The Clouds

by Juan José Saer

  Thirty years later, when I recall that trip on rainy nights in Rennes, I often think: No one in the world knows what loneliness, what silence is, but me. One morning, ten or so days after departure, I broke off from the convoy with Osuna and rode about an hour to explore the surroundings on the pretext of visiting some ranch, which, at any rate, we never found, and to this day I suspect was purely imaginary, and that the real cause for our excursion was Osuna’s growing fear that, any day now, we would come face to face with Chief Josesito. It was not the loss of life he feared, but rather his reputation as a guide; as his task consisted of bringing us safely to our destination, he too would find himself vulnerable if he failed. It was near ten in the morning, and as the south wind had died down and not a cloud appeared to block the sunlight from warming the earth, despite how recently the first days of August had passed, a herald of spring was already drifting in the air. The brightness grew so quickly in the clear morning that Osuna and I seemed to be galloping not to somewhere on the horizon, which appeared motionless and always set in place, but to the impossible point in time where the noon hour shone, flaming and fixed. At the edge of a lake, we paused to let the horses drink and I saw that, due to spring’s premature beginning and the terrain’s favorable saturation, a new flower was beginning to sprout. In order to observe it, that I might discuss my findings with Dr. Weiss later on, I proposed to Osuna, if he promised not to be long, that I would wait for him by the lake while he finished exploring the surroundings. Osuna was flattered by the interest that spot awakened in me as if he were its proprietor, accepting my suggestion immediately, and with his habitual bent for practical matters that, to one who did not know him as well as I, might have concealed what tugged at him internally, flew straight into a gallop southeast. He went clear and deep into the morning, and his green-and-red-striped poncho flowed about his rigid torso, angled back somewhat, shrinking by disjointed leaps as if he were being compressed, and when he’d gone far enough that hoof-beats could not be heard, the motion of the gallop—without the accompanying sonic consequence to grant it intelligible sense—became an unreal caper, almost impetuous, like that of an exaggeratedly loose-jointed paper doll manipulated via an invisible thread, tossing about silently in the air until it collapses to the ground, undone. Osuna and his horse, still distinct from each other only because my memory persists in saying so, after that clear compression by successive leaps, became so small that before the horizon swallowed them up, all at once, with no transition, and disappeared, and no matter how the eye went searching for them just over the horizon, there, in the dark and insignificant strip of land under the open blue sky, endless and even, like a luminous abyss, it could not catch sight of them again. Although the mind presumed that they remained, it could discern no indication, no sign, no consequence of their presence or their passage.

  I stayed alone by the water. The crested screamer birds, especially the lapwings, showed their distress at my arrival with loud, insistent cries. They came and went nervously across the shore, passing by without even seeming to look at us, a-shriek and a-quiver, ruffling their plumage as if trying to rid themselves of the threat our presence posed. Ever since we crossed the river north of the city and began to advance through the plains, we saw many different animals in larger numbers than usual, and, in the case of several species, in places they were not in the habit of frequenting. That strange profusion was due to the flood, which had covered vast expanses, driving many animals from their usual habitats and forcing them to settle on the strips of dry land. In this way, we had seen a bloated, muddy undulation of alligators moving west along with the water’s edge, and an uncommon quantity of felines that, though they lived amongst the trees and undergrowth, had to migrate to the open plain to escape the waters. As we passed through the lowlands near the flood’s western border, however, plants and animals were found in their customary places once more. The animal abundance was easy to notice, and the uncharacteristic presence of certain species arrayed on terrain they were not in the habit of frequenting gave the traveler the impression that upheaval had produced a sort of disorientation, of disquiet, or even panic, in the animals, which made them forget their ancestral postures and, taken from that immemorial form, allowed them to live on what land remained as they waited for the world to resume its normal course. The presence of so many different species in such a confined space—creeping, scampering, swimming, or flying, standing motionless in the water, or winging through the air—gave the countryside a motley aspect, with the arbitrary disposition of examples in a naturalist’s engraving. Since childhood, animals have often seemed to me like painted things, perhaps because it has been impossible to put myself in their place, to imagine what happens within them and, simultaneously—except perhaps for dogs—because we inspire a sort of indifference in them, present in the bird flying high in the skies just as in the horse we ride or in the tiger that prepares to devour us. Beyond their outward actions for survival, they are inaccessible to reason; it is easier for us to calculate the movements of the furthest star than to imagine the thoughts of a dove. A group of butterflies that all unmistakably perform the same motion at the same time puts our categories of individual and species to shame. Few understand the meaning of the word precision if they have never seen a flock of birds coast above a field in the crystalline evening sky, accurate and swift, tracing the same varied figures in unison. They are smaller, no doubt, of a shorter and more limited lifespan, but they are more perfect in and of themselves than man, who is clumsy and incomplete. And amid the loneliness of the plains, their unreachable external appearance of painted figurines is further intensified, rendering them almost ghostly. The hare that leaps into the rider’s path and disappears into the grasses seems at once to be and not be, both real and present to the senses and a fleeting phantom to the imagination.

