the visitors spoke in whispers, as people nearly always do in forests. Little white foxes fled before them as they went; these were ornamental animals, not for hunting. Their flesh, it was said, had a soapy taste, like that of the southern screamer. They could be caught by tossing them little cakes. They had milk teeth.

  One of Hual’s groups crossed the island diagonally and came to a beach on the northern shore, where they could hear shouts and bursts of laughter. As they came through a curtain of vines, they saw a multitude of youths swimming and playing on the sand. Catching sight of the visitors, the young men called out greetings and invited them to come and have a drink.

  A powerful figure stood out among them: tall, painted in black and gray, with a hard gaze and a resonant voice.

  “Who did you come with?” he asked them.

  They told him.

  “Hual?” he replied, raising an eyebrow.

  “Do you know him?”

  He nodded, with a vague smile.

  “I’ll go and visit him.”

  Meanwhile, another contingent was weaving its way through the jungle, five or six warriors and as many girls, carrying nothing but paper cigarette cases and necklaces of opaque stones. They had decided to search for one of the island’s famous springs, although they knew it would be hard to find. They trekked up a wooded hillside, not noticing the climb, until they heard the sound of water. They followed it and soon came to a trough of agitated liquid, among grotesque rock formations. They sat down on the ston
es, out of breath. Between the trees, amazingly far below, they could glimpse a fragment of the lake’s sunlit gray.

  A sudden movement drew their gazes back to the trough: it was a manatee, six yards long and blue, moving sinuously under the surface. How could it have reached those heights? There were hollows above the spring, and suddenly, from one of them, a large tuna-like head emerged: another manatee, flaring its nostrils in the air, its flat eyes fixed on the movements of its fellow creature. The hikers refrained from all movement. They didn’t know how dangerous those mammals might be.

  Eventually, the one in the cave threw itself clumsily into the water. They could see its whole body as it fell: a female. They realized that they were, by chance, about to witness the act of mating. The male could barely control his excitement. When he swam upside down they saw two horns, one on either side of the anus, as long and thick as pencils, with sharp points. The female turned over: her anus was surrounded by bulbous rings of throbbing tissue. The creatures coupled and sank to the bottom. The water made their cries sound distant. They tumbled in ecstasy, still clamped together. A web of white threads spread out around them. When they let each other go, they rose to the surface with lightning speed and lifted their heads like a pair of swimmers, gasping violently: they had been submerged for no less than fifteen minutes. Then they paddled away joyfully up the river.

  This left Hual’s men in a dreamy state. They tested the water: it was icy, with an oddly clear and bitter tang. Perhaps it was the taste of the manatees.

  They were so amazed that when they saw a human figure appear on top of the cave-riddled rock wall, they thought for a moment that it must be an unfamiliar animal . . . It was an Indian, the shiny resin covering his body tinted with a touch of rust red; his head was shaven and his genitals rested in a bowl of white porcelain held in place by ribbons. He was watching them, amused by the bewilderment he had caused.

  “Good day,” he said in a well-mannered voice. “Who are you?”

  They told him.

  “Would you like to come up and have a drink with us?”

  “We’d be delighted . . . But we don’t know how to get up.”

  The stranger bent down to point out some steps carved into the stone. Once the others reached the top, he took them to a bench made of stone slabs on which his friends were sitting and playing dice. Perfect, painted individuals, with a relaxed and superior bearing. The women were holding long lit cigarettes.

  “Are you planning to stay for a long time?” asked one of Hual’s men.

  The strangers didn’t know.

  “We’ve been here,” they said with a sigh, “for more than a month, boring ourselves silly on these beaches. It won’t be long before it’s time for us to go; we hope not anyway — we can’t wait.”

  “It doesn’t seem boring.”

  “Not at first. But you’ll see.”

  They lifted the egg-shaped dice-cups. They were playing with a magnificent set of ivory dice, on a double board.

  Once the bets were placed, the little dice rolled, making a crisp and multiple noise. It was the only sound that hushed the birds. Empty bottles were scattered everywhere — it seemed that the players had been there for days on end. But there were still plenty of full bottles, and they proposed toast upon toast. Time slipped by imperceptibly. When the visitors saw how late it was, they had to say goodbye.

  The prince, of course, was still asleep, but his men went out hunting for lunch anyway, and the children looked for nests to plunder. The sun had shone intermittently throughout the morning. Now it was hidden by a layer of light gray cloud, shedding pallor on the world. The best kind of light for hunting.

  Once the men had drawn their tiny, toylike bows, they reacted to the slightest rustle in the foliage by releasing their pencil-size arrows with a convulsion of all their muscles. They didn’t aim. It was hard for them to miss. The barbed bamboo shafts were so light they wobbled as they flew. Before long they had a good stock of various birds. There were many they couldn’t even name, but in that region only the birds with white plumage were poisonous or indigestible. The Indian doctors knew how to extract drops from the little head of a certain bird, and these were used every now and then to hasten a succession or settle a disagreement. Cases of accidental poisoning were very rare, since one would have had to be very careless to eat an unfamiliar species. It could happen only at an overly abundant and entertaining lunch.

