*3 Business being done in the dark.
(In the private notebook)
I have never loved anyone. I would remember it. Some trace of it would have remained in my memory. But only in dreams, and then they were animals. Dream-animals, from the beyond. Human figures of an indescribable perfection. Above all that creature that summed them all up. Woman-vision. Female-star. Wandering-comet. Otherworldly being with blue eyes. Dazzling whiteness. Very long golden hair, emerging from amid the clouds of vapor on the horizon, sweeping, covering at a fantastic speed the entire arc of the equinoctial hemisphere.
* * *
—
I did not love Clara Petrona Zavala y Delgadillo. At least not in the form of normal love, which is not granted to an abnormal being such as I am. Don’t you understand that the impossible doesn’t happen in a normal world?, I tell myself over and over. Especially to a spirit such as mine throughout my life. Always on the alert against myself; always mistrustful, even of what is most trustworthy.
Those blinding paroxysms of rage. Sudden acts of violence. Why those insane fits of temper? That wrath, that fierce exaltation suddenly rising within me with the fury of a devastating wind. With no more cause or reason than their own unreason. Those terrible eruptions that made my life a hell. So long a dying after the fatigue of having been born twice. Once was already too much. So weary in the end!
In a certain sense it may have been regrettable. Not to have found, to have deserved a good wife to help me be a calm man. A spouse. Resigned to being simply that.
Perhaps I would be sitting in the sun smoking my cigar, patting the bottoms of third generations or fourth. Swirling in my brain, on the tip of my tongue, the aftertaste of what is going to be served at dinner, amid the good smells coming from the kitchen, the clatter of dishes. Esteemed, respected by all. Slippered ease, rather than dragging worn-out shoes over the same old or new paths. Being. Staying. Enduring. To a spirit such as I have always had, journeying, constant contretemps, hectic rushing back and forth have never been enjoyable.
Ah, had it not been for that horrible sense of malaise I have always had, I would have spent my life shut up in a great empty room, full of echoes. Not in this sewer hole. With nothing to do but listen to the long-kept silence. A great grandfather clock. Listening, growing drowsy. Not the sounds of a sick mind clattering along. My eyes following the pendulum swinging back and forth from black to white. Seeing the lead weights drooping, lower and lower, until I get up from my chair. I pull the weights back up once a week.
According to the Latin proverb Stercus cuique suum bene olet, everyone finds the smell of his own dung pleasing; but would my good wife, however patient, have put up with the miseries of a conjugal life? If it had fallen to her lot, let us suppose, to marry that man of whom the bishop of Hippo speaks, forced by the gases in his belly to fart incessantly for more than forty years till he descended to the grave, on the wings of those winds in his insides, in a manner of speaking?
Let us assume, however, the best of cases. Let us imagine the optimistic variant proposed by Vives, the commentator of the saint, by way of another example of his era; that of the man who was able to work his will upon his asshole, the most rebellious, the most tumultuary of our organs. It had become so obedient to his will that he could make it expel its gases in the form of musical tunes, varying its repertory every so often, so that many people visited him, hoping to be favored with one of these odoriferous concerts. Vives reports that the virtuoso was sometimes so inspired in the solitary retreat of his chamber that the quality of his executions bordered on that of the best bagpipers, the most renowned flageoletists of the country. These are exceptions. But let us think for a moment of the poor wife of the man with the musical behind. Would she have been able to bear hearing those clarinet solos for more than forty years, without a single moment’s respite, without going out of her mind?
But not only the gases. Rheumatism too, the stone, the countless disorders of age, of health. These inevitable aches and pains, these extravasations, deflexions, exudations are not the only ones that cause the conjugal union to mildew, deteriorate, crack, apart. One must also bargain for the worst ailment of all: the solitude of two who live in each other’s company. Having to see each other, rub shoulders, put up with each other, willingly or unwillingly, one day, every day with no end to it save death itself. To watch each other every minute. Endure the other’s caprices, manias, whims. The bitter tyranny of not being able to face a thought different from one’s own. The one remedy then is never to see each other at meals. To flee from the other. Never speak. Especially when the other belongs to that fanatical breed that persuades itself that it is rendering proper worship to its own self-nature by denaturing itself; that becomes enamored of its own contempt; that betters itself by becoming worse. Monstrous animal, the one horrified by itself, whose very pleasures are a heavy burden! Under such conditions the company of a dog is more human than that of a peculiar husband, than that of a hysterical wife. Nostri nosmet poenitet. We are our own penance, as Terence rightly said.