  The lapwings that came and went noisily on the shore of the lake, realizing perhaps that their screams were not going to scare me away, grew quiet and disappeared into the brush to stand guard at the nests they had built on the ground. For a few seconds, there was no living presence before me, although I knew that life was teeming in the water, on the banks, and in the surrounding countryside. The lake, some fifty meters in diameter, reflected the blue of the sky, lightening a little from mixing with the water’s beige, acquiring a sallow, and, in stretches, slightly greenish tint. Light from the high sun flickered on the surface and when some movement, however small, came to disturb it, a fleeting sparkle, slightly more intense, flared and faded several times, and then, quieting, mingled once more with the constant and uniform vibrations rippling the water. There was nothing outside myself but the lake; the near horizon, so round it looked as if it had been drawn with a compass; the winter grasses, still gray, in which spring shoots could not be perceived at a distance; and above, the dome of the sky like a blue porcelain bell, supported at the base by a circular rim that fit the horizon’s circle to the millimeter, where the incandescent stain of the sun, which I was unable to see as I was facing west, where Osuna had disappeared at a gallop, was growing hot at my back and neck through my jacket. I was still mounted on my horse, which trembled, perhaps awaiting an order, motionless, hot and sweaty. I clapped a few times at its own damp neck and back, which it received with repeated head movements and, unsaddling, I took a few steps to the lakeshore, bringing it by the reins to quench its thirst. It lapped up water peacefully for a time, almost delicately, and then, seeming satisfied, straightened its neck again and looked into the distance, perhaps at the line of the horizon that curved smoothly beyond the lake. But, as I believe I’ve said above, the horse made it difficult for me to know exactly where it was looking and to infer thoughts (or however to call them) from such calm, visited periodically by the disturbance of nervous quivering, gentle and distracted as if the horse did not suppose it was living in its own body. I peered intently at its profile, and, as if warned, it did not turn its head toward me once, with such apparent stubbornness that it seemed to purp
osely treat me with indifference. For a second, I had the unmistakable impression that it was putting on and then, almost immediately, the total conviction that it knew more of the universe than I did, and therefore understood better than I the reason for the water, for the gray grasses, for the circular horizon and the flaming sun that glistened on its sweaty hide. With that conviction, I found myself all at once in a different world, stranger than the ordinary one, in which the outer world was unfamiliar to me, and so was I to myself. Everything had changed in a flash, and my horse, with its impenetrable calm, had wrested me from the center of the world and expelled me, without violence, to its edge. The world and I were separated and, for me, would never be quite the same again from that day forth; as my gaze strayed from the horse and alighted on the blue water, on the gray grasses, seeing the enclosed capsule resting blue above the horizon with us inside, I realized in that new world, born before my eyes, it was my eyes that were unnecessary, and that the expanse of strange countryside, of water, grass, horizon, blue sky, flaming sun, was not meant for them. The silence was utter, and every sound heard against it, small as it might be, could be heard clearly in each of its disordered parts: an animal gliding among the grasses; my own breath; even the beating of my heart, a sound that a fire beetle seemed to suddenly mimic in the distance; the horse’s muffled and curious snorts as it tossed its head, abstracted. An absurd notion came to me: I told myself that, exiled from my familiar world, and within that boundless silence, the only escape from terror was to disappear myself—that, if I concentrated hard, my very being would sweep that world along with it into nonexistence, that world wherein I was beginning to glimpse the nightmare. But my consciousness rebelled, persisted, whispering: If this strange place does not drive a man mad, then he is no man, or he is mad already, for it is reason that engenders madness. On that beautiful, sunny morning, panic began to set in when I saw a tiny dot begin to grow on the southwestern horizon, its movements hazy at first, then taking the shape of a man on horseback, until I saw the blaze of Osuna’s red-and-green-striped poncho, and a few minutes later Osuna himself reined in his horse three meters from mine and told me that he had thought the better of it, and had decided to come back to find me so we might make a larger turn without having to pass by the places we had already explored along the way. (Months later I told Dr. Weiss of the impressions I had during the few minutes I was alone with my horse at the lake. The doctor’s expression grew serious, and he reflected for a time before answering: Between the madmen, the horses, and yourself, it’s hard to know which are the truly mad. We lack a suitable perspective. As relates to the world you live in, whether strange or familiar, the same problem of perspective presents itself. It’s true, though, that madness and reason are inseparable. And to the extent you point out the impossibility of knowing the thoughts of a hummingbird or, if you like, of a horse, I want to note that the same is often true with our patients: They do without language, or distort it, or use one for which they alone hold the meaning. And so while we want to understand their performance, we find it’s as inaccessible for us as that of a speechless animal.)