  They carried the game on their backs in elastic string bags. When they could fit in no more birds and were bowed down by huge multicolored feathery bundles, they returned to the camp (they hadn’t gone far).

  The children went into the groves in search of nests. Climbing with monkey-like agility, they held their bodies away from the trunk, gripping it with hands and feet, which made them seem weightless. Apart from laughing, they were quiet. Sometimes a bird would come and sing dreamily over its plundered nest. And the child would be taken aback. Because of their eye color, the birds couldn’t meet a human gaze, and the children had learned never to catch a wandering eye . . . Some nests had a peculiar smell, which the children breathed in eagerly, an intimate and secret effluvium destined to return in dreams.

  The booty was abundant: leverets, little frogs with fat thighs. Meanwhile, the women gathered wild fruits and tubers. Swimmers tore up water-lily rhizomes and collected the sweet bulbs from which the reeds sprang. Mint leaves were gathered, and small bitter gourds. They couldn’t get enough, or enough variety.

  Hual woke up in the course of the afternoon. He found it immensely difficult to come back to life after his narcotically assisted siestas. He wasn’t painted, and the cotton strips hung loosely from his arms and legs. Before going out, he put on a visor of leaves. His eyelids were barely raised. The light, which he needed so badly to keep fear at bay, was painful to him.

  He walked toward the water, deliberately inhaling the moist air laden with the scents of roasting meat and seasonings. It was just what he needed to wake up properly. His courtiers were hungry. They drank aperitifs and ate wild olives until the pigeons on the fire turned golden. Those late lunches were terribly tantalizing to the stomach.

  At the prince’s request, his favorite musician began to play a harp with three untuned strings, accompanied by a three-year-old girl with little bells. Sometimes the musician plucked the strings with his fingers, sometimes he rubbed or struck them with sticks; the knocking sounds startled Hual, and left him in a pensive mood. He ate less than anyone, nibbling at a pigeon breast and a few leaves of basil. But he emptied glass after glass of brandy. To the scolding of one of his wives, he replied that he would eat more at night.

  “You might find this hard to believe,” he added, “but I’m still sleepy; that’s why I have no appetite.”

  “I don’t find anything hard to believe any more,” she said.

  Fruit was brought. He took a sip of juice, between yawns. But he said that he didn’t want to go back to sleep or he would be awake all night.

  “Well,” said a wife, “let’s take a walk. You should see the scenery.”

  “Quite so.”

  The white glare was dimming so he removed his visor. He announced that he would go for a walk on the beach. He was accompanied by a few women and a horde of children who ran to the edge of the water, splashing each other and throwing stones into the lake. Seeing how happy they were, Hual felt like a guardian of youth.

  A child found a shell with a curious shape and brought it to the prince, who examined it most attentively.

  “It’s odd. Is it a gift? Thank you. I’ll use it as a cup.”

  The child’s eyes opened wide in amazement.

  “But it doesn’t have a bottom!”

  It was a kind of irregularly twisted cylinder.

  “You’re right,” said Hual. “I hadn’t noticed. In that case, perhaps it could be used as a whistle.”

  The little o
nes crowded around him, drinking in his words. They brought him everything they found, asking for explanations. The party came to a promontory, which interrupted the beach. Hual didn’t want to go any further. The children climbed the outcrop and leaped into the water, shrieking and making a terrific racket. Then they returned, in no hurry. The day was strange; it was getting dark for no reason, as if the clouds were growing denser without moving. There were no birds. The sounds coming over the water were ghostly.

  The group dispersed again, but this time no one went far: just into the undergrowth or down to the water’s edge. The prince asked for more music.

  “I need it,” he said, “to regain the sense of my life’s asymmetry.”

  How exhausting it was just to take a few steps! Tomorrow without fail he would start exercising. But how? Horseback riding seemed awkward, and hunting with a bow and arrows bored him. Swimming, maybe. He had been a big swimmer in his adolescence.

  He sat down on the grass and looked at the lake. The surface of the water seemed taut for some mysterious reason; there was something hidden beneath it, producing a delicious suspense.

  “That’s how it is,” thought Hual. “Many things lie hidden underwater: the sublime forms of beauty, which I cannot even imagine. And the worst of it is that now, right now, they are being made and unmade. Everything is irretrievable. And beauty always dissolves before it is seen.”

  Then it occurred to him that perhaps there was nothing under the water.

  “But in that case water itself is elegance in its supreme degree. It is a sunken galleon.”

  The prince turned his gaze to the women and warriors nearby. Most were asleep, but a few were smoking or drinking, lying back looking at the clouds, playing dice or talking quietly.

  His eye lingered on a young white woman, the newest of his half wives, who had been with him no more than a few weeks. She was nursing a naked little girl, two or three months old. She didn’t look European and was barely different from the Indian women sitting around her. He couldn’t remember who had told him that she was white. Some fragments of her history had reached his royal ears.