There are certain people who hide their lives.
* * *
—
No, I did not love any woman, unless it was that woman-comet.
I could not have loved Clara Petrona Zavala y Delgadillo. If for an instant she occupied the place of my celestial Dulcinea, it was for only an instant.
In any event her mother, Doña Josefa Fabiana, formed a single person with Clara Petrona. The daughter, the crepuscular shadow of that woman, to whom I, not the Porteños, gave the name of Star of the North. But that name really corresponds to a star of my secret cosmos that I myself do not know.
The heart expands in every direction when it loves. The one who falls in love because of a person’s beauty: is it that person who is the beloved? No, because the smallpox that kills beauty without killing the person would cause the lover to cease to love. One does not love persons. It is their qualities one loves. Clara Petrona’s, though well-nigh insurpassable, were inferior to her mother’s; her mother’s in turn were not the equal of those of the Star of the North, my celestial deity.
As a child I called her Leontina. Perhaps because of the luminous sounds I felt light up within me on uttering that name stolen from the nanny’s confidences. It was in that name that the story of the fair-haired child took shape. Her name. That name in which the lights of a Catherine-wheel blended. Force. Fragility. Sound without sex, audible to me only in supreme femininity.
Ah, Star of the North! An overflowing heart followed you everywhere. Above all at night. Dog-adventure. Lion-adventure. Was I hoping to find her in the unhoped-for? As you follow the path, the nanny warned me, don’t get yourself into a hole.
I closed my eyes in the dark. I murmured the name. I saw her gleam beneath my eyelids. In those days she was a child too. Even then I sensed that I could love only her. Her fair hair fell to below her waist, above her aó-poí tunic, belted at the waist with an esparto sash. Her comet-hair did not yet light up the black holes of the Southern Cross, amid the three Canopuses that Amerigo Vespucci speaks of in his Relation of his Third Voyage. But the first description of the black spaces, of the Coalsacks, I found much later in the De Rebus Oceanisis of Peter Martyr of Anghiera.
In bygone days I would lie on my back in the grass, searching for the Star of the North, amid the constellations of the She-Bears. Following along behind me came my nurse, covered with sores, holding Heraclitus by the hand. They used to make fun of me. You’ll find her in the hole, the hoarse voice of the one said mockingly. Woman comes forth from the humid, the other one said. Look for her in the law of the seasons; there where the number seven enters into conjunction with the moon.
* * *
—
The heart confuses loves. Everything fits together inside that round universe. Tiny brain that pulses as though it were thinking.
Many other loves in my life took the for
m of the Star-of-the-North. But they did so only for an instant. Only she remained changeless in my heart, in the pupils of my child’s eyes, in the inconstancies of my manhood, in this sad second childhood of old age.
Try to close your eyes again. Do you see her shine beneath your eyelids? No; the darkness is inside now, outside, everywhere. The black smudges of the Southern Cross cover the empty expanses of the sky. Dead light of constellations, turned to coal, two bulging bags full of it beneath your eyes. The soft, flickering glow of the nubeculae turned into gummy sleep in your eyes.
Won’t you ever stop talking about yourself? Who is it you’re trying to stage this scene for now? You are trying not to confuse the black holes of the Southern Cross with the luminous clouds of Magellan. You are speaking of those beings whose pole is the night. You are searching the boreal sky. I am searching for my Star-of-the-North amid the Coalsacks of the Cross.