  As we speak of madmen, it seems to me I should proceed with the memoir and return to my own: They were my chief concern, and of course, with the obstacles standing in our path, placing them safe and sound into Dr. Weiss’s hands was more complicated than I had imagined. Of the five, I knew there were three who, even if their illness were to worsen suddenly, would not cause further problems. Locked within the narrow cells of their madness, they seemed to have dispensed with the outside world altogether, and any aggravation to their state was not going to make the prison where they lived darker or more wretched, nor increase their indifference and passivity. The elder Verde’s monologues, passionate as they were, were not meant, at heart, to convince anyone, and Verdecito’s mouth-sounds were a sort of sonic wall that cut him off from the world—not to mention young Parra who, some mere months after he was admitted to Casa de Salud, allowed himself, without complaint, to be taken out of bed for the first time (and a year later, out of his room). As exasperating as he was, the elder Verde’s only phrase—morning, noon, and night, as you will recall—with which he tried to address every theme of conversation, argument, and even fatherly edification of his interlocutors, was enacting the paroxysm of his madness, and a change of state could only reduce his fervor to the deepest gloom. With regard to Verdecito, it is true that hardship increased his anxiety, his mouth-concerts, and his deafness—I had to repeat the most trivial phrases several times before they reached him—but as far as what I speak of, the main trouble was that he stuck to me like my shadow and seemed only to feel safe at my side, which on one hand allowed me to monitor him, but on the other would cause me to lose patience and, as a corollary, disturb his calm.

  It was Sister Teresita and Troncoso, even prior to departure, who worried me. Unlike the others, they grew unruly because, as often happens with a certain class of the mad, rather than shutting themselves in, they fervently believed in the legitimacy of their delusions and wished to impose them on the world at all cost, militant in their madness. The little nun was convinced that Christ had ascended to divine love in heaven after the resurrection, separating himself from mankind, leaving only his sparks scattered among men. She, then, had as her mission to reunite these sparks through the carnal act, to merge divinity and humanity anew. Her Manual for Love is exceedingly explicit on this point, and though her thinking disintegrated in the final pages, giving way to a senseless list of profanities, there is a reasoned exposition of her doctrine in the first part of her treatise, which, if one briefly adopted her theology’s point of view, is unassailable indeed. Given that theologians call purely speculative and rational theology “positive” and mystical theology “negative” (I believe), we can imagine that, drafting her Manual, Sister Teresita, like Saint Thomas, acquired her conviction to enact the recommendations received from Christ in Upper Peru, and if this hypothesis is true, it casts new light on the raison d’etre of her treatise’s final section. In any case, Sister Teresita was without the slightest doubt a troublesome presence in our caravan, and the central dilemma she posed for me was trying to keep her apart from the soldiers without imprisoning her in the wagon; there was a contradiction between keeping her under lock and key during the trip and the fact that in Las Tres Acacias, the patients, with very rare exceptions, could move in total freedom throughout the establishment. Another problem was knowing to what extent the members of the convoy—cart-men, soldiers, whores—were aware of the sort of madness that had taken hold of Sister Teresita. For the first two or three days I held the illusion, completely unjustified of course, that nobody knew of the little nun’s erotic ravings until, one afternoon, I saw a group of soldiers in a circle near Basque’s saloon, looking profoundly attentive and serious as they listened to somebody speaking inside. Intrigued, I approached to see what was being discussed, and over the shoulder of one of the soldiers I was able to confirm that Sister Teresita, slit-eyed with indignation and lowering her voice, as if disclosing a terrible secret, was revealing to the soldiers that, If Christ was crucified, it was because he had such a huge . . . and accompanied her words with a familiar gesture, raising her hands to chest height and, placing the palms facing each other some thirty centimeters apart, bobbing the two simultaneously to indicate an approximate size. When she saw my astonished face over a soldier’s shoulder—he, like all the rest, was bewitched by Sister Teresita’s words and failed to notice my presence—the nun began to laugh, and with an impudence that makes me smile to this day when I remember, stuck out her tongue, ran it with feigned delight across her narrow lips and, preempting my summons, left the circle of soldiers and accompanied me meekly to her wagon. We never discussed it, and it all happened casually, but what impressed me most deeply, and especially incited me to reflection, was the seriousness, even the gravity, with which the soldiers listened to her. It was clear they would not doubt for a single instant, for the rest of their lives, that t
he little nun had just revealed the true cause of the crucifixion.