* * *
—
In those days I removed myself only halfway from nature. I shut myself up with her in an attic. Rejected by human beings and even by animals, I gave myself over to books. Not to books on paper; to books of stone, plants, desiccated insects. Above all, the famous stones of the Guayrá.*1 Very crystalline stones. I must take them out of my memory now, where they lie buried hundreds of ells deep. The crystalline stones are formed inside hollow balls of flint. Closely packed together, like the seeds of a pomegranate. They are of different colors, and so diaphanous and lustrous that at first they were taken to be very fine gems. But the first finders were wrong. They are much more precious than rubies, emeralds, amethysts, topazes, even diamonds. Of incalculable value. The most beautiful are found in the Serrezuela de Maldonado. I know, I am the only one who knows how the sap penetrates the outer crust of these stone coconuts, forming the crystals inside. They grow inside. When there is no more empty space and they become very compressed, the coconut bursts with as deafening a roar as a bomb or a cannon shot. The pieces are scattered all over a large area or imbed themselves inside others, forming single composite, conjoined stones. In the very bottom of the last one, in the innermost nucleus, the gleaming walls and towers of miniature cities, no bigger than a pinhead, can sometimes be seen. As visible as though they were on the top of a mountain. Some of these pieces bury themselves very deeply and burst again, producing tremors and rumbles in the hills and highlands. And in the lakes and rivers as well when the weather turns bad….I brought these stones to the garret under the roofbeams, turned into a secret alchemical laboratory, nursing the chimerical illusion of fabricating with their essence the stone of stones: The Stone.
From this daydream that they did not suffice to protect, ah lovely, traitorous stones, I was wrenched by my presumptive father, whose mind was made up: I was to be sent off to the Gothic Pagoda. Before he goes crazier than his brother Pedro fooling around the livelong day with mulatta and Indian girls, he decreed. Off you go, dotorsinho da merda!*2
And so here we are drifting downstream. Overwhelmed by the fetid pyramid-column of the stench. I am writing in the notebook on my knees. I address myself to the river at low water; that way perhaps it will listen to me: You know that I am going against my will. Can someone who as yet has no being be taken against his will? You, whose flow is unending, whose birthings are ceaseless; you who have no age; you who are pregnant with the conscience of the earth; you who have given your humor to a race for millennia, can you help me to relieve my multiple souls still in embryo, to find my double body submerged in your waters? If you can do so—and you can—give me a sign, a signal, an indication, no matter how small and imperceptible. Don’t be like the miserly spirits of Sentinel Hill. Some time back, I left a message beneath a rock for them, asking them about the Star of the North. I found the paper wadded up into a little ball, stained with a substance that was not exactly spiritual. Ah! Aha!, the river cleared its throat on a broad beach: The Takumbú is a very old hill. In its dotage. Driveling. It knows very little. It suffers from stone and from the cavernous flux that the Serpent cult left in its bowels. Why do you think they put prisoners sentenced to forced labor for political crimes there? The Great Tutelary Toad has ordered them to quarry stones from it for the streets of this accursed city. Asunción will be paved with bad thoughts…The wailing of the rowers interrupted it. The two-master heeled over for an instant above the edge of a sand bank. Several takuaras bent double and broke in two as they pushed. The two-master barely skirted the reef. I took advantage of the confusion. I placed the sheet of paper in a bottle, and dropped it overboard amid the water hyacinths.
My putative father spent the whole night telling of his life and labors in Paraguay, from the time of his arrival in the Brazilian caravan to exploit black tobacco. Rising in the world. Adventures. Blustering and bragging. He told of joining the royal militias. Manufacturing gunpowder. Repairing harquebuses. Inspecting the forts, presidios, and ramparts of the Province, from top to bottom. Founding the fort of San Carlos. Commanding those of Remolinos and Borbón. Erecting new forts and bastions. Collaborating with Félix de Azara and Francisco de Aguirre in the demarcation of the boundaries between the Spanish and Lusitanian empires. Speaking endlessly of his services to the crown. Monotonous lip intonation, without a thought for what he is saying. Don Engracia repeats the old story a thousand times and then one more. For the moment he is interested only in distracting the rowers as they take turns at the oars. Those taking a rest fall asleep, lulled by the murmur of the capric voice.
At times the tutorial voice fades amid the muffled sound of the oars, the slap of the water against the sides of the boat, the crackle of the bales, the explosion of a barrel of tallow. So that in their own way these interruptions tell other stories. These too no one listens to for their sense, only their sound. Except for me. I listen to them for both things, and hear both.
(The tutorial voice)
In 1774 I was promoted to captain. Twenty years of hard labor. Total fidelity to our Sovereign. Three years later I performed the most important service of my career for the Crown. I was commissioned to investigate in secret the situation in which the vassals of the Most Faithful King found themselves along the banks of the Igatimí River, where they had a fort of the same name. Following rugged trails invaded by infidels, the savage Mbayá Indians, stirred up by the bandeiros, I entered deep into enemy territory with only a deserter of the aforementioned nation as a guide. At enormous risk, and on two occasions, I infiltrated, in the silence da noite, the previously mentioned bastion occupied in those days by the Portuguese-Brazilians through cunning and treachery. I observed its fortifications and situation with the utmost accuracy. I made a detailed plan of everything, in plane view and otherwise, which, as Governor Pinedo himself said afterward, was very useful and favorável*3 when we passed to the attack and took the aforesaid fort.
We lay siege to it for three nights and three days, in the dead of winter. Shivering with the cold, we animals and men slipped and fell on the thick layers of ice. They broke beneath our weight, plunging us into the deep trenches and ditches of the defenses, as heavy discharges from the besieged and Indian arrows rained down upon us.
The artillery pieces bogged down on this field of yelo*4 that lighted the darkness. Three times the cavalry scattered. Naked, without food, we men turned to veritable icicles.
Our jefesinho, Officer Dn. Joseph Antonio Yegros, father of the present Captain Don Fulgencio Yegros, a half-relation of mine, gave the order to simulate a retreat. Intentarem un último ataque en la madrugada. Isso era querer enganar ao macaco com banana pintada. Encender vela sem pabilo.*5
* * *
—
Sitting on the hides, leaning against the mainmast, amid the stench made worse now by the putrefaction of the corpses of Igatimí, the narrator fell silent for a moment. The red navigation lantern placed on his knees hollowed out his he-goat features, half man, half beast. Entirely absorbed in his memories, he is present here only in the bone. Antihuman soul wander
ing through great regions of yelo, of wind, where thousands of arrows hum, where reports of cannons, of rifles resound. Savage cries in Portuguese, in native dialects. Infernal uproar. Hellish din.
It is glaringly obvious that the tutorial voice is no longer taking any notice of the rowers, the pilot, the boatswain, the mulatto ferrymen, the Indian oarsmen. Less still, surely, of me. He never thought of me as anything but a ridiculous, monstrous creature. I did not exist for my putative father save as an object of his hatred, of his angry shouts, of his punishments. The Portuguese lets fly with slaps so hard they could shatter a lion’s jaws. The wind from the fillip he gave me when he caught me with the skull that afternoon is still whirling round and round beneath my scalp. Another one, in the night, because I took my time about obeying his order to throw the skull in the river. But that night the force of my fist too makes itself felt with the swiftness of lightning. The talon-hand lands its blow on the tutorial master. Clutches his neck. Closes around it. Does not let go until tears of rage and impotence well up in his deathly-dull eyes. Can two deserts weep? I rivet my eyes on his, and now the deserts number four. The Portuguese finally gives up. With his next-to-last rasping breath: Let go, rapaisinho.*6 Come on, let go, I’m strangling to death! Throw the skull in the river and let that be the end of it! I slowly took my hand away from his Adam’s apple. The cainine fingers were still tightly clenched. I had to submerge them all night long in the stinking water, which little by little loosened them until it brought them back to their natural state.
(The tutorial voice)
…I did not die that night in the ditch, naked, shivering from the cold, a short distance away from the enemy palisades. With a superhuman effort I dragged myself through the brush stiff with frost, over to two corpses still just barely warm. I covered myself with them like a quilt. I huddled up close to one of them, holding on to him by the arrow stuck in his back. I glued my mouth to the corpse’s in search of any remaining heat that he still might have within him. Pardon me!, I murmured amid the bloody froth, already frozen as hard as the hairs of his mustache. Ayúdame, miliciano morto! No me dexes morir si vocé ya está morto!*7 The cadaver said nothing, as though giving me to understand: Go to it, cumpai. Whatever I have left I have very little need of. From the tone of voice I recognized my cumpai Brígido Barroso in the dark. The most stingy skinflint in all of Tierra Firma since time everlasting. It surprised me a little that he’d suddenly turned so generous. I tucked his body in snugly all around me. If you’re already in the Infernos, tell me what it’s like there, cumpai Barroso, and si es verdade que estaís en el País do Fogo,*8 give me a little bit of that fire, even if it’s just one little coal. But Barroso’s mouth gradually froze over, haggling, splitting hairs, quibbling over what wasn’t his even after he was dead….
I the Supreme Page 39
